DeVuego ES_COR

If only there was substance to match the undeniable style.

So yes, there's definitely something strange about this place - and it's those peculiarities that, for all its flaws, make this Call worth heeding.

The first Lords Of Shadow is remembered as a commendable achievement from a relatively small team working to a comparatively tight budget. Its sequel, by contrast, cannot disguise the resources with which it was made. Lords Of Shadow 2 is clunky, ugly and deeply misguided. It’s a game that sees the lord of the damned as a vehicle for rat-powered linear stealth, and that takes a future-Gothic London setting and then sets the action in tower blocks and sewers. MercurySteam says this will be the final game in the Lords Of Shadow saga, and on the evidence of this cluttered, bloated and forgettable mess, it’s just as well.

There are a few neat touches: the GamePad screen makes for an immediate, intuitive way to manage your inventory, while you can set a variety of shortcuts for swifter access to key items. There’s a wonderfully overblown pop-up for quests and achievements, too, its pronouncements accompanied by a pair of cackling skulls. It’s a pity they sound like they’re having a much better time than you: Unepic is a perfectly serviceable platform-RPG, but Unremarkable might have been a more apposite title.

Scourge: Outbreak may seek to mimic the thrills and achievements of its blockbuster inspiration, but it serves merely to underline their superiority. Tragnarion has clearly put effort into polishing the game, but it’s fatally neglected to work on the underlying basics that were crooked three years ago.

Three times the protagonists gives you three times the number of toys and an engaging, if thoroughly convoluted, story, but it’s not without cost. What Simon, Trevor and Alucard give to the mechanics and narrative they take from its flow: you still feel gated, even when you’ve got all the gear. It’s a deflating discovery, but few games save their disappointments for their endgames. And Mirror Of Fate, like Lords Of Shadow before it, feels like Castlevania, but carves out a likeable identity of its own.

Tequila Works, which counts former Blizzard, Quantic Dream and Weta staff among its number, is clearly a talented and passionate team, and has made a striking debut with Deadlight. While it doesn’t quite live up to its early promise, it proves a great deal more than just another zombie game.

As a proof of concept, Reality Fighters is convincing, but it’s sub-par as a high-priced fighting game, trailing the competition and offering novelty in place of substance. Augmented reality on Vita has been proven as a viable tool, so now it just needs to be applied to a more suitable genre than the 2D fighter to truly exploit its potential.

It's a vehicle that may win over more action fans than true-bloods, but its plagiaristic tendencies represent a shrewd way of ensuring that the series gets a firm footing outside of the 2D realm. 

The inadequacies of the PSP camera shatter what little illusion is conjured. At one point, Brian Blessed whispers. All is not right in the world.

With various Greek gods making cameo appearances, the design team hasn’t been afraid to invoke the big names on the development side either, their simple platformer recalling Ico in its confident use of ruins and silence, and referencing Metroid and Zelda in the means by which its puzzles and items dictate the minute-to-minute structure. And yet, despite such a lineage, there’s never a moment when Icarian lacks its own identity, and never a moment where homage crosses the line into theft. Unlike Icarus himself, then, Over the Top has tempered its obvious ambition with skill and understanding, and the result is a game that’s refreshingly quick to take flight.

A stunt-filled shooter in the vein (but not the league) of Stranglehold, it's a game that takes control away, reverts to how things used to be done, and judders between debilitating combat and haywire presentation.

The game's failure to monopolise on its squad dynamic relegates it to a shooter-by-numbers, and its appeal is then further undercut by the fact that, while Barker clearly has a sense for the grotesque, it is the only note that Jericho plays. 

Ignorance of Pyro's past glories is actually an advantage with Commandos 3 since it means the tension and atmosphere that the series still has in abundance can be enjoyed without the nagging feeling that things aren't what they used to be. Inspiration and aspirations appear to be in short supply in the Commandos camp.

99bullets is about learning rather than doing: each run-through of arcade mode starts at the first level, so replaying layouts and learning to perfect them is the cornerstone of its design. There is a level select to practice any previously completed stage, but this could have done with something smarter – a randomly generated endless mode, or at least some online leaderboards. As it is, 99Bullets is a smart idea, executed in a very controlled fashion, but could do with letting its hair down occasionally.