Name: Rage

Genre: First Person Shooter

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC (reviewed)

Price: £38.89 from Amazon on Xbox 360
£38.99 from Amazon on PS3

£27.50 from Amazon on PC

Rage was reviewed using a Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti. If you want to run the PC version of the game with EVERYTHING turned on then take a look here.

The kings of first person shooters, id Software, are back with Rage, their first major release since 2004's Doom 3. An apocalyptic open-world shooter running on the new impressive Tech 5 graphics engine, does Rage do enough to see id Software remain the gun-slinging supremos? Read on to find out!

id Software make great shooters. We all know that. Christ, they practically invented the first person genre with Wolfenstein, and the gaming world has never looked back. With Rage, the godfathers of gun-touting gaming are taking a slightly different tact, putting a greater focus on story and exploration than any of their previous titles have attempted.

Set in the near-future wastes of a world scorched by a gigantic asteroid collision, you awake after many years in stasis as the sole survivor of a scientific project known as the Ark, designed to save the cream-of-the-human crop from the apocalypse. From the off it's clear that the world has gone a bit awry, and you're saved from a gang of bandits by a local buggy-driving settler.

After this brief introduction to the dangerous world of Rage, you begin to see the ways in which Rage plays differently from previous id Software games. Though a fairly linear story thread drives forward progression in the game, you'll also be able to take on a load of side quests (play the odd gambling mini-game too), which will see you heading out into the Rage world to earn a few mercenary bucks. You'll interact with characters, learn their stories and then take their cash once you've completed the odd task for them, letting you buy new weapons in shops, put together weapon schematics you find dotted around the world and upgrading your armour.

This RPG-lite system works well, and while side quests only ever really amount to going from point A to wipe out a load of baddies at point B, it gives an illusion of freedom not normally found in id Software titles like Doom or Quake. Make no mistakes though, this is not a free-roaming world in the same way that, say, Fallout 3 is; id Software call it a "directed open world experience", meaning that whilst relatively expansive, straying too far off the beaten track in Rage more often than not leads you to an invisible wall rather than a hidden treasure trove.

More disappointing is that the story itself falls a little flat. Once you've settled into the breathtaking world (more on how that looks later), the characters that inhabit it prove to be rather hollow. Their stories lack imagination, and while the voice-over delivery is consistently good, very few break established "end of the world" clichés. Follow the main story line through to its conclusion somewhere around the 12 hour mark, and you'll find that there's never truly been a build in tension, or a notable villain beyond gangs of thugs introduced. id Software's storytelling is competent, but lacking the depth of other AAA titles.

So that's the bad stuff out of the way. If we're being harsh on Rage so far, it's because we expect nothing but the absolute best from id Software. And in pretty much every other department, Rage absolutely excels.

As you'd expect from the team that pioneered the FPS genre, Rage's gunplay is visceral, powerful, and buckets full of fun. You'll fight all sorts of gruesome adversaries across the course of the game, and they're a consistent challenge throughout. The majority of combat sequences take place in tight-close quarters settings, and the enemy AI has been tuned to take full advantage of the surroundings. Mutants will swing from overhead pipes before jumping down behind you and swinging for your head, making them incredibly tricky to get a cross-hair lock on. Bandits will zig-zag in and out of cover, only popping out for a brief instant to pop a shot off in your direction. Gangs of baddies will often use advanced tactics like flanking and giving covering fire support to their allies in order to make your life hell. No two gun-fights ever play out the same in Rage, and you'll constantly have to be on your toes in order to stay one step ahead of your foes.

Thankfully, you'll have access to one of the most satisfying arsenals of weapons in recent memory. For the most part, these will be familiar shooters like pistols and shotguns (or "old faithful", as we prefer to call it). Where id Software's versions of these guns differ though is in the gory punch they deliver. A shotgun blast doesn't just kill an enemy, it absolutely decimates them, with all sorts of flesh flying around the screen. Unique weapons like the boomerang blades of the Wingstick, spider-like moving turrets and mind-control bolt ammunition are equally satisfying to wield. The devil is in the details, and the way enemies react to bullet impacts realistically will make you wince.

All this is presented with some of the most stunning graphics rendering we've seen to date. Whether you're playing on an Xbox 360, PS3 or a top-spec gaming PC, Rage is awe-inspiring to look at. While the PC version is by some distance the better looking one, id Software should be commended for making their impressive Tech 5 graphics engine work so excellently on consoles too. Draw distances stretch for miles across the dusty wastes of the Rage world, letting you see the extent of the desolation caused by the asteroid impact, with textures so crisp and detailed that you'll barely be able to spot any repetition in the world, making it all highly believable to look at.

Things get even more impressive when you venture into one of the game's many settlements. The art direction is staggering, from the patchwork metal mess of Wellspring to the shiny surfaces of Subway Town. The fact that all this runs at a constant 60fps with only the most minimal pop-in is an amazing achievement. And while characters may not have anything particularly interesting to say, they're all sculpted with such visual attention to detail, and animated with such flair and realism, that you'll forgive their often soggy dialogue.

Getting around the large and beautiful gameworld of Rage is slow work on foot, so often you'll find yourself jumping into dune buggies, naturally armed with an assortment of weapons. Vehicular combat in Rage (or any driving at all for that matter) is a first for id Software, and they manage to deliver an excellent experience that's as close to Mario Kart as it is to Mad Max. Buggies bounce and flip, leading to calamitous explosions. Whether you're taking part in a race or fending off other drivers looking to let off steam with a bit of road...ahem...rage, it's consistently, and surprisingly good fun.

These buggy sequences make up the majority of Rage's online competitive multiplayer. Again they're great fun, but we can't help but feel that a straight-forward deathmatch gun-blasting frag fest wouldn't have been what more people were hoping for. These are the guys, again, that pioneered the FPS deathmatch with Quake, after all, and eking out some more of the single player mode's excellent gunplay into the online sphere would have been a treat. Co-operative modes however do go back to the game's shooting mechanics, and while only a short diversion, nicely pad out the main game's story line by letting you act out a few of the settlers wilder tales with a pal.

Verdict:

Rage then once again sees id Software playing too their strengths, building a visually magnificent title with shooting mechanics that absolutely smacks the competition in their faces. Even the driving sections, though simple, offer plenty of cheap, explosive thrills. Where the game fails is in the story department, never quite building to a satisfying conclusion nor throwing up an interesting cast, and in the multiplayer area, where a true deathmatch mode would have gone down a treat. Double-barrelled fun, for sure, but not quite the revolution we'd hoped for.

Rage was reviewed using a Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti. If you want to run the PC version of the game with EVERYTHING turned on then take a look here.

Name: Forza Motorsport 4

Genre: Racing

Platform: Xbox 360

Price: £37.99 from Amazon

Turn10 studios really laid down the gauntlet with Forza Motorsport 3, a deep, accomplished racer that was as realistic as it was fun. Can this year's sequel, Forza Motorsport 4 go one better and overtake Gran Turismo 5 to take pole position? Read on to find out!

Forza Motorsport 4 is, for want of a better description, "car porn". From the opening rhetoric of Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, ranting against hybrid, green-conscious cars and the "Lentil-matics", to the anal tinkering and tuning you can perform under the hood of a Bugatti Veyron, this is very much a car nut's wet dream.

That's not to say it's intimidating however. Like Forza Motorsport 3 before it, Forza 4 is accommodating to videogame drivers of all experience levels, swinging wildly from arcade thrills to po-faced simulation depending on your preferences, making it accessible and enjoyable to everyone from Noddy to Jensen Button. Being able to toggle a suggested driving line, or traction, handling and brake support among other helpful settings lets you totally tailor the Forza 4 tarmac experience into something you find comfortable.

Of course, becoming over-reliant on steering aids and the like can come at your detriment too, particularly in the lengthy single-player World Tour mode. Here you're awarded credits for your performance on the track, which are penalised the more you use the built-in driving supports.

Those returning to the World Tour mode from Forza 3 will notice a few changes this time around. Most important of these is that cars no longer level up alongside the driver experience you accrue from racing which lets you tackle more challenging events and unlock more powerful cars. Instead, each car manufacturer has an "Affinity Level" that increases the more you perform well with their vehicles. In turn, building this stat will offer you bonuses, such as drastically cheaper car upgrades on the manufacturer's models.

While on the one hand this makes beefing up your favourite, most-used cars far easier, it also (along with the fact that you can purchase cars across Xbox Live with real money) devalues the in-game currency that was so vital before. Add to this the fact that you're regularly offered new, incrementally higher powered cars free of charge each time you level up, and you could very well go through the entire World Tour mode without buying a new car, which diminishes the sense of achievement you once got from saving up for your most-wanted vehicles. It's not a bad change though, and will suit less committed players well, given the fact that hardcore collectors can still race for hours to collect enough credits and levels to earn the rare "Unicorn" cars.

A more universally welcomed addition to the World Tour mode is the greater sense of freedom given. While you'll still be whisked along on a whistlestop tour of the globe, every time you land at a new circuit you'll be given a choice of events to participate in of varying difficulties and with differing win bonuses. You'll be able to pick and choose races depending on your preferred cars and car classes, as well as take part in events that may, say add an extra credit bonus if your chasing a particularly expensive car, or add an Affinity bonus if you're looking to boost a particular manufacturers models in your garage.

If you're a true grease monkey, you can spend hours tuning pretty much every conceivable component of the a car in Forza, catering it to each tracks specific needs should you be that way inclined. It's such a precise and varied system that you can even sell your best efforts via your very own in-game shopfront, letting you up your credit count by trading with real-world players. The same goes for custom vinyls and liveries, which can contain minute details making each truly unique.

Whatever the look of a vehicle or the tuning specs however, take a car for a spin in Forza 4 and everything feels spot on. Responsive and with distinct differences between each model, there's a superb weight and grunt to each vehicle in the game. AI opponents are a little more aggressive this time out too, meaning you'll really have to work to keep ahead of the pack, though we noticed they'd behave a little erratically if we used the "Rewind" ability to undo our on-track mistakes too often. Overall, the game gives you superb visual and audio feedback at every turn, making it a true joy to play.

What's more, it's even more stunning to look at than we were expecting, given the stellar standards set by the last title in the series. Were it not for the slightly ropey fans dotting the stands on some tracks, you'd be totally forgiven for doing a passing double take to check if you were in fact watching a real-world race.

The extra visual fidelity is capitalised upon in the new Autovista mode. Unlocking more super-powered cars as you progress through challenges, here you're given the chance to explore in great depth the game's most lust-worthy cars, with voice over narration explaining each model in great detail and the odd quip given again by Jeremy Clarkson. You can get in the driver's set look from every angle, open the bonnet for an exploded annotated look at it's components and much more. Whereas out on the track Turn10 are using all the 360's considerably processing power to render at times 16 cars at once, here all that power is just focussed on one. Autovista mode then is in many senses a sneek-peak at what cars on the track in a Forza Xbox 720 title may look like.

It's a shame then that more attention wasn't given over to adding brand new content to the table. Only five new tracks feature (with a handful of variations on each) for a total of 26 race courses, each with variants. And though 500 cars now feature, the vast majority are ones we've seen before. Now that's still a hell of a lot of racing to be getting on with, and newcomers wont be complaining, but returning fans may feel a little short changed. Even new weather conditions, such as rain-soaked roads are missing, which in itself could have added more challenge as well as being a visual treat.

Turn10 have tried to do some brand new stuff with the Kinect sensor though. It's a mixed bag, and the less said about the controller free Kinect steering mode the better (losing control of the accelerator does NOT make a driving experience better). But there's clever use of the sensor in the in-car viewpoints, allowing you to glance out of the car's side windows just by turning your head. It's a subtle, intelligent use of the sensor that doesn't feel too intrusive.

Lastly there's the multiplayer suite, which has had plenty of attention lavished upon it, and is one of the titles biggest improvements over its predecessor. Up to 16 racers can now compete online simultaneously in all sorts of modes that include everything from straight speeds to the finish line to drift events to tag events. Multi class races, which see sedans sharing the track with sports cars, offer new thrills as you have to take into account the wildly varying abilities of each car on the track. Best of all though is the new Rivals mode that lest you challenge other racers to beat your best times and scores across a series of events that include slaloms, overtaking challenges, fastest lap times and much, much more.

Verdict:

While not every addition in Forza Motorpsort 4 is a must have one, none of them are awful, nor detract from the absolutely stunning race action on offer here. You could argue that more brand new content could have been thrown in to appeal to returning race fans, but the truth is that there's so much on offer here it's already being squeezed onto two discs here. Turn10 are turning us into spoilt little petrol-headed joyriders. Who can blame us for wanting more?

If you do a lot of driving like I do then you need a decent sat nav that will not only get you from A to B, but will make sure that you get to B before A has even realised you've left.

The TomTom Go LIVE 1000 is just such a device. Although it's been available since the end of last year, prices have now dropped to around the £200 mark on Amazon, making it one of the most affordable decent sat navs around with built in traffic information.

I've been testing it constantly for the past few months (hence the tardiness of my review) and it's saved my proverbial bacon on more than one occasion - most notably when large parts of the M1 were closed due to someone starting a fire under the bridge in North London. On that occasion it re-routed me off the motorway onto the A1 and then back onto the M1 further north, saving me having to set up camp on a piece of tarmac in Barnet.

Tom Tom Live

Key to the device's success is the integration of TomTom Live. A suite of services, it's free for the first year, thereafter it will set you back £47.50 per year (a fairly hefty amount, but crucial if your work or play depends on you being on time).

With TomTom Live you get the latest Speed Camera locations (very useful when it comes to saving you money), but crucially you also get HD Traffic which feeds live traffic information to the device and re-routes you if necessary, making sure you are on the quickest route. The reassuring voice even tells you: "You are now on the fastest route."

Upcoming road works are shown in a bar graph on the side panel which takes a little getting used to, but basically tells you how long it is until you reach a standstill and how long you are going to be stuck there (sometimes roadworks are simply unavoidable). It's a really useful feature especially when half the pain of travelling in the car is the not knowing whether you are going to be in traffic for five minutes or five hours.

Local search

Other features included with TomTom Live are Local Search with Google to help pinpoint shops and businesses in a given area and TomTom Weather with five day weather forecasts - though to be honest I've never had to rely on either.

All you need to know with the British weather is that if you are driving for more than an hour it's probably going to rain, the traffic is going to slow down to a crawl and someone driving a BMW far too fast will spin off the road taking an old lady in a Ford Focus out in the process.

As for the Local Search, the only thing I've ever really wanted to know is how far it is to the nearest petrol station (I think every sat nav should have this feature as standard).

Magnetic mount

Visually there's nothing too exciting about the TomTom GO LIVE 1000. It's black, it has a decent 4.3inch screen and has a USB socket which fits into a cigarette lighter adaptor. Unlike some sat navs, the mount is also quite straightforward to use. It's magnetic and comes with a screw suction mount so you can tighten it up on the windscreen without having to lick it like a giant stamp.

The only annoying thing was that because I'm one of these people who likes to carry the sat nav around rather than leave it in the car to be robbed out of the glove box, I managed to drop the cigarette adaptor on the end of the USB cable and lose it (this wouldn't have happened if it was all one piece).

As we have come to expect from all TomTom devices, the maps look great day or night (the night mode automatically kicks in and shows the maps in various shades of blue when it's dark). And, while the basic GO LIVE 1000 comes only with maps for the UK and Ireland, you can upgrade to the version with European maps for an additional £50.

Virtually all the information you need when driving is displayed as standard on the screen, but strangely if you want to see how far it is to your destination in terms of distance, not time, you need to go into a fairly obscure 'Status Bar Settings' sub-menu and tick the 'remaining distance' option.

Zoom in

One interesting on board feature is the capacitive Fluid Touch screen which sounds a bit jargony but basically lets you pinch to zoom in and out of maps (like using Google Maps on your iPhone). Great in theory, but don't try using while you are driving without risking losing your place or, worse, going into the car in front of you!

Another small-ish complaint is that it's not always easy typing a postcode into the virtual keyboard - maybe my fingers are too fat, but I've yet to find a sat nav that makes this basic process easy. Instead I always end up having to get the wife to type in the postcode of where we are going.

All in all, though, the GO LIVE 1000 is highly recommended. The Live features are particularly handy for saving time on your journeys by rerouting you down quieter roads if neccessary and the maps are both clear and easy to use.

Tom Tom Go Live 1000 £200 approx

Features:
4.3inch Fluid Touch Screen (11 cm) - pinch to zoom in and out of maps
Free HD Traffic for a year
Local Search with Google
Easy click Magnetic Mount
TomTom Weather - five-day forecasts courtesy of TomTom Weather.
Tom Tom Live includes Speed Cameras, providing mobile and fixed speed camera alerts
USB home charging cable

Pros:
Live traffic information - including re-routing to avoid jams
Clear maps on 4.3inch screen
Speed camera data
Sturdy magnetic mount

Cons:
Virtual keyboard quite small for typing in postcodes/addresses
Difficult to find remaining distance menu

TomTom GO LIVE 1000

Name: Cyborg R.A.T. 7 Albino

Type: Customisable gaming mouse

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £89.99 from Game Shark

Part PC peripheral, part customisable Autobot Transformer lookalike, Cyborg's R.A.T. 7 Albino gaming mouse is one of the most unique pointers on the market. But is it comfortable, and most importantly, will it up your frag count come the end of the online deathmatch? Read on to find out.

An updated version of last year's excellent R.A.T 7 gaming mouse, the new Albino version draws gasps of "oooo" and "aaaah" from anyone that lays eyes on it. In some respects it's barely recognisable as a mouse, with its chunky, space age matte-white finish alongside cogs and gears sticking out at all angles. It looks like a long-lost Transformer character that's been making a living by masquerading as a PC peripheral.

The Albino's unique looks are more about function than fashion however. Cyborg have made a highly customisable mouse here; nearly every part of the Albino can be tweaked to your own preferences.

We're not just talking about custom DPI settings and the 5 programmable buttons (which we'll get onto in a minute). The actual mouse hardware itself can be physically altered to better fit your grip. Slotted in the underside of the Albino is a small screw-in key that can be used to adjust the width of the mouse and angle and positioning of the left hand side buttons, as well as opening up a spring-loaded compartment that houses five 6-gram removable weights, allowing you to make the Albino as heavy or light as you find comfortable.

The adjustments continue further with a sliding palm rest that lets you tinker with the length of the Albino. This piece itself can be swapped out with one that better fits lefties, as well as an alternate palm piece with a rubberised grip finish. Likewise, the right hand side pinky area can have a rubber piece attached, or swapped out for a sloping finger rest, giving the Cyborg a wide wing shape.

Now, all this tinkering wont be for everyone. Though the Albino remains a plug-and-play device, to really get the most out of it you're going to have to spend a few hours play messing about with different physical configurations to suit your hand. It's very easy to make an RSI-inducing monstrosity if you get too addicted to clipping bits on all over the show. However, once you've found your own personal sweet spot, you'll likely never find a more comfortable gaming mouse, even if it's not the most practical of pointers for everyday OS tasks.

As mentioned previously, the customisable elements of the R.A.T 7 extend to the device's buttons too. On the left hand side are two regular "back/forward" mini buttons and another round red button called the "Precision Aim button", which we'll detail in a second. Just below the left mouse button is an unusual chrome roller, which when turned left or right can represent a key or macro in either direction. Linking keys and macros to the buttons and roller is easy thanks to the ST software that can be downloaded form the Cyborg website, also allowing you to tweak DPI settings. Making use of a mode-switching button adjacent to the left mouse clicker which scrolls through 3 sets of programmable key settings, you've in theory got access to a whopping 15 separate programmable input commands packed into the Albino alone. It's worth noting that both the mouse and the software are Mac compatible this time around too.

In terms of movement precision, the Albino makes a sizeable jump from the original R.A.T 7. The first iteration had a max DPI of 5600; the Albino jumps up to 6400DPI with its twin-eye laser sensor. This effectively lets your mouse cover a 6 metre range in just one second. In other words, you'll be able to make lightning-fast adjustments to your aim on the battlefield. These settings don't necessarily have to remain fixed either; a rocker switch immediately below the mouse wheel lets you scroll between 4 custom DPI settings which can be set using the software described above, letting you quickly jump between slower and more responsive settings on the fly. Opting for a wired USB connection over wireless to cut down on even the smallest amounts of lag time, you'll be pleased to see Cyborg have put in a braided white cable, rather than a tangle-prone plastic one.

There's also a dedicated, programmable DPI toggle button on the left hand side which Cyborg call the "Precision Aim button", mentioned earlier. We prefer to call it "The Terminator button" thanks to the robot-like efficiency it adds to your aim. The button lets you switch to a super-low DPI setting when held down, letting you fine tune your aim minutely and make every bullet fired potentially a headshot. It's so effective it's practically cheating.

Verdict:

It takes some tweaking, but once you've got the R.A.T 7 Albino to fit your playing style, you'll find this flexible, responsive pointer gives you a real edge over the competition. The new white finish is stunning in our books, and that fact that this improved model ships for the same price as last year's original R.A.T 7 just sweetens the deal.

Name: Gears of War 3

Genre: Third-person cover shooter

Platform: Xbox 360

Price: £37.99 from Amazon

Image Gallery: Click here

Gears of War is back for a final tour of duty in the conclusion to the blockbusting trilogy. Can Epic Games raise the bar for cover shooters once more, or should this sequel be thrown down one of the series' own deadly emergence holes? Read on to find out.

Gears of War 3 kicks off two years after the events of the second game in the series. After being forced into destroying one of humanity's final strongholds to quell the growing threat from the underground Lambent forces, the burly, wisecracking, gun-toting members of Delta Squad eke out a meagre existence aboard a sea-faring battleship. On the run and on a planet slowly killing itself from the inside out, the Gears must make one final all-or-nothing push for survival.

The scene is well set then for an epic finale to a much-loved franchise. Thankfully, Epic Games deliver with buckets full of blood, bullets and boomtastic explosions aplenty in what's sure to be this year's best Xbox 360 exclusive and a strong contender for Game of the Year.

Three games in and it's become easy to forget that not only is the Gears of War cover system tight, accurate and most importantly fun, but also how innovative it was in the first Gears game and how influential it's become. From Uncharted to Mass Effect, plenty of this generation's best titles owe their bread-and-butter combat mechanics a hell of a lot to Gears. In this respect, Gears of War 3 doesn't try to fix a system that isn't broken; you'll still snap behind shelter, pop off fire towards a few baddies, then "roadie-run" to the next safe object to hide behind.

Where Gears of War 3's campaign mode shines then is in how Epic consistently shake up this now tried-and-tested formula.

Take the vast variety of enemies your Gears now face. As well as closing up Locust emergence holes, you're now tackling the explosive Lambent forces introduced in Gears of War 2 from the outset too. The glowing nasties, filled with the volatile immulsion goo, tear up through the ground in massive, tentacle-like "Stalks". Each Stalk has a number of pods on it which spawn the Lambent forces and must be destroyed to halt their advances. With the pods stuck anywhere around the circumference of the Stalks, you'll be forced to move into dangerous positions to destroy them, rather than simply lobbing a grenade in their general direction like you can get away with when it comes to emergence holes.

Lambent foes themselves are tougher too. While the Locust remain doggedly persistent bullet sponges, the tougher Lambent (many resembling the aliens from Dead Space) have glowing weak spots that have to be specifically targeted. Add to this extra challenge the fact that Lambent blow up as they die causing caustic splash damage and you're looking at a far tougher challenge. This is before you consider environmental hazards, enemy artillery strikes, mobs of suicide bombing spider-like creatures or a handful of superb, suitably epic boss fights.

Variety extends into all aspects of the campaign design. For starters there's a more refined balance between open, expansive battlefields with fire coming from all sides, more linear, claustrophobic corridor sections and one off set-pieces, all of which are a joy to play through. You may have to extinguish fires on your home battleship while other Gears lay down covering fire at one point, then shepherd vital food and resources into a chopper whilst riding in a mech suit the next. You never know what's coming up, and you'll never be bored as a result.

With the challenge ramped up a notch or two, it's a good job your AI buddies are up to the task. They can handle themselves very well during gunfights, while also keeping an eye out for your safety, intelligently reviving you or fallen allies at only the most opportune, sensible moments.

Practically the whole campaign sees you flanked by three other Gears, which leads on to the fact that this campaign can be tackled online by four players co-operatively. It's a great game in single player, but it's an absolute riot with three pals along for the ride. The added levels of organisation and communication needed to succeed make for a far more tactical game, and an even more satisfying one to boot. Nothing says "fun" like synchronised chainsawing with your friends, and nothing says "funny" like your dumb pal's suicidal "Leroooooy Jenkins" head-first sprint into certain doom.

It's a pity then that some of the supporting cast that you'll play as over the course of the campaign feel a little shoehorned in. Maybe it's because the usual Gears suspects Marcus, Dom, Baird, Anya and Cole have become so fondly appreciated that new cast members like Jayce and Sam don't get much back-story love, but at least none of them are annoying and all feel like believable Gears in their own right.

That's not to say the story is poor. Far from it; it's the best Epic Games have penned yet. We learn far more about Marcus's past, his relationship with his father and his responsibility to his squad mates. We see Dom coming to terms with the harrowing events he endured during the course of Gears of War 2. We see Cole pine for his Thrashball superstar "Cole Train" past, a life he'll never get back in world now so near to utter destruction. Gears of War as a franchise has always had the blood and the explosions; now it's got the heart and the tears too. Needless to say, it's a visual tour-de-force throughout, with detailed textures, gruesome kill animations, beautifully crafted rubble strewn streets and not a hint of slow down in even the most chaotic of scenes.

Just as Epic have delivered the best campaign mode to date, the multiplayer suite is stellar also. It seems the extra time spent refining this area with the summer's beta testing period has really paid off; maps are wickedly crafted to encourage constantly inventive tactics, with a finely balanced arsenal of weapons catering for all types of play. Dedicated servers now allow for speedy matchmaking, and also combat the "rage quitting" cheats who host a custom game and duck out rather than face a loss.

Team Deathmatch is now the "default" match type, with a set amount of respawns given to each team before their squad numbers fall permanently and concede the match. If you're after a less forgiving match, Warzone removes respawns. Tacticians should give returning favourite King of the Hill a try, or Capture the Leader, where you have to prevent your invulnerable team captain from becoming a meat-shield for too long.

Beginners stand a better chance online this time around too. "Beginner Assistance" options scan a player's hard drive for previous Gears experience, and if none is found then grants them a boost to energy and damage levels until they've reached their first 10 kills, at which point they've presumably got a hang of things. Even veteran players will benefit from the ability to "self revive" on the battlefield in all matche modes but Warzone now too, providing they can avoid being finished off long enough after being downed by opponents.

As well as being excellently crafted on a technical, balanced level, maps are also a little more quirky in Gears of War 3 in terms of overall design. The Thrashball map has a giant score board which can be made to drop and kill those standing below it; Overpass randomly sinks into the ground, mixing up the viewing angle and the way in which you have to aim; Trenches is hit by periodic sandstorms that cut visibility levels dramatically. Again, greater variety leads to greater fun in Gears 3.

All the weapons from Gears of War 2 reappear, but are joined by newbies such as the Retro Lancer (a powerful machine gun with poor accuracy), the Sawed-off shotgun (dealing massive damage at close range, offset by incredibly slow reload times) and the flame-spewing incendiary grenades amongst others. New weapons like the "Digger" come into their own online; there are few multiplayer kills more satisfying than by firing off a living bullet that burrows through the ground before bursting out underneath a foe and eating them ass-first, causing their heads to explode. It has to be seen to be believed.

Add to these the endless of waves of progressively more menacing foes in the returning Horde mode and the new Beast mode (which plays out a lot like Horde but from the Locust perspective, giving you control over a variety of monsters, unlocking progressively more dangerous foes to kill the COG with as you build up cash for more units), and you've got masses of great gory gaming to get through.

Verdict:

Bigger. Better. Gorier. Funnier. Sadder. Faster. Prettier. If previous entries into the Gears of War series had the odd failing here and there, Epic Games have patched them up, and as an apology added ten great new things to make your jaw drop at every turn. It's the best campaign the developers have ever made, paired with one of the most fully-featured multiplayer offerings on the Xbox 360, be that co-operatively or competitively. If this is to be the last Gears of War game, then it's one hell of a high note to bow out on. To quote the Cole Train himself: "Bring it on, sucka! This is my kinda sh*t!"

Name: Rocketfish Rocketboost Wireless HD Audio Starter Kit

Type: Wireless bridge for 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound speakers

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £159.99 from Best Buy

Home cinema kits are all well and good for delivering that booming Hollywood sound, but they also cause more headaches than they're sometimes worth when it comes to leaving lengthy trails of unsightly wires around the room as you try to set up rear surround speakers. This Best Buy exclusive, the Rocketfish Rocketboost Wireless HD Audio Starter Kit, may however have an affordable answer to your wireless speaker woes.

Wireless home cinema systems seemed the future for surround sound in the home a few years back, but latency issues, high price tags and overall poor audio quality has made them on the whole somewhat rare relics these days. That's not to say that the demand for wireless speakers has declined, which is where the Rocketfish solution comes in.

The Rocketfish Rocketboost Wireless HD Audio Starter Kit (AKA the RF-RBKIT ) is made up of a sender and a stereo amp receiver, which Best Buy also sell as separately with the model number RF-RBREC.

Essentially, the two units create a wireless bridge between your home cinema receiver and the rear surround channels. Hookup the Rocketboost sender to the terminal posts in your AV receiver and switch both on after connecting the rear speakers themselves to the powered Rocketboost receiver at the rear of your viewing area. After a quick and painless pairing procedure, you're 5.1 surround speakers are blaring out audio without being directly connected to the main AV receiver you already own.

Now of course, this isn't truly wireless speaker territory here; you still need a power supply for the rear channel Rocketboost receiver, not to mention speaker cabling too. But what you are removing is the pain of running lengthy wires from the front of your home cinema gear to the rear of the 5.1 soundscape. You no longer have to hide leads under carpets, or pin them to the edge of skirting boards, instead just hiding it all instead (in what we'd assume is the usual viewing environment) behind the sofa.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that there'd be a considerable audio quality drop as a result of using such a system, but the undesirable effects are extremely minuscule. Set the sender to "HD" mode for Blu-ray flicks and you're still getting Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD system audio with latency issues so minimal you'd have to be a bat (or the most demanding of audiophiles) to notice the difference. Audio is sent across the wireless bridge at 16-bits, 48 KHz, uncompressed PCM audio, and with the RF-RBREC being a 50W x 2 (into 6 ohms) amp, it'll pump out audio at a healthy level with great calrity. Grab another RF-RBREC unit and you're good to go for 7.1 surround, with a handy channel-lock switch setting the gain levels from each separate amp equally for a balanced sound.

The only potential issue is that each unit uses the 2.4GHz wireless channel, a pretty crowded frequency that tends to be interfered with easily by microwaves and cordless telephones. Though we had no issues during our testing, it's a problem that may rear its head in other households.

Overall it's a relatively simple concept that works very well, but the potential for the Rocketfish gear doesn't end there. The wireless audio line is fleshed out further by a handful of other products that you can pair with the Starter Kit and each other to create a full wireless audio network.

For starters, there's the RF-RBWS02 speaker. Designed for both indoor and outdoor use, it's a bi-amplified speaker with both woofer and tweeters, rated at 22 Watts. Working as a standalone mono speaker, you can add another RF-RBWS02 and pair the two together for true stereo sound, receiving audio from any source connected to your newly-set up Rocketfish wireless network. They'll work from an AC power supply or from batteries. They're not reference-grade speakers, but offer a surprising punch, especially when in a pair as we heard at a preview event earlier in the year, and make for a particularly effective audio solution for barbecues and parties spilling outside.

The RF-RBWS02 speakers come packaged with the RBAUX wireless audio sender/receiver, which itself can also be bought individually. It can take line input stereo and transmit it wirelessly, but also has a line output, allowing it to serve a "Zone B" powered speaker system by pairing it with the RBKIT sender, or serve as a loop back to the line input.

If you've got the dough, your home can be turned into a wireless audio workhorse with the Rocketfish gear.

Verdict:

OK, so the "wireless" part of the Rocketboost kit might be a bit of a fib as technically you're going to need power and speaker cables for your surround channels. But the flexibility and scalability of the Rocketboost range is excellent, and comes as a highly recommended alternative to snaking lengthy cabling across your living room.

Name: iRobot Roomba 780

Type: Robotic Vacuum Cleaner

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £499 direct from iRobot

The future promised a lot, and while robot butlers and hovercars are still pipe-dreams, robot vacuum cleaners are very much a reality. Hot on the heels of its IFA 2011 unveiling, Tech Digest got to spend some quality time with our very own clean-freak R2D2, the iRobot Roomba 780 vacuum cleaner. Read on to see whether or not it's time to send the Dyson to the dumpster.

I'm a "cat man". I've had more of the furry felines as pets than hot dinners, and am currently the ward of two moulting black cats. I also live in a mostly-carpeted house, and often have my crumb-dropping toddler nephews over to visit. This would make me (if I do say so myself) something of a "grubby-carpet" expert. So obviously I was delighted to find that I could not only hand over my hoovering duties to iRobot's latest top-end robot vacuum cleaner (the Roomba 780), but that it did a damn fine job of cleaning up after my messy mates too.

Part of the new 700 Series line that iRobot launched over the weekend at the IFA 2011 tech show, the 780 system has a few notable improvements over its predecessors. There's new touch-sensitive controls, new iAdapt Responsive Cleaning Technology for helping the Roomba better navigate your home and better dirt-spotting sensors and cleaning routines for isolating and clearing away different types of mess. Though you'd assume a robot would be a nightmare to set up, the Roomba 780 is actually very simple; it's just a matter of taking out a battery tab and the wheel and brush stoppers, popping the clear bin unit into the bot and leaving the Roomba 780 to charge overnight. From here on in you could potentially leave the Roomba 780 to go about its business automatically, but there are multiple ways of scheduling clean ups, which we'll go into more detail on in a sec.

First though, the matters of size and style. At roughly 50 cm in diameter and about 10cm high, the circular Roomba 780 is relatively small in comparison to the majority of vacuum cleaners. Even it's Home base (the charging unit that the Roomba returns to when it's finished cleaning your house or is running low on power) is discrete. It may not have the bells and whistles of R2D2, but the Roomba is sensibly styled with black and grey mixtures of gloss and matte plastics, with a carry handle to help you move it about the house when necessary. LED displays on the top of the cleaner easily let you view programme cycles and spot when the bin needs emptying, with strong, colourful glows of red, blue and orange displayed depending on the circumstances. There's a big central "Clean" button if you want to send the Roomba about its business immediately, and practically all functionality can be carried out with a supplied IR remote too.

Using the onboard clock, you can set up any cleaning schedule that suits your home's needs, sending the Roomba skirting around the floor at a surprisingly fast pace. All actions are accompanied by voice notifications too, which charmingly reminded us of our favourite educational toy from the late 80s/early 90s, the Speak and Spell. The new cleaning sensors seem to have worked very well too; though we haven't had a previous model with which to compare the 780, we had no real complaints with how the Roomba 780 cleaned both our carpets and wooden flooring areas. iRobot, like all vacuum cleaner manufacturers, do encourage you to avoid hoovering up wet or mushy substances though.

Other than that, be they large chunks of popcorn or fine animal hairs, the Roomba 780 grabbed them all...eventually. It's hard to argue with the thoroughness of the clean this Robot vacuum cleaner manages, but do expect it to be darting around for quite some time per cycle. The bin onboard is also a little bit on the small side, so expect to empty it more-or-less after each average clean cycle.

If however you just need to sort out a quick crumb drop or or particularly messy post-party area, the Roomba 780 also features a "Spot" clean mode, which will set the robot off for a hardcore cleaning session in its immediate one-metre diameter surroundings. It's a great feature if you've got an intense spillage to clean up in a short amount of time.

Another excellent feature is the ability to set up Lighthouses and Virtual Walls to help the Roomba navigate areas that it's finding hard to get around, or block off areas that don't need cleaning. You get two units that can act as either Walls or Lighthouses, each sending out a signal telling the Roomba where it should and shouldn't be heading. While the circular design means the Roomba will always struggle to clean room corners, the Lighthouse features let it weave around chair and table legs with ease.

Once the Roomba 780 starts cleaning you can pretty much leave it unattended, though there are a handful of things it doesn't like. Wires and rug tassels can hold the Roomba 780 up, causing it to spin brushes in reverse for quite some time until it's convinced it's clear of any tangles. The environmental sensors also don't pick up black surfaces very well, which meant the Roomba 780 would bash into my glossy black home cinema subwoofer quite regularly.

Last but not least; stairs. The Roomba 780 has a cliff sensor that means it won't throw itself down steep drops, but that also means that it won't be able to go up and down stairs cleaning them if need be. That cliff sensor works perfectly, but is arguably almost too smart; we could swear the Roomba 780 was teasing us like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey as it darted towards the top drop from the stairs, only to stop and reverse at the very last second. Terrifying stuff considering I had to send back the review sample a week later.

Verdict:

It's a bit of a stretch to call a vacuum cleaner fun, but we have to admit the iRobot Roomba 780 did raise a fair few smiles. From its charming robot voice and nifty touch-sensitive control panel to its ability to drag stubborn cat fur out of our carpet, it was a pleasure to have a new robot pal around the house. It's a fair bit slower than doing the work manually, but when you're sipping an icy cool beer with your feet up while the Roomba does the dirty work, who's going to complain?

Name: ViewSonic V3D245

Type: 3D monitor with built-in Nvidia 3D Vision

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: $599 (£368) from Amazon

Like it or loathe it, it seems 3D is here to stay, be that on your living room TV, your local cinema screen or even in your pocket on a mobile device. 3D's near-imminent ubiquity even extends to the office, with 3D an increasingly common feature of the latest PC monitors. Just like all other 3D gadgets though, 3D monitors can be a pain to set up with multiple compatible devices needed, as well as needing a fair amount of cash to being with. ViewSonic's latest offering, theV3D245, aims at both affordability and ease of use with it's built in Nvidia 3D Vision transmitter and accompanying glasses. But is it any good? Read on to find out.

Though we're not fans of a glossy, fingerprint-harbouring chassis when it comes to monitors (especially ones that use touch-sensitive controls) the ViewSonic V3D245 doesn't look half bad, with its angular base and row of touch buttons on the monitor's lower left side. A 24-inch monitor, you're getting roughly a 23.6" visible screen. Set up is a breeze thanks to the refreshingly simple slide-in base, locking with an underside key. However, those looking for manoeuvrability beyond a little tilt will be disappointed. The screen is wall mountable though, which is still a rare feature for what, despite its bells and whistles, remains essentially a PC monitor.

Regardless of its 3D smarts, the screen stays relatively slim at 2.2" thick (not including the stand), thanks to its exterior brick battery. Input connections are solid; you get DVI (Dual Link), VGA, Audio In and Audio Out ports, as well as a single HDMI 1.4a port. We'd have liked an extra HDMI port, which would have been particularly handy for those looking to hook up a games console or two to the display as well as a PC. The monitor also has 2-watt stereo speakers built in, which of course don't offer too much bassy grunt, but are perfectly serviceable thanks to SRS Premium Sound tech.

While ViewSonic's OSD is clear and self explanatory (if visually basic), using the touch buttons to tweak settings is a chore. They'd sometimes fail to register our fingers, and though we're all for slick clean lines in design, here's one case where we'd rather had physical buttons to push.

Maxing out at a Full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080), the V3D245 is a solid performer with 2D imagery, with crisp text and graphics throughout. Though the claimed 20,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio is ridiculously ambitious, that's not to say that black levels are in any way poor. Blacks are inky and detailed, with the LED backlight evenly distributing light. Colours were bold too, but erred a little on the saturated side without a bit of tweaking. Viewing angles horizontally are perfectly reasonable, though dim noticeably long before the 170º angle ViewSonic claim. Vertical viewing angles are less effective, though this is unlikely to cause much concern in the majority of usage scenarios.

Billed in many ways as a gaming screen, pro Call of Duty fans will have the words "120Hz refresh rate" and "2ms response time" ring out like music to their ears. Movement is smooth and free of flicker and tearing, which is great for those long frag matches, and has obvious benefits for the V3D245's headline feature, 3D content.

And, thankfully, ViewSonic's 3D here delivers in spades. After a clumsy start with wired 3D glasses on their previous V3D241wm model, ViewSonic have made the sensible move of partnering with Nvidia and popping its 3D Vision tech right into the monitor itself.

Nvidia's 3D PC solution has been knocking around for a little while now, but their combination of comfortable wireless active shutter glasses (provided here with adjustable nose-bridge inserts and good for 60 hours of usage per USB charge) and flexible software makes it possibly the best example of 3D tech available right now, not least of all when it comes to 3D gaming. It requires a compatible Nvidia graphics card (GeForce 8800 GT or later; GeForce 9600 GT or later; all GeForce GTX 200 cards or GT300 Series, NVIDIA GTX400 Series or later if you're hooking up a HDMI 1.4a games console - we were using a GTX 560 Ti card), but is simple to set up, and more importantly, simple to tweak.

Using the Nvidia Control Panel software, you can adjust the intensity of the 3D effect, making it as eye-popping or subtle as you see fit. As the compatible Nvidia cards manipulate the way traditionally 2D games are displayed, a vast number of PC games can be played in 3D through the 3D Vision set-up with minimal fuss, even those that we're never intended to be played with an added dimension. It's engrossing and clear thanks to the quality of the panel, with minimal drops in brightness and hardly any noticeable flicker when the glasses are on. With HDMI 1.4a certification you'll also be able to play 3D games from a PS3, as well as 3D Blu-rays, each again offering equally, startlingly impressive 3D visuals.

Verdict:

While its build is a little rough around the edges (those touch buttons annoy in particular), the simplicity of having Nvidia's 3D Vision tech so seamlessly integrated into the display is a joy. Superb in both 2D and 3D, the ViewSonic V3D245 will be more than enough for even the most demanding of 3D gamers.

Name: T12v3 Soundbar (Orbitsound)

Type: Stereo soundbar with subwoofer

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £299 direct from Orbitsound

UK audio specialists Orbitsound return with their latest re-vamped T12 Soundbar, the T12 v3. Have they perfected the "spatial stereo" wizadry to kill off audio sweet-spots for good? Read on to find out.

We know what you're thinking; "V3? It seems like yesterday that the the v2 launched!" It's a little under a year since Orbitsound's last T12 soundbar launched, but the smaller, dynamic nature of the UK audio upstarts means that they can churn out updates to their gear far faster than rivals. But far from being a mere incremental update, the v3 is a marked improvement over its predecessor.

The T12 v3 set includes a gloss black soundbar (600 x 100 x 100mm) and similarly styled subwoofer (230mm x 460mm x 200mm) connected via cable as opposed to a wireless connection, which may limit its placement in more spacious AV set-ups. As well as an iPod connector on the top of the dock, connectivity on the rear of the soundbar includes optical, coaxial and analogue ports as well as a 3.5mm connection for those with mp3 players or phones from stables other than Apple's. Leads for all these connections are included inside the box, while a volume dial also sits on the back.

It's worth noting at this point that we've had our hands on a pre-production model rather than the final retail build. It's almost identical to what's headed to stores, barring a few quirks. Firstly, there's a rear switch for changing the intensity of the stereo effect that wont be present in retail models as it's more a feature to demonstrate Orbitsound's "spatial stereo" tech to reviewers and journalists, which we'll speak about in a second. Also, the volume steps on the remote control will be a little more refined, giving you more precise control over volume levels in the final product.

What makes the Orbitsound soundbar unique from its rivals is how it uses a proprietary "spatial stereo" system. Designed by Orbitsound founder Ted Fletcher (whose CV includes working alongside musical luminaries The Eagles, Elton John and mad-cap producer and sonic-scientist Joe Meek), it is able to deliver stereo sound from a single central unit. In other words, it does away with the concept of a "sweet-spot", giving anyone standing at any position in a room with a T12 v3 soundbar the same left and right stereo fields as if they were standing between two separate left and right speaker channels.

In practice, it's not quite as clearly defined as that, but there's certainly a separation in the audio delivery no matter where you're standing in relation to the T12 v3, making it the perfect choice for those who indulge in busy movie nights with a gang of pals. What's arguably more important is the overall sound quality of the unit, and that thankfully is very good indeed, thanks to improved drivers and a new metal grille across the soundbar that allows for a greater spread for the audio image.

Though a little muddy at first (which again may be tweaked slightly in the final product) dialling back the bass a tad and pushing the treble settings up a little via the lightweight remote offered a full, warm stereo sound that's incredibly detailed. The T12 v3 soundbar is billed as primarily a partner for your flatscreen TV, and it certainly does a great job of bringing dialogue to the fore in movies, without scrimping on explosive booms and tinkling details. We spent quite a few hours playing games through the soundbar, and was incredibly impressed with the incidental detail it managed to pick up whilst we played through the classic Half Life 2. The crackling flames of a ruined city, being bombarded by sci-fi shells have rarely sounded so crisp.

Our main bug bear was the way that the T12 v3 soundbar doesn't retain your audio tweaks if you switch it off from the mains, a problem considering it's initially a little flabby sounding. It has a standby mode in which it does remember your changes, but if like me your green-conscious worries mean you have to switch everything off from the wall at night, you're going to have to keep re-configuring the soundbar. This wouldn't be so bad if HDMI support was included to allow for an onscreen menu, but as it isn't you're going to have to keep your ears finally tuned to re-balance the sound each time.

Keep in mind too that you're not getting support for 5.1 or 7.1 surround channels here, with everything being scaled back to stereo instead. It's not a fault for a soundbar clearly billed as doing some pretty special stuff with its stereo tech, but with similarly priced bars offering the feature, it's worth considering.

Verdict:

Orbitsound's T12 v3 is a worthy update to the brand's popular soundbar range. There remain a few niggles (namely HDMI support and surround features) for this price point, but it's hard to argue with the overall aural quality of the product. If you're looking for a no-fuss system with which to boost your flat screen's sound capabilities, you can't ask for much more than the T12 v3.

Name: GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Nvidia)

Type: Direct X11 compatible graphics card

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £199

Nvidia's Fermi GPU wagon continues to spout out top-notch cards at low prices, and perhaps none are more appealingly spec'ed and priced than the GTX 560 Ti. It tears into the sub £200 market by some margin if you shop around, but can it compete with the stellar cards AMD are touting at similar price points? Read on to find out.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti can be seen as a direct replacement to the GTX 460, with the "Ti" suffix denoting a premium build over the straight GTX 560 card. In the sub £200 RRP bracket it's a direct competitor to AMD's Radeon HD 6870. However, due to judicious overclocking headroom, you could even pit this one against the priceier Radeon HD 6950. Looking back at the legacy Nvidia GTX cards, it's worth noting that though the GTX 470 is effectively made redundant by the GTX 560 Ti, the massive price drop on the GTX 460 as a result of this new card makes it well worth a look for those on a tight budget.

Though an incremental update with the GF114 GPU here when compared to the GF104 of its GTX 460 predecessor, low-leakage transistors and the addition of an extra Streaming Microprocessor add up to 384 CUDA cores and 64 texture units to play about with. That's a lot more graphical horsepower to play about with, and though the heat-management systems aren't quite as robust as seen in the GTX 580 and GTX 570, you'll still be able to tweak the BIOS settings to overclock the 560 Ti relatively safely out of the box.

All this adds up to a card that's on average as much as 28% more powerful than its GTX 460 predecessor. Crank up to whopping 2560x1600 resolutions on Direct X 11 gaming content and with the memory clock speed pushed to 2,390 MHz, we were seeing improvements over the last gen card of as much as 35%.

In fact, in terms of Direct X 11 the Nvidia card wins out across the board in comparison to the Radeon HD 6870, making it going forward the card of choice out of the two for those looking to play this generation's most demanding games. If however you're looking to put Direct X 10 gaming performance as the deciding factor, it's a closer run race, with the AMD card coming out the victor.

Verdict:

The GTX 560 Ti is a superb card, make no mistakes. Its handling of Direct X 11 at all but the very highest resolutions make it a mid-range card to be reckoned with and with plenty of headroom for a fair bit of overclocking, you'll be able to tweak the card into performing feats well beyond its price bracket. The real problem is that this price bracket is now a crowded one, with many rival cards offering equal-or-better performance rates straight out of the box. It's horses for courses with Radeon's similar cards vs the Nvidia set-up, and you won't want to make a hasty decision when picking between the GTX 560 Ti and a Radeon HD 6870, particularly in terms of Direct X 10 performance. But with this model now selling for under £170, the bang-for-buck ratio is undeniable.

Name: Yeti Pro (Blue Microphones)

Type: USB microphone with analog XLR output

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £229 from Amazon

Blue Microphones set themselves a high standard when they released the superb Yeti microphone, but they're out to top even those lofty aural heights with the Yeti Pro. Could this be the finest USB microphone ever built? Read on to find out.

The Yeti Pro is a sturdy as it is big and beautiful. Rising 29.5cm in its included stand and weighing 1.55 kg with the base attached, the textured black and silver metal casing is quite the looker, reminiscent of a 1950's radio mic in some respects. It's about as far removed from the cheap plasticy USB mics that dominated for so many years.

Now the original Yeti was a great mic, so much so that we thought it'd be hard to top. But the Yeti Pro is full of so many extra bells and whistles as to completely justify its premium price tag.

The first thing you'll notice from this successor is the 5-pin XLR connector on the bottom as well as the usual mini-USB port, allowing for stereo analog recordings. As it's stereo, it's not your standard 3-pin connection, but Yeti throw in a converter cable to make hooking up analog connections pain free. It's worth noting too that the volume knob on the Yeti Pro's front dial is a digital one as opposed to analog, so you can keep pumping that dial up infinitely here, and will have no bearing whatsoever on input volume on analog recordings.

XLR support would be reason enough to give this model its "Pro" suffix, but Blue go the whole hog and add the ability to capture 24 bit/ 192 kHz audio too. The accuracy of the Yeti Pro therefore is quite astonishing. With three custom condenser capsules and four mic patterns (Stereo, Cardioid, Omnidirectional and Bidirectional) you'll easily be able to configure the mic to be just as effective at picking up full-room live band recordings as a simple voice-only podcast. Either way, the sound going in is almost identical to the resulting recording, with the high resolution sound files produced revelatory in their clarity.

A headphone jack also sits on the underside of the Yeti Pro. Recognised as a full USB audio device, the Yeti Pro therefore allows you to use your headphones to fully monitor playback, with zero latency, adding to the flexibility of the kit.

If you hadn't already guessed, it's an incredibly sensitive mic. While in many cases this is a blessing, there are a few occasions when this could frustrate too. It's a joy to be able to pick up quiet sounds without worrying too much about recording levels, but this of course has certain downsides too. Recording just a few minutes of spoken audio with the cardoid pattern in 24 bit mode, with the Yeti Pro standing on my computer desk, the mic picked up the whirring of my external PC disk drive. It's fantastic that a USB mic has sensitivity levels this high, but you're going to have to make sure your environment is pitch perfect before hitting the record button.

Likewise, it's a bit annoying that there isn't a quick-switch option to swap quickly between analog and digital recording settings. As it stands, you'll have to physically unplug the analog connections before making a digital recording. It's not ideal, but unusual for dual analog/digital mics either.

Verdict:

The Yeti Pro oozes quality. From its construction to the clarity of the recordings it produces to the flexibility afforded by the dual USB and XLR connections, it's head and shoulders above the competition. But quality comes at a high premium however, so unless you're a dedicated musician, podcaster or video editor, cheaper alternatives may suffice. They'll unlikely sound anywhere near as good though.

Name: Age of Empires Online

Genre: Online Real-Time Strategy

Platform: PC

Price: Free to play, with additional premium DLC

Age of Empires Online represents the dawn of a new era for Microsoft's flagship RTS series. In the hands of new developers and with added online social features, this free-to-play title has one eye on the future and one foot in the past. Can it bring the old and new together in harmony, or will gamers be warring against this new direction for the veritable series? Read on to find out.

Few real-time strategy series are as revered as Age of Empires. As well as leading the way with perfectly balanced combative units, it had a great defensive system too and finely tuned resource management, tied up in a sweeping historical bow that would make Cecil B. DeMille proud.

In many ways, Age of Empires Online retains much of what made the first three entries into the series (and their many expansions) great. You'll take a small gang of villagers from one of history's earliest cultures, and set them about collecting resources like stone, wood, food and gold in order to build buildings and then raise an army to protect them. You'll expand your civilisation to bursting point, forcing you to seek out new outposts to colonise, which will inevitably lead you to discover opposing forces. It then (usually) becomes a race to make your civilisation the most strongly equipped around, passing through to more advanced historical ages, building more powerful offensive units and then crushing your foes with military might.

It's not complicated by today's standards, but it's still plenty of fun, and underlines the majority of what makes up Age of Empires Online's gameplay, which is nothing but a good thing. In this respect Age of Empires Online gets off to a good start; it'll feel familiar to long time fans, while newcomers have a tried, tested and much loved system to explore.

Visually, the historically accurate feel of older AoE games has been replaced with colourful, caricatured units and exaggerated cultural architecture. This will likely make serious Age of Empires fans turn their noses up as it's such an obvious departure and a pointer towards the casual market Microsoft are intending to snare with this new entry, but that's mostly unfounded as it actually looks rather good. There's lots of life in the varied villagers and foot soldiers, and overall presentation is very good with a clear, accessible UI. More obvious hotkeys would have been useful though.

But while the tried and tested Age of Empires mechanics still hold up remarkably well, the additions that make this a unique entry in the series drag it down.

The real problems stem from the new online elements and the "freemium" model employed here. Let start though by noting that it's not all bad. Having a persistent online capital city for instance is a great idea, and being able to decorate it as you see fit to show off to your pals, as well as using it as a multiplayer hub, works very well. Being able to add persistent advisers who "buff" your cites through the ages is good too, and gives you unique angles with which to take on opponents.

But there are terrible things that drag it all down too. For starters, the questing system. You'll level up your civilisation through quests rather than the story driven campaign that was present in earlier titles. They'll unlock new units, and eventually level up your city into a grand wonder. That's fine at first, but quests soon turn into familiar MMO grinds, dishing out the same sort of missions over and over again. As each time you'll have to build up a new little outpost and defences, this grows incredibly tedious, forcing you to replay the more prosaic early elements of city building over and over. If you want to remain competitive on a multiplayer level you'll have to play through them too, as they're the only way to access the higher tier units and upgrades.

The gulf between free players and premium players is vast. If you don't cough up dough you don't get access to certain units, certain technologies, certain crafting abilities, sufficient storage space for crafting or ranked player-versus-player match ups. It's worth a quick go as a taster without paying, but you're really going to have to pay if you want to truly play at this game's best.

Premium content then allows for Greek and Egyptian civilisations at full strength, but at £15 a pop that's far too expensive, especially when you know there are at least two more civilisations down the line to grab (Celts and Persians, if you're interested). £80 will grab you a 6-month season pass, giving access to all content within that time window, which would include the likes of decorative capital city items and consumable buffs and units. That's just too much, and doesn't work well in the pocket-money way that the freemium model thrives on.

This inevitably leads to balancing issues, but some of these stem from the game itself. In order to accommodate the "always on" Farmville style capital city, there's an annoying crafting system that requires you to check in on your production at regular intervals. It's a boring time sink, but a necessity if you want to be powerful empire.

The bigger problem here is that these crafted items are horribly unbalanced too, which leads to rewards being given to players investing the most time in the crafting system rather than the player with the most skill. Facing off against the exact same civilisation with a player with at the same level, only to be bested by his inferior forces using a near-mythical item is incredibly disheartening. This is not good news for a franchise that once prided itself as a "go-to" competitive game.

There are bugs aplenty too, which will no doubt be ironed out with patches, but are worth noting all the same. Age of Empires Online requires that most hated of newly implemented PC DRM conventions; the constant broadband connection. It's annoying as it is and (in a free-to-play game especially) wholly unnecessary, but goes the extra mile to frustrate by kicking you out of the game every time there's a blip in your internet connection. No countdown, nothing. Quest over, which is particularly frustrating if you're halfway through a lengthy one. Likewise, AI path-finding can at times be atrocious, and will have you screaming at the screen as your units insist on taking the longest route to a battle, or refuse to take the path less trodden in order to line up a stealthy "back door" attack.

Verdict:

The core fun of what made Age of Empires the RTS to beat back in its heyday is still here. The problem is its hidden away, only at its best when you cough up for premium content, and then even that is extravagantly expensive in the long term. Having a capital city as an online hub for your friends is great, but these added social aspects came at the price of the inclusion of quest-grinding filler and balancing issues to the justify the "Online" suffix of the title. In this age of Starcraft II, Empires has lost its RTS throne.

Name: Speedo Aquacoach

Type: Swimming Computer Lap Counting watch

Specs: Click here for full video specs

Price: £99 from Amazon

Whether you are a recreational or serious swimmer it's good to be able to monitor your progress in the water. Up until recently, if you wanted to work out how far you'd swum in any one session you would have to count up the lengths and multiply them by the length of the pool - a process fraught with complications especially, if like me, you tend to forget to keep tally after a few lengths. However, here's a gadget that automatically works out how far you've swum - and does far more clever stuff besides. Read on to find out more.

While watches for swimmers are not new, it's only recently they have become advanced enough to automatically count your laps (lengths) for you. Previously if you wanted a watch to work out how far you'd swum you would have to manually hit a button every time you got to the end of the pool - not exactly ideal.

However, a few years ago Swimovate developed a new technology which used algorithms to sense a break in the stroke pattern every time you turn around in the water. It works with all four strokes (front crawl, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly) and with standard turns as well as tumble turns though it won't work if you change your stroke half way through a length. The watch will also work on either the left or right hand.

It is this technology that is incorporated in Swimovate's range of Poolmate watches - available in pink, blue, black and grey for £69.99 online.

Essentially, the Speedo watch licenses Swimovate's core technology and though the model is a little more expensive than Swimovate's (the Aquacoach is currently retailing for £99) it does look a little nicer as well as feel a bit more chunky. Available in blue or red versions, it has a large flat digital display and four control buttons - two on each side of the watch. A green backlight is on board and the watch can be worn at depths of up to 100m.

Before you swim you need to set the length of the pool you are swimming in as well as your weight (it uses this to work out how many calories you have burned). Settings are in lbs and yards or kg and m and it will work with all pools over 15metres (most public pools are between 20m and 35m). Unfortunately, though, it can't be used in open water to measure distance - for this you would need a watch with a built in GPS!

While the Aquacoach can be used just to work out the distance and time of your swim (simply by pressing the bottom left button at the start and end of your swim) keen swimmers may be interested in its additional functionality. This includes average speed (how many seconds it takes to swim 100m) and stroke count - how many strokes it takes to get from one side of the pool to the other (basically the lower the better). You can also measure individual 'sets' within each of the sessions.

However, it doesn't have the 'efficiency' setting of Swimovate's Poolmate which uses a clever little metric to work out how well you are swimming - maybe Speedo felt this was a little gimmicky or a bit crude.

Verdict:

For keen swimmers this is definitely a must-have gadget. While it's not perhaps the most intuitive of products to set up, once you have figured out what all the buttons do, it's reasonably straightforward to use. Up to 99 swims can be stored in the log, complete with a breakdown of the date, time, speed, calories burned etc. And while I'm not always in the mood to monitor all of my swims, I do find it useful if I just want to gauge my progress from time to time, especially when it comes to reducing stroke count per length. Recommended.

See Speedo's Aquacoach video here:

Name: Griffin Beacon

Type: Universal remote control with iOS app

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £57 from Amazon

One device to rule them all? That's the idea behind the Griffin Beacon, a universal remote control kit that works in tandem with your iOS device to control all the gadgets in your house that use a remote control. But is the Beacon a shining light in a murky sea of universal remotes, or is your best bet to dig under the sofa for that dusty lost zapper? Read on to find out.

The Griffin Beacon is quite the looker. Best described as a similar size to a black Apple TV box with a shiny black pebble placed on top, it'll sit comfortably and stylishly alongside most AV set-ups. Powered by four AA batteries, it syncs with your iOS device via a Bluetooth connection and, when used alongside the Dijit controller app, lets you control as many as 200,000 home entertainment devices from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch straight out of the box.

Set up was incredibly simple. Once the batteries are placed in the bottom of the Beacon, you push down on its curved top till you hear a "Frustration" style click, which sends out a Bluetooth signal. It's then just a case of syncing the device with your iOS gadget through the Bluetooth device menu of your Apple phone, mp3 player or tablet. Rather than an actual remote control, the Beacon actually works to convert Bluetooth signals from your iOS device into infra-red ones that your entertainment devices can understand. Therefore line of sight thankfully isn't needed to control the Beacon's many functions (though you'll still have to carry it around if you want to use it in multiple rooms). There are no control buttons on the Beacon; this is left up to the free Dijit app, which is very good indeed.

Upon firing up the Dijit app (which syncs and recognises the Beacon very simply) you'll be presented with a quick set-up screen which lets you select all manner of AV gear, from TVs to home cinema receivers, games consoles to stereos. Everyone from the big name brands like Samsung and Sony right down to the sort of budget brands you'd find in a supermarket bargain bin are supported, which is a great achievement. There are inevitably gaps in the device list (Roberts DAB radios weren't supported for instance) but the majority of gear is there. App software updates will continually update the device list, so it's worth checking back later, and the Beacon can also be "taught" other unsupported devices too, though that's not worth the complicated set-up it needs.

The Dijit app is simple to navigate and select different units to control, but perhaps its best feature is the level of customisation it offers. You can add tens of buttons for each device you want to control through the app, resizing buttons to fit what's comfortable for you, add custom buttons to run controls not found on your regular remote, or even remove buttons that you find no use for. The days of squinting at remote controls for a hard to find tiny button are long gone, and you can even use it to invent touchscreen gesture controls, like a two-finger swipe to adjust TV volume for instance.

Another great touch is the Activities feature. This lets you program the Beacon to perform numerous buttons at the press of a single button. For instance, you might set up an activity that turns on your TV, Digital TV box and home cinema speaker system all at once. It's a great time saver, and one that once set up would suit to a tee a technophobe who finds multiple controllers confusing.

As you can probably guess, we were very impressed by the Beacon. But it's not without its faults.

Firstly, the decision to run off of regular batteries rather than a rechargeable built-in one seems an archaic one. Two months worth of battery life is considerably less than I squeeze out of my remote controls. Though the wire-free set up is handy, it would have been nice to have had the option of using an AC adapter for those not planning on moving the Beacon about.

The lack of Android support is understandable for a device that's launching as "Made for Apple", and though there is an app in the works, it's disappointing not to see it ready at launch. Even more disappointing is the lack of native iPad app support; using that big screen to house multiple remotes at once would have been a superb addition over a blown up, stretched iPhone one.

Lastly, the Beacon lacks some functionality in the UK that its US versions have. In the US, users can check TV listings and share them via social networking sites with their pals; in the UK you cant. Likewise Netflix accounts can be browsed and managed in the US with the Beacon and Dijit app, and while Netflix may not be available in the UK, no suitable alternative (like Lovefilm) has been added to fill the gap.

Verdict:

Despite some quibbles, the Beacon remains a superb solution to having tens of chunky remote controls laying around your living room. iPad support and a rechargeable battery are the main issues holding it back from top marks, but the amount of customisation easily lets us see past the Beacon's few faults.

Name: Bamboo Stylus for iPad (Wacom)

Type: Capacitive touchscreen stylus

Price: £24.99

Earning your place among the iPad accessory elite in a market already so cluttered is difficult enough, but for touchscreen styluses it's even harder. With presumably the majority of touchscreen owners equipped with ten fingers that work perfectly fine on capacitive screens, a stylus is a particularly hard sell. Can Wacom's Bamboo Stylus for iPad prove its worth, or are you better off just using your own stubby digits for ultimate touchscreen control?

At first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Bamboo Stylus was a regular ink pen. Though a tad thicker than your average Bic, the rounded pen measures a standard 4.25 inches long. Built from metal, it's weighted comfortably, slightly heavier at the end you write with. Like a quality fountain pen, you can twist off and remove the pocket clip from one end, as well as replace the rubber nib at the writing end. All in, it's well constructed and comfortable to use, and feels far more sturdily built than the majority of throwaway stylus pens available, justifying its slight price premium over the competition in this regard.

The nib is of course the most important part of any capacitive touchscreen stylus, and has at times been a tough cookie to crack for manufacturers. Whereas the resistive touchscreens of old relied on pressure and worked well with many pointy, hard stylus shapes, modern capacitive screens work through conduction, letting them respond to the slightest touch from a finger. In the past, capacitive stylus pens have used foam tips to replicate finger inputs, but they'd deform over time and become useless. Most newer styluses instead take the approach of using a hollow, squidgy rubber tip, and so too does the Bamboo Stylus. There's no magical circuitry going on inside the stylus here, just a rubber tip getting the job done.

The Bamboo Stylus is as accurate a capacitive pen as they come, thanks to a nib that's smaller than the competition at 6mm (based on a claimed 8mm average from Wacom). You'll be able to sketch and take handwritten notes with pressure consistent to a regular pen, feeling far more natural than trying to do the same with a greasy finger. As a side note then, using the Bamboo Stylus will keep your screen relatively smudge free, so long as you keep the nib away from any greasy or sticky substances. Artists in particular will appreciate the extra control that using a stylus brings, making sketching using apps such as ArtRage or Doodle Buddy, or handwriting apps like Penultimate, far more consistent to the feel of writing with a pad and paper.

It's a shame then that Wacom couldn't have made the rubber nib just a tad smaller. Though only the central-most point of the 6mm diameter nib is picked up on the drawing apps, the wide nib can make the finest of details a little difficult to enter. This may be an unavoidable problem, given the iPad needs a certain amount of surface contact to register touch (in line with a finger's tip) but it's a niggle nonetheless. Also, though a limitation of the iPad hardware and app software rather than the stylus itself, you'll notice a delay between inputs and onscreen results with the stylus, which may be off-putting for those used to the instant strokes of pen and paper.

If you're not an iPad owner, you'll be happy to hear the Bamboo Stylus should, in theory, work with all capacitive touchscreen devices, be that a HTC smartphone or a Samsung Galaxy tab. The iPad arguably has the most responsive capacitive screen on the market however, so results may vary from display to display.

Verdict:

You'll have to be pretty big on tablet doodling to justify shelling out £25 for a capacitive stylus, but if you are, there are no finer options than Wacom's Bamboo Stylus for iPad. A well-weighted finger alternative with a responsive nib, you'll be an iPad Picasso in no time with the stylus. We'd personally like to have seen a smaller tip, which we believe would have lead to even greater accuracy in our hands, but for the most part this will be a point of personal preference, married with the brush/ tip size specifications of the app you're using. Highly recommended otherwise.

Name: TouchPad (HP)

Type: WebOS Tablet

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: 32GB £449.99 from Amazon

16GB £387.99 from Amazon

HP's acquisition of Palm bears its first tablet fruits with the HP TouchPad, the latest contender to step into the ring with Apple's iPad. Its WebOS operating system sets it apart from the Android masses and the iOS showboat, but is stellar multitasking enough to deliver a knockout slate punch? Read on to find out.

Hardware and Build

HP's TouchPad doesn't stray drastically from the blueprint laid down by Apple's iPad. Measuring 240 x 190 x 13.7 mm and weighing roughly 740g, it's a fair bit heavier and thicker than the iPad 2, despite rocking a similar 9.7 inch, 1024 x 768 display. Slight curves on the chassis make it no less comfortable to hold though, even if the gloss black backing and screen are particularly susceptible to picking up smeary marks. The plastic backing build is good, though inevitably feels a little flimsy when compared to metallic rivals.

A black bezel, around half an inch thick, sits around the screen, with a "Home" button embedded in one of the 4:3 scale tablet's shorter sides and a 1.3MP HD-capable front facing camera in the opposite bezel edge. The TouchPad doesn't have a rear facing camera, though their genuine usefulness is questionable anyway. That Home hardware button has thin strip of light that pulses when a notification is awaiting your attention, with a fixed glow showing when the tablet is on and in use.

A microUSB port is used for charging the TouchPad (though it also works with a wireless TouchStone charger too, which can be seen like HP's take on the PowerMat), while USB drag and drop file support over a PC is also possible. TouchStone technology also allows the TouchPad to share web pages and other information with the Pre 3 smartphone, simply by placing one on top of the other. This produces a nice ripple visual effect, and is useful if you want to quickly transfer web details or similar before pocketing them and heading out on the road.

A volume rocker and lock button for the screen accelerometer also feature, while HP's use of Beats Audio-powered speakers continues from their laptop and notebook lines into the stereo pair found here.

Under the hood you'll find a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core APQ8060 processor. On paper, this much processing power should put the HP TouchPad easily among the fastest tablets on the market. But as you'll find as you read on, the performance doesn't quite match the numbers touted here.

Wi-Fi versions of the TouchPad hit stores first, though 3G versions are also to be available.

WebOS

If there is one stand out feature that sets HP's TouchPad apart from the tablet pack, it's the WebOS operating system. After HP acquired Palm, it seemed a given that the under-achieving smartphone OS would be tweaked and land on a tablet. And it has here, with mostly excellent results.

Multitasking is where WebOS really excels. Open up a string of apps at once, and each will be represented by a "card", sitting side by side on the main tablet homescreen, which can be swiped through at will. Tap a card to make the app go full screen, and hit the hardware Home button to go back to the mainscreen where all your cards sit side by side. These cards are not merely a list of recently used apps either; each is "live", and as you swipe through the carousel-like interface you'll see any active videos or real-time messaging continue to bop along in the background, even if it isn't the active card. When you're done with a task, just swipe the card up and it'll disappear and close.

To keep the number of simultaneously opened apps manageable, each card can be also grouped into stacks. If an app requires a pop-out window to say a web browser link or an email message, these too will stack rather than take up a new card space on the mainscreen, which helps keep related tasks nice and organised.

For the most part, this multitasking system is great, but we had two rather major complaints which sullied the experience a bit. Firstly, as you're encouraged to multitask so freely with the TouchPad, you can quickly build up a very large number of cards, which can take an age to scroll through if you don't stay on top of what apps you have open. An exploded view, similar to that offered by the HTC Sense UI, which would allow you to see miniature panes of all open cards at once from a pinch multitouch gesture would have been very useful here.

Of more concern however is the slowdown that multitasking seems to cause. For the most part the tablet handles multiple opened tasks well, but for some reason takes a shocking amount of time to adjust its orientation when you spin it around with the accelerometer active. With all the live cards needing to be flipped from landscape to portrait mode or vice versa, the tablet screen hangs for an age when turned around. On one hand the multitasking saves a lot of time, but in this instance at least it caused lots of frustration. It's a real shame, considering the 1.2 GHz dual core.

WebOS does impress elsewhere though, most notably with a superb, adjustable keyboard. You can tweak the size of keys, as well as the number bar sitting above the standard QWERTY offering. It's great to be able to have the option of a smaller keypad when less text entry is needed, say when web browsing, and then expanding it when punching out a lengthy email. It's surprising how much of a difference having number keys as a constant presence helps the flow of typing on a tablet too, even if the auto-correct HP has employed isn't all that good.

Though not quite as customisable as Android, a dock bar sits at the bottom of the homescreen, onto which you can drag and drop your most used apps for easy access. You also get a slim status bar along the top, which offers visual cues as to battery life, the time, Wi-Fi connectivity and the like. Notifications sit up here on the right hand side too, displayed in the order they came into. It's a tidy way of organising the many notifications you're likely to get from social networks and email accounts, but is limited in the way that only one notification can be viewed at a time, rather than expanded to see multiple ones.

The JustType bar found on WebOS smartphones also makes an appearance, but here it feels more like a legacy addition. With the hardware keyboards found on the old Palm smartphones, tapping away would give you instant search functionality of the many features, apps and files stored on the phone. Here it works more like iOS's Spotlight feature, as you're having to pull up the software keyboard before anything happens in the first place.

Apps

The TouchPad comes pre-loaded with all the usual native apps that any self-respecting tablet should, such as a browser, email client, calender, media viewing apps and maps, here powered by Bing rather than Google.

The browser is presented much like Safari is on the iPad. An address bar sits at the top alongside forward, back and email sharing buttons, as well as a history and bookmarks pane that pops out at the push of another software button. Rather than offering tabbed browsing, the browser adds each new page to the card stack outlined earlier. It makes sense in the context of the operating system, and is useful when sliding about the homescreen, but for the most part we missed the simplicity of regular tabbed browsing found on Honeycomb tablet browsers.

The browser also supports web-based Flash content, and while this should be a great boon over its iPad rivals, its appearance can be a little hit-or-miss. Flash animations and web navigation controls rendered perfectly nearly 100% of the time, even running without a judder in the multitasking cards views. Flash video on the other hand caused no end of problems, stuttering to a halt on many occasions and scaling up very poorly when pushed into full screen modes.

Email is set up in a similar column set up to anyone familiar with email apps on iPads or Android tablets. It's a tidy interface with legible text and recognisable shortcut buttons, but organising each column was a bit of a pain. A small slider button has to be held and dragged about to move each pane, which is fine in theory, until you realise that swiping also deletes emails. In other words, miss the pane dragging icon slightly and you can inadvertently delete an important message. The Calendar app has no such problems, and was easy to link in multiple sources, organised by label colour.

It's early days for the AppCatalog store, but already most of the big-name third party apps are in place such as Tune In Radio, Angry Birds and a superb Facebook app which seeps its sharing options into many of WebOS's native elements. There are only a couple of hundred apps at the time of testing, but at the moment they appear to be of high quality, and covering all the productivity/entertainment bases that you'll need to get going initially. Hopefully it'll grow quickly enough to match the might of the App Store and Android Market. It's worth noting though that scrolling through the store is again a stuttery affair, unresponsive to the touch.

The AppCatalog certainly has a great feature in Pivot. Much like a digital magazine, it's an editorially focused take on "what's hot" on the HP app store. Focusing on a dozen or so apps, it goes in-depth with developer interviews and highlights apps' key features, linking to each apps' purchasing page. It makes filling up your TouchPad with the finest the store has to offer very easy, and is a visually pleasing, informative read. It's a pity then it's currently slated as a monthly release, as a weekly one would surely drive more sales in the store, as well as helping newcomers navigate to the best stuff.

Media playback

HP's Touchpad handles media playback very well. Though the screen doesn't display in full HD, the tablet does a sound job of downscaling 1080p and 720p content, and both played without a hitch, in multiple video formats. Whereas some apps and the accelerometer seem to cause the tablet to slow down, HD playback is surprisingly trouble-free. The Video and Photos app, while a good idea in terms of presenting family albums and the like, felt a strange place to store our Hollywood movies. It was a little jarring to find a video of my baby nephew next to a 720p Deerhunter movie file I'd been watching. Likewise, the lack of thumbnail images for video content was disappointing, so make sure your videos are legibly titled before pushing them to the TouchPad.

Despite the Beats Audio stereo speakers, sound quality was disappointing on the TouchPad. As with their laptop counterparts, they deliver solid bass, despite the slim chassis, but in terms of movie playback this comes at the expense of dialogue clarity. With tablets more a video consumption device rather than music in our opinion, this seems like a slightly misguided sonic stance to take. It's not dramtically worse than other tablets we've seen, but definitely resulted in a muddy audio mix.

Battery life on the TouchPad is solid, but not quite as good as the iPad 2's. You're looking at around 6-7 hours of continuous video playback from a full charge, depending on what you've got running in the background, and the strength of your display's brightness settings. It's worth noting that the screen is also a little less bright than an iPads. Again, it's not a dramatic difference, but the TouchPad is noticeably dimmer when put side-by-side with Apple's offering.

Verdict:

We had high hopes for the HP TouchPad, and have been silently willing the tablet to be great since we first laid hands on it. In some respects it is; WebOS is a nifty operating system, and its take on tablet multitasking is as good (if not better) than that offered by Honeycomb flavoured Android. The TouchPad falls down though when it comes to performance. Despite packing a solid 1.2GHz dual-core processor, that extra CPU grunt is hardly ever in evidence. It may be a side-effect of the multitasking focus, but it all feels too sluggish, too often. The potential for the tablet is plain to see, and we'd love to see the TouchPad make enough money to justify a series of refined models. As it stands, we'll be holding onto our iPad 2 as our go-to tablet for a while longer.

Name: Cars 2

Genre: Arcade racer

Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3

Price: £34.91 from Amazon on Xbox 360
£34.91 from Amazon on PS3

Pixar's Cars 2 races onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 following the release of the summer sequel in cinemas. Have the Disney team pushed the anthropomorphised motors the extra mile, or is this just another Hollywood cash-in? Read on to find out.

Last year Pixar teamed up with developers Avalanche Software for the Toy Story 3 console game, which, through close collaboration with the Pixar animators, resulted in one of the finest licensed videogames in recent memory. That partnership has continued with Cars 2, and has yielded even greater results in this kart racer.

Though this is essentially a Mario Kart style arcade driving game, there's a loose story ripped straight from the movie pulling together the action. The movie's stars Lightning McQueen and Mater set off to train at a the base of a secret spying organisation known as CHROME (Command Headquarters for Recon Operations & Motorized Espionage), who are out to foil a massive world-threatening plot. This is based on a kids Disney film of course so don't expect Jason Bourne levels of intrigue, and is mostly used as a framing tool for the road-based mayhem that Cars 2 is really all about.

And when it comes to burning rubber, Cars 2 rivals even the mighty Mario Kart. With a heavy focus on combat, you'll take control of 25 different cars, ranging from fast-talking sports cars to stoned camper vans, equipped with everything from machine guns to landmines.

If this sounds just like a re-skinning of Mario Kart to fit the Pixar movie, you're only half right; while it certainly takes its cues from the Nintendo racer, Cars 2 has plenty of its own tricks tucked under its bonnet. For instance, each vehicle can jump high into the air, allowing you to find secret short cuts on the stylised real-world tracks, while driving in reverse using backwards steering controls allows you to build up turbo boosts. Each car can also jump horizontally from side to side, which can be used to shunt enemy vehicles into oncoming obstacles, or force them off the road during a tough turn.

While the controls are quite unlike your regular racer, with a heavy emphasis on drifting and jumping, Cars 2 is simple enough for almost every gamer to pick up and play straight away. All the cars have a light and floaty handling style, which in most other racers would be a fault. Here however it adds to the madcap charm on screen; these are as much living breathing characters as they are vehicles (highlighted by their humanised animations) and as such shouldn't be expected to handle like Gran Turismo motors. You're barking up the wrong tree with Cars 2 if that's the sort of driving experience you're after, but you'd be missing out on some truly thrilling fun, especially in Cars 2's multiplayer modes.

Which leads us onto our only two real complaints with Cars 2. Best enjoyed in with friends, it seems a foolish decision to lock the game's best competitive multiplayer modes off from players at the outset until they've completed enough of the 40-odd Career mode challenges. Kart racers are best enjoyed in quick battle modes, and Cars 2 has excellent variations on these events (with the capture-the-flag style Disruptor races a true highlight), so why not offer these superb events straight away? Likewise, there's no online modes with which to play Cars 2. It's nit-picking, as all the Career mode events offer local 4-player drop-in-drop-out multiplayer anyway, and the other modes will eventually be unlocked, but this seems unnecessarily restrictive.

But from chase races to arena style battles, the Career mode is a charming one regardless, so it wont be long before those multiplayer modes are unlocked anyway. Cars 2 looks a treat too, which makes playing in single player, full-screen, a real pleasure. It's not easy to give cars character, but both vehicles and tracks alike bustle with life, even if the repetitive voice-over work starts to grate.

Verdict:

When you consider the party/racer genre has only one real stand-out series in the shape of Nintendo's classic Mario Kart franchise, it's no small compliment to say that Cars 2 is racing easily alongside the mushroom-chomping big boys. Though the need to progress through the story to unlock all the multiplayer modes is a clunky decision that hampers out-of-the-box competitive fun, Cars 2 is a superbly fun racer once you get going. It oozes Pixar charm, with enough solid, madcap ideas to put it on the starting grid just a tad behind Mario Kart, which is a great achievement.

Name: Crayola ColorStudio HD

Type: iPad stylus and children's drawing app

Price: £24.99

Accessory makers Griffin have teamed up with everyone's favourite crayon brand Crayola for the latest entrant in their App Powered line. The Crayola ColorStudio HD pairs a digital stylus with a free iPad app, letting kids get creative on Apple's tablet without getting felt tip marks down the sofa, or worse; your slate's screen itself. But is the ColorStudio HD set any replacement for a colouring book and a cheap set of pencils? Read on to find out.

The Griffin-built ColorStudio iMarker stylus does a great job of conjuring the feel of chunky kids colouring pens and pencils when you pick it up. The length of your average Bic pen but roughly three times as thick so as to fit clumsy toddler's hands, it's powered by a single AA battery that gives enough juice for 3 to 4 months' worth of scribbles. With a power button down one end, the iMarker's Crayola logo lights up depending on what actions you are performing, while a low humming noise lets parents know if a child has left walked off and left the pen switched on. A silver lid is provided to protect the stylus's nib while in transit, though the iMarker seems sturdy enough to survive without this.

Though the Crayola ColorStudio HD app is free and readily available to all iPad owners, only those wielding an iMarker pen will be able to unlock all its features, as it specifically recognises the stylus's rubber-tipped nib and inner circuitry. You could use the free app in finger mode alone, but this would mean that the majority of the features we're about to detail will be unavailable to you.

The ColorStudio HD app is like the colouring book us adults could only have dreamed of as kids. As well as of course offering blank sheets for children to sketch their own masterpieces on, there are 30 themed colouring pages (such as scenes based on wildlife, monsters or sports), as well as the ability to drag and drop your own favourite pre-made elements from each pre-installed sketch into your own drawings. Many of these elements can be animated too, offering an interactivity missing from many rival drawing apps. Each animation can be paused, alongside the chirpy music that accompanies the app, while your best sketches can be sent to a printer, or even shared via Facebook.

Though the interface is a little complex for younger children, and could have done with voice-guiding features and in some instances larger buttons, it's colourful and in keeping with the overall Crayola brand. Plenty of different brush sizes and colours are available by tapping on the pencil box logo at the bottom of the screen, and these scroll beautifully in a pop-up peacock tail-style semi-circle. In a nice touch, the brushes mimic the pen and crayon styles you'd get from physical Crayola gear, with solid, inky colours from felt tip pens and scratchy marks from crayons. There are also options to set the pen so as children never draw outside of the lines, though this served only to confuse our three-year-old child tester.

However, the package does have one rather unfortunate setback. The iMarker itself can be a pain to use, only really responding to the screen at near-vertical angles. It's an uncomfortable way to hold the stylus, and doesn't teach kids good pen-grasping habits. As such, our three-year-old often got annoyed with the pen, pushing down on the screen very hard as he couldn't understand why it wasn't always responding well, often resorting to finger input. It's by no-means unusable, but hardly intuitive at the same time. We've spoken to a Griffin rep about the issue, who promised that as more feedback comes in, a software update will be perhaps possible to tweak the iMarker's responsiveness.

Verdict:

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but is it possible to have a double-edged pen? On the one hand, the Crayola ColorStudio is a great learning tool for the youngest members of your family; not only does it let them get creative (as well as offering the simplest animation suite you're ever likely to see), they can be artistic without being messy, as well as learning the fundamental concepts behind modern touchscreen technology. On the other hand, the pen can be frustratingly unresponsive unless held at an awkward angle, meaning many kids are likely to soon turn back to their traditional sketching tools. If Griffin can fix the stylus nib's responsiveness through a software update as they claim, we'd mark this one up higher. For now though we'd suggest not throwing away your wax crayons just yet.

Name: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Genre: Third-person action adventure/shooter

Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3

Price: £37.91 from Amazon on Xbox 360
£26.99 from Amazon on PS3

Image Gallery: Click here

The Harry Potter wizarding saga is brought to a close this weekend with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in cinemas. As with every other Harry Potter movie, there's a game to accompany it too. But can the game conjure the same magic that its silver screen and paperback counterparts can?

Like the summer Hollywood blockbuster that has spawned it, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 for games consoles follows the events of the second half of the final book in JK Rowling's magical series. Harry and friends Ron and Hermione are in a race against time to destroy the remaining Horcruxes within which the evil dark wizard Lord Voldemort stores parts of his soul before he assumes complete destructive control over the world. Taking in many of the book and movie's key scenes, the game sees you travel through the underground caverns of Gringott's wizarding bank, fight Death Eaters and Snatchers through the streets of Hogsmeade and eventually reach a final showdown against Lord Voldemort himself amidst the chaos of a gigantic battle at Hogwarts school.

The incongruous problem is that, just like the game that accompanied Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a 3rd person cover based shooter of the most un-magical kind, one that plays so liberally with the conventions of the Potter universe that it is a Harry Potter-inspired title merely by stitching its gameplay to the story's key plot points.

It's as much "Gears of War with Wands" as it is a game about teenage wizards and witches. Each level will see you take on wave after wave of dark wizards and snatchers by blasting them with spells. The aim of the game here is to fell wizards by matching Harry and his pal's many spells to the defences of those out to get you. However, in what is sure to infuriate fans, these spells bear little resemblance to those described in the book or captured on film.

For instance "Stupefy" acts more like a handgun than a stunning spell, and "Expelliarmus" as a way to take down shields rather than disarming bad guys' wands. Pretty much all the spells in the game can be sat next to corresponding guns and weaponry from similar 3rd person shooters, lacking the distinct magical qualities you'd imagine they'd have. In fact, in order to shoehorn shooter conventions into Part 2's gameplay, developers EA BrightLight have in many cases totally undermined the magic they're attempting to replicate. You'll scream at the screen the tenth time Hermione takes 5 minutes to perform an unlocking charm on a door that in the Potter universe should be instantaneous, just for the sake of forcing another "Protect and Escort" sequence into the game.

While the cover and shooting mechanics do handle well, it quickly becomes tiresome as you realise nearly all you'll be doing throughout Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is shooting. That's fine in a series like Gears of War that runs with the many possibilities blasting foes has within that game's universe, but that's never what Harry Potter was about. Exploring the magical world, learning the secrets of Hogwarts' every nook and cranny has here been replaced with linear blasting through corridors.

As well as Harry, Ron and Hermione, several of the series' minor stars are also playable in the game, including Neville Longbottom, Seamus Finnigan, Professor McGonagall and Ginny Weasley. These moments are usually reserved for boss battles (such as one between McGonagall and Snape that mimics the fight scene between Yoda and Count Dooku in Star Wars Episode 2), or to slightly spice things up with a new gameplay mechanic. These sequences however are often again at odds with the Potter universe; who, for instance, remembers Seamus's skills as an explosives expert, using a C4-like spell to quell attackers on a bridge. Though it's nice to see elements of the climactic Battle of Hogwarts from a point of view that isn't Harry's, BrightLight's vision is likely to be at odds with what your own.

In fact, many of the game's most memorable moments are unplayable cut scenes, such as a thrilling escape from Gringott's on the back of a blind dragon. It looks great, and the extra variety that could have been brought to the game by having had control over these show-stopping moments makes them merely teasing. With so many dramatic, epic moments to draw upon with the final instalment in the series, Part 2's video game totally squanders its potential. Adding insult to injury is the game's length; you'll easily finish the game within one extended sitting of 4 hours or so, adding an extra hour or two if you go for every collectible hidden away.

The game's few saving graces then come from its sounds and visuals. Here BrightLight have managed to capture the essence of the films marvellously, with recognisable-if-stiff character models and many environments that look as if they've been lifted straight from the film itself. Likewise, good use is made of the stirring score of the movie, and while the majority of voice actors are not the same as their silver-screen counterparts, for the most part they are indistinguishable, particularly the Emma Watson soundalike.

Verdict:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a particularly frustrating movie-tie in. Visually it manages to bring the magic of the movies onto home consoles, even if a little roughly around the edges. And though the game is maddeningly repetitive in its action, not to mention being built upon a gameplay style that is totally at odds with the source material, the underlying gameplay mechanics work fine. It's just once you put all the elements into the potions pot and mix them together, your left with a taste worse than Polyjuice potion. The charm and warmth of Harry's tale is completely sidestepped in favour of bog-standard shooter conventions that have no place in Hogwarts, shoehorned into a game you can finish in a sitting. TT Games Lego Harry Potter titles do a much better job of pulling you into JK Rowling's universe, and come heartily recommended over this puddle of Snape spittle.

Related | REVIEW: Captain America - Super Soldier (Xbox 360, PS3)

Name: Captain America: Super Soldier

Genre: Third-person action adventure

Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3

Price: £29.99 from Amazon on Xbox 360
£24.99 from Amazon on PS3

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In the 2011 "Summer of Superheroes" at your local cinema, the big screen Captain America adaptation is arguably the most hotly anticipated of the lot. Veering away from the main plot of the movie to focus on Captain America's earliest missions, Captain America: Super Soldier takes a slightly different tact to other movie-tie ins. Has freedom from the narrative of the movie led to a game better than your average Hollywood cash-in, or is this another super-heroic flop?

Of all the leading Marvel superheroes, Captain America is among the most unloved when it comes to getting his own gaming spin-offs. Barring ensemble cast appearances in the likes of Marvel vs Capcom 3 and the Ultimate Alliance series, the shield-wielding symbol of American freedom hasn't been given much screen time during this console cycle, whereas Spiderman for instance gets an almost-annual outing. News of Captain America: Super Soldier's release then was met with a mixture of excitement and trepidation; would the Captain finally get the game he deserved, or would the proximity of its silver-screen counterpart lead to an inevitable rush job?

Things look promising at first for Super Soldier. Sidestepping the events of The First Avenger film hitting cinemas in a couple of weeks, it weaves its own unique narrative around one of Captain America's earliest missions. Sent to infiltrate castle hideout of the fascist HYDRA forces, this 3rd person action adventure has appearances from the Red Skull, and Nick Fury, among other familiar faces. Even Hollywood's own Captain, Chris Evans, is on hand to voice our hero, and he does a fine job compared to the usually bored-sounding actors who have put their names to games before.

For a game that has a strong focus on combat, developers Next Level Games wisely take their brawling cues from another comic book legend, pilfering many of the ideas found in Batman Arkham Asylum. Captain America can pummel baddies with free-flowing melee strikes, popping from one baddie to the next with a lean of the directional stick without breaking a combo chain and reversing attacks from other enemies. This being a Captain America game, his indestructible shield also comes into play. A well-timed tap of the block button will repel gunfire back towards any shooters, while it can also be thrown around at enemies, bouncing off multiple HYDRA foes once upgraded and also used as an area-of-effect ground-slam with the appropriate upgrade. String enough hits together and you'll also earn an unblockable strike which cracks with a slow motion crunch. While not as slick as Arkham Asylum, wailing on bad guys in Super Soldier is initially good fun.

That however, is as good as things get with Super Soldier.

You'll quickly release that foes offer next to no challenge, standing off you and just waiting to be knocked out. They also arrive in their cookie-cutter droves, room after room of identical nazi-inspired baddies practically asking to be stomped on. Even later in the game when power-weapon wielding baddies enter the fray little tactically changes, with boss battle not so much fun as a welcome diversion from the tedium that preceded them.

Platforming sections, meant to highlight the Captain's nimble nature in fact only make him look like a clunky Nathan "Uncharted" Drake wannabe. Executed in rhythmic fashion by hitting the appropriate jump button near a ledge and then on to swing from beams and flag poles and the like, the timing of the tap mechanic is all-but broken, meaning you'll never be able to string a slinky smooth parkour sequence together. It's made all the more frustrating when you realise that mistiming these jumps leaves you vulnerable to enemy fire.

Taking another cue from Arkham Asylum is Super Soldier's light puzzle mechanics. Hotwiring electronically locked doors for instance is a simplified version of the cryptographer minigame gadget that Batman wields, pushing the two analogue sticks together before finding a sweet spot, but without a visual cue to aid you. Likewise, the code cracking puzzles, requiring you to overlay two identical numbers from a numerical sequence over each other, offer no challenge other than getting the frustratingly unresponsive patterns to glide together.

An easter egg hunt for HYDRA dossiers and actual porcelain antique eggs is designed to encourage you to explore the mostly-linear levels of the game but fails on two fronts. Firstly, because the "hidden" collectibles are more-often-than not left in clear sight of your primary objectives, meaning little actual hunting is needed. Secondly, because the environments in Super Soldier are so bland that you're unlikely to want to spend any more time than necessary exploring them.

Visually, Super Soldier is as beige as they come. The HYDRA castle, which is the predominant setting of the game, feels like an endless succession of wood-panelled corridors that open up into the odd-arena like room. The objects that litter the rooms are bereft of life and look decidedly last gen; you get no sense of anyone ever having used the castle before the game's start, nor until much later on in the game that it is being used for truly nefarious means. While enemy design is limited, they are on the whole interestingly crafted, as is Captain America's combat and movement animated relatively smoothly. However, the framerate seemed consistently low throughout Super Soldier, while recurring visual glitches (like Captain America's disappearing shield when viewed from near angles) only act to highlight the lack of polish on show throughout.

Verdict:

Though it gets off to a strong start, sadly Captain America succumbs to many of the same old failings that movie-tie ins do, year in, year out. The decent combat mechanics will do enough to keep you focussed through the seven-to-ten hours it'll take to finish Super Soldier, but it'll be almost wholly forgettable once you do so. Arkham Asylum showed that superhero games need no longer be butchered for the sake of coinciding with a silver-screen sibling, and can act to really highlight the strengths of the property and in turn do a far better job of building interest in any big screen adaptations, which seems to be Super Soldier's sole, failed purpose. This game presents itself more like Steve Rogers before his Captain America transformation; a sickly failure in need of a few steroids.