Casual gaming is a curious thing. On the one hand, you have a wide array of games, appealing to many people who don´t have much more than 20 minute spells to while away during a hectic day. On the other hand, you have die-hard gamers, accusing companies of flooding the market with low intelligence, inferior games, and destroying our beloved gaming world in the process. This brings up an interesting predicament: is casual gaming the future we refuse to accept, or merely a way of widening a somewhat narrow market for appeal to the masses?

Gamers in the UK rejoice, as THQ are offering freebies! Anyone who purchases the PC version of upcoming shooter, Metro 2003, in any format in the UK on launch day will be given a complete version of Red Faction Guerilla, last year's sleeper hit, absolutely free!

Although the press release has yet to confirm whether this is a hard copy or a digital download with retail versions, the bundling of such a great game with Metro 2033 shows that THQ really mean business.  This offer also applies to pre purchases. 

Metro 2033 is a first person shooter based on the acclaimed Dmitri Glukhovsky novel of the same name. Fight your way through the chilling settings of post apocalyptic Moscow, utilising the pre-war subway system and all its harrowing secrets to survive.

 Red Faction Guerilla is an open world shooter, utilising a fantastic destruction system as an additional weapon. Fight as part of the resistance, taking on the might of the Martian mining corporations as you and your compatriots struggle to defeat oppression.

Back in the early 21^st century the gaming industry was going through a craze about injecting realism. That was also the time period of GTA 3 and Vice City and they particularly stood out because they threw realism out of the window. Now that the craze of realism has slowly died down, it seems the bug of realism has bitten the GTA franchise.

All the Little Things:

Don’t get me wrong, I did thoroughly enjoy GTA 4 when I played it. I was particularly impressed with all the little nuances such as getting spam in your email, to actual television channels and the various mini-games available. I did not really spend time taking part in those activities but I appreciated their presence.

It wasn’t until I played DMC4 and the Condemned series right after GTA 4 that I realized I did not actually have as many thrills as per the amount of time I had spent playing that game. The question that comes to mind is if all the little things that GTA 4 developers included in the game made them side step and take the concentration away from making the campaign missions more exciting and fun.

You stand on top of the ramp surrounded by beautiful snow and scenery. You wait for the wind to pass and time your launch in that small window of opportunity. You can hear yourself breathe heavy. As the launch begins you can feel yourself accelerate at an increasing rate and hear the sound of your skis gushing through the snow. As you jump you wait for that last moment to land, a fine line that separates the gold medal from falling over. I am not actually talking about ski jumping in real life, but rather the Vancouver 2010 video game.

It´s almost a given that any game with "Shock" in the title carries some huge expectations. Irrationals "sequel-to-a-spiritual-sequel" has some huge shoes to fill, both in terms of gameplay and storyline, and the inclusion of a multiplayer mode was a surprise to many. So, Big Daddy is back, and this time he is meaner than ever before.

First things first, I am going to assume that most people reading this have played the first game. If you haven’t, I strongly recommend you play that first as the story and characters of the first tie into the world of Rapture so strongly that you will only get half an experience (and a confusing one at that!). For those who have, Bioshock 2 is set around 8 years after the first game, with the city of Rapture in a worse state than it was before.