Another sample, this time without the benefit of having had a major issue pointed out to me by a professional editor. Writing this before I re-read and point out flaws, this is actually one of my favourite pieces in a while that I’m very proud of. Really shows my passion and style. Let’s see what I think after another read.

Bulletstorm is a game that made an entire room full of my friends cheer. That, by itself, has to be worth something. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary (for Bulletstorm) happening on screen, and I’m not some StarCraft professional; a magical master of the keyboard and mouse. It’s just that this is a singleplayer game that naturally becomes a spectator friendly experience. Controlling it is all the better.

This might not seem all that incredible, every game we stick with is fun to watch and fun to play; that’s why we keep going – but Bulletstorm turns it up to 11. Further than 11: it breaks the dial off and throws it at you. In every area it’s over the top, in every way. Going for the “high score” is the oldest gaming goal in the book; here it’s measured in tens of thousands via the medium of looking cool and being a badass. A headshot has always been an impressive feat, rewarded with extra damage and a quicker kill; here there are bonuses for leg shots, throat shots, sustained fire, even the self-explanatory “rear entry”. Alternate fire modes have been hanging around gaming for over a decade; this has controllable, explodable sniper bullets (points for taking out multiple enemies with clever positioning of a tagged target, naturally) and shotgun rounds that act more like Half-Life 2′s Gravity Gun delivered saw blades… you get the idea.

All this could be garnered from advertising materials and promotional videos. What isn’t so obvious is the world: the vistas are incredible – run down cities with literal skyscrapers and bottomless canyons. Electric radiation storms, terrifically giant wheels, crashed spacecraft. If it looks good and it could theoretically kill someone, it’s in this game. But they aren’t simply backdrops to the carnage, they /are/ the carnage – the environment is such an integral part of the gameplay that where you fight is as important as who or what you do it with. Even the weapons fall in line with the rawness of each location, obviously clobbered together from spare parts and barely functioning but capable of sudden, explosive violence.

Both share one other attribute, most important of all – they’re just /fun/. Stupid and ridiculous, but fun. Every area is packed with explosives and hazards, even the ceilings have a tendency for spikes and detonations, exploitable thanks to the signature leash device. The leash works just as well with personal weaponry, roping people in for glorious blows to the chest from the four barreled (FOUR!) shotgun or making them helpless in the face of your rocket propelled drill launcher. Enemies explode into showers of gore, machine gun and grenade launcher wielding “mini-bosses” have their heads ripped off or are thrown into the air and splattered all over the floor – every single kill is a visceral display of graphics fidelity just as much as the levels themselves.

Lets get something very clear: on anything from half decent graphics settings on up to maximum over-ultra, this is a game that is amazing to behold. The Unreal Engine is doing work here and renders wonderfully both indoor and outdoor sections. If you’re able to turn every setting to full do so – for goodness sake, borrow the biggest monitor you can find and immerse yourself. You won’t be disappointed.

People Can Fly understand one very important fact – combat has to look and feel perfect for an FPS, no matter the writing or engine, for it to be a good game. They knew this and they pulled it off. Environments provide differing challenges, enemies are varied and smart, every action is rewarded with some ridiculously named achievement or, at the very least, a feast for the eyes and ears. There are few frustrations beyond trying as hard as possible to be as much “the boss” as possible. A small issue may be that the ability to only choose two of your weapons to carry at once limits your potential; or that ammo in the world is scarce and mostly bought using the mentioned badass points, but it’s hard to be negative in the face of such raw, unbridled enjoyment.

Alright, I hear you cry, what about the substance. The plot, the dialog, the voice acting, the flow of the game. Here’s the biggest shock: they’re superb. Stupidly, insanely silly and aware one hundred percent of how macho-ridiculous the game is and pulling it off better than anyone else. It’s the game Duke wishes it was, it’s who Serious Sam grew up to be. There’s more swearing than the engine room of the Titanic and so many ideal little lines that say “yes, we get how stupid we’re being.” It mirrors the rest of the game – a focus on laugh out loud entertainment over anything else.

Similarly, the characters themselves are, if cliché, brilliantly put together. Constant team mate and robo-Asian Ishi Sato is brooding and quiet, but with a hint of humour at his situation that just isn’t found elsewhere. Public enemy number one Sorrano isn’t just a bad guy, he’s insultingly bad. He taunts you, mocks you, calls you worthless and tricks you. He’s a villain in every respect. The lead female, Trishka, provides a no bullshit angle that far too few games aspire to, never mind achieve and is graced with the best line in the game.

I could go on and on, about how the boss fights (while not as outstanding as the rest of the game) are not the gigantic pitfalls that ruin so many of the genre. About the set pieces, each so visually stimulating and outrageous they deserve reviews of their own. But I’ll leave you with this: I leash a guy towards me, instantly switching back to the sniper rifle and fire, no scoping him in the head from close range causing a satisfying explosion of gore.

“Fuck” comes a voice from next to me, “Ben you are the best. This game is incredible.”

94%

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Improvements:

• The attempt to explain that I’m not a god of video gaming probably comes out poorly. I think it’s written right in terms of grammar and punctuation, but is still confusing, particularly this early in the piece. I’m write thoughts on the overall framing of the piece in a second.

• Know what would make Paragraph 2 good? At any point explaining that points mean prizes. It would improve it _so much_. It doesn’t even need to be in that paragraph, but so long as it was explained somewhere close to pointing out how awesome you can be that there is a benefit to it too. Again, it’s a description thing. The “you get the idea” at the end might be a misstep, particularly considering the start of the next paragraph, it doesn’t flow well.

• Wow, I never actually explained why the environment is important. It very definately is, but god knows why? This would clearly have been the place to explain kicking and leashing and expand on the ways to get points. Again, too busy saying how nice looking it all is and not why that actually matters.

• As opposed to what I do in the next paragraph, which is mention the leash but not what it actually does. Why does it help put enemy’s on the ceiling? Surely a leash would keep them close? Seeing as the leash segways perfectly into the purchasing system, this would have been a fine place to explain that as well.

• Paragraph 6 is an odd one. It’s very good at getting its point across, but feels like a mid-season recap to the rest of the piece. Nothing particularly new, other than “this game is pretty good at being an FPS” is presented. Eventually it was used as an utterly lame attempt at explanation of one of the games most basic mechanics and an easy way to show the score isn’t going to be 100%

• Everything except the bit where I talk about “so many little lines” is fine in Paragraph 7, but this almost ruins it. It feels much too like cock-sucking than stand-up praise to me. The conclusion to the paragraph does a good job of holding it up, but explaining the same concept differently would have been a benefit.

• The character summary makes a good point – that the character’s in this game are excellent – but misses out in some important respects. For a start, it’s basically a list. Secondly, rather than actually saying anything about the quite well characterised PC who is, wonderfully, not the silent protagonist that seems to have become the norm in video games of late, I simply talk about three of the main characters. There’s even some slight spoilers in there, in that it confirms that Sarrano remains a large part of the plot. Trishka is probably the weakest part, despite her being arguably my favourite character.

• Saying that you could say more, but you’re not going to is dangerous in a review. It basically says either “I’m lazy” or “There wasn’t enough room in my word count for me to explain everything I wanted to”. Here, I was trying to stick to about 1000 words, and did so. However, if I spent a little less time waxing lyrical on the game and explained some mechanics, maybe I would have room for these things.

• The overall structure – that I sat in my room and friends of mine enjoyed the game as much as I did – may not have been a good choice. It’s unique and frames the piece nicely, but makes me sound like a bit of a tremendous twat. I don’t hate it, and would do it the same again, but with twice as much room it would have been a lot better.

• I still think this is a good example of my writing, unfortunately it’s a good example of the flaws and the talent. Let me know what you think.

Gonna throw up a few pieces I recently sent off to an opportunity to which the answer was a very nice “no thanks”. Self improvement’s the plan, so at the bottom you’ll see my criticisms of myself. Enjoy!

Beat Hazard is an incredibly violent video game. Not in the standard blood, guts and gore way but that every single aspect feels like three rounds with a boxing instructor. From the second the loading screen ends there are bright flashes, jarring sound effects and epilepsy warnings. Even the simple task of selecting game modes has more particle effects than what one might reasonably expect to find in an entire indie title. This isn’t “ride your music”, this is “be ridden”.

It’s fucking brilliant.

The idea of constantly ramping up the intensity of the action is common in video games and, when done correctly, the part I most enjoy. Beat Hazard is /all/ ramp. Between the high speed of my play list and some clever coding, Beat Hazard produces a roller coaster ride of ridiculous gunfire and infinite targets. Pushing the difficulty and feedback all the way up produces an almost impossible but beautiful canvas of destruction. The problem is, it had no depth.

Until the recent Ultra update that is. Before, Beat Hazard felt like an incredibly slick tech demo but lacked actual game. A brilliant concept without the execution it needed to be truly great or hold attention. Now, for about the price of a bottle of Coke or 3% of a AAA title, the amount of content has been doubled. The new progression system is probably the best – allowing players to buy perks when they rank up, and then improve them with money earned during levels. It allows a wide degree of customization and lets you play the way you want to. In addition, a massive scope of possible difficulties is provided, from the lowest setting with extra lives and more starting weaponry to the highest with nothing but bonuses for surviving and /not/ shooting.

The plethora of new ways to play peaks at Boss Rush, an incredible survival game type where nothing but the biggest opposing ships show up. As time continues and waves pass, it’s easy to have three or four on screen at once, each firing smaller ships, laser beams, homing missiles and all other manner of deadly projectiles. For your defense come the triple punch of super powered new weapons that can all be improved further: up to the point where you start with nine of each and they all devastate an entire screen of enemies within seconds. Very useful for getting out of a tight spot.

Some missteps remain. Certain boss turret types remain much harder to see, dodge or avoid due to the chaos occurring on screen. Dying can lead to a string of being so underpowered it is impossible to escape, as you are knocked from “Beat Hazard” status down to what is comparatively a shopping trolley – though this may be more my fault than anything for insisting on “Suicidal” difficulty. These are naught but gripes however; Beat Hazard is now a true competitor to Audiosurf for the best way to play your music, just so long as your eyes can take it.

84%

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Improvements:

• As pointed out by the editor I sent this off to, maybe, you know, actually say what Beat Hazard is at some point in the review Ben? That might be good, hmm? Honestly I was actually a little worried about this just after I sent it off and proved to be right. Very easy way to improve, thankfully.

• Paragraph 3 is pretty sloppy. The first sentence isn’t particularly interesting or informative, in my opinion. I never explain what I mean by feedback. The tense shift at the end is awkward as all hell, I thought it worked when I first wrote and re-read it but honestly, not so sure.

• I often find my own humour to be fucking awful on a re-read, but I think the attempt at describing the price could have been better just as a numerical value. This is a minor issue, Paragraph 4 is pretty slick.

• Again, 5 starts with a lack of description. What is a wave? What do I mean by survival game type? These things seem obvious to me but I’ve played the game and others. If this was your first ever video game review, you’re going to be confused all to fuck. This confusion will stop you enjoying the rest of the paragraph (assuming you don’t give up all together), which is alright from a “know exactly what I’m talking about standpoint” but is probably vague from a “do I want to buy this game I’ve never heard of” standpoint.

• Ending is a bit of a rushed mess of explaining what’s wrong and still coming out the otherside with a positive view so the score is anywhere near correct. Again, what is “Beat Hazard” status? Why is dying so bad? What’s a boss turret type? Even when I was writing that I thought it was a little vague, but assumed the strength of the rest of the piece would hold it up – not realising that there was actually quite a large amount of vague throughout.

• Overall, I tried to cram way too much “art” into a 500 word piece that needed more description. Beat Hazard isn’t part of the FPS/RTS/RPG trifecta where you can basically use one of your word count and three characters to explain exactly what’s going. The issue here is that I haven’t read enough recently. If there was a sign I need to resub to something, or at the very least actually read the long articles I see that I’m always so lazy about doing so with, this is it. Not an awful piece, but I can do better and I will do better.

Yay, finally a review! I’m a reasonable fan of the FEAR series and was excited with the prospect of this new DLC when I found out about it. Read on for my thoughts and a score. I do those.

Orbitally dropped into a battlezone encased in an invincible battlesuit is certainly one way to begin a game. It sets the pace of the first single-player DLC to appear for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin – very quick and very violent.

Addressing that: it will almost certainly take you longer to download this than it will take you to play it, particularly if you have recently played the base game. This is easily completable in a lunch hour, which is all well and good until you realise the price to play ratio is roughly £12 per hour. Not exactly the deal of the moment.

The action itself is of a high quality. It’s nothing new from what was present in Project Origin already, but the sheer destructive power of the weapons available is a thing of beauty. On that note there is an odd valley of a power curve to the strength of your character throughout – eventually you must abandon your battlesuit and procede on foot. Later still you lose all your weapons and must build back up again. It was actually reasonably refreshing compared to the standard “here is a new gun, it is better than your old ones” repetition over an 8 hour period.

Despite the shortness, there are attempts to provide additional replayability in the form of some resonably challenging and interesting achievements, including a “Minature Replica Soldier” easter egg. I just didn’t have the passion to go back and complete them afterwards – the experience just wasn’t that exciting. The gameplay was standard run and gun, although very unforgiving to my control-forgetting brain. Some of the set pieces were nicely put together; particularly the finale (although it suffered from a rather ridiculous difficulty spike).

The plot was there but rather thin and requiring a reasonable knowledge of the FEAR universe to even decipher. Cinematic moments involving Alma were as awesome as ever, though woefully thin on the ground. A lot of the metagame pieces were very well put together; mission objectives being worded in such a way to heighten your sense of being in the world.

There really isn’t much more to say, other than: if you enjoyed Project Origin, you’ll enjoy this, but you won’t enjoy the price no matter your preferences. Oh, and I do wish we could control the same character two games in a row, just one time in F.E.A.R.

70%

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Wow, that was short. So’s the game. Inspired me to write a piece on DLC.