For us normal games fans, Battlefield 3, like its more famous counterpart, the Call Of Duty series, is just a first-person shooter set in modern times. You play ‘a soldier’ and you shoot the bad guys until you reach your objectives.

There will be no bush beating here, directly or indirectly. Battlefield 3’s single player campaign is boring, especially in comparison to the untethered soap opera of Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Only a really bad thing when you consider Battlefield 3 is trying to compete with Modern Warfare 3.

These are top-of-the-line video games, costing millions to develop and made by the two biggest companies in gaming and each have their loyal, angry army of fanboys (see comments below) ready to defend the good name of their title. Think of Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 like religions with the fans as the Inquisition, or off on crusades. Except they wear head-guards and aren’t allowed to hold anything pointy.

Only, I don’t suffer from this faith, I’m more of a science guy. So, bring on the heresy! Both Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 suffer from a case of the repetitions. In Battlefield 3, the single-player mode is still stuck in a ’run-forward and shoot’ structure, occasionally throwing in building-toppling set-pieces, button pressing and tenuous character interaction. Were Deus Ex and Bioshock for nothing? The co-op mode, by contrast, is a glorious alternative alienating the single-player mode entirely.

Sure, Battlefield 3 is a damn site prettier than its predecessor Battlefield Bad Company 2 and that’s probably got something to do with the new tools Dice, the developers, used to build the game. Big whoop. I’m a gamer, not a software technician.

Dice, my friends, you can harp on about how great your game engine is when it does something the previous game didn’t. Buildings blew up in Bad Company 2 just like they do in Battlefield 3. Still, deep breaths here, move on. One thing Battlefield has always excelled in is online multiplayer. Again, it’s brilliant fun.

The huge maps, the slew of tanks, planes and trucks, the various weapons, the realistic sniping, they all make a return for Battlefield 3 and it is good. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of game modes and too few incentives for team-work making the console version stink like a rotten, half-baked version of its PC sibling. Dice has failed to innovate here, again, just cutting and pasting multiplayer from its last effort.

Bad Company 2 was also brilliant fun to play online and it too suffered from all the same post-game issues and accessibility problems Battlefield 3 does.

You can quit or join a game whenever you like, with absolutely no penalties. There’s no encouragement to stick around other than the love of the game or maybe you’re trying to unlock a few more items as you level up. This results in bizarrely uneven matches; a force of 12 who are up against two blokes and a dog one minute are suddenly down 10 men and heavily outnumbered the next.

You can’t quit out to the main menu after a game is over, on the pathetically constructed, bizarrely long, post-match stats screens. These clumsy displays give you a fraction of the info you’d like to see while you are able to do NOTHING but wait for the 40 seconds to count down. You can’t fiddle with your classification, choose a new gun; nothing.

But the lack of decent stats available on these screens is staggering. While you can happily hand over your email address to EA to receive the ‘Battlefeed’ to get extra stats and friend updates, you shouldn’t have to.

Halo, for example, also has an online stats thing, but it also bombards you with post-match info in the game too. Dice, really, this should have been sorted since Bad Company 2. It’s embarrassing to herald Battlefield 3 as any kind of evolution in the shooter genre when it’s still being out-performed by a 10-year-old franchise about space soldiers.

Dice has failed to deliver a decent online console experience. It’s marred by regular team errors, splitting squad mates across different teams and random lost connections. Problems other developers would have fixed by now.

Then there’s the downloadable content (DLC), all the extra bits you can buy along the way to add to the game. So far, the first set of new maps was free (if you bought a specific version of Battlefield 3 - EA is looking at you, second-hand game buyers!). New updates, well, they’ll surely cost money, just as later updates for Battlefield Bad Company 2 did. For a distraction, here’s a nice article explaining how you can tell how much a game-maker respects its customers by the way it rolls out its DLC.

It’s a clumsy title, one I’ll continue to play through gritted teeth (and with a good book to hand) as playing multiplayer and co-op with friends can make Battlefield 3 feel like gaming perfection.

Gameplay-wise, Battlefield is the superior online war game for consoles. When you consider the online gaming environment is the perfect place for grown men, or angry boys, to pretend to be soldiers and act like co-ordinated teams with objectives and strategy in beautiful surroundings, Battlefield 3 is ready for that kind of fun.

It only fails in every other respect.

EDITED ON: 10/01/12. 17:12

The Call Of Duty series has done this a lot, evolving the realistic modern shooter series beyond praise. Until recently.

Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is an annoying thing to keep on typing out or reading, so let’s call it MW3 instead. MW3 is a solid and highly engaging first person shooter. Each level is an action set-piece; throwing you through gun blasting, character exploding, shaky camera missions John McClain of Die Hard fame would respect.

The plot, thankfully, is a continuation of the story that’s been threading the Call Of Duty series together for yonks now. So, if you’re a fan, MW3 is nothing short of perfect.

I won’t give anything away here, and not because, as a Battlefield nut and addict of multiplayer online gaming, the plot passed through my brain like a whiff of fresh bread but because it feels as flamboyant as all other Call Of Duty games. They’re all blurring into one.

It’s just a shame MW3 feels old. Not old like Norman Wisdom before he died; a man famous for his high-energy antics and comedy mannerisms turned into a frail but cheerful version of himself.

No, it’s more like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 4. Kinda cool looking, pretty exciting but he’s only sticking bows and ribbons on what he did in the last one.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, eh? MW3 is a money-making machine, having sold £500 million worth of game in the first five days of its release.

Changing it too much would alienate Activision Blizzard, the game’s publishers, from those they care about the most; their banks. Haw-haw! Seriously, though, Activision cares about its customers. Indeed, it cares enough not to change anything about the game for risk of upsetting those temperamental, easily upset schoolboys Activision has to call ‘fans’.  ‘But what about playing online?’ you say. I say, ‘Oh dear’.

Take MW3 online and it’s clear where all my formative current generation gaming hours should have been spent. This is where creeping around tiny corridors and blasting enemies with shotguns originated. This is where your kill count matters more than the objective, whatever that was again.

MW3 is where teenagers with respect disorders and large mouths perfected contempt for his fellow gamer and it’s where team-based, tactical co-ordination is favoured despite no one really wanting to chat to each other while playing, unless it’s with mates.

It’s also where downloadable content money traps were perfected. Want a green gun? Yours is grey, buy a green gun!

Plenty of other first person shooters can take your fancy over MW3; it’s done nothing to innovate its genre. Neither has its main rival, Battlefield 3.

You’d think by now there would be more to war than running and shooting. I’m pretty sure actual modern warfare is more intricate, you know, with commands and orders and teamwork and that.

The online mode is disappointing and only for the Call Of Duty faithful. Battlefield is easily the superior online experience. Plus, you can’t fly planes in MW3, kids!

The main story mode of Modern Warfare 3, however, is a lavishly exciting first person shooter experience as were the Call Of Duty games before that. It’s an achievement to keep that bar high but it’s obvious now Trinity Ward, the developers, need a new bar to aspire to.

Time to do that innovation thing again, guys.

Confused? So was I. You’re going to need a quick history lesson first, get a cup of tea. Back in 1992, Nintendo, still one of the two kings of the world of gaming, the other being Sega, released a light-hearted racing title based on the Mario universe and its characters for its SNES console. This game was Mario Kart. It was brilliant.

Mario Kart was a subtle balance of skill and fun; from racing around colourful tracks, dropping silly, Mario-themed, race-altering weapons (great for crapping on the other players) to mastering the courses themselves. Made by gaming geniuses, the kind who knew how to innovate in their time, Mario Kart had the depth and replay value most games kill for. Indeed, it’s been ripped off countless times.

And so it began: for every new Nintendo console thereafter, a new Mario Kart title was produced. Mario Kart 64 for the Nintendo 64 (loved that one, many folks didn’t like it), Mario Kart Double Dash for the GameCube (again, not bad, but hated by many) and a remake of the original Mario Kart for the GameBoy Advance (brilliant stuff) and a couple of arcade versions. Each game would alter very little from its predecessor, including tracks from older incarnations, a couple of new weapons and maybe a new gimmick.

Then the DS came and so did the inevitable Mario Kart. Only, this time, it was perfect. With its stripped down gameplay, lack of Double Dash-like gimmicks, simple progression goals and with the quick multiplayer capabilities of the DS, Mario Kart DS was, still is, the greatest incarnation of the game to date.

Then the Wii version came out… Never played it. Moving on.

Which brings us back to the present, 2012, and Mario Kart 7. With three levels of racing difficulty, eight cups in each difficulty, each with four courses, 32 tracks in all, it’s a standard Mario Kart affair.

Thing is, 2012 is a time where, amongst other things, the way we digest our entertainment has changed quite a lot since 1992. Unfortunately, the little Italian plumber’s return to racing, in 3D no less, is bogged down in old-school gaming misery.

Don’t get me wrong; the racing in Mario Kart 7 is perfectly balanced and wonderfully challenging. It’s as good as the DS version, but this is the only quality Mario Kart 7 shares with its predecessor.

The star-rating makes a return from the DS version, but in a reduced, far more useless capacity. Earning star-ratings on Mario Kart 7 is a kudos thing and, while it worked well on the DS on Mario Kart 7 it stands out as a blunt attempt to inject modern replay value into a very tired format.

It jars with Old Man Nintendo’s retro approach to achievement and awards within a game. It’s also a completion thing; most gamers like to beat a game entirely, and why not.

Now, obtaining all three stars for every cup and every challenge on the DS was tricky, not frustrating, just challenging. On Mario Kart 7 it’s wall punching. The enemy intelligence has been ramped up to 11 making tactical racing and racing to beat the game counter-productive.

Worst of all you can’t restart a race. Only a cup. So, three races of perfect driving later and on the fourth you’re knocked about so much you get, say, two stars. Not bad, I guess. Bloody agonising, though, if you’ve already had two stars on this cup for the past 10 tries.

There are also no lap times on-screen to help you beat your best, not that it’s clear what the criteria are for three-star wins. That would be too useful.

Weirdly, the mini challenges are missing from the DS version. Not a crucial component, fair enough, but highly useful for training and getting used to the game’s AI (artificial intelligence). Without it, Mario Kart 7 feels a little light content-wise compared to other £35 games. The online play, though a huge improvement over the DS, is painfully slow to use with limited functionality, but the addition of racing communities is a nice touch.

Nintendo! What are you doing? It’s 2012, now. Games are made to be enjoyed not flung against a spike. Mario Kart 7 excels in its gameplay, making multiplayer a joy, as it was on the DS. And the new weapons included in this Mario Kart are a giggle too.

Still, to release a game this strict is arrogant. There was a time when a new Mario Kart title meant a joyous little trip back in time to when video games were less complicated and bogged down in choice. Today, though, as modern games find their balance and keep us wanton with more than just decent game-play, Mario Kart 7 feels old.

Entertainment has evolved, Old Man Nintendo. Do try to keep up.

The Gunstringer

A superbly presented on-rails shooter about a dead puppet? Oh yes. Set in a theatre, and introduced with a very sweet little pre-amble by the game’s developers, you take on the role of the puppeteer. Your job is to guide the mysterious Gunstringer, a skeletal cowboy, on his journey seeking out revenge on the posse that betrayed him.

It’s great fun, playing a little like Time Crisis or Sega’s House Of The Dead series, you can also play along with a friend. With one hand you guide the puppet, with the other you lock on to targets and shoot.

The narrative is carried along nicely by an old-west-style voiceover and all the while you can see the audience in the background enjoying the show. Twisted Pixel are game developers with massive gaming hearts and it shows. If you have a Kinect, get The Gunstringer.

Dance Central 2

So you pick a song and then you copy the dancer. The points you gain depend on how well you can copy computer-generated people, how much room you have and how ludicrously-limbed you’re not. I’m like a cross between John Cleese and Lee Evans with all the grace of your uncle.

The song list is confusing but that’s simply because I’m not 15. Or a girl. A few classics might have been nice, as well as a bulkier online catalogue for beefing up your song list. Still, it’s early days. I might get to dance along to Ghostbusters one day. Oh, what a day.

Kinect Sports Season 2

There’s something about sports titles on the Xbox’s Kinnect that jars with me slightly. On the PlayStation Move or the Wii, the controller acts as a register of force, regardless of how fast you swing it. On Kinnect, chucking a dart or swinging a baseball bat just isn’t as rewarding. The tactile interaction is actually quite crucial, for this sports-shy gamer, at least.

Still, as a friendly competitive distraction or for a post-Christmas (or Burns Night, considering when you’re reading this) meal activity, it’s an easy, approachable night of fun.

The PS Vita, the successor to the questionably popular PSP, will be released here in the UK on 22nd February, next year. It’s a big deal because it’s the first new games console in a while, in a time where, due to the massive cost of making games, releasing a new console is a perilous and expensive venture.

Portable consoles are usually a safer bet for your top-flight manufacturers; it’s cheaper to produce, to make games for and to sell to the public. Plus, gadgets are cool.

There’s no mistaking the fact that the PS Vita is cool. Damn cool. It’s a powerful little beast, plastered in touch screens on the front and back, regular buttons and sticks and stuffed with multi-processors, tilt sensors, microphones, cameras, 3G (optional) and a headphones jack. Obviously. It also supports PS3 co-op play but, for some reason, doesn’t come with a TV connection.

Take Reality Fighters – a simple PS Vita fighting game where you can use the camera to make the fighter look like you. Eerie, but fun. The camera will also happily use where ever you’re standing as the background. Fancy kicking seven shades out of Jeremy Clarkson in front of Big Ben? It can happen.

It’s this kind of reality augmentation the PS Vita will languish in, eventually. Like the PSP before it, the PS Vita will also have its own versions of the PS3’s top games, even though it isn’t as powerful – but you’ll be forgiven for thinking it is a pocket PS3 with your untrained eye.

Uncharted, Little Big Planet, Ridge Racer, some pool game or something, Wipeout and Resistance will be available around launch. Whether you enjoy playing fully immersive TV console games on the move is up to you and your ability to pull yourself away from an absorbing game mid-commute. Personally, I prefer Mario Kart to Ridge Racer on the way to work. It’s quicker.

Still, you’ll look dapper playing your PS Vita surrounded by folks on their iPhones. Stupid iPhone gamers, right? Yeah!

The PS Vita will come ready to upload everything you do and play onto Facebook, Twitter, take your pick. Sony has aimed squarely at the times we live in, where the consumer is the king in a land created by the manufacturer.

We want convenience; they want to sell us convenience. It works. Only, there’s a problem. How we, the lovely public, use our tech is a private thing we don’t really talk about. Companies like Sony want to sell us something we’ll use but without the proper feedback they just aim at what they think we like and hope for the best.

Apple aimed for the bullseye and ended up obliterating the target entirely. A new target was built. Nintendo had a go at this new target missing the centre with the 3DS so now it’s Sony’s turn with the PS Vita. I’m dubious it’s going to hit the middle – if, indeed, Sony is aiming that way.

We’re living in strange time indeed when the PS Vita’s biggest rival is a phone. But that’s how it is. The iPhone can do everything the PS Vita can do. And if it can’t, it’s not worth writing about, even though it’ll be a matter of months before it can.

What of the Vita’s ‘rival’ the Nintendo 3DS? Well, let’s put it this way; judging by Nintendo’s continually weak European support, the fact it’s basically a slightly more powerful DS with a screen gimmick and that every key title is a re-hash, the 3DS is barely a spot on this new generation of handheld gaming.

In an optimistic world, the PS Vita will sit in a place comfortably behind the iPhone. The Vita is a gamer’s gaming machine, just as the underwhelming PSP was, the die-hard fans will get one and a whole bunch of children will too but that doesn’t mean it’ll succeed.

The simplicity of the Vita’s new menu system, the many useful functions, the download-only software platform and, most probably, a very funky advertising blitz will be lost on the iPhone-casual masses. Good luck, Vita.

Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter began their ownership of cinema goers’ hearts, Russell Crowe dominated the Oscars, we saw the launch of Wikipedia and the death of George Harrison. Fittingly, then, it was also the year Halo was released.

Halo Combat Evolved was, I’m told, a revelation in console gaming. It became so popular that it was declared by many in gaming as the Xbox’s first must-have title, kick-starting the franchise that would propel the Xbox brand into super-stardom.

Now, 10 years later, it’s time to revisit this ancient classic with Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary (CEA). Yes, it’s a remake.

Normally I’m not a fan of remakes, but Halo CEA is more of an education than a remake. It’s a Halo education. Did you know games used to be much, much harder in the past? They did. The further back you go, the more difficult they get. They do! Try playing through Mario 3 again but this time without trying to punch your TV.

Halo CEA is a temperamental first person shooter, dripping in the Xbox 360’s now standard high-definition graphics. It’s a paced, long, plot-heavy game punctuated with a slightly clichéd, video game-typical back story that, even the most hating of Halo haters would admit, has been highly influential.

In the far future, when humans are out populating the galaxy, a huge ring in space is discovered. This ring, or ‘Halo’ is apparently very powerful and the Human race needs to stop its enemies, the evil and highly religious Covenant, from uncovering this power first.

You are the Master Chief, who is (amongst) the last of the Spartans – a questionably-bread army of super-duper mega-soldiers; taller, faster, wiser, manlier than normal Earth soldiers.

Details are a little hazy after that. There’s something about sentient artificial intelligences and the Master Chief is some kind of last hope.

Regardless, you have to shoot your way through fields and corridors (with emphasis on the corridors) until you stop the covenant from doing whatever it is they’re doing. It’s a Nolan-style approach: the more complicated it is the cleverer it is.

Games like the Halo titles work on two levels; you like the story or you’re not bothered by it. Halo CEA plays the same as its offspring; controls, mission objectives, level design, these are now standard throughout the franchise. They’re solid and logical making Halo CEA easy to get into but perhaps only for Halo fans.

If you’re new to the whole Halo thing, start with Halo Reach – the plot will make more sense and it’s a far more forgiving gaming experience.

Halo CEA still plays like a 2001 title, influenced by old school games. There are huge gaps between checkpoints and you spend most of your time surrounded by giant metal walls blasting varying mixtures of aliens to progress.

If anything, it’s a testament to how much games now pander to the weak-minded, lazy gamer or, if you prefer, how games have evolved their challenges beyond simple level progression and boss fights. It’s a frustrating title, far more so than Reach and it’s long. So, so long.

Yet these are testaments to what Halo has done for console gaming and grown as the Xbox’s Alpha first person shooter series. If nothing else, Halo CEA proves how well evolved this gaming franchise is.

Crucially, this is the first Halo title to be developed by 343 Industries before next year’s Halo 4 and not the award-winning, franchise owning Bungie who gave up all things Halo to work on new titles. They’re probably sick to the back teeth of all the Spartan this and Master Chief that.

Still, 343 Industries should be commended. They haven’t tinkered too much with what made Halo so popular, even with the addition of lobbing grenades by shouting at your Kinnect sensor.

It’s a pure conversion that, had Bungie done this instead, would have had a number of charming executive decisions thrown in to bring Halo CEA properly up to par with its successors, changing the original just enough to make it different. Something only Bungie could do with its matured sense of gaming humour and its over-familiarity with the franchise.

343 were wise in changing pretty much nothing but the presentation. This is apparent in the multiplayer especially. Halo CEA comes with a slice of Halo Reach multiplayer, giving you a bunch of new maps based on this updated classic populated with the armour, physics and game modes of Halo Reach. Genius.

You don’t need Halo Reach to play this, it’ll just give you more playing options if you do. The last thing us Halo fans need is to waste time ranking up all over again upon every release. That’s what Battlefield is for.

Thankfully, Halo CEA is an unhampered slice of gaming past presented for fans that have shown loyalty with their wallets and dedication with their free time. Please, though, don’t play Combat Evolved Anniversary if you’ve never loved a Halo game before now.

Batman: Arkham City is just such a game; it’s an evolved balance of adventure, combat, story, character and it’s beautiful to look at. I imagine it’s a lot like dating a female Army officer, I imagine.

It’s a sequel to 2009’s Arkham Asylum, the first Batman game I can remember which follows the events of the comic books and not the movies – Burton’s or Nolan’s, take your pick.

This was a huge deal: it had to exist alongside Christian Bale’s new, darker big-screen Batman yet it also cast aside the mantle of every licensed video game being a load of rubbish. It struck a very delicate yet brilliant balance. Arkham Asylum was above average and highly compelling. How do you top that?

You make it bigger. Much, much bigger. Arkham City tells the tale of Gotham City’s futile attempts at policing a broken city. Led by Doctor Hugo Strange (one of Batman’s less famous foes), the city is segregated with a giant wall. Batman is suspicious and, as Bruce Wayne, tries to do something about it, only to be arrested and thrown into Arkham City for his efforts.

Turns out Strange knows Bruce Wayne is Batman, or the Batman if that’s how you flow, and he wants to blow up Arkham City, cleaning the place up for good. He’s mad, hence the name.

From the start, Arkham City sets the bar very high, throwing you into the action via the opening sequences in a fashion so effortlessly cool and seamless you know the makers, Rocksteady, are masters of their medium.

The pace never falters, building your skill set, just as with its predecessor, and teaching you Batman’s many, many bat-skills. Even the most ham-fisted among you will dart The World’s Greatest Detective around like a pro, the skilled among you will relish the ballet of kicking the crap out of an army of bad guys single-handed and look awesome doing it.

Arkham City is very similar to Arkham Asylum; the controls are identical, thankfully, visually it’s consistent but, most importantly, the learning curve and structure are the same. This is game engineering at its finest; if it aint broke don’t improve it. Purely from a gameplay perspective, having played Arkham Asylum before Arkham City is a huge help. Or, perhaps, any other game.

We live in a time where games like Arkham City are rife. Just Cause, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, they’re all very similar in gameplay, structure and design. Batman: Arkham City stands out mainly because it’s using the most iconic villains of all time with determined characteristics most writers would kill for. And because it’s Batman

The Joker is bat-shit crazy (pun intended), the Penguin is a selfish little thug and Catwoman is an opportunistic scoundrel. Even the reason you’re picking up the controller is a character trait buried deep within your psyche garnered from buying the game; you’re Batman. You must do good, you must win. You’re Batman!

As a non-purist (I’ve only read about three Batman comics in my life), the movies are where I get my Bat-knowledge, with a little Adam West thrown in, Arkham City is an education. Featuring almost every villain from Bruce Wayne’s world, the game is accurate and detailed. Purists should love this, amateurs will simply admire the backstories.

At (and this is a guess) 50 times the size of Arkham Asylum, and (this is another guess) a million hours longer than Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City still feels too short. Completing it in two days, I still can’t put it down, which is really upsetting my copy of Battlefield 3. From the Riddler trophy searches to the plethora of puzzle rooms and challenge maps on the menu screen, via the game’s main story and every single side-quest, Arkham City is unquestionably the most compelling gaming experience this year.

The only thing I could possibly bring it up on, feeling the need to nit-pick just a little, is the downloadable content (DLC).

Buying this game from Tesco, and other UK retailers, you’ll get the free Catwoman side missions – telling the tale of the sexy burglar separate from The Dark Knight’s one. A Nightwing update was also released, at a price. A reasonable price. Alas, it’s just a new costume and funkier moves for the non-story challenge maps – a huge opportunity wasted.

American gamers were lucky enough to get a Robin expansion pack and different Batman costumes, like a Batman Beyond skin. Very cool. Us UK gamers wont see this stuff until later in the year, that’s an annoying thing. Mainly because I want to play more Arkham City. Now.

And so do you, you probably just don’t know it yet. And even if you have, play it again. Go on, just one more. You know you want to.

You’re Batman!

Car games, then, are nowhere to be found on my gaming shelves, not ones like Forza 4, anyway. Titles like Burnout Paradise of the Need For Speed games are car-centric, but those are arcade racers – easily accessible mechanics with a dumbed down scale of differences between motors.

Forza 4 is a game for motor engine fanatics; it’s for ‘car nuts’, ‘petrol heads’, it deals with torque, engine tuning, tyre choices, suspension set ups and very complicated courses. There are no power-ups, no weapons, no shortcuts, this is just racing real-world style. Forza 4 should bore me to tears but it really doesn’t. It’s fantastic.

Forza’s creators, Turn 10, have found a healthy balance between car-fanatic and fans of simple competitive racing – the kind who want to switch on a console, press ‘drive’ and have fun. Unlike its rival, a certain Gran Turismo – famous for having graphics so realistic and such a wide variety of cars  it’s easy to mistake it as real life – Forza 4 drip feeds you the car count and eases you into its spectacular visuals.

OK, maybe not spectacular; the Xbox 360 is around six years old now so we’ve pretty much seen the best it can do. The car models look fantastic, the background of the racing courses significantly less so. Mustn’t grumble though, I’m racing not sight-seeing.

Forza 4 literally drops you behind the wheel of a Ferrari straight away. Afterwards, you’re free to adjust the simplified, computer aided controls any way you like. Personally, I like automatic gears and ABS breaking but everything else on manual. See that? I have NO IDEA what ABS breaking is! This is awesome.

Like a lot of modern games, the career mode works on an experience point basis; the more you earn the more cars you can buy. You’re also awarded cars as you level up. After a while you start fiddling with better engine parts and tuning set-ups without realising you’re only one paunch off becoming Jeremy Clarkson.

Talking of which, Forza 4 has taken the planet’s Top Gear love one step further than the ‘rival’ and its efforts by filling the game with commentary on certain cars by the aforementioned Mr Clarkson. There’s also the Top Gear test track, the reasonably priced car and, as a separate download, the Top Gear car-football pitch. More than that, Forza 4’s presentation is remarkably Top Gear, almost like Turn 10 pinched the show’s designers.

Still, it should save the BBC a lot of money producing their own car-nutter racing title and, you know what, it feels like a nice touch; it’s personal. It adds a warmth to Forza’s stark CGI racing tracks and sterile engine mechanics.

Having found my perfect driving set up and, after a few long yet enjoyable racing sessions, the intricacies of Forza’s car fleet become apparent. As you’d expect (or not expect if you don’t know racing actually is), the cars each handle a little differently; I found myself favouring a number of cars while relishing the drifts and the overtaking as I bomb it to the finishing line.

After a while, it’s clear the cars are not the element to be taming. It’s the tracks. There are only a dozen or so in the game, for now at least, with different variations of each. They teach you about driving lines, when to decelerate and just how far to push which ever car you’re in.

Word of warning, however. By the time you hit the ‘pro’ stages in Forza 4, racing is a test of preparation and endurance – the races can take forever and keeping a level head round every single corner is mentally testing. But that’s just another element of Forza’s beauty. This is what racing is about and it’s something Forza 4 does very well.

It’s a subtle learning curve which has you thinking like Jensen Button in just a few hours. This the game’s greatest achievement; turning a car-luddite like me into a petrol-head, OK, a virtual petrol head, and loving it.

It’s a beautifully presented game, too. The menus are easy to navigate, the race options are clear and complimentary to your skill level and the room for customisation is nerdtastic.

The custom decal designer makes a return from previous Forza titles to great effect. If you have the time, patience and a wicked eye you can create anything to stick on your car. Anything. I actually mean that.

As for online: phew! There’s only so much space I’m given to write these things, you know. Forza 4 is stuffed with different racing modes to test your skills out properly. Let’s face it, even the toughest computer-controlled cars are no match for Johnny Human.

I took it online and got pulverised. Many times. There’s a very high standard of driving online, presumably from the folks who were playing Forza 1, 2 and 3 for all this time.

That doesn’t matter though. Everyone’s a winner online and every car is available to race with. This is pea-cock gaming at its finest. It’s about showing off, it’s about good driving.

However, if you want that Bugatti Veyron to tune and custom for yourself without earning 1.3 million credits, you can spend real-life credits (money) on gamerpoints to buy car tokens to trade for the likes of a virtual Bugatti Veyron. A shallow cash-cow disguised as a bloody good idea.

There are also hundreds of second hand cars to buy, being sold by fellow players, as well as a slew of user-created decals to stick on your four-wheeled thunder machines.

Forza 4 is due to have a wealth of downloadable content (DLC) available eventually, from new cars to, hopefully, a lot more tracks. Regardless, this is an impressively full game; stuffed with multiplayer options from the get-go and is endlessly playable (until you reach your skill height and can’t get past the last race on professional – stupid bloody corners!). If you only ever get into one slightly hardcore racing game make it Forza 4. It’ll treat you right.

Perhaps the greatest quality of Forza 4 though, for me, is how it taught me to talk about cars. Thanks, Forza 4, thanks Turn 10. Just, please, I don’t want to turn into Jeremy Clarkson.

Things like grumpy commuters, Hollywood hot-shots like Charlie Sheen or moaning about not having the heart to dump someone even though you’re not that into them anymore. So cute.

Then there’s Gears Of War 3. This ‘blockbuster release’ is the third instalment of an Xbox exclusive, third person shooter series, set on a planet where insect-like aliens commit genocide against Humanity.

You take control of the hulking, great big muscle-men (and women) of the army you’re rooting for, or ‘Gears’ as they’re known. They quip and blast their way through hours and hours of storyline while guts explode, rockets explode and, ok, everything explodes.

Yup, it’s a video game cliché; probably the biggest I’ve ever played. When I picked Halo as my go-to no-brainer console shooter of choice, I expected I’d picked one of the beefier-plotted, hard-man character, drab-coloured shooty games out there. Turns out I’d picked the colourful, subtle, well-acted game with the engaging plot.

Since it’s the third in the series, and eagerly awaited at that (though by whom, I wonder. 15-year-old boys spring to a mind struggling to comprehend how a game like Gears garners any critical success at all) the plot of Gears Of War 3 is quite complicated.

Which is a shame as the plot is pretty compelling especially for those who’ve become loyal, passionate fans of the Gears Of War brand and its universe (see comments below), it’s just the dialogue that stinks. Though, as it turns out, playing the first two games is a pre-requisite for believing the Gears Trilogy is the greatest first-person video game story ever written. It isn’t, no. See Bioshock for that.

Well, here’s a Gears 3 summery; Fenix, the main muscle-man, is in jail. Then he isn’t. The planet he and his team are on is over run by aliens, or two different types of alien, and the humans are surviving like scavengers, hiding out on a massive floating war base (or ‘boat’). Then Fenix’s dad is still alive (who knew!) and he’s a top scientist and then the ex-President shows up like he didn’t run away at the first sign of trouble, years ago. Then he dies. In short: it’s bad. Humanity is on its knees and the death toll is extravagant; it’s a dark time. Not that the Gears give a shit, oh no.

They prattle through Humanity’s final mission to save itself with Die Hard-like comebacks and breeze through the barren landscapes, littered with death and bodies, joking away like they’re somehow aware it’s all just a video game and, no matter how bad it gets, take comfort knowing you can switch the Xbox off and have a nice cup of tea whenever you like. Or maybe it’s brilliantly witty dialogue. Nah, it’s not that. Really, it’s not that.

Epic, the makers of the Gears Of War series have excelled in one slightly unnoticeable place, though. The controls are seamless. Really, playing Gears Of War 3 is fluid and borderline enjoyable, if the plot, design and colour pallet didn’t get in the way.

Running to cover, picking off aliens, reloading and running to the next cover point is brilliantly executed. Three games in, however, and that’s pretty much what people expect. As someone else pointed out; video games mature and ripen with sequels, films rot (generally speaking).

Then there’s the multiplayer. This is top-notch too. The Gears series always excelled in multiplayer gaming with many different game modes, upgrades and compelling play – even if the delicately engineered ‘cover and shoot’ mechanics are chucked away in favour of blasting your foe till death. And repeat.

Gears Of War 3 expands on all this fun, however, with effortless integration of online modes, more options within the modes and a plethora of co-op options. Nerdy, endlessly good stuff.

The opposite of this, though, is Gears Of War 3 having game modes greyed out while it waits for the right time to release them as downloadable content (DLC). This feels like a slight punch in the neck, to be honest. The cherry on that would be, I dunno, dozens upon dozens of useless funky patterns to cover your guns or muscle-men in, costing dozens upon dozens of pounds. Bad DLC management, Epic. Bad.

Worse of all, though, is the cliché Gears Of War 3 perpetrates. This could be a Duke Nukem-style game; deliberately exaggerating gaming’s biggest clichés – like hulking men, pithy dialogue, endless bloodshed, wise-cracking ballsy women you only find in games like this – to celebrate a withering genre of shooter. But, it just isn’t. All the Gears Of War titles are this obvious. The game HAD to be like this.

Gaming is a platform of infinite ideas and at a time when cost and trends push games into the same narrow genres, with Gears Of War 3, Epic does nothing more than cement the baggage its more innovative peers struggle to drop.

Now, finally, The Book Of Mormon is coming to the West End, I’ve been told.

Written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park and Team America fame, along with Robert Lopez of Avenue Q, The Book Of Mormon has been storming my iTunes for weeks now. It tells the story of two young Mormons, fresh out of Mormon school, ready to change the world with their eager, happy ways. However, instead of being sent somewhere lovely and sunny, like Florida, they’re sent to Uganda where they’re confronted with famine, female circumcision and AIDS.

To the likes of me, the 30-something, South Park-loving, Parker and Stone aficionados, The Book Of Mormon has been an eagerly awaited masterpiece long before it scooped up multiple Tonys, and numerous other awards.

Parker and Stone have been writing brilliant satire for years, though lost on those of you who dismiss South Park as simply puerile toilet humour. To me, and other South Park fans, their song writing skills had never been in question, their script-writing genius unparalleled. Just check out South Park The Movie’s Blame Canada, which was nominated for an Oscar, It’s Easy M’kay or Team America’s montage song.

The Book Of Mormon is the platform which is opening the eyes of millions to the pair’s talents. It’s been a long time coming and I couldn’t be happier or more excited.

Waiting for it to come to the West End, though, is a tough one. I’ve been told by a friend who knows a guy who knows a guy that the show will be hitting London in January. I wish I could tell you more than that but, at this stage, I cant. Plus, you still don’t know why Book Of Mormon is such a big deal.

Maybe it’s because the humour that’s been tickling me for years is finally becoming accepted or maybe it’s because musical theatre really needed a kick in the funny bone like this.

Avenue Q aside, the musical theatre genre, from this grumpy media-twat’s point of view, has been nothing but a slew of re-hashes, movie remakes and band homages.

Also, bear in mind South Park’s solid history of pissing people off. From Scientology, where Tom Cruise wouldn’t come out the closet, to toying with the fear of depicting the Prophet Mohammed or the episode where Cartman, in an effort to get back at a school bully, feeds the bully the remains of his own parents, South Park can be very controversial.

So, what of the Book Of Mormon? Well, yes, it’s controversial but it’s also very warming. The Mormon Church has said it doesn’t mind the show and, indeed, helps enforce their follower’s faith. That’s great, but as Matt Stone himself said, ‘If you’re going to pick on a religion the safest bet is probably the Mormons. They’re such a happy bunch’.

Now we wait. We wait for official word on The Book Of Mormon coming to the UK and we wait for the hype machine to kick in and the talk show interviews and the bus posters and the word-of-mouth. However, when you DO finally hear about it, book tickets straight away. DO NOT WAIT.

In the meantime, I’d like to leave you with words from The Book Of Mormon musical itself; “Hasa Diga Eebowai”.

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