The Last Remnant is a tactical RPG by Square-Enix and that comes with a weight of expectation. Last Remnant doesn’t disappoint on these stakes, though it is a little unpolished. Coming out of playing through Final Fantasy XIII this game feels like a dry run in many ways, the theme of powerful, unknowable machines and whether they’re being used or using the people around them and, system-wise, taking a great deal of control away from the player and putting it in the hands of automation.

Another sequel and another one with a lot to live up to. Mass Effect 2 was, somewhat, overshadowed by the release of the hotly anticipated Dragon Age: Origins. While ME2 is a solid sequel much as with my review of Bioshock 2 I felt a sense of mild disappointment – not that this stopped me playing it all the way through quite rapidly. ME2 is a solid game and is, in my opinion, superior to the more lauded and praised Dragon Age, perhaps due to the fact that Science Fiction is a more free and wide-ranging genre without the similar sort of strictures and expectations – even demands – that the fantasy genre has.

The game opens with a hell of a kicker, the Normandy investigating missing vessels and encountering an enormous and deadly vessels that cuts clean through her defenses and destroys the ship, including – apparently – killing Shepherd, the main character. Given that you’ve just imported your old game details that’s a bit of a fright. Fortunately, that’s not the end of it.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year you’ve probably heard of Mass Effect and, since I’m always late doing these reviews odds are you’ve already played it, or – lacking the luxury I have of spending more time playing games – are still playing it. A brief summation then at the start of this review is ‘buy it, it is good’. Above and beyond Bioware’s existing reputation for creating good computer game RPGs this shows they’re masters of it and, until they perfect freeform AI for running roleplaying games this is about as good as the genre gets.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

We’re suckers, so we bought the collector’s edition. In this edition you get a nice tall box that you feel bad about throwing away, a six inch or so plastic figurine and… that’s it. *rattles the box, turns it upside down* yes… that’s all you get. No art book, no strategy guide or hint booklet. Just the plastic figurine. They didn’t exactly go all out. To make matters even more annoying they’ve plastered a ‘not for resale’ tag across the front of the game box so you can’t even trade in the game. After the wonderfulness of the Bioshock collector’s edition this was… a little aggravating. If you’re going to have a special edition and charge that much more for it you should really push the boat out a little and this just wasn’t the case with Assassin’s Creed.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough