Catherine is two games, kind of. It’s actually more like a game and a selection of things that feel a bit like they’re almost a game. For as much as it paints itself as a dating sim, that really is secondary to a more prominent puzzle system that involves moving assorted blocks around so that you can climb further up massive towers. In Catherine you control Vincent, an early-thirty-something in a relationship with Katherine (with a K!). She’s concerned that they aren’t moving forward and is looking for more commitment, but he’s overly self-absorbed, clinging on to his fleeting adolescence and peaceful bachelorhood. After a night of drinking, Vincent inadvertently ends up in bed with Catherine (without a K!) and begins having a series of horrible nightmares wherein, obviously, he’s a part-human-part-sheep scaling walls of movable crates.

From here the game takes on three parts. During the day you’ll be treated to cutscenes that further expand on Vincent’s relationships with the two girls. In the evening, Vincent goes out to a bar to drink and chat with other people that are experiencing the same nightmares. After you turn in to sleep you play through a few challenging block puzzles.

Catherine’s narrative is absolutely detached from the gameplay in a way that seems almost inexcusable after Portal so effortlessly blends story into the playable sections. The disconnection makes both parts seem like they’re the least important part of the product. The story seems as if it’s getting in the way of a game being a game; the game seems as if it’s getting in the way of a narrative being delivered like an anime series. Atlus could, in theory, have released these halves entirely separate and we would have never considered they were once part of the same licence.

On occasion during sections in the bar or between puzzle stages, you’ll be given totally binary options that govern how you’ll react to different characters or odder choices about your own relationship hang-ups. Some of this is interesting as the game will often show a graph of what other people said in reaction to the same question. This interactivity is novel, but is awful in some sections. As much as you (and by extension, Vincent) make decisions about what to do with Catherine’s interruption into your life, this isn’t reflected in his attitude toward her. You could be entirely cold and uninterested and she’ll still be a part of the story until the end. This makes your choices seem meaningless throughout and even your ending might not reflect the direction the narrative has been propelling toward.

Unfortunately, as it’d be much easier for me to explain, it’s difficult to call any part of Catherine particularly bad. Certainly in some cases it’s unenjoyable, but there’s always a saving grace. The block puzzles get a little tiresome and frustrating – perhaps as a result of being jackhammered into the middle of the story as if they’re work you have to complete before reaching the good part – but they’re deep and interesting enough to take pleasure in. The story sections are too small a part of the whole experience and your input far is too minimal. Still, the supporting cast are layered enough to be compelling and you’ll be interested to see how the plot progresses.

If Catherine is anything, it’s a step forward for games using relationships in a more adult way. Catherine definitely is a game for adults, not just in the sense that there’s some extreme violence and almost constant alcohol abuse, but it’s really one of the first mainstream titles to put growing up and finding your place in life as the core struggle. If it were a more cohesive package, one that paid more attention to either of the ideas it sets up, this would be an amazing title. It just doesn’t excel enough at any one thing.

It all seemed too good to be true, and as we began to find out more about Sony’s marketing strategy, the costs began to rise. Rumours that the Vita had little to zero internal memory were confirmed by Sony, and that they would be releasing a proprietary memory cards which you would need to buy in order to do pretty much anything on the handheld. Alarm bells started to ring, as proprietary usually means ten times the cost of its market equivalent. With the 32GB memory card priced at $119.99, the rose-tinted glasses began to slip, this £230 bargain was quickly becoming a £300+ investment.

This is a scary prospect, not only because of the recent massive price-drop Nintendo has given the 3DS, but also because the current generation of home consoles is not much more expensive than the largest Vita memory card. As I just noted, I was one of the people who bought a 3DS day-one and I was deeply disappointed by the quick drop in price, lack of software support, and sudden back-tracking by Nintendo. As an apology I have been given 20 old games I don’t play while other people can pay less than half of what I did for the console. I’d rather have the £100 in my pocket Nintendo! Now Nintendo have also realised that a second analogue stick is a necessity, and have released a gargantuan peripheral called the Circle Pad Pro, in order to compensate those who have the first-generation 3DS. (I predict the next iteration is right around the corner.)

As you can probably tell, I have been hurt by my experiences with the 3DS and that is having an effect on my Vita contemplation. Of course there will be the inevitable price-cut/second generation hardware, this doesn’t bother me, but in years gone by, this would be at least a year after the initial release.

Now, it is happening within the first three months, or few weeks if you look at the Vita’s Japanese launch, where sales have continued to plummet, forcing retailers to lower the price of the console by as much as 20%, according to a GamesRadar report discussed in IGN.

If you just read all of the above, you would probably think I hate the Vita. Our very own Richard Gwilliam also discussed the troubles Vita could have in a diminishing market of dedicated handheld gaming when smartphones and tablets are becoming the big-sellers. But the reason why I am having this debate is that I think the Vita is a phenomenal console. Having the chance to spend some time with it, and play some of the amazing launch games made me realise how much I want one.

There is nothing inherent about the console itself that makes me not want to buy it. It’s merely the logistics. £300 is a lot of money. Based on the 3DS and Japanese sales, the price will probably drop within the first 3 months, and I’d be paying way more than I should for a memory card. But what it comes down to in the end is that I love games. The Vita certainly has them in spades. I’ve always wanted a console-like experience on the go, and that’s the Vita’s home run swing. I want two analogue sticks, Vita has them. Plus with the innovative front and back touch controls, there is the potential for a wider marketplace which could offer everything from blockbuster titles to 69p apps.

It is a big investment, but I’m am such a weak-willed person that even if I avoided the release-day urge, it probably wouldn’t be long before I went out and bought one. So, today, I pre-ordered my Vita, as well as an overpriced memory card, and Little Deviants, which I thoroughly enjoyed in the little time I spent with it.

I’ll make sure to keep you posted on my thoughts on the Vita once I’ve spent time with it, and if anyone else has pre-ordered a Vita, let me know what your impressions are of the console once you’ve tried it for yourself.

SoulCalibur V sees the long-running series undergo a serious makeover to the core gameplay. The major changes centre around the new Critical Gauge meter. Most of the moves you do consume some of your Critical Gauge: Critical Edge moves, the game’s flashy super moves, cost one bar of the gauge, while Brave Edge attacks power up regular attacks and cost half a bar. Even counters come at the expense of your Critical Gauge. Traditional parrying has been removed from SoulCalibur V, and replaced with a new Guard Impact system, which requires a sacrifice you to sacrifice half your Critical Gauge to deflect an enemy’s attack, allowing you to turn the tide of a match.

I could talk endlessly about the ins-and-outs of the new combat system but the important thing to note is that even in what is the most mechanically complex SoulCalibur in the series, there isn’t a decent tutorial mode to help explain all of these details to new players. The training mode offers character move lists and a brief explanation of tactics, but nothing like explaining the actual inputs themselves, or telling you when your timing’s off.

Despite the lack of a decent explanation for newcomers, the game is still fantastic no matter your skill level. Each match is intense and thrilling, with fast-paced action taking place in stunning arenas and supported by a beautiful soundtrack. Matches feel absolutely epic. The new Critical Edge moves really add something special to not only the gameplay, but also the presentation, allowing you to see the game’s detail up close in a series of quick, cinema-esque camera shots. The focus on block-counter-attack as opposed to all-out attack means matches can go down to the wire, and with all the tools at your disposal, you rarely feel completely overwhelmed.

Sadly, there is a lack of variety in the matches themselves. While there is a good amount of game modes, with Arcade, Story, Legendary Souls as well as online and an offline mode that replicates the online experience, there is nothing that adds something different to fights.

Where games like Mortal Kombat and even SoulCalibur IV excelled was in the different types of fights they offered. Some fights gave characters 50% health, poisoned, or even an inability to block. None of these are present here. The lack of fight variation is disappointing and would have been a nice twist to the already great fighting.

SoulCalibur has taken a leaf out of Street Fighter IV’s book by including a reward system for everything you do in the game. You earn points for every fight you compete in, both online and offline, which increase your overall level, and allow you to unlock different titles and player cards to customise your own playercard, as well as new characters, arenas, and customisation tools.

The large character roster sees a number of new faces, most of which are just slight alterations of older characters. The two brand new characters, Viola and Z.W.E.I (I have no idea what it stands for either), feel fresh and offer something new to the game. Each character feels strong and well balanced. Unlike other fighting games, there don’t seem to be any clear weak-entries on the roster. Ezio Auditore, the latest guest character, is a perfect fit. His move set employs all of the weapons you see in the Assassin’s Creed series, and his backstory slots in well with SoulCalibur lore.

The only filler are a few of the unlockable fighters, who act as copycats, replicating the move-sets of other fighters and changing style between rounds. If you get bored of the roster that Project Soul have provided, you can always make your own in the extensive character creation mode. You can lose hours creating the perfect incarnation of your favourite character in this mode, which is the best seen in the series yet.

Patroklos and Pyrhha, a brother and sister duo, and children of Sophitia, act as the core of the game’s story mode, which is sadly lacking in all areas. Most of the cut-scenes are presented in charcoal-drawn stills on parchment, which is a shame considering this is a graphically stunning game, and it would have been nice to have fully rendered cut-scenes. Considering the story takes place in 17th century Hungary, the voice acting hardly helps create the sense of the setting, and is dull at best. The very odd (and slightly incestuous) relationship between Potroklos and Pyrhha certainly raises an eyebrow at one or two points, and it sounds as though the majority of the male characters were voiced by the same guy. It also doesn’t help that for the first half of the story, Patroklos is an ignorant arsehole, and you not only have to fight as him, but win also. Luckily the disappointing narrative only takes around an hour or two to complete, and doesn’t detract from the fighting.

Online has been fleshed out to cater for all types, including a new Global Colosseo, which allows players to group together in large parties and take part in player matches. Text chat is supported, as well as spectator mode and the ability to upload replays of your fights.

This is a great game. It would have been nice to see more spice in the matches, but the thrilling combat, excellent roster, and stunning presentation make this a worthy purchase for anyone with a taste for fighters.

Quarrel’s really bloody good.

For the unconverted, it’s a combination of Risk and Scrabble, but it retains all the fun of both and dispenses with the downsides. Risk is too slow and can ultimately fall apart due to chance. Quarrel rewards tactical skill and planning. Scrabble can limit you to whatever bad hand of letters you’ve grabbed from the bag. In Quarrel, you have access to the same letters as your opponent; you just might not be able to use all of them.

A Quarrel match takes place on a board divided into territories. Each of these is populated by varying numbers of units. When you want to take over another area you and your opponent battle using 8 letters that form an anagram. If you’ve got 8 units you can try to spell the entire word; any less and you have to make do with fewer letters and hope the other dude has a worse ability than you.

That’s the core conceit. It’s wrapped up in bright colours and interesting character designs for the units. If Denki had simply ported the game over from iOS to XBLA it would have remained wonderful but not seemed like a worthwhile investment since there’s an increased cost. Thankfully they’ve added an incredibly viable multiplayer mode which was offensively missing from the initial release.

There are some slight issues with controlling on a pad, like how the same button to confirm a move is the same button that will completely end your turn, so double clicking it can accidentally leave you ill prepared at the end of a round. That’s an absolutely tiny complaint when measured up to the countless successes that Quarrel makes.

Quarrel’s an excellent buy if you don’t already own the iOS version and still reasonable if you do.

The Western Europe map that will be available is 4-player co-op and if you want to complete it on Hard as we did, you’ll need to be incredibly focused on teamwork and tactics. As Mat Jones pointed out in his own Syndicate preview, we dropped straight into MMO jargon from the outset. The level of co-operation required to complete this map makes it feel an awful lot like a small 4-man raid, clocking in at roughly 30 minutes per session.

In the world of Syndicate, you play as an Agent; a member of the Syndicate squad with a Dart 6 weaponised chip implanted in your skull. These brain enhancements let you get up to all sorts of remote shenanigans like causing your enemies’ guns to misfire, commanding computers without using your hands and healing your squad mates. No, I have no idea how a skull implant can repair bullet holes in other people’s bodies but there it is. You can also offer your team buffs in the form of shielding, breach enemies’ armour to make them vulnerable and, if you die in the field leaving one of your team-mates still alive, they can resurrect you when they get close enough. Very MMO-ish indeed.

The tactics our group used on this map were very much around teamwork. In one section with distant snipers and rocket launchers, we’d send out one player to snipe while the others heal and generally try to stay out of rocket blast radius. In another section, we’d split into pairs and have one group draw the boss over to one side of the map while the others engaged additional enemies on the other.

If even one team member lost focus and failed to heal their buddy or to keep their assigned enemies at bay, the battle was over, so good communication was paramount. The HUD design is very helpful with this, showing the health bars of all your teammates at the top. There’s no excuse for letting someone die through ignorance. Thanks to the checkpointing system, having the entire team wipe was frustrating but not the end of the world. The checkpoints we needed to use were perfectly placed, so dying usually meant that we’d spawn at the entrance to a section. We never had to repeat more than one real firefight.

The game had no avatar customisation that I could see but you do get to define your own set of three loadouts named Defense, Offense and Support. These define the equipment you will have at the start of the mission. Each loadout has a free choice of primary and secondary weapons and a chip ability or “application”. These names are purely for convenience and don’t restrict your options – if you want to set up your “Defense” loadout aggressively with sniper rifles, assault rifles and, say, a chip ability that causes your opponent to commit suicide with a grenade, you go right ahead. You’ll also have the option to unlock a second remote ability once you grind enough points to upgrade your chip.

Grind. Remember that word. It will come up later.

When playing on hard mode, loadouts are more about customising for your own play style than trying to build a balanced team. In a traditional MMO raid, you’d need to make sure you have at least one healer, one “tank” to soak up damage and draw attention, and maybe someone set up for crowd control. Syndicate co-op needs people to do all those jobs yet doesn’t force you into specialising for any one role. This is just as well because, as with most games, the XP system is heavily biased towards killing.

I spent one of our four play-throughs spamming heals on everyone else while a specialist sniper took out distant targets and the remaining two took care of close-quarters fighting. This left me trailing at the bottom of the leaderboard with 10,000 XP while the sniper took home 23,000. In another play-through we all took sniper rifles as our primary weapon and clocked in with a respectable 15,000 XP each. The fire rate and low recoil of the basic sniper rifle do mean that a quick double-tap to the torso will kill most enemies as quickly as single headshot, so I fear that this weapon is rather overpowered. However, you get points for kill assists and achieving objectives as well as heals, so there’s little danger of sessions turning into a race to be the fastest sniper. I hope.

XP is important for a number of reasons. Yes, you need it to level up but you also use it in research to unlock new abilities. This is where things gets weirdly complicated.

• Killing, healing and completing mission objectives will get you XP.
• Levelling up though gaining XP will earn you chip points.
• Completing challenges will win you application tokens.
• Completing certain objectives will give you blueprint tokens.

Spend chip points to upgrade your implanted brain chip and gain new applications like the aforementioned shield buff. Spend application tokens to enhance existing abilities – for example, the basic Backfire will do some damage to a distant opponent when he next tries to shoot you. Upgrade that with the Chamber Patch and Backfire will happen earlier and cause extra damage.

But here’s the catch. You can’t use your application tokens to purchase Chamber Patch unless you’ve already spent a chip point on the ROM 1 upgrade. Even then, once you’ve purchased the Chamber Patch, you still need to unlock it by setting it as your research project and earning 5000 XP in a map. Blueprint tokens work in the same manner but for grenade and gun upgrades. To put this another way, the team have built an RPG-like technology tree but spread it across 3 different menu screens for an awkward-as-hell interface.

The upshot of all this is that unlike an MMO where you’ll run a raid time and time again in the hopes of getting a rare or epic drop from the boss, your incentive to repeat maps in Syndicate’s co-op mode is to grind your research for weapon upgrades and abilities. You can queue up multiple research projects so if you want a fairly cheap ability, any excess XP earned in the session won’t go to waste.

Having played through the demo level four times in a row on hard mode, this worries me a little. I honestly feel like I’m done with the Western Europe map already. I’ve proved that my team are good enough to beat it on the hardest difficulty available. Where’s the incentive to earn new abilities? I could speculate that this might lie in other maps, with certain bosses requiring specific abilities to beat but as yet, that has no basis in fact.

If you have a group of friends you trust, or a clan, then Syndicate’s co-op will be great fun on hard mode. Everyone else will enjoy running and gunning their way through the normal difficulty. Abilities are fun but long cool-down times meant that we hardly used them and we really didn’t need to. As such, even though I really enjoyed our sessions, I have my doubts over the longevity of this mode without a steady churn of new maps. You should definitely try it for yourself when the demo is out this week.

Syndicate will be released on 24th Feb on Xbox 360, PC and PS3.

This survival horror (more survival, less horror) just feels like a total copy of the Saw games but worse, and inherits the same basic problems.  Controlling Lana – who, with the game’s namesake little girl, are trapped in a disease-ridden town after their train crashes – is laborious and cumbersome at best. At times it really does feel that you are there, pushing her along to escape the monters. If you are separated from Amy, then you will slowly become one of the creatures yourself; the visuals become more distorted, everything starts to go red, and you can hear voices whispering to Lana. Join back up with Amy, all is cured.

Both Lana and Amy need to escape both the monsters created from the contamination and the trigger-happy containment soldiers deployed to the area. In particular the soldiers; if they see you, you will die. If you walk just one smidgen too quickly, you will be heard and die. Move too slowly, you get spotted anyway and die.

At least you get a chance to tackle the monsters/zombies but you’ll wish you didn’t have to. The combat system is terr-i-ble. Like the Saw games, it’s all very swing-and-hope-for-the-best. Any attempt to sneak up on an enemy is pointless because as soon as you draw your weapon, your character is set to ‘run’ mode. Your steps become louder and, you guessed it, you will most likely die. If anything, the combat is like controlling GTA IV’s Niko Bellic after a drunken night with his cousin.

As you may have gathered, you will die a fair amount through AMY but hey, there are always trusty checkpoints to help you out, right? WRONG. If you die near a checkpoint you won’t lose much progress but you will lose any health and weapons that you had on your person. Checkpoints are also quite sparse so be prepared for a lot of trial and error. Don’t confuse these checkpoints with save points either. If you turn off the game, you will have to complete the entire chapter again.

It’s really hard to recommend AMY to anyone. Everything is sub-standard in quality. The graphics look as jerky as the controls feel. The music tries to give the uncomfortable surroundings an uncomfortable atmosphere, but it’s just flat.

Some happenings make no sense either. Quite often Lana is required to sneak through motion sensor devices very slowly so as not to be harmed, yet, whilst you’re traversing these hazards, young Amy is running back and forth through them like she’s had too much sugar. There are odes to Metal Gear sections where you must hide in cupboards or under tables to escape sight; yet if the enemy is right there, and you’re in the ‘hide’ menu, then you’ll be safe from harm anyway.

AMY is not an easy game, but only due to the problems above, not the actual difficulty level. There are a couple of decent ideas in AMY. It’s a shame the rest of the game lets it down. Some doors require DNA scans to obtain access; off you go around the facility reading scans off deceased individuals until the correct one is scanned. Quite often separation is required, due to the nature of the puzzles (crawl into small gap, etc), and with no health to assist, can be a real threat. This is not too dissimilar to the PS2 classic Ico. If Amy is caught by one of the monsters, they feed off of her lifeforce, until you come to the rescue. Some nice touches also include holding Amy’s hand, and feeling her heart rate through the controller’s rumble function. This also increases/decreases, based on the current threat situation.

Ultimately though, the real threat is continuing through the game, or having to start over. The Saw games at least had good, brain-teasing puzzles (such as the circuit breaker puzzles), and kept you on your toes at times. AMY is all too frustrating and annoying to care about, and has very little going for it in terms of plot/characters. AMY is not a credit to the download market at all, and should be avoided. Only the curious need apply. You have been warned.

Amy is available on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade now.

After playing through the demo three times for your benefit I can safely say FFXIII-2 appears to fix the few issues that XIII had. Combat is faster and more involved, cutscenes shorter and the corridor issue I talked about in my XIII post-mortem? All but gone. Sadly it seems to throw in a few new issues that upon initial playthroughs left me slightly stunned.

The demo throws you straight into the deep end, fighting the floating hand of an invisible giant. Combat seems much smoother and is still based on the paradigm feature of XIII yet one of the new features is quickly apparent in the form of Quick-Time Events. YAY! See I love QTEs as much as anybody, when they directly involve your character [You mean not at all? - Ed.] but when you have to time a QTE to make sure a helicopter lands a strike on an enemy? Urgh. Perhaps I’m being picky but I don’t need events like that scattered here, there and everywhere to keep my attention during short cutscenes in battle.

Once the intro battle is out the way, Noel and Serah set off with a moogle in tow to explore the town they have found themselves in. That’s right folk, a town! With people and treasure and shops and everything! If you’ve played FFXIII you will know that lack of freedom is something in XIII that really started to grind. Towns give life to worlds – the movements of people, the ability to explore and talk to folk really adds energy to a game and stops it from just being a linear romp through a series of backdrops with artificial life.

Upon beating your first standard enemies, you are introduced to the Paradigm Pack feature. The Paradigm Pack is like a Pokemon game crammed into a full-scale RPG. Defeating certain enemies grants you with crystals representing that enemy, which can be upgraded and then mixed into your paradigms to fight alongside you.

In theory this works well but micromanaging an ever-growing list of animal comrades could become a tricky and rather dreary task. The pack works as a third member of your team would; different animals naturally have different roles such as Ravager or Medic. Three animals can be added to your pack at once with the creatures swapping round depending on how you set them. All good, if a little cheesy and odd for an RPG.

Other than an odd minigame set that involves solving puzzles inside the Paradox by working out the best route around a level without crossing your own path, everything seems standard fare. The soundtrack has been thrown forwards a little and doesn’t follow the classical roots of the series. Instead it opts for a faster-paced electro style. FFXIII-2 does feel like a true FF game and despite a few odd choices designed to add variety, it is well worth a look-in.

Of course we can’t base our opinions solely on the demo alone but it’s free so go give it a try on XBL or PSN and see if Square can’t re grab your attention. Keep an eye out for our review of Final Fantasy XIII-2 when it goes live.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be out in the UK from 3rd Feb on Xbox 360 and PS3

Get used to this. You’ll be hearing it a lot, at least if the tournament I played is anything to go by. The development team at THQ have worked hard on making the commentary system sound natural. “You’re actually getting live broadcast feeds,” I was told by senior designer Wes Bunn. “The UFC gives us all their mic feeds and our sound team chop up every bit of commentary from every fight and incorporate it into the game. So when you hear a guy say ‘Oh, nice left head kick’, that came from a fight somewhere.”

Led by Antoine Peltier, the audio have actually done a great job, especially with the contextual commentary. Turn off the main VO and you’ll hear your coaches shouting at you to get your guard up or protect your head. Still, when certain submission positions like the Kimura are easier to get into than others, you’re bound to hear some lines repeated over and over (and over) again.

The team had to use a different approach for the new PRIDE mode in this game, since PRIDE matches no longer take place. “We’ve added a whole new commentary team with the PRIDE Fighting Championships so everything you have in the UFC had to be mirrored for PRIDE. We did that with Bas Rutten and Stephen Quadros who were two of the commentators at the time. It’s a little more WWE-ish – they’re making jokes, they’re talking about the sport and the history as opposed to technical descriptions of what’s going on in the cage.”

I also spoke to Bunn about the game’s controls. “One of the big pillars that we wanted to do for this game was accessibility. We kind of fell into a lull with [UFC Undisputed] 2010 after 2009 came out. We just assumed everybody knew how to play our game and what we found was that the new players who picked it up were getting lost and frustrated and didn’t understand how to do things. We went back to our roots with 3 and brought back more of the tutorial aspect so whenever you jump into a fight for the first time, you’re gonna get these pop-ups that come up and tell you how to play the game.”

The last fighting game I played was WWE ’12 and the contrast between controls for the two games is obvious. Where W’12 requires frequent and confusing shifts between the face buttons and the thumb sticks to pull off a single move, UFC3 splits control-sets into a number of different “modes”.

Loosely speaking, you focus on the face buttons for out-and-out combat and the thumb sticks for grappling and movement. You’ll have access to different types of punch, kick and motion (or “transition” in UFC parlance) depending on whether you’re standing, in a clinch or on the ground but the controls themselves remain consistent. With the help of the initial tutorial pop-ups, this separation makes the system much easier to learn and modifiers like the left stick, bumper and trigger add depth and variety for the more experienced fighter.

Exhibition matches are your quickplay option to fight as a professional UFC competitor like Anderson Silva and this is what’s available in the demo that came out this week. As a mixed martial arts competition, UFC is more brutal than its entertainment-focused contemporaries. There are two ways to win a match: tire out or beat your opponent to a bloody pulp until he can no longer intelligently defend himself; or hold him (and it’s always a him) in a submission pose until he “taps-out” and admits defeat. In Undisputed 3 you’ll find that fighters have noticeably different strengths and weaknesses. Swinging punches with a kickboxer will deplete your stamina faster than it should and trying to throw an experienced wrestler to the ground while playing as a boxer will get you on the wrong side of a submission. Knowing your individual fighter’s skills is key. This is where Career mode comes in.

Supposedly the mainstay of UFC Undisputed 3, the Career mode is where you design and train your own fighter to battle your way up the ranks. In focusing on accessibility for new players, it seems to me that the team have erred too far on the side of education. Creating the avatar for your new fighter is easy enough. The problem starts when you choose your fighter’s specialities.

Everything seems to require half a dozen button presses to either select something, learn about it or skip the annoying verbal history. Once you finally navigate through the maze of menus you’re forced into a sparring session to determine your level of skill in that particular discipline.

This is fine for the first couple of rounds of just mashing the punch/kick/grapple button until the sparring meter fills up. When 15 minutes later you’re still struggling through menus and tutorials, it’s very tempting to just put the controller down and walk away. Sure, you can skip the sparring matches (after sitting through the loading screen) but you won’t get the stats boost for your character. Given that there are 62 individual tutorials you can choose to play through from a separate menu, forcing this seems like an unnecessary hindrance for those who are experienced or want to just get on with it.

When you’re in the cage, this game can be great fun. Pounding away on your opponent as he lies dazed on the floor triggers an incredible endorphin rush of satisfaction. Even watching other people play is entertaining. Matches are brutal and quick and I guarantee that any spectators will let out a collective “Ooo” of anticipation when you successfully daze your opponent with a solid blow to the head. It’s what happens outside the cage that lets it down.

UFC Undisputed 3 will be released on 17th February for Xbox 360 and PS3. The demo is available for download now.

In it he explains why they’ve decided not to go with the traditional 99¢ sales model and instead are pursuing the free-to-play route.

“There’s a specific revenue graph that you see for a typical packaged or downloadable game. You get a big spike of money that slowly trickles down to almost nothing. These are hit games in a hit driven industry with hit shaped revenues.

This has some fun psychological implications. When the money is good, it seems like it will never end. As a result, teams tend to overextend themselves. They hire on additional people, and they take on more ambitious and exciting projects…

…At some point, the money starts fading. The next game or port suddenly needs to be a success. You make decisions that start matching what the market is doing. You start listening to experts. You start looking back on your past success and trying to emulate them. All this makes it more difficult to comprehend and react to new opportunities. You’ve gone from a fresh new success to a fragile bloated company…

I’ve come to the conclusion that long term, the hit-driven model found in disposable, packaged games is an anti-developer business model.”

He goes into much more depth on why this is the case in the full post.

Instead of churning out hits that do well and fade away, Cook’s dream is to build games as long-term services and relationships with his customers. He wants steady streams of revenue that grow and to retain his independence.

Sounds like every entrepreneur’s dream and I wish him well. I just hope he finds a model a bit more compelling than the currently-popular one of making the game slow and filled with periods of not-playing unless you pay for a speed bump. I’ve seen it with Tiny Tower, I’ve seen it with 8 Realms and now we’ve seen it in Order Up!! To Go. That’s not what I call fun.

TripleTown’s model seems a little less punishing in that you do start out with several thousand bushes (the smallest building block for your town) and you can earn the in-game currency by playing games. However, I used about a hundred bushes in my first couple of games and earned enough coins to buy one, so I suspect that earning currency isn’t a sustainable long-term model for the gamers. Or perhaps I’m just not that good at it yet.

Have you seen any games that do the free-to-play model well?

[via @SpiltMilkStudio]

TripleTown is free for iOS 4.1+ and Android 2.2+

At various points in the game progression you’ll unlock special visits from restaurant critics offering a chance to earn more coins or more frequently surprise hygiene inspections. These see you frantically smearing the surface of your iPad pretending to scrub dishes or trying to flick rats off your counter tops. You can limit the more annoying of these visits by paying to have your kitchen cleaned. The cynical part of me suspects that this is just added motivation to buy in-game currency.

I played three restaurants out of a possible seven, simply because I don’t have months and months to devote to playing the game the cheap way. The management side of the game lets you decide what dishes to stock the ingredients for. This adds a very nice planning aspect to the fast-paced swiping-like-a-maniac segments. Once the cooking day starts you’ll receive a stream of customers and the game becomes a juggling act to keep everyone happy and dishes leaving your kitchen in a timely and presentable fashion. Alongside the normal customers you’ll also be served up picky versions who want a unique twist on their order – manage to work out what they want and you’ll earn bonus payments.

I would happily recommend this game to anyone. It’s free (to a point) and it’s fun. I just wish Chillingo hadn’t gone for “making the game dull unless you pay” route. That said, there’s every likelihood I’ll roll over and pay. A good game deserves it.

Order Up!! To Go is available now for iOS 4.0 or later.