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"The driving plot point of Modern Warfare 3 is tracking down the Russian president who was kidnapped on his way to working out a peace treaty with the West. Now, if the Russian government was committed enough to peace that he was already on the plane puckering up for some imperialist bottom-kissing, who the hell gave the order to invade Europe?! Because when the president finally does get into that meeting with the Western powers, there are going to be some fucking awkward items on the agenda! Full-scale chemical weapon attacks on civilians, that's a hard thing to blame on a few bad apples! I think the problem might lie with the orchard, Mr. President - you might want to stop watering it with liquidized children."

"Nitpicking is unhelpful, however, and I'm in the kind of mood that I'm prepared to overlook a lot of flaws in Skyrim, which is good, because there are a lot of flaws in Skyrim. But I'll applaud it if it means we can have less games that treat me like a child stuck in a pipe, Games Industry. I will applaud it as hard as you like. I will slap at my palms until my future children suffer masturbation guilt. No I don't know what I'm on about; go away."

"Now, the first Saints Row game was comparatively straight. It wasn't exactly Homicide: Life on the Street, but you weren't going to climb aboard any rocket-powered jet-bikes either. Saints Row 2 leaned wackier, with a slightly unhealthy fascination with spraying poo at things other people would rather you didn't spray poo at, but was still somewhat grounded in reality at least. Saints Row: The Third drinks wackazade from a clown shoe. This is a trilogy progression we academics call, "Evil Dead Syndrome," and I'm not sure I like it. The funny parts of Saints Row 2 shone all the brighter alongside its more po-faced aspects - it's when you're wearing full lucha libre gear, thwacking at zombies with a big floppy dildo as part of the everyday routine that it starts to feel less special."

"The cynic is an isolationist beast but can always recognize one of their own, and the Assassin's Creed series is getting very cynical. I like the games but I feel my like is being exploited for coin, and at the risk of devaluing one of my favorite words, it's now faffing about like it's never faffed before and the faffing is getting out of hand. All of this bullshit - the Championship Manager human resources management games, the Templants vs. Zomsassins - all of this is just more and more layers of flaky pastry between me and the succulent meat of the Assassin's Creed Cornish pasty: one bloke in a bedsheet hopping about on the rooftops, carefully planning a stealthy guerrilla assault, to surgically strike like a thumbtack in a McChicken sandwich!"

"Speaking of Wind Waker, spiritually Skyward Sword feels quite reminiscent of it, except you're exploring an ocean of clouds rather than the more traditional ocean of water. But if the surface world is supposed to be so completely covered in clouds that you and your ivory tower friends aren't even sure it exists, then why when you're exploring the surface world is it always a bright sunny day? I found a plot hole! Nurse!"

"So obviously Zelda ends up in an embuggerance, and Link has to pick up a magic sword and sort her out. This time the magic sword comes free with a standard-issue support character, who deserves special mention because, besides a twitchy enraged badger that points out important quest items by breaking wind at them, I cannot imagine a worse assistant. Her big thing is spurious rigour; she can't just say, "Go in the room and stab the big lad in the obvious glowing weak spot," it's always, "There is a 70 percent chance that you must stab the big lad in the obvious glowing weak spot." She sounds like a fucking laundry detergent commercial!"

"First you "prove your worth" for the Master Sword, then you "prove your worth" for the three Sacred Flames, and then "prove your worth" a few more times for the Song of the Hero. If I were Link, I'd throw the sword down and yell: "Do you want this motherfucker dead or what?! I feel like I'm trying to arrest the person burgling your house and you keep telling me to fuck off until I've put on some nicer shoes.""

"For the uninitiated, Sam Stone is a nineties action-hero graduate from the Duke Nukem correspondence course with some kind of unclear role in the military, and who started showing up to work one day in a customized t-shirt and jeans. And no one wanted to complain in case he blew cigar smoke in their face, or shagged their mums."

"Interestingly enough, the crown of greasy brambles and throne of compacted garbage to be awarded to the worst game of 2011 are in this case two crowns and perhaps some kind of chaise lounge affair, because I can't decide which creepy, masturbatory, lead you by the nose, flimsily justified violence upon vastly inferior enemies, open-quotes "realistic" shooter with a 3 on the end I despise the most: Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3. I don't hate them because they're poorly made or fail in what they set out to do, I hate them for what they represent. Modern Borefare and Twattlefield not only show that people should stop making realistic shooters, but also make a convincing case that people should stop existing generally and perhaps we should save time, form a big circle and on an agreed signal all cap the person to the right. Oh, Happy New Year by the way."

"3D Mario Land Super is a Mario game in which you jump on things in covetous pursuit of stars and coins, like you didn't already know that. How does it differentiate itself? Well, the standard policy with a new Mario game seems to be to write down every feature from every previous Mario game on Post-It Notes, stick them all to a wall, and throw a fucking dart. And in the case of Super Mario 3D Mario Super, it landed on the raccoon tails from Mario 3, a dart throw everyone was so fucking pleased with that they felt they had to base the whole game around it, handing out raccoon tails to half the enemies and stationary objects too. Although considering the original Japanese Mario 3 was more faithful in its depiction of the folkloric tanuki, I'm hoping there's a version of this game knocking around somewhere where every enemy has a big, hairy scrotum dangling underneath in which case it's the Thwomps I feel sorry for."

"Okay, going to have to go back to Rayman Origins for a bit. It plays most similarly to New Super Mario Bros. Wii right down to the four players, two of which are named characters and two of which are passing woodland creatures that walked in the wrong door by mistake. Crucially though, players do not bounce off each other like they did in NSMBWii, so you can actually get through a level without disowning three friends or family members. Another difference is that Rayman ditches the lives system, a very stupid and outdated concept that Nintendo have to stick to because of an ancient voodoo curse that will make their bell-ends explode if they try to think for five minutes!"

"...It turned out Generations only updates one classic level per game. Green Hill Zone from Sonic 1, Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic 2, et cetera, and this led inexorably to a brain-scouring moment when I was faced with a level based on part of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006! I mean, there's no way of making a game like this without coming across as self-congratulatory, but it wouldn't matter so much if you're congratulating yourself for something good. I'd have thought Sonic Team would want us to forget about Sonic 2006. Nobody liked Sonic 2006. If you think you did, you're wrong. It's like saying you enjoyed listening to someone singing completely out of tune or reading a book whose pages are covered in brown sauce. I know it's your opinion, but your opinion is just wrong. And yet here it is, presented unironically in this alleged celebration of Sonic's greatest moments. If I were a diplomat, I'd call it, "misplaced conceit," but I'm not so I'll call it, "frothing bug-eyed self-delusion.""

"Every time I play a MMORPG I have a moment of self-realization at some point when I say, "What the fuck am I doing?" and go back to being a productive member of society. In some games it comes earlier than others, but to Old Republic's credit, it did take a while. It was right after my character got the Schmillenium Schmalcon back, and the game universe opened up. My heart leaped when the space battles were introduced, but they're basically just pseudo rail shooters, in the Nova Storm or Microcosm style, and aren't much more than a gimmick. What really made me lose interest was that, in emphasizing the story, the game unwittingly sealed its downfall, because once my smuggler had reclaimed the Thousand-Year Albatross, he suddenly didn't have a story anymore. Some hideously contrived development about a pirate treasure was yanked from a butt-hole lubricated with desperate sweat, but all I could think was, "Why the hell would I want a treasure?! I've got 25 grand in the bank gathering dust because the stores don't sell anything worth shit, and I peel all my equipment off dead tosspots! At least provide a beautiful princess for me to put my cocksure leg over. I spent a lot of cold lonely nights in the captain's bunk with my right hand and some racy holograms, thinking, 'So this is why they called him Han Solo!""

"Using the word, "Escort," to describe core gameplay is like using the words, "Bloody and viscous," to describe a urine sample, but Amy pulls her weight by having the power to heal you, create cones of silence, and telekinetically blast things aside. Obviously. I'd have been rather put out if she didn't. In horror circles, small mute autistic girls are second in power only to Jason Voorhees listening to people fucking."

"I also have a problem with the dodge mechanic in that how it's supposed to work is vague at best. Sometimes my character nimbly sidestep a blow, and sometimes their ass would get played like the bongos. I checked the manual which said to, "Use the analog stick as you're about to be hit." "Use it," eh? Thanks. Have you guys considered writing bomb defusal manuals? "Step 1: Use your hands. Step 2: Also maybe some pliers.""

"Ah, doesn't this take ya back! Around mid-2007, I was living in a drainpipe, licking the backs of Cornetto lids for sustenance, and one night I'd scraped together enough pennies to afford to spend the night at the YMCA. After agreeing to be viciously buggered in return for being allowed a go on the communal PS3, I played a demo for a game called The Darkness with a silly opening sequence and a slightly obtuse puzzle that I couldn't get past. So after Big Steve chased me off so he could play the new Ratchet and Clank, I scrounged up some yellow craft paper, made some figurines from stolen Burger King napkins, and produced a short Internet video explaining how I'm really clever and therefore the game must be dumb. Who would have thought that that event would lead me to where I am today? Now I have Cornetto lids beyond the dreams of avarice, and I'm the one paying to viciously bugger Big Steve. And I'm now professional enough to play a game for more than ten minutes before I attempt to sabotage its developer's retirement plans -- unless it's Final Fantasy. Or Monster Hunter. Or I'm bored, or in a bad mood, or it's Thursday."

"In never leaving Jackie's perspective, the single-player campaign feels like a very personal journey, and there are even moments when the Darkness induces hallucinations to make him question reality. And the co-op undermines that, too. "Oh, I guess this is reality after all, 'cause there's a voodoo priest and a samurai summoning black holes and... Actually, let's double-check that.""

"I know I can't speak for everyone -- at least not until The Device is completed..."

"I've called Kingdoms of Amalur a lot of things - "Single-Player World of Warcraft," "Fable With a Shriveled Willy" - but I think I've found the soundest comparison: it's "Baby's First Skyrim!" Pretty much the same gameplay features with substantially less complexity and with boring, claustrophobic environments, or at least that's what I thought. When I took a moment to stop and take a good look around me, I realized that the environments were actually quite expansive, epic, and artfully designed. It just didn't feel that way because the camera is angled slightly downward, so at any given moment of gameplay 60 to 70 percent of the screen was taken up by the floor texture. If I'd been in charge of designing ceilings in this game, I'd be out for fucking blood right about now. Just goes to show how the smalles tweak of a core feature can have ruinous consequences, like prodding a tiger's bollock."

"The best constructive criticism I could offer would be to travel back in time to the first gameplay planning meeting with a large Hessian bag and some day-laborers with cricket bats. "Hey!" said one developer looking up from his Lego set, "If our character's immortal, then there's not going to be much challenge, is there? Why don't we put in another character he has to escort..." And that's as far as he gets before disappearing into the Hessian bag, and his pig-like squeals are drowned out by the grunts and thwacks of the day-laborers at work. "And," says another developer sticking whiteboard markers up his nose, "Let's constantly put some monsters around that can instantly game-over you if they suck in your disembodied head, but you can avoid it by completing a quicktime even..." "Get in the fucking sack!" "You know what I hate?" interjects a third developer emerging from underneath his pillow fort, "Using nice convenient button presses for sword attacks when we could be rattling the right analog stick back and forth and up and down like a clumsy teenage boy's first time at third base." "Thank you for sharing," I would say. "You know what I hate? You not being in this fuckin' sack right now!""

"Mostly though, the agenda I sympathize with the least is the publishers. What is the point of slapping a 90s tactical shooter's name recognition on a generic modern shooter if most people who like generic modern shooters won't remember the name, and the people who do remember the name will want to set your office on fire? You won't endear yourself offering to rape my mum for fifty bucks!"

"A word, then, on the subject of trilogies: "Bollocks!" That was it."

"The arrangement this time around is that there's a big fat bar graph representing what percentage of your arse will get kicked if you launch the invasion, and it goes up as you complete missions and gather troops and massive quantities of sandwiches to feed them with. It's sort of like the latter half of Fable 3, but not so much designed by a yogurt (no offense, Peter)."

"And then there's my prowess with driving video games, in that taking my foot off the accelerator as I go around sharp mountainside bends is advice my brain just can't seem to absorb properly. And there's something about being in a sturdy, powerful machine and being forced to wait for pedestrians crossing the road in front of you pushing some stupid pram that makes me want to physically inform them of their place in the grand scheme of things, as I explained to the judge. Most of that came from playing Carmageddon back in the ironically bad pun period in the nineties (see also: Wargasm). I never got around to playing any of the Twisted Metal titles, but that's all right because the new one is just called Twisted Metal which obviously means it's exactly the same as the original, doesn't it, OH, FUCK YOU!"

"Fortunately, there is an optional training mode, and I would highly recommend going through it, because it was only there that I found out about the jump command, which would have been handy in the previous mission when my progress was being stymied by a chest-high wall on loan from the shooter next door..."

"I find the single-player elements upsetting in many ways. I'm sure I needn't remind viewers that I'd rather hug the venomous quills of a tarantuhedgehog than a human child, but it's a shame when a game essentially about watching things explode at high speed with gurgling childish mirth tries to make itself all dark and edgy as well, like a Ferris wheel with the face of Stanley Kubrick painted on the side. Just seems like unnecessarily limiting the audience. I'm picturing Mrs. Stephens leaving her rosy-cheeked boys in the care of the latest electronic babysitter only to freeze mid cookie-baking at the sound of an f-word drifting through from the lounge, whereupon she storms in and wrenches the controllers away from her children so hard their little arms snap off at the elbow. Huh. Actually, on second thoughts, I'm down with that. Carry on, Twisted Metal."

"To stop beating about the bicycle, the shooting controls are a load of piss. If you go into aim mode -- that's the second aim mode; for some reason there are two aim modes, one slightly less aim-y than the other, so why the fuck would you bother? -- then the camera angle switches to where your character is facing, rather than the character turning to face the camera angle, like how the regular boring well-designed shooters work; and I wish I had a sewing needle for every time I got teeth marks in my mauve blazer while intimidating a wall two feet to the right of the guy I was trying to aim at, because I'm going to shove them all under my fingernails. Also, when you're not aiming, you use the right analog stick to look around. But that's what it's good at; it's like a faithful hound trained to fetch the grouse and nothing else. That's why in most shooters, when you go into aiming mode, you continue using the right analog stick to adjust your aim, because you're still looking at things, but now in an edgy, masculine kind of way. Yakuza is of an innovative mindset, however, so adjusting your aim in aiming mode is done with the left analog stick. Why the scrambled eggs on fucktoast would anyone do that?"

"It's like the series feels like it's lost so much identity from cutting out the leather-clad titty monsters that it's grabbing scrips and scraps from anything that it thinks people seem to like these days, trying to find a new niche before it throws up its hands, gives up, explodes all over the bedspread, and you spend the last few moments fighting a giant city-destroying naked woman clutching a broadsword. Well, good try, Team Ninja, you almost held out!"

"So it's got the right survival horror combat and the right survival horror exploration, all Silent Hill: Downpour needs now to earn a great big fat tick at the bottom of the page is to be scary! ... Oh. This always ends up being the sticking point, doesn't it. Fear being a purely emotional response, it's difficult to say precisely why something is or isn't scary, but as I said earlier the essence of it lies in subtlety. And because I know that word disappeared from the vocabularies of triple-A game developers some time ago, no it is not the name of a small village in Derbyshire."

"In all seriousness, it's true that I'm petty and bitter about a lot of things – I'm the guy who went 50 miles out of his way to burn down Lee Drummond's house – but I honestly have nothing invested in pointing out Nintendo's recent failings. Unlike their entire fucking target audience, I wasn't raised on Nintendo so I have no sense of wounded betrayal. Maybe if I express not having enjoyed a Nintendo product, it's because I didn't enjoy it, rather than because I was seething with jealous, impotent rage at its undeniable splendor. Okay then, now that's covered, here's Kid Icarus, a shit game for twats."

"As you may have inferred from my pain-wracked sobs throughout last week's video, I was at the time suffering from rather severe tonsilitis. So everything that passed me lips magically transmuted into an entire Mongol infantry unit the moment I tried swallowing it. Basically what I'm saying is, the back of my mouth looked like a bunch of incontinent seagulls had exploded in a cave. Basically what I'm saying is, it looked like a shoggoth had gotten cold feet while trying to use my epiglottis as a diving board. Basically what I'm saying is, you could have cut my tonsils out and hid them in a basket of fancy cheeses and no one would have been the wiser. Basically what I'm saying is, more painkillers! Yum-yum!"

"Fez is a deeply explorative game in deliberately retro pixel style, outwardly a 2D platformer, but it's kinda complicated. In broad terms, it makes me think of Nit if it had less direction, or Yume Nikki if it had actual gameplay (get a load of my indie penis, spurt spurt!). And it's all wrapped up in a bag that smells strongly of Super Paper Mario. You move in 2D, but can freely rotate the levels in 3D ninety degrees at a time to cross gaps and rearrange platforms with perspective tricks. So I guess we could also call it Echochrome if it had more colors. Blimey! If indie gaming was a country, Fez would be the ki... Well, Cave Story would be the king, but it'd be unwise to appoint Fez as the Grand Vizier, I tell ya that!"

"Games like this and Skyrim and Just Cause 2 really are the sort of thing triple-A development should be making all the time, because it really is the only thing they do best anymore. They badly need to understand why they should stop piling all their resources into designing glorious skyboxes and elaborate set pieces and other things that fall solely under the category of "looking at stuff," when you cannot possibly compare "looking at stuff" to "blowing up stuff," "running to the top of stuff" and "skiing back down stuff with two still bloody scalps attached to the soles of your shoes.""

"Things are operating on a sort of Pirates of the Caribbean level, where there's a bunch of all-powerful god-like entities threatening generic destruction all over the place, and a loose coalition of bad-smelling toothless seafarers have to stop them by acquiring four cans of spray-on all-powerful godlike entity repellant. Well, four magical treasures, but basically that's the gist of it. It really is strongly reminiscent of the plot writing in the later Pirates of the Caribbean films, in that there is no problem in the world that doesn't have some convenient bullshit magical artifact kicking around somewhere, specifically designed to deal with it. Either the Ancient Ones didn't feel like they were doing their jobs properly if they didn't enchant every last fucking thing in their trophy cabinets, or someone's making shit up as they go along!"

"You know, if any game company is likely to be secretly headed by a James Bond villain, it's Blizzard, because all their games put me into a fucking hypnotic trance, and levelling starts to carry this mindlessly addictive quality into which they could easily insert some subliminal instruction to raid the nearest plutonium storage facility. Ultimately I confess I still don't get the appeal of dungeon crawlers. Seems like I could recreate the essential experience by opening Microsoft Excel, scrolling down ten thousand pages with the down cursor key, and then typing, "THE MOST SPLENDID TROUSERS OF THEM ALL!" What I really don't get is the appeal of randomly-generated dungeons. Surely that could only possibly pay off during a second playthrough when/if the player realises that this small handful of barren rooms manaically copy-pasted and then arbitrarily stapled together seems to have been arbitrarily stapled together slightly different to before. If a book randomly rearranged its chapters with every read, then every chapter would have the characters doing fuck-all, because the plot wouldn't make sense otherwise. So the end result will always be a fucking boring book. It's not just missing the forest for the trees - it's missing the forest for the trees in another completely different forest."

"What with Juliette being built like a collection of sofa cushions strategically nailed to a lamp post and her fondness for skirts the length of an information pamphlet on feminist theory, one could reasonably take this as yet more proof of the rampant objectification of females in the media. But the more I considered it, the more I regarded Lollipop Chainsaw as comparatively progressive, and isn't that a depressing thought. Juliette is always in control of the situation, has a healthy devoted family life, and the developers would never suggest that the players should feel motivated to protect her from rapists. (Seriously, that's pretty fucked.) But importantly at the same time, it's never suggested that she is something women should aspire to be, either: her bubble-headed obliviousness is constantly played for laughs and there's a strong undercurrent of psychological damage as she chainsaws up her former schoolmates while remaining as innocently upbeat as a cruise ship entertainer teaching a pensioners how to line dance. It's almost a parody of the standard improbably skilled impractically dressed pouting hotties of video gaming, but then again, I'll say the same thing I said about Bayonetta: just because you're being ironically fetishistic doesn't mean people aren't gonna jerk off to it."

"So let me tell you about Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. I picked it up 'cos the back of the box said the Kinect had finally found its hardcore game and I interpreted that as a challenge. But I've always thought Kinect combined with the controller could work in the same way a man with no arms or legs could still join in everyday life if he were strapped into a luggage trolley. The tutorial went by alright; move the vehicle with the controller and use the Kinect to operate the cockpit levers but the moment I got into an actual mission, fucking Christ, it was like jumping to Expert Free Bird on your first morning at Guitar Hero lessons. Twelve or thirteen different characters shouted conflicting orders into both my ears as enemy shells slammed into the hull and the Kinect started getting bored and acting up to the point that holding the controller any further forward than lodged uncomfortably under my ribcage caused my character to repeatedly headbutt the windscreen. "The game is un-FUCKING playable!" I said aloud. "Shame on you", came a reply, "Playing games is your job regardless of their quality. If you have any self-respect you'll stick with it." *beat* So anyway Quantum Conundrum is a game available on Steam that comes to us from Kim Swift, ex-Valve luminary who brought us the gameplay behind Portal."

"So the puzzles are driven by a handheld device called a Portal G... Oh, wait. Actually a sort of power glove thing that allows you to shift between four alternate dimensions (read screen filters) that alter the physical properties of the objects around you. It's kind of like a glove-mounted cocktail dispenser, except that it alters the physical properties of things other than your own legs. There's the Piña Colada dimension where everything is light and fruity; the Black Russian dimension where things sit much more heavily and you start clutching your head complaining about your ex-wife; the Absinthe dimension where everything floats off into the sky to come crashing apocalyptically down the following morning; and the slow-motion dimension where this analogy kind of breaks down."

"In some ways, it's a rather grim exploration of the relationship between player and player-character. Are we really in control of Captain Walker, or do we merely represent the last vestige of self-awareness in his increasingly damaged mind as he railroads us into committing atrocities, and our distrust and fear of him grows in parallel to that of the men in his command as he weakly tries to rationalize to both them and us until we feel as disconnected from him as the rest of reality and... (*weary sigh*) Do you remember when shooters were about killing demons from hell? Those were good days..."

"...If you're thinking of having a go at making your own [point-and-click adventure game], here's my hot tip: First, think of a problem that the player has to get around like, say, helping a cat down from a tree. Then think of how a normal sensible person would solve the issue with the objects that would be close to hand. Then seal your head inside a half-full vat of boiling chlorine for about twenty minutes, then write down another way you'd solve the problem that at that moment makes perfect sense to your probably fatally poisoned mind. Repeat this process until you've discovered the most circuitous possible solution, maybe hiding a spider under the sunshades in Old Man Withersteen's car, so that he crashes it into the tree trunk, dislodging the cat and allowing you to catch it in a bucket of rose petals you found on the Moon. "Why?!" Because adventure game developers can't cum unless they're picturing the frustrated tears of people who used to trust them. Actually, that could just be me."

"Cover shooting is fine if it serves the game; if it's the glue connecting the actual interesting bits of the model aeroplane. But when the interesting bits only exist to serve the cover shooting, then you're grinding up the model aeroplane components to help beef up the glue. You give us mastery over one of the fundamental forces in the universe and then suggest we just use it to make it slightly easier to shoot things behind cover? Not really a big picture sort of thinker, are we? I'm glad you were never given a Green Lantern ring. You'd probably just use it to conjure a magical green credit card to pay for a second-hand spud gun. Couldn't we use our gravity powers to, y'know, fly?!"

"Well, it's the lull before pre-Christmas and the game release schedule officially has its mouth hanging open and a thin line of drool running into its sippy cup, so at this point there's only one thing I can do: MASTURBA- I mean RETRO REVIEW!"

"I close now, reassured that Half-Life is indeed still good. Perhaps one could partly blame it for some of today's shooter problems, like aggressive linearity and cut-scenes, but that was just dipshits aping something popular without grasping the subtleties. You can't blame Watchmen for all of the comics in the '90s being about angsty people shooting blood out of tit-mounted pouch guns... and pouch-mounted gun tits."

"[Deadlight] is a game that looks like someone at Castle XBLA who I imagine resembles J. Jonah Jameson said "Where are the indie-spirited unrelentingly grim platformers?! Take this checklist and find me a game with more tics than a mangy dog!" It's like something that the XBLA spontaneously generated one day when it had enough titles rubbing together. So it's a linear silhouette platformer like Limbo that controls kind of Shadow Complexy with the merest hint of Splosion Man and a story channeling I Am Alive narrated by a bloke with a voice like he smokes entire rolled-up carpets. Oh yes, and it's set in a zombie apocalypse, which is the point that the Indie-O-Meter starts ringing bells and emitting confetti."

"...I was surprised to see a 20 hour play time on the save file, because it had felt a fuck-load longer than that. It's that most tedious of game plots where you have precisely one goal, that never wavers or updates in any way, and they fill the time by putting a fucking parking barrier every fifty paces that you can't move past until you've gotten three of something from the local dungeon. And it's always three of something! In fact, more than once I'd be asked to find three of something in exchange for one of another set of three things I was already looking for! It's not just padded, it's fractally padded!"

"Anyway, we return to to the planet Pandora, or, to give it its full name, the planet Pandora – no-not-that-one – with four vault hunters of varying skillsets different superficially from the four vault hunters of the previous game, but not in any practical sense. And after the vault that drove the first game's plot was revealed to be short on treasure and long on tentacles, it turns out that there's actually more than one legendary treasure vault on Pandora-no-not-that-one, some of which actually do have treasure in. So that means that everyone in the game gets to keep calling you Vault Hunter. Phew. Thought we'd have to change our stationery. But now your quest is to end the tyrannical regime of one Handsome Jack, who lured you out to Pandora-no-not-that-one and then tried to kill you because he hates vault hunters, oh no wait actually he wants to manipulate vault hunters, but then why would he try to kill you? Oh, stop thinking about it and kill some more Jasons, Mr. Picky-Pants."

""This week was a difficult one", I reflected from my hammock that I have set up between two naked ladies, and for once I'm not going to blame slow releases 'cos there were quite a few, it's just that they were all the kind of shit I don't touch with a ten-foot barge pole. There was Dead or A-Five Live and Tekken Tag Testicle Tourniquet and I've never gotten into one-on-one fighters 'cos they're like going to a job interview for a job you can't do and don't particularly want, except instead of answering questions you punch a school girl in the tits. Partially, I blame publishers not wanting to put out anything that might have to compete with Mists of Panderia, which incidentally I wouldn't touch with a twelve-foot sterilized barge pole being held by somebody else. So that leaves FIFA 13 and is there really anything insightful I can say about it having never played a football game before and indeed still never having done so? Some might say not having played the game and only glancing briefly at the cover art might preclude reviewing it as a rule but I didn't get to where I am today by following rules all over the place. Let's give it a crack! FIFA 13 is a game about- actually, has anyone played Mark of the Ninja on XBLA?"

"[After finishing his Mark of the Ninja review] But, anyway, on the subject of sex crimes let's get back to professional football. FIFA 13 is a game. In that respect, it's eerily reminiscent of Anna an indie first-person horror adventure on Steam that I also played this week, because after Amnesia the phrase "indie first-person horror adventure on Steam" makes my willy perk up and spin around like a tassle on a stripper's tit."

"[After finishing his Anna review] Sorry, I don't what's wrong with me. I just can't stay on topic this week. I'm supposed to be talking about FIFA 13. I'll start again. *AHEM* Tokyo Jungle is a game on the Playstation Network set in a world where the humans are dead and the animals must retake the city in a rather simplistic survival game with environments that look like they were made from painted cereal boxes."

"[After finishing his Tokyo Jungle review] Shit! Hang on, I got confused again. How long have I got left? EIGHT SECONDS?! FUCK! Er... FIFA 13 is a game in which you and your burly friends help a small leather sphere realize its dream of being in a net and I think we can all agree that that's basically a positive thing, nighty-night!"