Rayman is a name that won’t ring true with a lot of modern gamers. The series spawned way back in the Playstation 1 era and was a competitor for games like Sonic; a 2D, tricky platform game with a loveable, weird protagonist. The game then shifted into 3D alongside Spyro, Mario and Crash Bandicoot but it struggled to capture the same audience. The game was shelved by Ubisoft and was considered a dead franchise.
Then came the newer generations. Ubisoft decided to take a risk and revive Rayman as a classic 2D platformer. It was a huge risk; but the low budget of the game, coupled with light requirements, meant it could release on a number of platforms at a lower price. The Vita, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC all saw Rayman Origins come at a lower price and the game did well as a result. So much so that Rayman Legends was announced; a full sequel to Origins.

I recently wrote about gaming commitments; or rather how sometimes it’s best to just sit back, relax with a control in your hand and just enjoy the one game you have chosen to play instead of worrying about all the others you have sitting, unplayed or unfinished. The one game that I decided to do that with over this weekend was Fallout: New Vegas. The game, often seen as a side shoot to the main Fallout franchise, is actually a worthy entry and, in some respects, a more complete game than its predecessor, Fallout 3.
The game takes place in the Mojave desert following on from a nuclear attack. The land is barren, the survivors are scarce and there is almost no law. You wake up from being attacked with no memory of who attacked you; all you knew is where you heading and what you needed to deliver. The game’s story is one of the strong points and keeps you guessing throughout.

I own the original Payday game. It is a game about robbing banks and killing police officers. It got old pretty fast though; with missions quickly panning out the same way as you would usually expect them to with very little dynamic content, or changes from mission to mission. They added downloadable content, as every developer does these days, but it did not stray very far from that original, core vision. The game must have done well though, spawning a sequel a few years later.

Payday 2 has been released, along with about three thousand pieces of downloadable content, and is doing extremely well. This was definitely a case of the follow up game capitalising on the things that the original game did well, while also expanding on it in a number of intelligent ways. The game now allows for stealth completions of missions, something sorely lacking in the first game, and has an enormous number of mission types and maps that keep the game feeling fresh every playthrough.

It’s been a while since Shadow of the Beast was announced, much less since the last update about it. It has been a while because the team has been hard at work on the game since that original reveal, and showing very little since the original trailer. Today, though, the company has released some early screenshots of Shadow of the Beast and it looks mightily impressive. The team talked at length about how the original Shadow of the Beast impacted them when they were younger, and they knew it was important to capture the same emotions in this remake.
The balance between beauty and brutality was the key feature of the development process; especially when it came to game’s visuals. The game’s core gameplay traits are focused around platforming and speedy, visceral combat. The game looks gorgeous already but with no firm release date the agonising wait goes on. We can only hope it comes out this year.

Bioshock is one of my favourite gaming series of all time, despite just featuring three games and a handful of downloadable content. The first game burst onto the scene for Xbox 360 and PC and set a new standard in passive exposition, level design and narrative in mainstream gaming. Such was the success of the first game that Bioshock 2 was quickly announced and developed, releasing across all the major platforms of the time. Despite none of the original team involved the game was received pretty well. Then came Bioshock: Infinite.

The third game in the series was a return for many of the staff from the first game. A new setting, new character but the same overall tone made Infinite a success. However not one without its flaws; missed deadlines, staff departures, cutting of content and an over ambitious plotline (and an insistence on using too much gunplay) meant that Infinite fell short of what it might have been; a genre redefining masterpiece.