SSX is a terrific evolution of the series that delivers extreme snowboarding thrills like no game before it.

Those who have played past SSX titles will jump right back into hitting all of their favorite moves. New users should definitely look to take the training course; with practice, like a lot of things, it may not be anywhere near perfect, but you’ll get it eventually (maybe). Or you can do what I did and just play every course with your flying-squirrel-like “wingsuit”. Who cares about points when you can soar down the mountain at blistering speeds like Batman on a snowboard?

Score: 8.5 / great

If Sniper Elite V2?s Killcam of the Week is a thing now, then I’m all for it. Simple, effective delivery of bullets to the brain over distance has always been my favourite thing in games, even better when we get to join the bullet on their journey, to share the excitement of their life’s ambition of making a skull’s acquaintance. Rebellion’s WW2 sniper sim puts you in the pants of a an OSS agent, hunting his targets through the Battle of Berlin. Historically inaccurate video, below.

I hope the X-Ray effect isn’t just an affectation for the videos, but everything we’ve seen of it shows the innards of the targets leering for the camera in similar garish fashion.

Blades of Time catches one’s eye for what is a Hack ‘n Slash full-blown with a protagonist who, more for the skimpy outfits and charisma, and reminds us of Bayonetta. And the game approaches in general for elements and characteristics as in X-Blades and, as admitted by the same developer, takes a lot of inspiration from Darksiders.

In Blades of Time, here is the heroine Ayumi, a treasure hunter who finds herself trapped in a mysterious island populated by monsters and a group of pirates in search of valuable secrets belonging to a handful of lost legends. She will find itself involved in the discovery of an artifact belonging to an ancient tribe of dragons. From one of these will inherit the powers to go back in time and be able to stop the conflict broke out between dragons and humans.

Do you have a guitar? Do you like both Coldplay and Lynyrd Skynyrd? Well have we got the product for you.

BandFuse: Rock Legends announced itself yesterday, promising that you’ll be able to plug in a real! guitar and play your favorite hits, assuming those hits include both “Harder to Breathe” by Maroon 5 and “Breakin’ the Law” by Judas Priest.

The rhythm game comes with an adapter that you plug into the guitar and an Xbox 360. The game “animates real guitar tablature in a simple and intuitive format allowing you to take your music wherever you go.” It also lets players plug in a mike and “sound like a rock legend.” A career mode is included.

Would you like to play Borderlands 2? You can do it on September 18 this year, on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. (September 21 for international audiences, Gearbox tells us, meaning those of you not in North America.)

You can even play it in splitscreen. Four-player co-op, too. With more guns and skills than ever, it looks like.

Get ready to strap in, go back in time and take stick in the most pivotal battles in the history of air combat.

Birds of Steel puts you right in the crosshairs of WWII’s most intense skirmishes. This original IP blends next gen supremacy and the fine details of aerial combat into a historical recreation fit for flight sim fans and history buffs alike. Use your skills to pilot the top planes from all combatants in WWII to recreate history or to change the outcomes of the most prolific battles in history. Online and offline elements add an entire new element to the game which will ensure Birds of Steel remains a fresh combat experience long after you’ve played for the first time.

I was rather close to falling down a deep, dark Counter-Strike hole just after the Counter-Strike:Global Offensive launched in November, but a broken PC released me from a frightening future of constant de_dust2 battles and crying about how unfair it is. I’d actually forgotten I had it until Valve and Hidden Path updated it this week, switching from a stress test to a big-assed closed beta, with over 80 tweaks. The big changes are the addition of three reworked classic maps, de_inferno, de_train, and de_nuke, and new guns, the Nova shotgun, the Bizon and the MP7 SMGs. But there’s more.

Any changes made to Counter-Strike brings more eyes, more opinions, than any other game I can think of, and Valve are using this as a real beta, not a marketing exercise. Aside from adding extra content, they’ve already altered the recoil twice: first according to CS pro Salvatore “Volcano” Garozzo’s tip that the recoil was too much and too difficult to control, and then shortly after when it was clear their tweak wasn’t nearly enough to help out player. CS: GO is an actual work-in-progress.

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Angry Fish: Deep Sea features a 7 battle trial mode that allows players to get a taste of the game and the different types of fish that can be used to battle against the cats for free./p>

Angry Fish: Deep Sea features an all new fish, the Clown Fish, which has a wicked metal mode. Once the game is purchased all 63 unique puzzling battles are unlocked along with 6 unique fish, each with their own special attack abilities. Many puzzles have been designed so that launching an attack of multiple fish out of the cannon in semi-automatic fashion is a must!

Each battle must be completed before subsequent battles are unlocked. A 3 star battle point system has been implemented to award players for optimal destruction and technique. The player is awarded points for destroying objects, defeating cats, and for having a minimal amount of fish casualties.

Angry Fish: Deep Sea is available to download here for just 80 MS Points.

Waveform is an interesting experiment in minimal game design: you stretch and compress a wave passing through space, manipulating it to fit the patterns it encounters. It’s on the relaxing end of the spectrum, with only one control and chill-out music. Despite a troubled inception, failing to reach a modest Kickstarter goal of $8000 funding, it’s managed to wiggle into Steam’s servers, oscillating to fit the wavelength of Gabe Newell’s heart. Fancy seeing what it’ll look like? Video here.

It’s got some (oscillo)scope, and it’ll come with a wave editor as DLC, although there’s no word if that’s free or paid for.

Obviously it would be handy of the launch trailer told is when the game is due, but this does nothing of the sort. You’ll just have to ping a rubber band between your fingers, or get a long length of rope and flick it, watching the flick move along, while you wait for it to land sometime in March.

Somewhere along the line, cooperative MMO bullet hell shooter Realm of the Mad God became a real thing. I was looking the other way when it happened, perhaps getting a haircut that required my head to be pointing in exactly the opposite direction, otherwise I’d have noticed and not had to rewrite this opening paragraph where I’d previously claimed it was being released now. So, yeah: Wild Shadow‘s magnificently silly bullet-hell based MMO is now out on Steam, rather than just being released for the first time. Alec has written so many words on the game that I’ll refer anyone looking for actual details to those. Or if you prefer video, I have that below via another cynical Brit. It’s good, it’s free, it’s frighteningly compulsive and the Steam version ties into the web-version, so you can continue progress from one to the other.

So, like, WTF is Realm of the Mad God? Total Biscuit will save me.