Recent reviews by phy

Borderlands 2 is a first-person shooter that randomly generates the guns you find, varying damage values, clip sizes, accuracy, and even how many bullets they fire at once. It's built like an RPG: you level up by killing things, improve your character's abilities, and find higher-level guns to kill higher-level beasts and bandits on a rocky, backwater planet.

That was already compulsive in Borderlands 1, but here the formula's been tweaked to ridiculously addictive effect. I think I had one or two guns I really liked in Borderlands, and the rest were necessary but uninspiring situational alternatives. In 2, I have a full loadout of weird, powerful and satisfying weapons I love, and an entire 'alternate' set in my backpack that I switch in and out to compare potency.

I've become a gun scientist. Sometimes I fill all four weapon slots with different types of shotgun and throw myself into a nest of Skags – as one does – to take notes.

The Jakobs has the numbers – 24 pellets at 600 damage each – but it's an ammo hog, and the Hyperion's bigger clip makes it better against mobs. But it's hard to bench the Tediore, because when it's out of shells, you can throw it at someone and it explodes and a new one teleports into your hands. And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I've run out of Skags.

This is the game, and it makes Borderlands persistently fresh in a way other shooters never are. So it's weird that they kick it off with a painfully slow introductory segment that strips the game of everything that makes it good. It's ages before the first randomised gun even drops, and for ages after that, it's all useless inaccurate trash. And although the quests later become a highlight, in the first hour they're a maddening drag. You spend most of your time trying to figure out why your robot guide Claptrap has stopped following you, and backtracking to unstick his sloppy scripting.

It matters more than most ♥♥♥♥♥♥ intros, because you'll probably go through it more than once. Even if you stick to one class, you can start the game again after you complete it, taking your levelled character into a mode with new high-level enemies and loot. And if you don't, of course, there are three more classes to try.



The Commando can throw down a turret, a play style that needs some planning: you can execute satisfying pincer movements, but it doesn't help you escape if you screw up.

The new Siren can temporarily suspend a single enemy in the air, and her skill recharges rapidly enough to be used in every fight. It's spectacularly cool to leap into the air to get a perfect shotgun critical on your hovering victim.

The Gunzerker can enter a rage that lets him use two guns at once, regenerating health and ammo as he goes. It's fun, but the perks he can unlock as he levels up are less interesting: mostly percentage increases to this or that.

The Assassin can cloak, leaving a hologram of himself to keep enemies focused on his former location. I stuck with him for my main character, upgrading to give myself lots of buffs shortly after every kill. The ultimate skill in that tree let me maintain stealth if my melee attack killed someone in one hit. I could prey on groups by taking out the weakest first, invisibly eliminating each until only the toughest was left.



More than in the first game, those abilities fit together nicely in co-op: the Gunzerker can be more reckless with friends around to revive him, the Assassin benefits hugely from distracted enemies, and it's a relief for everyone when the toughest enemy in a fight is suddenly plucked into the air by the Siren.

The interface for joining a co-op game is much nicer this time, and it's better at handling how quests are shared. But we still couldn't connect to each other without some port-forwarding faffery, and we still had to argue among ourselves about who got what loot.

More than the class abilities, it's the enemy design that keeps the combat fresh. The Goliath might be my favourite. Facing two of them in a bandit camp, I shot one in the head. At first he just seemed surprised. Then he got angry – angry enough to turn on his friends. He turned to the other Goliath and screamed: “Ever been strangled with your own intestines?” then projectile vomited a stream of caustic acid into his face.

His victim was baffled. “Why are you so mean? ” he said, dripping in acidic sick, before fighting back.

This is already sterling entertainment. But there's a twist: if the Goliath kills his friend, he levels up, getting stronger still with every kill. If you just want a distraction while you slip by, that's perfect. If you actually need to kill him, you have to be strategic about how much damage you let him do first.



Then there are the robots. I was dubious about how much fun it'd be to shoot metal instead of flesh, which now that I write it down doesn't make me sound like a particularly great person. But I needn't have worried. You can't headshot robots, but their joints are weakspots. If you're taking a lot of damage from a particular droid's weapon, you can aim and blow that arm off.

Flying repair droids try to fix the others in the field. Jet Loaders transform from humanoids into fighter jets, and bombard you with missiles. Bull Loaders can drop their shield to the ground and ram you like a bulldozer. And Constructors churn out a slow but endless stream of new bots until they're killed.

Best of all, the robots, the bandits and all of the world's gargantuan wildlife hate each other. Luring a giant stealth bat into a battle with a squadron of killbots is exactly what I want to be doing with my life.

The sidequests are a different story. Because they're not about saving the world, they have room to have fun with the whims of the characters, who are always the strong point in Borderlands.

I set up a tea party for a 13-year-old girl. I took photos to inspire a garage mechanic's terrible poetry. I had a mission objective to endure a boring party. I had a three-way shootout with two other bounty hunters looking for the same long lost gun stash. I helped a malfunctioning robot delude himself into believing he was human. I tried to solve a murder, and shot the wrong guy. I was chased by Skag-riding cops five levels too high for me as I hunted for a cursed gun. And I took an assassination contract to kill myself – and completed it.

The effort and invention that's gone into this stuff is a constant pleasure, and the sheer amount of it is overwhelming. The majority of the game is tied up in these side quests, and it's mind-bogglingly huge. I probably found half of them, and the game took me 30 hours to complete.

The main quest takes you to some cool places, but it's often marred by disproportionately tough bosses. Dying in a boss fight also undoes all the damage you've dealt, wasting all that time and ammo. I once made the mistake of using the nearby fast-travel station to get to a shop to restock. Turns out you can't travel back to that particular beacon, so I had to do the whole mission again, with all enemies respawned.

Luckily, you can level up by doing side missions first, where these problems generally don't come up.

It's generally well-adapted to the PC: graphics options, an FoV slider, some sensible control tweaks, and most importantly smooth and responsive mouse movement. My only issue is that levels load before the textures are ready, so everything's hideously blurry for a moment.

I've been playing Borderlands 2 all day, every day, for five days – and I'm probably going to play it again when I finish this. It's not the most consistently brilliant game, but I can't think of another singleplayer shooter that's given me more hours of fun. My Assassin's second playthrough is as interesting as starting fresh with a new class, and I plan to do both.

It seems crass to judge a game by quantity, but this is quantity of quality. So if the amount of money you spend on games is a practical concern, it's worth saying that this one is freakishly.

First-person shooters need to be so much more than what they once were. In the space of around two decades, it’s a genre that redefined the entire games industry simply by pointing and shooting at stuff to requiring jetpacks, wall-running, zombies and skyscraping titans in order to keep our ever-dwindling attention spans interested in its twitch gameplay. But it’s taken one of the godfathers of the genre to return and cut through the noise to offer a simultaneously simplistic and immensely enjoyable shooting experience in the form of Quake Champions.

I’ll admit, as someone who games primarily on a controller, I was a little hesitant jumping into the Quake Champions beta. I look at a mouse and keyboard when playing a game in the same way my mum looks at her smartphone when it does something she doesn’t expect: with desperate confusion.

Mercifully, Quake Champions uses an incredibly simple control scheme that even PC novices such as myself can quickly get to grips with. Weapons can be switched by scrolling on the mouse, WASD is to move, and look by moving the mouse. There are other buttons, but Quake moves at such an unreal pace you won’t ever use them.

There isn’t a faster first-person shooter on the market than Quake Champions. Titanfall 2 offers incredible speed and fluidity thanks to its exploration of the battlefield, but nothing comes close to Quake’s raw sense of absolutely gunning it around the map. Even the slowest Champions on the roster – such as Clutch, an autonomous robot – are nifty enough to run around at lightning-fast speeds. But, remarkably, I always maintain a sense of control, keeping abreast of the situation before me. It’s almost inexplicable, but amidst all the hyper-speed chaos, everything makes sense.

It’s a testament to developer id Software that Quake Champions operates at such incredible speeds, but feels more manageable than most shooters. This feels like the classic Quake of the good ol’ days.

There are three maps in the beta: Blood Covenant, Ruins of Sarnath and Burial Chamber, and all feel brilliantly designed with plenty of choke points for players to converge, but also with excellent placement of weapons to both run around and collect; there’s also opportunity to get into some trouble on the way.

Each match is preceded by a 30-second ‘warm up’, which is the perfect chance to check out where the rocket launcher, nail gun and other weapons are littered in the map. There’s no mini-map on the screen, meaning you have to learn where everything is.

Thankfully, each map offers brilliant iconography, making every location familiar and recognisable. Want to get the rocket launcher? Oh, that’s on the top of the altar by the central chamber. Want the body armour? Follow the church altar right to the top. Placing weapons and armour in areas with recognisable points means paying attention to the surroundings is of great benefit.

It’s a huge breath of fresh air from the bland greys and browns of modern shooters, too. Going all out with design means these maps are instantly more familiar to me.

Each of the Champions also offers something different in the form of their unique abilities. Each has a super-move that can be activated after a timer winds down (you can speed this up by collecting sand timers found throughout the map).

Ranger, for instance, throws an energy ball that detonates if it hits anybody, but he can also teleport to it should he want to escape danger or move into the middle of the fight. Nyx can temporarily be invisible, then reappear as soon as she starts firing bullets; Anarki can fully recover health, while simultaneously giving a small but permanent boost to his health.

Each Champion also has different health, armour and speed stats, so learning which one is your preference based on your own play style is part of the fun. At first I stuck with Clutch, who offered the highest health and armour but was the slowest, before becoming more comfortable with the game and moving onto Anarki.

However, while the game itself is delightfully simplistic, it is the free-to-play systems that run the risk of becoming overly convoluted.

Presenting itself as a free-to-play game, Quake Champions is probably more aptly described as “free to start”. Yes you can, technically, enjoy the game to your heart’s content without spending a penny. Maps and modes can be enjoyed for free, and everyone can use the first Champion, Ranger, for free. Additional Champions can be rented for 24 hours by accruing enough in-game currency.

There are three forms of currency in play at any one time: Platinum, which is bought with real-world cash; Favour, which is earned in-game and can be spent on Champions and certain loot boxes; and Shards, which are earned by dismantling duplicates.

Backpacks are a little more confusing. You can earn these by playing matches and completing objectives, but the majority of them will need to be bought, particularly as you progress through higher levels and unlocks become fewer and further between. Each of them includes skins and gear for Champions.

There are also three tiers of loot boxes: Backpacks, Chest and Reliquary. The latter couldn’t be unlocked with Favour, and had to be bought with real cash or as an unlock via level progression. As someone who has never cared about character skins, this section really didn’t interest me, but it did add another layer to these already complicated F2P systems.

Naturally, if you want to make the most of what’s unlocked in the loot boxes, you’ll need the Champion to don them. It makes the whole cycle a bit of a chore and almost overly forcing the players hand to invest.

In my time with the beta, it didn’t take long to earn enough Favour to be able to rent a Champion for 24 hours, provided I won enough matches. The payout for victory is significantly higher than that of losses, so if you dont’ plan to shell out to play the game, you better be good.

Also, some game modes will require multiple Champions to take part. In the first round of the beta, only Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch were open; Dual was unlocked the following week. Dual sees two players select three Champions and face-off in one-on-one elimination. Naturally, if you’re renting Champions, this would be a costly endeavour.

I really hope the monetary system doesn’t become overly confusing and interfere too much with the core game – and at the moment, it doesn’t seem too. The trouble is, too many systems are in play, since it’s clear that Bethesda is trying to make money both from core gameplay features such as additional characters as well as skins via loot packs.

By offering so many monetisation schemes it makes me less inclined to spend, which is a huge disservice to how good the gameplay is. I want to play it, and based on this beta I’d absolutely buy it. I just hope it’s simple for me to do so.

GTA is perhaps one of the only games on the market that's able to sell itself twice, and this is the top performing version of one of the finest games to date. If you never played the GTA epic, it's a no brainer that this belongs in your game library. However, is it worth buying again?

At first glance, you're reintroduced to the same game, but now with an all new first person perspective! This subtle, yet finely detailed change is what really sells this game again. In fact, it's worth redoing the story mode just to play in this new enlightened perspective. It's one thing to control a character, but to have an entire world in the perspective of a character's eyes, truly redefines the gaming experience. Each action suddenly feels like it affects you more, it feels more real, interactive, and interesting.

When you played the story mode the first time, there's a lot of this scenario, you pick up your allies in a car, drive to your next location while the characters in your car chat. With this first person mode, you're now right there in the action, feeling like you're actually driving the car. You can even turn your characters head to see the players in your passenger seat and/or back animated while they talk. When I noticed this, it was no wonder it took rockstar another year to polish this game up, they clearly went through the whole story mode to make sure that each mission works with first person.

Granted, story mode isn't a must do for those who've already played it, so what's new for you? GTA Online! Carrying this epic online, somehow made the game even better! This is nothing like the online you may have played on GTA IV, not even for a second. You are able to create your own character from almost a similar fashion to The Sims. Being able to customize the finest details from your heritage, to body shape, and clothes, you create your own character that truly feels unique to you. The whole concept of this new online play is to make the user's experience feel more controlled and custom to their desires. What truly divides this online experience from any other, is that you're able to progress your character any way you want. Whether you're playing by yourself, with friends/family, or of course strangers online.

The key features of the online experience are between the freemode, and the different jobs and opportunities your player can choose from. The concept is simple, you create your own character, and build their skills as you raise in the ranks of criminal activity. I will start off with freemode, and then quickly introduce some of the other jobs you can do. In free mode, your player has their own bank account, and wallet. You quickly learn that your bank account is very essential, as players can take your cash by killing you. (With the exception of Passive Mode, a mode used to protect this from happening by restricting players, including yourself from being able to kill). Your bank account can is safe from other players and can be used "for most legitimate purchases" which includes, apartments, clothes, hairstyles, cars, you name it. Basically anything legal

Spending your money is fun and easy, you can walk to physical locations in the game or use their own fully immersive internet that includes sites from anime cartoons, to the stock market of GTA businesses, to car dealerships and everything in between. I'm sure there is a finite number of sites that's easy to reach, but the tie-ins with between the radio, internet, TV, and game world are so phenomenal, it really adds this dimension to the game that is unmatched to any other title.

Making money is going to be your primary objective of online, which can be done in many different creative ways. You can rob from stores, npc's, other players, and for those who have already put two and two together, accept jobs and opportunities. There is actually somewhat of a story mode to online, as you progress your character, you meet more and more contacts, some who are even featured in the offline storymode, and they each give you opportunities for some quick cash. Other jobs you can choose between are familiar game modes like Racing, Team Deathmatch, and all the works. My personal favorite part of this GTA, is how you are sometimes allowed to take jobs for yourself, instead of playing with other players, which is of course also an option. But this is the first online experience I've seen, that can feel fluid like an offline game, and be played by only yourself.

But when you are eager to play with fellow gamers, the players can be numerous ranging anywhere from 1 to 30 players in one game, depending on the game mode. The game is constantly rewarding good gaming behavior and punishing the bad. So the game lobbies are usually very fun. For people who quit whenever they're behind in a race, or go afk during games, they get they're repped lowered, and repeat offenders will only be able to play with other players that have low rep. So when you're racing against 12 other players, they'll stick through to the end, and be rewarded for doing so.

There are countless features of GTA that I haven't even mentioned, but last thing I want to cover is the differences between this game, and the old gen versions. Again, biggest key difference for me, was the first person perspective. I think it improves the game significantly by increasing how large your field of vision is so dramatically. Graphics were never something I mentioned, because I think new gen has already proven itself to be so much better anyways, but truly the graphics are pristine. You can see gum stains on the sidewalks, rainbows on the edge of a flashlight, the draw distances are huge as well. The weather patterns were huge too, I have never in my life seen a rain storm that looks more real than what GTA can pull off, puddles build up in lower elevations, and the rain drops are so detailed. It's kind of a funny detail for Cali to rain, but never the less is really cool. The touch pad is utilized for this game, you can swipe up or down to change the radio stations while driving, left or right to change your weapon. The light is used quite a bit too on the controller, it'll flash red and blue when the cops are at you for instance! When there's an in game phone call, your player's voice will come from the TV, but the character your talking to will come from the dual shock controller. There's a couple of easter eggs in this version too (look up GTA V peyote)

In the end, what you get with your money here, isn't a brand new game, but you will get a very finely polished masterpiece. Many games suffer through bugs and glitches at their launch, but that was taken care of last year. When the new gen consoles came out, this is the game that could have defined them, this is the game that gives you an online open world, now the rest is up to you.

This is the only game I've ever had to pause because I was laughing too much to play. I want to tell you about the exact section that caused me to crease up. I want to sit you down, do the voices, and perform a poor recreation of the whole thing. And I want you to know about the other hundred-odd moments that physically contorted my real-life face into real-life grins or my real-life mouth into real-life laughs.

I won't tell you about all of them because I'll spoil them. But I want you to know because they're so joyful, so playful, that they turn this third sequel to an average Grand Theft Auto clone into one of the most fun videogames I've ever played.

Like Saints Row the Third, Saints Row IV is set in the city of Steelport. Except it isn't. The game starts with an alien attack on Earth, with you as president of America. Except technically it doesn't do that, either – the game actually starts once you've infiltrated a terrorist base to find a nuclear missile, and clambered up the side of it mid-flight, yanking vital bits of wiring out, as Aerosmith's 'I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing' blares. The missile explodes, you fall to earth, and manage to crash through the ceiling of the oval office. Congratulations, you're president!

I'm including this precise description because it sets SRIV's tone early, and better than I could with words like 'madcap' or 'anarchic' or 'what?!' This tone continues throughout – throughout the subsequent alien invasion, throughout your incarceration in a Matrix-esque simulation of Steelport (see why it technically isn't the same place?) – and all the way through the ten-hour campaign and twenty-plus hours of side missions.

I played my hero for laughs, dressing him in a towel, then in Lara Croft hotpants, then as a giant foam hotdog. But you're also free to play him straight, a man in a suit amid the madness of an imperfect simulation of an already-mad city. Or you're free to play as a her. Or as a him with a her voice, or a her with a him voice, or a her with a her voice pitch-shifted to 100%, or even as a him with Nolan North's voice. Or, if you really fancy, you can play as a small white hovering toilet.

I created a monster, with an ageing wrestler's body, a pencil moustache, and giant buggly eyes, and gave him a cockney voice pitch-shifted to 60%. He talked like Jason Statham huffing a birthday-partyful of helium balloons and loomed out of the screen like a child's drawing of a nightmare. By the end of the game, I loved him. I'm still not quite sure how that happened.

But I think I've got an idea. SRIV is surprisingly inclusive. It trades on ridiculousness – but unlike its raison d'etre Grand Theft Auto, it's never sneering or cruel. Where GTA lauds movies and music as cultural touchstones, SRIV takes on games. Mass Effect is one of its most visible targets. Punching out of the alienrun Steelport simulation for the first time, I got my own spaceship, with cabins for a crew I'd later recruit by rescuing them from the Matrix.

Press E on a crewmate and you can talk to them. Press R and you'll 'romance' them. There's no convoluted conversational minefield to unlock fade-to-black shagging here, though: almost all of your friends – male, female,å or robot – will immediately agree to a quick fumble. It's a pastiche of BioWare's RPG sex vending machines – feed enough in and collect your hump from the slot below – but also indicative of SRIV's desire to simplify.

That desire is the best thing about the game. Options unfurl as you play. Steelport is a city full of cars, and, as in GTA, any of them can be hijacked and driven. They felt good. Half an hour into the game, I unlocked nitrous boosts – for all vehicles. My already-quick cars went faster. They felt great. An hour into the game, I unlocked super jumps. Holding the spacebar would power-up a leap to get me halfway up a tower-block. It felt fantastic.

Two hours in, I could run faster than cars. It felt brilliant. Three hours in, I'd unlocked a glide move that meant I could float between objectives like a disgusting flying squirrel. It felt amazing.

Ten hours in and I barely needed to touch the ground. My favourite way to get to a story mission-marker was to sprint to Steelport's central island, bound up the tallest skyscraper while charging an upgraded tier three superjump, then leap off and glide toward my objective. Fifty storeys above it, I'd turn myself into a human missile through an upgradeable ability and slam to the ground with a powerful shockwave. Pedestrians and cars would careen away from my impact point, and I'd saunter the few feet to my destination in luminous pink high heels. It felt ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ glorious.

There's a full customisation system for all the cars, in addition to pilotable alien hoverbikes, UFOs and attack helicopters. Any minor inconvenience I had, I found stripped away by an upgrade. Glowing blue collectibles hidden on buildings and bridges around the city let me upgrade my movement capabilities, as well as a suite of four powers that include ice blasts and telekinesis. I found myself entering mini-trances and collecting these blue orbs for ten, fifteen minutes at a time, revelling in the joy of superpowered movement and the camp little yelp my character produced whenever he collected one.
Simulated Steelport's shops can be hacked to provide new clothes and weapon options, as well as turning the local populace to the Saints' side. Towers can be climbed and turned from angry alien red to calm blue. These missions are structured further by your crew, who'll ask you to perform certain tasks to 'destabilise' the simulation.

Some of these missions are weak: clearing waves of foes gets tiresome when they take too long to turn up, and the Audiosurf minigame goes on too long. Others are inspired, particularly the destruction jobs where you're given the keys to a tank, and the insurance fraud schemes, where you purposefully ragdoll yourself into traffic to earn points.

But it's the story missions that are the strongest, using characters from the three previous games to make them bombastic, funny and imaginative. The simulated setting lets SRIV play wherever it wants to, the standout for me being a base infiltration in the Metal Gear Solid vein that forced me to shoot out every light source in the facility – and the line “that light had a family.” The setting also enables the game to cast its staggering level of violence in an acceptable light. Enemies, aliens, pedestrians: all of them simulations to be suplexed onto the concrete by one of your ludicrous melee moves and left to fade back into imaginary numbers.

Saints Row IV is a game that's comfortable with itself. It's solved how to tie callous violence to a character you actually want to inhabit by means of a narrative device, it's solved fiddly movement by an intoxicating set of movement mechanics, and it's solved the leery, exploitative tone of previous sequels through genuine affection for its cast and equality of player characters – man, woman or toilet, all can wield a giant purple dildo bat. It's a vast, mechanically joyful game, the result of chucking all the fun and freedom of gaming into the same city.

Saints Row was born of Grand Theft Auto, but although both feature open cities and freeform violence, they've diverged. Grand Theft Auto is desperate to be a film, to be satire, to be an experience. Saints Row IV wants to be a game, and by showing its heartfelt love for the medium, it's become something wonderful.

If you've heard of Paladins: Champions of the Realm, no doubt you've also heard the inevitable Overwatch comparisons and criticisms from the keyboard warriors of the world, and in some ways it was always going to happen considering the colourful art style and the fact that both sit firmly in the hero shooter genre, but there are elements like player customisation that really do set Paladins apart from other hero shooters. The game entered early access back in September 2016 and has since then been tweaking and changing things as time went by and more people came on board, meaning lots of player feedback too, and now we have the full release to sink our teeth into.

Let's start by giving you the basic rundown of what happens at the beginning of each match. First off you select a hero, and then you choose what's called a Talent, meaning bonuses that increase the effect or potency of one of your abilities. Afterwards, you choose your Loadout, which is essentially a set of five cards that also contain their own effects, and then you're dropped into the game to start playing.

And with that comes what may be a sticking point for some people, and that's the added bells and whistles that new players might find a little intimidating at the start. If you're jumping in expecting a simple drop-in-and-play approach, picking a Talent and a Loadout might be a little confusing, which is why we'd advise training before actually facing the other players in the world.

Newcomers might also find the main menu a little intimidating as well, as you there are daily rewards, quests, Battle Pass, and a store to find your way through, but like with everything else, with time you'll realise that these are just more options to spice up your game. The quests, for instance, offer incentives for extra XP and coins to spend in the store, while the Battle Pass offers regular incentives each week, although you have to pay for it (Fortnite players will be familiar with this model).

In regards to the Store, there's plenty on offer here too, including a Champion Pack for £24.99, unlocking all current and future Champions (characters); the Season Pass for £32.99, featuring all Battle Passes for the year; and a Digital Deluxe edition for £37.49, featuring the Season Pass and Champion pack. Of course on top of that there are skins, mounts, sprays, announcers, poses, and more to unlock, as well as crates to purchase containing these items, and while we won't get into the discussion around loot boxes, it's important to note that this isn't a pay-to-win setup, as these are purely cosmetic.

Speaking of pay-to-win, much ado was made about the card system introduced last year, which some accused of being pay-to-win, but that's been removed as of a few months ago, meaning that instead there's now a deck building system which allows you to tailor your character to your own playstyle. Talents, for example, are unlocked for free by earning XP and advancing in the game, while the Loadouts allow you to distribute up to 15 points over five cards to make a deck that suits you, depending on the different bonuses on each card. With each Champion Card being free, this is a far better system than the one we saw before in the one accused of being pay-to-win, and it really allows you to deeply customise how you play based on your personal preference.

So now that we've thoroughly laid out the structure and the extras of the game, how does it play? Well, when booting it up you have the choice between either DeathMatch, Siege, or Ranked, although as with other shooters you'll need to reach a certain level before entering into the battlefield of the latter. Deathmatch speaks for itself, revolving around game modes such as Team Deathmatch and another that has you all vie for control over a zone on the map. Siege, on the other hand, works like the Payload in Overwatch (we're sorry, it was the easiest comparison), so teams try to control a point before pushing a moving target towards an end-goal.

These modes won't be too shocking for most players, and the simplicity is sort of the joy. With a lot of things to choose from around the outside, when you're actually in the game the premise is always pretty straightforward, which allows players to easily know what they're doing, regardless of their level of ability. If newbies find a hero they're good with, they could potentially top the leaderboard in their first game, for example.

When the going gets tough and you face experienced opposition, then team composition comes into play. Heroes are split into Front Line, Flank, Damage, and Support classes, and it's only by balancing your team that you'll get the best results. Someone like Fernando (a Front Line) with a shield will be useful when defending a point, for instance, while Androxus or Lex (Flanks) will be useful to get around the opposition to deliver a quick punch. Again, not too complicated for people who've played shooters - especially hero shooters - before, but it's worth mentioning since it adds another layer of depth to the affair.

As for the Champions themselves, we really enjoyed experimenting with them, and there's a ton of creativity on offer. Our favourite, for instance, was Mal'Damba, who fired shots out of a snake, and when he reloaded he threw the old snake at the opposition which stuns them. Whether it be visually or in terms of their in-game offerings, there's a ton of variety in here to choose from, and during our time playing we didn't get the sense that any was picked more than the others, nor that there was any imbalance, which has no doubt been helped by the game's lengthy stay in early access.

With five different Champions running around the screen injecting colourful attacks into the mix, matches often become chaotic and frantic, but that's a good thing and especially engrossing when you're all fighting over the capture points. Maps are intelligently designed too, with various bottlenecks forcing people together and different avenues that allow Flanks to shine, but we have to say that some maps (like Trade District) felt a bit too big and aimless, as we were often wandering around wondering where people were when playing TDM.

Each Champion of course handles differently, but in terms of the gunplay in general, we felt hat everything was as it should be; satisfying to handle with each weapon feeling unique. The slower weapons like Pip's guns that fire potions felt light, for example, while the heavyweights like Drogoz' rockets felt heavy and slower, and each weapon had their own benefits and drawbacks just like the characters themselves.

All in all we thoroughly enjoyed our time with Paladins, especially once we found our stride and what characters worked for us and which didn't, as well as learning the subtleties of all the maps. It's not always perfect, and it's a shame that there will always be comparisons to Blizzard's Overwatch, but considering it's free-to-play Paladins might just win you over if you give it a try, and we'd definitely recommend you to do so.

For now though, we'll be enjoying what's currently on the table, and seeing if we can hone our skills a touch more.

The core elements of the Counter-Strike series haven’t changed much since the original Half-Life mod emerged in 1999. That trend continues with the newest update, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, for better and worse. Though the $15 downloadable title keeps the core of the series’ gameplay alive, preserving the traditional maps, gun mechanics, and game modes, it lacks any innovation the FPS genre has introduced in the past decade and never introduces anything new of its own.

The fact that Counter Strike: GO hasn’t become just another “knock off” of the Call of Duty franchise is reason enough for long time CS players to rejoice, but even they will be disappointed in the lack of fresh content. There are only a few new weapons. Plus, of the sixteen maps, half are recycled from previous installments in the franchise, including Dust, Dust 2, Office, Italy and Aztec. So, why migrate to CS:GO?

For one, the visuals from Counter-Strike Source have gotten an upgrade, providing updated visuals to the old maps and more detailed weapon and character models. In addition to the Hostage Rescue and Bomb Defusal matches, CS:GO adds two new gameplay modes. Sort of. Arms Race is Gun Game with a new name. There’s unlimited respawns and you receive a different weapon after each kill. This is a much faster-paced gameplay mode than the other modes, since it allows you to jump right back into the action after a death rather than having to wait for the next round to start. It’s a nice change of pace for CS:GO, especially if you are new to the series and haven’t adjusted to its more conservative playstyle from modern shooters.

Domination is a mix of the Bomb Defusal and Arms Race modes. The terrorists can plant a bomb at the bomb site (to which the Counter-Terrorists have to disarm) or either side can eliminate all opposing players to win the match. There are no respawns in a match, so be prepared to spend a lot of time on the spectator screen if you run around with guns blazing. Domination isn't nearly the draw as the other modes are, as you’ll more than likely stick to playing either Bomb Defusal or Arms Race. It’s even difficult to find any Domination matches that are fully populated.

Those that loved the slow-paced, deliberate gameplay of Counter-Strike 1.6 or Source won’t be disappointed by any blasphemous changes to the formula. CS:GO keeps the core mechanics intact, but there are a few nit-picky changes that have been made. For instance, you can no longer screw a silencer onto the M4, and some of the old guns have been exchanged for more up-to-date versions (the MP5 is now the MP7). Also, some maps have had small paths added that open up congested choke points. While the lack of changes can be seen as a positive for long-time CS players, at the same time, it is also GO’s greatest weakness.

Counter-Strike has an incredibly high learning curve for anyone new to the series. Besides a short tutorial that walks you through the basic controls, GO doesn’t provide a real way to ease new players into a match. The majority of players online have extensive experience with the unchanged weapons and maps, so if you are a newcomer, you’ll feel like a guppy in a shark tank.

For the experienced CS player, old tactics work just as well as they did before, but you won’t be developing dramatically different, new strategies for your favorite game modes on the new maps. Bomb Defusal and Hostage Rescue make up the classic game modes, with six maps dedicated to Bomb Defusal and two to Hostage Rescue. CS:GO does add eight new maps, but those are dedicated to Arms Race and Domination. If you were hoping to play the traditional modes in some brand new environments, you’re out of luck.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive takes no chances and it’s hard to tell who it was made for. Source and 1.6 players will feel at home with the tried and true CS mechanics and traditional game modes, but GO gives them few reasons to migrate, other than flashy graphics on a few of the old maps. Conversely, newcomers to the series will find Counter-Strike’s steep learning curve rather discouraging. Essentially, you’re getting most of the same content, including maps, weapons, and gameplay modes that gamers have been playing for over a decade, with only minor changes to a few of them. CS:GO, mechanically, holds up as one of the best shooters you can play, but offers few reasons to move over from the previous versions.