Round 75 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Alyssa scoring another win, this time with her review of Heavenly Sword. She prefaces the review by saying how it was ignored due to being released at the wrong time, and explains that if it was released under different circumstances, it would immediately be a classic, perhaps outside of some gimmicky motion controls. But hey, if you have excellent combat, a fantastic story and surprisingly good animation, it's very easy to overlook the motion controls.

Heavenly Sword Score: 9/10
Genre: Hack and Slash
With a dynamic cast of characters and intense battles, it's hard to deny that Heavenly Sword is definitely one of the finest games in this generation.

quote Alyssa

Damn, 2007 was a gooood year. Before the seventh generation became little more than corporate greed and generic faceless crap, there were a bunch of games that could give a lot of

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Round 74 of the Articles Of Excellence ended a bit later than usual, but Gryzor was in hospital between Monday and Friday so he couldn't make the AOE deadline. So sorry about that. But enough of that, because he has a review to make the winner, and this period's winner is none other than Demonfurby's review of Bioshock Infinite. He describes it as one of the finest games ever made, and for a game made in the year 2013 to accomplish this, it's definitely something to consider.

Bioshock Infinite Score: 10/10
Genre: First Person Shooter
Please buy it, support Irrational. Support a change for the better. For the betterment of the genre, and industry as a whole.

quote Demonfurby

Wow.

That's all I was thinking after completing Irrational's latest masterpiece, BioShock Infinite. My mind was officially blown. Not because of the immense atmosphere, juxtaposed by the highs of the soaring, majestic

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Round 73 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Gryzor giving the reboot of the Devil May Cry franchise some kind words, giving kudos to the parts that work really well, but add a cruel tinge towards parts where it fails. He describes this reboot as one with excellent art design and a great combat engine, but a poor story and underwhelming enemies and bosses to utilize such a good combat engine on.

DmC - Devil May Cry Score: 6/10
Genre: Hack and Slash
It's not so much the hype that let me down, as much as it was the potential to be a fantastic game because if they followed through with their designs a lot better, the 8s and 9s and even Tameem's boasting would be justified, but as is... it's worth a rental, but nothing more.

quote Gryzor

The one thing that captures the attention of any potential buyer is what's on the box. As much as people bang on about looking up reviews and trailers,

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Round 72 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Monterey Jack coming back from a short hiatus to take the circuit by storm with his review of Okami! Describing it as being on par with nature itself, he explores its deep artistic appeal while at least keeping you on Earth by pointing out some flaws here and there while explaining how everything adds to a fantastic experience.

Okami Score: 9/10
Genre: Adventure
That's the beauty of Okami – nature, like how you're restoring nature back to the way it looked instead of having all of this artificial darkness, or how you'd naturally use the different Celestial Brush techniques in order to solve various puzzles in dungeons.

quote Monterey Jack

I've stated this in a previous review, but allow me to reiterate the fact that I'm not a believer of the whole “video games are art” thing. They've always been something that you do to kill a couple of h

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Round 71 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Praetorian Lord travelling back to the glorious year of 2007 when the seventh generation still had great ideas to expand the medium of gaming. He describes it as a game with excellent ideas with hit and miss execution.

Assassin's Creed Score: 7.5/10
Genre: Stealth
The chance to rampage around the medieval Middle East is perhaps even more enjoyable than being one of history’s greatest assassins.

quote Praetorian_Lord

When you look back at the relatively harmless video games of the ‘70s and ‘80s, you wonder how killing has become the indispensable ingredient of AAA titles. Gamers have become so desensitised to blood and gore that none of us batted an eyelid in 2007 when Ubisoft’s new IP had us playing as a medieval, professional murderer. Indeed it speaks volumes about the appeal of animated slaughter that six years, seven titles and some 3

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Fans are poisonous. The average, majority fan is so fickle and short-sighted, they stand to halt artistic vision and experimental game design and leave us in an endless wheel of regurgitated styles and templates.

This thought stems immediately from Capcom published, Ninja Theory developed, franchise reboot DmC. A fair fan of the previous titles and owner of all four, I wouldn’t call myself a Dante Must Die kind of guy but hack-n-slash has its kicks. What most stood out within the series for me though was the first title: the game was hauntingly atmospheric and was clearly influenced by its history as a Resident Evil title. As a kid I found the puppets and inanimate-turned-animate objects strictly terrifying, and even now a real sense of claustrophobia can envelope me as I get locked in room faced with having to eliminate all enemies first. This is what the series should be recognised for;
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