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Written By: Scott Malthouse

Cats are best known for their cuteness and terrible grammar. They are not known for their prowess as bounty hunters. Atari, however, has other ideas with its latest platformer: Blade Kitten.

Of course, there have been sillier concepts for a videogame hero. After all, who would have thought a worm wearing a white suit and toting a 1950’s ray gun would have been a success? It’s a shame then that, although a fun idea, Blade Kitten is a decidedly average affair that fails to deliver an exciting experience, while having ‘just’ enough going for it to warrant a play through.

Taking obvious influences from Japanese anime in its colourful style and goofy tone, Blade Kitten follows the story of Kit Ballard, a pink tailed felinesque bounty hunter who is pursuing her blonde and incredibly annoying enemy, Justice, after she stole Kit’s Breaker key and destroyed her ship.

Written By: DrunkenGamer

If there is one thing about MMO’s that makes them fun to play, it’s the hours of gameplay they provide you. However, from a reviewer standpoint, that is also a pain of a problem.

While I would love to have high level characters on all of the major MMO’s, there are just not enough hours in the day. So when I hear about new additions to titles, it can be a little frustrating not to be able to jump right in and give it some hands-on coverage.

One such example of this is Aion. As much as I loved playing this game during its Beta and after launch, time and other content slowly ate up my time. Too many damn good games! As a result I only ever made it to level 26ish on the live servers.
So when NCSoft released the Assault on Balaurea expansion in September, I was very interested in the new instances and high level content that was added, and put in a solid effort to get caught up.

Thankfully though, it seems the NCSoft Community Managers are well aware of this issue and invited me & several other members of the gaming press to a run of the expansion’s multi-group 12 man instance, the “Abyssal Splinter”, on a test server.

Written by: Kieran McSherry

Hydrophobia – ‘An irrational fear of water.’ If we’re completely honest, being scared of water isn’t overly irrational. We don’t breathe the stuff for one. and large bodies of endless liquid are some of the most inhospitable habitats for us land-bound mammals. In fact, I’m sure the basic fear of drowning is written into us at the genetic level, like being scared of the dark or afraid of confinement.

Hydrophobia, the new third person, futuristic survival-adventure from Dark Energy, attempts to tap into each of these base and primal fears. By locking players in a leaky box beneath the waves, before turning out the lights.

The world is overpopulated, nearly ten billion souls at the last count. In an attempt to cope with such swelling numbers, humanity built ‘The Queen of The World’, an enormous ocean-liner/mega city. You take on the role of the unlikely, hydrophobic heroine Kate, an engineering officer aboard the enormous floating real-estate. Her ship is attacked, obviously, by ultra-radical terrorist’s hell bent on global genocide. For an indie title, this game has a dark and very adult subject matter. Story isn’t the only ‘indie-surprise’ Hydrophobia has in store either. The graphics are stunning, easily comparable to many blockbuster titles, with the ship’s innards looking realistic and complementing the astounding water and lighting effects well. Dark Energy’s Hydro Engine was obviously at the core of their design, and digital liquid has never looked so genuine or behaved so accurately. However, Dark Energy didn’t just design their new engine with looks in mind. Water is a very important part of Hydrophobia’s gameplay.

Written by: Kieran McSherry

Zombies. They get everywhere, smear gore on the furniture and nibble the household pets/children – wholly unacceptable behaviour, even from the deceased. It’s no wonder that we ‘breathers’ find smashing their mushy noggins in so satisfying.

Dead Rising 2, the new third person, sandbox, pseudo-RPG, zombie survival melee-masher from Blue Castle Games, should help alleviate any undead related frustrations.

Not much has changed since Dead Rising (1). The action still takes place in a mall. Well strictly, it’s a gambling and shopping resort called Fortune City. Admittedly the overall area and level of detail make its predecessor look like a deformed half-sibling, but the games layout, set-up and formula remain unchanged. Core enjoyment is still derived from brutalising the undead in an assortment of comedic fashions. Everything has gotten a lot prettier, as expected, and it is easily one of the most genuine and cohesive sandbox worlds to date, all be it more restrictive than many others of similar genres. The in-game day/night cycle highlights a wondrous set of lighting, shadow and water effects, and even a balanced and realistic physics engine is present, meaning that decking a zombie never felt, or seemed, so real. Dead Rising 2 drops gamers right in the middle of the most authentic zombie apocalypse yet, and at the precise moment of that realization the fact that it’s basically just a tweaked re-release doesn’t seem to matter at all.

Written By: DrunkenGamer

Have you ever had the feeling that you are the centre of the universe? That the very world itself revolves around you?

In that case, I think I have just the game for you!

And Yet It Moves – the first title released by Austrian indie studio, Broken Rules – is one for all you egomaniacs out there, as the game literally involves moving the world around yourself.

Set in a world where everything, including yourself, is made of torn up and sketched on pieces of paper and card, your goal is a simple one – get to the end alive. However, as with all the best puzzle games, that very simple concept is far more difficult than it sounds.

Facebook is saturated with copycat games occupying the same genre: farming, cooking, fishing and petting. How about Vikings? Gotcha! Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

So give credit to Iceland’s GoGoGic and their pioneering social game, Vikings of Thule, which popularises Norse culture (just in case you nodded off during history in school) and delivers the sort of whack to the senses that would even make the likes of Asterix proud.

Vikings of Thule is an MMOG on the facebook platform. You have to admit the prospect of charging around as a Viking, a mercenary group in history famed for being more blood-thirsty than merchant bankers, does give one the horn. The premise of the game is simple – select your avatar and allegiance from one of the cities illustrated on the authentic map of Iceland, and strive to become what is effectively one of the 39 members of the Viking parliament, otherwise known as the Althingi (perhaps they were tanked up on Thule beer during that particular brainstorming session).

As Neocore’s follow-up to the rather excellent King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame, I was expecting some good things from Lionheart: King’s Crusade, and on many counts it does not disappoint.

However, there are a few areas where the game fails to reach the heights set by their predecessor.
Like King Arthur, Lionheart is a complex game that manages to be both accessible and deep, thanks to a well laid out interface and tutorials that explain everything clearly.

The first thing you’ll notice about Lionheart is there is a lot more personality than other titles based on real historical events. Also, it does not do much to hide it’s more linear nature, feeling confident with its primary options of choosing which area to conquer next, and taking resources from that area once the battle is won.
The missions and tactical options in battle are much less linear though, and while the game as a whole will be inevitably compared to Total War when it comes to the battles, Lionheart offers a largely different experience.

When you think about it, football games are pretty hard to review. How do you judge them?
Do you use the sequel rules and concentrate on the way they they further refine what was already there, or do you constantly look for the biggest revolution in gameplay and realism?

With rivals PES and Fifa once again going head-to-head in an effort to be crowned the year’s “Best of Footy Gaming”, this years annual debate poses more of a conundrum than ever before.

EA’s Fifa 11 lines up with a host of refinements on the Fifa 10 mould, building on its solid foundations, adding the best bits of their Fifa World South Africa release, and introducing a host of new gameplay features that are geared towards realism. It’s arguably refinement at its best, and undoubtedly makes for the truest game of football to ever grace our screens.
However, Konami have gone for the total revolution approach with PES 2011, scrapping the last few years and working hard to change it into a more faithful representation of the beautiful game. PES is definitely the bigger change of the two, but it still ends up playing a pretty different game of football to FIFA.

Both games are great this year, so we’ve decided to compare them side-by-side to decide the match winner.

We`ve been at sea fer moons now, most o’ th’ crew be havin’ scurvy, th’ water ran ou’ moons ago, at least we still be havin’ bee….Bilge water be ou’ grog..Set sail fer th’ nearest port!! Bounty Bay be closest!

For our readers not familiar with Pirate speak, roughly translated that means it has been a few months since we last took a look at Frogsters Pirate based MMO, Bounty Bay, and with the launch of its latest expansion, Atlantis, what better time to check in with them than now.

With that in mind, I decided to take a look at what players can expect to find in this anticipated expansion.

Level Cap Increases
An MMO expansion staple, Atlantis will push the level cap on Bounty Bay Online from 120 to 150. This will allow the players that had reached the level cap a new opportunity to expand their characters.

New areas to Explore
One of the good things about being out at sea is the opportunity to discover new lands to explore and plunder. Atlantis adds two entire new regions for the adventurous seafarers to explore as they work towards their new level cap.

If you’re at all interested in the realms of Indie game development, there is one name that stands head and shoulders above the crowd – Team 17. And while they have worked on many great titles, including Alien Breed & Superfrog, their best known game still remains Worms.

What started as a competition entry for a programming competition run by Amiga Format, eventually became a franchise as iconic in the gaming industry as Mario or Halo. First released in 1995, the game was an instant success and spawned a series of follow-ups and different platform releases.

Now over 20 years old, its latest incarnation has recently been released and bought the game back to its 2D roots. So, like me, is this game starting to show the ravages of time, or has it matured like a good whiskey?
To start with I decided to take a look into the single-player side of the game. I know, Worms has never been about single-player, but it has one so it needs to be looked at. Aside from the obvious Quick and Custom battle modes that set you against AI controlled teams, there is also a campaign mode.