Assassin's Creed Revelations Review Round Up

We've barely had time to dip our toes into the deep oceans of Skyrim, but Q4 2011 marches on and keeps pummeling us with blockbuster games that demand our attention.
Next title to be served up on the bulging gaming buffet table is Assassin's Creed Revelations, which ones again puts you in the (now rather well worn) shoes of Ezio Auditore and Altair Ibn-La'Ahad.

Reviews are up of this wrist bladed stab-em up and we're looking at another strong game, but perhaps not quite up there with the best contenders for 2011.

Gamespot Review (8.0/10)
Joystiq Review (4/5)
IGN Review (8.5/10)

It looks like Ubisoft has given us another great Assassin's Creed game that builds on all the successful elements of the past games, but the new additions are not all that meaningful. Worse, a few of the new additions seem to be unpleasant experiences that actually detract from the enjoyment of the game.
So if you are already buried in fantastic games that you want to play (Skyrim, Batman and multiplayer Battlefield 3 says "Oh hi there!"), then perhaps you can postpone your trip to the Animus machine until the new year.

IGN video review:

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Early impressions of Batman: Arkham City - Batting for a home run?

Being one of my top 5 games for Q4 2011, I was extremely excited to finally get a chance to play the Xbox 360 version of Batman: Arkham City.
So far I've only had time to scrape the grimy surface of Arkham City, but I have gotten enough dirt under my fingernails to bring you some initial observations and impressions.

It's a strange time when one of the most hotly anticipated games of the year is a comic book franchise one

Like Gears of War 3, which I reviewed earlier this week, Batman: Arkham City is a pretty looking game that feels like it is really doing its best to wring out every last drop of graphical juice that can be found in the current generation of consoles.
However, it is also clear that the graphical juices are limited, and I feel that some of the animations, and particularly the facial work, is a bit lacking.

The big question that you're all waiting to be answered is of course; did Rocksteady Studios pull off another stunning Batman game?
Since I'm only a few hours into the game I'm not prepared to give a final answer on that, but I do think that I can already answer this question with a firm yes... and no.

Rockstar announces GTA V

In perhaps one of the least shocking pieces of gaming news to hit the web in a while, Rockstar has just announced the existance of GTA V.

Of more interest is the fact that we are going to be treated to a trailer of GTA V on the 2nd of November.
The GTA V website is up here, but is so far just a title screen and the promise of said trailer.

This is what you see at the official GTA V site at the moment

When we get our first peak into GTA V next week, it will be very interested in seeing if Rockstar will continue the rather sombre and serious story tone that they tried to set in GTA IV, or if we're going to to see a more crazy GTA that is more along the lines of the previous entries in the series.

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Batman: Arkham City Review Round Up

The review embargo just ended for Batman: Arkham City, which is one of my 5 must get games for Q4 2011.

And it certainly looks like the caped avenger is not going to let me down.

Batman is looking to be serving us all another round of awesome

Reviews are looking, to say the least, pretty fantastic.
It seems like the game is an improvement over the, already pretty awesome, original in almost every single way.

New Hitman: Absolution teaser and 15 min gameplay video up

I am a moderate fan of the Hitman series.

I think the games have always appealed to me more in theory than practice, because I have never actually played a Hitman game all the way through.

Nevertheless I am prepared to be suckered in again with Hitman: Absolution, and this new teaser trailer is doing a good job of pulling me in:

Somehow people in the Hitman world never seem to learn to look out for the bar code tattooed on the back of Agent 47's head, which is prominently displayed even when he is wearing a disguise.

Also just released is this video demo of the game, featuring 15 mins of actual gameplay, which was shown behind closed doors to the press at E3 this year:

Rad!