I’ve not written in awhile as I’ve been busy moving to the other end of the country.  I’m now in London (Clapham Junction) rather than Manchester and slowly but surely settling in to my new life.  I’m still living out of boxes and preparing for an ISP change, so I’ve not really had time to do too much development (on a laptop, please, the poverty!) but what I have been able to do is play a good load of Xbox 360 games.

So a little executive roundup, in order of release…

• Bionic Commando
  
  Interesting one this, I didn’t pick this up on release week, as I have a habit of doing with most games that look “premium” due to mixed reviews floating around the web.  I think it was the Kotaku review that swayed me to pick it up (that and a £30 price point in Tesco the week I was packing all my belongings into boxes).  I actually really enjoyed the core game play mechanics of BC.  I went in expecting something like Crackdown and didn’t get it.  What I did get was a pretty tight modern 3d Contra game.  The internet said it was difficult, and after initially being disappointed that it wasn’t, the game spent the final third of the game throwing three hundred sodding mechs at you at the same time.  Enjoyed it up until then… oh and the end of the game is hilariously bad / amusing / poor / brilliant. 
  
  Enjoyable, but I’m not sure if I’d recommend it.
  
• Fuel
  
  I looked forward to Fuel coming out.  I liked the previews, I thought it looked really decent.  I like Fuel but it’s not a good game.  Fuels gimmick is that they’ve used satellite imagery to render an massive open game world (talking hundreds and hundreds of square kilometres of, well, dirt) and thrown a bunch of “extreme” weather in there.  Only, the vehicles don’t remotely handle like cars, the core game play mechanic of “racing” is really poorly implemented (you loose every race until the quarter of the final lap, then get to catch up) and generally there isn’t too much game to be had.
  
  Thankfully there’s a free roam mode, where you collect car customisation bits that make not a single piece of difference to the game play experience.  Fuel is just plain boring and I can’t recommend it to anyone.
  
  However, I oddly find myself enjoying Fuel.  I like exploring the largely bland (think Yellowstone National Park but with some poor texture work) massive environments, driving in one direction for literally half an hour (the map really is that big, big enough they let you teleport around it). It’s somehow therapeutic. So I guess, while I can’t honestly recommend it, you might enjoy it if you like endless sandbox driving.
  
• Red Faction: Guerrilla
  
  I’ve only really spent about 3-4 hours with Red Faction, and only with it’s single player.  I really really like Red Faction, but honestly I just got really bored playing it after awhile.  The core game mechanics behind the game are brutally fun.  Everything explodes, literally everything.  The combat is pretty difficult, and blowing up just about every building in the game is incredibly fun.  Unfortunately the game is set on Mars, so everything is red.  And I mean everything.  If you think Quake looked brown, just wait until you see the red in this.
  
  The tech behind the game is pretty excellent, there are tonnes of excellent pacing mechanics to lead you through the open world game, they stage game progression pretty well, but it’s all a little… soulless?  I don’t know, something just didn’t quite grab me despite the game clearly being excellent.
  
  I guess I’ll get back to you on it.
  
• Prototype
  
  The game where you get to karate kick a helicopter.  Seriously.  When I turned Prototype on I was pretty disappointed – largely because the texture work throughout Prototype is actually woefully bad.  Like really, 2003 Xbox game bad… and then three seconds later they give you the super-powers of Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, Wolverine and er., Bionic Commando.  At once.  Prototype is equal parts a kind of rubbish looking version of Crackdown with a far far worse environmental traversal component and part Devil May Cry rip off (I don’t rate DMC) where you play, to the best of my knowledge some angry hoody.  The story is trying to be graphic-novel cool along with dramatic and really, it’s just utterly lame.  But you don’t care, because the game play mechanic is incredible FUN.  Not clever and not big, but you get to use your weird whip arm to pull helicopters out of the sky and sprint up skyscrapers while fighting mutants.
  
  I really can’t say a bad thing about a game with a core mechanic so fun that it overcomes both terrible art assets and a woefully bad story, two things that I tend to hold in high regard.  I’d recommend it.

Oh I’ve also purchased and got re-engrossed in Fallout 3: The One That Raises The Level Cap To 30 And RetCons Out The Ending. Fallout 3 is pretty much still my game of last year, so being able to continue made me very very happy.  Looking forwards to Telltale Games’ Monkey Island episodes that start tomorrow and I’m positively lusting after Mass Effect 2 after the E3 teaser (along with, surprisingly, New Super Mario Brothers Wii).

As ever, make your own decisions, but I’d recommend you check out at least a few of the above games.