Toomanywires

Call of Duty is a peculiar series. Each year it shifts millions of copies and is greeted with near unanimous critical praise, yet it also attracts a special kind of hatred from a vocal segment of the gaming community that consider it a microcosm of everything that is wrong with modern gaming.  If Call of Duty is to be an acquired taste, then with Modern Warfare 3 it's one that is more refined than ever. The single player campaign is exactly what we have come to expect from Modern Warfare: a relatively short rollercoaster ride, punctuated by memorable set pieces. The narrative doesn’t quite reach the heights of the original Modern Warfare, but it succeeds in telling an engaging story which revisits familiar characters like Captain Price, Soap and villain extraordinaire Makarov. It’s fun controlling these violent men, but war is never glorified in this dark tale that focusses on a bleak near-future, where life is cheap and atrocities par for the course. There is a lot of jumping a...

If I were to appear on TV’s Mastermind, and I couldn’t select video games or the NBA since 1996 as my specialist subject, I’d probably end up opting for something historical. I have been fascinated with history since I was a child, an interest that was nurtured throughout my school years and culminated in my studying modern history at university. These days I'm a little rusty with my dates and monarchs, but I still get a kick from reading a good history book, usually of the ancient variety, and greatly enjoy seeing historical periods adapted into works of fiction, particularly in video games. My main attraction to the Assassin’s Creed series, and perhaps the reason why it has retained my interest despite slightly diminished returns, is its varied and beautifully realised historical settings . Across four entries we have been treated to the Holy land of the Crusades, Renaissance Venice, Florence and Rome, and most recently Constantinople. As far I am concerned, the cities have al...

1. Counting Colossi I'll keep this short, as I hope to write about Shadow of the Colossus in far more detail next month, but suffice to say I have been blown away by this PS2 re-master, in spite of the same impossibly high expectations that sunk my experience with ICO. It is stunning, from the towering Colossi to the remarkable HD transfer that frames one of the most desolate yet memorable world maps I’ve ever seen. It takes all the best bits of ICO (atmosphere, sound and setting) whilst doing away with all its less enviable traits, with the exception of the camera which is still a bit shit. I'm up to the fourteenth colossus and, although I feel certain of what the end will bring, I can't wait to see it through to its conclusion. 2. PS VITA and the UMD A lot of people seem to be getting their knickers in a twist about Sony's abandoning of UMD media for the forthcoming Vita, and their initiative to give consumers the option to transfer their PSP games from physical c...

These last six weeks, I have been enthralled by HBO's Game of Thrones. A TV adaptation of the first book in George R. R. Martin's Fire & Ice fantasy series, it is essential viewing for anyone who likes their drama bleak, bloody and full of compelling characters. I have been watching weekly repeats of the first series and seem to be nearing the end of what has quickly become my favourite show on TV. The production values are extremely high, and in its scope and ambition it reminds me of the short-lived, but equally brilliant Rome. Sean Bean is perfectly cast as the unwilling protagonist Lord Stark, and there are some great turns in the supporting roles. The visceral nature of the show - you rarely go more than ten minutes without spying guts or muff - is never to the detriment of the layered narrative that succeeds in being in three, or sometimes more, places at once. I can't wait for the second series in 2012, and yesterday I took advantage of Amazon's Black Frid...

In the last two weeks I have completed both Uncharted 3 and Modern Warfare 3 on their highest difficulty settings. I didn't do it for the praise, though do feel free to applaud me, but because playing them on Crushing/Veteran is actually rather good fun. This is something that I have done for every Uncharted and each entry in the Call of Duty series since MW1 (CoD 4), and will continue to do so until it no longer entertains or my motor functions betray me. Completing these games on a higher setting offers a sense of personal achievement, as well as a badge of honour by way of the shiny trophies that flash each time I do something worthy, letting everyone know that I am not a man to be trifled with. For the most part, Uncharted 3 and MW3 do not allow the ramped-up difficulty to lessen the core experience and do not fall back on frustrating and cheap methods of punishing the player. Instead, they demand that you think and act slightly differently than in a normal playthrough, and ...

I am currently in the midst of my annual FPS pilgrimage to the world of Death Match, by way of Call of Duty. I have finished and thoroughly enjoyed Modern Warfare 3’s ridiculous single player and have now turned my attention to the ever-addictive multiplayer. I’ll keep plugging away at it for the next couple of weeks, until I eventually lose interest and move onto something else (Skyrim?). But for now, I’m in deep and struggling to tear myself away from the on-screen carnage. As I have done in the past with John Marston , Kazuma Kiryu and a Helghast grunt , I thought I’d compile a Day in the Life of… diary for MW3, only this time with a bit of a twist. Instead of coming from the perspective of a fictional character, this one is all about me as I embark upon on a (slightly) exaggerated evening of mindless fragging. 10.00 pm - Right, tonight I am definitely playing the last hour of ICO. I shall put it off no longer. 10.02 pm - At the Modern Warfare 3 main menu. 10.04 pm - I...

The Xbox is ten years old. I have no history or sentimental attachment to this particular collection of wires and plastic, but you don’t have to have been an Xbox gamer to appreciate its profound influence on the industry and how we play games today. Back in 2001/2, I was quite content with my PlayStation 2 and paid little attention to the competition. As far as I was concerned, the Xbox was an unsightly block of black and neon that only Americans were interested in. Microsoft was the name I saw each time my outdated PC wheezed into action and was certainly not a company I equated with fun. Halo was a silly game about a man in a motorcycle helmet lollygagging in space, and why on earth would I need online multiplayer when I already had a multi-tap and more controllers than I had use for. The Xbox was entirely superfluous and I had no intention of making space for it under my TV. The Xbox didn't hang around for too long, as by 2005 Microsoft were eager to get a head-start on the...