The £10 Music Challenge

Like all music lovers, I know more about music than everyone else. I am also a phenomenal shopper. That is why I dream of the day that someone asks me to recommend music for them to check out (I try to tell people what music they should be listening to but they're strangely resistant). What's better is I will recommend a bunch of classic albums for less than £10! Though they are all second hand from Amazon.

Pulp: "His 'n' Hers"

I've already written about my love of this album here, it is a must own for any fan of rock, indie or pop music. Just buy it already.

Price: £0.32 + £1.26 (postage) = £1.58 

Peaches: "Teaches of Peaches"

Electroclash! No, I'm not entirely sure what that is either, even after reading the description on Wikipedia. It seems like there's some new fashionable form of electronic music on a regular basis (EDM, Italo disco etc), often sounding not dissimilar to the previous cool thing. I know that this album is considered electroclash, and it's quite brilliant. If songs with titles like 'Fuck The Pain Away' and 'Lovertits' don't put you off, then check it out.

Price: £0.01 + £1.26 = £1.27

Subtotal: £2.85

Spinal Tap: "This Is Spinal Tap (OST)" 

Perhaps the funniest, and maybe greatest, movie ever made had an equally brilliant soundtrack album, made up with songs featured in the movie, though some of the songs vary slightly to the versions in the film itself. You should own the film on DVD or Blu-Ray anyway, so why not listen to classics such as 'Sex Farm' on your stereo or MP3 player whenever you want?

Price: £0.19 + £1.26 = £1.45

Subtotal: £4.30

Marvin Gaye: "What's Going On"

This timeless classic, which seems as relevant today as ever, should be a part of everyone's music collection, and for such a small price is a must-buy if you don't already own it.

Price: £0.97 + £1.26 = £2.23

Subtotal: £6.53

The Donnas: "Spend The Night"

I love The Donnas and their brash and youthful rock 'n' roll anthems, something few bands have managed to do well over the past 15 years or so. This is probably their best album, a seeming non-stop barrage of guitar riffs and sassy lyrics.

Price: £0.24 + £1.26 = £1.50

Subtotal: £8.03

William Shatner: "The Transformed Man"

This may well be the greatest album ever made. Or the worst. It's kind of hard to tell. Either way, it's the kind of thing everyone needs to experience at least once, a mix of spoken word poetry and pop songs, made in such an earnest way that just makes it sound even weirder.

Price: £0.01 + £1.26 = £1.27

Total: £9.30

There you go, for just £9.30 you can get 6 awesome albums. It was hard to choose just 6 as there's so many bargains available if you're willing to look around and buy CDs second hand. I went for Amazon over eBay as the postage costs are a lot less, and you can buy stuff outright rather than potentially having to wait for the auction to end (stuff on buy-it-now tends to cost more than on Amazon anyway). Try it out yourself! Or don't, I'm not that bothered really.

Snoop Dogg

Not a lot of people know this, but I am close personal friends with celebrity rapper Snoop Dogg. We coach a little league baseball team together. I say we coach the team together, but really, Snoop's the coach and I'm his assistant. Snoop owns his own clipboard and whistle, I own neither. That guarantees Snoop the head coach role over me. I'm hoping to get my own clipboard for Christmas, and maybe a whistle next birthday. By then though, Snoop will probably have his own polo shirt and baseball cap with the word "coach" on them, making him virtually unassailable as the main man.

For now, I'm happy being Snoop's assistant and enforcer. The bad cop to Snoop's good cop. If any kids need telling off, that's for me to do. Any opposition team's parents need abusing, that's me. Snoop motivates and sets tactics, I make sure everyone understands and follows.

I've learned many things during my time with Snoop. Like what "little league" is. And what "baseball" is. They're probably the main two things. I hope to learn more though. I've always fancied throwing down in some rap battles. Snoop could help me with that. And who knows, maybe one day I'll get to be head coach of my own team. My experience with Snoop will be invaluable.

It Was 18 Years Ago Today

Kids in the UK got their A-Level results yesterday (apart from Scotland maybe, I think they have a different school system); I got mine this day in 1996, a day before my 18th birthday.

The gang (John, Paul, George and Ringo) and I had previously arranged to go to school to get our results dressed in old suits, preferably 1970s-style in weird colours and with big collars. On the day, only John actually did it. He wasn't too pleased when we all turned up at his house wearing normal clothes and he looked like Jason King.

We went to school and got our results. We all got what we needed to get to the universities we had applied for, apart from Ringo, but he got the grades to get to his second/reserve choice. I got two As, a C and a D (30 UCAS points). I only needed 16 points. We saw some other friends too and everyone was pretty happy with their results as far as I can remember.

We then went to George's house for drinks. His parents were on holiday in France. Without him. We raided their drinks cabinet, but all there was was Tia Maria. We drank the bottle anyway. Feeling invigorated, we ventured on to everyone else's houses to tell our parents the results.

We then headed into town to continue the drinking at our usual haunts. We expected to see the rest of our school year out having a good time too, but we didn't see any of them for the rest of the day. I don't know what they were doing. Losers. One person we did see was one of the younger teachers (let's call her Miss Moneypenny) from our school, who had taught John, Paul and George. We ended up hanging out with her for a few hours. Miss Moneypenny bought us all drinks and shared her menthol cigarettes with us, though none of us normally smoked.

One of my uncles had recently taken over a pub and had started a cricket team, for which I played. The team had a match that day at 6pm (at Leek Hockey Club). So, at around 5.45pm, we said goodbye to Miss Moneypenny and left the pub. We had been there since about 1.30pm. It became apparent as we got outside that we were all pretty wasted, but isn't that always the way?

John decided to come with me to the match, Paul, George and Ringo all went home. John and I reached Leek Hockey Club late, a bit after 6pm. It turned out we only had nine players, which included me (very drunk) and my uncle, who had recently been in an accident and had his left arm in plaster. I asked my uncle if John could play to make up the numbers. I turned around to see if John was up for it but he was lying on the floor, either passed out or asleep. We just left him there.

Our team was batting, so I had a bit of time to sober up. Though, as it turned out, not much time, as we soon slumped to 15 for 7 wickets. I got the pads off the previously dismissed batsman (we only had two pairs) and made my way to the middle.

I'm more of a bowler than a batsman. My approach to batting is to defend anything straight and slog at anything wide. First ball I got was wide of off stump so I had a big heave at it. I sliced it a fair distance and we managed 2 runs. If I hadn't been drunk we could have easily got 3, maybe 4. Second ball up was much the same, though I got a weaker connection and we only managed to get 1 run. My uncle was now on strike, batting one handed. The next ball went through his feeble defences and knocked the stumps over. We were 18 all out. I top scored with 3 not out.

We decided not to have a mid-innings break and carried straight on with the match. I was sent to field on the boundary, which was a wire fence to keep animals out of the hockey club's cricket and hockey pitches. Almost immediately, I threw up, though I did manage to put my head over the wire fence as I did it, so as not to sully the outfield. The menthol cigarettes left a strong aftertaste, which covered the usual vomity taste but gave a different and just as bad sensation. The ball did get hit towards me a couple of times and I managed to field the ball OK. The other team only needed three overs to reach the target score. I think I threw up three times too.

The normal practise after matches was to head back to my uncle's pub for drinks and sandwiches, but I decided to go home. We woke John up. Someone gave us a lift back to my house in the trailer on the back of their car. John said he would be OK to walk home, so we said goodbye. I went to bed to sleep.

I was woken at about 9pm by George, who had come around with some cans of beer. I felt much better after my sleep, though I could still taste the menthol cigarettes. We had a couple of beers and talked. I don't remember what about, but it was a nice low-key end to a crazy day, which had been a memorable end to my adolescence.

Crazy Pete

Some people have a way of taking the magic out of things. Whether it's the way they describe them, moan about them or just reveal the secrets you didn't want or need to know, we've all known people like this.

Anyway, like all supercool people, I'm a big fan of French cinema and hold a special love for films starring Anna Karina, especially those by Jean-Luc Godard. One of those films is crime drama Pierrot le Fou, which Wikipedia helpfully translates into English as "Pierrot the madman" in case you weren't sure.

This isn't good enough for Australia though, where they've decided that the film should instead be called "Crazy Pete". I don't know who's responsible for this (distributors, studio etc), but really? Crazy Pete?

Next Blog>>

One of the features of Blogger is the link to a random blog, available via the "Next Blog>>" link at the top of the page. Sometimes it's fun to check it out to see what other people in the world are doing.

Link 1: Moon Chase! A Sailor Moon News Blog

The first blog today is about Japanese manga and anime series Sailor Moon. I've not read or seen any Sailor Moon but it seems pretty popular on Tumblr. News on here includes Sailor Moon appearing at an animation festival in London and pictures of Sailor Moon cosplay. Sadly, this blog's last post was in 2011 and has since moved to its own site at moon-chase.com.

Link 2: Titus The Dog

Clicking on the Next Blog>> link on Moon Chase! takes us to a blog named after the writer's dog. The most recent post, in November last year, is about the writer going on a walk with Titus and seeing some cows. Pictures of the cows are provided. The cow in the second picture down is looking at the camera as it is pissing. The eye contact weirds me out. Other posts mainly include details of days out in Dumfries and Galloway. Somehow, the writer(s) of this blog seem to have disappeared the Next Blog>> link. It means we'll have to start again back from my blog.

Link 1: Kelvin's Space

As the next blog is always random, you can start again from your own blog and get different results. This time the first blog is about a baby called Kelvin. He was born in 2008 and the blog started then; I guess it was meant to be a kind of scrapbook for him to see when he was older. Or maybe just grandstanding from the parents. Sadly, the last post was in 2010, just before Kelvin's second birthday. Hopefully he's OK and the blog wasn't ended because he died or something.

Link 2: FOOD By Andreas

Following on from baby Kelvin is a food blog. I'm guessing by someone called Andreas. The most recent post from two weeks ago is a delicious looking blueberry lemon coffee cake. Impressive work by Andreas. He should invite me over some time to try it. Looking through his blog he seems to know his stuff and the food looks great. The blog has been going for over five years now so there's plenty to catch up on.

As Andreas has also disappeared the Next Blog>> link on his site, I'm going to make that the last one today. Try it yourself and see what you get! Or don't, I'm not that bothered really.

PS3: Still To Play

Since I wrote the original list, I've started Borderlands, Dead Space 3 and South Park: The Stick of Truth. Borderlands seems like a slightly worse version of Borderlands 2 (the controls are a bit worse, and the Siren's special ability is not as good). Dead Space 3 seems pretty good, very similar to Resident Evil Revelations, which is no bad thing. South Park has started off just as much fun as I thought, though the combat system seems very simplistic, very similar to the Mario & Luigi RPG games, but even easier. Might get a bit annoying after a while. Ni no Kuni I will play after I finish South Park.

I've since got the game Fez as well on PS Plus, though I don't know when I'll get around to playing that or Limbo. I've barely started Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Wii U, and that will be the next platformer I play.

Far Cry 3 and Metro: Last Light I honestly don't know if I will ever play; a Metro Redux compilation is coming to PS4 and Xbox One, and Far Cry 4 is also coming soon to those consoles too. I might wait until I get a PS4 or Xbox One to pick them up then. Also XCOM: Enemy Unkown I only downloaded because it was on PS Plus, I'm not really that interested in it.

For the future there is Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, which hopefully will be more like the second one (which I'm sure it will be), Destiny, which is also coming to just about every other platform (except Wii U, d'oh!) so I don't know if I'll bother now, a new Assassin's Creed game which I'll probably get mainly for the multiplayer (the campaign sounds like it'll be a cross between the last two games, and I'm a bit sick of the boat sections, there was too many in the last game)... and not much else. The new Call of Duty looks like they've just copied some of the mechanics from the Crysis games, but I'll get it on Wii U if anything (though it's not been confirmed for Wii U... yet) and there'll probably be more Battlefield etc too but nothing to get too excited about. I think next year is when I upgrade, to find a second console to back up my Wii U.

PS3: Disappointments

GTA IV was one of the first PS3 games I bought, and also one of the first I got a bit bored of. Yes it's a great big, well-detailed city, and yes there's loads of missions and other stuff (like pool, darts, bowling, comedy clubs), but the game is missing a certain something. The characters are kind of bland and there's not that much variation in the missions; drive to location and shoot a bunch of people is pretty much it. And there is way too much driving around in the missions between action locations; and if you die, you have to do all that driving again. And the graphics are kind of hazy. Maybe previous GTA games were like this too,  but they seemed a lot more fun than this game. And GTA V was much better.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and (PS3 exclusive) Journey are two highly rated indie games, both of which I found a little bland. They're both quite hard to describe too, which doesn't help me out any here. Brothers has the interesting mechanic of controlling both the titular brothers at the same time (one for each control stick) and revolves around puzzle solving; the puzzles are pretty easy though. In Journey, you play a floaty figure in a cape travelling through a desert. I'm not really sure what it's about. No-one is.

Heavy Rain is another disappointing PS3 exclusive. It sells itself as "interactive drama" as choices you make and paths you take affect the rest of the game. The theory is about as interesting as the game gets though; it looks a bit weird (as games often do when they try for realism) and the controls are very awkward. It's also quite badly paced, with many of the segments being little more than plodding sections of wandering around doing not much. It's not terrible, just not very good. Mediocre probably sums it up best.

Crysis 3 I've already mentioned in the worst multiplayer list. It's a futuristic first person shooter, which gives you the power of invisibility and really high jumping via some suit or other of alien technology. The levels are slightly more open than most fps, and the invisibility offers more stealth options than most similar games. So far, so good. Sadly, the game handles quite weirdly when shooting (it feels a bit like Aliens: Colonial Marines), the levels are pretty boring and the final boss battle is very annoying.

Fallout 3 is a very highly rated open world rpg shooter (first person or third person, you get to choose!). I found it very boring, and not half as good as the excellent Borderlands 2. Maybe I'm just a bit sick of post-apocalyptic landscapes, but I found the world of the game quite tedious and uninteresting. I also didn't care for how it handled in first person mode (third person was slightly better though). Borderlands 2 had personality, a sense of humour and a fairly unique (cell shaded) art style on top of a similar premise to this. This game didn't really have anything of note. Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much the same, but with a slightly less boring landscape.

Payday 2 is another game I got "free" via the PS Plus subscription. It's a fps where the aim is to rob banks and stuff (and get a payday, yay!). I think it's designed to work best as a co-op game for four players. I did a few missions on my own with three AI players with me. It was pretty boring. I don't really see how it would be much better with three other human players. I might be wrong but I'm not gonna bother finding out.

Finally we get to Pro Evolution Soccer 2013. I've been playing PES games since the PS1 and was always a big fan of them; I've had pretty much every game in the series on some console or other since then. I had PES 2012 on the Wii but didn't like it much. This game was only slightly better, but still not that good. The passing mechanics have been improved from that game (they couldn't really get much worse), but the worst thing about the game is how slow it is. Gone are the days of quick, one-touch passing moves, this game plods along at a pedestrian pace. Maybe the pitches are too big (or bigger than they used to be?) I don't know, but the ball certainly doesn't ping around like it used to in the good ole days. And unlike in the PS1/PS2 days you don't get the option to speed up the game either (at least not that I could find) to compensate for this. I've also got PES 2014 (via PS plus) but haven't played it yet. Someone I know who had it said it was terrible and took it back to the shop after about two days.

PS3: Honourable Mentions

I was eager to try Bayonetta as its sequel had already been announced as a Wii U exclusive, and something I was considering getting when it is released, so what better way of knowing how good it might be than by playing the first game? I started the game off and really enjoyed it, it's a fast paced, funny action game and fairly difficult, even on normal mode. Certainly a game you need to get used to playing (especially the combos, timing and dodging) before you can even think about breezing through levels. It was announced at E3 this year though that a souped-up version of this game will be included free with Bayonetta 2 on the Wii U, so I never bothered finishing it; it was more than good enough though to convince me that Bayonetta 2 will be a must-buy.

Vanquish is also from Platinum Games, the makers of Bayonetta, and similarly over-the-top. It's a futuristic third person shooter which looks great and handles fantastically well. The fun factor keeps you going when the action gets a bit repetitive (as almost always happens in these kind of games).

BioShock and BioShock Infinite are also excellent, though I preferred BioShock 2. The games inhabit a wonderful world (the art design in these games is truly terrific) and they're a lot of fun to play. The first one suffers slightly from slightly more awkward controls than the other two games and Infinite has a less interesting and more vague story as you play through it (though it comes together well at the end), but all three are definitely worth playing and I'm glad I did.

L.A. Noire is another game from Rockstar (the GTA people). It's essentially L.A. Confidential in game form, where you actually get to solve the Black Dahlia murder(s)! You play a cop in the game and have to visit crime scenes, collect evidence and interview witnesses and suspects. It looks gorgeous, has a good story and is a lot of fun. Certainly a unique experience.

Saints Row: The Third is kind of like a GTA game. Some would call it a poor man's GTA game. I found it very entertaining though, it has an outrageous sense of humour and some very varied missions to keep it from getting stale. The city is a bit empty though in terms of traffic, NPCs etc, but it's a lot more fun than GTA IV...

(Word I over used in this post: fun.)

PS3: The Bad

It's not all good on PS3. There is a lot of lame.

inFamous: Second Son has been one of the major releases on PS4 so far. Hopefully, it's a lot better than the first game in the series, which is truly terrible. A first party "AAA" game for PS3, you play a guy with a deep voice that action stars like Jason Statham always seem to do in their films. Which is very annoying. You have special electric-based special powers, which work the same as guns in shooters. But worse. You get to climb buildings, just like in Assassin's Creed games. But worse. The graphics are poor, it handles badly, it's incredibly repetitive, the story is bad right up until near the end of the game when it picks up slightly, the dialogue and characters are terrible and the final boss battle is one of the worst in video game history; you have to shoot your basic electric shot at the baddie for about 30 minutes. None of your other attacks seem to work. It's bad all round and the worst of the worst on PS3. And a Sony exclusive lest we not forget.

I also hate Uncharted 3. There, I said it. I feel a lot better now. As one of Sony's major IPs, and being made by the same people who did The Last of Us, I was keen to try it out, but what I got was a run-of-the mill (at best) third person shooter with crappy stealth and melee mechanics, the odd lame puzzle solving bit, some poor platforming sections and some very hackneyed, clichéd dialogue spouted by some of the most annoying characters in the history of video games (which is really saying something). The graphics were excellent though, to be fair.

Brink, Aliens: Colonial Marines and Max Payne 3 are the other very bad games I've played. And all shooters. Brink has ambitions of being better than a run-of-the-mill shooter but suffers from bad design and annoying gameplay. Aliens: Colonial Marines has terrible graphics, perhaps the worst hit detection of any game I've ever played and strange story decisions (apparently Michael Biehn's character from Aliens survived and was taken away and replaced with another body for Ripley to find and be fooled by or something). Max Payne 3, from Rockstar Games (the GTA people), has good graphics and handles quite well. What it doesn't have is any kind of variation. It is just relentless and very boring; walk into an area, shoot 20 or so people, walk to next area, shoot 20 or so people. And repeat. Seemingly for ever. It doesn't help to have a very annoying voice-over throughout the whole game as well, which aims for some sort of film noir commentary insights but just does your head in. 

Man loads up game. Man starts game. Man gets immediately killed after spawning by a possibly invisible sniper, and there's no proper kill cam to see where they are. Man spawns again and gets killed again straight away by the same (or another?) seemingly invisible sniper. Man spawns again and immediately sprints off to the side and runs for about 5 seconds before being killed by another sniper, nowhere to be seen on screen. Man looks at scoreboard. Half of the other team have scores of 19-0 or better. Man quits game. That was my introduction to Killzone 3 multiplayer. It didn't get much more fun after that. I hate Killzone 3. There, I said it. I feel a lot better now.

Hey Uncharted 3, what are you doing on another bad list? Sony fanboys say you're the best action series ever! Well, they're all idiots. The multiplayer is every bit as bad as the single player, if not worse. There's no annoying cutscenes this time at least. Unless you play the co-op missions that is. What there is though, is lots of players running around doing forward rolls all the time and even worse controls (there is even recoil on the guns!) than in single player. The graphics were… not as good this time. The Tomb Raider multiplayer is almost the same as Uncharted 3 but worse because the makers should have known better than to copy this crap.

Hey! Listen! How is Aliens: Colonial Marines in the list for best and worst multiplayer? You weren't paying attention to what you were doing, were you? Wrong. Aliens: Colonial Marines is so bad that it is actually kind of good at times. In the multiplayer games for example, you play one round as a marine and one as an alien. The marine rounds are awful. The graphics are bad and the hit detection (as mentioned above, it's no better in mp) seems to be completely random. It's a bit of a mess. The rounds where you play as the aliens though are all kinds of awesome. The graphics are even worse than normal. It's meant to be like seeing stuff as an alien (even though it's a THIRD PERSON game!), reminding you of bad horror movies from the 70s or 80s where you supposedly see through the werewolf's eyes with hazy or coloured camera effects or something as it stalks its prey. The controls are also kind of sloppy and sometimes unresponsive, but again, it unintentionally adds to the cheap fun factor. And running around as an alien chasing after and killing marines is an absolute ton of fun. There's even special aliens hidden in the maps too. If you can find them you get to then play as them. One looks like a Triceratops. It's pretty much unstoppable.

Crysis 3 had a lot of potential for being good online due to the nature of the game and the powers available (invisibility, big jumping etc) but makes the worst mp list for three main reasons: (1) it suffers VERY badly from online lag (2) hardly anyone plays it; six months after the game was released, the most players I ever saw online was 250, and most of them just played the team deathmatch mode; (3) of those who did play, I reckon about a quarter of them were aimbot hackers.

Modern Warfare 3 is also on here due to the amount of hackers. The reason it's worse than Crysis 3 is because, as well as the aimbots, there is a huge amount of players who have a so-called "god mode" hack. They are invisible and invincible. Almost every game seems to have at least one player like this making games unplayable and unfair. On top of this, the game is very unstable (lots of games time out or freeze up, maybe caused by the hackers?) and people quit games all the time once they realise they're up against a god mode hacker. MW3 was never one of the best CoD games anyway, but it was never this bad when I played it on the Wii.

What's worth noting is that probably the three worst games on PS3 are all Sony first party exclusives: Uncharted 3, Killzone 3 and inFamous (not necessarily in that order). Given how strong Nintendo's exclusives are (Mario, Mario Kart, Zelda, Kirby, Pikmin, Smash Bros etc etc etc) and how much Xbox fans rave about their (admittedly few) exclusives, it's a bit strange how the PS3 eventually outsold the Xbox 360 and how the PS4 is now racing ahead of the Wii U and Xbox One. The PS3's success is even stranger given that most multiplatform and multiplayer games are considered to perform better on Xbox 360 than on PS3. Reasons for the PS3's success? I really don't know. The success of PS1 and PS2 must have something to do with it, maybe people who grew up with them consoles feel more connected to Sony than Microsoft. Maybe it's the unreliability of the Xbox 360? The console was plagued with problems and supposedly has a failure rate of 24% compared to 10% for PS3 and 3% for Wii. Or maybe it's that PS3 offers free online services while Xbox 360 charges money for Xbox Live Gold, and if you do pay for PS Plus you get free games every month (which Microsoft have only just got around to doing). I don't regret getting a PS3 at all, but I think I was swayed by having had a PS1 and PS2, how Xbox 360 fans were so annoying in comment sections on gaming sites (they were much worse/angrier/more arrogant/more offensive than Sony or Nintendo fans) and the free online; I don't really agree with having to pay for online play for games that cost up to £50 on a console that already cost several hundred pounds. That said, you now have to do this on PS4 as well as Xbox One. Still free on Nintendo though.

PS3: The Good

The controversy ripples from my list of best/worst/etc of PS3 games are still reverberating around the world, so I'll give some background to my reasoning. First off, the best of the PS3.

Most of his family may have been killed, but Ezio wins in the end! Yes, Assassin's Creed II is the best game on PS3, narrowly beating out The Last of Us. Why? I think the story and characters in AC2 are excellent (especially the merging of fact and fiction, which wasn't as good in any other AC game as it was here). The locations in the game are magnificent, the missions varied and the scope pretty huge. It's also a hell of a lot of fun to play, a massive leap forward from the messy first game in the series but not as simple as the later games. It actually took a bit of skill. I've placed The Last of Us behind as even though the story is at least on a par, and the characterisation almost certainly better (amongst the central characters at least), the gameplay is not quite as good and is slightly more repetitive. I don't need to tell anyone how great the Last of Us is, I think people who have played it and the world's media have done just that ever since it was released. AC Brotherhood comes a close third. It refines the gameplay slightly from AC2 but the story's not quite as strong. Still awesome though.

The new Tomb Raider game was a very pleasant surprise (multiplayer aside) as was Borderlands 2, one of the few good games I've got via the fairly underwhelming PS Plus subscription service. Batman I'd played before on the Wii U and is almost as good on the PS3 and BioShock 2 is my favourite of the three games in that series (controversial I know) as I think it has the best story and handles the best.

As for multiplayer, I've gone for AC3 at number one as the Wolfpack co-op mode is about as good as online play gets (and yes I have played it on Wii U as well). AC4 is lower as even though it's just about as good, it's much easier to complete Wolfpack. Even with players on the team running around like idiots not playing properly you can still get get through to the end, which won't happen in AC3. Also in AC4 there's no new game modes, just the same as in AC3. Still great though.

The Last of Us has to settle for second place again. The mp is as much about stealth and teamwork as it is about shooting, setting it apart from most shooters. A lack of game modes was it's only real weakness (there's only three), but its teamwork dynamic is what keeps it fresh. Lone wolfs won't last long due to a lack of ammo available in the game (it's not like CoD or Battlefield where you can do your own thing and prosper if you're good enough) and the fact that downed players can be revived; even if a lone wolf takes down one opposition player or even two, most teams (of four) tend to stick together meaning the other players will take out the lone wolf then revive their own teammate(s). Also, the multiplayer fits in really well with the game world established in the campaign, another great feature. The fact that how you do in games affects your virtual clan is also a nice feature. For example, doing better in games gets you more points which converts to resources to keep your clan healthy and even grow. It's an interesting take on mp, different than the usual kdr stats and also discourages players from quitting if they're not doing very well. I have to add though that since the second lot of dlc maps was released a few months ago (which also included new guns and loadout options for all players as well), the game did seem to get glitchier and laggier. It may have been fixed since then I don't know, I've not been online since before the World Cup. Also, there's no option for playing in games with no parties in the the two dlc lobbies, which might not sound like too big of a deal but it often means that you end up playing against teams of four very high level players playing together and games are often very one sided as a result. These are minor complaints though for a truly great game.

Black Ops is still the best Call of Duty game, and is relatively unaffected by hackers (compared to the other CoD games at least). Black Ops II shakes things up a bit with its futuristic angle and is almost as good (and has even fewer hackers), though suffers from having a few more mediocre maps. Battlefield 4 has the best multiplayer in the series and mostly good maps (but some fairly erratic graphics), though the single player is broken and crap.

Tiger Woods 14 has excellent online play, loads of daily and weekly tournaments and all sorts of direct competitive play options. GTA V online can be pretty great at times but suffers because of bad matchmaking. Whatever sort of game you are playing there are rarely more than four players placed together which can get pretty depressing after a while (especially for games of up to 16 players) for such an ambitious online experience.

Interestingly, only one of the best PS3 games is a PS3 exclusive: The Last of Us. The rest are multi-platforms. If I'd done a similar list for Xbox 360, would it be the same? Or would exclusives like Halo, Gears of War, Alan Wake etc make the list? As I've never owned a Xbox 360 I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that it would contain more than one exclusive on there, even if only in multiplayer.