After PSN outrageously long down time Sony is welcoming back Australian PSN users by offering free games and other services.

You can choose from two PlayStation 3 games from the following list:

• LittleBigPlanet
• InFamous*
• WipEout HD/Fury
• Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty
• Dead Nation*

For those with PSP accounts, you will also be eligible to download two PSP games from the following list:

• LittleBigPlanet PSP
• ModNation Racers PSP
• Pursuit Force
• Killzone Liberation

and more.

For more information check out Sony’s post at: PSN News

The PlayStation Network was finally restored today but not without issue. After switching the service back on, Sony servers were quickly swamped with thousands of users trying to reset their account passwords. After switching the PSN off once again, the servers recovered and were brought back online later in the day.

As explained in previous posts, the PlayStation Store was not part of the phase one restoration. This means users are still unable to download DLC, game demos, or anything from the PlayStation Store. This is bad news for game developers, still left without a way to deliver important profitable content for their work.

Its still unclear if the game updates system is available to developers.

The new security measures now in-place mean that you need to provide your password to do, well pretty much anything in the account section. When you do set a new password, it’ll need to be a strong password. PSN passwords now need to be at least 8 characters in-length, mixed cases, can not use characters 3 times in a row, different to your PSN ID and different than your previous password. These requirements make PSN passwords the strongest of almost any online service. Lets hope Sony’s new security systems on the backend now encrypt passwords, otherwise password strength will be negated.

Check out a gallery of images of PSN coming back online.

Now go enjoy that Portal 2 multi-player, albeit a month later than expected.

Turns out the PlayStation 3 update rollout is progressing faster than expected. I’m happy to report that it has now reached Australian, UK and no doubt the shores of many other countries around the world. 

The download is going pretty fast, currently at 42% after only a couple of minutes. Lets hope Sony’s servers can cope with the big demand. After changing the password for PSN, I’ll be investigating if its possible to pull your credit card details from the system. I suspect many of you may want to do the same. Hopefully its not as painful as removing it from Xbox Live.

Update
The download is now complete, only took around 5 minutes on ADSL2 connection. Now for the installing phase.

Update 2
So while the firmware is available it seems the PlayStation Network is still down here. Upon signing into the PlayStation Network, users still see the message “PlayStation network is currently undergoing maintenance, even after the new firmware. Grrrrr. So frustrating. Back to waiting.

Update 3
You can at least get info on changing your PSN password.

After being offline for 2 days shy of a month, the PlayStation Network is beginning its relaunch. The PSN Relaunch comes with a pre-recorded video from Sony CEO, Hazuo Hirai in which he apologies for the outage and thanks you for being patient. You’ve all been patient right ?

The first of a multi-phase relaunch has begun. Currently PlayStation and PSP owners in the US are able to use some services, with other countries due to receive PSN Relaunch phase 1 over the next few days. Phase 1 of the PSN Relaunch will include:

• PlayStation and Qriocity sign-in
• Online gameplay (PS3 and PSP)
• Music Unlimited (PS3 and PC)
• 3rd party services – (Netflix, Hulu, Vudu + MLB tv)
• Friends list
• Trophy comparisons
• PlayStation Home

What’s not included in phase one..

• Sign up for new accounts
• PlayStation Store

To prevent future attacks, Sony have implemented a number of new security protections. They include Advanced Security Technology, Increased Levels of Encryption, Additional Firewalls, Early Warning Systems. While these vague and borderline comical explanations of increased securities at Sony, only time will tell if they are enough to stop future attacks.

When the PlayStation Network is back online in your region, you will be forced to download and install a new firmware for your PS3/PSP. You will also be forced to change your account password. Given that these were taken in the hack, it makes sense to force people to change their password, but its equally important for users to change it anywhere else those same credentials have been used.  

Sony are offering users a welcome back package, details of which will be made public in the next few days. Hirai says that it will include content and services. The initial compensation package discussed was to include 1 month of free PlayStation Plus and some kind of game. Given the PSN downtime stretched from a week to a month, the ‘welcome back package’ will likely be more substantial in an effort to keep customers.

More info @ PlayStation

Sony have finally come clean about why they had to switch off and are rebuilding the PlayStation Network. What is now a PR disaster for the company, they say they discovered the “illegal and unauthorized intrusion” between April 17th and April 19th. However this first consumers knew of the breach was on Thursday 21st when PSN went offline.

Sony say:

As soon as we learned of this issue, 1) we temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services in order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services

But that just isn’t the case, we know there were multiple days in between. With almost a week where the PSN was compromised, what information did the hackers obtain ? Cue the bad news..

How many were effected ?
Our investigation indicates that all PlayStation Network/ Qriocity accounts may have been affected.

Does that mean all users’ information was compromised?
In terms of possibility, yes. We believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password, login, password security answers, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data may have been obtained, including purchase history and billing address (city, state/province, zip or postal code). If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, it is possible that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may also have been obtained.

When will the service resume?
We will keep the service down to allow us to conduct a thorough investigation and verify smooth operation of our network services but are working hard to resume the services as soon as we can be reasonably assured security concerns are addressed.

Wow. Just wow. When PSN’s multi-day outage worsened, many jumped to point out Xbox Live suffered an extended outage during Christmas 2007, but its clear that outage was more of technical one, the PSN compromise is much more serious.

This downtime just turned into a serious breach of trust and personal data, worse yet is the time it took Sony to come clean about it.

What you should do now
The best thing to do now is check your credit card account for any unauthorised transactions, then keep checking, once compromised, there’s no telling when the info will be used. As for email and physical spam to your home addresses, we’re all used to dealing with that.

What we’re not in a position to protect against is identity fraud. PSN owners trusted Sony with the most important data, after all they are Sony. There was a level of security and trust implicit with a company of that size and reputation. That has now been irrevocably broken.

Once PSN is back online, will you trust it ?

PlayStation Network Q&A

Sorry PSN users, news on Easter Sunday is not good. With another update on the PlayStation blog, Sony identify the cause as an ‘external intrusion’ as the outage enters its third day.

An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th. Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience. We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share.

While on the surface the downtime just seems like a major inconvenience, especially to new Portal 2 owners, but in reality some users are paying for PlayStation Plus. Complaining when a free service is down is one thing, complaining about not getting a service your paying for is entirely another.

While Sony doesn’t commit to any service level agreements, you can be sure this outage will affect subscriber numbers. Also spare a thought for anyone who rented a movie the day before the outage and was charged for something they couldn’t watch. Hopefully Sony gets on top of the issue soon and things can return to normal, but you can be sure there’ll be claims for compensation that arise as a result the shut down.

Sony’s revenues will also be significantly impacted as a result of this, every hour that goes by is costing them revenue. Everything from rented movies, margins on games and add-on content, purchased items in HOME and revenue from music service Qriocity are all frozen since Thursday. It is likely this shut down as a result of the intrusion / hacking / botnet is likely to cost Sony hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the perpetrators of the attack, I hope you covered your tracks, the Sony lawyers will be on your doorstep.

More information @ PlayStation blog.

So you just started your 5 day Easter holidays and jumped on your PS3 to play co-op with friends.. bad luck. The PlayStation Network is currently experiencing a worldwide outage.

Senior Director of Corporate Communications & Social Media, Patrick Sybold posted on the PlayStation blog to confirmed the issue and had this to say.

We’re aware certain functions of PlayStation Network are down. We will report back here as soon as we can with more information.

Thank you for your patience.

While Sony confirm there are issues, in reality, users can’t even sign into PSN at all. The error code provided – 80710A06 is a generic connection issue, which essentially translate to PSN is down. So start your timers, hopefully the issue is resolved in a matter of hours and you can get back to GLaDOS.

Update
More than 12 hours later and PSN is still down. PlayStation have updated users with another blog post on the outage, explaining it may actually be down for multiple days.

While we are investigating the cause of the PlayStation Network outage, we want to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running. Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter. Please stay tuned to this space for more details, and we’ll update you again as soon as we can.

Follow us on Twitter @PlayStationEU for live updates.

Thank you for your patience.

More @ PlayStation via TechGeek

Utilising the CryENGINE 3, the multiplatform FPS Crysis 2, is the sequel to Crytek’s PC exclusive shooter, Crysis. The Crysis whingers have been well documented, the ones that believe that Crysis has been given a lobotomy to fit in with the console market. Ignore them. While some aspects of the shooter do conjure up thoughts of past games, it brings a breath of fresh air to the FPS genre’s stank filled pub.

The story takes place in a devastated New York City, three years after the events of Crysis. Its the year 2023 and humans are dead or dying in the streets from a flesh melting plague, the “Manhattan Virus”. Amongst the skyscrapers, Alien forces – the Ceph – are battling against the humans for global dominance. Players take the role of Force Recon Marine  ”Alcatraz” who is unwittingly put into the Nanosuit 2.0 after a failed extraction mission. So Alcatraz finds himself in a fancy new suit in the middle of New York City, with two forces dying to get their hands on him; the Ceph, and terrestrial CryNet Systems army, Crynet Enforcement & Local Logistics (CELL). CryNet are particularly interested in Alcatraz because they think he is “Prophet” – the supporting protagonist from the first Crysis – and they want the Nanosuit.

The plot is standard video game fair, it doesn’t pretend to do anything ground breaking and it has no illusions about what it is. Think if Snake Blisken was put smack in the middle of New York, with some aliens thrown in for some extra zing, and you have the games main plot artery – minus the mullet. The story telling was similar to that of Half Life’s, it isn’t as good but it had similarities that I won’t delve into for fear of revealing too much. The storyline was easy to follow but left me pondering for a few moments at the end, mentally tying all the facts together.

The suit had three main attributes: sprint, armour and stealth. If used too liberally, each attribute will drain your suits power faster than a box of wine at a bogans house party. For instance, cloak drained power faster the quicker you moved, and shooting while cloaked drained power completely. Some good techniques was to de-cloak right before taking a shot, and cloak straight after taking the shot. “Pockets of safety” would need to be sought out every minute or so of cloak use to recharge the suit. I generally activated armour when a frag detonated close by, when an enemy was engaged head to head or when a large drop was executed.

The nano suit and weapon upgrade menus were very elegant and easy to access. Press and press-hold start, to bring up the suit and weapon upgrade systems, respectively. The suit had four upgrade paths, each with three attributes – only one of those three attributes can be activated at a time. You unlock suit upgrades with alien DNA, that gets picked up from dead aliens. I only had to walk over the DNA to pick it up, rather than doing that annoying walk over and press ‘a’ dance. That made me very happy. Suit and weapon upgrades can be switched out to harmonize with the shifting combat situations or players style.

Weapon unlocks included different sights, silencers etc. The weapons felt satisfying to use, especially against humans, but a few felt like shooting spit balls at the aliens due to their physical superiority. The weapons had good “weight” with great reload animations. Added details, like the sniper scope border, really jazzed things up.
Stealth kills or remaining in stealth through a combat situation removed my reliability on weapons – I only used them out of curiosity or to cause mindless destruction. Being short of ammo was never a problem as ammo drops were frequent and the enemies dropped loads of ammo.  The tank controls felt a bit awkward, very weird utilising the bumpers to shoot rather than the triggers. Another thing I found inconsistent about the tank was it could push over cars but not a lamp post.

Generally, the gameplay consisted of periods of high intensity enemy contact and then breaks with traversal and exploring. These breaks gave a good chance to appreciate the environment and allowed the story to progress. The structure of Crysis 2, unlike the first, is linear. Done away is the sand box nature, and in with the linear get from point A to point B, however, unlike most other linear shooters Crysis 2 gives you options to progress through those points.

You have options to go about a combat situation; stealth kills, circumvent altogether using stealth or Rambo your way through a level. Once an enemy infested area is approached, a reminder will be voiced  to look at your strategic options using your visor. Your visor will highlight key vantage points and suggestions of how to dispatch enemies in that particular level eg snipe, stealth kill etc. I only used the strategic highlights a couple of times to get the gist of what it was about, however the visor came in handy to flesh out ammo drops and enemy positions.

I favoured the stealth route and silent kills, mainly because it was more thrilling to do so than the usual run and gun. This was surprising because I’m not usually a stealth fan. The downfall to sneaky route is that less aliens are killed, which means potential credits for suit upgrades are missed out on. Generally, you could usually tell what enemies would be encountered by the environment; CELL for corridors and building interiors, and Ceph for open spaces.

Humans, when the AI did work, will report a squad mates death, converge on your last position and will sometimes call in for reinforcements. I witnessed a few occasions where human enemies got stuck on barriers or inexplicable geometry, or they were stuck in their walk cycles looking at the ground. On one occasion three humans got stuck on the same piece of geometry, and then, died at the same time through no action of mine.

Aliens will break rank and investigate your position but will lose interest if you cloaked and moved position fast enough. Aliens were easy to dupe and coral when the terrain was just right. For instance, there was a broken down school bus that I jumped into, the aliens couldn’t get into because of their bounding boxes, so they all just crowded around the bus – it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The Crysis 2 multiplayer, developed by Crytek UK, features six gameplay modes and 12 New York City maps. All maps and modes are unlocked for local play and private matches, however points accrued do not carry over to the players online profile. I loved the Crysis 2 multiplayer – the Nanosuit stealth and armour attributes bring new facets into play. Sure other shooters have brought stealth into multiplayer games, but I haven’t been this head over heels about invisibility since Quake. The cloak won’t fool online players, you can see it clearly, especially if someone is moving at a fast pace. Yet, there are many ways to use it effectively in an online game. In more ways than one, Crysis 2 multiplayer evoked memories from Perfect Dark Zero multiplayer, perhaps it was the map design or maybe it was the pacing, or the hide and seek nature.

Load times of mission were noticeably longer than other shooters, but it was a trade readily accepted for the brilliant textures and environments. The textures are gorgeous in 1080 p, the first console game on Xbox 360 to push the graphics that far. I thoroughly enjoyed being in the destroyed and desolate New York environment. The game will take you through some breathtaking environments from huge freight ships rammed into sky scrapers to rooftop gardens to being on a highway during an earthquake.

The world was furnished in such detail that it fleshed the environment out: discard items, equipment and yellowed missing posters (presumably of the dev team). You could interact with almost everything – from laptops, radios, bins etc.  Shooting alien biohazard left goop on screen however shooting dying people didn’t elicit a thing – probably because shooting helpless dying people to bits would grate some countries rating boards. I was thoroughly disappointed that the little insectoid creatures didn’t explode when shot.

The artists left a lot to be implied when it came to the dying and dead civilians, for instance, the models did the motions of throwing up blood onto a already bloodied patch on the floor, but there was no fluid dynamics involved. Animated textures gave the effect that bodies were melting and organs exposed. The effect was effective. Also, there were only a few different civilian character models used throughout the game.

Overall the Xbox handled the game brilliantly, however some popping of bushes and lighting was witnessed. Major frame rate issues were non existent, it was smooth sailing. Other details like the characters shadow was well done and mirrored the movement of the character, in what I thought looked natural. The aliens great and were intimidating close up when first encountered. Dead and inanimate aliens weren’t as striking, this was due to what looked like bad antialising around the head tentacles.

There were some physics and clipping hiccups. Generally the guards feet weren’t grounded correctly when they walked and this was especially apparent when they side stepped, so it gave the effect that they were skating. The Ceph were seen walking about a foot off a solid surface and dead bodies would get stuck on a cliffs geometry and get stuck in mid air, leaving floating bodies. The physics would have moments of roughness, sometimes the impact of a bullet would throw a baddie back in a unbelievable way. There were a few places that I needed to get behind to recharge my suit but couldn’t, for instance I couldn’t get between a wall and a car that could hide least two or three men.

Gunfire audio was brilliant the way it echoed around the skyscrapers. Nothing brilliant should be expected  from the dialogue i.e. the line “this conversation is over” was used, and that made me cringe and laugh at the same. I think “cloak engaged” activation dialogue could have been dropped after while, the thrilling predator-like noise and cloaking visuals was enough. A few audio bugs were encountered in the campaign and the multiplayer. In one combat section a constant digital hammering was apparent – it wasn’t intentional because no other audio could be heard. Other times there were phantom footsteps, another time the screams of a helicopter crash happened post event. In some multiplayer games only footsteps of other players could be heard, no gun shots or ambient noises could be heard.

Crysis 2 had many similarities to other games, be it through homages or a few ideas inspired from  blockbuster games, such as Halo or Call of Duty, especially in squad based moments.

There was cut scene after one gun fight that was hard to dismiss as a tip of the hat to Bioshock. If you are a seasoned gamer or like to savour your games then I recommend anything Veteran or above – anything else will be too easy.

This game grabbed my attention from beginning to end, it left its hooks in deep enough that I got urges to play it whenever I was away from the console. The freedom to choose how to tackle a situation was a refreshing experience in the shooter genre. Sure it was another shooter, but at no point was I thinking “wow they should have gave up the ghost two hours ago” or “I’m sick of doing the same thing over and over again”. The niggling issues highlighted above were just that, the bugs didn’t break the game, and only added character to this high class piece of work.

Image credit: Electronic Arts.

This weekend motorsport fans flocked to the TopGear Live show in Melbourne. Held at Melbourne showgrounds, thousands of attendees we treated to the main live show with hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Shane Jacobson as well as plenty of outside side attractions.

Housed inside a large red d dome was 4 racing simulators using Grand Turismo 5, complete with 3D glasses. While 3D typically gets a pretty bad wrap, the lines for a turn were massive all day long.

The Top Gear tech didn’t stop there, also on display was the latest handheld gadget, the Nintendo 3DS. After getting hands-on with it for the first time, I have to say, I wasn’t at all impressed. A new experience with a new device should be lustworthy, making you feel like you just have to have one, sadly this wasn’t the case with the 3DS. It’s been 15 years since I first played the original Nintendo handheld, the Gameboy and while the technology has improved, it no longer sucks me in.

The 3D wasn’t at all impressive, sure it worked, but you soon get over the initial intrigue of the faked 3rd dimension. Who knows, maybe I’m just too old, the 20-odd devices available to play were packed with kids who all seemed to love it.

As someone who has watched Top Gear for years, as I’m sure many of you have, it was pretty surreal watch the incredibly successful banter between Clarkson and May unfold live on stage (Hamond was busy on other projects).. oh yeah.. and the cars were pretty sweet as well. And now a chick with flame throwers..

The back story was explained eloquently as it could be in a FPS, and without losing the player along the way. The story line has many similarities to the Gears of War story, however it explains a lot more than the GoW storyline. Epic orchestra opening music on the title screen. On idle, the screen pans out from the main characters standing erect, to a pastel coloured sci-fi city and then back to the characters. A pretty and proud start to the brutal game.

The game revolves around Grayson Hunt on his quest to right wrongs. He and his black-ops team went AWOL when they found out the truth about their commanding officer. There are three supporting characters important to the storyline; Hunt’s cyborg partner Ishi Sato, General Sarrano and a female soldier Trishka. A majority of the story takes place on a failed resort resort planet, Stygia. The start of the story is used to ease the you into the mechanics of the game. That’s not to say it isn’t full of action but neither is it full of fast past playable action – most of it is cut scenes and talking.

The environments are destructible i.e hiding behind a semi opaque billboard will eventually be blown away bit by bit. A lot of interactive elements are scattered throughout the environment to kill enemies with, such as: explosive barrels, hot dog stands, parasitic pollops, walls of spiked metal, electric cables and man-eating plants, just to name a few. These elements are a lot of fun to play with and are highly entertaining for the first couple of times they are employed as killshots.

Default speed felt like the sprint mode on other shooters, while the sprint action was flat chat. Sliding – double tap A – is a grand way to get around. Can slide into enemies to stun them or shunt them into obstacles. Do your leg presses cause you’ll be doing a lot of kicking. Certain types of enemies get up into your face pretty fast, so kicking them sends them hurling into the air in slo-mo. This gives you time to pound on them. Turning around was slow in relation to the other controls, it was too easy for enemies to get behind the character and slash away. At least on the console version, you will definitely need to crank up the sensitivity on the controls.

There are 135 Skillshots in the game, there are both skill centric and gun centric skillshots.  Skillshots reward you for getting creative in your murdering. For instance you are only awarded 10 points for a normal kill, while “Fire in the hole” – Leash a miniboss’s helmet off, stun him again, then leash his head off – will award you with 250 points. The first time using a skillshot will award you up to 5 times the usual amount awarded. Skillshots can be strung together.  A large majority of the Skillshots can be crossed off by the end of the game without trying too hard. The points awarded are used as in-game currency, to buy weapons, ammo and upgrades which gives you further incentive to go out of the box.

All weapon classes are represented: the Leash; a handgun, the Screamer; Peacemaker Carbine; chain-linked-grenade-shooting Flailgun; Turret Gun; the explosive ball firing Bouncer Cannon; drill firing heavy weapon, the Penetrator; sniper rifle, the Headhunter; shotgun, the Boneduster. Most weapons have secondary fires which are unlocked and bought with skillpoints. One favourite is the Leash’s, which has the Thump, enemies in the vicinity are shock waved into the air or obliterated and explosive environmental elements are triggered. You will get a chance to unlock all of these weapons throughout the game, and will even get attached to two or three as weapons of choice. There are segments in the game where a certain weapon should be used, like the Headhunter to dispatch enemies at a far distance. Some weapons have a twist. The Headhunter is no ordinary sniper rifle, you take control of the bullet once it has been fired. Was a novelty to use at first but became tedious and time consuming by the end of the game.

Thankfully team mate AI’s don’t pick up ammo dropped by fallen enemies. An added bonus is that ammo is easily picked up from a distance using the leash. Enemy and friendly AI don’t make use if the interactive elements, such as exploding barrels. Not a even a stray bullet of theirs will cause an explosion. The game does introduce new enemies, all have varying AI attributes, which coax you to  change your player style to accommodate.

It was easy to run out of bullets at the start because you will have a tendency to rely on weapons rather than using the environment.   The variety of set pieces in the first few chapters were incredible but these gave way to traditional Gears of War style repetitive gunning your way through levels set pieces. These do serve to give you time to experiment with kills and knock off a few skillshots off the list. There was one cut scene towards the end that would have worked better as a payable section and cut some of the more repetitive sections out. There are some old school boss fights scattered throughout, with a good measure of mini bosses throw in.

The voice acting is what you would expect from a Willis or Schwarzenegger action movie but with added jazz. The dialogue is a tapestry of colourful words, while some would call them vulgar expletives. I loved the language right from the start. Somewhere in the middle of the game the banter between Ishi and Hunter became unbearably obnoxious, perhaps because they were the only two speaking characters for a long stretch of time. Or maybe it was because the game became highly repetitive in those chapters! Some respite was offered when the other characters were reintroduced. The main character sounds like a gruff, sarcastic Jack Nicholson.Ishi’s character oscillated from a whining wet blanket to hardened cyborg. But it doesn’t make sense – why would a whining wet blanket want to become a death guzzling soldier in the first place?  The Generals dialogue is over the top racist and derogatory with lines like “sushi dick” directed to Ishi and degatory terms like “faggots” and “You namby-pamby cock sucks” are a constant. This character instantly grated on me at first but by the end of the game he was my favourite character.

The multiplayer mode, Anarchy, puts you and up to 4 other players in a enclosed map, with a finite number of spawning enemies. The aim is to beat the set skill kill score with in the required time. Again, creativity is rewarded and collaboration with team mates is a must as there is team skillshots goals to accomplish. A major let down was this only multiplayer option. Echos are segments of the campaign where you have to get through them as fast as possible for time bonus points while racking up as much skill points as you can. Always a good idea to stay within the vicinity of your AI buddy because you won’t progress until he gets through all of the enemies. So its best to help him out so he’ll finally get moving.

Overall the art style is brighter than Gears of War, bright pastels and lush greens were laid on thick. Also, it was like someone took Gears of War and just cranked up the gamma on the monitor.  A particular environment section felt lifted straight out of Borderlands, and there were several scenes that evoked strong flashbacks of Gears of War. Some would say immersion was broken by the light blooming and liberal use of lens flare in the environment. These visual effects reduced as the game progressed and as the environments changed. The environments really shone when the lush organic environments –  and city scape segments – of the game were introduced.  The character design was the typical space marine physique. The main character looks to have heavy influences from Enslaved’s Monkey and Wolverine. Triska’s design was sexy and strong, without being a near naked, top heavy, sex bomb with a trout pout. All of the characters texturing looked a bit off, the skin had the sheen and the translucency of Tupperware.

Happily, no frame rate issues were experienced in the actual game play. There was one segment that chugged unashamedly in a cutscene at the beginning. Encountered bug at the end of a chapter which involved a lengthy gun fire battle with no checkpoints.  At the conclusion of the battle, the character became stuck, could only move the head and not the body. Had to restart from check point and do it over again, with no issues the second time round. Another bug was encountered later on in the story. There is a race against the clock to get to point B –  a trench run through enemies and sheets of bullets. Do this section too fast and some enemies won’t spawn, nor will the option to jump over the required barrier appear. Had to do this section a few times over to find the sweet spot – not too fast and not too slow so the timer doesn’t run out.   Another few issues that may irritate you, it is only possible to jump over a barrier is approached in the middle of the obstruction – this is really annoying when you are in a rush. Also, the mini bosses seem to have overly large clip zones, this becomes an issue in smaller fight zones.

Even FPS fans will be divided on this game. For those players who love the efficiency of a clean kill, you will get impatient with the “cat playing with a half dead mouse” approach to dispatching enemies. For those who are are looking for hoot hollaring kills, with the language on the side as garnish, then this game is for you. The story is extremely linear, but, hey – the killing isn’t. I finished Bulletstorm on Hard and was challenged about two or three times.

Bulletstorm is available now for PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows. The Epic edition of Bulletstorm comes with a code for a limited edition blue armour blue pmc, golden leash, 25k XP to use in multiplayer mode Anarchy and six Echoe mode maps.