Emergency Heroes

Finally, Emergency Heroes has been announced. Now I can tell people more than "We're working on a Wii-exclusive driving game for kids".

It's a Wii-exclusive driving game for kids.

And you can be a high-speed fireman!

'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End' - Film review

4 out of 10

Much like the previous film in the series, this film is far too long and self-indulgent. It has too many characters (more even than last time) and is over 150 minutes. It's a one note film, with no variation in pacing, so it quickly becomes boring despite all the action.

The visual design and special effects are stunning but they can't hide the fact that the film itself is completely worthless. What can almost hide that is Hans Zimmer's quite excellent score but you might as well just listen to that on CD - it would take less time than watching this.

If you liked the previous one then you'll like this because it's even more of the same. For me, it was the film equivalent of Mozart's music - there's so much of it you forget the parts that are clever and it never seems to know when to end.

Bully beef

Rockstar might claim never to have seen the problems with the Xbox 360 version of Bully in QA but I think it must be a crock. It would be impossible not to have seen them. I've hardly played it and it's crashed twice already. Combined with the archaic manual save system, it's highly annoying. I'd got loads of kisses and it crashed before I could save!

'The Manchurian Candidate' - Film review

6 out of 10

Powerfully acted but ultimately disappointing "thriller", in which the thrills quickly peter out into a fairly predictable conspiracy plot. Entertaining enough for a rental but hardly gripping.

'300' - Film review

8 out of 10

A rare film that is actually as good as the trailer promises. The trailer does not contain all the best bits and the rest of the film is not tedious padding between "trailer moments". Based on a comic book which was itself inspired by another film, which was in turn based on the account of Herodotus, it tells a fanciful version of the story of a small army of Spartans standing up to the Persian invasion of Greece in 480BC. It works really well, partly because it is presented as being a pep talk to Greek troops, and so the exaggerations and one-sided story telling are perfectly valid.

It's a whole lot of fun, especially if you like limb-chopping and cool computer effects. The performances are actually really good, which you don't expect in an action film. Gerard Butler has clearly been taking warlord acting lessons from Brian Blessed, and there can be no higher praise than that. I half expected him to say "Gordon's alive?!"

I have no idea how modern directors have any clue what their film will look like. What they see when they shoot is nothing like how it ends up on screen. Hats off to Zack Snyder for pulling off a film of this scope and vision. I enjoyed his Dawn of the Dead remake and now I have real faith that the "unfilmable" Watchmen might actually turn out okay.

'Burnout Paradise' - Game review

9 out of 10

At first I thought this game was aimless, with no help regarding how to find its secrets and no championship structure to spur you on through the races. After playing for over 20 hours I realise I was wrong. It's a great playground for cars, a sandbox of four-wheel fun.

Of course, one thing that does push you to play the game is the achievements. Like Crackdown, it's the achievements that keep you playing. I can't imagine putting 20 hours into the PS3 version but I certainly got hooked on Xbox 360.

The game encourages you to explore and try things you otherwise wouldn't bother trying. It does a great job of leading you past its secrets so that you notice them and feel clever for discovering them, when the game has actually given you big fat hints. It's quite clever and carefully designed.

The game is also great online. Sure, you can race online. But you can do so much more than just race. A big part is the collaborative multiplayer, which consists of lots of challenges that require various numbers of players to complete - for example, 'Go to the airfield with 5 players and get 2 minutes of combined air time on the jumps there'. Also, if you have the Xbox Live Vision camera, you can exchange mugshots and "smugshots" with people that you take down (or who take you down) online. The online functionality is seamless and great fun.

What this game is not is a normal Burnout game. If you come to it expecting Burnout of old, you won't get it here. Sure, it has many of the features and just as much attention to detail and balance as the previous games. However, the open world environment means it is not actually as good as a racing game. Traditional racing can be quite frustrating, with poor signage of which route to take (which is bad when you're doing 200mph) and no instant retry if you fail. In some ways it would have been better not to call this 'Burnout' because I think it has confused some people.

But apart from not being what Burnout fans will expect, it is a very, very good driving game. If you want a driving game you can play with or without friends for many, many hours and you don't care too much about realism or hardcore racing, you should definitely buy Burnout Paradise.