Lamborghini Gallardo

Yes, as we all know or should know this blog is not just about game reviews, its about reviews so here it is my first review about a car...AND WHAT A CAR!!!

The Gallardo isn't like Lamborghinis that have gone before. For a start, it's smaller - considerably dinkier of proportion than the hulking Murcielago that sits at the top of the range. But it's also been engineered to the standards set by Lambo's new parent company, Audi.

The upshot is solid, Germanic construction in addition to the sort of driving dynamics you would expect from a junior Italian supercar. And although some buyers might think that various bits of Audi switchgear in the cabin aren't really in keeping with the whole experience, the upshot is a surprisingly practical all-round package.

Okay, let's not get silly here. The Gallardo is still only able to offer two seat practicality, near-zero luggage space and the sort of running costs that would make even Premiership footballers wince. But it's far closer to the sort of everyday practicality offered by top-end Porsche 911s than Lambos of old.

It's great to drive, too. Four-wheel-drive keeps everything pointing in the right direction and it takes serious abuse to make the Gallardo's chassis surrender its massively high reserves of grip. The mid-mounted V10 engine gives very strong performance and a yowling exhaust soundtrack to die for, although the lurch-prone "e-gear" semi-automatic transmission is worth avoiding.

If it wasn't for that pesky Ferrari F430, the Gallardo would be pretty much perfect. As it is, it can't quite match the Ferrari's soul or ultra-clever traction control system.

Breakdown

Styling  Gorgeous from every angle. The Gallardo's styling has the ability to stop entire streets in their tracks.

Handling  Enormous grip levels are assured by the standard four-wheel drive system, although the Gallardo snaps when the limit eventually arrives.

Comfort  You don't buy a supercar for limo-like refinement, but the Gallardo rides reasonably well, the driving position is comfortable and it's ultra-stable at high speeds.

Quality & reliability  Audi engineering ensures the Gallardo is far better assembled than the Lamborghinis that preceded it, although buyers will find themselves facing various bits of VW switchgear.

Performance  The yowling mid-mounted V10 engine delivers searing pace and an amazing soundtrack. Tunnels are a very special experience.

Roominess  Access is a bit of a squeeze for taller occupants and the cabin isn't exactly roomy. Luggage space is tiny.

Running costs  In a word, scary. Despite its baby status, this Lambo is anything but cheap to run. Servicing, insurance and depreciation are all massively expensive, making the 15 mpg fuel economy the least of a buyer's worries...

Value for money  Depends how much value you place on the Lamborghini badge: Audi R8 does much of the same job for a massive saving while the Ferrari 430 trumps the Gallardo on desirabilty.

Stereo / Sat nav  Audi-derived audio system gives reasonable performance, although it struggles to make itself heard over the engine at high speed. Satnav is expensive but works reasonably well.

well I think if you are lucky enough to have the kind of money to buy this car, go for it, but dont forget you got to run it too!!! 

Best Wishes.

Sims 3 is nearly here!!!

Sims 3 in nearly out and am I excited?!?!?!

 YESSSS I can't wait, I mean I have been waiting for this moment far too long... and I know you guys can't wait so I decided to show you even more, and by that I mean going really deep to get you even more excited, so here it is guys, some more stuff!!!

Well guys that all I got, tried to get a clip or something but you how this guys are...

So to lets just wait for the game, and please guys FAIR PLAY, NO CHEATS!!!

Far cry 2

Here’s the funny thing about Far Cry; it was never all that great a game in all honesty, but that somehow ended up getting forgotten and it was the console expansions that got all the flak. 

Wow, I know – controversial, eh? It’s true though. Far Cry was a visually stunning game and the fact that you could roam the tropical islands where the game took place was very impressive, but in reality it was never as open as people claim. You could run through the trees ‘til your heart was content – but you’d never find anything out there and there were still a whole load of invisible walls and insta-kill helicopters to stop you straying too far. 

By the time people realised that though it didn’t matter; they’d either reach the lacklustre indoor areas of the game or they’d met those invincible TriGen monsters and thrown the game away in frustration. It’s probably for the best that Crytek moved on to make Crysis and left the sequel rights with Ubisoft.

In fact, it’s definitely for the better. This is a Far Cry game which isn’t totally about graphical power and lurid Hawaiian shirts. It’s about freedom, player choice and a complex game-world. It also happens to be a very definite early contender for Game of the Year. 

Far Cry 2 isn’t actually a true sequel to the first game. It doesn’t have mutants, monsters, creepy German doctors, all-American heroes or gameplay that gets utterly broken in the last ten levels of the game. It isn’t set in a tropical paradise and the stories for the two games aren’t linked at all. 

Instead, Ubisoft has focused on what the original game did in gameplay terms and what players said they liked about it. The (pseudo) open world, the different vehicles and ability to tackle objectives on your terms, with your tools – these are the things that made Far Cry great. Oh, and the handglider too. By designing the game around these elements, Ubi has been able to make a game that isn’t constrained by the plot and premise of the first game but which can still tick all the right boxes.

The new game then offers something different to its predecessor. The tropical jungles have been traded in for an African savannah. The linear progression of objectives has been turned into a mission-based structure. The invisible walls which gave the illusion of openness inFar Cry have been removed so that Far Cry 2 now really is as open as you think. 

The story has been reworked too – in fact, abandoned. The mutants and genetic semi-science of the first has been turned into a gritty and harsh tale of mercenary life. You’re now a mercenary operating in a very unstable region of Africa that is being wracked by the fitful throes of civil war. You’re there to kill a man who calls himself The Jackal, an arms dealer and war profiteer who is prolonging the conflict and supplying weapons to both sides in order to keep business up. 

Who hired you? How did you get there? How will you deal with the competing mercenaries operating in the area? All these questions and more start to get answered as the game progresses and it’s really very impressive to see how the story of the game is woven into the gameplay. 

Speaking of the gameplay...

Far Cry 2 – Gameplay

We have a theory that all really good PC games begin with the player confined to some method of transport that they can’t control, forcing them to watch the scenery roll by as the backstory filters through to their subconscious. BioShock, Call of Duty 4, Half-Life – all of them start with the player in a car, plane or train for the opening sequence. 

Far Cry 2 does the same thing and for the first few minutes you’ll be sat in the back of a taxi being taken to your hotel and watching the waxing and waning of the chaos around you. The backstory is woven into the environment and the contexts around you – one moment you’re watching your driver shoo buffalo out of the way, the next he’s bribing local militia with beer to get you past a checkpoint. 

When the game actually does let you take control after this well-made and gentle introduction, the pace rapidly changes. You’re quickly threatened, shot and diagnosed with malaria. In the short term it’s the malaria which is most important – the game draws you in by forcing you to trade favours and complete missions in order to get medicine.

Once your supply of drugs is secured and you’ve got familiar with the two main parties involved in the civil war, the APR and UFLL, the game takes the stabilisers off and lets you really get your teeth in. From thereon you’ll be trading favours, accepting missions and causing all sorts of chaos as you pursue your long-term goal; to kill The Jackal. 

Africa is a complex place though and the 50 square kilometres you have to mess around in makes for a formidable playground. The first thing you’re advised to do is to get a safehouse and start making some friends. 

Friends play an important part in the game and a huge portion of Far Cry 2 is spent trying to keep your allies happy and your foes confused. At the start of the game you get a chance to choose your identity from one of a dozen or so other mercs with the same goal, but whichever guns for hire you don’t choose will still play role in the game and it’s by finding and helping them that you can unlock some of the game's extra-special features. 

One of the first missions you come across in the game, for example, is to try and wipe out a Special Forces squad that is planning to launch an attack on one of the two warring parties. Your mission-giver tells you that you’ll need to destroy all their equipment. It seems simple enough, right? Surely the hard part will just be getting there in one piece since it’s a long way to the Special Forces base (or not, thanks to the busses which act as the fast travel system).

If you’ve managed to make some friends though (and provided they like you enough) then your ally will give you a call and suggest an alternative plan. How about you go to the Special Forces’ informant and force him to feed them some fake data? You could lure your enemy to a more vulnerable position and wipe them out far easier, though you’ll need to do some extra legwork to do it. 

This is one of the easiest things to like about Far Cry 2 and it’s also one of the most accessible and useful. By using friends and informants you quickly attach to other characters and are made to care about them, while at the same time getting more options and extra-paths to try if you find certain missions too hard.

That’s not all your buddies are good for though. Ubisoft has done its best to make them a real and functioning part of the game world. Find yourself getting shot down in battle? You can rely on your best buddy to come to your rescue and give you a second shot at a mission by pulling you to safety and working the assault with you. Not sure where to find the best deals on guns and cars? Your friends can help you out with that too, advising you on tactics and how to progress. 

Hell, they can even accompany you as back-up if you need and Ubisoft has made sure that they don't slow you down with poor path-finding by ensuring they just meet you at the battlefield.

Wow – a massive page on gameplay? That’s something we only usually do for the most complex and best of games! That fact alone says a lot more about how much we like Far Cry 2 than the score itself will. 

You see, Far Cry 2 is a fairly complex game and it definitely does a bit to buck the trends of the usual and somewhat staid FPS genre. Understand though that when we say ‘complex’, we don’t mean it in a bad way. One of the best things we can say about Far Cry 2 is that it takes all these amazing features and it makes them utterly accessible to the player. Soon you’ll be gouging bullets out of yourself with no problems. 

And that leads us neatly onto one of our favourite features of the game – the health system. 

In most FPS games there are only two ways to handle player damage. You either have a straight-up health counter that ticks down and is restored by healthpacks, or you have health as an invisible idea that you’ll only become aware of when you’re almost killed by two bullets and have to hide behind a crate for your screen to stop pulsing red.

Far Cry 2 though has got a little inventive here and actually fused the two together. Player health is therefore represented by a series of coloured bars at the bottom of the screen and these empty when you take damage. 

If you only take minor damage and the segment isn’t completely depleted then it’ll slowly restore as your bruises heal – but whole segments cannot restore themselves if they’ve been totally drained. Instead, you’ll have to give yourself an injection to restore your health completely, which makes styrettes an important commodity to reserve as you can only carry so many at once.

That’s all well and good then – but it all changes if your last health segment becomes damaged. If that happens then it counts as lethaldamage and your health will start draining away quickly as you bleed out. Your vision will blur, your heart will pound and you’ll be unable to move at full speed. 

The only solution: battlefield surgery. By pressing H you’ll automatically address your most severe wounds and restore your last two segments, but the process can take time so it’s important to find a safe spot as fast as you can before you keel over like a duck caught in the path of skimming stone contest.

It’s also pretty gross as you’ll have to watch the surgery be performed based on the damage you’ve taken. If you’ve been shot a lot you’ll have to yank the lead out with pliers or cauterise the hole with matches. If you’ve been hit with splash damage your limbs will need relocating. If you’ve been caught in a fire then you’ll have to stop, drop and roll. All of it is disgusting and we have to keep telling ourselves that it’s just the sound of sizzling bacon or snapping celery, not crisping flesh or broken bones.

The benefit of the health system then is that it helps bring a small slice of realism to the game, while also making the tactics of a gunfight more involved and interesting. You can still charge in all guns blazing if you want – but you’ll have to have a good hiding place in mind. 

Oh, and you also better hope that your gun doesn’t jam either – a feature which seems to have divided fans right down the middle ever since it was first announced. In reality though, gun-jamming can be as much or as little of an issue as you want in the game. It isn’t something to worry about unless your RPG misfires and plants the rocket at your feet.

Pick-up some rubbish gun off the ground that looks all dirty, battered and cracked? Fine, do it – but expect it to jam more than the band at The Black Cotton Club in London on a Saturday night. Just as in real life, randomly grabbing guns off the floor is a tactic you can’t always rely on. A far better option is to buy the guns you want in advance and ensure you have enough ammo. Guns don’t degrade over time, so as long as you have a quality product then reliability is assured.

Graphics Analysis

For once, we’re going to kind of gloss over the graphics – not because they aren’t impressive, but because Tim and Harry will be looking at them more closely later. Soon we’ll have an indepth set of performance benchmarks and graphics analysis for Far Cry 2. 

If you find yourself asking; will my computer or graphics card run Far Cry 2? Then you’ll soon have an answer. 

For now, we’re just going to look at the three standard presets for the game to check out what it looks like on the various different settings. Below you can see what the game looks like on Ultra High, High and Low presets, but we’ve skipped out on Very High and Medium. 

Far Cry 2 is an impressive game graphically and it has all sorts of effects and tricks. The fire in the game is especially good-looking, more so because it can spread out across the land in a believable way if you use it right. A well placed Molotov cocktail can make a wall of flames than can effectively fence in an enemy and destroy or cut them off from their vehicles.

Far Cry 2 graphics on Ultra-high with DirectX 10.1 enabled, click to enlarge

The game also has a full day and night cycle which passes as you play, meaning that you can watch the stars and moon rise if you like and then use the cover of darkness to hide your stealthy, backstabbing game tactics. Though time passes quite slowly in game, you can also find beds to rest on and fast forward to your desired point in the timeline. 

On top of all that the game is also the first to use DirectX 10.1, which is used to give better anti-aliasing performance. Yes, we know thatAssassin’s Creed PC also used DX 10.1, but that was removed in a subsequent patch. Far Cry 2 is the first game to retain the use of DX10.1, though you’ll have to pump up the settings and be running Vista Service Pack 1 to make use of it. The enhancements even work onNvidia graphics cards through a DirectX 10 extension.

Far Cry 2 graphics on High with DirectX 9 enabled, click to enlarge

If you’re worried about how the game might run on your system too, then there’s no real need to be. The game doesn’t require massively powerful specs and the minimums list only 1GB of RAM and a Shader Model 3.0 graphics card with 256MB. The recommended specs are just a bit higher – 2GB of RAM and a card with 512MB. You can check out the full set of minimum and recommended system specs for Far Cry 2 here if you need more info. 

For our part, we ran the game on Ultra-high settings at 1,920 x 1,200 with 2.93GHz CPU, 3.50GB of accessible RAM (thanks to 32-bit Vista) and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 and the performance never dropped below thirty frames a second. Not once. That’s impressive when you bear in mind that there are no load screens in the game as you roam through the 50 square kilometres. 

Far Cry 2 graphics on Low with DirectX 9 enabled, click to enlarge

To be honest though, even if you’re running the game on the High settings and not the Ultra-high then the game is still going to look great. You might be sacrificing some slightly tweaked AA performance that you wouldn’t notice anyway, but ho-hum. As you can see in the screenshots on this page, the game still looks great on the High setting and that’s a setting which most systems nowadays should be able to hit.

In fact, from the screenshots it’s hard to tell the difference between High and Ultra-high. In motion the difference is a little easier to spot thanks to the motion blur, depth of field and so on, but those settings are all pretty extraneous anyway. Good if you can get them, but not worth fretting over.

On the Low setting, things are a bit different. The game is still OK looking to anyone who doesn’t demand the best of graphics, but it’s definitely a few steps lower than you might hope. The textures are less detailed, more flat and not as interesting. There’s a lot more pop-up too as you roam the game world and the lack of shadows massively impacts on how the game looks. While the Low setting may be tolerable, you certainly aren’t making the most of what the game has to offer.

Conclusions

So far, we focused on what the good parts of Far Cry 2 are, like how cool the health system is and how we like the buddy system which lets you use allies as you need them. Now it’s time to talk about the bad points of the game.

Um…and we’re drawing a blank, to be honest. 

That isn’t to say that Far Cry 2 doesn’t have its flaws, because it does. The voice acting, for example, isn’t delivered very well and the actors seem to rush their lines too quickly – but when you’re dealing with a game of this size and quality, is that a legitimate criticism?

The writing is surprisingly well done too. Going in to Far Cry 2 you’d have the suspicion that the game was gearing up to be a plain and simple shooter, easy on plot and sub-text. That isn’t so. Instead, the game has a surprisingly deep selection of characters and motives. 

There’s Reuben, the journalist working to expose the massacres to the world. There are the leaders of the different parties each of whom believe they have the interests of the community at heart. Then there’s The Jackal – cold, calculating but shockingly philosophical and not just out-and-out anarchistic; he comes across as a cool antihero in the interview tapes which you can collect throughout the game.

The main flaw with Far Cry 2 is perhaps that it’s a bit samey in places, especially when it comes to getting from A to B. The savannah is verybrown after all, so driving cross-country can be a bit of a monotony. Then again, it’s clear that Ubi has tried its best to alleviate this and provide distractions on the way. There are plenty of diamonds to search for and collect and regular guard posts and safe houses to liberate from insurgents. 

The combat is as smooth and strategic as you could hope it to be too, so there’s no fault on that side. You can take a silenced pistol and sniper rifle approach if you want or use rocket launchers and molotovs to flush the enemy out. The fire in this game spreads beautifully and can really be used as a weapon to funnel and direct enemies – plus it looks gorgeous.

The enemy AI showcases some basic quirks though – like closing the distance to reach you and then waiting to pull out a sniper rifle to shoot you with instead of a pistol. It’s not a huge issue, but it is noticable and occasionally holds back the game from reaching the brilliance it is capable of. That's the case with some of the filler missions too, which can get repetitive. Completing missions for the Gun Seller for example is pretty much always the same - find the enemy truck, drop a well-timed grenade in its path and reap the rewards.

For the most part though, that brilliance manages to stay intact and Far Cry 2 secures its place as one of the gaming highlights of the year. Really; it is a very, very good game. It feels like a blend of all the things we like about games. It has the upgradeable weapons and tactical options of Deus Ex, the open world and vehicles of Grand Theft Auto and the solid FPS mechanics of Half-Life 2 – and each element manages to be both distinct and at one with the overall game design.

It’s the little things that give Far Cry 2 the edge though; the clever additions that make it stand out and force you to question why nobody has ever done this before.

Take navigation for example; rather than cluttering the HUD with a minimap you instead have a map you can refer to and update when on foot. When you’re in the car though you have a SatNav that fills the role of a minimap – but if you need a larger view then you can pop your map in your lap and refer to that as you drive.

Far Cry 2 isn’t perfect; there’s something missing here which we’re struggling to put our fingers on. It’s something emotional. Games have an enormous power to move players and that’s the one thing that Far Cry 2 doesn’t do that games like Episode Two and BioShock do manage. Far Cry 2 can make you excited and happy, but it won’t ever leave you scared or crying. It just lacks that last inch of emotional impact or philosophical pretension to take it from a truly fantastic game to an inspiring piece of craftsmanship. 

If we marked out of 100 then Far Cry 2 would definitely be a 95/100 score, but we don’t. We mark out of ten, and ten is a score reserved for games that go that extra mile and do something to move the genre as whole forward. Far Cry 2 just misses that target, but it should still definitely be on your Must Buy list.

Fifa 09! finally!!!

FIFA 09
Release Date: 3rd October 2008

I recently downloaded and played the FIFA 09 demo and thought I might post some thoughts on it.

Gameplay

As with the FIFA series gameplay is basically the same, soccer (football), in the demo version there is only one team from each league available and I chose Chelsea. Advanced tactics are similar to the FIFA 08 ones. I am unable to comment on Manager Mode because that wasn't there in the demo 

A new feature of FIFA 09 is the ability to get weekly player form updates from EA so instead of having to rely on EA's guessing mechanisms you can well see how well your players are going. The one flaw in this is that usually gamers don't play one game a week so form updates might affect a month in game time or so depending on the user.

Graphics

The graphics have drastically improved in this version when being compared to the FIFA 08 graphics... The players are actually shown with high detail especially on the face. Physique differences are also noticable now. The graphics have improved to the point where I get 30-60fps which is exactly the same as I got on Assassin's Creed on the same machine both with details maxed out. The 60fps is the VSync if you haven't noticed already. I hit 30fps when the camera zooms in to a few individual players such as a goal kick or free kick. Anything in between is when the players are celebrating or when the ref is walking over to give the beloved red card. I wish they would make the audience a bit more dynamic though, they are just 2d objects waving their hands in the air, I don't care if you make 10 different 3d spectators and re-use them in the entire crowd, it'll look better at least.

I believe it is possible for a computer with worse graphics to still be able to play this at reasonable settings. (Low)

The Vista required rating for this game is a 3.0 and the recommended is a 4.0 if that gives you an idea.

EDIT: *In-Game Settings*

Graphics Settings:
Resolution
...

Level of Detail
Low, Medium, High

3D Grass
On, Off

Post Processing Quality
On, Off

Depth of Field (Shader quality must be 2 or automatically set to Off)
On, Off

Shaders Quality
0,1,2 (2 is highest)

Sounds

No commentary was available in the demo version unfortunately which I noticed instantly and missed . The crowd's cheering and booing reacts with what is happening on the field, make a bad tackle and they respond accordingly, ref makes a controversial decision and instant booing.


Conclusion

FIFA 09 is definitely a step up in terms of graphics but thats pretty much it. Manager mode isn't here yet so can't really comment on that. The User Interface has stayed the same so not much can be said. This is a demo version so they could always add stuff to the full version. People who enjoy the FIFA series like me should get it when it comes out and if you can't wait you can get the demo (link at bottom).

Pros 
- Improved Graphics
- Weekly player form updates
- Crowd cheer accordingly

Cons 
- Weekly form update a bit flawed
- Crowd is still.... 2D....
- No commentary... yet

Rating: Recommended!

Sims 3 is COOOMING!!!

Never two without three for Maxis and Electronic Arts which parties appear to be well for us repeat the dual of Sims and Sims 2 with a new simulation of life that is expected on PC in the course of next year. Because of the reputation of the series which leaves clearly not indifferent, Sim 3 has been sinking a lot of ink. We had only a few catches, a few animated sequences since its announcement and the Games Convention has enabled us to see it all in motion and in the details. First impressions on a game still in full development. 

The Sims 3

The Sims that are no longer afraid to go to the corner? 

From the beginning of the presentation, officials from Maxis who made the trip to Leipzig have been very clear: the version we saw, though already very rich, is only a rehash of work and many elements are to refine, rework or even completely redo. On the merits, things should not change that much, and at first glance you realize that the gap between The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 should be substantially identical to that which we had already experienced during the passage of the first Sims named the Sims 2. 

The Sims 3 Photo

While many extensions have been developed to bring some life into the Sims 2, this third series of the famous series should, at the base, already be very open. Thus, during the presentation, guests were initially insisting on the concept of city / village. Our Sims are no longer alone in the world and their house is incorporated into a city, a community that moves, changing ... In short, lives. This community can enrich the lives of our comrades who have real friends that you can see that evolve and can meet for example through small parties. 

It is of course in this community that our Sims will exercise their professional activity. It does not really change what we were used to seeing with previous Sims except that now the concept of work is much richer. The Sims are defined in different ways and the concept of "traits" makes its appearance. A Sim can be lazy worker or, rather nice or rather bad, very open, very curious or lymphatic frankly ... These criteria will obviously shape the character of our Sim and have an influence on its development. 

The Sims 3 Pictures

It is interesting to note that these character traits should not directly be found among children of our Sims. Through the education of children, players can actually really act on these traits of character and we have also learned that a pregnancy carried out more or less disobedience can lead to more negative traits. The genes are thus not everything in The Sims 3, even if the parents will face a very significant influence on the children. Since we are talking about physiognomy, it is interesting to detail the creation of Sims. 

The Sims 3 Images

Directly linked to the revolution and technical chart that accompanies this third opus, the tool creation Sims is impressive wealth. The player should take advantage of "models" much more numerous and more precise to create its Sims. It will be possible to choose the sex of her character, to act on its body, its muscles, its size or fome of each element in his face. There may of course defines the color of his skin Sim, but also choose their hairstyle, hair color and dress. These elements essential to the richness of a game like The Sims. 

The Sims 3 Screenshot

More than ever, players can get people who are really what they want. It is then not to spoil everything during the game. It is interesting to note that as was already the case between The Sims and The Sims 2, protected our grandchildren are showing a little more justified. There is no example more necessary to tell him to go to the toilet to relieve our Sims have finally understood that the bursting of bladder was not a technical evolution humanly viable. Same for everyday activities, which should give one side less daunting, less routine play and help focus on the social bond through countless activities that developers have promised to detail soon ... To be thus! 

The Sims 3 Wallpaper

So we all  expecting it to be REALLY GOOOOOOD!

Halo 3 VS Bioshock

 VS 

   The two biggest titles on the Xbox 360 this year are, of course, Bioshock and Halo 3, and it's only a matter of time before the fanboys start arguing the merits of each.

 Well, I've played them both--objectively, ya nerds--and I've compiled a quick assessment of the most important criteria.  Let's take a deep breath, promise not to post obscenities in the comments, and read on...

 

Multiplayer Halo 3 lets you make your own types of matches and has one of the biggest multiplayer communities in gaming, if not the biggest. You can also play co-op.

 Bioshock doesn't have multiplayer. Let's not spend any more time on this criteria.

 Winner: Halo 3 Storyline 

Bioshock tells the story of a man lost in an underwater city filled with evidence of horrible experiments and a brooding sense of twisted reality. As he unlocks the secret of how Adam, the central chemical/substance in the story, was created, he must make dreadful decisions and try to stay alive, hoping all the while to see the world he left again. 

In Halo 3, I think you fight aliens or something. I skipped past most of the cutscenes in the first two because they were the worst part of the game. The third one? 

Eh, more of the same. 

Winner: Bioshock Casual 

Gaming Allure Halo 3 and 

Bioshock are both (gasp) very good casual games. On one hand, Halo 3 has done a very good job of toning down the difficulty, even on the normal setting, to make the game more playable for the masses of people that bought it--a battle with a handful of enemies is no longer a 10 minute affair, just a few gun strafes. And, of course, the addition of the co op helps nicely.

 BioShock puts up a fight; it's not too long, the main character can gain a host of powers, and intelligence is more important than a quick trigger finger. Plus, nearly anyone can finish the game because of the tilted death dynamic (mentioned below), and you can't ask for a more casual-friendly move than, "everybody wins!"

FIFA 08 or PRO 08?

         VS                                

   Where to start with Fifa 08? I'm sure most of you have heard or asked the question...Pro Evo or Fifa? Don't lie you know that's why you're here! 

I've generally always bought both Fifa and Pro Evo games, mainly because I couldn't just pick one as they are both excellent in their own ways. I will now attempt to find differences in the games and eventually pick the better one....here goes....

Controls

Fifa bring brings more realism than ever in the new installment. Ball control is brilliant but can be a bit confusing at first if you are new at the game. The controls can take a bit of getting used to. But once you've mastered that gameplay is superb. The right choice of button and you can get the ball exactly where you want it. Even more skill controls have been added which I feel has always been what the had over the Pro Evo franchise. These new moves are great for dummying defenders and sending them the wrong as you steam off down the wing to send in that last minute cross to a waiting striker. It really is great!

But this is nothing compared to Pro Evo. The gameplay in that is simply excellent. So much more realistic that Fifa (I can't decide if thats a positive or negative thing, you decide), which is a pretty damn realistic game so you can imagine how good Pro Evo is.

Graphics

The graphics are even better in this new installment, 10x better than Pro Evo. When you are at full distance it really does look like your just watching a game on tv. You will at one point start shouting at cesc fabregas for not moving until you realise its because your meant to be controlling him, trust me it will happen.

Even one you zoom right in on the reply all the players look superb. I have never seen anything like it. You will be blown away.

Sound 

The couple of new commentater phrases have been added compared to 2007 so you still get some of those classic phrases, but it can be a bit annoying once you've heard them a thousant times. I think they should have got a few more phrases in there before they sent the game out though.

Menus etc.

Would I choose this game over Pro Evo though? It's such a tough question. I don't particularly like the set up of Pro Evolution. Some of the game modes can be a bit of a pain setting up etc, but once you're done the game takes over and you forget that the masterleague isn't really as good as the premier league or even have the right team names. That's right, Pro Evo still haven't managed to get licences for all leagues and teams. I'm one of those people who like to see their team winning 5-0 in a London derby in the proper kit. Not just some cheap imitation like the ones you see loud people selling in rubbish stalls in markets trying to fool foreigners. Well it's doing nothing for me.

Obviously Fifa has all teams and leagues so you can be part of the official premier league or take your team up there from Division 3. It's just so great to see Millwall taking the top spot and seeing off Chelsea with ease. It just doesn't get much better.

All new EA Sports games have improved their menus this year I think, every EA game I have played the menus seem to be alot more user friendly. In Fifa you start off as Ronaldinho in a practice against a keeper which is a pretty nice idea. It works really well as you can get ina couple of shot practices before you get into you league.

Conclusion

The main reason I didn't give this game 5/5 is the realism. It is just one of those things that Pro Evo has over Fifa and I don't think that will ever change. 

I think that when it comes down to it though I would end up buying Fifa for the main reason that they have all the official licences etc. Its really just isn't good enough not to have all team names in a game. I can't handle it. 

Then saying that I have just bought both games and I keep finding myself drawn towards Pro Evolution. 

I think my conclusion has to be... buy both. For a quick kick around with a mate of a proper competion with a couple it just has to be Pro Evo. But for when you're on your own the masterleague just can't cut it I'm afraid and you just have to play Fifa 2008.