Gameplay

Best game level

For the, umm, best level in a game

All Ghillied Up – CoD4
COD4's one concession to stealth, in its otherwise breakneck assault on the senses, has you playing your commanding officer back when he was a rookie. In All Ghillied, you sneak around a pallid Pripyat, dodging mercenaries, rabid dogs and radiation patches. It's as tense as fuck, and hugging the ground, while a battalion of mercs walks right by you, is a nerve-wracking experience. Then, after you've assassinated the scumbag you were sent to kill, it all goes tits up and you are forced to hold off an assault in an abandaoned fairground as you wait for an EVAC lift. Crazy changes of pace and tension by the hatful – sheer brilliance.

Final Level – Portal
Play the first dozen-or-so levels of Portal and it’s nothing more than a stylishly realised puzzler. A good puzzler but nothing very special. Sure there are some moments of laconic humour and the odd properly sadistic taunt… and then as the game draws to a climax, the quality shoots skyward. The closing levels are so complex, thoughtful, tough and funny as fuck. And the final level – that’s one for the album is that. Very, very special indeed.

Fort Frolic – Bioshock
We had fully five different Bioshock levels in our shortlist. We might easily have ended with more than one in the last four nominations, it was that close but in final-cut ,Fort Frolic delivers a quantum step more Bioshock than any other. Cohen the deranged pianist represents the madness of Bioshock boiled down into a crazy paste and spread on lunatic toast – he’s fucking mental. And all 1930s with it, the detail, the lurid, preposterous, reality of the place and of your situation are held in pure liquid atmosphere throughout. A flawless triumph.

Nottingham – Resistance: Fall of Man
Yes the thing is broadly on rails and yes the choice of a very limited colour palette is a bit perverse but the guns, enemies and level design are good enough to make you shout out in joy at times. Nottingham especially is thrilling with its huge environments and cracking kill-rushes. The level gets incredibly kinetic as you drive on, passing in an absolute flash of action, bullets and fucking mayhem. Much like the real thing, except with fewer aliens.

Most difficult moment in a videogame to explain to the missus


For those barking moments of gaming madness that make our hobby ace

Because girls just don't get travel through time and space – Portal
Rodent: "That's you."
Her: "Well who is that?"
Rodent: "That’s you too."
Her: "How can I be two people?"
Rodent: "You're not, those are both you."
Her: "But how?"
Repeat for ever.

Oooh missus - The Witcher
Try playing this in front of the missus after you’ve done that new relationship ‘videogames are all grown-up and socially ace and that now’ thing. Basically you are required to shag every bird you meet and to achieve this you spout chat up lines barely more sophisticated than "Fancy a fuck luv?" Your missus will remember this in the ‘I should be allowed to go and play games sometimes’ argument forever.

Sticky Star Power – Guitar Hero II
Sometimes the Star Power fails to engage. Its always at a point when you really, really need it too, like you're going to fail the song otherwise. So all you can do is throw the guitar back and forth with an increasing level of frustration to try and invoke it (a bit like you're rescuing a very reluctant swan) and hope that does the trick. Your red-faced exertions, mad cursing and thrashing limbs are not easily translatable when you realise she's been stood behind watching the whole time.

Muttering Mentalist - Zelda Phantom Hourglass
Her: “Are you feeling ok?”
Rodent: “Yeah I’m all good, why?”
Her: “Well I heard you shouting from the living room last night?”
Rodent starts laughing
Her: “What’s so funny?”
Rodent: “I needed a good price for the salvage crane on my ship, so I had to shout at the old guy.”
She just stares at Rodent like he is a crazy drunken hobo.