Deus what?

We’re never going to play classic Syndicate again. Even though we’re curious about how it would hold up today, we’re afraid yet another rose-tinted set of memories will be rendered a flaccid disappointment.

Memories like risking an agent’s life to run into a bank and defuse a Smart Bomb worth your entire budget for the next month. Or using the Persuadatron to persuade the civilians, to persuade the policemen, to persuade the enemy agents until we’ve got a train of bodies ambling along behind us like we’re science fiction’s answer to the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

And since 1993 there’s been Deus Ex and System Shock – franchises that have toyed extensively with similar dystopias, taking Syndicate’s concepts and developing them with each fresh iteration. We’re wary about dwelling on the Bullfrog original for too long, for fear of realising the extent that 20 years has dulled its cutting edge.

This is why, for all the resentment former Amiga owners may heap upon Starbreeze for turning the game into a modern FPS, we should applaud the studio for not trying to faithfully recreate the Syndicate experience to the letter.

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Brain and chips

The DART 6 bio-chip is a b rain implant that the three rival mega- corporations of Syndicate use to control the world. Eurocorp, Cayman Global and Aspari connect to their agents using this implant, giving them the power to slow time and hack devices – and other agents.

And, of course, the bio-chips are used to make agents loyal to their firm.

Never mind that, though; here’s five easy reasons you should be excited:

5. Starbreeze is the same award-winning developer behind The Chronicles Of Riddick and The Darkness.

4. Executive packages of Syndicate will give gold versions of all guns to co-op players who pre-ordered the game.

3. Weapons and environments from the classic will be used in Syndicate and should be familiar to fans.

2. Missions from Bullfrog’s original Syndicate game will be recreated for a four-player co-operative mode.

1. This time, we don’t choose which agent to control: we play as Miles Kilo, a prototype agent for Eurocorp.

If sci-fi shooters are your thing, why not take a look at Sega’s Binary Domain and its vocal interactions, or perhaps traditional RPG’s are more your bag, then our exclusive interview with Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning will prove interesting.

If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue. Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

After aiding development on Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as Infinity Ward recovered from the departure of Jason West and Vincent Zampella, it seems Sledgehammer Games may be back on board for a sequel.

Looking at Activision’s tandem development cycle between Infinity Ward and Treyarch (with Sledgehammer Games helping out the former), a job posting on the new studio’s website intimates that a new COD is in the works.

Quelle suprise.

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Which, obviously, is nothing to write home about. We were never in any doubt that a Call Of Duty, to be released after Treyarch’s next entry, would already be in the works, but it’s interesting to see that Sledgehammer Games is potentially back.

Call Of Duty 2013 will be taking advantage of the two-year development cycle and though we could easily equate Sledgehammer’s involvement as a sign of Infinity Ward’s ongoing issues, what’s more likely is that Activision will be pushing as much development horsepower behind it as it can.

Sledgehammer proved it could easily slip into the development needs of Call Of Duty, too. No one could argue the game suffered because of Infinity Ward’s troubles.

With that in mind, what we could be looking at with Sledgehammer’s job posting is the first unofficial recruitment for a next-gen game. 2013 is a perfect launch window for a new console and a next-gen COD would offer the perfect accompanying title.

We can only hope.

If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue. Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

It’s commonly referred to as the ‘Xbox 720′, but if Microsoft gives the successor to the Xbox 360 such a blindingly obvious title (despite the name appearing on an ad banner in Real Steel), we’ll start taking every one of Michael Pachter’s predictions seriously.

Incidentally, the industry analyst has recently said that a new Xbox console won’t be revealed in 2012 and won’t launch until as late as 2014, which gives us time to play the guessing games with the name of the new Xbox.

Or rather, guessing which of the names out there has even the slightest chance of being the one. Here are our top 5 most (un)likely names for the new Xbox:

5. Xbox 720

What?: It’s the Xbox 360… times two (*rolls eyes*).

Likelihood: This is waaaay too banal a title to be green-lighted. Besides, based on the precedence that no hardware manufacturer has ever simply rolled with an unofficial denomination of a new product, we’ll stop gaming forever if Microsoft makes its new machine an excepetion to that rule.

4. NextBox

What?: We’re not even going to justify this with an explanation.

Likelihood: Only marginally more chance of being the official name than Xbox 720, purely because it’s not as widely disseminated. But seriously, it’s stupid on several levels.

3. Xbox Uranus

What?: Microsoft’s marketing team was going with big cats or planets, but Jaguar was already taken and the dart stuck in the seventh planet from the Sun.

Likelihood: We know Sony fan boys would love it if Xbox Uranus was green-lighted and it would make us chuckle too. Xbox Uranus would probably generate as much media heat as the Wii did when it was launched… but no. No way, not a chance.

2. Windows Box

What?: The machine that finally makes a happy compromise between PC and console.

Likelihood: You’ll be able to find this one in the gardening section of B&Q. Commercial suicide.

1. Xbox Fusion

What?: It brings us together to play and combines several new technologies, including Kinect and Cloud storage.

Likelihood: We quite like this one as a concept, except fans have already thought of it so for the sake of the marketing guys justifying their jobs (as per name #5), this name has only a glimmer of a hope.

Trust me.’ It’s something that’s often asked of us while playing, usually preceding the line, ‘I know what I’m doing’ and shortly before something explodes. It’s also something that’s often requested of us unquestioningly as we play.

Modern games have trained us to perform acts (usually of unspeakable violence) without so much as a second thought, and rarely do we ever question this obedient state of mind while playing.

This was put to great effect with BioShock’s fantastic ‘would you kindly’ reveal, but, we’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve run headlong into the jaws of death, behind a commanding officer who deemed it a good idea.

Rarely do games ask us to engage with characters on a more fundamental level. Last-gen’s The Thing made confident strides to approach trust in new and interesting ways, making fine use of John Carpenter’s licence while doing it, but few games have attempted such complex human emotions since.

Binary Domain, though, is putting trust at the heart of its story of replicants in a dystopian future-Tokyo. Sent into the decaying bowels of Japan’s capital to deal with the robotic issues arising there, Dan Marshall and his team from the International Rescue Squad will have to work together to survive.

On a basic level, Gears Of War is a clear influence on Binary Domain’s moment-to-moment gunplay, appearing practically as a carbon copy. But beyond that it’s the trust between us and our squad-mates that influence the way we play, and the way the game reacts to us.

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It’s something Dom and Marcus clearly took for granted. As well as bringing full voice control to a genre that rarely communicates beyond our trigger finger, Binary Domain enables us to talk directly with our squad.

Using something the developer is calling the ‘Consequence’ system, the dynamic of our team is ultimately dictated by how trustworthy we are during combat.

Sending troops needlessly into dangerous situations, ignoring orders or conversely accepting orders and failing to follow them through all see the trust drain from our allies. This is visibly represented on screen with a trust gauge; it’s perfectly obvious who we’ve pissed off.

Binary Domain’s squad-mates are about to become gaming’s prissiest bunch of hard-asses. Health packs and ammo don’t come our way any more, and the cheeky banter that continuously occurred during the gunfights of a happier squad are noticeable by their absence.

Keeping everyone on our side is essential if we’re to have any chance against the hordes of mechanical monstrosities, too. How far Binary Domain takes this new concept could have the biggest effect on its enjoyment, but the potential is obvious.

The possibility for some trust-straining moments, procedurally created, or enforced by the story, makes Binary Domain one of the more thoughtful shooters to grace the Xbox 360 in 2012.

If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue. Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

Cinema continues to have a pervasive effect on gaming, and Hitman Absolution is the latest in a long line of games to take a considerable step closer to the visual aspirations of Hollywood’s finest.

There are often subtle ways developers inject their silver-screen inspirations into the games they’re working on, but finding a balance between cinematic flair and downright plagiarism can often prove to be difficult.

Games which aim to replicate the thrills of Hollywood can end up sacrificing the player’s freedom in the process and often, if the ride is sufficiently exciting, this can be a good thing; however, for the Hitman series it could prove to be a step in the wrong direction.

IO Interactive’s series has long prided itself on giving players the most comprehensive contract killer simulation available, with all the grisly details that entails. For many, though, it’s the interactions with the world and its AI that make the series so special.

Absolution already looks like it’s sacrificing much of this freedom in favour of a more structured (and yes, cinematic) set of events that Agent 47 can deal with.

With the unrestricted trial-and-error nature of his previous outings replaced with a much more regimented set of obstacles, it’s hard to ignore the inherent issues this approach raises. This is a step away from Hitman’s core tenets.

Agent 47’s toolset has been streamlined to support this new direction and Instinct is his way of reading the world around him.

Enemies (even if they’re behind walls), the direction they’re walking and climbable ledges all glow in a moody red, and your options are clearly presented to you.

It’s not too dissimilar to Batman’s Detective vision, but it’s an approach that lacks the logic of Bruce Wayne’s tech; Agent 47 is a gifted hitman, but he’s no clairvoyant.

Where previous Hitman games gave players the freedom to take out a target in the most efficient manner possible, this new ‘cinematic’ gameplay is replacing total freedom with a more sandbox style.

Dealing with the immediate threat of a room full of police officers ends up feeling like a more traditional ‘level’ and not the series of open environment-led kills that provided the previous games with their unique structure.

The section of gameplay IO has shown off so far embodies a very restricted, almost Splinter Cell: Conviction style – incredibly beautiful to look at, very cinematic, but, ultimately really rather linear.

The inclusion of Inception’s trademark horn-blasts (bbwarrrrggghhhh) highlight what is happening to Hitman; it’s sacrificing the series’ core substance in favour of brand new style.

Without understanding this shift and how IO Interactive is applying it to the game as a whole, Absolution is one of the riskier propositions of 2012.

Though the return of Agent 47 is cause for celebration, the changes that are being made could render his uniqueness obsolete.

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If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue. Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

Best games of 2012, you say? Well, so far… to be more precise.

We’ll not pretend to have clairvoyant powers over the games industry or anything; that would be stupid, but there are a few games that seem destined for greatness, even now.

Over the years gaming has proven to be an unpredictable mistress, but as we look ahead to 2012 and the exciting games that have yet to be announced, it’s the ones with firm release dates that have us reaching for those pre-order links.

2012 has already established itself as a strong year for gamers, but there are still a number of titles that have already proven they are pushing their respective genres in new and exciting ways.

For us at least, these are the best games of 2012 and the titles that will keep more of us glued to our consoles than ever before.

More games may be announced between now and the year’s close (or at least we blooming well hope so), but right now, these are the best games of 2012 and the one’s you really should be looking out for…

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5. Final Fantasy XIII-2

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Kick-starting the year in style, Square Enix’s popular series opens with something of a rarity, a numbered sequel directly following a set of characters from a previous game. It’s easy to see Final Fantasy XIII-2 is ticking all the right visual boxes, but Square has injected this with some unique time travel elements and a revamped combat system tweaked with fan’s suggestions.

4. Far Cry 3

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Though it’s still a long way off, Ubisoft’s E3 demo displayed a game with its identity and engine already incredibly well realised. With stunning visuals, a return to the series’ staple tropical island and a natural sand box antidote to COD’s increasingly liner corridors, Far Cry 3 could quite easily be one of 2012’s best FPS.

3. Mass Effect 3

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Forget the whinging that’s surrounded BioWare’s recently announced multiplayer add-on, Mass Effect 3 will still round off Shepard’s adventures in style. All the choices and consequences from the previous games will come crashing together in what has to be one of the most complex scripts ever committed to disc.

2. Grand Theft Auto V

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Rockstar rarely disappoint and with the lessons learnt on GTA IV in evidence throughout GTA V’s recent trailer, the latest in its long running crime series should be a tighter experience all round. This means that Rockstar will have ample opportunity to play around with gameplay conventions and anything else it deems appropriate to making this one of the most exciting open world titles in years.

1. BioShock Infinite

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There are plenty of big games scheduled for 2012, but few even approach the scale, intelligence and technical clout of Ken Levine’s and 2K’s BioShock Infinite. An incredibly ambitious follow up to the already successful series, Infinite is pushing boundaries all over the shop. Stunning visuals, a complex story and a relationship with an AI that will fame the player’s actions in ways that we’ve never seen. This has hit written all over it.

If you’re looking for something a little funnier than this, take a look at Gaming’s 7 Funniest Easter Eggs or even the Worst Game Trailers Of All Time, they’re always good for a laugh!

If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue. Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

Trailers, in their own right are a work of art. It’s easy to see that in the movie industry, its had years of getting just the right amount of information and hints to get an audience excited.

Gaming, on the other hand, hasn’t had quite as long and so we’re treated to a range of trailers that try to ape the same sorts of thrills of the cinema, while also showing off that all important ingredient everyone wants to see; gameplay.

As such, most trailers are either too much like those made for the cinema and show not very much at all, or go the other way and present so much gameplay you have no idea what’s going on.

With this in mind, we thought we’d share with you some of the most promising and downright brilliant trailers for 2012. The only rules we stipulated were the trailers had to be in real-time (or an approximation at least), be for games releasing in 2012 and strike a balance between action and story.

Without further ado then, we give you the top 6 trailers of 2012, enjoy…

6. Aliens: Colonial Marines

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You can’t go far wrong wrong with an Aliens trailer. Even if Gearbox had simply copied one of James Cameron’s original trailers and remade it in gameplay form we think we’d be on to a winner. As such, Colonial Marines manages to show off a load scary xenomorph action while showing that the game is sticking rigidly to Aliens canon. Good work, and scary, too.

5. Binary Domain

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Any new IP needs a shocking trailer to pull an audience in and Sega does an effective job within these few atmospheric and teasing minutes. It’s hard to tell exactly what to expect with this new game, but there’s sufficient gameplay to prove that this should be a nice distraction for the Gears Of War fans and a sci-fi trip through a Bladerunner-style ‘are they, aren’t they’ (robots!) for everyone looking for something more cerebral.

4. Syndicate

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It’d be so easy to write Syndicate off as either a Deus Ex: Human Revolution wannabe or a shameless remake of a popular licence, but knowing Starbreeze, this is probably neither. Though it’s a shame this looks to be repeating many of our favourite gameplay moments from Adam Jenson’s last outing, that this trailer actually stirs up some excitement is enough to get our vote.

3. Max Payne 3

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Few manage to make trailers as impressive as Rockstar and Max Payne 3 manages to remind us just why we love that messed up cop so much. Sticking closely to what fans expected of the series, this introduces Max’s new digs in style, showing that he’s lost none of his bite from the move to a new studio and in the intervening years.

2. Mass Effect 3

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Though BioWare have a penchant for developing gorgeous  (but rendered) trailers that show off their character design, for its third game it’s opted for some real-time gameplay and is all the better for it. Ignoring the fact that this could quite easily be showcasing the new multiplayer mode, the quick cuts and deep rumbling sound effects are put to great use. This easily gets us excited for what should be a fantastic final outing.

1. GTA V

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Well, it was always going to be a Rockstar game at the top and GTA V’s trailer doesn’t disappoint. Cramming an insane amount of information into a short run time, Rockstar manages something few can do. Not only does it give you a glimpse into a huge world, but it looks effortlessly cool while doing it. A killer soundtrack helps, but GTA V’s real triumph is the improvement it’s made over the visual designs of GTA IV. For a game coming towards the end of the current console’s life cycle, this is one good looking title. By far and away the greatest trailer yet released for 2012, we salute you Rockstar.

Now make sure the game’s great, too!

If you’d like a giggle, you could do worse than checking out Gaming’s 7 Funniest Easter Eggs or failing that, there’s always Nowgamer’s Top 50 Moments In Gaming which every discerning gamer needs to read.

If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue.Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

Rayman Origins is, without question, the finest, most enjoyable platform experience available on 360. Bursting at the seams with artistic brilliance thanks to its publisher’s UbiArt framework, it assaults players with an array of concepts wider than the gap between Rayman’s hands.

From the world’s first mosquito shmup to gliding through a skyline filled with clouds and ponytails, it’s quirkiness par excellence, with few moments demanding precisely the same skills of players to progress.

Featuring solid physics as well suited to steady exploration as barrelling through stages like patience is going out of fashion. Musically too Rayman Origins is perfectly judged, coming in somewhere between LocoRoco and Sonic The Hedgehog, making anything other than happiness an impossibility.

Quaintly, its underlying story takes place because Rayman and his buddies managed to annoy an old woman, the resulting hours of gameplay suffering from no unusual spikes in difficulty, or drop in satisfaction at seeing each stage beaten and your totals totted up.

Adventure platform gaming – and no, N+, ‘Splosion Man and Super Meat Boy don’t count – has suffered perhaps the most barren hardware generation ever – at least so far as Microsoft is concerned, if not the industry generally. The extent to which Rayman Origins lies ahead of Kung Fu Panda, de Blob et al really cannot adequately be expressed by mere words.

Neither, though, can the abyss lying between this and the exercise in joined-up thinking and boundless creativity found within each Super Mario Galaxy. Regardless of their appearance on (spit) another format, this is undoubtedly where the industry standard currently lies.

While Ubisoft’s title attempts to overwhelm its players with a torrent of concepts that are as swiftly introduced as they are dismissed, Nintendo’s work constantly riffs upon itself, reintroducing almost forgotten concepts for further exploration, like a good comedian tying together their otherwise disconnected set of gags. This is where the difference lies – in that small sparkle of cohesion.

Despite its beautifully realised worlds, capacity for enjoyable replay value and, well, ability to leave players with a massive grin on their faces, the pick ‘n mix counter feel never fades. Or, to render our argument less poncey for a second, there’s a huge array of ideas on show here, but only a couple you’ll never have seen before.

So, this is still the most enjoyable platformer on 360 – by an appreciable margin, in fact – but it’s a title earned almost by default. Though its art direction is indeed wonderful, throwing up moments of stupefying beauty more often than your average platformer doles out collectables, underneath it’s as old school as flat top haircuts and parachute pants.

As gamer’s we feel it’s our duty to point them out so that similar mistakes aren’t made in the future. This is beginner’s stuff it honestly is; Bethesda must be kicking themselves.

You might think The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the most complete console RPG ever created, but here are 5, crushingly obvious leftovers that totally ruin the experience. We don’t think we’ll ever get over it… it’s just too upsetting.

Here’s a run down of the top 5 things that, clearly, should have been included in Skyrim…

5. Toilets
Oh, so we’re expected to believe we have to sleep whenever we can, but we can’t ever take a shit? Ever? Where are all the toilets in Skyrim? You’d at least think players would occasionally come across a farmer doing his business, but no; no one in Skyrim ever needs a poo. Even the woods are off limits because they’re full of bears, but none of them, and I mean none of them, are ever shitting there. That answers one question.

4. Dinosaurs
There are mammoths and sabertooth tigers, so why not dinosaurs? And before you say that dragons are like dinosaurs, let us be the first to inform you that dinosaurs and dragons became extinct at totally different times. Having dinosaurs roam the plains alongside mammoths, as they did in the past, would have been so much more realistic than having dragons. You can’t tell us you wouldn’t want to see a Chungkingosaurus Jiangbeiensis stomping around Skyrim, stealing all the toilets?

3. Cars
‘An olde world fantasy RPG, with cars? Are you mental? Our answer is ‘why not?’ Cars are the perfect means of transport across huge open spaces and Skyrim has loads of these. Walking around on-foot or on horseback takes flipping ages and it’s really boring, hasn’t Bethesda ever played Baja: Edge Of Control? It’s amazing. ATVs would have made it much easier to chase dragons around. Think about it; you know we’re right.

2. Yoda

Yoda, in Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, is as wise as he is old and as green as he is strong with the Force and as mode of speech as he is backwards in. Skyrim might be filled to bursting with colourful characters but none of them are Yoda; what were they thinking? Magic in Skyrim is basically the Force, and Yoda has already appeared in Soul Calibur IV, and they made it work in that game. This would have made Skyrim at 5.8% better; 95.8% better if Bethesda had also included toilets for us to loot troll turds from.

1. Dr Who
Dr Who is a Time Lord which means he can travel through time all he wants. He also has access to the Tardis which allows him to travel through time and space (at the same time), so the fact that he doesn’t appear anywhere throughout Skyrim is a glaring omission. There’s heavy shit going down and a complete dearth of Timelords. Bethesda could have tied it into the BBC Christmas special.

Bethesda really should have thought twice about releasing such an obviously lacking game and they should hang their heads in shame. If you’d like to read more of our thoughts on Bethesda’s excellent new game here’s a look at some of Skyrim’s glitches, part one and part two and here’s a look at Skyrim’s five most fantastic locations.

5) FIFA

Though currently scoring rather respectably, EA Canada’s epic sports sim is in for a somewhat turbulent year, being developed alongside that unnecessary complication, FIFA Street. Aside from the fact that it’s rather unpleasant to be charged around £80 for the full digital football experience this coming year, exactly how thoroughly can FIFA 13 reinvent itself when part of its development team will be distracted for half the year?

4) Sonic

Lavish recreations of levels from our collective youths. Bursting with additional challenges, beyond simply completing a stage and moving onto the next one. The briefest of appearances for Shadow. Review scores: Sevens and eights. If a Sonic title bending over backwards to satisfy our boyish desires can achieve only this, surely some extended development time is needed to avoid outright disappointment, next time out?

3) Need For Speed

Please EA, just hand all development duties to Criterion. Sure, you won’t be able to release a NFS title every year for youths in Burberry hats to covet, but the damage done to the series’ reputation by 2001 aping nonsense like The Run must surely be more grave?

2) Tiger Woods

Remove all aiming assists and controls that take effect after you’ve actually struck the ball. And bring back Hank Haney. That guy was cool.

1) Assassin’s Creed

You know that Itchy & Scratchy cartoon that’s advertised ‘contains 8% new footage’. That’s what Assassin’s Creed is becoming. Okay, so we’re exaggerating for effect, and restoring yet another city remains reasonably entertaining, but the series’ role-playing elements really are going to have to receive a complete overhaul before we’ll be prepared to believe they aren’t just a series of chores designed to obstruct our progress.