King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame appears very much as a spin-off from the Total War series; you’ve got the grand map (of England rather than the World) and armies to move around between provinces. The idea is sound; lead your army through battle and take over Britain.

Zooming in to see your troops fighting for the kingdom is immensely gratifying.

The game starts out just after Arthur has taken the sword from the stone; your foster father and brother swear allegiance to your cause, and it’s off into the big bad world of Brittania to unite England under your rule. For veteran strategists with a keen eye for stats and abilities, the mix of turn based strategy and real time tactics makes for a very immersive and enjoyable experience; but for first time strategy gamers, it will feel like an uphill struggle.

It’s easy to get sucked into King Arthur though, and realise that there is an immense amount of detail underneath; the music fits the period, the graphics and animations- while with some imperfections and not standing up quite so well when compared to the likes of Shogun 2 or Dawn of War- are extremely well done, with rolling medieval hills, dense towns and villages. Neocore Games have put a lot of effort into the nitty-gritty, and it’s this that will really immerse the hardcore strategy crowd. You can keep check on knight loyalty and infrastructure development and choose which spells and potions to research.

Unit detail is eye popping.

The rough edges of the game come through shortly after beginning a campaign though- you only have one chance to recruit mercenaries at the start of the game, after which you are given some punishingly difficult quests to complete; and faliure to complete said quests means, quite simply, that you cannot progress through the game. Initially the units seem quite unbalanced too; archers are extremely powerful, and seem to destroy even the strongest melee troops. It’s nice that Neocore has given the player the ability to tweak balance of units in the game’s settings, but you would’ve though it might have been more efficient to directly tweak the balance through patching.

The battles themselves can be incredibly satisfying in much the same way as winning battles in the Total War games; the battles are fairly large, the intricate animations make for fun viewing and the ability to utilise special hero units and knights adds extra depth. In a pleasant extra layer of detail, you can choose where you fight your battles, and how you fight them; if you’re defending, you may choose to surprise your opponent from the forest, but bear in mind that this carries with it it’s own set of positive and negative influences over your troops fighting skill. Skirmishes take a leaf from the Company of Heroes book with a series of victory points that you must capture and hold. Doing so will grant certain nearby troops certain buffs, such a a slow healing. All victory points will slowly drain your opponent’s morale- and vice versa. Morale plays an important part in the real time battles, as even large armies can route causing an instant defeat if their morale is low enough. Playing several battles though, and you begin to realise where the annoyance can creep in. Having huge rolling hills as the backdrop for battles is all well and good, but not if the camera moves up and down as you traverse them.

For England, Arthur!

Your campaign time is mostly taken up by recruiting troops in your towns and moving them around your kingdom to expand your borders (except for the Winter season, which is strictly for move actions only, as no fighting is allowed!). As per almost any modern strategy game, there are some specialised units such as spearmen, cavalry, archers etc, but you have the ability to tweak their stats in attack and defense and so on as each unit gains experience as they become more battle hardened. This extra layer of customisability really aids the wargame ‘feel’. It’s an odd mix of the very intricate, and highly simplified; there are only two resources, automatically collected- food and wealth- yet the player’s control goes as deep as to let you assign your Knights lands, award them wives and amange their balance between good/evil and pagan/christianity.

The sense of freedom and exploration is huge- even overwhelming, when you find yourself finding out about new gameplay quirks even 100 turns in. The pacing is a little off though; you can be merrily stomping over the AI with your army one minute, then be asked with an impossible quest the next and find your troops squashed to bits because you chose to attack the wrong province. This means that you will be making copious use out of the save and load buttons, and it’s frustrating that many of your campaign faliures seem to be the result of the game screwing you rather than a poor tactical decision.

With a surprising amount of historical accuracy, troops are not permitted to combat in winter season.

The graphics of King Arthur are a real mixed bag. Certainly, the ability to zoom right down to see the individual melee battles is a great, if fairly standard, addition. Unfortunately, the game is quite poorly optimized. On a Q8200 2.33 Ghz processor and HD4850, I could barely manage high settings with a playable frame rate. Scrolling around the map where there were large battles also caused some slowdown. For those with more recent hardware however, such as my recently acquired i5 2500K and GTX 560 Ti, you should find no such issues.

Overall, King Arthur: The Role-Playing game is no bad purchase. Certainly, if you’re a little tired of the standard strategy game fare then you’ll find a ton of quirky fun in King Arthur. It is rough around the edges no doubt, and the difficulty will be off putting to some; but if you are interested in the mythology, or are just a veteran Total War fan, then you’d do yourself well to pick up King Arthur. Just bring your A-game.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

I’ve had a chance to take the latest build of Serious Sam for a spin, and it’s left me feeling all happy inside.

This is Serious Sam alright, with all it’s craziness and bloodbaths. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel that Croteam have matured the game a little as well- the crude humor is still there, and the over the top gore, but there’s an actual sense of pacing now. Whereas previous Serious Sam games made the only downtime the loading screens, there are actual spooky thrills to be had when you’re exploring the catacombs riddled with monsters bursting out of the woodwork. This reviewer genuinely received a shock when a Gnarr (for the less well Serious-Sam-educated, it’s like a cross between a cyclops and a rhino) burst out from behind me and started trying to burrow his way into my spine.

My goodness GrandmaGnarr, what big eyes you have

The first thing to notice when you start playing Serious Sam is the new melee system. Unlike most other FPS’s, there’s no bog standard pistol-whipping here; when you melee attack an enemy, Sam will pull off a gratuitously gory and immensly satisfying instant-kill move, which differ depending on the enemy. For example, when fighting Gnarrs, Sam will rip out their eyeball. Want to know the really cool bit? You can then use their eye as a weapon. Similarly, when fighting undead rocketeers, Sam nonchalantly reaches into their chest and rips out their heart. Now that’s just badass.

Of course, what everyone’s really excited about is the new Serious 3 Engine, specifically designed for Serious Sam 3: BFE. Fans were right to be excited, because even in this pre-release build, the graphics are beautiful. If it wasn’t for the enemies exploding as if they’d been packed with Ketchup when you kill them, you’d think the cartoon-like Serious Sam’s were a thing of the past. Water ripples, shadows are sharp, and some of the scripted events have a sense of awe about them. There are still a few bits missing- Sam’s own shadow, for example- but these are excusable in a pre-release version of the game. In fact, the game looked so good that it gave my PC a bit of a spanking- PC gamers still rocking the 8800GT reign of graphics cards would do well to acknowledge that you might only squeeze a mix of medium/high settings out of this puppy.

An opening scene that really shows that the Serious 3 Engine has a lot of potential to wow.

I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of work gone into ensuring that this is at heart, a PC game, made for PC gamers. The graphical and technical options you can make are daunting, and you’re likely to be overwhelmed by the number of little tweaks you can make to everything from parallax mapping, to the numbers of ragdolls, and 4 different types of anti-aliasing.

The gameplay remains as solid as ever, and you’re once again thrown into a mix of huge arenas, claustrophobic tunnels and wide urban areas. Don’t get me wrong- this is still a run n’ gun, and while Sam can crouch, it’s not something you’ll be doing very often. Not least because cover is, at best, flimsy. Most cover in the game world can be destroyed by sustained fire, as is becoming industry standard, but this won’t matter to Sam too much as you charge around with your array of weaponry. Of course, no Serious Sam game would be complete without a delectable choice of firearms and blunt instruments- everything from the humble Desert Eagle to the shotgun and sledgehammer. The sledgehammer is interesting because it hasn’t been too prominent in previous Serious Sam games- the original opted for the trusty knife instead. The sledge is unique because it has several special attacks- you can spin around 360 degrees to take out all surrounding enemies, take a hefty vertical swing to crack some skulls, or go for a wild pirouette using it like a morning-star.  Little bits of detail like the random blood spatters up and down the handle really help to add to the immersive, albeit crazy, experience.

The sledgehammer is so good currently, that it might even be considered a balance issue

While the multiplayer isn’t yet functional, I can tell you the different game modes on offer;

– Deathmatch; Confront other players in head-to-head combat

– Beast Hunt; Test your hunting skills against other players

– CTF; Bring other team’s flag into your base

– Instant Kill; One shot, one kill

– Last Man Standing; Kill all other players to win a round

– Last Team Standing; Kill all other players on the enemy team to win a round

– My Burden; Score rises as long as you hold the burden item

– Team Beast Hunt; Match your team hunting abilities against other players

– Team Deathmatch; Confront other teams in head-to-head combat

While most of those you’re likely to have seen before, Beast Hunt holds promise of something unique- but you’ll have to stay tuned to find out exactly what it entails.

Creeping around catacombs only makes up a small chunk of the game, but the difference in pacing is a welcome change

All in all, my playtime with the new Serious Sam has been a thoroughly enjoyable one. The new engine is beautiful and has large scope and scale; the gameplay has been all gored-up, for the better; the attention to detail is already visible, and extremely pleasing, and the multiplayer holds lots of promise. There’s also coop, so if those game modes don’t rock your world, don’t lose hope just yet. Is this the spiritual successor to Duke Nukem, what Forever should have been?

You’ll have to wait until November 22 to find out.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a rather noisy man with something round attached to his hands. I’d better go help him out….

Games

Mass Effect 2

Many times hailed as the Game of The Year, Mass Effect 2 takes Commander Shepard back into hyperspace in this thrilling third person shooter/role playing game. The cast and speech is so good, you might almost kid yourself that you’re watching a movie. The shooting is suprisingly solid and every moment seems fresh- there’s very little repetition, a notion that has taken leaps and bounds since the original Mass Effect.

Call of Duty Black Ops

With a stunning single player campaign and the same great multiplayer you’ve come to expect from the Call of Duty series, you can’t go wrong with Black Ops. If you’ve played all of the previous Call of Duty series and been underwhelmed, then Black Ops won’t change your mind. Fortunately, for the vast majority of the huge fans of the game, there’s lots here to like, from new and improved killstreaks to a small overwork of the perk system. No more One Man Army. Hooray!

Starcraft II

Yes, it’s been a long wait, but it has been worth it. With enough new features to entice newcomers, while retaining plenty of old aspects of gameplay, there’s enough here for veterans too. Battlenet, when it works, tends to work well, and many happy hours of hectic multiplayer fun are guaranteed.

Civilization V

Sid Meier once again gives you the chance to build your nation up from the stone age in one of the most addicting games ever created. Are you man enough to take on the challenge? The tactical combat system has taken a huge overhall and the interface is as slick as ever- if you have ever felt slightly daunted by the sheer scale of previous games, there’s no better game in the series to jump in.

Just Cause 2

If you just like causing chaos, throwing cars into big gangs of dudes and just plainly blowin’ s*** up, then Just Cause 2 is the game for you. The sheer number of crazy stunts you can pull off make it almost worth the money straight away. And as if you needed any extra pushing- it’s $7.50 on Steam for a limited time only!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

If you like the thought of a combination of Fallout 3 and Good Gunplay, you owe it to yourself to check this out. If you played previous games in the series and was underwhelmed by it’s mediocre gunplay, shoddy graphics and bugs, then think again about Pripyat- while not totally bug free, it’s the most immersive and stable S.T.A.L.K.E.R game yet.

Hardware

Still rocking your default mouse and keyboard?

Still squining at your elderly monitor?

It’s time to upgrade

Logitech G15 Keyboard

With stunning reviews all over the internet, this beastly keyboard is all the board you need to play to the max. With 18 programmable macro keys and it’s own LCD screen displaying stats such as CPU usage, ping and more,  the G15 makes an awesome upgrade from the bog standard.

Razer Tarantula

Forget PC’s- even keyboards get onboard memory nowadays. The Rzer Tarantula not only sports some of the most comfortable keys fingers ever layed on, it also has enough memory to store up to about 5 different gaming layouts, all fully customizable.

Logitech Mx518 Mouse

With a funky design, a big hump, thumbrest and 2 programmable additional buttons, what’s not to like? Despite fitting in at the budget end of gaming mice, this offers great value for money. This editor owns the Mx518, and I can say from personal experience the mouse is fantastic, rugged and great for those with big hands.

Cyborg R.A.T. 9

It might well be the ugliest piece of kit you ever lay eyes on, but the Cyborg R.A.T is second to none when it comes to customization. From interchangeable pinkie grips, palm rests and custom weighting, this is the mouse for you if you’ve never quite managed to fit in with other gaming mice.

Razer Naga

Always running out of room for those all-so important hotkeys? Then check out the Naga. With 17 MMO-based programmable macros , you’ll never run out of buttons again. It is also available for a terrific price due to recent cuts at around $70.

Imagine a game so difficult, you could throw away your keyboard in frustration.

Luckily, Commandos 3 is not like that game.

What Destination Berlin is though, is an extremely difficult real-time strategy game. But somehow, it manages to be engrossing and engaging no matter how many times you fail. Think Demon’s Souls in World War Two. Without the dragons. Or knights. And with explosives.

What made Commandos 3 such a great game is that there was always a different way of accomplishing your objectives. One level places you and some of your agents in a gigantic scenario- Berlin- complete with complete underground sewers, several-storey high buildings and the massive, urban sprawl itself. How do you want to eliminate that SS official? Snipe him from afar? Place explosives on his car? Disguise yourself as Gestapo and poison him?

The choice is very much yours.

The game is all about variety- while one of two missions might have you with just one, specialized, agent at your disposal, most of them give you two or three, each with their own unique abilities, as well as a few bog standard soldiers to command as cannon fodder.

And what kind of agents do you get to command? Let’s take a look…

SEGA’s racing game, OutRun, has been taken down from the PSN.

The premise behind OOA was to pick a Ferrari of your choice, then race it in time trials.

However, it seems bad blood has caused the game to be taken offline.

“Due to the expiry of the contract with Ferrari, OutRun Online Arcade will remain offline on PSN but will still be available on XBLA until Dec 2011,” a SEGA spokesperson told Eurogamer.

The news that it will remain up on the XBLA is likely to cause a stir with PS3 owners.

Fortunately, the removal of the game from the PSN is likely to make the game a much more valuable collectors item!

Alan Wake: The Writer is now available for download.

The final piece of listed DLC for Alan Wake comes in at 477mb, and will cost 560 MS points.

Check out the trailer above.

If it’s anything like the previous DLC, we can expect it to make a worthy purchase.

THQ has unveiled a brand new way of paying for your WWE DLC.

The new DLC program, called Fan Axxess, will allow players to download ‘select’ DLC for 800 Microsoft points, or $9.99.

The initial load of downloadable content will include WWE legends British Bulldog and Lex Luger as well as the Nexus’ Wade Barrett, Justin Gabriel amd David Otunga and extra costumes for Shaun Michaels and Shad. A NXT arena is also included.

The second part of the DLC will see extra costumes for John Cena, Undertaker and CM Punk, and a WCW arena.

WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2011 releases on October 29 for PS3, 360, Wii, PSP and PS2.

The movie rental service LOVEFilm is making its way to the PS3.

The decision was announced by a video on Youtube on the official PS3 channel, but it has since been removed.

The service that will be made accessible via the XMB will be able to stream ‘thousands’ of movies direct to your console, including DVD’s and Blu-rays.

Existing members will be able to start streaming instantly.

The move will come as a huge boost for many UK PS3 owners, who have only been able to look on jealously while the US PS3’s have access to Netflix, another streaming site.

The service could be arriving as early as next month.

Thanks, VG247.

The cautiously titled Heroes on the Move has been rebranded as Playstation Move Heroes.

The mysterious game will contain many familiar faces from the Playstation universe, including Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper and Jak and Daxter.

The synopsis behind the game describes it as a “mysterious alien duo has swept through the galaxy, fiendishly snatching entire chunks from the worlds of Ratchet, Jak and Sly to create a mysterious new planet in the galaxy.”

The rename was announced in New York last weekend at ComicCon.

The game is due out Q1 2011.

Via Movemodo.

To celebrate 25 years of Mario, Nintendo are releasing some limited edition Wii’s and DSi’s.

On October 22, a special red DSi will go on sale, complete with a bundled New Super Mario Bros.

The Wii, also in red, will come bundled with New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Wii Sports and the original Donkey Kong- where Mario made his first appearance. That will be released on October 29.

Currently, the only prices are in Yen, and you can expect to pay ¥20,000 for the Wii bundle, and ¥18,000 for the DSi.

Thanks, VG247.