I'm pretty sure everyone knows the ins and outs of the story to the first Metal Gear Solid. This is its 3rd incarnation (4th if you count the fact that Son's of Liberty was meant to be a recreation of the first game to test GW... but that's just fanboy nitpicking) and it's still as gripping as ever. Told as a kind of semi interactive comic MGS:DGN once again pushes the boundaries of storytelling in 'videogames' to a point where you could almost call it a film, it's certainly a new entertainment form.

The Art of MGS comic artist Ashley Wood is brought to life in a kind of semi animated way that brings to mind a very well produced Flash Cartoon with far better artwork. Wood's work goes from impressionistic scribbling, to almost looking like blurred frames from the games cutscenes and often looking a little like the art of regular character and Mech designer for the MGS series Yoji Shinkawa. Once the bullets start flying DGN is a real eye opener, memorable moments include Snake's duel with Ocelot and being chased up the control tower by the guards.

Freed from the constraints of gameplay, the story actually makes more sense, Wood fills in a few blanks in the story line such as the reason for the ninjas actions and Liquid's plans for Snake. Some of the extra scenes fall a little flat though, the expansion of the relationship between Otacon and Sniper Wolf isn't really needed but overall the additions are welcome.

One of the features of the game is a 'Memory building mode' where by searching the frames of the comic of 'VR simulation', the user can find little pieces of infomation that connect together into a massive web of MGS based knowledge. While it's a nice idea, it's terribly implemented. It's impossible to navigate around and considering this is a piece of Metal Gear Fan service, doesn't really contain any infomation that any respecting MGS fan wouldn't already know just from playing the games.

The most exciting thing however is that the memory building 'web' or cube, extends to the beginning of Metal Gear Solid 2 with infomation on Raiden, The Sons of Liverty and Metal Gear Ray hinting that not only will there be a second Digital Graphic Novel but there'll be some connectivity between the two. Even more interesting is the fact that Wood's MGS2 comic fills in even more story from the 2nd (and far more complex) game. It'll be great to see more of Ashley Wood's interpretations on the events of the game.

Unless you're a MGS fan, DGN isn't worth your time but for anyone with more than a passing interest in the games it's a worthwhile purchase.

Far Cry is pretty. The water, lighting, explosions and weapon models are all fantastic looking... and the good points pretty much end there. Despite most industry reviews to the contrary, Far Cry is a painfully dull and unoriginal shooter with a few 'feral' abilities thrown in to liven things up a bit or possibly to distract from the fact that Far Cry runs out of ideas within the first few minutes of play.

AI is weak, really really weak. Considering we're on the verge of a new 'generation' in gaming, Far Cry seems as if it's trapped in the previous one. The guards have one speed.. 'kill'. They seem to know where you arte the minute you're within a few feet of them whether you're hidden by grass, bushes, trees... whatever, they know you're there and they're either gonna charge or stand wherever they were when they first spotted you and unload their guns while shouting phrases speacially designed to make you think that they're thinking for them selves. Example? 'He's hurt!, a signal to close in or flank the player? Nope just carry on as you were. 'Grenade!' Get out of the way right? You'd be surprised.

What's even more irritating is the fact that early on, a scripted event with a gurd who's back is turned and later a moment where the oppourtunity to lay a trap arises, suggest that the game can be played using some degree of stealth and maybe even tactics. In truth, you may as well be playing Doom. You'd probably have more fun.

This is made even more frustrating after playing MGS3 where the player was able to hide in foliage that moved as they crawled through it. Far Cry instead has all the environmental interactivity of astroturf. You can walk through bushes like they weren't there, and they may as well not be since they don't hide you from the omnipotent guard's AI.

Things are plodding along averagely, even starting to pick up with some of the abilities you get, when all of a sudden, the cancer of the modern videogaming era manifests itself... EXPLODING ZOMBIE THINGS WITH GUNS THAT RUN AND SCREAM. Thanks a lot Halo. Far Cry decides to shoot itself in both feet and pull out its teeth. Nice move Guys, you just snatched defeat from the jaws of mediocraty.

Well it's all downhill from there.

Oh there's a mapmaker, and multiplayer, and splitscreen. But the game's got me so angry I'm going to sell it.

When Paul Smith of Maximo Park (or whatever his name is) appears on TV wearing a trilby looking smug and tells you that you should be listening to Field Music, your immerdiate response is to avoid them like the plague. Well mine is.

If you were as unforgivably stupid as I was however, you'll miss out on one of the very few genuinely interesting bands left in this country. Field music are effortlessly charming, sensitive and intellegent if not always coherent.

The only real problem I have with the album is they suffer from the same lyrical vagueness that plagues most North Eastern bands like The Futureheads and Maximo Park, verses often bumble along in a clumsy manner with no real direction, as far as words go that is. It's just a slight shame when everything else is so good and to be fair its nice not to hear songs about going out on Friday night and drinking and having a fight or something.

Musically they know exactly where they're going. Field music thankfully ignore all the John Lennon influences so beloved by Britpop and instead take more from John's much maligned, animal loving, thumb's upping writing partner. No not Yoko. All the parts of the Beatles that everyone ignored 'cause they weren't cool are revived with twinges of the aforementioned Futureheads and a general post punkiness.

The use of strings is really impressive since they manage to avoid sounding 'epic' or 'like embrace'... ie pathetic and emasculated. Stand out tracks include 17, Pieces and the final track 'You're so Pretty' which is frankly amazing...

BUY!

Canada is better than us. If the world is a school playground then Canada has just stolen the UK's girlfriend by being better and cooler, and who cares? The UK wasn't treating her right!

As if to flex the national musical muscle, nearly all of the best artists in the country gang together to form Broken Social Scene and create an album of utter brilliance. They're kind of like the Justice League of Canada except without Spandex. I could pick out individual songs but it'd just read like the tracklisting with me gushing between each one, so I won't bother.

And just to make us look worse, if you follow the threads of the collaborators you'll only find more and more astonishing albums; 'Let it Die' by Feist, 'Folkloric Feel' Apostle of Hustle, Both Stars albums, By Divine Right - Also have a look at 'Reverie Sound Revue' since Lisa Lobsinger is now a full time member of BSS.

If I was going to pick out one problem with the album it's the fact that I will never be able to join the band firstly because I'm not from Canada and secondly because I have no talent. But I can dream can't I?

The original Zone of the Enders was (unfairly) most famous for housing a demo of the hotly anticipated Metal Gear Solid 2, lots of people bought the game with no real intention of playing it half as much as they intended to play 'Sons of Liberty', what they missed out on was an innovative but highly flawed game with a story that was below parr for producer Hideo Kojima.

It's sequel arrived with no such fanfare but is ironically one of the best games on the PS2 and possibly better than 'Sons of Liberty'... that's right I said it.

For a start ZOE 2nd Runner is gorgeous. Gone are the bland environments of the original and now the space colonies shimmer and pulse with electricity (or is it metetron, whatever). Yoji Shinkawa's Mech design is as distinctive, and quite frankly cool, as you'd expect but now the whole game benefits from subtle Cell shading effects that really captures the Anime vibe that the series goes for. You won't find a better use of this technique on any other game.

FMV's are replaced with Manga-esque videos that are infinitley better than the original partly because (once again) they just look cool but also because of new Playable Character Dingo who's a little tougher than Leo his predecessor.

Gameplay too has been taken up several notches. The temptation to button mash in the original lead to encounters becoming repetative - here that's not a problem. Nearly every enemy that comes at you requires a different strategy, whether that's grabbing it's limp body as a shield, throwing it into walls, throwing projectiles at it or just getting up close and personal with the sword. And everything happens at once, very fast. You wonder how the PS2 can manage it considering the number of enemies on screen and the fact that it looks fantastic.

Boss Battles are uniformly brilliant too but you'd come to expect that from Kojima, no? In fact the entire game seems to be more geared towards set piece after set piece so it never gets boring.

It's sure to be one of the forgotton games of the system but anyone who plays it won't forget ZOE the 2nd Runner in a hurry.

Now that all the dust has settled we can look at Killzone objectively. Halo beater? Yes, because Halo is rubbish. PS2's Killer App? Heavens no. There's a guy with a bandana who'd eat it for breakfast. But what Killzone does is deliver tense, believable gunfights against enemies who may lack variety but are very well designed.

Unlike your usual Halo style 'I R the Master Chief, quiver before my green head and 2 guns!' gameplay, where 'you need not take cover my son for you are made of pieces of submarines'; Killzone usually has you pinned down by hoards of enemies and running out of bullets... fast. You can't take many hits and your guns arent all that powerful (especially since these space Nazis are as armoured up as they look) so you end up cowering behind something hard and peeking out to spray a few bullets at the Hellghast (what a name!).

It's not Super realistic so it's far from boring but it's also not a run and gun game which will throw a lot of people off.

Level design is hit and miss, some of them being painfully cool and often quite beautiful (the snow levels and the mall where particularly goo) but some are just sloppy and feel unfinished, (swamp/jungle levels) Graphics too are often quite impressive but there's some instances where the lack of finishing touches hurts the experience.

The story is cheesy and dialogue could practically be wrapped in plastic and sold next to butter but it's got Sean Pertwee doing one of the voices... that's cool.

There's also a very solid multiplayer that has apparently got quite a strong online following so you're not limited to one on one deathmatches with whoever you can find in your house.

The fact that there is a squad with you in the single player (and the fact that the aquare button basicly has no real function) suggests that squad commands where taken out of the game and this is a let down. It's also dissapointing to see a clear oppourtunity for Co-Op play (the greatest thing in the world) that isn't taken advantage of.

All in all though, Killzone is a very underrated game that will occupy you for far longer than the recent BLACK or Halo but that's because Halo is rubbish. Rubbish... Rubbish.

I expected Black to make me feel 12 again and for a few minutes it really did. I shot down the front of a building and threw grenades everywhere... I beat my chest and admired my handiwork. From then on in however it was all a little dull.

The first problem with black is that it's got no soul. As Criterion's previous effort was 'Burnout', you expect good gameplay but you don't expect all the emotional involvement of a game where it's more fun to crash cars than race them. Black has a pitifully dull story told in flashback (urgh) in a gravely voice (urgh) about a black ops group for whom, who... erm... it's very difficult to care. The worst thing is you can't skip the cutscenes so you're normally asleep by the start of the level.

Characters are non-existent and the only lines you'll hear in game are your usual 'get him' or 'take cover' junk. So any excitement that comes from blowing stuff up is quickly offset by a colosal sense of apathy.

As for stuff actually blowing up, there's a few problems there too. 'If it looks like you can blow it up then you can!' ok then, why can't I blow up that rickety wooden look out tower? And why can some of the enemies take more shotgun blasts than things made out of concrete? It's things like this that just make black seem cheap. I've never played a game where I've shouted 'BUT PAINT CANS DON'T BLOW UP!!!' Yup, after a while it just gets a bit repetitive, just shoot till something sets on fire... attaboy.

AI was obviously replaced with explosions, as I mentioned before, why use smart AI if you can just give soldiers armour made from the impenetrable beard of Zeus. And a hockey mask sometimes too.

Level design is often a little odd, like everywhere has been made specifically for a buff black ops guy to make explosions in, it just makes everything seem more contrived. There's also a lot of levels that are self consciously similar to parts of Half Life 2 (there's a Bridge that seems like it's ripped straight out of the buggy section) all this serves to do though is remind the player that they are not playing Half Life 2 and they wish they were.

The actual level objectives are just laughable, secondary objectives are even worse... remind me, why am I throwing grenades at a safe? Oh right military secrets. Cool.

But some things are nice, guns are big and noisy even if there's no point having half of them since they're mostly the same. Still the best part of every level is getting a new gun and seeing what it sounds like. The graphics are plain but they do the job quite well and it's probably a bit of a sacrifice to fit in all of the particle effects and whatnot.

In closing there's about 6 hours of gameplay in Black, 2 of which are really great, the rest is just average. To be quite honest, Killzone was better and it had multiplayer... it's probably cheaper too now... the choice is yours

So this is it? This is the most exciting thing this entire country can produce musically. Let's face it, everything we've heard for the past 4 or 5 years has been leading up to this point and then crashing in on a wave of hype so big that they were practically saying 'hang 10' and 'gnarly', the Arctic Monkeys arrive and they're perfect.

The Arctic Monkeys are a Frankenstein's monkster of record Company cynicism. They seem like the product of market research, focus groups, bar charts, pie charts and a few too many listens of 'Up The Bracket'. The signs were all there, people are responding to bands that hold a mirror up to their pointless lives. Hard-Fi, the Streets, The Kaiser Chiefs. These bands that revel in some kind of 'new laddism', they roll around in the filth of their vacuous existence with only a layer of arrogane and a belly full of Stella Artoise (or whatever's cheap at the bar) to shield them from the truth, that they are nothing.

So the music? Sub Libertines scrappy trash, a rationing of three notes a tune as if bumping part of the vocal line up a few tones would have cost more money, valuable money for drinks no doubt. You can basicly guess which note the singer's gonna hit first, second and third before the song has actually started. And that Voice! All the charm of syphilis straight from the back streets of some Yorkshire town. Maybe that's what they were going for? Is no one else sick of people going out of their way to sound colloquial? It's so forced and contrived, it screams 'middle class boys overcompensating' or should I say 'MIDDLE CLASS BOYS OVER COMPENSAATIN''

So not only is it irritating, it fails to connect on any sort of emotional level. Ofcourse, emotions are for 'gurls'. These guys probably worked in coal mines before they got signed, and you don't talk about your feelings down there. So empty track after empty track rolls by, one about a hooker (all the involvement of a Powerpoint lecture on prostitution by a 15 year old) one about drinking, another about drinking, one about bouncers (basicly drinking) one about someone stealing your 'bird' and feeling ambivilent towards this. These guys just say what they see don't they? I'm sure there's a few songs already written for the next album that're just a Rain Man style list of items one of them has found in a bag. Hurray for social realism!

Not that it matters but they're horrible people, arrogant, mysoginistic, homophobic, unintellegent, illiterate morons who would probably call Liam Gallagher 'ded braaineh'. They're insulting fans at gigs, acting like divas and just slumping around waiting for their own delicious downfall.

This album is the lowest common denominator of 21st Century culture. It may not seem like it but it's afraid. It's afraid of it's own feelings, it's afraid of alienating people by talking about something that no one knows about. Yes, everyone has fallen out with a bouncer, everyone has had a bigger guy push them around. Everyone has also eaten muffins, tripped on a loose paving flag, drank water, watched adverts for shampoo and tied their shoe laces. It does not mean that songs about such things are an incicive comment on modern life.

May their fall from grace be quick and painful. Whenever it is I hope I'm still alive.

Lordy! Wishing Stone is quite a song. Initially cold and uninvolving, it grows with repeated listens into the sexiest, most decedant, coolest and gloriously dark sounding single since the duke spirits 'Love is an Unfamiliar Name'

There are shades of the aforementioned Duke Spirit and a touch of My Bloody Valentine along with the Pixies but who it sounds like isn't all that important. The point is - let the moronic general public dance to The Arctic Monkeys, anyone who wants to brood in the corner with a Jack on the Rocks should be all over this.

After 'One Time Bells', immediacy isn't one of the words you'd associate with the French Kicks. The Debut Album's odd rhythms and often atonal moments didn't make for easy listening but given time the songs revealed hidden depths beneath the experimentation.

'Trial Of the Century' brings the bands melodic qualities to the fore ground and expands on the Motown and 80s pop influences of the debut to make an album that's a long way from the post punk of the bands peers. And immediate is the best way to describe it, the title track's chorus is one of the most immediate reactions to a song I've had in some time and stand out track 'Following Waves' will have you scrambling for the repeat button. Never has a song had such an inexplicably fitting title, it's difficult to explain in words.

Even tracks that don't initially recieve the same response as the rest such as 'The Fall' and 'Was It A Crime' pull off the same feat as the better songs on the debut album by creeping into your head and making you warm to them.

Its unfair to single out songs and if I tried I'd just be regurgitating the tracklist. You'll just have to take my word for it, 'Trial of the Century' is one of the most interesting and engaging albums of the last few years.