Despite having a number of well paced levels, most of the game saw our favourite blue fuzzy hedgehog, reduced to angry and aggressive furry were-flop and not the blue-spikey-speed-dazzling-freak we all know and love. Ultimately, what the series needed was a return to it’s roots.

So when Sega announced they were working on a traditional return to the series with Sonic 4, I was quite excited.

No doubt this was all inspired by the release of Super Mario Brothers Wii – a game that proved traditional 2D platform adventures are still very popular.

Sonic 4: Episode 1 - Playstation 3

What could go wrong?

Well, despite it’s good intentions, a number of things and as a result, the game is a bit of a let down. That’s not to say it’s all bad, but had a bit more care and attention gone into a few details, the game would be a hell of a lot stronger.

For starters, it seems to take Sonic a life time to start running and considering his name means “having a speed equal to that of sound”, this oversight is not wholly appropriate.

Rather frustratingly, the game suffers from unresponsive controls – a hindrance that leaves him vulnerable to attacks from the various invisible meanies that are scattered around each level.

On several occasions, after pressing the jump button, Sonic just stood there. It’s a real problem with the game that severely disrupts the flow of the game and leaves you feeling quite infuriated.

However, as I said earlier, it’s not all bad.

The ability to attack various items and villains when targeted is an inspired one and one of the few aspects taken from Sonic Unleashed that actually worked quite well the first time round.

Sonic 4: Episode 1 - Playstation 3

Graphically, the game is served very well – the HD make over is long overdue and certainly does justice to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog.

And the sound is everything you’d expect from a game in this series – hearing that trademark collection of the rings sound will bring a smile to your face if you’re already a fan of the series.

It’s a shame then that the game is let down by the problems listed here, as Sonic 4 really could of been something special. As it stands, it’s just not as good as it should be.

Ultimately, it’s just not a rewarding game to play – when compared to how far the Mario games have come, it just feels as if the Sonic series has come to a grinding halt.

One for the Sonic fans only

Verdict: 6 out of 10

The Good
- Traditional Sonic in HD
- Nice attack mode

The Bad
- Questionable mechanics
- Sonic is a slow runner

Alpha Protocol - Xbox 360

“Jack of all trades, master of none.”

Never was there a more appropriate adage for a game than this one.

Alpha Protocol is a bit of a mess. Supposedly an ‘espionage RPG’, the game itself plays like a mix of Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, James Bond movies and a little of Jason Bourne, drawing inspiration from each one and coming up with a product which should have been incredible – but which instead falls far short.

The premise is Tom Clancy-esque fare, and is arguably the best aspect of the game.

Michael Thornton, a new inductee to the secretive agency known as Alpha Protocol, is tasked with chasing down some renegade tech and a bunch of shady bad guys, all the time trying to unravel a conspiracy that stretches into the American government itself.

Starting off apparently captured and in a lab, the player has to battle his way out and get started on his missions, paving the way for a globe-trotting adventure.

Along the way he meets and greets a bunch of interesting characters, ranging from a crazed, M60-wielding Russian lady-commando to a manipulative overlord-like boss, making choices which affect the course of the story.

The interaction between all the characters is handled through a Mass Effect-style conversation wheel, offering Thornton a selection of responses, from seductive to threatening. While the system works well, the game doesn’t offer you an inkling as to what Thornton is going to say, as the option is just labelled ‘seduce’, and can often lead to Thornton saying something inappropriate, losing you valuable trust points, and closing characters off – denying you vital support later in the game.

Getting to know the other characters does, however, have an effect on the story, as characters who trust you or who have fallen for your Bond-eque charm might come to your rescue, but wether you stick with the action is the challenge, as the game falls down in many other areas.

The game is played in third-person, with an over-the-shoulder view. Focussing on gunplay and martial arts, the plot itself is a battle through various missions, ranging from a snowy firefight in Siberia to an assasination attempt in the deserts of the Middle East.

Thornton’s skills with the various weapons, which are the usual predictable options including sniper rifles, shotguns and pistols, are handled by the in-depth upgrade screen, which allows you to spend your accumulated XP points on your favourite abilities.

XP is gained through killing enemies, completing objectives, snatching data and collecting the thousands of bags of gold apparently strewn around the world by feckless minions.

As well as upgrading Thornton’s skills, a variety of additional abilities are unlocked over time, or through completing specific objectives. These include the ability to spot enemies through walls and slow down time, and are actually pretty handy in a fight.

The fighting itself is pretty standard run-and-gun fare. While Thornton can take cover, the object tracking is hit-and-miss and will often leave you open to attack, hugging a wall that’s not actually there, for example. Your accuracy is also circumspect, despite the in-depth upgrade system, and firing bullets willy-nilly is never fun.

Not that it really matters – the AI is abysmal, with the soldiers not bothering to flank you, more than happy to stand in front of you and even charging you on occasion, carrying perfectly good rifles in their hands.

They are also either incredibly eagle-eyed – spotting you despite your stealth upgrades and obvious cover – or won’t see you when you walk up to them and snap their necks.

The game’s environment is also pretty slapdash – CCTV cameras have a blue cone sweeping out of them, like a game from the 90s, and the graphical engine is also pretty awful, with the rendering looking about five years out of date, especially on the characters themselves.

The animation is also messy. When Thornton takes out an enemy – using the same martial arts takedown every time, I add – the characters jerk and wobble, rather than the smooth movement you would expect as an agent takes out his prey with a flying back-kick, it’s just lazy.

The sound effects and voice acting are also a little rushed. Some characters are brilliantly voiced – one of your bosses sounding very dry and sarcastic in particular – while anyone with an accent just sounds silly, and Thornton himself is a monotone drawler at times.

The guns’ sound effects are also a little pathetic, as is the music, which is less Jason Bourne and more John Lewis.

Alpha Protocol should have been great. The plot is good, the ideas were there, but the end product falls far short of expectations. If you stick with it and work with its flaws the game can be enjoyable, but the shoddy combat and poor graphics can start to grate on you pretty quickly. This is one worth trying when the price drops, and even then only if you’ve always wanted an ‘espionage RPG’ and are incredibly patient.

Score: 3/10

Good Stuff:
- Intriguing plot
- In-depth upgrade system

Not So Good Stuff:
- Poor AI
- Shoddy graphics
- Out-of-date gunplay

Iron Man 2 - Xbox 360

Another day, another rubbish film tie in.

Ok, perhaps that’s a little harsh, but consider this – the Iron Man suit is the very pinnacle of weapons technology, one which is piloted by a multi-billionaire with a super-cool attitude – and it comes in hot-rod red.

How could SEGA possibly get this wrong? The simple answer? Easily.

Let’s start with the obvious. The game is called Iron Man 2 – there are two battlesuits on the cover and two main characters – and it’s a one-player game.

If ever there was a missed opportunity, this is it.

On top of that the graphics are poor, it’s short, the controls are duff, the sound is off-kilter, and the sensation of flight is now about as exciting as walking to the bank…to pay a bill. Namely, it’s a let down.

Unlike what the developers would have you believe, this game is not an improvement on the first one.

The huge open environments are gone, the story makes even less sense and the graphics and rendering are lazy and shockingly bad at points. It’s not an improvement at all – if anything it takes the only good things about its predecessor – the sensation of flight and reasonably cool battles, and ruins them.

This story takes place after the events of the movie (which, incidentally, is pretty good), and sees Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr, and War Machine, Don Cheedle’s suit, team up with the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Logistics Division (“Just call us SHIELD”) to kick ass and take names.

There’s a whole plot revolving around a rival company to Stark Enterprises’ stealing tech and causing trouble, but as the plot is badly written and only spread over eight short levels, it’s not worth going into.

The gameplay follows the same line as the previous game, featuring Iron Man and War Machine taking on legions of baddies, tanks and other powered suits on the ground, in the air and (in the only half-decent level included in the game) on a massive flying battleship.

Iron Man and War Machine each have their own suite of powers, ranging from Stark’s repulsors and shoulder-mounted rockets, to War Machine’s deadly chain gun, missiles, lasers and powerful blaster cannons (shotguns).

There are also a selection of close combat attacks built into the suits, but as you’re likely to have defeated the exceedingly weak enemies with ranged attacks before they even get close, they’re pretty redundant.

The suits and weapons can be upgraded in a central hub screen, but there seems to be little or no point in wasting your time as the upgrades are all so similar it’s difficult to figure out what does what, or even to see the effects in-game.

There are also a variety of different suits available to unlock, but they all suffer from the same dodgy control scheme and poor weapons, so it’s a minor bonus at best.

My main bugbear is with the flight mechanic. In the previous game Iron Man could reach pretty nippy speeds before diving down to the ground and landing in his signature ‘ground-pound’ move.

This time around flying feels slow and unwieldy, and even using afterburners doesn’t make things any more fun- it’s the dream of all human kind to fly, so why make it so slow and boring?

The controls don’t lend themselves to the game either, with the aiming mechanic targeting distant objects at will and switching between targets made all the more difficult by an auto-aim system that is a little too overzealous.

The camera is also pretty shoddy, needing constant adjustment to stay on the action, and makes each battle all the more difficult.

It also struggles with enclosed spaces, spinning the camera on its axis at random – a very irritating problem.

Not that you really want to see the graphics anyway – they’re rough around the edges with tacky textures, bad facial mapping and lip-sync, a poor draw distance and odd colours – it’s a real let down.

The total lack of multiplayer is another nail in the coffin.

Surely there has never been a better opportunity for multiplayer co-op? Just think of it- you and a mate, blazing through the sky, kicking ass and taking names, covering each other’s back.

Such a shame this was totally missed in development.

The game’s only saving grace is the voice acting, which is pretty well done, and features Cheedle and Downey Jr at their best, with dry humour and put-downs every few lines.
But even these two titans of cinema are not enough to save the game itself, which is little but a cheap rip-off of the last title with even less effort put in.

Iron Man should be video gaming gold – a super soldier in a powered suit who can fly, punch through metal, fire weapons from his palms and then pull off a smooth one-liner? Absolute pay dirt. So why is it then that production companies can’t do the character or movies justice, and keep rolling out disappointing games which leave critics, and more crucially fans, disappointed.

Score: 2.5/10

Good Stuff:
Lots of suits
Good voice acting

Not So Good Stuff:
Poor gameplay
Shoddy graphics
Too short
No multiplayer

Alien vs Predator - Xbox 360

You’d think that after several films, a handful of games and numerous graphic novels the Weyland Yutani corporation would of learned its lesson and steered well clear of any Xenomorphs and strange looking pyramids.

Yet here we are in the presence of what I believe is the 4th incarnation of the Alien vs Predator series, once again watching Bishop admiring the Xenomorph’s simplistic and primal beauty, and once again witnessing the bloodbath of events that happens when you put a Predator, Marines and a Xenomorph all in the same room.

Fortunately this game is set in the future, and all but completely abandons the environment and settings that was established in the awful films released a few years earlier.

Taking the imagery and feeling from the earlier Alien films was definitely a wise move for the developers, as the world established by Ridley Scott (and later developed by James Cameron, followed reluctantly by David Fincher), makes a perfect setting for a game of this type.

There are three campaigns to play.

First is the Marine campaign, which sees the gamer take control of a character simply known as the Rookie.

Arriving on-planet after your command ship is destroyed by a massive Predator cruiser, you have to pick up the pieces of the events and find out what has happened on the planet.

Taking instructions from a female marine called Tequila, you have to fight off the Xenomorph hoards and run round the facility switching on power generators and searching for the remaining survivors scattered around the complex.

Unfortunately for some of the survivors they have been “hived”, and are expecting an ickle baby Alien to burst through their chests at any minute.

Playing as the marine you find various weapons scattered through the world, all which bear the signature sounds established in the classic 1986 movie Aliens.

There’s the explosive pulse rifle, sounding exactly as if it’s been pulled from the feature film, and the repetitive beep on the motion detector, which ramps up the tension and makes you feel just as petrified as Bill Paxton’s character did.

For the most part the campaign plays quite well. However, there are a few omissions that are glaringly obvious.

Unlike most first person shooters out there, Rookie appears to be unable to duck and take cover. This really bothered me, partly because I am massive chicken and all I wanted to do was hide – especially during those moments when the eggs containing facehuggers hatched. The other reason was because I noticed my NPC counterparts had the ability to do it, which just made me jealous.

Perhaps it is because he is a real rookie, and due to health and safety regulations he hasn’t passed the Weyland-Yutani training course on how to duck properly – futuristic political correctness gone mad. I don’t know, but none the less it’s an odd omission that makes the game feel quite dated.

It’s also strange that you can’t view down the iron sights on your pulse rifle or shotguns – a mechanic that has pretty much become standard on first person shooters in this day and age.

The Alien campaign is completely different and gives a bit of back story to the events of the Marine campaign.

Taking control of a captured Xenomorph, number Six, you start off trapped within a science lab in the Weyland-Yutani complex.

Needless to say something goes wrong, the facility’s power is knocked out, you then escape and the humans panic as you and your siblings run around, killing the poor employees in the most grisly way possible.

The lack of any long distance weapons is noticeable during the Alien campaign, but the developers have countered this by changing a few of the in-game mechanics.

Darkness is the Xenomorph’s best friend, so you have the ability to smash lights around the complex so you can confuse the humans, crawl right next to them and spring your attack from out of nowhere.

It also helps (and at times confuses you), that the Xenomorph can run on any surface. Whilst it is a nice little addition, the controls can be a little frustrating and will quite often leave you wondering where the hell you have ended up.

Playing as the Predator is a rewarding experience. Taking control of a Young Blood hunter, who is proving himself to the extra-terrestrial clan, you come equipped with all the weapons and technology featured in the movies – there’s the red cross-hair laser, the thermal vision and, not to mention, the twin wrist blades that come in so handy during those melee attack moments, especially when fighting off the “serpents” (the Predator’s word for the Xenomorphs).

Overall the look and feel of the game is spot on – with the developers throwing in nods to all the movies, and it features quite a number of chilling sequences. Sadly the graphics do look a little dated, and a few tweaks to the motion and movement of playing the Alien could of vastly improved the experience.

The gameplay can get very repetitive at times as well, especially in the Marine campaign – which after several levels becomes a standard bug hunt.

The multiplayer can be good fun, but it still suffers from the same mechanical problems that plague the singleplayer campaigns. It can also take ages to find a game.

If you are a fan of either the Alien or Predator films series then you’ll enjoy Rebellion’s latest effort for it’s novelty value. It’s incredibly faithful to the series, even going so far to make use of the likeness and voice of the actor Lance Henriksen (who famously played the recurring character Bishop). But if you are looking for the next big first person shooter, this game narrowly misses the mark.

Due to the commercial success of Alien vs Predator, a sequel will no doubt be on the way. Fingers crossed they’ll address the problems with this current title, as it really does have the potential to be an entertaining FPS franchise.

Verdict: 6.5 out of 10

The Good
Very faithful to the films
The three campaigns play differently

The Bad
Poor controls
Dated graphics