The power of text is often forgotten in modern video games. I was always impressed by the use of text in Mass Effect, some of the planet descriptions are so evocative and beautiful, there's this one gas giant where every evening these tiny bird like life forms gather in flocks so big they can be seen in orbit, catching the sun as they appear from the sulphurous clouds. Because of the extreme close-up of the planet they showed you could imagine this sight beautifully. It also pulled this great trick where if you scanned a planet or asteroid and found a collectible they would give you a short narrative. Instead of:

"you found a BLANK"

they would give you:

"You picked up a signal from a derelict hull that was orbiting the planet, Officer Presley lead a small investigation team who found a Turian vessel that had seen heavy conflict. A data disk was recovered. Tali decoded the disc and found it contained one of Matriach Dilinaga's writings."

Unfortunately in the sequel they made each planet more of a silly mini game rather than a place of mystery...

For me Bayonetta represents a certain kind of pulp quality that the art house Japanese developers have mastered, whereas the western developers are still chasing their golden cinema. A great example is the wonderful No More Heroes. It throws around pulp imagery from star wars to tarantino (who looks conventional in comparison) and unities it all with a wonderfully ridiculous plot, a t-shirt obsession and insane blood fountains. Bayonetta does the same; the first time an enemy appears they are accompanied by a classification scene in a giant library, bayonetta's shadow shows invisible tattered butterfly wings, her strange fantasy outfit is accompanied by Armani styled classic glasses. In the same way that Suda 51's insane experiments in postmodern videogame craft are not extensions of japanese pop culture but reactions to it, Bayonetta lies on the other side of that important boundary, a reaction to the hentai, sexualisation and sub-pornographic material that people want to place it alongside.

This combination of garish flair and intelligent design is what makes the few great art house Japanese studios an asset to gaming, they understand that at their base videogames are a flamboyant and tacky medium, filled with cheap tricks and flashing lights and to this end they build games with aesthetics that take this and run with it. And what lies beneath this shell of kinder surprise plastic? a beating heart of pure unadulterated gameplay.

I guess you are right, those are certainly the games on my best ever lists...

I agree wholeheartedly. I used to expect games to get a lower score in Edge and this 8 completely sits with their score structure in isolation, but in comparison to the slew of 9's and 10's it just doesn't follow. It seems like EDGE has ended up in the same bag as a lot of others, where only the top third of the scoring system is being used. But despite the scores the reviews are as well written as ever, its just I usually expect EDGE to offer some insight that other magazines don't.

Left 4 dead 2, ODST, both reviews made the games sound worse than this and both ended in a 9. I am slowly seeing that scoring for videogames gets more and more non-sensical, especially as the values are never relative. Be a man EDGE, drop scores alltogether, or at least convert to an out of 5 system.

And how about some completion notes...

http://kotaku.com/5405800/assassins-creed-ii-review-a-season-for-masterp...

EDIT: Also if i read another review that compares the sword fighting of ACII to the fist fighting of Batman I will go mad, am I the first to suggest they might be attempting different things?