Remember the “red shirt” characters Carmine in each previous game? Well they have another brother who will make an appearance in the third installment and it’s up to us fans to decide whether his fate will differ from his fallen brothers or if he will succumb to the overwhelming onslaught of grubs and whatever else Cliffy B has up his sleeve.

The voting process is quite inventive, simply turn on your Xbox, go into the Avatar Marketplace, find the Gears of War 3 avatar items and buy either the “Save Carmine” or “Carmine Must Die” t-shirt for your digital personification. Each shirt costs 80 Microsoft Points and all proceeds go to Child’s Play, so not only are you having a say in how a game will unfold but you’re also helping sick kids, it’s win win! Plus you get an avatar shirt! That’s a thing, right?

Don’t get me wrong: it’s a button masher, essentially. Attack is X, powerful attack is Y, then the bumper buttons give you magic spells. That’s about it. It’s the enemies themselves that make the game a challenge; they’re fast, they do a lot of damage and for most battles you are heinously outnumbered. Which is great.

Let’s be honest: when was the last time you played a really hard game? I mean one where a simple fight took you a good twenty minutes of thumb-numbing frustration? Yeah, I thought so. In the bigger picture, Nier isn’t all that difficult, but compared to the watered-down Auto Aim Replenishing Health gaming universe we live in today, it provides a nice challenge that few games of late have offered.

Of course these points also reflect badly on the game. Sometimes, it can be too difficult (those of you who have played it will share my pain of defeating the wild boar at the beginning, which took about 15 minutes of magic-spamming from behind a rock because showing my face would get me killed in two hits). With save points only at the beginning and end of mission sequences, it’s more than a little easy to get face-planted on the floor and have to start again because you weren’t able to get to your health refills quick enough.

One of my favourite things of the game is the soundtrack, great little guitar ditties, soothing symphonies and whatnot, it’s a very pleasant experience that I would happily listen to on my iPod as well as in-game.

That being said, Nier is a good open game with a lot to do and very… colourful dialogue, which gives it a nice hard edge compared to the fluff Square Enix puts out. To metaphor my point, imagine Final Fantasy and Nier are both animals. Final Fantasy would be a nine week old kitten; its teeth prick but don’t hurt and no blood is drawn. Nier would be a snapping turtle. Cute one minute, leaving you without a forefinger the next.

In summary, buy it if you like a challenge. If you just want pretty but simple with dialogue that’s safe for the kids, I’d stick to Final Fantasy.

Fighters are at a point now where the games themselves are struggling to think of something new that will separate the title from the rest.  It used to be a case that sequels were being produced thick and fast adding more and more characters and giving you the ability to play as the previous title bosses.  Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter used to slug it out on the Megadrive and SNES in this manner.  Nowadays we have moved in the realm of 3D and to be honest its made fighters have a complete re think about the way they operate.  Mortal Kombat has never been able to find the same appeal it once did and it took a hell of along time for Capcom to decide what to do with street fighter.  Needless to say the idea of turning street fighter 3D but giving the 2D feel worked for them and received a satisfactory response from its fans.

The question is thought, what really was so wrong with 2D fighters in the first place?  Is there no way for them to evolve?  Well Blazblue answers both those questions very competently.  The first thing that strikes you playing the game is how awesome the backgrounds are.  With Anime films and TV series evolving themselves with the likes of Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, Blazblue has taken this and used it in the gaming environment.  The characters themselves are crystal clear and move like they would in a movie.  In fact, it would be quite easy to forget you are even playing a game altogether and just sit back – don’t though cause it is a game and you will lose if you do this, thanks.

The control system is both simple and advanced at the same time, which is good for someone like me really.  Its based around the principles of a punch, kick and “do something cool” button.  Unlike Street Fighter this allows the most inexperienced player to pull off at least some good looking moves.  For the more advanced player there are endless amounts of combos and devastating attacks to be pulled off after carrying out very complicated sequences.

There are 12 characters in total ALL completely different with their own unique style of fighting.  If i remember right, this would be the thing that attracted people to Street Fighter in the first place.  There are no clones in this game or to put it another way there are no “Ryu and Ken’s”.  So you need to think up a specific fighting style against every character.

Overall Blazblue: Calamity Trigger is a stunning and thoroughly enjoyable game, one that brings back the excitement we once had back from the initial days of 2D fighters.  Kind of the same way that Super Mario Bros Wii has shown that platformers can still be the same as they used to be.  We spend alot of time now playing retro games and reminiscing on the fun we once had but maybe its time to stop and think.  Before all games were in 3D we would spend hours still playing these games, maybe its time to start revisiting the ideas and making NEW games the way that we used too.

With Super Mario Galaxy 2 the situation is the same, you dont need to have played the first you can just pick this one up and away you go. I need to state that I LOVED the first, it quickly became my favourite Mario title so I was intrigued as to how they can improve on it and make a second.  In fact the strangest thing that this game does for the first one is pick out the flaws that you didn’t even know were there! I didn’t realise that the level select idea in the first was such a chore for me till they simplified the idea for this game!

The idea of this game in comparison to any other Mario title is all about gravity and 360 degree control. To watch someone else play this game can quite quickly put you off and easily dismiss it as being too difficult. Galaxy 2 is by far that, you jump from planet to planet using gravity and stars that fling you through space using spin attacks (rather than the conventional jump on the head Mario usually uses) to kill enemies (although you can still jump on their head if you so wish). Each galaxy is themed in its own way and has its unique “feel” to take on and give you a new challenge each time.

The thing that makes this game feel great is how epic is feels, the music and constant action really makes you feel like you are playing THE Mario game of all Mario games. It feels and plays and looks a lot like the first title but this time round it feels like they have perfected an already perfect title, as impossible as that may seem.

The main features that makes Mario Galaxy 2 better than before is what it brings to the table now. Yoshi is back and works incredibly well with the Galaxy control system, to shoot his tongue its a case of pointing the Wii remote at the screen and taking aim.  There are various things for Yoshi to swallow that gives you a brief ability such as red peppers that will make Yoshi run like a mentalist for a small period of time giving you the ability to run up walls. Mario’s “abilities” have also changed, there is Cloud Mario which gives you the ability to make a cloud platform appear under your feet allowing you access to hard to reach places. There is also Rock Mario that transforms you into a boulder which can spin attack enemies. 

This time round they haven’t dropped in the option of 2 player which I thought would happen if im honest, however there is a sort of “co-op” mode which allows another player to grab another Wii Remote while your playing and take control of a star that helps kill baddies and makes it a little easier for you.

In a nut shell though, as i stated about the first Super Mario Galaxy is one of the few titles that you NEED to have in your collection if you own a Wii and now I can say the same about this. If you have ever enjoyed a game of Mario (and I’d be quite surprised to see how many people haven’t) then this is an essential purchase and possibly one of the greatest reasons to own the Wii in the first place.

Let me be frank here: I like my controllers. I like the sticks and the buttons and I like how moving those sticks and pushing those buttons makes my little on-screen self do things and play games for me. When I’m playing Street Fighter, for instance, the last thing I want to attempt is a Spinning Bird Kick in my living room.

This is where Kinect falls horribly short. It’s just an expensive Wii without the wii-mote.

Just like the Wii, it’s almost doomed before it’s even become a household item. Games will need to be made specially for it, and will need to make good use of the arm and leg waggling at all times. Not only will this make alot of games unavailable (I really can’t envisage Prince of Persia making it onto Kinect unless they are wholly expecting people to wall-run in order to make the Prince wall-run) but it will also make the games that are designed for it very limited in playability and to the market they must be aimed at.

Sure, kids love to jump around and will like nothing more than to see their XBL Avatar jump around and move as they move, but I have to raise an eyebrow as to whether parents will fork out £300 for a better version of the Nintendo Wii, especially considering most may already have one.

Certain things come to mind with a controller-free gaming experience. How do you skip cutscenes? Do they have a clap-on effect? How sensitive is the motion capture? For example, if you’re driving in a racing game and have to sneeze will you go hurtling off the track? Menu navigation is obvious as it’ll be a ‘point at it’ job, but how do you pause your games?

Plenty was shown at E3 regarding Kinetic, like making your Avatar move like you, and games like Dance Central, where you’ll obviously need to show your moves, Kinectimals, which sounds like Nintendogs but with animals you can scratch behind the ears, Kinect Sport (but of course), which includes lots of ball and track games and Joyride, a racing game where players steer with an imaginary steering wheel.

I hate to be a Naysayer here but… is that it? I must say, none of these games are making me want to run out and spend my hard-earned cash on Natal so I can scoop up these games.

Don’t get me wrong; I think Kinetic is very brave and I think with the right games and the right tweaking, it could work and it could sell. However, I am also of the opinion that it’s just like Guitar Hero or Buzz; it’s a peripheral gimmick. Kinetic looks to cost around £300, but from what I’ve been reading, this is separate to the £200 XBox 360 you’ll also need (it plugs in, as it’s a peripheral and not a ‘separate console’ as was initially rumoured back in 2009), which is going to stack up on the wallet and probably take more flack than the original price tag for the PS3.

To conclude, I can’t say I’ll be buying one myself, I like my arms where they should be: connected to my hands that are moving my controller sticks.

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This isn’t a review, but Red Dead is the only game I’ve played this week so I just felt like talking about it (god bless not being paid to do this website; it means we haven’t got strict deadlines to work to, I’d hate for playing a game to become a well-timed chore).

I’m going to explain that best/worst comment below decorated with wonderfully western puns for your amusement:

The Good, The Bad and the Multiplayer…

Unless you open up a private game and invite your friends in to go and clear gang hideouts and go shoot some cougars, at the time of writing I wouldn’t touch multiplayer with a ten foot cattle prod.

There have been numerous, angry comments from fans on the internet who have been booted from public games (and that’s on the odd occasion they are actually able to join one due to ‘connectivity issues with other players’ – a common error message around the world). This is a little more than annoying and until Rockstar fixes it, this error has rendered half my game unusable, which is annoying given the amount of money I shelled out.

A Fistful of Glitches, For a Few Glitches More…

Whilst aesthetic glitches like the infamous ‘donkey lady’ and ‘cougar man’ don’t hamper gameplay and merely make a fun game funny, Red Dead has some more serious glitches that need ironing out. On more than one occasion, I’ve walked over, say, a bucket or a bale of hay only to be rocketed 100 feet in the air and fall to my death. This can be annoying if you’ve not had a chance to save your game after a difficult mission.

Another glitch, if you can call it that (I call it bad game design but there you go), is doorways. You can open a door, but then spend ten minutes face-planting either side of the door frame until you eventually sidle through like there’s an invisible net blocking you from advancing. The same tends to happen when your horse rides between rocks on the road, or obstacles in a town.

Once Upon a Save File in the West…

This brings me nicely onto the lovely modern world of autosaves! Come on Rockstar, get with it! You autosave after every change in honour, ever store purchase, every animal skinned and every stranger mini-encounter (you know, the ‘help, he stole mah horse!’ ones), so why oh why can’t you just take a leaf from the Assassin’s Creed II book and just ‘save as you go’?

Surely the game can cope? Safe houses and campsites would still be useful for changing clothes, sleeping to advance six hours and refilling ammo. The fact that there are so many places to save makes me wonder why autosave isn’t an across the board feature all the more.

Sandbox Drifter…

One of things that I love about this game is the size. It’s ruddy massive; and beautiful to boot. The sweeping, desert lanscapes, the weather effects, the quaint towns and ranches… I’m an out-of-the-closet country girl at heart and those who know me well know that I listen to more country music than I’ve had hot meals and have always had a penchant for the Old West. I just love how dusty and raw it all is.

That being said, I realised I’d clocked up a good 11 hours of gameplay before I realised that I hadn’t even finished the story – in fact I’ve still got West Elizabeth to unlock. I’d been so bound up in rescuing whores from kidnappers, having shoot-outs in gang hideouts, getting stolen horses back and picking flowers for old perverts that I’d totally forgotten somewhere along the line about the story – about what John Marston originally set out to do, and that was catch Bill Williamson.

You remember Bill Williamson? The guy at the beginning who shot– oh never mind, he’ll die of old age if I keep playing Blackjack long enough.