Where are all the cowboy games? Bald marines seeking crouch-level cover emerge from the shadowy, inexplicably-brown wastes of the industry’s finest on a weekly basis, whilst the sheer brutality and unique charisma of the western era has gone largely ignored. Thankfully, Rockstar have kicked down that paticular door recently, with the fantastic Red Dead Redemption, so hopefully many more devs will step up and give us more adventures in this interesting setting!

Hopefully, they’ll be better than this game.

The Great Giana Sisters is a Super Mario Bros. ripoff. THERE I SAID IT. Course, this is not some startling new revelation: The original game came out in 1987, and lasted all of five minutes before Nintendo swarmed upon it like a pack of angry wildebeest. 20-something years later, the game returned in a new form on the DS and iPhone, somehow managing to avoid Nintendo’s wandering eye despite once again leaping into their kitchen, eating all their food, and probably pooping in the fireplace.

When it was announced that Bethesda, a studio with many years of experience in medieval fantasy RPGs, would be resurrecting the long dormant cult classic series Fallout, fanboys all over the internet swept into a violent fury that the series’ dead, long bankrupt creators would not be doing the job. The rage only increased upon the revelation that it would not be an isometric, turn based game running at 640×480 like the originals, but a high resolution 3D game like Oblivion. But while the accusations that Fallout 3 would just be a pallete shift of Beth’s previous game increased, the studio had learned from past mistakes, and delivered a RPG tour de force that, while far from perfect, is still a great way to while away the hours.

This game has gotten a decent amount of flak from the press and the fans – scores roughly average at 75 and the multiplayer has been widely panned – but there’s still a decent amount of enjoyment to be wrung out of the latest installment of The Only FPS Franchise That Can Stake An Accurate Claim To Possibly Being Older Than Prostitution.

Well, it’s Halo. Sure you play as (several) different protagonists, and Bungie remembered to turn fall damage on for the first time in 8 years, and there’s an element of exploration between missions, but it’s still Halo, and you’re still fighting the exact same enemies with the exact same weapons. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is entirely up to you.