Paradox's March of the Eagles was released this week on PC, and if you've been at all swayed by my love of Crusader Kings II, the video above may have you thinking "wonderful, this is like that, only with muskets".

Be warned, then, that this isn't the case.

I've been playing the game since last year (I was part of the beta), and it's an interesting thing. It's basically an enormous board game. Risk with more pieces and more numbers. There's no real politics and no marriage or intrigue to speak of. Just loads of men in fancy uniforms being pushed around a map. To their deaths.

The whole thing's a little dry, lacking in either the character of Crusader Kings or the depth of, say, Hearts of Iron, another Paradox game that's all about warfare. But it's (relatively) more accessible than the latter, and you've got much more control over your forces than the former, so it does have that going for it.

I've heard (didn't get a chance to try it myself) that multiplayer is where the game really shines, though, so if you've got some like-minded friends around maybe that's the ticket.

They had to make up a word for it. For all the over-the-top cyber-machismo dancing across the screen in this new Metal Gear game. Nothing currently extant in the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition would do. And the definition? Something like, "the confluence of bionic ninja warriors, near-future war profiteering and giant, quadraped war machines." Revengeance.

So, is Revengeance a word you should make part of your vocabulary? Yeah, it is.

This Metal Gear game focuses on Raiden, the soulful cyborg warrior who became controversial after debuting as the main playable character in Metal Gear Solid 2. Revengeance happens four years after the events in Metal Gear Solid 4, in a world where the constant churn of global combat is a crucial economic driver like oil, pharmaceuticals or consumer electronics. And Raiden's part of that, working for a private military corporation called Maverick to protect heads-of-state, kill terrorists from rival PMCs and intervene in coup d'etats.

Even though the spotlight is all his this time, Raiden still doesn't feel as magnetic as Solid Snake, the world-weary stealth savant most associated with the Metal Gear games. But, then, MGR:R exists on the other end of the Metal Gear spectrum. The game still offers up the series' trademark philosophizing but it's more cocky and cavalier, not as mournful as on the Snake side of the mythos. Raiden's adventures take place after Metal Gear 4 and the game references the Sons of the Patriots affair as a turning point with regard to how conflicts are fought. While the game's war-has-changed future represents the cheapening of human life that disgusted Snake, nobody seems all that bothered by it. Raiden himself treats his own body like a weapon, disposable and replaceable. Cyborgs exist as a secret, more palatable option than UAV drone strikes but one used by PMCs, not world governments, so as to dodge any bio-ethical murkiness. Cyborgs don't get counted in official death tolls either and Raiden himself barely looks human anymore.

WHY: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance weaves a unique blend of combat and survival to the idiosyncratic pillars of Hideo Kojima's long-running fictional universe.

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Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Developer: Platinum Games
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360 (version played)
Released: February 19th

Type of game: Action/stealth hybrid with political overtones.

What I played: Played through all of the game's seven campaign levels in 10 hours and 24 minutes. Sampled some of the unlockable VR Missions.

Two Things I Loved

• The tight symbiosis between precision cutting and continued survival—harvesting enemy anatomy as a way to instantly refresh health—kept combat from feeling repetitive.
• I kept playing just to see how crazy the next big set piece would be.

My Two Things I Hated

• As Raiden, Quinton Flynn's voiceover work is all over the place—faux-gravelly as a tough guy, annoyingly whiny in the moments where he's supposed to be more relatable.
• The last big battle trots out so many bad boss fight cliches that you'll feel like you're the butt of a giant joke.

Made-to-Order-Back-of-Box-Quotes

• "You wouldn't think that swordfighting with your feet would be cool. But it is. Oh, it is." —Evan Narcisse, Kotaku.com
• "Raiden, cyborg or no, you really need to look into getting some kind of manicure, mmkay?" —Evan Narcisse, Kotaku.com

This isn't the game that's going to make Raiden an icon, though. The voice acting, dialogue and character design that bring him to life don't resonate with Snake's philosophical stoicism. Tough as the game tries to make him seem, he still comes across as a whiny weak sister. Lethal as all hell, yes, but annoyingly sullen.

Revengeance is a weird little baby, born of Hideo Kojima's conceptual sperm and Platinum Studios' womb. The action game manages to feel in line with both the famous game designer's self-aware sensibilities and the all-star dev studio's high-adrenaline combat. In fact, the rip-out-a-spine-and-then-ruminate-about-human-nature proceedings feel like they were hashed out over an epic whiskey-and-karaoke binge.

One minute, I was done up in goofy traditional dress or wobbling underneath a metal drum to sneak past enemies. The next, I was in a gruesome processing plant, where brainstems of abducted children were held as raw material for new crops of bionic cannon fodder. The action through the game is bombastic, with set pieces that get more overblown as you go. You'll run up a barrage of missiles to destroy the helicopter that launched them and hijack flying enemies to escape exploding buildings.

In terms of tone, the pendulum swings from cheesy, so-bad-it's-good territory to moments of shock horror and exploitation. But I never got whiplash, even as I moved from gleefully beheading fools to debating moral relativism with an archenemy.

It's the cutting that, paradoxically, holds the whole game together. Glorious cutting that always feels so damn good.

Revengeance rotates around swordplay. Raiden's main weapon is a fancy future-sword that cuts through just about everything. Like other third-person action games, mixing up light and heavy attacks lets you unleash combos. You'll have other weapons and tools—more bladed implements, missile launchers, decoy lures and electromagnetic pulse grenades—that you can add to your arsenal, too. But the main element here is the ability to angle sword attacks and shred animate and inanimate objects to bits.

In addition to Raiden's health bar, players will have to manage his fuel cell energy. This resource powers the Blade Mode mechanic, which slows down time and lets you dismember enemies with surgical precision. While in Blade Mode, you can rotate the high-frequency blade to a specific angle using the right stick. This comes in handy when you need to slash more explicitly. For example, if you chop off a bad guy's left arm, you'll get data chips that are among the game's rarer collectibles.

Revengeance ties combat into health management in a clever way. Once you slash an enemy up a certain amount, you can enter Blade Mode to target a select area for dismemberment. Hacking off that limb opens up a zandatsu sequence. It's a split-second window that exposes a chunk of cyborg tech can restore all your health and fuel cells, provided you snatch it with a super-quick button press.

The zandatsu is Revengeance's signature move. Like the active reload in Gears of War, it's the kind of skill-intensive mechanic that makes you feel great every time you nail it. Associating the zandatsu with continued health adds just the right amount of compulsion, too. It makes you think about how you cut and why. Revengeance offers the chance to feel lethally inventive in how you dispatch enemies.

The option to freely slice with the right stick made me feel like a sushi chef, cutting with the grain—or is it against? I forget— to get the most succulent part of a fresh fish. Miss the moment for a zandatsu and you'll curse yourself, especially if it's the only chance you get for more health during a gnarly boss fight. There's a bloodthirstiness to it all, yes, but one that lives in fleeting split-seconds and feels oddly joyous. Killing waves of bad guys in a video game has rarely felt this artistic. And as this is a Metal Gear game, stealth is present. But, since the game is so combat-centric, it's offered mostly as an option, not a mandate.

But Revengeance's tempered cyber-steel does have flaws. The game does a poor job of teaching you how to play it. Even when I knew what I had to do in an early boss fight, I still couldn't execute the parries that I needed to break down the enemy's defense. And I had to stumble onto basic elements like defense and health management. Crucial bits of info get mentioned in passing or get buried inside sub-menus where you don't really need to go, as in the case of the game's save-anywhere function. Some of these things get spelled out in the VR missions you discover while playing, but that's a really ass-backwards way of revealing a game's systems.

While a few levels dazzle with their use of color and layout, most of the game happens in sewer/warehouse/military base environments that are hoary clichés. I also found myself wishing for a quicker way to switch between secondary weapons. Worst of all, the game climaxes with a truly aggravating boss fight that left me wondering what it was supposed to represent. The nigh-invincible status quo of the military industrial complex? A strained justification for the continuance of multi-tiered final battles? It doesn't matter what Platinum wanted me to take away because all I felt was annoyed.

But, overall, the game's edge is sharp. It still hits the marks of what a Metal Gear game should be about, but inverts the combat and stealth. You're encouraged to slash instead of sneak. Rambling codec conversations and overly verbose cutscenes are waiting there for the Kojima faithful, too. The experience takes moments from samurai legend—where wild slashing and/or icy precision win the day—and updates them in a setting where technology renders the human body almost obsolete. Short as it is, the newest Metal Gear mixes old and new elements up in winning fashion, proving that the series may be more adaptable than anyone ever thought.

Classic RPG (like, proper RPG) Shadowrun was, at one time, not a classic. In 1990, it was a product competing against other products, and had to sell itself. Using videos like this.

If you thought live-action commercials/trailers in 2013 were still occasionally awkward, you may not want to watch this. It is 4:32 of Mr. Awkward pressing his boot to your throat and not letting go.

A Night's Work (Shadowrun promo, 1990) [Michael Ostrokol, via Seamus Byrne]

Hasbro is calling them Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters, but that's not what I'm calling the upcoming third season of the animated series and the corresponding toys. A dragon that transforms into a robot and a red-and-blue figure that's vaguely reminiscent of the original Optimus Prime? These are the new Beast Wars, my friends, and they're pretty damn spiky.

Perhaps it's just the hope talking. After all, this is the new continuity, and the adventures of Optimus Primal and talk-to-the-T-rex-head-hand Megatron are no longer a going concern. On the plus side, it means that the ending of the Beast Machines series (Cybertron becomes a lush natural utopia and a rat mates with a house plant) never happened. It also means that the Beast Wars series proper, featuring the greatest writing and characterization of any Transformers series, isn't a thing anymore.

Beast Hunters could be this continuity's Beast Wars. While the Autobots deal with the fallout of season two's finale, a new threat arrives on Earth in the form of the Predacons, a race of animalistic Transformers created by Shockwave. Turns out old one-eye wasn't done messing with animal life after creating the Insecticons and Dinobots, as seen in the Transformers: Fall of Cybertron video game. He kept going, splicing together beast and machine. He was probably surprised when he lost control of them. He's pretty stupid for a super-genius.

And so we come to Beast Hunters. The Autobots and Decepticons have to reconfigure themselves to deal with this new threat, a process that involves lots of spikes. Seriously, these things have spikes all over the place. Just look at the first wave of Deluxe figures.

Those are some spiky robots.

And spiky vehicles too, but I'm not here to talk about the Deluxe figures, which have been showing up on shelves for a couple months now. We're here to talk about the first two Voyager-class figures, the obligatory Optimus Prime and the verging-on-blasphemy Predaking.

Oh fine, here are four incredibly quick reviews of the deluxe figures. Bumblebee - overcompensating. Soundwave - still a skinny pain-in-the-ass. Wheeljack - spikes make transforming him a joy (lying). Lazerback - vicious duck creature. Could use more spikes.

Now that that's over with, on to the main event, starting with the man himself...

Optimus Prime

One look at this figure's robot form is all it takes to recognize the leader of the Autobots. He might have wings, a jetpack and Rob Leifeld shoulder pads, but this magnificent bastard is definitely the keeper of the Matrix of Leadership.

He's just a little bit angry about the green-tinted windows.

Splashes of unfamiliar color seem to be a theme with the reformatted 'Bots and 'Cons of the Beast Hunters line. Most of the Deluxe figures sport oddly-compelling mottled plastic, riddled with swirls of color. Optimus isn't having any of that nonsense. He's red and blue, with windows colored to match the green plastic of the mighty Star Saber he wields.

He's a bot with a backpack, a streamlined figure that houses all the ancillary vehicle bits in condense form on his back. Tucking it all away without looking at the instructions is a bit of a chore—he wasn't quite transformed all the way in the package—but once you get it right the configuration makes sense.

And hey, that backpack's not just for show. Eons of evolution have failed to grant most Autobots the power of flight, but it looks like they've finally figured out the jetpack. Good for them.

Optimus Prime's vehicle mode is a larger departure from what we've come to expect than his robot form. He's been a semi, a fire truck and a missile-toting military vehicle, but I'm not exactly sure what sort of truck he's supposed to be this time around.

Some kind of safari vehicle, perhaps? He's sort of a jumbled mess in vehicle mode, really. It's the wings. They're a crutch. Instead of giving the vehicle form any sort of interesting back end, the designers have used the wings to haphazardly cover up Optimus' arms. The jetpack folds down over top of them, and the wings themselves fold over the side. It's obvious this truck is trying to hide something.

It's a very peg-heavy vehicle form—lots of tabs fitting into holes in order to make everything fit. I'm not terribly fond of that style of transformation. It feels like cheating.

I'll be displaying Optimus Prime in his robot form, which is just fine. He'll need to be ready to deal with the new big baddie in town...

Predaking

His name is Predaking, but in my heart he's just impostor dragon guy. To me Predaking will always be the massive gestalt from the first generation of Transformers, a fusion of five Predacons, the deadliest hunter in the universe. I only ever owned Razorclaw, the leonine team leader. Never collecting the whole set is one of my biggest regrets.

Hello, stupid dragon face.

He's got the colors right, I'll give him that.

Instead of five different animals combined into one, Beast Hunters' Predaking is a single entity with three heads, two of which are semi-sentient and the other is not really Predaking so he's a jerk. I'll get over this eventually.

He's actually a rather impressive beast with an impressive amount of detail, at least mold-wise. The paint detailing differs a bit from what's on the back of the packaging, especially in the wing area. The box shows the orange wings punctuated by black edge accents, which are nowhere to be found on the actual toy.

The wings are still impressive, though the joint holding the larger portion to the rest of the assembly is loose past a certain angle, falling to Predaking's sides limply and limiting poseability.

I'm also not sure how I feel about the semi-sentient dragon cannons. They've got lovely detail on the molding, but again they could have used a little detail work. Still, they're removable, add a little play-action to the figure and can even be combined to fire simultaneously. If only they came in black.

Why hello there, tall, dark and menacing.

Predaking's transformation from dragon to robot is evocative of the Dinobots of old. The tip of his tail comes off to become a sword. The thick end of the tail splits in two, tiny dragon legs flipping away inside, leaving no indication that they were ever there. Tricky!

The top is more straightforward. The dragon head folds back, the bot head comes out of the chest cavity, and the forelegs become arms.

Predaking the robot cuts a menacing figure, retaining much of his bestial features without re-using everything that made him a dragon. Those feet, for instance, were not feet in dragon form — they were the dragon's waist, more or less.

I particularly love the wings in robot form, riding low on Predaking's body like he's some sort of metallic demon. This is a villain I can believe in.

If the battle between the Autobots and Predacons came down to a beauty pageant, Predaking would surely come out on top, thanks to the advantage of not needing to fit an established archetype. Too many sacrifices were made to make Optimus look like Optimus. He's not a bad figure—I adore his robot form—but that vehicle mode was phoned in. Predaking may share a name with one of the greatest Decepticons, but he's his own 'bot, and that makes all the difference.

Chris Anderson works at Turbine (Lord of the Rings Online) as a senior concept artist. Prior to that, he's worked for a range of other MMO studios such as Tencent, Sony Online Entertainment, Mythic and NCSoft.

That means his resume includes a whole range of MMO titles, including LotR Online (obviously, and the headline will make sense once you see the gallery), Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Warhammer Online, DC Universe and... Tabula Rasa. Can't win 'em all, Chris.

You can see a whole lot more of Chris' fantastic art on his personal site and CGHub page.

French artist Bastien Vives, whose cosmopolitan video game art does little to dispel French stereotypes, returns this week with a batch of terrific fan art.

It's not all video games—Disney features prominently—but you can excuse that when his Ninja Turtles characters (turtle or otherwise) are so, well, sexy.

lundi... lorsque ce n'est pas de l'archéologie, mais une course contre le mal. [comme quoi]

Bungie co-founder Jason Jones said something recently that, depending on how you choose to look at it, could have been taken at best as an inaccurate assessment of the control preferences of the PC gaming market.

It's sparked an interesting to-and-fro between two websites, Ars Technica and Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the former declaring the "keyboard and mouse are losing the FPS market", while the latter predictably offers a very convincing rebuttal.

If you've got any stake in PC gaming at all, it's worth a few minutes of your time to catch up on it all. Start with the Ars piece first.

Sorry to say it, but keyboard and mouse are losing the FPS market [Ars Technica]

Mouse & Keyboard Still A Major Player In FPS Market [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

When you see a rumour end with the word "considering", it's always wise to tread cautiously. Because that word could mean anything. That said, this particular PS4 rumour comes from Britain's The Times, so it's at least worth... consideration.

The report says that Sony is looking at "pricing the new device at about £300", which is over £100 cheaper than the PS3 was at launch. I won't convert the currency, since that's a meaningless gesture, but it doesn't take a mathematician to know that's a reduction of over 25%.

The PS3 launched at $599, so apply the same rate to the US—yes, we're getting our feet off the ground by this stage—and you're looking at a possible PS4 launch price of around $449.

Then again, seeing as the report says Sony is simply "considering" that pricepoint, maybe it'll be $1000! Maybe it'll be $1! We don't really know, and chances are, we won't know on Wednesday, either.

Sony upgrade cheaper than predecessor [The Times]

Oh boy. This one hurt.

When we first fired this feature up, this was the first series I wanted to cover, seeing as it's both incredibly popular and dear to my heart. But when I sat down and tried to actually rank them, I gave up. I just could not wring my hands tight enough to sort between them.

After a few weeks' stretching and hand-wringing exercises, though, I think I'm ready. Maybe. Sort of. Please don't hurt me.

What made separating these games tough is that, when you look at them as a whole, they're so similar. While nips and tucks have been made, and systems introduced and overhauled, many of the most basic mechanics have remained almost untouched in over 20 years. This speaks volumes as to how enduring the series core design is, sure, but it also makes picking between games a lot harder than a franchise where, say, the first game has almost nothing in common with the first.

A few notes before we begin: only the primary Civilization titles are being included. That explains why the original Colonization is not at the top of the list, and also why Alpha Centauri and Civilization Revolution are also missing. This list was hard enough as it was when only dealing with the five main games.

1. Civilization IV

It was a close-run thing. As someone who plays epic maps to conclusion, the fact this game has "unit stacking" makes the endgame laborious, and Civ V's new unit design is a big reason I love it so much.

But I just couldn't ignore the fact that, outside of that, this is the perfect Civilization game. No wonder Civ V had to go making so many radical changes, because it was the only way a proper sequel could be justified. Even the little touches, the icing on the cake, were the best. Think the Grammy award-winning theme song, or Leonard Nimoy's narration, which peaks with his amazing "pig iron" intro.

2. Civilization V

In many ways, this should be number one. Like I said above, the way units are arranged on the map was a revolution, and a welcome one for those pursuing military campaigns. The Gods & Kings expansion was the most logical and complete execution of religion the series has yet seen, allowing it to emerge as the separate cultural force that it is, rather than having it act as some form of sub-state diplomacy. The leader screens are some of the most beautiful things PC gaming has ever seen.

But the diplomacy... oh, God, the diplomacy. The computer AI in Civilization has always been a fickle beast, but the longer you played Civ V, the more you realised your opponents were absolutely bonkers, and no amount of adjustment or difficulty sliding could fix that.

3. Civilization III

Implemented religion and, more importantly, national borders for the first time and did an admirable job of it. I know a lot of people who still think this is the best game in the series, and I appreciate why; you can almost look at it as the pinnacle of early Civ games, the perfection of the formula laid out by Sid Meier's original before IV and especially V started rolling up their sleeves and really messing with stuff.

Civ III also has, I think, the best map editor of the series. And even over a decade later, still looks damn pretty.

4. Civilization

Yeah, I put the original above Civilization II. I shouldn't be, I know, and this is going to sound crazy, but do you know what I loved most about the original game? The full-screen imagery that for the most part has never been seen since. Think rioters marching in a city, or even better, the diplomacy system where you'd get to see medieval rulers in modern business suits.

That stuff was great. I miss that.

5. Civilization II

Sorry, Civ II. You were, and in many ways still are, an awesome game. Your Second World War scenario is maybe the most underrated joy to be found in the entire series, as it's good enough to stand as its own game. But somebody had to come last, and that somebody is you.

You know how you tend to lose one of every pair of matched socks you own? Well, turns out that's because a bunch of weird tiny masked dudes break into your room when you're away and steal them. But, if you've got guard-cats like in this insane new video from CorridorDigital, you should be able to keep the thieves at bay.

Where to even begin with this? I don't know. Tina showed it to me, and so of course I had to post it in the off-topic. You can download the song, by Savant, here. Everyone doing well? I haven't watched this week's Walking Dead, but I heard it's maybe not such a great episode. I'll watch it soon, I think.

Feel free to discuss cats, toys, or whatever else, here or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum.