Xbox 360 Previews

What superpower would you have? Us? We’d probably have to plump for invisibility because you can’t kill what you can’t see, and someone has to watch over Veronika Zemanova as she goes through the dangerous process of trying on lingerie. And, as luck would have it, in the forthcoming MMO, Champions Online, you’ll be able to live out these superpower-wielding dreams without the fear of arrest.

Imagine being a fighter pilot in World War II. It was – to coin the biggest understatement this side of Wall Street bosses telling traders they might need to have a few quiet nights in – daunting. Your plane is made of plywood, you can’t fly upside down too long for fear of stalling the engine and there’s every chance some German pilot will have perforated your parachute just prior to your requiring it.

You might not have known it, but every moment you’ve spent playing Guitar Hero, or indeed Rock Band, has led up to one moment. From those first uncertain chords of I Love Rock and Roll in the original Guitar Hero all the way through to smashing several shades of excrement out of your World Tour drum kit during Freak on a Leash – everything was just padding the way for four digitized men to stride purposefully toward a stage drowned in golden fireworks.

Last night we finally got to try out Puzzle Quest: Galactrix for ourselves, and right off the bat we realized that while Galactrix does look quite different from its predecessor, Puzzle Quest fans will find that at heart, it still feels like the same game we know and love.

The easiest way to describe the gameplay is that it’s like a Bejeweled RPG with competitive battles (either against AI opponents in story mode or against friends in online matches)

Within five minutes of our hands-on with GTAIV’s long awaited DLC, The Lost and Damned we’ve already seen a cut-scene where a bloke’s shot in his back in broad daylight, a building gutted with a grenade-launcher for no reason and enough swears to make Chris Rock blush. “We’re going for a grittier theme this time around” we’re told by a Rockstar representative, and they’ve certainly achieved it.

Monolith’s second outing for her of bedraggled hair and psychic entombment is crash-landing in a very different pool of expectation to the original FEAR. In the past few months, shooters have changed.

It’s one of the privileged few videogames that can lay claim to true legendary status – sitting alongside Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, GoldenEye and Half-Life as the pinnacle of what gaming can offer. Resident Evildent Evil 4 revolutionized survival horror and third-person blasting – so the chance to get our hands on the near-finished sequel was just too good to pass up.

In a world where videogames are quite often accused of exploitation, Bayonetta goes beyond titillation and into borderline pornography: featuring more crotch shots than a Larry Flint publication, often accompanied by a teasing wink from the lady in black, Sega’s latest heroine flaunts her oversized assets as she dances her way through her missions, favoring as many pelvic thrusts and split-legged moves as possible.

There are times when a game’s influences are buried well beneath its own style and fresh ideas leaving only the internet’s finest forum detectives to stroke their cyber-chins and ponder what rival discs were spinning away in the dev’s debug kits during development.

You’re thinking about trying out Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, but you don’t know the Principality of Zeon from the Zanscare Empire? Yeah, we feel you. Don’t worry, though, we’ve taken the characters form Gundam 2 and condensed decades of history into easy-to-read blurbs that contain every little drop and morsel of Gundam Knowledge you’ll ever need to know.