There are some real treats on offer. The tweekability is second to none, you can alter a great many settings in both the audio and visual departments making it easy to adapt to older PCs (i.e. between 6 & 18 months old) and also to really get the most with a higher spec PC. Personally, I just used the default settings, not much of a fiddler I, but this alone could occupy the more discerning gamer for ages.

   

I like to get straight to the action, which I did, standard WASD & mouse, familiar keys for the FPSer, a little bit of plot, and you're in - 'in', that is, with a 9mm Auto in each fist blowing off mags like there is no tomorrow. Lots of choice for weapons; Fists (when you have nothing else) Knives (do people still use those?) Handguns (great, one in each hand) Assault rifle (satisfying killing power) Shotgun (stops even the Uber-nazis with one blast) and of course the Sniper rifle, what can I say? Well it's as good as any I have used, good sound, almost feel the recoil and a satisfying splash of gore on the wall behind the hapless victim. Good stuff!!!

As you have already guessed the gore factor is set to max and then some, I know its not PC, but you do feel it's a good job done when the nasty baddie is spewing claret at your feet.

Play is quite fluid until you meet your team, (aforementioned sexy rebel chicks) and errrrm….Gus. Then it's like growing up, suddenly you're responsible for some very dangerous but simple children. I know AI isn't perfect yet and this is a good effort, however until you learn to control these gung ho ankle-biters, play can just stop or even go back to the last autosave (I shall speak of this later). They can be suicidal (If one dies, back to last autosave you go). They also don't always follow orders, or just get in the way, in fact sometimes you'll want to slot them when they do. But you of course can't kill them, which is just as well, because there are times when I could have quite cheerfully changed sides.

An interesting glitch happened when I lead Gus into a train shed and for no reason started to climb a wall failing at about one foot off the ground. The next time I called for him, he came out of the shed levitating at about one foot off the ground and still doing the climbing animation! It looked hilarious, I made several attempts to alter this bizarre behaviour to no avail - in the end I led him into an ambush. He merrily did his climb/float/dance toward a sentry robot with a milligun so I watched with great amusement as the gibbering fool was cut in half.

Having said that there are few instances in Devastation of bodies clipping half in and half out of walls (which can plague a game), and it was really quite funny.

Autosave. This is the most annoying part of the game for me. There isn't really one to speak of. If you die you start the mission again, which could mean ten to fifteen minutes of gameplay. This can be very tedious to say the least, especially if you, or one of the kids you are babysitting, have bought it at the same place several times (there are some very hectic ambushes). Your alternative is to save where you think is a good spot, but loading these saved games seems to take forever! If there is one criticism it is that this ruins the fluidity, especially if you are like me, I like to charge in and not worry about dying.

   

Which brings me to my favourite part, if you do get the pace up with some nifty shooting (head shots are the best), and start annihilating everything in your path (killing spree!), some pumping hardcore dance music will accompany you, and you know to keep this going its death or glory time. Great fun!!!

The scenery is consistently good and alters a lot; you get weather, sunshine and murky sewers, and a real sense of being there. Draw-distance is also impressive.

There are also some interesting ideas, remote-control exploding rat-bombs, regeneration pods, and ninjas who pop out of nowhere to relieve you of your head (as they do).

On balance devastation is a very good game, good imagery, good pace (most of the time) fast and furious gunplay. It's not the greatest game ever; it has some annoying quirks (detailed above) but still a worthy addition to your games collection.