We felt what you might call a minor disturbance in the Force when Activision released its now wildly successful Skylanders game last year. In case you don’t know about it, Skylanders : Spyro’s Adventure is a toy/video game hybrid that comes with a ‘Portal of Power’ that connects to a console or computer, and toys that carry all the game characters information.

You get your characters in the game by buying the toys – and of course there are various kinds with various powers – and the two are totally linked. It’s an admittedly clever idea that we’re mystified no one else has really latched onto  – combining video games and toys the way Skylanders does is a no brainer really – but we were slightly surprised at the lack of response by gamers as a whole. Skylanders is just the kind of thing that we’d expect gamers to be wary of, linking content to items you have to continuously buy the way it does, but because it’s a kids game and focused on toys – which have always been that way – no one really paid attention. Given Skylanders is what it is, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but we did wonder how long it would take for another publisher to try something like it for a main stream game. And we wondered what kind of reaction making gamers buy something large and gaudy just to get game content would garner.

It didn’t take long as last week EA announced that Mass Effect 3 figures were on the way that would have exclusive Mass Effect 3 DLC content attached to them. These, by the way, look to be figures that were part of an earlier wave of Mass Effect figures, only this time with Mass Effect multiplayer DLC attached to them. Looks like a great way to stock clear to us. We’ve never been big game tat or game toy collectors, but we can totally see the appeal for some people. Yet at the same time we felt a much larger disturbance in the Force at the announcement. I think I even used the words, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

The reaction of the gaming community was varied, and for our part  as we’ve slowly reflected on the idea, just how good or bad it is really depends on how much that DLC affects the game for those who aren’t interested in buying plastic figures. What’ll be key in our minds is whether or not they’ll be any other way of getting hold of this DLC other than through this figures, and most importantly how powerful and how much of a game changer some of this stuff will be.

If player with figures end up getting vastly better weapons and upgrades, that’ll be enough to send many gamers – including us – into paroxysms of rage. Why? Because what that’ll effectively be doing is splitting ME3’s multiplayer community, and be the most expensive DLC we’ve ever seen – these figures are around $17 each (no word yet on UK price or release).

You might say that’s a silly idea and we’re fairly sure that whatever comes with the figures will be release separately for download after, but we’re watching this one very closely, and you should be too. If it’s a success and, here is the caveat, Bio Ware does manage to get away with having any of that content totally exclusive to the figures and only the figures – watch out. That could be the thin end of the wedge that ends up with everyone having to buy bits of tat they don’t want just to get game content – which is a terrifying idea. It’s unlikely to happen, and you might call us paranoid, but that’s our job, to watch trends as they emerge and speculate about where they might go – besides we get to say, ‘I told you so,’ if it does get out of hand further down the track.

I’ve probably been playing games for longer than you’ve been alive – that’s almost three decades. And when I started working with games, over ten years ago, you probably didn’t even have pubes. I’m a veteran of electronic entertainment and I love it. But, y’know, when you’re so close to something you see its flaws more clearly than anyone else.

So yeah, I have issues, problems and gripes with gaming as a whole and I’m going to share them with you because maybe you’ll agree with some of them and enjoy it for that, or maybe you’ll fervently disagree with others and call me names in the comments, and enjoy it for that. I just hope I feel better for getting all this off my chest. So, I love games, but I hate…

XP for no reason

As a lifelong RPG fan, I love earning XP and levelling up, but ever since Call Of Duty 4 more and more games are putting in XP and levelling up for absolutely no reason. I actually think it’s worthwhile and well implemented in the Call Of Duty series, but most games just use it as a cynical tool to keep you playing.

Slow menus

I’m predominantly a console gamer, but I do also love PC games and appreciate the importance of the PC as a gaming platform. Most game developers, for example, have their own roots in PC gaming. But some of them need to work harder at making their menus navigable for console users. I’m looking at you, Bethesda. I team of your caliber should know better than the “let’s just give ‘em the same as the PC version” menu system in Skyrim.

Annual updates

It used to just be sports games, but now several major franchises have gone annual and, personally, I don’t buy into it. I never even bought into it with sports games. I’m still playing FIFA 11 at the moment because I don’t like FIFA 12 as much. You might enjoy buying and playing a new Call Of Duty and/or Assassin’s Creed every year, but I’m sure you’d get a better experience overall if they were coming out every two or three years. The ‘when it’s ready’ approach to development scheduling will always produce better games.

Easy ones

I’m all for accessibility and I’m all for tutorials and I’m all for games that don’t require you to spend hours learning and practicing complex skills and techniques, but that’s no excuse for games being just plain easy. One thing more likely to turn a player off of a game than anything else is frustration, but boredom isn’t much better, so making a game that’s just a pushover isn’t the answer. I want my games to kick my ass sometimes, and if they’re well designed I won’t be frustrated about it – I’ll be itching to restart straight away and do right what I did wrong the first time.

The stories

If there’s something that really bugs me it’s credit being given to videogame stories where it is not due. Claims that the stories of games like Heavy Rain, Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted, L.A. Noire and BioShock are among the best in any media are absolutely ludicrous. These games, among others, are driving storytelling in games forward, and should be applauded for that, but there’s still a long, long way to go and suggesting that they’re already on a par with the best stories cinema has to offer is letting developers off far too lightly. We need to stop heaping unreserved praise on these admirable, but ultimately failed, attempts to tell sophisticated, mature stories and push developers to do better. Because it can be done. Videogames do have the potential to tell great stories in their own unique way, but so far only one developer truly deserves to be considered a decent storyteller and that’s Valve.

False promises

There was a time when games would earn plaudits by exceeding expectations and defying the perceived limitations of what was possible. These days the trick to getting your game hailed as a classic seems to be to make all kinds of far-fetched claims during the build up to its release and hope that everyone would rather blindly go along with your lies than admit to themselves that games aren’t actually as innovative or as progressive as they desperately want to believe they are. And it works again and again. It’s sad, really.

Bad endings

I so rarely complete games. This is partly because I get loads of free ones and am easily distracted by shiny, new treats, but it’s mainly because almost every game I ever play gets boring about two thirds of the way through and grinds its way to a disappointing, and usually annoying, anticlimax. It’s understandable that designers want to get their best work in early to draw you in, and that any game is going to be more compelling during the midway period when it’s gradually drip feeding new features into the mix, but do the endings always have to be so crap? No, they don’t. Once again, see Valve. Half-Life 2 is guilty of dragging itself out a bit in the middle, but the final hour of Episode 3 is the best hour of gaming you’ll ever play. That’s how to do an ending – leave us desperately wanting more.

Graphics whores

I don’t subscribe to the “graphics don’t matter” school of thought at all. Graphics do matter and if you’ve invested a large sum of money in a machine with powerful graphics technology at its core then you’re entitled to expect developers to take advantage of that technology. However, a lot of games – like a lot of people – seem to get away with being boring and uninspired simply because they’re damn pretty to look at. Worse still is the boring obsession gamers have with discussing graphics. What’s to discuss? Anything beyond “It looks good/bad” just seems like obsessive, nitpicky or both, if you ask me. Still, the fact that all three of the best looking games ever – Killzone 3, Crysis 2 and Rage – failed to achieve stellar sales suggests graphics whorism isn’t as prevalent as it can sometimes seem.

Geek in-jokes

What is it with geeks and their inability to understand when a joke has run its course? You do realise that ‘meme’ is essentially a shorter way of saying ‘joke that has been milked to death already’, don’t you? This dead horse flogging approach to humour is as rife in games as it is on the internet. The worst example? “The cake is a lie”. A good joke is like an exotic animal. It thrives in its natural habitat, but as soon as you remove it from where it belongs you destroy its beauty and kill its spirit. Printing “The Cake Is A Lie” on a T-shirt is like making a dolphin live in a bucket. Leave it where it belongs! In Portal! There’s even a reference to the Portal cake in Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow! Not only is it embarrassingly unfunny it undermines the otherwise beautifully crafted atmosphere of the game. Stop it!

Awkward controls

The basic design of a regular videogame controller has remained essentially the same now for nearly a decade and a half and by this point developing an intuitive control system ought to be a question of common sense. Yet some games still have unnecessarily fiddly control systems that repeatedly break me out of the game experience by forcing me to think about how to do what I want to do instead of just doing it. Metal Gear Solid 4 is probably the worst culprit of this generation, and playing those Resident Evil HD remakes reminded me of why I could never get along with those games the first time around. Then there’s Assassin’s Creed, a series with such a nonsensical control set-up that it has to dedicate a part of its HUD to telling you what each button will actually do at any given time. I’m not saying every game should have the exact same controls, but there does seem to be a lot of fixing that which isn’t broke going on.

Generic settings

Having just given Assassin’s Creed a bit of a kicking for its control system, I’m going to give it some credit here for being the exception that proves the rule of games seldom venturing beyond a very small selection of setting types. Assassin’s Creed’s detailed historical settings really are unique, distinctive and refreshing. But for every Assassin’s Creed, BioShock or Portal 2 one of these there are dozens of depressingly familiar game worlds. Even the settings of series like The Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect, despite being well flesh-outed and richly detailed, are still starting to feel a bit by-numbers to me.

Macho characters

A lot is made of how poorly women are represented in games, and they sure are, but this discussion often carries with it an assumption that representations of men in games are somehow far preferable. Maybe if you’re a thirteen year old dipshit with anger issues, but I’m not one. And I find the likes of Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, Chris Redfield and Solid Snake embarrassing. I didn’t mind so much when the macho men were just deliberately goofy stereotypes like Duke Nukem and Serious Sam, but now that we’re somehow expected to invest emotion and meaning into these meatheads, it’s just getting pathetic. Shall I namedrop Valve again? Yes, I shall. Eli Vance – there’s a real man for you.

Stealth games

The weird thing about this one is that I enjoy employing stealth in games that aren’t ‘stealth games’. That’s how I play both Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer and Skyrim, for example. But in the former I’m sneaking around real people and in the latter my sneaking depends upon clearly defined stats and perks, not on some arbitrary set of parameters and inconsistent AI. That’s what I hate about stealth games – the mechanics and AI are invariably stupid and unrealistic, and it’s so frustrating being forced to play by their crummy rules. Plus, there’s too much waiting, and that feels like a massive waste of time.

Pointless sandboxes

There was a plague of this early in this generation. The sandboxes of the last-gen GTA games were revolutionary and technically mindblowing on that hardware. It’s piss easy to make a sandbox game on a 360 or PS3 though and from a game design perspective, nothing could be simpler (and lazier) than building a big, open environment and scattering things around it to collect and destroy. It’s always dressed up in buzzwords like ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ but it’s all bull. Sandbox games should require more carefully crafted design, not less. It’s most common among licensed tie-in games and is often seen alongside the more recent lazy trend of arbitrary XP systems. Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention how much I hate it in racing games. Burnout Paradise isn’t a bad game, exactly, but the switch to open world robbed it of so much that I loved about the earlier Burnout titles.

Nonsense puzzles

This is why, despite their featuring a genuine with rare in videogames, I’ve never been able to abide the Monkey Island games. I dislike the point and click genre as a whole really, along with any game that leans heavily on prescriptive, single (usually illogical) solution puzzles. If I think of a solution to an in-game problem that makes logical sense then I want it to work, or I at least want to see exactly why it doesn’t work. I don’t to be told “You cannot use this here” or some other variant on “computer says no” just because the game designer had some other, more convoluted solution in mind when he or she made the game. It just ends up being a matter of pure trial and error and that’s not my idea of fun at all.

Expensive gimmicks

I love Guitar Hero, but I loved it more when the guitar added a very reasonable £10 to the RRP of the game. Once Activision got a hold of the idea, though, the peripherals got more and more expensive and more and more pointless. It all culminated in the ridiculous Tony Hawk board controller. At that point, Activision had apparently found the limit of just how much over-priced gaming clutter people actually want in their lives, and has since scaled back its gimmick flogging to the much craftier Skylanders brand. I hate it on principle.

Fanboys

Fanboyism is boring and annoying, that we all know, but that’s not the worst thing about it. The real problem I have with it is that if it isn’t kept in check, it’s far too easily exploited and this has a negative effect on everyone that isn’t directly profiting. It’s one of the reasons the games industry is so cluttered with endlessly iterated brands and spin-offs and reboots and remakes and nonsensical story arcs, and has such a hard time introducing anything new or truly progressive. A lot of gamers get really attached to dated, generic crap for some reason, and don’t seem to realise that almost anything billed ‘for the fans’ is there to exploit them.

Motion control

I’d be alright with motion control if it weren’t for the inevitable lack of control. There’s fun to be had seeing yourself, or a version of yourself, on-screen in a game, but most motion control games just make it harder and more exhausting to do things that could be done much more accurately with a button and/or a stick. The whole idea that using your body to control games makes it feel like you’re really doing whatever you’re supposed to be doing is a lie. Nothing breaks the immersion of a game more than unresponsive, inaccurate controls and that, as far as I can tell, is the main USP of motion control – it doesn’t do what you want it to do.

Cut-scenes

The most obvious reason I hate cut-scenes in games is that they’re usually really badly done and the stories usually suck anyway, so who cares? But there’s a more fundamental reason I object to their use in games. Even when they are, in themselves, pretty good, such as in the Uncharted series, I still find it depressing that game developers are just copying cinematic techniques instead of exploring the unique storytelling possibilities interactive entertainment can offer. Sorry to sound like a stuck record, but this is yet another area in which Valve leads the way. It’s no coincidence that Valve almost never uses cut-scenes (only very sparsely in Left 4 Dead to bookend episodes, but Left 4 Dead is styled like a collection of B-movies, so it’s deliberate and applicable), instead preferring to use seamless, reactive, interactive storytelling that ensures you always feel like you’re at the centre of what’s going on and never jarringly pulls you out of the game.

PC gamers

As I already said, I love the depth and innovation of PC games, but hardcore PC gamers have to be some of the weirdest, most deluded, most inexplicably arrogant people on the entire planet. First of all there’s the very idea that a set of tools designed for typing and operating utility software is somehow objectively better for playing games than a device designed for playing games. I’m happy for some people to prefer using a mouse and keyboard over using a pad, but the way they say it offers precise control as if it’s a fact is so annoying. Once and for all, control in games is about movement as well as about aim and if you think four fricking arrow keys offers you more precision than an analogue stick then you’re an idiot. Oh God, and they cannot accept that they’re idiots just because they know a bit about how computers work, when to the rest of us it’s obvious they’re idiots because only an idiot would spend a small fortune (and Lord knows how much time) on a ‘rig’ just for marginally faster loading times and marginally better graphics performance. I hate them so much. That said, I’m always really glad to count one or two of them among my friends when I’m having issues with my PC. But I still hate them.

QTEs (“Quick Time Events”)

While I hate the idea of cut-scenes for reasons already stated above, some of the more action-orientated ones can be pretty entertaining. And this is why I absolutely cannot fathom why so many develops insist on punctuating them with button prompts. I hear what they say, that they want the player to continue to feel involved through the cut-scene, but they’re wrong. If you don’t want to break the player out of the game, don’t use cut-scenes. But if you really must break me out of the game with a cut-scene, don’t then immediately break me out of the friggin’ cut-scene. Or worse still, make me watch the cut-scene repeatedly because I don’t press a button quick enough. I’d rather be playing than watching, but I’d rather be watching than some awkward hybrid of both that’s seemingly designed to ensure that doing one makes it impossible to do the other properly. There is absolutely no defence for it.

Oh wow, that really does feel much better. A huge weight has been lifted. I suggest everyone tries this. Aaahhh…

I think a great deal of videogame stories – particularly those of the bigger series out there – have a problem. They’re too big, too complex, and often, too convinced of their own brilliance. Videogame narratives tend to be either overly self-involved or so unbearably silly that we choose to ignore them, paying no heed to the talk of conspiracies within conspiracies or whatever the reason was for that alien invasion in favour or just blasting through enemies and savouring the gameplay (which is, by and large, usually rather good).

The thought came to me when reading details about the Resident Evil 6 plot, and realising that despite having played Resident Evils 1, 2, 4 and 5, I still felt largely in the dark as to what was going on. T-Viruses, G-Viruses, Uroborous, Las Plagas, all the characters and conspiracies and backstabbings…I can barely follow any of it, and nor do I feel compelled to. It’s over-convoluted nonsense. I fondly remember playing the first, and even the second, Resident Evil games. Enter a haunted house or fight your way through a zombie invasion – they were nicely contained narratives that were all the more immersive and gripping because I wasn’t getting distracted by the kind of tedious subplots and overwrought backstory development that’s now undermined the series.

It’s a problem inherent in many series that have got a bit long in the tooth. I won’t deny that I’m interested to see what happens next in the story of Desmond Miles, but the longer Ubisoft stretches out the narrative of Assassin’s Creed the more its tight, interesting story is beginning to unravel. Gears Of Wars story built throughout its three games, hinting at something deeper and brilliant beyond what we were being told, but then failed to take it anywhere, ending the trilogy on a damn squib of a conclusion that failed to answer most of the questions its fanbase wanted resolved. The Metal Gear Solid saga does have some fantastic story elements running through it  – Metal Gear Solid 3 in particular has one of the great videogame narratives in recent memory – but that’s only if you can keep up with the tangled backstory and incestuous relationships of the characters. Anyone who could keep up with what was going on at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2 or throughout Metal Gear Solid 4 then we salute you, good sir.

There are plenty more examples – the later Silent Hill games, the F.E.A.R. series, and yes, even Halo’s story is, let’s be honest, utter nonsense. The longer a series goes on, the more ignorable its story tends to become.

The best examples of videogame narratives are those that are self-contained, unique, and most of all, simple. Red Dead Redemption is a great example, as is BioShock (the sequel to which threatened to destroy it’s well-constructed plot, but actually managed to develop the narrative without picking it apart completely). Final Fantasy VII told a beautiful story of love and saving the world without complicating matters with the needless exposition the series crams into its more recent entries, and although the Uncharted series may be a shameless imitation of Fifties adventure romps and Indiana Jones it can’t be denied that the formula works.

The Modern Warfare series is in no way a prime example of good storytelling, but the first and third entries into the series are indicative of the fact that keeping things easy to grasp always makes for the better story. They were simple manhunts, sending you around the world in a bombastic and exhilarating chase for the enemy. Modern Warfare 2’s story, in comparison, was an over-complicated trawl that threw too many elements into the mix, turning gamers off in the process. The return to the cat and mouse chase in MW3 fared far better.

I would even go as far as to say that the Kane & Lynch games, despite the fact that they’re undeniably less accomplished games than Halo, still have the better stories by way of the fact I can easily enjoy and follow them. I also fully expect myself to enjoy the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot over past franchise entries too, given that it replaces globetrotting and insidious conspiracies with one, singular plot element: survive.

I’m not saying that all videogame stories should be uncomplicated, undemanding affairs. BioShock’s certainly wasn’t and it worked, and I’ve no doubt Irrational will achieve something similar with BioShock: Infinite. But I firmly believe that developers need to learn when to stop adding elements and retconning their sprawling narratives in an effort to try and make something new. Yes, videogame developers are building entire worlds, but the stories they tell don’t have to be as complicated as the mechanics that underpin them.

My taste in games is pretty broad but if I had to pick a favourite genre, it would be strategy. I love all sorts of action games, but nothing quite hooks me in, addicts me and makes me lose track of time like a good, expansive, turn-based strategy epic.

If you’re like me then surely you’d have to agree that yesterday’s announcement of XCOM: Enemy Unknown has to be one of the most exciting in gaming history.

When I conned my parents into buying me an Amiga (for ‘homework’) back in 1992, the first game I bought was Sid Meier’s Civilization and I immediately got so, so, so addicted to it at the expense of homework, of course.

I’ve been in awe of Sid Meier ever since, playing every game in the Civilization series for hundreds of hours each and even dabbling in Colonization, Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon over the years. If I had to choose an all-time favourite game developer, he’d be one of two that would tie for the lead.

The other would be Julian Gollop, creator of XCOM.

I’ve been a fan of Gollop even longer than I’ve been one of Meier. In 1990 I got a demo of Lords Of Chaos free with a Spectrum magazine and played it over and over again. A few months later I conned my parents into buying me a subscription to that same magazine, mainly because every subscriber got a free copy of the complete Lords Of Chaos game as an incentive.

I played Lords Of Chaos religiously with my best friend and my brother for months on end. It still remains one of my favourite games of all time.

Anyway, after a few years of Civilization addiction on the Amiga, I needed a new massively immersive strategy game to neglect my studies in favour of and a game called UFO: Enemy Unknown (a.k.a. X-COM: UFO Defense) caught my eye.

At the time, I had no idea it was created by the same guy responsible for my favourite Spectrum game, but it does, of course, make perfect sense. Both games implement superbly balanced random, procedural elements to ensure that, even though you’re often playing on the same, or very similar, environments again and again, every battle feels different and you’re always kept on your toes.

About a year ago, I revisited UFO: Enemy Unknown after I found myself gushing about it to a co-worker asking for suggestions of scary alien encounters in games. It’s still awesome and was honestly one of my most played games of 2011.

I don’t want, or expect, Sid Meier’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown to be the same. I’m actually more excited about this announcement than I would be if Julian Gollop were making it himself. It’s one of my two all-time favourite developers reinterpreting a game by the other of my two all-time favourite developers and that really is something I thought I’d never get to see. This strategy gamer couldn’t be happier.

Now, bring on Jullian Gollop’s Civilization VI.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising was first announced way back during E3 2009, and since then all we’ve seen of the title is a short trailer and presentation during E3 2010. It’s been very quiet since, without even one new screenshot having been released in the interim period. As such I’ve often had doubts about the quality of Rising, given that what little we have learned about the title makes it sound like a less assured version of Ninja Gaiden.

Today we finally got a snippet of news, but it wasn’t of the good kind. Kojima Productions confirmed that Metal Gear Solid: Rising producer Shigenobu Matsuyama has stepped down from the project, to be replaced by Yuji Korekado.

It’s not been made clear why this change of staff occurred or whether it’s related to the game’s long silence – for all we know Matsuyama had any number of personal issues that could be attributed to his need to leave the project. But still, it’s never a good sign when a senior member of staff departs mid-way through a title’s production.

I’ve had a bad feeling about Metal Gear Solid: Rising for some time now. We’ve heard little about the actual gameplay other than the fact it’s got a more action-based take on stealth, and that the game is based around a ‘cut and take’ mechanic which, basically, sounds like any action game in which you attack enemies and then pick up whatever orbs or pick-ups their dead bodies leave behind.

Perhaps it was the big run-up to announcement that gave Metal Gear Solid: Rising such prominence, with website countdowns and teased images getting everyone talking long before the actual game was announced. However the lack of information and almost total silence from publisher and developer over the years have painted a worrying picture of the game. We’ve seen nothing of Rising in action – nothing to suggest that it’s something special or worthy of our attention. This shifting in senior development staff only further reinforces the fact that perhaps Metal Gear Rising isn’t quite the game many gamers’ imaginations have it shaped up to be.

Still, a full reveal is expected following a showcase at this year’s VGAs, taking place in a little over three weeks time. Perhaps then my fears will be proven completely and utterly unfounded.

Time for a confession. I hated Oblivion with a passion. It should have been the kind of game I loved, as I’m a huge fantasy and RPG fan, but it totally rubbed me the wrong way.  A great many people were willing to put up with its very rough edges to immerse themselves in its huge fantasy world, but I went through some kind of fantasy game  ‘uncanny valley’ with it.  It was as if something in me could see the mechanical gaps in the attempt to portray this fantasy world with such scope and it made it hard to lose myself in the game.

It certainly came down to personal preference, but I couldn’t stand its terrible engine for a start. It managed to render landscapes beautifully enough – albeit it with some odd texturing problems – but made a total butchery of peoples faces. The way you interacted with those characters with that god-awful conversation wheel- the wheel o’ comedy as I always called it – totally put me off.

And don’t get me started on the totally crazy way the AI would often  behave! Companion behaviour and random events were all too often either infuriating or unconvincing, which is never good in an immersive RPG.   I just couldn’t enjoy its shonky first person combat either, and going into third person was even more terrible. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with its more traditional class based levelling system, but quite why you had to sleep in order to rank up was beyond me.  As for it’s quests, there were some gems in there, but it felt like ultimately everything had to be decided with its terrible combat. I’ve heard the Oblivion gate quests became a real pain later on, but I was out of there long before that. It also felt that for all the wide open spaces, forests and mountains Oblivion portrayed so well, too many of its caves and dungeons felt like they were merely repeated set pieces and textures, and they all felt exactly the same – if you’d been inside one Dwarven barrow you’d been inside them all.

And don’t get me started on the endless glitches, crashes and resulting occasional quests that couldn’t be done without resorting to an earlier save because of them. I, a self confessed RPG geek, was constantly taken out of the game and bored in what should have been a boundless magical fantasy. I’m totally willing to admit that most of these problems could have been down to me, but Oblivion just felt like it was over reaching on all fronts and it really disappointed me.

That isn’t the case with Skyrim . You might not consider it more than just a polished version of Oblivion, but to me it manages to cross that uncanny valley gap that Oblivion couldn’t. The revised engine not only gives Skyrim the realistic feel Oblivion seemed lacking, with some of the most beautiful, far more naturally fashioned landscapes, but it’s people are finally alive! They aren’t going to be competing with the cast of LA Noire anytime soon, but getting rid of that ridiculous conversation wheel and using conversation trees makes talking to them enjoyable rather than a massive annoying chore. People’s AI, especially that of your various companions, while still wonky feels massively improved.  I’ve even come round to liking it’s first person combat, which has been given far more nuance and options – especially with your magic and Dragon Shout abilities – and this time out playing in third person while not ideal is actually an option. The levelling up system now has to be one of the best in an RPG, being totally focused on what you use, really opens up your choices and encourages variety of play. I’m also particularly taken by the way your skill tree is presented as an easy to navigate series of constellations rather than a prosaic list.

It’s quest system and random events have similarly seen a vast improvement with so many things to do, and while it’s still predominantly about combat, there are more ways to do them. And all of the places you explore in your quests are all far more unique, both in the outside world and in the various caves, dungeons and holds. I’m only about ten hours in, but have yet to see anything that remotely even looks like repetition in the various places I’ve explored. There are still glitches in Skyrim – ever seen a mammoth inexplicably fall from the sky? I have – and the occasional crash, but so far nothing bad enough to actually put me off.

With Skyrim it looks like Bethesda really paid attention to what didn’t work in the last Elder Scrolls game, and look to set it right in this one. And I’m fairly sure that a good number of lessons were learnt and taken on board after Fallout 3, as Skyrim is even more polished than that was. As a games journalist it’s encouraging to see that despite how much everyone praised the last game Bethesda were willing to look at it’s flaws and correct a good many of them, and as a gamer I just very glad they’ve crafted a game that I can now really enjoy.

The depths of my love for Skyrim were revealed to me on Sunday morning, when I actually got out of bed early rather than sleeping in so I could get back into completing the Thieves Guild quests. If something trumps staying in my lovely warm bed on a Sunday morning then I know it’s got to be good. Very good indeed.

But because I’m a cynical, negative games journalist, and because I have to say something about the game on this here blog, I’m not going to focus on the positivies of Skyrim. That doesn’t make for an interesting read for you readers, after all. No, I’m going to have a quick rant about the one feature of Skyrim that I dislike.

I say dislike – I dislike it about the same amount as I dislike the way oranges have to be peeled before you get to enjoy their deliciousness, or the way self-service checkouts tell me there’s an unexpected item in the bagging area when I’ve put nothing in there – it’s something that irritates me, but doesn’t ruin the experience. I just dislike it.

What is it? It’s the menu system. When I first heard about the sleek interface and the way it slid across from the right and left of the screen I thought it sounded cool and accessible, and insofar as the way it looks and moves it is. However, in terms of functionality it makes a great many mistakes that slightly, almost imperceptibly, chip away at the fun I’m having with the game.

• The columns are too thin for starters, meaning that you’re constantly scrolling to find the items that you want to use. Exacerbating this is the fact that just names are used for items rather than small icons, meaning locating them take far longer than it needs to.
• Equipped items don’t stack to the front of the inventory, leaving them muddled with the rest of the items. It may just be my OCD acting up but surely grouping equipped items together would be a clearer way of doing things?
• A huge part of the screen – at least three fifths of it – is used to show one single item. Why not use all this screen space to show your items and what your character is equipped with with more clarity?
• The magic menu is particularly at fault – just finding out what your active effects are takes four steps (why can’t they just be displayed on the huge, unused space to the left of the menu?) while changing Shouts is a dull trawl through menus instead of just being able to immediately swap them on the fly using, say, one of the three unused buttons on the d-pad.
• The skills menu looks lovely, but there’s too much time spent flicking from left to right, and you can’t immediately compare specific skills side-by-side.

I’ve certainly got bigger things to worry about in life than the fact that Skyrim’s menu system slightly annoys me, but when I’m spending this much time with a game (and believe me, I’ve spent a lot with it) these small niggles and issues gradually grow bigger and more dominant over the many hours. I’m fed up with scrolling through text and playing with fidgety menus to get the desired effect. Bethesda could have designed this small portion of the game in a much more user-friendly way. If it had done so I wouldn’t be writing this blog, and I would be playing a near perfect game.

I’ll let it off though. Last night I stumbled across a wooly mammoth and a dragon fighting while a bandit ineffectually hacked at the mammoth’s legs. Any game that lets you write a sentence like that can pretty much get away with murder in my book.

It’ll come as a surprise to absolutely no one that EA has just announced Battlefield 4.  Battlefield 3 has been a phenomenal success, with sales of over five million in just it’s first week after release and while that’s not quite in the league of  Modern Warfare 3 record breaking nine million in its first day, it’s nothing to be sneezed at.

The truth is that Battlefield 3 easily has far more dimensions to it than Modern Warfare 3 – there are just more toys in the box – but perhaps it doesn’t quite use them as effectively as Modern Warfare 3 does its more limited set – at least as far as appealing to console gamers goes. EA would love to get closer to the kind of numbers that Activision does with its juggernaut shooter, so what does Battlefield 4 need to better take on Modern Warfare 4? We had a little think and came up with five things we believe the console version of Battlefield 4 needs in order to do better against the Modern Warfare monster.

It’s worth noting  – for any rabid fan boys out there – that we aren’t inherently saying Modern Warfare 3 is better than Battlefield 3, just pointing out what needs to be done if EA and DICE want to capture a greater share of the market it specifically appeals to.

5. Time.

This is obvious but cannot be overstated.  Yes, console gamers have played versions of the Battlefield games before in the Bad Company series, but this is their first taste of the ‘real’ Battlefield experience. The shooter market is no longer driven by PC, where gamers are more than familiar with Battlefield, so the series needed the big time exposure it’s gained. Now that it’s been established in the console consciousness a large core of fans will return for Battlefield 4 – and more new comers will feel safe to jump in. The brand, so to speak, is now far bigger and that’s important in video games – a huge percentage of Modern Warfare’s sales are arguably boosted by its sheer reputation.

4. Better progression balancing.

A multiplayer shooters progression system can make or break it, and while Battlefield 3’s is very satisfying as you unlock weapons and abilities both on-foot and in vehicles, it could do with some better balancing. A huge part of the problem is that the gap between your starting abilities and what more advanced players have is really telling, meaning that when you first start playing you’re really out classed. The early part of the Modern Warfare 3 progression system, is just a little better at constantly giving little upgrades that help even things out.That’s especially true in the case of Battlefield 3 vehicles like Jets, where a beginner will be armed with nothing but machine guns and have to go up against other players with missiles and countermeasures galore.  Aircraft are particularly hard to master, and with such a gulf of kit, beginners often avoid using them – and if you do that you’ll never improve them. Better balancing Infantry upgrades and just giving all players a more even playing field on vehicles – everyone having  missiles and countermeasures for example and perhaps only needing to unlock really advanced abilities – would make Battlefield 4  more fun.

3. A better single player campaign.

Battlefield 3’’s slightly lacklustre single player campaign did the game no favours at all– especially failing in the important work of  attracting more casual shooter fans.We’ve all heard the argument that single player campaigns are pretty much ancillary to multiplayer shooters these days, and that you could just have the multiplayer and still sell as much, but frankly we disagree. Gamers still expect an entire package and that includes a great single player. It’s why multiplayer only games don’t usually fare well outside XBLA.  The campaign isn’t just part of the game and a chance for developers to show off some of the skills they wouldn’t be able to in multiplayer. It’s also, let’s be slightly cynical here, a great advert for the game, serving as a focus for reviews and – if it’s good –  helpful in generating general positive word of mouth for the game as people talk about it.

2. Better Team Death match maps.

A huge part of Modern Warfare’s success has been its tightly tuned Death Match focus. That’s what console gamers, having been tied to systems with more limited power, have grown up with and are used to. Developers like Infinity Ward have turned what should be a disadvantage into a benefit through tightly designed and engrossing play – mostly tusing clever map design. DICE recognised the appeal that TDM has for many players, which was why it created the TDM and Squad Deathmatch playlists in Battlefield 3 for the first time in the series. The only problem is that the maps, which are truncated versions of the larger areas used for Conquest and Rush, aren’t particularly well suited to TDM. They’re still a little too big, and don’t have quite the flow need for TDM, which is all about quick, satisfying snatches of combat. For Battlefield 4 DICE need to build a dedicated set of TDM maps which better cater to that style of play.

1. More players in the console game.

It’s hard to deny that when Battlefield 3 gets going you’re constantly embroiled in it a huge amount of fun.Nothing quite matches the fun of twenty four players charging about it’s huge maps, fighting on foot, in jeeps, boats and tanks and in the air with helicopters and jets. It’s real war on a huge scale, and it’s fantastic. But it could be better, something the PC version of Battlefield 3 proves with its larger maps and up to a whooping great sixty-four players online! That upping of scale really takes full advantage of Battlefield 3’s combined arms play in a way that can’t be done on 360 – and just playing it you can feel the difference.

Battlefield 4 needs to deliver that on console in all it’s glory, and while we reckon it’ll need to be on a next generation console to do it, it’ll be more than worth waiting for. DICE’s Frostbite 2.0 engine is a huge leg up for the developer to do that, and it’ll be a salvo that Modern Warfare 4 simply won’t be able to respond to – unless it becomes a very different kind of game.

Despite easily being one of the greatest games released in 2008, in can’t be argued that Grand Theft Auto was not a game without its problems. Sure, those problems were largely overshadowed by great characterisation, insanely fun gameplay, and a gameworld so fantastically realised in its dedication to detail it often felt like you were looking at snapshots of NYC itself – but still, the problems were there. If Grand Theft Auto 5 is to avoid the critical lashings of its fanbase then its going to need to address the following issues.

Cut scenes versus gameplay

One of the problems evident in GTA IV was the fact that during cut scenes Niko Bellic talked and acted like a man looking for salvation and a life that wasn’t defined by violence. Fair enough. However, as soon as he got out onto the street the rocket launcher was out and he was taking down police helicopters. It’s a problem endemic to all games, not just GTA IV. Uncharted’s Nathan Drake is meant to be an affable, happy-go-lucky rogue, but during gameplay he’s a mass murderer. Far Cry 2′s Clint Hocking coined a fancy phrase for this – ‘ludonarrative dissonance’. It’s a tough problem for games to crack – how do you make characters interesting and believable throughout both narrative and gameplay? If anyone can do it, Rockstar North can (we’re assuming that’s the developer – it hasn’t been confirmed). Rumours have been doing the rounds for some time now that you’ll actually be playing multiple characters in GTA V, which could go some way to solving the problem. One level you could be playing the quiet guy who wants to remove himself from the criminal underworld, and the next playing as the psychotic kingpin determined to get his hands as bloody as possible.

Actually having fun

I wasn’t quite so bothered as this by others, but many criticised GTA IV for distancing itself from the wilder aspects of gameplay that have now become the domain of the Saints Row series. GTA: San Andreas had you blasting around on a jetpack, chasing a firetruck on the back of a motorcycle, or simply just causing utter carnage on the streets with bag full of grenades. GTA IV was an altogether more serious game than that, opting for a more level-headed, cinematic approach to its gameplay. It eschewed zaniness for realism, and making a world that felt altogether more believable than those we’d experienced before. That was part of the problem. The world was so realistic that you didn’t actually want to go round blowing stuff up. It just felt…wrong. For many, that wasn’t what a GTA game should be. In GTA V Rockstar will need to find a way to inject that sense of crazy abandonment into the experience alongside the more serious aspirations towards mature, cinematic storytelling.

The game loop needs addressing

Even though I love Grand Theft Auto IV and everything it achieved, even I can see the transparency of its game mechanics. It goes something like this: drive to a location. Meet character and watch cut scene. Drive to next location. Shoot everyone and everything. Drive to next location. Watch cut scene. Repeat. Outside of this is a larger narrative loop consisting of the protagonist – whether it was Claude, Tommy Vercetti, Carl Johnson or Niko Bellic – meeting crime bosses, doing a bunch of missions for them, somehow upsetting them, and then killing them. It’s often just that repeated over and over until the big shoot out at the game’s end. Hopefully GTA V will introduce enough new mechanics that keep the player doing new and interesting things without having to repeat themselves. Again, the possibility of playing as multiple characters with different roles – an assassin, a driver, a mob boss, even a single mother attempting to keep her son out of the drug trade – all of these could open up a variety of truly interesting gameplay approaches.

No more hanging out with friends

NO LITTLE JACOB. I DO NOT WANT TO GO F**KING BOWLING WITH YOU I’M BEING CHASED BY THE F**KING POLICE.

As life long comic book fans we love superheroes on X360 Magazine. But you’ll often be hard pressed to find decent video games starring our spandex wearing friends. All too often superhero games are rushed abominations thrown out by second-rate studios to meet the launch date of a movie. Developers just can’t seem to juggle the challenge of imaginatively portraying these costumed powerhouses with creating a game that works provides a challenge. They generally end up being the kind of horrible rubbish that sits on at the back of the shelves in shops until some child’s unsuspecting Grandparent buys them. They then give it to a child who has to grin and say thank you when they really want to scream and jump on the disk till it’s in a thousand shiny pieces. But there have been a few shining heroes amidst the dross, with developers that have managed to both create good games and portray their heroes in a fun way. So here without further ado are the X360 teams top five superhero games.

5. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

It might have been a  terrible movie but it actually had a decent tie-in game and X-Men Origins: Wolverine  is probably the best rendition of the feral X-Man in video games. It’s incredibly bloody third person fighting has you slashing your way through the ‘old Canuckleheads enemies with believable abandon. Some of his brutal finishing moves are enough to make you wince, although perhaps not as much as the games ‘interesting’ take on the characters history.

4. Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3

You might be a little surprised to find Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 on this list, but Capcom’s fighting game manages to do what so many superhero games simply can’t – present it’s heroes as dynamic, powerful fighters with crazy powers. With its huge roster of some of the very best from the Marvel Universe, (and the most obscure– you’re a kindred spirit if you had any idea of who the hell Rocket Raccon was before he was in this game and we salute you) this is the only game that can make you feel like you’re actually in control of a superhero team in combat – and the attention to detail on every character is enough to make a comic book geek swoon.

3. Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions

What’s better than one Spider- Man? How about four Spider- Men? (Or is that four Spider-Man’s? Sub, help! ) The cell shaded antics of Spider-Man in four very different looking dimensions of the Marvel Universe was not only fun to play, but the unique play styles and stylish looks of the individual Spider-Men made for great play variety. It’s just a pity that this years terrible  follow-up Spider-Man Edge of Time was such a backward step by developer Beenox.

2. Batman: Arkham Asylum

It’d be fair to say that Batman: Arkham Asylum set the standard for superhero games when it was released in 2009. Rocksteady Studios managed to capture the essence of the character in the games cleverly paced third person play, incredible fighting, stealth abilities and plethora of gadgets. You really feel like the Dark Knight as you play Arkham Asylum, and the amount of homage to the comics and Bat-lore in the game shows just how much respect and love the developer have for their subject. If only all superhero games were treated with such love.

1. Batman: Arkham City

This one was always going to be fairly predictable, but when you give a great developer like RockSteady the chance to iterate upon a game like Arkham Asylum they were bound to come up with the goods.

Batman Arkham City radically expands upon the Arkham Asylum concept to give us the definitive Batman tale set in the wider open world of Arkham City. This holding pen for all his greatest villains and their gangs is a much bigger and more ambitious setting but Rocksteady pull it off with panache. With the ability to swoop, glide and rappel across the city added to Batman’s already impressive repertoire, more gadgets and the inclusion of Catwoman as a second playable character there’s just so much more to see and do in Arkham City. The side missions dotted about the city are particularly engaging, and just give it depth beyond the main tale.

While Arkham Asylum might have the slightly tighter narrative, Arkham City very much builds upon it with new Bat-villains to fight and even greater insight into what makes Batman tick. Just like the Batman himself, Batman: Arkham City soars high above the rest of the superhero pack. It’s not only the best superhero game on 360, but one of its finest games on the system as a whole.