OMGN: Video Games Channel

1-Up: Mass Effect 3 Demo Impressions

darkstar2380@gmail.com (Edward Kaczynski) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

It's nice to see that somebody out there remembers what a demo is and why you release them...

When I was younger, I had a subscription to PC Gamer. It was a decent magazine, but the best part was the bonus demo disc. Every month, I had approximately 12 to 15 different games to check out and decide to spend money on. Unfortunately, as I got older, games got bigger -- but CDs only had so much space. Fewer and fewer demos made their way via the old method, and as time grew increasingly sparse, I stopped spending it looking for them and fell into the "let's gamble on this one" trap.

Many games no longer even have an obligatory demo. I guess that's good business sense -- if you're making a steamer, why advertise that to the world? All you're going to do is hurt your bottom line by turning people off who might have otherwise purchased the game. But when a decent studio (such as Bioware) can make a great game and release a really entertaining demo, everyone wins.

Fortunately, Bioware has enough faith in its product to deliver a playable demo of the latest installment of the Mass Effect series. I have to say, I'm excited. It's a two-level shot of heroine into the veins of a Mass Effect junkie -- not enough to sate the craving but enough to get me salivating and ready for this experience.

The original Mass Effect was an achievement in storytelling and plot wrapped in a ho-hum RPG. I bought it on the recommendation of a friend and was turned off completely by the sloppy, poorly thought-out inventory system, massive amount of time traversing mountain range after mountain range in the Mako, mission after stupid mission on the Citadel, elevators that seemingly (and slowly) went nowhere, and the terrible human companions you got saddled with at the beginning (Ashley and Kaiden).

It was enough to make me stop playing. For months. I only went back because I needed something to do, and it was one of the few games I hadn't beaten yet.

It was the best decision I could have made. The gameplay didn't get any better, but once I got off the Citadel and hit the plot-centric planets (Virmire, specifically), the story was so well done and so compelling that I couldn't put it down. I began recommending it to everyone I knew, including badgering my roommates -- consistently -- to play it. I gave copies of it away as Christmas and birthday gifts because I couldn't let anyone with an appreciation for story miss out.

And then came Mass Effect 2. This game was liquid fun. I couldn't stop playing it -- not only had they fixed everything about Mass Effect that I couldn't stand, they actually found a way to make a perfect story better. They created new characters who didn't completely suck. They fixed some of the old characters and made them palatable. They put you in the rough-and-tumble universe they swore existed but you never actually saw until that moment.

So, now comes Mass Effect 3. We're a month away, and we have a demo, dropped and ready for criticism. There's a few things I can say for certain, and several things I can infer based on what I saw.

Let's start with what I know...

Combat didn't need an overhaul, and thus, it didn't get one. That said, firearm operation seems more natural -- less like you're firing a space weapon designed to look like a rifle, and more like you're firing a rifle. This is a minor improvement that some many not even notice, but when you're looking to nitpick, it goes a long way toward accrediting the developer. Moreover, health begins to act like health again – when you lose it, you sort of actually lose it, only regenerating portions of it. I applaud Bioware for helping reverse the wussification of gamers worldwide. (You can blame Call of Duty for teaching gamers that their wounds heal magically if they act like cowards and hide from the big scary bad guys.)

Leveling up is as streamlined as it was in ME2 but with more customization available in every skill tree. Graphically, ME3 is significantly improved, although customization of the graphics settings wasn't really an option in the demo. Day 1 hasn't yet allowed us to test out the multiplayer aspect, so, unfortunately, there's little to say on that front.

What I can infer only relates to storyline stuff, so, bear with me.

It appears as though you get all your ME1 cronies back together minus whoever you killed. If true, this is a significant victory, as Wrex was one of the best parts of ME1.

It also appears as if Freddie Prinze Jr. has finally landed a role in something that won't completely fall apart and burn around him, no matter how hard he tries to make that happen. If true, this is a significant victory for his career, as everything he touches dies a miserable, painful death.

Shepard has split from Cerberus, which leads me to wonder -- was giving over the Collector base a really stupid move on my part?

Female Krogans finally make an appearance. I don't know if she can become a crew member or not, but if so, this means possible Krogan romance option. Eeew.

You don't get to see anything of the Normandy interior or space travel in the demo. So, how much are they going to have remodeled of the ship interior, using the Collector attack as the excuse (because you totally know that's going to be their excuse)?

And finally (and this is a big one), how much freedom are you really going to have?

I ask this because ME2 gave you a significant amount of freedom in what you did and how you got there. That was one of its most endearing features, and one of the many, many reasons it got replayed more than once. But Mass Effect 3 is the final chapter -- is Bioware going to keep that level of freedom, or is it going to force you to follow a predefined path and call it "freedom?" Anyone who's played The Old Republic should know what I'm talking about. Yeah, you have choices on where to go and what to do, but you don't really have a choice.

Maybe I'm worrying over nothing -- the demo is a little slice of heaven. Let's hope it's a precursor to something great -- something timeless and memorable and not just another polished turd.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Review Rebuttal

anne.m.king@gmail.com (Anne King) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note: Minor spoilers ahead!

OK, OK, I'll admit it: I've never beaten the original Zelda. And in this day of phenomenal graphics and utterly immersive storylines, I couldn't. I'd get bored and wander off to play the latest iteration instead.

And yet the latest, Skyward Sword, isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's certainly no Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time as far as the dark depths to which their stories plunge. Granted, those two are nearly impossible to best, so perhaps the bar was held just too high -- but I can't get over feeling sorely disappointed with this one.

The game starts on a lame note. True, most of them do -- you're happy little Link, running around his happy little village that's remote and totally removed from real world problems. Nothing new. In Skyward Sword's Skyloft, it's the day of the Goddess Festival, and Link's got to wake up and practice because, according to his childhood friend Zelda, he's a lazy ass. But -- gasp! -- his bird's been stolen by the incredibly awkward village bully, Groose. It goes on. Frankly, no matter how much the story improves from here (it couldn't get any lamer, after all), the game fails to climb out of the dinky pit it digs for itself at the start.

And therein lies the key issue: It's dinky. Certainly this iteration made use of Wii's impressive motion controls ... yet they fall short of being anything but an irritation. With the change in controls comes a whole new slew of moves, items, graphics, and music for Link. And most of them fall short. For instance, Link's maneuvers when he climbs a wall or the way he holds his sword when he runs -- dinky. Combine them with the motion controls, and it's utterly irritating. This isn't a game in which the control can be swung wildly about, but it's also not one of finesse. It's somewhere in between, but finding that balance -- when flying the bird, when climbing a wall, when fighting a sword-bearing foe -- is guesswork in every instance.

Click the image to view game screenshots

The graphics are facing an identity crisis, as well. They hang around somewhere between Twilight's darkness and Wind Waker's goofiness but don't ever settle for one or the other. When the lighter side of the story comes off as just plain silly, it makes accepting the darker side impossible. Throw in a mess of incredibly androgynous characters (more so than usual in a Zelda title), and you've got a game that is constantly arm-wrestling with itself.

You’re also incessantly led around by the nose with Link’s Borg-like (think a purple and green Seven of Nine) companion, Fi. If it's possible, she’s worse than Navi. Not in the respect that she bounces around your head yelling, “Hey!” every two seconds but in that she tells you exactly what to do when you don’t really need the help -- to the letter. There’s several instances in which she’ll direct you to go elsewhere in your search, and if you decline to acquiesce to her request, she’ll simply pop back up and insist in her mechanical way that there is 0 percent probability you’ll find what you’re looking for here, so she highly suggests you go elsewhere. If she didn’t inhabit the damn thing, I’d cut her down with Link’s sword.

And then comes the bright idea to nearly wipe out the timeless Zelda soundtrack and replace it with a mess of incoherent jangling. It's a key element that would have inevitably tied all this together into a cohesive whole, and it's missing. It's a huge disappointment and yet another irritation. It’s a bad sign when you feel compelled to turn the volume down while playing a game because the music's repetitious randomness (yes, that’s possible here) is driving you batty.

Another bright idea: wiping out most of the mainstay items in Link’s arsenal and replacing them with never-before-seen items. It's, at first, yet another disappointment. However, the game redeems itself in this aspect as the new items are pretty badass, overall. You also don’t have to play half the game before you get upgrades (cough, duel grapple shots, cough). Each item is continually in use throughout the game as well, which is a plus over previous iterations in which you’d use the item you just got in the very next dungeon and then forget about it for half the game. You’ll even call back on earlier items to beat a later boss, of which there are plenty of pretty awesome new ones.

It's still a Zelda game. It still has its charm for all its overall lack of identity. There are still moments that elicit a smile, a laugh, a gasp -- or even a baffled head shake. I’ll still beat it, although I probably won’t revisit it. And I'll still buy the next one and get giddy over it. It's clearly not an utter failure, but finding the gems are a lot harder than finding the faults.

Score: 4.0

New Star Wars Battlefront Game Rumors Surface

davidtelfer89@hotmail.com (David Telfer) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Speculation of a third Star Wars Battlefront game has been ongoing. Rumors circulated that Spark Unlimited was developing Battlefront 3 at the same time as it was rumored to be working on a Resident Evil title. Yet, all gamers had to go on were a couple of tweets suggesting the company "couldn't say either way" what it was working on.

That's all changed in the last couple of days thanks to fresh evidence hinting that Spark Unlimited is indeed working on the game in the form of a job application posted on its website (see below). The developers are looking for someone to work on a "3rd Person Action/Adventure sequel in a high-profile science fiction franchise" who has a "strong sense of story and narrative techniques as they pertain to the gaming medium." Sounds a bit like Star Wars, doesn't it?

Other evidence comes in the form of two LinkedIn profiles, the first for John Lawrie (see his profile below), who states his work for Spark Unlimited includes an "Unannounced third person sword fighting game (well known IP, Xbox 360, PS3)." The other is Cesareo Gutierezz, whose profile describes how he has "been working for three years in a AAA third person shooter using Unreal Engine and Kynapse AI middleware." Both their profiles, coupled with the timing of the application, seem to strongly suggest that Battlefront 3 -- technically the sixth installment of the game's series including the PSP and DS games -- could very well be coming to our galaxy soon.

Sources:

Child of Eden Review

kjhovanec@bsu.edu (Kyle James Hovanec) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Child of Eden is a difficult game to describe. At some points, it feels like a simple on-rails shooter. At others, it feels like a time-attack shooter, forcing you to gather as many points as possible in the allotted time. Sometimes it doesn't feel like a game at all, but rather an interactive music video/drug trip in which context doesn't matter, but like a music video, the emotional energy takes center stage.

Child of Eden is all of these things. It is an entirely unique and beautiful game that straddles the line between an interactive multimedia experience and something that goes beyond the “do these tasks to win the game” mentality that video games have espoused since their creation. Winning in this game is still a goal, but it isn't as necessary as the experience you'll have getting there.

Child of Eden's gameplay is simple. Using either a traditional Xbox 360 controller or the Kinect sensor (or a PlayStation Move controller for the PS3), your goal is to simply shoot at the screen, obliterating enemies before they get you. It's a simple arcade style that works well and provides a unique experience depending on your controller of choice.

The Kinect sensor allows a nearly 1:1 ratio of movement with your hands. The lock-on fire is controlled by moving your right hand over a target and flicking your wrist. Your left hand controls a rapid fire function that is more useful for dealing with quick enemies or projectiles. If you prefer to use only one hand, an alternate control scheme in which you clap your hands together to change firing modes is available. Both modes also feature an option called "Euphoria" that involves raising both of your arms and bringing them down to release a barrage of lasers, clearing the entire screen of enemies.

Click the image to view game screenshots

The traditional controller is best used for score attacks -- this is for the player who wants to get five-star rankings. It requires an incredible amount of accuracy. The controller was actually much more accurate in attaining high scores. Yet, the Kinect sensor excels at providing immersion and a connectivity to the game that a controller cannot even come close to offering. The Kinect's mantra, “You are the controller,” has never been more apparent as your arms seemingly and effortlessly fire at enemies and, in essence, control the tempo of the soundtrack.

The music and sound effects are integral components of the game that go beyond simple immersion. Each laser you fire and every enemy you destroy leaves an echoing musical chord as a reminder of each death and each round fired. These sounds contribute to the background music of each stage and change both the beat and tempo depending on how well you're killing enemies, how long you're taking to kill them, which weapons you're using, and how well you're surviving.

By doing this, you're in essence not only shooting at enemies, but also acting as a background DJ, changing and remixing the beat depending on your performance. It's another way that a simple arcade on-rails shooter is providing even more depth and ambiance.

Finally, the levels themselves are as varied and unique as the mechanics of the game. Each of the game's five stages (six after beating it) provide a different visual theme for each level. One stage may be a jungle-inspired environment, and another may be an open vacuum with meteors and falling stars peppering the horizon. At the end of each stage, a boss awaits you, usually a much bigger abstract creature you'll engage in a prolonged battle that ends with you earning your ranking and moving on to the next level.

While all of the environments may be themed, they resemble the real world only on the most basic level. The art design behind each level is abstract -- trees may dot a landscape but with a neon-drenched color scheme that pulses to the beat. Your enemies vaguely resemble insects and underwater creatures, moving with the fluidity of fish, but like the environmental objects, they pulse with the bass and flash with a neon veneer. It's Planet Earth meets Tron.

Child of Eden isn't a video game to be played, beaten, and put back on the shelf. It is an experience, a marriage of music and gameplay, lights and sounds. It's a game that is hard to describe, and yet you'll always remember long after you finish playing. In the category of "games as art," Child of Eden is a strong contender and something that is entirely unique from anything else currently available.

*Editor's Note: This review is based on the Xbox 360 version with a Kinect sensor and Xbox 360 controller.

Score: 9.0

Rayman Origins Review

kjhovanec@bsu.edu (Kyle James Hovanec) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Like a splash of cold water on a hot summer day, Rayman Origins is a blast from the platforming past that arrives with such ferocity and such a high level of quality that it shouts with colorful graphics, crisp animation and ingenious level design: “We're not dead! The platformer still exists, and it's just as fun as you remember!”

Origins is a return to form, a throwback for our limbless hero and his friends, giving him 2-D worlds to explore. This time, there aren't Rabbids, no wraggle control, and no additional gimmicks -- just 60 levels of pure platforming, item-collecting, boss-battling goodness. The “Origins” in the title could not have been more appropriate.

A platformer lives and dies by its level design, and Rayman Origins has some of the most inventive and well-designed levels seen in a modern platformer. Each world comes with a different theme that borders from fantastical and lush to bizarre and abstract. In some levels, you'll traverse dense jungles, jumping from treetop to treetop, and in other levels, you'll traverse a desert full of ... didgeridoos. It is an entirely surreal experience to jump around blowing dunes and giant didgeridoos jutting out from the sand as their deep baritone echos in the background. If there is one thing this game has, it's charm in its aesthetics and responsiveness in its controls.

The charm not only comes from just how bizarre the game gets in its environments, but through its characters as well. Rayman is far from a “normal” videogame character, but he appears downright vanilla compared to his friends and the enemies you'll encounter. (Crazed piranhas, jungle explorers, and white blob-shaped monks are some of the most common ones.) Visually, it's far from the normal platformers we've grown accustomed to. To play Origins is to accept the lunacy and revel in its surrealness. It's pure slapstick, an Earthworm Jim and Ren and Stimpy lovechild in playable format. If that last sentence makes you the least bit giddy, this game was made for you.

Click the image to view game screenshots

Visuals and design only go so far in platformers if their controls are awful, something that Origins succeeds in avoiding. Not only are the game's controls extremely smooth and responsive, but they also retain their responsiveness and playability even when you're learning new abilities and changing how you play through a level on the fly. Your basic controls: moving, running, flying, jumping, and punching are the bread and butter you'll refer back to throughout the game as you progress and learn new controls. Soon you'll be shrinking yourself down to fit in small spaces, swimming through the ocean at an alarming speed, and running up walls like some limbless Spider-Man ... all while having absolute control over your characters and their abilities. The only excuse you'll have for failing is your own lack of abilities.

Rayman Origins comes with a slew of unlockables and secrets. Simply completing a level is not enough. Hidden in each level are a variety of collectables: coins, little characters called electoons, and later on, treasure chests. Upon completion of a level, you are judged on not only completing the level, but how many items you collect and how fast you finished. Given the gradual increase in difficulty and the many hidden nooks and crannies in each level, you'll be making numerous trips back through stages long after you've completed the game. All of these trinkets are not without value, as each one you collect earns you more medals, which in turn earn you more electoons, which in turn allows you to unlock even more levels and characters. It may put you through the wringer trying to gather every last collectable, but your efforts are always appropriately awarded.

If I had to find one flaw with the game, it would have to come from the co-op mode. It's not that it's bad -- far from it. The co-op feature allows up to three other players to join in with their own characters and progress through the levels with you. It's a ton of fun and makes an already fun single-player experience a riotous multiplayer one. The flaw comes from the lack of online co-op. This type of game is screaming for online co-op but only features local. Admittedly, it's not a huge flaw, but a small nitpick in an otherwise stellar title.

Rayman Origins is a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief for fans of platformers. It's comforting to know that in an age when the FPS is king and single player is becoming less common, a decent-length and well-crafted game -- in a genre from an age past -- is as excellent, good looking, and smooth playing as Origins. Like Dark Souls, it's a perfect marriage of old-school game design paired with modern technology. It's quirky, fun, and beautiful. It's a must-play.

*Editor's Note: This review is based on the PlayStation 3 version.

Score: 9.3

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Review

link9981@hotmail.com (Charles Foster) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the 8th Zelda console game. It's also one of the most highly rated series. The very first game I ever beat was the original Legend of Zelda. It is the series I anticipate most every time Nintendo releases a new system. (No, I don't count Twilight Princess as a Wii game.) Skyward Sword did not disappoint. Everything from the new controls, the story, and the tweaks to the formula turn this Zelda iteration into one that should not be missed.

Story (Minor spoiler alert!)

Skyward Sword starts off in general Nintendo fashion. You'll have plenty of things to laugh at -- a loftwing spitting a letter on Link's head, rampant confusion among the villagers, etc. There's plenty of new villains and supporting characters. Groose and company even bully Link a little at the onset, and Zelda is a childhood friend.

It's the Goddess Festival, but this one isn't going to end well. Zelda and Link are flying together when a tornado comes out of nowhere, and she falls to earth, something that has never happened -- sky people don't go below the clouds. Link is chosen by Zelda's father, Gaepora, to rescue her. That's what you'll learn in the first 30 minutes to an hour of the game. Without getting into too much detail, Link will travel across several areas trying to find Zelda. The further you get into the game, the better the story gets. Fi, Link's sword, plays a huge role here. Think of Fi, like Midna or Navi before her, as not only a guide but a main accessory. Your sword is the biggest piece in the motion control puzzle, and it goes hand-in-hand with the main story. Everything ties together extremely well in the end, so keep pushing on.

Click the image to view game screenshots

(Other points of interest: There's myriad side quests, and there's even a second main quest. It's entitled Hero mode. If you want a challenge in Zelda, you'll get it in this mode.)

Gameplay

Skyward Sword sports the biggest change to Zelda, gameplay-wise, than any other console game in the series. It turns your Wii remote into a sword. This is the game we've all been waiting for since the Wii came out to show good motion-controlled gameplay. It finally manages 1:1 motion thanks to Wii Motion Plus. Take your Loftwing, for example. Twist your remote right, and it banks right; twist it left, and it banks left. If you want to dive or climb, then lean your remote forward or backward like you would a flight stick. Flying is done effortlessly thanks to the motion controls.

Combat is taken to a nice new difficulty level here, as well. Link's enemies will block his incoming attacks in every direction he can swing his sword. In fact, if you just waggle your remote, you will soon find yourself out of hearts with no fairy to turn to. (I'm looking at you, Stalfos.) When I first started playing, my sword kept bouncing off the bokoblins' blades. I just couldn't get past their defenses. I'm not saying it was impossible; I'm saying it felt way too much like luck whenever I finally did hit. The first boss fight in the game is what really set me straight. It's a battle with an enemy named Ghirahim. I tried swinging my sword around, but to no avail. It wasn't until I started to pay attention to the positioning of the sword strikes and timing my hits that it just all clicked.

Link has always had a bunch of toys to play with during his adventures. Skyward Sword ups the ante with an upgrade system. You can upgrade just about everything you get -- shields, potions, even the equipment found in dungeons. There's more than 30 different items to collect to get the job done. And, no, it's not just about killing things or putting stuff in jars. I'll give you a hint for the monster horn: You don't just kill the bokoblin to make him drop the item. Let's not forget about the classics, either. Hearts are still gathered, and keys are still needed to open the boss doors.

Environment

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword doesn't feel like it's all that big; it doesn't seem as though there are many places to go. Don't let that fool you, though. I won't say it's as large as Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time, but it has more going on in each area. The areas never feel devoid of activity like in the earlier games. Think of it like a handheld Zelda. Everywhere you set foot is a giant puzzle that needs to be solved. It also has some the most varied locales in the Zelda universe. My favorite environment is the Lanayru Desert. You just have to get there to find out what I'm talking about.

I have to admit that I was very impressed with the dungeons this time around. Earlier installments used most of the items in the proceeding dungeons. In the 3-D Zelda games, that happened less and less. Skyward Sword took the series back to its roots. You will have to use the item you got from the last area to help you in the new one. Couple that with the ever-increasing challenge of using the item you just got. It makes for very good puzzles. You will be amazed by the imagination that went into even the very last dungeon you explore. And the final boss area? Best in the entire series.

(A side note: If you're expecting the old soundtrack, don't. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword does away with the music theme that has been going on for so long and replaces it with a more interesting one.)

Final thoughts

I loved everything about this game. The controls are some of the best of this generation, motion-controlled or otherwise. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is an instant classic in a series full of them.

Score: 9.5

Random Drop Hits Us With Episode 4

rfludwick@darqflare.com (Robert F. Ludwick) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

After a long break between their third episode and the VGA special, Random Drop has given us a quick turnaround on their fourth episode (Does that mean the VGA special wasn't an episode? What does it all mean?!) In this installment, the crew talks about Batman: Arkham City, Dark Souls, RAGE and more.

As always, the three Random Drop podcasters are Justin Huthmacher, Adam Nelson, and Rob Watkins. The podcast's home is http://randomdrop.libsyn.com/. The real Episode 004's download location is here. Apparently that whole VGA 2011 Special wasn't really Episode 004. What were we thinking?

Editor's Note: The three members of the Random Drop podcast previously worked with OMGN's publisher, Robert F. Ludwick, at Meteor Games.

Random Drop's VGA 2011 Special Hits

rfludwick@darqflare.com (Robert F. Ludwick) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Random Drop's fourth podcast made its way onto the web recently, after a long break from the last podcast, Oct. 24. If you're a big fan of the VGAs, then you may want to skip this podcast, as the group generally lampoons what the VGAs have become.

As always, the three Random Drop podcasters are Justin Huthmacher, Adam Nelson, and Rob Watkins. The podcast's home is http://randomdrop.libsyn.com/. Episode 004's download location is here.

Editor's Note: The three members of the Random Drop podcast previously worked with OMGN's publisher, Robert F. Ludwick, at Meteor Games.

Retrospective: Modern Warfare 3 versus Battlefield 3

kjhovanec@bsu.edu (Kyle James Hovanec) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Mario vs. Sonic. Metal Gear vs. Splinter Cell. Gran Turismo vs. Forza. You vs. everyone. The video game community has long been the grounds for spirited rivalries between similar franchises. Message boards become war zones, and comment sections transform into battlegrounds as devoted fans deliver their arguments and mud slinging vitriol, defending their favorite franchises with words delivered in machine gun staccato, as fast as their fingers can type and their Internet browsers can refresh.

It comes as no surprise that two of the biggest military FPSs of the year had their own sets of fans and rivals. The million-dollar juggernaut, Modern Warfare 3, would face strong competition from the class-based multiplayer shooter, Battlefield 3.

While I have already reviewed both titles here on OMGN, I like to look at things as objectively as possible and provide another light on what was the better popular shooter this year.

Broken down into six categories, I'll be giving a winner from each category according to the reviews with a brief explanation. It's heavyweight versus heavyweight. Who will come out on top of this rivalry? The battle begins ...

Single Player

Winner: MW3

While BF3's single-player story was technically a well crafted and decent playing romp, the storyline and cliched characters along with the linear gameplay were out of place -- not like a Battlefield title at all. Forgettable characters and a vague storyline made this an incredibly forgettable title I had no desire to replay.

MW3, while staying very close to the structure of past titles and having copious amounts of explosions and over-the-top scenarios in place of well-written characters or story, was still an entertaining ride. It's the Michael Bay vision of World War III, and despite the shallow banality, it still provided an entertaining way to pass a few hours before jumping into the multiplayer. Something Battlefield 3 could not do.

Multiplayer

Winner: BF3

BF3 had Team-based FPS action on large maps littered with usable vehicles, upgradable weapons, and unlockable gadgets. Along with a variety of modes and the beauty, fluidity, and destructible environments of the Frostbite 2.0 engine, BF3 was a monster of a shooter, and despite the initial flaws and bugs (most of which have been addressed and fixed), was a fantastic shooter to play with a group of friends. Teamwork, more than K/D rations, triumphed here, which was very refreshing in an age of shooters obsessed with rampant killing.

All of these additions made MW3 feel positively archaic with its smaller, less diverse maps and lack of reliance on teamwork. When you also consider the numerous glitches, bugs, and quirks that have plagued the series since Call of Duty 4, it's no contest which had the better multiplayer offering.

Co-Op

Winner: MW3

If you thought BF3's single-player campaign was boring and repetitive, you would possibly gain a whole new appreciation for it after playing through the co-op missions. Filled with boring objectives, bland levels, and the lack of ability to play with a partner locally, only the ability to unlock weapons for use in multiplayer kept this mode from becoming completely irrelevant.

MW3 took the core gameplay of the series, stripped away the ridiculously unbalanced multiplayer and story from single player and left the player with a variety of game modes. Survival was this game's version of zombies, but the added unlockables and increasingly difficult enemies made this an addictive and fun mode to play with friends or solo. The specific missions were even better with a wide variety of objectives, from assassinations to bomb disarmament, that could be played both locally and online. MW3's co-op didn't just best BF3's, it annihilated it.

DLC

Winner: MW3

While it may be too early to tell, based on past actions and the words of MW3 lead designers wanting new content on a near-constant basis, MW3 will deliver new map packs, spec ops maps, and possibly other features to its fans. When combined with the elite service, the amount of items, bells, and whistles should be enough to keep fans happy.

BF3, on the other hand, recently released its promised expansion: Back to Karkand with new maps, vehicles, and weapons. Beyond this, there has been no word on any future content. The developers expressed an interest to continue supporting BF3 long after its release date, but they also promised the same thing for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and after a bright-looking first six months, there wasn't a single drop of content afterward. The hopes aren't high here.

Lasting Appeal

Winner: BF3

While MW3 features map packs and a stat-tracking service for its fans in the coming months, Activision is its own worse enemy in terms of longevity with the announcement of yet another CoD title for 2012. This effectively divides the community, leaving only a few left playing last year's title with a majority of the fanbase migrating on to the latest installment.

BF3, as of now, has no future sequels planned in the immediate future; however, the sheer size and variety of gameplay should give fans plenty of reasons to keep playing, especially if CoD still sticks to its arcade shooter formula. There is simply no other FPS like it on the market that blends fast-paced gameplay with rewards for teamwork. Three Call of Duties could be released in 2012, but as long as they play largely the same, BF3 fans will stick with BF3.

Visuals and Audio

Winner: BF3

As great as MW3 looks -- a great feat considering the age of the engine -- BF3 has its competitor beat in the visuals department. With buildings collapsing, detailed character models, and excellent draw distances, BF3 took full advantage of its Frostbite 2.0 engine and made a game that was as fun to watch in motion as it was to play, something that can rarely be said about a military FPS. MW3's visuals still look pretty good, but they bring no comparison to the vastness of BF3's battlefields and fluidity of its characters and vehicles. Where MW3 feels very much on rails, BF3 feels organic and ever-changing.

BF3 also wins in the audio department. From the crumbling buildings to the detailed sounds of bullet casings hitting the floor and pavement crumbling, BF3 provided a robust selection that gives your system a workout and shakes the living room. MW3's sounds were just ... loud ... with guns that sounded too similar to one another and a focus on being as loud as possible rather than as detailed as possible. Against BF3, there was no comparison.

The Winner: Tie

Well ... I certainly didn't expect this outcome. It's a happy and surprising one. Both have their pros and cons, and both are unique in certain areas. Take your pick and leave the bickering fanboyism at the door. Have fun and frag on!

The Best (And Worst) Video Games of 2011

link9981@hotmail.com (Charles Foster) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

It's that time of the year again, folks. The time when everybody starts making new years resolutions, only to break them in a matter of weeks. It also happens to be the time of the year when video game critics put out their awards for the industry. Fortunately for us, these edicts will withstand the test of time.

From worst to best, find out here what we thought of 2011's offerings -- as well as those that shouldn't have seen the light of day.

(Note: Missing categories will be finalized at a later date. Thanks for reading!)

Worst Sequel

Loser: Duke Nukem Forever

This really comes as no surprise, but has Duke Nukem earned it? Well, yes. Duke Nukem - Forever is technically a sequel, and already being voted as OMGN's most disappointing game, it only seems natural. A low weapon count, stunted humor, an overly long vehicle segment, and an equally disappointing DLC that pretty much ditches everything the series has been known for all contribute to this end result.

If DNF came earlier -- much earlier -- the game probably would have received higher marks. But there's just no way around it: 14 years is simply way too long to be in development when all you come up with is this. Granted, the game was revived by Gearbox, makers of other such great titles such as Borderlands, but the damage was already done, and the restoration of DNF was more of a salvage.

- Jenner Cauton, writer

Runner-Up: Dynasty Gundam Warriors 3

Coming soon!

Most Disappointing Game

Loser: Duke Nukem Forever

There’s no doubt that Duke Nukem Forever cinched the coveted Most Disappointing title by simply getting released in the first place. Nobody knew exactly what to expect, but we were all expecting something -- it would be a lie if anybody said otherwise. Of course, despite not knowing exactly what we wanted out of DNF, we know we didn’t wind up getting it. Sure, Duke was there, and that was ... well, that was something. But the gameplay was weak and sloppy -- contrived at best and forced at worst. What really killed DNF was that it was the Shia LaBeouf of the videogame market this year. Nobody who actually enjoys movies likes LaBeouf, but the producers still force him on their captive audiences. And Gearbox Studios did the same with DNF.

Gearbox tried too hard to convince all of us that this was the Duke Nukem we wanted, so much so that when the bad reviews began pouring in, the company complained that consumers were simply being pissy. The company lost sight of what every developer needs to be asking when creating a game: “Is this fun?” Frankly, the company didn’t know what to bring to the table and was so obsessed with trying to meet what it thought everyone’s expectations should be that it didn't realize the game was a failure in the works. Instead of tapping the unlimited potential it had available, it delivered a mediocre shooter with aged game mechanics and a piss-poor attitude about itself.

- Ed Kaczynski, writer

Runner-Up: L.A. Noire

We know what you're thinking. "How on earth can L.A. Noire get this distinction, especially standing next to DNF?" And we wouldn't disagree with you. The best part is the story, and the fact that the main gameplay elements -- investigation and interrogation -- go hand-in-hand. But the other half of the game was exploring an open world, and unfortunately, it wasn't really given any thought. With nothing to do but collect things or play repetitious combat scenarios, the game's open world was a waste. L.A. Noire is a good game -- it's just the good part is over before you know it.

- Jenner Cauton, writer

Wost Game of the Year

Loser: Rise of Nightmares

Rise of Nightmares is a first of sorts. It’s the first fully M-rated survival horror game for the Kinect, and it’s the first to teach us that walking sucks. That’s the major downfall to this motion-controlled game as far as gameplay goes. Taking a chainsaw to a zombie is slightly satisfying for a time, and kicking open a door works rather well. You just get tired of it ... fast. Walking feels like a 1-year-old trying to take his first steps. What can possibly beat the worst part of a game when it's getting from point A to B? How did developer Sega let this happen? “WAIT!” says a Sega employee. “We can give it an auto-walk feature.” If that doesn’t say, "We know we screwed up on something," we don’t know what does.

To be fair, though, it also has a terrible story. Let’s put it this way: Take the plot from House of the Dead and add in lines like, “You, the master of unlocking,” and that’s Rise of Nightmares. Nobody cares how the miserable, bickering couple got separated in the hostel, nor do we care to help them find their way out of it. Sega not only made Worst Game of the Year, but quite possibly the Worst Game of the Decade.

- Charles Foster, writer

Runner-Up: Call of Juarez: The Cartel

If all the context of Call of Juarez: The Cartel was stripped away, it would be a mediocre sequel. Changing a game series from the Old West to a contemporary Western setting could have worked, and it could've been a new way to introduce people to the Mexican drug war issue. The real problem is everything besides the gameplay. With its backdrop of the drug trade in Southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, it turns into an inconsiderate monument of disrespect. The drug war is just that: a war. The stereotyping and misconceptions the game has (one example of many: in the game, American women are kidnapped by Mexican cartels to be used as sex slaves in Mexico when in real life, it's usually the other way around) show that the game developers didn't even try to use The Cartel as a means of both entertaining and enlightening its audience to real-world problems. Not only did developer Techland fail to make a decent followup to the first two Call of Jaurez games, it managed to make a mockery of a tragedy.

- Tyrone M. Cato, writer

Best Sequel

Winner: Portal 2

When we heard a sequel to the clever and all-too-short Portal was in the works, we wondered how could they make something better? It just didn’t seem possible that developer Valve could surmount the insurmountable ... and then we got our hands on the much-lengthier Portal 2. Combine brain-twisting puzzles with insane robots created by long-dead egomaniacs, and you get a game that’s full of dark humor, so much so that all you can do is laugh or go insane yourself. Hell, some of the puzzles require thinking like someone who is short a full deck just to complete them.

Back to the insane robots. At the start of the game, we fully expected Wheatley to be short-lived comic relief, but he morphs into something so much better -- and so much worse. After Portal, it’s hard to imagine something worse than GLaDOS, but it is very, very possible once Wheatley gets in charge. Power corrupts. And it corrupts in the best way in this sequel. Give yourself plenty of time to -- literally -- work your way up from the depths of insanity.

- Anne King, copy editor

Runner-Up: Batman: Arkham City

In a year full of sequels to existing productions, Batman: Arkham City came through with shining colors. While Arkham Asylum may have taken the gaming world by surprise in 2009, there were heavy expectations in place for Arkham City. Despite the anticipation, developer Rocksteady Games delivered what is arguably a Batman masterpiece, blowing away even some of the highest hopes many had for the game. The superb gameplay from Arkham Asylum returned, and with it came an excellent open world with far more to do. The integration of the open world and side quests was woven seamlessly into the experience, giving the player the feeling that he was truly in a living, breathing world of criminals. How Rocksteady will top this, we cannot fathom.

- Robert F. Ludwick, publisher

Best Indie Game

Winner: Minecraft

There are points in time when we realize that even individuals can have great power, especially when we band together. Be it political movements or game developers, humanity has the capability of enacting great change if we put our minds to it. Developer Markus Persson (company name Mojang ) certainly put the effort in here, and it shows. While the game is only 8-bit and had no marketing strategy to speak of, it now has millions of players. We’ll say it again: millions. All those people constantly digging, chopping, mining, and above all, creating. Creating millions upon millions of 8-bit-style square blocks that turn into millions upon millions of lush, strikingly vivid landscapes. All from a simple concept.

And while some may ask, “Why play at all?”, it quickly becomes apparent when one sits down to try the game -- there are infinite possibilities. Infinite ways for the mind to expand its creative wings. Infinite ways to build, shape, and develop the world around you. The only limits are the depths of your imagination. All those ideas you’ve got for your back yard or house? Try them out here. Or maybe you just really wanted to build a space ship yourself but never had the wherewithal to do so. Either way, this game is going to the stars.

- Anne King, copy editor

Runner-Up: Bastion

While some may argue that Bastion isn't a true indie game because it was published by WB Games, we disagree. Bastion is a true indie game, and boy did Supergiant Games deliver. The mix of gameplay, story, art, music, and narration provided an immersive and engaging experience that no gamer should ever miss. Add in the fact that the game also sells on the cheap, and you're looking at a winning combination.

- Robert F. Ludwick, publisher

Best Mobile Game

Winner: i Love Katamari (on iOS)

Coming soon!

Runner-Up: Kirby Mass Attack

Coming soon!

Best XBLA/PSN Downloadable Game

Winner: Dungeon Defenders

Never before has a downloadable-only game brought together so much cooperation, friendship, sharing ... and arguing whenever someone places their tower in places monsters don't go. Dungeon Defenders is one of the most-played XBLA games out there, combining real-time combat, tower defense, and RPG elements. Just be sure to bring as many friends as possible.

The game is a blast online or offline in local 4-player splitscreen. And it doesn't get any harder the more players you have, so it behooves you to play with as many people as you can. The first few levels may seem like a cakewalk, but the difficulty soon escalates. Cooperation and communication is key -- among friends, even better. So what better game to award this title than one that brings friends together?

- Jenner Cauton, writer

Runner-Up: Renegade Ops

Coming soon!

Most Exciting Game

Winner: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

When Nathan Drake, star of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, is running along the collapsing rooftop of a burning chateau, you're controlling him. As he fights pirates inside an overtaken cruise liner while it fills with dynamically undulating ocean water, you're controlling him then, too. Even after he gets sucked out of a crashing airplane into the open sky without a parachute, you can still make him flail around while you try to figure out how the hell you'll get him through it all.
Just about every set piece in Drake's Deception has existed in some form of media already, but it's the way that developer Naughty Dog puts these moments right in the middle of gameplay that makes them special. While it may be walking a fine line between "overly scripted" and "just right," Naughty Dog certainly has a knack for creating some of the most gorgeous and involving action sequences in gaming. Drake's Deception's spectacle is anything but fluff.

- Tyrone M. Cato, writer

Runner-Up: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Coming soon!

Best Controls

Winner: Dance Central 2

Coming soon!

Runner-Up: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Twist the remote slightly left, and your bird banks left. Twist the remote slightly right, and your bird banks right. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword nails motion controls. Your Wii remote is the sword. It’s a simple concept that just hasn’t been done correctly until this game. It took the power of Wii Motion Plus to finally get it right. Link can deftly slay his enemies if you’re quick and precise. No waggling allowed in this game, folks. If you run up to Moblins in this Zelda adventure and waggle, they will take a piece of you with them. You have to watch where they’re guarding and strike accordingly. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is not only the Wii’s swan song, but the yard stick on how a motion-controlled game should play.

- Charles Foster, writer

Best Environment

Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim is beautiful. Say it with us. Skyrim. Is. Beautiful. There’s going to be one guy out there who utterly disagrees with this. We don't care who he is or why because he's flat-out wrong. The biggest leap forward between Oblvion and Skyrim was the complete retooling of the natural environment. When you played Oblivion, you were playing a game -- the cities were closed-in, the ruins were ill-placed, and the natural world (while vast) was artificial in feel. Hell, you could see the temperate Imperial City from both ice-ravaged Bruma and swampmucked Bravil if you stood in the right spot.

But when you play Skyrim, you’re in Skyrim. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s the first, best, and most shining example of a natural, virtual world. Nothing feels forced or out of place, and despite having hundreds of areas to visit and thousands of NPCs with which to interact, the hauntingly beautiful Nordic backdrop has a feel both vast and cloistered. It’s an experience that any gamer with an eye for detail would utterly lose out on by skipping.

- Ed Kaczynski, writer

Runner-Up: Alice: Madness Returns

When your only limit is your imagination, then really, what’s holding you back? Alice: Madness Returns is a hauntingly beautiful take on the latest installment of the Alice franchise. Starting off with a twisted take on Dickens' London, the game quickly abandons this brown, polluted mess and dashes it against the backdrop of a restored Wonderland. As it represented Alice’s psyche, it quickly turns from a light and beautiful gardenscape into a dark and nightmarish place of clockwork monstrosities, but each new stage brings with it a symphony of gorgeous design and carefully constructed scenery. The gameplay may have been a bit dated, and the bugs and errors a bit frustrating, but as a visual feast, few games can compare.

- Ed Kaczynski, writer

Most Surprising Game

Winner: Catherine

Catherine is very story-driven and a very difficult puzzle game. You play as Vincent Brooks who likes to hang out at the Stray Sheep, a bar he frequents with his friends. Vincent's longtime girlfriend Catherine is trying to get him to settle down. One particular night, Vincent gets overly drunk and wakes up with a half-naked Catherine. Then the story really picks up. Vincent is also having nightmares every night. It’s this part that’s the core gameplay here. You’ll spend your nights trying not to be murdered while you climb blocks. This gets more and more difficult, as it's timed. And then add in exploding blocks, heavy blocks, ice blocks, and fragile blocks. Did we mention the medal system that unlocks harder levels?

Catherine was a huge surprise in how much fun it provides. One normally wouldn't expect a puzzle/dating sim to equal a fantastic game. It's got some serious replay value. You have a morality system to contend with and a conversation hub area -- the Stray Sheep. Vincent will chat with his friends and other patrons, play stuff on the jukebox, and just plain get drunk. (Which, by the way, helps him move faster in the nightmares.) Atlus scored again this year with Catherine. You simply have to play it to believe it.

- Charles Foster, writer

Runner-Up: APB: Reloaded

All Points Bulletin: Reloaded is a relaunch of the horribly flawed, unbalanced, hacked, gold-farmed-to-death, and short-lived MMO All Points Bulletin. The shutdown of Realtime Worlds (Crackdown) spelled doom for the unique GTA-style shooter. Fortunately, GamersFirst, an MMO company dedicated to F2P games, applied its business model to the game and made dramatic changes -- and what change. Even during the beta phase, no one saw this coming. But those who stuck with it even during the hard times, be it through the first or both betas, were rewarded with a game that players not only enjoyed but felt like they helped shape. APB: Reloaded's successful comeback has earned it this title.

- Jenner Cauton, writer

Best Strategy Game

Winner: Total War: Shogun II

Plenty of historical war games sacrifice making the combat itself look awesome in order to have a game that will actually work because having dynamic fight animations for hundreds of soldiers all at once would be crazy, right?

Well, Shogun II is crazy. It has 8-player, multiplayer, weather that affects whether classes are effective, and all the micro-managing of past Total War games. To top it off, a horseman can throw a spear into an infantryman, ride up to the guy as he stumbles about and yank the spear out of his stomach, all while fighting is going on around the two of them. Developers behind the Total War series, The Creative Assembly, has sharpened its skills over the past decade in creating engaging war strategy games. Shogun II is the result of that and manages to be an awesome addition to the series.

- Tyrone M. Cato, writer

Runner-Up: Tropico 4

Coming soon!

Best Sports Game

Winner: NBA 2K12

All hail NBA 2K12! If the lockout had you worried you wouldn’t enjoy the NBA, then think again. There's tons of things to keep you busy in this game. Its got My Player, Association, NBA’s Greatest, Creating a Legend, and online modes. In normal sports terms, it would only take one of these modes to make the game a great improvement to the previous year. 2K12, however, made all of them fantastic. My Player streamlined the process to get to your team and made the team grading system easier. Association mode is 2K12’s franchise mode. This is the one area in the game that didn’t change that much. NBA’s Greatest is exactly that: going up against some of the greatest players of all time. They even put it in black and white and talk about the game as if it happened in the past. Seeing that for this first time is just jaw-dropping amazing.

NBA 2K12 is shockingly improved what was previously a great game. We've never seen the number one in any sports category change so much the second year around and be this awesome. They usually just spoon-feed you more and call in the next year. Thank you 2K Sports and Visual Concepts for not resting on your laurels on this one.

- Charles Foster, writer

Runner-Up: NBA Jam: On Fire Edition

Coming soon!

Best Action/Adventure Game

Winner: Batman: Arkham City

Batman Arkham Asylum not only proved that excellent superhero titles could indeed be possible, it also was one of the best action/adventure games this generation. Arkham City did the near-impossible, providing not only a worthy successor to the original title but surpassing it in nearly every way.

Taking all of the excellent combat and stealth mechanics from the original and adding in nearly every Batman villain worth mentioning along with an open world to explore, Arkham City provided a mix of engrossing gameplay and compelling narrative that sucked in the player and refused to let go until the shocking conclusion. Best action/adventure title of 2011? Yes, and quite possibly one of the best action/adventure titles this generation.

- Kyle Hovanec, writer

Runner-Up: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Take everything great about Uncharted 2 (fantastic visuals, cinematic gameplay, exciting set pieces), make them better, and release to the public. Seriously, if you even remotely enjoyed any of the previous Uncharted installments, you must play this title. From amazing visuals to some of the most exciting action/set pieces we've played this generation (the boat and plane levels still linger), and you've got a hybrid of cinema and gaming perfection.

- Kyle Hovanec, writer

Best First-/Third-Person Shooter

Winner: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

One top of being an excellent action/adventure title, Uncharted 3 also has some of the best third-person shooting mechanics this year. Being able to take cover, hang from objects, and pull off headshots with a variety of weapons made for the some of the more intense gun fights experienced this year.

The mechanics truly shine when played online in one of Uncharted 3's many multiplayer modes. For someone who originally started out loathing the idea of multiplayer Uncharted, this third installment has won us over with its variety of modes, character customization, and weapon modifications. In a market where Gears of War 3 gathers the most attention, Uncharted 3 not only stands toe-to-toe with it, in a variety of ways it surpasses it.

- Kyle Hovanec, writer

Runner-Up: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

It’s difficult to find anything wrong with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Choices, choices, choices galore, each with short-and-far ranging effects on gameplay, make this a gamer’s game. The game doesn't pigeon-hole anyone into doing anything the way it wants them to, mostly because it doesn't want players to do anything a specific way -- it lets us make decisions and then live with the consequences. It's a lesson Square Enix should take to heart what with its other slipshod productions.

- Ed Kaczynski, writer

Best RPG

Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Yes! New RPGs like this one make us want to simultaneously squeal with joy, quit our jobs, throw away our cellphones ... and develop carpal tunnel and near-sightedness. After all, when faced with massive time-sinks like Skyrim, what else can one do but plunge in head-first and hope to come out breathing at the end? Is it possible we were living in a world without this game only a few months ago? What did we do with all that time?

Bethesda took all that was amazing with its previous titles and made it shine in Skyrim while leaving out the game-killing factors (aside from the *cough* bugs). While there are a few deal-breakers here, Skyrim is infinitely satisfying if you love exploring, questing, and killing. You can ally yourself with the empire or the rebellion or neither. You can become a sneak-thief or a brutal warrior. You can kill anyone you want and take all their stuff (of course, there are consequences), or you can be friends with everyone while stealing all their stuff behind their backs. Did we mention you can steal? Oh, and dragons. Have we mentioned them before, too? The point is: choices. Thousands of choices. Hundreds of hours of gameplay. What more could an RPG fan ask for?

- Anne King, copy editor

Runner-Up: Dark Souls

No other RPG this year provided steep challenges, amazing enemy design, and frightening moments than Dark Souls. With steep challenge came incredible awards through weapons and armor for those who dared to explore and conquer their enemies. This is the hack-and-slash for the big boys and girls -- the RPG for adults and one of the very best RPGs of 2011.

- Kyle Hovanec, writer

Game of the Year

Winner: Batman: Arkham City

There are many routes to earning a Game of the Year award these days, but in the end the game itself must be rally stupendous, really awesome, and really spectacular to pull it off. This year, Batman: Arkham City pulls it off with a great formula. Take the solid underpinnings of Arkham Asylum (which includes great stealth and beat-em-up gameplay, as well as a phenomenal story and puzzles) and add to it a wonderful open world, great (and greatly integrated) side quests as well as even more unlockables at Batman lore than before, and this is what you get.

Arkham City does a wonderful job of not breaking what made Arkham Asylym great. It does this with a large roster of Batman baddies, but manages not to get bogged down by the sheer variety, much like how the movie Spider-Man 3 did. The stealth game has been upgraded; the beat-em-ups are even better; the flying is totally awesome. Rocksteady hit a home run with Arkham City.

- Robert F. Ludwick, publisher

Runner-Up: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim, through all its bugs and glitches, could have easily swept if we let it. Instead, we’ll give a salute to its vast, rich environment, solid story, and gameplay. In comparison to Oblivion, this game’s replay factor is through the roof. Throw in billions of tons of loots, thousands of quests, dragons, an amazing crafting capability, a unique leveling system, more loot, more quests, more dragons ... You get the idea.

- Anne King, copy editor

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review

kjhovanec@bsu.edu (Kyle James Hovanec) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

It's impossible to ignore the FPS juggernaut that is the Call of Duty franchise. From its rabid fanbase to its yearly installments that earn millions, the franchise has -- love it or hate it -- earned a strong presence in the video game community.

Modern Warfare 3 is the latest in the military first-person shooter series. This title, a continuation from Modern Warfare 2, is the end of the line that began with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007. That means characters and situations fans have become familiar with all have their final moment in the spotlight before the bullet-and-explosion-filled finale. For a series as popular and as successful as Call of Duty, one has to ask if the most recent title, the 8th, is as compelling as the introduction was to the gaming world. Is the single player still filled with epic moments? Is the gameplay still easy to pick up and play? Is the multiplayer fun? An even more important question: Is the multiplayer balanced?

After experiencing single-player mode in its entirety, and playing a large portion of both the cooperative spec ops mode and the competitive multiplayer mode, I can say Modern Warfare 3 delivers exactly what one expects from a CoD title .

The single-player campaign puts you in the role of Delta Force soldiers, Russian secret service, and series' main characters Captain Price and “Soap” MacTavish as you work together to stop the terrorist Makarov threatening to destroy the world by starting World War III. Throughout this six-hour campaign, you'll be playing the role of different characters through war-torn New York City to a poison gas-filled downtown Paris. As with all of the previous titles in the series, Modern Warfare 3 has some impressive levels that guide you down a narrow path, shooting enemies as you go with the newest and most impressive weapons. The single-player campaign was an impressive and well-made experience that provided a whirlwind tour of a modern world at war. However, despite the amount of fun I had with the campaign, it is impossible to ignore that the entire experience feels hollow.

Click the image to view game screenshots

The campaign attempts to give you one set piece after another, one explosive combat situation after another, and make the experience come across as a dark and somber commentary on the horrors of war. It is a game that thinks it has an important message to tell and tries too hard to tell it. The characters are nothing more than one-dimensional cut-outs functioning as a convenient way to deliver a few lines of dialog. When characters, civilians, and enemies die, we never get a sense of loss due to the fact that they're so shallow to begin with. I have nothing against simple shoot-em-ups, and even less against paper-thin FPS stories so long as the game itself plays well. When you make one type of game and expect people to invest in characters and ideas that are not there, it comes off forced, annoying, and generally unpleasant.

The cooperative-based Spec Ops mode is easily the most fun I had playing MW3 as it takes the game's biggest strength, its core gameplay, and dumps all the less enjoyable elements. It drops the cheesy story and multiplayer balancing and lets you and another friend take on waves of enemies or complete a series of cooperative missions.

Survival mode is similar to the previous entry in the CoD series, Call of Duty: Black Ops, in which you and a partner take on wave after wave of enemies earning stronger defensive options and weapons as you progress. Even though the zombie theme has been dropped in favor of more realistic enemies, the gameplay feels as fast and as smooth as ever. I played through a significant portion of the survival maps alone and with friends, both online and split screen, and I didn't run into any lag or glitching -- just pure FPS shooting, fast, furious, and a lot of fun.

The other cooperative mode involves either yourself or a another player taking on a series of separate missions that focus more on objectives rather than trying to shoehorn in a plot. The difficulty and the variety of objectives has been vastly improved from its previous incarnation in Modern Warfare 2. Objectives range from disarming chemical bombs as you take fire from enemies to assassination objectives. Each of the missions was fun, provided a consistent level of difficulty, and never seemed to repeat the same mission objectives twice.

Finally, the biggest bullet-point on nearly every CoD fan's list is its multiplayer offering. Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have taken great strides to improve the multiplayer experience by adding new modes, new kill streaks (now called point streaks), new weapons, and new pregame modes (such as a zombie mode). All of this sounds like a substantial addition to the multiplayer offering, but underneath exists issues that have plagued the series since its rise in popularity and also introduces some new issues as well.

One of the largest problems with this latest installment is the bland and uninspiring map designs. Not a single map stands out as memorable or exciting. While previous installments may have had a few clunkers among their selections, most of them had memorable design, easily recognizable landmarks, and played with different game types. Here, the maps all largely look the same, play the same (massive choke point in the middle, some sniper spots above), and seem made more for deathmatch than objective-based modes. There may be less camping and defensive play, but instead a stronger focus on run-and-gun gaming and close quarters combat. If only a portion of the maps catered to this style, it wouldn't be an issue, but when nearly all of the maps play this way, not only does objective-based gaming suffer, but the weapons suffer as well. Close quarters caters well to assault riffles, sub machine guns, and shotguns. Sniping and more long-range combat goes out the window and forces those using those weapons to make an uphill climb to be proficient.

The spawns are also terrible, as most of the time, they put you as close to the action as possible. Getting killed right after spawning is a much more likely event in this title. I am still baffled by spawn issues cropping up in modern-day games.

The ability for the player to choose their own point streaks, through “strike packages,” is the newest addition to the game and for the most part, functions very well. It forces the player to rely less on getting kill streaks and more on helping the team. Not really good at getting kills? Use the support package and help find the enemies. Still pretty good at getting kills? Use the assault package to rack them up through more traditional kill streaks. Finally, the specialist package can be used to rack up kill streak after kill streak but will only work if you can continually get kills or points. The strike packages do a great job of helping the player feel useful regardless of skill level.

The new modes also make it fun by requiring a kill be confirmed. Simply shooting the other players is not enough, as you now have to claim their dogtags in order to confirm the kill. Team defender is a nice twist on capture-the-flag, forcing each team to scramble for the flag (which comes from the first person who dies in a match). It's a fun mode, but again, not many of the maps play well to this game type.

It would be simple to write Modern Warfare 3 off as another phoned-in project from Activision. However, that would be selling the game short. It has its issues, some of them quite significant, but overall the game still has the rock-solid mechanics and fantastic graphics (quite a feat from such an aging engine) that the series has had since day one. For fans, chances are you will get a great deal of enjoyment out of this title.

For everyone else, the casual fans and those on the fence about purchasing another yearly installment of the FPS juggernaut, it is entirely safe to sit this one out, or at the very least, consider a rental. For those not already a fan, Modern Warfare 3 offers not enough new and too much of the same. There's better ways to spend $60, and this is not one of them.

* Editor's Note: This review is based on the Xbox 360 version.

Score: 7.0

WWE '12 Review

ryangoodman@cox.net (Ryan Goodman) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

Not long after the release of the previous WWE game, THQ announced it would be going back to the drawing board for the next one, WWE ’12. THQ promised to build the entire game from the ground up, including brand new graphics and animations. Early builds of the game, such as the one seen at E3, seemed to back away from most of those statements. While the final product is far from perfect, wrestling fans will be pleased to know that this in-ring competitor is ready to move toward that championship gold.

WWE ’12 features a roster of the who’s who in World Wrestling Entertainment. All of the big stars are there, including John Cena, C.M. Punk, and The Undertaker. There’s also several of the WWE Divas and other on-air personalities, such as commentators Jim Ross and Jerry “The King” Lawler, along with the head of the WWE himself, Vince McMahon. The game also has many past superstars, such as Shawn Michaels, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, and even UFC star Brock Lesnar. If that isn’t enough, THQ plans on adding more characters via DLC, and you can make your own in one of the most detailed creation modes you will ever see. The game also includes all the main shows and arenas, such as Wrestlemania, and you can create those from scratch, too. You can also stream your own music to add yet another layer to the customization.

WWE ’12 also features virtually any type of wrestling match you can think of. Along with your basic one-on-one and tag team battles, you can also fight multiple opponents at once, lay the smackdown inside a steel cage, and even participate in several of WWE’s specialty matches, such as the Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank. The game also features two main story modes: Road to Wrestlemania and WWE Universe. In the former, you play out three different scenarios -- as a hero, villain, and outsider -- going after the ultimate prize, the WWE championship. WWE Universe, however, is where you’ll likely be spending most of your time, as you become the matchmaker. You get to control who fights who, and who rises to become the top contenders on each show. In many ways, WWE ’12 is a wrestling fan’s dream putting you in the shoes of Vince McMahon and letting you control the entire WWE universe with a touch of your fingertips.

The game’s major hiccup, however, is a big one. WWE ’12 prominently features online play, including several of the match types, and a community forum where you can download and upload your created wrestlers and arenas. The problem lies in that THQ’s servers are hardly ever up long enough to even log on. THQ has said that it's working out the kinks, but as of this writing, WWE ’12 has been out more than a month, and the problem still persists. When it is finally working, it will probably be a great component to the game, but for now, it’s completely useless.

Click the image to view game screenshots

Despite the lack of consistent online play, THQ did, for the most part, back up what it promised when WWE ’12 was announced. The game does feature improved graphics and new animations. Most of the theme songs for the wrestlers are in their current form, too, which had been a big problem in many previous WWE titles. Another positive is that the commentary in the game doesn’t sound as repetitive as in previous titles. The in-ring action moves very smoothly, and it should only take you about a match or two to get the new controls down. The game features a new “predator” system, in which you can target an opponent’s limb to maximize damage to that area. One annoyance, which hasn’t changed since the E3 build, is that it seems the computer knows your every move at times and consistently counters. The good news is that the game has AI control options, where you can use sliders and turn down the amount of reversals and other things CPU opponents do in the ring. Overall, WWE ’12 plays very well and is probably the most realistic wrestling game from a control standpoint since WWF No Mercy more than 10 years ago.

In the end, WWE ’12 is a must-get if you are a wrestling fan. Casual fans and gamers can get a kick out of it, but the game may only take them too far. Had it not been for the major issues with the online play, WWE ’12 could have easily been the new champion of the video game ring, but until those issues are resolved, this bout will have to settle for the middle of the card.

* Editor's Note: This review is based on the Xbox 360 version.

Score: 7.5

Battlefield 3 Review

kjhovanec@bsu.edu (Kyle James Hovanec) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

If you were even remotely following the video game industry this year, you heard of Battlefield 3. After releasing to an enormous amount of hype following this year's E3 and a marketing campaign that set its sights on its closest competitor, Call of Duty, the game has finally come out, and the dust has finally settled. Gone is the rivalry, the hype, and the massive anticipation, and what we are left with is a look at the game with a clear head and unclouded views.

BF3 is the sequel to the PC multiplayer Battlefield 2. It is a military FPS that incorporates an equal amount of squad combat, vehicular combat, and air combat as two opposing forces clash across massive, destructible maps. Console gamers who have not experienced the previous PC titles will find this latest installment also shares a lot with its console spin-off, Battlefield: Bad Company. In it, the destruction of cover and the ability to destroy obstacles comes into play more than any other official Battlefield title in the past. It serves as a nice conglomeration of all the previous titles and adds enough new features to elevate this FPS to the modern echelon of games.

The visuals and audio aspects of Battlefield 3 are excellent. Whether you play on PC or console, the graphics for characters, vehicles, and weapons are some of the best seen in this generation of games. Characters move through the environments and maps with a fluidity that involves little interruption even when the areas are littered with debris. The destruction from the Bad Company series returns as well, and even though it's not quite as detailed as those previous titles, what is here is still impressive. Buildings slowly degenerate into bullet-riddled messes, and roads and sidewalks become smoking craters as battles progress.

The audio is also as excellent as one would expect from an FPS with gunshots, explosions, and guttural engine rumblings ringing out from all corners of the map, greatly adding to the chaos of battle. Soldiers scream profanities as they are shot, and radio commands squawk orders as you capture points or destroy objectives. It all adds up to an incredibly immerse and exciting environment.

Click the image to view game screenshots

Unlike most FPSs, BF3 is class-based, and unlike most class-based FPSs, shooting is less important than performing your class's role. Don't get me wrong, shooting is still an essential class option, but the ability to use each class as it was designed rather than as an excuse to rack up kills is essential to performing well. For example, the assault class, while armed to the teeth with offensive options, comes with the ability to heal and revive your allies during combat. The engineer has the ability to repair vehicles, lay mines, and take out vehicles more proficiently than any other class. The recon class has the ability to easily spot enemy soldiers and vehicles, along with the usual sniping duties. Finally, the support class comes armed with a heavy machine gun along with the ability to replenish fellow soldiers' ammunition. Each of the class's abilities is essential to winning two of BF3's multiplayer modes. It becomes immediately apparent which teams are coordinating their abilities and strategies and which are simply trying to get kills. Even the points system (points that you can use to unlock weapons, camo patterns, and gadgets) gives out more for assisting your allies rather than pure offensive tactics. It's a system that comes with its own pros and cons, and either way requires teamwork to succeed. If you refuse to play the classes as such you will lose. There is no avoiding this fact.

Each soldier controls incredibly well with the ability to go prone or crouch at any time. If you've played any modern FPS, you'll be at home here. What is here works very well and feels natural with only a few moments of playtime.

Along with each soldier class, Battlefield 3 comes packed to the teeth with vehicles. From tanks to Humvees to jet fighters, there are plenty of vehicle options to use against your enemies. For the most part, each vehicle controls very well, with easy-to-grasp controls. The flying vehicles, however, are much more difficult to control, and can sometimes prove useless in certain situations. Choppers can transport soldiers to different zones, and some also provide a decent offensive option. Jets, though, are difficult for use in assisting your team. More often than not, you'll see two jets dog-fighting, occasionally shooting at the ground, but rarely making any progress in advancing the team and its efforts. Like soldiers, vehicles can also be modified and tailored to each person's abilities. While this is handy for ground vehicles, air vehicles get useful abilities much later than they should (such as flares). Most beginning jet pilots will be quickly dispatched by stinger missiles from the ground before they even have the chance to get used to the jet.

The maps in Battlefield 3 are, for the most part, well-done and well-designed for a variety of game types. Large rush (in which each team has to destroy and protect its M-Com station) and conquest (in which teams fight to control flag points) work well with the high player count that each mode allows, while smaller maps (especially the recent release of the Back to Karkand maps) play well for the smaller player counts and team deathmatch. There was never a point where I felt I had to cover too much ground to reach my objective. Most maps struck the right balance size-wise. Yet one of the biggest flaws of each map is its respawn points. More often than not, especially on smaller maps, the spawn points are too close to one another, resulting in death as soon as you spawn and sometimes a cluttered and chaotic mess where players can spawn camp to their heart's content. This could have easily been fixed, especially with the fast-paced team deathmatch mode. Games from nearly 10 years ago had this option; it's unthinkable that an FPS in 2011 does not.

Along with the main attraction of multiplayer, Battlefield 3 also comes with a single-player and multiplayer co-op mode. This is somewhat new for the Battlefield series because previous titles were usually multiplayer affairs, not counting the Bad Company series. Unfortunately, both the single and co-op mode are boring, tepid campaigns that can be completed entirely too quickly and feel nothing like a Battlefield title.

In the single-player campaign, you fill the role of Sergeant Blackburn, a U.S. Marine Corps soldier being interrogated by the CIA. The story revolves around a series of flashbacks as he struggles to remember past events in order to stop the potential bombing of New York City. The campaign makes a nod to other more recent military FPSs including the Modern Warfare series. Battlefield 3 also borrows one of the series' biggest flaws: linearity. By itself this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but given that this series is known for wide open and varied gameplay, this design choice comes off as a disappointment. You'll spend a majority of this short (six hours) campaign moving down linear hallways and alleyways, taking out enemies that occasionally pop up in front of you. Even the vehicle segments offer the same amount of linearity with the jet level being nothing more than finding and shooting enemies that fly past and a tank level that is little more than driving in a straight line, shooting at enemies that dot the horizon. Granted, I have nothing against linear level design if it offers a tight experience, but what is here is neither tight nor compelling. It's paint-by-the-numbers that has been done a dozen times before and still remains as uninspired as previous efforts. Even the story could have been a politically charged tale of missing nukes and the lengths one man will go to to prevent them from detonating. What we get is a convoluted mess of multiple characters whose intentions and motives are never clear and a villain whose aims to blow up New York never go any farther than "Let's do it to be evil!”

Co-op mode fares no better and comes across as another missed opportunity. Never mind the thinly written “narrative” that serves as nothing more as an excuse for you and your buddy to shoot some baddies. The missions themselves, as with single player, are bland and uninspiring. More linear hallways, more corridor shooting, the only exception being the vehicle level in which one pilots an Apache attack chopper and the other serves as the shooter. If there was not an option to unlock additional weapons for multiplayer, I would not have had the interest nor the desire to continue playing this mode.

Battlefield 3 is a game that aspires to dream big and be the best FPS on the market but isn't willing to get over a few of its hangups. I can't speak for the PC audience, but as far as the console version goes, it's occasionally fun, if a rather uneven experience. There are moments in multiplayer where brilliance shines through, and the fun factor is higher than ever, but the occasional annoyances that pepper every aspect of the game hold it back from attaining true greatness. Battlefield 3 aspires to be king of the FPSs and ends up being something lesser.

Score: 7.3

One Man's Xbox Live Support Issues

rfludwick@darqflare.com (Robert F. Ludwick) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

Usually, customer service and support departments operate relatively smoothly. There may be glitches and hiccups sometimes, but in the end, customers get helped. This is especially true if you're talking about companies such as Amazon, which has such an exemplary track record with customer service that, well ... I can't even think of a time when it didn't go above and beyond to help me with issues.

Unfortunately, sometimes issues can linger unresolved for long stretches of time at other companies. In this case, it's Microsoft. This is the story of Justin Massongill and his journey through Microsoft's support system.

For Justin, this all started more than four months ago, even before the FIFA hacking allegations cropped up. His account was broken into in early August, with a hacker buying $125-worth of Microsoft Points using his credit card. Said hacker then proceeded to go on a shopping spree on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Thankfully, Justin caught the activity rather quickly, and his bank got his money back to him the very next day. Yet Microsoft's response to the hack has been sub-par, to say the least.

Justin is an editor over at Nukezilla, one of my favorite indie video game press websites. He actually wrote an article regarding the hacking incident when it first happened. To me, the worst part of his predicament is explained in his words:

"The part I’m most upset about, more so than the fact that I’ve been Identity Theft’d for the first time in my life, is that while my account is locked down I can’t log into my Xbox Live profile, on or offline. That means I can’t access any of my saved games (I was really close to finishing Bastion!) or save new ones. Thankfully, I recently started a new game of Final Fantasy Tactics on my PS3 so that’ll keep me busy for a while."

It sucks when your account on any website or service is hacked into, but when it's your Xbox Live account (or PlayStation Network, etc.), everything becomes inaccessible.

This isn't an uncommon response. It's a security measure to ensure no further hacking happens, and it also allows Microsoft to look over the account and internal logs without them getting added to or modified. In Justin's case, though, it became locked and stood locked for a month before the company got back to him again.

In September, about a month after the hacking incident happened, Microsoft gave Justin a call asking for his console's ID and serial number. He was unable to take the call at the time, but a couple days later, he gave them a call back to get them the information. Justin kept in contact with Microsoft over the next few months, but his account was never unlocked again for use during that time. He says:

"I called back a few more times over the next few months, and each time I was told there's no way for them to tell how much longer it's going to take, and that I just need to hang tight. The reps were consistently very friendly, but ultimately not helpful. On two of these calls, I asked if they could give me something in return for all the trouble I'd gone through, and each time they gave me a code for a month of XBL, which they assured me would be in addition to however many months I was out of service once this was all sorted."

What a slog, right? To be honest, I'm surprised he worked with them as long as he did. This just screams, "We don't care if you move to our biggest competitor." Justin also has a PS3, and he could have easily given up on Microsoft entirely and dedicated all of his future gaming to the PS3 and the other systems he owns. In fact, he threatened to do just that a few times with Microsoft. While on the phone with their customer support representatives, he broached the possibility of leaving them for a competitor. It didn't get him anywhere closer to getting his account fixed.

This all finally came to a head Dec. 13. He got an email from Microsoft telling him he had regained access of his account -- four months after this ordeal began. When he went to log on to his account on Xbox.com, however, he still couldn't access it. He called up Microsoft to discuss the issue, and what happened wasn't pretty. He detailed this particular part in the story on Google+. It's pretty disturbing, actually, to see how this particular representative backtracked on what earlier representatives had told him:

"Once I got on the phone with the supervisor, she said she'd give me TWO months (not the four I was without an account, since I had gotten two months previously, though I was told at the time those would be in addition to whatever time I was down), and that was all. I tried to illustrate the absolute ludicrousness of this to her, and we ended up yelling at each other for half an hour, me insisting that what she was proposing was both contradictory to what I was previously promised, and her insisting that that was the absolute best she could do for me."

By this point, Justin had pretty much reached the end of his rope. He tweeted about this latest setback as well, and that is what helped everything get resolved the morning of Dec. 14. He copied Microsoft's Major Nelson (Larry Hyrb) on his tweet. If you actually read the Google+ post I linked to earlier, you'll have noticed that Larry Hyrb responded to Justin there and said he'd see what he could do.

Indeed, Larry came through for Justin. Just this morning, Justin announced via Facebook that he had finally regained access to his Xbox Live account. Microsoft ultimately gave him the four months back on his account to replace the time he was unable to use his account and also tacked on a half-year as further compensation. It also dropped more Microsoft Points into his account just for good measure. It turns out Hyrb really did help Justin, as well as a wonderful woman named Beth in Microsoft's Exceptions Management department.

I think this whole thing is pretty unbelievable. First of all, nobody who paid for access to something should have their account locked for four months. And nowhere along the way should the company that locks the account not compensate the account holder for the entire time the account was unavailable. Especially if the account was hacked by somebody else.

Something else that is unacceptable is the fact that it took one of the most public figures in Microsoft's Xbox division to intervene to get things fixed. Larry Hyrb is a stand-up guy, but he shouldn't have to get involved in cases like this. These things should be handled by the people who are supposed to handle them.

Finally ... I find it interesting that Microsoft has a department titled Exceptions Management.

The Customer Is Always (Allowed to Be) Right

tmcato@bsu.edu (Tyrone M. Cato) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

There’s a point at which a company’s actions come across backward and anti-consumer, even by modern-day corporate standards. But, beneath all the seemingly underhanded, shady business tactics, there have to be reasons. Whether those reasons are good is subjective, yet they will at least be understandable.

Sony has made changes in various aspects of its business model since the PlayStation 3’s release, including (but not limited to) the removal of backward compatibility in the PS3 (the PS3 can no longer run PS1 or PS2 games), the deactivation of OtherOS (a feature that allowed outside operation systems to be used on the console such as Linux), the lowering of the limit of profile sharing (how many consoles you can have your profile tied to) from five consoles to two, and most recently, the decision to require ($30 to $120) memory cards on the upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld console.

At face value, all of the above seems to hurt the consumer. There are fewer options than before, fewer features, and fewer reasons to purchase a PS3 over a competing console.

A lot of gamers are crying foul over Sony’s decisions, with good reason. Each of these changes has cut a function of the PS3 that may have been a selling point to a consumer out there somewhere. Considering there are more than 3,000 released games for PS1 and 2, there are plenty of people who would like to play those titles all on one console. The PlayStation Classics collection features PS1 and 2 games downloadable through PlayStation Network (PSN). Sony only stands to convince some who already own physical copies of these games to repurchase them on PSN. Are they making enough money from those sales to warrant terminating such a feature?

A few of those terminations have caught attention, a lot of it negative if comments from video gaming discussion forums are anything to go by.

What should be taken into consideration is Sony’s reasoning when it comes to all of these decisions. Sony isn’t considered a charity; its entire goal is to make money.

On Sept. 15, 2011, Sony changed its terms of service (ToS) for the PS3. If users decided to download the firmware update issued that day, they had to agree to Sony’s “Class Action Exemption Clause,” which stated users would be given access to PSN so long as they agreed never to file a class action lawsuit against Sony.

At first glance, this may seem ridiculous. The prospect of telling people they must forfeit being able to join in on a class action lawsuit in the instance that Sony messes up in a big way (such as the millions of PSN accounts whose information was compromised back in April) comes across as shady.

But Sony came close to being hit by a class action lawsuit after the 24-day PSN outage following the information breach. If the company were sued by those millions of people all at once rather than through an alternative dispute resolution, it'd be spending a lot of money in court. If the company did lose, most of that money would go to lawyers rather than customers who were wronged (they'd each get less than a dollar apiece). This ToS change cuts down on legal expenses all around.

Again, Sony is a company whose goal is to generate revenue. If it makes a decision, it’s because higher-ups saw a chance to make money from that decision. If Sony implements a feature in one of its products, it could be fun for customers. Ultimately, though, that feature was designed to be fun so as to get more customers, in turn netting Sony more cash. Like any other game corporation, it will charge as much as people will pay.

It’s understandable for some Sony fans to feel betrayed or wronged by some of these decisions, yet Sony doesn’t want to hurt anyone. In fact, it has no direct emotional attachment to its customers, and those customers need to keep that in mind. Rather than take these money-saving, lawsuit-resisting methods personally, the customers should simply not support Sony monetarily when unfavorable decisions are made.

Companies create a product for consumers in order to make a profit. The only language they talk in is “money.” If a customer wants to get a company’s attention, they must learn how best to speak -- through their wallets.

Dark Souls Review

kjhovanec@bsu.edu (Kyle James Hovanec) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

A fair warning: Everything you've heard about Dark Souls up until this point is entirely true. This game isn't a game you enjoy; rather, it's a game you survive. It is not meant to make you feel powerful, nor is it meant to make you satisfied as you tear through enemy after enemy. There is no strong narrative, no interesting characters, and no motivation to continue -- only the sense of pressing on and surviving one more encounter. Living one more day.

If you are a gamer who shies away from challenge, who grew up in this privileged age of linear difficulty and cookie cutter level design, do not try this game. You will not like it, you will not survive, and you most certainly will not want to complete the game.

For those of you left, those of you looking for a new type of challenge, for a game with one of the most dark and oppressive atmospheres in the history of gaming, or for those who are old enough to remember the challenges games such as Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden brought along with them, then stick around, clear your schedule, and prepare to be killed. You're about to enter the brutal world of Dark Souls.

Dark Souls is the spiritual sequel to the the PS3-exclusive Demon's Souls. If you are already familiar with Demon's gameplay, then Dark will seem like a brutal welcome home.

Click the image to view game screenshots

You start out left for dead in an asylum, nothing more than a walking corpse, your skin leathery and dry, your clothing little more than tatters, with a basic blade as your only protection. After being released through mysterious circumstances, you're thrown into the world of Dark Souls with no guide, no tutorial, and no map. In most games, this is an unfair disadvantage, but in this game, the rules are different. Death is an inevitable and constant way of life in Dark Souls. As advertisements have said many times, prepare to die, as death will come often, sometimes with little to no warning. Even veterans of Demons Souls still find death a frequent and brutal reminder that even the experienced are not safe from the challenges this game presents.

Most of the time, death will come from the various enemies you encounter. Sometimes enemies will come en masse, making them difficult to defeat in close quarters. Sometimes enemies may fight one-on-one, using different patterns for you to exploit when they let their guard down, and sometimes enemies will bring about a series of status effects that, if not treated quickly, can lead to a sudden decrease in health or in some cases, instant death.

If you die at any time during the game through an enemy encounter, environmental trap, or boss encounter, you'll lose the "souls" you gain through pillaging treasure chests or killing enemies. You have the option to go back through the level and retrieve these souls, which are the equivalent of currency in this game and, in many cases, are more important than a simple monetary system. Souls allow you to customize your character and his abilities, purchase weapons and armor, or learn new magic abilities and spells. Dropped souls stay at the location of your last death as long as you are alive. Die on the way to picking them up, and suddenly, all of the souls will disappear, leaving you with the burden of starting over again and remaining soulless.

Along with dropped souls, enemies and chests may also yield another important element in the Dark Souls world: humanity. Humanity can be reclaimed at various checkpoints throughout the levels (called bonfires) and restore your character to a human form, rather than the zombie-looking soulless form your character retains after death. Humanity is not just for cosmetic purposes; it increases your chances of picking up rarer items, souls, and even more humanity. With this humanity, you can "stoke" the bonfires and increase their potency, yielding more healing items and a stronger resistance to status effects. Perhaps the most important function of humanity is the ability to summon, invade, and be invaded by other players. Summoning other spirits and players will allow you to take an additional ally (either computer or human controlled) into battle to help you fight the different enemies or bosses along the way. This can prove to be an incredibly useful feature if a certain boss is giving you trouble or you need an extra hand to take on a large or powerful group of enemies. On the flip side, though, other players have the ability to "invade" your game and challenge you to a one-on-one duel to the death. If they win, they not only gain your souls, but your humanity as well. However, just as easily as they can invade your world, you can also invade theirs, making it a nice risk/reward part of the gameplay that adds an extra dimension of paranoia and challenge to an already difficult game.

So how in the world could such a challenging and unfair game ever be fun? The simple answer is the fun lies in the heart of the challenge, the sense of exploration, and the immense satisfaction of being appropriately awarded for your struggles. For every enemy that seems unbeatable, each death will yield a new technique to defeating them until you get to the point that a once-unbeatable enemy can be eviscerated in seconds. For every area that seems imposing and filled with traps, a ton of powerful weapons, armor, and secrets await those who plumb its depths. For every boss that seems larger than life (which is, well, all of them) an easy solution to its defeat awaits if a player is patient and observant. Foolhardy gamers who slash first and ask questions later will surely always find death as company. Those who take their time and are attentive to the environment, enemies, and clues will still die, but will eventually come out with a much more rewarding experience. If Dark Souls punishes those who foolishly stumble through the land, it surely rewards those who take the time to absorb and explore it.

The amazing visuals make each land memorable and distinct. The excellent enemy design trumps any other fantasy release this year (yes, that includes you, Skyrim). The customization for your character, weapons, and armor is amazing. Each facet of the game shines with such an incredible level of quality and scope that other games seem lazy and meek in comparison. While some might bemoan the lack of story or central narrative to the game, it -- like everything else -- must be unraveled by exploration, conversation, and a willingness to explore this dark and desolate world. Nothing is handed to you here. What you get out of it is exactly what you put into it.

Dark Souls is not for everyone; in fact, it's probably not for most people. That's fine. For the rest of us, it's a game that can exist without hype, hyperbole, or the grasping hands of marketing. It's a game for gamers, a game that brings back the core pillars of gameplay from long ago dressed in the latest and greatest technology that modern gaming has to offer. It is a game that one can spend hours in and still not scratch the surface. It is a game that, above all else, serves as an experience that shows the world that imagination, the sense of challenge and discovery, is not dead, and that no matter how casual or mainstream games become, the heart of gaming, the essence, the very soul of why we game, is still alive and burning white-hot. Even if that flame is buried under 90 hours of darkness, despair, and overwhelming challenges.

Score: 9.8

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review

darkstar2380@gmail.com (Edward Kaczynski) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

It’s impossible to review a game like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim without comparing it to its predecessors. Bethesda has always taken great care to keep the spirit of The Elder Scrolls alive while altering and enhancing gameplay between every title, and Skyrim is no exception. A revamped interface, altered character creation and a brand new graphics engine create an atmosphere both familiar and new.

Taking place roughly 200 years after the (bittersweet) conclusion of Oblivion, Skyrim focuses on the return of the dragons, long considered to be myth in the Elder Scrolls canon. The eradication of the Septim bloodline has allowed lesser monarchs to claim the throne, allowing the Empire to crumble into decadence and entropy, with multiple provinces seceding over the two-century gap. The titular province of Skyrim is in open revolt against the Empire and engaged in a civil war within its Nine Holds. The High Elves have sought to dominate the planet with their own newly established kingdom having conquered and enslaved the Khajit and the Wood Elf races and have entered into a tenuous, fragile peace with the Empire – a peace the Skyrim rebellion threatens to disrupt.

Like all the other games in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim gives you almost total freedom in the choices you can make, the places you can go, the skills you choose, and the level and manner in which you can interact with the world. For some, this results in the creation of an epic hero in the style of Odysseus or Beowulf. For others, the birth of an evil the likes of which Tamriel has never seen. And for almost everybody, untold amounts of looting and pillaging everything not nailed down or on fire. (Actually, that’s not strictly true – in some cases, the crap you steal is on fire.)

Bethesda really stepped up to the plate in terms of world design and atmosphere. Where Oblivion had an artificial, city-centric feel, Skyrim takes it in a more natural, sprawling direction. This includes villages, cottages, thorps, barrows, forts, mills, and dungeons – of which, there are hundreds – none of which seem to clash in terms of pacing or placement. While Skyrim (the province) is roughly the same size as Oblivion’s Cyrodil, it’s separated and spread out by natural boundaries such as mountains, ravines, cliffs, and rivers, giving it a far larger feel than its forerunner. The best way to describe it, I suppose, is to say that Skyrim feels more like a real world than any of the previous Elder Scrolls titles.

Click the image to view game screenshots

Gameplay is both recognizable and alien in comparison to previous Elder Scrolls titles. Melee combat has frequently been frustrating because, in an attempt to keep things challenging, Bethesda has always adopted the “scaled-leveling” system. You might have noticed this in Oblivion, where after the player reaches a certain level, rats and mudcrabs disappear from the world, and all wildlife becomes bears. All wildlife because the idea was that all creatures are to present some form of challenge, no matter how tough you were. (Thankfully, Cyrodil is a virtual world and doesn't suffer from the ill-effects of an ecosystem that throws itself wildly out-of-whack with the progression of a single sentient being.)

While the idea is novel, if I’m playing a 67th level scourge of Oblivion and Daedric God-Killer, I shouldn’t have trouble sticking a sword in Smokey the Bear – if I feel like starting a forest fire, he should know, just by looking at me, to back the fuck off and let this shit happen. Sure, it might present a challenge, but the frustration of losing a demigod to the local wildlife was more than I could handle.

Skyrim takes a better approach to this – the scaled leveling still exists, to a point, but ecological destabilization doesn’t occur just because you got better at swinging a sword. This, again, goes into the natural feel of the game.

Sound-wise, the game is pretty much perfect – the Dragonkin language being developed in both written and speaking form is a brilliantly subtle touch. The inventory and magic interfaces are, at first, more than a bit clunky and unintuitive. They were developed to imitate the iPod interface, which is obvious once you realize it but doesn’t seem possible beforehand. Still, like most things, clunky and intuitive make way to familiarity with time and practice.

Load times are, in truth, excessively large, and they only get larger as you get further and further into the game. I mean, you’re doing more, exploring more, and the world continues whether or not you’re present. So it’s conceivable, and it makes sense, that all that crap has to load before you can begin. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s annoying as all hell. It makes you resist entering or leaving areas or buildings until you're absolutely sure you need to, simply because the waiting gets tedious. Keep a book nearby to read while you wait for the next screen to load up.

I guess the only truly negative thing one can say regarding Skyrim is a common failing to the entire Elder Scrolls series – in fact, a failing common to every major title Bethesda has ever released – is the massive amount of bugs present within the game. Some are minor, some are major, and some are complete and utter show-stoppers. This isn’t a surprise. Hell, this isn’t even a “roll-your-eyes-and-sigh-loudly” type moment. This is an accepted fact. And Bethesda is the only company that can get away with releasing a title like that.

There’s a reason for this. In fact, there’s a few. The obvious one – and the one your average gamer will give right off the bat – is that this game is enormous. It’s 16 square miles of terrain, quests, random monsters, and coding, and by giving the players the ability to do whatever they want whenever they want, you’re introducing variable after variable after variable. Stuff isn’t going to always run as smooth as it should – it would be impossible for the tech team at Bethesda to anticipate every conceivable choice, and thus, prepare for it.

That said…

The other reason Bethesda can get away with releasing the bug-fests that it does is because, as a community of gamers, we let them. Like a battered spouse, we’re constantly making excuses for Bethesda’s behavior because we know it's only hurting us because it loves us so much. We, in fact, go to the trouble of hiding the bruises by creating thousands upon thousands of mods for Bethesda's titles. The community has simply accepted that they’re going to pick up Bethesda’s slack, knowing that Bethesda isn’t going to change, but hoping that it’s going to do a little better next time.

And we’re going to believe it. And we’re going to like it. Because if Skyrim’s release has shown us anything, when we sit and complain about how buggy and unstable The Elder Scrolls VI or Fallout 4 is, we’re going to be complaining with three-and-a-half-million other players – on the first day.

Do the math. When Bethesda can rake in $210 million dollars in a single weekend, why spend months of time finding and fixing bugs? Especially when the community is just going to fix it for them. (At least for PC. Console players are going to have to hope Bethesda takes their concerns seriously enough to release a patch.)

The bottom line: Skyrim is a beautiful game. Skyrim is a well-developed piece of software. Skyrim is a forward-only time machine (in that it will suck hours and hours of your life away) and an excuse to buy a next-gen console if your PC can’t run it. Skyrim is so addictive and so distracting that it’s difficult to say anything bad about it. It would be a disservice to anyone who considers themselves a true gamer to miss this one.

Score: 9.0

Is This the End of the World (Of Warcraft)?

stanley.jackson@omgn.com (Stanley Jackson) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

Activision’s shares are sliding, membership is on the decline, and Mists of Pandaria has received a few quizzical glances from gamers and critics alike. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the big daddy of MMOs?

Let me take you back to August 2005. Our story starts on a busy Tatooine. The game is Star Wars Galaxies. Sony Online Entertainment and its President John Smedley were very happy; the game had exceeded their target of 1,000,000 users, and a bustling universe was filled with bounty hunters, medics, spies, and officers, all indulging in that most fantastically geeky fetish -- the Star Wars MMO. The game was fairly well received from critics and gamers; its lush graphics, enormous world size, and varied character customization led to an all-around good MMO experience. Fast-forward two years. In 2007, coming to the stage a bit late, I bought a copy of the Star Wars Galaxies starter kit. I enjoyed the game, but one thing was missing. Where was everyone? The server I played was mostly empty of people around my level, there was no one I could do any missions with, and purely max-level blue-glowing Jedis, who had no intention of helping a lowly level 10, inhabited the town centers. "What’s the point?" I thought to myself, "When I can have no hope of ever catching up to the game's high-end elite?" So I quit. I went on to play WoW. It was vibrant, and there was always something to do.

As early as 2006, just a year after the good ol' days of Star Wars Galaxies and two expansions later, there was only 10,000 subscribers playing a night; fortunes in the world of MMOs can turn -- and quickly. It will not surprise anyone to know that, as of December this year, Star Wars Galaxies will shut down its servers for the last time. There are still some remnants of the hardcore, but the huddle of blue glowies outside the Tatooine Space Station must feel awful alone in the desert, trudging through sand, searching for life in chat channels like some post-exodus apocalypse. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

And they don’t come much bigger than the World of Warcraft.

Star Wars Galaxies: Let down by diminishing player numbers

I quit WoW midway through Wrath of the Lich King, the games’ second expansion. It just didn’t excite me; those elusive, shiny purple shoulders no longer felt like an unknown quantity. It felt routine. I’d succeeded in the Arena in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of The Lich King; I’d raided Karazhan, Black Temple, Ice Crown, et al. to my heart's content. Re-rolling a new class and doing dungeons with friends was fun for a while, but nothing new, nothing to keep me captivated. But I was still in the minority; most people still (rightly) contended that WoW was king. Even so, times are changing. Recent reports have suggested that WoW may no longer be the undisputed champion in terms of monthly subscribers -- after all, Finnish-based "Habbo Hotel" is nearing 10 million a month. Despite a recent loss of 800,000 players, the 10.3 million WoW subscribers still make up more than the entire population of Cuba and the economic clout of Samoa. WoW still boasts around half of all MMO users and rakes in $800,000 a year for Activision. Let's not feel too sorry for it just yet. So why are people staying, and why are people leaving?

There are complaints about the changes in both PvP and raiding. Blizzard is in a difficult position in this sense. It must cater to those who have been playing for seven years, and at the same time, attract new members. There are those who hark back to the days of all night Alterac Valleys and the excitement that went with forming actual rivalries with your enemies on your server. You would recognize names and create genuinely interesting battles. Now everyone knows the drill. You’re grouped in with faceless counterparts from other servers, none of whom feel like an ally. But if Blizzard reverted back, it would lose many of the casual gamers who don’t want to spend 3 hours winning one battleground.

The Mists of Pandaria: Fighting pandas not everyone’s favorite WoW expansion idea

The effort that goes into making a new instance or dungeon is quickly nullified by the high-end guilds. The information on how to beat a boss trickles down through the servers, and Blizzard must again react with new content before the players grow tired of the current high-end dungeon. It’s all a bit formulaic. The gear, too, becomes a formula of success, with old gear becoming quickly obsolete. There is no option but to add better items and increase the level cap with every expansion, but it leaves the better players strolling Azeroth like demi-gods, leaving new players to view the venture to what will soon be level 90 as a chore, an unthankful task that, by the time they have finished, will be pointless, as there will be a new expansion, more gear, more dungeons, and more and more levels. “I used to enjoy five-man dungeons,” says Tom, a player who left WoW around the same time I did. “Finding a group used to be fun. You would get to know people -- you had to in order to consistently find groups. If you were a douche, then the server would quickly hear about it. There was planning and crowd control. Now it's just a race, with people from other servers you will never see again, so if someone goes to the toilet now, they get kicked from the group -- everyone is replaceable. The new system was successful in the short term because it meant people could find groups and get gear, but in the long term I think it will be very destructive."

New Cataclysm dungeons have done little that hasn’t already been achieved.

Blizzard has been tweaking and adjusting WoW since its sunrise, and if anyone has the overhaul know-how -- an overhaul that has not been forthcoming -- it's Blizzard. The Mists of Pandaria is the latest brainchild and features the Pandaren, a race that existed before as only a bonus character in Warcraft 3, and despite the fans who (correctly) say, "It’s not just like Kung-Fu Panda because WoW did it first," I’m not sure the general public -- or the casual Warcraft fan -- is going to see much past the fact that the mighty WoW is reduced to fighting pandas. There is also the by-now standard level cap increase, the new playable race (Pandaren), and the new class (Monk), as well as a overhaul of the talent tree system. Of those who still play, not many I have spoken to are thrilled about the Panda expansion. The new raids and dungeons will be exciting, but it also looks increasingly like Blizzard has run out of villains.

This does not mean Warcraft has become a bad game. It still provides one of the most complete MMO experiences out there. But 7 years after release, it is just beginning to feel old. There is nothing Blizzard can do about that, save a full graphics and class overhaul, which would risk decimating player numbers. The World of Warcraft, due to the unique expertise of the people who run it, will likely not be murdered by a sharp fall in membership like Star Wars: Galaxies was. But we are now witnessing its twilight years. I do not believe the Warcraft series will end with this game, but one day, perhaps not in the distant future, the old king will be quietly put to sleep, after a truly magnificent reign.

Guardian Heroes Review

kjhovanec@bsu.edu (Kyle James Hovanec) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

I've played many, many beat-'em-ups during my life. All the Final Fights, Streets of Rage and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I could get my hands on. This was before the days of online co-op, achievements, or DLC. It was pure and simple you versus them. Pummel your enemies all the way until the end. It was mindless, simple entertainment that, while light on strategy, was heavy on fun.

Guardian Heroes changed beat-'em-ups forever. It introduced innovations that, at the time, were unheard of for this genre and set a standard that all future titles would be judged by (sadly, not for long, as the genre all but dried up a few years later).

Heroes took the straight forward beat-'em-up and added multiple playable characters, large colorful enemies, a fighting system that mimicked juggle-based fighting games' mechanics and alternate endings and pathways that changed based on the decisions you made and the characters you talked to. On top of that, support for up to eight players was offered in a time when having only two players was considered the norm.

The recent re-release of Guardian Heroes on Xbox Live Arcade brings all of those features and includes a slew of new ones that not only work well with the existing game mechanics but also make the game even more fun to play alone or with friends.

Click the image to view game screenshots

This newest version comes with two ways to play: the original mode or the new remix mode. The original mode features the original sprites of the Sega Saturn version along with the original character designs and animations. Admittedly, this mode is entirely functional, but due to its lower resolution, looks pixelated and ugly on an HD TV. The remix mode takes the same graphics from the original and adds a cell shaded-like layer over the characters. It gives a storybook appearance to each character that matches the environments of the game (it is a sword and sorcery themed beat-'em-up, after all) and also offers a new level of difficulty called "remix" that scales the hit boxes and areas of attacks according to the newer graphics.

The original had a selection of evasive moves at your disposal for avoiding attacks and enemies. The remix version has new evasive moves such as air dashing and air recovery that extend your evasive options into the air along with your ground options. This changes gameplay significantly, as now dodging from the air can lead to bigger attack combos. It's a fine example of the care and attention to detail put into the game.

In addition to the single-player story mode, multiplayer has also been enhanced and expanded. Besides supporting online play through Xbox Live, Guardian Heroes allows other players to fight one another over XBLA. It's not Street Fighter or BlazBlue, but it's a fun distraction that allows fans and admirers of the game even more ways to play. Unlike the original, the HD version allows up to 12 players instead of the original's 6 and also features a survival gauntlet that pits players against unlimited enemies as they fight wave after wave in order to survive and earn a higher score.

I cannot recommend this game enough. For fans of beat-'em-ups, slick looking 2-D side scrollers, or the original, there is enough new and classic content to keep everyone busy and satisfied. Guardian Heroes is a game from yesterday that has aged incredibly well and still stands the test of time as one of the best beat-'em-ups ever. Xbox 360 owners, do not miss the chance to play this game.

*Editor's Note: OMGN received a free review copy of the game for this article.

Score: 9.3

Dueling Reviews: Batman: Arkham City, Take 2

xanirus@gmail.com (Jenner David Cauton) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

If the past is any indication, movies based on video games don't tend to do so well, as well as vice versa. Video games based off of superheroes also tend to suffer from this ailment, but if there’s one superhero who tends to triumph more often than others (and in this case, rather exceptionally), it’s DC Comic's Batman.

Batman: Arkham City is the sequel to the game’s previous game, Batman: Arkham Asylum. Aslyum revolutionized the adventure game genre by combining hand-to-hand combat, exploration, detective work, stealth, and story all in one package. The game had a little bit of everything. (As well as oodles and oodles of extras to find that will keep you playing for hours.)

For the most part, everything is the same in Arkham City. But that's a good thing. Batman can still navigate skyscrapers like they're his local playground and can still make criminals soil their pants as they nervously hunt him down while he silently takes them out one by one. The simple, yet unique and exceptionally well-animated combat system returns, rewarding focus and concentration instead of pure button-mashing. A lot of new tweaks have been added to the system, such as criminals with riot shields, stun sticks, and bladed weapons. (Trust me, you’ll hate the bladed weapons.)

The game could have taken considerable risks to change what worked so well the first time, and thankfully, it didn’t. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a sequel if there wasn’t at least one major new thing, and in this case, it’s the game’s pace. Arkham Asylum had Batman patrolling the dangerous halls of the criminally insane. The game met with critical acclaim, often with scores at a minimum of 90 percent.

Arkham City starts with Bruce Wayne protesting against an apportioned section of the slums, bought out by Hugo Strange, functioning as a wide open prison for Gotham's criminals. The inmates are free to roam about the slums as they please, violently or otherwise, with security concerned only of anyone escaping. Bruce claims that the prison's lackluster care should be of concern and demands a stop to it. Because of this, Bruce is arrested for his protest, and becomes an inmate himself. Of course, this only makes things easier for Bruce, and after a quick call, he dons his cape and cowl, and prepares for the longest night of his life.

Tonight's weather in Arkham: heavy chance of bat droppings. And I don't mean guano.

The game's main storyline will have you traveling all over Arkham City. The city itself isn't as large as other open-world titles, but it is nonetheless packed with things to do, see, or find. Or beat up. Or terrorize. Throughout the journey, you'll get a more personal outlook of Bruce Wayne's personality -- at least, more than the last game. Batman's personal code of conduct to never lethally harm even criminals was expressed in the last game, but this code is pushed to the very limits here, and it shows. The game's ending, while not completely jaw-dropping, may leave you with some rather particular emotions that you may not have come to expect. (Be patient during the game's credits. You'll be presented with a surprise if you wait at least halfway through.)

Arkham City takes what was good about the previous game and applies it to the open-world genre. The previous game, while having plenty of extras, was more or less very linear. In Arkham City, players finally get the chance to roam about the dark streets as the Dark Knight, either terrorizing their victims or straight up brawling. The best part is, after you finish the main quest (unlike the last game, which became very lonely with no thugs around), you'll still have criminals roaming about for you to play fisticuffs with ... or hide and seek.

Throughout the game, you'll encounter many of the characters you met in the first game, but you'll also meet some new ones, both good and bad. If you have the proper DLC, you'll also get to play as Catwoman or Robin. All of the character actors sound excellent, but of course, the real star of the show here is Mark Hamill, who once again uses his Jedi powers to deliver a terrific performance as the Joker. Both Hamill, as well as Kevin Conroy (Batman), reprise their roles as they had in Arkham Asylum and Batman: The Animated Series. However, because there's a lot of characters, some of the more prominent characters from the last game tend not to get a lot of face time this time around, which is a shame considering they're all voice-acted so well.

"Hey B-Man! Why do you always have to hog the camera, huh?!"

Despite Conroy's otherwise brilliant portrayal as the dark knight, I can't help but feel Batman's overly-serious tone falls a bit flat when it comes to taunting his opponents. Granted, Batman is a serious character, but once in a while the intonation of his voice makes me want to cringe from its lameness when he's trying to taunt someone.

The game rarely has a lack of things to do. Aside from the main quest, it also has a large variety of side missions, and none of them ever feel half-baked, although some are rather short. Still, most side missions feel more like mini-adventures in and of themselves, as they'll involve you traveling from place to place. The missions are more than just go to point A and go to point B -- the activities involved will vary.

People with the fear of question marks (there's just something creepy about them don't you think?) should stay clear of this game. If you don't know what I mean, then go ahead and play it, and you'll probably agree with me afterward. This game is riddled with question marks, literally. Arkham City has a few hundred Riddler trophies for you to find, far more than the previous game.

The Riddler is a bit more...assertive this round.

This time around however, some of the trophies are out in the open, but this is because they've been elaborately placed in complex mechanisms or contraptions, and it's up to you to figure out how to get through them. The achievement-like Riddler challenges also make a return, as well as the object-scanning riddles. (Although the riddles are more like a pun on words, and therefore, most of the challenge in the "riddles" are less figuring out the answer and more on just finding the object in question.) The previous game also prompted you whenever you enter an area that contains a Riddler answer in the vicinity, but because most of the game is in a wide open area, they're a bit more difficult to find, and even the interior prompts sometimes won't trigger at the appropriate times.

As in the previous game, you'll be able to level up Batman and choose from a wide assortment of combat skills, stealth skills, gadget upgrades, and more. My only gripe with this is, from the start, a rather large amount of combat upgrades were already in place. Not that I didn't mind having a lot to start out with, but it didn't leave much to look forward to in this category. It is possible the game could have read my previously completed Arkham Asylum save data, and this head start was a bonus because of it, but I still seemed to level up at a regular pace, as if it would of been there regardless if I had that data or not.

The ever-addictive challenge maps make a return if you're looking to beat up or scare some thugs from the shadows in a hurry. New to the mix are campaign challenges, a set of preselected maps that must be completed along with a selection of modifiers that must be used by the end of the campaign. These modifiers can range from disabling the warning prompts in combat or disabling the usage of silent takedowns from behind. You can also create your own custom challenges, allowing you to choose your own modifiers, making for even more possibilities. Also, in addition to Batman, you can play these maps with any DLC characters you have purchased, and they all include their own separate progress.

This cat has a lot more tricks up her sleeve than just having nine lives.

As with Robert, I partially agree with Catwoman's DLC content, though I feel her campaign was disjointed because there is a huge, huge time-gap in between being introduced to her and seeing her again near the end of the game. It's nice that she has her own set of Riddler trophies to collect, but I found it really strange that Batman gets shocked trying to pick up any of her trophies, yet Catwoman could pick up hers in addition to any of Batman's trophies. Her campaign aside, her DLC is still worth it (although I don't know of any way not to get a DLC code for her when purchasing the game ) because she is nonetheless fun to use. From her unique way of climbing buildings, her fighting style, to the rather ... kinky ... way she sneaks, it's a refreshing change to play as her, almost as if you were playing a new game. Plus, when you finish the main quest, you'll be able to switch to her anytime. (Just look for the kitty cats.)

Without a doubt, superhero games often struggle to become remarkable or even average. Whether it's the design, or even the hero himself, the reason can be puzzling. But be rest assured, if you've never picked up a Batman game in today's world of gaming, you're missing out on a lot. Even if you're not particularly a comic-book fan, this game is a definite must.

Score: 9.3