When I upgraded my Gaming PC to Core i5 loveliness, I got two new games with it.  Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is without a doubt note only the best Batman game of all time but also the best superhero game of all time; and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is – to be frank – bloody hard.

Much has been said about CoD:MW2 in the press regarding the gratuitous violence and a notorious level which sees an undercover US soldier forced to gun down many innocent civilians in a Russian airport.  I played the level and actually saw it as pointless as a game level despite being essential to the plot by fomenting hatred of the warmongering US.  You are forced to shoot people otherwise the terrorists smell a rat and kill you, if you shoot the terrorists they kill you and at the end of the level they kill you anyway.  A cut-scene would have worked just as well although it wouldn’t have sickened me as much and make me wonder for a second or two if our forces actually every need to do this type of thing.

What hasn’t been commented on is how hard as heck it is.  I’m on the third or forth level, which is set in Brazil, and I never get very far without being killed by some scumbag’s bullet.  The damage model is pretty hard so you only have to take two or three hits before the screen goes black and the game reloads.  Whilst I can get to cover, I get pinned down and immediately surrounded.  I’m all for realism but this is taking it a bit far.  Yes, I know that I’d be a bit pants in a fire-fight, but I don’t want to pay money for what is, after all, entertainment and have this demonstrated to me.

For Christmas, I was kindly given more computer games for my new system.  Something my old rig could never ever, ever, ever, ever play was Crysis so I was kindly given Crysis: Maximum Edition which gives you the original game plus the expansion and multiplayer in one little box set.  I have to say it’s impressive.  As well as looking gorgeous, the enemy AI seeks to flank me and surround me as well as searching for me under cover.  Realistic but not so hard that it makes me want to weep.

Thanks to lovely, lovely Steam I have just downloaded and played demos of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Bioshock.

ET:QW looks simply gorgeous on my new card and I can only imagine how much better it would be under DX10. It took me a little while to get into it though and is very much a Quake co-operative death match type of game rather than a facelift of the much loved (well, by me, anyway) Wolfenstein – Enemy Territory. Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t that I hate it, it just isn’t totally what I expected.

Bioshock was another surprise. I was expecting a poop-’em-up in much the same vein as F.E.A.R was and started the game expecting to be scared out of my mind. What I got instead was an introduction on the scale of TV’s Lost and a totally absorbing and purely gorgeous experience. The little touches in this game such as context sensitive help and minimalist HUD coupled with the effects when you activate the Incendiary plasmid, which is reminiscent of the nuclear power in TV’s Heroes, all combine to make this a truly wonderful experience. And that was just on the demo! Cannot wait to get the full game.