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With much anticipation, I installed the PC version of the highly-rated Assassin’s Creed into my computer, after weeks of watching my friends play on the Xbox 360 console. My first impression was that Assassin’s Creed was a very brilliantly-detailed game but the impression I got after hours of game time is that it lacks the muscle in gameplay and content to compete with the very best of its genre.

The storyline revolves around a bartender called Desmond who was kidnapped by a shadowy high-tech organization who forces him to make use of a device called Animus to relive his ancestor’s ‘genetic memory’. Desmond’s ancestor is Altair, a skillful assassin of the time of the Crusades and players will assume control of Altair in the ancient cities of Damascus, Jerusalem and Acre. Altair will receive orders from the leader of his order, the enigmatic Al Mualim and, over the course of the game, plan and escape from numerous assassinations. Along the way, you will occasionally assume control of Desmond during his breaks from the Animus and gradually you will learn about the agenda of the organization and what they intend to do with Desmond’s memories.

In the first city of Damascus, you will undoubtedly have plenty of fun, performing pre-assassination preparatory tasks. Prior to any assassination attempts, you will have to gather some intelligence about the target, location, escape routes and so on. These can be obtained through interrogation of civilians, pickpocketing information and maps or performing tasks for informers in exchange for information. After these are completed, Altair will proceed with the assassination.

This is where the flaws of this game start to be apparent. Despite having an assortment of weapons like the short blade, sword, throwing knifes and a hidden wrist-blade, players will find themselves often using only the wrist-blade for assassination as it guarantees a kill. The assassinations become much of a chore after the first few as majority are routine. Blend into the crowd, gather information, assassinate target, run away. It is horrendously routine and repetitive, so much so that gameplay becomes hopelessly boring.

The most fun and creative aspect of the game is actually the escape from the guards after the assassination. The in-game dynamics and physics are very well modeled; in fact, it is one of the best thus far. The free-running Altair can be commanded to leap across rooftops, run and scale walls, jump from a foothold to another and even dive across merchant stalls in the marketplace. Soldiers will climb after you, throw rocks and shoot arrows at you. Yet even for its most original aspect, Assassin’s Creed falls short again, as there are only three fixed ways to totally elude capture – that is to seek refuge in either a stack of hay, rooftop terrace or to sit innocuously between civilians on a bench.

Fight scenes are decent, with the traditional swordfights being very engaging. However, players might lapse into a repetitive combination as there is a direct counter for sword attacks which could kill enemies in a single hit. Other than this, the set of fighting moves for Altair is really restricted. I often find myself killing the random civilian or guard scattered around in the city just for the sake of picking a fight.

One major inconvenience of Assassin’s Creed is the system requirements. If you thought that Crysis had some killer minimum requirements, Assassin’s Creed’s requirements would be considered mammoth. A dual-core computer setup is mandatory and preferably 512MB of graphic memory coupled with 2GB of RAM memory. All these are the bare minimum for playing and I believe that the demanding requirements would exclude many from enjoying this game.

I would have loved to see elements of Hitman or Crysis in Assassin’s Creed. I would very much prefer to see an improved version of stealth kills, allowing players to execute assassinations in more ways than just the old-fashioned walk-up-and-stab. Perhaps introduce disguises or long-ranged executions or even help of an accomplice. One thing that Assassin’s Creed can adapt from Crysis is the open-ended nature of both the story and environment. Enemies can be dispatched in countless ways and that would definitely add loads of fun to the game.

Do not expect much from Assassin’s Creed. It has a commendable gameplay concept, but the actual gameplay falls rather short of the expectations. This game would provide you maybe two hours of thrilling gameplay before proceeding to bore the living daylights out of you.

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Imagine the majestic city of London in post-apocalyptic ruin, lair to monstrosities released from the depths of Hell by the ominous Hellgate. The majority of London’s population has been massacred by the merciless creatures, their motive seemingly only to wreak havoc upon the lands. Now imagine yourself as a Knight Templar, remainders of the population that has taken to arms and sworn to die defending against the tide of darkness that has engulfed the land. This is the backdrop of Hellgate: London.

In Hellgate: London you choose from 6 classes of characters, namely Evokers, Blademasters, Engineers, Guardians, Marksmen and Summoners. Each of these has their unqiue abilities and roles in play in team combat. For example, the Guardian is a melee attacker capable of soaking up large amounts of damage in combat. Usually Guardians remain at the frontlines of group battles and remain among masses of enemies to inflict maximum damage. Meanwhile, characters like Marksman would hang behind and stay from afar to pick off enemies assailing the Guardian. Choosing your character class is one that would define the entire gameplay experience.

In single player, you will traverse through underground subway stations, completing objectives and missions, before advancing to the next stations. Basically most missions are straightforward – kill a certain number of a type of monster and return to claim your reward. After playing through several stations, I was immensely bored from the similar quests and gameplay. Killing some monsters and then going back to the person who initiated the quest for equipment. This was especially so when I was playing a Guardian, who had limited combat techniques and it was a repetition of seeing the same moves over and over again on the enemies. One good thing was that there was a huge array of monster types, ranging from zombies to leaping insect-like creatures to huge towering humanoids. Fighting with these enemies will hardly be a bore.

Graphical effects have been well-designed and the enemies are diverse in nature. The apocalyptic London environment was brilliantly sculpted to effect. Train wreckages, corpses and whatnot lie ravaged along streets while monstrosities roam the streets aimlessly. However, this does not makeup for Hellgate: London’s most significant flaw – the lack of a defining storyline. The game does not educate the player about the background (other than the opening cutscene) of the game but instead, throws the player right smack into the middle of the conflict without prior briefing. The player will be satisfied by the levels of action but the hollow feeling of not knowing enough will always be there.

Hellgate: London offers hardcore players many options in weapon choice. Apart from the weapons and ammunition themselves, many spare parts can be looted from enemies to upgrade your weapons and equipment. This is a very useful and interesting feature but it takes some time to get used to and master. Also, players can mould their characters according to what skills they acquire. Gaining experience from slaying monsters will allow the player to procure and upgrade skills which become increasing powerful. More skills can be unlocked as the story progresses.

Another utter disappointment of Hellgate: London is the multiplayer options. The multiplayer allows the player to connect to the server to play together with players around the world. However, the biggest fault is that the storyline is exactly the same to that of the single player campaigns. This means that you will be doing the exact same thing during single player, except now you have human allies playing alongside you instead of computer AI. This game becomes so entirely repetitive that your interest will die out faster than your character dying to a horde of hellspawns. This is one big setback that I feel should be addressed.

Hellgate: London failed to live up to all its hype and my expectations and I would not recommend this game to anyone, less hardcore Diablo fanatics.

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Which self-respecting gamer would not admit to feeling at least the slightest tinge of nostalgia after hearing “Worms”? This series is the most old school game series that I could care to remember. I remember playing Worms in 2D when I was twelve, having fun blasting opponent worms to oblivion with the Holy Hand Grenade. After so many years, Worms has evolved from a 2D landscape, to a new 3D one.

Worms 4: Mayhem is by far, not a new game. It was launched in 2005, to mixed reactions. This was considered something like a follow-up/improvement to the earlier Worms 3D. Worms 4: Mayhem introduced several new additions to the Worms arsenal, notably poison arrows and a sniper rifle. The player will take control of the Worms on a 3D landscape (modeled after architecture during Medieval, the Old West and modern times). Basically, it is just the old Worms game slightly improved, thrown into a 3D arena.

However, despite having said that, it is an entirely new ballgame. The difference between marshaling your Worms in 2D and taking control of them individually in first-person in a 3D environment is vast. When firing bazookas, trajectory is no longer bi-directional, and this adds a significantly large degree of challenge to the players. Even basic navigation of the terrain is arduous in 3D, and you risk plunging your Worm to death in many cases. It adds a sense of novelty to the Worms franchise as gameplay feels more ‘down-to-earth’, with personal control of the individual Worms through their eyes.

The downside of this is that, although it adds a good measure of novelty to the game, the game becomes that much more difficult to play. Navigating the uneven 3D using the ungainly Worms is a nightmare; I often end up accidentally killing my Worms. Also, using the scope of a sniper rifle to take out enemy Worms do not have the same sadistic but entertaining effect of dropping a Holy Hand Grenade on them (while mouthing “Hallelujah!”). The visual effects are nothing to be proud of, in fact, I felt that the explosive effect was better in 2D. Worms 4: Mayhem does not provide much depth of play; for example, it’s actually easier and more straightforward to hop up to a nearby enemy Worm and club him off the ground and into the water than trying to aim a bazooka through a scope. This takes the fun off blasting things up, which is the tried-and-tested-to-be-effective success formula for the Worms series.

Worms 4: Mayhem gives a new dimension to Worms play, but much of the gameplay is similar to that of the previous Worms 3D episode. Critics have argued that the little improvement made does not justify the purchase of this title. If you grew up loving the act of maniacally blowing up Worms with an assortment of incendiaries, you would do better to stick to Worms in a 2D landscape.

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Street racing games are all the rage recently, ever since the start of the ‘The Fast And The Furious’ franchise till the climax of the Tokyo Drift episode. Sending heavily modified cars screaming down a busy city street while avoiding police - this seems an all-too-familiar scene in racing games like ‘Need For Speed’. The latest racer that I got my hands upon cuts a much different scene. Colin McRae: DiRT is one of the better racers that I have played in recent times.

While many might not agree to playing racing games on a computer keyboard, DiRT has provided me endless hours of fun on the virtual outdoor tracks. The most remarkable feature is the breathtaking display of graphics. Overall, scenery, car designs, tracks and weather elements are modeled to near perfection. Watch the tires kick up dirt and burn smoke as a car navigates a sharp turn, blaze through sheets of rain on the tracks in chilly Japan; each individual detail is taken care of. My favourite aspect of detail is the vehicular damage. Taking a slight rub against rails will leave scratches on the paintjob, knocking an opponent racer dislodges his bumper and crashing your car into a barricade turns it into a flattened wreck.

Racing dynamics are standard, although cars feel lighter than they look. It is easy to pick up even for racing novices. Basically the difference between DiRT and games like Need For Speed is that there are no objectives to clear other than clocking the best timing on the track against other racers. In this sense, DiRT focuses more on the racing aspect, whereas games like NFS focus more on developing the plot through racing. With this said, DiRT sacrifices storyline for more race quality. This may be good for hardcore racing fans, but the whole process does get repetitive after some time, especially for the uninitiated. DiRT tries to alleviate this problem by offering us a wide variety of race vehicles of different classes. Each handles different and the range of the vehicles present are quite impressive.

The downside of Colin McRae: DiRT is that the superior graphics and model engine comes at a cost to performance. You will need a relatively high-end machine to run everything smoothly. Solo races will hardly pose any problems, but once you are squaring off beside three or more cars, gameplay gets choppy and frame rates drop to unsatisfactory levels. Although these can be occasional, it is a true annoyance. Furthermore, the multiplayer system on DiRT is largely deplorable. Only two types of races are supported - hillclimb and rally. Basically you can race against 20 or so racers online simultaneously. That sums up the entire online gaming experience on DiRT.

While DiRT will not please many fans of the Colin McRae series, this is sure to ‘wow’ the crowd with the awesome graphics and will appeal to most racer novices. This game’s depth is unparalleled, with the multitude of races and championships. Just make sure your computer has the capability to support the high demands of this graphic-intense racer.

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Frontlines: Fuel of War is one realistic scenario depicted in this new PC game from Kaos Studios. The year is 2024 and the future seems hopelessly bleak as the world powers are embroiled in a global conflict because of an energy crisis. Gas and oil supplies dwindle, prompting a mad scuffle between major powers to establish control over the remaining stashes of fossil fuel. The main players are the Western Coalition, formed by the United States and the European Union, and the Red Star Alliance, consisting of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. Certainly, the problem of diminishing fuel supplies is one problem which is rooted in current-day context.

This is a First-Person Shooter (FPS) and in my opinion, all FPS should belong solely to the PC, thus this review would be focused on the PC version and not the Xbox 360 one. The main defining characteristic of Frontlines is the presence of a ‘frontline’ in combat (no pun intended). The player assumes control of a trooper on either faction and takes part in an entire series of battles in the single player campaign. Players have to perform various tasks to advance their own frontline, including things like capturing satellites or detonating enemy structures. The game makes use of the famed Unreal 3 Engine to produce some spectacular combat effects and display.

Apart from the usual arsenal of weaponry likes rifles and machineguns, Frontlines stand out from other FPS like Call Of Duty 4 because of the presence of remote-controlled drones. These drones are machines that can be controlled remotely by the player’s character and can be used to scout enemy territory or even carry out an assault mounted on their own. These drones offer more gameplay dimension to this FPS as this is no longer about running straight into enemy lines with guns ablazing. Tactics come into play more than ever, and players will find themselves performing flanking maneuvers and so on.

The biggest rant that I have about Frontlines is how the storyline is restricted by the single player campaign. Every mission, although the backdrop is different, is similar as players will be deployed on the frontline to establish control over territory by overrunning the enemy forces. Doing this repeatedly really decreases the longevity of the game a significant bit. Furthermore, the AI allies are decent but of course, AI being AI, they often make use of the same old tactics and moves over and over. This gets monotonous after some times.

This game, however, really shines on multiplayer mode. With up to 50 players on a single map, it is tremendous fun especially when you’re hooked up together on TeamSpeak or Ventrilo. Players now have the freedom to dictate tactics and strategies on the spot to counter the opponents’ advances. In this aspect, the usage of drones becomes all the more important as reconnaissance is now of paramount importance.

Although this is a decent FPS, I can foresee many not liking this game due to its repetitive nature of missions. The array of weapons and vehicles available for use seems large, but people do get bored doing the same old thing even with new tools. Adding more depth in the single player campaign might put Frontlines: Fuel of War in contention with powerhouses like Call Of Duty 4. Right now, Frontlines is nowhere near the standard of these ‘Game of the Year’ nominees.

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