GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony: a Gaymer's perspective.

Whilst gay, bi, or transexual characters are not uncommon in games from Japan (see the wonderful Valkyria Chronicles for a great example), here in the West, it's still a disappointing rarity-with one exception. Dan Houser and his team at Rockstar Games are one of the very few developers in the West to implement mature depictions of gay characters in their games. Whilst the initial release of GTA IV featured one main gay character, the effete, mincing Bernie, and you could a spot a few Chelsea boys around the docks in Algonquin, it's in the second part of it's DLC Episodes from Liberty City that puts the gays [almost] up front and centre.

Review: ModNation Racers

ModNation Racers is the second game to follow  Sony's new Play, Create, Share ethos established by LittleBigPlanet. Comparison's to Nintendo's Mario Kart are inevitable, but what kart-racing game is not bound to be compared to the godfather of the genre? Fret not, for this is no Mario Kart clone, and more to the point, it's creation tools are far more accessible than the digital Meccano set found in LBP.

Play

ModNation racers is not a necessarily a hard game, especially when you get down with the whole drifting aspect of the game. Drifting is necessary not only because it will help you speed up a bit, but also because every time you drift your boost meter goes up. The boost meter can be used to speed up for a while or to raise a shield and defend yourself against other players' attacks. Thing is, you will be drifting a lot and raising that shield even more; the game's AI is unforgiving. You can do everything right in the game, you can be the first one and be a few inches away from raceline in your last lap and still lose. The AI suffers from major rubberbanding issues and it will not let you win. This wouldn't be a big issue if it wasn't because in order to move on you must finish first (in some races) or top three in others.

Review: Dragon Age Origins

Writer's note: Even though the game is what most of us would consider "old," I have been tasked by Steve to write a review. I don't know if it is because I absolutely love this game, but something tells me it has something to do with Steve's elf fetish, which is no taboo in Ferelden.

Dragon Age Origins is a western role-playing-game (WRPG) by Bioware. It's set on the kingdom of Ferelden and task players to save the kingdom from being destroyed by forces called the Darkspawn. At the beginning of the game, players can choose from six different origin stories. These origin stories are varied and spread through different races and locations. You can either be a human noble, a common dwarf or a city elf.

In Dragon Age Origins you play as one of the Grey Wardens, a group of warriors who defend the land of Ferelden against creatures called the darkspawn, who bring "the blight," (think of it as the Apocalypse) every hundred years. After some initial events (that I won't spoil) you are tasked to go and visit every race and groups of influence in the land to get their support battling the Blight. However, it's not as easy as it sounds because everywhere you go they all have their own issues, which of course you are going to solve. It's very standard, but it can be distracting. At some points you'll go to random battles against the darkspawn, but it is so random and the story branches into so many places that is easy to forget what your true goal is.

Killzone 3 debuts before E3!

Dutch developer Guerilla Games continues their beautiful, violent tale of the ferocious war between the red-eyed Helghast and the true-blue Interplanetary Strategic Alliance in Killzone 3.

The game is again flexing the muscles of the PS3, featuring 3-D support, ultra-violent "close melee combat", wider and more expansive level design, a revised game engine, new weapons, jetpacks, Move support, less swearing from a [hopefully] less infuriating Rico and a denser story which [hopefully] will draw on the detailed Killzone Chronicles on www.killzone.com. Actually, it will have a story full-stop, which for some will be a vast improvement on the acclaimed Killzone 2, where all the expense had been poured into the game's meaty gameplay and multiplayer, and barely a thought spared on the profanity-strewn dialogue and cookie-cutter space marine cast. That said, I for one loved that game's's Black Hawk Down-esque, ground-zero experience of a war against an enemy that has been sorely underestimated, and in this writer' s opinion it is still almost unmatched in it's intensity and oppressive atmosphere in the FPS genre. And, oh yeah, it's stunning to look at and features some of the most cunning AI seen anywhere on any system..

We can expect another round of dazzling, deafening technical prowess in February next year. We'll hopefully get to speak to Hermen and the crew at GamesCom in August, where we can find out if Sev is going to take his shirt off or not! Cannot wait.