​More modern TV series and DC properties which have made their mark pop into the game, but mostly in the story’s closing  credits (and some inevitable DLC), without any explanation of context - not to mention that there’s not enough of them to fill each section, meaning you must sit through each exchange between the likes of The Arrow and original Batman Adam West several times over.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this game isn’t fun though. Gameplay is as tight as it has been for any game in the series, and the narrative is just the right balance of humour and intrigue to keep you playing, while some of the new environments discovered when you visit the various Lanterns’ coloured homeworld in particular really raise the bar for the variety shown in the series.

The hub menu for this game feels like something of a step back from Lego Batman 2 as it loses its open world in favour of a series of hubs connected by portals, including the Watchtower, the Hall of Justice and the Bat Cave. Sadly these multiple hub locations not only makes it difficult to remember where things are, but also no area really feels like home, making it less compelling to just amble about and discover side quests and secrets hidden here, there and everywhere.
​
Completing the game doesn’t give as much satisfaction as it should, since completing the actual story is only a small percentage of the game overall, thanks to the ever-increasing slew of collectables.
Batman might have a gadget ready for any occasion, but this game is the utility belt-equivalent of a Swiss army knife with 17 different types of spoon - useful, but there’s plenty of it you feel like you’ll never need.

Kyrat itself is beautifully created, full of stunning views, amazing locations and its own fully formed religion and history.  It’s also packed with things to do and, very quickly, the map will start to fill up with the wide variety of activities we’ve all come to expect from an Ubisoft game ranging from liberating enemy compounds, climbing seemingly endless towers to uncover more of the map (and more activities) or hunting various rare animals to virtual extinction.  This is in addition to the main story and side quests doled out by a range of characters.  

​So packed is the map that you’ll often find yourself finishing a particular mission only to find yourself immediately, and accidentally, caught up in another side mission to help the locals fight against wild animals or other random activities.  The main story missions are possibly the weakest part of the game but the majority of the side activities are incredibly addictive and the side quests, such as helping two backpackers with Dick Van Dyke cockney accents test their latest drug recipes, are entertaining enough that it’s very easy to quickly lose track of time and play for longer than you expect.

However, it’s the sheer denseness of the activities that hides the fact that Ubisoft are manipulating you just as much as Mrs Ghale is her son.  In the same way as Ajay you’ll get swept up in the constant flow of activities without ever being given time to think and, as a result, you’ll be half-way through before you realise that FarCry 4 suffers the same problem as most of Ubisoft’s games since the launch of the new generation: Ubisoft are possibly second to none when it comes to creating amazing worlds and interesting settings but seem to have lost the skill of telling a compelling story once you get there.  

As annoying as FarCry 3’s extreme sports loving rich kid Jason Brody was you never doubted why he did what he did.  He wanted to save his friends and as the game progressed you were left in little doubt as to the humanity he sacrificed to achieve that goal.  By contrast Ajay Ghale, despite having a more sensible reason to be there in the first place, lacks motivation. After his opening introduction Pagan Min barely appears in the game, relegated to just a voice on a radio and thus becomes too distant a threat to really care about.

After early promise of a culture clash between the Americanised lead, who thinks of himself as AJ Gale rather than Ajay Ghale, and the country he came from it’s never touched on again and indeed Ajay never really seems to connect with or care much about his heritage or homeland.  Both leaders of the Golden Path are in their own ways as bad as the man they are fighting and neither seems to connect with Ajay on any level where you can understand why he would risk his life one way or the other to support them.

Throughout the game he remains a cypher with no real personality or character progression and his sole motivation is apparently to liberate the north of the country in order to reach his mother’s home and scatter her ashes, an objective undercut by the fact Pagan Min is quite happy for you to scatter her ashes and even offers you a lift at the start of the game.  
What made FarCry 3 so compelling was Vaas holding a mirror up to the player and demonstrating what you were becoming, but whilst Troy Baker does his usual great job voicing Pagan Min he just doesn’t have the material to work with and you never fully develop the same connection. Picking off Min’s lieutenants as you progress is similarly badly handled and much like the Templars in Assassin’s Creed Unity they are introduced too shortly before your final show down with each of them for them to ever really develop much more personality than the faceless guards you kill in order to reach them.

There aren’t too many games where you can go from helping the CIA with an assassination, to reliving the mythical origin story of a country, to running around tripping on LSD in the space of an hour’s play time; and that wide range of activities means that even if there’s something you don’t enjoy you’ve got plenty of other things to do.  

FarCry 4 is a lot of fun, whether you’re tossing wild animal bait into an enemy stronghold and watching guards get eaten by tigers or riding an elephant and over turning jeeps in order to hijack a convoy, but in the end it’s a game that doesn’t have an awful lot to drive it on and as a result ultimately outstays its welcome.
      
Pros

• Very addictive game play
• Wide variety of side missions
• Honey Badgers are just the greatest animals on Earth

Cons

• There are just TOO many random animal attacks
• The bad guys, especially Pagan Min, are really underused
• Lacks a driving narrative and feels too long as a result

Score 7/10

It’s no secret that a lot of people have a lot of love for the Star Wars franchise (in fact I’ve riffed, optimistically, on the subject), and so from the word go, developer DICE had their work cut out for them.

As soon as you jump into the world that Star Wars feeling hits you like a trusty blaster-butt to the face. The sound effects and music fit down to a T, and every level is visually stunning - particularly the lush forest areas of Endor. There’s plenty of detail in the levels as well, with references to specific moments in the films dotted about, so much so that you’ll occasionally find yourself stopping mid-battle to explore. It’s obvious the folks at DICE are big fans of the series and their dedication to the source material pays dividends.

The maps themselves span four different planets, all with a different visual style and feel to them. Some maps work more than others - such is the case in pretty much any game’s multiplayer mode - but there are definitely more hits than misses. There’s also more to come, of course, with The Battle of Jakuu DLC free to all players from December, the promise of more free DLC and an extensive season pass. Since that’s all still to come though, it unfortunately doesn’t earn the release game any points.

Gameplay is straightforward and responsive, feeling particularly easy to pick up for those familiar with the Battlefield series, for which DICE and EA are also responsible. The majority of time in most modes is spent on foot as ground infantry, fighting for either the Rebel Alliance or the Empire.

​While the modes do offer variety, even the objective-based modes often descend into a chaotically messy death match at times. The stand outs are probably Heroes vs Villains - which pits two teams of six against each other with three heroes (or villains, obviously) on each team as you race to win five rounds - and Fighter Squadron - which may take place in-atmosphere rather than out in the far reaches of space, but gives a great opportunity to relive your Rogue Squadron memories in some of the franchise’s most memorable craft.

Vehicle controls take some getting used to, and finding the balance in modes like Walker Assault (which re-enacts battles like the Empire’s attack on the Rebel base on Hoth) can’t have been easy. All the modes, vehicles, heroes/villains and power-ups blend together in a most balanced fashion to create a lot of gameplay variety and replayability.

Being an online-only game, a lot of the experience relies on the abilities of your teammates, and this can be a difficult thing to rely on in any game, let alone something as universally popular as Star Wars. Thankfully the tactics needed aren’t complex enough to need complicated communication (though some non-verbal commands would go a long way), and you’ll generally be partnered with one player, highlighted on your map, who you can use both to back you up and as a mobile spawn point (think Battlefield’s Squad system).

DICE faced an impossible challenge with this game, and the end result is something which may not surpass everyone’s expectations, but at least delivers a good experience with what it ships in the box. Whether it’s justified to expect so much more money for a season pass worth of content post-release is too hard to call before we’ve seen anything from it.

​There’s no denying there is fun to be had here, with locations, characters and more that will bring a smile to the face of anyone who has love for the original trilogy. While there might be less love for the newer films, it’s a shame not to see some of the war machines and locations from the prequel trilogy realised here - even if they opted to leave out some of its less endearing characters… (They had to hold that back for the sequel - Ed.)

It might not offer the depth of Battlefield or any meaningful single-player campaign, but what the game does offer is well put together and makes a strong impression, it’s just a shame there isn’t more to go around. Even if you aren’t an established series fan, the tight gameplay, gorgeous visuals and sumptuous audio make the experience strong enough to stand on its own two feet.

With Star Wars-mania arguably at an all time high, it was clearly the right time to release this game, but you can’t help but feel like if it had been delayed six months we would all had a three course meal instead of a tasty starter and a minimalist main.

Pros

• Undeniably beautiful
• The love for Star Wars shows
• Solid game underneath the brand

Cons

• Not severely, but feels light on content
• Odd elements, like voiceovers, let the experience down
• Lacks depth for the most hardcore shooter junkies

8/10

These aspects are great, but there is a lack of information for the player in general when playing the game. There’s no form of tutorial, so you can actually learn the moves, nor is there any way of slowing down the song in order to make sense of what’s going on if you’re new to this type of game.

There’s plenty of modes to strut your stuff to. Dance Party is your standard mode where you pick a song and then are suggested a choice of three to follow it up with, while Showtime requires you to own a PlayStation Camera (or Kinect) and allows you to create your own music video, complete with lip‐syncing to your favourite tracks and sharing them with the masses if you like.

Dance Quest is what can generously be described as the single player mode, which pits you against AI‐controlled dancers and challenges you to beat their score over set songs ‐ sadly you don’t get to see the AI mess up though. Finally Sweat & Playlist is the fitness element, which has more intense versions of the dances and measures how many calories you burn. The Playlist part lets you make your own mix for a set time.

Playing Just Dance with the PlayStation Camera can be a bit of a nightmare when attempting to select songs and you will become frustrated with it quite quickly. On the Xbox One, Ubisoft clearly responded to how awkward navigating by motion control can be and switched it to controller only for this version. Back on PS4, the camera worked fine once we managed to get the song up and running, though the camera sync with the game wasn’t as responsive as we felt it should be.

A new feature this year is that you can install the Just Dance Controller app onto your mobile device, and control the game that way instead, working in practice like a  PlayStation Move controller. This really opens the game up to a much wider audience, since the motion control hype has trickled away (especially on Xbox) and most people own a smartphone. In practice it’s quick, easy, and saves the host rummaging around the house looking for enough controllers for everyone. Up to six players can join the party in this mode as opposed to four.

If you’re taking a breather between songs, you can also check out JD TV. People from all over the world upload their dance videos there, which often entails an enthusiastic young guy flailing about while their significant other sits on the sofa in the background looking unimpressed. It’s a nice break and you will definitely get some giggles, especially with some friends.

One more thing to note is that microtransactions come in the form of a Just Dance Unlimited subscription, which adds an additional 156 songs, including favourites from last year’s version which you may have purchased as DLC (which sadly don’t carry over), and 4 Dance Quests. This is of course optional, though you can try it for free as each copy comes with a one month trial to hook you in.

Developer Dennaton Games were perhaps a little too ambitious with the scale of Hotline Miami 2. As in the original, levels consist of floors on which you must eliminate all enemies to move to the next. Floors are often so challenging and numerous, however, that playing in short bursts – something the original was perfect for – becomes less viable. You lose all floor progress if you don’t complete the level in one sitting, and some levels take around an hour to clear first time through. The size of many floors is also an issue – they’re so big now that you’ll often find yourself getting shot by off-screen enemies, making for cheap, infuriating deaths. In this instance, less would have been more.

​It’s unfortunate, as the vast majority of deaths are well deserved and accepted with open arms. Gameplay is fast and precise, with death serving as a learning experience: you learn enemy placement, how they’re armed, and the best course of action through death. It’s a rare game where you gain rather than lose progress with each death, and respawning is so easy and instantaneous that thinking “one more try” doesn’t even enter the equation – you’re already playing again before you get chance. This does mean learning through repetition, so if you’re opposed to that, Hotline Miami 2 isn’t for you. I literally had hand cramps through repetitive strain at times, but the looping music track and feeling of small and frequent progress had me in an addictive rhythm I couldn’t bring myself to break before the job was done.

Despite a few missteps, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is an easy recommendation for fans of the original - it remains an entrancing and addictive experience, best played with the volume cranked up. I would, however, recommend that newcomers pick up the original at a fraction of the price for a slightly more polished experience.


Pros

• Amazing soundtrack
• Smooth, precise gameplay
• Prompts you to question the media you consume

Cons

• Repetitive learning experience
• Large floors result in frustrating deaths to off-screen enemies
• Confusing story

8/10      ​

There’s something a bit depressing about the end of the world, but, on the other hand, if the world is falling around your ears, then you may as well go out with a bang (or several). The latter is very much the mentality behind Sunset Overdrive, one of the killer exclusives Microsoft has bagged for the Xbox One.

As one of the developers aptly put in an interview shortly before release, the easiest way to sum up the experience of playing Sunset Overdrive is in one word - momentum. While you could amble about and shoot things, you’d find that you’re struggling to keep on top of the enemies, which spawn randomly across the city as you traverse between missions. The better plan is to bounce, grind and otherwise speed across the map in a fashion closer to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater than the complex parkour of Assassin’s Creed. Almost everything can be manipulated in some way to keep you moving, and after just a few key upgrades, which you are gifted as part of the story, you’ll find you can get from A to B without touching the ground.

Multiplayer generally comes in the form on the tower defence and Horde mode-inspired Chaos Squad, which sees you setting traps and defending a variety of locations around the city against an ever-increasing variety of OD, and the multiplayer angle adds a fun dimension without really relying on teamwork to succeed. There is also a score attack mode which only the most stylish will excel at, and, in fact, not progressing far enough in the campaign before jumping in can give you a serious disadvantage.

The story stays close to the game’s stereotypical style and is relatively obvious, but the characters you come across are entertaining enough to give a chuckle once in a while. One particularly unfortunate character ends up being trapped for an extended period of time and, instead of grumbling about it, proceeds to chew off his own limbs to keep himself alive, maintaining an unnaturally positive attitude. For an apocalypse though (or an awesome-pocalypse as the game would say), this is probably the most horrific thing which takes place, and even then its all off-screen and done in good humour.

​The tone is certainly something which will divide people playing for the first time. It isn’t crude or low brow but it can come across as trying too hard, and if you don’t get the joke you can quickly find yourself judging it for being childish. In terms of gameplay though, the title stands up as one of the most unique, fun and interesting experiences on offer on the console.

Insomniac have done well to establish a new IP with a clear sense of identity, not too far from the release of the system. The fact that the game will remain a true exclusive, being published by Microsoft Studios, makes it, along with stablemate Titanfall a compelling reason to give the console a shot, but whether MS keep hold of the sequel remains to be seen.

Pros

• The most fun game on the Xbox One
• Oooo, pretty colours!
• Take out enemies by deploying garden gnomes with pickaxes

Cons

• Tone can grate at times
• Trying multiplayer too soon can put you off
• Not much to keep you playing after the story is done

9/10

Variety is injected through tackling the aforementioned alien races. Easiest are the melee-based Bugs, while the heavily weaponised Cyborgs fall somewhere in the middle. The most interesting and difficult of the bunch are the Promethean-esque Illuminate. They’re all fairly bog-standard fare and nothing you haven’t seen before, although the Illuminate can reverse your controls, so it’s always advisable to employ extra caution when facing those. Each race has weaknesses, and the game’s highly customisable and upgradable loadouts come into their own when experimenting and establishing play styles to best combat them.

Helldivers is a challenging, engaging ride that’ll keep you coming back for more. It’s a game that always has you thinking and frantically juggling numerous tasks without the time to complete them all. It’s best played with friends, although random players generally behave themselves – if you’d rather go solo, however, it’s not a dive you should take.
 
Pros

• Challenging, rewarding gameplay
• Essentially endless
• Superlative co-op

Cons

• Not much fun solo
• Lacking story & mission variety
• Bad eggs can spoil the fun

8/10    ​

Yet somewhat bemusingly, the fact I’ve had nothing positive to say so far is by design. These problems begin to dissipate as you play and unlock abilities to combat the issues, before they eventually disappear entirely. It’s not a smooth ride, however, thanks to the levelling system, which tasks you with performing the actions you want to upgrade à la Elder Scrolls. You can’t complete missions and put the experience you gain into improving your parkour skills, you have to endure hours of bad parkour to make it bearable and messily kill hundreds of zombies to become slightly combat proficient. Eventually, I unlocked a grappling hook to zip wherever I wanted to go in an instant and I killed zombies with one satisfying, head-popping blow. I was a badass and I was loving it, but why on earth did I have to endure hour upon hour of tripe to make the game fun? This is the protagonist’s line of work, after all, so there isn’t even a contextual reason for him to begin unskilled.

Conversely, one element of the game gets progressively weaker. When night falls, “volatiles” take to the streets. These faster, more deadly enemies change the entire dynamic of the game, transforming it into a tense, stealthy, survival horror experience. When you’re spotted, heart-pounding chase music kicks in and you flee to reach safety at the nearest hideout or work to shake pursuers. If they catch you, or you try to fight, you’re as good as dead – it’s a terrifying game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately, when you reach Old Town in the second half of the game the map’s verticality makes it incredibly easy to avoid foes, and the darkness no longer holds any horrors.