Kaset Game PC Murah

PENTING

2015-02-22T06:56:00.001-08:00

MOHON MAAF GAN ANE GA BISA SERING SERING BUKA, KALO MAU PESEN LANGSUNG SMS ATAU MENGISI FORM AJA TAR ANE BALAS

Semua Game

2015-01-08T07:37:00.002-08:00

007 - The Legends 2DVD

144 MEGA DASH 2DVD

18 Wheels of Steel - Extreme Trucker

18 Wheels of Steel - Extreme Trucker 2

18 Wheels of Steel Collection +

18 Wheels of Steel Haulin 1DVD 1DVD

1954 Alcatraz (1 DVD)

2XL Supercross

3845 The Most Wanted Mini Games of 2011 MegaPack

3D Custom Girl XP

3D Hunting 2010

3D Sex Villa 2.99

3D Ultra Cool Pool

4PM (1 DVD)

4x4 Hummer SKIDROW 1DVD 1DVD

51 PopCap Games 2011 +

7 Sins

7554

84 BigFish

99_levels_to_hell_2.0.0.4 1DVD

A Farewell To Dragons +

A Game of Dwarves

A New Beginning Final Cut v.2.0 (1 DVD)

A Story About My Uncle (1 DVD)

A-10C Warthog

A-Men (1DVD)

A-Train 9 Extended Edition

A-Train9 +

Aarklash Legacy (1 DVD)

Ace Combat 3 +

Ace Combat Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition 2DVD

Aces of the Galaxy

Achtung Panzer - Kharkov 1943

Achtung Panzer Operation Star

Achtung Panzer Operation Star - Sokolovo 1943 (Expansion Only)

Achtung Panzer Operation Star - Volokonovka 1942 (Expansion Only)

Adventure Park - POSTMORTEM (1 DVD)

Afterfall Insanity Dirty Arena Edition 1DVD

Agarest Generations of War (1 DVD)

Age Of Empire 3 1DVD

Age of Empires I + Rise of rome

Age of Empires II - The Age of Kings

Age of Empires II - The Conquerors

Age of Empires II HD 1DVD

Age of Empires II HD The Forgotten + UPDATE 3.3 (1DVD)

Age Of Empires III - The Asian Dynasties 1DVD

Age Of Empires III - The WarChiefs 1DVD

Age of Empires III Complete Collection (1DVD)

Age of Mythology

Age of Mythology Extended Edition (1 DVD)

Age of Mythology Extended Edition + UPDATE 1.7.2646 (1 DVD)

Age of Mythology The Titans

Age Of Pirate Caribbean Tales + Pirate Of Caribbean Legend Of Jack Sparrow 1DVD

Age Of Pirates 2 - City of Abandoned Ships V.1.3.0 (1 DVD)

Age of Wonders Collection (1 DVD)

Age of Wonders III = 1 DVD Betrayer (+ Patch v1.1) 1 DVD

Agricultural 8 2011

Agricultural 8 2013

Agricultural 8 Historical Farming 2012

AI War - Fleet Command

AI War - The Zenith Remnant

Air Aces Pacific

Air Conflicts Pacific Carriers

Air Conflicts Secret Wars

Air Conflicts Vietnam (1 DVD)

Airline Tycoon 2 +

Airport Control 8

Airport Madness3 +

Airport Simulator 2014 (1 DVD)

Airport Tower 8 2012 +

Al Emmo And The Lost Dutchmans Mine (1 DVD)

Alan Wake 2DVD

Alan Wake American Nightmare 1DVD

Alan Wake Collectors Edition V.1.06 2DVD

Alexander the Great +

Alice Madness 2DVD 2DVD

Alice Madness Returns - SKIDROW 2DVD 2DVD

Alien Arena

Alien Breed 2 - Assault

Alien Breed 3 - Descent

Alien Isolation + Corporate Lockdown DLC (7 DVD)

Alien Rage Unlimited - v.1.0.9084.0 (1 DVD)

Alien Spidy

Alien Swarm

Alien VS Predator 2 +

Aliens Colonial Marines 2DVD

Aliens Colonial Marines Complete Edition 2DVD

Aliens vs Predator 2010 + DLC (5 DVD)

All Zombie Must Die + A Sirius Game 1DVD

Alone In The Dark 2DVD

Alpha Protocol V.1.1 (3 DVD)

Always Sometimes Monsters (1 DVD)

AMAZING SPIDERMAN 3DVD

Ambulance Simulator 1DVD

Amnesia A Machine For Pigs (1 DVD)

Amnesia Dark Decent 1DVD

Among The Sleep (1 DVD)

Amorous Professor Cherry 1DVD

Angry Bird Season 1DVD 1DVD

Angry Birds 1DVD 1DVD

Angry Birds StarWars

Angry.Birds RIO 1DVD 1DVD

Anna Extended Edition 1DVD

Anno 1404 - Dawn Of Discovery

Anno 1404 - Venice

Anno 1702

ANNO 2070 2DVD

Anomaly - Warzone Earth +

Anomaly 2

Antichamber

Antisquad (1 DVD)

Apache Air Assault 1DVD 1DVD

AR-K Episode 1 +

Arcana Heart 3 Final +

Arcania - Fall of Setarrif

Arena Wars 2

ARMA - Cold War Assault +

ARMA 2 4DVD

ARMA 2 Reinforcments 2DVD

ARMA 3 + UPDATE 1-8 + SP Campaign Epsd.1 dan Epsd.2 DLC (4 DVD)

Arma 3 - V.1.2.110.424 (2 DVD)

ARMA 3 Complete Campaign Edition (include last patch + The East Wind Episodes) 3 DVD

ARMA 3 UPDATE 1

Arma Tactics (1 DVD)

Armada 2526 SuperNova 1DVD

Armed & Dangerous +

Army man toys in space 1DVD

Army Men RTS

Articial Girl 3 1DVD

Artificial Girl 1DVD

Artificial Girl 3 Expansion 1DVD

Aselia The Eternal

Aselia The Eternal 1DVD

Ashes Cricket 2013 (1 DVD)

Assasin's Creed 2 2DVD

Assassin's Brotherhood 2DVD

Assassins Creed + V.1.02 2DVD

Assassins Creed 3 + The Tyranny of King Washington EPS.1 & 2 & 3 4DVD

Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag + UPDATE 1.04 + 7DLC + Freedom Cry Addon DLC (5 DVD)

Assassins Creed Directors Cut (1 DVD)

Assassins Creed Liberation HD (1 DVD)

Assassins Creed Revelations 3DVD

Assassins Creed Unity + Update 1.4 (11 DVD)

Assetto Corsa (2 DVD)

Assetto Corsa Early Access (1 DVD)

Astebreed (1 DVD)

Asterix And Obelix XXl 1DVD

Audition AyoDance Indonesia Full Patch 2012

Avadon the Black Fortress

Avatar 1DVD

Avatar James Cameron 1DVD 1DVD

Avatar The Last Airbender 1DVD

Awesomenauts Complete Edition (1 DVD)

Axis.And.Allies-RELOADED 1DVD

Azada 4 - Elementa CE - Full PreCracked - Foxy Games 1DVD

Back to The Future The Game - Episode 4 Double Visions

Back to The Future The Game - Episode 5 Out at Time

Back to the Future The Game Episode 1-3 1DVD

Bad Boys 2 1DVD

Baldur Gate 2

Baldur's Gate + Tales of the Sword Coast 1DVD

Baldurs Gate Collection 1+2 GOG Edition incl. All Expansions

Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition

Baldur\'s Gate II - Enhanced Edition (1 DVD)

Bang Bang 6

Barbie Fashion Show 1DVD

Basketball Pro Management 2012 1DVD

Basketball Pro Management 2015 (1 DVD)

Bastion +

Batman Arkham Assylum 2DVD

Batman Arkham City - GOTY 5DVD

Batman Arkham City 4DVD

Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate Deluxe Edition 1 DVD

Batman Arkham Origins Initiation DLC (3 DVD)

Batman Arkham Origins+ UPDATE V.2 + 12 DLC SKIN (4DVD)

Battle Chess Game of Kings (1 DVD)

Battle LA 1DVD

Battle Realms Winter Of The Wolf +

Battle Reaper 1-2 1DVD

BATTLEBLOCK THEATER (1 DVD)

Battlefield 1942 1DVD

Battlefield 2 - Armored Fury + (Expansion Only)

Battlefield 2 - Complete Edition

Battlefield 2 - Euro Forces + (Expansion Only)

Battlefield 2 - Forgotten Hope + (Expansion Only)

Battlefield 2 - Nation at War (Expansion Only)

Battlefield 2 - Project Reality 0.85 + (Expansion Only)

Battlefield 2 - Special Forces + (Expansion Only)

Battlefield 2 1DVD

Battlefield 2142

Battlefield 3 V.1.4.0.0 5DVD

Battlefield 4 + UPDATE 110067 (6 DVD)

Battlefield Bad Company 2 2DVD

BattleForge

Bazooka Cafe 1DVD

Beatbuddy - Tale of the Guardians (1 DVD)

Beavis And Buthead 1DVD

Beowulf 2DVD

Beowulf The Game V.1.0.0.1 (2DVD)

Best Of BigFish Games Collection 2011 3DVD 3DVD

Betrayer (1 DVD)

Betrayer (EU) - RELOADED (1 DVD)

Beware Planet Earth 1DVD

Big City Rigs - Garbage Truck Driver 1DVD

Big Fish Games Collection August 2011

Big Fish Games Collection July 2011

Big Fish Games Collection June 2011

Big Fish Games Collection May 2011

Big Fish Games Collection Vol. 3

Big Fish Games Collection Vol. 6

Bikini Karate 1DVD 1DVD

Biko 1-3 1DVD

Binary Domain Complete Edition (2DVD)

Bio Shock 1 2DVD

Bionic Commando

Bionic Commando (2 DVD)

BioShock 2 Complete Edition (3DVD)

BioShock Infinite Burial (EU) (include Burial At Sea Eps 1 + 2 + all DLC) 8 DVD

BioShock Infinite Burial at Sea - Episode 1 (3DVD)

BioShock Infinite Clash in the Clouds DLC (2 DVD

BioShock Infinite-FLT 6DVD

Black & White +

Black & White 2 - Battle of the Gods + (Expansion Only)

BLACK & WHITE 2 1DVD

BLACK MESA 3DVD

Black Mirror 2

Black Mirror 3

Black Mirror III 1DVD

Black Site Area 51

Black Site Area 51 v.1.2 (3DVD)

Blackguards - V.1.3 + Chapter 1 sampe 5 + Untold Legends DLC (1 DVD)

Blade Of Darkness 2010 +

Blades of Time

Blades of Time Limited Edition + Update +

Blazblue 1DVD

Blazblue Calamity Trigger Steam Edition 2DVD

BlazBlue Continuum Shift 1DVD

Blazing Angel

Bleach M.U.G.E.N 2010 1DVD

Bleach The Hollow Strife

Blinding Dark (1 DVD)

Blitzkrieg Anthology 1DVD

Blood Bowl - Chaos Edition - v.3.0.2.2 (1 DVD)

Blood Knights (1 DVD)

Blood of the Werewolf (1DVD)

Bloodline Champions

BLUR 2 2DVD

Bof4 1DVD

Bonetown-ViTALiTY 1DVD

Borderlands 2 Complete Edition V.1.7.0 + UPDATE V.1.11.0 + 4 NEW DLC (4 DVD)

Borderlands 2DVD | 2DVD

Borderlands Mad Moxxis Underdome Riot [Expansion] 1DVD 1DVD

Borderlands The Pre-Sequel (2 DVD)

Borderlands The Secret Armory of General Knoxx [Expansion] 1DVD 1DVD

Borderlands The Zombie Island Of Dr. Ned [Expansion] 1DVD 1DVD

Bound By Flame (1 DVD)

Braveland (1 DVD)

Bridge Project 1DVD

Bridge to Another World - Burnt Dreams Collectors Edition 1 DVD

Brink 2DVD

Brink Complete Pack inlude 3DLC (2 DVD)

Broken Age Act 1 (1 DVD)

Broken Sword 5 The Serpents Curse Episode 1 + UPDATE 1 (1 DVD)

Broken Sword 5 The Serpents Curse Episode 1 Dan 2 (2 DVD)

Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons (1 DVD)

Brutal.Legend-RELOADED 2DVD

Bullet Storm Out 2DVD

BULLY SCHOLARSHIP 1DVD

BURNOUT PARADISE_THE ULTIMATE BOX 1DVD

BUS SIMULATOR 2012 2DVD

Bust-n-Rush +

Cabelas 2013 - Dangerous hunt 2DVD

Cabelas African Adventures (3 DVD)

Call of Duty - American Rush 2

Call Of Duty - Black Ops 2 4DVD

Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 3DVD

Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 3 4DVD

Call of Duty 1

Call Of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare v.1.7 2DVD

Call Of Duty 5 World At War v.1.2 2DVD

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare + SP Exo Upgrade DLC + UPDATE 1 & 2 (10 DVD)

Call of Duty Ghosts + UPDATE 3 (8DVD)

Call of Duty I - United Offensive 1DVD

Call of Duty II 1DVD

Call of Duty: Black Ops + Update 6 2DVD

Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood

Call of Juarez -The Cartel FULL SKIDROW 2DVD

Call of Juarez -The Cartel FULL SKIDROW 2DVD 2DVD

Call of Juarez Gunslinger 2DVD

Call of Juarez The Cartel V.1.1.12 (2DVD)

CALL OF JUAREZ_BOUND IN BLOOD = 3.71 GB 1DVD 1DVD

Campus Student Life 1DVD

Capcom vs SNK 2 1DVD

CAPOIERA FIGHTER 1DVD

Car Mechanic Simulator 2014 v.1.0.5.8 (1 DVD)

Cargo 3 (2 DVD)

Cargo Commander 1DVD

Carnage Racing (1 DVD)

Carrier Command - Gaea Mission (1 DVD)

CARS 2 1DVD | 1DVD

Cars Toon Maters Tall Tales - FLT 1DVD

Castle Crashers 1DVD

Castle Crashers 1DVD 1DVD

Castle Of Illusion (1 DVD)

Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 (2 DVD)

Castlevania Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate HD - RELOADED (1 DVD)

Castlevania Lords of Shadow Ultimate Edition (4 DVD)

Chaos Domain (1 DVD)

Chernobyl Commando 1DVD

Chernobyl Underground (1DVD)

Chester_1.1.5.1 1DVD

Child of Light (1 DVD)

Chivalry Medieval Warfare 1DVD

Chronology (1 DVD)

Citadels + Update 5 (1DVD)

Cities in Motion 2 1DVD

Cities XL 2011 1DVD

Cities XL 2012 1DVD

Cities XL 2013 - Platinum 1DVD

City Bus Simulator 2010 1DVD 1DVD

CITY CAR DRIVING 1DVD

Civilization III Complete (1DVD)

Civilization V - Complete Edition V.1.0.3.18 (2DVD)

Civilization V - GOTY 2DVD

Civilization V Sid Meier's - Complete Edition (include last patch + 7 DLC + 8 Pack + Deluxe Scenario) (2 DVD)

Close Combat Gateway to Caen (1 DVD)

Cloudbuilt Through the Fog (1 DVD)

Cognition Episode 1 The Hangman 1DVD

Cognition Episode 3 The Oracle 1DVD

Cognition_Episode_2_The_Wise_Monkey-FLT 1DVD

Colin McRae Rally Remastered (1 DVD)

Collapse (1 DVD)

Collin McRae 1DVD

Coma Mortuary (1 DVD)

Command & Conquer 3 Complete Edition (3 DVD)

Command & Conquer 3 kanes wrath Exp 2DVD

Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars 1DVD 1DVD

Command & Conquer First Decade 2DVD

Command & Conquer Generals Full Version (include CNC Zero Hour) (1 DVD)

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 Uprising 2DVD

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 Uprising 2DVD 2DVD

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Version 1.03 2DVD

Command and Conquer 4 - Tiberian Twilight 2DVD

Commander - Conquest of the Americas

Commander Conquest of the Americas Gold Edition (1DVD)

Company Of Heroes - Opposing Fronts - RELOADED 2DVD

Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault (5 DVD)

Company of Heroes 2 3DVD

Company of Heroes Complete Edition + SKIRMISH OFFLINE(3DVD)

Company of Heroes Tales of Valor 2DVD

Confrontation V.1.0.0.19003 1DVD

CONSORTIUM (1 DVD)

Conspiracies 2DVD

Conspiracies II Lethal Networks - SKIDROW 2DVD

Construction Machines 2014 (1 DVD)

Construction Manager 2015 (1 DVD)

Contrast (1 DVD)

Counter Strike Global Offensive (CS Go) (1 DVD)

Counter Strike Stalker +

Counter Strike Zero +

Counter-Strike 1.6 +

Crash Time 5 1DVD

Crash Time IV 1DVD

Crazy Machines Complete Collection 1DVD

Crazy.Machines.2.Happy.New.Year.Bundle.Edition-TiNYiSO 1DVD

Create 1DVD

Cristiano Ronaldo Free Style 1DVD

Crusader Kings II 1DVD

Crusader Kings II Way of Life (1 DVD)

Crysis 2 - Maximum Edition 3DVD

Crysis 2DVD

Crysis 3 FULL PATCH 1.1 - 1.2 - 1.3 ( ONLY PATCH ) = 1DVD

Crysis 3 INTERNAL-RELOADED v.1.1 (Deluxe Edition) 4DVD 4DVD

Crysis Warhead 2DVD

Cypress Inheritance The Beginning (1 DVD)

Damnation 1DVD

DARK (1 DVD)

Dark Matter (1 DVD)

DARK RAID (1 DVD)

Dark Secrets 1DVD

Dark Sector

Dark Sector 2DVD

Dark Shadow - Army of Evil 1DVD

Dark Souls 2 + UPDATE 1.02 (2 DVD)

Dark Souls II Crown of the Ivory King (3 DVD)

DARK SOULS II CROWN OF THE OLD IRON KING (4 DVD)

Dark Souls II Crown of the Sunken King (4 DVD)

Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition

Dark Void 2DVD

Darksider 2 v4.0 + DLC 2DVD

Darksiders 3DVD

Darksoul PTD 1DVD

Dawn of Fantasy Kingdom Wars (1 DVD)

Dawn of magic 2 1DVD

Dawn of War - Complete Edition (3DVD)

Dawnstar- Skidrow 1DVD

Day of the Zombie 2009 1DVD

Day One Garrys Incident + UPDATE 1-5 (1 DVD)

Dead Effect - v1.2 + Soundrack (1 DVD)

Dead Island 1DVD

Dead Island Bloodbath Arena DLC 1DVD

Dead Island Game of The Year Edition PC + DLCs 2DVD

Dead Island Riptide 2DVD

Dead Rising 2 2DVD

Dead Rising 3 - Include DLC Untold Stories Eps.1 - 4 (7 DVD)

DEAD SPACE 2 3DVD

Dead Space 2DVD

Dead Space 3 Awakened DLC 1DVD

Dead Space 3-RELOADED | 3DVD

Dead State (1 DVD)

Deadfall Adventures + UPDATE 1 (2 DVD)

Deadlight 1DVD 1DVD

Deadly Premonition: The Director\'s Cut (2DVD)

Deadpool (2DVD)

Dear Esther 1DVD

Death Spank 1DVD

DeathSpank - Thongs Of Virtue 1DVD

Defense Grid 2 (1 DVD)

Dementium II HD (1 DVD)

Demigod 1DVD

Deo (1 DVD)

Deponia - Chaos on deponia 1DVD

Deponia - CPY 1DVD

DEPTH HUNTER 2 DEEP DIVE (1 DVD)

Des Blood VR 1DVD

DesBlood 3 1DVD

DesBlood 4 1DVD

Deus Ex Human Revolution 2DVD

Deus Ex Human Revolution Directors Cut (3DVD)

Deus Ex Human Revolution The Missing Link ( STAND ALONE ) 1DVD

Deus Ex The Fall (1 DVD)

Devil may Cry 2013 Complete Edition V.1.02 include 3DLC (2 DVD)

Devil May Cry 3 1DVD

DEVIL MAY CRY 4 2DVD

Dexter The Game 2011 RELOADED 1DVD

Diablo 1DVD

Diablo II 1DVD

Dino Crisis 2 1DVD

Dirt 2 2DVD

Dirt 2DVD

Dirt 3 Complete Edition 2DVD

Dirt Showdown 2DVD

Disciples III Reincarnation (2 DVD)

Disciples III Renaissance - Steam Special Edition (1 DVD)

Disciples III Resurrection RELOADED (2 DVD)

Discipless III Renaissance (2 DVD)

Dishonored + DLC Dunwalls 1DVD

Dishonored - Game of the Year Edition (3 DVD)

Dishonored 2DVD

Dishonored The Brigmore Witches DLC (2 DVD)

Disney Collection 1DVD

Disney Planes (2 DVD)

Disney Tangled Rapunzel 1DVD

Distant Worlds Universe (1 DVD)

Dive to the Titanic 1DVD

Divinity Dragon Commander + Imperial Edition Content + UPDATE 1.0.20.0 (3 DVD)

Divinity Original Sin + UPDATE V1.0.169 INCL DLC (4 DVD)

DmC_Devil_May_Cry_Vergils_Downfall_STEAM_RiP-GameWorks 1DVD

Dogfight 1942 Limited Edition (1DVD)

DOGFIGHT 1DVD

Dollar Dash 1DVD

Don Bradman Cricket (1DVD)

Doom 3 - BFG 2DVD

Doom 3 - Resurrection Evil 1DVD

Doom 3 1DVD

Doorways (1 DVD)

DotA + Warcraft III Reign of Chaos & The Frozen Throne 1DVD

Dota 2 Offline Edition ( Bisa LAN ) (1 DVD)

Double Dragon Neon (1 DVD)

Dracula 3 Complete Edition (1 DVD)

Dracula 4 The Shadow of the Dragon (1DVD)

Dracula 5 The Blood Legacy (1 DVD)

DRAGON AGE 2 2DVD

Dragon Age 2 Complete Edition (2DVD)

Dragon Age 2 Legacy Expansion - RELOADED 1DVD

Dragon Age Complete Edition (3DVD)

Dragon Age Inquisition + UPDATE 2 (7 DVD)

Dragon Age Origins 2DVD

Dragons Lair Collection (1 DVD)

DRAKENSANG_THE RIVER OF TIME 1DVD

DreadOut (1 DVD)

Dreamfall Chapters Book One - Reborn (1 DVD)

Dreamlords 1DVD

Driftmoon (GOG) 1DVD

Driver 1DVD

Driver Paralel Line 1DVD

Driver San Francisco 2DVD

Driving Simulator 2011 1DVD 1DVD

Drunken Robot Pornography (1 DVD)

Duck Dynasty (2 DVD)

DuckTales Remastered + UPDATE 2 (1 DVD)

Duke Nukem Forever 1DVD

Duke Nukem Forever Complete Edition (2 DVD)

DukenukemHD Atomic 1DVD

Dungeon Defenders Collection-PROPHET - 2DVD

Dungeon Gate

Dungeon Lords 1DVD

Dungeon Siege 3 Treasures of the Sun

Dungeonland_v1.0.6068_Incl_Dungeon_Maestro_Grimoire_Pack_DLC-FLTDOX 1DVD

Dungeons & Dragons Daggerdale 1DVD

Dungeons 1DVD

Dungeons.The.Dark.Lord-RELOADED 1DVD

Dust An Elysian Tail 1DVD

Dusty Revenge - Co-Op Steam Edition (1DVD)

Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper 1DVD 1DVD

Dynasty Warriors 5 Special 1DVD

Dynasty Warriors 6 2DVD

Dynasty Warriors 7 - Extreme Legends 3DVD

Dynasty Warriors 7 4DVD

Dynasty Warriors 7 with Extreme Legend + NEW ENGLISH PATCH (4 DVD)

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition - ENGLISH (4 DVD)

E.Y.E.Divine.Cybermancy-TiNYiSO 1DVD

Eador Masters of the Broken World 1DVD

Earth 2140 HD (1 DVD)

East India Company Collection (1 DVD)

Echo Prime 1DVD

Eidolon (1 DVD)

ELDER V SKYRIM 2DVD

Emergency 2012 2DVD

Emergency 2013

Emergency 2013 2DVD

Emergency 2014 (2 DVD)

Emergency 5 (5 DVD)

Empire Earth 3 2DVD

Empire Total War 3DVD

Enclave Gold Edition (1 DVD)

Endless Space - REVOLT 1DVD

Enemy Front (2 DVD)

ENSLAVED - Odyssey to the West Premium Edition (3DVD)

Epoch (1 DVD)

Eroi 3D 1DVD

Escape Dead Island (2 DVD)

Eschalon Book III + CRACK FIX (1 DVD)

Euro Truck 8 2

Euro Truck Simulator 1DVD

Euro Truck Simulator 2 Going East (1 DVD)

Europa Universalis IV - v.1.1.1 (1 DVD)

Europa Universalis IV Conquest of Paradise (1 DVD)

Europa Universalis IV Wealth of Nations + 18DLC (1 DVD)

EVIL DEAD POUND OF GROUND 1DVD

Evil Genius + PATCH 1.01 (1DVD)

Expeditions Conquistador 1DVD

Extreme Roads USA (1 DVD)

F.E.A.R. 3 +

F1 2011 2DVD

F1 2012 2DVD

F1 2013 + + UPDATE 6 (2DVD)

F1 2014 (2 DVD)

F1_Race_Stars-FLT 1DVD

Fable 1DVD

Fable 3 - V.1.1.0.3 + DLC 2DVD

Fable Anniversary + DLC Unlocker (2 DVD)

Face Noir (1DVD)

Fairy Tales Three Heroes 1DVD

Fall Out 3 Expansion 1DVD

Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes 1DVD

Fallen.Enchantress-KaOs 1DVD

Falling Skies The Game (2 DVD)

Fallout 2 1DVD

Fallout 3 Complete Edition v.1.7.0.3 (2 DVD)

Fallout New Vegas 2DVD

Fallout New Vegas Honest Hearts -dLc- 1DVD

FANTASTIC 4 1DVD

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (STANDALONE) 1DVD

Far Cry 4 (RELOADED) + Update v.1.5 (8 DVD)

Farcry 1 1DVD

Farcry 2 1DVD

FARCRY III 3DVD

Farm Fables Strategy Enhanced 1 DVD

Farm Machines Championships 2013 (1DVD)

Farming.Simulator.2013-RELOADED 1DVD

Fast and Furious Showdown 1DVD

Fatal Frame 3 Tormented 1DVD

FATE 1, 2, and 3 1DVD

Fate ?Of The ?World ?Tipping ?Point V.1.1.2 (1 DVD)

FEAR 2 PROJECT ORIGIN 3DVD

Fieldrunners 2 1DVD 1DVD

Fieldrunners_2_ENG 1DVD

FIFA 14 - V.1.3.0.0 ( UPDATE 2 + V5 ) + UPDATE SQUADS (2DVD)

FIFA 2008 +

FIFA 2009

FIFA 2010 +

FIFA 2011

FIFA 2012 +

FIFA 2013 + V.1.7 2DVD

Fifa Euro 2012 2DVD

FIFA Manager 13 - PREMIUM PACK EDITION V.1.0.2.0 (2 DVD)

Fifa Manager 2012 2DVD

FIFA Street 1DVD

Fifa Street 2

Final Fantasy III (1 DVD)

Final Fantasy VII - Remake 1DVD

Final Fantasy VIII + Everything 2DVD

Final Fantasy VIII Steam Edition (1 DVD)

Final Fantasy X 1DVD 1DVD

Final Fantasy XII 1DVD

Final Fantasy XIII (15 DVD)

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (7 DVD)

Finn and Jakes Epic Quest (1 DVD)

Firefighters 2014 (1 DVD)

Fishing Simulator 2011 1DVD

Flaout 2 1DVD

Flashback (1 DVD)

FLASHPOINT 1DVD

FlatOut 3 Chaos And Destruction (3 DVD)

Floorball League +

FM 2012 1DVD

Foosball Street Edition (1 DVD)

Football Manager 2012 1DVD 1DVD

Football Manager 2013 V.13.3.3 + EDITOR PATCH 2DVD

Football Manager 2013 V.13.3.3 = 2DVD AUTORUN

Football Manager 2014 + UPDATE 14.2.2 (1 DVD)

Football Manager 2014 Mega Pack ( DLC ) 2 DVD

Football Manager 2015 (1 DVD)

FORCED (1 DVD)

Foul Play (1 DVD)

Fractured Soul (1 DVD)

Frederic Evil Strikes Back (1 DVD)

Free Style Urban Soccer 1DVD

FreeDom Fighter 1DVD

Frontlines Fuel of War V.1.3.0 (3DVD)

Frontlines_Fuel_Of_War-Razor1911 2DVD

Frozen Hearth 1DVD

Frozen Hearth V.1.1.1.0 (1 DVD)

Fruit Ninja HD - The Dragon ( 1CD)

FX Eleven (1DVD)

Galactic Command Echo Squad Second Edition Remastered + Fix (1 DVD)

Game House 2010 1DVD

Game of Thrones - Special Edition (1DVD)

Game of Thrones A Telltale Games Series (1 DVD)

Game Stock Car Extreme 2013 - v.1.15 (2 DVD)

Games Of Thrones 2DVD

Garfield Kart (1 DVD)

Garrys Mod v1.5.80.0 1DVD

Garshasp 1DVD

Garshasp The Monster Slayer 1DVD

Gas Guzzlers Extreme (2DVD)

Gatling Gears (2011) 1DVD

Gauntlet (1 DVD)

Gears Of Wars 2DVD

Getting UP 1DVD

Ghost Buster 2DVD

Ghost Buster The Video Game V.2.0.1.0 (2DVD)

Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime (2011) 1DVD

Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams - Rise of the Owlverlord (1DVD)

Giana twisted dreams 1DVD

Glacier 3 The Meltdown (1 DVD)

Glare (1DVD)

God Father

God Father II +

God Mode 1DVD

God of War

God of War 2 +

Gomo 1DVD

Gone Home 1DVD

Goodbye Deponia (1 DVD)

Gothic 3 1DVD

Gran Turismo 3

Gran Turismo 4

Gran Turismo Series 1.4

Grand Ages Rome Gold Edition 1DVD

Gravity Badgers (1 DVD)

GRID 2 2DVD

Grid 2DVD

Grid Autosport + High Texture Pack (5 DVD)

Grimm (1 DVD)

GTA 3 1DVD

GTA 4 Update 1.0.7.0 4DVD

GTA EFLC + V.1.1.24DVD

GTA Liberty City 2DVD

GTA San Andreas 1DVD

GUACAMELEE SUPER TURBO CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION (1 DVD)

Guitar Hero 3 - Hatred 1DVD 1DVD

Guitar Hero 3 1DVD

Guitar Hero Aero Smith 2DVD

Guitar Hero III Legend Of Rock 1DVD

GUITAR HERO WORLD TOUR 2DVD

GunHound Ex (1 DVD)

HALF LIFE 2 1DVD

Half Minute Hero Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy

Halo Spartan Assault + UPDATE 1 (1 DVD)

Hank Haney World Golf

Hank Haney World Golf - SKIDROW 2DVD

Happy Tree Friend 1DVD 1DVD

Hard Reset +

Hard Reset Extended Edition +

Hard To be A God

Harry Potter 7 2DVD

Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 2DVD

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 2DVD

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban

Harvest Moon Back To Nature 1DVD 1DVD

Haunted

Haunted Memories EP2 Welcome Home include Eps.1 (1 DVD)

Hearts of Iron 2 Complete (1 DVD)

Heaven the Game 1DVD

Heavy Fire Afghanistan 1DVD

Heavy Fire Shattered Spear 1DVD

Hegemony Rome The Rise of Caesar (1 DVD)

Helicopter Simulator Search and Rescue 1DVD

Hell Yeah - Wrath of the dead rabbit 1DVD

Helldorado 2DVD

Hellgate London v1.2 (2DVD)

Hen*tai 3D 1DVD

Hercules 1DVD

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Complete Edition (1DVD)

Heroes V - Hamer of fate 1DVD

Heroes V 1DVD

Hidden & Dangerous 2 Sabre Squadron 1DVD

Hidden Runaway 1DVD

High School Musical 3 Senior Year DANCE! (1 DVD)

History legends of war (1 DVD)

Hitman 1 - Codename 47

Hitman 2 - Silent Assassin

Hitman 3 - Contracts

Hitman Absolution - Professional Edition V.1.0.44.4.0 (4 DVD)

Hitman Absolution 3DVD

Hitman Blood money 1DVD

Hitman Sniper Challenge 1DVD

Home Mate 1DVD

Horizon (1 DVD)

Hot Wheels Worlds Best Driver (1DVD)

Hotel Giant 2 - V.1.10 (1 DVD)

Hotel Giant 2 1DVD

Hotline Miami 2.0.1.5 GOG 1DVD

House of the Dead 2 & 3 1DVD

How to Survive (1DVD)

Hoyle 2013 Card Puzzle and Board Games (1 DVD)

Humanity Asset (1 DVD)

Hunted The Demons Forge 3DVD

Hunters Trophy 2 America (1 DVD)

Hunting Unlimited 2011 1DVD

Huntsman - The Orphanage + UPDATE 1.03 (1DVD)

Hydrophobia Prophecy

Hyper Fighters (1 DVD)

HyperSonic 4-SKIDROW 1DVD

I Am alive 1DVD

I-Ninja 1DVD

iBomber.Attack-TiNYiSO 1DVD

Ice Age 2 1DVD

Ice Age 3 2DVD

Ice Age 4 1DVD

Icewind Dale

Icewind Dale II

Iesabel (1 DVD)

IGT Slots Miss Red 1DVD

IL-2 Sturmovik Complete Edition (2 DVD)

Impire 2013 Steam-Rip krackED-RG GameWorks 1DVD 1DVD

Impire_STEAM_RiP-GameWorks 1DVD

Infected The Twin Vaccine (1 DVD)

InFlux (1DVD)

Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition (6DVD)

Interact Play VR 1DVD

International Basketball Manager

Into The Dark 1DVD

Into The Dark Desura Edition (1DVD)

INVERSION 1DVD

Iron Man 1DVD

Iron Sky Invasion 1DVD

Iron Soul (1 DVD)

J.U.L.I.A AMONG THE STARS (1 DVD)

Jack Keane 2 The Fire Within (1 DVD)

Jade Empire Special Edition 2DVD

Jagged Alliance Collectors Bundle (1DVD)

James Bond 007 - Blood Stone

James Bond 007 - Quantum Of Solace

JAW UNLEASED 1DVD

Jazzpunk 1DVD

JEKY and HYDE 1DVD

JetFighter-2015 1DVD

joan arch 1DVD

Joe Danger (1 DVD)

Joe Danger 2 The Movie (1DVD)

Joe Danger 2 The Movie + UPDATE 2 + DLC (1DVD)

Joe Danger V.1.0.1 (1DVD)

Jolly-Rover-Special-Edition 1DVD

JUICED 2 1DVD

Jurassic Park the Game 1DVD

Jurassic_Park_-_Operation_Genesis 1DVD

JUST CAUSE 2 1DVD

kane & lynch 2DVD

Kane and Lynch 2 Dog Days 2DVD

Karateka-TiNYiSO 1DVD

Kentucky Route Zero Act I 1DVD

KickBeat Steam Edition (1 DVD)

Kill The Bad Guy (1 DVD)

Killer Instinct vs Mortal Kombat - Brutal Murderers 1DVD

Killer is Dead - Nightmare Edition (2 DVD)

King Arthur 2 4DVD

King Arthur Fallen Champions (2011) - SKIDROW 1DVD

King Arthur II Complete Edition V.1.1.08 4DVD

King Bounty The Legends 1DVD

King's Bounty Warriors of the North - Valhalla Edition + Ice & Fire DLC (1 DVD)

Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning 1DVD

Kings Bounty Crossworlds 1DVD

Kings Bounty Dark Side (1 DVD)

Kings Bounty.Warriors.of.The.North.Valhalla Edition + Ice & Fire DLC + UPDATE 1 (1 DVD)

Kung Fu Strike The Warriors Rise

KUNGFU PANDA 1DVD

Kungfu Strike 1DVD

L.A. Noire The Complete Edition 4DVD

LAND OF THE DEAD_ROAD TO FIDDLERS 1DVD

Lara Croft and The Guardian Light 1DVD

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (1 DVD)

Last Remnant 3DVD

Lead and Gold 1DVD

Left Behind 3 1DVD

Left For Dead 2 Full Edition V.2.1.1.0 (4 DVD)

Legacy of Kain Anthology (1 DVD)

Legacy Of Kain Chronicles 1DVD

Legend of Grimrock 2 (1 DVD)

Legendary 2DVD

Legends of Aethereus (1 DVD)

Legends of Dawn (1 DVD)

Legends of Pegasus - SKIDROW + UPDATE 2 1DVD

Legends of Persia (1 DVD)

LEGO Batman

LEGO Batman 3 - Beyond Gotham (2 DVD)

Lego Harry Potter 2DVD 2DVD

LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 +

LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 +

LEGO Indiana Jones

LEGO MARVEL Super Heroes (2 DVD)

Lego Pirates Of The Carribean 2DVD 2DVD

Lego Star Wars - The Complete Saga 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Lego Star Wars III The Clone Wars 2DVD 2DVD 2DVD

Leisure Larry 1DVD

Leviathan Warships 1DVD

Lichdom Battlemage (4 DVD)

Lifeless Planet (1 DVD)

Lili Child of Geos (1 DVD)

Lili Child of Geos + UPDATE 1 (1 DVD)

Lilly Looking Through (1 DVD)

Lionheart Kings Crusade Complete Edition 1DVD

Little Inferno 1DVD 1DVD

Little_Inferno_ENG 1DVD

LocoCycle (4 DVD)

Loki 1DVD

London Olympic 2012 2DVD

Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth 2 1DVD

Lord of the Rings War in the North 2DVD

Lord of the Rings - War of the Ring 1DVD

Lords of Football 1DVD

Lords of Xulima (1 DVD)

Lost Planet 2 3DVD

Lost Planet 3 (3 DVD)

Lost Planet Extreme 2DVD

Lost Via Domus (1DVD)

LOTR - The Rise Of Witch King - expansion 1DVD

LOTR Conquest 2DVD

Lucius-SKIDROW 1DVD

M.U.G.E.N Marvel vs DC

Mafia 2 2DVD 2DVD

Mafia 2 Include DLC 2DVD

Mafia II DLC - Joe's Adventures 1DVD

MAFIA II_JIMMS VENDETA 1DVD

Magic 2014 Duels of the Planeswalkers (1 DVD)

Magic 2015 (1 DVD)

Magic the Gathering 1DVD

Magicka - SKIDROW 1DVD

Magrunner 1DVD

Major League Baseball 2K10

Major League Baseball 2K11 +

Major League Baseball 2K12

Manhunter 1DVD

MARK LEUNG_REVENGE OF THE BITCH 1DVD

Mark Of the Ninja 1DVD

Mark of the Ninja Special Edition (1 DVD)

Marlow Briggs (1 DVD)

Mars War Logs v.1736 (1 DVD)

MARVEL ACTION PACK 1DVD

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1DVD

Marvel vs Capcom 2 ultimate 1DVD

Mass Effect 2 DLC's - Alt Appearance,Arrival,Hammerhead,Lair the Shadow broken,Overlord 1DVD

Mass Effect 2DVD

Mass Effect 3 - Complete Edition All DLC 5DVD

Mass Effect 3 3DVD

Master Reboot (1DVD)

Masters of The World Geopolitical Simulator 3 V.5.14 (1DVD)

Max Payne 1 & 2 + Kungfu Edition + Updates & Expansions

Max Payne 2 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

MAX PAYNE 3 7DVD

Max The Curse of Brotherhood (1 DVD)

Medal of Honor - Airborne +

Medal of Honor - Allied Assault Complete +

Medal of Honor - Pacific Assault

MEDAL OF HONOR WARFIGHTER 4DVD

MEDIEVAL II TOTAL WAR - Complete Edition 2DVD

Medieval Total War - Complete Edition (1 DVD)

MegaMan X-8 1DVD

Memento Mori - V.1.7.5.827 (1DVD)

Memento Mori 2 (1 DVD)

Memento Mori Collectors Edition (1 DVD)

Memoria (2 DVD)

Men Of War - Assault Squad GOTY 1DVD

Men Of War - V.1.17.5 (1 DVD)

Men of War Assault Squad 2 + UPDATE 3.033.0 (1 DVD)

Men of War Red Tide (1 DVD)

Men.of.War.Vietnam-RELOADED 1DVD

Men.of.War.Vietnam.Special.Edition.MULTi6-PROPHET 2DVD

Mercenaries 2 2DVD

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance (7 DVD)

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Substance 1DVD

Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes (1 DVD)

Metal Slug PC Collection 1DVD

Metro 2033 2DVD

METRO 2033 REDUX + UPDATE 2 (3 DVD)

Metro Last Light + UPDATE 1.0.0.14 + 9 DLC (3 DVD)

Metro Last Light + UPDATE 5 + DLC

Metro Last Light Redux + Update 2 (3 DVD)

Miasmata 1DVD

Microsoft Flight Simulator X deluxe 2DVD

Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor + HD TEXTURE PACK (13 DVD)

Might and Magic Heroes VI Complete Edition V.2.1.0 3DVD

Might and Magic X Legacy + UPDATE 1 + 3 new dungeons (2 DVD)

Minecraft 1.4.6 by TeamExtremeMc.com 1DVD

Miner.Wars.2081-FLT 1DVD

Mini Motor Racing EVO 1DVD

Mini Ninja 1DVD

Mining and Tunneling Simulation (1 DVD)

Mirrors Edge V.1.0.1.0 (2 DVD)

Molester Train 1 1DVD

Molester Train 2

Monday Night Combat 1DVD

MONKEY ISLAND 2_LE CHUCK REVENGE 1DVD

Monochroma (2 DVD)

Monopoly Here and Now Edition 1DVD

Monster Minis Extreme Off Road v1.04 (1 DVD)

Montagues Mount (1DVD)

Moorhuhn Tiger & Chicken (1 DVD)

Moorhuhn.Kart.3 1DVD

MORROWIND 2011 1DVD

Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition (2 DVD)

Mortal Kombat Special Edition 1DVD

Moto GP 2008 1DVD

Moto Gp-Ultimate 6 Technology 3

Moto Racer 3 Gold Edition

MotoGP 13 (2DVD)

MotoGP 14 (4 DVD)

Motor Rock (1 DVD)

Mount & Blade 1DVD

Mount and Blade Warband - Viking Conquest (1 DVD)

Mountain Bike - Adrenaline 1DVD

MouseCraft (1 DVD)

Ms Splosion Man 1DVD

Murdered Soul Suspect (3 DVD)

Musou Orrochi Z 1DVD

MX Vs ATV 2DVD

MXGP - RELOADED (1 DVD)

Mystery Case Files 4 Madame Fate 1DVD

Nail'd

Naissance 1DVD

Nancy Drew Ghost of Thornton Hall (1DVD)

Nancy Drew The Captive Curse 1DVD

Napoleon Total War - Complete Edition (3DVD)

Napoleon Total War 3DVD 3DVD 3DVD

Narco Terror (1 DVD)

Naruto Battle Arena 2 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Naruto Dragon Blade Chronicles 1DVD

Naruto Naiteki Kensei R1 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution (2 DVD)

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 Full Burst (2 DVD)

Naruto Shippuuden Gekitou Ninja Taisen Special 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Naruto Storm Mugen 1DVD

Naruto Storm Mugen 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Nascar

Nascar 14 (1 DVD)

Nascar The Game 2013 V.1.0.0.1 (1DVD)

Nasty Neighbors No Picnic for Celebrity + Hector Badge of Carnage Episode 1 1DVD

National Geographic The Challenge 1DVD

NBA 2012 2DVD 2DVD 2DVD

NBA 2K10 +

NBA 2K13 2DVD

NBA 2K14 (2 DVD)

NBA 2K15 (11 DVD)

Need For Speed Carbon 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2DVD

Need For Speed Most Wanted 2012 - v.1.5.0.0 + DLC (2 DVD)

Need For Speed Most Wanted Black Edition 2DVD

Need For Speed Pro Street 2DVD 2DVD 2DVD

Need For Speed Rivals + UPDATE 1.3.0.0 (2 DVD)

Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed 2DVD 2DVD 2DVD

Need For Speed The Run 5DVD

Need For Speed Undercover 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Need for Speed Underground 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Need For speed Underground 2 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Need For Speed WORLD 2010 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Neighbour From Hell 2in1 + Rhythm Zone (1 DVD)

Neighbours From Hell II 1DVD

Neighbours From Hell V 1DVD

Never Alone (1 DVD)

Neverwinter Night 2 Platinum Collection 4DVD

Neverwinter Night 2 Storm Of Zehir 2DVD

Neverwinter Nights 2 - Mask of the Betrayer 1DVD

Neverwinter Nights 2 2DVD

Neverwinter Nights 2 Complete Edition (2 DVD)

Neverwinter Nights Deluxe + All Expansion +

Nicolas Eymerich The Inquisitor Book I - The Plagu (1DVD)

Nights Into Dreams 1DVD

Nihilumbra (1 DVD)

Ninja Blade 1DVD

NKPro 6

Obscure 1DVD

Obsecure II 1DVD

Ocean City Racing 1DVD

Octodad Dadliest Catch (1 DVD)

Oddworld Strangers Wrath HD 1DVD

Of Orcs and Men 1DVD

Old Village Simulator 1962 (1DVD)

Omerta City of Gangsters - The Japanese Incentive (1 DVD)

Omerta City of Gangsters-FLT 1DVD

Omsi Bus Simulator 2012 1DVD

Onimusha III 1DVD

Open Sea Fishing The Simulation 1DVD

Operation Flash Point Dragon Rissing 1DVD

Operation Flashpoint Red River 1DVD

Oppai Slider 2 1DVD

Orc Attack Flatulent Rebellion (1 DVD)

Orcs Must Die 2 2DVD

Order Of War (1DVD)

Origins - Elders of Time Platinum Edition (1 DVD)

ORION Dino Horde (1 DVD)

Out of the Park Baseball 15 (1 DVD)

Outlast + UPDATE 1.0.11774.0 (1 DVD)

Outlast + Whistleblower DLC (1 DVD)

Overclocked - A Story of Violence V.3.0.1.0 (2 DVD)

OverLord 1DVD

Overlord II 2DVD

Pac Man and The Ghostly Adventures (1DVD)

PAC-MAN MUSEUM (1 DVD)

Painkiller - Hell.and.Damnation + DLC's 1DVD

Painkiller - Pandemonium 3DVD

Painkiller - Recurring Evil 1DVD

Pandora Eclipse of Nashira (1 DVD)

Pandora First Contact (1 DVD)

Panzer Tactics HD (1 DVD)

Papo And Yo 1DVD

Paradise 1DVD

Paraworld 1DVD

Party.of.Sin-SKIDROW 1DVD

Patrician IV 1DVD

Patrician IV Gold Edition (1DVD)

Patrician IV Rise of a Dynasty (2011) - SKIDROW 1DVD

Payday 2 - V.1.4.2 + DLC = 4DVD AUTORUN

Payday.The.Heist-RELOADED 1DVD

PES 2011 Patch 4.0 +

PESEdit.com 2013 Patch 2.8 1DVD

PESEDIT.com 2013 PATCH 3.0 1DVD

Pet Sport Dog Playground 1DVD

Pinball FX2 1DVD

Pineview Drive (1 DVD)

Pirate of black Cove 1DVD

Pirates of Black Cove - Gold Edition (1DVD)

Pirates of the Caribbean - At Worlds End 1DVD

Planet Alcatraz 1DVD

Plant vs zombie 1DVD

Playboy Mansion 1DVD

Point Blank Offline 1DVD

Point Blank Online 1DVD

Pok*er Night 2 1DVD

Police Force 2 (1DVD)

Pool Nation (1 DVD)

Portable Game House 2DVD

Portal 2 2DVD

portal 3 1 DVD

Port_Royale_3_Treasure_Island-FLT 1DVD

Post Master Simulator (1 DVD)

Postal 2 Complete (1 DVD)

Postal III (3 DVD)

Power Ranger Super Legends 1DVD

Praetorians_Proper-iMMERSiON 1DVD

Premiere Manager 2013

Pressure 1DVD

Primal Fears 1DVD

Prime World Defenders v1.2 (1 DVD)

Primordia-SKIDROW 1DVD

Prince Of Persia 2DVD

Prince Of Persia 2DVD 2DVD 2DVD

PRINCE OF PERSIA FORGETTEN SAND 2DVD

Prince Of Persia Sands of Time 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Prince Of Persia The Forgotten Sands 2DVD 2DVD 2DVD

Prince Of Persia Trilogy

Prince Of Persia Two Throne 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Prince Of Persia Warrior Within 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Prison Break

Prison tycoon 4

Private Infiltrator (1DVD)

Pro Cycling Manager 2012

Pro Cycling Manager 2013 V.1.0.2.0 (2DVD)

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (PES 2008) 1DVD

Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (PES 2009) 2DVD

Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 (PES 2012) ENGLISH include PES EDIT 3.2 include Team Indonesia dan Malaysia 2DVD

Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 (PES 2013) + PES EDIT 6.0 (2 DVD)

Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 (PES 2014) + PES EDIT 4.4 (2 DVD)

Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 - World Challenge (2 DVD)

Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 + UPDATE 1.02 + SUNPATCH 1.0 (2 DVD)

Pro Rugby Manager 2015 (1 DVD)

Professional Farmer 2014 (1 DVD)

Prototype

PROTOTYPE 2 2DVD

psp games 1DVD

Psych (1 DVD)

Q U B E Directors Cut (1 DVD)

QVADRA (1 DVD)

Race Injection 2DVD

Racing Manager 2014 (1 DVD)

RAGE Complete Edition (5 DVD)

Rage The Scorchers v1.3 + DLC's 4DVD

Ragnarok Offline -rAthena 1DVD

Rain Blood Chronicles Mirage (1 DVD)

Rainbow Six Vegas 3 1DVD

Rambo The Video Game (1 DVD)

Rapelay 1DVD

Ravensword Shadowlands (1 DVD)

Rayman Legends (2 DVD)

Rayman Origins 1DVD

Real Girlfriend 1DVD

Real Madrid The Game

Real Warfare 1242 v.2.2.3 (1DVD)

Real Word Racing + + Amsterdam DLC & Oakland DLC (1DVD)

Real World Racing Z - REPACK (1 DVD)

Realm Of Arkania Blade Of Destiny (1 DVD)

RealMyst Masterpiece Edition (1 DVD)

Recovery - Search and Rescue Simulation (1 DVD)

Red Faction 2DVD

Red Faction Armageddon + Path to War DLC - SKiDROW 3DVD

RED JOHNSON CHRONICLES 1DVD

Red Johnson's Chronicles

Remember Me + UPDATE 1.0.1 2DVD

Renegade Ops 1DVD

Renegade Ops Collection (1 DVD)

Rescue 2013 Everyday Heroes 1DVD

Resident Evil 1 & 3 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Resident Evil 4 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Resident Evil 5 2DVD 2DVD 2DVD

Resident Evil 6 + UPDATE 5 4DVD

Resident Evil Racoon City Operation 2DVD

Resident Evil Remake 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Resident Evil Revelations 2DVD

Resident Evil The Umbrella Chronicles (1 DVD)

Restaurant Empire 2 Full PC Game [www.findwarez.org] 1DVD

Retro_City_Rampage_v1.09_MULTI5-VACE 1DVD

Revolution Under Siege 1DVD

Ride to Hell Retribution (2DVD)

Ridge Racer Unbounded Bundle (1DVD)

Rig n Roll Gold Edition 1DVD

RIPD The Game (1DVD)

Rise Of Nations Gold Edition 1DVD

Rise of Nations: Extended Edition (1 DVD)

Rise Of The Triad + UPDATE 1 (2 DVD)

Rise of Venice + Beyond the Sea DLC (1 DVD)

Risen 1DVD

Risen 2 1DVD

Risen 2: Dark Waters Complete Editon V.1.0.1210.0 2DVD

Risen 3 - Titan Lords (2 DVD)

Rock of Ages - V.1.11 (1 DVD)

Rocks Keep (1DVD)

Rocksmith 2014 (2DVD)

Rocksmith 2DVD

Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 1DVD

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI 1DVD

Royal.Defense.v1.0-TE 1DVD

Rugby Challenge 2 (1DVD)

Runner2 Future Legend of Rhythm Alien 1DVD

Ryse Son of Rome + Update 2 (7 DVD)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Call of pryphat 1DVD

S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Clear Sky 2DVD

Sacred 3 + DLC (6 DVD)

Sacred Citadel 1DVD

Sail Simulator 2010 1DVD 1DVD 1DVD

Saints Row 2 V.2.0.0 (2 DVD)

Saints Row 4 + PATCH 8 + 29 DLC (3 DVD)

Saints Row The Third - The Full Package + 20DLC (2DVD)

Salvation Prophecy v.1.0.5 (1 DVD)

Sam and Max Season 3 The Devils Playhouse - FLT 2DVD

Samurai II Vengeance 1DVD

Samurai Warrior 2 1DVD

Sanctum 1DVD

Sanctum 2

Sanctum 2 - Complete Pack include 5DLC (1 DVD)

Sang Froid Tales of Werewolves V.1.1 1DVD

Saw 1DVD

SBK 09 - World Superbike Championship 2009

SBK 2011 - World Superbike Championship 2011

SBK Generations

SBK X Superbike World Championship 1DVD

Scarface the World is Yours 1DVD

SCARY GIRL 1DVD

School Mate 1DVD

School Mate 2 1DVD

School Mate Sweets 1DVD

SchoolV1 1DVD

Scooby-Doo and the Spooky Swamp

Scooby-Doo First Frights +

Scooby-Doo First Frights 1DVD

Scribblenauts Unmasked A DC Comics Adventure (1 DVD)

Scribblenauts.Unlimited-SKIDROW 1DVD

Secret Files Sam Peters (1 DVD)

Section 8 1DVD

Section 8 Prejudice 2DVD

Seduce Me 1DVD

Sega Rally

SENGOKU 1DVD

Sensei 2 1DVD

Serious Sam 3 BFE V.147879 + DLC 1DVD

Serious Sam HD 2010 Second Encounter 1DVD

Seventh Kingdom Conquest 1DVD

Sexy Beach 2 1DVD

Sexy Beach 2 Expansion 1DVD

Shadow Harvest - Phantom Ops 1DVD

Shadow Warrior (2 DVD)

Shadow Warrior Special Edition (2 DVD)

Shadow.of.the.Game-TiNYiSO 1DVD

Shadowrun 1DVD

Shadowrun Dragonfall Directors Cut (2 DVD)

Shadowrun Returns (1DVD)

Shadowrun Returns V.1.0.3 (1 DVD)

Shadows of the Vatican Act I Greed HD (1DVD)

Shadows on the Vatican - Act II Wrath (1 DVD)

Shank 1DVD

SHANK 2 1DVD

Shaun White Skateboarding SKIDROW 2DVD

Sherlock Holmes - The Awakened (Remastered Edition) (1 DVD)

Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishments (3 DVD)

Sherlock Holmes versus Arsene Lupin ( NEMESIS ) (1 DVD)

Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper (1 DVD)

Sherlock vs Ripp 2DVD

Ship Simulator Extreme 2010 1DVD

SHOGUN 2 - TOTAL WAR 4DVD

Shoot The Robot 1DVD

Shrek Forever After 2DVD

Sid Meier's Pirates 1DVD

Sid Meiers Civilization Beyond Earth (2 DVD)

Silent Hill 2 1DVD

Silent Hill 3 1DVD

Silent Hill 4 The Room 1DVD

Silent Hill 5 Home Coming 1DVD

Silent Hill Homecoming (1 DVD)

Silent Hill Shattered Memories 1DVD

Silent Hunter 2 WWII U-Boat Combat Simulator 1DVD

Silent Hunter 5 1DVD

SIM CITY SOCIETES 1DVD

SimCity 2013 + ALL DLC + UPDATE 10.1 - OFFLINE (1 DVD)

SimCity Deluxe Edition (include Cites of Tomorrow) 1 DVD

Sims City 4 1DVD

Sinemora

Singles 2 Triple Trouble 1DVD

Singles2(TrymediaFix) 1DVD

Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion - Stellar Phenomena (1 DVD)

Skateboard Park - Tycoon 1DVD

Skateboard Park 3 + Ski Resort + Snowboard Park Tycoon 1DVD

Ski Park Tycoon 2014 (1 DVD)

Skullgirls + UPDATE 082413 (1 DVD)

Sleeping Dogs Complete Edition V.2.1.437044 ( Include 30 DLC ) (3 DVD)

Sleeping Dogs Definitive (3 DVD)

Sleeping Dogs v1.9 - All DLC 2DVD

Slender 2012 1DVD

Sniper Elite 3 + 5DLC + Extra Features (4 DVD)

Sniper Elite Berlin 1DVD

Sniper Elite Nazi Zombie Army 2 (1DVD)

Sniper Elite v2 2DVD

Sniper Ellite 1DVD

Sniper Ghost Warrior - Gold Edition 2DVD

Sniper Ghost Warrior 2 + DLC Siberian Strike

Sniper_Elite_Nazi_Zombie_Army-FLT 1DVD

Snowcat Simulator 2011 1DVD

Sonic 2 2

Sonic 2 DX +

Sonic All Star Racing - Transformed 2DVD

SONIC GENERATION 2DVD

Sonic Heroes 1DVD

Sonic Heroes DX Adventure 1DVD

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Eps. 2 1DVD

Sonic Unleashed 1DVD

South Park The Stick of Truth + UPDATE 1 + 2DLC (1 DVD)

Space Ace Remastered (1 DVD)

Space Ark (1 DVD)

Space Hulk (1 DVD)

Space Hulk Harbinger of Torment (1 DVD)

Space Rangers HD: A War Apart (1 DVD)

Spec Ops The Line 2DVD

Special Transport Simulator 2013 = 1DVD AUTORUN

SpellForce 2 Demons Of The Past (2 DVD)

SpellForce 2 Demons Of The Past + UPDATE 1 (2 DVD)

Spellforce 2 Faith in Destiny v2.26 Incl DLC Packs-FLTDOX 1DVD 1DVD

Spellforce_2_Faith_in_Destiny_v2.26_Incl_DLC_Packs-FLTDOX 1DVD

Spider-Man Friend or Foe -RELOADED 1DVD

SpiderMan - Friend or Foe

SpiderMan - Shattered Dimension

SpiderMan - Web of Shadow

SpiderMan 2

Spiderman Shattered Dimension 2DVD

Spiderman Web of Shadow 1DVD

SpinTires (1 DVD)

Splinter Cell Blacklist - V.1.01 (5 DVD)

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE 1DVD

SPORE Complete Edition (2 DVD)

Spore-RELOADED 1DVD

Stalker Call Of Pripyat v.1.6.02 (1DVD)

Stalker Clear Sky + Clear Sky Complete MOD PATCH (1DVD)

Star Trek 2013 2DVD

Star Trek Elite Force 2 +

Star Trek Legacy 1DVD

Star Wars - Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast

Star Wars -Knight of the Old Republic 2DVD

Star Wars Battlefront 2 v1.1 1DVD

Star Wars Empire at War Complete Edition (1 DVD)

Star wars the force unleashed 2 2DVD

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Star Wolves 3 - Civil War - V.1.12 (1 DVD)

StarCraft II 2DVD

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StayDead 1DVD

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Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha + III 3rd Strike 1DVD

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Styx Master of Shadows (2 DVD)

Subway_Surfers 1DVD

Super Mario Brawl

Super Meat Boy 1DVD

Super Street Fighter IV 2DVD

Super Time Force Ultra v1.01 (1 DVD)

Supreme Commander - Forged Alliance 2DVD

Supreme Commander - Forged Alliance V.1.5.3599 (1 DVD )

Supreme Commander - V.1.1.3280 (2 DVD)

Supreme Commander 2 2DVD

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SURGEON SIMULATOR ANNIVERSARY EDITION (1 DVD)

SWAT 4 1DVD

Sword of the Stars - Ground Pounders (1 DVD)

Syndicate 2DVD

Syndicate 3DVD

Take On Mars - v.0.8.0323 (1 DVD)

TAKEDA 3 1DVD

Takedown Red Sabre (1 DVD)

Tales from the Borderlands (1 DVD)

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out of the Shadows + UPDATE 1 (1 DVD)

Terminator 3 War of The Machines 1DVD

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation 2DVD

Test Drive - Ferrari 1DVD

Test Drive 2 Unlimited 2DVD

Test Drive Ferrari 6 Legends

The Adventures of Aladdin 1DVD

The Adventures of Tintin The Secret of the Unicorn 3DVD

The Amazing Spider Man 2 (2 DVD)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2DVD

The Banner Saga (1 DVD)

The Book of Unwritten Tales The Critter Chronicles Deluxe Edition (2 DVD)

The Bureau XCOM Declassified + Hanger 6 R And D DLC(3 DVD)

The Cat Lady ISO-RAiN 1DVD

The Cave 1DVD

The Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena 2DVD

The Club 2DVD

The Da Vinci Code Conpiracy

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The Darkness 2 2DVD

The Darkness II Limited Edition (2 DVD)

The Elder Of Scroll 5 - Skyrim 2DVD

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The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim + DawnGuard + Heartfire + Dragonborn +High Res 4DVD 4DVD

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The ElderScrolls V Skyrim (ONLY UPDATE) Update.12-RELOADED 1DVD

The Evil Within + UPDATE 1.03 (`10 DVD)

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The Fairy Legends Of Avalon 1DVD

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THE GODFATHER 2 2DVD

The Goodlife 1DVD

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing + UPDATE 1.1.25 + 6DLC (3DVD)

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The Journeyman Project - Pegasus Prime (1 DVD)

The King Of Fighters Forever 1DVD

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THE LAST REMNANT 3DVD

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The Legend of Korra (1 DVD)

The LEGO Movie Videogame (2 DVD)

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The Matrix The Patch Of Neo 1DVD

The Movies - Stun & Effect 1DVD

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The Sims 1 - Complete Collection 8 in 1

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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (4 DVD)

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Total War ROME 2 Caesar in Gaul include 6DLC + UPDATE 9 (4 DVD)

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Trials Evolution Gold Edition + UPDATE 1.0.5 1DVD

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Watchmen - The End Is Nigh

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Waveform

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Zooloretto

Zuma 23 Best Games Collection +

Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 + UPDATE 1.02 + SUNPATCH 1.0 (2 DVD)

2015-01-08T07:31:00.002-08:00

It's the same question every year: which is better, PES or FIFA? For the last five years, or thereabouts, the answer has been near-unanimously FIFA, with its greater depth and sophistication trumping the comparatively shallow game coming from Konami's camp. That wasn't always the case, of course. PES' PlayStation 2 heyday was so glorious that it has long held a sentimental place in the hearts of those that were there to experience first hand the suspect penalties, expertly crafted runs, and the agony of defeat at a stoppage time goal.
Sadly, most of those players migrated to FIFA, thanks to the quality of the football on offer being, quite simply, superior. Wonderful it is, then, that the PES vs. FIFA question is once again one worth raising without a hint of satire or cynicism. PES 2015 is not only the best game the series has delivered for many years, it promotes and prioritises a form of football that is, welcomingly, very different to that of FIFA 15--and variety across games is never a bad thing.

Manchester United vs. London FC... the lack of official licenses for all teams remains irritating.

The considered approach to football on offer means unorthodox players like Thomas Muller are more effective here than they are in FIFA.

PES promotes a tactical and technical approach to football. If FIFA 15 is the embodiment of the Premier League, all action, speed, and ferocity, then PES 15 is the Spanish La Liga, more considered, subtle and delicate. Success is less about bursting through the midfield and delivering a killer through ball to your striker, and more about using the ball's movement to disrupt the opposition's shape, and create space for your teammates to work in. As such, it pays to have a basic understanding of how different formations create unique passing lanes, and set up situations in which you outnumber the other team in certain areas of the pitch.
Not that you need to have the footballing brain of Jose Mourinho to succeed, but some degree of knowledge is of undeniable benefit. Primarily, it's the quality of the defensive players that makes life difficult; the AI, especially on higher difficulties, is very adept at positioning itself in a way that limits your options. This applies not only to the defenders themselves, but also to midfielders that drop deeper when their team is without the ball. That means quickly getting used to attacking two disciplined lines of defenders, making it essential that you retain possession long enough to make an impact.

This makes PES 2015 a slower brand of football, which, predictably, results in fewer goals being scored in matches. This can be frustrating, especially if you're playing in a league or cup competition and consistently find that games are ending 0-0 or 1-0. Raising the match time from the default 10-minutes to 15-minutes helps immensely in this regard. Not only does this give you more time to score, but it allows you to express yourself calmly and methodically; there's far less panicking and resorting to hopeful shots from 35 yards, or forever pinging the ball to Ronaldo, Messi or whichever star you happen to have (if any).
Giving possession to Ballon D'Or contenders such as these can still work wonders, though. While the core of the game this year is about using space efficiently, the top players still perform like top players. The difference is that you have to make better use of their entire suite of abilities. Simply dribbling or pulling off long strings of tricks doesn't lead to many goal scoring opportunities, the feints and spins linked to the right stick not acting as some kind of magic wand with which to win games. Using your best players as a pivot around which the rest of your team flows is fine, but success doesn't come from the ability of an individual.

Depending on your team of choice, building attacks from the back is generally the safest option, especially if you can open gaps behind the opposition.

PES used to be perfect for those late, hazy nights where everyone is a little too jolly and looking for something simple to play. That isn't the case anymore. While not entirely inaccessible--lower difficulty settings remain terribly easy--PES does require more concentration than the vast majority of football games past and present; it's not a party game.
Further highlighting the idea that PES is aimed more at football nerds than casual fans are the included game modes, with the official licenses for the UEFA Champions League, Copa Libertadores, Asian Champions Leaguem, and various minor league competitions present. This is not a game for those only interested in Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, or Arsenal vs. Chelsea; this is a game set on trying to represent football as it exists around the world.
The contradiction to that, of course, comes the fact that huge swathes of official licenses are missing. While this doesn't negatively impact the gameplay, it does dampen the overarching levels of excitement and charm. Manchester Utd, for instance, are the only officially licensed team from the Premier League. They're joined by the likes of Merseyside Red (Liverpool), London FC (Chelsea) and West Midlands Village (Aston Villa).
All of the players have the correct names and, in most cases, accurately modeled faces, but playing with a licensed team versus an unlicensed team disrupts your suspension of disbelief. Most destructive is the complete absence of the German Bundesliga, with Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen and Schalke unceremoniously included in the Other European Teams category. Borussia Dortmund are not here at all, with the likes of Marco Reus showing up only in the German national team.

Core menu design leaves much to be desired, doing nothing to communicate the passion and love fans have for the sport.

Matches can be simulated in Coach Mode, allowing you to watch the game and make substitutions and tactical changes where necessary.

The Master League career mode remains the primary time sink for single-player games, although it will be interesting to see how well the Ultimate Team-like myClub performs after a couple of months of play, and whether it even comes close to becoming the go-to option. More interesting than those, though, is the Role Control idea, which can be optionally assigned to a multiplayer game. This allows players on the same team to take control of entire defensive, midfield, or attacking units, rather than randomly switch to whichever player is closest to the ball. The result is a greater sense of involvement in the bigger picture; the fact that you're in control of a specific group allows you to work with your co-op partner in a much more meaningful and controlled manner. You still control only one player at a time, but only those that are part of your unit. It's an idea all football games should include.
Other details work less well. Menus remain ugly and dull, which is a problem that this series has never properly addressed, with predictable grey boxes and boorish black text doing little to get you excited or engaged. English commentary is similarly sleep-inducing, comprised mainly of reeling off player names and repeating the same descriptions of actions that you heard in previous matches. In keeping with the lack of licenses, the frills and accessories adorning the core game are workmanlike at best.
The answer, then: FIFA or PES? If you're looking for something fast-paced, exciting and guaranteed to give you goals, then FIFA is for you. If you're looking to delve more deeply into passing, movement and working out how to break teams down, plump for PES. If football games are the only thing you play, it's worth owning both in a bid to satisfy every mood. Most importantly, though, is knowing that PES 2015 is not inferior to FIFA 15. That in itself represents a huge step forward for a series that, for a time, looked as though it had no chance whatsoever of getting back to digital football's elite table.

Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes (1 DVD)

2015-01-08T07:29:00.002-08:00

At the southern tip of Cuba, along a rocky, wind-battered coastline, lies Camp Omega. Here, prisoners of war are beaten, tortured, and brutally interrogated, all in the name of protecting the interests of the United States of America. Sound familiar? It’s no accident that this grim place draws close parallels with Guantanamo Bay. Despite its obvious fetishism for weapons and the military, the MGS series has always been anti-war, and this is writer/director Hideo Kojima’s most provocative statement yet.
Prisoners in orange jumpsuits, black bags pulled over their heads, cower in cages as rats scurry around their feet. Spotlights shine from towers through pounding rain, always watching. Armed guards, who seem almost as miserable as the detainees, patrol the base, their raincoats billowing in the howling wind. It’s an overwhelmingly bleak, but powerfully evocative setting—and it’s the centrepiece of Ground Zeroes, a single-level prologue to the forthcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
You are Big Boss, a legendary soldier and former CIA operative who, after being betrayed by the US government, forms his own private army. Two prisoners are being held captive in Camp Omega, and he needs them alive. This, like previous entries in the series, is a stealth game. Ideally you’ll want to sneak into the base, extract the prisoners, then escape without alerting anyone. But that’s just one of many ways to complete the mission, and it’s this freedom that makes Ground Zeroes worth spending money on, despite the fact that, at first glance, it seems to be little more than a demo.

You’ll see the credits roll and you’ll think, is that it? But then you go back to the main menu and notice that you’re at 8% completion. Clearing the main mission unlocks four more that alter the camp’s layout, enemy patrol patterns, weather, and time of day, creating an entirely new set of challenges. In one mission you have to identify and assassinate two war criminals. Another sees you destroying anti-air guns to pave the way for an airstrike. They might not sound that interesting on paper, but it’s the sheer number of ways to approach each objective that makes Ground Zeroes special.
While Metal Gear Solid games are typically story-heavy, the focus here is squarely on the stealth. Except for intro and outro cut-scenes—the former of which makes atmospheric use of a Joan Baez protest song, reminding us of the game’s 1970s setting—all of your time in Camp Omega is spent playing. It’s a remarkably detailed, interactive world, filled with ways to evade, distract, or subdue enemies.

Big Boss prepares to infiltrate Camp Omega.

The small army of Marines who guard the base feel like people, not automated drones. There’s an impressive amount of reactivity, and they respond to suspicious noises or malfunctioning security cameras with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. If the alarm sounds, they’ll work together intelligently to surround you and pin you down. They follow set routines, but sometimes they’ll surprise you by suddenly looking over their shoulder or sneezing, giving you a split second to dash safely past.
How you reach the prisoners and carry them to safety is left entirely to your imagination. A deep ranking system rates your performance based on how quickly, quietly, and efficiently you complete the mission, and you earn extra points for things like not killing anyone or not triggering any alarms. You can dumbly charge through the majority of the game with your guns blazing, but the fun (and challenge) lies in learning the map, exploiting the systems, and outsmarting the AI to get the best possible score. It’ll take you a while to achieve the ultimate S rank on every mission.

PERFORMANCE & SETTINGS

Reviewed on GeForce GTX 970, Intel i5-3570K @ 3.40GHz, 16GB RAM
Graphics options Borderless fullscreen, vertical sync, frame rate lock, model detail, texture filtering, shadows, lighting, SSAO, effects
Remappable controls Keyboard and mouse only, but gamepad users can choose between four different control schemes
Gamepad support Yes
Other Native 4K support

On my GTX 970 (4GB) review PC, the game maintains a solid 60fps on ‘extra high’ settings at 1080p. On my HD 7850 (2GB) at home, I had to knock it down to ‘high’ to achieve the same frame rate.

I tested the game in 4K using a Samsung U28D590D UHD monitor, and while it looked impressively sharp, the dip in FPS wasn’t worth it.

Overall, this is a great port. Kojima Productions’ new Fox engine was designed with PC in mind, and it shows. Minor object pop-in aside, I had no issues with crashing, frame drops, bugs, or anything else. It ran perfectly on both my work and home PCs.

The camp is big, and a testing ground for The Phantom Pain’s open-world stealth, which is a first for the MGS series. But it’s small enough that, after a few hours, you’ll have a fairly accurate map of it in your head. It’s a brilliantly designed space, and fifteen hours in, I’m still finding new ways to navigate it. There are vents to crawl through, walkways to sneak across, towers to climb, and roaming trucks to hide in the back of. It’s as rich a systems-based stealth game as Deus Ex, minus the RPG elements.
Ground Zeroes is, really, a proof of concept for a newer, more modern take on the series’ established stealth. It retains that distinct Metal Gear Solid feel, but with tighter, more responsive controls. Anyone who played the old games will recall the pain of wrestling with the clumsy three-step stand/crouch/prone button. Mercifully, this is gone, and you can now transition seamlessly into a crawl/crouch from a run/walk. Push up against a vertical surface and you’ll lean into it, allowing you to peek over to tag guards. It’s the first Metal Gear game where movement actually feels intuitive. By confining you to this single, focused space, the game lets you really drill down into its systems. Learning and mastering its intricacies is deeply satisfying, if you’re willing to put the hours in.
The controls are still slightly idiosyncratic in places, though. You have to play Twister with your fingers to simultaneously hold a guard up and interrogate him, for example. But this is part of the deal in a Kojima game. The mouse and keyboard controls are fine, but like all third-person games, you’ll benefit from using a pad. It’s clear the game has been designed with a controller in mind, and the analogue stick is used to control the speed of Big Boss’s movements. Nudge it slightly and you’ll almost tip-toe, which is essential for creeping up on guards without alerting them. You can achieve the same effect by holding the control key, but it feels more intuitive using the stick.

The rain-slicked cliffs that line the edges of the camp are a perfect vantage point for scouting before you begin your infiltration. Using zoomable binoculars you can tag enemies Far Cry-style, and a directional microphone lets you listen in on their conversations, revealing clues about where the prisoners might be being held. It pays to be methodical, as tagged guards will be permanently marked by a HUD icon, even from a great distance. This is useful, because the large, open nature of the map makes keeping tabs on every guard and the direction they’re facing basically impossible.
But, inevitably, you’re going to get spotted. If a guard catches a brief glimpse of you, he’ll come and search your last known position, radioing his commander to say he’s seen someone suspicious. In this situation it’s best to let him finish and report back with the all-clear before you take him out, otherwise more soldiers will be sent to investigate. At night they’ll shine their torches at any unusual movement they see, which can expose you. On normal difficulty you can linger in an enemy’s line of sight, from a distance, for a good few seconds, but they’re much more perceptive on hard.

Raiden makes a strictly non-canon cameo appearance.

It’s when the enemy gets a good, long, uninterrupted look at you that they’ll enter combat mode, telegraphed by an exclamation mark above their heads and a shrieking brrring sound that Metal Gear Solid fans will be all-too familiar with. This will put the entire base on alert, and your best option is to run and hide. You can fight back, but reinforcements will arrive if you start getting trigger happy. Generous checkpointing lets you return to an earlier state if you mess up, but this will affect your final score. Evading and adapting is the most enjoyable way to deal with an alert.
Sneak up on an enemy and you can interrogate them, either by grabbing them or holding them up and demanding they drop their gun. They’ll reveal the locations of hidden weapons and tag nearby enemies for you, then you can choke them unconscious or execute them with your knife—but make sure you hide the body. Stunned enemies will eventually wake up and sound the alarm, so it’s best to fire a tranq dart at them before you move on.
They’ll also mark XOF patches on your map, nine of which are hidden around the camp. They’re worth finding, because they unlock two very silly bonus missions—Deja Vu and Jamais Vu—that have been designed with fans in mind. These were previously PlayStation and Xbox exclusives, but on PC we get both.

Deja Vu sees you recreating key scenes from the Shadow Moses Incident from the first Metal Gear Solid. It’s a shameless parade of callbacks and easter eggs with a quiz at the end. If you’ve never played the game, you’ll find it all a bit confusing. But if you’re a fan, the snow and howling wolves will make you misty-eyed with nostalgia.
Then there’s Jamais Vu, which sees you playing as Raiden from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Body-snatching aliens have disguised themselves as guards around the base (a reference to early Kojima game Snatcher), and you have to identify them with your binoculars and kill them. Raiden controls identically to Big Boss, although he sprints at twice the speed. Sadly, his high-frequency blade is nowhere to be found.

With the iDroid you can call in a chopper to extract you.

These missions are just extras, really. A bit of irreverence to lighten the game’s otherwise dark tone. The meat is in the main mission and side ops, which took me 8 hours to complete. You might balk at the idea of paying almost £20 for a single level, but trust me: there’s a lot in here. With just one location, it’s deeper and more varied than games some publishers would charge £50 for.
If you like challenging, open-ended stealth that lets you flex your imagination, you should seriously consider giving it a go. And don’t worry if you haven’t played a Metal Gear Solid game for years, or ever for that matter: there’s a backstory option on the main menu that will get you up to speed. Or you can read my beginner’s guide. Metal Gear Solid has been absent from PC for far too long, and this is a hell of a comeback. Now I just have to come to terms with Kiefer Sutherland replacing David Hayter as the voice of Big Boss, but I'm getting there, one day at a time.

Neverwinter Night 2 Storm Of Zehir (2DVD)

2014-11-28T22:42:00.002-08:00

To say that the expectations are high for Neverwinter Nights 2 would be a massive understatement. Not only is it the sequel to one of the best role-playing games ever to bear the Dungeons & Dragons license, but it's also been developed by some of the creative talent behind such other revered role-playing games as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. The good news is that Neverwinter Nights 2 lives up to its pedigree by delivering a captivating story full of exciting twists and characters who you'll grow attached to out of fondness or, perhaps even better, complete loathing. It's not without a few frustrating technical shortcomings, but overall Neverwinter Nights 2 is a great role-playing adventure that just about anyone can enjoy.

Treasure box? Check. Shield? Check. Pointy ears? Check. Neverwinter Nights 2 has all the trappings of a classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure, but it doesn’t come off the least bit hokey or cliché.

As great as the story is in Neverwinter Nights 2, it's difficult to convey without spoiling the plot; but suffice it to say that it will keep your interest throughout the entire campaign--which, at around 50 hours long, is no small feat. You begin the game by creating a character. You can choose a race, subrace, appearance, class, moral alignment, and even a voice for your hero. After you create your character, you are taken on a journey that will see you rise from your beginnings as a humble peasant to become one of the most respected and elite heroes of Neverwinter. It's a long journey that involves the awakening of an arcane and unstable evil power that only a chosen savior (guess who?) can banish. As cliché as it sounds, the story reaches far beyond the usual good-versus-evil plot. You'll get a heavy dose of political treachery; shattered, shifting, and solidified alliances; ethereal mysticism; dark secrets; and much, much more. In addition to the main story, the world is full of side stories that you can explore or ignore as you see fit. It all adds up to make this feel like a real world with real history and very real inhabitants, but beyond even that, the game does a great job of making you feel like an integral part of that world, rather than some insular hero who comes out of nowhere to save the day and then disappears.
A large part of what makes the story so interesting is that you play an active role in the way it unfolds. As you talk to all of the characters in the world, you're given several choices in how to respond, and your responses often have a very apparent effect on the progression of the story. When speaking to someone, you might be given the choice to lie, intimidate, or simply ask questions to get the information or response you're looking for. The choices aren't black-and-white, though, and you'll often come across some difficult moral dilemmas that make your part in the conversation much more interesting. Your responses have both immediate and delayed effects. If you tell a goblin chieftain that you're sick of hearing him talk and would rather paint the walls with his blood, you can expect that you'll have an immediate fight on your hands. But sometimes the effects are more subtle. If you are forced to make a decision and one of your party members tries to convince you to take a certain course of action, you can comply or simply tell her to keep quiet. Either way, your influence over that person will be affected. It isn't much of an issue at first, but repeatedly going against an ally's wishes can eventually turn him or her against you. The interactive dialogue is well written and so engaging that you'll probably want to save your game often, so you can reload and repeat conversations just to see what will happen if you choose your words differently.
Even though you create a character who serves as the central hero for the tale, there's a great and varied cast of supporting characters who will join you along the way. You can have up to three supporting characters in your party, in addition to the occasional non-player or special character who will tag along with you. With a quick click you can take direct control over any of your party members at any time (as long as they're conscious), which adds some welcome variety to the single-player experience because you aren't pigeonholed into playing a single class for the entire game. By creating a well-rounded party of casters, fighters, rogues, and rangers, you'll have access to a huge array of skills and abilities.
For the most part you'll use those skills and abilities to combat all kinds of monsters, people, spirits, and animals that always seem to get in your way. The combat takes place in real time, but you have the option to pause the game and assign up to five successive actions to each of your characters. Then it's just a matter of hitting the space bar to unpause the game and watching your characters go to work. The most frequent battles don't usually require that level of management, though, because you'll almost always come out on top by just rushing into a mob of enemies and letting the artificial intelligence do the work. If you do happen to lose all your health you'll be temporarily knocked out (despite the cobwebbed corpse icon that replaces your character portrait). As long as one of your characters survives the battle your party will revive, and then you can use the rest function to fully replenish your health in just a few seconds.
Unfortunately, the AI in Neverwinter Nights 2 isn't always reliable. If you're in an open area you can usually count on your companions to stick by you and back you up in a fight, but when you're exploring the narrow hallways and labyrinthine corridors of the games' numerous, sprawling dungeons, your characters will sometimes get lost or stuck, or will just freeze up for no apparent reason. Needless to say, it's extremely frustrating when you're in the middle of a heated battle and your supporting characters are just standing there watching you get trounced. At least if that happens you can pause the game and assign actions to spur your lifeless cohorts to action, but when you have to struggle just to get your characters to follow you, you'll find your patience wearing thin.

The artificial intelligence is usually passable, but it can be downright stupid sometimes.

Don't worry, though--all that work fighting mob after mob of nefarious foes does pay off. Primarily you'll be vanquishing evil for the sake of completing quests. There are a ton of quests in the game, most of which you aren't actually required to complete in order to beat the game. The quest design is interesting and usually fits well within the context of the story. There are some quests that just require you to find or deliver a certain item, but the required quests are usually much more involved than that. You'll be asked to do everything from saving damsels in distress to answering riddles and even acting as a trial attorney. By completing quests you earn experience points, and when you have enough experience points your characters will gain a level. By gaining levels you develop basic skills like strength, dexterity, and intelligence, and you also learn new feats and spells. You also gain experience points for defeating enemies, but the vast majority of your experience comes from finishing quests, and all of your characters earn experience simultaneously, whether they're actively in your party or not.
In addition to experience points, you'll collect copious amounts of treasure that you can use or sell for gold. Since your weapons and armor greatly affect your stats and performance in battle, you'll always be on the lookout for new and exotic treasures that will help you squeeze a little bit more damage out of each blow you land on your enemies. There's also an item synthesis system in Neverwinter Nights 2 that lets you collect ingredients and recipes and use them to create new, useful items, as long as your character is at the required skill level to do so. Still, you'll probably end up selling the vast majority of the loot you collect, rather than actually using it.
The joy of looting is slightly diminished by the unnecessarily cumbersome interface. There's no way to sort your items by type, so you'll end up having to sift through four pages of cluttered, often barely distinguishable icons representing all of your items. To examine your items you have to right-click and select the option from a menu, which makes checking the stats on the new bastard sword you just picked up a bit more of a hassle than it should be. Interface issues like these have been addressed in numerous other role-playing games, so it feels a bit dated here.

With the right cast of characters in your party you'll be ready to face just about anything as you stroll through one dungeon after the next.

Neverwinter Nights 2 bears the official Dungeons & Dragons license, which is apparent right from the beginning of the game when you start reading about things like saving throws, will saves, modifiers, armor class, and die rolls. Everything from creatures and items to character classes and abilities are all taken from version 3.5 of Dungeons & Dragons. If you've never rolled a 20-sided die in your life then you might be a bit confused by all the stats and jargon in this game, but if you give it a bit of time you shouldn't have a problem getting a general idea of how everything works. After all, the same principle of "bigger numbers are better" that works in just about every role-playing game still applies here. If you're a D&D veteran, though, you'll feel right at home here, and you aren't likely to find a more accurate and faithful adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons rule set in any other video game.
Like Dungeons & Dragons, Neverwinter Nights 2 emphasizes multiplayer interaction and creative development. You can play the game online or on a local network with up to three other players. The single-player campaign is available to play cooperatively, although you'll need to start from the beginning because you can't add new players into an existing single-player game. You can set options such as a level cap, item restrictions, and whether or not to allow players to damage each other. The in-game server browser makes it easy to find or set up a game, and although you need a BioWare Community account to log in, it's free and easy to set up, and it just requires an e-mail address. We did notice some slight lag when playing multiplayer on a local network, but not enough to cause any real problems.
If you've had enough of the main story campaign, you can create your own and share them online. Included with Neverwinter Nights 2 is an editor program so robust that it's seemingly limited only by your own imagination. It will take a good deal of time and effort to start building your dream campaign, but the possibilities are there if you're determined and moderately savvy with similar software. Given the large and active community of module creators for the original Neverwinter Nights game, the opportunity is there for the sequel to be just as interminable as its predecessor.
Most of the shortcomings of Neverwinter Nights 2 are technical in nature. First off, the game has some fairly steep system requirements, but that horsepower won't get you much. Even on a system that exceeds the recommended specs, with all of the options maxed out, there are some rough spots that make this game look dated. In some of the dialogue sequences the view switches to a zoomed-in, letterbox perspective. It's a nice effect that makes the cutscenes a bit more dramatic than small text windows, but getting in that close also reveals some blurry, low-resolution textures, jerky character animations, and frequent clipping. The game doesn't look bad by any means, and some of the level designs are genuinely interesting and fun to explore, but at the same time it's reasonable to expect the game to be a bit more pleasing on the eyes given its system requirements. When a character's beard is clipping right through his chest, or when he floats across the floor without moving his legs, the game just looks a little sloppy. That said, some of the spell effects are pretty spectacular, and when you're in a large battle with several casters it's like watching a pyrotechnics show.
The most frustrating part of the presentation in Neverwinter Nights 2 is the camera. There are four different camera modes to choose from, but they all require almost constant adjustment to see what's going on. The camera will get stuck on a building or object or will just start tweaking out for no reason, which is incredibly annoying. The best option is to zoom the camera all the way out for a bird's-eye view. Even then you'll feel like you've found a barely workable solution rather than an ideal viewing angle. You'll eventually come to terms with the camera, but it's unnecessarily awkward.

You have to be mindful of your companions' feelings, otherwise they might turn on you.

This game sounds much better than it looks. There's a ton of voiced dialogue in the game, and although some of the voices are annoying, all of the main characters sound great, and their respective voices lend each one a lot of personality. From the sinister-sounding evil wizard to the feisty young demon girl, the voices all sound appropriate and fitting. The music is excellent, with dramatic orchestrated tracks that sound as if they could be taken right from a big-budget Hollywood film. The music does a great job of setting an appropriately grandiose and bombastic backdrop for your adventure, without being overwhelming.
If you're willing to look past a few relatively minor technical issues, you'll have a great time exploring the world of Neverwinter Nights 2. The excellent story, characters, and quests will appeal to your sense of adventure without getting overly convoluted. The many paths you can take through the lengthy single-player campaign are enough to make this game worth your money, but when you factor in the multiplayer and the editing tools you'll find that Neverwinter Nights 2 is a fantastic value and a thoroughly enjoyable game.

Napoleon Total War (3DVD)

2014-11-28T22:41:00.003-08:00

Thanks to his radical, republican ideals and his astounding military accomplishments, Napoleon Bonaparte is remembered as a revolutionary figure. Napoleon: Total War, on the other hand, meddles very little with the tried-and-true formula of its predecessors, preferring instead to apply it to this new setting while executing a few tweaks and updates. Notable additions include powerful, historical generals, as well as weather and attrition effects. There are also additional multiplayer options, better graphics, and an improved interface. Meanwhile, the poor artificial intelligence remains a problem area for NTW, and its scale takes a step backward from the global reach of Empire: Total War. However, its immersive, well-executed setting, as well as its historical battles, enemies, and allies let you step into Napoleon's shoes to re-create his conquests, making it one of the most engrossing Total War games yet.

Scores of Frenchmen die of thirst and the bubonic plague while their beloved leader visits the pyramids.

Like the previous Total War games, Napoleon combines a turn-based strategy mode with tactical, real-time battles. The turn-based portion of the game takes place on the strategic map where you make various strategic decisions, build infrastructure, develop research technologies, and move your armies. When an army engages in combat, you can either use the improved auto-resolve feature or fight it out in real time. As the attacker, your goal is to route the enemy army, but as the defender, you merely have to hold out until the time limit expires (20 minutes, 40 minutes, or 1 hour, depending on your settings). The optional time limit is a mixed blessing. Although it ensures that battles will eventually end, it also means that you can employ incredibly cheap tactics to win a defensive battle against an army of thousands by kiting your general around the map until the time runs out.
Napoleon: Total War takes you on a near-exhaustive journey through 20 years of Napoleon's major campaigns, from the Franco-Austrian fighting in Italy and the Egyptian expedition to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the battle of Waterloo. Another campaign lets you choose one of the other European powers--Austria, Prussia, Russia, or the United Kingdom--with which to destroy Napoleon's empire. Sadly, omitted is a Napoleonic campaign to drive the British out of India with the help of Muslim Indian leader Tipu Sultan, which was the ultimate goal of the Egyptian adventure. This alternate history scenario could have provided some novelty and widened the game's scale to a more global level. With the exception of Waterloo, each campaign takes place on a large strategic map comparable in size to one of Empire's theaters and provides up to 10 or more hours of gameplay. In another single-player mode, you control the French in a series of 10 historical battles, starting at Lodi in 1796 and ending at Waterloo in 1815.
Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, once said that Napoleon's presence on the battlefield "made the difference of 40,000 men." While that's not quite the case in NTW, generals do play a much larger role. First, depleted units automatically reinforce back to full strength when they're attached to a general and within friendly territory, eliminating the need to buy reinforcements. In addition, each general has two special abilities that he can use in battle; one boosts the morale of nearby troops, while the other improves the accuracy of a specific unit. As with the previous Total War games, your troops will suffer major morale penalties if their general dies on the battlefield--it will probably hit you pretty hard as well--so you have ample reason to keep him alive. Thankfully, Napoleon himself never dies. Instead, he returns to his capital to convalesce for a while, which is a preferable alternative to losing the entire campaign because you neglected the emperor for a few seconds. In addition to Napoleon, the game portrays numerous historical generals and admirals. These range from the illustrious English Admiral Nelson, who devastated the French and Spanish fleets in an almost flawless victory at Trafalgar, to the ill-fated Marshal Ney, who led a disastrous French cavalry charge that may have lost Waterloo for Napoleon. The generals also gain bonus traits based on how you use them in battle during the course of the campaign, which can profoundly influence your success.

This time around, the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon face off in Ireland.

Another addition to NTW is a system of seasons, climate, and weather that produces various in-game effects. First, units suffer attrition damage in harsh, foreign climates. As a result, if you pursue an opportunity to steal camels from a Bedouin tribe in the middle of the desert, many of your troops will never make it back. Meanwhile, the native Bedouins won't have any trouble taking the heat. The attrition isn't necessarily ruinous, but you'll certainly want to have your army quartered in a city during the winter months, lest your precious old guard freeze to death. Weather also plays a role in the tactical battles since weapons are more prone to misfire in adverse conditions.
New building options are another addition to NTW, including supply depots, banking houses, and small arms factories, but the biggest change is a new ability that lets you switch a building from one type to another by paying a small fee. This means that you can turn a barracks into an opera house during peacetime and revert it back to a barracks when war comes. However, peace doesn't last long in NTW, so opera fans may be frustrated more often than not. The religious buildings from Empire are nowhere to be found, and universities still make the unwashed masses rebellious, so you have to concoct other ways to keep your people loyal. One simple method is to earn the people's respect by dominating your enemies on the battlefield and conquering multiple regions. On the other hand, you can win the hearts and minds of conquered peoples by peacefully occupying their region instead of looting it. And, on rare occasions, you can liberate an oppressed nation, such as the Poles, to create a friendly (and generous) independent protectorate. Diplomacy, in general, works well in Napoleon, and AI countries readily agree to sensible demands like trade agreements or military access rights for your allies.

We'll get you one day, Admiral Nelson!

Although NTW brings several improvements to the series, the artificial intelligence is still rather dense. That isn't to say that the AI hasn't learned anything. The AI's turns don't take as long as in Empire, and AI generals now understand that their troops are allergic to canister shots so they won't throw away countless lives in foolish charges against amassed artillery. While the AI's new survival instinct is a welcome change, it goes too far. For instance, Prussian troops who are supposed to be attacking your city will often march up and down the periphery of the map rather than storm fortified positions. Apparently afraid to attack, they'll run nonstop drills until they are almost out of time, at which point they'll mount a desperate, careless attack on your position. Perhaps their strategy is to menace you from just out of range until you send your forces out to be slaughtered out of sheer boredom.
Of course, the surefire way to avoid AI stupidity is to take advantage of Napoleon's multiplayer options. You and a friend can play the Egyptian, European, or Italian campaigns together as rivals or allies. Whether you'd rather re-create a historical war or just divvy up Europe as France and Russia, you'll have plenty to do. One great aspect of the multiplayer campaigns is that you can take over for the AI opponent when other players engage in combat. Unfortunately, turns tend to take a long time, so you need some pretty dedicated players if you ever want to make it through an entire campaign. Another novel multiplayer mode lets you either drop into another person's single-player campaign as the enemy in a real-time battle or open up your own campaign for human intervention. Sadly, this option is only available on certain battles, but it's a fun way to mix up the gameplay. Additionally, there are 15 historical battle scenarios for multiplayer, as well as a plethora of random land, sea, and siege battles.
Visually, Napoleon is exceptionally immersive and detail oriented. On the strategic map, you can feel soothed by the tranquil waves of the Mediterranean Sea, notice the subtle changing of the seasons as the first snows fall, and watch as the countryside makes its first shaky steps into industrialization. In battle, you can watch the cavalryman's lance connect with its target, buildings crumble beneath your hellish cannon fire, ships turn into floating infernos as their crews make desperate attempts to extinguish the flames, and hundreds of corpses litter the battlefield. These include men and horses alike, waiting for the carrion birds or the worms. It is marvelous. In light of all the visual stimuli, keeping track of the morale of your units, the traits of your generals, and your research progress can be a daunting task, but Napoleon's interface helps keep things manageable. Color-coded morale bars now float above your units during battle, and buttons for changing unit formations or using special abilities are clearly visible. Useful tool tips are also abundant in and outside of battle. Despite this, the interface never feels cluttered, and the bulk of the screen is always devoted to the action.

Waterloo lives up to its epic reputation.

The sound effects are on par with the graphics, with cacophonous sounds of dying horses, cannon blasts, volleys of musket fire, and officers screaming orders in French that lend credibility to the battlefield. Additionally, the classical score offers hours of diverse music that fits the period beautifully. Assuredly, the emperor himself would be jealous that his own adventures lacked such perfect accompaniment.
Just as the real Napoleon dominated Europe with the same muskets, cavalry, and cannons used by his predecessors, Napoleon: Total War offers nothing radically different from the previous games in the series. However, it manages to improve upon the Total War franchise in almost every way while adding its own unique Napoleonic flavor. Whether it's the addictive turn-based campaigns or the thrill of running down routed Austrians with your cavalry, Napoleon offers countless hours of entertainment. Fans of the series, gamers with an affinity for "the Corsican," and European history buffs will all find plenty to celebrate with this release.

Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition (2 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:40:00.002-08:00

It's been a long time coming, but the PC version of Mortal Kombat is every bit the focused, gruesome, and ludicrously over-the-top fighter as its console counterparts, not to mention the best looking. It pushes the boundaries of taste to the extreme with eye-popping attacks that see you ripping your opponents in half, impaling them on spikes, and stamping on their chests while their internal organs bounce around like tetherballs. And, thanks to the inclusion of all the game's DLC to date, it's jammed full of great new content and challenges.

Most fighting games have some kind of narrative backing up the action, but few do more with it than bookend their arcade modes with a few cutscenes. Not so in Mortal Kombat's Story mode. Each fight you have is punctuated by in-engine cinematics, taking you on a journey that reboots the narrative from the first three Mortal Kombat games. The story picks up where Mortal Kombat: Armageddon left off, with Thunder God Raiden under attack from Shao Kahn, an evil emperor hell-bent on merging Outworld with Earth Realm--a process that threatens to end all life on the planet. It's all a bit cheesy, but the story fits well with Mortal Kombat's outlandish action.
That action makes a return to the single-plane 2D fighting that the series is known for, albeit with 3D models in place of digitised sprites. You're given the usual range of kicks, punches, and special moves to perform, as well as a combo system that lets juggle your opponents by knocking them into the air and following up with additional attacks. Pulling off such moves is tricky, but responsive controls and a simple control scheme mean that you're only ever a few hours practice away from an impressive combo.
If you're used to playing the likes of Super Street Fighter IV, though, then the feel of Mortal Kombat does take some getting used to, because the animation is less fluid. Moves don't string together as smoothly, so if you try to perform a combo that isn't in your character's repertoire, there's a delay between each attack, which feels jarring if you're not used to it. This doesn't make the game any less fun, though; it's just a different approach.

New to Mortal Kombat is a super meter, which gives you few more options during a fight. Most notable are devastating super combos called X-ray moves, which treat you to a slow-motion X-ray view of your opponent's bones and organs being crushed in an excessive display of blood and guts that even the most hardcore of sadists will appreciate. Skulls are smashed, spines are broken, and knives are thrust into eyeball sockets, all accompanied by flying shards of bones and chilling sound effects that crunch and splat just right.
On the surface, then, subtlety and sophistication aren't Mortal Kombat's strong points, but spend some time diving into the underlying mechanics and it soon becomes clear there's a lot of depth to its combat. For example, you can integrate X-Ray moves into your existing combos--nothing screams pro more than launching your opponents into the air, landing a combo, and then, while they're completely helpless, smashing their skull with your boot in glorious X-Ray vision. And while X-ray moves are powerful, they're not unstoppable; some can be blocked if they're not performed as part of a combo, and others can be dodged.
If you really want to impress--or give your opponent the ultimate middle finger at the end of a match--you can unleash one of the many Fatality finishing moves on offer. They're certainly not for faint-hearted, though: skin is ripped off opponents, their bodies are sliced into quarters, and they're turned into vapor with a barrage of explosive rockets. There are also stage fatalities that let you use the surrounding environment to kill opponents, such as by punching them into a pool of acid or dropping them onto a set of spikes and seeing their guts spill out. Yes, it's all very juvenile, but a hell of a lot of fun too.

Traditionally, these moves have been difficult to perform, requiring complicated input commands and precise placement. Mortal Kombat makes things easier with simplified commands, some of which are the same for different characters. There's also a useful fatality training mode that shows you exactly where to stand and displays the button commands onscreen along with an input display, so you can see any mistakes you're making.
A wide range of modes mean there are plenty of places for you to put your new moves to the test too, and make Mortal Kombat one of the most content-rich fighting games out there. There's the usual array of arcade-style tournaments and tag team modes--complete with a madly frustrating final battle against a cheap, spammy, and expletive inducing Shao Kahn--but a mode called Challenge Tower offers so much more. It acts as an extended tutorial, teaching you different strategies via a series of fun challenges and minigames like having to perform eight-hit combos, or fighting without the ability to block.
It's engrossing stuff, and it's easy to see the hours fly by as you practice each minigame to perfection. Still, like any fighting game, taking on other players provides much of the fun. Offline multiplayer offers up standard one-on-one versus modes, as well as a tag team Ladder mode for up to four people. Online, there are even more options to choose from, including a great mini-tournament called King Of The Hill, where 10 people compete in a mad, blood-filled dash to the top of the leaderboard.
Sadly, the online system could do with some tweaking when it comes to performance. While some matches work fine, others suffer from unplayable lag. There's also an issue with the matchmaking system, which sometimes takes an age to find a game. These problems don't happen often enough to be a total deal breaker, but when they do it's mighty frustrating.

Whether you fight online or offline, and in all but the offline versus mode, you're rewarded with coins for your victories. They are used to buy your way up the Challenge Tower if you're stuck on any particular challenge, or purchase new content in the Krypt, which is a virtual graveyard-cum-shopping-mall. There's so much to discover in the mall, that you can end up spending a lot of time in there. Items such as concept art, character costumes, and music tracks can all be unlocked, as well as more practical things such as new fatalities and Kombat Kodes, which unlock new game modes such as Headless Kombat and No Blood.
With all that content, an in-depth Story mode, and a wide range of modes to play through, Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition is one of the most complete fighting games around. It looks fantastic on PC too, and while there aren't a lot of graphical options to tweak, even those with less than cutting edge hardware will have no trouble running the game smoothly. The return of fatalities and the addition of X-ray moves mean fans who have craved the return of gore after the toned-down Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe will have plenty to keep them amused. Likewise, the return to 2D fighting and a substantially tweaked control system have made the game more accessible for newcomers, seriously fast, and lots of fun. Plus, no other fighting game lets you knee your opponents in the groin and proceed to tear their bodies in half. And really, isn't that what Mortal Kombat is all about?

James Bond 007 - Quantum Of Solace (2 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:39:00.000-08:00

James Bond has had something of a chequered past in video games, but Quantum of Solace brings him back with a certain amount of style. While the game based on the latest 007 movie is primarily a first-person shooter, the single-player mode incorporates stealth-action gameplay and a number of third-person sequences. The solo play is fun while it lasts, but it ends abruptly after only four or five hours. Fortunately the wealth of included multiplayer modes ensures that this remains an enjoyable Bond experience.
The majority of the gameplay feels conventional for a first-person shooter, though the optional stealth elements and the third-person cover mechanic definitely make things more interesting. When in cover, the camera zooms out and affords you a third-person view of the situation that makes popping out for headshots a relatively undemanding endeavour. This view also helps the game in more subtle ways; the satisfaction of controlling a character who is instantly recognisable as Bond as you pop out from cover and silently put a bullet in the back of a henchman's head cannot be overstated.

Just another day in the office.

When attempting to move around unnoticed, your silenced pistol serves you well--as long as you manage one-hit kills. Get careless, and you'll find yourself under heavy fire and diving for cover as enemies are alerted to your presence and their reinforcements pile in. With that said, on lower difficulty settings it's certainly possible to make it through many levels with guns blazing. But it's just as much fun and ultimately more rewarding to play by moving carefully, sneakily taking your enemies down, disabling security cameras, and quietly hacking locked doors.
Occasionally, taking a somewhat stealthy approach is mandatory. This would be fine, except that some of the set-pieces feel a little ham-fisted. A couple of segments that leave you pinned down by multiple waves of enemies feel out of place, and the novelty of edging along a window ledge keeping an eye on windows to avoid guards inside wears off by the third time you find yourself doing it.
The environments are, on the whole, well designed. The variation presented by wreaking merry havoc in a large museum in Miami, gunning down bad guys on the roof of a moving train, and chasing double agents across rooftops in a world heritage site is one of the game's strengths; it makes the chapters more fun individually and really helps to make the game feel like a James Bond movie. That feeling is further enhanced by cutscenes that feature key members of the cast of both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, including Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench, and Eva Green. The stars' voice talents are also put to good use in the MI6 briefings that flash across the screen between missions, and all of these things add up to a very satisfactory Bond experience. One thing that doesn't sit well is the amount of product placement in many of the levels, from indestructible Sony Vaio laptops to SonyEriccson Cybershot phones that are loaded with clues. The presence of such things really jars with the rest of the world, given that nothing else is branded at all.

In the words of Sherrif Pepper: "You're that secret agent! That English secret agent! From England!"

The thing that really brings Quantum of Solace down, though, is the lack of a coherent story. This is largely because in addition to the titular movie it features content from 2006's Casino Royale. The action from the earlier film is presented as an extended flashback sequence that kicks in after an hour or so of gameplay, and it feels out of place in the context of the main story. It goes on for so long that by the time you are thrust back into the story proper, you will almost certainly have forgotten why you're standing on a rocky outcrop in the middle of a jungle next to a downed helicopter. The story takes only four to five hours to play through, and ends very abruptly. There's some replay value, though only if you're into unlocking achievements, finding hidden items, or checking out different difficulty settings.
Thankfully, the multiplayer suffers from none of the issues that put a damper on the single-player experience, and the wealth of modes makes for manic fun across all of the game's varied environments. The linear chase through the Siena rooftops provides the basis for a great multiplayer environment spread over a seemingly wider area, for example, while the courtyards of Venice provide some intense close-quarters action. Most of the multiplayer modes pit nameless MI6 operatives against mercenaries from a shadowy group known simply as The Organisation. The Man With the Golden Gun mode is worth singling out from the standard selection of deathmatch and territory control modes, however, as it lends itself well to manic encounters. All players are fighting for control of a gold Magnum that fires explosive one-hit-kill rounds, and kills with it count for much more than those using other weapons. The nature of the challenge means that nervous and fragile alliances will be formed on the fly among players going for the gun, with all parties waiting for just the right moment to annihilate those around them.
Other interesting multiplayer modes include those in which you get to play as Bond. Bond Evasion is a team-based escort-style game in which MI6 players are charged with making sure that the Bond player makes it to an exit point alive. Bond Versus, on the other hand, pits The Bond player against everyone else in the game in a fight to the death. Bond has access to more impressive gadgets than his Organisation enemies, he can see them on his minimap, and he has two lives. Bond can only live twice, Organisation players can only live once. Both of these modes are fun for a while, and they provide an interesting counterpoint to the more traditional offerings.

Third nipple optional.

To give the multiplayer even more longevity, credits are awarded from each successful round based on your contribution. These can then be spent on new weapons, new gadgets--such as scopes, extra ammo capacity, or armour--and even rather excessive golden weapons. These are a nice touch for those who want to make it very clear how little taste they have or to flaunt their experience over less-seasoned competitors. The standard loadout is good enough, however, to not put new players at any great disadvantage, and it's also possible to earn credits in the modes that don't let you customise your starting weapon or equipment set.
It's unfortunate that Quantum of Solace's single-player mode is so short-lived, but there's enough good multiplayer content here to keep you playing long after you've saved the world.

Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition (6DVD)

2014-11-28T22:38:00.000-08:00

When it comes to superheroes-turned-street fighters, DC Comics' stable of superfriends have always received the short end of the stick. While Marvel enjoys the steady success of Capcom's legendary Vs. series, the likes of Justice League Task Force and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe have not done DC any favors. Injustice: Gods Among Us, the latest fighter from the house of Mortal Kombat, aims to break this combo with a fighting system that builds upon the lessons of MK, while also introducing a few new tricks. But for all its complexities, Injustice unfortunately falls short when compared to its contemporaries.

If you are familiar with Mortal Kombat, you will feel right at home in Injustice. Character movement has that same deliberate, staccato style that's distinct from the fighting genre's Japanese-developed counterparts. That style feeds into the satisfying weight and brutality of each attack, whether it's Bane breaking you over his knee or Hawkgirl taking her mace to your face. Controlling these characters feels powerful, and the destruction you bring upon your opponent and the environment add excitement to each fight.
While MK and Injustice have a similar feel, their underlying mechanics are very different. Injustice has three attack buttons and a special trait button. Whether it's flight, healing, or a simple strength boost, these traits are unique to each fighter and play into their particular abilities and histories. The distinctions are clearly apparent, and don't just boil down to slightly altered punches and kicks.
Clashes are another interesting mechanic. When activated, they instantly interrupt a combo, and then both players secretly spend an amount of their super meter. If the fighter who initiated the clash spends more, he regains health proportional to the amount spent; otherwise, he takes damage proportional to what his opponent spent. Clashes can be used only once per round, per character, and only if the initiator is down to his second health bar. The threat of a clash adds an interesting dynamic to the back half of a fight. It forces you to constantly reevaluate how much meter to save and spend based on what your opponent has stored.
While clashes are only a two-time threat, Injustice's interactive backgrounds are a constant hazard. Peppered throughout each stage are items--a missile here, a motorcycle there--for characters to use. Different characters use these items in different ways. Some use these objects as weapons to be smashed over an opponent's head, while others use them as springboards to quickly navigate the arena. These items are a fun way to augment your fighter's arsenal and take stage awareness to a new extreme. Knowing that a combo could put your opponent near a deadly item might make you think twice before launching your assault.

Injustice does not have rounds. Instead, you have two health bars, and when they run out the match is over.

It's too bad that so many characters simply destroy these background objects. A stone tablet that Batman can spring off of to reach the other side of the screen, Superman just smashes. Superman--along with the game's other heavyweights--smashes almost everything he touches. In some stages, it is too easy to smash all of the interactive objects early on simply to deny your opponent their functions. This is especially troublesome for characters with limited mobility options who need these items to compensate for their shortcomings.
The story in Injustice--while grand in scope--is also full of shortcomings. This lengthy tale presents a world where Superman has reached his limit after being tricked into murdering his pregnant wife and unborn child, thereby triggering a nuclear bomb--which was linked to Lois' heartbeat--in the center of Metropolis. It is a premise so ridiculous it borders on parody, but it's presented in all seriousness. The cracks quickly begin to show as this narrative labors under the weight of finding new reasons for characters to stand around punching each other. By the end, you're left wondering how the game could treat this cornball story with such unblinking reverence.

The alternate control option changes the move inputs to a Street Fighter style.

If you're new to fighting games, you'll find Injustice's educational options disappointingly sparse. An extremely basic tutorial runs first-time fighters through the fundamentals, and that's it. There's a practice mode, but any information on fighting game theory or character-specific instructions is left to independent study. The S.T.A.R. Labs missions, Injustice's version of MK's challenge tower, offer some character-specific instruction, but are more of an enjoyable distraction than a way to prepare for real combat.
To further compound the confusion, other, lesser features are left completely unexplained. Tucked away in the controller settings menu are options for release check and alternate control. Both can significantly impact how you play, but you are on your own to figure out how. The largest omission lies in the frame data. This data provides useful insight into the properties of each move, but unless you know what startup frames and block advantage are, it's not going to do you much good. And, once again, the game offers zero insight.
Online, Injustice offers the basics of player and ranked matches, along with the option to practice online with a friend. Player match options let you fight one-on-one, in a king-of-the-hill style or a survival mode. Unfortunately, replay support is a glaring omission. While players in the same lobby can spectate matches, there is no way to record and replay other fights. Replays can offer fantastic insight for players of all skill levels on how to play their favorite fighters, but their absence further compounds Injustice's educational deficiencies. Matches against opponents within a three- or four-bar connection range run without serious delay. However, falling below this connection range can cause some noticeable lag between inputting a command and having it appear in the game.

Leveling up your account unlocks music, concept art, and costumes.

Injustice: Gods Among Us is a hard-hitting fighter that plays to the hardcore crowd. Its creative use of background objects coupled with satisfying fighting mechanics make it both fun and distinct from it contemporaries. But for newer players, the minimal instruction modes and disappointing story provide little incentive for your sustained interest. And the absence of replay support is a loss for everyone involved. Injustice is an enjoyable fighter but as a whole, the package is found wanting.

Hellgate London v1.2 (2DVD)

2014-11-28T22:36:00.004-08:00

Hellgate: London is a likeable action role-playing game that answers the question "What would happen if you took all the loot lust from Diablo and fit it into a first-person shooter?" OK, maybe you weren't asking that question, but Hellgate is an interesting game. It will probably come into its own after a few more patches, but right now, it has almost as many issues as strengths.

It's futuristic London, and it's all been torn apart by demons.

The game takes place in London, naturally, and it's the near future. A large gate to hell--some might call it a "Hellgate" of some kind--has opened and demons have been spewing forth from it. The storyline has you, as a character in one of six classes, falling into an adventure that puts you on a path to seek out various oracles, kill a whole lot of demons, and eventually penetrate the Hellgate itself. But the storyline is rather limp. It's best conveyed by prerendered cutscenes that play out between each of the game's acts, but there are hours of often poorly written quest dialogue text and flat character exclamations between those cutscenes. The game can't seem to make up its mind as to whether or not it wants to be serious or funny, and the characters that have been placed in the game for comic relief don't work very well, with the possible exception of a guy who, through your actions, ends up having a small demon hump his face for the rest of the game. The game also has a handful of technical issues, including frame rates that randomly take a dive and hard lockups that, depending on when they occur, might make you play through a significant chunk of the game again.
This storyline plays out the same way whether you play offline or online, which essentially means that the offline mode is useless. The main point of this game is collecting loot and upgrading your character. Considering that you'll find a ton of loot that your character class can't use and that the most important part of tricking out your character is the ability to show it off to other people, there's no good reason to play offline.
The gameplay in Hellgate has you spending time in safe locations, usually train stations, where you'll take on quests, buy or sell items, and, if you're online, interact with other players. But there are a lot of different zones tying these stations together, and they're all filled with a variety of enemies for you to shoot or stab. How you attack depends on which character class you play. There are two melee classes, and these actually play out from a third-person, behind-the-back perspective, so you can see your sword and what you're cutting. The ranged classes, whether you're shooting guns or spells, work best from the first-person perspective (though you can pull out to third, if you want). Either way, playing the ranged class turns the game into a first-person shooter...but not a particularly great one because it's more RPG than action. You get the impression that when you aim your weapon at something and start firing, all you're doing is triggering some hidden series of dice rolls that determine how hard you hit. The weapons lack impact and you end up feeling really detached from the combat.
Of course, there's more to it than your basic attacks because each character class has a set of skills you can use. Marksmen can paint targets to make them take more damage, engineers can call out bots that do most of the heavy lifting in battle, evokers can cast various spells at enemies, and so on. As you gain levels, you earn more points to put into skills, but you need to be careful with how you spec out your character because there's currently no way to undo your choices. It's very possible to misspend your points and end up with a weaker-than-average character. Some similar games let you trade a chunk of in-game currency for the ability to reset your skills.

You'll spend a lot of time in train stations and train tunnels, most of which start to look alike after the first couple of hours.

Much of Hellgate ends up feeling quite repetitive because you'll see most of the game's best tricks in the first few hours. The enemy designs look great, covering a wide range of imps, crawling demons, surprise-spawning beasts, and floating, ghostly images. But the game also reuses those same enemy designs repeatedly, using the old "let's change their name and their color" trick. The level designs look really nice at first as you explore train tunnels, torn-apart city streets, and hell itself. But the game's random level design just sort of cobbles together prefabricated pieces in slightly different ways as you play, and before too long, all of the combat zones just start to feel identical. At least they'll look quite good from a technical perspective, especially if you have a DirectX 10 setup, which allows you to turn on some really great-looking motion blur and depth of field effects.
Playing by yourself is relatively easy and fun, but even if you're playing online, you don't have to interact with other players at all. Online, though, you can party up with other players and go into combat together. This makes the game more interesting because the various class skills can work well together and the game gets tougher as you add more people to the mix. If you aren't good at socializing, you can check an "auto party" box, which attempts to automatically hook you up with other people when you enter a combat zone. Chatting in Hellgate can be tough because the interface isn't too great and there aren't too many natural breaks from combat while you're out fighting. The game also has a voice-chat option.

Getting new gear and upgrading your old stuff are the things that make Hellgate so weirdly compelling.

So what makes Hellgate worth playing? That's the craziest part. Hellgate: London is saddled with a variety of issues, yet it still manages to be totally addictive and compelling because it expertly handles one of gaming's oldest clichés: new stuff. New items and money are constantly popping out of enemies when you mow them down. Each item--even the ones that aren't suitable for your character class--is also useful in some way. You can, obviously, sell items back to any merchant in the game, but you can also break items down into base components that are the backbone of the game's crafting system. With a blueprint, some runic fragments, and a whole mess of rare tech boards, you can make new items. But you can also use those same items to upgrade your existing gear. When you find the exact type of rifle or a pair of pants with bonus stats that really help out your character, you can use these components to make sure the items remain useful as you (and your enemies) get tougher. This means you never really have to outgrow your gear, though you'll also find plenty of new, useful gear as you play.
Furthering the customization and upgrade aspect of the game, some weapons also have slots for weapon mods, such as different types of ammo, batteries, or fuel. These add properties to your weapons and can raise your accuracy, raise your attack power, add fire damage to your weapon, or make weapons cut through enemy shields. You can add mods for nothing, but you'll have to spend some of your in-game currency to remove them. You can also put any equippable item into a machine found in most stations and pay money to add effects to them. The catch is that you don't get to choose the effect; you just get to choose whether it's a common, rare, or legendary effect. So it's a risky gamble that can make your weapons insanely powerful, but it might end up giving you an effect that's only relevant to another class.
You also have to watch your character stats. Each time you level up, you're given five points to drop into accuracy, strength, stamina, and willpower. Most items have stat requirements, and those requirements stack. So if your pants require you to have five willpower points and your shoulders require three more, you'll need at least eight points in that stat to wear both. It's possible to upgrade a weapon to the point that you can't actually use it anymore, but the game doesn't warn you about this, which is supremely frustrating.

While it looks its best on a DX10 machine, DirectX 9 players will still get a good-looking game.

While you can certainly play the game online for free and experience most of what Hellgate has to offer, you can also subscribe for $10 a month. Right now, the main benefits for subscribers are access to a harder difficulty setting, more character slots, and more room to store gear. You also get to partake in various themed events. There have been two such events as of this writing, one based on Halloween and one based around Guy Fawkes Day. These events add a few quests, but their primary function so far seems to be adding a bunch of annoying little drops to the game, such as apples, potatoes, or blueprints, for pets and stuff. Considering you have limited inventory space, it all just gets a little overwhelming.
If you love hoarding stuff and don't mind repetition, Hellgate: London is a really neat but often uneven game that will probably keep you busy for at least a month or two, even if you don't subscribe. But, for many, the game's issues will be a real deal breaker. If you're on the fence, you might want to watch the game's patch notes to see how many technical glitches, as well as other annoyances, are cleared up

Half Minute Hero Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy (3 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:36:00.000-08:00

The moment you start playing Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax, you're presented with a situation in which you have only 30 seconds to save the world. This is a predicament that you find yourself in at the start of every level, so it goes without saying that this is a game that's rarely played at anything but a frantic pace. At a glance, Half-Minute Hero might easily be mistaken for a traditional role-playing game, but features like side quests, random battles, and party management are all boiled down to their bare essentials; thus, the resulting experience is almost unrecognizable. It's also a lot of fun, and because there are multiple ways to complete every bite-sized quest, as well as leaderboards that compare fastest times, there's plenty of replay value.

Despite the fact that each quest starts with only 30 seconds on the clock, most take longer than that to finish successfully. Your hero works closely with an amusingly materialistic Time Goddess who, when you pray to one of her statues and make a cash donation, has the power to reset the timer. The size of the required donation increases every time you pray, so you certainly can't afford to take it easy as you navigate the world map. But provided you're collecting plenty of currency from slain enemies, you can at least take some time to level up (typically you gain at least one level after every fight) and to acquire better gear before confronting the boss. A different boss awaits you at the end of every quest, and they all have one thing in common: They've either deliberately or unwittingly cast the same world-ending-in-30-seconds spell after coming into contact with the game's truly evil antagonist.
Boss locations are pointed out to you as each quest gets underway, but heading straight to them is never a good idea because if you lose the fight (or indeed any fight), you're returned to the start point with minimal health. Rather, your first move should be to make your way to a nearby town where local folks can not only impart knowledge of the area and its dangers, but also sell you weapons, armor, and life-restoring food and herbs. Time stops when you're in towns, but you rarely need to hang around them for long because all of the useful stores, quest givers, Time Goddess statues, and such are simply arranged in a straight line, with no filler in between. That might sound dull, but it's very much in keeping with how Half-Minute Hero treats all RPG tropes; these towns serve much the same purpose as those in more traditional RPGs but in a streamlined fashion. Often while in towns, you're offered optional side quests that, while time consuming, are well worth undertaking because of the rewards they offer. If you take 15 seconds out of your busy schedule to kill a sea monster that's terrorizing fishermen, you might earn yourself a powerful spear, for example.

Most of your time is spent navigating map screens like this one. Quickly.

Every decision that you make in Half-Minute Hero ends up being based on time, and you might be surprised by how much you can accomplish in just a few seconds. Four or five seconds can be enough time for you to poke your head out of a town, randomly encounter monsters, watch your battle with them play out, and then return to town having collected enough money to pray to the Time Goddess statue. And while running rather than walking between locations might sound like an obvious way to save time, doing so expends health, so even basic movement is something of a balancing act. Unless you're replaying a quest specifically to find its alternate ending or to collect any allies or equipment that you missed, your goal is always to reach and defeat the boss as quickly as possible. The faster your time and the lower your hero's level when the boss is defeated, the higher your position on the leaderboards. Upon finishing a quest, you have an opportunity not only to see how how your time fares against those of your friends and other players, but also to find out if you missed out on any gear, allies, or alternate endings. Often, what you see here is reason enough to immediately replay the quest you just finished, and when chasing a friend's time, you can see a ghost of his hero with his time ticking down to zero as you play, which adds an even greater sense of urgency.
If you prefer a more direct form of competition, Super Hero Wars is a competitive multiplayer mode that lets you go head-to-head with up to three other heroes in 10 specially designed quests. Incredibly, multiplayer games are even more frantic than solo games, not only because they're essentially races to the finish, but also because weapon and armor upgrades are only available in limited quantities. If another player purchases a powerful sword in town, that sword is sold out when you show up two seconds later, so you're stuck using an inferior weapon either until you find another or the player who purchased it runs out of time and it returns to the store. Even when you're clearly behind your opponents, all is not lost; you can shadow other players and force your cooperation upon them as they go up against enemies that are guarding treasure chests and the like, and you can even attack each other. Playing alongside other heroes is a blast and adds another layer of strategy to the fast-paced proceedings. Although 10 quests might not sound like a lot, they offer plenty of variety.
While your hero's level is reset to one at the beginning of each quest, any weapons and armor that you collect are retained in solo play. You're not permitted to replay quests using gear earned later in the timeline--that would not only cause a paradox but also render the leaderboards far less interesting until you had access to endgame equipment--but finding and acquiring all of the equipment that's available during quests is still one of the most compelling reasons to replay them. Some weapons make it possible to kill enemies of a specific type with a single blow, whereas others simply do more damage or have higher critical hit ratings that can make winning battles in subsequent quests a little bit quicker.

Any gear that you find or purchase during a quest is automatically equipped, and there's no way for you to customize your armor or weapons once a quest is underway. This does away with inventory management and introduces an interesting element of strategy in situations where new gear isn't obviously an upgrade. It's easy to avoid wasting money on a shield made of glass when shopping in town, but picking up an inferior weapon from a treasure chest might be unavoidable on your first attempt and is something that you want to remember for subsequent plays. On other occasions, you might find that equipment can benefit you in different ways; wearing a heavy suit of armor protects you from damage and makes it harder for enemies to knock you back in combat, but swapping the armor out for an inflatable ring enables you to swim and take shortcuts across the water to reach areas that are otherwise inaccessible. Figuring out the most efficient routes through each quest is really satisfying, but the action eventually gets repetitive even if you avoid replaying quests and just progress through the story as quickly as possible.
The main story-driven mode, Hero 30, comprises 40-plus quests (including those on alternate paths, you only need to finish 30 to beat the game) that all follow much the same formula, so the repetition is inescapable. With that said, many quests do at least one thing that separates them from the rest. Some give you the option to procure a horse, a boat, or even a dragon, which all afford different movement benefits; others feature characters who can become powerful allies, not only for the duration of the quest in which you meet them, but also later in your adventure. A couple of quests force you to think of 30 seconds as an in-game day and only let you complete certain objectives at morning, noon, or dusk. One that's especially memorable sees a two-color retro visual style emanating from the boss's castle and altering scenery in subtle game-changing ways as it spreads.

Clearly this pelican is out for blood. Kill--or be killed.

Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax can be played in either of two distinct art styles. The first, labeled Retro, looks identical to the original Half-Minute Hero PSP game, with pixelated environments and characters that, while charming, sadly don't work as well on a big TV screen as on a handheld. The second, NEO Cartoon Mode, is significantly easier on the eyes, but its generic Flash-game look is almost completely devoid of personality. Still, it's not difficult to pick one and stick with it, which is more than can be said for the controls at times. Using a regular Xbox 360 controller, neither the D pad nor the analog stick feel precise enough when you attempt to sprint in anything other than a straight line. The former is ultimately the lesser of the two evils, but you might find yourself alternating between the two regardless. In this regard, Super Mega Neo Climax is inferior to the original Half-Minute Hero, which controlled just fine on the PSP.
Super Mega Neo Climax also offers a much less impressive array of unlockable bonus modes than the 2009 game. Upon finishing Hero 30 mode, you can gain access to, in order, Evil Lord 30, Princess 30, Knight 30, Hero 300, and Hero 3 modes. On the PSP, Evil Lord 30 is a real-time strategy game of sorts, Princess 30 is a shooter, and Knight 30 is an action game in which you can issue simple commands to a sage that you're escorting. These modes comprise 30 levels each, and while none of them are great, they still add significant value and variety to the package. On the Xbox 360, however, these modes have not only been trimmed down to a single level each, but all of them also play in much the same way as Hero 30. So, in effect, you're unlocking three additional levels rather than three additional games. The Hero 300 and Hero 3 modes have survived the transition to the Xbox 360 intact, but again, they play in much the same way as Hero 30. The former affords you 300 seconds to complete a relatively lengthy quest with multiple bosses and strips you of your ability to pray to the Time Goddess for extra time. The latter differs only from Hero 30 quests in that the timer maxes out at three seconds. All of these unlockables are fun for the short time that they take to beat, but it's hard not to feel a little shortchanged when you consider what they were two years ago.

This line is pretty much the setup for every quest.

One of Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax's greatest strengths is that it feels both fresh and familiar. This is a role-playing game minus most of the things that make a role-playing game, and that's not necessarily an endorsement, but the resulting action game is unlike anything else you've ever played. You can finish an entire quest, complete with side quests, gear upgrades, and a boss fight in less than a minute, but by the same token, you can get sucked in for hours as you progress through the story and get competitive both online and on leaderboards. Flying in the face of its title, Half-Minute Hero delivers hours of entertaining gameplay for the reasonable sum of 800 Microsoft points.

Murdered Soul Suspect (3 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:26:00.002-08:00

There are strange events unfolding in Salem, Massachusetts, and it has nothing to do with the growing ghost population. It's the living who are noticeably off-kilter. As a serial killer slowly picks off the uneasy inhabitants, the frightened few who remain seek shelter in an eerie playground as a foreboding moon illuminates their discontent. Or maybe they embark on a guided tour of the local graveyard, where centuries of restless spirits glide along the foggy paths. To question their puzzling actions during such a stressful period is to understand how dissimilar their decisions are from what you'd expect from a rational being. Murdered: Soul Suspect is full of such abnormalities, and as it struggles to frame its supernatural events in a way that's plausible, you're often overwhelmed with a need to laugh.
However, even though it wears its many faults so openly, Murdered: Soul Suspect manages to demand your attention until the chilling end. This is the rare game that has problems you could count off on your fingers--flaccid visual design, overly dramatic score, underdeveloped characters--but that overcomes its missteps to provide an adventure laced with the empathy of a human-interest story and the constant dread of a well-realized ghost tale. Laugh all you want at Soul Suspect, but it has serious heart as well.
Things get off to a rocky start, not only for the game in question but for its beleaguered protagonist. Ronan is a street-thug-turned-cop whose life story is told through extensive tattoos spread across his body. We see him perish in the opening cutscene, killed by a hooded assailant whose motives, we can deduce, are far from pure. It's then that you embody Ronan's ghost, desperate to solve the mystery of the murder that suddenly ended his life. Such a setup could have provided a solid structure to build upon. However, Ronan's tough-guy act is so painfully generic that there's little more to his characterization than puffing on a ghostly cigarette. He's a stoic blank slate who never made me care who his killer was.

Even though it wears its many faults so openly, Murdered: Soul Suspect manages to demand your attention until the chilling end.

Such a major problem could have derailed this entire adventure, but as Soul Suspect slowly gains its footing, there's more here than a tired protagonist. Ronan's ethereal nature gives him voyeuristic powers that serve to shed light on the people--alive and dead--who still roam the streets of Salem. Much of Soul Suspect involves walking casually through the desolate city. Because you're a ghost, the barriers can't rein Ronan in, so walls are nothing more than opaque passageways. As you examine locales, you discover clues peppered about, filling in details of who you are and where you've come from, along with myriad tidbits about those who inhabit this world with you. And it's piecing together this intricate puzzle that serves as the most interesting aspect of Soul Suspect.

You may come across ghosts who are still stranded in purgatory because they have unfinished business. Clues are strewn about that, once collected and assembled, spell out the causes of their deaths, which have kept them trapped in Salem, and there's inherent pleasure in seeing their troubled stories through to completion. Maybe the boy upset that his drunk driving was the cause of death for his friends and himself can find respite in knowing the truth, or a drowned woman might learn that her death was not in vain. These characters only exist in these small situations, so we don't learn much about who they are. But I felt much closer to the characters when I put their fears to rest, so I welcomed Ronan's knack for investigating.
Other times, you hear only a snatch of information about stranded ghosts, understanding why they haven't moved on to the afterlife without having any chance to save them. There's a college guy who doesn't realize that a fraternity prank went horribly wrong, and a woman suffering deep regret over her own suicide. These views into people's psyches are affecting because it's easy to understand their mindsets even though you spend such little time with them. How trusting that frat-boy pledge was, and how he suffered for what should have been a virtue. And how sad it was to see a woman overwhelmed by her own troubling thoughts, and how desperate she is to reverse her rash decision. These characters felt real in ways I had not expected and pushed me onward to see who else was out there.

If only I didn't need to make so many excuses for the rest of Soul Suspect. There are forced combat encounters against roving demons that make no sense compared to the slow-paced scenes that encompass the rest of the game. Granted, it takes no more than a couple of minutes to get the jump on these prowling reapers, but these scenes still provide only an annoyance that detracts from Soul Suspect's strengths. And then there's a baffling stealth section in which you must help your medium friend sneak through a building that she already has permission to be in. Talk about a forced challenge. Plus, as you're searching for clues in the environments, objects flicker as if they're crossing between two planes, and you can't tell if you've already interacted with them or there's more to do. Much of the action in Soul Suspect feels sloppy, so that you're often fighting to progress instead of helping the story unfold.
At least Soul Suspect's many problems serve as laughable tonal shifts rather than frustrating dead ends. Take, for instance, the rare moments when you must possess a cat. Not only does this look incredibly goofy, but by tapping the otherwise useless meow button, its silly mouth moves like a feline puppet. This is good for comic relief but doesn't exactly fit within the rest of the game. Then there are the contradictory thoughts of the citizens whose minds you can enter. The guy who loves being in a small town but regrets that there's nothing to do is all over the map, and it's sad how many people the developer believes are locked in psychiatric wards because they see bugs crawling up walls. It's a cheap way to exhibit mental problems.

Despite these issues, at no point was I disenchanted by Soul Suspect. Even though I recognized how ludicrous the game often was, I was still invested in the story that was slowly unfolding. Finding the many pieces to hear the troubling truth of a psychiatric ward was well worth the searching it required, so I never got deterred by Soul Suspect's weakness. The strongest story thread belongs to your wife, Julia. She grappled with her feelings for Ronan, struggling to rationalize why she was attracted to a man with so many problems. And she had mental issues of her own, which caused her to question her life choices. Uncovering the details of her life made me care about Soul Sacrifice much more than the flimsy relationship I built with Ronan ever could.
Murdered: Soul Suspect is as troubled as its protagonist. There are so many problems--from the presentation to the story and even technical hiccups--that I was continually pulled out of the experience. And yet, I continued on, and I'm glad that I wasn't overwhelmed by those missteps. It's empowering to piece together the sad details of the people you encounter, and that element was strong enough to keep me engaged throughout. Murdered: Soul Suspect has a lot more spirit than its taciturn protagonist could ever muster.

MotoGP 14 (4 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:25:00.002-08:00

Namco Bandai Games certainly isn't setting any speed records in releasing MotoGP 4 in the United States. The game was released more than a year ago in Japan and Europe, but race fans in North America have been kept waiting. The reward for that patience is added support for eight-player online racing, which is certainly an important and appreciated feature. However, the game does show its age in other areas, like the out-of-date roster and somewhat bland presentation. More importantly though, the racing is as enjoyable as ever, and with a respectable offering of features and options, MotoGP 4 is a good choice for race fans who are ready for a few more laps around a very familiar track.

MotoGP 4 is based on the 2004 MotoGP season, but at least it has online play.

The single-player MotoGP 4 experience is divided into several different modes. There's the requisite arcade mode and time-trial mode found in every other racing game, as well as a challenge mode, legends mode, and season play. There are three different classes to choose from in the arcade, time trial, and season race modes: 125cc, 250cc, and MotoGP. As the displacement of the engines increases, the bikes get heavier and more powerful, making them more difficult to control. As a result, the 125cc and 250cc classes not only add a bit of variety, but they also make good training grounds for the MotoGP circuit. The bikes in each class handle very differently. The 125cc bikes are nimble and fairly easy to ride, while the MotoGP bikes require much more precise braking and control to keep on the tarmac.
Season mode returns with more courses and riders than in the previous MotoGP games. After you choose your difficulty, lap count, and other settings, you can choose a rider or create your own and participate in a 16-race season. Before each race you can run practice laps and qualifying laps, which are helpful for memorizing each and every turn of a track. You earn points based on how you place in the actual race, and those points are tallied over the course of the season, and the rider with the most points at the end of the season is the champion. You'll get a message from your mechanic every couple of races telling you that he wants you to try out some new parts that the team has been working on. At this point you can attempt a parts test, and if you pass you get to keep the upgraded parts. The tests are all straightforward, requiring you to reach a certain speed in a short distance, come to a stop within a specified zone, complete a slalom course as quickly as possible, and so on. If you fail the test, you don't get the parts. But don't worry, because you'll get a chance at several tests throughout each season, and while the upgraded parts are helpful, they aren't absolutely necessary. Even though you can earn new parts, the actual tuning of the bikes in career mode is limited to adjusting a handful of sliders for general attributes like braking and acceleration.
The challenges return in MotoGP 4. There are 125 challenges in all, and while some are self-contained events that require you to meet certain objectives as quickly as possible, others are related to your performance in other game modes. When you complete a challenge you're awarded a bronze, silver, or gold medal depending on your performance. You might have to take first on a certain track, beat one of the top-ranked riders, or win a championship in each of the three classes. The specific focus of each challenge makes it a bit more interesting than your average race, and if nothing else, they add plenty of replay value to the game, since it will take you a lot of time and skill to collect each of the three medals for all of the challenges. Doing so will earn you GP points, which can be spent to unlock new riders, bikes, and tracks
The different modes offer a few different ways to play the game, but for further flexibility you can fully customize the controls and handling characteristics of the motorcycles. Not only can you assign commands as you see fit, but you can also toggle settings that drastically change the way the motorcycles handle on the track. You can turn on brake assist, which will automatically slow you down to keep you on the track. You can essentially hold the accelerator down the entire time when you use this feature, and as long as you turn at the right time you'll never crash or even leave the track. It isn't quite as useful as it sounds, because the brake assist tends to play it very safe, which means that in most races you'll have a hard time taking first using brake assist. Conversely, you can turn on sim mode, which puts everything in your control and makes for a much more difficult, but finely tuned racing experience. Sim mode requires you to use your brakes individually, shift your weight appropriately, and use a feather-touch on the throttle. These control features make it a very customizable game that you can play as a simple arcade-style racer or a very technical motorcycle racing sim. The choice is yours.
While the motorcycle controls are flexible, the artificial intelligence in the game is anything but. Computer-controlled characters aren't very forgiving, and they provide a decent challenge even on the easiest difficulty setting. If you race poorly, your opponents won't slow down to let you catch up, which means that if you make even a slight mistake, you'll have to fight hard to regain your position. But even though the AI provides a challenge, it just feels very rigid, as your opponents keep the same line throughout the entire race. You'll rarely see an opponent stray from that line, even if it means riding right into your rear tire. When you do make contact with another rider, you'll usually just bounce off like a bumper car.
The most important new addition to the MotoGP series this year is online play, which allows for eight-player races on any of the tracks in any of the three classes. Finding a game is relatively easy, as you're just plunked down in a lobby where you can browse available sessions and choose one to your liking. Unfortunately there's no matchmaking features, which makes choosing a match something of a crap shoot. If you want to play it safe you can create your own session and set the track, number of laps, bike class, collisions, bots, and whether or not you want to allow tuned bikes. In our experience the online play was smooth and lag-free, and the greatest shortcoming of what is otherwise a very welcome addition to the series is the fact that races are limited to eight riders. Racing against seven riders just doesn't quite measure up when you're used to going up against a pack of 20 in a season race.

Don't expect to get any breaks from the AI riders in the game, because they stick to their lines whether you're in the way or not.

The presentation in MotoGP 4 is functional, but it feels dated. The interface is dull and gray, the music is muted and generic, and the tracks, while authentic, don't look especially eye-catching. The backgrounds are grainy and flat, and if you look closely you'll see some unsightly seams and flickering textures on the track surfaces. The riders and bikes look and sound good for the most part, especially during the races. From certain angles, though, you'll notice that the bike tires aren't anywhere close to round. You also don't get much of a sense of speed from the game. Part of the reason for that is that most of the tracks don't provide a lot of room for you to really open up the throttle. But even when you do reach speeds of 200 miles per hour or more it doesn't feel especially exciting. For the most part you wouldn't even know you were going any faster than usual if it weren't for the high-pitched whine of the engine. At least the frame rate is able to keep pace though, and it remains solid throughout the game.
MotoGP 4 is a late entry into a very crowded field of racing games for the PlayStation 2. The core gameplay is still as fun and flexible as ever, and the addition of online play is a welcome, if very tardy, one. Despite being slightly out-of-date, MotoGP 4 is still a good way to get your racing fix.

METRO 2033 REDUX + UPDATE 2 (3 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:24:00.002-08:00

Beneath a frozen city ruined long ago by its own weapons of destruction, humankind clings to survival. In dirty overcrowded stations, women haggle for scraps at the market as old men mourn the world they lost and children run underfoot, knowing no life beyond their meager subterranean existence. The hardier souls stand at the gates, vigilant against the beastly offspring of Armageddon, while the bravest venture out into the tunnels to trade, scavenge, and scout the dark reaches of the man-made underground wilderness. This is the world of Metro 2033, where the oppressive atmosphere fills every corner and is so well cultivated that the relentless gloom can begin to wear you down. Yet your journey is a lengthy and intriguing one, full of dramatic moments and tense action. Particularly hectic encounters can stress the game's performance, but the richness of the environments more than makes up for any small hitches. The immersive world of Metro 2033 is not for the faint of heart, but those whose brave it will find a fresh and entertaining new adventure into the postapocalyptic future.

And make no mistake, this future is bleak. The aforementioned station-villages are dreary, but you'll come to regard them as welcome beacons of light in the pervasive darkness of the tunnels. As you venture away from the comforting firelight and busy soundscape of the crowded stations, you enter tunnels that echo with the howls of murderous beasts, where the only illumination is provided by glowing radioactive fungi or your own headlamp. Light, or lack thereof, plays a huge role in creating Metro 2033's engaging atmosphere. Passing through a dark, foggy tunnel can be harrowing, and entering the warm glow of an electric lamp can relieve the palpable tension, until you look down and see a freshly mutilated body at your feet. Grim scenes, inescapable shadows, and an omnipresent sense of desperation help create a powerful sense of gloom and doom. Though this world is not without hope, it is a dark one, and it can be overbearing at times. Soldiering on can be difficult, but sometimes all it takes is a worn out record player to lighten your spirits. Darkness can also be your ally, providing you have some night-vision goggles handy, allowing you to sneak past foes or position yourself for a silent kill. Lightscape is just as important as landscape in Metro 2033, because not only do they combine to create the rich subterranean atmosphere, but each is an important tactical consideration.
Though much of your adventure plays out in the subway, don't expect to see the same tunnels over and over again. Human outposts are cobbled together from scrap and salvage, but there's a big difference between a bandit settlement and an entrenched military outpost. Some areas you traverse belong to the beasts, as evidenced by chewed corpses and ominously narrow dirt tunnels. Still others belong to neither men nor mutants, and the eerie silence will make you wonder what has kept them away. And just when the endless tubes are becoming too oppressive, you strap on a gasmask and venture out onto the surface to pick your way through the frigid skeleton of Moscow. Thoughtful details make exploration tempting, as does the prospect of stumbling across a dead adventurer or ammo cache ripe for the looting. Metro 2033 rewards you for paying attention to the little things, not just with precious ammunition, but with thoughtful touches that make this dilapidated world truly come alive.

Someone needs to teach that guy how to use a bayonet.

Most of the living things that you encounter on your journey are quite nasty. Winged fiends and quasi-yetis get very territorial, while loping, long-nosed beasts stage regular assaults on humans in most areas of the Metro. Theses hideous creatures are rendered in vibrant detail, and aiming down your sights into their livid, snarling faces will make you want to pull the trigger even sooner. As you travel the tunnels from station to station on your quest to deliver an important message, you have to fend off these fierce mutants who would like nothing more than to rip the flesh from your bones. Combat can be challenging, but you have a good array of weapons at your disposal. Powerful prewar weapons are rare and valuable, and clever postwar improvisations provide intriguing alternatives. Shooting mechanics are sharp and allow you to easily utilize your arsenal to slaughter your monstrous foes, and for every time that a creature keels over lamely from a killer revolver bullet, there will be two others that whip back from the impact of a headshot or tumble away from a satisfying shotgun blast.
In addition to the always enjoyable shotgun (which comes in two varieties), there are a few fun guns (like the pneumatic crossbow/revolver), and the action is usually solid enough to make combat enjoyable. Some of your fiercest enemies are your fellow men who are spurred to violence by ideology or desperation. Using stealth is a great way to get the drop on or just sneak by human enemies, and the quiet approach allows you to overhear some fascinating conversations that add interesting layers to the world. Movement mechanics are also solid, though even if you are careful to avoid making noise, shining light, and triggering traps, your movements may still alert the enemies for reasons unknown. Startled foes launch scrambled attacks that can showcase some pretty wonky AI, but for the most part you are dealing with competent foes that will vigorously try to put bullets in you. Hectic firefights can cause some slowdown, especially when a whole squad of enemies has just realized you are infiltrating their camp. How bad this is obviously depends on your system and what settings you are running, but even the worst lurches dissipate quickly, leaving you to continue fighting for your life.
The reason for all your under- and aboveground adventuring is established early on, but the vague urgency doesn't coalesce into a clear mission until much later. Though the narrative can be patchy, Metro 2033 fills in the blanks by slowly unveiling its rich, multifaceted world. Everywhere you go, from bustling stations to lonely tunnels, you will find clues that broaden and enrich your understanding. Eavesdropping on an enemy conversation will shed light on Metro mythology, while bioluminescent flora raises questions about postnuclear biology. You glean a lot of information from just paying attention, and through this observation you create a kind of patchwork, discovery-fueled narrative that eventually comes to an intriguing conclusion.

Rats chewing on a corpse? Sure, it's gross, but that guy might have some ammo on him!

Metro 2033 is a well-paced shooter that will likely take you more than 10 hours to complete. It is punctuated by emotional and dramatic moments (a surprising encounter with a child, a few intense railcar sequences), though these aren't without their own idiosyncrasies (the immersion-busting "quickly tap E" prompt). The Metro and surface worlds are superbly detailed, and though how much of this detail you see depends on your system, rest assured that the game scales well and offers impressive visuals across different settings. The pervasive atmosphere fuels your whole experience, creating a grim, enthralling world that you feel compelled to explore. Metro 2033 is a very worthwhile game for anyone craving a uniquely rewarding journey into man's dark future.

MEDAL OF HONOR WARFIGHTER (4DVD)

2014-11-28T22:23:00.004-08:00

Upon completing Medal of Honor: Warfighter's campaign, you are met with a heartfelt dedication impressing upon you the heroism of the men in uniform the game depicts. The attempt at sincere emotion is commendable--but it rings hollow, coming as it does at the end of a bog-standard military shooter that celebrates the killing of hundreds. The battlefield fantasy itself offers a few surprises, but they're crowded out of your psyche by the indifferent hours of shooting and military chatter that surround them.

"Linear." The word is commonly used to identify any number of shooters that usher you along a narrow path, interrupting your progress with a bit of sniping, the shooting of a turret, or an explosion-heavy cutscene. Warfighter's issue isn't that it fits this common modern-day shooter template, but that developer Danger Close doesn't use the linearity to the game's benefit. By directing the experience so tightly, a developer can build momentum, giving the action an arc that develops tension and ultimately reaches a zenith. When a game intends to be a playable action film, as so many do, managing that arc is key to delivering a memorable experience.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter doesn't craft such an arc, and thus feels more like a pastiche of shooter tropes than a self-contained experience with its own identity. Yet there's something worthy here--the glimmer of a Medal of Honor that might yet hew its own path if the right elements are cultivated. The basic shooting and movement models are a good start, not because the guns are that remarkable, but because there's a sense of weight to your sprints and your leaps. You're given the ability to take cover and lean or peek before taking aim, lest you get pelted with lead; at times, this encourages you to consider your surroundings and preserve your own well-being rather than rush forward, spraying the room with bullets.
The shooting is occasionally put to good use, too, such as in a noisy showdown during a raging rainstorm, the palm trees waving and bending in response to the heaving winds. Other levels are just as visually impressive, like an on-rails boat shootout during which fires rage and floating debris threatens to ram you. Elsewhere, you use the blazing shine of your enemies' flashlights as beacons for your violence in various locales. The Frostbite 2 engine that gave Battlefield 3 life is used well enough here, occasional visual glitches and distracting screen grime notwithstanding. These visuals are much more effective on the PC than consoles, but on any platform, Medal of Honor: Warfighter isn't always just a sea of brown, though you can still expect plenty of dusty roads and crumbling hovels to fill your field of view.

The heat is on…

If only the gameplay could consistently uphold the promise of the most atmospheric levels. To Warfighter's benefit, it's not as much of a turkey shoot as its 2010 predecessor, though enemies still pop up in the most predictable places, inviting you to gun them down. The excitement is also undercut by your AI teammates' unlimited supply of ammo; there's never any need to scrounge the ground for enemy weapons, which diminishes the sense that you are in imminent danger. (A little improvisational spirit could have gone a long way.) But it's the moments you most expect to deliver the brightest sparks that are most devoid of them. The aforementioned boat chase requires no skill, neither from a driving nor from a shooting perspective. Ditto for the obligatory helicopter gunner segment, in which you mow down nameless grunts from above. Without challenge, there needs to be something else to keep excitement levels high--but there aren't enough foes to shoot or other sources of thrills to compensate.
Warfighter checks other paradigms off its list, too. There are the parts where you sneak up on enemies from behind and gruesomely stab them, and the parts where you snipe the baddies lurking in distant windows. There are the parts where you call in airstrikes to annihilate entire buildings, and there's the bit where you shoot down a helicopter with a rocket launcher. There are seemingly endless door breaches, in which time slows to a crawl while you and your AI teammates charge into a room and litter the floor with corpses. Things explode real nice, but these sequences are all segmented sharply from the surrounding gameplay. The game signals "hey, here's the part with the sniper rifle," and you dutifully perform the necessary actions so you can continue.
There are several scripted set-piece sections that stand above the rest, however--and in fact, stand above the campaign in general. All of them involve vehicles. Some of these driving sections are ridiculous and entertaining, directing you to incite crashes, and then showcasing the destruction in slow motion, Burnout-style. The camera that so lovingly caresses the chaos flies in the face of Warfighter's meager attempts to identify the drivers as everyday heroes, but the tension of avoiding oncoming traffic and the joy of watching your four-wheeled victims flip with abandon are both guilty pleasures. The game's most surprising turn of events is a vehicular stealth sequence in which you must slip into designated safe spots to avoid prowling enemy drivers. It's a neat idea, executed well, that generates tension and has you fearing your possible discovery. It's not difficult to succeed, but even so, this portion is elegant and imaginative.

…it's on the street.

Less elegant are Warfighter's nods to the effects war can have not just on its participants, but on their loved ones. Your role alternates between different operatives, with Preacher (returning from 2010's Medal of Honor) fulfilling the role of main protagonist. The central story comes by way of the jargon-filled military chatter you're used to in such games, in which you know who the bad guy is, not because wrongdoing is demonstrated, but because the characters say he's the bad guy. The globe-hopping narrative, like the gameplay, is chopped into cutscenes and key events without regard for exposition or transition. There's plenty of plot, but little storytelling--and there are important distinctions between the two.

Off the battlefield, you meet Preacher's wife and daughter, who suffer from the effects of the uncanny valley by way of their sort-of-lifelike, sort-of-not character models, but nonetheless deliver some civilian levity between explosions. The gentler side of Warfighter's story is a wasted opportunity, however, since every character is a stand-in for an idea (the neglected but stalwart wife, the loyal and conflicted warrior) rather than a defined individual. Yet while they are simple plot constructs, actors deliver their lines with conviction, and the manipulative soundtrack swells in properly melodramatic ways, softening your heart for a few moments before the ensuing action hardens it once again.

It must be tough to go through life with big triangles hovering over your head.

There's a moment near the end of the campaign, however, that has you confronting the consequences of war, allowing you to witness terrible deaths in ways you never can while shooting down combatants. And it's here that Warfighter almost achieves something special. You witness more vulnerability here, and can appreciate the operatives' sacrifices in these final throes. The military fantasy becomes dark reality for a brief moment, and there's no joy in your final shots. Here, you see one more way in which Medal of Honor may yet make its mark, if only this conclusion weren't so removed from the remainder of the game, which otherwise treats levels as interchangeable building blocks that needn't fit into a larger picture.
Of course, if a military shooter is a means for you to shoot fools online and insult their skills (and mothers), the campaign may be a secondary concern, and it's just as well, since the multiplayer is much more satisfying than the campaign, though not without its flaws. Warfighter doesn't have the weight of, say, Killzone 3, but it doesn't shoot for the zippiness of Modern Warfare either, instead finding a more-or-less comfortable place between the two. The leaning mechanic in the campaign finds a place here, and while gameplay doesn't hinge on successfully using it, it's nonetheless a boon, allowing you to quickly establish a line of sight, take some potshots, and lean back into cover.

If you weren't afraid of flying before, you will be now.

More important is Warfighter's fire team system, in which you are paired with another team member, and the two of you leech off of each other's successes. Your buddy is both protector and spawn point, and you earn a few experience points for his headshots and kills, presuming you're in close proximity. You earn various bonuses for sticking with your buddy, so you quickly develop a camaraderie of necessity. This isn't a wholly new mechanic in games, but there is a palpable psychological component to it: when your buddy is waiting to spawn, you stay out of harm's way so that your friend might arrive in relative safety, and there's joy in getting revenge on the opponent that gunned down your buddy just moments before. It's a good feeling to know someone's got your back.
A traditional class system glues matches together, though you need to sort through the game's improbably convoluted and busy interface to make sense of it. Everyone starts out as an assaulter, but it isn't long before you've unlocked every class and are well on your way toward earning medals (Congratulations! You've killed 30 players with primary weapons!) and various weapon modifications: barrels, paint jobs, optics, and so on. You also unlock variations of the classes, each associated with a particular nation, and within matches, you can perform offensive or defensive support actions (fly an Apache!) should you string together enough kills. There's a healthy progression system here that keeps the rewards coming.

Where there's smoke, there's gunfire.

A metagame goes only so far if the core action and modes don't hold up, but Warfighter is a decent multiplayer shooter with a number of ways to play, held back mainly by its confined maps, some of which are more collections of winding exterior corridors than organic spaces. You never run out of players to kill, at least, within the five modes on offer. The matchmaking options also include playlists that pair up two different modes, and one of these playlists minimizes the interface and turns on friendly fire, inspiring a more cautious experience. On the other end of the spectrum is Home Run mode, a vicious 10-round mode that combines capture the flag with Counter-Strike's tight assault-and-defend dynamic. The maps are small and you don't respawn when you die; all you can do is wait for the next round. Home Run sports a livelier tug-of-war than the other modes, and after the initial learning curve (knowing the map is key), combat can get intense.
Danger Close didn't tie up some necessary loose ends before the game's release: you might spawn outside of the map and into freefall, spawn into some environmental anomaly and struggle to unstick yourself, or even bang into an invisible obstacle. In the single-player campaign, enemies might clip right through walls when they aren't busy being generally dumb. Yet Medal of Honor: Warfighter's greatest handicap isn't bugs, but that its building blocks are snapped together into a shapeless hunk rather than an identifiable monolith with form and purpose. Still, you shouldn't dismiss the game as wholly unworthy: online multiplayer is good fun, and the campaign shows signs of life, occasionally letting you see past the me-too warfare and appreciate a brief flash of imagination. But on the whole, Warfighter leaves you thinking, "Yep, that's a military shooter, all right." Its heroes strive for greatness; the game they star in is merely serviceable.

MAX PAYNE 3 (7DVD)

2014-11-28T22:23:00.000-08:00

Like it or not, times change. When Max Payne last appeared in a game in 2003, he blasted his way through countless enemies with reckless abandon, aided by his signature ability to slow time and deal graceful death. Today, reflecting modern sensibilities and perhaps his own age, Max takes things slower and makes judicious use of a new cover mechanic. Yet the addition of this contemporary element doesn't mean that Max Payne 3 plays like every other third-person shooter. Far from it. With its gripping narrative, brutal violence, and fantastic implementation of Max Payne's bullet-time ability, this is a distinctive and outstanding game through and through, and it's easily a worthy successor to the Max Payne games that preceded it.

Wherever you go, there you are. It's a truth Max Payne knows better than anyone. Fleeing his New York life to take a job working security for a wealthy family in Sao Paulo, the hard-drinkin', pill-poppin' Max finds that his demons come along for the ride. Though the details of the plot add up to your typical story of conspiracy and corruption, of the rich and powerful preying on the poor and helpless to become even more rich and powerful, the writing, acting, and presentation elevate this tale well above a boilerplate video game crime story.
It's hard to stay ambivalent once you see the horrors being suffered by the innocent here, and you'll likely want to see Max's quest for vengeance through to its conclusion just as badly as he does. Max reveals a complexity here not seen in earlier games, as he hits rock bottom and must either stay there or face his demons head-on and make himself anew. Other characters, too, reveal a surprising humanity. You might be tempted to write off Marcelo, the youngest brother in the wealthy Branco dynasty Max is hired to protect, as the shallow playboy he often appears to be. But in moments of disarming honesty, he reveals to Max a depth that lies beneath the facade he presents to the world.
Cutscenes use multiple moving panels to pay homage to the graphic-novel-style storytelling of previous games without feeling beholden to it, and the considered use of blurring and other visual effects echo Max's state of mind, perhaps making you feel as if you're the one who has been hitting the bottle a little too hard. James McCaffrey does an excellent job reprising his role as Max, bringing a wider range of emotions to a character who has previously often been one-note. The writing is terrific; Max's world-weary wit is as bone-dry as ever, and as he ruminates on things like loyalty and loss, much of what he says has the sound of hard-earned wisdom. Subtle touches throughout the game make Max seem convincingly alive, such as the complex look that crosses over his face at the start of one stage when bloodshed seems inevitable; it's as if he dreads what's coming, but does his best to mentally prepare himself for it.

Max brings death from above. Also from below, the front, the back, and the sides.

Max Payne 3 has far more sunlight and color than earlier Max Payne games, but the menaces Max faces here are at least as dark as those he's faced before. The locales Max has to gun his way into or out of are alive with authenticity and detail. Nightclubs throb with dance music and light shows; children play soccer in the favelas; run-down hotels are packed with leftover junk from their earlier days of luxury. And it's not all tropical locations and bad Hawaiian shirts for Max Payne here; a few great flashbacks that take place in Hoboken, New Jersey, reflect the snowy weather and urban atmosphere of earlier Max Payne games, as well as Max's previous fashion sensibilities, and connect his new life with his old one.
Though some things may have changed for Max Payne, one thing that hasn't changed is his ability to blow bad guys away by the hundreds. Three aiming options for the campaign let you customize the gunplay to your liking: hard lock takes much of the challenge out of things, snapping on to the nearest enemy; soft lock sticks to enemies once you've got them in your sights; and free aim leaves it all up to you. Regardless of the option you choose, shooting in Max Payne 3 feels terrific. This is partially due to the game's unflinching violence. Bullets visibly tear through bodies, leaving holes that spurt blood as your enemies die. Each encounter with a group of enemies ends with a bullet cam, showing your final, fatal bullet soaring through the air and striking its target in grisly detail, and giving you the option to pump excessive, unnecessary ordnance into the poor bastard. It's a cathartic and satisfying way to end each firefight.
Bullet time, the defining mechanic of the Max Payne series, lends gunplay a cinematic intensity that remains exhilarating from the start of the substantial campaign until its finish some 12 hours or so later. When bullet time is enabled, you can see every pellet that bursts forth from a shotgun, every bullet that whizzes past your head. Windows break apart beautifully; concrete shatters to reveal the rebar underneath; and all other sorts of believable destruction to the world around you takes place as you and your enemies try to gun each other down.

New Jersey. Brazil. There are scumbags the world over.

Bullet time slows your enemies down significantly, letting you aim and fire faster than they can respond. But despite the significant edge this gives you over your foes, they are no pushovers. They make smart use of flanking tactics, so you need to stay aware of what's happening on all sides, and, yes, you need to make effective use of cover. There are still situations aplenty where an old-fashioned head-on approach can get the job done, but by and large, you need to approach combat in Max Payne 3 a bit more defensively than in past games.
Max's vulnerability, and the feeling of danger that accompanies it, makes combat much more nerve-racking than it was in earlier Max Payne games, but it does come with a downside: Max's signature shootdodge has suffered. You can still leap through the air in slow motion like a John Woo action hero, attempting to blow your foes away before you land, but because your enemies also make good use of cover, there's a good chance some of them won't be vulnerable to your airborne assault, and as you get up from the ground after a shootdodge, you're something of a sitting duck. The result is that you may end up using shootdodge from time to time not because it's a particularly effective tactic but because, risks be damned, it just looks so cool.
There's a great variety of guns to use in Max Payne 3--all manner of pistols, shotguns, rifles, and submachine guns. Max can still dual-wield weapons but, in a great touch, any larger weapon you grab is carried in his left hand, and if you opt to dual-wield your smaller weapons, he has to drop the bigger gun. (After all, where is he going to put it?) Max also has a number of terrific, hard-hitting melee attacks at his disposal, which knock enemies helplessly to the ground and then let you fill them full of lead. Great sound design supports the impact of the action. Gunfire sounds as fierce and deadly as it looks, and simmering percussion comes to the forefront in battle, a fitting accompaniment to your escalating pulse.

The campaign deftly avoids falling into a rut by frequently putting you in situations that fall outside the standard action. You might find yourself blasting enemies in bullet time as you hang from a helicopter, sliding down a sloped roof into a swimming pool, or in any number of other action movie situations. The campaign also includes just enough periods where you get to catch your breath and simply walk from one place to the next, taking in your vibrant surroundings before the next firefight begins. Optional clues you can search for and collect throughout each level give you an added incentive to look around and give you the sense that Max is good at more than just killing, that he has the instincts of a detective. It all adds up to an immensely exciting, expertly paced campaign that's lengthy enough and varied enough to leave you satisfied.
Where the campaign is tight and focused, the multiplayer is fast, freewheeling, and a little goofy. Though you start with just a handful of loadouts to choose from, you eventually unlock an impressive variety of weapons, attachments, gear, and abilities, called bursts, to choose from. Unlike in the campaign, in which Max fills up his bullet-time meter rather quickly on the standard difficulty, the adrenaline that fills up your burst meter in multiplayer takes time to collect, ensuring that these powers are not overused, and requiring you to choose carefully: Do you cash in your trigger-happy burst at level 1, enjoying the benefit of armor-piercing ammunition for 20 seconds, or do you hold off until you have a full meter and reward yourself with a devastating grenade launcher?
Bullet time is one of the available bursts in multiplayer, and it works well, affecting enemies in your line of sight rather than slowing down enemies all over the battlefield. But it's not the only standout burst. Paranoia is great for causing mayhem on the field, making members of the enemy team see each other as enemies. And big dog, which gives you and your teammates a health boost, can help turn the tables when things are looking grim.

You can loot bodies in multiplayer for helpful items like adrenaline and painkillers.

There are standard deathmatch and team deathmatch games, but Payne Killer and Gang Wars are much more interesting. In Payne Killer, you become Max Payne or his partner Passos by killing them, and then earn points for staying alive and killing the attacking players as long as possible. Your bullet-time bursts and life-restoring painkillers give you an edge over your opposition for a little while, but you're heavily outnumbered in these roles, and it's only a matter of time before you're overwhelmed.
Gang Wars is a five-round team game in which objectives vary from round to round. In one round, your team might need to plant bombs at sites that the other team is struggling to protect; in another, there might be a VIP you need to kill on the other team, whose identity and location are revealed only after you kill a certain number of other members of the team. The frequently changing objectives and the uncertainty of what's next make Gang Wars an exciting mode that keeps you on your toes.
In the context of the campaign, shootdodging typically looks like a stylish way to kill people. In multiplayer, however, you might see people belly flop gracelessly onto the ground, which can make things a bit comical. The action is wilder in multiplayer than in the campaign, as players scramble to kill each other, using their various bursts to aid their team or to wreak havoc on their opponents. It's all chaotic fun, and the option to start vendettas against players who have killed you twice in a row, which earns you more experience points for the next kill if you get them before they get you, brings a dynamic and personal aspect to the competition as you're often trying to seek out and kill one player in particular.

Even by the standards of Max's rough life, this is kind of a bad day.

But while the multiplayer is enjoyable, the single-player campaign is a knockout. There's incentive to return to the campaign and conquer it on higher difficulty levels, or to tackle the leaderboards in Arcade mode and in New York Minute mode, in which you race through levels, earning time for each kill. Times change and people change, too; Max Payne isn't the same man by the end of this game that he is at the beginning. It's fitting, then, that the gameplay has also evolved, that Max needs to proceed with a bit more caution than he did in his younger days. They say the more things change, the more they stay the same, and one thing remains true: you can still count on the Max Payne name to deliver some of the most stylish, distinctive, pulse-pounding shooting around.

Lost Planet 3 (3 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

In the third iteration of the Lost Planet series, some things are gained, and some are, appropriately enough, lost. Lost Planet 2 was a frustrating and beautiful concoction, loaded with grand ideas that all too often sacrificed basic playability. In this mediocre prequel to the original Lost Planet, the frustrations are minimal, but so are the ideas; its predecessor's variety and visual panache are steamrolled in favor of perfectly decent, perfectly standard shooting encounters. Lost Planet 3 is a difficult game to hate and an equally difficult game to adore. It might feature monstrous aliens, but it never thinks big.

One aspect of this third-person shooter that will keep you thinking, however, is its story, a surprise given the series' lack of a personal touch and grand plot ambitions. The early hours move slowly, introducing you to hero Jim Peyton, who has journeyed across the blackness of space to the planet E.D.N. III to assist the Neo-Venus Construction company in its mining efforts. Jim is an excellent everyman, frequently exchanging personal video messages with his devoted wife, who is raising their newborn son while Jim works toward a brighter financial future. The couple labor to maintain a tone of normalcy, but never fully contain their misgivings and personal longing. The dialogue is natural and delivered gracefully; Jim's love is not characterized by overwhelming passion, but by quiet adoration and sincere concern.
While performing odd jobs and fighting off the wildlife that threatens the mining operation, Jim spots a figure eyeing him in the distance. Jim's paranoia turns to confusion as he uncovers truths about NEVEC and the indiscretions of the company's past. Here, the tale begins to follow recognizable paths, invoking elements of stories like Pocahontas and James Cameron's Avatar by contrasting the greed of the invader with the purity of the land. But it's how Lost Planet 3 subverts cliches that makes it so compelling. In fiction, lines like "I didn't know you had a wife" often lead to predictable story outcomes--but not here. Lost Planet 3 avoids overt moralizing and soap-opera melodrama, instead placing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and allowing them to find their way.

Lost Planet 3 makes no secret of where you should be aiming.

That isn't to say there aren't sour notes. A miner with a deplorable French accent tops that list, though an annoyingly chatty engineer can also grate on your nerves. Both ultimately earn a vital place in the story, though not before injuring your sense of good taste with their cliched characterizations. The game's tone wanders, sometimes shooting for "space cowboy" a la StarCraft or Firefly, and other times getting jokey, going so far as to point out its own mechanical shortcomings. A little lighthearted humor is appreciated, but when it's a bit of dialogue pointing out how often you have to turn on an elevator's power, you can't help but wish developer Spark Unlimited had avoided repetitive mission design rather than cracked wise about it.
That repetition is a problem. Many of Lost Planet 3's missions have you heading out into E.D.N. III's icy wilderness to perform odd jobs for NEVEC or other allies, flipping switches, riding elevators, and shooting some aliens in a comfortable but overfamiliar pattern. Like in the previous games, your primary foes are the akrid, aliens primarily known for their insectlike appearance and the glowing orange growths that indicate weak points. Previously, fighting the largest of these creatures could be both a stunning and frustrating affair, with their outlandish attacks sending you flying through the air and into drifts of snow, where you had to struggle to your feet and resume battle. Combat arenas were often large and gave you the opportunity to pilot combat mechs, and giant akrid forced you to use your wits when you weren't busy cursing the frustrations of irritating knockbacks.

The pre-rendered cutscenes do a great job of showing you Roman's desperation.

In Lost Planet 3, the distress and the diversity have both been toned down. You face some large akrid, but you do so without worry of being bowled over by numerous enemies and paralyzed by endless animation loops. Yet with greater playability also comes greater predictability. Regardless of the monster you face, the tactic remains the same: you tumble out of the way, the creature gets stuck for a moment, and you shoot at the glowing bits. And when you aren't fighting the bigger akrid, you're fighting off the smaller ones, which you can typically dispose of with a few shotgun blasts. And you do all of this in samey gray-white corridors and in small arenas frigid with wind and snow.
The action is bog-standard shooting, and the encounters are tame when compared to previous Lost Planet games. New this round is a cover system, though you rarely need to use it in the single-player campaign, and it's bizarre to see non-humanoid life-forms sticking against cover and rising up to fling projectiles at you. Yet there's still joy in watching orange thermal energy burst from an akrid's vulnerable wounds when you shoot it, not to mention the sense of relief that comes from smashing its iced corpse to smithereens. In the first case, you see the lifeblood leaking from your foe; in the second, you prove your superiority by vanquishing all remnants of it. The combination makes for a rewarding power trip.

Yet once you've vanquished one big akrid, you might as well have vanquished them all, and the best boss encounters in the game are those against different kinds of enemies entirely. And it must be said: the visual spectacle is noticeably lessened here, particularly on the PC, where bland textures, wonky animations, and low-resolution cutscenes are more prominent. (Also, be prepared to tweak the keyboard controls, because the default keybindings are laughably dumb.) Furthermore, small but vital flaws add up to give Lost Planet 3 a pervading sense of clumsiness. The grappling hook returns, but you can use it only in scripted locations, and zipping to a higher ledge delivers little sense of weight and momentum. Invisible walls pop up here and there, as do large collision boxes, which can keep movement from feeling absolutely fluid. Colossal akrid are not immune to these issues either; expect to see at least one big boss get stuck in place, allowing you to shoot it down without resistance.

For a mining machine, the rig sure packs a punch.

The vital suit mechs are gone from the campaign, though you do get a new toy to commandeer: a mining mech called the rig, which does a surprisingly good job of defending you from the local fauna. The rig isn't an offensive powerhouse, but there are numerous "hell yeah" moments that make you thankful for its protective housing. In the rig, you can grasp smaller akrid with its claw and drill them to death, watching t-energy splash all over the windshield. Facing a larger alien in the rig results in a rhythmic dance culminating in a scripted event in which you raise up the akrid's limb and drill into its tender joints.
Such events meander between traditional quick-time events and the tense interactions in the Walking Dead series in which you must hover the targeting reticle over a sensitive spot before attacking. It's the later mechanic that keeps rig battles from falling into too deep a rut, as repetitive as they can be. Besides, there's a real sense of impact when you swing your rig's mechanical arm that's missing from the on-foot shooting, and watching the drill buzz into your foe, spraying goo every which way, is plenty satisfying.

Another bug battle in another snowy area. Yawn.

That goo was your ticket to warmth and health in previous Lost Planet games. In Lost Planet 3, it's just a currency you collect that you then cash in for weapons and weapon upgrades at NEVEC's center of operations. After many missions, you return to base and dock your rig; in fact, the game's open structure lets you do this whenever you like. It also allows you to repeat previous missions under the guise of "side missions." That menu designation doesn't boast truth in advertising, but at least you can go out and earn more t-energy at your leisure. There are also a few nooks to explore, where abandoned machinery and scattered audio logs flesh out NEVEC's complicated history, though you shouldn't take that to mean that E.D.N. III has much in the way of exploration value.
Lost Planet 3 ignores its past almost as completely as NEVEC does. Fugitive mode? Gone. Granular match customization? Forget it. Persistent faction battles? Gutted. Instead, you get less interesting (and on the plus side, less frustrating) team deathmatches, an objective-based Scenario mode, and Extraction, which has both teams fighting each other while collecting thermal energy. In spite of the familiarity of the modes, competitive multiplayer is good fun, in part because the grapple hook gets a good workout. You can grapple to higher ground or use a zip line to slide to the other side of the map in a matter of moments. It's gratifying to use the grapple hook to get to higher ground and get the drop on a competitor that had you on the ropes a moment before--and it's hard not to wish that the single-player campaign had made such good use of the hook.

Perhaps Clearasil would be just as effective.

In competitive matches, you can get a couple of armored vital suits in play, firing bullets and rockets at oncoming challengers, but none of the maps have the challenging verticality of Lost Planet 2's marvels. Thus it's the new three-on-three Akrid Survival mode that best captures the imagination. This mode combines cooperative and competitive play, first pitting teams against attacking akrid before bringing them together and forcing them to fend off the gross aliens--and each other--to retain control of a central structure. The tug-of-war can be challenging, with teams tossing grenades and firing explosive bolts into the outpost in hope of softening the enemy and rushing to take it for themselves, all while fending off the swooping critters that complicate matters.
Lost Planet 3 takes narrative steps forward while standardizing its sci-fi action, for better and for worse. It's a decent game, neither a mess nor a triumph. Its story pulls you through, even when the missions themselves don't deliver any sense of urgency. Shooting giant bugs on a hostile world is still entertaining. But in this wholly adequate prequel, a struggling series has lost some of its identity.

LocoCycle (4 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:18:00.002-08:00

LocoCycle features a talking, battling motorcycle named Iris that drags a mechanic behind her by the pant leg. Iris' nemesis is a mean, gruff-talking motorbike that takes a moment to somehow munch on a giant hamburger in a roadside diner. Iris throws around Pablo, the mechanic, as if he's a battle-ready boomerang, all in the name of attending a festival she saw advertised in a biker magazine. Iris' Mecca is Scottsburg, Indiana. It's there where she belongs.
Who could have imagined that a game featuring so much ridiculousness could be boring?

You, too, can rack up high combo scores with a minimum of effort!

Well, it's not all boring, though most of the fun comes not from the act of playing LocoCycle, but from watching it. Clever live-action cutscenes introduce you to Iris, Pablo, and a variety of other kooky characters, laying out the events that lead to a motorized battle machine dragging a Spanish-speaking mechanic down the open road. These wacky scenes had me laughing out loud frequently, especially during the first 30 minutes. Iris' translation functions are fried early on, so she constantly misinterprets Pablo's cries to be set free as encouragement, and she lets loose hysterical one-liners proving her single-minded focus. "Pablo, do you think in Scottsburg, Indiana, that the streets are paved with flags?" she drones. "I hear that freedom rides an eagle, which rides a motorcycle." Elsewhere, the references fly fast and furious, with Iris dropping quotes from Top Gun, Back to the Future, and Allstate insurance commercials. (Though I wouldn't argue that Pablo is, in fact, in good hands.)
The giggles flow freely when the evil motorcycle called Spike picks up his own happy-go-lucky human companion. While Pablo routinely begs Iris for sweet release, Spike's jocular friend keeps a grin firmly plastered on her face. She happily sips iced tea as Spike pulls her down the open road, and the strange situations that duo finds itself in are great sources of chuckles. As for Iris and Pablo, Pablo's dialogue is all in Spanish, with subtitles splashed across the bottom of the screen, even during gameplay. At first I was annoyed that I had to keep taking my eyes off the action so I could read Pablo's dialogue. But in time, you realize that Pablo has absolutely nothing to add, and that you can safely overlook his repetitive pleas, just like Iris does. And truth be told, the game's biggest joke--having Iris pulling Pablo down highways and across rivers--is stretched thin by the time you reach the end after about two hours of play.

LocoCycle has no sense of when enough is enough.

Typically, you drive down the road as you might in a driving game, though there is no danger of crashing into guardrails and dying a fiery death; the game just nudges you back on track as an on-rails shooter does. You usually take down the vehicles and robots that hound you in one of two ways: either by shooting them from behind with your unspectacular guns or by mashing buttons in similarly unspectacular hand-to-hand combat. Or would that be bumper-to-bumper? In any case, the cartoonish cars and trucks that speed in front of you erupt in sparks as you fire at them, but the shooting sequences suffer from sameness and are kept separate from the melee sections. More importantly, there is absolutely no sense of danger, and thus no tension instilled. LocoCycle is the easiest game I have played in quite some time. There is little need to swerve around traffic, and there are no nail-biting shootouts between you and your enemies. The gameplay is a mechanism for delivering jokes, not for delivering interactive fun.

Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.

The close-quarters combat also suffers from a major dose of shallowness. At first, these sections prove to be a visual delight. Iris leaps into the air and pummels flying combatants in jetpacks with her tires and chassis, occasionally tossing poor Pablo around like a spinning top. (That's gotta hurt.) But once the craziness of the concept wears off, you're left with a simplistic combat system that only requires you to hammer on the same two buttons over and over, occasionally hitting another button to counter an attack. These battles are so easy that I don't think I missed an entire counter in the game, and I racked up enormous combo scores without breaking a sweat. The whole idea of combo scores in this game is silly, actually, given how aimless mashing makes you an instant LocoCycle expert. You earn points to unlock passive benefits, but I'd unlocked them all before I even hit the final stage, and none of them meaningfully deepened the gameplay. Its roads may be bumpy, but LocoCycle feels oddly flat from beginning to end.
LocoCycle does try to diversify, but most ideas wear out their welcome before the game moves to the next one. Side-view boss battles are fun diversions at first, but the bosses repeat the same few attacks over and over again, and possess so much health that it takes seemingly forever to bring them down. A top-down vertical shooting sequence is a nice change of pace for two waves, but it, too, fails to rise above the most basic ideas. By the time I hit the third wave, I was bored. By the time the fourth wave arrived, I was actively annoyed. LocoCycle has no sense of when enough is enough, and as a result, too many of these detours feel like padding as opposed to creative variations.

"I hear that freedom rides an eagle, which rides a motorcycle."

Luckily, LocoCycle comes into its own in its final 20 minutes. I don't want to give away too much of the final chapter, since you have to see it to believe it. Let's just say that LocoCycle takes on the guise of a pure rail shooter, filling the screen with explosions and big robots, and using live recorded footage in its background to keep you gawking. And even before that, the game finds its way to a faster tempo. The quick-time events are accompanied by crazy scenes that remind me of 2009's Ninja Blade in all their dramatic insanity. You dodge falling boulders and careening school buses, evade Spike's frightening chained wheels, skim under semi trucks, and hang perilously from speeding helicopters. There's also a joyous minigame that has Iris flinging Pablo forward like a saw blade and spinning through legions of oncoming agents riding hoverbikes and surfing missiles.
I loved seeing LocoCycle through to its zany finale, because I enjoyed the jokes and Iris' robotic line delivery, and because I loved seeing the characters get themselves into silly situations. This would have been a great short comic film. But LocoCycle is a game, and in an unexpected twist of fate, it makes the act of catching rockets, fighting soaring robots, and rushing through the rural fields outside of Scottsburg, Indiana, blander than they deserve to be.

Lichdom Battlemage (4 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:17:00.003-08:00

The song you hear calling from the center of Lichdom: Battlemage is one of ice and fire. A chorus chants from within, urging you to chill your personal demons with the ray of frost you blast from your fingertips, and to burn them with showers of brimstone. Elemental powers aren’t the only ones you command in this magic-driven action game, but they are the two that define the initial hours of Lichdom’s overlong campaign, which hobbles to a close long after it milks the joy out of its excellent but single-minded combat.
Let’s return, however, to those initial hours. Lichdom: Battlemage is built around the most satisfying spellcasting this side of Kingdoms of Amalur, and it’s this one system that drives the adventure from beginning to end. There is no mana bar obstructing your access to deadly magic. The only cooldowns you need consider are the intrinsic casting times of the spells themselves, not additional timers that dole out casting permission at specified intervals. Wizards and skeletons spawn into the level from nowhere, and you fling icicles at them or soften them up with a hive of buzzing parasites that floats above your head.

If you want to keep your distance during rough battles like this, craft shields that give you unlimited access to the short-range teleport called "blink."

Casting these spells from Lichdom’s first-perspective feels oh so good, and they come in three types of magical flavors, called sigils. Each sigil allows for three casting techniques: a focused attack, an area-of-effect attack, and a parry--termed a nova--that typically offers its own kind of offensive enhancement. A focused spell might take the form of a continuous ray of elemental energy or a ball of filth, though I was most taken by homing missiles, which I could fire off in quick succession or charge up for a more thorough display of destruction. To turn an archer into a pile of ash is simple enough with such a missile: hold a mouse button, then release that flaming projectile and watch your target skeleton dissolve into the wind when it hits.
Forgive my focus on fire and ice. It’s easiest to describe these types of magic in light of the more complex sigils, such as kinesis and delirium, which allow you to control the battlefield in various ways, turning enemies against each other or halting them in their tracks. I grew fond of a slaughterous trio comprised of necromancy, corruption, and ice. Necromancy does what it says on the tin, turning fiends into friends when the grim reaper comes to visit, while corruption allows you to spread an epidemic of tumorous growths and ravenous parasites. These sigils often work in tandem with each other, turning a sequence of properly-timed blitzes into a colorful spectacle of frozen sorcerers shattering into a trillion pieces. This may be magic, but I am more than a mere magician: I am a demigod.

Mr. Freeze would have an excellent ice pun to accompany this image.

More specifically, I am a Dragon, capital-D, and a significant figure in Lichdom’s baffling story, which stars you--a battlemage of the gender you choose--and a scout of complementary gender whose role would best be described as "exposition faucet." He or she flits in and out of your travels to share the details of a story that’s never properly established, making every line of Lichdom’s dialogue a mess of white noise. "Here’s a story about something cool you’ll never witness for yourself," says the scout, in essence, and you move on to making your own story. The beautiful environments thankfully have stories of their own to share; twisted tree trunks and tarnished temples rise from a fetid swamp, and you see massive sea vessels encased in ice, as if they were frozen in time before their captains were aware of such an unlikely danger. CryEngine 3, the same graphics technology that humbled many a PC in 2013 in Crysis 3, has returned to remind you that your machine really needs a new graphics card. To be fair, however, the game looks great even with medium-ranged setting activated, though the game’s liberal use of motion blur will have you rushing to tweak its visual options to diminish the discomfort.
As tempting as it is to compare Lichdom: Battlemage to Skyrim, what with the early snowy environments and all that magic, this is no role-playing game--at least, not in the traditional sense. Lichdom does, however, grant you plenty of agency over how you exercise your magical talents. Your spells are not assigned to you as if they are medicines prescribed by a doctor (burn two brutes to a crisp with this bog-standard fireball and call me in the morning). Instead, you drive your own destiny by designing your spells using the various materials that occasionally rush to your body after a kill as if drawn to your magnetic personality.

Elemental powers aren’t the only ones you command in this magic-driven action game, but they are the two that define the initial hours of Lichdom’s overlong campaign, which hobbles to a close long after it milks the joy out of its excellent but single-minded combat.

I couldn’t possibly begin to detail Lichdom’s convoluted spell creation, which isn’t ungraspable, but requires that you make sense of various terms--mastery, control, critical effect multiplier, apocalyptical chance--and interpret the results of each step of the crafting process. At first, it’s difficult to tell why spells behave as they do, especially when there are countless statistical minutiae differentiating one spell from the next. ("These two spells are the same except one offers a slightly larger attack radius and the other does slightly more damage. Is it worth spending time on a decision that won’t likely matter much on the field of battle?") It’s both empowering and somewhat tedious to have so much control over so many magical attributes, but whether or not you fall in love with this system, you’ll spend plenty of time attending to it: more powerful demons shall arrive, and you will have to create higher-level spells to destroy them.
After several hours of winding your way through Lichdom’s linear levels, it becomes clear that developer Xaviant relied on this combat system to the detriment of other basic aspects of game design. One by one, combat scenarios appear, each one exactly like the last. Enemies spawn into being out of nowhere--and should you die and have to relive the battle, they always materialize in the same locations with no concern for your position relative to their spawn points. You wave your hands about, spreading disease and death, until every demon has fallen--or until you are wholly annihilated. You then interact with a floating sphere that generates a purple hologram depicting two or three characters talking about apparently vital story events you never get to witness for yourself. And then you repeat this scenario, with only boss fights and the occasional appearance of your opposite-gendered exposition vessel to disrupt the flow. Necromancy, ice bolt, ice bolt, fiery aura--once more, with feeling.

Click above for more Lichdom: Battlemage images.

To be fair, the flow is also disrupted by frequent deaths, an annoyance that’s sure to hound you when you enter new areas with spells that no longer adequately protect you, but without the components that would allow you to create stronger magic. Some battles are teeth-gnashingly, hair-pullingly grueling, particularly those with enemies that enjoy freezing you in place, and Lichdom almost takes a perverse delight in how far apart its checkpoints occur. And so you take part in a tedious video game version of Groundhog Day in which you perform the same amazing supernatural feats so often, and in the same repetitive scenarios, that those feats become as boring as collecting Gandalf the Grey’s dry cleaning.
That isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate the inherent diversity of Lichdom’s spellcrafting; a ray of focused flame behaves differently than the necromantic conversion of dead demons, after all. But the game's general approach takes the burden off the design and transfers the impetus of creating variety to me--and without innate structural variety, Lichdom stretches its one excellent idea to the point of tearing. The game’s inordinate length only reinforces the monotony. I hesitate to suggest a game should be shorter than it already is, but Lichdom itself makes an excellent argument for brevity. Xaviant miscalculated the formula. (Great spellcasting) - (mana bar) + (meaningless story) + (unvaried battles) is not, in fact, equal to 15 or 16 hours of consistent enjoyment and $39.99 of your money.

The most important consequence of Lichdom's impenetrable story is that you always know when it's safe to go make a sandwich.

While Lichdom makes a strong case for a shorter game, it also makes the case for another Lichdom game. If there is any game this year deserving of a sequel, it’s this one. With a steely backbone of meaningful world-building, sensible storytelling, and proper pacing, a Lichdom 2 could have an unassailable place to hang its best asset. The game at hand is concerned only with the magic. A few hours in, I was convinced that it might be enough. The love affair didn't last, but I’ll always have those golden memories.

Left For Dead 2 Full Edition V.2.1.1.0 (4 DVD)

2014-11-28T22:17:00.000-08:00

Last year Left 4 Dead unleashed a harrowing and entertaining vision of what it's like to be on both sides of the zombie apocalypse. Whether you were shooting your way through hordes of infected (the preferred nomenclature) en route to possible rescue, or scheming with your fellow superpowered zombies (an acceptable colloquialism) in an effort to choke, eviscerate, and otherwise kill the intrepid survivors, Left 4 Dead was enormously fun. The only real drawback was the shortage of content. Left 4 Dead 2 does not have this problem, offering five new campaign maps that can be enjoyed across five uniquely engaging game modes. These campaigns are more diverse, more atmospheric, and more exciting, thanks largely to the stellar level design. Left 4 Dead 2 also improves on the original in almost every other way, featuring new weapons, new items, new enemies, and new survivors that make the game richer across the board. Though the core action remains largely unchanged, the widespread enhancements make Left 4 Dead 2 even better than its impressive predecessor. This is one zombie apocalypse you do not want to miss.

The heart of Left 4 Dead 2 is the five campaign maps that take the survivors through a wide variety of terrain in the Deep South. From murky swamplands to a creepy carnival ground, from flooded suburbs to claustrophobic city streets, every environment is detailed and immersive. Clever design touches abound, some of which are clues that show you which way to progress. It's deceptively easy to get turned around, especially since you aren't the only ones who have been leaving piles of bodies around. Left 4 Dead 2's environments help tell a story, and as you travel through the remains of a massive government-organized evacuation effort, you get a better sense of how it all went down. The campaigns now string together to make one long adventure, and though the oppressive, desperate mood seethes more potently this time around, there is still plenty of levity and high-impact excitement. Well-timed survivor quips make trudging through zombie-infested swamps a bit less nerve-racking, and thunderous rainstorms make a tense final stand (the moments right before your rescue) even more dramatic. The sound design is a standout once again, filling the air with eerie strains and helpful cues, as well as conveying the full range of the survivors' emotions. This rich atmosphere is enhanced by the wider variety of choke points and final stands, all of which give the campaigns their own unique pace.
Into these grim landscapes come four new survivors. This new crop is more lively and talkative than the first bunch, and Ellis' good-ol'-boy stories about crazy stuff that he and his buddy Keith did one time are bound to make you chuckle. There is a new crop of guns as well, including multiple versions of pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, and assault rifles. These different flavors go a long way toward spicing up the gunplay, but the standout new addition is the melee weapons. A fire axe, a crowbar, a cricket bat, and a frying pan are just some of the objects you can use to slice, bludgeon, and decapitate your enemies. They take the place of your secondary weapon, but you still have a sidearm you can whip out if you are incapacitated. Using these weapons forces you to get up close and personal with the infected, affording you a better view of the carnage but also putting you at higher risk. Still, nothing stops a horde like a katana-wielding survivor standing tall in a doorway. Melee weapons are a great new strategic asset and add a very enjoyable new dimension to combat.

Infected are not particularly fazed by gaping abdominal wounds.

Part of the reason melee weapons are so fun to use is that the infected die in a lot of gruesomely entertaining ways. Dismemberment and gibbing have been ratcheted up in Left 4 Dead 2, so you'll be chopping off limbs and blowing holes in zombie abdomens like you were born to do it. The common infected models are more diverse and detailed, and there are a number of tougher variants that pose a bit more of a challenge. Some of them can take more damage, like the ones in hazmat suits and riot gear, while others move more quickly and can obscure your view, like the swampy mudmen. These "uncommon common" won't throw a huge wrench in the works, but they add some welcome variety and help further diversify your enemies.

The foes that will derail your progress are the special infected. These zombies have superpowers that make them seriously dangerous, and all the baddies from Left 4 Dead make an encore appearance. There are a few new nasties to contend with as well, including the Jockey (jumps on your head and steers you off course), the Spitter (shoots a pool of deadly acid on the ground), and the Charger (rams into you, carries you away, and pounds you into the ground). There's also a variety of Witch that actually walks around as opposed to just sitting and weeping, and she rounds out the formidable roster of special infected. These enemies are tricky to contend with in the field, especially when a few of them descend on you at the same time. They are even nastier when they are controlled by your fellow players. One of the best parts of the zombie apocalypse is being part of the problem, and unlike its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 makes every campaign available for Versus play right from the start. Playing Versus mode allows you and your team to spawn as special infected and coordinate attacks in your efforts to make sure the survivors don't make it out alive. Nothing eases the frustration of being dragged away from your fellow survivors by a Smoker's tongue like jumping on a survivor's head and jockeying him into a pool of burning acid. Versus mode plunges you into an engaging mix of competition and cooperation as you and your team alternate trying to survive and trying to kill.

For those who don't fancy this sort of competition but are looking for a challenge beyond the range of difficulty offered by the Campaign mode, the new Realism mode is the place to go. Here you'll play through the campaigns with many of the game-y aids removed. There are no glowing outlines around your fellow survivors or around helpful items, zombies are tougher to kill, and dead comrades won't respawn until you reach the next safe house. You won't know how much you rely on the glowing outlines until you walk into a clearing and realize you are utterly alone and have no idea where your friends are. Or worse, what happens if you get grabbed by a Smoker and dragged away, but no one sees it? Realism mode very effectively ramps up the tension, and you'll be even more thankful for the new equipment items that offer help. Adrenaline shots not only give you a health boost, but they allow you to heal and rescue teammates more quickly. Defibrillator pads allow you to bring dead survivors back to life, and explosive and incendiary ammo packs help make sure you don't need defibrillator pads as often. And then there's the bile bomb, which lets you spray enemies with the Boomer's horde-attracting vomit. If you chuck this on the Tank, you'll get some help killing him. And if you chuck it over a ledge or into a fire, you'll kill a lot of infected and get a good hearty chuckle to boot.
Rounding out the package are two modes that offer all the excitement of Campaign and Versus play in a fraction of the time. Survival, introduced as downloadable content for Left 4 Dead, is like playing a last stand in which rescue never comes. Survivors try to stay alive on a well-stocked map against endless waves of infected, and they earn medals and leaderboard-worthy times for their troubles. Without the joy of escape, this mode isn't as satisfying as its longer counterparts. The same is not true for the new Scavenge mode. Here, survivors try to collect gas tanks from around a map and pour them into a generator to add more time to the dwindling clock. A team of infected try to stop them and kill them. This mode more adeptly mirrors the frustrations and rewards of Versus mode. On the one hand, you have the challenge of survival and the thrill of each can successfully deposited; on the other, you have the task of foiling the survivors' well-armed efforts and the grim satisfaction of taking them down. Each team plays both sides per round, and the first to three round victories wins. The short format makes it easy to enjoy in quick sessions, though more than likely you'll be tempted by rematch after rematch.

Team melee attack go!

Though it comes a mere one year after the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is a much better game and much better value. The new campaigns and unique game modes offer more variety and more longevity, while all the other additions and tweaks make the already great gameplay even more enjoyable. Even the AI has improved a little bit, and while they still aren't big on using pipe bombs or Molotovs and are prone to missteps, they seem to have a better grasp of tactics and will follow you a bit more closely. Still, Left 4 Dead 2 is best enjoyed with friends, and every mode is seamlessly integrated online. Though the core gameplay remains pretty much the same, there is more than enough new content and improved action to make this zombie apocalypse highly recommendable.

L.A. Noire The Complete Edition (4DVD)

2014-11-28T22:15:00.002-08:00

What awaits Cole Phelps at the next crime scene? Will it be a couple of hopheads who overdosed on morphine and are now on the midnight train to nowhere? Or maybe a young lady whose dreams of Hollywood stardom were chewed up and spit out by the studios and who now lies naked in a park, the victim of a brutal murder? L.A. Noire confronts you with these sad situations and many more. Inspired by film noir classics and hardboiled crime fiction, this tale of a complicated and troubled cop in postwar Los Angeles makes the business of detective work absorbing and rewarding, and it's drenched in so much authentic late-'40s style that you'll practically be able to smell the acrid mix of glamour and corruption in the air. This PC release comes complete with the five cases that were released as downloadable content on consoles, making it the best version of L.A. Noire you can buy.

Billboards and neon signs are just a few of the details that help create L.A. Noire's authentic period atmosphere.

The City of Angels is one of the stars of L.A. Noire, and it gets the red-carpet treatment here. The game re-creates a vast swath of the city circa 1947; though it's by no means accurate down to the tiniest detail, those who know Los Angeles will appreciate the tremendous amount of research that clearly went into designing this version of it. (You expect to see the historic Egyptian Theatre in its proper place on Hollywood Boulevard, for instance, but seeing the Pig 'N Whistle right next to it, which has been there since 1927, is impressive.) Your journey takes you from filthy flophouses and hobo camps to elegant mansions and the sleek, modern offices of a company that's shaping the development of postwar Los Angeles. The architecture, which includes cookie-cutter housing developments that are springing up in droves to capitalize on the return of soldiers from the war, as well as jazz clubs where cops and gangsters alike relax after night falls, is authentic and makes this Los Angeles an absorbing and immersive place.
And it's not just these big things that the game gets right. As a detective, your work investigating crime scenes is often about the smallest details, and the richness of these details in L.A. Noire makes rummaging around grisly crime scenes and perusing the personal effects of victims a compelling process. The homes of murder victims feel lived in as a result of pictures on the walls, notes pinned on refrigerators, and clothing tossed on the floor and forgotten. Pick up an official document while rummaging through some files and you'll see that it looks genuine right down to the fine print. This attention to detail makes the often unsavory business of being a detective deeply absorbing. On top of this, the period fashions, actual automobiles, and music of the era--along with a score that evokes the style of some of the great composers of film noir--weave an intoxicating spell that's sure to stir the heart of anyone with a fondness for 1940's style. The art direction that pervades every aspect of L.A. Noire is simply outstanding, and it's a huge part of what makes this game such a memorable experience. And if you want the game to look more like Out of the Past than Chinatown, there's an option to play in crystal-clear black and white.

In a moment, that criminal's blood will be painting the pillar behind him.

But all that attention to detail wouldn't amount to much if it weren't in the service of a game that was worthy of it. Thankfully, L.A. Noire is worthy. You play as Cole Phelps, a young veteran of World War II who enlists in the L.A.P.D. in 1947. Phelps is played by Aaron Staton, best known for his role on Mad Men, and thanks to L.A. Noire's use of an impressive motion capture technology, his performance goes far beyond voice acting. Phelps' face is Staton's face, and while motion scanning doesn't quite capture all the soul of an actor's performance, it nonetheless allows for a great deal of the subtlety of that performance to come through. It may take a bit of adjustment, seeing almost-but-not-quite-real faces on these characters, and there's sometimes a bit of a blurriness around the lips that can be distracting. But for the most part, it's very effective, allowing for rich and nuanced performances that seem to fully inhabit the world of the game. And this isn't just for show. The story of L.A. Noire hits harder because its characters look and sound so believable. Phelps' commanding officer Captain Donnelly has a passion for swift, merciless justice and a preacher's gift for oratory, while the weathered face of Herschel Biggs, one of many partners you have throughout the game, speaks volumes about his years on the force. The performances have a concrete impact on gameplay, too. When you're interrogating a suspect or questioning a witness, it's the facial expressions of a real person that you're reading when determining what approach to take.
You start out playing Phelps as a newly recruited uniformed officer. When a call comes in over the radio that a few homicide detectives need some assistance, you make your way to the crime scene and get your first crack at investigation. While investigating, you move Phelps around the environment and look for clues. Of course, not everything in any given location is going to be relevant to your investigation, and at first, the process can feel a bit silly. You might pick up empty beer bottles, hairbrushes, rolling pins, and other meaningless stuff, making Phelps move them around in his hand as if they might conceal vast significance while he mutters to himself (and to you) that these particular items have no bearing on the case. But as you progress, you develop a sharper eye for what things in an environment might be relevant. By default, the game indicates that you're near something you can examine with chimes (and controller vibration, if you're using a gamepad), but with this option turned on, investigations often boil down to just walking Phelps over every inch of an area, waiting for those indicators to go off. Turning these off makes investigation far more involving and encourages you to carefully study the environment looking for anything that might give you insight into the case. You still know when you've found everything important in a given location because the investigation music fades out, though if you like, you can also turn this indicator off.
Phelps goes above and beyond the call of duty to close this first case himself, but it's not out of a selfless wish to protect and serve. He has a cold ambition to rise up the ranks in the department, and it's not long before his drive pays off politically. This determination also isolates him from his fellow cops and makes him a bit hard to root for initially, but this only makes him a better noir protagonist. He's a deeply flawed hero, and as the game progresses, you learn more about the experiences that turned him into the man he is today, and he develops in some fascinating ways as the narrative approaches its powerful conclusion. It takes quite a while for the story to build up steam, but the excitement of the later chapters makes the more deliberate pace of what came before well worth it. And you don't need to be a fan of film noir and hardboiled crime fiction to appreciate this tale, but if you are, you may take particular pleasure in the inspiration L.A. Noire takes from many terrific sources. (James Ellroy's bloody epic L.A. Confidential is a particularly clear influence.)

Another poor sap meets a violent end in the City of Angels.

As Phelps makes a name for himself in the department, he's called upon to start heading investigations himself, and that means questioning witnesses and interrogating suspects. During interrogations, you select something to question the witness or suspect about from a list in your notebook. (This is partly why thorough investigation of a crime scene is important; if you miss an important clue, you won't be able to ask people about it, which may prevent you from getting vital information.) Once the person responds to your question, you have three choices. If you believe the person is being honest and forthright with you, you can select Truth, which results in Phelps responding positively to the witness or suspect and coaxing more information out of him or her. If you think a person is being less than entirely honest, you can select Doubt, which often translates into "press the witness or suspect harder," and if your instincts are correct, this generally results in the suspect giving up something useful. But if your instincts are wrong and the person was cooperating, this approach results in him or her reacting negatively, which gives you nothing. Finally, if you think the person is lying to you and you have a piece of evidence that proves it, you can select Lie. In this case, you have to back up what you're saying with evidence. For instance, if you ask a suspect what shoe size he wears and he tells you he wears a size 9, you can use the size 8 work boots you found in his home to prove that he's lying.

In the early cases, the game holds your hand through these processes, and as a result, they can feel narrow and artificial. For instance, at one point, you need to get a confession from a suspect. If you botch the interrogation, the suspect will dismiss you, at which point your commanding officer will tell you to get back in there and get a confession out of the suspect, starting the whole thing over. It's also typically very obvious early on when a suspect or witness is not being entirely honest, as he or she makes an exaggerated show of looking nervous or shifty eyed. But once the training wheels come off, the process gets a lot more interesting. It becomes entirely possible to miss vital clues at crime scenes or fail to get important information from a witness and to progress through a case, and suspects behave more naturally, which makes them tougher to read.

Would the guy who played Ted's dad in the Bill & Ted movies lie to you?

When you're stumped about the right approach to take, you can spend a point of intuition, which bears unmistakable similarities to the lifelines on the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Intuition can be used either to remove one of the incorrect approaches--eliminating Lie, for instance, and leaving you to choose between Truth and Doubt--or to see what approach other players took at that particular moment in the interrogation. Intuition can also be used to highlight the location of every important piece of evidence while investigating a crime scene. You don't earn intuition points very quickly so they must be spent sparingly, and they serve as a bit of help without taking all the detective work out of your hands. There's only one save file that the game updates automatically, so you can't just restart when an interrogation goes badly, but this is for the best. It's far more interesting to just rely on your instincts and finish the case to see how things play out, at which point you can restart the case and try for a better outcome if you like. Cases can definitely take some very different turns depending on your actions, which makes replaying them worthwhile. In one case, for instance, you might end up shooting a potentially innocent man and earning the scorn of Captain Donnelly, or you might put away a social menace, at which point Donnelly takes you and your partner out for a celebratory drink.
Regardless of whom you put away, you may come away from some cases with the troubling feeling that you didn't get the right man. That may sound unsatisfying, and in a way it is, but it's a good kind of unsatisfying. Noir isn't about tidy resolutions and happy endings. It's often about the cases where the truth is elusive--the cases that keep cops up at night. And L.A. Noire rewards your patience. A story strand left unresolved in one case may come up again a few cases later, and something you thought would be left unclear may finally come into focus. Less satisfying is the way that the resolution of one story case doesn't have any bearing on the next. For instance, even if you completely botch the aforementioned case and Donnelly rains fire and brimstone down on you and your partner, the next case begins with him showering you with praise. L.A. Noire has an overarching story to tell, and it's a good one, but the inelegant way in which it keeps that story on track can be jarring.

The beautiful L.A. River features in The Consul's Car, a case that was previously exclusive to the PS3.

L.A. still had streetcars in 1947, but it was a city quickly becoming dominated by the automobile, and that's the only way to travel in L.A. Noire. Thankfully, driving is fun. Whether you steer them with a gamepad or the keyboard, cars are responsive and swift, which is particularly important during the game's many car chases. Still, it's not so enjoyable that you'll always relish the thought of driving from one end of the game's large map to the other; thankfully, you can usually opt to have your partner drive, which functions as a fast-travel option for getting to your selected destination. The cars are also nicely detailed, and you can admire any vehicle you've driven in the game's vehicle showroom.
The gunplay is very easy to pick up. You can hide behind cover, and pop out to squeeze off shots. Aim assist options are available, and if you're playing with a gamepad, you may want them on, but the precision afforded by mouse control makes them unnecessary. The shooting itself feels fine, but it's the context and the atmosphere that make some firefights stand out. A pursuit through catacombs, a gunfight in a historic movie theater, and the tumultuous climactic shoot-out are just a few of the moments throughout L.A. Noire that have a cinematic sense of place and style. Although the objectives often describe your goal as subduing suspects, once the bullets start flying, the only way out for the criminals is in the coroner's wagon. Shooting suspects in the legs a few times proves to be as fatal as popping them in the head once. The grim brand of justice that Phelps doles out in these situations is certainly in keeping with the game's somber tone, but it's disappointing that you can't try to keep these criminals alive so that they can face a trial.
Not everyone you pursue ends up dead, though. You regularly find yourself pursuing suspects on foot, and these chases don't always end with someone headed to the morgue. Pursuing suspects is easy. You just try to keep Phelps headed straight for his target; he handles all the climbing over fences and leaping between rooftops automatically. In some cases, you have the option of trying to bring the suspect to a halt by firing a warning shot. To do this, you must keep your reticle fixed on the fleeing suspect for a few seconds as a meter fills up. But strangely, there are many chases in which you're not given this option. (When you can attempt it, you'll know because Phelps will have his gun in his hand.) It's clear that the game doesn't want you to stop suspects before you've experienced the thrilling chase through a crumbling movie set that awaits you or whatever else it may have in store, but this restriction nonetheless feels artificial and limiting.

I'm not sure 1947 Los Angeles is ready for that tie, Cole.

Gunfights, foot chases, car chases, and the occasional simple brawl don't just spring up during cases. They're also a regular part of the street crimes that are reported over the radio, which you can choose to respond to or ignore. There are 40 street crimes in all, spread across each of the desks that Cole occupies--traffic, homicide and so on. They're typically brief; you report to the scene of the crime and a car chase, shoot-out, or other action sequence ensues. These aren't as interesting as the action sequences that occur during cases, where you have a deeper personal investment in the action and the stakes are higher. But they make this Los Angeles feel more alive and troubled, and they're a good way to earn experience, which scores you intuition points and occasionally a spiffy new suit.
For all of its attention to detail, L.A. Noire hits the occasional false note. For instance, the way people you pass on the street constantly comment loudly to nobody in particular about having seen you in the papers or indicate that you could use a bath is awkward, and it sticks out like a sore thumb in a world that tries so hard to be believable. But this is a minor nitpick with a game that gets under your skin the way few games do. L.A. Noire's length can vary significantly, depending on how many street crimes you respond to and how much of your own driving you do, but in any case, the 26 story cases (up from 21 in the original console release) make for a complete and satisfying experience. You come into contact with the seamy side of the movie industry and with major players in the gambling racket; you meet working stiffs and powerful businessmen; you encounter low-ranking mob thugs and Mickey Cohen, one of the most powerful gangsters in Los Angeles at the time. L.A. Noire is a unique game with a terrific sense of period atmosphere, absorbing investigation mechanics, and a haunting tale with plenty of moments that would be right at home in a classic film noir. Those smoky nights spent listening to jazz at the Blue Room, and the price you paid for them, will stay with you long after you've retired your badge and gun.

Dawn of War - Complete Edition (3DVD)

2014-11-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

Considering the weaponry that humankind has already invented during the past couple of thousand years, it's difficult to even begin to imagine what kinds of implements of destruction will exist in the 41st millennium. However, England-based Games Workshop has done an excellent job of imagining what will come with its unique Warhammer 40,000 universe, which originated as a tabletop wargame but over the years has spun off into a variety of computer and video games. Dawn of War is the latest of these, and it's probably the best of these. Developed by seasoned real-time strategy maker Relic (best known for Homeworld and its sequel), Dawn of War is a testament to what can be so great about this style of gaming, and it captures the grim and brutal world of Warhammer 40,000 extremely well.

In the 41st millennium, warfare will take the form of great-looking, fun, and exciting real-time strategy battles.

Those unfamiliar with Warhammer 40,000 will get the perfect primer in the game's brief, spectacular, introductory cinematic that shows off a pitched battle between two forces that are bent on ripping each other to shreds--and are well equipped to do so. Dawn of War actually features four of Warhammer 40,000's most popular factions: The tireless and imperialistic space marines, highly versatile warriors who have access to a variety of vehicles as well as terminators, the strongest infantry in the game; the savage green-skinned orks, whose tough forces can vastly outnumber and therefore overwhelm their enemies; the enigmatic and technologically advanced eldar, who are the sneakiest and most maneuverable of the races, and who have access to numerous specialist units; and the traitorous forces of chaos--former space marines who have been warped by demonic energies, and whose strong infantry are assisted by terrifying demonic creatures.
Each of these factions has a great deal of personality in the game thanks to the imaginatively designed, vibrantly detailed, and beautifully animated units available to it, along with equally good speech and audio effects. Even the way in which the respective sides build their structures is interesting. Whereas chaos summons its buildings through arcane rituals, ork structures unceremoniously arrive from orbit in big heaps of junk parts. Visual differences aside, each faction is distinctly (though not drastically) different and playable in the game's skirmish and multiplayer modes, although the single-player campaign exclusively focuses on a space marine chapter called the Blood Ravens.
The game's relatively brief campaign of around 10 missions begins when the Ravens are called in to assist with the defense of the planet Tartarus, which has suddenly been overrun by the warmongering orks. In addition to fending off the orks, the Ravens soon experience some "misunderstandings" with the eldar, who are already on location investigating something sinister--something that chaos is after. It's a good setup to pit you against three of the game's four factions, and the main character of the story, a veteran space marine commander named Gabriel, is quickly likable because of his ruthless, loyal, and valorous attitude.
The campaign itself isn't great, though, since it's just a linear series of missions that typically involve building up a base, mustering your forces, and crushing the enemy. So, basically, it's standard stuff. Some missions have some interesting set pieces in them. In one mission, a computer-controlled battalion of the imperial guard--human allies of the space marines that lack the marines' cybernetic enhancements and power armor--covers your flank from an onslaught of orks as you conduct your operations. It's tempting to help the guardsmen in their defense of you, or at least it's tempting to watch as their tanks and laser weapons stave off the aggressors. However, the campaign is brief and conventional overall, so any remotely experienced RTS player should find it to be a cakewalk at the default normal difficulty setting (two tougher settings are also available). The actual story is pretty good, at least, and it unfolds between missions through some excellently over-the-top dialogue between the game's main characters. However, the between-mission cutscenes, which are rendered using the game's 3D engine, simply don't look good. You'll see characters flapping their gums and animating awkwardly, which is in stark contrast to how terrific they look in battle during actual gameplay.

The campaign only lets you play as the space marines, but the other three sides are yours to command in skirmish and multiplayer matches.

Playing through Dawn of War's campaign at least teaches you to respect the space marines' abilities in battle. In addition, the game features four separate interactive tutorials--one for each of the game's factions--which get you acclimated with the respective sides' buildings and units. As mentioned, the four sides in Dawn of War aren't drastically different, since they're each dependent on the same resources and have roughly analogous military units. However, these similarities are to the game's credit, because they serve to reduce the learning curve involved in switching from play as one faction to another. Consequently, the thought of learning to play as each of them, in turn, doesn't seem intimidating. Nevertheless, as in any great RTS game, it can take an indefinitely long time to truly master the different options of any one of these factions. Therefore, the devil's in the details of the various units, vehicles, weapons, abilities, and tactics available to them.
One of Dawn of War's accomplishments involves how successfully it translates some of the tabletop wargame's elements into effective twists on the conventional formula for real-time strategy games. For example, the action in any given battle revolves heavily around the capturing and holding of "strategic points," which have an abstract concept but literally take the form of beacons on the map. You may capture these points with most infantry squads, which is a process that leaves your squad immobilized and vulnerable for a number of seconds. But then, the captured point grants you a steady flow of requisition resource, which is necessary for purchasing new buildings, units, and upgrades. The idea is that the better you're faring in battle by capturing more strategic points, the more likely your faction is willing to support you from orbit with additional troops, structures, and supplies.
Your strategic points can be recaptured by the enemy, but you can defend them by building listening posts on them, and then you can upgrade these listening posts into respectable automated defenses. Moreover, upgrades to these structures also increase the flow of resources from that point, so they're a good investment. In addition to strategic points, maps contain similar points that represent relics and critical locations. These, too, add to your requisition resource rate. Relics also unlock the most power elements from your arsenal, while capturing and holding the map's critical locations for a sufficient length of time may win you the match. That is, if you play with the default settings, in which you may alternatively achieve victory in this fashion--or by capturing and holding two-thirds of the map's strategic points. Of course, you could always go the good old-fashioned route of annihilating the opposing army. Regardless, Dawn of War is decidedly unkind to overly defensive play styles, so the best defense is a good offense here.

It's not practical to play the game while zoomed-in and up close to the action, but it's always a treat to take a closer look at some of the carnage.

The game's other resource is power, which is automatically accumulated when you build generators. A few points on each map let you build special ultrapowered generators for a major influx of this resource, which becomes especially important in the late-game, since large quantities of it are needed to marshal your strongest units. At any rate, the game's resource model is simple, and there aren't an overwhelming number of buildings or upgrades available to each faction, which creates some pretty clear-cut strategic choices in battle from an economic standpoint. Do you "tech up" your best units, or do you quickly throw together some fighting forces with which to rush your enemies and prevent them from gaining the upper hand? Actually, in practice you'll probably want to do both. The game's economic model, through its simplicity, does a great job of putting the emphasis on combat. You can't just hunker down and hoard resources; instead, you need to get out there to capture strategic points. This will inevitably cause you to encounter the enemy quite early in a match. So while there's a fair amount of repetitive base-building in a given battle, it's an easy and relatively quick and painless process that facilitates some interesting strategic choices. However, it doesn't much take the emphasis away from the action out in the field.
As well it shouldn't, since much of the game's underlying strategy unfolds during the heat of battle rather than back at base. Despite how you gain access to some extremely powerful vehicles and other units in the later stages of a battle, Dawn of War strikes a fine balance of requiring you to use your relatively inexpensive infantry throughout rather than simply replacing your less powerful forces. It's these infantry units that you'll use to capture strategic locations on the map, so you may want to upgrade your infantry and other units during the course of a battle. Interestingly, Dawn of War lets you upgrade and customize individual squads. So while you might research an upgrade back at base that allows you to equip your squads with additional heavy weapons, you then need to decide which squads to equip with which weapons. Furthermore, infantry squads can be reinforced, since they usually don't start out at full strength. So, for example, whereas you initially get a squad of four space marines out of your chapel-barracks, you may reinforce that squad with up to five more marines--and the squad will move and act as a single unit.
Dawn of War lets you comfortably focus your efforts on managing a relatively small number of versatile military forces. Your units do quite a good job when left to their own devices, but there are several behavioral presets that let you determine how they should act when confronted by the enemy. The default defensive position works well in most cases. It's not all automatic, so there's plenty for you to do. Squad reinforcements and upgraded weapons materialize out of thin air, making it possible to upgrade your squad from anywhere on the map, which gives you the power to counter your enemy forces on the fly. You can also summon squad leaders, and you can even attach powerful hero-type characters to your squads, who'll empower their brethren and who are extremely strong in their own rights. Some options are noticeably lacking, for better or worse. For instance, if a front-line unit is taking damage, you can't just walk him to the rear ranks to keep him alive, since you can't control him independently of his squad. In fact, there's not really an easy way of tracking individual casualties anyway, so it's common to have to quickly cycle through your squads to then commission more reinforcements and heavy weapons as your forces take damage. Also, larger units sometimes have a hard time maneuvering around smaller ones, so you might need to help them get around. Since you don't have too many units to work with, though, this level of micromanagement doesn't seem excessive or unwelcome.

A dreadnought, one of the space marines' most powerful combatants, can easily take on dozens of orks.

You'll also need to keep an eye on your units' morale, which is governed by a blue meter above the green meter that represents health. The game's morale system is simple, but it works well. Basically, units lose morale in addition to hit points as they take damage, and some types of attacks (and attackers)--while not necessarily the deadliest in the game--are particularly damaging to morale. A unit's morale is broken when its meter empties, and while the unit won't automatically turn and flee at this time, you'd do well to get it out of the fight. Otherwise its strength will be severely crippled until it escapes from battle and recovers. So, when faced with overwhelming odds (such as at the hands of the swarming orks), it's viable to try to break enemy morale to turn the tide of battle. As such, not only does the morale system add a strategic element to Dawn of War's combat, but also it helps differentiate the playable factions. For example, the space marines are extremely brave and won't ever break under typical battlefield conditions. But when faced with some of chaos' most hideous demons, even these stalwart men may lose their resolve.
Dawn of War offers a similarly simple but effective implementation of battlefield cover. Basically, your forces can fight from behind cover to reduce the amount of damage sustained. Cover usually takes the form of large craters, though certain maps have rivers, which actually incur a defensive penalty upon the units caught stranded in them. Context-sensitive icons lets you clearly see which units are in cover, and your cursor noticeably changes when the area on the map you're pointing at will grant the benefits of cover. Cover doesn't always work as you'd expect, so a unit standing within the ruins of a building might seem like it should get some sort of protection. However, one of the only obvious rough edges in the game is how it's possible to shoot straight through solid walls in some cases. This really isn't as bad as it sounds, though, as most of the game's maps are battle-torn wastelands without too many such obstacles to deceivingly stand between you and your foe. Along similar lines, there's no need to be worried about friendly fire, because your squads can safely shoot past (and sometimes through) one another.

The game's units are highly detailed, though they still don't make for great cutscenes during the brief single-player campaign.

There actually aren't a ton of maps that ship with the game, and, surprisingly, Dawn of War doesn't ship with a scenario editor either. Nevertheless, it's possible to squeeze a lot of variety out of the available maps, the largest of which support up to eight players. By customizing the victory conditions and by taking on different numbers of computer opponents of various skill levels (from "easy" to "insane"), either in a free-for-all or in team-based matches, you can keep busy for a long time just playing the game offline. The game's difficulty settings are appropriately named and tuned. The easy artificial intelligence is practically brain-dead and is just fine for RTS neophytes, while the insane AI is inhumanly efficient but apparently doesn't cheat. So if you want to learn the game quickly, try saving a replay of one of your battles against the insane AI, and carefully observe your defeat when you play it back.
Of course, Dawn of War also supports LAN and online play, and its online player-matching service optionally lets you easily get into a random game (based on a few parameters of your choosing) via an automatch feature. There's a lot of potential for fun to be had online, especially since some of Dawn of War's superunits--including a couple of huge demons that stand about a hundred feet tall--are so satisfying to watch as they crush their foes. We expect many players will forfeit the match (their own morale, broken) at the mere sight of these things. For good measure, Dawn of War's army painter lets you create your own custom color schemes and insignia for your factions--or you can choose from a number of preexisting types that Warhammer 40,000 fans will instantly recognize.
It's worth discussing Dawn of War's excellent interface, in general. The game offers pretty much all of the interface innovations developed to date in a real-time strategy game (plus unique interface graphics for the four sides), making it eminently easy to play if you're accustomed to using a combination of the mouse and some keyboard hotkeys for games like this. The game's especially quick to get into if you've recently played Blizzard's Warcraft III--the apparent inspiration for Dawn of War's interface design. In fact, the overall look and feel of Dawn of War--and its brutal, relatively small-scale skirmishes--is actually quite reminiscent of Blizzard's latest RTS game, as is the fast pacing and the average 20- to 30-minute length of a battle. This is at least a little ironic, since Blizzard's own strategy games have evidently drawn from Warhammer 40,000 and its fantasy counterpart, Warhammer, for creative inspiration.
As suggested previously, Dawn of War features a superb presentation, and it's also a case of when a game's audiovisual elements serve to significantly enrich the gameplay experience. Few real-time strategy games pack in this much detail and personality into their units. Dawn of War's units are not only spitting images of the meticulously detailed pewter miniatures that Warhammer 40,000 is known for, but they're animated extremely well. The larger units are especially a joy to behold (or a terror to behold, as the case may be), since they boast a surprising variety of different attack animations. Space marine dreadnoughts will grab hold of enemy infantry and squash them like grapes before tossing their listless bodies aside like garbage; the eldar's avatar of Khaine, which takes the form of a fiery demon, impales its victims on its burning sword and causes the earth to blacken with ash in the wake of its footsteps. Generally speaking, a lot of blood is spilled, and the game's 3D camera gives you front-row seats to all the mayhem. Meanwhile, the backspace button instantly allows you to snap back to the game's default isometric viewpoint.

The world of Warhammer 40,000 is brought to life like never before in this excellent game.

Dawn of War also features a fittingly grand orchestral score by Jeremy Soule, who's been responsible for many other such great game music compositions over the years. It's bombastic at times, but it mostly just adds to the game's ambience. And the game's audio effects are a suitable match for the graphics. The speech is particularly noteworthy, so Warhammer 40,000 fans should be thrilled at how appropriately the various voices capture most of the respective units' personalities. The game also sports some great audio cues for when units' morale falters or for when your forces first catch glimpse of their enemies. Unfortunately, you'll notice a few weak points in voiceovers, such as chaos' whiny cultists and heretics, who sound just a little too sycophantic. And as in other RTS games, the speech is inherently repetitive. But it's mostly quite entertaining, and in some cases, dare we say, it's quite quotable.
Fans of the source materials will especially appreciate Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. However, this is simply a great game, regardless. It's also another step in a good direction for the highly evolved real-time strategy genre, because it takes what's great about this style of game--the process of outmaneuvering and outsmarting opponents to defeat them through military might--and puts pretty much all the emphasis on the parts of the gameplay that inherently seem exciting and satisfying. And while we'd be tempted to say that the skirmish and online multiplayer modes are the main attractions in Dawn of War, that's actually not quite the case. Instead, it's the game's four different sides, each brimming with personality and intriguing tactical potential, that steal the show.

The Darkness II Limited Edition (2 DVD)

2014-11-25T06:08:00.000-08:00

Darkness Reborn – Penerus Dark Avenger Yang Layak Dimainkan, Meski IAP-nya Kamu Anggap Mahal

Risky Maulana | 25/11/2014
Sebagai action RPG yang mengedepankan elemen hack-and-slash, saya rasa istilah grinding merupakan kalimat yang cocok untuk menggambarkan impresi keseluruhan saya setelah memainkan Darkness Reborn. Melanjutkan impresi sebelumnya, kali ini Darkness Reborn kembali dalam sebuah ulasan lengkap seputar kelebihan dan kekurangan yang saya jumpai di sepanjang play-trough atas game rilisan Gamevil ini.
Berhubung penjelasan mekanisme Darkness Reborn sudah sempat didetailkan di impresi sebelumnya, dalam review berikut saya mencoba untuk straightforward dengan ulasan saya. So, jangan kemana-mana dulu untuk melihat seberapa bagus performa RPG terbaru rilisan Gamevil yang satu ini di mata saya.

Darkness Reborn sendiri merupakan contoh bagaimana sebuah action RPG mobile berkembang dengan peningkatan kualitas yang terus diperbaharui setiap waktu. Boolean Games selaku pihak developer bisa dibilang belajar banyak dari action RPG mereka sebelumnya: Dark Avengers yang dirilis tahun 2013 lalu. Meski Darkness Reborn tidak mempunyai hubungan apa-apa dengan action RPG rilisan Boolean setahun sebelumnya, namun lompatan visual Darkness Reborn memperlihatkan pencapaian yang baik dari developer asal Korea tersebut selama setahun ini.
Gameplay hack-and-slash yang diusung Darkness Reborn sayangnya tidak berbeda jauh dengan action RPG yang pernah kamu mainkan. Bahkan jika kamu sudah mencicipi Dungeon Hunter (Gameloft) maupun Kritika: Chaos Unleashed rilisan Gamevil kemarin, saya yakin kamu pasti tidak perlu bersusah payah menekuni aksi hack-and-slash yang diusung Darkness Reborn, apalagi jika kamu sudah familier dengan tingginya jam terbang grinding yang dibutuhkan tipikal game seperti ini sebelumnya.

Grinding, naik level, repeat

Yep, grinding merupakan rutinitas yang bakal sering kamu lakoni di Darkness Reborn. Mengulangi sebuah level berkali-kali agar kamu mencapai level yang mencukupi adalah aktivitas yang memang menjemukan bagi beberapa kalangan. Namun jika kamu membutuhkan suntikan game penuh aksi yang berlangsung cepat selama beberapa menit, saya rasa kamu bisa memaklumi repetisi dari game ini untuk hiburan singkat yang menyenangkan.
Beruntung aktivitas grinding di Darkness Reborn diberikan reward yang sangat memuaskan seperti perolehan loot dan gold yang cukup mudah di setiap misi. Yep, jika kamu bertanya-tanya apakah Darkness Reborn “aman” untuk dimainkan? Saya pikir kamu tidak perlu mengkhawatirkan hal lain di luar mahalnya harga IAP, karena item, gold dan equipment drop dalam Darkness Reborn sangatlah efisien. Jadi jangan khawatir dengan investasi waktumu di sini, karena system loot Darkness Reborn akan membuatmu ketagihan untuk terus melakukan grinding demi perolehan equipment yang lebih menarik.

Butuh equipment rare? Jangan khawatir, di sini ada banyak equipment bagus yang sayangya tidak bisa kamu tukarkan dengan player lain

Yang menarik, Darkness Reborn menyertakan rutinitas multiplayer raid berupa Rift yang lumayan seru untuk dimainkan. Rift sendiri mengajak kamu, kawanmu atau orang lain untuk bertahan mengalahkan tiga gelombang musuh di sebuah arena kecil dengan lawan yang bervariasi. Menariknya, penyelesaian mode ini memberimu beberapa crafting material yang kamu butuhkan untuk membuat sebuah rare equipment. Jadi jika kamu ingin memperoleh senjata yang berbobot dan sesuai kebutuhan level hero kamu, seringlah melakukan grinding di mode ini baik itu dari random invite yang diberikan orang maupun Rift yang kamu dapatkan sendiri ketika melalui serangkaian grinding di sebuah level.

Sayangnya, serunya grinding di sini terbatasi dengan sistem energi yang cukup lama untuk menunggunya penuhi kembali. Setiap kali kamu menjalani sebuah misi, kamu menghabiskan tiga dari 25 slot energi yang tersedia. Masing-masing energi tadi butuh waktu 10 menit untuk beregenerasi kembali, jadi bila semuanya habis, kamu harus menunggu setidaknya 30 menit untuk bisa menjalankan sebuah level.

Bingkai skill ala Diablo III langsung terlihat saat saya mengamati skill tree di Darkness Reborn

Menyebut Diablo III sebagai sumber inspirasi bagi Boolean Games merupakan hal yang tidak sulit dicermati setelah menghabiskan 10 jam bermain Darkness Reborn. Sepanjang play-trough tadi, saya menjumpai beberapa aset grafis seperti bingkai skill dan visualiasi karakter yang membuat saya teringat dengan game buatan Blizzard tersebut. Jika saya boleh sedikit berandai-andai, mungkin Darkness Reborn merupakan bentuk paling mendekati versi mobile Diablo III seandainya saja Blizzard ikut terjun di kancah game mobil.
Menyandingkan Darkness Reborn dengan game berkualitas AAA seperti Diablo III memang kedengarannya agak berlebihan bagi siapa saja yang belum mencicipi game ini dari awal. Saya rasa hal itu masuk ke dalam reputasi Gamevil sebagai publisher yang kurang begitu bersahabat dengan ukuran dompet kita karena harga IAP-nya yang terbilang mahal.

Ada banyak sekali cara mendapatkan uang di game ini, mulai dari daily spin, achievement, hingga daily quest

IAP di Darkness Reborn bisa dibilang masih cukup mahal untuk pembelian Sol Gem yang menjadi mata uang IAP di sini. Untuk membeli boks dengan jaminan kualitas item legendary seharga 100 Sol, kamu memerlukan Rp. 111.000 guna mendapatkan satu item legendary yang jarang bisa didapatkan kecuali membeli boks ini. Pembelian boks khusus untuk mendapatkan item legendary ini sebenarnya tidak begitu terasa efeknya di bagian single player.
Namun jika kamu memutuskan bertarung menghadapi musuh di multiplayer arena battle, label pay to win di aspek yang satu ini terasa kental sekali, karena mustahil kamu bisa mengalahkan musuh dengan kualitas equipment di atasmu. Beruntung di luar upaya mendapatkan equipment legendaris tadi, pembelian IAP di sini bukanlah hal yang begitu wajib. Kamu tetap bisa melanjutkan grinding hingga energimu habis atau memutuskan untuk refill ulang dengan biaya 20 Sol saja.
Secara keseluruhan, Darkness Reborn merupakan action RPG yang lumayan seru meskipun upayamu untuk mendapatkan equipment legendaris di sini terhalangi monetisasi IAP-nya yang terbilang mahal. Jika janganlah keburu pesimis mencobanya saat kamu melihat nama publisher game ini sebelumnya, karena menjajal Darkness Reborn selama lima belas menit saja bisa membuatmu memutuskan apakah game ini layak bagimu atau tidak. Saya sendiri telah bersenang-senang dengan game ini selama 10 jam, dan saya harap kamu juga mengalami hal yang sama.

Battlefield 4 + UPDATE 110067 (6 DVD)

2014-11-25T06:06:00.000-08:00

Review Battlefield 4 – Seri Terbaik Battlefield Dengan Peningkatan Kualitas Cerita

C. Custer | 04/11/2013
Battlefield 4 adalah jawaban Electronic Arts terhadap game seri Call of Duty yang sudah sangat mendunia. Peluncuran Battlefield 4 ini sudah sangat dinantikan oleh para fans FPS diseluruh dunia dan jika kamu tidak tahu pernah mendengar mengenai Battlefield sama sekali maka kemungkinan besar kamu tinggal di goa :). Tapi apakah game ini berhasil melakukannya kali ini atau apakah seri terbarunya ini hanya sekedar pembaharuan yang nantinya juga akan terlupakan dengan cepat?

Gameplay: Masih Sama Dengan Battlefield Sebelumnya

Jika kamu pernah memainkan seri sebelumnya maka kamu tidak akan menemukan banyak kejutan di Battlefield 4. Bahkan jika kamu pernah bermain game shooter apapun maka Battlefield 4 akan terasa sangat familiar. Kamu akan mengendarai kendaraan perang, meledakkan dinding, menembak tank dan ratusan tentara musuh. Seperti seri sebelumnya di seri Battlefield 4 ini, gamenya terasa lebih open dibanding dengan Call of Duty dalam hal pendekatan perangnya, namun masih belum dapat disebut sebagai open world game.
Kontrolnya terasa akurat seperti biasanya dan setiap senjata yang saya tembakan terasa memiliki bobot dan bertenaga. Tapi itu bukan berarti semua senjata terasa sama, tentu saja setiap senjata memiliki “feel”nya masing-masing dan kamu akan menemukan banyak sekali pilihan dalam seri kali ini. Dalam story modenya kamu dapat memilih senjata yang sudah kamu temukan selama bermain ketika mengakses ammo crate, jadi bukan senjata yang tergeletak di sekitar kamu saja yang dapat dipakai.
Memang pada awalnya tidak akan terlalu terasa, namun seiring kamu bermain maka kamu dapat melakukan experimen senjata dengan berbagai situasi yang kamu temui. Kamu juga akan masih membawa dua senjata dan dua peledak pada saat yang bersamaan, tapi tidak ada batasan senjata apa yang dapat kamu bawa.
AI musuh dalam game Battlefield 4 terbilang sangat baik. Mereka akan menggunakan perlindungan dengan baik dan akan berusaha untuk membuat kamu keluar dari tempat perlindungan dengan cara melempar granat atau memutar dari samping (flanking). Kesulitan untuk membunuh musuh (dan dibunuh musuh) tergantung dari tingkat kesulitan yang kau pilih. Di Battlefield 4 kamu tidak akan melihat terlalu banyak musuh berdiri di area terbuka sambil menembaki kamu, berjalan ke arah tembok, atau tidak menembak padahal sudah berhadapan muka seperti yang kamu sering temui di game dengan AI yang kurang pintar. AI dari pasukan kamu juga terhitung pintar, mereka akan berjalan di depan kamu ketika menyusuri sebuah jalan tapi ketika kamu mulai menembak mereka akan bergerak menyamping, AI pasukan juga tidak bodoh untuk stuck disebuah tempat dan menghambat perjalanan kamu.
Saya memang menemukan beberapa bug sewaktu bermain, tapi kebanyakan dari bug ini dapat diselesaikan dengan update driver graphic card. Beberapa bug lain yang saya temukan adalah mayat yang mengambang dan sebuah bug yang membuat saya mati ketika memanjat tangga. Walaupun begitu bug ini jarang terjadi dan tidak mengganggu saya ketika bermain sama sekali. Memang benar bahwa tidak terdapat banyak inovasi dalam gameplay Battlefield 4, namun menurut saya memang game ini tidak membutuhkannya. Kegagalan Battlefield 3 dikontribusikan oleh ceritanya yang tidak kuat dan untungnya hal tersebut diperbaiki di Battlefield 4.

Cerita: Acting Sedikit Saja Sebenarnya Sudah Cukup

Battlefield 3 mempunyai kualitas gameplay multiplayer yang sangat seru, namun mode single-playernya terasa kekurangan sesuatu. Para pemain jelas mengharapkan cerita yang sangat fantastis dari game ternama seperti ini, tapi sayangnya ceritanya hambar dan mudah terlupakan. Battlefield 4 memperbaiki hal ini dalam hampir segala sisi, Battefield 4 menawarkan mode story yang kuat dengan nama karakter yang pasti kamu akan ingat lama bahkan setelah menamatkan game ini.
Warning: Sedikit Spoiler tentang awal-tengah cerita.
Kamu akan berperan sebagai Daniel Recker, anggota dari US Special Force dengan nama team Tombstone. Tombstone ini adalah salah satu kelompok militer yang mencoba untuk mengatasi kudeta militer di China akibat pembunuhan Jin Jie, politikus yang menyuarakan pergantian sistem di negeri China dan berpotensi besar untuk menjadi president China selanjutnya. Akibatnya Shanghai menjadi kacau balau dan Komandan Zhang menyerbu kota ini dan merebut kepemimpinannya.
Seperti kebanyakan shooter, kamu akan berperan sebagai anggota militer tingkat rendah dan kamu akan menghabiskan banyak waktu dengan peluru dan granat dan bukan berdebat dengan politikus China untuk menyelesaikan masalah ini. Terlepas dari apakah cerita ini terbilang seru atau tidak, yang pasti adalah cerita ini mampu membuat ikatan yang terlihat jelas dengan setiap misi yang kamu jalani. Ini adalah peningkatan yang besar jika dibanding dengan Battlefield 3.
Kebanyakan karakter yang kamu akan temui dalam game ini akan meninggalkan kesan, namun sebagian besar waktu akan kamu habiskan dengan Irish, seorang rekan di Tombstone dan dengan “Hannah” seorang agen intelijen China yang bekerja sama dengan Tombstone. Untungnya, voice actor yang mengisi karakter ini terbilang sangat mantap. Irish diperankan oleh Micahel K. Williams yang terkenal lewat perannya sebagai Omar di acara televisi The Wire dan Hannah diperankan oleh Jessika Van. Kedua voice aktor ini saya sebutkan namanya karena tanpa mereka maka game ini tidak akan terasa sama. Kedua karakter ini mempunyai dialog yang ditulis dengan baik dan kedua voice actor terasa mempunyai chemistry yang begitu nyata.

DICE (developer game ini) telah cukup cermat untuk menekankan cerita dalam seri Battlefield 4 ini dan menjaga agar plotnya tetap masuk akal. Sebagai contoh kamu tidak akan pernah menerbangkan pesawat di game ini karena Recker bukanlah seorang pilot. Hal ini mungkin terasa mengurangi kesenangan bermain, tapi dengan fokus seperti ini ceritanya menjadi terjaga kualitasnya. Sayangnya ini juga berarti story modenya akan berlangsung pendek, seorang pemain veteran dapat menamatkan game ini dalam waktu kurang dari 6 jam.
Untungnya kamu akan mempunyai alasan untuk memainkan ulang story modenya karena nantinya kamu akan diberikan beberapa pilihan yang mempunyai pengaruh besar terhadap endingnya. Jika saya ceritakan lebih lanjut maka itu akan menjadi spoiler, tapi yang bisa saya katakan adalah saya sangat-sangat terkejut dengan ending pertama saya.

Cerita Battlefield 4 tidaklah sempurna. Kamu dapat melihat sifat sinis karakter Irish yang sangat berlebihan dan ada beberapa plot cerita yang akan membuat kamu bertanya-tanya mengapa hal itu mungkin terjadi. Game ini juga sempat hampir menyentuh beberapa masalah rasial namun sebelum itu terjadi Battlefield 4 mengakhirinya sehingga tidak akan mempengaruhi kamu dalam bermain. Ceritanya memang pendek tapi sangat seru seperti action movie dan kamu akan menemukan beberapa karaker menarik seiring perjalanan.

Atmosphere: Selamat Datang di Asia

Secara visual Battlefield 4 dapat dikatakan sangat-sangat mengagumkan. Pada setting grafis tertinggi gamenya terlihat sebaik game PC lain yang pernah saya mainan dan jalan dengan sangat smooth. Dan untungnya DICE menggunakan seluruh map dengan effesien, kamu akan diajak untuk menyusuri Shanghai dimalam hari ketika hujan deras dan Singapura ketika badai tropis menerjang. Kamu juga akan terlibat dalam petarungan di air dengan menggunakan perahu kencang yang sangat terlihat realistis.

Tapi apa yang membedakan game ini dari yang lain adalah tingkat detailnya. Lingkungan dibuat dengan berbagai ornamen lengkap dan terasa sangat nyata dan hidup. Namun sayangnya walaupun lingkungannya sangat indah tapi kamu tidak akan mempunyai banyak waktu untuk melihat-lihat, tidak dengan tentara China yang sedang menembaki kamu.

Suara di Battlefield 4 benar-benar layak diacungi jempol. Suara desingan peluru dan ledakan game ini mampu membuat tulang kamu bergetar (jika kamu menyetel suara cukup keras). Selain itu kamu juga dapat mendengar percakapan para tentara China dengan detail. Musiknya juga terbilang sangat baik, DICE memilih untuk menggunakan musik elektronik dengan sangat minimalis dan membiarkan suara asli dari suasana perang mengisi ruangan kamu. Tapi walaupun begitu musik dengan frekuensi yang rendah dan berulang-ulang ini mampu membuat pertempurannya terasa lebih seru lagi.

Multiplayer

Saya akan posting khusus mengenai multiplayer Battlefield 4 begitu saya telah memainkannya cukup lama dan naik level, tapi dari apa yang saya mainkan kali ini pengalamannya bisa dikatakan sama. Seperti seri sebelumnya pemain dapat memilih satu dari beberapa class dan melakukan kustomisasi dengan berbagai equipment. Tentu saja seiring kamu bermain dan naik level peralatan baru akan terbuka juga untuk digunakan.

Rush, Conquest dan Team & Squad Deatmatch masih menjadi menu utama dari multiplayernya. Terdapat menu baru yang bernama Obliteration yang nampaknya mencoba untuk mengabungkan pertermpuran dengan jumlah pemain yang banyak dengan mode Rush. Namun ketika saya coba, saya dipentalkan kembali ke lobby, ntah bug atau memang masih belum ada orang yang bermain mode ini. Nanti ini akan saya bahas lebih lanjut.

Tambahan baru di multiplayernya adalah Test Range, dimana kamu dapat mencoba semua senjata dan kendaraan dalam game ini dalam sebuah arena tanpa musuh. Kamu dapat mengakses menu ini untuk berlatih senjata dan juga kendaraan, cocok bagi pemain baru. Saya malah berencana untuk menghabiskan waktu cukup lama di Test Range untuk belajar menerbangkan helicopter tanpa menghancurkannya dalam seketika.

Ada juga mode baru bernama Commander, yang terintegrasi dengan aplikasi tablet dimana kamu dapat bermain sebagai komandan dalam perang yang memberikan bantuan berupa supplies dan memberikan panduan orang yang sedang bermain di PC, tapi itu belum tersedia pada saat revew ini dibuat. Dan jikalaupun sudah tersedia maka kamu harus naik level sampai 10 untuk bisa mengaksesnya.
Tidak ada yang benar-benar baru di multiplayer 4, bisa dibilang sama dengan Battlefield 3 kecuali dengan map baru dan beberapa perubahan minor. Tapi sekali lagi, itu bukan hal yang buruk. Jika kamu suka dengan multiplayer Battlefield 3 (yang mana jutaan orang menyukainya) maka kamu akan suka dengan multiplayer Battlefield 4. Secara pribadi, saya sudah tidak sabar untuk kembali ke medan perang.

Emergency 2014 (2 DVD)

2014-11-24T07:21:00.002-08:00

Emergency Heroes is Ubisoft's attempt at an open-world game for young gamers. But with an incredibly sterile city, repetitive missions, and an inconsequential plot, the game manages to make playing as a police officer, a firefighter, and a medic no fun whatsoever. The single-player game is a five-hour slog through dull missions, and the introduction of friends in multiplayer does little to alleviate the boredom. In the end, it's a game that's so generic and devoid of fun that it actively sucks the life out of you as you play it.

Emergency Heroes offers up a shocking vision of the future, in which humankind makes cities entirely of highways. And tunnels.

You play as Zach Harper, an emergency hero in the city of San Alto. At the beginning of the game, Zach is recovering from being forced out of the city's combined services after a training accident killed one of his colleagues. Predictably, though, he's called back into action when a gang, led by a mysterious figure, starts terrorising the city. You can probably guess the twist from that description alone, but the story is so inconsequential that any spoilers are unlikely to impact your enjoyment. Emergency Heroes features some of the most cliched plotting, one-dimensional characterisation, and laughable dialogue ever to feature in a video game.
The gameplay itself is based entirely around driving, with no on-foot sections at all. You control vehicles either by holding the Wii Remote on its side or by using one of the many Wii Wheel-style peripherals, such as the one bundled with Mario Kart. The control method is functional, but the vehicles suffer from poor turning circles, and it's a shame that there's no option to use a Nunchuk. Even worse, all 12 vehicles handle the same, and even the smallest police car can smash a civilian truck right off of the road. There's also no punishment for crashing into an endless amount of innocent vehicles, which makes the game incredibly easy to play.
The story progresses through 40 preset missions, or "perils," as they're called in the game. However, there are only a few different mission types, such as putting out fires, saving civilians, or inflicting enough damage on an enemy car to knock it off of the road. This lack of variety quickly becomes tiresome, and the city itself doesn't present any of the opportunities usually associated with sandbox games. You might not earn a gold medal for every mission on your first try, but it's unlikely that you'll actually fail one.
Given that this is an open-world game, you can spend some time driving around and taking in the sights. The problem is that San Alto lacks the landmarks, pedestrians, and other points of interest that might make you want to do so. All you have to look at is highway after tunnel after roundabout, resulting in a city that's boring and sterile. Emergency Heroes is perhaps a more shocking dystopian vision of the future than has been created by any number of science-fiction writers in the past. There are also bugs and design issues in abundance. Your car bounces over other vehicles, the GPS often points you in completely the wrong direction, and characters' heads pop up in the middle of the screen and block your view of the road, for no other reason than to offer up another line of meaningless dialogue.

Emergency Heroes is entirely devoid of artistic merit.

Although the game itself is merely dull and repetitive, the overall presentation is on a whole different level of bad. The futuristic comic-book style is reminiscent of Crackdown on the Xbox 360, but it doesn't have that game's style or level of detail. The buildings all look the same, there are only a few different vehicle types, and the character designs look cheaper and more generic than the lowest-budget children's cartoon series. The music maintains a relentlessly fast tempo, but it fails to add drama to the monotonous pace of the game. Furthermore, the voice work teeters on the so-bad-it's-good level of amateurism. If you thought the House of the Dead series was laughably bad when it came to acting in video games, then Emergency Heroes makes that series look like a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet in comparison.
Though multiplayer modes help extend the longevity of the five-hour single-player game, they use the same mission types and are unsurprisingly as repetitive with friends as they are alone. The game supports two players via split-screen mode, and has seven multiplayer game modes in total once you've unlocked them by playing through the single-player game. These games aren't improved in any way by having another person involved, and there's no way to share your best times or play with other people online.
Emergency Heroes is a bad game. It's lazy, boring, and repetitive, and won't even appeal to the younger market that it's aimed at. The missions are dull, the driving is pedestrian, and the city is restrictive. Although it's not fundamentally broken, Emergency Heroes is devoid of any artistic merit and should be avoided at all costs.