We’re not one to talk about other sites, but there’s something strange going on over at GameSpot. The US reviews editor, Jeff Gerstmann, has left, apparently due to an argument surrounding his review of Kane & Lynch.

There are all sorts of rumours flying around. Eurogamer are claiming that a source “close to the editorial team” says the row is focused on the tone of the review, the contents of which were edited after Gerstmann submitted the original piece. The score is thought to have been left unchanged, however.

Eidos have been advertising heavily on the GameSpot site of late, and are thought to have been unhappy at the review. Kotakueven went so far as to claim that Edios threatened to pull the ads unless something was done.

Unfortunately, CNet (the owners of GameSpot) have refused to comment.

Some games catch you completely unawares, and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is one of those games. When I initially heard about it at some games show or another, I was ready to write it off as “some game that looks a bit like Tomb Raider”. Developers Naughty Dog have been limited to Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter games mostly, so a game like this is uncharted territory for them – no pun intended. So it’s quite a pleasant surprise to find out that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is the best thing on the PlayStation 3 and one of the most impressive games I’ve played in recent years.

Basically Uncharted is like an exceptionally good Indiana Jones game, mixing elements of Tomb Raider and Resident Evil with the ‘duck ‘n cover’ shooting mechanics of Gears of War. If you want to go over the top with the comparisons, it’s also a bit like Half Life 2 and Goldeneye. I forget how exactly it’s like Goldeneye, just that shooting people in the groins has a similar feeling and it’s one of the very few games I’ve compulsively played and replayed since Goldeneye. That’s either a stupendous achievement or just shows how bitter and negative my view of games in general has been in the last ten years.

Uncharted’s Indiana Jones roots aren’t just in the gameplay and nazi gold references, but in the game’s cinematic presentation. Entertaining film quality cutscenes seamlessly blend with gameplay and make the whole thing feel like a playable 1980s treasure hunting movie, complete with over the top character acting and not entirely annoying sidekicks. The brilliant audio – from the voice acting to the orchestral soundtrack – really adds to the atmosphere. This is one of the first times where it feels as if games are really starting to blend with films, admittedly 80s B movies, but better than anything else the games industry has offered so far.

The game’s title pretty much sums up the aim of the story – your character Nathan Drake is a supposed ancestor of Sir Francis Drake, and along with sidekicks Elena and Sully you set out to discover the fortune Sir Francis Drake was hunting for. It’s a search for lost Spanish gold on a South American island essentially. Along the way you encounter a bunch of enemies such as competing treasure hunters, pirates and Nazis. The first half is all pretty straight forward. Later on in the game however, things change. I’ll avoid spoiling the not-entirely-original surprises, but importantly these changes don’t just affect the narrative but completely change the pace and atmosphere of the game in the later levels. The game just flows brilliantly with the narrative, and genuinely, there’s never a dull moment.

This is a game that manages to be simultaneously unique and unoriginal. Its components are fairly standard – the platform jumping and ledge swinging from Tomb Raider, with the shooting and melee combat somewhere between Resident Evil and Gears of War. Whilst there’s nothing particularly original about that, Uncharted manages to combine those components in such a way that it feels like no other game. The climbing and jumping is perfectly done, satisfying but not needlessly hard or hampered by bad camera angles and blind jumps. The duck ‘n cover shooting system even manages to make the Sixaxis pad seem reasonably decent, allowing you to pull off headshots with pleasure or occasionally just jump out from cover and run ‘n gun with a shotgun. It might not sound too charming, but it’s just done so well.

The graphics – because it’s obligatory to mention them in any games review – are stunning. This is probably the best looking game available. Some people might argue some other games (Gears of War for instance) look better, but you really shouldn’t care about that. The point is that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune looks lovely – from the luscious environments and brilliantly realistic water (your character Nathan Drake gets realistically wet – step in a shallow stream and you’ll have soggy trousers, dive in and you’ll be dripping in watery wetness) – to the unique style created by all of the hand painted textures. Everything looks reasonably realistic but has a nice stylised design full of vivid colours which really enhances the visual quality.

The animation deserves a special mention – Nathan Drake is the best animated game character ever. Why? Partly because of the motion capture, fluidity and perfect responsiveness, partly just because it’s brilliant and lifelike – Nathan doesn’t just “run and jump”, he stumbles, trips, loses his balance and barely makes long jumps, clinging on with his fingers and mumbling expletives. No other game has managed to create a more convincing, well animated and lifelike character. It’s that good.

I’m really stumped to say anything bad about Uncharted. It’s quite a short adventure – taking about eight hours to complete – but every level you play through is entirely enjoyable, so that when it finishes you’re left satisfied but immediately craving more. There’s very little filler content thrown in, which is a blessing really. The game even helps push you on – if you spend too much time trying to progress or solve a puzzle, the game will give you a blatant hint to stop boredom setting in. Thankfully, even when you die, you rarely have to backtrack much, usually restarting within minutes or seconds of the section you died at. Perhaps it’s too forgiving, but it’s also really refreshing – a game that doesn’t treat you like a bastard.

Despite the game’s length, there’s a bit of replay value thrown in. As you collect hidden treasures throughout the game and unlock achievements (along the lines of “100 headshots” or “kill 10 people in a row with a stick whilst hanging from a ledge”), a variety of rewards are unlocked – there’s basic stuff like Making Of documentary videos and alternative costumes, as well as unlockable weapons, infinite ammo, alternative rendering modes and some interesting fast and slow motion modes. The game’s so much damn fun, that when I completed it first time around, I restarted the game playing it in fast mode, watching Nathan jump between ledges like a hyperactive monkey, occasionally switching to slow motion mode for the shoot-outs like the cheating bastard that I am. The last time I even remotely bothered with all that unlockable crap was with Goldeneye on the N64, which possibly shows how satisfying this game is. On the downside, there’s no multiplayer player mode, but then this isn’t a first person shooter and I didn’t hear people making the same complaints about Mario or Tomb Raider. It’s just a really excellent single player game, without all of that silly online fluff.

The guys at NGamer – which comes with a handy Jam Sessions DS case this month – have been treated to an exclusive look at the Wii and DS versions of Ghostbusters: The Videogame. I wish Vivendi weren’t calling it that; just plain old ‘Ghostbusters’ would suffice.

As mentioned here, the Wii and PlayStation 2 spook-blasters are going to be vastly different to the ‘next-gen’ ones, sporting their own visual style. Most notably, the characters have a soft, rounded look – almost as if they’re made out of Playdoh – while the ghosts are almost cartoon-like in design.

The demo NGamer played was set in a graveyard, and they were more than impressed with the controls. As you’d expect, you can aim with the Wii remote, using the Z-trigger to blast, while a push of the nunchuk makes the ghost trap slide along the floor. Like you’d find in a fishing game, some ghosts need a good tugging before they can be caught, although once inside the beam they can be slammed against walls, and environments can be fully damaged.

The proton pack can be upgraded over the course of the game, with a goo-firing tether gun and an explosive blast mooted. You can also short-circuit the pack to create a temporary shield. The analogue stick is used to move the characters around, although there will also be on-rails driving sections involving Echo 1. Slimer will be a playable character too, although it’s not clear whether it’ll just be in the promised mini-games.

Multiplayer is already sounding comprehensive: there’s a four-player co-op mode, along with ‘Busters vs Ghosts’ battles, and a couple of 2 vs 2 modes – one involving catching more ghosts than the other team, another requiring as much furniture as possible to be damaged. Lastly there’s Domination Mode, a take on the usual ‘King of the Hill’ deathmatches involving ancient artifacts.

It’s still early days for the DS version, but we do know that it’s viewed from a top-down perspective and will have a management structure – you can pick and choose missions, then use the cash to buy weapon upgrades.

It all sounds promising so far, and with ages to go – autumn 2008 is the ETA Vivendi are giving – the developers have plenty of time to get it right.

It’s common knowledge that the next-gen versions of Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 are broken. Even on a great connection, the online play is laggy and slow, with action stopping while your opponent dribbles around you and scores. For a game based on timing, the teleporting of players around the pitch is unforgivable. Having played the PS3 version, we can also verify that when there’s a lot of players in the box the game grinds to a halt, and the replays must have single digit frame rates.

However, Konami has released a patch. Let’s listen to some words.

“The free download addresses the online lag and the slowdown that affects the game in both online and offline modes. The PlayStation 3 update also fixes problems associated with downloading the game to the console’s hard drive.”

Has it worked? Well yes and no. The replays are still slideshows, however online play is a little quicker and has less lag. However, it hasn’t worked completely, so you’ll still lose the odd goal because of the broken online play, which is quite frankly rubbish, especially when you’re paying for the online service.

Our advice? Buy the PS2 version. It’s quicker, cheaper, smarter and doesn’t have that stupid dive ability.

It would appear that Activision’s Spanish for Everyone really isn’t a game for everyone, featuring a highly dubious plot containing hidden sexual overtones. Furthermore, the “exceedingly racial stereotypes” have prompted a few complaints, causing copies to be returned to US stores.

Ten year old Shaun catches a ride to Mexico with his Aunt to get his DS back from his friend Miguel, who gets dragged into a limo being chased by police across the boarder.

It just so happens that his Aunt is called Gina Vasquez – an anagram of Vagina Squez – a lady who can “teach him many things”. Once in Mexico, Shaun roams the dangerous streets alone before meeting up with an “exporter” who eventually sends him on a trip with a “package”. A cut-scene then warns of a “new adventure” in the back of a truck. Then there’s a similarly suspicious scene with a talking bull, that’s currently proving popular on You Tube.

According to those who’ve played it, the actual ‘learning’ aspect is worthless. The four mini-games on offer are apparently impossible to play if you don’t know the basics of Spanish, while conjugating verbs and the difference between masculine and feminine nouns are totally ignored.

Sounds like the developers thought they’d have a laugh with this one…

At my college there was a large contingent of special needs students. Among the “needies” we had ‘Lurch’, a boy who was about seven feet tall and appeared to have his elbows glued to his body, ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, a wheelchair-bound girl with a large hump on her back, and The Rock, who used to stand on the spot, arch his back and loudly launch into WWE commentary, with full introductions and gurning, whenever anyone said “can you smell what the rock is cooking?”. This is about the most contact I have had with WWE, so I approached this game as a newcomer, not a fan. A newcomer who is obviously going to hell for being a cruel bastard at college.

As soon as you load the game up Puddle of Mudd scream, Terry Funk stares and the logo jumps around. Everything is pompous, everything poses. The game reminds you of Woody Allen and his horror at “the level of a mind that watches wrestling”.

I headed straight to WWE 24/7, which is the career mode, except I had no way of knowing this. It was an option on the menu, but there was no explanation as to what it actually was. It’s my personal opinion that you should be able play a game without reading the manual, that the game should stand on its own and make perfect logical sense on screen. However the developers here seem to have held two fingers up to anyone who hasn’t played the last umpteen installments or sat down and read the manual cover to cover before daring to delve straight in. There are no proper tutorials here, all you get are some rubbish videos introducing you to the new fighting styles, so you’re left to button mash and guess what does what. It took me a while to realise that L1 is run. In a game with such slick presentation, it’s a strange oversight.

A perfect example is when I loaded up the two player game with my flatmate. He knows a little about wrestling and picked The Undertaker, I picked a horrible over-breasted, over-muscled, over-cooked wench. I was always going to lose. Anyway, as we aimlessly ran around the ring, accidentally walking out of it and jumping into thin air, he flicked the right thumb stick around wildly and remarked “I just want to Tombstone you.” Wrestling fans who want to see digital recreations of their favourite moves will be frustrated.

As I went back to WWE 24/7 mode my virtual phone rang. Answering it, some text popped up on screen telling me to be the best in my brand. That’s when I realised what this “game” was. Marketing bullshit. An extension of a brand, just like a billboard, just there to advertise humanity’s downfall. It is “content”. It’s any other terrible marketing word you want to use. This isn’t going to make you giggle in joy, it’s not going to make you think, it’s not even going to make you forget for a tiny second your own bleak existence, it’s just there because it has to be. It’s been earmarked in a marketing budget. The marketing budget of “sport” that makes me lose hope for humanity. The kind of sport that rounds up thousands of placard waving morons in arenas chanting at scantily clad men fake fighting. It’s like some sort of bizzare, homoerotic satire on our own lives. It’s a family sport in a country where breaking a man’s spine in imitable and glorified fashion is fine, but to show a naked breast is heresy. It’s the nadir of civilisation. It’s utter, utter madness.

Even if you ignore all these problems, it’s still a bad game. The collision detection is poor, and there’s no fluidity whatsoever. You press a button to activate cutscene, then another button for another cutscene and so on. There are vaguely interactive reversals, but these don’t really work. So you just lay there on the floor, pressing X repeatedly, trying to get up while cutscene after tiresome cutscene plays. The new fighting styles are also a mystifying inclusion. They feel like they’re there merely so that the publishers could say that this year’s game is different to last year’s. All that happens is one player builds up his power meter until he can execute a fighting style and then pounds his opponent with unstoppable moves. It makes the whole thing rather pointless.

There are loads of modes, though, and the create-a-wrestler is probably the best character creation utility there is in a game, but what’s the point when the fighting itself is shallow, boring and slow?

Bad news for EA, as unlike its two immediate predecessors, Need for Speed: Pro Street doesn’t debut at #1. It is #2, but then it’s supposed to be a bit poo, so that seems entirely appropriate – if needlessly childish. It could yet be Christmas #1 though, being supported as it is by a ridiculous marketing campaign.

Mind you, Assassin’s Creed – #1 for a second week – is just about everywhere in the media too, including a recent edition of Five’s very mediocre Gadget Show.

Super Mario Galaxy watch now, and it’s down two to #7. Strip multiformat games down to their individual format editions though, and only the 360 version of Assassin’s Creed is taking more cash money in the nation’s games retailers. So, you know, it’s not really doing badly.

What else is new then? Guitar Hero III enters at #10, quickly followed by Mass Effect at #12, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games at #14, and Kane & Lynch at #16. How delightfully uniform.

Otherwise it’s war, Simpsons, Brain Training, football and wrestling knocking around the top of the chart. Expect this picture to become pretty familiar as we approach Christmas.

One moment Midway claim that Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro-Am won’t be released in the UK due to being of limited appeal, then the next thing we know there’s a copy coming through our letterbox completely without warning. And there was us stupidly thinking that publishers love getting press coverage for their games.

The cult cartoon is notorious for being completely random and this budget priced tie-in follows suit. It’s primarily a golf game, but while travelling to where the ball landed you have to fight off walking trees, mutated chocolate brownies, robot hens and other oddities. There are racing sections too, featuring golf caddy carts, in which you can pick up speed boosts and homing missiles. It’s an odd mixture of genres to be sure, but at least the developers have tried to do something less predictable than a standard 3D platformer.

Master Shake – the selfish and sexually confused giant milkshake – is the only one that can play golf, on account that he’s the only one with hands. He specialises in close range attacks using with his golf clubs, swords, a chainsaw and similar weapons, whereas Frylock – a hovering carton of French fries – can spew fireballs and lightening from his eyeballs. The easily fooled Meatwad isn’t a playable character but can be summoned as a decoy, while various other characters appear as “bosses”. 2D pixel aliens Mooninites put moving barriers around the hole to hamper your chances, for instance

The golfing stuff is rudimentary – there’s the standard swing power bar, as seen in every golf game in the last ten years – plus a range of clubs and some power-ups that make the ball go further and such. The cart racing isn’t bad either, but a tad basic. What really drags the whole thing down is the combat which is tedious to the extreme. The two characters move slowly and the amount of skill required is almost zero: just stand in front of an enemy while hammering the X button. The shield takes too long to appear around either character to be of any actual use and after a while we gave up using Master Shake and just sat back and took out enemies from afar using Frylock’s projectiles.

Furthermore, occasionally before you take a shot at the ball you have to kill all the enemies in the area, but they don’t actually appear until you walk over their invisible spawning point, so you often find yourself walking around aimlessly. A counter showing how many enemies are left to kill in an area would have been a huge help. Remember: these are dull golf courses you have to traverse; not interesting sprawling interactive environments. Perhaps it’s a good thing that all nine holes and three races can be cleared in around four hours.

Fans of the show will get a kick out of the cameos and the four full episodes which are available right from the start, one of which has never been shown on TV, but for everybody else the whole “joke” of the game being so random and pointless will be lost.

The BBC’s Economics Editor and presenter of Dragons’ Den, Evan Davis, was this week confirmed as a regular presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme from next year. He could tell you all about supply and demand. So could games retailers at the moment.

This week we had 1,400 Wiis disappearing from Amazon in 10 minutes when they got new stock. HMV’s Oxford Street store managed to hold onto their latest delivery for all of 34 minutes.

The word from retailers seems to be that supply may be disappointingly insufficient to meet demand, but at least stock is steadily coming in. Stock tracking websites are rather popular, so if you’re after a Wii, you might be better off picking a shop and getting friendly – not like that (well maybe like that) – with someone who works there. Or just steal one. But not mine.

Note: Don’t actually steal one. And really not mine.

An abundance of obscure Japanese RPGs aside, the PSP hasn’t exactly had the best of the best when it comes to software this year. Exclusive titles have been few and far between, and even when they do appear they often fail both critically and commercially. Sadly this top-down tactical shooter fails to buck the trend… which is odd seeing as top-down tactical shooters usually work quite well on handhelds.

Firstly, running and gunning is out of the question. In fact, if you shoot before politely asking foes to surrender and drop their weapons you’ll end up with a penalty. It’s all about taking things slow, ordering your two teammates – who have their own skill sets, ranging from headshots to interrogation – to check ahead, and approaching every single sodding door you come across with caution.

Without question, opening doors with style is SWAT’s forte. You can stick a mirror underneath to look for enemies, place C2 to blow them wide open and potentially kill anybody lurking behind, send in your teammates to clear the area, chuck in a flash grenade or just simply kick the door down. Unfortunately though your teammates aren’t too clever, rarely acting wisely without your instruction.

That’s the least of the problems. Once you’ve made your way through the first level, a subway in the midst of a raging gang war, you’ve seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. From then on it’s just a case of making your way through maze-like levels, bursting into rooms and taking out enemies until you reach the end and a cutscene appears. It doesn’t help that the auto-aim takes ages to lock on either.

It’s a pity as the PSP’s widescreen is ideal for this type of game and the controls have clearly had a lot of thought put into them. The unlockable FMV clips, taken from an actual SWAT training school documentary, are a nice extra and the music provides some decent atmosphere. But when you start being shot to bits by off screen enemies while your teammates stand there picking their noses, the entire atmosphere is lost.

They’re an odd couple, Kane and Lynch. One’s a “flawed mercenary”, though perhaps better described as a brutal killer, and the other’s a paranoid schizophrenic, although perhaps better described as a foul mouthed paranoid schizophrenic mass murderer. We get the impression Eidos were trying to stir up a bit of controversy with the game’s main characters.

There are two ways to look at Kane & Lynch – as a sequel of sorts to Hitman, with the squad based aspects of Freedom Fighters, the big thing being the two player co-op. Alternatively, as a game that focuses on cinematic storytelling and mature content (read: lots of killing and swearing). Before the game was even released, Lionsgate Films picked up the film distribution rights, so some people have been making a big fuss about “the story”. It is vaguely interesting, and starts off with death row prisoner Kane being busted out of prison by Lynch and his gang cohorts. We won’t say too much, but it revolves around Kane seeking revenge and such. In the process of the revenge getting, there’s quite a kerfuffle, and a lot of bloodshed. It’s not particularly high brow.

The basic gameplay is familiar fodder by now, a standard third person shooter that involves excessive use of cover and occasionally telling your squad where to stand. There’s nothing really new here, though the two player co-op mode is a big selling point. It’s billed as a heist game, though the single player game doesn’t involve a great deal of heists, apart from a very memorable bank heist that feels like it’s straight out of Heat. The multiplayer mode is quite interesting though, and involves a group of up to eight players performing a heist together – the twist being, that any player can decide to turn rogue and steal a larger share of the money for themselves. If all the players co-operate, they each walk out of the heist with equal shares of the loot – but if they turn rogue, they can try to win a bigger share, at the expense of being shot at by the rest of their team. In theory it sounds like a brilliant multiplayer game, and could be great if you were playing online with a bunch of people you already knew, but in reality it can get old really quickly.

It all sounds quite good, but the game suffers from lots of problems. Firstly, the controls are rubbish. Although aiming with the Sixaxis’ right analogue stick isn’t the best thing ever, other games (see: Uncharted) have proven it’s entirely workable. Here, aiming is slow and useless. Usually you’ll be standing behind cover and aiming your shots, which when combined with slow aiming and an annoying camera, can be quite frustrating. If you choose to run and gun, there’s no lock-on, instead you aim in the general direction of the enemy, and randomly make perfect shots if you’re close enough. Or you shoot a dozen bullets at their face and don’t hit them once. Or you actually see the bullets hit their face three times, but they’re still standing. It’s frustrating. As a last resort you can run up to the enemy and stab them, which is better than throwing the controller at the screen.

The other big flaw? The AI. It’s useless. Your squad are generally a bunch of morons. Their only saving grace being that they can inject you with adrenaline to bring you back to life when you’re lying in a puddle of your own blood. You can essentially die and be revived quite a few times if your squad have got your back. The thing is, you need the revivals – the game has quite a random difficulty curve, and some levels can be extremely difficult and frustrating. A few encounters are down to seemingly blind luck, especially as they require running and precise aiming, which thanks to the rubbish controls, is almost impossible. Then there are levels which literally require you to take on entire armies, except that your squad spend most of the time getting themselves shot or running out into the open to look at the sky. In parts it feels insanely difficult, but largely because the controls and your squad are useless, so it’s not difficult in a good way. It’s frustrating more than anything – that word’s popped up a lot in this review.

For all its annoyances, Kane & Lynch does provide some very visceral experiences. The soundtrack is filled with shouted swearing, psychopathic mumblings and gunshots, and some scenes see your squad of criminals pinned down against seemingly hundreds of cops, or engaged in gunfights whilst crowds of screaming civilians run past. There’s usually a lot going on, with some really elaborate environments – though the graphics themselves are often quite mediocre. Things generally feel very frantic and you always want to progress and see what happens next, which just about makes up for all of the frustrations. It could have really done with more development time to live up to the hype though.

I’ve written about my love of Super Mario 64 – the best game ever, FACT – many times. But I’m definitely not assuming that Super Mario Galaxy isn’t as good without giving it a chance. So to prove it, after playing Super Mario Galaxy for only a few hours, here are three ways that it’s already not as good as Super Mario 64.

• It starts horribly slowly. Granted, I can’t really remember how Super Mario 64 started, but I’ll assume it was better. That seems fair.
• The castle was a far better hub area than the observatory. Selecting galaxies is disconnected and just plain messy, whereas jumping into a painting was seamless.
• There aren’t enough coins. Coins are good. Bits of stars can sod off.

So there it is. My impartiality is confirmed, and Super Mario 64’s position as best game ever is maintained.