What do you get when you task Kurt Rolston (lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion), R.A. Salvatore (acclaimed fantasy author) and Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn) with creating a single-player RPG? An intense hack-’n’-slash experience called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The game’s creators promise a massively open-world experience with hundreds of hours of gameplay, serving as a precursor to their upcoming MMORPG, codenamed Project Copernicus. Most of us are jaded from countless promises of a game experience that never delivers, so what hope of redemption does Reckoning provide? Read on to find out.

Kingdoms of Amalur is a fantasy world created by R.A. Salvatore that will be brought to life through comics, novels, video games and toys. Reckoning is our first glimpse inside that world, centering on the Fateless One, previously dead, who is brought back to life through the magic of the Well of Souls. With no memory of his past and no clear destiny, the Fateless One’s future is wide open. As the Fateless One, you can choose to align yourself to a god and receive a bonus in magic, speech or combat, or you can choose the path of the godless and gain experience points at a higher rate. The Fateless One’s destiny in Amalur appears to focus on destroying the chaotic Tuatha Deohn, but I’m hoping that the game allows you to choose a side. Otherwise, is the Fateless One’s destiny really unwritten?

Reckoning’s opening gameplay is a familiar blend of “choose your name/race/powers” cut-scenes that almost all popular RPGs utilize. Each of the four playable races (two human, two elf) have bonuses (or handicaps) in areas of magic, speech and combat. The demo attempts to give us a taste of the essential types of combat without divulging anything too specific. I chose to go the way of the rogue, relying mostly on stealth and dual-wielding daggers, but the demo didn’t provide enough time to really find out how choosing this path can alter gameplay. I was still able to charge into a room full of enemies and take them out as a warrior would. I’m anxious to find out if choosing stealth would force me to be more methodical in combat, as it did in Skyrim.

In the hour or so that I played the demo, it’s clear that Reckoning is influenced by popular games in the RPG action genre. Most notable are many similarities to the Fable style of combat and storytelling. I thoroughly enjoy the Fable trilogy, so this is a strong point for Reckoning. Unique to this game, however, are its adult themes and level of violence (would you expect anything less from the creator of Spawn?). Reckoning combines RPG elements in a way that’s accessible to all gamers – not just D&D nerds – and provides mature gamers with the level of violence and storytelling that can keep the game engaging. If there really are 200-plus hours of gameplay in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, I hope the rest of the game is a strong as the demo. From what I’ve experienced so far, I’m hooked. It appears to be what I’ve been looking for in a hack-’n’-slash RPG but was never given. Reckoning is available now for the PC, Xbox 360 and the PS3.

© Matthew Booth for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

There was a time when I could call CounterStrike my game. I logged hundreds of hours with friends before Steam even tracked such things. I replaced my gun models, installed blood mods, and even dabbled with mapping. But somewhere along the way CS and I parted ways. Sure, CounterStrike: Source was amazing, and the Gun Game mods were a hit at every LAN party, but I just couldn’t hack the competition anymore. But now the beta test of the upcoming CounterStrike: Global Offensive has stirred me out of my single-player fever dream and brought me back into the fray. So, gather around and listen, all who have eyes to read, while I document the pain and glory to be found in CS:GO.

The beta only has two maps currently, de_dust1 and de_dust2. Both are the same classic maps that you know like your own living room, but unlike your living room, they’re getting cleaned up. Most notably in Dust 1, there’s a new passage connecting the underpass to the way above, which reduces the time it takes to mop up the stragglers towards the end of a round. Likewise, the weapons are fairly limited in the current build. A Desert Eagle (now available to teams), the UMP, the two sniper rifles, and each side’s respective rifle and starter pistol were all I had at my disposal. Both sniper rifles have received visual redesigns, and the scout has been retitled the “SSG 08.” The only change I noticed was a higher rate of fire for the UMP, which significantly improves its viability.

All the weapons feel like classic CounterStrike. This is because developer Valve is staying its traditional course and not adding the ubiquitous ADS (aim down sights) ability. This forces you to crouch, walk or stand still to control your gun. You need that control because the weapons have the same wide cones of fire. It’s easy to open up full-auto on a guy, only to have every shot go straight over his head. To compensate, the dynamic crosshairs are much improved, providing much more detail about your current accuracy than any others I’ve seen. You might not be able to hit the broad side of a barn, but at least you’ll know why.

Global Offensive introduces two grenades that add new tactics to the game. The Molotov cocktail is the easiest to understand. When it explodes, it spreads out flames that temporarily block off a passage, while the smoke provides a modicum of concealment. The Decoy has the most intriguing of uses. It makes gunfire sounds wherever it’s thrown. It’s most useful at higher-level play, where using sounds to guess enemy locations is critical, but I can’t see it being used much in casual play.

There’s a lot of cross-platform compatibility in CS:GO, but it never holds back as a PC game. In the options menu there are lots of settings for TVs, including lowering the field of view, switching to a higher brightness and moving the screen to fit your display. These settings are likely to coincide with the launch of Steam’s TV mode, which will allow for full navigation of Steam (and Valve games, apparently) via controller. While I can’t see anyone playing CS:GO with a gamepad against the average keyboard-and-mouse gamer and enjoying themselves, I can see it working well for that bloke who always lugs his 40-inch plasma to the LAN party.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Bulgarian developer Masthead Studios, after a long and difficult year, has decided to pull the plug on Earthrise, their sci-fi/fantasy MMO. In a statement, studio director Atanas Atanasov said that “Earthrise was released too early and did not meet the expectations of its fans.” Atanasov also issued a challenge to other developers who might seek to create an MMO such as the ill-fated Earthrise. “I hope that one day an independent studio will be able to release the long anticipated open-world sandbox MMO, which everyone is talking about, but no one is making.” A previously planned free-to-play version of the game is still in the works, but its release hinges on the interests of investors and publishers.

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Many fans of Diablo III were angered recently when Blizzard community manager Bashiok (aka Micah Whipple) tweeted that the upcoming game wouldn’t have public chat channels. However, in a shock twist, Bashiok was actually wrong. Public chat channels will be in Diablo III. Not only that, but they will also be included in an “upcoming beta patch.” Bashiok has since taken to the game’s official forums, apologizing for his original misinformation and setting the record straight.

“You know how sometimes you say something that’s stupid and wrong and then people very reasonably get upset and create a lot of threads and discussions and demands with some pretty reasonable reasons for the thing you said wouldn’t happen but then it turns out that you’re stupid and wrong and the things you said are completely the opposite of what’s actually true?,” said Bashiok. “Yeah. So that happened. Public chat channels will be in Diablo III, barring any catastrophe that requires we remove them, because they’re already implemented. In fact they’ll be in an upcoming beta patch so you’ll get to see and play around with them yourselves.”

Bashiok was unable to offer any explanation for his previous incorrect statements, except that “I believed them to be correct when I made them. I apologize, and I’ll strive to not be stupid and wrong in the future.” Looks like a happy ending for the game’s fans after all!

© Simon Moore for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

The latest Skyrim update, version 1.4, is now live on Xbox 360, but PS3 owners will have to wait a bit. “Sony tells us the PlayStation 3 patch will be hitting later today [9 Feb.],” Bethesda said in a blog post, “so stay tuned for more updates.” The developer says the patch, which became available for the PC last week, provides a heap of bug and quest fixes, including “…long term play optimisations for memory and performance,” meaning it should eliminate the game-crippling lag on the PS3.

© Simon Moore for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Kinect, Microsoft’s revolutionary motion-control gaming peripheral, is now available for Windows PCs, retailing for an exclusively priced $249.99. When first released for the Xbox 360 in 2010, it became the fastest selling consumer electronic device, pushing 10 million units in 60 days.

Don’t think Microsoft is just repackaging the same Xbox hardware, as they did for 360 controllers. The Xbox Kinect requires a distance of about six feet between the player and the sensor. To make desktop use less distant, Kinect for Windows features a “near mode,” which features an optimal distance of just 19 inches.

Since the device uses a standard USB connection, many homebrew hackers have been playing with the Kinect since its initial release, so Microsoft is offering official support for the idea. Now separated from a game console, Kinect is being used for many applications in business, educational and medical fields. There are a lot of dreams behind the Kinect, and as long as those dreams let me play Minority Report, then it’s all worth it.

Source: BBC

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

The Microsoft Flight Simulator series returns for the first time in six years with Microsoft Flight. Instead of arriving in traditional retail form, MSF will be free to play, and will feature the futuristic ICON A5 amphibious mono-wing and the entire island of Hawaii to explore. If you wish, you can branch out beyond your beautiful basics and purchase additional regions and aircraft using the money earned in your daily labors. To keep you coming back, there’ll also be “daily aerocache challenges” and a variety of mission goals to complete.

Realizing that the age of the joystick is over, Microsoft wants everyone to experience Flight, regardless of what peripherals they own. According to the company, “Players can choose to take the helm using highly rendered, accurate cockpits and authentic piloting procedures, or simply use their mouse and keyboard to control the plane in an exterior view.”

Microsoft Flight seems to be separate from its Games for Windows platform, which is a blessing. However, if players sign in using their GFW accounts, they’ll unlock extra content, including “the legendary Boeing Stearman plane.” Flight will be released, free of any puns, on February 29.

Sources: PC World, Game Informer

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Starting today, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim PC players can download and install mods directly from Steam with the new Steam Workshop. Using the “upload to Steam” feature in the recently released Creation Kit, modders can upload their creations, and players can view, sort and rate mods, as well as see which ones their friends are using.

Bethesda’s open-world RPGs have always been fertile soil for player-created modifications, which allow each user to tailor the game to their preferences. Even before the official Creation Kit, ambitious modders were already fixing, rebalancing and adding to the province of Skyrim. The list of launch mods is fairly thin, but expect it to balloon quickly very soon. To get the ball rolling, Bethesda has released an official high-resolution texture pack to PC users, free of charge. Additionally, the entire Elder Scrolls series, including Skyrim, is 33 percent off on Steam during Valve’s Midweek Madness sale. If you haven’t already snapped up this Seal of Excellence winner, you now have 33 percent less excuses.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

The popular FPS/tower-defense hybrid Sanctum will be receiving a sequel in 2013, according to Joystiq. After launching on Steam last April, Sanctum became an indie success story, quickly selling more than 300,000 units. The game took the typical tower-defense formula and injected it with more than a few ampules of adrenaline. In four-player co-op, players have to carefully construct and upgrade their defenses to stop waves of monsters, before leaping into the fray with their own upgradable weapons. No details are available on what new features await players in Sanctum 2, except that PSN and Xbox Live players will also get to experience the teamwork.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Kerberos Productions
System requirements: Windows Vista/XP, Core2Duo or better CPU, 512 MB graphics card with DirectX 10 support, DirectX 10 (February 2011 or newer), 2 GB RAM, Vista-compatible sound device, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RTS
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Fans of 4X games spent last summer waiting in anticipation for the release of Kerberos’s Sword of the Stars II. Given the excellence of the previous installment in the series and its expansions, expectations were high as trailers were released and the developers teased their fans with tidbits about the game. After wrestling with it for hours on end, it’s clear that SOTS II doesn’t live up to the hype. In fact, it doesn’t even live up to the basic promises to be expected of any game that had an original release price of $39.95.

SOTS II, in the tradition of the series, includes basic 4X gameplay. You still explore planets and systems, build your empire, negotiate and fight with other civilizations, and ultimately try to dominate the galaxy. Ship building, planetary development/colonization and maintaining trade are the norm for most civilizations. Like its predecessor, SOTS II gives each race its own unique method of faster-than-light travel, meaning that building a Hiver empire is, by definition, a very different experience than building a Liir empire.

The sequel also takes a page from the original and implements the randomized tech-tree that worked so well in the past. While most civilizations have potential access to most technologies, you can never be sure from game to game what exact technological possibilities exist. In addition to researching new things, players also conduct feasibility studies to determine what potentially profitable research paths are available. Even if you play the same species three times in a row, you might end up developing differently each time, thanks to how the tech-tree works out for you. It was a feature that worked so well in the original, Kerberos wisely kept it with only minor tweaks with some new research possibilities, such as the feasibility studies.

Planets and governments are now much more important than they were in the original game. The actions you take with regards to your empire’s domestic and foreign policy can impact the morale of your citizens on individual planets, but it also changes they way your government functions. There are several potential government types you can assume based on your actions, everything from anarchism to military juntas. Instead of forcing you to accept a certain play style for a specific race or scenario, you can adopt a natural evolution of domestic politics based on your choices in the game. Crushing minor races or making your space habitats friendlier to other species all impact your government type and the benefits it provides.

Before I go any further and begin pointing out the game’s many flaws, I must be honest and indicate that I specifically put off reviewing this game for a number of weeks because of the troubled release that SOTS II had last October. I normally wouldn’t do such a thing, but the release version of the game was so bad it was unplayable. There’s a reason why refunds were offered for those who purchased the game, even through Steam. As such, telling you that the game was in what appeared to be an early beta state two days after release wouldn’t have told you anything you didn’t already know. Now, months after release, the game has been patched several times, and it’s still plagued with problems. I don’t mean that you notice bugs if you play it for a few hours. There are so many problems that even as I write this, I’m not totally sure whether some issues are bugs or features. For example, when starting a new game, you select a map. The interface has buttons for increasing or decreasing the number of players, the number of starting planets, and the number of starting technologies. Currently, no map seems to support changing these values. Is that a bug or a poorly implemented feature? I can send Hiver ships on missions to plant a teleport gate in a new star system to enable colonization and exploration. But the fleet I send just builds the gate and then teleports home without doing anything else. I can’t find a way to force the fleet to stay in place and conduct other missions, which wastes valuable game turns and jump gate capacity because I have to resend the ships to the unexplored star system to conduct survey missions. Bug or feature? There is a button on the new game interface labeled “Scenarios,” just like the original game, but pressing it does nothing. Bug or missing feature? Even in terms of the game’s main menu, something is amiss. For the past four months there has been a greyed-out cinematics button on the interface. Bug or missing feature? Considering how important narrative is to this franchise, I’m surprised that nothing has been done to correct this issue one way or another.

These issues are just the tip of the iceberg. These kinds of problems have induced some players to complain that the original release of SOTS II was more or less a beta copy of the game. They are, in fact, wrong. I’ve done beta testing, and the inability of the opening menu to register mouse-clicks properly, as was the case during the first few patches, isn’t even beta-quality work. The only reason I’m not angry with Kerberos is that they have publicly apologized, and they did the right thing in offering refunds. We’ll probably never know what happened with the release of SOTS II, but it wasn’t worth the purchase price on release day and people who pre-ordered it were right to be angry. And as of now, it still isn’t worth buying because it still appears to have all kinds of problems. I’m very disappointed in Sword of the Stars II, and I can’t recommend that anyone pay the $39.95, even in its present condition. If you want a good 4X strategy game, go buy the original SOTS instead.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments

Publisher: Iceberg Interactive
Developer: InterWave Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX 10.6.7, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or better CPU, 2 GB memory, 6 GB hard-drive space, 128 MB DirectX 9-compatible graphics card with Shader 2.0b support, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device
Genre: FPS/RTS
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

My PC brethren, turn in your hymnals to #1337, and sing along with me: “Mods are good, mods are great, mods are things we appreciate.” Some of your favorite games started out as mods, and the others were undoubtedly influenced by them. Indie developer InterWave has been in the Source mod scene for a while now. Both Stargate: Last Stand and Insurgency (which is quite nice) are notches on their collective belts. Tossing the budget-o-meter up from “freebie” to “costs money,” they’ve cranked out the generic-titled Nuclear Dawn, which proclaims to offer a “full FPS and RTS experience within a single gameplay model, without crippling or diluting either side of the game.” Featuring six maps and 32-player matches, Nuclear Dawn isn’t just a funny pun on my mother-in-law’s name. It’s the best multiplayer FPS that you should be playing right now.

On the FPS side, Nuclear Dawn features four classes, each with different loadouts. Each class is marked by its own activated ability. The Exo can go into lockdown mode, turning into a living chaingun turret. This is countered by the Stealth, who can use (gasp!) stealth to run around and stab said Exos, who in turn are countered again by Soldiers and their stealth-detecting thermal goggles. Meanwhile, the Support class decides to stay out of it and tosses medkits, repairs buildings, or barbeques everyone. All classes are bolstered with the gradual unlocking of attachments. The unlocks simply add tactical versatility instead of greater power. If you’re a skilled player, you can top scoreboards regardless of rank.

Yet, this old formula gets really interesting when you have two commanders playing the game like an RTS against each other. Now you have to capture and hold resource nodes so your leader can build, using a deep tech-tree to unlock goodies or drop turrets on the field. Forward spawn points, fueled by a network of power relays, let the battle change momentum in ways that static control points never do, as you push forward to knock down the enemy’s command bunker.

The RTS/FPS crossbreed makes for some truly engaging team play. Even as a foot soldier, you’re engaged in the macro-level strategy. Defending critical power stations or sneaking behind lines to swipe a secondary resource node, you’re constantly aware how your actions affect the battle. Ideally, the players and commander work together to reach goals, each informing the other as situations arise. However, we all know that things never go quite like that, and mutinies are remarkably common. Pub games can be rough on commanders, but on a good server, the experience is unmatched.

Even though its built on the latest Left 4 Dead 2 build of Source, Valve’s venerable engine is certainly showing its age. If you want flashy graphics that use all eight cores of your rig, this isn’t your game. Nuclear doesn’t have much, but what it does have it uses very well. The maps are not only well constructed, but each also has its own feel. Pre-war ads flicker across urban walls, adding the right splashes of color. The floating HUD isn’t just functional, but pretty spiffy to boot.

There are many multiplayer shooters that compete for your time and your wallet, and InterWave has made sure to make more than just another copycat. While many of Nuclear Dawn‘s features, such as squads and unlocks, are borrowed from larger games, its soul is all-original. The RTS/FPS hybrid concept isn’t a gimmick, it’s a huge feature that makes the game stand out in a crowded field of look-a-likes. For $20, you get far more bang-per-buck out of it than most AAA games give you.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

Publisher: Zachtronic Industries
Developer: Zachtronic Industries
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX 10.5.8 (Leopard), 2.0 GHz CPU, graphics card with frame buffer support, 1 GB RAM, 300 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

SpaceChem doesn’t seem to have a lot going for it. It’s a simple-looking 2D game about programming machines to build molecules. Yet, under this unassuming surface lies a game of such seething excitement that it’ll have you shouting and yelling more than when you play an FPS. I myself spoke such dark utterances that Khorne himself shivered. How can a science-themed puzzle game go so right?

As the title correctly suggests, SpaceChem does indeed involve chemistry in space. As a Reactor Engineer for a leading chemical synthesizer, it’s your job to take base elements and construct them into usable ones. Your reactor has two mechanisms, lovingly called “waldos,” which you program by dropping clearly-labeled instructions into the reactor. The entire process is demonstrated through a series of tutorial missions that teach you the techniques, step by step.

When you think you’ve got the basics down, the game starts layering upon itself like an insane Escher Sonata. Suddenly you have to manage entire pipelines of factories, some with limited functionality. When you’ve got that down, then you get inputs that provide variable atoms, forcing you to add if-then statements into your machines. Then there’s the occasional timed boss battle, just to make sure you’re still breathing.

Like the enshrined Portal, SpaceChem does a wonderful job of slowly layering mechanics, leading you to complex solutions without explicitly giving away the answer. After completing a level, it shows you where you fit in the bell curve of players. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself replaying missions again and again, trying to find ever more efficient solutions each time.

The soundtrack in particular deserves special praise. There’s something about Evan Le Ny’s soaring orchestral music that adds an element of urgent danger. The fact that it provides something of an immersive atmosphere is nothing short of astonishing.

Space Chem hits that gooey sweet spot in the center of your analytical cortex and explodes into a thousand splinters. Every new puzzle looks more impossible then the last, yet finally clicks with such immense satisfaction your roommates might rat you out to the narcs. Once you’ve finished all 50 levels, gnawed at the expansion pack and its “quantum junction” addition, there’s also a sandbox mode that lets your creative beast free from corporate restraints. SpaceChem is more than just a Gainful Employment Simulator for out-of-work post-grads. It’s the best piece of brain candy for those of an analytical bent to come along in a long time.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Developer THQ has announced its list of upcoming releases. Sneaking out first on February 17 is UFC Undisputed 3. Then comes the company’s fiscal 2013 slate, which includes Darksiders II in June, South Park: The Game and a new WWE title in Q3, and Metro: Last Light and The Devil’s Third in Q4. In 2014 and beyond, THQ plans to release an unnamed game from Turtle Rock, inSANE from Volition, Homefront 2 (Crytek), the new game from Patrice Désilets’ THQ Montreal, and Dark Millennium Online, which will be completed with the aid of a “partner,” company boss Brian Farrell has revealed. On top of these, THQ has four unannounced core games in development for release in fiscal 2014.

© Simon Moore for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Ino-co Plus
System requirements: TBA
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Everyone 10+
Release date: Q2 2012

In 1994, Simtex released a 4X game entitled Master of Magic. Like every similar RTS at the time, it initially looked like a Civilization clone. Despite initial bugs, it was far more then just Civ with spells, and it quickly became a strategy classic. A few games have tried to capture its spark since, most infamously 2010’s Elemental, but none of them have quite made it. Unwilling to let such a great spirit languor in DOS emulators, Paradox Interactive is giving MoM a modern body in the form of Warlock: Master of the Arcane. The details are so enticing it might cause your carpal tunnel to flair up in anticipation.

Warlock features three races, each with its own very distinct set of units. You pick a race and a leader, each of whom has his own set of bonuses, and then you’re let off to conquer a randomly generated world, one turn at a time. Warlock feels very influenced by Civilization V. Before anyone panics, please note that it borrows the good parts: the hex-based combat, lack of unit stacks and actual ranged units. Being a master of arcana, you have access to a large grimoire of spells to cast, which adds whole new tactical spice. Once this plane of existence has sworn its allegiance to you, there are others to find and invade. It’s like a layered taco-dip of turn-based strategy, only instead of heartburn keeping you up at night, its “just one more turn.”

Yet, with all these features, Warlock manages to be accessible, yet still deep. A great example of this is the streamlined city management. There are only three resources: food, gold and mana. Units have build and upkeep costs, while buildings produce resources at a constant rate. Aside from the occasional bonus, tiles are not used for harvesting resources so much as for holding new buildings. Meanwhile, choosing buildings becomes more important, because you only get one building per population point. The changes are small and easily learned, but their interplay leads to a myriad of strategies.

Developer In-co Plus is still hard at work packing more goodness into their game for its nebulous Q2 2012 release. Currently, Warlock: Master of the Arcane is definitely one to watch for all those afflicted with “One More Turn” syndrome.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments

If you have set aside your February 7 to relax with your favorite Ubisoft games, you might want to rethink your plans. According to Eurogamer, most of the developer’s games will be unplayable or otherwise impacted when the company starts the process of moving its game servers. Some of the games that will go totally dark include HAWX II and The Settlers 7 (PC), and Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell: Conviction (Mac). Console games and certain PC titles (Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Driver: San Francisco) will be unaffected by the move, but all games that require Uplay authentication will be unplayable. No word was offered on how long the work will take to complete.

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments

After dozens of hours in the province of Skyrim, I’ve done a lot. I’ve plundered tombs, slain dragons. I’ve picked a point in the landscape and gone there, full of manly purpose. I’ve listened to many personal stories and stuck my mailed fist of intervention into more then a few faces. Though my adventuring might someday come to an end, it will never truly find a conclusion. Yet, through all of it, I have reached one conclusion:

I like Fallout: New Vegas better.

It’s not a beautiful beast. New Vegas is a cluttered game, mechanically and aesthetically. It’s not just diverse, but outright unfocused at times. The interface, as broken as anything compromised for a controller can be, breaks under the weight of the added survival and crafting modes. Nor is the ham-fisted way the intro exposition is handled a compelling start. Sometimes it can be an outright ugly game.

At the heart of New Vegas is something that you’ll never see in an Elder Scrolls game: a real, dynamic plot. A score of forces all compete for the heart of The Strip. The NCR, the Legion, the Brotherhood, Mr. House, maybe even you. Each faction is well developed and thought provoking. The NCR isn’t the shining beacon of democracy and freedom you’d expect, nor is the Legion pure evil (well, they are, but have very good reason for being so).

Playing through the main storyline involves picking winners and losers, shaping the political dynamics to your liking. The wasteland is not for the weak. Eventually, you’ll have to step on some toes and anger (or outright kill) factions you’d rather not. Make the choice. If you don’t, someone will. In the end, you cut a swath through the wasteland, reshaping it in your own image. It’s this blending of stories that elevates it above Fallout 3, which polarized its players into Paragon or Villain story branches.

Perhaps we can forgive Skyrim for its failures in plotting; Elder Scrolls has always focused more on world-building than story. Yet, I can’t help but find its world boring. It’s far away from the bland European realm of Oblivion, but I can’t help but feel that I’ve done it all before.

Skyrim’s bandits are typical thieves and murderers, while the enemies in Fallout are shaped and broken by the nuclear-charred world in which they live. Murder and theft are necessary actions to survive, be you bandit or homesteader. Why plunder identical ancestral tombs when you can explore ancient nuclear vaults and uncover tales of experiments gone wrong? Why adventure with Illia when you can choose Lily?

I’m not ready to say that New Vegas is a better game then Skyrim. Elder Scrolls V offers far more coherent aesthetics and sensible mechanics, but New Vegas just clicked better for me. I’ve never given Obsidian much credit, but I think that they might’ve bested Bethesda by creating a huge RPG that has a sandbox and thought-provoking plot developments. I’m 30 hours into Skyrim, yet I’m already hunting down more mods to toss into New Vegas for yet another playthrough. After all, when the forgotten realms are quite explored, why not dose up and go to Gamma World?

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

Another MMO seems to be released or switches from subscription to free-to-play almost every month. Up until now, only the venerable EverQuest has stood strong and resisted the FTP tide. But after almost 13 years, the time has finally come for the last of the classic MMOs. Sony announced today that EQ will be moving to the FTP business model starting sometime in early March. Lead producer Thom Terrazas said in the EQ Player’s Blog that growing the player base was a prime reason for the decision. “With the gaming landscape changing every day, we want to ensure we continue to evolve the game to keep players engaged and bring in even more new players to further expand the community.” If you’re already a paying subscriber, you might be tempted to demand a refund, but don’t worry; your subscription fee gives you a number of advantages over the free players. A detailed comparison of free, silver and gold memberships can be found here.

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments

Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.8 GHz Pentium IV or better CPU, 256 MB graphics card, 2 GB RAM, DirectX 9.0c, DirectX 8.1-compatible sound device, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

There was a time when some part of creator Dick Wolf’s ubiquitous Law and Order TV franchise was on the tube almost every day in the US. Some didn’t last long (Crime and Punishment, Trial by Jury, Law and Order: Los Angeles), while the parent show became one of the longest-running scripted shows in American TV history. These days, only Special Victims Unit remains, but now Wolf and NBC/Universal are pushing the franchise into new frontiers with the help of game developer Telltale.

Law and Order: Legacies is a series of seven episodes based on the original show, featuring characters from all of the major periods of its run (plus one character from SVU to give younger players someone to recognize). Several of the characters are so old that the actors who played them have since passed away (Steven Hill as prickly DA Adam Schiff, and most notably, Jerry Orbach, who played the now-beloved detective Lennie Briscow). In fact, Briscow is a major part of the game; one of his old cases forms a thread that connects all six of the game’s episodes. In the first three, the Law half of the show features detectives Rey Curtis, Mike Logan and Olivia Benson (from SVU), while the Order half includes attorneys Mike Cutter, Abbie Carmichael and Jack McCoy (if these names are unfamiliar, don’t fret; the beauty of the show is that the characters have next-to-no backstories, so you don’t really have to know who they are to understand what’s going on).

Just like the show, each episode of the game is played in two parts. In the first, you play the detectives as they examine evidence, conduct interviews and make an arrest. In the second, you become a DA and try the case in court. You select dialogue options from a pop-up menu. Occasionally you’re asked whether or not to believe the things the suspects are telling you, using information that has been previously introduced to back up your claims (a running transcript of the dialogue is available to refresh your memory). Choosing correctly earns you stars, which raise your rank as a detective or sway the jury your way as an attorney. Additionally, in the detective phase you complete hidden-object minigames to locate physical evidence, and in the court phase you can choose to plea bargain or take the case to the jury, depending upon how your case stands with them. You also get a primer in courtroom procedure; you must occasionally make objections, and you have to pick the correct objection (text boxes describe each of the available objections and when to use them). Stories include a cellphone hacking case that leads to murder, a cockfighting suspect killed by his own animal, and a serial killer targeting prostitutes.

Legacies tries its best to give you the full Law and Order experience. You get the narrator, the teaser that ends with a line of darkly ironic dialogue, the credit sequence (complete with Mike Post’s iconic theme music). You even get the trademark “thunk thunk” sound effect. But once the story actually begins, you need to pay attention. Every off-hand statement made by a suspect can become important as you try to catch them in lies, and the more of them you catch, the more likely it is that the perp will be shipped off to Rikers, never to be seen again. The characters are modeled fairly well in that fans of the show will recognize who they are, although the animators took a few pounds and a few inches in height from Benson, made Schiff quite a bit younger and Curtis a bit older than their actor counterparts. And the writers seem to have a love for Briscow, since his is by far the best dialogue in the game. Of the two sections, the court sequences are much more engaging. You’re given more to do and you have to apply yourself much more than you do when playing the cops. Decisions you make in court can significantly alter how the case is eventually resolved.

From an artistic standpoint, however, Legacies is a disappointment. The graphics are primitive and low-rez at best, mostly owing to the extreme age of the Telltale Tool, the developer’s decade-old graphics engine. None of the original actors appear on the voice tracks, which is troubling; it’s understandable in the case of Orbach and Hill, and you’re not likely to hear pricey talent such as Benjamin Bratt (Curtis) or Angie Harmon (Carmichael) in a videogame, but it would’ve been good to hear at least one familiar voice (other than the narrator, of course). The find-the-evidence minigames can be frustrating, since certain items are buried under other items and you get a limited number of guesses before your detective rating goes down. And the interrogation sections are straight out of LA Noire, but not nearly as high-tech; making mistakes means practically nothing when playing as the cops, but it can cost you a conviction in the courtroom.

I’ve been a fan of the Law and Order franchise ever since the first show debuted in 1990, and I have to admit I smiled profusely when the title card appeared and I heard “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups…”. And the first case on the docket had a twist that genuinely caught me napping. But the other two cases lack that extra creativity, leaving us with an occasionally tedious procedural that only piques our interest once we get off the streets and into court. Combine that with the ancient tech upon which the game is built and you get something that only the hardest of the TV hardcore (or budding trial attorneys) could really love. But there are four episodes left; maybe the best is yet to come.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments

The gate swung open.

Revolted by the thick scent of excrement in the chamber, Locklear hastened to the ladder affixed on the far wall and ascended its filth-slick rungs. Behind him, Gorath and Owyn reluctantly did likewise, gaffing on the noxious vapors in the shaft. “This is nothing,” Locklear grunted, shoving upwards against a grating. “All the windows in the palace are open right now. You ought to smell it in the winter.”

Darkness surrounded them as they slithered out of the privy, their only impressions of the chamber provided by the faint flicker of distant firelight. Ten yards before them the hall joined with an elaborate colonnade stretching in either direction. “Somehow I hadn’t pictured my first visit to Krondor like this,” Owyn sighed, falling blindly into step behind Gorath and the Seigneur.

Betrayal at Krondor surprised me. I expected an RPG typical of the era (it was developed in 1993 by Dynamix), complete with clunky combat and minimal story. I knew it was based on the Riftwar series of novels by Raymond E. Feist, but I expected that to be little more than a marketing tie-in. Instead, it’s an early crossbreed between games and literature.

His curiosity sufficiently piqued, Owyn popped open the half-gallon cask and inhaled deeply. Immediately his senses reeled as the heady cinnamon-like aroma assaulted him. Keshian Ale!

Krondor inundates the player with text at every opportunity (the quotes in this article come straight from the game). Whenever possible, it serves up paragraphs of it, stewed in its own fantasy world. The developers knew that they could only say so much at a time, so every sentence is full of seasoning and flavor. Nothing is wasted.

Voice acting is nice, but it reduces scenes to simple dialogue. As anyone who’s experienced Planescape: Torment can attest, the power of text is its ability to deliver so much more than speech. Every item has a paragraph detailing not just the object, but also the characters themselves, picking them up, turning them over, and telling stories about them. Everything is given far more nuance than even an advanced 3D engine ever could.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments

Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Developer: Rocksteady
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/Athlon X2 4800 or better CPU, GeForce 8800GT/ATI 3850 HD or better graphics card, 2 GB RAM, 17 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Developers take their careers in their own hands when they set out to make a superhero game. If they want the legions of comic-book fanboys to give their game their seal of approval, it has to be almost perfect. All of the canonical i’s have to be dotted and the t’s have to be crossed, over and above the things that the rest of the gaming public want to see (good story, great graphics, etc). Rocksteady accomplished this with Batman: Arkham Asylum back in 2010. Now they’re trying to make lightning strike twice in the same place with the sprawling action/adventure Batman: Arkham City. In most ways, they’ve succeeded. In some others, not so much.

Since the conclusion of Asylum, Gotham City leadership decided to adopt the Escape From New York theory of criminal rehabilitation: they built a wall around a large section of the city and turned all of their criminals loose inside to fend for themselves, under the watchful eye of prison administrator Hugo Strange and his private security army. For some reason, billionaire playboy/industrialist Bruce Wayne has been arrested and sent to Arkham City. After a hearty welcome from his fellow inmates, Wayne finds his way to a waiting storage container, dons the iconic batsuit and begins his search for Strange, who can be heard periodically counting down to something called Protocol 10. But before the search can begin in earnest, Bats has to come to the aid of his old pal Catwoman, who’s suspended over a vat of acid by a group of thugs.

From this point, you have the run of the city. You can go anywhere, do practically anything (except escape to the outside world). You’ll run into some of your favorite DC villains, and even help some of them (Mr. Freeze is pining for his kidnapped wife, so you try to find her in exchange for his scientific expertise). Of course, no Batman game would be complete without his primary adversary, the Joker, and the Riddler has scattered 440 (!) glowing question marks throughout the city for you to collect. And from time to time, you leave Batty behind and guide Catwoman through a side story of her own.

Artistically, very few games can hold a batsignal to Arkham City. The art direction is stunningly beautiful and amazingly detailed, from the views atop the various structures to the unkempt squalor of the city streets. Combat is almost completely melee-based (Batman has an aversion to firearms), and the fight animations are the smoothest you’ll find in any game; I’ve never been good at hand-to-hand fighting, and even I managed to learn to use the dozens of unlockable combat abilities and takedown moves (not to mention those wonderful toys). The open-world concept is similar to the one found in inFamous. Side quests become available as you travel around the city. You can choose to ignore all of them and stick to the story quests, but you’d be missing some of the most interesting parts of the game. But if you do choose to speed through the main story, you can go back and do the side quests after you complete the final boss battle (and watch the 21 minutes of closing credits). Actually, there is a veritable mountain of content in this game, including the challenge modes that you unlock as you progress. Nick Arundel and Ron Fish’s soundtrack is sufficiently brassy and effective, with more than a few Danny Elfman influences present. And let’s not forget the outstanding voice work (once again) by Kevin Conroy as Batman, Mark Hamill as the Joker (somewhat underused this time but still entertaining), and “It’s that voice guy again” Nolan North as the Penguin. Also, fans of the TV show Castle might recognize the sultry tones of Stana Katic as Talia al Ghul.

Unfortunately, with all of this freedom to explore there are bound to be a few hiccups here and there. The most annoying of these is the constantly respawning enemies. Those of you who’ve played Far Cry 2 will recall wiping out all of the baddies at a remote crossroads, only to come back five minutes later and have to fight all of them again. So it is with Arkham City. You can choose not to fight (being able to reach a rooftop in seconds is a big advantage that you don’t have in Far Cry 2), but there are times when engaging multiple times is unavoidable. The Riddler trophies are much more difficult to grab in City than they are at the Asylum. Some of them are inaccessible unless you’re far enough into the game to unlock particular gadgets. But more troubling than how tough they are to acquire is that you are required to grab all 400 of the Batman-targeted trophies to complete one of the side quests (the other 40 trophies can only be picked up by Catwoman). The issue of collectables has been a touchy one with me. There are tons of them in the Uncharted games, but you don’t lose anything by not finding them. The blast shards in inFamous at least add strength to your character. But to close off one of the Arkham City side quests to those who don’t want to scour the city for green question marks strikes me as ill-advised. All this does is artificially lengthen the game, to the point where I got tired of swinging from building to building like Spider-Man, searching for a trophy that I can’t get because I don’t have the right gadget. Oh, and about that chalk outline on the ground where Bruce Wayne’s parents died. After all these years, you’d think it might’ve faded a bit by now…

In 2010, Rocksteady made a pie that everyone loved to eat from the first slice. So, they figured that it would be great to bake a bigger pie, so folks would eat that much more of it. And we gobbled it up just as they planned, and so we should. Batman: Arkham City is an unparalleled artistic achievement, with great melee combat, an interesting (though wandering) story and lots of gameplay options. But it really is possible to have too much of a good thing, which is why Arkham Asylum will always be the better game. Sometimes just a slice is better than the whole thing.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments