Cast your mind back a year ago, when you might have felt a large time gap in your day-to-day routine. This was quite possibly because you had just finished your hunt for the last of those pesky gargoyles in Lionhead's impossibly addictive Fable II and it was time to come to terms with the fact that you had finished the game. Whether or not you then had to attend Albionics Anonomous meetings is your business, not mine, but rest easy, for rumour has it that the production Fable III is drawing near an end, and soon enough you will once again be roaming the lands of Albion, but as its ruler.

You might already have a basic idea on what Fable III is going to be about, but for those who don't, you're going to play the child of your Fable II hero (if you have a Fable II saved game, of course) who has become the ruler of Albion, but has since been murdered for the throne. It is therefore your quest as his heir, during the first half of the game, to take back the kingdom that is rightfully yours from this tyrant. In the second half, you're going to go about having an awesome time as the actual ruler, making difficult moral decions which will shape your appearance, personality and even your entire kingdom dramatically! I know, I can't wait either!

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Battle Blasters is a one-on-one beat-em-up-come-shoot-em-up that packs a real punch.  Available now for £1.79 it's an addictive game with surprising depth that will provide you with hours of fun.

The game concept is simple enough: you will be pitted in 1 on 1 fights against each of the 6 characters in a tournament and to progress you must beat them in a best of three match.  Losing doesn't mean you have to start again, you can replay the match you are currently stuck on as many times as you like, and with whatever character you like; a welcome feature for a pick up and play title.  The game play can get fast, frantic and exciting.  Matches are out of 3 rounds and at 1-1 with not much health left on either side there's an excitable tension that will see you dodging their shots and firing off yours whenever you can, resulting in a small leap of joy or nearly throwing your iPhone across the room.

If the concept is simple, the controls are slightly less so.  Moving firing, blocking and special attacks are all done with a touch or swipe of the screen and there is often a lot to do at once, requiring fairly frantic, complex movements and practice which may deter non regular gamers. This could be a reason why non gamers may struggle but it might also the reason gamers will love it.

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Play it with a friend. Seriously. Army of Two: The 40th Day may allow you to take it on with an AI partner, but to do so would be doing the game a disservice, and result in a poorer experience for yourself.

EA Montreal built the game from the ground up as a two man operation, and whilst it’s serviceable when you’re on your own, it’s only really in co-op that the game begins to shine. Commands can be given to an AI partner, but that can never compare to screaming into a headset, or better yet to the person sitting next to you, to flank the heavy who can only be taken down from behind.

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The force is once again with us, it seems, as Lucasarts have announced their newest upcoming release. It was in 2008- the time when the caped crusader wowed us and Indy picked up his whip again- that another movie sequel slipped in, episode 3.5 of George Lucas' epic 'Star Wars' saga. I refer not to the god-awful 'Clone Wars' flick, however, but the awesomly cinematic 'Star Wars: The Force Unleashed' video game, of which a sequel is now on its way.

Selling fantasically and being met with a mostly positive critical response, it is not surprising that a sequel to this game is next on Lucasarts' agenda and it's already looking good with the release this great teaser trailer, which will leave you feeling as if you've just been the target of an extremely high voltage force lightening attack. For those who have played the original game, however, this trailer will raise many more questions then it answers, and Lucasarts , being greedy Siths, are keeping plot details entirely to themselves. So watch and ponder over this awesome trailer, thinking up questions which are currently set to be answered some time this year. May the force be with you!

Puzzle games have a hard time of it, all things considered. They’re ignored by people who consider themselves ‘serious’ gamers, and ultimately overshadowed by the giant in their genre, known as Tetris. In fact, the puzzle genre is a good example of how having one truly popular video game can wreak havoc on the rest of the genre. It’s a sad trait of the last 25 years that many puzzle games can simply be described as ‘Like Tetris but...’, and a new game in the genre would have to be something truly different to avoid Tetris coming up at least once in a review. With that said, Magnetis is essentially 'like Tetris but' with magnets.

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256 players online. What was the biggest before that? Resistance 2 with 60? That’s one hell of a step up. We’d have been impressed with a 100. It’s perhaps fitting then that MAG stands for Massive Action Game. So how does it measure up against the likes of Modern Warfare 2 and developer Zipper Interactive’s Socom games? You might want to upgrade your broadband for this one.

Creating Your Soldier
At the start of the game you choose from one of the three factions. The rough and ready S.V.E.R, the rich Raven and the middle-men of Valor. Annoyingly, you can’t change your faction afterwards, despite the initial screen looking like it has left space for you to create three characters; you have to start again if you want to change sides. A simple patch fix perhaps?

There are five loadouts you can create for your soldier with an assault, sniper or LMG weapon available at the start. Each item you carry uses up a set number of points: 1000 for heavy armour, 500 for an assault rifle, out of an allowed 4000 for example. It manages to maintain the balance quite well with a decent level of customisation.

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Retro style games have been a bit of a dying breed at late. With the innovation of the iPhone sparking that 'quick fix' feeling in your everyday gamer, there isn't much room for games that take time, effort and skill. Marble Worlds 2, created by Limelight Studios, is one such game.

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Has it really been almost 17 years since I played Rocket Knight Adventure on the Mega Drive, a game that is one of the consoles greatest games, thanks to bold visuals, catchy music and fun-yet-challenging gameplay that still holds up to this day. Indeed it feels like it was just yesterday that I was completing it again and again, each time on a higher difficulty level. That was followed by the sequels, released on the Super Nintendo as well as the MD with the SNES offering more superior due to better graphics and better gameplay, though the MD version is still decent.

Point is, Rocket Knight Adventure and Sparkster were fantastic games and the series deserved to be continued. But for whatever reason, Konami decided to stop there and focus on other games and it looked like the rocket knight would never get a game as the years go by. Then all of a sudden, Konami announces that Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network and Steam will be getting a sequel (being developed by Climax Studios), titled Rocket Knight. It’s as if my years of praying for such a thing were finally heard.

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Despite the DS outselling its Sony rival and even the big consoles on a regular basis, Nintendo are determined to get one into every gamer’s (and their relative’s) hands. With the children's market sorted they’re going for the grownups in force.

Handheld console manufacturers just can’t help but fiddle around. With both the DS and PSP getting numerous make-overs over the last few years getting bigger, smaller, slidier but rarely cheaper.

So it’s surprising to say that this is one upgrade that looks pretty good. Adding all the extra functions of the still recent DSi and supersizing the console to fit in adult hands and give them a screen big enough to make all the extra features worthwhile for once. While still not exactly cheap, the console will retail at £150 which is only £10 more than the smaller DSi.

So what does it do that we haven’t seen before on the DSi? Well not much to be honest. No Nintendo, new colours don’t count. There are only two colours available at launch, Wine Red and Dark Brown. It would seem Nintendo believe this the best strategy to attract the more ‘mature’ gamer, assuming they all like merlot and dirt.

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The much anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City for the PC and for PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system is coming this spring – on March 30, 2010. For the first time, PlayStation 3 and PC players will have the opportunity to experience the last two thrilling chapters of the Grand Theft Auto IV saga together on one disc.
The two action packed episodes, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, will also be available for download via PlayStation®Network and Games for Windows®-LIVE on March 30, 2010.

In The Ballad of Gay Tony, players explore Liberty City’s high-end nightlife as Luis Lopez, struggling to balance the temptations of money and vice against loyalties to family and friends. The Lost and Damned is a dark trip through Liberty City’s seedy underbelly as outlaw biker, Johnny Klebitz, fights to keep his gang together as a rift in the gang’s leadership threatens to tear the brotherhood apart. Both episodes feature a slew of new vehicles and weapons, and each episode adds new activities including cage fighting, gang wars and BASE jumping.

Well I guess the saying patience is a virtue is true in this instance, but I wonder whether PS3 and PC owners even care. It’s like someone giving you there old toy once they’ve had their fun with it, but then again who can resist more Grand Theft Auto. Who knows when the sequel to GTA IV will be released, if you ask me Episodes from Liberty City was a long time coming to PS3 and PC owners. Not one developer or publisher out there can afford to make their games platform exclusive in this day and age, simply because no one is recession proof.

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The second gameplay trailer has been revealed, educating gamers on the weapons and deaths you can expect to see come 30th April 2010. Rockstar Games RAGE engine and Natural Motions Euphoria physics engine synthesizes animation on the fly, making every turmoil and death a unique one as seen in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Players can wound enemies in different limbs, depending on where a shot is placed you will see your enemies crawl and dismembered of their weapons leaving the fate of their lives in your hands.

A distinctive feature in Red Dead Redemption is the dead eye targeting system, which allows you to freeze time and place several targets on enemies. With the unleashing fury of one button John delivers his targets with a penetrating bullet.

Weapons of choice range from revolvers, rifles (sniper rifle, buffalo rifle, repeater rifle), shotguns, gatling gun, throwing knives, fire bottle (molotov) and dynamites are currently the confirmed weapons at hand in the game. Just as GTA you can buy weapons in the game from ammunition shops.

With another month almost marked off the calendar we’ve got just three agonizing months left until release. Despite the rumors of Rockstar’s recent troubles with its employees and Red Dead Redemptions development the game seems to be right on track sticking to 30th April 2010. Let’s just hope they keep it that way, be sure to enjoy watching the latest trailer above.

Prepare to start jumping from rooftop-to-rooftop while turning guards into a bloody heap in this, the first of two DLCs Ubisoft have in store for Assassin’s Creed II fans. However, many of these fans may find themselves slightly disappointed by this entry. While there is no doubt you will have a good time as you step back into Ezio’s boots, it is undeniable that the overall experience leaves much to be desired, and you are left wondering whether it was really worth the short time you spent on it.

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The PSP GO is the latest revision of the Sony Playstation Portable. It was released October 1st for a whopping price of £225 and here are my thoughts.

The Go is a lot lighter and thinner than the other models, what is lost is the UMD drive and it has slightly smaller screen. It has 16GB of storage in the PSP itself and you can buy Micro SD cards to use as separate storage, the main change you'll notice is that the screen can slide up and down kind of like a mobile phone. You can only buy games from the Playstation Store using your Playstation Network Account, which you can use on your PS3 or you can create a new one on the PSP itself.  The handheld itself looks slick, neat and it was definitely a good design for the console, its more compact and portable due to its size and it feels nice to play with. The analogue stick is placed differently, near the bottom of the console, which can take time to get used to though its good once you get used to it.

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Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Ultimate All-Stars looked like it wasn’t going to be released in the west after all. In fact, next to Yakuza 3, it seemed like it would be the most likely game (since it was revealed) not to make it to Europe and North American shores. Well thank God that Capcom managed to pull it off. It’s a bit complex how the localization came to be but in a nutshell, Ultimate All-Stars will have some new characters and online play via Wi-Fi.

And it’s about time, since we haven’t had enough fighting games that can showcase the frantic, over-the-top action Capcom manage to produce when they teamed up with Marvel. While the Super Smash Bros series, Guilty Gear series, and Blazblue contained hectic gameplay, I don't think those games came close to the action MvC 2 provided, something that Ultimate All Stars promises to deliver.

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In part one, we looked at the gameplay. This time I’ll be looking at features that will should help White Knight Chronicles stand out, which is a fair bit since  Europe and North America will be reciving the international edition of WKC. That means were in for some nice extra treats that shows you how much Level-5 appreciates JRPG fans in the west.

The nifty extras we shall be receiving are over 50 disc-based online quests which can be done on your own or with friends, voice chat so you can praise and insult your team members, and live talking where conversations will take place during your travels (just like those in Dragon Age, which means this will either be entertaining or annoying).

But the most exciting feature is the inclusion of the Georama. Fans of the Dark Cloud series will tell you this is one of the best aspects of the games and it’s so cool to see it come into WKC. This time, Instead of building a village to satisfy the non-player characters, you do so because a) you can show off to your friends and b) more importantly you can go on quests can get some unique equipment.

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