You'd think this would be noisy.

Mass Effect 3 sounds like shit. I mean that literally. Having played the recently released demo on the PC, Xbox 360 AND PS3, nothing struck me with more force than how awful the sound design is. Sure, the animations were robotic and unnatural, the writing was hammy and cringe inducing, but it’s the shocking lack of effort devoted to creating a realistic, or cinematic sound-scape that sticks out like a throbbing, sore thumb.

Remember how amazing Uncharted 3 sounded when the Villa was burning down around you? Bioware doesn't. Mass Effect has special silent flames.

The biggest problem is what’s missing. I’m not about to complain about the voice work, music or specific sound effects. Those elements aren’t bad, they just sound stupid contrasted with the utter silence of the game world. To give an example, in the opening cinematic the player character, Shepherd, is called to speak in front of the Earth’s “War Council”. On the way to their chamber the base is portrayed as all a bustle as soldiers rush through the halls, to and fro, preparing for an attack. But that’s not what it sounds like. It sounds like two people having a conversation in a static, silent room with some music layered over top. Where is the sound of alarms? Of boots clopping through the halls? Where is the squeak of shoes when a young enlisted man bumbles into Shepherd’s path, heavy breathing, nervous chatter?

The lack of background sound, room tone and foley effects is utterly distracting. Eventually the action moves outside when the base comes under attack, but aside from a number of scripted explosions and fly-byes, the environment remains strangely silent. At one point Shepherd is literally standing on a starship, hovering ten feet above the ocean, shouting down to another character while the city is being destroyed all around, and it still sounds like these two people are arguing in the same silent room. No wind, no lapping tide, no roaring turbine engines, no screams or terror in the distance, weapons fire or groaning structures.

It’s maddening! I hoped the missing audio was a bug, but if it is, it’s one that is present across all three versions of the demo. For a game series so preoccupied with emulating sci-fi cinema, to fail so utterly in the area of sound design is unforgivable. We are not talking about a first attempt from an indie developer’s new IP. This is one of EA’s biggest titles for the year, the third in a franchise that will easily sell five million copies and it’s utterly devoid of ambiance.

In Mass Effect 3 the waves break silently, space ships make no noise and it's easy to talk over the world ending.

I don’t remember the previous Mass Effect games in the series having this deficiency, but it’s hard to say if that is a function of my flawed memory, or simply rising expectations. But whether I’ve been spoiled by the high audio standards set by games like Uncharted, or Bioware has been neglecting an important aspect of Mass Effect 3’s presentation, the result is the same: immersion shattering artifice.

It may be easy to overlook, but creating a convincing, naturalistic aural landscape is paramount to giving any game (or film) as sense of verisimilitude. Good sound is one of the first places low budget, strait to video or made for cable movies make cuts, which is why they can so readily be identified by ear. And there is more to good sound design than creating cool sound effects for your city destroying robots, or cribbing the sound delayed explosions from the asteroid chase in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Less sexy, but more important is the task of making your characters sound like they exist in a real place.

Bioware’s inattention to such details has me more worried about the game than I was before the demo came out. Hopefully it will be a minor complaint about a great title, but I fear it is symptomatic of the same dysfunction that lead to a half baked, under funded Dragon Age 2, and the ongoing abuse of the Bioware brand by EA.

“Last” may be something of an exaggeration, but it sure has felt prior to today that I was the only one on the internet who had yet to be waived through the door at the Diablo III nightclub. Today I finally got the nod from the Battle.net bouncer and started downloading the beta client. Unfortunately there are still a few rough spots in that process. For one, the installer failed in Windows 7 x64. I had to try a second time because it required administrative access to modify the Program Files directory, even if you’ve chosen to install it elsewhere. Second, for some reason the downloader was using up 60-70% of my quad core processor non-stop for the entire 2 hours it took to pull down all ~3GBs of game data. That is, frankly, absurd.

Luckily, the game itself is a lot better than all that. Aside from the occasion stutter when a new area is loaded, the game runs like a dream. And it’s a think of beauty, to boot. Any fears about the WoW-ification of Diablo’s art design are completely unfounded. It’s not a sepia-toned nightmare — there are colors — but the levels are still dark, moody and atmospheric. The monsters are suitably gruesome and the sound design is incredibly effective. I was also surprised by how long the beta actually is. I had heard it was very short, but I got a good 3 hours out of it with my first character. That was long enough to gain a follower, unlock quite a few abilities and play around with the cool crafting system.

I’m not enough of a Diablo aficionado to comment to closely on the differences between this game and the previous entries. I appreciate the ejection of town portal and identify scrolls from the franchise. The instant ability to re-spec characters also struck me as a really smart move. I’ve only played a Barbarian so far, but being able to experiment with different play styles without starting over from scratch is pretty great.

The story also appears a lot more fleshed out than in previous games. There are a number of Bioshock-style audio diaries to be found in the levels and the writing and voice acting was pretty sharp. There’s also a good deal of banter between the Templar follower in the demo and the player character. Despite Blizzard’s amazing cut-scenes, the story in Diablo II couldn’t hold me. Diablo III is far more promising on that front.

In all honesty I wasn’t particularly excited about a new Diablo before today. My interests had drifted to Torchlight and whatever the Titan Quest devs are cooking up next. But the Diablo III beta makes a really compelling argument for Blizzard’s commitment to quality and gameplay. And unlike Star Craft 2 which was slavishly devoted to the original’s mechanics and play style, Diablo III feels incredibly modern and unafraid to discard even elements that have been considered synonymous with Diablo in the past. Whether or not the old school fans appreciate the changes doesn’t really matter to me. The game they’re making seems pretty damn good.

If it’s not obvious by now, my intent is to re-purpose this site into something a little less ambitious, a little more mundane, but hopefully sustainable. The real joke is I’m going to do exactly what all the blogs don’t, keep a journal of my gaming habits. In that sense the joke domain name I conceived up in a half-sleeping stupor a couple years ago has come full circle. Many so-called gaming blogs have long since graduated to actual reporting and criticism, while pretending that calling themselves “bloggers” excuses their incompetence, excess and snark. Hopefully in a few weeks this site will be a good example of what blogging about computer and video games actually looks like.

As a jumping off point I will tell you I’ve been playing a lot of the demo for the game pictured above. This week I upgrading the videocard in my PC to a Radeon 6950 which should have me up to my elbows in technical showpieces like Crysis 2 and The Witcher II, but there’s just something about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning that has me incredibly excited. As you can see from the full 1080p shot there, it’s a beautiful game on the PC and it plays like a dream with a gamepad. The demo has a handy feature that lets you skip the tutorial area once you’ve completed it the first time so I’ve experimented with three different character builds already.

Quite frankly, I’m finding it difficult to go back to Skyrim now. Combat has never been a strength of the Elder Scrolls series, but with Dark Souls, and now Reckoning, we have examples of two very different systems that each make Skyrim’s blind flailing come across as nothing less than incompetent. It’s still the closest Bethesda has come to fulfilling the promise their games have always embodied, but the actual fighting remains a frustrating chore. Too long RPGs have clung to their pen and paper roots, acting as though engaging and visceral combat was antithetical to the genre’s goals. Luckily, neither the folks at From Software, nor the team at Big Huge Games agree.

Homefront is publisher THQ’s first real attempt to assault the Call of Duty Throne. Unlike last year’s Medal of Honor from EA, THQ has chosen not to compete head to head with Activision in the crowded Fall, preferring instead to bring their modern military shooter to market in a lighter Spring market. Although March is not traditionally considered the best time for a major release, more and more publishers are pursuing the same strategy of getting out of CoD’s way. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 found some success last year, but can Homefront measure up in terms of quality?

Starting an Insurrection This Week

Pyongyang Express: full of North Koreans and Aliens (and tacos)

Unlike most other games in this genre, in Homefront you do not play an elite soldier on the front lines of a major war. Instead you play an average Joe initially out of his element when LA is invaded by aliens from North Korea smuggled into the country inside a fleet of Pyongyang Express taco trucks. For the entirety of the single player campaign you will be behind enemy lines, out-gunned and under-fed.

Tomorrow, When the War Became Available at Stores Everywhere

In the opening sequence you control Hunter Applewood, a science teacher at a small public high school who must help his Australain students escape the massacre using a series of improvised weapons. After successfully fleeing to a bilabong in the Rocky Mountains, the rest of the game takes place over a number of years as you continue to lead your band of Aussie guerrillas through a series of brazen hit and run attacks against Korean Alien patrols, convoys and motherships.

Suspicious Packages Exploding at Retailers the 15th

Written by ultra-liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, known for hit movies like Roger and Me, Zapped! and You’ve Got Mail, the game’s politics are incredibly complex. Obviously, to begin with the games sets the player in the role of an insurgent defending his homeland against a superior invading force, inviting comparisons to real-life situations in Iraq and Afghanistan where the insurgents are usually labelled as “terrorists”.

Routing the American Dream Tuesday

Moore also sneaks in seemingly loving depictions of the Alien North Korean’s Space-Communism at work, including atmosphere and volatile redistribution. He has every right to express those opinions, but at times these touches work at cross purposes within a game mostly about sabotaging those efforts. He may be straining towards a more profound revelation about moral relativity, but here his reach exceeds his grasp.

Executing Collaborators This Spring

Homefront features rvolutionary nostalgia shading!

Setting the thematic elements aside, Homefront is a remarkably well executed shooter with large, beautifully detailed environments, meaty gun play and immersive sound. It does not make the mistake of so many recent shooters which offering no relief from the action, instead creating a comfortable pace with proper peaks and valleys enhancing both quiet moments for discovery or reflection, and pulse-raising thrills from intense combat.

Liberating Internment Camps in March

Developer, Kaos Studios, was previously best known for their popular multiplayer game Frontlines. As you’d expect, Homefront also includes a substantial multiplayer component. Matches are hosted on dedicated servers allowing for large, hectic battles with as many as 64 players. Large maps accomidate this well and offer great flow, suitable choke points and sensible spawning areas. Kaos have also chosen to ape Call of Duty multiplayer by including and RPG-like experience and progression system for unlocking equipment, abilities and customizable loadouts.

Poisoning You Against Capitalism This Tuesday

Standard modes like Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch are present, but the best game type is the new “Heart of Darkness”. In each of these maps one team is tasked with travelling up river to find a mad Colonel, played by one member of the opposing team, by clearing a series of contested objectives and managing to cling to their own sanity. Players who lose it “go native” and are switched to the defending team. If the searching team can find and kill “Kurtz” before their last member is killed of loses his mind, they win, otherwise the defenders win. There is no time limit to this mode and matches can become epic.

Available for Sale at All Major Retailers March 15th

For a first attempt from THQ at assailing the Call of Duty throne, Homefront acquits itself quite well. Sharp gameplay and fun multiplayer more than make up for some of the narrative shortcomings. Although not quite up to the polish level of Activision’s cash factory, Homefront is a worthy competitor sure to win over fans on its own steam.

Our Score: Librarian Glasses

It would seem a certain Kevin Butler busies himself as a Promise Keeper running Purity Balls evenings and weekends. That, or he guest starred in this week’s episode of the Showtime series Shameless.

You might wonder if this is all some cynical attempt to get in on the ground floor, become the defacto NGP website and eventually sell my huge audience to a media conglomerate for buckets full of money. The answer is: yes. Of course it is. Hopefully it’ll be a prescient, sharply written resource as well. If you are at all interested in Sony’s quad-core monster portable, please stop by and check it out!

My shiny new old Xbox 360

Prologue

In the summer of 2005, I made the fateful decision to go back to school full time in order to receive a bachelor’s degree. That probably isn’t very interesting to you, but the upshot was that being a poor student prevented me from participating in this console generation. Sure, I went to the occasional party where everyone got drunk and tried to play Marble Mania and Excite Truck on the Wii, but for the three years it took to graduate I mostly gamed on my PC and my trusty PS2.

In 2008 I had the good fortune of graduating into the worst economic downturn in generations, with the least marketable major imaginable (Philosophy!), and this financial hardship further prevented me from buying in to a new console until the very end of 2010. On December 28th, over five years after its introduction, I finally acquired an Xbox 360.

Getting Set Up

Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford a new system, but thanks to the dreaded RROD, prices for used 360s on craigslist hover around $100 locally. I did a lot of texting and trading and finagling and at the end of the day I had a 3 year old Xbox 360 Pro with a 20GB hard drive, one wireless controller and an official headset.

I was glad to get a hard drive, even the smallest one, since I didn’t expect to in my price range. This became even more important when I got the system set up at home and realized why the previous owner was so keen to upgrade to a 360 Slim.

The DVD drive in this thing is deafening. Really, it’s simply intolerable. I was flabbergasted the first time I popped in a disc and heard the drive absolutely howling. In this, the ability to install games to the hard drive is an absolute blessing. I can’t install more than two discs at one time, but juggling drive space is a small price to pay to keep the console operating at an acceptable noise level.

Click to see the image ghosting over my VGA cable.

My second disappointment occurred when the VGA adapter I ordered from eBay arrived. It could be that the 3rd party VGA cables everyone sells just aren’t very good, or maybe that’s just how bad analog signals are when you get to higher resolutions, which is why everyone migrated to DVI a long time ago. Whatever the case, while the colors are pretty good and the detail is there, I’m getting a lot of ghosting in the image on my Dell 2005FPW LCD monitor. It looks much better over HDMI on the HDTV in the living room.

Signing Up for Xbox Live

The previous owner was kind enough to wipe the system and leave it factory fresh for me. The first thing I did (after struggling to get the controller and console to talk to each other via a non-obvious process to someone without a manual for reference) was try to sign up for Xbox Live. Oops, the Xbox tells me, that email address is already in use! Well, I guess I do have a Games for Windows Live account, let’s see it I can recover it! Uhhh, not until I reset my password, but after that it went fine.

I sent out a couple dozen friend requests, mostly to people I know through Quarter to Three, and now have a reasonable friends list to look at. I set up media streaming via the Media Center Extender as well as PS3 Media Server. MCE is pretty good for music, but I found the HD video quality far better when transcoded by PS3MS.

I’d love to check out some of the dashboard apps like Netflix and ESPN3, but I can’t afford to go gold yet. I’m still experiencing a level of cognitive dissonance over the idea that I should pay MS for the privilege of accessing other services I pay for directly, using an internet connection I pay for directly, and to play user-hosted multiplayer games. That choice is not an urgent one yet, as I do not own any games with significant multiplayer features yet.

My First Three Games

I actually bought my first games a couple days before I had secured a system. When I stopped in to a Gamestop to check their pricing an availability of used systems, I found they were running a buy two, get one free sale on their preowned games. After looking through their selection I ended up picking up three games I really wanted to try for $40: Fable 2, Final Fantasy XIII and Lost Odyssey.

Fable 2 has a really fantastic look.

In 2008, when Fable 2 came out, that was the first time I really found myself coveting an Xbox 360. At the time it was getting all sorts of game of the year awards and I thought the visual style was gorgeous. The real-time combat system also looked incredibly appealing, with the ability to switch between melee, ranged and magic attacks instantly. At only $10, this was a definite buy for me.

The second game I picked out was Final Fantasy XIII. Ironically, I had always imagined playing it on a PS3, but since PS3 ownership seems to very far off at the moment, I decided I’d lower myself to playing the reportedly inferior 360 version. Historically, the first new Final Fantasy game in each generation has usually been what motivates me to actually buy a new system. Final Fantasy VII was my first PSX game and Final Fantasy X was my first PS2 game. I guess I simply couldn’t resist the chance to pick up XIII on the cheap for the 360. Gamestop had just dropped the price to $20, after all.

Finally, I grabbed a copy of Lost Odyssey, Sakaguchi’s 360 exclusive Final Fantasy competitor, part of Microsoft’s fruitless attempt to win over the Japanese market. I’ve always been both skeptical and intensely curious about this game. I’m not sure I like the character designs I’ve seen so far, but I’ve also heard the game contains some really amazing in game text stories. Those apprehensions notwithstanding, it jumped out to me as I was looking for a third game that wasn’t a shooter I’d rather play with a mouse and keyboard on my PC.

Expectations Vs. Reality

I decided to tackle Fable 2 first and promptly lost a lot of time, in eight hour chunks, including a large portion of my New Year’s Eve. It’s a very fun game with a beautifully realized world to explore. Unfortunately, I found I had finished the main story far more quickly than I would have liked, and although there was more post-credit stuff you can do, having the chair kicked out from under me like that put me off playing any more for the time being.

Ultimately, I had expected a grander adventure than Fable 2 actually delivers. I was disappointed that the scope of the main story was so narrow and that there weren’t many more lands to discover, explore and exert my influence over. I expect I’ll go back to Fable 2 some day, but for now I’ve moved on.

For a little over a week I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIII. First things first, I don’t have the PS3 version to compare side-by-side, but the quality of the Bink compressed video cut scenes in the Xbox release is simply egregious. The PS3 version received pristine H.264 videos in 1080p. The 360 gets officiously smeared, blocky video at less than half that resolution. They look terrible and that failure is enough to regret the purchase a bit.

Otherwise, I’m having fun with the game. The combat system really is dynamic and crazy and fresh. The challenge curve is satisfying, and in the first 16 hours, or so, I’ve never felt like I’m being punished with the need to grind.

The slimes look real nice in FFXIII

The story is, however, incomprehensible. The worst thing you can say about the storytelling in this game is you will not understand anything that is going on until you go to load your save when the game scrolls a little recap of what’s happening. There are made up words, undefined geography and no real explanation of what is driving the conflict.

It’s weird, since the game takes every opportunity to break up the combat with dialog-heavy cut scenes. But the characters most stop to be angsty about their strained relationships with each other, instead of delivering exposition about WTF a Fal’Cie is or where Cocoon is in relationship to Pulse.

But at least it’s pretty and the animation and voice work are all high quality. I’m finding some of the characters endearing, in particular Sazh and Vanille. The character development system is also satisfying. The “Crystarium” lets you invest points into multiple combat roles to unlock universal stat increases as well as class-specific combat abilities. Those classes roughly correspond to a MMORPG paradigm of tank/nuker/healer/support, and you can customize your party composition into a series of load-outs to switch between during combat.

Others have complained about the game being overly linear, but I haven’t found that true. In fact, my biggest problems involve a number of silly UI annoyances that serve no purpose. As one example when you go to load a save game you select your file, press the button, it will ask if you’re sure, you say yes, it will load the save file, tell you it’s loaded and then wait for you to press a button again before it will start loading the game proper. It’s not like it’s even giving you an option to back out at that point. The only possible thing you can do is proceed with loading the level, but instead of doing so automatically, the game obstinately requires one more meaningless button press.

Getting in and out of battles has similar issues. FFXII was such a treat in the way it did away with the antiquated need to load a separate combat scene. FFXIII use the same art assets for exploration and combat, but it insists on an old school screen blur and pause before combat starts and then, two combat summary screens you have to button pass every time combat concludes. That gets very tedious very quickly.

But it’s not enough to deter me from playing, and I’m already near the mythical 25 hour mark where the game supposedly “gets good”.

I have actually popped in Lost Odyssey for a few minutes, just long enough to watch the opening FMV and defeat the intro combat sequence. For now it’s on the back burner.

Looking Ahead

Although I’m still working my way through my first set of games, I’m already starting to plan my next game acquisitions. In the first couple days of ownership I downloaded a whole bunch of demos for titles that I’d been interested in but had no way to play before. I tried Enslaved, Bayonetta, Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, Vanquish, Dead Space 2, Brutal Legend and a whole bunch of Xbox Live Arcade games.

Seriously, I love that chrome effect!

Of those I’m most excited to play more Bayonetta and Brutal Legend. Bayonetta is just gorgeous, frenetic and absolutely mad in a way I find very exciting. I was also very impressed by what I saw of Brutal Legend. I laughed a bunch playing it, and there is something sublime about the design of the characters, the world and the shader effect on Eddie Rigg’s spiked wrist band. I’m not really in to heavy metal, but the game just feels right up my alley.

Other games on my radar are additional crazy JRPGs like Nier, Resonance of Fate and Tales of Vesperia. I’m also a big fan of the Assassin’s Creed games, having played the first two on the PC, but I’m not sure I can wait for the port of Brotherhood to come out. Red Dead Redemption is another game I’m really excited to give a try.

The Road Goes Ever On and On

Any time you get a new system to play around with, there is an inherent excitement in exploring a new avenue of entertainment. In my case, that effect was intensified by five years of back titles and dashboard enhancements. Finally buying an HD console also carried with it a sense of relief. As my personal timetable for ownership kept getting extended I became a little anxious about this console cycle completely passing me by.

With that monkey off my back I’m left to ponder that value proposition of Xbox Live Gold and fret over the longevity of my three year old system. At some point I’ll also need to invest in a larger hard drive, but as someone who has always been extremely skeptical of Microsoft’s console offerings, I can’t help but feel largely won over by my new (to me) Xbox 360.

Perhaps most surprising is how front-loaded 2010 was with great games. I was mostly disappointed by the big holiday releases, and if you weren’t predisposed to geek out over Kinect it was hard to find a lot to hang your hat on through November and January. The biggest change this year in my own gaming habits was the acquisition of a PSP, opening up a whole new library of really interesting software. We’ve seen the big Japanese publishers struggle to find a way to succeed on the HD consoles, but they’re doing some very creative and inventive things on the PSP.

Without further ado, here are the games I had the most fun with in 2010.

Commander Shep, killing bitch-ass aliens.

Mass Effect 2 (PC/360) – Although I was disappointed by the brevity of the “Suicide Mission” the entire game was building towards, I still felt ME2 provided one of my most enjoyable gaming experience this year. Bioware did the smart thing cutting out all the RPG cruft they had tried to wedge into the first game’s combat to deliver what Mass Effect should have been all along, a clean shooter experience linked together in a sprawling, nonlinear RPG structure. The writing for the individual recruiting and loyalty missions was almost uniformly excellent, and this would be my, hands down, favorite game of the year if it had delivered an entire third act once you journey through that last relay, and not a single combat encounter. Despite that missed opportunity, still one of the best games I’ve played all year.

Alpha Protocol (PC/360/PS3) – Sadly savaged by much of the press, AP delivered an admittedly janky experience in places, but it also delivered some of the best writing and the most dynamic and reactive narrative of any RPG this generations. Lots of RPGs these days let you tackle quests in any order you like, in Alpha Protocol that order could change the experience dramatically, opening and closing doors, altering relationships and shifting the plot seamlessly.

Half-Minute Hero (PSP) – Anyone who says there’s nothing worth owning a PSP for reveals nothing but their own ignorance. Half-Minute Hero is an example of the kind of amazing, lo-fi RPG charmers that have been coming out of Japan for the last couple years. Adopting a retro, pixel-art style and playing on JRPG cliches to great effect, HMH is both a love letter to 8 and 16 bit Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy titles, and a brilliant deconstruction of those series’ conventions. The time limit, auto-combat and scenario designs turn each round into a puzzle unto itself. You are also given multiple modes of play, including an RTS and Shooter. I’ve dropped a dozen hours into the game and still only scratched the surface.

Gotta get paid, gotta get paid.

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale (PC) – In another great twist on the traditional JRPG genre, Recettear puts the player in charge of a stereotypical item shop you might find in one of those games. Required to make increasingly large payments against your missing father’s enormous dept, you have to buy low, sell high and hire adventurers to plumb the depths of nearby dungeons for valuable relics. Just the zen of haggling with townspeople and arranging your inventory is pleasurable, but the addition of optional action-RPG dungeon crawls and a funny and charming localization elevate this indie game from Japan.

Assassin’s Creed II (PC/360/PS3) – I’d apologize for being late to the party on this one, but the PC version didn’t come out until early this year. But, man, what a fantastic game. Truly gorgeous, incredibly satisfying mechanics and the best sense of vertigo I’ve ever experienced in a game. I’m really not good with heights and some of those climbs were simple terrifying. I’m extremely excited to play Brotherhood as soon as it gets a PC release next year.

Final Fantasy V (SNES/PSX/GBA) – Despite having bought this game multiple times for multiple platforms, I’m shamed to say it was not until this year I actually beat the game. The cast isn’t as big as the other 16 bit Final Fantasy titles, nor is the plot as complex, but the job system makes character development more interesting and it has a wonderful score. One of the shorter FF games, but that’s not a bad thing when you’re just trying to get through your backlog of shame.

Portal (PC/Mac/360/PS3) – I know what you’re thinking, but no, I did not wait until Portal was free to play it. Admittedly, I missed it on the first go around since I already had Half-Life 2 and didn’t want to buy the Orange Box, so I waited a long time for the stars to align on the right Steam sale for Portal ala carte. As you’ve no doubt heard many times before, Portal is brilliant and hilarious.

Battlefield: Bad Company II (PC/360/PS3) – Looking back at the year in military shooters, I have to admit Bad Company II actually delivered my favorite experience. Medal of Honor had moments, but in the end came across as half-baked. Black Ops was so preoccupied with delivering a thrill a minute experience that you never got a chance to breath. Bad Company II has great mechanics, cool destructibility, a genuine sense of humor and gravitas. Best of all it’s paced such that the quieter moments actually help you appreciate the crazy shit.

Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP) – Not having a PS3, I missed the first Valkyria Chronicles, but the sequel was kind enough to skip its way over to the PSP. I can’t evaluate exactly how well the mechanics of II compare to the first title, but I’ve been quite satisfied with the tactical combat and squad management it presents. The visual novel storytelling may be excessively verbose, and no doubt offputting to some, but there’s no arguing with the actual battle mechanics.

Actually, Super Baby can really handle her shit.

Z.H.P.: Unlosing Ranger Vs. Darkdeath Evilman (PSP) – What do we have here? Another charming PSP strategy/RPG title out of Japan! ZHP is from Nippon Ichi, makers of the Disgaea games, and represents that grindy style of gameplay taken to extremes. I’ve only just dipped my toes in to this game, but you have to love a title that apologises for only containing a single battle before the game starts. Twice. Most of the game you will spend leveling up your character through a series of training dungeons, reincarnating every time you die, but retaining some of your built-up stats. Also: you are married to a penguin who brings you lunch mid-dungeon, should you ask.

Another fall, another Call of Duty from Activision. With the massive shakeup at Infinity Ward earlier this year, Treyarch is finally poised to take the reigns of the franchise as the “A” team. To that end, they have put forth their latest effort, Black Ops. It’s an ambitious title from a huge team and a reportedly enormous budget, but the question remains: how will the millions of Modern Warfare fans react to the series’ new direction?

As the game’s full title suggests, Tyler Perry Presents: Call of Duty: Black Ops was designed in full cooperation with the famed filmmaker, Tyler Perry. Although it may seem strange to involve a filmmaker in the creation of a Call of Duty game, it follows directly in Activision’s recent strategy to reach out to a broader, more diverse audience, something that began last year with DJ Hero.

Where that game sought to appeal to an under-served segment of Hip-Hop fans, Black Ops comes across as a less cynical and more earnest attempt to chronicle the many contributions and sacrifices made by African Americans serving in the US military.

The opening stage clearly takes its inspiration from the film Glory, casting you as a member of an all black regiment in the Union Army during a battle in the Civil War. The basic controls and mechanics are explained as you participate in rifle volleys, navigate trenches, join a bayonet charge and finish Confederate soldiers at close range with a Colt revolver.

No CCR in this game.

There is no main character or overarching narrative, exactly. The game jumps from time period to time period as you take on the role of a different character in each era. This will include fighting in the Argonne forest attached to the French Army during WWI, aerial sequences as one of the Tuskegee Airmen, time in the jungles of Vietnam, and you even get to play Keith David’s character from Modern Warfare 2, Sgt. Foley, back when he was a green soldier during the first Gulf War.

What this means is you will be treated to a wide variety of lovingly recreated locales, rich with fine detail. You will also be exposed to a huge variety of weapons and vehicles as you progress through the levels. With the exception of the seemingly timeless Model 1911 Colt .45, you almost never have access to the same weapons from one level to the next.

The gameplay proceeds in the familiar Call of Duty style, emphasising incredible set-piece battles and the need to advance aggressively. The controls feel as sharp as ever and the weapons still sound and feel fantastic.

It’s perhaps the best looking Call of Duty game to date. The levels are more open than in the past, with a long draw distance removing that claustrophobic corridor feeling common to the series. The levels are also more dynamic than before with destructable elements, though it still does not match the Battlefield series in that area.

Sean Murray’s score is impressive, drawing inspiration from contemporary musical movements for levels in each different era. A number of licensed tracks also make an appearance to date the beginning of each level not unlike an episode of Cold Case.

As expected, Black Ops features fantastic online multiplayer. The modes included are generally slight refinements on those included in the Modern Warfare games and World at War. The biggest change is the mishmash of uniforms and armament available from the game’s extensive singleplayer campaign. The RPG-like character progression returns, along with a full suite of new kill-streaks and perks. Based on each players personal preferences, this generally results in wildly anachronistic matches online.

In fact, customization is the single organizing principle of Black Ops multiplayer. In addition to choosing your weapons and uniform, you can actually completely change your base appearance. You are given options for racial make up, gender, hair style, etc, taking the RPG character paradigm that much further. Neatly avoiding any Medal of Honor-style Taliban controversy, there is no “Opposing Force”, named or otherwise. Everyone creates their character and is assigned to either the blue or orange team when they join a match online.

Locked and Loaded.

Our Score: Dogwood Tree

The Frog Knight

As you may have guessed, Fable III is a videogame retelling of the third great fable in human history. The first, of course, being the one about it being turtles all the way down. The second great fable is the one about losing socks in the drier. Lionhead Studios, headed by Peter Molyneux, has already released two very successful games in the series telling those stories. This fall they have moved on to the one about the frog and the scorpion.

We all know the fable about a scorpion who asks a frog for a ride across the stream. Fable III begins with you controlling that frog in a lushly recreated estuary. The original fable plays out in the form of a tutorial level. You learn how to move and swim and hop and aim your tongue at flies to catch them. There’s even a mini-boss battle against a water snake.

At the end of the level you meet a silver-tongued scorpion who complements you on your courage and suggests you journey together. In a sequence clearly intended to evoke the old school arcade game Frogger, the scorpion climbs on your back and you attempt to cross the water avoiding various dangers and obstacles. But just as you are about to reach the bank, you are betrayed. The scorpion plunges his stinger into your head and you both sink.

At that moment the camera sweeps over to the reeds on the opposite shore where a tadpole is watching his father die.

After that the game jumps forward. You play the bulk of the game as that tadpole, come to full frog-hood, whose mind has been forever warped by the trauma of seeing his father murdered. Like Batman, the frog reacts by going on a crusade to restore order to the land.

You grow more powerful as the game progresses.

Cue the familiar Fable action-RPG gameplay. You will explore the estuary, meet locals, fight stoats and cranes and fish. Combat is handled through a similar melee/ranged combo system with additional offensive and defensive Amphotics (the game’s magic system).

The game also continues the Fable tradition of highly involved morality and reputation systems. Your appearance changes based on how good or evil you act. You have multiple ways of overcoming obstacles, some more scrupulous than others. The local population will also react to you reputation, your appearance and your demeanor.

The world is expansive. There are a number of huge regions, including the coastal estuary, a bog, woodlands and a mountainous area. You are given the freedom to tackle each in any order that you like, but as was the case in this year’s Alpha Protocol, the order you choose and the choices you make can vastly change what transpires. Unlike Alpha Protocol, this all happens in an open world, free roaming structure.

The whole game builds to a confrontation with an invasive species of scorpion, your most hated foe. It’s an epic experience with sweeping visuals, a haunting score and a surprisingly moving story. I cannot recommend this game enough.

Our Score: Enkidu