Now, plenty of gamers subscribe to their games as resolutely as the millions enamoured with their untouchable beliefs, and if you show an inkling of opening discussion over that which they love religiously, the diatribe is heated, quick, and cruel. But rarely is the scorn against your words. Rather, it will probably be against the number by which you sum your praise and criticism of the game.

Like the fanatics who walk around convinced that anyone who isn’t enlightened to their way is doomed to fire and brimstone, a great many of the gaming denizens are convinced that reviews with differing scores are written by someone who is either dumb as a doornail, or tainted by subjective interests. No doubt that there are true cases of both peeking out, here and there. However, the notion of an omnipotent conspiracy (or stupidity) that supposedly clouds over every “low scoring” review is more often than not spawned from the ill-will of those unhappy with the number.

The fiery vernacular that so many use has nothing to do with the contents of the criticism, since it’s the preconceived notion of digits that does all the talking. Varied outlooks should enliven those who ostensibly love this medium so much. You would think that debate and discussion of gaming, no matter how disparate from a popular view, would be celebrated. Any thoroughly contemplated criticism, that’s scored far lower than the norm, should be as prominent as the rest. After all, the only purpose is to offer constructive insight.

But therein lies the problem: It’s safe to assume that those gamers, clamouring for a pipedream cascade of perfect numbers, either read the words and don’t take them in, or skip the text entirely and go on to blasting their virtual lungs about decimal points.

There should only be dialogue. And all I see right now is a flow of shouting matches between people who are so wrapped up in their whole hearted gaming dogma, that they are blinded to the true hindrance of their tirade. One small step to getting out of this never ending rut is doing away with petty digits and scores. So if you’re still hell-bent on damning a review, at least you will be fired up about an idea. And that is the first step on the right path.

With that, all our review scores are gone.

Many before Mirror’s Edge have flirted with physicality, but few have made any strides beyond staring down at two moving feet. The rulebook of the experience never needs to be expressed in full here, because within minutes of literally sinking into the shoes of Faith, the heroin, your intuition and hers meld as one. Blatant rules of design don’t delimit the environment, but rather the range of possibility is defined by a tangible sense of self.

As your momentum increases, flying from rooftop to cascading down narrow slopes, there is a frame of mind that begins to set in. While your pace quickens, the edges of the screen become blurred, your breath becomes heavy, and you soar atop the city skyline at bracing speeds. With every graceful step and rough tumble, the sensation of being in that other body is realized.

A simple control scheme only makes it more natural, with a single button for upward motion, and another for down. But without complementary environments, that wouldn’t mean much. And so the two work accordingly, inseparable from one another; without innate control, fluidity would turn rigid; without a flowing path through the surroundings, brisk turns and sprints would be all too disjointed.

Even the fresh, modern tone of Mirror’s Edge is minded with the main purpose. A staunchly white dystopian cityscape makes use of colour scarcely. So notable paths or far-off destinations are cued by bright, bold colours. Vibrant indications offer casual guidance through each situation, while also painting the dystopian world with distinctive, modern style.

Sleek doesn’t amount to substance though. Faith is a punchy but ultimately dull heroin who finds herself in the thick of conspiracy theory rubbish. At the very least it offers a cascade of dangerous circumstance, surging with chase and escape, both in equal measure. Beyond a fumbling plot, the nameless city is rife with dystopian overtone and social implication that screams ready to flourish into form.

All the rooftop chases and escapes have to end at some point though. And for an experience that’s fixated on movement, fighting with enemies can fittingly end as soon as it begins by hightailing it over and above their heads. But rarely can you keep a pace when any hint of up-close danger comes along.

Encounters will often cut your speed to a dead halt where the dire task becomes struggling to take down several enemies at a time. Fights simply fall apart as a clumsy mess of button presses and onscreen slaps. Even punts and blows tied to your speed just have you bounce off enemies with little effect. Of course, you’ll just have to use the finicky disarm to grab their gun, unload the lead and miss the entire point that the heart of the experience puts forth so clearly.

Mirror’s Edge lays the groundwork for something truly profound, but the focus on where it thrives is intermittent. In between soaring amongst the rooftops and sliding down the slopes of skyscrapers, the experience is hard-pressed to find an overarching pace when deadbeat combat is at odds with the flow of the experience. That central spirit, the stunning possibility of first-person movement and perspective, has found its footing. And now it’s time to take the leap.

However there shouldn’t be any expectation that this is an outing reborn to new mechanics; the unsung developer, Treyarch, has stuck with the stuff of series antiquity. The scripted first-person action funnels you through the most linear paths of action, with little deviation. So simple, so susceptible to blunder, so easily inspired by the cinematic, it all comes down to the tempo of the ride.

Teeming with context, two separate campaigns run parallel and complementary: the Russians with their grim determination for vengeance, whose brutal retribution ironically mirrors the enemy they loathe so much, and the Americans, whose quest to avenge Pearl Harbor pits them into dark and unchartered territory of the Pacific.

Sure there’s the tall grass, the lush jungles and the majestic imperial colours, but it’s an enemy ingrained in strange ideals that rings so different for anyone unversed in their ways. As the atypical faceless soldier sitting happily by your cover, the bloodcurdling cries begin and a torrent of enemies stream from the hills. These Japanese Banzai charges, of desperate and suicidal aggression, shake up the comfortable position of picking off enemies from entrenched positions. The range of expectation is broadened considerably, and although enemies have slightly lobotomized lapses in artificial judgement up close, the bold punctuation between long range skirmishes transcends any rare technical blemish.

But it’s not all bullets against a force that cunningly make use of their surroundings. Often given to you is a worn flamethrower that spews fire out at long arching lengths. The Japanese will burst from the grass, and snipe from perched positions in distant trees, completely unseen, making the scorching addition to your toolset that little bit of much needed balance to rid them of advantage.

Less inspired by its setting, the Russians driving back the Reich and taking the heart of Berlin proves to be equally stirred, but rather through situation. The obligatory Call of Duty set pieces flourish here in a crumbling Russia and a ruined Germany. The Nazis are often oppressively driven back as you and your comrades sprint through their lines, all the while buildings crash and burn in heaps of billowing smoke around you – probably not historically accurate, but it’s an unfettered rush of stunning imagery. And the quieter moments frame an overarching lust for revenge perfectly, by placing you in a truly tragic spot that will only strengthen your resolve to crush the enemy.

In an ill-conceived notion that vehicle sections are mandatory, a mild rove with a tank rears its head – only once, though. But other attempts at variety outside the consistently intonated basics prove more interesting. With a slight throwback to Call of Duty 4’s night vision attack from the skies, which had inklings of breaking the fourth wall and questioning the perspective of war, here it’s a blistering turret assault run from a plane over the wide ocean. While sinking battleships and protecting your own fleet from Kamikaze planes doesn’t reverberate with much of an undertone, it serves as a searing swell of wanton destruction.

There is no denying that we’ve seen stuff of a similar vein before. But it’s the shockingly modern tone of the pulse-pounding score that blasts in your ears, it’s the unpredictable landscape of the Pacific, and it’s the fiery vengeance which motivates an entire people to action that make this one ring so different.

Treyarch has finally honed an ability to twist the rhythm of the autonomous shooter: guiding you through the most basic of paths while imbuing it with variety, a stunning sense of place, or both, all at once. Call of Duty: World at War is an armchair rollercoaster of emotion that runs through the drab pages of history, but with an eye for style and a keen sense of the rousing, it speaks far beyond a single time or place.

As an enigmatic mercenary pitched into an ever boiling warzone, you’ve been tasked with taking down an idealistic arms dealer who spouts philosophy as easily as he ships a payload of weapons. The set story plays out in a mostly linear fashion, with pitting two factions against each other until you find your final target. But with several buddy characters who are not unscathed by the possibility of death, the in-betweens are shaped entirely by you.

Falling in a firefight, your grizzled combatant friend reaches his breaking point. Either you can try to jolt him back to life by plunging a syringe into his heart, which may result in an overdose, or just make his end a quick one – with pistol in hand. Around the basic narrative framework, your actions form secondary, emergent outcomes. And when you quietly close the dead eyes of a dear friend in Far Cry 2, they and all their gameplay related benefits are gone for good. Every time you enlist help, the risk of irreversible loss becomes a potent one.

Placed in an open world, the liberated nature of the environment is something rarely coupled with a first-person shooter. Purposefully anonymous, the African nation enveloped with conflict is littered with bloodlust factions and underground movements. Main contracts and errands will have you sent on assassinations, destruction runs, pickup runs and a range of uninteresting errands. But it’s the miniature playgrounds, within a more immense one, that transcend the mostly trivial tasks.

Sitting atop a grassy hill, surveying your target, sinking into the role of the hunter comes with ease. A game of observation as much as it is aggression, planning is paramount. The arid lands often provide an opportunity to flush enemies out in a fit of wicked flames, brought on by you. The soldiers run panicked as their encampment is engulfed, and it opens a chance to pick off the confused stragglers from afar. You can only attempt to predict the results. When a single fuel canister is hit by one bullet; it spins around burning everything it touches, finally landing right beside a massive fuel tank, which just so happens to be the main target of the mission. A ball of fire flies up into the night sky and, with a single shot fired, it becomes apparent that brains far outweigh brawn in this world.

It’s an incontestably smart shooter when framed right, rewarding those who manipulate the environment as their instrument of death. The swaying grass and the bending trees not only form a thriving sense of place, but minute details of weather and wind actually affect how something like fire may spread within the surroundings. But it’s not often that you can twist much of this in your favour, as most of the striking moments are spread thin with plodding filler in between.

Padded beyond belief, it’s as if Ubisoft Montreal crafted a colossal world and then was lost with how to make it interesting. So it’s brimming with the same lazy enemy encounter, over and over again. Without an effective fast travel system (the bus stops barely help) you’re forced to drive for kilometres, and enemies in machine gun totting jeeps are there at every turn. For each focused and dramatic hour, there are two which sink into the depths of a monotonous drivel of driving and meaningless scuffles. Seemingly, it’s all for the sake of making your travels as realistic and steeped in the environment as possible.

Other aspects with an affinity for keeping you ingrained in the experience fare far better. Though not entirely doing away with the trappings of the archetypal regenerative health system, you’ll be biting bullets from your arms, burning together gaping wounds, and ripping shrapnel from deep within your thighs. It’s a bold step toward instilling logic to both health and player death. Even your buddies serve as your personified second chance, coming to your aid when you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

Overflowing with new ideas and novel notions, Far Cry 2 is hell bent on reinvigorating a genre that has been shoving players along a single path for too long. Those hours, thoroughly steeped in the mindset of the hunt, are unlike any you’ve experienced. But too penchant with realism, the focus is stretched thin.

A series reborn with a new identity, the shortcomings are impart to the ambition of doing away with the conventional. But neither can it be dismissed that there is a new rulebook being written here, and flawed as it may be, Far Cry 2 is a profoundly daring game.

Though not all manpower, forced upon the mix is an overarching emotional thread that’s shoved between the butchest of the butch. Blood and guts, sweat and power, but also a heap of overwrought sentiment is piled on through the clumsiest of love stories.

Apparently someone thinks that players are easily stirred, because shoved down your throat with a heavy hand is Dom’s emotionally sterile search for his lost wife. Most unfortunate is that, rich with potential, this beautifully dishevelled world deserves and begs for something better – beyond bromance and ham fisted subplots.

But not to digress, as it hasn’t taken away from the rip-roaring fundamentals. Away from that clutter, Epic’s sequel is happily resting on its laurels. It’s undoubtedly conservative, but an unassailable formula has been instilled with refinement and mostly favourable variety. Then again it’s hardly elusive to fault, either.

Though a graphical wonderment, the original Gears of War was ever so focused and enclosed to smaller encounters. By being unchained from establishing new fangled mechanics and technology, Epic has a fresh slate to tear down the walls and allow the basics to ring with immensity. Hundreds of enemies onscreen at once and towering bosses, even the lumbering Marcus Fenix appears to be a complete spec in these boundless encounters. But what worked so well before is hardly forgotten.

In keeping with what it does best, you and your Locust enemies use cover fervently, and the majority of the carnage plays up close and visceral. Since the system has been ironed out to a wholly intuitive point, picking cover is razor sharp in split second decisions. And again you’re matched neck and neck with enemies: they’ll take cover, flank, and punish your mistakes to no end. Like a demented Lord of the Rings pumped with roids, the Locust infantry now ride on the backs of feral beasts, oversized explosive beetles irk your brittle cover, and Shamanic priests revive the dead. Simply, anything you expect from a skirmish is continually turned on its head. And, from the outset, the appeal is unerringly instant.

However, death does reveal some imperfectly dispersed checkpoints. Occasionally you’ll be thrown back far enough that pedantic repetition begins to take shape. A bit too rigid, there is no margin for error.

Like finger paintings on the wall of variety, anything outside of what the original set in stone doesn’t come entirely into form. A vehicle section rears its disparately detached head, and through forcing a drastic change in pace, it throws the flow far off kilter. Bearing no resemblance or feel to anything else within the experience, this roar through the mountainside atop a roving tank feels like a dull afterthought from an entirely different game.

But when the time comes round to climb aboard a bad Locust beast or two, the experience is far more engrained and steeped within the continuity of the environment, not to mention the sense of scale is entirely tangible. That much dallied over sprawling spectacle is at its most affecting with a punchy in and out – let the awe resonate, for that brief instant, and then move on.

In a highly scripted fashion, boss battles, though infrequent, are far too finicky and sink into an extremely linear rulebook of events. At one point, you’re faced with dodging falling pillars, but somehow these towers of stone have minds of their own. As the columns fall they literally track and follow your every move, hell-bent on crushing you under a heap of rubble. Last time I checked, stone isn’t sentient. The man behind the curtain reveals his hand and pokes you with blatant attempts at nonsensical difficulty, which turn to frustration rather than challenge.

Void of emotional interest, yet brimming with mechanics that have been impeccably refined, the campaign suffers the same problems as its predecessor. Pulled in by an immaculate cover system – and the multifaceted diversity infused within – the mildly inspired memories of singleplayer will slip away when other modes offering those same essentials take hold, with fewer the blemishes too.

Lacking the occasional poorly placed checkpoint or brazen attempt at intonating the experience, Epic has siphoned the essence into Horde mode. With increasing intensity, wave after enemy wave is thrown upon you and your friends. And at the height of the relentless flow, it becomes a game of sacrifice; run and save that buddy, or leave him to the dogs.

Community and teamwork will resonate long after the credits roll. Strategic twists like picking up enemies as shields (“meat shields” if you prefer) and chainsaw battles will quickly bolster multiplayer to new heights of friendly gags and competition. Confident that the joys are in simply playing it, Gears of War 2 continues the tradition of doing away with an experience based levelling system.

Once again Epic shows its complete incompetence with narrative, and it only becomes such a problem in spite of trying to better themselves. Surely a far better developer of multiplayer experiences, the hand of design is revealed too often, squandering transparency. But it’s the succinctly focused essentials that will again become the stuff of memory, and we’ll hear the grunts and cries of this ripped brethren for a long time time to come, in the rich halls of the online space.

With minds in the right place, detached from primordial mechanics, developer Bethesda isn’t interested in the irrational expectation that the Fallout series will, always and forever, be stuck at an archaic plateau. Through a tersely envisioned world, where people praise undetonated bombs as relics of their creation, where slavers and raiders seek nothing but pain and bloodshed, Fallout 3 touches on every dark and dank place spawned by a desolate existence, but never does it lose touch with hope. Through retaining the essence of Fallout, and presenting it for a new era, the setting resonates as deeply as ever.

Opening within the sheltered walls of Vault 101, the experience begins with your literal conception from the womb. Character creation is done primarily within the context of the experience; choosing your sex, your attributes and your general direction are all decisions incited by in-game events. From birthday parties to schooling, it’s a brilliantly veiled tutorial in which you frame your path from childhood to adulthood. And as chaos builds within the thickly governed confines of the Vault, it’s soon off and out into the vast expanse of the Capitol Wasteland in search for dear old dad.

From there, what you do is unbound from any particular path. And well thought out as it may be, the main quest isn’t even the main draw… especially when it ends in PowerPoint slides (three poignant endings would have been far more compelling than two hundred combinations that are all equally mild). The appeal is the post apocalyptic landscape; an enormous mass to explore, in both its scale and scope. Every inch has a story to tell, not to mention that it’s equal in size to Oblivion and even grander in detail.

Fitting with the archetypal Western roleplaying game, a route deeply carved by Bethesda, the rhythm of the experience proves tough to get into for the first several hours. But context is everything, and Fallout 3’s capability of imbuing in you a sense of place shows no bound with its complement to design. Fresh faced and untainted, it only makes sense that coming to grips with the harsh environment is a struggle. Scavenging for supplies, through dishevelled supermarkets and skeletal remains of white picket neighbourhoods, as a low level character the experience is appropriately focused on survival against irradiated elements. And ever so mildly in spirit, this early part might just be the closest thing to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road we will ever see in videogame form.

As your inventory grows, and meagre rusty pistols give way to more effective but equally battered rifles, shotguns, and plasma tech, the terrain becomes increasingly manageable to traverse – though it never loses aspects of survival completely. The first person real time combat is, even after maxing out all the necessary skills, not as effective as it should be. The futility as a straight shooter is slightly offset by VATS (Vault Tec Assisted Targeting), which has you queue up individual body parts of enemies for a more efficient, targeted, and cinematic result. But a mix of the two never quite comes to fruition without the right balance or feel.

As difficult as getting past the lack of rhythm might be, you never feel too outmatched or incapable. And seeing as you can sidestep encounters entirely by going the sneaky, smooth talking route, it hardly impinges the heart of this vision.

Rarely touched upon in the gore fest filled media leading up to release, Fallout 3 is subtly effective with its humour. And not just owed to the pseudo 1950’s demeanour, but interaction with colourful yet rugged characters that populate the Wastes. Their origin stories, and disparate views of historical icons, provide a quietly humorous and ironic undertone that permeates every encounter.

The Wasteland is rife with dark schemers and people in need of help. Megaton, one of the first towns you’ll most likely visit, is a heap of scrap metal shacks forged around an undetonated Atom bomb. The township’s Sheriff would have you disarm it, making it a slightly safer place, meanwhile a shadowy elitist would have you rig it to explode to rid the world of the new fangled “scum” that have scrawled their lives on irradiated dirt. The consequence of going thermonuclear erases all quest threads within the town, but it also unlocks a different location which would prove difficult to gain access to otherwise.

While never reaching the same spectacle, other quests attain increasing heights of moral ambiguity and power. Paths within them are malleable to your moral standing, and dialogue options tied to your skills can twist characters and outcomes as you see fit. There is a true sense of weight to player authorship; the fragility and malleability of environment and character incites a looming sense of responsibility, no matter the path you choose.

At its heart, Fallout 3 is an enigma ready to be unravelled. Through intrepidly envisioning the series as their own, Bethesda has crafted an experience that resonates in a new age. Perhaps the combat lacks identity and punch, but much of this wholly realized vision is intrinsically tied to your sense of place and weight on a ravaged world. Another triumph of first person narrative, along every step of your journey the remnants of a million tragic tales lay at your feet. Now the choice is yours to taint that little bit of new hope, or strive to keep it alive.

Returning to the rollicking land of Albion, full of cobblestone streets, majestic manors, and characters ranging from the lively to the downright shady, this slightly twisted world is perhaps Fable’s greatest asset. Rife with comedy, both dark and crude, the pseudo British demeanour provides a neutral canvas ready to be moulded by your hand. Practice emancipated bigamy, entertain the masses with your farts, down litres of ale and do some blacksmith apprenticing soon after – you might just puke all over the forging fires. It’s a semi open ended world rich with possibility.

Born to the poor city streets of Bowerstone, big decisions come early for your little would-be Hero. From moral in betweens like reacquainting a drunk with his bottle, to clear cut moral polarities such as taking part in extortion, your early choices have a predetermined and ostensibly boundless effect. Entire towns are subject to your whim, and the consequence is mainly seen through a change in stature (a shanty town to prosperous village, or the other way around). But visual alterations are only stirring to a point.

Because crowds of admirers are so important to your sense of heroism, personal consequence is lost in interaction with the townsfolk. In a doll-like fashion, you can take a heroic pose, fart in the faces of children, or offer any number of gifts to swoon local maidens. You can feel loved, you can feel hated, but you never truly feel your affect on a tired and beleaguered housewife whose life you turned upside down. Perhaps it’s a necessary trade-off in making one variety of interaction fully formed, but nevertheless, it disconnects another.

Though it lacks overarching punch, it’s the personal journey of Fable II that’s told with a great deal of individual devotion and heart. Those closest to your voyage are shaped by your actions, namely the lovable dog that devoutly sits by your side. As a fresh faced hero, with a dazzling halo atop his head, your pooch will have a bright and shimmering coat of fur. Or if you sport an ashen complexion, thanks to years of corruption, the furry fellow will be as dark and brooding as his master. There is a strong affection for your canine buddy, and only the most hateful of hearts will remain stone cold.

And man’s best friend isn’t all just reflective looks and companionship; he is your guide in the lands of Albion, which are more open ended than memory of the original Fable would have you think. Sniffing out departures from the main trail, he’ll inform you of places to dig for booty, or treasure chests hidden by the wayside. It serves as a deviation from the glowing “bread crumb trail” that guides your journey a little too overtly.

It’s just one form of handholding in a wholly inclusive experience and, for better or worse, it works. Seeing as a helpful map is almost nonexistent, the glowing trail guides you well – even if it doesn’t help you find something as simple as your home within the larger towns. And if you are that aforementioned Hero with a great many wives and homes, then good luck finding the right one.

Stomping from town to town, quest to quest, combat is just as streamlined as every other aspect. But rather than being too simple, like a few too many other things within Fable II, scuffles with bandit hordes and fairytale creatures are easy to play, difficult to master. Each style tied to a single button, melee, ranged and magic can be used in unison with stunning rhythmic style. The accumulation of experience, specifically woven with your actions, incites you to experiment with each, resulting in some spectacular combinations.

Every other element within Fable II should have been informed with an ease of playability while retaining complexity. The multifaceted combat system achieves this like no other, and your canine friend proves to be deeply interwoven with exploration, not to mention an important figure on your journey of heroism. Decisions are imbued with ostensible consequence, only coming to some form of fruition in the later depths of the main quest. Though it’s still not everything it could and should be, Fable II is crystal clear in identity and it’s a downright rollicking good time.

But how do you reap even more booty? Why, turn the clock forward to better times of course. It was quickly obvious that this profit system within Fable is tied directly to the console’s clock. The solution to the small trickle of cash was as simple as pushing time forward, preferably by years. So unplug that Ethernet cable, change the time in the console settings and you’ll be greeted by a pile of gold when you return to Fable II. Can’t promise that the same can be said of the real credit crisis though, if you turn the clock far enough into the future you might have a situation easily defined by another little RPG that’s hitting shelves next week.

In a familiar setup, something goes very, very wrong with a seemingly untouchable manmade wonder. Communication goes cold with the city sized mining vessel, the USG Ishimura. And as engineer Isaac Clarke (clearly a dead ringer for Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke) you’re tasked as investigator, astral handyman, and one man against a massive crew turned planetary zombies – or “necromorphs” as they seemingly prefer.

Enlightened to the ways of BioShock, mission structure is entirely linear and environments are inspired with the possibility of freedom. But unlike the undersea descent it admires, the linearity of progression is obvious and barely masked. Fix the engines, fix the radio beacon, and fix the orbital controls… Isaac deserves to fix himself a drink after all is said and done. The overarching story of a search for a loved one, entwined in the horrors of space, is a touching one; a mild ode to Andrei Tarkovky’s stunning work, Solaris. But minute to minute, your actions lack an immediate pull.

Not that anything lacks a sense of place; the USG Ishimura is an embellishment of atmosphere and terse design, at its most unsettling in absolute silence. The seclusion is made all the more daunting with distant scatters across the floor and subtle murmurs of childlike melodies, shorn and sung in strange ways. The wholly textured sounds reverberate through the corridors, evoking the emptiness.

The barren halls are taken over by alien flesh; the organic masses use the steel of the ship as their skeletal form. From the vents, from the walls, enemies can break out from anywhere and the eerie pace swiftly crescendos in unpredictable ways. Amid a tone concerned with bodily imagery and function, it only makes sense that combat is woven with it too. The necromorphs are a concoction of skewed limb, and demented bulbous frames; taking out a proper combination of limbs will render them lifeless, rapidly. And considering ammo is in short supply, this strategic complexity is a necessity.

What would seem like a gimmick is invigorated consistently through a volatile variety of encounters. There are twists upon twists, keeping your strategic expectations evolving just as quickly as your enemies take on new shapes. Not to mention that the experience is turned on its head, quite literally, several times in segments with zero gravity. An entire room of soaring height can be traversed in three hundred and sixty degrees. And while empty of environmental interest, it layers on another twist to the already enthused combat.

Permeating every inch of the ship is a perfectly balanced economy that walks the line of keeping combat dire while still offering a sense of power. Ammo is in short supply, but never to a point where it impinges upon your ability to handle a situation — just effectively scarce. The numbers were crunched to a tee, and the same can be said of weapon customization, which is so effective that you can literally play the entire game with the weapon you get from the outset.

Far too many survival horror games have purposely stinted controls for a supposed increase in tension. In Dead Space, there isn’t a single corner cut in favour of a scare. All the elements work off each other seamlessly, proving to be a horror experience truly unhinged from daft design. Manageable, and far more affecting because of it, EA Redwood Shores has made a simple, fundamental leap.

Like comedy, you can tell a joke once, twice maybe, and then it’s dead. Horror works within the same rulebook. Moment to moment, Dead Space isn’t the scariest jump-out-of-your-seat experience ever, because that dream is entirely askew, as it only exist in realm of one-off practical jokes. It is, however, an oppressive exercise in atmosphere and an impeccable tapestry of mood, with an unparalleled magnitude of loss and despair. Through intrepidly leaping past deliberate limitations, each element informs and builds upon a sole purpose: placing you in the depths of terror, and making you believe you’re in that derelict nightmare.

Playing the earlier levels of Insomniac’s latest effort left a feeling of indifference. For all its attempts at imbuing a sprawling scale, the highly deliberate crescendo of chaos generally remained at a mild plateau. Much is going on, most of it blurred together.

Opening in the thick of confusion and chaos, you’re guided through several small warehouses as the aforementioned towering wonder, the Goliath, tears apart the scenic landscape. The pseudo boss takes form right from the outset, in which you have to sit around and wait as the Goliath spins to reveal its vulnerable hind. Within minutes, the most intriguing element of the experience laid before you is reduced to the most uninvolving and formulaic of interactions; shoot a glowing point a few times and move on, nothing to see here.

Perhaps the most intrinsic problem, befuddling an otherwise decent, if slightly tired, framework, is that the movement and controls in Resistance 2 don’t entirely feel like your own. It’s as if you’re watching yourself play the game, rather than actually being viscerally immersed in what the gorgeous visuals would seemingly invite with ease.

But there is still an undeniable talent behind the wheel here, and glimpses of great variety shimmered ever so slightly. The second level, after the uninspired romp in Iceland, is set in the familiar dense woods of California. Here, the varied and beautiful aesthetics provided a mix up after a strikingly rigid opening, which saw horde after horde of Chimera and little else.

A brilliant twist in tension came with traversing the serene forest, quietly anticipating the attack of several cloaked enemies. The sheer atmospheric eeriness spawned from listening to the brooding gallop of the new, lizard-like enemies proved to be a surprise. It was the sole accent in a play session that, decidedly, struck too many of the same notes. Of course, soon after, it was back to a drivel of cloned enemies, punctuated by a boss who lumbered lamely around the rural environment, soaking up bullets and doing little else. And on that dim note, the playtime ended.

If lines are drawn to frame the best moments of Insomniac’s sequel, this Resistance could potentially be a standout. But as it stands, the bland canvas of styles is uncharacteristic of the talented folks who spawned the likes of the consistently rollicking Ratchet and Clank series. A well intonated experience is trying to find its form here, but from the initial salutations it’s too sporadic to take shape.