Battlefield: Bad Company 2 stands alone in its ability to compose cinematic, adrenaline-fuelled events — and place you right at the centre. The huge, completely destructible environments constantly transform the tactics and the arsenal you’ll employ to swing the battle in your favour — not to mention keep you on your toes with the constant fear of your position becoming exposed. Your ability to adapt to the incredibly dynamic locale will be tested to the extreme.

Similarly, teamwork is an essential trait if you want to succeed. As in Battlefield 2, Bad Company’s multiplayer places a fair amount of emphasis on teamwork and rewards points appropriately. Medics receive points for reviving unconscious comrades, while engineers are rewarded for repairing the plethora of vehicles available, and so on. Squads also make a welcome return, allowing you to team up with four friends in the fury of 32 player battles in the PC incarnation. This feature helps immensely in strategizing and localizing the epic online tête-à-tête’s. The, now obligatory, perpetual ranking system is also in-tow, gifting players weapons and upgrades for their war efforts.
The game’s sound design is also worthy of mention. Whether you’re treading snow in Port Valdez or swatting mosquitoes deep in the Bolivian jungle, each sound vividly brings the location to life. The cacophony of bullets you’re likely to hear on the battlefield will also instantly fill you in with what weapons your opposition is packing and their probable position after a few hours of play.

Despite the vivid presentation of the solo campaign, however, the overall campaign is an anti-climax. While the multiplayer is certainly a recommendable substitute for the popular Modern Warfare 2, the single player campaign will inevitably leave you feeling let down. Bad Company 2 aims at achieving a cinematic blockbuster feeling but unfortunately misfires on several counts. Major points of the story – most notably, the fact that Russia is at war with the USA – are almost overlooked, while, overall, there is a serious lack of intensity in scale compared to the Call Of Duty series. Though it would be harsh to say that there is no fun to be had in the campaign, if you’re thinking of buying Bad Company 2 for the solo play alone, you’ll inevitably feel short-changed.

With regards specifically to the PC version, the most pertinent criticism thus far is reserved for the game’s stability. The game itself has crashed on several occasions on different machines and the game servers can be hard to connect to for one reason or the other. The user interface is also incredibly fussy – exceptionally so when using the server browser which lacks real-time updates, leaving you waiting until every server has been scanned before you search through the results. Hopefully, these are only teething problems.

Technical hitches aside, if you’re a fan of first-person shooters expect Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to keep you occupied for some considerable time.

The game’s plot by itself doesn’t break any boundaries, but it’s still thoroughly engaging and contains several twists and turns. The story revolves around main protagonist, Ethan Mars, who is doing all he can to find his son who goes missing and presumed to be the latest victim in a series of murders committed by the Origami Killer. What separates this title from any other, however, is the empathetic connection made between the player and each of the four protagonists. This is achieved by a deliberately slow, methodical build-up, which any number of best-selling authors would be proud of, to establish each character (you’re also granted with the ability to learn how each protagonist is feeling at a particular moment). It’s a profoundly different approach simply isn’t available in any other title elsewhere; it’s incredibly refreshing and will immerse you into the lives of the characters, tug at your heart strings and will refuse to let go. The pay off for creating these bonds comes later in the form of heart-pounding chases and violent brawls which will inevitably have you feverishly pounding buttons, and gripping the pad, literally, for your characters life.

Similarly, unconventional is the games control system. Most the gameplay involves third-person roaming and Quick-Time Events (QTE’s – which is basically tapping the corresponding button on the pad that appears on the screen). Don’t allow this to put you off though, as the controls still feel highly intuitive while allowing the story and the action to take centre stage. The Quick-Time Events will never punish your lack of precision either. Failing them will not result in the sequence restarting; however, how well you complete them will have a substantial effect on how the story unfolds.

In Heavy Rain, every decision you make comes under scrutiny. So much so, that your story could unravel in an entirely different way to that of your friends. And your second play through could be entirely dissimilar to the previous two.

Heavy Rain won’t appeal to everyone’s taste: the mundane tasks and slow build up could easily leave someone questioning the point. But, when given a chance, Heavy Rain is a truly unique, gripping, and engaging experience that should be enjoyed by everyone who owns a PS3

Interestingly, however, Davis conducts the entire proceedings professionally and fairly. Instead of holding Big Brother style auditions to find East Anglia’s answer to Jade Goody, Davis advertises the experiment as any other job opportunity – completely missing the chance to have a xenophobe-Polish face-off with spuds in a factory. Incidentally, this is where Paul and Terry instead take out their grievances on a machine, which, they claim, was operating far too fast (in fact, though it wasn’t stated, the machine had been slowed down for their induction). Deflection, though, is the least worrisome characteristic painted onto British workers by the programme.

Of the 12 people arranged to replace the immigrants, 4 didn’t turn up at all; Paul and Terry were half-an-hour late; and Ashley quit his job at an Indian restaurant half-way through the day. Equally embarrassing was carpenter Dean’s explosion at a critical appraisal from a Lithuanian supervisor. Cue the Imperialist attitude from Sam who confused picking asparagus for a stroll in a country park picking brightly lit daffodils for a loved one. If Jeremy Kyle had been running the show, he’d be dead now.

In fact, you’d almost wish Jeremy Kyle had been on hand to evoke some shame and drama from the whole exercise. Sam seemed to sulk with no sense irony that he was sulking about asparagus picking; Dean would rather he be criticized outside of his own presence; and Tanya, another asparagus picker, floats through the hour relatively unnoticed. Kyle would have had them all weeping within the hour. And rightly so.

There is one problem I have with Assassin’s Creed II, however. It’s far too easy. It’s like trying to pull in Essex. It’s like Stephen Hawking feeding you answers on a physics exam. It’s like betting on an American baseball team to win the ‘World Series’. Sure, you may not complete a race first time round, or get spotted a few times trying to execute a kill, but there’s nothing that will make you throw your controller in anger or gnaw on your fingers till they bleed because you desperately need to take it out on someone and, look, no one else is here, it’s just you, it’s your fault, it’s you who’s failing.

Face it, games are getting easier.

Take the early Tomb Raider series. I owned both two and three and completed neither. On TR:II, I got stuck at the same point twice: Lara is in an underground cave; there’s a boat; she needs a key; two bury men try to club her with some polygonal turd; kill them. Where’s the damn key? Nowhere, that’s where. I even looked under my own sofa, just to make absolutely sure. If that was remade now there’d be some clever two-dimensional English know-it-all – like a cross-between Simon Cowell and Jamie Oliver – taking me through the entire process of finding said key, with a map and waypoint just to make absolutely sure. Granted, Tomb Raider: Anniversary was slightly more subtle, but it was still completable within six or seven hours, whereas I agonized over a single key for days before giving up because my catheter was full.

In a change to its usual standard format of 45 minute episodes, the return of the series begins with an ambitiously epic five part episode on BBC1 as the schedulers attempt to dupe viewers into thinking that Torchwood has been transformed into a flagship drama series. Imagine ‘Waking the Dead’ carving open an alien carcass found in a quarry and delving into an intergalactic murder mystery with Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd happy slapping Martians until they confess. Inevitably, the widening of the Torchwood demographic towards BBC1 viewers takes its toll.

Those expecting an epic romping sci-fi will be bitterly disappointed as the climax to the reveal of the alien beings is purely the antithesis of what a climax should really be. By the end of third installment it becomes increasingly difficult to care about the reveal anyway as the threat becomes some faceless menace that could easily be substituted with terrorists.

So Torchwood has become a political drama then? Well, no. The verisimilitude of political intrigue is constantly broken by ministers walking around purposefully handing out documents about little green men. The interactions between the Torchwood members and their social circles do give a humanizing drama quality but will certainly be tedious for those already familiar with the Torchwood universe. Genre juggling isn’t the biggest flaw, however.

The pace of the story takes more beatings than Jack Harkness himself. Around the third and fourth part there’s a plethora of time given to characters doing nothing but staring thoughtfully just off camera. Russell T Davies’ attempt to build dramatic tension through these sequences eventually falls flat as they become increasingly tedious as time goes on. A scene in which Gwen highlights the Torchwood teams’ acquisition of toilet roll is also mystifying and could have only wormed its way into the script as time filler. Arial top-down views of London and Cardiff – long a staple of the Torchwood series – also – needless as they are already – become irritating; it wouldn’t be surprising if they spent a quarter of the allocated budget on helicopter flights.

Despite the flaws, the experiment pulls through. Taking a cult series which began as a spin-off to another hugely popular show on a digital channel really takes some doing. To then morph the format into an epic five part political and sci-fi thriller is something else.

Not only was scrolling 24-hour news channels at the forefront of this, but also a relatively new medium of sharing information. Social media networking sites like Facebook and Twitter highlighted a new way of proliferating news around the world. The news broke around 3pm Pacific standard time. Almost instantly, Google reported a vast increase in traffic – around 72% – as people went online to check if the news was indeed true. Twitter was also brought to a standstill as the micro-blogging site churned out a remarkable 100,000 tweets per second about the singers death; around 30% of all tweets were reported to be about Michael Jackson. I personally witnessed the event through Facebook as thousands of people updated their status messages in remembrance of his passing.

Traffic online was so abnormal that the internet struggled to cope it is reported.

Only a few days ago were journalists lauding Twitter for its ability to publish events in Iran through mobile phone messages sent to the website; this phenomenon alone made people sit up and take notice of the ability to send and receive news through the social media circle and now Michael Jackson’s death highlighted the advantages of online social networks to bring breaking news to everyone, whether they are at or away from their computer or away from television or radio. This ability, to reach everyone at anytime, has journalists salivating. Where else can they get such a vast audience?

There is a word of warning though. Rumours also bounded around that Jeff Goldblum had also kicked the proverbial bucket; these rumours were totally unfounded. The problem is that there is no way of clarifying anything through social media because it is written by anyone and everyone, people without sources or with an agenda.

Jacksons saddening death has however created an epiphany moment in social media which will only see its growing use as a system to collate opinions and bring breaking news to a vast audience in an instant.

Symbolized by a reflective visor and white overalls – instead of a Guy Fawkes mask, Top Gear’s own enigmatic persona managed to draw in one of the largest hauls in terms of audience figures in the series’ history.

7.1 million people; it’s a figure BBC Two doesn’t reach too often.

The supposed revelation of his identity proved to be an audience winner. It has since been confirmed that, although Michael Schumacher did don the white overalls for the Stig’s lap of the track inside Ferrari’s FXX – which is no surprise given the cars exclusivity, other drivers slip on the famous white helmet.

So the faux-reveal  was quite a miraculous piece of near subliminal advertisement. Does anybody remember an advertisement on the beeb for Top Gear this time round? Nope – there wasn’t any.

Budget cuts – as Jeremy Clarkson himself had admitted during the show – were the prime reason.

In the end though, there simply was no need. Filming of the series is done on Wednesday. The BBC, therefore, hoped that word of mouth and newspaper columns would spread would begin to circulate rumours of the identity of the Stig. Ergo, this speculation would also spread word of the return of the show. Ingenious. It was a risk, but in the end it worked quite superbly.

I’m no hypochondriac either. However, after watching House (Sky1, Sunday), I’m beginning to rethink my criteria of relevance that I apply to potential symptoms.

Every week some poor sod is carted off to the operating table by a drugged misanthropic maverick doctor – portrayed superbly by Hugh Lawrie – and is disassembled piecemeal until some incredibly obscure diagnosis that the NHS has never heard of is found.

Effectively, House is the medical drama’s answer to CSI.

Don’t let that put you off though. The main draw of the show isn’t its impossibly complex medical mysteries.

Instead, it’s the underlying relationships between those making the diagnosis, the voluptuous woman in charge, and the patients, that make this series so enjoyable. House’s dry sarcastic wit and distaste for social niceties are the cause of most of the highlights. “So you’re treating sports injuries now?” he quips as he spies one of his former employees examining an overweight man’s foot injury.

When you compare the witty dialogue with that of other medical dramas such as the BBC’s Casualty – which, by comparison appears so amateurish that you start shouting at the TV and waving at Ruth (Georgia Taylor) thinking she’s your youngest daughter in a play at the local primary school.

It is already a massive hit in America, but, like American Football, House – perhaps because its home has been, until recently, Channel Five – has been largely met with indifference. Its new slot on Sky will most likely change that.

My doctor has since disappeared.

Little did we know that when Arnie’s thick Austrian accent bellowed the immortal phrase “I’ll be back” all the way back in 1985 that he’d be talking about the movie franchise and not about himself.

However, Arnie remains unreplaced in the most recent Terminator sequel: Terminator Salvation. Instead, his endless ass-kicking and bullet dodging action sequences are a notable absence. The Terminators have lost all the human touches and consequently there is no real antagonist save the collective nameless robots of Skynet. Without a real cackling villain behind it all, Skynet’s ultimate demise doesn’t really bring sufficient satisfaction. This isn’t helped either by the protagonists.

There’s an ongoing timeshare throughout the film between John Connor (Christian Bale) and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) and inevitably we fail to connect sufficiently enough with either. Marcus, after waking up – somehow, into the desolate world after being dead for nearly a decade, is notably unshaken by the entire experience; after one or two questions he seems oddly unfazed by the entire thing.  The help he receives from Blair Willaims’ (Moon Bloodgood)   during his escape from the resisters comes across as incredibly contrived considering he only met the resistance pilot 24 hours earlier. His own particular narrative twist is also incredibly predictable.

Bale does as well as expected in the role of Connor but is let down by his supporting cast of resisters.

The action sequences of Terminator of old have given way to massive CGI effects of a similar mould to Transformers and are visually stunning; with that said, such scenes are quickly becoming run-of-the-mill.

It probably comes as no surprise then that the underwhelming nature of the narrative was overtaken by a brief  line-less cameo – of whom, I cannot say.

Expect nothing outstanding then from this satisfactory action blockbuster.

Unfortunately, there are so many more programmes that continue to bewilder and confound.

Sitting in a rather comfortable chair which I had just plucked from the householder of a friend of mine, I sat down and glared zombie-like at the television in the corner mimicking the actions of the others who I had joined. The stare was not of fascination or interest, however; it was more of confusion. I had never seen the show which was being pumped out of the screen before.

The studio audience was restless with enthusiasm before being hushed into silence by the irritable jowl of Vernon Kay. With Family Fortunes no longer running (I think – or hope) I quickly deduced that before me was Beat The Star. I had imagined it would consist of several lucky audience members taking a kayak paddle to Vernon’s bonce in an attempt to slip his jaw back into place. No luck.

The contestant, poised and consumed by concentration, bent slightly over. What incredible feat will he be trying to perform? I wondered. He stepped to one side slightly, put his hands in front of his face and dropped a pea from his hands, through a ring, towards a bottle. The laughable tension quickly disappeared into gasps. The pea bounced off the bottle onto the floor.

Slightly confused, I looked around. Not one person blinked or moved their head away from the screen to return my puzzled glance. They were in suspended animation because of a pea dropping contest.

I know ITV’s books aren’t exactly balanced at the moment but I couldn’t help but bring myself to a giggle at what has become acceptable entertainment not only to them, but to the audience.

Beating one of ITV’s supposed celebrities at a pea dropping contest is nothing to be proud of. Neither is screening it. How has this irritatingly incomprehensible low-budget drivel managed to drag itself into a second season? It should have been discarded quicker than a Newcastle United season ticket.

After the contest had finished, the silence dissipated.

“He should have held his breath,” commented a friend, “like a sniper.”

A sniper, you say? Now that’s a TV show I’d like to see…

And now on ITV1: Britain’s Got Snipers with celebrity guests Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Jordan.