After coming upon Hunted around six months ago, I hoped that I would be reviewing a game with oodles of the rich RPG history that Bethesda are renowned for; with a welcome splash of hack and slash fantasy thrown in for good measure.

RPG’s have been around for decades, featuring on just about every console since the ZX Spectrum. Early examples were often very basic (in appearance) text adventures such as ‘The Hobbit’ or ‘Lords of Midnight’ although as hardware moved on, so did the RPG genre. I still remember the first time I played ‘Eye of the Beholder’ on a friends dads Amiga once and being totally blown away by both its graphics and ambitious, complex gameplay. RPG’s have moved on a lot since then, but not always in the right direction for hardcore fans of the genre, so does Dragon Age II stay true to it’s roots, or pander to EA’s army of casual fans?

Being a closet fan of most of the DC and Marvel Comic Characters of the late 80′s, 90′s and 00′s, I had high hopes for a super hero/villain game when the original iNFamous turned up on the PlayStation3 2 years ago. Unfortunatley, for all the things it did right, I have never felt so underpowered for a Hero who in all rights should have been a juggernaut of a character. Enter iNFamous 2 …

Good things always come to an end (and to those who wait.) My XBOX/PS3 setup ran happily using Onkyo’s 2008 low-mid price powerhouse (the 606) for over 18 months, but with failing mainboard components and aging processing capabilities, I’ve had to look at a successor. Will Onkyo’s brand spanking new 609 live up to expectations, or will offerings from Yamaha, Pioneer, Denon and others win my hard earned cash?

Dungeons and Dragons has had quite a chequered past when it comes to video gaming, the frequent ruleset changes and amendments make it quite difficult for many players (and developers) to adapt to in a digital medium. Veteran players also found the various implementations clunky at best and it wasn’t until the introduction of Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and most recently Neverwinter Nights (and their various expansions) that the vast majority of gamers accepted the concept as mainstream.

A team based shooter similar to the Team Fortress premise made popular by Valve, Brink offers players the opportunity to fill the shoes of either the Ark Security or the Revolutionary Forces based on the floating citadel. Touting freeform parkour style movement, multiple player classes, and highly customisable characters, Brink promises a lot at the first look. In a genre where players expect innovation, quality and balance, have Bethesda managed to deliver …. the Pixel Junkies endevour to find out.

After a recent resurgence of classic, single dimension, one on one fighters it is nice to know that Netherrealm Studios have taken note and have been busy beavering away on a reboot of the Mortal Kombat franchise. The build we had the opportunity of sampling had 4 of the available fighters for use along with a selection of environments in which combat (Kombat, surely – Ed) takes place.

Sitting down to play Dead Space 2 i got the same feeling that i got when sitting down to watch the second Matix Movie (Revolutions). As a real fan of Dead Space i couldn’t see how the developer could improve upon the original. A great story with some fine twists, great control and genuine brown trouser moments that were welcome in a new IP hitting the next generation consoles. Having checked the same build as Super Stu, i had become slightly worried that some things had changed too much and gone were the things that made Dead Space a must have.