Games

Outside of the ubiquitous Final Fantasy series, there are very few Japanese role-playing games that have ever managed to find mainstream success in the West. But Namco Bandai's latest has done just that – thanks largely to the game's connections to the legendary Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli, who co-developed Ni No Kuni… with RPG specialist Level-5 (creators of the phenomenally popular Professor Layton handheld games).

There has been no shortage of games that try to make you feel like a superhero, with Batman: Arkham City still reigning supreme as the benchmark for the genre. If Prototype 2 doesn’t quite measure up to that title, it’s not for want of trying, and in the process it comes closer than any other game.

Ever since Grand Theft Auto III first exploded onto the PlayStation 2 back in October 2001, developers have leapt at the opportunity to create their own sandbox games thanks to the computing power offered by today's high-spec consoles. Free-roaming videogames where the gamer can essentially do whatever they want, whenever they want within the confines of an open-world, are now commonplace across pretty much all platforms. But few of them have ever lived up to those Rockstar Games has conjured up for its Grand Theft Auto series.

Long gone are the days when Resident Evil games were all about sneaking around dark mansions and avoiding shambling zombies. This latest instalment seems to have more in common with Paul W.S. Anderson's action-packed movie adaptations, with the first 10 minutes of play finding you dodging cars thrown into the air by a massive explosion, and then battling the undead onboard a helicopter that is about to crash into a speeding train.

The role-playing genre has undergone a pretty major shift in recent years, with the Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age franchises bringing things closer to the realm of action-adventure. Risen 3: Titan Lords continues in the same vein, but ultimately lacks the polish that made those earlier titles so popular.

While the previous two instalments in the Sacred series were pretty full-on action role-playing games, Deep Silver's latest sequel has mostly ditched all of the RPG elements in favour of four-player monster-slaying that harks back to old-skool favourite Gauntlet. Unfortunately, Sacred 3 has none of the charm, immediacy or addictive qualities that made Atari's 1985 game such a hit in the arcades and at home.

Psychological horror is a tricky thing to pull off in a videogame. But it’s something that the first couple of games in the Silent Hill series managed with aplomb. Unfortunately, recent years haven’t been quite so kind to the franchise, with a greater emphasis being placed on combat at the cost of the more subtle chills that once proved so effective.