All Play Station Games

Red Faction

2011-06-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

Red Faction: Armageddon review

The very first objective you get in Red Faction: Armageddon captures what it’s all about: “Destroy the wall.”

Gripping the shaft of my mighty, gyroscopically enhanced hammer, I swing at the barrier. CRACK! The force of impact with steel-reinforced concrete reverberates through my character’s body. THUD! Chunks of rebar-entangled concrete fill the air as a 50-foot-long, three-foot-thick barrier dynamically collapses, with chunks sailing into the rear supports of a guard tower behind it. The dust settles to the dull moan of stressed metal as I approach the tower, knowing what’s about to happen. A sound like rolling boulders fills the air, and 10 tons of concrete and twisted metal lands at my feet. Total destruction. Absolute power.

RFA has a destruction engine like you wouldn’t believe (unless you’ve played Red Faction: Guerilla). Anything that’s not terrain—barracks, bridges, people—is all fair game to be bludgeoned, blasted, or concussed into rubble. In an engagement with a band of crazed cultists in the opening battle, a rocket trail reveals two hostiles firing from cover. I’ve got several options available: open fire directly with my assault rifle, collapse a tower on their heads, or flank them by bashing in the side wall of their firing position with my hammer. I’m a sucker for that hammer, and in seconds tenderized cultist meat spatters the remaining walls and ceiling. The open environment provides innumerable creative combat opportunities—it’s an empowering sensation that too few games offer.

The punishment for your halitosis is death.

RFA’s biggest limitation is that, 30 minutes in, its forgettable sci-fi story moves most of the action into a network of tunnels. The machine that terraformed Mars’ atmosphere has been destroyed by a cult leader, driving the populous underground—where they’re attacked by a swarm of Martian bugs. At least it’s reasonably well voice-acted and never really descends into schlock in its search for reasons for the bald hero, Darius Mason, to break many, many things.

Except for a few instances (such as a firefight with aliens on a three-story underground scaffold), that creative combat of the opening level is lost, and gives way to a feeling of playing as the unstoppable boulder chasing Indiana Jones down the tunnel in Raiders of the Lost Ark. For the rest of the game, you’re moving forward from chamber to chamber, connected by dark, narrow tunnels, and fighting aliens that jump from ceiling to floor to wall faster than a pack of third graders on Pixy Stix. The change of venue isn’t necessarily less fun, but the combat becomes something less thoughtful.

There’s simply less to destroy in these tunnels than there is on the surface. The awesome explosive weapons I pick up on my journey, such as the Singularity Gun and Plasma Cannon, just aren’t very effective against enemies that don’t stand still. Don’t get me wrong—disintegrating aliens with a Nano Rifle is always a good time, but the particular combat situations that RFA’s tunnels and bugs create are so perfectly tuned for one particular weapon that it rarely makes sense to use anything else.

The real star of RFA is the Magnet Gun. Much like Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun, the Mag Gun is inventive and kinetic in a way that you won’t want to use any other weapon. Its first shot fires an orange magnet tag on any destructible surface (or enemy), and the second affixes a blue magnet tag on any other. Once both are placed, the blue tag rips whatever it’s attached to (say, a 20-foot-tall explosive canister) off of its moorings and tries to unite it with whatever the orange tag is on, such as the alien across the room. Because you’re often in a corridor, enemies can only come from so many directions, making it easy to nab baddies one by one and splat them into stalactites at the other end of the corridor. It has unlimited ammo, and it’s so powerful that I found myself going entire levels, sometimes more than an hour, without equipping another weapon.

The Mag Gun is basically a futuristic flyswatter.

Unlike the Gravity Gun, though, this weapon isn’t presented with a lot of interesting challenges. You never have to think differently about how it works—it’s always either launch the enemy into something or smack things into the enemy. RFA’s physics and destruction are by far its strongest features, but its potential feels wasted on the simple level design.

With all the destruction, inevitably a staircase or catwalk that you didn’t mean to destroy will explode. That’s where the Nano Forge kicks in—it can instantly repair virtually anything man-made with the push of a button. It’s a magic undo button that makes no sense, but it’s a clever way of preventing players from breaking the levels permanently, and handy for reconstructing cover in battle. Collecting salvage from broken objects allows you to upgrade the Forge, buffing your health or weapons, as well as unlocking new abilities.

There’re also vehicle sections to vary the pace. The four mechs Mason can pilot come in varying degrees of fantastic, but my favorite has got to be the Mantis—it’s a spider-legged robot that spits plasma rockets and a great super-heating laser that burns its targets as you sweep it over the battlefield, followed by a spectacular linear explosion of everything the laser touched. The delay between pulling the trigger and watching your target explode is just long enough to make you feel like a sun god, so large and far away that it takes a few seconds for the ants beneath you to suffer your wrath.

What could be better than a pink explosion?

Just like the on-foot sections, however, vehicle sections funnel you through tight corridors. At one point I tromped through a subterranean studio apartment complex in a one-ton exoskeleton, and the only means of maneuverability was smashing through walls and ceilings. Yeah, that’s fun, but in a simple sort of way. I’m not playing cat-and-mouse with another mech, or even trying too hard to avoid damage.

If the campaign is an over-seasoned meat sauce, then the co-op multiplayer is a deep-fried buffalo—and man, it’s one tasty buffalo. The survival-style multiplayer has you and up to three friends battling waves of aliens and/or defending an objective. You’re still mostly fighting in confined spaces, often with the magnet gun, but now there are four of you. Boulders, columns, and baddies are flying all over the place, and your Nano Forge’s long-distance repair ability makes it easy to protect your objective as long as you’re still standing. It’s social mayhem that feels great, and it leads to all kinds of experimentation like Mag-Gunning one object in multiple directions.

There’s also the single-player Ruin Mode, a highly satisfying free-form destruction playground time trial that pits your arsenal against a ton of buildings. A leaderboard keeps you from feeling lonesome, and the grandeur of taking down sky-scraping structures in some of the outdoor maps is something sorely missed in the subterranean campaign.

It’s not really the lack of open spaces that holds Red Faction: Armageddon back, though. It’s a lack of player engagement. Eventually, even with a godlike weapon, combat feels empty—a bag of pyrotechnic fun without much creative spark. Still, demolishing Mars leaves me filled with an incredible sense of dominion over my environment, and I can’t help but wonder: why doesn’t every game use this technology?

The Sims 3

2011-06-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Sims 3: Generations Review

The Sims 3: Generations bucks Sims expansion conventions. Previous Sims 3 expansions have offered meaty updates that enhance the classic life-simulation experience with new gameplay features and a glut of new items, like world exploration, hands-on professions, and even a vampire nightlife. The changes and nuances are more subtle in The Sims 3: Generations. I still got a kick out of giving my Sims über-hairy man chests, making "Woo-Hoo" in the shower, lighting bags of dog feces on fire, and creating home videos of my various shenanigans. But the value proposition falls a little short.

The Sims 3: Generations focuses on fleshing out and expanding the depth of the different stages of your Sims' lives instead of drastic changes to the core game. Unfortunately, it's hard to pinpoint the bulk of the new content unless you really dive back into the flow of Sim life and experiment. Even then, much of it is easy to miss. New options are woven into each of the main phases of Sim-life, from stumbling around as a toddler to growing old. Most of the updates don't jump readily out at you, though it's the teen and adult stretches that see the most interesting and exciting changes. Some of the more forgettable new features are strange additions, like optional body hair for male characters or the Sim mid-life crisis. But at least a few updates in The Sims 3: Generations have a meaningful impact on the gameplay.

Younger Sims in Generations will find extra content themed around imagination, creativity and playfulness. Babies come with a doll that can turn into an imaginary friend that only they can see. Fiddling around with chemistry can make their invisible pal a permanent addition to the household, which is a cool touch. This introduces a subtle extra level of task-oriented gameplay that made it more fun to manage my Sim kids. Hardcore Sims enthusiasts will eat up the new kid-centric items like playground structures, tree houses, and hop scotch pads, but I got more mileage out the updated toy boxes that let me encourage my virtual tykes to dress up in silly costumes and act out fantasy roles. Watching them parade around the house in a pink T-Rex suit or brandishing a magic wand as a wizardly prince is at least worth a few laughs, even if it's not a huge addition.

Things really ramp up for teen Sims. They can throw parties and attend special social events, and pubescent Sims also have raging hormones to contend with. They'll undergo wild mood swings at random – usually to comic effect. When this happens, they're prone to acts of rebellion, which is where Generations' new prank feature shines. Rebellious Sims can rig faucets to explode, plant whoopee cushions, and stick hair dye in the shower, and pranks get crazier when pulled on neighbors. It's easily my favorite fresh element in the game, as it injects some extra randomness and added comic relief into the daily grind.

At one point my angst-ridden teen followed me to the abode of a potential love interest to cause trouble. He hurled eggs at her porch and flung them at my prospective date when she came outside to yell at him. This continued until the cops came to haul him to jail for the night. Good times.

Thankfully Generations also grants parents the ability to punish their brats, from simple grounding and chores to boarding school. The dynamic between pranks and punishments makes for some hilarious moments. It was also amusing to see my younger Sims take things into their own mischievous hands when left unsupervised.

Adults have new opportunities to cut loose too. Expanded party events let you throw elaborate wedding ceremonies and bachelor/bachelorette parties, but it's not a free-for-all. There's a new romantic relationship system that tracks any romantic activities you engage in throughout your travels, and other Sims take notice of your romances. You earn a reputation based on whether you're faithful or attempt to steal other people's spouses. While it's another opportunity to wreak havoc, it's a rather dull addition though.

Other notable features were also worth exploring. The new Daycare profession has neighborhood Sims dumping their kids on your doorstep each day, and it was surprisingly fun to juggle their occasional tantrums, emergencies, and happiness. Purchasing new video camera items lets your characters record short home movies that they can watch on their TV sets. The best part was sitting down and popping these in the TV to replay those wacky moments, and this is easily one of the most creative features added into Generations.

Closing Comments

The majority of the new features introduced in The Sims 3: Generations are enjoyable enough to fiddle with, but none of them are major game changers. Greater depth to the different life stages provides enough fresh material to make it worth revisiting your Sims’ worlds for another go around, particularly when it comes to pranking neighbors with flaming dog poo and other mischievous tricks. But Generations doesn’t usher in the same level of sweeping change found in the last few expansions. As a result, it comes across as a weak link in the chain.

Mortal Kombat

2011-06-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

Review: Mortal Kombat

There was a time when Mortal Kombat was synonymous with all things evil in the video games industry. Grown men and women would beat on each other. Demonic-looking monks and ninjas were fighting with sorcerers and Bruce Lee knock-offs. Blood gushed from every blow and you even had the option of brutally executing your opponent as a reward for beating him. Children snuck around to shadowy cabals of Mortal Kombat when Street Fighter just wasn’t enough.

Like Eminem, Marilyn Manson, and so many other controversial things, people eventually moved on from Mortal Kombat. After all, there were games like Grand Theft Auto andBulletstorm to get up in arms about. With that decline in controversy, Mortal Kombat has felt its own decline in popularity. For years, we’ve longed for a game that captured the same feeling the original two games captured all those years ago. Enter the latest installment in the franchise, simply called Mortal Kombat.

I must confess, I haven’t played a Mortal Kombat game in years. I used to sneak over to my buddy Russell’s house back in grade school to play the original Mortal Kombat and thenMortal Kombat II when it came out. I didn’t have a current-gen gaming console (Super Nintendo or SEGA Genesis) and my mom wouldn’t have allowed me to play those games anyway. Nevertheless, I logged many hours with Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and their ilk. I may have played a random match or three on some of the subsequent games, enough to know who Cyrax is. That’s about it.

I was pleasantly surprised how much of the original games I remembered and how well they translated to this newest installment of Mortal Kombat. I was spearing and freezing enemies just like it was 1992. That’s not to say this isn’t a brand new experience. While the back-front punch-kick button layout, infamous block button, and the almighty uppercut return from the olden days of Mortal Kombat, the complex combo system of later games returns here with some brand new tricks as well.

One very new and very game-changing feature introduced is the tag system. While tagging isn’t new to fighting games, it is new to Mortal Kombat. Nearly all modes of the game can be played solo or as a tag team. Tagging opens up combo extension and special attacks that do damage as your tag partner comes in. You can even compete in a tag match with a human partner, where you and a friend compete against a tag-team of CPU opponents while working your way up the ladder. This is all done quite well, adding new depth to an already robust game.

Mortal Kombat also introduces an energy bar. This energy bar is charged both by landing blows and receiving them. This energy can be used for several things. One segment (of potentially three) can be used to boost a super move. Two segments can be used to break a combo. A full energy bar can be used to activate the all-new X-Ray combo. The X-Ray combo does massive damage during a slow-motion cutscene in which you actually watch bones splintering, spleens freezing, or other such internal injuries occurring. All three have a dramatic effect on gameplay tactics and can swing a match this way or that very quickly.

I was most impressed with the dynamic differences in martial arts styles from character to character. You can really tell the Mortal Kombat team spent a lot of time researching various forms of martial arts to give different fighters and factions of fighters their own styles. All the characters fighting identically except for their super moves plagued early games in the series. This is no longer the case, with fighting styles dictating strategy just as much as super moves this time around.

Mortal Kombat is brimming with modes and features. You can progress up the ladder to get each character’s endings. This can be done solo, tag, or tagging with a friend. There’s also a lengthy story mode, the Krypt for buying unlockables, the 300-level challenge tower, training modes, practice mode, and online play. The online play offers ranked and unranked one-on-one or tag team matches. The unranked mode also offers King of the Hill mode, in which fighters congregate in a lobby where they can actually watch the fight occurring in real time. The winner of the match is the “king” and must defend his/her crown against all comers. Lose, and the winner of that match becomes the new “king.” I found the matchmaking to take a very long time and suffered lag on a regular basis. While some may think this is more due to the recent PSN outage than anything else, the Xbox 360 version experiences similar issues on a regular basis.

While Mortal Kombat has a lot of things in the awesome column, it has its warts too. The single player combat is often horribly unbalanced. Several fights in the story mode are two-on-one or even, late in the story, three-on-one. High-level bosses like Goro, Kintaro, and particularly Shao Khan break the rules of kombat and are impossibly cheap. Khan rarely staggers when hit and can throw a hammer that cannot be blocked and stuns you. In higher-level matches, he will hit you once with that hammer and just keep throwing it, leaving you helpless while your health bar is annihilated.

The story mode I mentioned earlier is cheesy to say the least. It goes chapter by chapter, retelling the stories of the first three Mortal Kombat tournaments as Raiden tries to change the past so Shao Khan doesn’t win the whole shebang. The story plays out like a bad kung-fu B-movie, but it runs between 5-8 hours to complete. While this story won’t hold up against storytelling juggernauts like Mass Effect or Uncharted, it is far and away the most in-depth story of any fighting game EVER. Most fighting games resort to corny non-sequitor intro and outro movies with a string of fights linking them together and call it a story. Mortal Kombat has in-engine cutscenes between each fight, explaining them each in detail. That said, you can never skip these cutscenes and there is no chapter select, which is very annoying.

Mortal Kombat is a big graphical step forward for the series. While several of the characters were rendered in HD for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, this is the first HD rendering for a full MK cast. Classic Mortal Kombat arenas return here as well, albeit with updates like actively moving backgrounds and much more detail than ever before. However, everything looks just a bit too shiny at all times. This is an odd contrast from the older games that used captures of real people. This new Mortal Kombat almost looks like plastic action figures fighting until they get beaten and start bleeding. That speaks to one great graphical addition to Mortal Kombat: progressive damage. As the fight progresses, characters show damage to their costumes and bodies that progressively worsens as they keep catching fists with their faces.

Mortal Kombat is a brutal game. That brutality is never more present than in the sound design for the game. Anybody who’s ever been punched knows how much it sounds like a car crash occurring in your head when it happens. The sound effects for Mortal Kombat are just that visceral, powerful, and persistent. Just as satisfying as the sounds of bones crunching are the sounds of the various weapons and abilities in action. Kitana’s fans, Sub-Zero’s freeze, and Jax’s metal-arm punches ring true every time.

As I said earlier, Mortal Kombat presents a plethora of modes for a single player or friends wanting to get their bloody beatdown on. The game also boasts nearly 30 playable characters, each with their own unique fatalities, fighting styles, stages, unlockables, and ladder endings. The PS3 version also features Kratos, though the addition of one character to an already healthy roster isn’t enough to affect the value score. The Krypt has hundreds of unlockables to choose from such as concept art, costumes, extra fatalities, and even alternate play modes. Any fighting game also boasts immense replay value and Mortal Kombat is no exception.

Mortal Kombat seems to be trying to do what Street Fighter IV did for the Street Fighter franchise: bring a classic 2D fighting franchise back into relevance in the 3D, HD generation. At that purpose, it succeeds, though not quite so well as Street Fighter did. Nevertheless, this is the Mortal Kombat experience that both newer and old-school fans have been awaiting for a long time.

MX vs. ATV

2011-06-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

Review: MX vs. ATV: Alive

Third time's the charm, fourth is just less of the same.

Every couple years we've seen another addition to the MX vs ATV franchise, with Alive marking the fourth installment, and it really seems like Rainbow Studios hit their stride with Reflex back in 2009. In many ways, Alive seems like a watered down version of the previous game with very little new to offer. When Reflex rebuilt the game, it set the stage for some great new expansion potential for future games. It seems Rainbow has instead done the opposite, and stripped the game down. That being said, the game is still quite a bit of fun, especially if you don't own any of the previous MX vs ATV games.

Gone is supercross as well as trick events in freestyle play, which now offers only two small areas out of the box, with another available via DLC. There is also a serious void of atmosphere surrounding the events that are raced in the game. While there is usually no "story" in racing games, there isn't even any real environment to Alive's career mode, as each event is separate and there is no linear arrangement of the races. I found the unlock schedule for tracks and vehicles to be unbearably slow. Alive uses a new rider and vehicle XP system for unlocks and upgrades. Rider skills, such as quick recovery, more responsive clutching, or faster wreck avoidance, unlock as your rider levels up, and parts for your vehicle unlock as you level up different vehicles. This is a good system overall, but when it is applied to what tracks are available, it causes the game to get laborious fairly quickly. There are only 2 tracks open to race in career mode at the beginning of the game, and it takes a solid 4 to 5 hours to get to level 10 where 4 more tracks open up, and some serious grinding is in store to get to level 25, where the remaining 6 tracks become available. I would have liked to have seen a somewhat more gradual process, opening new tracks fewer at a time but somewhat more frequently over the course of the game. By the time I opened up the middle set of tracks, I had completely mastered the first two tracks on all but the most difficult AI setting.

The AI in career mode makes for some serious reality checks along the way. I found that I was lapping the competition on the Rookie setting right off the bat, and when I set the same track to Amateur, I became very comfortable in 6th to 8th place for quite a while. A similar jump in skill occurred from Pro to the All-Time difficulty. I was on the podium regularly on Pro, and couldn't break 10th place on All-Time. This contributes to Alive's extremely choppy, non-fluid game experience of the player working too hard to unlock too little.

Several of the great aspects of Reflex are back: most notably the rider reflex control scheme using one stick for the bike, and the other for the rider, which is really the only way that a 2-wheeled racer works with any kind of realism, and Alive makes for a very realistic experience that's still forgiving enough to be fun. The turn assist and jump assist are both very good "training wheels" which made the game very playable up to the point around level 10 when I turned them off, at which point it didn't ruin my racing. The "real dirt" in the form of real time terrain modification is still present from Reflex as well, and makes for a very lively race environment, particularly when you are way out front and the other 11 riders have changed the lay of the land from your last lap around the course. Different types of dirt behave differently in the game, varying the level of traction and making ruts in different ways. Snowy tundra-mud of the Japanese mountains behaved noticeably different from the dry desert sand of the west. This keeps the game interesting and adds another layer of things to learn before you have completely mastered the game.

New to Alive is a wreck recovery and "bar bang" system which allows riders to recover by leaning their rider in the indicated direction after a major altercation with other riders, which will happen more and

more frequently at the higher levels of the AI and certainly online. This also works if you mess up your landing on jumps. I found this system to be fairly simple most of the time, and never really added much to the gameplay, though not wiping out as much as in the past was an improvement.

There is absolutely no tutorial of any kind, so pay attention to the tips that come up in the loading screen. The control scheme is complex, but for a realistic off-road experience they need to be. Much of the challenge of MX vs ATV, like other off-road titles is knowing how to keep your speed up in the changing environment. Knowing how to not only find the right line through the corner, but not to over-accelerate on that line and spin out, or knowing what part of the hills and bumps to hit to keep your speed up through an otherwise straight stretch. As complex as the controls are, it doesn't take more than an hour or two to pick up all but the most advanced details of the gameplay. The controls are not mappable, but there are several pre set configurations to choose from, and all of them have right and left handed versions.

The twelve tracks in the main career mode are all very nicely rendered with good attention to detail, and many are breathtaking, carved into the sides of mountains and bamboo forests. The graphics are fine, and the animation is smooth the vast majority of the time. Any of the minor graphical hiccups that occurred never interfered with my enjoyment of the game. The soundtrack is what you would expect for a dirt racer, with lots of high energy rock and punk. Sound design is average, though surround is put to good use for knowing when other riders are coming up on your back. Outside of the tracks there are over 50 riders and even more gear to customize your rider, and a good assortment of parts and vehicles, but that's about it; there is very little in the way of atmosphere. The online is somewhat watered down from its predecessor, with far fewer options, especially in the lack of trick events.

THQ has announced support for the game online with one new freeride area, two new national tracks, and tons of gear, and several vehicles slated, but with so much of the previous title's content removed, it seems like too little too late. There is still much fun to be had in the game, but it is fairly straightforward compared to other titles in the series. In order to unlock all the game has to offer, it will likely take even fairly experienced racers upwards of 20 to 30 hours (more if you're like me and it takes a while to get the hang of the game); most players will find they get their money's worth out of Alive.

Alive is still one of the best off road MX racers out there, and is very playable and lots of fun. My frustration level was significantly lower than with many racing games, and while the game isn't all that engaging when it comes to variety of content, it is still worth a look, especially if you're new to the franchise.

DiRT 3 Review

2011-06-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

Lens of Truth: DiRT 3 Head-2-Head

DiRT 3 recently hit store shelves to rave critical reviews. Our own Craig Snow gave it a 9.1, claiming, "This is, without a shadow of a doubt, Codemasters’ most packed racer ever." So you know you should get it if you're a racing game fan. The question still remains for those owning both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3: which version do you buy.

As usual, Lens of Truth is up to the task of providing us with all the information we need to make an informed decision. First up are some shots from their recent screenshot Head-2-Head. As usual, the PlayStation 3 is on the left, Xbox 360 is on the right.

As you can see in the first picture, the PS3 version is showing significant screen tearing. Being Lens of Truth, one screenshot isn't enough, however. Here's the breakdown of the framerates and screen tearing between the two consoles.

Xbox 360:

Clip 1 info:
Length of clip: 6981 frames
Average FPS of clip: 30.10
Percent of torn frames: 0.00
Clip 2 info:
Length of clip: 929 frames
Average FPS of clip: 29.87
Percent of torn frames: 0.00
Clip 3 info:
Length of clip: 5342 frames
Average FPS of clip: 30.00
Percent of torn frames: 0.00
Global percent of torn frames: 0.00
Global average FPS: 30.05

PlayStation 3

Clip 1 info:
Length of clip: 6981 frames
Average FPS of clip: 30.03
Percent of torn frames: 10.03
Clip 2 info:
Length of clip: 929 frames
Average FPS of clip: 29.87
Percent of torn frames: 0.00
Clip 3 info:
Length of clip: 5342 frames
Average FPS of clip: 29.58
Percent of torn frames: 11.01
Global percent of torn frames: 16.61
Global average FPS: 29.84

As you can see, the PlayStation 3 version shows significant screen tearing in two of the three clips. As they say, the proof is in the pudding. So here's the pudding, video-style.

The Demon's Forge

2011-06-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hunted: The Demon's Forge

Bethesda wants to "bring back the dungeon crawler". Not the World of Warcraft style of dungeon crawler, but the ultra violent, goblin-decapitating, boob-bouncing kind we haven't seen in videogames for many a year.

And Hunted is definitely not World of Warcraft; our first look dug up feelings of Gears of War, God of War and plenty more games with 'War' in the title, with a far more cinematic, action-orientated approach than what we're used to seeing in the dungeon crawler genre. There's even a cover system.

Gears of Goblin

In the very first scene we're introduced to two protagonists, the Conan-esque Caddoc and his scantily clad female companion, Elara, as they bump into a goblin that's literally ripping a man's heart from his chest. It's a bloody start to a game that's more brutal, visceral and action-orientated than anything else we've seen from the dungeon crawler genre this generation.

For all intents and purposes, Hunted is Gears of War with XP and goblins. With a drop-in, drop-out online system in full effect, the game lets you control either one of its two companions as they enter a murky underground goblin hive in search of magical crystals.

The slinky Elara is naturally the ranged expert, firing dangerous-looking (and sounding) arrows that rarely require a second shot to take down their target. Caddoc, meanwhile, is your typical bruiser, storming in sword-first to lop baddies' limbs off with great abandon.

Even at this early stage, Hunted is clearly a well-presented and great-looking game. Combat in particular is visceral and well animated; shields splinter, sword swipes send blood dynamically spraying in the correct direction and spell powers carry visible physical force. Without even picking up the pad, Hunted looks satisfying to play.

We're not used to seeing these qualities in a game of this style; while close cousins Diablo III and Neverwinter Nights go for scale, Hunted has clearly taken a far tighter approach which has allowed it to pull off beautiful environments, a cinematic narrative and combat with all the bells and whistles of an action game.

Our two heroes, with their full-on Eastenders accents, keep up the banter as they progress deeper into the dusty dungeon. Animation again is particularly noteworthy and the duo will brush cobwebs aside and squeeze their way through tight gaps.

We were also impressed by the mount of interactivity with the environment. In one scene Caddoc was able to push over a giant pillar, which kicked off a domino-like chain reaction as bricks and stone came showering down all around.

From what we can see developer inXile is concentrating heavily on building the foundations of a solid co-op action game. As mentioned, both characters have their own unique skills and players can swap them mid-game via checkpoints. inXile was also keen to emphasise how it's streamlined the co-op experience, with tweaks such as being able to revive a downed team mate from a distance.

The combination of melee brute and hotshot archer seems to result in some interesting gameplay too. In one scene Elara froze the hordes into place using ice arrows, while Caddoc swung in close to smash them to bits.

World of Gorecraft

The RPG elements are definitely present in Hunted, however. As you progress through dungeons your characters collect magic crystals from downed foes, which can then be used to improve spells and abilities via branching skill trees. One move, 'Levitate', can be used to raise enemies into the sky, leaving you free to pick them off with a well-placed arrow. Once levelled up this power can be used to pick up multiple foes (or everyone in the surrounding area) in a visually spectacular burst of power.

In another scene we saw Elara use her magic to "buff" Caddoc, who then ran in swinging his newly-flaming sword to annihilate anything in his path.

Hunted is an interesting take on the Diablo-alike. The initial emphasis on action with RPG systems subtly lying underneath worked wonders in games like Mass Effect 2, so there's definitely potential for Bethesda to repeat the same success in its game.

Our one concern is how much has been traded in scale in order to the get the meaty combat and environment interaction working, but clarification on exactly how "open world" the game is will arrive at a later date, we were promised.

inFamous 2

2011-06-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

inFamous 2 Review

The Beast draws ever closer. The prophesied monster from the end of Infamous marches toward its inevitable confrontation with Cole McGrath. Toppling your colossal foe is the impetus for your latest adventure, but there is something far more sinister stalking you: an unshakable feeling of deja vu. The superpowered third-person action that was once novel and exciting has turned predictable. New problems arise as well. An overactive camera is a mild irritant, but the biggest issues stem from aimless pacing and suffocating enemy encounters. Infamous 2 is a disappointing sequel, but a solid foundation ensures there are still plenty of thrilling moments. There's no denying the inherent fun in sliding along an electrical wire while shooting bolts of lightning from your fingertips. And a few notable improvements, such as revamped visuals and a robust mission editor, add to the experience. Infamous 2 struggles to reach the lofty heights of its superb predecessor, but wanton destruction and carefree exploration provide good reasons to see how Cole's journey plays out.

He's actual size but he seems much bigger than me.

A little bit of power is never enough. Cole can absorb an unholy amount of punishment, scale buildings with a simian grace, and wield lightning like he's Zeus' son, but such parlor tricks aren't enough to vanquish the all-powerful Beast. So he travels to New Marais to find out just how much stronger he can get. Although the premise is decent enough, the story lacks a hook to invest you in Cole's affairs. New characters such as Nix and Kuo are one-dimensional caricatures who represent the two sides of the morality coin, and the slight growth exhibited by this bland duo does little to make you care about their well-being. Zeke resumes his role as the comedic best friend, though his banal dialogue fails to make a lasting impression. The cast of supporting characters is certainly lacking, but it's the star who drags this ho-hum tale down. Cole is the kind of guy who chuckles at the term "penal code," and his gruff voice acting is just grating.

Karmic decisions should invest you in the story, but the implementation of the morality system is woefully inept. During certain story sequences, you have the choice to complete the mission in either a good manner or a bad one. Unlike in Infamous, in which evil and pure were sometimes indistinguishable, your options here are entirely binary. Without a moral gray area, there is no reason to give these decisions serious thought, which makes the adventure seem slight. This issue is compounded by how the game grades your actions. You may set out on a mission to rescue a group of hostages from a gang of armed assailants. Ideally, you would kill the henchmen to free the captured citizens, but it's not important to exhibit such loving care. Instead, you can kill the whole lot of them with a devastating tornado attack and still ring up the good karma points. The system is flawed at a fundamental level and turns what should be interesting decisions into laughable situations. The bright spot is that there are unique missions depending on which branch you choose, which makes it worth replaying this lengthy adventure.

In another life, Cole is a super dancer.

Thankfully, showing off your heroic powers is a lot more entertaining than the bland story. The controls from the original game are virtually unchanged. Exploration is still a strong part of this adventure, and movement is forgiving enough to ensure that even those afflicted by acrophobia have fun. Stickiness is the defining feature of your jumping abilities. Cole gets sucked toward nearby objects, which makes it a cinch to jump onto thin electrical wires or leap across treacherous rooftops. The breezy nature of your movement makes bounding across the city a pleasure, though just like in the original game, problems do crop up when you need to be precise. Cole has a mind of his own, so if you want to shimmy up a specific drainpipe, he may grab hold of a balcony, guardrail, or ladder instead. When you're out for a joy run in the sprawling city, these tiny issues aren't too noticeable. But things take a turn for the worse when you're caught in life-or-death struggles. Cole latches on to ledges even when you're desperately trying to flee from a treacherous shoot-out, and those moments can lead to more than a few frustrating deaths.

It's a shame the movement controls haven't been refined at all from the previous game. Luckily, combat suffers from no such problems. Shooting enemies with your lightning blasts feels as great as ever, which makes it a snap to pull off a headshot or land a sticky grenade right on some poor sucker's back. Infamous 2 is at its best in large-scale fights across the expansive rooftops of New Marais. Mixing up your attacks between long-range sniper strikes, devastating rocket blasts, and rapid-fire electrical bursts gives diversity to your actions, and you can seamlessly unleash your destructive powers while gliding along a wire or hanging precariously off a drainpipe. Melee has also been vastly improved from the original game. You now wield a two pronged bludgeoning device called Amp that lets you beat down your foes in a few powerful smashes. This is an effective way to clear out a crowd, though the camera is too interested in delivering a cinematic view during these attacks. It moves with a disorienting style that makes it difficult to know what's going on around you and where your still-living threats stand.

It looks like you're playing a video game from 1943.

Your attackers take many forms in Infamous 2. Gun-wielding lowlifes, mutated warriors, and repulsive-looking monsters give combat a dose of variety the original game lacked. Each enemy has a different weakness to exploit, and figuring out which of your attacks is most effective gives a layer of strategic depth to the lightning-spewing action. Bosses rear their heads every few hours, and these foul monstrosities are as ugly as they are large. They fill the screen with their vile presence, forcing you to make smart use of your evasive abilities as you await an opening to unleash a few deadly attacks. When these terrible beasts first appear, they bring with them a feeling of awe that makes you shake in your boots. But these oversized monsters reappear as you get deeper into the game, and once the surprise of their hideous design fades away, you're left fighting predictable enemies with inflated life bars.

Tedious fights are a sour trend in Infamous 2. The combat is at its best in wide-open spaces, but all too often, the flexibility afforded by these locales is taken away from you. You may find yourself in a warehouse or surrounded by walls of ice, and with your movement abilities severely limited, fights turn into arduous wars that drag on for an interminably long time. Creatures that used to be bosses are tossed in alongside normal, low-level grunts, which turns ordinary missions into frustrating battles. To make matters worse, the health-regeneration system is as poorly balanced as the other combat elements. The screen turns to black and white when you take enough damage, and this makes it extremely difficult to properly see the environment. It's incredibly aggravating when you're near death and you can't tell if that's a deadly body of water you're running toward (Cole can't swim), or if you're able to climb the pipe in front of you. Furthermore, the black-and-white filter takes a long time to fade away, and often gets triggered again if you sustain only a couple of hits. This means you spend half of each fight desperately trying to see what's going on, which leads to more than a few untimely deaths.

Cole begins the adventure with a healthy number of abilities. You can glide along electrical wires, hover in the air, shoot lightning bolts, and toss grenades. As you progress through the adventure, you get new moves, including electrical blasts that mimic a rocket launcher or sniper rifle, and fancy-looking melee takedowns. The unlock system encourages you to be creative in fights. You have to meet certain requirements to gain access to some of your moves, which means you can't just rely on the same handful of attacks all the time. Although most of these moves either appeared in the original game or are quite similar, there are a few new offerings that make your repertoire more exciting. An area-of-effect attack lets you dispose of foes in style. Sweeping up a troop of lowly peons in a swirling tornado is one of the most satisfying ways to deal with enemies, and it doesn't get old no matter how often you do it. Movement hasn't been forgotten when it comes to new skills either. Toward the end of your adventure, you gain access to something that changes how you navigate the city. Using it is as exciting as anything else you can do, so it's surprising that you have to wait so long to acquire it. Considering that one of the most glaring problems with Infamous 2 is that it plays too much like the original, a lot of that familiarity could have been swept aside if this fantastic tool were handed to you early on.

Come for the Cajun cuisine, stay for the terrible monsters.

New Marais is roughly the same size as the first game's Empire City and is loaded with missions, side quests, and hidden collectibles. The mission variety is similar to what was offered in Infamous. Most sequences revolve around fights to the death, with a few twists thrown in to mix things up. Sadly, diversity isn't always welcome. For instance, during one mission, you man a spotlight as if you're in a turret sequence, but Infamous 2 doesn't have the creepy atmosphere to turn this battle against creatures of the dark into a heart-pounding endeavor. Most of the missions are fun, though, and the side quests do a good job of giving you different tasks to perform. Some of these test your agility, others your strength, and it's well worth completing these so you can upgrade your powers. When you don't feel like following the strict directions of the various missions, you can explore the city at your own pace. There are blast shards scattered in many out-of-the-way places, and hunting them down is a good way to show off the exhilarating freedom of movement without worrying about being precise.

However, the open-world structure in Infamous 2 ultimately leads to uneven pacing. In the original game, you followed a rhythm of killing enemies, jumping through sewers, and earning new powers, and there was a continual feeling of forward momentum. When you gave electricity to a blacked-out area, it meant something, since traveling through dark sections was a surefire way to die. Every action had a specific purpose, so instead of just doing missions because you had to, you felt as if you were making a tangible difference with every quest you completed. But that smooth pacing is absent in the sequel. The sewer segments have been scrapped in favor of sequences in which you must defend stationary objects, and though it's fun to fend off waves of attackers, these sections blend in with the other combat-heavy missions. The ramifications of this change spread throughout the entire game. It never feels as if you're making an imprint in this city. And earning new powers doesn't carry with it the same thrill because most of your abilities are so similar to those from the first game. Because of these issues, the pacing in Infamous 2 feels aimless, rarely pushing you to see what comes next.

Although Infamous 2 takes a step back in a few important areas, the visuals have been vastly improved. This is a great-looking game. Each neighborhood in New Marais has a unique feel, and seeing what secrets the city has to offer makes exploration rewarding. From the red-light district of downtown to the foggy wastelands of Flood City, there is personality in these different areas that makes it feel as if they are inhabited by real people. Flood City in particular is hard to ignore. It has more than a little in common with the 9th Ward of New Orleans. Help messages are spray-painted on top of shanties nearly drowned in the rising swamp water, and citizens are desperate for a helping hand. It's strange seeing a real-life tragedy portrayed in a video game, but it adds to the feeling that this city is lived in. The music is another strong point in this adventure. The game forgoes the bombastic tunes that normally accompany heroic exploits, and in their place is an ambient orchestral score. The most affecting song plays when you're near death. Dissonant chords highlight your distress, and the wailing melody does an excellent job of setting your mood.

Hurl cars at fine art!

Your first story play through will like take at least 20 hours, and you can extend your playtime significantly if you dive into the expansive mission-editing tools. There are so many options in this editor that it can be daunting at first, but if you stick with it, you can create a plethora of different quests that are on par with just about anything you find in the main game. The intricacies of mission design are at your fingertips. You can quickly set objects down and come up with a few goals, but things get a lot more complex for the eager designer. AI routines let you alter the behavior of every creature onscreen, and coming up with ridiculous scenarios is a large part of the fun. You can share your missions when you're finished, and it's easy for players to jump right in and rate what you've done. User-created missions appear on the map while you're playing through story mode. These are clearly marked in green, so you can avoid them if you just want to play through the story, or make a beeline toward them if you're curious what the community is up to. Whether you're an aspiring creator or you just want to play others' work, this is a great addition to the franchise.

If only the rest of Infamous 2 were as imaginative as the creation tools. In many ways, this follows the predictable formula for a sequel. Better visual design and more variety build on the original's foundation, and the core mechanics are still fun to mess around with. But bigger is not always better. Pacing issues sap away much of your motivation to see what happens next, and poorly balanced combat encounters turn explosive action sequences into frustrating drags. Although there are still plenty of enjoyable moments that conjure blissful memories of the original game, a number of small flaws make for an uneven experience. Infamous 2 proves just how difficult it is to capture lightning in a bottle.

Madness Returns

2011-06-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

Alice: Madness Returns Review

In Alice: Madness Returns, the heroine of American McGee's Alice has not escaped the demons she worked so hard to banish. The Wonderland of her imagination has been mangled into a dark and demonic caricature, filled with even more torturous hallucinations than she last encountered. Alice's mind is a dark place indeed, and in this long-awaited sequel, we discover that the real world isn't any sunnier. Creative and creepy visuals give this action platformer a twisted and surreal vibe, drawing you into a land inhabited by fire-breathing doll babies and squirming leeches. The action doesn't display the same kind of creativity, unfortunately. The game recycles the same basic ideas over and again, and its failure to grow and challenge leads to occasional tedium. Nevertheless, leaping and floating through an eerie oversized dollhouse and a Japanese-inspired dreamland is a joy, and there are enough hidden secrets to make it worth inspecting Madness Returns' grotesque nooks. Alice: Madness Returns is a fun but thoroughly ordinary game that takes place in an extraordinary setting.

Alice gets high on mushrooms. Literally.

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In American McGee's Alice, the titular dreamer had seemingly overcome her insanity. A fire at her home had killed her parents and sister, leaving both her mind and her imagined Wonderland in shambles. She eventually triumphed over the Red Queen and her own madness, but it seems that this victory was a temporary one. Alice is still under medical care, struggling to remember the circumstances that led to her family's horrific end. Her psychiatrist urges her to forget her past, insisting that doing so is the only way to wellness. Yet forgetting proves a formidable task, and soon Alice finds herself once again lost in her imagination, where Wonderland lies in ruin. To save herself, she must save Wonderland, and vice versa. But this is not the curioser and curioser world author Lewis Carroll dreamed up when he wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Rather, it is a place of nightmares, where the card guards that once protected the Red Queen are now undead monstrosities, and hobbyhorses are not playthings, but deadly weapons.

Wonderland itself is Madness Returns' finest attribute. Each chapter explores a different visual theme, some of them impossible to describe in a few simple words. Rusted platforms float against a cloudy yellow backdrop, next to clock towers from which giant forks and teapots dangle. Gnarled vines twist into an off-kilter heart above a giant castle whose spires lean in all directions. Alice's clothing changes from chapter to chapter, and her flowery prints and blood-red fabrics subtly match the level art. Wonderland is not the only place you explore, however. At the start of each chapter, you wander about an increasingly morose London. This vision of that city is more grubby and industrial than even Carroll's contemporary Charles Dickens conjured, drained of color and inhabited by impossibly wrinkled old crones and filthy fishermen. This world is not flawlessly rendered, however. Textures pop in frequently (and sometimes back out, and then in again), and the game pauses at bizarre times to load data. Audio is an occasional issue as well: characters might talk over their own lines and are sometimes drowned out by the ambient music. At least that music is evocative, if not as excellent as the original Alice's score. The occasional tinkling of a toy piano and the buzz of low double basses provide fine contrast to the pounding drumbeats that accompany battle.

The surreal environments will make you want to see this adventure through.

Alice is generally a dream to control due to the effortless way you can string multiple jumps together and float gently downward. When you drift or perform midair leaps, flower petals blossom in your wake, emphasizing Alice's grace in a graceless land. The smoothness of motion makes bouncing from springy mushrooms and catching drafts of air a delight, and rarely is timing or landing a leap a struggle. For a few hours, you get caught up in freewheeling around this unusual place, scanning for secrets and admiring the view. You can shrink yourself to minute size and enter keyholes, where you might find lost memories, Madness Returns' equivalent of audio logs. You come across floating pig snouts and can shoot them full of pepper from your pepper grinder to uncover new pathways. Hidden treasures are scattered all over, and hearing the telltale snort from a nearby snout elicits a pleasant Pavlovian response: you hear the oink and immediately move into scouting mode.

Every so often, Madness Returns' level layouts displays a glimmer of creativity, such as when playing cards flip and slide into view, extending your path. However, reaching your destination is a usually predictable affair. You spend a lot of time jumping onto floating surfaces and into gusts of air so that you can flip a switch that creates another set of surfaces and gusts. Sometimes you need to drop bombs to weigh down pressure plates, shrink to miniscule size to bring invisible platforms into view, or run under a spiked ceiling threatening to slam down on you. But Alice: Madness Returns has a limited bag of tricks, and so you frequently perform the same actions in the same context. Monotony too often results, particularly when your objectives are simple fetch quests. (Some residents of Wonderland are unwilling to divulge information unless you do them petty favors.) Levels have no sense of momentum: were it not for the unique environments, you could replace one sequence with any other and not even notice, and navigation is barely more challenging in the penultimate chapter than it is in the first.

Luckily, combat freshens things up, due in part to the horrific enemies you face. Hideous monsters dripping with black ooze fling projectiles from above, and goblins wielding dinnerware threaten to stab you. Each enemy requires a slightly different technique to bring down, and Alice is fortunate enough to have the right tools for the job. First up is the returning vorpal blade, Madness Returns' version of a light attack. The hobbyhorse does strong attack duty, while the pepper grinder is your basic ranged assault weapon. Then there's the teapot, which you can think of as a grenade launcher, as well as your parasol, which you use to block incoming attacks. Once you get accustomed to the patterns and weaknesses, the vile fiends aren't difficult to fell. But while fights aren't often challenging, facing multiple enemy types at once is still fun, because you must use your entire arsenal in a single battle. Many battles are too easy to feel like anything but filler, and the sticky target lock can push the camera into awkward positions. But the sound of porcelain shattering when you slam your hobbyhorse into a wretched freak crusted with dolls' heads is worthwhile compensation.

The Cheshire Cat: still grinning after all these years.

Alice: Madness Returns occasionally tries to enhance the proceedings by wandering outside its comfort zone. You slide down ramps, solve some puzzles on a chessboard, jump about in a two-dimensional version of Wonderland, and so forth. The attempts to vary the pace are admirable, but in most cases, the execution is less than ideal. For instance, there are sequences in which you take control of a rolling doll's head and navigate in 2D and 3D alike. It's a neat idea, but the too-close camera and some awkward transitions in and out of third-person and side views frustrate. Running from a gigantic executioner should have led to pulse-pounding chases, but these sequences have you running toward the camera. It takes a special game to make it fun to run toward the unknown, and Alice is not such a game. An underwater shoot-em-up, a musical minigame--you might welcome the change of tempo at first, only to discover that these sections whistle a boring tune.

Fortunately, these are short detours, not core mechanics, and they are overshadowed by Alice: Madness Returns' better elements. It might take you nine or 10 hours to complete the game, and should you buy it new, you get a code to download American McGee's Alice. This port of the original PC game takes some getting used to: moving Alice doesn't cause her to face that direction. (Fans of the original will miss the ease of movement mouselook provided on the PC.) The action feels stiff by modern standards, but its dramatic art design and uneasy atmosphere are timeless. The Cheshire Cat fades into view, filling you in on the state of Wonderland while doing his best Alan Rickman impression. Instead of shooting pepper at the Red Queen's guards, you fling razor-sharp playing cards. And in at least one important way, the original still surpasses this late-in-coming sequel: it more effectively uses events and characters from the source material. And thus it is more likely to tap into your nostalgia either for Carroll's works or for their place in pop culture.

The Vorpal Blade went snicker-snack!

If you grab the game on the used market, you can still purchase American McGee's Alice separately, though you shouldn't assume that Madness Returns is a lesser value without the inclusion of the original. It's fun to move through Wonderland as if carried by a summer breeze, bringing a touch of beauty to its contorted imagery. It's a shame that the game never expands its fundamentals. Looking back on time spent with Alice: Madness Returns is like remembering a vacation from your childhood: you remember where you went, but not what you did. Yet Alice's broken psyche is so tortured, her waking nightmare so vivid, that you're tempted to push forward to see what deliciously morbid sights yet await.

Duke Nukem Forever

2011-06-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

Shippin' Out June 12-18: Duke Nukem Forever

Duke Nukem can be called a lot of things, but vaporware is no longer one of them. Gearbox Software's much anticipated first-person action game Duke Nukem Forever finally arrives tomorrow for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, following an international market release last week.

Initially announced in 1997, Duke Nukem Forever was synonymous with vaporware for over a decade. While at original studio 3D Realms, it went through at least two engine changes, with its protracted development reportedly costing $20 million to $30 million.

Gamers can finally get their hands on Duke Nukem Forever tomorrow.

Duke Nukem Forever will be available in both a standard edition, as well as a Balls of Steel Collector's Edition for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. This top-tier bundle includes a bust of the titular hero, a set of playing cards, dice, and two casino chips. A comic and hardcover art book are also included in the collection, along with a numbered certificate of authenticity.

Out today for the Wii is Wii Play: Motion. From Nintendo, the new bundle sports a black Wii Remote Plus and an all-new compilation of 12 minigames. Among the minigames are an umbrella-based gliding game and a whack-a-mole-type garden-pest control title involving a virtual mallet.

Gamers looking to play an explicitly twisted riff of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland can pick up Alice: Madness Returns this week. The game sees a grown-up version of the titular heroine grappling with insanity. Her journeys take her back to Wonderland, where players will find combat, platforming, and puzzle challenges.

Alice is back, wielding a knife.

Fans of famous Japanese designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Rez can pick up the man's latest project this week, Child of Eden. The game takes its cues in large part from Mizuguchi's previous rhythm shooter, and it features the same style of music-enhanced shooter gameplay with psychedelic visuals.

It also bears a storyline: Gamers will attempt to rescue the embattled Project Lumi, which is an effort to "reproduce a human personality inside Eden, the archive of all human memories." A virus has invaded the program, however, and players must defeat it, before all hope is lost.

Lastly, gamers looking to jump into the latest Transformers title can pick up Transformers: Dark of the Moon this week. The title is due tomorrow for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Additionally, versions of the game are also releasing for the DS, 3DS, and Wii.

Though it bears the same name as its cinematic inspiration, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is actually a prequel to the big-budget blockbuster, which arrives in theaters July 1. The game will introduce Shockwave to the Transformers movie games, as well as a new mechanic. In addition to their robot and vehicle modes, the Transformers in Dark of the Moon will have a hybrid "stealth force" mode combining firepower with mobility.

For further details on the week's games, visit GameSpot's New Releases page. The full list of downloadable games on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Wii Shop Channel will be revealed later this week. Release dates are based on retailer listings and are subject to change.

MONDAY, JUNE 13
Wii Play: Motion--Wii--Nintendo

TUESDAY, JUNE 14
Alice: Madness Returns--X360, PS3, PC--Electronic Arts
Balloon Pop 2--3DS--UFO Interactive
Child of Eden--X360--Ubisoft
Duke Nukem Forever--X360, PC, PS3--2K Games
Transformers: Dark of the Moon--360, PS3--Activision
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Autobots--DS--Activision
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Decepticons--DS--Activision
Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Stealth Force Edition--Wii, 3DS--Activision
Wipeout: In the Zone--X360--Microsoft

Star Craft

2010-08-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

“It isn’t a game you can hope to master in a weekend. It takes a lifetime to get good at it.”

If you haven’t managed to tame StarCraft yet, don’t worry: now you can get started on StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which promises a deeper experience with an epic storyline, three carefully balanced factions, and a wide variety of maps and missions that test your strategic thinking. Hopefully it won’t take two lifetimes to master.

“The definition of balance is how long a game is fun,” Browder explains. “If it stops being fun after a week because you’ve figured out all the strategies, then the game wasn’t balanced very well.”

The Swarm Cometh. Terrans try to hold off a Zerg invasion.

Unanswered Questions

At the convergence of StarCraft II’s balancing act lurk the Zerg, Protoss, and Terrans. (See the sidebar “A Tale of Three Races” on page two to learn more.) The three factions look more impressive than ever before thanks to the latest technology, which Browder says has “caught up to where we can do StarCraft in 3D. Only in the last six to seven years did it become possible to do the game the way we wanted to, with the massive scale of combat we had envisioned since we did the original game.”

“[StarCraft] isn’t a game you can hope to master in a weekend. It takes a lifetime to get good at it.”
- Dustin Browder, game director

Wings of Liberty focuses its single-player campaign on hard-nosed Terran commander-turned-rebel Jim Raynor, who is still battling his former boss, Arcturus Mengsk, the leader of the autocratic Terran Dominion. “With the storyline, we’ve had a chance to revisit unanswered questions from the first game,” Browder says. “For example, Jim Raynor hasn’t gotten payback yet [for what Mengsk did to him]. He’s the protagonist of the game, and everyone revolves around him.”

Incoming. Terran battlecruisers play offense.

Unfortunately, Browder adds, Raynor also finds himself in a dark place: “After seeing way too much carnage, Jim has lost a lot of his fire for combat. He’s grappling with the loss of his friend, Sarah Kerrigan, and he’s dealing with alcohol problems. How does he handle his new situation? Will basic survival be enough, or will he be destroyed?”

“Each [mission] is a unique mini-game, and you don’t know what we’ll throw at you next.”
- Dustin Browder, game director

The game’s non-linear campaign follows Raynor’s Raiders as they take on mercenary missions to earn the cash they need for their struggle against the Dominion. Browder elaborates: “We have a lot of crazy scenarios in StarCraft II: one mission might have you fighting zombies, and another might deal with something at the heart of the universe that’s threatening its very existence. Each one is a unique mini-game, and you don’t know what we’ll throw at you next.”

One if By Land, Two if By Sea. A group of Protoss Colossus units come ashore.

Back to Game Development School

The wide variety of StarCraft II’s missions comes from lessons learned while developing scenarios for Warcraft III and its Frozen Throne expansion pack, both of which many of Browder’s team members worked on. Looking back at the original StarCraft proved useful too.

StarCraft is considered a polished game,” Browder says, “but we learned a lot from it that we applied to the sequel. For example, the starting experience is now much different: we do in-game cinematics that immerse you in the story, and we let you walk around the bridge of a starship, where you can talk to other characters. It takes the game to a new level.”

The Fiery Depths. There’s wide variety in StarCraft II’s maps.

He points out that those lessons were key to figuring out not only what worked, but also what didn’t: “We tried a lot of different things during development. For example, we tried cover systems, which have been used in first-person shooters and other strategy games, but StarCraft II is so fast-paced that they didn’t work. They made the game become stagnant.”

The team also drew on the thoughts of the many StarCraft players who fervently play the game today. “Those fans were able to educate us on what is happening now in the StarCraft world, and what they wanted to see from the sequel,” Browder says. “They helped a lot during the Beta. They were involved from the earliest stages, and they really helped us fine-tune the game based on the way the original StarCraft is currently played.”

Choose Your Path. Between missions, use that hard-earned cash to improve Raynor’s Raiders before deciding where to go next.

Fresh Strategies

Browder notes that the original StarCraft has “evolved over time as players learn more about it, even though we did very little in the way of game balancing through patches. I’m sure players will develop build orders for StarCraft II, as they did for the first game, but those will mostly fall apart when they make contact with the enemy and must adapt to a unique situation — that will make it feel fresh each time.”

He concludes: “Every time you sit down to play a game, your experience will be unique, between the differences between the races, which map you choose, and where you start. You’ll have to use all the knowledge at your disposal every time and figure out your strategies on the fly.”

: Defense Grid

2010-08-14T03:07:00.000-07:00

: Defense Grid: The Awakening

You thought this planet was abandoned. You were wrong. Well, from a certain point-of-view: a computer that calls itself Entity is now in control of this inhospitable chunk of rock. Luckily, it’s benign. Unluckily, an alien invasion force has arrived, and Entity’s defense grid is offline.

“Ah, the aliens are back, are they?” Entity asks in a nonchalant voice as you scan your surroundings. “Yes, well, we knew this day would come, and so it has,” the computer adds, as if it’s talking to a long-lost friend. There will be time for a round of “How do you do?” and raspberry tasting later; you have work to do.

The Rub

The objective seems simple enough: place towers along the aliens’ path and blast them to smithereens. At first you only have access to basic gun turrets, but soon Entity provides others to choose from, including cannons, flame-throwing towers, spinning structures that slow down enemies, and more. As you gain resources from eliminating aliens, you can upgrade existing towers with more powerful attacks and wider ranges of fire, or buy new ones. Do you want to inflict a few devastating blows, or death by a thousand paper cuts?

Of course, the aliens come in 15 different varieties, each with unique movement rates, levels of shielding, degrees of strength, and other qualities to consider, so you can’t simply place a series of gun turrets and sit back to watch the carnage. Some of the aliens even fly, and certain weapons are useless against them.

The aliens want your power cores, and if they carry all of them off the map, they’ll prevent the defense grid from going online. Wise tower defense strategists would be wise to heed Entity’s advice: “Be merciless. They are.”

Tips and Tricks

When you place a tower, it takes a few seconds for the structure to rise out of the pad, so make sure you’re not relying on it to take out a final alien that’s about to exit the map with a power core.
And when you upgrade a tower, you need to give the process several seconds: the old tower lowers out of view, and then the new one rises. Your best time to do that isn’t when you need that tower to destroy some aliens in the next few seconds.
Pay close attention to towers’ ranges of fire: place the ones with smaller ranges closer to the path, and let the long-distance guns sit back. Meteor towers are perfect for out-of-the-way spots, since they can cover long distances.
You can click on an alien to check out its stats and monitor its health level. That’s a handy way to know if you should beef up some last-minute defenses before it reaches the exit.
Make sure you’re prepared for boss aliens when they arrive. (The bar along the top of the screen tells you what types of enemies are on their way.) Because the bosses are so powerful, you won’t earn many resources for a few minutes while your existing towers work on taking them down.
You’ll need quick mouse moves to survive the game’s higher levels. From the main menu, select Help and Options, then choose Controls. The first tab lets you change the mouse sensitivity: fill the bar to let your cursor move as fast as possible around the screen; empty it for the slowest speed. You can choose anything in-between to fine-tune the setting, but note that you won’t see the effect of your choice until you resume gameplay.
Don’t place temporal towers where their ranges overlap each other; they seem to cancel each other out.
Each tower or group of towers has a force field. Aliens must go around the force field, unless their path is completely blocked. Keep this in mind as you look for ways to lengthen the aliens’ path; the farther they have to go, the more opportunities your towers have to shoot at them, and the longer it takes for them to get away with power cores.

Tango Down

2010-08-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

Blacklight: Tango Down (Xbox 360)
Zombie studios have created a cheap, multiplayer focused first person shooter that is a fantastic value for money. It contains 12 maps and multiple game modes including Black Ops mode which is a Co-op mode made for up to four players and has you trawling through levels killing enemies just to get to the end of the level.

Blacklight: Tango Down tells of the fight between the US Blacklight Special Forces and the US ex Special Forces called the Order. You get to play as either of these sides in a fast paced battle to the death. In order to accomplish this task you are given a few items that can help you, amongst these is the Hyper Reality Visor (HRV).

The HRV works like an upgraded version of Splinter Cell Convictions Sonar goggles allowing you to pinpoint enemies, friends and health stations by the icon or coloured dots that appear on the screen whilst activated. So you can easily spot where the battle is after respawning or find that sneaky enemy trying to hide in a corner. It has a cool down timer that stops you using them continuously to help balance out the game.

Digi Grenades create a sphere of energy that cause blindness in the area which is a worthy upgrade to a flash grenade but it affects you as well as you can’t see into the energy sphere to kill the enemy that you have just blinded, instead try spraying the area with bullets in the hope you’ll drop the enemy.

To stop enemies camping, the static spawn points the bases contain automated machine guns and players have a few seconds of invulnerability which doesn’t sound like much but on these fast paced levels it is all you need. The level design is great with lots of tight enclosed alleyways as well as open spaces for the snipers amongst you.

As you earn Kills and Assists you are awarded experience points which unlock extra weapons, tags and parts. Weapon Parts come in four types Barrels, Stocks, Scopes and Magazines, These all have a bearing on how the weapon handles. Tags are small key ring like objects that are attached to your weapon and give you extra abilities or further increase your weapons statistics e.g. Faster Reload, Quicker Health Regeneration or a bonus to the damage, but you can only have one tag on a weapon at any one time so careful choice is required.

There are a few points that could have been addressed or need tweaking such as maybe the possibility of multiple spawn points on a map and more emphasis on the story rather than finding it in a how to play option in the menu screen, but you are getting the best looking Xbox Live Arcade game. As long as this title is well supported in DLC this is a lesson to developers on how an Xbox live game should be done with great graphics, simple game-play and enough content in the weapon customization to keep you playing until well after midnight.

StarCraft II

2010-08-14T03:01:00.000-07:00

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC)
StarCraft 2 is great, it picks up from StarCraft and whilst it is only one single campaign, the Terrans, it is a highly polished and thoroughly engaging game from start to finish. Hardcore StarCraft fans may not agree with that of course, expecting more than just one campaign but when you actually play the story from start to end, experience the content as it is, it's a meaty package and adding other campaigns may well have pushed the development schedule too far into delay.

Damnit Jim, I'm a farmer not a revolutionary!

From its grinding sci-fi western inspired soundtrack for the Terran Campaign, to the lush visuals and dramatic battles, science fiction RTS' have never sounded or looked so good. StarCraft 2 has been at least 10 years in the comin' but now it's here, it is every bit as frenetic and fun as the original and has some of the best single player storytelling in a game, since Mass Effect 2 from Bioware. This is really how you do a sequel to a popular game franchise.

Jim Raynor is struggling with his inner demons whilst trying to ignite the fires of revolution across the sector, against the Dominion led by the avaricious and power hungry Arcturus Mengsk, this is the stuff of classic good vs. Evil with a dash of wild west Firefly space adventure thrown in as you battle across the extensive single player campaign and watch the story unfold, you are Jim Raynor and you choose what battles you undertake and where.

Aboard the massive flagship Hyperion, a huge battlecruiser, you're not alone, you have a legion of supporting characters and in a decidedly rpg-lite twist you get to talk to your crew, learn about their motivations and fill in the gaps of the story between missions. You also get to accrue money and research points. The former is funnelled into the Terran tech tree between missions and the latter goes to purchasing special units, or abilities that make your army even more formidable - be warned though, once you research one particular tech, the other is locked out so...choose wisely.

You have various locations aboard the Hyperion, the Bridge, the Cantina, the Armoury, the Lab and so forth, each of these locations provides a backdrop for the story, characters and even more as you travel from mission to mission. Many of the game's in-engine cut-scenes take place in these key locations and serve to draw you deeper into the narrative and immerse you in the StarCraft universe. This is where the game triumphs over the bog-standard rts, the storytelling and the characters are excellent, you get a feel for Jim Raynor and his crew more than you normally would, we started to care about what happened in the plot, even though it can feel a little contrived at times.

Hey, is that a zerg or are you pleased to see me kekekekeke ^_____^

Outside of the main narrative, we come to the gameplay, where Blizzard has taken time to balance the units extremely well. There's a distinct rock/paper/scissors aspect to the game and each unit has a particular strength, a role, a unit counter and so on. It may take time to learn their various aspects, the use of their special abilities and what unit does what in what circumstance, but it's a rewarding experience and once you learn the ins and outs of the game and how it's changed from Starcraft, you should find you're back on old and familiar ground even if you are a StarCraft veteran.

Base building is back and there are a plethora of new options for defence, the supply depots can be lowered into the ground to allow units to walk over them. A clever tactical player can make use of those buildings to impede the march of an army, allowing them to fire ranged and area effect attacks with Siege Tanks or Thor's over the buildings and into the mass of their opponents forces. It is a familiar game but the resource gathering and base construction are much faster than before, allowing you to build a huge army as long as you have the resources, getting into the thick of battle much quicker.

In the single player story, you move from mission to mission, selecting them from a map screen and allowing some freedom of choice. There are also a few missions where you can choose to side with a particular faction or character over another, this alters the narrative and provides a moral dilemma for Jim Raynor. It also influences a few unit unlocks. You can collect resources and cash; find Zerg or Protoss research strewn across the maps, allowing you new research opportunities. The missions are also varied, we won't spoil the types of missions that you can undergo, but don't expect them to just be Army A vs. Army B, there's more to StarCraft 2 than just a basic rts even in the single player campaign, which numbers around 30 missions.

In multiplayer things are just as good, there are extensive matchmaking tools, Blizzard's brand new BattleNet 2.0 is much better than before and it has a great deal of user friendliness as well as good quality voice comms. There are a variety of game types, settings and full AI unit support across the numerous modes. With the option to build your own maps and create your own game types, the game is fully moddable, Blizzard have even snuck in a top down scrolling shooter in the Cantina to prove just how moddable it really is. You cannot play over LAN but in this day and age, it seems the online support is just as good, we never had a problem with waiting for matches and those matches we did play were great fun.

Multiplayer feels fast and frenetic with a great deal of tactical opportunity. The 3 factions are available outside of the single player story and they have been well balanced, with the larger unit cap and variety of units especially for the Zerg, it is great fun to initiate a Zerg rush on the enemy and watch them get overwhelmed early in the game. Of course, one wrong tactical move can see your strategy crumble against a few powerful Terran units, Firebats are especially good at flambé and they can serious cripple a good Zerg attack. The base building in adversarial multiplayer is just as fun as it was, with the new options such as being able to transform your HQ into a Planetary Fortress armed with a massive cannon and good for defence. The 3 faction tech trees are likewise, excellent and well balanced; each offers something for old and new StarCraft players alike.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Blizzard does some pretty-pretty CGI and they seem to be rivalling Square-Enix in that respect. The CG movies for StarCraft 2 are extremely well produced and very well directed, adding to the story and forming a good solid narrative. The in-game engine cinematics are very good and they have a great deal of character to them, especially when they involve the interactions between Jim and his crew. The actual in-game graphics with their fixed camera and solid colour palette are excellent as well, with a high level of detail on the various units that can be missed during the frenetic pace of the game itself. But it is there, from the Ghosts to the mighty Terran Battlecruiser, everything looks well textured and well made.

Lightning and shadow are used to good effect, the level design and map design is beautiful in many of the locations and whilst I never really was a StarCraft fan, I can truly say that 2 has actually converted me with its design, story and production quality. The physics are par for the course with explosions and bits of debris from the various destroyed buildings, it all comes together nicely in one eyecandy package of destruction and war.

Seems to be pretty intelligent too

The AI is good enough, the Zerg are troublesome when allowed to expand and the Protoss are sneaky. Terran AI seems very good at direct assaults and will usually probe your defences lightly before bringing in some seriously deadly firepower. Pathfinding on a whole is not broken and whilst we did get some odd unit movement from time to time, it worked out the path pretty quickly.

Sounds like a good one

The sound in StarCraft 2 is definitely good quality, everything has a nice meaty audio to it, from the weapons, the battles, the units themselves and the ship-board ambience aboard the Hyperion.

I dig them tunes Jimmy, I dig them real good

With a mix of various rock tracks and so on in the bar/Cantina, to the Firefly inspired western guitar twang of the Terran soundtrack, StarCraft 2 delivers a great musical experience across the whole soundtrack. It is at times suitably dark and grim, then sweeping and dramatic.

Now that's some mighty fine voice you got there!

Married to the music is the solid voice acting, everyone does their part extremely well, the voice acting is some of the best in the industry and it's great to hear StarCraft voices return, including the voice actor for that of Jim Raynor, who lends his suitable vocals to bring the hero to life in a very believable manner.

It's all good until someone loses their spleen

StarCraft 2 is a worthy successor to StarCraft and whilst it is certainly not the best ending out there, falling a bit flat, nor does it answer a lot of the questions you might have about the Terran side of the story, it sets up for a nice sequel (2 of them in fact) and provides a wild ride from beginning to end, one that you'll want to repeat to see some of the outcomes and unlock the other units. Of course, there's also the various tech upgrades as well as some other surprises - which we won't spoil.

Tekken

2010-08-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

The past cannot be rewritten, but the future still stands a chance!

The 5th KING OF IRON FIST TOURNAMENT ended with Heihachi Mishima missing and Jin Kazama as an eventual winner.

Jin, becoming the head of the Mishima Zaibatsu started to use the special Tekken force units for propaganda and manipulative acts all over the world. People became upset, and the Mishima Zaibatsu saw an opportunity to conquer the world, as riots and finally war started amongst nations. But all around the globe people still believe someone is able to stand in its way. The G-Corporation! As well as started an open war against the Mishima Zaibatsu the G-Corporation offered a reward on Jin Kazama’s head. No long after and as anyone could have expected, the announced for the 6th “King of Iron Fist Tournament” was under way.

Many different ideals and goals gather while the tournament is unveiled. Those that want to make a name for themselves, those that seek money and those… that want revenge!

Master League

2010-08-14T02:54:00.001-07:00

Monday sees the launch of the Master League online test. For those lucky enough to be chosen you will be emailed with codes so you can join in.

In Master League online players compete in the same league playing matches against each other. To make the most out of the test we want as many people to play online at the same time.

As the test is only open for 10 days we suggest that all players where possible play each night at 7pm BST, this is to ensure we have enough players online at once to experience the full Master League Online.

PES 2011

2010-08-14T02:49:00.000-07:00

PES 2011 Preview Q&A

After the PES 2011 first look tests we opened a Q&A thread which clocked up over 400 posts so, with the success of that in mind, we've decided to adopt the same approach now that we've had our hands on the preview code.

All we could share before was our impressions based on a few hours of gameplay, from a relatively small section of the game, but now we've had our fill of the finely-tuned code that looking to fix the documented bugs/glitches - and also offered up a healthy dose of Master League, Editing, BAL and everything else you can expect to see in the full title which will be released in a couple of months (barring online capabilities). As before, myself and Fury have written a few articles to pass on our new-found knowledge, but if there's something that you want to know about that you feel we've missed off, or if you want something clarifying - feel free to give us a shout.

We'll try to get back to everyone - but, please be patient... There's only a few of us - and a lot of you. Questions may build up - but like we did in the last one, we'll clear them out when we get chance. Apologies if we miss any as we work through, and if you know the answers already (from previously asked questions etc), you're welcome to share them on our behalf - which a number of you did in the last thread (and it was much appreciated - PES Fan community spirit for the win!).

Without further ado, lets have it...

How many camera angles are they and can they be tilted?

Eight camera angles in all inlcuding: Wide, Normal, Long, Short, Player, Broadcasting One, Broadcasting Two and a horizonatal angle.

There are no tilt options.

Can the red and blue bars above the player be removed/replaced?

All on screen icons can be removed apart from the radar.

Crossing - Does double / triple tapping :circle: still work? Are :l1: crosses still in and are they less powerful?

All crossing mechanics seemed to be the same and I think more playing time would be needed to see if :l1: crosses are more powerful.

How much can you mess around with the controller configuration?

Changing controller buttons is the exact same as before.

In exhibition mode, is it possible to play at 'Home stadium' by default?

No

Do replays state date, difficulty goal was scored on?

It does show the date, but not the difficulty.

Does training have a rewind function?

No

Can we perform all the tricks individually without using the Link-Feint system?

99% yes.

What tricks can be performed with the right stick only?

Upper Body Feint
Matthews Faint
Step Over Dummy
Reverse Step Over Fake
Step Over Pull Through
Step Over Out
Step Over Fake
Reverse Step Over Fake

L2 + Right Stick tricks

Bring the ball back to feet
Roll ball left/right
L Feint
Drag Back Turn
Backheel Feint
Inside Bounce
Inside Bounce dribble (formerly known as Long Step）
Flip Flap
Reverse Flip Flap
Roulette
Out-Footed Roulette
Crossover Turn

The rainbow flick can be done from a stationary position by pressing L2 and R3 x2

Do certain players perform tricks better than others?

Tricks can be done with any player it seems. The Boss telling me he was able to the a rainbow flick with a goalkeeper.

Can R2 and L1 still be used for basic stepovers and sidesteps?

No, all with the right stick.

Rise Fantasia

2010-08-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

Arc Rise Fantasia Review

Confession: Until Arc Rise Fantasia I've never played more than an hour of any Japanese RPG. It's not that I hate them, but rather that I've never been that intrigued by their art-style and what appeared, to me, to be a very slow style of play.

Now, after having dedicated innumerable hours of my life to playing Arc Rise for review, I've discovered something about myself -- I actually don't mind JRPGs after all. In fact, I think I might enjoy them. Especially if, as so many people tell me, there are JRPGs that are much more intriguing than the relatively dull grind of this, my first adventure.

More Arc Rise Fantasia Info

Arc Rise has all the pieces of JRPGs that I'd come to fear over the years. From an utterly predictable, cliched story involving typical things like magic, dragons, and teenage love, to a complex, garish menu system that's hard for a newcomer like me to navigate, this game is clearly designed for a very RPG-literate audience. I think fans of these games are more inclined to forgive the awful localization (misspellings in subtitles, for instance) and quirky, kiddy moments the characters share in the game, but for me they just made the story something to laugh at, as opposed to laugh with. I mean you don't have to tell a completely new story to make it interesting -- see any game BioWare does, for example -- but this story feels like they hardly even tried. Still, despite eye-roll inducing narrative, I found that I mostly enjoyed what I had previous assumed would be tedious turn-based combat.

Combat systems are, of course, a huge deal in any JRPG, and Arc Rise's is just complex enough to make it interesting during the more intense fights. The four members of your party all draw upon the same pool of Action Points (AP) to do anything and everything (fight, use spells, move, etc.) during their turn. This means that you have to strategically decide which characters are going to participate in the battle, sometimes choosing to have one character use up all the points while the others just stand there. The finite AP resource also makes for hard choices: at times making you choose to simply defend or do nothing for a turn, in order to save up the points you need to enact more powerful moves in subsequent turns.

On top of AP, combat is made deeper still by giving you several other things to manage on the fly. For instance, physical positioning of your party members is important, as standing spread out might allow you to avoid damage to multiple characters from a single spell, while having them standing next to one another could allow them to assist each other's attacks. Additionally, casting spells costs MP, and each level of spells has its own MP. Then you're special powers are spent using SP, which builds up during the course of battle (all other stats outside of AP are for each individual, not in a collective pool). I'll admit, as a newcomer, having to manage so many stats and variables -- as well as just focus on keeping my party alive -- can be overwhelming, but it also makes a hard-won victory all the sweeter.

Arc Rise Fantasia at IGN.com

The only problem is that battles are hardly ever challenging. Besides the boss battles -- which are often so difficult that you have to go back and grind for an hour just to get past them -- combat is so easy you can pretty much put your party on autopilot and do something else. Maybe that sounds appealing to some people out there, but for me it's problematic when a large portion of how I spend my game time is mundane enough that I find myself searching the Internet or chatting while it goes on. And please don't confuse my complaint for some strange desire to have each battle be an epic struggle, I just wish that combat could have been better balanced overall instead of a series of far-too-easy fights followed up by a sometimes frustratingly difficult boss battle.

Closing Comments

The oddest thing about my time with Arc Rise, though, was that I actually kind of enjoyed my time with it despite the terrible story and boring stretches. Something about maxing out my characters' abilities, equipping them with the right armor, and manipulating how they cast spells really appealed to me, and I find myself genuinely interested in trying out more of a genre I’ve missed out on for more than 25 years. Who knows, perhaps this is the start of something new for me, and, if nothing else, I can thank this mediocre game for helping me jump into a number of worlds I’ve previously avoided.

Absolute Chess

2010-08-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

Absolute Chess Review

I'd normally be a bit upset at a game reusing art and assets from another, previously-published title from the same studio -- but I kinda dig this "Absolute" brand so far. Absolute BrickBuster kicked off the franchise on DSiWare a few weeks ago, offering an fast and frantic Breakout clone wrapped up with some electric Japanese music, menus and cast of playable characters. Chess, as a slow-paced, thinking man's strategy board game, is about as far away from Breakout as you can get. And yet Absolute Chess has the exact same presentation -- music, menus and playable cast. I'd normally be upset, but this time I'm just amused.

Probably because the chess itself is so good. Separated into several different difficulty levels that actually play like their descriptions suggest (from novice on up), the player-versus-computer matches here are satisfying and well-presented. It's probably my favorite chess download on DSiWare – which isn't that tough a title to claim, seeing as the only competition has been the ugly Chess Challenge! (which was easier to recommend back when it came out in May, when there were zero other competitors to compare it against.)

You'll also get support for DS Download Play to take on human opponents, and a whole set of missions to accomplish in a separate Challenge Mode -- tasks like completing the current game in under a set number of moves, or before a countdown clock runs out of time.

The interface is nice too, offering both D-Pad and stylus control and good art that highlights how each of your pieces is able to move.

4x4 Evolution

2010-08-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

4x4 Evolution

N.B. This is a preowned video game. It comes Boxed and may include original Instruction manual. It is also guaranteed to work on your Playstation 2 video game console.

4x4 Evolution takes a unique approach to off-road racing. Most off-road games from the past feature arcade gameplay complete with turbo boosts and weapons. 4x4 Evolution makes its mark as a simulation by allowing you to purchase new parts to upgrade your vehicle. There are 70 licensed trucks in 4x4 Evolution from manufacturers like Dodge, Nissan, Lexus, and Ford, and you may upgrade your truck’s appearance, chassis, engine, suspension, electronics, and drivetrain. The upgrades are expensive, and you often have to invest in several prerequisite parts before you can purchase a significant upgrade. For instance, in order to jump up to a new engine size, you must first install a high-capacity fuel pump, a new air filter, and a race exhaust. This ridiculous amount of customization is impressive, but it really only motivates you to save your money and buy new trucks altogether instead of piddling it away on parts.\

Specifications
Region: PAL Version. The Format for UK, Europe, Australia & New Zealand

Category: Racing

Supplier: THQ (click here for our THQ store)

Barcode (EAN) No: 5026555300254

Part Code: 0

10000 Bullets

2010-08-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

10000 Bullets (Pre-Owned)

N.B. This is a preowned video game. It comes Boxed and may include original Instruction manual. It is also guaranteed to work on your Playstation 2 video game console.

Enter the world of Crow and Judas, professional hit men who handle all the "dirty work" for the Tonio Family, a powerful crime syndicate based in Rome, Italy.
Having lost his mother at a young age, the aimless Crow was taken in by Papa Tonio, and was raised to serve the syndicate as one of its members. For his entire life, Crow had only one goal in mind: to avenge his mother‘s death. He also possessed a secret power. The power of "Gunslinger": who could foresee the future. With his powers and determination for revenge, Crow matured to became the finest hit man in town.
Though understandably a loner, Crow eventually found himself a friend in Judas, a fugitive from France. Judas taught Crow how to “manipulate the trigger like a pro”.
Features

Control four deadly "Gunslingers" such as Crow, Alice, Dragon and Boris
Enhance your sense, feel the "Bullet time", froze the time and master all the special tecniques
Each Gunslinger has it‘s own ability path fully customizable an upgradable
Furious full-action-shooting-adventure trought an impressive sets of scenarios

In-Game Text: English, Italian, German, French, Spanish
Manual Langauge: English, Italian, German, French, Spanish

Specifications

Region: PAL Version. The Format for UK, Europe, Australia & New Zealand

Category: Action Adventure

Supplier: 505 (click here for our 505 store)

Barcode (EAN) No: 8023171006666

Part Code: P2OESSGAM00666

Please Note: Any images are used for illustrative purposes only, actual products and/or packaging may differ

DeathSmiles

2010-08-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

Death-Smiles Review

There's no doubt that Death-smiles is bound to garner some attention for its clearly underage witchy schoolgirl protagonists who must battle through evil hordes and demonic forces in provocative attire. However, this gothic-themed Lolita shooter isn't haphazardly slapped together by just anyone. It's a finely honed bullet-hell shoot-'em-up crafted by Cave--the Japanese developer responsible for a remarkable number of insane arcade shooter games in the east. As such, the game is less about catering to pervy-minded gamers who get cheap thrills from a few up-skirt shots and more about delivering a seriously palm-sweat-inducing ride through a deadly hailstorm of insurmountable bullet fire. It's a bit of a rare treat for stateside gamers to get a shot at surviving the psychotic deluge dished out by Cave games, short of importing them at a high price. Games like Deathsmiles make it well worth the wait because the glut of play modes, crazy gameplay, and over-the-top boss battles draw you into a twitch-laden vortex from which it's brutally hard to escape. And you won't want to escape.

As an arcade game that revolves around sending throngs of satanic beasties to their doom, Deathsmiles doesn't concern itself with the most elaborate of plots, and that's fine. A handful of little girls have mysteriously been plucked from their normal existences in the mortal realm and dropped into a twisted alternate dimension called Gilverado. There, these young "angels" develop mystical powers and the ability to summon friendly demonic familiars to their side. Capable of unleashing a potent array of firepower, the girls are enlisted to help the king keep peace in the kingdom. Unfortunately for them, it's not long before the gates of hell are thrown open and a torrent of rampaging creatures is unleashed across the land. There are scores of vile monsters storming your way, and you need to blast the living hell out of them.

After selecting the girl of your choice, you set off to slay monsters across dank swamplands, creepy castles, molten crevices, rancid graveyards, and other terrain. Every location throws a swarm of gnarly creatures at you, and enemies approach from all four sides of the screen, forcing you to frequently change your firing direction to compensate. The left and right triggers switch up your shooting direction, and the face buttons can also be used to engage a more powerful attack in either direction. The trade-off for using these heftier blasts is a slower movement-response time, but it's necessary during boss battles and when facing larger enemies. Your handy little familiar helps out as well. It floats around and fires along with you, so you can position it strategically to block some bullets and blast at enemies approaching from blind spots. And because no bullet-hell game would be complete without a screen-destroying explosion button to wipe out everything in sight, Deathsmiles has that too. Monsters drop glowing skulls that you'll gather to boost your score and your kill meter. When it maxes out at 1,000 kills, you can trigger a power-up mode that substantially boosts your score and firepower for a short time.

The opponents themselves aren't as troublesome as the frenzy of small purple orbs they emit in vast quantities. On the lowest difficulty setting, the bursts of bullets are simply hard to avoid; on a higher difficulty, the screen is almost completely obscured by them most of the time. While dodging the sprays of bullets and swirling death that shoots forth from fanged ogres, mighty serpents, tree beings, demonic entities, and other adversaries gets a lot harder the further you venture into the game, you only take damage if a bullet hits the smaller glowing heart area in the center of your character. This gives you some decent leeway to stay alive when you're frantically trying to squeeze through tiny open spaces amidst blizzards of flying bullets. Death is inevitable, but unlimited continues will keep you from putting your fist through the screen. Not having to worry about running out of lives also keeps the frustration to a minimum, and even though this soften the impact of the game's overall difficulty, there are still high scores and leaderboards for players who want to further challenge themselves.

It's entirely possible to blow through Deathsmiles' short smattering of levels from start to finish in about an hour. While that's painfully short for a retail console release, there are a lot of reasons to go back and play through the game numerous times. For starters, the four main playable characters have a unique visual style; their own familiar, method of attack; and minor special story elements. This makes playing through repeat sessions with each character a different experience. Additionally, there are three ways to play the core game. You can play a straight-up port of the original arcade game; a cool "arranged" mode that lets you control your familiar independently from your main character with the thumb stick; and a graphically enhanced Xbox 360 mode that has extra visual polish. Stages can be tackled in almost any order, which further keeps replays feeling fresh. On top of all of that, there's a Mega Black Label setting for each of the three core modes. This adds one of the bosses, Sakura, as a fifth playable character; includes a new ice-palace stage; and adds an optional supermasochistic fourth difficulty setting called Level 999 that literally bathes the screen in gratuitous gunfire. When you throw in some crazy local and online multiplayer co-op, a Score Attack mode, and the ability to record and watch your replays, it all adds up to one hefty package.

The fast-paced shooting action is intense, frantic, and a lot of fun. Getting pummeled and dealing out some death of your own along the path through each stage is rewarded with some incredible boss fights. These tough encounters are memorable because of the spectacular assaults you face and the general weirdness of your towering opponents. One stage has you fighting a giant cow head with Borg-like cubes floating around shooting at you. Another has you battling a half-buried undead giant whose face eventually rips off and tries to chomp on you with its skeletal remains. Two-headed dragons, a hefty tree demon, and some little dude without a shirt are among other big baddies that will try to drown you with flying debris and bullets. On the higher difficulty settings that feature a lot more bullets onscreen, the Xbox 360 chugs a little to keep up with the action. Though it's minor, the slowdown isn't entirely unwelcome because it gives you an extra split second to try to weave through the tiny openings in the walls of death cascading around you. As niche as it may be, Deathsmiles is a top-notch shooter that brings the crazy Japanese arcade action in spades with a great presentation and a lot of options for bullet-hell buffs.

Madden NFL 11

2010-08-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

Madden NFL 11 Review

The annual arrival of Madden signals the end to the summer sports doldrums. The newest entrant in the long-running franchise doesn't offer a substantially different experience from last year's edition, but a number of small tweaks make this the best game yet in the series. Improved artificial intelligence on both sides of the ball eliminates much of the frustration from previous games, and a streamlined play-calling system keeps everything moving at a steady clip, letting you focus on pulling off spectacular plays rather than futzing around in menus. Commentary has also been improved, largely because the interminably dull Tom Hammond has been replaced by the vibrant Gus Johnson. But there are still a number of issues that keep Madden NFL 11 from cruising through the playoffs. The new Ultimate Madden mode is little more than a novelty and a number of odd quirks during games are real head-scratchers. Even with those problems, though, this is a great replication of the hard-hitting sport.

Watch this video in High Def

Gameflow is the most obvious addition to Madden NFL 11. This feature allows you to call your offensive and defensive plays with just one button press, which may sound sacrilegious to those who enjoy choosing the perfect play from a list of hundreds but is a welcome option for those who just want to focus on the action. The game does a good job of picking a reasonable play based on down, distance, and game situation, and there is enough variety in the play calling to ensure your opponent is kept on his heels. Even though gameflow offers an intelligent play most of the time, there are still some issues with this feature. Draws and screens are called on consecutive downs too often, killing the element of surprise, and the computer tends to favor the passing game even when you're tearing things up on the ground. You can always audible out of a bad call if you need to or tweak your game plan beforehand to ensure your favorite plays are called more often, but there is one other hurdle: the wildcat formation. This is as predictable in Madden NFL 11 as it is in real life, and all too often, it results in a wasted down because you can't audible to something worthwhile. Even with these issues, gameflow is a welcome addition to the franchise.

The other changes are less noticeable than gameflow, but they have a much larger effect on the action. Artificial intelligence has been greatly improved. In previous games, cornerbacks had trouble covering slant routes, but that's no longer an issue here. On the harder difficulty levels, you need to run a variety of routes to have any sort of success, so you can't just rely on a few money plays to march down the field. The offensive line is also much smarter this time, especially in run blocking. Linemen move with a purpose during plays, making it easy to follow them through a hole and giving you confidence that they'll pick up the linebacker in your path. There are still times when they turn around to block a player who is no longer a threat or simply stand still while you get flattened by a safety, but, for the most part, the improved line play makes running much more enjoyable.

As good as the offensive linemen are on running downs, they can be lousy on passing plays. There are far too many times when your five linemen will remain immobile after the snap of the ball, letting defenders crash into your quarterback like bloodthirsty barbarians. This is especially noticeable while running play action. By the time you fake the ball and get ready to pass, a linebacker will be breathing down your neck, giving you little choice but to throw the ball away and live another day. There are also strange flubs that ruin the illusion that this is real football. Quarterbacks will sometimes throw a cover-your-eyes, Jamarcus Russell-caliber pass on what should be a simple dump off in the flat, and these unfathomable passes occur even when you're standing still without a defender in sight. The ball also does not conform to real-life physics. If a safety knocks the ball away from a receiver, the ball will sometimes bounce wildly between the players, resting on the backs of their necks or helmets, which looks completely ridiculous. None of these issues are problematic enough to destroy the fun, but they are annoying and can lead to bouts of anger if they crop up during an inopportune moment.

The improved physics and animation make this the best-looking game yet in the franchise. Nevertheless, for the first time in ages, Madden is behind the competition in this area. The recently released Backbreaker still has the most vicious, realistic-looking hits, but even though Madden NFL 11 is runner-up in this area, it's certainly no slouch. The revamped physics system gives you more subtle control in your offensive repertoire. All of your jukes are mapped to the right stick, and you can twist and contort your body to pull away from a grasping defender. The sprint button has also been disabled (though you can turn it back on in the options menu), which sounds like a strange thing to remove but makes carrying the ball feel more realistic. Your speed is automatically increased if you hit a hole and can pull away from a defender, but for the most part, you just have to focus on evading opponents. You also won't outrun your blockers nearly as often, and it is fun to use them as a shield until you can break free for a touchdown.

Last year, Ultimate Team mode was offered as DLC after Madden NFL 10 was released, but it's included in Madden NFL 11 from the get go. In this mode, you create your own team and then receive a collection of random players to fill out your rosters. These players are doled out as if they were football cards, with their pictures on the front and their statistics on the back. You use this collection of athletes against either the computer or friends to earn coins that allow you to buy more players for your team. It's a neat concept, but it's not very interesting in practice. The initial assortment of players is comprised of second-tier talent that won't be recognized by anyone but dedicated NFL fans. And it takes a lot of time to unlock anyone you would actually care about. The best part of the Madden games has you taking control of your favorite franchise with your favorite players and turning them into Super Bowl champions. Ultimate Team takes away that appeal. Even though you unlock household names by winning some games, it's not worth the effort.

Madden Moments is a much more enjoyable alternative to Ultimate Team. In this mode, you replay dramatic contests from last season. Sometimes, you try to reenact improbable victories; at other times, you have to change history by coming up strong where the real-life team fell short. For NFL fans that lived through these intense situations last season, it's a real rush playing them all over again. Remember when Peyton Manning threw that embarrassing pick six in the Super Bowl? You have a chance to mount a comeback that the reigning MVP could not pull off. But there are still some issues in this mode. The most glaring problem is that you can't restart in the middle of a contest. If you throw a stupid interception or fail to recover a crucial onsides kick, you either have to go through the motions until the clock mercifully runs out or go all the way back to the main menu and reload. More troubling for big-time NFL fans is that the rosters aren't accurate. Even though these moments all took place last season, you have to use this year's rosters. It's downright laughable trying to mount a Rams comeback as Sam Bradford, when the prodigious QB was still in college last year.

Despite other modes vying for your time, Madden NFL 11 is still at its best when you're taking on a friend in competitive play. The online action is incredibly intense and downright exhilarating at times. The ebb and flow of professional football is captured beautifully here, and there's nothing like pulling out a last second victory against your gridiron equal. There is a bit of lag, which is particularly noticeable during the kicking game, but it's generally smooth and tons of fun. Cooperative action is a cool gimmick, giving you the ability to team up with up to two other friends on the same side. Each person controls a specific group of players, like linebackers or running backs, and you upgrade your abilities by completing objectives. However, it's strange to lose full control over your team. Playing as the quarterback is still much more interesting than any other position on offense, which only makes cooperative play entertaining for a few games before you just want to disband your loyalty and take your buddies on head-to-head.

Commentary is greatly improved in this edition mostly because the monotonous Tom Hammond has been relieved of his play-by-play duties by the effervescent Gus Johnson. The excitable commentator does not quite match the overwhelming joy he exhibits in real games, but he still infuses games with much needed energy. His color man is Cris Collinsworth, and though he does repeat himself a bit too often, he provides heady analysis that gives these digital events the feeling of something much larger. Unfortunately, elements of the presentation are not handled nearly as well. In Franchise mode, you can watch a weekly wrap-up show called The Extra Point that goes over the key games from the previous week and previews the upcoming slate of games. But the details are so vague that it's completely worthless. You get a box-score breakdown of the biggest games, but you won't hear any specific details on how the game played out (such as a big comeback or questionable referee call) or get any highlights.

Despite the gameplay quirks and presentation hiccups, Madden NFL 11 is still a great football game. The improved AI and enhanced physics system makes the on-field action even better than before, and the realistic commentary makes your quest for victory carry that much more weight. The changes are generally subtle, so casual football fans may not notice all the tweaks to the core gameplay. But for those who live for football and get pumped for granular changes, Madden NFL 11 once again hoists the Lombardi Trophy.

Base Ball 11

2010-08-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

Spring training begins with the wide-open promise that accompanies each new season. As the exhibition games commence, you tweak your lineup, trying out newcomers in different slots and attempting to account for off-season losses, including a Cy Young Award-winning pitcher who left for greener pastures. Then you receive a message all managers fear: your owner, who is tight with cash, demands a playoff spot and has little patience for team rebuilding. He wants you to produce a winner now.

April:

The season progresses as spring training did, full of missed opportunities and struggles to build team chemistry. An injury to your best outfielder puts him on the disabled list for four weeks, forcing you to juggle your lineup when setbacks extend his recovery time. A key starting pitcher acquired in a blockbuster trade fizzles when his breaking ball loses its snap, putting your job on the chopping block. Looking through the list of available free agents, you notice an aging player who is past his prime but whose leadership skills could boost your flagging clubhouse. You offer him a basic one-year contract. He accepts, happy to be playing again.

May:

Your lineup and pitching rotation intact once more, you now contend with the daily dilemmas brought on by the vagaries of hot and cold streaks: Do you bench a player whose performance begins to tail off, or do you stick with him and hope he turns it around? What if that player is your star third baseman, who signed a very expensive contract during the off-season? And how do you handle a rising star whose popularity drops when he’s suspended after an on-field fight?

There are no simple answers to these questions, but the ability to pull up side-by-side player comparisons gives you the opportunity to make some informed decisions. You write up notes for each player based on what you see and set reminders so you can prompt yourself to revisit your thoughts later in the season.

June:

The team’s first — and hopefully only — prolonged slump of the season accompanies the start of summer. Six games into a losing streak, you leave a starting pitcher in too long and he gives up an eighth-inning grand slam that seals yet another defeat. You turn to your Scouting Director for help. His team of scouts assembles reports on key players; that information proves vital in making decisions. You swap a few players in your lineup and rearrange your starting rotation, hoping to ignite a spark.

Meanwhile, the annual First-Year Player Draft gets underway, with prospects from more than 1,700 colleges and over 17,000 high schools available. The loss of that Cy Young winner still smarts, but as compensation, you received the top pick for the team that signed him. You make careful decisions throughout the 50-round draft, keeping in mind the fact that many draftees never even get playing time at the highest level, and few of those make enough of an impact to earn spots on a big-league roster.

However, that doesn’t stop your draftees from demanding signing bonuses, particularly those chosen in the first two rounds. Negotiations can be tricky: a draftee might snub you entirely and sign elsewhere, or even decide to go to college, if they were drafted out of high school. First- and second-round picks who don’t sign a contract earn you an extra selection next year as compensation.

July:

Your fortunes begin to turn around. An eight-game winning streak puts you within striking distance of first place. Your key starting pitcher, whose rise through the minor league farm system was overseen by you, produces two sterling games. That star third baseman earns back-to-back Player of the Week honors, capping those games with a ninth-inning, game-winning double in front of a cheering home crowd. Your closer converts all nine of his save opportunities during the month, putting those two walk-off homers in May behind him.

August:

The dog days of summer bring you a tie for first place, neck-and-neck with your toughest division rival. Sifting through the voluminous statistics at your disposal, you notice something interesting: your back-up second baseman has fared much better against right-handed pitchers than the starter, despite the fact that both bat right-handed. Going with your gut, you start him during a key three-game series and he drills four home runs. Perhaps a platoon at second base is in order.

And you discover something else about that back-up: in a late-inning situation, during a close game, you decide to send him home as he rounds third on a shallow single to right field. Knowing the outfielder’s arm isn’t very strong, you hope your runner’s average speed is enough to allow him to score. You’re right.

September:

The race for the division title heats up. In your league, one division leader has a 15-game edge, all but ensuring a playoff spot. The other division is closer, while yours continues to swing back and forth. Your team seems to click as the month draws to a close. A seven-game winning streak, punctuated by your best starting pitcher’s masterful one-hit shutout of your division rival, gives you a two-game edge heading into the final weekend.

One of your top minor league prospects, who you summoned when rosters expanded on September 1, delivers two key hits during the streak. You also uncover something intriguing about him: during a lopsided win for your team, you give that prospect some late-inning pitching, figuring he can’t do much damage while giving your bullpen some rest. He walks two batters and allows a hit, but he also strikes out one and shows poise in working his way out of a bases-loaded jam with a lone run allowed. Maybe you’ll work on converting him into a much-needed middle reliever during the off-season.

October:

The final series of the year, against your division’s last-place team, turns out to be free of drama, thankfully. You sweep them in three blow-outs, securing the division title and allowing you to focus on the playoffs. Round one breezes by in a three games to one victory, putting you in the League Championship Series against your arch-rival.

Down two games to none, your team limps home for the crucial middle three games of the series. You take two of the three as your line-up comes alive with timely hitting. Now you face the daunting task of taking games six and seven on your opponent’s home turf, but you pull off the feat, a 12-3 laugher capping the series.

Moving on to the World Series against the other league’s champion, game one sees your star third baseman go down with a devastating injury while fielding a sharply-hit ball. He’s out until next year, but his teammates soldier on. His back-up provides key support to your hitting attack, and your pitchers excel in their starting and relief roles. The teams split the first two games, but the next three belong to your club, ending a 20-year championship drought. You had recorded all of the games in the series for posterity, allowing you to relive those thrilling moments any time you want, complete with the roar of the crowd and animations charting the trajectories of batted balls.

There’s little time to bask in the glory, however. You have contracts to negotiate, free agents to peruse and pursue, and strategies to formulate. Already your opponents are crying: “Wait ‘til next year!”

Castlevania

2010-08-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

is an interesting experiment. While it looks just like the 2D Castlevania games we've grown accustomed to since Symphony of the Night, it's actually very different than any previous entry in the series. This is a multiplayer adventure designed for up to six vampire hunters to jump into the game together. In six maps, they must find and defeat the boss before time runs out. When you get a group of people together and finally figure out how the game works, it's definitely fun. But it's not very enjoyable to play on your own, it fails to explain its mechanics to the player, and most of the assets look like they're pulled straight from existing Castlevania games. This one is for the hardcore Castlevania fans only, but I do think they will enjoy it.

There are six recognizable characters from the series to choose from and each behaves the way you would expect them to. For instance, Shanoa, from Order of Ecclesia, can use her Magnes ability to attach herself to magnets and use them to slingshot to hard-to-reach areas. The game doesn't tell you about the differences between the characters, though, so you may be left wondering why Shanoa isn't learning new spells or can't equip new weapons. That's a problem with the entire game. There is no in-game tutorial explaining how everything works – you're just dropped into the action to fend for yourself. You can read the "How to Play" section of the main menu, but that's not the most effective way of learning a game. Even if you do read the tutorial, it only explains a small fraction of what you can do in Harmony of Despair.

If six maps don't sound like much, know that you'll have to play each one many, many times before you are able to reach the boss and put it to rest. When you first arrive in an area you will be underpowered and ill equipped to battle Dracula's minions. Harmony of Despair is all about finding loot that will make you a little bit stronger for the next time. You don't level up, but you're always finding better and better equipment and are slowly becoming more powerful. It is an addictive formula, but I wish it were even deeper and included an experience system like that of Symphony of the Night.

The maps are intricate and you'll have to spend some time with them to learn the best path to the boss. Harmony of Despair is definitely designed to be a multiplayer game, so you may find a switch that one player can stand on to douse a fire so that another player can access a new area. Try to go it alone and you can't use these shortcuts, making the game considerably more difficult and denying the player the use of these fun devices. Solo players cannot add bots to help them.

Closing Comments

There have been many 2D Castlevania games in recent years and they're all rather similar, so I applaud Konami for trying something new. Xbox Live is also a great place for multiplayer games, and Harmony of Despair is quite enjoyable when you have a posse backing you up. But I'd have to say this Castlevania experiment is only a modest success and there is definitely room for improvement. The focus on multiplayer came at the cost of the single-player experience. With so little of the game explained, some players may find themselves confused or, worse, frustrated. And because assets seem to have been plucked straight from previous games, that $15 price tag is questionable. But, Castlevania fans will definitely have fun with Harmony of Despair. It's basically a six-player time attack mode with all your favorite characters, and there isn't anything else quite like it on Xbox Live Arcade. If Konami ironed out the kinks, a follow-up to this could be really great.

Assassins Creed II

2010-08-02T10:36:00.000-07:00

Assassin's Creed always felt like a rough diamond. It had an interesting storyline, a spectacular game engine and a massive sandbox to play in, yet it was ultimately just a tad repetitive. For the sequel, UbiSoft has kept the engine and most of the basic elements of the sandbox-style gameplay intact and concentrated on stealth aspects of the formula, more varied gameplay and on the actual story. Yes, in Assassin's Creed 2 you will still ultimately end up stabbing a bunch of people, but that is just a small part of it all. Oh, and the PC version comes with a brand new form of DRM...

Animus 2.0 allows Desmond and the Assassins to explore the past by reliving memories embedded in the DNA.

The story so far? You still play as Desmond Miles, a present-day descendant of a long line of assassins, captured by Abstergo Industries, the modern day front for Templars. In the first game, Desmond was captured and forced to live the memories of Altar, his ancestor, seeking information about a "Piece of Eden" from memories encoded in his DNA while Altair worked his way to redeem his status as an assassin in the late 12th century Holy Land. Eventually Abstergo got what they wanted out of the memory sequences and dispatched a team to recover the "Piece of Eden" in the present day, ending the game in a cliffhanger, with Desmond still a prisoner.

The sequel starts off right where the first part ended and anyone who hasn't played through the first game will probably be a bit confused early on. Lucy Stillman, a modern-day assassin who had infiltrated Abstergo staff as a technician returns and helps Desmond to escape from the Abstergo facility, explaining that the Assassin order of the present day needs his help. Desmond may have experienced the key moments of Altair's life and may have a fine line of ancestors, but he's not yet a trained assassin. With Animus technology, this is not a problem - Lucy takes Desmond to a hideout equipped with an upgraded Animus device and the plan is for Desmond to explore the memories of another assassin ancestor in order to learn the skills through the "Bleeding Effect" of the Animus. Enter our new hero, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an assassin.

Trailer

Assassino!

Desmond quickly dives into the life of Ezio, starting the journey from Florence, Italy in 1476. The story of Assassin's Creed II is very much the story of Ezio Auditore, following his long career as he plots to revenge the hanging of his father and two brothers. Like Desmond, Ezio is initially unaware of the fact that his father was an assassin and the early part of the story concentrates on Ezio learning about his ancestry and the skills an assassin needs. Numerous real historical figures show up along the way, notably Leonardo Da Vinci, Caterina Sforza, Niccolo Machiavelli, Lorenzo De Medici and Rodrigo Borgia - better known as Pope Alexander VI. As with the first game, minute historical details have been bent to fit the characters into the story. Real historical events are also tied in, with The Pazzi Conspiracy used as major part of the storyline early on. The mixture of real history and a fictional story is even stronger than in the first game and the detailed storyline is what sets Assassin's Creed II apart from the first game.

Pazzi Conspiracy, blending historical events with the storyline.

Much-hyped Leonardo's flying machine plays a small part in the story.

In the first game, you were pretty much sent to stab a bunch of people while learning about the order of Assassins and the actual big picture emerged only at the very end. The sequel merges everything much more closely with real historical figures, events and places and mixes it all with a pretty impressive thread of conspiracy that has apparently been going on for hundreds of years. Sure, it ain't a historical documentary but all the real historical figures, locations and events serve an important purpose, reinforcing the illusion of a "what if?" historical scenario.

The story takes you around Renaissance Italy with sections in Florence, San Gimignano, Forli and Venice, just to name a few. Each major area is also dotted with historic landmarks that are easily recognizable, further immersing you to the locales and wide open areas offer a fresh change of scenery when compared to your average action adventure game that forces you to slug through a predetermined path as if on rails. Yes, the storyline still demands you to visit specific places and perform specific tasks, but the play areas give you plenty of freedom to improvise.

Out-of-Animus parts are kept to a minimum - the events still all tie to the present day "real world" and Desmond, but the action in Renaissance Italy is interrupted only on very special occasions, unlike in the first game where you were constantly taking breaks between separate memories. This improves the flow of action considerably.

Playing In The Sandbox

Assassin's Creed II story is presented in the form of missions - you visit a marked spot on the map and the story progresses with a cutscene and the objectives are spelled out. Mission goals vary a lot - sure, many of them ultimately boil down to assassinating someone, but there is a lot of variety. Gone is the repetitive style of the first game, requiring you to repeat same small pool of investigations to open up an assassination target. Every main story mission in AC2 is unique. As can be expected, the play area is initially limited and city districts and areas open up as the story progresses. Travel between major areas you have already visited is immediate and "manual" travel is used as part of the story and not as a repetitive gameplay element.

Venice rooftops - plenty of room to roam.

Play areas are large and wide areas of countryside surround smaller towns.

The story flows between different cities with later missions opening up new previously inaccessible areas, nicely re-using existing content to maximum effect. You rarely feel boxed in and there is always something to do - so much, in fact, that it is easy to get distracted from completing the main story missions.

Nice weapon, mind if I loan it?

Movement and combat is fluid and easy to control once you get used to the control scheme. PC version disappoints with the generic on-screen prompts - instead of showing a key you are supposed to press, you just get a symbol of the action required - Open Hand, Armed Hand, Talk and so on. The only place where you can find out which key or mouse button corresponds to which action is in the keymapping menu. Fortunately the problem goes away after the first hour or so as you learn the logic of the control system.

Default controls are also pretty much the same as in the first game, so veterans are probably going to be familiar with the setup instantly. Still, Ezio has the same annoying habit as Altair - jumping off buildings if you fumble with the space bar at the wrong moment. It is mostly a matter of learning how the controls automatically adjust to different situations (and when space = jump = bad idea) but it can be frustrating at times.

Still, once you get used to the control layout, AC2 is easy to handle. Combat is much easier than in the first game, even if counterattacks still rule the day. Bigger enemies that are immune to counters can be alternatively tackled by switching to unarmed stance and going for a disarm. Ezio also has the new ability to swim - very handy, considering that large part of the game takes place in Venice.

Gotta Collect 'Em All

Some treasure chests are guarded - well, at least they try.

The storyline missions are only a part of the gameplay - a major part, but there is loads of other stuff to do in all areas. Viewpoints are still around and while you are not forced to climb them to survey the area, they do open up the map uncovering Codex Page locations and easing navigation considerably.

Codex Pages written by Altair are the only mandatory collectibles. They are stored away in guarded boxes that show up on the map. All 30 codex pages include hints about the overall story and they are ultimately needed for the final chapter of the story - should you be missing any at that point, they are added to the map even if you haven't previously uncovered them by visiting a nearby viewpoint.

Optional collectibles include Treasure Chests, Feathers, Seals and Glyphs. Treasure Chests appear on the map once you have purchased a treasure map from the local artist - they are small boxes with money that are often guarded or hidden away. Feathers are the "hidden packages" of AC2 - a harder set of collectible items. There is no in-game map for them and some are in truly bizarre locations that require some creativity to reach.

Seals are hidden away in tombs of assassins. All six are required to unlock the Armor of Altair and while optional, these tomb maps offer a very good set of alternate play areas. Tombs are constructed very much like levels in Prince of Persia games - you have to reach a hidden tomb in an indoor location with a lot of climbing and acrobatics. Tombs are all about figuring out a complex path to a goal. Each major room includes a helpful flyby that gives you a good idea where you should be heading to, but it is up to you to figure out the exact path that will take you there. Some later tombs include complex timed sequences of movement that are probably the only truly challenging parts of the game, forcing you to return to the start of the area at the slightest mis-step.

Hidden tomb of a past assassin.

Famous landmarks contain Glyphs that help unravel the conspiracy.

Glyphs are a mysterious set of objectives that seem out-of-place. They blend the line between reality and ancestral memories experienced in the Animus. They apparently did not exist for Ezio, but are instead "glitches" in the Animus 2.0 representation of the era, hacked in by "Subject 16", the previous assassin that the Templars used to dig into the past. All glyphs are tied to major landmarks and when located, trigger a puzzle sequence with some truly strange conspiracy-related imagery and hints. Each completed glyph unlocks a fragment of a "Truth" video sequence that is central to the whole Templar/Assassin storyline.

Glyph puzzle: Moon landings - obviously part of the Templar plot.

Glyph puzzle: Yep, JFK and Dallas, they all tie into all this too. Tinfoil hat recommended.

Early Glyph puzzles are very easy, but the complexity of the puzzles ramps up nicely - to a degree that the only time I reached for a walkthrough was to solve a couple of the Glyph puzzles that got really complicated. Technically they are wholly optional, but for me the Glyphs were actually the driving force for completing the game - each puzzle was a nice change of pace from the action and the conspiracy backstory is both bizarre and entertaining. It is just like "Da Vinci Code" - a story about a conspiracy so strange that it goes beyond all the mundane events of the game - at least until it all ties together when... ah, but that would be spoilers.

Villa Auditore

The fact that Ezio collects and uses money seems strange at first but there is a whole economic element to the game and suddenly it all makes sense. After the initial story missions force you to flee with your family, you end up basing your operations out of Villa Auditore in the town of Monteriggioni. The Villa is initially in a state of disrepair and as an additional goal you can renovate the Villa and the surrounding town with the money you collect in your journeys. There is a clear benefit in doing so - local shops, when upgraded, sell to you at a discount and with some work the Villa becomes a money-making machine. Every 20 minutes of play time you get a share of the revenue that grows with the value of the holdings.

Upgrading Villa Auditore and the surrounding town.

Collected weapons are all on display at the Villa.

The Villa also functions as a gallery for your collections - all the weapons, armor, paintings, codex pieces, seals and feathers are stored here and most collectible items also improve the value of Villa Auditore, providing more revenue and allowing you to buy better weapons and armor. Villa also acts as a map to explore on its own, with a set of treasures hidden in the area, some which are available only after certain renovations are completed. Villa map also includes Auditore Family Tomb, a seventh tomb map that is unlocked with Uplay points.

The Villa management is a nice distraction but the system breaks down in the late game, leaving you with massive piles of money and nothing to spend them on. I mean, if one includes a constant money faucet into the game that grows larger as you spend money to upgrade it, unsurprisingly the end result is that money eventually doesn't matter. Not a huge deal, but a flaw anyway.

Tools of an Assassin

Ezio receives the signature weapon of the assassins - the hidden blade - early on and soon obtains a second one for some juicy double-stab action. Other melee weapons include daggers, swords and maces which you have to purchase from weapon merchants. While each weapon does have a set of stats and the later, more expensive ones are theoretically better, in reality you can complete the whole game with just the hidden blades.

Now with dual hidden blades for twice the stabbing power.

Sorry. I know... I'm a pain in the neck...

Armor works the same way - merchants both offer sets for sale and repair them - but armor upgrades are actually useful, at least until you gather up all the seals and obtain the Armor of Altair. Stores also offer consumables - throwing knifes, smoke bombs, medicine, poisons... all kinds of little things that allow you to get creative when completing your tasks. Smoke bombs are especially handy (and overpowered), allowing you to stun a large pack of enemies - either for a quick getaway or for a quick series of deadly stabs.

What really sets AC2 apart is the attention to small detail. Corpses can be looted for some extra money, many items can be used as temporary weapons in a pinch and you can toss money around to create a distraction in crowds. You can also pickpocket money and consumables with obvious consequences if you linger too long near your victim. These are all minor details that are technically irrelevant, yet they further enchance the immersion to the game world - something far too many games tend to forget these days when trimming "unimportant" features during development.

"Keep looking at those... assets... while I just walk by here..."

There is also a notoriety system that determines how guards react to you. As you assassinate people during your missions or in order to secure codex pages and treasures, your notoriety level raises. Get too famous and guards will start recognizing you on the streets, leading into chases - stacks of hay are still quite useful. To get rid of any unwanted infamy, you can destroy posters, pay off heralds or assassinate officials that have witnessed your handiwork - all help reduce the notoriety level. You can also obtain capes that effectively disable notoriety in certain areas, usually once you are done with the area in question. Handy for completing side jobs with less harassment from the guards.

You can avoid detection through blending - no, you don't have to hold down a button to look like you are praying all the time or to walk real slow (ugh, that was annoying in the first game) - all that is required in the sequel is to move normally between crowds of people. Each time you enter blend mode by mixing into a group of people, any nearby guards stop investigating as they lose track of you in the crowd. You can also hire courtesans, thieves and mercenaries to take care of the guards, either by distracting them or by fighting them while you do your job.

Minor Jobs

In addition to the storyline missions, each area has a number of optional side missions. There are four types of optional missions available.

Races - Beat the clock while traveling a path dotted with glowy targets, usually on foot, sometimes on horse. Can take several tries as you learn the route.
Beat Up Events - Women with sob stories about their unfaithful husbands. Just find the scumbag, put your weapons away and just beat up the guy in hand-to-hand combat.
Courier Missions - Your average delivery boy job, run around to deliver letters under a time limit.
Assassination Contracts - Find target. Apply pointy hidden blade. Profit.

Importantly, each side mission is still an unique, if short, story piece. They are not part of the main story, yet they all do contribute towards full 100% completion of the game and offer some much-needed challenge that is otherwise not really present in the main story. All side missions and collection tasks can still be completed once you have finished the main storyline, so if you are eager to see the conclusion of the main story, you can safely skip them and fill them in later.

Console Conversion

Compared to the first Assassin's Creed, graphics options are more limited. There are still multiple things to change - Environmental Detail, Character Detail, Shadows, Reflections and so on. They just don't change things that much. When comparing the visuals between maximum and minimum settings, you lose some post-processing effects that soften things a bit, you get lower-resolution shadows, no reflections on the water surfaces and... that's about it. The overall lighting on lowest setting is noticeably worse, but in general, lowest possible setting is comparable to "Medium" setting in the first Assassin's Creed. This also means that the practical minimum has gone up considerably when compared to the first game, even if the engine is mostly the same.

Minimum settings.	Maximum settings - most noticeable difference is with shadows.
Minimum settings.	Maximum settings - water and reflections are much improved at maximum detail.

Visual quality is similar to the first game but it appears that the game world is even more detailed than before. The engine has also gained some new bells and whistles, supporting full day/night cycle, reflections, water and better spot lighting and there is more unique building pieces in the different play areas. This does improve the illusion of a real city, even if you still do tend to notice that the world is mostly pieced together from a limited number of "generic" building parts. Unfortunate casualty appears to be the quality of shadows. The shadow resolution drops dramatically fairly close to the main character and there is no way to push it higher in the visual settings. Buildings also drop to a lower level of detail fairly close to the player - an obvious flaw when you start looking at it, but hardly noticeable in normal game play. Such compromises are understandable for a console game, but it would have been nice to be able to push LOD range and shadow resolution up on high end PCs. Still, this is mostly a cosmetic flaw and doesn't matter one bit when playing.

Four guards dead before the first one has fallen to the ground. Very detailed character animations.

When compared to the first Assassin's Creed on the PC, something is also missing - there is no DX10 rendering path. This is not a a big loss - the only noticeable difference between DX9 and DX10 in the first game was that the DX10 codepath handled texture caching slightly better and the sequel seems to work just fine in this regard with no visible stuttering when moving to new areas. It probably just wasn't worth the effort to include a DX10 renderer as the content is all done to Xbox 360 limitations anyway.

Animation can't really be praised enough - it was already superb in the first game and the same is true here. Movement and combat includes massive number of animation sequences and they all blend together almost seamlessly as you roam and fight. NPCs react fluidly, there is ton of variety, especially during combat and while the level of detail found in some minor character models isn't that great, the sheer number of characters that may appear simultaneously, all moving about doing their business (or trying to kill you) is very impressive. Too many games these days fail at animation and AC2 deserves every bit of praise here.

Reasonable Requirements

Publisher's minimum requirements are just a tad fuzzy - a "256MB Shader Model 3.0 card". This would theoretically qualify something as ancient as GeForce 6600GT, but in reality the game is unplayable on such hardware. If you want to play at 1280x720 at a reasonable framerate (matching the consoles) you'll need at least GeForce 9600 GT or Radeon HD 3870 and even then you will have to tweak down the settings a bit.

On the processor side, a dual core CPU is mandatory - and it should really be a fast dual core. Assassin's Creed 2 is fairly heavy on the CPU and can easily max out a low end Core 2 Duo if paired with a modern video card. The engine threads fine for up to 8 threads and even a modern Quad like Core i5-750 will show more than 50% total load across four cores.

Our recommendation for play at maximum settings and constant 30fps+ is to have (any) quad core CPU paired with GeForce 9800GTX 512MB or Radeon HD 4850 512MB and there is something to do even for high end cards - even a Radeon HD 5870 can't quite keep things locked to 60fps at 1920x1200 with everything maxed out and AA in use.

Exceptional, But Just a Port

Bonfire of the Vanities DLC - built in, but just a series of stealthy assassinations.

Assassin's Creed II is a superb game. It mixes a strong storyline with tons of activities and places it all into a detailed environment that is teeming with life. Small hooks like famous landmarks and notable historical figures help you to immerse in the world, each adding a little bit to the mix until it all just weaves together to form an exceptional experience. The play areas are massive, fast travel system ensures that you are not forced to spend time on horse and there are so many things to collect and do that it is easy to get sidetracked from the main story for hours at a time.

I guess the biggest downer is that the PC version doesn't really differ from the console versions. Higher resolutions, better framerate, some token graphical options and that's about it. It is a very good port, but still just a port, with all the visible shortcomings ported intact. At least the two DLC packs are included as standard on the PC - even if they are not that remarkable to begin with.

Sure, there are some things to complain about, but they are mostly minor. Difficulty level could have been set higher. Now the only bits that truly challenge you are some of the side missions and some of the tombs. It is nice that the volume of fighting has been toned down and the vast majority of killing can be done properly, with a sharp stab to the gut. Yet it is sad that if you choose to go toe-to-toe against the guards, just a couple of tricks will defeat every single one of them without much effort and any failure to counter or disarm can be easily undone with a quick medicine bottle. I would have preferred to see the game pushing you more towards being an assassin and being more harsh when you fail. There are some missions that do require stealth, with the memory desynchronizing the moment you are detected and I enjoyed them immensely, but for the most part the only reason not to just chop up everyone in melee is "effort" - it is usually faster to be quiet and insta-gib everyone with backstabs. Either way, combat is just as easy - it really takes to some truly monumental fail to actually die in the game.

Still, the whole is such a solid and playable game that all the issues are easily forgiven. Even if you couldn't stomach to finish the first Assassin's Creed (or never played it), you should definitely not miss Assassin's Creed II. It is effectively a "quadruple-A" title, pushing the envelope in detail, polish and production values. And no, the DRM is not a big deal - unless you are a pirate and were hoping to play this for free.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.4 GHz	Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 / AMD Athlon 64 6000+
Memory	1536 MB	2048 MB
Graphics Card	Shader Model 3.0 with 256MB Video RAM	Not specified
Graphics Card Example	NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT series 256MB / ATI Radeon X1800 Series 256MB	GeForce 8800 GT / ATI Radeon HD 4700 Series
Free Disk Space	8 GB	8 GB
Net Link	Broadband - constant online connection to UbiSoft servers required	Broadband - constant online connection to UbiSoft servers required

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 / AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+	Intel Core 2 Quad (any) / AMD Phenom X4 (any)
Memory	2048 MB	2048 MB
Graphics Card	NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
Free Disk Space	8 GB	8 GB
Net Link	Broadband	Broadband

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	93	Gameplay has evolved in countless different ways, trimming off the bits that didn't work and adding in more variety. Smooth, playable and interesting to the very end with tons of things to do.
Graphics	89	Exceptional animation quality and massive detailed cities, yet there are some small flaws stemming from console hardware limitations that could have been addressed on the PC. Instead, we get a direct port.
Audio	94	I've always appreciated Jesper Kyd for great music that fits the game and it is true here as well. Voiceovers use the "spice things with Italian phrases" trick too much but overall the voice acting is solid.
Technology	90	Technologically pretty much flawless - no bugs, glitches or instability. The OSP DRM system is arguably an issue to some, but as long as it works to keep pirates at bay, it is an acceptable deal. Internet connection required.