If high octane arcade racing, rather than realism, is your idea of a good time, then you could do far worse than spend some time with MotorStorm: Apocalypse…. The second word in the title refers to the fact that it’s not just dastardly designed tracks that you’re up against this time around, but the

Crysis 2… is a first person shooter where the emphasis is very much on survival, with some of the toughest firefights you’re likely to encounter in any game of the genre. The action has moved from the jungle of the original game to the torn-up urban cityscape of New York, which is under attack from

Not a standard second album, instead Chopped & Screwed… is the result of a live collaboration between Mici Levi and her band and leading contemporary orchestra, the London Sinfonietta last year. It’s Micachu, folks, but not as we know her. The process of chopping and screwing is a hip-hop technique whereby the tempo is halved,

Based on the animated movie of the same name, Rango is an action platformer with superb visuals and cracking voice acting, but the brevity of the single player campaign ensures it falls short of greatness.
This is the Old West, but not as we know it. Rango …is set amongst the lizards, rodents and snakes

In contrast to the likes of Killzone and Resistance, games which aim for gritty realism in their portrayal of battle, Bulletstorm is deliberately in-yer-face and over-the-top, with more expletives than a Sopranos …box-set and enough garishly cartoon violence to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty of adolescent gamers.
The story revolves around a tough-as-nails assassination

Easily the most satisfying game in the series to date, Killzone 3 is a worthy adversary to Halo, Resistance or Gears Of War. Set immediately after the events of Killzone 2…, the game once again plunges us straight into the action, as our ISA team try to extricate themselves from the Helghan

Three albums in a decade isn’t everyone’s idea of a high workrate, but when the songs in question have the intensity of a long dark night of the soul in conversation with Samuel Beckett, Cathal Coughlan and Eamonn Dunphy, it’s easier to imagine that creating these dark arts must be an emotionally draining experience.
Through …

Smart Flesh may have been recorded in a vast, abandoned pasta sauce factory in Rhode Island, but it sounds anything like it. The follow-up to Oh My God, Charlie Darwin… is as warm, fuzzy and intimate as if these 11 tracks were put down in a tiny living room with thick shag carpets, an open

There was always going to be a sequel to Dead Space…, one of the scariest and most addictive shooter/survival horrors in years, and the good news is that it’s just as good as the original. Once again, you play the role of Isaac Clarke, a humble engineer thrust into the role of warrior against

Having recently become reacquainted with Gomez’s stunning 1998 debut Bring It On, State… was hoping for something special from Ben Ottewell, the raw, raucous voice behind the epic ‘Get Miles’. It comes as a disappointment then that his debut solo effort contains none of the ragged beauty or rasping blues we might have expected.

Following 2009’s foray into concept album territory, with the ill-advised country-rock opera of The Hazards Of Love, Portland’s Decemberists have returned to the folky blueprint that made them almost household names (in the cool indie households, anyway) with 2006’s The Crane Wife…, even roping Gillian Welch and David Rawlings in on vocals and

There are times watching The Frames play live that State is reminded of that old Sean Hughes gag about two journalists discussing their pint at the bar, with one describing it as “triumphant” and the other “a tour de force”. The Frames may be two decades on the go, but at their best, they still…

Taking up immediately after its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed II, left off, Brotherhood …plunges the player back into the life and times of Ezio Auditore, at the start of the 16th Century, as he bids for revenge against the dastardly Borgia family, led by the power-hungry Cesare and his vampish sister, Lucrezia.
When the Borgia

Looking at and listening to the gristled, gnarly Bob Dylan in recent years, you could be forgiven for forgetting that he was once the brightest new voice in American music, a maverick who rewrote the rules on music publishing and almost single-handedly invented the term singer-songwriter.
Even a cursory listen to this double-CD compilation of…