Haze Review

The hero of the story is a man called Shane Carpenter; he is a solider in the army of a private corporation called Mantel in the year 2023. Mantell are engaged in an action in an unnamed country, which could be Mexico by the look and feel of it. Each soldier wears an advanced armor suit, built into it is a nectar administrator. The soldiers are given the drug called nectar routinely by this administrator. Nectar functions as a performance enhancer in combat. Heightened awareness, improved vision etc.


A man called Duvall, who seems to be a genuine gun-toting idiot, leads the squad that Shane joins. From Duvall we find out that we are fighting a rebellion in the country led by a Dictator called Skin Coat. Apparently this is a man who wears the skin of his victims. After a few skirmishes with the rebels it becomes clear to Shane that Nectar isn’t just a performance enhancer, there seems to be other effect. Occasional lapses and malfunctions with the suits administration system show us atrocities, which have been hidden from our view. This eventually shows us that it may be Mantell that is the problem in the country. An eventual meeting with Skin coat himself shows Shane that he cannot in all conscious continue to fight for Mantell and sees him joining the rebels in their fight against Mantell.


There are only a few characters in the game, Duvall, Shane and Skin coat or Merino as we find out his real name to be. Duvall is our nemesis and the face of the duped and powerful who give their all in a misguided fight. Merino is the wise man fighting because he has to save everything he knows. Shane is simply the player and little is known or indeed needs to be known about him.


My problem with the story is that it’s a premise and not a story. The corrupt drug company, the drug fed to all to make them do and see things that they wouldn’t normally. The company soldiers brainwashed into being unfeeling immoral monsters, you realizing this and joining the rebels. Fighting back and using the drug against the company, the problem is that the story simply is so sleight in the game that it does no justice to the premise. You simply fight pointless battles for many levels until there has been enough of a game to actually get to the story points of knocking out the nectar control system and then taking on the Mantel land carrier.  The greater portion of the middle of the game is pure padding.


The final revelation at the end of the game about Merino was just unnecessary, not clever. Someone has been reading Animal farm.


Everything about this game feels a little clunky, 5gb of an install before playing, a long patch download before playing. There are long delays connecting to an online server every time you start the game, even if you are only playing the single player game.  Needless button presses in the menus, you are left thinking that the game is still loading when it’s stopped and is now needlessly waiting for you to press a button.


For the first few missions you are playing as a Mantell trooper and get to play with Nectar. Holding L2 boosts your nectar levels, though you must be careful not to overdose. Nectar light’s up the enemies and makes them easy to see. Health restores itself over time. Clicking the right stick sights along the weapon, which is far less intuitive than L2 would have been.


Nectar seems to be more of a hindrance sometimes than help; occasionally you go into overdose, which makes your fellow soldiers look like rebels. Also you get nectar disruptions, which make the color drain from the screen and you lose your crosshairs.


There are occasional vehicle combat sections, where you drive around in jeeps and quad bikes etc. The vehicle sections are quite fun, don’t overstay their welcome, however they don’t really add anything to the overall experience.


There is some backtracking in the game, although not enough for it to become something to mark the game down for.


There are some terrible design choices in the game, which to me were so glaringly obvious that play testers must have seen them. The flamethrower weapon being the most obvious, when you get the flamethrower you encounter similarly armed enemies; the problem is that the flamethrower has a limited range. Basically you have to walk into each other’s range to kill. This means that you can only set each other on fire. Once you realize this you stop using the useless flamethrower and go back to the other weapons. The fun section of the game with the flamethrower is reduced to a laughing stock. Was this the designer’s idea or did they actually want you to have fun with the flamethrower?


Once you are liberated from Mantell and nectar you have a few new abilities. Like taking guns from soldiers, playing dead, and making grenades into nectar bombs using the administrators from dead Mantell soldiers.


Since Mantell troops on Nectar can’t see atrocities then if you lie down and play dead then they ignore you. Unfortunately they don’t go anywhere, which means that yes you can avoid death when health is low by playing dead. You only buy yourself time, the enemies mill around in the area; you can’t shoot at them from the ground. Which seems really, really stupid, what you have to do is get up which takes ages and then shoot at the enemies again, rinse and repeat. Suffice to say it feels really unnatural and stupid.


Nectar bombs produce a cloud of vapor that makes the Mantell troops shoot at each other.


Taking weapons from enemies is such a stupid idea that I did it only once when the game makes you do it to progress. Sorry much easier to shoot someone than walk up to them as they fire at you and grab their gun.


Dying after a cut-scene or tutorial means that you see it again until you want to snap the game disc, as they are un-skippable.


Mines rise up out of the ground and explode as you get close. There is no way to shoot them from afar. This means you have to get close then dance back away before they explode, would you make a mine that did that? A mine that announces it presence and gives you a chance to run before it explodes.


The a.i. is fairly standard for an FPS, notable bad points I saw were that only certain events trigger them to move. I threw a grenade down a flight of stairs trying to kill some soldiers. The grenade exploded and I went down to look, the men were still standing with their back to me, the explosion didn’t start them shooting at me or move to investigate, only me getting close. When you play dead you see them mill around pointlessly rather than go and do something less boring instead.

 

At one point during the game I fell off a bridge and expected to die. I didn’t and after a long time finding my way back up to the top of the bridge I found that all the enemies and helper a.i. had vanished, leaving me free and easy to get to the next objective. 


There are a few boss encounters, tanks, drop ships and of course a showdown with your nemesis.


The art direction is middle of the road; the only thing standing out in my opinion is the design of the Mantell troopers’ uniforms. The Mantell landcarrier was impressing me when I thought it was a floating aircraft carrier, when I found out it was a huge aircraft carrier on wheel I had to laugh.


There is jungle, factory, swamp, village, beach, hotel and and mountain type environments. None are rendered badly, though nothing about the game screams beauty.


The game runs in a lower than average resolution, and as such seems to avoid slowdown and screen tearing.


Sound is adequate.


Checkpoints are absolutely terrible, a few times I put the game down for a while because I was sick of being sent back too far after dying. There are some huge swathes of the level with no checkpoints whatsoever. This game is without doubt the worst I have played in this regard in a long time.


I couldn’t get the multiplayer to work, something about not being able to connect to a Demonware server. I didn’t care anyway; I wasn’t ever going to play it. I only play a few multiplayer games and I never score a game on multiplayer components for that reason.


Scoring


Graphics 6

Gameplay 5

Story 7

Level Design 6

A.i. 5


Total 5.8


Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Review

Nathan Drake is a supposed descendant of Sir Francis Drake. He and a television journalist named Elena are working together to find the coffin of Sir Francis Drake. Elena's t.v. company is funding the expeditions and Nathan the hired hand/jack of all trades. Nathan knows when they find the coffin that it is going to be empty and he is right, inside is Drakes journal. Elena wants to know what's in it and is upset that Nathan tells her he was only using her for the funding and has no intention of letting her share in the secrets of the journal which he knew was there all along.


The pair are attacked by pirates and survive thanks to the Intervention of Sully, a friend and father figure for Nathan. Sully urges Nathan to ditch Elena and go after the gold of Eldorado which the journal shows the way to. With Elena firmly ditched the two head into the jungles and find that the spanish took the gold a long time ago.


Thinking the trail has gone cold a despondent Sully confesses to huge debts and very nasty men after him to reclaim them. On the way back the unexpected fInding a Uboat in the jungle prompts an investigation and the trail gets warm again. Sullys debtors turn up and seemingly kill him, whilst running from them Nathan runs into Elena who has followed the pair. Nathan and Elena make a truce and set off after the treasure together. They travel by plane to a seemingly uninhabited Island where they are shot down and spiral into the adventure of several lifetimes.


Nathan is an interesting hero, likable and funny. Elena his reluctant at first love interest. The enemies also are given fairly good characterization, Roman is a huge cliche and reminiscent of the bad guy in Die Hard 1. Navarro is a good nemesis although is fairly underused. Eddie is a great bad guy, seemingly incompetent but funny and even likable at times.


The heart of the story concerns the theme of treasure hunting, or greed basically. The characters go to huge lengths to recover gold. The bill for cars, boats and helicopters and ammunition probably comes close to the money the idol will be worth. Well maybe not, though my point is that an awful lot of money is spent on the pursuit of more money. The twist in the tail about the Golden Idol of El Dorado is interesting, however not fully explained. It may be a theme for the next game, and I hope it is, not the idol turning up again, but whatever supernatural power it possesses and what is behind that power.


Now come the inevitable problems with the plot. There is little actually wrong with the story itself, it's a workable Indiana Jones script that never got made. The problems come with integrating it into the game and the mistakes made were so easily rectifiable.


On several occasions you are instructed to do certain things, like go up to a tower to do something, sometimes this order is given without the motivation first being established. I spent some of my play time wondering why I was actually going somewhere. For example at the government house you arrive and Elena waits at a certain point with no explanation. She tells you that the zip line from a nearby tower will do the trick. What trick? I go to the zip line after much fighting and puzzling and use it. To find that we were wanting to go through the door Elena is standing in the general area of. The game just never actually pointed out that the door was where we wanted to go, and we could get inside the building an alternative way by using the zip line.


My next major gripe with the storytelling was a problem again with the integration of game and story. On several occasions you crack fairly complex combination puzzles with the aid of the Drake's journal. You go into these unexplored areas which have never seen human occupation for hundreds of years expecting to find treasures. What you find mostly are mercenaries? How did the enemies get here before you? I thought you had the super secret journal? Now I know why they did this. It's a game, you have to have enemies in a game. All could so easily have been sorted with just making these secret areas smaller and have you coming back out into public areas before meeting the bad guys, or as actually does happen once near the end you see the enemies blowing their way into the secret catacombs rather than work through the puzzles. It is a nit pick, however every time it happened I groaned and was taken out of the story.


I enjoyed the story and look forward to Nathan's next adventures, my advice and why I gave this an 8 for story rather than a 9 is to wrap up loose ends unless they are being kept for the next game, and if so signpost that. Keep the motivation before the action and keep the thugs out of the secret tombs only you are supposed to be able to get into.


Uncharted is a game split into two distinct and separate halves, well that's not strictly true, there are actually three gameplay styles. These have a rough 50, 30 and 20 percent weighting to them. There is the shooting sequences which take the form of a third person shooter, the puzzling elements which take the form of a tomb raider style 3D platform puzzler an there is significant sections of the game where you ride on a jet ski or drive a jeep.


The 3D platform puzzling section borrows heavily from Tomb raider. However it takes Lara as its template and throws out the annoying parts of Tomb Raider and keeps only the fun. You explore areas at times with other a.i. characters which allows for story to flow as conversation, rather than the slightly mad talking to herself that Lara does. You encounter various puzzles in the form of environmental obstacles and also traps and locks left behind by the long dead. 

There are also long sections where you clamber around the ruins like an acrobat jumping from ledge to ledge hanging on by your fingertips to crumbling masonry, swinging on vines.  The animation of Drake outclasses Lara's smoother moves in that he feels heavier, more human and less like a machine. He stumbles and scrambles, looks like it hurts and that he's going to fall.


In Tomb Raider you are presented with huge puzzles and sometimes it all feels wearisome. Here they realized that and the platform puzzling is shorter for the most part and thanks to more obvious handholds and use of a fixed camera in places makes it much easier to negotiate these sections. The result is you get all the great fun gameplay of a Tomb raider game without any real frustration. It take the difficulty out of the game but since this is roughly fifty percent a third person shooter then the ease of the 3D platform puzzling section of the game isn't a problem it's a novelty fun game mechanic that breaks up the shooting and allows for some story telling outside of the cut scenes.


There is a later section of the game which throws out all I have said above and brings you firmly into Lara territory, however it can be forgiven as it's near the end of the game and a break from the norm rather than the rule. There is also a few unintuitive bits in the platforming, for example at one point I kept dying on a crumbling rock jump, until I realized that you had to wait for the rock to actually crumble and fall a bit before jumping, which was a solitary experience, and thus unprepared for as jumping quickly seemed to be the solution on all the other crumbling rock sections.


On the puzzles, which are varied, you are given help in the form of consulting Drake's journal which gives clues or solutions to the puzzles. Sully and Elena also pipe up with useful information as well.


The shooting sections of the game are it's mainstay, View is third person, with aiming using R1 to aim and L1 to shoot. You can get yourself into cover where popping out to shoot is fairly essential to survival, running and gunning is not really a viable option if you want to live long. Some cover collapses after a certain amount of pounding and the enemies will work their way to flanking you unless you suppress them with fire. They also like to use grenades to get you out of cover.  Ammunition and new guns are found on the bodies of the dead enemies.

The shooting takes place in the same maps as the 3D platform puzzling however you stay firmly on the ground during the firefights and enemies are cleared before moving on the the platforming.


There are a variety of enemies, mostly mercenaries, pirates and swat team type enemies. They use all of the available weapons, including rocket launchers, shotguns etc. They use emplaced guns which you can liberate and use as well.


There are a few environmental obstacles to negotiate here as well, shooting padlocks from locked doors, balancing on logs using the sixaxxis, sliding on zip lines. There are also primitive spring loaded traps to avoid. There are also treasures to be found for trophies.


My main criticism of the game is the way bullets interact with your enemies. It seemed to me that you could spray a mercenary with a machine gun in the chest and it would take an awful lot of bullets to kill him. If you carefully shot them three or four times in the chest then they went down like a sack of potatoes. I played around with this and found that there seems to an "I'm hit" animation that is triggered when you shoot someone. Whilst this short staggering around screaming animation is playing they don't seem to take any more damage, so bullets fired into them when they are in the animation cycle seem wasted. If you wait and plug them after each animation then they go down a lot quicker and you save a hell of a lot of bullets that are in short supply anyway. Once I realized this I got on an awful lot better in the game, it's a shame as it takes you out of the game and reminds you that this is a game when you have to do something so obviously game like to get ahead.


Like most third person shooters of the last few years the game is broken up into what I call "fight room" like sections. Basically you enter an area, enemies enter in groups from various points and you shoot at each other until you eventually conquer all the enemies, an exit then becomes available and you can progress. I criticize these games for their box like fight rooms, however, Uncharted whilst strictly adhering to this formula does it in a way that the fight rooms feel natural and less obviously cubes with cover scattered around.


There is variety in the weapons with all the usual bases covered, pistols, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles, rockets and grenades of various types.


In three distinct sections of the game you ride around on a jet ski. The physics for the waves and surf are excellent here, rivaling Wave-race. As you drive around a river system avoiding exploding barrels in the water and enemies from the shore who take pot shots at you. There is some puzzling here as well with gates to unlock.The pacing of the longest jet ski section is made slow by the need to take it easy and shoot all the enemies and barrels. Charging like a lunatic, driving full speed is suicide as the barrels are everywhere and hitting them with the jet ski makes them explode. I can't help feeling that this section would have been a lot more fun if they had just let you drive like a crazy man and enjoy bouncing around on the water.


There is also a section where you ride on a jeep using its mounted gun as Elena drives. You take out a whole fleet of vehicles during this long car chase section which is enormous fun. 


The A.i. is above average, tending not to do anything obviously stupid. They take cover, move when grenades get lobbed into that cover and generally try and get close enough to flank you if you don't shoot directly at them to suppress them. One thing that I haven't seen a.i. do previously, though I am sure it's not entirely new is hide and lay in wait for you. At certain points enemies seem to be hiding and only attack when you get close enough to melee or give you a shotgun blast in the face. This tactic is shocking and entertaining at first, however once you know where the enemies are hiding it becomes easy to blast them as they lurk.

Later in the game you encounter a different type of enemy and the cover tactics go out the window for panic stricken run and gunning with the shotgun.

Mention must be made of the good helper a.i. which tends to only hang around when there is not much going on, but occasionally is present in firefights. 


There is only really one traditional boss fight which comes at the end of the game and is a mixture of quicktime events and shooting.


The environments are all wonderfully detailed, the jungles lush, the ruins crumbly and everything has that real world feel to it that suggests many man hours of hard work and care. The game has it's own particular look with what I can only describe as a skinny look to the characters, which makes a welcome contrast with the bulky space marine that seems so common in other games. Nathan isn't built like a tank, he is more of a Bruce Lee.


The graphics in this game are great, everything moves at a steady frame rate. The water effects are particularly noteworthy. Many small touches have been added to the animation of the characters to make them feel more real. If I was to nitpick about the graphics I would suggest that the frame rate is being kept up by a motion blur disguised reduction in texture detail as you pan the camera faster than a certain speed. Which is very noticeable.  Hardly a problem but something that shows the smoke and mirrors that cover the limitations of the engine.


The music is adequate and sound effects excellent.


Checkpoint distribution was fair and intuitive at all times, I can't recall ever being put back further than I would have liked.


I received 42% of the trophies for one play through on the hard difficulty. The in game clock says that I played for 11 hours, though I have to say I would have guessed at 15 hours if there wasn't an in game clock. TIme flies when you are having fun I suppose


There is no multiplayer in the game.


I really did enjoy playing this game, reading back the review I sound quite negative, but this game is a really good roller coaster ride and I had fun from start to finish. I wanted to play when I was away from it and will come back to it again and try on the harder difficulty setting which I unlocked by completing it when I get the time. This game is definitely worth a full purchase, especially as it's now available on the platinum range of half price games.


Scoring


Graphics 9

Gameplay 9

Story 8

Level Design 9

A.i. 8


Total 8.6


Saints Row 2 Review

Saints Row 2 is a fairly bi-polar affair, it's never sure whether it wants to be an action movie, or a comedy. The characters are sterotypes lifted wholesale from American ghetto gangster culture fantasies. Everything is over the top and sometimes played completely for laughs.


The story starts with the hero, known only as Playa, waking up in a prison hospital after being put in a coma at the end of the last game. An assisted breakout sees a return to the old neighbourhood being a big disappointment. Things have moved on, the Saints have fell apart and three new gangs rule Stillwater. The Ultor corportation led by Dean Vogel have regenerated the slums of city and the Old Saints headquarters.


Our Player vows to return the Saints to power and sets about busting his number two Johnny Gat from Prison. Recruiting new gang members and a base of operations sees war on the three rival gangs begin.


You get to choose which gang you wage war on first, and you can mix up the missions in any way you please. I preferred to keep to one gang until completing their story arc, but you don’t have to do it that way.


The Brotherhood sees you fight against a bunch of tattoed bikers and petrol heads who have a shipment of weapons coming in which they hope will launch them into the big league. Our hero is offered to share by their Leader Maero, however, refuses. I actually feel sorry for Maero the leader of the Brotherhood as our hero lets him kill his own girlfriend by accident, tattoo’s him with nuclear waste and destroys his empire. Yet at the start he offered to share with us.


The Ronin are a Japanese led triad gang who favour samurai swords and motorbikes. There is a father son disappointment story here, mixed in with Japanese honour and swordplay. The plot is essentially a tit for tat revenge story where each side takes increasingly bigger chunks out of each other until there is only one winner.


The sons of Samedi are drug barons with a voodoo tinge, Jamaican leaders and student drug labs combine. The Henchman here, Mr. Sunshine deserves special mention as an interesting bad guy, even if he is lifted straight from Live and Let die.


All three stories basically play out the same, our hero attacks the gangs money making structures and is then attacked in turn. The Saints are characterised by several supporting characters, all stereotypes, but fun all the same. Shaundie is a drug addled slut who sleeps her way to information. Pierce and Gat dedicated gun toting nutjobs.


Some of the action scenes are fairly well directed and wouldn’t look out of place in a movie. Special mentions to the scene where Ayesha is killed by the Ronin 2nd in command and the scene where our hero is kidnapped and given an audience with The general and Mr. Sunshine. There are some fairly good ideas in the mix, for example the fact that the General spends his life in his limo and the clever way that the Saints find to track him.


Once all three gangs are disposed of and the Saints rule Stillwater again, the other contender for the crown Dean Vogel comes into direct conflict with the Saints. His plan was to makes the three gangs fight and lower the housing prices in the city so that he could buy them up and bargain prices. The Saints spoil that plan and he tries to have the leadership assassinated bringing him into mortal conflict with the Saints.


There are many nods to the first game and a secret mission that brings you face to face with a major character from the first game.


I find myself torn in recommending the story to anyone. There are some diamonds in the rough here, but mostly it’s just racial stereotypes and clichés all the way. I found myself being aggravated at some of the decisions my character makes and find the hero to be the biggest idiot in the game. Something is wrong if you actually dislike the character you play in a game.


Like the first game you create your own character in a fairly detailed character creation suite. Similar to Home or Oblivion, you can customise your character fully. This customised character continues with you throughout the game, even in cut scenes. You can dress them up in clothes you buy from shops resulting In some fairly surreal cut scenes with suspect clothing choices. I chose a female avatar and one fairly dramatic cut scene had me laughing as my character spent it’s entirely with her legs wide showing her knickers.


Missions are closely tied to the story and are fairly predictable and nothing you haven’t seen in other sandbox games. Escaping from places, killing rival gang members, planting bombs, escort missions, destruction of property, stealing cars etc. nothing new but what sandbox game has done anything new? Is there anything new to do with mission objectives in the sandbox?


Controls are similar to the first game, and the weapon wheel is a good feature, holding B brings up an eight pointed circle and moving the left stick while it’s on screen chooses your weapon. Driving is fun with an arcade feel. Your character can climb onto waist height objects and also pick up small objects to melee or throw at people. Health builds up again if you stop taking damage, it can also be filled with food items during combat.


The map shows a huge array of icons representing shops, side missions, story missions etc. Thankfully these can be filtered to show only what you are looking for. Story missions pop up as you progress and there are usually only two or three story icons on the map at any one time.


The respect meter is there to prevent you ignoring the side missions. You must complete a certain number of side missions to be allowed to start story missions. This could be a bone of contention for those just wishing to plough through the story. Thankfully it does not overdo things and only a few side missions must be completed every so often to keep the respect meter up. 


The side missions are built for fun, some are rooted in the game world, but others are just crazy slices of pure mayhem.


Races

Race missions are standard in almost all sandbox games, Saint Row is no exception. The usual fare is reheated and served up here, if you are the sort of person that likes these missions in other sandbox games then you will not find anything to complain about here.


Septic avenger

These missions see you driving around an area in a tanker spraying faeces at the buildings. The reason given for this is to lower the property value so that the real estate agent’s can clean up. You are driven around in the tanker and can spray to your heart’s content or the gun overheats. The only control over the truck you have is the ability to pause to allow you to get a building fully. You are pursued by police and must complete your target before getting the tanker blown up. These missions sound more fun than they actually are however.


Ho-ing

Ho-ing sees you trying to earn money on your back, a little mini game following analogue stick movements until shall we say a conclusion. A fine example of Saints row at it’s most juvenile 


Escort

Escort missions see you driving a car with a prostitute and her client in the back. The problem is that news vans are following looking to get footage. If they get enough the mission is over. You have to drive to certain areas or run into pedestrians or cars, apparently belonging to the customers ex wife etc. 


Mayhem

This side mission sees you going to a specific area and blowing up cars etc. until a certain dollar value is reached or time allocated runs out.


Trailblazing

You drive a quad bike while wearing a flame suit, the bike is on fire. You drive around a course with an unfair time limit. To gain enough time to get around the course you have to run into people and objects and blow them up, which also give you a few seconds of extra time.


Fuzz

This activity sees you dressing up as a policeman and dishing out police brutality while being filmed by a film crew trying to uncover police brutality. You have to catch purse snatchers etc. and basically beat them to a pulp in front of the camera.

This escalates up into stupid antics like stopping fighting pirates and ninjas, or breaking up a prostitute revolution. 


Heli Assualt

In the attack helicopter you have perform mission objectives, for example, blowing up a plane, killing gang members and escorting saints gang members cars that are doing drug drops. Special mention must be made here of the time when the saints gang car breaks down and you end up ferrying them back to their base hanging from the skids of the helicopter.


Snatch

You have to get prostitutes back to their pimp after they have been stolen by other pimps. Basically driving to the prostitutes, kill the offending pimps and take them back to their own pimp. Some prostitutes are wandering around, others in cars that must be disabled before getting them out.


There are various locations on the map where these activities are available and several levels at each location.


There is the usual wide variety of vehicles including, helicopters, planes, cars and boats. Once a vehicle has been found taking it back to your crib and storing it in the garage sees it being available from all of your garages for the rest of the game.


As you progress you are given various un-locks, which include weapons, vehicles, helpers, unlimited ammo for certain weapons and discounts at shops. Certain abilities are quite useful, like the ability to drag around a.i. helpers, also the ability to get vehicles delivered to you anywhere on the map. Your gang can also be customized this time around. Changing the options here sees every gang member looking like a seventies pimp or a fully armoured swat team member.


There are various stronghold missions which see you attacking gang property, these are not necessarily story missions, but compliment the story. Push-back’s occur at random and see rival gangs trying to take back territory. You have to go back to the area and kill the marked gang members to prevent the pushback.


You have the ability to buy a share in a large amount of business's  around the city, which for an initial outlay sees you getting a daily income from the business in return for Saints protection.


Your cribs start small and end up as penthouse suites. Each can be customized with various options. In your crib you have an arcade game called zombie uprising which takes place in a sprawling underground cellar where you have to survive against waves and waves of zombies.


The city is well designed, like most modern sandbox games there are hills and rivers, not just endless straight roads and cardboard buildings. Every building is unique and the road system seems organic and functional, poor and rich areas along with industrial and shopping zones. It all looks slightly cleaner than Liberty city although that may just be art direction.


Graphically Saints row isn’t going to win any awards. There were zero times in the game that I looked at something and thought wow, that looks beautiful, or that looks like it took a long time to create. The engine seems competent and only slows down marginally when there are an awful lot of explosions going on. There is little loading once you get playing.


The soundtrack takes its lead from most sandbox games and has radio stations in the cars with a genre of music in each. Special mention goes to the 80’s soundtrack including Queen’s one vision which is especially fun to cause mayhem too. 


On the save game file it tells me that I played for 26 hours and received 250 achievement points. This does seems a poor time to reward ratio really. It surprises me how much I enjoyed Saint's Row 2, it hasn't the best graphics or the most original gameplay. It brings nothing really new to it's genre. Which is why it gets an average score. but don't let that fool you into thinking this game isn't a good one. It's pure fun and as long as you go into playing it with that in mind and don't expect anything state of the art then you will have fun. A liking for sandbox games is a must. Players of GTA IV who long for something a little less gritty and serious should give this game a go.


Scoring


Graphics 7

Gameplay 8

Story 7

Level Design 7

A.i. 7


Total 7.2

Quantum of Solace Review

The story presented here is that of Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale. Both stories are told with the major portions of Casino Royale being shown as a flashback while bond explains his history to his latest bond girl. The game takes the action set pieces of the movies and turns them in game levels. Story is limited to voice over and slick graphics which are meant to represent MI6 computers. As it stands the story seems disjointed, with flow and motivation unclear. I have seen Casino Royale, but to date haven’t seen Quantum of Solace. The story of Casino Royale I could follow, the other movie I am lost with. In short if you have seen the movies you will probably know the story here anyway, so it feels like they haven’t really tried that hard to convey the story well, just the bare bones. Which is fair enough, this is a movie game, it expects you to be a fan of the movie and therefore already know where things are going and any major surprises and twists are known long before they occur.


I suppose this is the curse of the movie game, you have to include the story, but the story has no real effect or impact. You have to simply go through the motions with token gestures. Movie game cut scenes are probably the most skipped in any game genre.


How do I review a game like this from a story point of view then? I didn’t like the way it was presented, I felt lost at times and there was no real connection with any of the characters. I have to give it a bad mark for story, but I also have to give it some leeway due to the aforementioned problems. Why spend hundreds of man hours making perfectly rendered recreations of the movie when you could simply use portions of the movie. There is the solution right there, if an officially licensed movie game can’t include the dull info dump portions of the movie, then what can?


The game is primarily a first person shooter, however it borrows from Rainbow six Vegas in it’s first to third person cover mechanic. This is implemented well with the ability to dash to cover. Getting in and out of cover is fairly easy once you have a little practice. When running around you have the usual sighting down your gun for increased accuracy by holding the left trigger.


The game is a corridor shooter with a penchant for large rectangular areas with plenty of cover. A finite amount of enemies populate the environments which allows for a paced battle. No need here for a Call of Duty like urge to press on recklessly for fear of repeatedly shooting the same enemies forever. 


Variety is found in the form of small mini games, there is balancing along narrow pipes and beams, with the controller being used to balance, I can imagine the wii and PS3 version using motion control, and without motion control these mechanics are more irksome than fun on the Xbox 360. I would question their inclusion even on a system with motion control, since it just seems to be a tacked on mechanic to include motion control for the sake of it.


There are quicktime events included here as well, my least favourite game mechanic, why they think that I would want to press random buttons rather than just enjoy the cut scenes I don’t know. Quicktime is used as a lazy excuse for boss battles in this game. Several times you are expected to watch the button presses rather than the interesting cut scene that plays alongside them.


Security locks are also opened by the use of quick button pressing, this time using the d-pad.


There are mobile phones scattered around the levels, these provide the collectibles and also some tips as to locations of hidden weapons etc.


In some levels stealth is rewarded with less enemies to deal with. The old staple of having security cameras with a set movement pattern shown by a beam of light is employed. You also have to shoot patrolling enemies with a silencer or sneak up behind them and melee them. Some security cameras can be hacked to give a view of upcoming areas as reconnaissance.


There are a few other small mechanics included to break from the norm and add variety, including some scenes where you use emplaced guns or when you edge along ledges avoiding people or searchlight beams.


Highlights for me were the parkour chase through the building site which was reminiscent of mirrors edge. The Venice scene where the building is sinking was done well and the poisoning scene where you rush to your car to defibrillate yourself.  


The levels are all based on locations from the movie and as such are fairly good recreations of real world areas. Mansion houses, sewer tunnels, rooftops, opera house, caves, Venice, building sites, shanty towns, science centres, airports, trains, casinos, boats  and hotels.


The game is said to use the Infinity Ward engine from Call of Duty 4. The frame rate is fairly solid even in the larger open areas. The graphics are not quite up to Call of Duty 4 standards but that is more a lack of imagination and effort than a fault of the engine. Put simply the effort put into the detail of the levels isn’t as great as the engine allows. Possibly that is the fault of the time given to the team to turn the game around.


The graphics are excellent, it’s just a shame that the game is coming out in the same time period as Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War, as both make it look inferior. Given a January release this game would have probably been much better received. That said examples of the state of the Xbox 360 art can’t be held above every game as a yardstick and there is little to complain about with Quantum of Solace’s efforts.


There are a few boss battles. Mostly of the quick time variety. The remaining one are straight fights with enemies. The last few include the shooting of certain environment triggers to cause explosions which end the fights. 


Music is excellent, as should be expected in a movie franchise like 007 the movie soundtrack is utilised well.


Checkpoints are well placed and each level is fairly short with a few exceptions. I am finding it hard to remember any times where the checkpoints were unfair which is a plus point for the game.


Achievements are fairly well handled with points for completing every second level or so and each level having a set task in it to gain points from. Simple things like killing certain people with one shot or shooting satellite dishes on the rooftops. There are the usual collectible and multiplayer achievements.

I completed the game on Agent level which is one below the 007 ultra hard setting. I got 360 points. Not the most generous but the remaining achievements should be within reach of another play through which I would not be adverse too. I will probably come back to this game and play some areas on easy for achievements and play it again on hardest setting for the achievements.


Scoring


Graphics 8

Gameplay 8

Story 6

Level Design 8

A.i. 7


Total 7.4

Dead Space Review

Dead space is a new intellectual property, however Electronic Arts have done a lot to make it broader than the game itself. There have been comic books to download, a full length animated prequel movie, and various website features. Which if the player was interested, make this game into a movie sequel or game of a comic book rather than just a brand new bare-naked game thrust out into the world.


The story is set in a future where man has colonised the stars. The setting is the Aegis system far from Earth. A mining ship called the Ishimura has lost communication and your character is part of a team sent out to investigate and help with repairs. On board the USG Kellion are Captain Hammond, a scientist/engineer called Kendra, your character an engineer named Isaac Clarke and two red-shirts ready to die at the first sign of trouble.


The Ishimura, which is a huge ship designed for ripping huge continent sized chunks out from the surface of planets, is blacked out when the heroes arrive. The landing goes very badly seeing the Kellion crash land into the docking bay. The ship is at first deserted, however it does not take long for monsters to crawl from the air ducts and start ripping the red-shirts to shreds. The story unfolds over 12 chapters or levels.


The core of the story revolves around an artefact called the marker, which was found on the planet and brought up to the Ishimura. The crew then exhibited signs of increasing insanity and eventually the dead began coming back to life in mutilated forms and killing the rest of the crew. As the playing field stands at the start of the game it’s three living humans against a thousand mutilated corpse-killing machines. The ship is being filled with organic material, with occasional screaming mutilated corpses hanging from the walls. The atmosphere is being changed for an unknown purpose. Hell in space is the setting for this game.


The heroes primarily want to escape the nightmare death trap, however along the way they are forced into learning more and more about what is going on. What force powers the marker, is it alien, why are the dead rising, using organic matter like clay to form new horrific perversions. The game portrays various sides in the run up to the disaster, govenrment / military tensions with a religion called unitology which seems to have a strong following amonst the Ishimura’s crew. Unitology is a cult centred around an indiviual called Altman who believes that an alien artefact was found on Earth and covered up by the government. The Unitologists believe that the marker is a sign from God and that they will have to die to ascend. This leads to some disturbing finds for the player during the game.


The story wears a lot of its influences on its sleeve, Event Horizon, The Thing etc. It also has it’s own identity. The plot would probably make a reasonably successful movie, and for a game that is quite an achievement.


I felt a little confused by the plot at the end, some of the mysteries are not explained and the player is left to wonder on certain aspects of the marker and the necromorphs. Possibly this is due to the already announced sequel, so letting us know the full nature of the marker might not be prudent. It did leave me scratching my head about Nicole’s motivation in helping Isaac. I have my own theories as to what happened but clarity is missing, again I have to concede that this might be intentional.


The view is third person, with the usual analogue sticks for movement and camera. Issac will hold up his weapon and aim by holding the left trigger and laser sights are used on most weapons. Running is with the left bumper and use is A. Pressing Y brings up an inventory map and objectives screen, which does not pause the game. This can be annoying when you are trying to refuel certain pieces of equipment whilst under attack. Most items reload automatically, however stasis which can be of great use in a crisis needs inventory intervention. Health thankfully has a button dedicated to use it from your inventory.


The map is a 3D affair and can be quite hard to read. Thankfully, and probably for this reason pressing down on the right thumb stick will make Issac consult a form of ship gps which paints a laser line for a second on the floor to point you towards your next objective.


Combat with the necromorphs is mostly weapons based, though Isaac does have a mean stomp and right hook. There are around 8 weapons, from the standard plasma cutter pistol to flame-throwers and rapid fire machine guns. Each has a secondary fire. The plasma cutter is the default weapon and it’s possible to go through the game using it exclusively. This is due to the weapons upgrade system that sees each weapon being fairly under powered to start with and deadly to the necromorphs when powered up. The snag is that you will need to play through the game around three times to power up the weapons. The power ups come in forms of power nodes, which are scattered in lockers around the ship. Therefore there is no easy way to gain the power nodes without playing through the whole game. This is made easier by the fact that you can restart with the character from a previous play through and at least have the advantage of your armour and abilities all being fully ranked up.


Upgrades for all equipment consist of putting power nodes into spaces on a grid to link to new abilities. This is done at special upgrade sites dotted around the ship.


Isaac has his armour suit which can be powered up with bigger capacity air tanks and stronger armour. He has kinesis and stasis abililities. Kinesis allows you to pick up free moving objects in the environment and move or hurl them around. Stasis is fired like a weapon and will slow time for objects and monsters hit with the blast for a short period of time. Upgrades to both abilities will allow for longer duration or greater strength of effect.


There is a large variety of enemies, although for the most part the humanoid slasher type will be main foe. There are baby type enemies which come from the clone vats of the ship, tentacles that come from holes in the wall and try and pull you in or crush you. Bat type monsters which transfrom the dead human bodies into necromorph soldiers. Wall mounted tentacled monstrosities that need many tentacles severed to take them down. Scorpion like amalgamations of flesh tend to attack in zero gravitiy environments. Once the military ship enters the story the necromoprhs created from the dead soldiers are harder to kill and faster due to the cybernetic implants that the soldiers possessed.


There are sections of the ship where gravity is either missing or can be turned on and off at will. In other areas damage to the artificial gravity sees areas where sections of floor can smash you into the ceiling if stepped upon. This can be used to lure and kill unsuspecting necromorphs as well as get yourself killed.


In the zero gravity sections you can push off the floor and jump to almost any part of the walls or ceiling. This leads to some disorientating puzzling and fighting. 


Puzzles involve the use of stasis to slow fast moving things and kinesis to move objects around. Some of these objects are very large pieces of machinery. For the most part the puzzles are fairly easy to solve and won’t give anyone a headache. There is one puzzle that I found to be totally unintuitive, where you are asked to swap our broken antenna in a huge communications array. The order of the pieces in the puzzle was hinted at, and the combinations many. I ended up looking at a walkthrough to save me half an hour of swapping pieces of the puzzle.


In addition to the gravity problems there are some areas where the ship has been damaged and opened to space. In these areas Isaac’s air supply runs down quickly. There is also an area of the ship open to space and frozen solid which gives a change of look to the corriodors.


The premise of the game lends itself to a repetitive level design with hundreds of corridors and block like rooms. After all this is a working space ship, space is at a premium and nothing is designed with aesthetics in mind. That said the designers have took a boring template and made something, which not actually beautiful to look at like say Prince of Persia is far from dull and repetitive.

The corridors and rooms are plentiful, however, there is also the large glass walled bridge, the hydroponics bay, engine room and medical bay. 


The mission objectives serve the story well, and while you may feel that some actions could be make work for game length sake, for the most part everything feels logical. You find yourself, fixing trams and asteroid defence systems, finding the captains codes to access the ship computer, blowing up barricades, refuelling engines, sending and S.O.S. etc.


A particularly good moment sees you enter an area of the ship where another smaller ship has crashed into the side of the Ishimura, here weapons from the small ship have spilled out into the bay. You must clear the radioactive weapons before the smaller ship will let you inside due to the radiation alarm. You have to open the bay to space by breaking the airlock and then get all the weapons outside before your air runs out or the necromorphs get you.


Supplies and ammo are a constant worry, ammo never seems to be enough and you scour the environment for more. Objects are hidden in crates and wall lockers, enemies drop items when they die. You can also sell useless items in the shop and buy ammo or weapons.


Saving is accomplished by the use of wall mounted save points. At first I found this annoying as I sometimes seemed to accomplish a lot only to have it all taken away when I died, I soon learned that although there aren’t that many save points they are usually situated in fairly central areas of the level. This makes it possible to make a quick trip to them before opening a new door or attempting something risky. With this mentality you quickly become a paranoid saver and the problem disappears. While I would prefer to be able to save at any time, this system is adequate once you learn it.


There is some small sections where gameplay changes radically, for example there is a shooting range and a section where you man a gun to shoot incoming asteroids. These are diversions and nothing more, and I am glad they are, too much of a mini game can sour the fun. Here only the asteroid shooting is pertinent to progress.


There are five boss enemies to destroy, each one has it’s weak spots and patterns like most traditional boss battles. The Leviathan midway through the game is a good boss battle and a fairly impressive design as well. The final boss, may be much more traditional, but it does not suffer from that and is great fun and aesthetically pleasing. The remaining bosses leave less of an impression and are of the shoot the weak spot and run away variety. I don’t usually have much love for boss battles and while I was cursing the leviathan until I defeated it I was enjoying myself.


I received 595 achievement points playing on the hard difficulty, which took 16 hours. I was disappointed that the newly unlocked harder difficulty mode sent you back to a basic character. What would have made much more sense was to have your powered up character start a new game on the harder difficulty. 


This is what I feel is missing in the games industry, writing which would stand for a fairly decent sci-fi movie. A big effort in the backstory department and solid gameplay, no frills, nothing that innovative, just a well made game that isn’t a sequel or feature a celebrity. Not something trying to be new and innovative, just a solid game.


Graphics 8

Gameplay 8

Story 9

Level design 9

A.I. 7


Total 8.2


Star Wars : The Force Unleashed Review

No Star Wars movie or game would be complete without the titles sliding up the screen in that difficult to read fashion. Shame to see they carry on that awful tradition here. The story is set between the third and fourth movie, Dath Vader in his crusade to purge the remaining Jedi from the galaxy stumbles across a child who is extraordinarily strong with the force. Massacring all witnesses Vader adopts the boy as his apprentice and secrets him away from the emperor and all other eyes. Time moves forward and we see the boy now trained as a Sith being sent on Jedi killing missions. As is typical for the Sith there is double crossing and intricate far reaching plans on all sides, Vader's and the Emperors. The Apprentice goes on a journey which sees him switch sides and allegiences and has far reaching consequences for the Emperor and the rebel alliance.

The conclusion is a branching affair which sees you being to able to make the ending light or dark as you see fit.


Characters are well fleshed out, The apprentice or Starkiller as he is known. Proxy his Kato esque robot. Juno eclipse, pilot and love interest. There is also a suporting cast of favourites from the movies like, leia, Bail Organa, Vader and Palpatine. There are also characters like General Kota, Maris Brood, Shak-ti and Kazdan Paratus, who I am sure are mentioned in Star wars lore many times if not in the actual movies themselves.


The story really grabbed my attention, which I didn't expect. It was well told and if Lucas wanted to make a Starwars 3.5 I am sure this would probably have made a good script and to my mind the best of the prequels. There was little child-friendliness here. A mature tone is taken and some fairly heavy handed moral lessons are doled out to the apprentice which makes him question his upbringing of hate and fear and find his compassion for life and a love for others. Of note is Jar Jar Binks frozen in carbonite as a trophy on a hunters wall, which shows the writers' contempt for the cute side or Star Wars.

I can take or leave Star Wars, I still haven't seen the new Clone Wars movie, I am in no hurry, though. I was first in the queue for the prequels and saw all the original trilogy in the cinema on first release. I realise what Lucas was trying to do with the prequels. He had to make a movie for a 10-20 demographic and also within the same movie include a plot that would appease the 30-40 year olds that grew up with the first three movies. What succeeds here is that there is no pandering this is a story for the 30 and upwards fans, kiddies need not apply this is 18 material.


There are several difficulty levels presented and one that is unlocked after the game is completed. One of the best things about the game is the rpg like levelling up of the apprentice, every time you kill someone little balls of green energy come from them and are absorbed into you. Behind the scenes the game gives you xp points and once enough have been gained you earn an orb to spend in the upgrade screens. There are three screens, one for combination moves, one for force powers and the third for health, resilience and recharge abilities. At the start of the game you have limited abilities. No force lightning, shield or ability to hurl your lightsabre around like a deadly boomerang. By the end of the fifth or sixth level they have been unlocked and with every enemy killed you are becoming stronger in all your abilities. This system even works in the training room and when you replay levels on the same game save. For example, say you are struggling on level seven, just go back to level one and earn more experience points so that when you go back to the harder area you have upgraded your ability to take damage and have mastered force lightning. There is nothing new here, it's just novel for this kind of game. Some smart soul will probably point out another similar game which has done it before, which only goes to show that there is little new under the sun. The only bad point is that the upgrade screen is accessed from the pause menu and takes ages to load for what it is.


Basic controls are handled well for a large skill set. You control lightsabre attacks with X which are context, timing and multiple presses sensitive. usual jumping, blocking and camera controls. Holding down the block changes the function of the face buttons to force powers like repulse, lightning, shield and throw lightsabre You can use force push by pressing B, force attacks use up force energy shown by a blue bar. The bar goes down with force power use and slowly climbs back up when not in use. When an object or person is in the centre of the screen it becomes targetted. Pressing in holding right trigger grabs it using the force. The apprentice then stands still and the analogue sticks are used to move the object around, letting go of the trigger while and object is in motion hurls it away in that direction. This is the attack that you will use the most, picking up enemies and simply hurling them to their doom is the quickest way of dealing with them, and most levels have a plentiful supply of large drops. 

Using force powers also has an effect on the enviroment, simply hurling large objects around damages things as you would expect. Doors can be ripped open, objects bent into shape or moved around to gain access.

There are several times in the game where force fields are used. The main point of inclding them seems to have been to give the player enormous satisfaction of hurling enemies into them and seeing them vapourised in a flash.

The game does include quicktime events on boss battles and some of the smaller enemies. I hate quicktime events. Though these seem more forgiving than some.


The environment itself is hostile, you are usually high up most of the time and death is only a mistimed jump away. There is lava, acid pustules and spiitting plants to deal with. One of the thing that it took me an awful long time to realize is that you don't have to kill every enemy in an area to progress. I lost count of the amount of times I spent ages clearing an area only to curse myself for bothering when I found that the way out was open all the time and I could have simply ran for it.


There are occasions when you have to escort people, however this is not a horrible as you might think as the person seems able to take care of themself, you just need to ignore them really and get on with it.

At one point in the game you are attacked on the planets surface by a star destroyer, this should have been a high point in the game, it is marred by a horrible analogue stick waggling sequence that seems broken. A real shame as people should have been talking about how impressive the scene was not how hard it was to actually get working despite the instructions being clearly visible on the screen.

There are some throwaway game mechanics near the end of the game where it seems to be chucking in everything but the kitchen sink. There are sections where you have to force move what look like huge stargates against the clock, which feel akward to control and as I say it's against the clock which is frustrating rather than fun.


For the most part the combat is great fun. The feeling of power is superb, the apprentice is a super hero in all but name and his abilities make him incredibly dangerous. There are lots of enemies, though they are mostly humanoid, stormtroopers, jawas, wookies, felucians, etc. They come in varieties with differing moves. Like shielded troopers, flamethrower troopers, sniper troopers. There are also the non humanoid beasties. Rancors, sarlaacs and walkers. The a.i. is actually fairly solid, they use cover, run screaming for you, grab onto things to prevent being thrown over cliffs etc. They will also use emplaced guns despite not actually being spawned as the gunner for said emplaced gun.


Boss fights are usually against Jedi and as such they have similar abilities as your own and need careful watching to learn the chink in their armour and exploit it. General Kota, Kazdan Paratus, Maris Brood, Darth Maul, Shaak-ti, Darth Vader and the emperor himself all get a turn with you. There are also mini-bosses in the levels in the form of large rancor beasts, walkers and the emperors personal guards.


Level design is patchy. There are some very detailed environments and some fairy simplistic ones. It looks like differing teams have been involved in the implementation of the design, I can see the concept art for each level being drawn by similar artists, however its just that it looks like the Raxus Prime team did a better job of implementing it that say the Kashykk or Felucian teams did. It's a shame that the environments are not consistent as the better ones actually draw your attention to the poorer ones.


There are 6 environments which are recylced. Though the levels are different when they are recycled. Kashykk is the wookie home world, forested and also more rocky areas are available. Raxus prime is a junk planet and is very detailed and confusing. Felucia is an organic nightmare of large mushrooms and plants. There is also the familiar enviroment from the movies of the cloud city. There are of course the obligatory Star Destroyer and Death Star sets.

The death star level deserves special mention for a sense of scale and letting you run around inside the giant laser array that we see being fired in the movies.


The physics engine is special in this game and can't really be faulted, the ragdoll and object motion is pretty seamless in it's feel and rarely makes you think of dodgy game physics, it just looks right which is an achievement. A prime example is the hunter trophy room on Kashykk, the glass cabinets shatter very realistically, and I imagine anyone who plays the game and comes across this area will not be able to resist smashing all the cabinets up.

There is a lot going on in some areas with lots happening and little to no frame rate drop evident. There is some, all games drop frame rate or gain it when there is less happening it's unlikely to ever be perfect this or next generation but for this game there is no need to make any issues about frame rate.


Sound is a joy, John Williams' score is faultless for an action movie and many themes are lifted straight from the movies really giving the game an epic feel. The sounds effects are also the usual wonderful array of whooshing and  screeching. 


The game saves automatically at each checkpoint as is the norm. The checkpoints are for the most part fairly good. However there are a few howlers where you are forced to repeatedly fight through long areas with many enemies due to what seems like the checkpoint fitter falling asleep at the wheel.


I played the game for about fifteen to twenty hours on the Sith Lord difficulty and gained 595 achievement points, which I feel is pretty fair. The remaining points can be found by scouring for hidden objects and  killing specific number of enemies using specific moves. 


There is no multiplayer available.


Scoring


Graphics 8

Gameplay 8

Story 9

Level Design 7

A.i. 7


Total 7.8









Mercenaries 2 : World in flames

Mercenaries knows that it's story is not going to win any awards for originality, in fact, I think Just Cause called and wants it's plot back. Possibly Just Cause stole from Mercenaries 1 but we won't play that game here.

The story revolves around Matthias who is a mercenary funnily enough. He does some work for the Venezuelan leader Ramon Solano and is double crossed for his trouble. Narrowly escaping with his life and suffering a dignity crippling bullet in the ass, our explosion happy merc vows revenge.

Finding Solano again proves harder than first thought and Matthias must get into bed with various factions to gain intelligence. These factions want jobs carried out of course and we are soon emboiled with the likes of the people liberation army of Venezuela and Universal petroleum. For the most part we are fighting the Venezuelan army which is loyal to Solano.

As the plot thicken and the explosions get bigger the flow of oil from Venezuela is threatened and the big boys arrive in the form of the Chinese army and the Allied nations.

Things go from bad to worse and all we want to do is find Solano, get revenge and get out. Not so much of a good time for Matthias, hwoever there is the little diversion of being paid a fortune to blow things up, which if Matthias is honest is what he lives for.


The characters are varied and interesting. Fiona is your handler and sweet soothing female voice in our ear at all times. There are supporting characters like Misha your drunken fighter pilot, who are there for light relief. There is a fairly good sense of humor in the game which suggests that they didn't take it all that seriously. It feels like the writers went out for laughs and that fans of the game only want to blow things up as much as possible.


There are three characters to choose from and each one has an advantage, such as being able to carry more ammo or run faster. The character choice doesn't have much impact other than on aesthetics. If you like to watch a female run around shooting rather than a male seems to be sum total of the choice.

Mercenaries 2 is an open world game, set on the island of Venezuela, I can't vouch for any accuracy to the landscape but it does seem pretty and fairly realistic. The islands are populated with cities, and small towns. There are the usual roads and waterways to create havoc in. You can drive a huge array of boats, cars, bikes, and helicopters. The only thing not open to you is jets, they are reserved for your pilot who provides you with air-strikes. You can grapple onto passing helicopters and winch yourself up to them, which makes them as easy to find as cars and really makes getting around the island easier when you get to the later missions where you hop around the whole island.


Early in the game you take over a mansion belonging to the bad guy and set up your base. From your base you can call your pilots to come and pick you up or pick up any resources lying around the map. Resources become increasingly important. Dotted around the map are oil, cash and equipment. When you find it you tag it for your pilot and they will come and pick it up. Though you have to be careful of stealing it from factions as they will try and stop your pilot. Once you have oil you can call air-strikes which certainly do make the missions easier. Certain missions require certain items and the mission giver usually will supply them. There is also a suggested ordinance load-out for each mission which is entirely up to you to follow or not. Money earned allows you to buy weapons in the shop which can be equipped or dropped to you in the field by your pilots.


The missions themselves range from stealing weapons and vehicles, rescuing kidnapped VIP's, setting up listening devices, freeing bases from army occupation, and defending buildings and people. Simply stated there isn't much there but each mission is made up of a combination of objectives and feel varied.

By far the most common mission is taking bases for the factions from the army. These missions consist of you making your way to a heavily defended base, working your way inside and taking out any anti-air resistance so that you can call in the attacking factions helicopters which deposit their soldiers. Once inside the soldiers enter the base until enough are inside to take it and the base is yours.


The game plays similar to the Club, third person view, no cover system etc. Fast running and gunning, generous health and quick kills. The weapons are standard, though fairly destructive. Machine guns, grenade and rocket launchers etc. There are also grenades and c4 type explosives. The weapons really come into their own when you are allowed the larger air-strikes like cruise missiles and bunker busters which can bring down tower blocks.


In addition to the story missions there are plenty of side missions to accomplish, and if you were really dedicated this game would take some time to complete to 100%. There are race missions, challenge mission and hundreds of what are termed high visibility targets to eliminate for each faction. There are also key buildings in each city area to be demolished for the factions.


Each faction gives you a rating and their love for you will increase as you do their jobs, consequently jobs begin to infringe on each others territories and sometimes you end up angering a faction in the course of your work for another. This results in the factions starting to shoot at you on sight when you anger them enough. Keep them sweet and whole chunks of the map become safe zones, get on the wrong side and bullets are coming at you wherever you go. You can be sneaky however, when a faction member sees you shooting up their men or equipment they will report you by radio. You can see and hear the person doing this, they have a red flash above their head. If you kill them before they get the message of then your standing does not change.


For the most part once you get into a mission area there are a finite amount of troops to kill before you complete an objective. One thing to watch for is the buildings which contain rocket troopers. These buildings have enemies shooting from their windows. The problem is that you can go around them and shoot all the men inside, however they will re-spawn until the building itself is destroyed. This is where taking enough heavy ordinance comes in handy as having a huge array of explosives certainly makes things easier.

The game also rewards creative interpretation of your approach, you can take it slowly and snipe lots of enemies coming in on foot and taking a calm measured approach, or you can also scream in on a flaming helicopter, order in a bucketload of air-strikes and barely survive the mayhem that ensues, it's all up to you own playing style.


All is not well at times though, I did notice some glitches. A.i. characters in missions not behaving as they should and running amok when they should be following you. I found a glitch in the menus that stopped me buying extra fuel storage several times and corrupted the menu until i went back to the game and then back to the menu.

Worst of all, which isn't really a glitch, but was annoying was the oil rig mission. The mission sees you boarding an oil rig and trying to reach a certain room in it to trigger a cut scene, which then sees you do battle with a character and take his picture to verify his death. The problem lies with the destructibility of the environment. The enemies fire at you indiscriminately with rockets which do tremendous damage to the rig structure, which led to me being unable to actually get to my objective as the stairs were taken out. A few times the whole rig would explode before I could get to the mission checkpoint. 


The a.i. is average for an open world game, with enemies mostly running straight at you or staying in one spot and shooting at you. There are no real boss fights unless you count the quicktime event scenes that occur at certain peak story points. Quicktime is also involved whenever you try and steal a tank or helicopter.


The design of the islands is fairly organic and there has been a lot of care lavished on making cities, shanties and natural areas all look and feel real world. The design is simplistic compared to the care lavished on say Liberty city, but not as simplistic as say The Godfather. 


The game engine is smooth for the most part, however I would not expect it to falter as the game is obviously running in sub HD resolutions and not really taxing anything in respect to amount of entities on screen.


Sound is fairly average. Nothing I can really comment on as bad, but nothing that peaked my interest either.


As with most open world games checkpoints come at the end of each mission. There are also some checkpoints mid mission which is a real lesson for Rockstar.


One of the best features of the game is the ability to bring a friend into your game at any time. This is a really fun feature and as long as you revive a downed player in 45 seconds you really make the game much easier with combined firepower. There is no traditional multiplayer, which is really not a fault as open world games tend to bore me with their much to large maps for death-match.


I obtained 735 achievement points for one play-through of the main story-line. I also played some co-op missions with a friend and helped him finish his game from about the halfway point of the story. I played for about 20-30 hours over a nine day period.


It's good clean explosive fun, A game that I enjoyed, but from the point of view of someone who requires excellence rather than just a good time for their £40 then it's a rental rather than a buy.


Scoring


Graphics 7

Gameplay 8

Story 7

Level Design 8

A.i. 5


Total 7.0