Most recently the Play Station Plus subscribers were offered a chance to play the demo for the upcoming Castlevania game. Going back a while to '09, when a lot of trailers for the '10 games were coming out I had a lot of excitement for this year. Ofcourse the reality of the year's release list has turned out to be one big disappointment after another followed by an absurd waiting period for the end of year releases.

Well now October is on the horizon and this is about the time the last big games start coming out and showing us what they've got. Right from the moment I set eyes on the laughable Dante's Inferno, I'd been hoping that if there was going to be one precious gem in all the rubbish it would be the Castlevania reboot.

Castlevania is a great idea but as I've come to learn in life, f***ing up a great idea isn't that hard to do. It's like Spiderman jazz dancing. You know that should be cool but somehow, it doesn't work out that way. But I'm happy to say that my taste of monster whipping, knife throwing and worg stabbing has proven to be a lot of fun.

Castlevania plays in that modern beat-'em up style - akin to the old Double Dragon series but in the modern world, more comparable to Heavenly Sword. You play as Gabriel who, as Patrick Stewart tell us with his mesmerising voice over, is a man driven to do things because of love lost. Beyond that, we don't get much of a sense of what these things are that Gabriel is doing or how they help him. It could be that he's just depressed and is throwing himself in harms way but we'll have to wait and see on that one.

The demo takes us through a tutorial fight in which you learn how to whip one enemy, whip all the enemies, throw things at the enemies, grab enemies, block enemies, dodge out of the way of enemies and introduces us to the mandatory "RPG elements" of collecting experience and buying new ways of killing monsters with your whip.

When you've got the hang of all that, Gabriel jumps onto a magical white horse and rides through the forest, whipping away pursuers until the magical horse jumps over a chasm and disappears in mid-air, leaving Gabriel to his fate... And gravity. Serious.

About there is where the demo ends and does it's job of leaving me wanting a whole lot more, taunting me with crytpic release times.

All in all Castlevania was exciting, fun to play and atmospheric. The voice acting is lovable and the monsters so far a frightening asortment of medieval superstitions. The game feels as if it's going to be this year's truly epic adventure and give us the satisfaction that other titles this year just haven't been able to give.

Unless you have a fetish for misproportioned witches with guns on their shoes... My brain cells are still dying.

It's not often I'll get one review out a day after my last one so consider this Bonus Features entry tied to both Heavy Rain and WET. I wanted to say the same thing about both of them.

I've often mentioned that I hate Quick Time Events and at last I'm going to explain myself. Hating QTEs is nothing new. I hear so much hate for them I'm surprised they're still used. But what exactly is the problem? Well it's not the mechanic in and of itself. In fact QTEs are probably the best way to handle any extended length of video footage in a game. A game like 'Metal Gear Solid 4' would probably benefit from some well made QTEs just to break up the exhausting length of some of its cut scenes.

You might say QTEs aren't really playing but a simple reflex test like this isn't too different from the entire genre of fighting games. Most games are built around your reflexes. Quick Time Events are just very straight forward about it. So if QTE themselves aren't the problem, what is?

Well I mentioned that they're especially bad in 'Uncharted' because there's all of about four of them. The problem with QTEs is that they often get thrown in randomly and become an arbitary, unexpected moment of gameplay that wind up distracting you from the actual game. If you're going to have QTEs, they need to be a core feature of the game like every other mechanic. It's like if you were playing 'Age of Mythology' and half way through the campaign you had to stop everything to design a ballista. Okay, that's not a bad feature for a game to have but having you do it once is pointless and annoying.

So rule number one for having QTE in a game "Make them a core part of the game." If you're going to replace boss fights with QTE cut scenes like in 'WET', do it at the end of every level and not just a few times.

Speaking of 'WET', the next rule is to make them interesting. The final boss QTE in 'WET' is boring. There's eight events and the fight is slow, unininteresting and the idea of a challenge doesn't even enter into it. The same is true for most QTEs you come across in video games. They're just no fun because what's happening isn't really exciting to begin with. 'Resident Evil 4' had one QTE scene if I remember and it was long and painful and the worst part of the game. So whether or not the QTE is a fight, a race, a game of dodgeball, do what you have to do to make it interesting. Be creative.

Finally and most importantly, never ever make a Quick Time Event "Press X to not die". This is the biggest problem with QTEs and where everybody seems to be going wrong. This is also where 'Heavy Rain' shines the brightest. 'Heavy Rain' might as well be called 'QTE: The Game' (not entirely true) but they've done everything correctly.

You see, if I fail to press X and then I die and have to start everything again, it not only gets frustrating but it also feels like I have no real control over everything. Remember this is a game. Being interactive means more than just pushing buttons. Going along the same idea that most features of a game are a reflex test of some kind, if I don't shoot an enemy in time I don't die instantly, I lose health. There's a consequence, an impact on the game and I move on from there. Instant death in any form is generally an annoying feature and poor game design. Combined with all the other ways you can screw up a QTE, it's the icing on the cake. A cake made of malaria.

So how should it work? Well if I fail to push X I should not die, something bad should happen and the direction of that scene should change. For example, let's say I am playing a game where the protagonist is Big Foot and his woodland home is being invaded by... Oh, I don't know, large anthropomorphic hippos weilding tire irons made of rainbows. Now I come across one of these hippos and they attack me. Cue the QTE and I don't hit X in time. Rather dying right there, Big Foot gets knocked on his ass and the next QTE is for Big Foot to roll out of the way of the next attack. On the other hand, if I had succeeded the first time around and Big Foot dodged the rainbow tire iron attack, my next QTE is to counter with a manly headbutt to the face. If I failed to hit the button in time, Big Foot might hit with the wrong part of his head and be dazed. My next QTE would be to shake myself out of it. Of course if I did succeed and my manly Big Foot head butt was correct, I'd be following with a kick to the shins. So on and so forth.

You see how this works? If you succeed at the Quick Time Event, good things happen. If you fail, you don't die and have to start again but there are consequences. Just like general gameplay in any good game.

Of course this is all an ideal world type scenario. I've only ever played one game to make QTEs enjoyable. Everyone else is determined to keep them as a rubbish time waster. But maybe with 'Heavy Rain' being so successful, other games will follow suit. That's generally how it works.

Alright, so I'll admit it. I've played all of about five minutes of the first Super Mario Bros. There, it's out. I'll watch my gamer cred slowly slip away. But you know what? I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad because the first Super Mario Bros. game I ever saw through to the end was New Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo DS and I had a lot of fun with it. Now I never need to play another Super Mario game again because, let's face it, I've finished them all at this point. Princess Peach was kidnapped, my fat little plumber rescued her and beat Bowser and his army of monsters. The end. So maybe I got to be a blue turtle instead of a flying raccoon but it's all the same.

I tend to feel the same way about The Legend of Zelda. Everyone else seems to wet themselves in joy when they find out they pick up the boomerangs before the bombs in the latest game or that you get to be in a boat instead of playing an ocarina. But what it comes down to is you're still a boy in a green hat with a sword rescuing the princess. Each sequel really doesn't bring anything new to the table and when it does, it's at the cost of something else. You might be fast forwarding time, changing the seasons or stepping into an alternate, demonic world but I'm still falling asleep because I've done all this before. The monsters look the same, the characters are doing the same things, the villain is the same guy I'm supposed to have killed last time, and my equipment is the same. Why are we still playing?

And why are these protagonists so useless and the villains so stubborn?

Pokemon. Ah, pokemon. Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver have hit the shelves. Oh we've really run out of ideas now, haven't we? For a while I liked pokemon. Each game really had broken this formula. Red and Blue kicked us off and then we had Silver and Gold! Okay, so it was basically the same story (if you can really call what Pokemon has a "story") but then it took everything a step further. The inventory screen was vastly improved, the controls were upgraded, new pokemon and new pokemon types were introduced, there were new items and new ways of catching pokemon and just when you thought it was all over you discovered you could go back and visit the places from the previous games and catch all the old pokemon as well as the new pokemon. It felt like two games in one. Then the next game in the series came out and it was another upgrade.

But there's only so far you can go. I really don't care about whether or not I can enter my pokemon in a beauty contest. This is not relevent to the game in any way. I also don't care that I can do group cooking or go underground. The best thing Game Freak added was the two-on-two battles but it wasn't enough. Eventually things have to change or it just gets stale.

So here's how it breaks down: Pokemon, Mario, Zelda and for a while, Yu-Gi-Oh! are dying a slow death. They're on borrowed time, existing in a state of decay and kept on fanboy life support. No one seems willing to admit that The Legend of Zelda really does suck and that the new games aren't fun, they're just the last game with a new name.

And you keep buying them. You bought Pokemon Soul Silver instead of Lost Magic simply because it was Pokemon. Alright, so maybe Lost Magic had its faults but its use of the touch screen was perfect.

These serials are rubbish. They don't qualify as sequels because they're essentially the same game remade without any kind of continuity. Oh sure, you can argue that Zelda has a chronological order with non-canon spinoffs but who cares? As far as I can tell they all take place at the same time with the same events and the same people on the same path.

Maybe one day we'll stop letting the video game industry spoon feed us. We'll take off the blind fold and actually look at what we're playing for what it is. Then, just maybe, we can start having some fun and seeing what video games are really capable of.

By the time I've finished a game - or played as much of it as I can stomach - I've had a plethora of ideas of how to write the review and encountered countless things I can comment on, analyze and talk about in my review. Ultimately I always end up with just far too much. So because shutting up isn't something I do so well when I get started, here's some extra stuff about Uncharted that didn't make it into the review. This stuff is left out either for space or because when it got to writing the review, it slipped my mind.

The big one for Uncharted is the controls. This game has the same horrible unintuitive controls that pissed me off in Ass's Creed. Now maybe my platforming prowess isn't up to scratch, maybe I should start wearing my glasses more and maybe - I'll admit - maybe I'm just a little uncoordinated. But I like to think my head shot count begs to differ and that the controls for jumping around are just crap.

Let's everbody take note from inFamous. If I jump towards a ledge or a climbable pipe or rock and I'm off by a centimetre, then I should still grab it. If I miss and die because my thumb was holding the analogue stick a fraction of an inch to the side, then you've failed to design the controls in a user friendly way. I shouldn't be sent back to the last check point because I didn't get the exact pixels to touch.

I'm kind of amazed by how often I encounter this in games and it really is one of the things I love so much about the movement in inFamous. If I jump towards a window ledge, Cole will reach out and grab it if he can. If he can't, then chances are I wasn't jumping for that window ledge.

The only issue here is, does the game become too easy? No. Especially not with the kind of platforming puzzles you encounter in most games. Uncharted, for example, is about finding the right path and moving along it. When you put it in that light, it's kind of strange that inFamous does this and Uncharted doesn't.

What I mean is that inFamous is about the movement. It's about the urban exploration, it's about finding one path among the many the fits you best. It's actually pretty hard to jump around the environment in inFamous and not grab onto something. There's just so much that you're hard pressed to fail and finding SOME way to get where you're going. With that in mind, you generally don't need help from the game to send you climbing. Not that I'm complaining about it being there. inFamous' movement controlls and parkour system is damn near perfect and I wouldn't take a thing away from that game.

Now on the other hand you have Uncharted and it's a different story. Uncharted's platforming has one path for you to take and in some cases you have to set it up yourself. Pulling switches and backtracking and swining back and forth on vines. It's far more elaborate and the challenge isn't the precision, it's in just finding out how to get there. Uncharted's platforming isn't about the movement but the problem solving and the keen eye. So it makes more sense that if you do solve the puzzle and know the steps to take, you should be able to take them without worry of having to start all over because you missed the jump only slightly.

Of course the world is a whacky place and sometimes, just like here, things are a little topsy turvey. The bottom line is that Uncharted's platforming controls are rubbish and the whole industry needs to be trying to improve in this department. Uncharted is really just another example of where it can be infuriating.

Oh yeah. There's some Quick Time Events in Uncharted. This didn't make it in the review because there's all of about three of them and that in itself makes them even worse. But the evil that is QTEs is another topic for another time.

I wanted to stay silent on this issue because I felt the whole thing was retarded. But I've finally decided to have my say on the whole stupid thing.

Honestly, I'd never really thought about RPGs in terms of western and Japanese styles. Much the same as I refuse to use the word anime, I don't think pidgin holing based on the idea of several countrys against a single country. What I mean by that confusing sentance is this: Why is it Japanese vs "Western". Shouldn't it be Japanese vs "American"? Secondly, either way you spin it it still makes a generalisation about the product of two cultures. Similar to cartoons. Japanese cartoons, so people will have you believe, are all the same. By the same token, many will have you believe that all "western" cartoons are the same. Speaking in terms of art and subject matter. While you can notice common ground in them, it's an assumption about a lot of product from a lot of people. It's a flawed notion to begin with and extremely narrow minded. To assume that Demon's Souls is in the same boat as Final Fantasy 8 just because they're from Japan or to assume The Maxx is the same as Spongebob just because they're from America is, simply, retarded.

But I said I was actually going to voice an opinion and there's a reason besides my desire to waffle on at end about people's poor judgment of artistic style. All this really got my attention when the head of Bioware (Remembering I'm on a crusade against them at the moment) publically stated that jRPGs lack evolution and progress. Now there's only one rational and logical way to respond to that. Ignoring his petty rubbish. But we're not doing that. We're talking about the petty rubbish that this whole issue is.

So, Mr Bioware, what do I think about that statement? I'd say go have a look at your catalogue of games. Someone point out to me the actual evolution between Bulder's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. These games are critically acclaimed and while I'll admit they've got their charm, there's basically nothing. When it comes to, dare I say it, "western" RPGs it is Bioware who must be held most accountable for stagnation. Bioware has shown a strong desire to evolve in terms of gameplay and in terms of story. The exact things that jRPGs are panned for can be seen in the design rooms of Bioware RPGs.

And to descend further into this madness, all western RPGs stopped evolving in terms of story a long time ago. I've lost count of how many times I've gone on an adventure from humble beginnings to epic, world saving battles as an elven wizard. Or an "Alfin Alchemist" if you really want to feign originality. And what's worse, in all of this, is while Neverwinter Nights 2, another much loved wRPG, was binding you to two dimensions and sending an alfin alchemist on an epic adventure to save the world and drink heavily with dwarves, Kingdom Hearts had made its appearence years earlier and that game alone shatters every theory you pretended to have about jRPGs not evolving.

Let's talk honestly for a moment. You and I, sitting down and having a chat. No rhetoric, no fancy language, no sarcasm. Let's just be honest, simple and polite. jRPGs aren't lacking evolution any more than wRPGs are. Sure, maybe there's a lot of androgenous teenagers with dead parents weilding oversized weapons to take on an oppressive government but only as many elven wizards are saving the world from evils from the darkest pits of hell. Don't you think it's a little anglo-centric to denounce jRPGs and put wRPGs on a pedestal? Vagrant Story, if you can remember way back to the PS1, breaks so many molds you seem determined to make your world view out of. And along that same line, Guild Wars was rubbish.

Now, let's take a leaf from this imaginary world of glorious wRPGs we've built up and do what we're imagining the wRPGs have done and done alone. Let's grow up. Let's stop stereotyping and making assumptions based on the country a game came from. Remember half the games made in Japan don't even end up on our shelves. jRPGs and wRPGs are terms that only waste our breath. They're not games made by a country, they're games made by different people in different studios with different ideas. Cultural influences are to be expected.

But that works both ways.

Bayonetta was a game that slipped under my radar entirely. I'd heard about it and had a general idea of what it was like but there's a big pile of things I'm more interested in like Red Dead Redemption and the Splatter House remake. Of course Bayonetta is one of those games you can't escape because there was just that much hype. I saw some video and I read a review from a trusted source and the game sounded stylish if nothing else.

So I logged onto the PSN store and downloaded the bayonetta demo. After discovering the "dodge everything" button and the "shoot" button I breezed through the demo and came to one conclusion. Someone looked at Devil May Cry and said "Do you know what this game needs? More naked women." Thus Bayonetta.

Now I can't say I entirely disagree with that opinion. There was a distinct lack of women taking off their clothes to perform super moves in Devil May Cry but of all the things you could have improved upon with Devil May Cry, this seems like an odd focus.

Devil May Cry was fun the first couple of times before it got a little stale and Dante's brooding stopped being adorable. But one thing Devil May Cry never was was great. From what I've seen Bayonetta is more stylish, more interesting to look at, and the boss fights slightly more interesting. But the key places where we could have improved this game like camera angles and general button mashy game play have been unaltered.

Bayonetta doesn't seem like a bad game but apart from an interesting butterfly motif running through it, nothing is really standing out for me with this game except a strange feeling that I've done it all before. So as I click the delete button and watch the demo disappear, I'm in no way driven to pay any more attention to this bland and uninspired release.

I found coming to terms with my feelings for Prototype something of a challenge. There's no denying that a game's quality can be viewed as a kind of scale. The kinds the egyptians loved to play with when it came to hearts and feathers. On the one side you have the game's flaws and on the other side you have the game's better attributes and you judge based on which side is heavier. Normally you can predict this neumerically.

As an example, we'll look at Little Big Planet. The game suffers in large from a short single player campaign and controls that can be difficult to negotiate when moving between a level's layers. On the other hand Stephen Fry's narration could put you to sleep (and it has) with its friendly, soothing tones and the game is stylish with some pretty creative puzzles. The biggest selling point is, of course, the grand customisation of everthing.*

So simply by adding up the numbers we've got more good than bad and so the game must be good. Beyond that we can take an indepth look to decide just how good. This is a pretty safe system to go with and arguably an objective approach. But it doesn't always work. Prototype is a time when it doesn't.

Prototype is a lot like the movie 300. 300 has recieved a lot of criticism for overtness, gore, lack of depth and even, sometimes, trying too hard. But the movie is still great because even though the acting is mostly unimpressive, the story is inconsequential and character development is nowhere to be seen it's a movie with sword and sandle action like you've never seen. Sure a lot of it is computer generated but that's easier than finding a few hundred seven foot tall body builders and teaching them Phalanx Formation. All that aside, this movie is good because those key scenes of combat are amazing and so satisfying just to watch. The machismatic gratification might escape certain genders but it's undeniably well crafted.

Coming back to the scale metaphor, you;ve got a larger number of flaws and inadqueacies on one side but the sole glory of the film is so heavy that it outweighs them all and thus you have a fine piece of cinema.

The same is true of Prototype. There's so much wrong with the game but it's done the sandbox gameplay so well that the rest doesn't matter. Perhaps we lose a little bit of objectivity in this kind of thinking but trying to cling to objectivity when writing a review is probably a bit like clinging to the Titanic for safety in the ocean.

*This is a short example. Not a review.

What a year this has been. There have been so many great releases this year and, thankfully, I got a lot of them. Some of them were excellent and some of them were mediocre but I was fortunate enough to miss the bad ones. Ones like Batman I wasn't able to get a copy of for myself but I still played it and I'm extremely satisfied.

As it is the end of the year, the Gamespot awards have happened and mostly I can agree with them. I wouldnt have picked Demon's Souls for game of the year but I can see why it was chosen. No doubt it's an excellent game. Of course there was the whining that Modern Warfare 2 got nothing but personally, I'm thrilled it didn't get anything. Why? Because it was RUBBISH.

But I would like to have seen inFamous take more awards. Yes, inFamous is my pick for this years most awesome creation. Even though I'm in the middle of prototype and Shadow of The Colossus and I've only played a little of Siren Blood Curse, I think I'm going to see this year out and welcome the new one in with a few drinks, a couple of movies and playing inFamous until I can't keep my eyes open any longer. Yes sir, I can think of no better use of my time.

Happy pointless celebration, everybody.

This year's wonderful day of christmas I was very lucky to recieve a bunch of games I've been wanting for a while. 'Siren Blood Curse' is nothing new but it might just be the horror game my collection desperately needs. 'Prototype' has been on my list for a long time and it'll be good to play it through and see how it rates against 'inFamous'.

Finally, there is 'The Saboteur'. Now of all the games I got this christmas, this was the one I was hoping for the most. I've seen practically no hype and no talk over this game and the company has disappeared sinse making it. So that's always a good sign! But more importantly, the concept is fresh and solid and after seeing Inglroious Basterds, my excitement doubled what it was when I first read the preview in OPS.

So far 'The Saboteur' is a lot of fun and, in addition to 'Shadow of The Colossus' this means I've got a lot of stuff to review and THAT is always good news.

Merry Christmas.

I've often times critisized video games for being too easy. It seems like nothing is a challenge any more. This was becoming such a problem that I had to consider a different possibility. Maybe, just maybe, the creators weren't the problem. Maybe games are the same difficulty they have always been and I've just become some kind of video game god. Statistically, this seemed more likely than every game made in the last few years being a piece of cake by nature.

Then came Batman: Arkham Asylum and it kicked my ass. Then it gave me a hand up and it kicked my ass again. Then it pulled me back up to my feet, spat in my eye and kicked my ass.

And I loved every minute of it.

Unfortunately it was proof that I am not an unstobable force of destruction in video games. As it happens, games really are being dumbed down in more ways than just writing. How unfortunate for us and the future generations.