Aimless

If they wanted it to be judged separately then they shouldn't have made it such an overt part of the Alien mythos. You can't have your cake and eat it. Whilst I think it would have been a better film without the Alien trappings, it's not an especially good one even if you discount those elements. The pacing is all over the place, numerous plot lines are underdeveloped, characters' actions are often devoid of reason, dialogue is frequently ham-fisted and it says a lot that the most engaging person in it is a robot. A director's cut might be able to salvage things somewhat, but the film I paid money for wasn't worth the entry fee. The film looked nice and made for a good trailer. Those are the nicest things I can say about it.

Whilst the console might be capable of it, I don't think you'll ever see a Wii U game with the graphical fidelity of The Last of Us. Power won't get you far without money to push it and Nintendo are a very different company to Sony; Retro are probably the closest the former has to Naughty Dog, but so far they've been working within existing IP which is rather limiting. That said the machine will certainly be capable of impressive games. The biggest ding against the best looking Wii games is they don't tend to fare well blown up on a big TV, which shouldn't be an issue this time around. Multiplatform games ostensibly not looking any better on Wii U does make it unlikely I'll pick one up this year, but then people in my position — those who own multiple consoles and are itching for a new generation — are a fairly niche market. Being a more obvious stopgap system would likely have netted Nintendo some more day-one sales, but ultimately those aren't the consumers they're targeting; that segment's likely to move on to the next Xbox or PlayStation next year anyway. The Wii U very much seems to be the Wii again, albeit far less likely to capture the general public's attention to such a degree. That isn't really a bad thing, though, as the Wii's a great console in its way; it's never been enough for me, but it wasn't trying to be.

Just to be sure they managed to cram in a red phone box near a fish and chip shop. If the fog wasn't there you'd be able to see the Queen waving in the back.

It's pretty good. Very much about barrelling into packs of enemies and tearing them up rather than taking cover. Not something you'd want to play for extended periods, but a decent diversion for the price.

Pretty sure I first saw this about 6 years ago. I'm not convinced it's ever coming out. In fact were I to be less charitable, I might say it comes across as an investment scam.

Did Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have a bet on to see who could put out the dampest squib of a conference?

Apparently you can go through it without alerting the other survivors at all.

It's not so much what they said as how they said it, really. Wonderbook is a good announcement for them but they spent far too long on it. A trailer would have sufficed for GoWA, as with FarCry 3. The All-Stars demonstration was entirely superfluous; saying CrossPlay was in would have been enough. On the flipside there was a lot of telling instead of showing, most notably Black Ops: Declassified.

The Last of Us looks amazing and I'm certainly interested in Beyond, but overall that was a rubbish presentation. I'm also pretty sure they could have made it 30 minutes shorter if you took out every utterance of "experience". Hopefully there will be some good post-conference reveals.

Unless you're another player. Or you could place the tablet on your knees. The potential is there but support is another matter. The fact it's a multi-platform application should help, at least; it would have been dead on arrival if you needed a Windows tablet. As an aside, it must be connecting via Wi-FI as the 360 doesn't support Bluetooth.

So, I guess this is our first glimpse of next-gen. By which I don't mean Wii U, even if the GamePad would be appropriate in this case.

So, I guess this is our first glimpse of next-gen. By which I don't mean Wii U, even if the GamePad would be appropriate in this case.

Heavy Rain was very flawed but a big step up from Fahrenheit. If this can manage a similar progression then it's definitely one to keep an eye on. It's ironic they should get Ellen Page in, given she was obviously the inspiration for Ellie from The Last of Us.

I think they showed a lot of good stuff, even if a fair chunk of it isn't relevant to me personally. SmartGlass is potentially a big deal, although it really depends on whether developers make use of it. The show's main issue was that it had zero personality. It was used-car-salesman-slick, but the type of people that make time to watch a conference on the internet are only going to buck at that. I'm interested in almost all the games they showed, but most of them are multi-platform and they chose to demo very similar roller-coaster moments: I know there's more to those games, but all we saw was the same trailer-bait material making everything blur together. Also, timed exclusive DLC is just annoying. At least with proper exclusives something that otherwise wouldn't have existed is getting made; these "exclusively first" deals have no benefit for the user.

Like the existing ones, supposedly. Hopefully it's less of a grind than Revelations, though. Here are some exceptionally poor photos of the latest Game Informer that show off the playable character, Aveline:

Then they should probably consider a new line of work. Here's a few probables we 'know', off the top of my head: Last of Us gameplay demo A revamp of PlayStation Plus and the Store Announcement of the Gaikai streaming deal A massive Vita push: ACIII: Liberation, Ghost Recon, NFS, MoH, CoD, Soul Sacrifice, etc. New games from one or more of: Quantic Dream, Media Molecule, Sucker Punch or Guerilla As for Microsoft, I think they'll have a solid showing that won't go entirely appreciated due to the very inclusion of Kinect and talk of non-gaming features; their music streaming service, Woodstock, and how Windows 8 and Xbox are going to converge via Smart Glass. Personally I've no real excitement for Microsoft's showing, but that's because Halo 4 — which will apparently open the conference — is the only one of their big hitters I'm really interested in. There are hints we might see something new of Alan Wake, though, which would definitely be a boon.

Got to say, I didn't think much of this either. I was enjoying it at first but didn't really like where they took the plot and felt the film fell apart a bit at the halfway point; it seemed very rushed, like someone else was trying to tie up another writer's script. I wasn't especially convinced by the characters' motivations, either: there were a few instances where I felt people were only doing things because the plot said they needed to. I don't often go to the cinema but bought a ticket for this as an Alien prequel by Ridley Scott seemed like a no-brainer. A real disappointment.

Oh, I'm not worried about the actual game; I think it looks great. Doesn't change my opinion of the recent trailer, though. For those who dislike GT's trappings:

The trailer itself will have been handled by Visual Works — the team that handle Final Fantasy's CGI — but my point is that this is the messaging everyone involved has agreed upon. I understand why it is the way it is, but that doesn't mean I have to like such barefaced cynicism. For comparison, look back at the and trailers.

It's disappointing that the people behind a series I love think that trailer would appeal to me.

I can see how it would work as a film, although naturally it would need to take a slightly different approach than the game. Namely I think they'd need to intersperse flashbacks to the events before Wander (the guy) headed into the Forbidden Land; what happened to Mono, who was she to him, etc. The game didn't really need to go into the specifics of the human drama, but I'm not sure the sensation of adventure and isolation can carry a film in the same way. Another obvious concession is the need to prune back the number of colossi shown, at least in detail. Tonally I think they could keep true to the original, though: retain the sparse use of made up language, make use of the amazing soundtrack, etc. Of course the fear is that it'll be much easier to get wrong than right, especially as the effects will require a decent budget; the more money that's in play the 'safer' something has to be.

For some reason this is currently £11.99 on the Store. I'm not into golf, but it seemed like a no-brainer at that price!

Given Sega's current state I'm not even going to assume a Western release until one's announced. Hopefully Sony will step in if not, though. I'm glad to hear they're using a new engine. I don't come to the series for production values, but the PS3 games can look a bit long in the tooth.

Your only worry at not having played the first two should be that you've missed out on a great pair of games. Max Payne 3 is handled by a different developer and has a different tone; it's Rockstar making a Rockstar game. It'll no doubt have some references to past entries but nothing too prohibitive, so you shouldn't pay the 3 much heed.

These days Q1 definitely sees more game releases, thankfully, but they tend to be more spread out and are often of a lower profile than their Christmas counterparts. Something like CoD sucks all the oxygen out of the room, especially in the run up to a holiday period that errs on the expensive side even if you aren't buying games. At the end of this year you'll have the Wii U launch, Black Ops 2, Assassin's Creed 3, Halo 4, RE6 and numerous 'smaller' games that are likely to do well come reviews like Dishonored and Hitman; it's possible we might see GTAV, too. Even a game with Tomb Raider's recognition could end up getting lost amidst it all.