Thirteen1

Activision’s latest fps hit, Singularity, has been a highly anticipated release since its announcement. It’s instantly very clear that they’ve taken a large step, rather, a leap away from the realism of the Call of Duty titles in this time-travelling, Ruski-shooter.

The convoluted and, at times, disturbing plot is far from simple; in brief, you play as Nathan Renko, a captain in the US Army, sent to a secret Russian Island, where the Soviets have been experimenting, for what of a better word, in time-travel. Of course, when you arrive at the island, the game immediately begins to seep with predictability; you get split up from your partner, you get ambushed several times by admittedly creepy mutants, you find your partner, he gets killed by an angry Russian, and you get saved by a female rebel, who believes that you are the saviour of mankind. Drawing any parallels yet?

When an indie company proudly calling themselves The Bearded Ladies (and the award for “Best Company Name Ever” goes to…) bursts onto the gaming scene, you’d be right to expect something a little different. Landit Bandit, their first release, is something of a revelation for the PSN Store. Not only is it a cracking title worthy of your time, it’s almost an entirely unique concept in the age of copycat companies and endless bedroom indies duplicating each other’s designs.

To put it simply; Landit Bandit plays out like every other retro-advanced-casual-physics-based-chopper-game you’ve ever played. That’ll be none, then…

If you want to get anywhere in the MMO business the major thing you need is innovation. But the trouble is that there are so many ideas floating around out there that it’s damned difficult to come up with a truly unique approach to gaming.

Most browser games suffer from ‘copycat syndrome’, a condition where game designers flat out lift ideas from other, more successful games. Crime RPG ‘Biker Battles’ is one of the few games that actually seems to be innovating, at least at the moment anyway.

Inspired by his love for the TV show Sons of Anarchy, Biker Battles is the brainchild of one Stefan Gaasbeek and is currently in open alpha, meaning anyone can register a character and get playing – just remeber that because game is still developing you currently only have the bare bones to play with. However, Gaasbeek had a spark of ingenuity when creating the game, deciding that the players themselves should play a big role in forging the gameplay of the new MMO.

Tally ho, pip pip and other such nonsense. Nowadays the kids are too hopped up on their Pokemons and Michael Bay movies to give two toots of the vuvuzela about good old fashioned adventure. You know, exotic locales, mysterious ladies, treasure and all that jazz. Good thing that adventure game stalwarts Animation Arts, the developers of the popular Secret Files series, are giving it to us in spades in their upcoming release: Lost Horizon. This month I strapped on my flying goggles and played through a preview – and there wasn’t an Optimus Prime in sight.

We begin with a prologue in Tibet, 1936, where a British cartographer recieves a strange artifact from a dying Chinese man whilst being pursued by Nazis. After escaping a large chamber with bizarre writing etched into the walls we cut to China, 1938 and our hero Fenton Paddock, a loveable rogue who is talking to his bartender friend, Shen, about the trouble he has got himself into with the local Tong Triads.

There are few things in this world so iconic that, with only a partial description, people instantly know what you’re talking about. Men on a zebra crossing? Very clearly the Beatles (more accurately the Abbey Road album). Use the Force? Obviously Star Wars.
With that in mind, what do you think of when I say “Blue Box” or “Sonic ScrewDriver”? The answer, without a shadow of a doubt (I hope!), would be Doctor Who!

I’ll admit to having a great personal love for Doctor Who – I grew up watching the show as a small child. While I never hid behind anything, I do remember being quite worried by the sound of the monsters from time to time…
I was very annoyed when it went off air in 1989, suffering my way through the 1996 TV movie travesty (twice) to get my Dr Who fix, and couldn’t have been happier when it triumphantly returned in 2005.

“He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn’t score many goals. Apart from that he’s all right.” I would have to agree with George Best if he was describing my footballing skills, but FIFA Online is set to change that with a free-to-play FIFA football game for the PC, packing a new simple control system that can even make me look more like Lionel Messi than Terry Hurlock.

I have always liked the FIFA games, going all the way back to the SEGA Megadrive days, but it doesn’t mean I have ever been that good at them. FIFA Online is trying to grab the PC football market here, with a game that is quick and easy to get into but tougher to master. It is free-to-play but will use micro-transactions to buy various upgrades and other items, both practical and cosmetic.

If you go down to the woods today, be ready to have gouged eyes,
these naughty bears will kick your ass, and that will be your demise.
This little bear from A2M, is sure to enjoy killing men,
a teddy bear is having a sadistic piiicniiiic…

Who can resist writing a bit of original music about a game that’s based on a masochistic, killing machine of a Teddy Bear hell-bent on gorey revenge? Not us, that’s for sure.
Naughty Bear, A2M’s latest release, has you take on the role of the game’s title character, “Naughty Bear”, a teddy bear who’s the butt of all jokes on the insanely cutesy Perfection Island. But the other bears have just played one trick too many, leaving him out of Daddles party and mocking his attempt at making friends by bringing a present.

While I have made no effort to hide the fact that, in the age-old ‘Sonic or Mario’ debate, my fanboyism falls squarely in the slipstream of the speedy blue one, it doesn’t mean I would ever miss out on any of the podgy Italian plumber’s titles.
In fact, in recent years the outings of Mario have stood head and shoulders above any of the Sonic releases. Personally, his most recent peak was Super Mario Galaxy. Now I’m sure that will cause much debate amongst both readers and other T1 team members, but I just prefer it over Super Mario World.

When I first played that game I was floored. The visually stunning worlds, the awesome gameplay and brilliant level design – everything about that game was spot on.

The air was cool as I descended the stone mausolean stairs, reaching out into the eveloping blackness for something to keep me upright. The room stank of death as I delved deeper into the dreaded necropolis, some detestable ichor dripping from the ceiling onto my coat.
I was witness to amorphous shadows creeping around me, possibly tricks of the wan moon. I approached a decrepit stone altar and beheld a basalt statue carved into an alien shape, a mass of tentacles protruding from what I was sure was it’s cephalopod like face. I thrust it aside and saw that it was sitting atop a rectangular plastic box. I held my torch up to the cursed object and could not muffle the terrible scream that rang out of my lungs. The box read: Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage.

When it was announced that Ruffian Games were working on a sequel to Crackdown, Realtime World’s 2007 hit, pretty much every 360 gamer who played the first let out a cry of unmitigated joy. There’s just something forever appealing about playing as a super-powered hero in an open-world environment, and with new additions to the already solid formula and many of the bugs ironed out, Crackdown 2 simply couldn’t fail to impress…right?

Well..that depends on just how much you liked the original, because Crackdown 2 is basically the exact same thing. Imagine handing your home to a group of interior designers and leaving for 6 months while they went to work, only to return and find the exact same layout with a slightly darker colour scheme and a chair switched with a sofa. That’s what you’ve got here.