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Resident Evil 5 Review

2009-08-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

Resident Evil is a long running series with many characters and plot threads. Basically A Corporation set up by a few scientists became a global pharmaceutical giant. This company manufactured many things, however this was a front. At its heart the Umbrella Corporation was a secret research program involved with genetic viral manipulations. These experiments had many aims, most importantly the improvement and evolution of man into biological weapons of mass destruction. Throughout the history of the games the T-virus which essentially creates zombies, monsters and super humans depending on whatever it infects has been one of the main focuses.

At the start of Resident Evil 5 we are re-introduced to Chris Redfield, a character seen in earlier games. He is in Africa doing work for the BSAA, an organisation setup to combat the threat of bio-weapon terrorism springing up in the wake of the disintegration of Umbrella.

Chris is given a new African partner to assist his integration into the culture he is investigating. This unfortunately throws up flashbacks to his previous female partner Jill Valentine, who vanished fighting Alfred Wesker a super human viral powered enemy.

Chris believes that Jill may still be alive and has reason to believe that the terrorists he is investigating here in Africa will have leads to her whereabouts.

Chris is sent to meet a man called Irving who is selling bio-weapons and he hopes to capture him in a sting operation. The BSAA team which is backing him up are spectacularly slaughtered by a new bio-weapon. Chris and Sheva chase Irving and his mysterious masked female bodyguard from the meet site across large swathes of Africa hoping to uncover who Irving's boss is and where he is getting the bio-weapons.

Chris and Sheva are likeable heroes, although their dialogue is a little stiff, and their love triangle hardly convincing. Enemies are of the cardboard cut out manically laughing bad guy variety, destroying the world because it's in the script rather than for any good reason. It seems churlish to pick on Resident evil's storyline, as it never really aims to be taken seriously. This is action movie fare and all involved know it.

The story progresses mainly in the cut scenes with only minor details being exposed in the actual levels themselves. The cut scenes are all well done and rendered using the in game engine. The action is suitably cinematic and a joy to watch.

Resident Evil is a fairly traditional third person shooter with no real cover system. This is stupid and or commendable post Gears of war, it does have a cover system, but it's very clunky and you rarely need it. The enemies tend to melee attack rather than shoot, don't get me wrong you do get shot at, just not really that often for the first two thirds of the game.
The major issue with the control system is the aiming system, as is fairly traditional in games for the past three or four years the left trigger is used to sight down your gun. The problem is that movement stops functioning when you do, Chris can't even shuffle slowly while aiming his gun. It feels very claustrophobic as zombies shuffle towards you and you try and gun them down without flinching, but it is a fairly glaring omission that could have been easily rectified.

Your inventory is the other rather old school system, copied from the early games it means you can carry very little. Ammo needs to be loaded into guns manually while in your inventory. You have a large array of weapons but can't carry very many of them and comfortably pick up health etc. during a level. For example picking up a bullet proof vest for Chris and Sheva sees two of your precious inventory slots being permanently used up. Thankfully the game pauses while you micro manage your stocks. As far as realism goes its fine, however, since when has realism played much part in games. Even supposedly realistic games ask us to believe that ammunition grows in crates.

In between missions you can place items in a store and sell collectables for in game cash. Each weapon can be upgraded to improve accuracy and effectiveness. One play through will usually allow you to upgrade two weapons out of the ten or so. This makes climbing the skill tree a fairly prolonged and unattainable goal as most people will not want to play through five or six times to get all the weapons powered up.

The focus on co-op play is evident from the start, Sheva is ever present and her assistance is needed at many Army of Two style moments as you open doors and both of you push obstacles together. At times you split up and work in separate areas towards the same goal. All of these things are novelties that add little. What is important is that she provides a constant companion who shoots at the enemies and attracts her fair share of the trouble for you. Give her good weapons and keep her well stocked in Ammo and she will be useful. Only occasionally does she get killed and halt the game for you. The real point however is the fairly seamless online co-op feature which allows you and a friend to play together. Which really does make the game that much more fun.

The levels are fairly simple, you start at point A and have to get to point B through all the zombies, dogs etc. in the way. Sometimes you have to survive in an area for a set time period to progress, at others there are bosses to kill or keys to find.
There are on rails sequences where you fire from an emplaced gun on a jeep. There is a little bit of QuickTime button pressing at times.

At one point in the game you come to an experimental sandbox area. There is a lake with lots of little villages around it. You basically have to collect four pieces of a key to open the door out of the area. What is novel is that instead of a corridor you can choose any of the four villages in any order to fight in and find the pieces of the key.

Each of the main chapters has little subtle variations in game play. For a short section of the game one of the partners must carry a lamp to light the way, which means that vision is very limited and that partner can't shoot. There is a sun temple which has magnified beams of light that toast you alive along with mirror angling type puzzles. There is also a place where stairs are moved in combinations to find your way to a goal. In a small section you have to be quiet and stealthy to avoid the attention of blind licker monsters. On a ship you have to use cranes to move cargo containers around to make progress.

Enemies are suitably varied; there are Magini types with chainsaws, chain guns, shotguns, and the larger executioner and mutated villager type Magini. Alongside the Magini are a cast of bat/insect hybrids, mutant dogs, alligators, lickers and the cockroach like reapers. At times you also find the enemies using emplaced guns.

The art direction is great, African shanties, labs, ships, all rendered well with a distinctive style. The monster design is of the animal insect mash up variety and done well.

Your reasons for being there and objectives are kept fairly clear at all times.

The character animation is done well, though there is some stiffness, I felt that everyone always seemed to be standing upright. There is no spinning head over feet when blown up, as if the characters were rooted to the ground.

Boss battles are a big part of Resident Evil, this game is no exception. There are roughly ten boss encounters and each one is varied. Black tentacle monsters, huge hybrid creatures, trolls and super humans all have a go at you.
Methods of dealing with them are as varied, basic shooting, luring them into traps and shooting certain targets in sequence. All have their patterns to learn and areas they fight in littered with help for those that explore. Unlike some bosses in other games, I felt these fair for the average gamer on normal, however my foray onto hard after completing the game found the troll monster at the jeep sequence darned irritating.

The Capcom MT framework engine is one of the best in gaming I feel and one that deserves to be licensed and used by all the developers who can't actually make their own. The frame rate and detail supported here are excellent. There is only really the Infinity Ward Engine and Guerilla's Killzone engine that are comparable.

Checkpoints were handled well with rarely any long retreads after you die.

The game took me around 20 hours on normal to complete. I played through half of it again on hard. Once you complete the game you have the ability to gain infinite ammo on weapons you have fully upgraded. This character building adds to the replay value and makes the harder difficulty levels easier to take.

I received 435 achievement points which I feel is fair enough.

Music and sounds effects are of a high standard. Not my taste really I have to say but adequate.

Multiplayer controversially has been added as a piece of downloadable content. Something that I won’t be buying as it does seem to be a blatant attempt to claw more money from fans of the game.

Capcom have made a good game here, taken as a shooter it performs well, those who want the survival horror of the early Resident Evil series will have to look elsewhere. Great graphics and mostly irritant free game play make a game that deserves your money. The inventory system could do with an overhaul, other than that this is a game that needs to be played.

Story 7
Gameplay 8
Graphics 9
Level Design 8
A.i. 7

Total 7.8

Killzone 2 Review

2009-08-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

The story picks up from the previous games, however, there is little attempt to fill in those unfamiliar with story. I haven't played Killzone or Killzone liberation; therefore I am left in the dark. Surely a recap would not have gone amiss. The setting is a future where man has went out into space and colonised many planets. Helghan and Vekta are neighbouring planets colonised long ago, long enough for the people to have diverged along different sociological and adaptive paths. Helghan is a harsh desert world and has resulted in a harsh Spartan fascist type society. On the other side of the coin is Vekta which though not shown much in this game seems more liberal.

The Helghast invaded Vekta in the last game and have been driven away by forces of the ISA. A kind of United federation. The Helghast, lead by President Visari, stole nuclear weapons from Vekta and are unable to use them at present due to codes built into the weapons. The Isa are understandably unhappy with Visari and he is to be taken into custody to answer for his war crimes. The ISA launch an assault on Helghan which has the primary objective of capturing Visari and recovering the nukes.

In an excellent scene setting movie at the start of the game we see Visari ranting against the injustice of the ISA's actions and watch as ISA ships launch and establish a beachhead on Helghan.

The character you play is named Sev, he is part of a squad under Rico and including Garza and Natko. There are also officer characters you interact with, Evelyn a scientist and Jan Templar the Captain of the whole expedition.

The Helghast are a faceless uniformed threat for the most part, however there are two main antagonists. Visari himself and his military commander General Radec, Radec is pure cardboard cut out villain, however he does give that boo, hiss, love to hate factor.
The squad are all believable distinct characters, however not enough time is spent with each to allow us to grow attached to them. When one of them is killed we are expected to care, which is hard to do.

The main thrust of the story sees you assist and escort a convoy of vehicles on the long hard fought road to Visari's palace. Along the way you will encounter many difficulties and are side tracked to disable a new defence system that Visari Deploys. Your team is stressed, Rico is hot-headed to start with and team mates are killed in action.

The story comes to a conclusion, which is within this games role as an ongoing series. You were never going resolve the story here; however main objectives are met along with the ISA getting a severe bloody nose.

There are some fairly tense dramatic moments in the story, I particularly enjoyed Radec and Templars scene together. The ending left me a little confused which I can't go into without spoiling the game.

Difficulty levels in games are essential, people of all abilities play games nowadays and there has to be that scalable difficulty to allow players of all skill levels to enjoy a game to the best of their ability. My complaint here is why are some, usually the hardest difficulty levels locked when you first play. If I want to play a game through twice I will do so if I enjoyed it. I don't need to be forced to in order to collect trophies. Too many games these days require you to play through the game before unlocking the hardest difficulty. This is transparently obvious as a way to keep people playing. I play a lot of games, if I want to be masochistic enough to play on elite the first time around why can't I.

Controls are fairly clunky on the default setting and there is a setting which emulates the Call of duty style. This should have been default. This isn't a criticism of Killzone 2 in particular. On PC FPS’s there are default keyboard and mouse layouts that rarely vary, why is this? Well, simply put these setting are comfortable for a great many people. The same goes for controller FPS and TPS layouts. The Call of Duty layout as its being called is simply the most comfortable for a large amount of people. Its common sense, not a failing, if you are making a shooter that layout is the one that works the best.

There is a cover system where you push against an area of cover and hold a button and move your stick around to peer out from behind cover. This is identical to Medal of Honour: Airborne. The cover mechanic is satisfactory, although I found myself using it less often than I should.

Where Killzone excels is peripheral activity, around eighty percent of the time there is activity going on around you that is not directly related to game play in any way. Its window dressing designed to make you feel that you are a small cog in a larger war machine, air vehicles fly and fight overhead and explosions rock the horizon.

The objectives are varied, destroy Apc's, AA guns, tanks, arc towers, buildings, open floodgates, take or defend strategic locations, also rescue missions.

The environments are expansive and detailed, in several areas there are small alternate routes or shortcuts which help you flank enemies. The environments are only destructible in a few tightly scripted areas, however, when they are they usually are blown entirely apart.

Sixaxis controls are used fairly often, the placing of detonation charges is a fairly simple manoeuvre, and is quite fun. On the other end of the scale are the large wheels which need to be turned at certain points, this mechanic does not work and should have been dropped.

There are some small puzzles which mainly involve cutting the electricity supply to gate force fields.

There are two sections of novelty game mechanics; you defend a cruiser using its emplaced guns at one point. There is also a mechanical walker/driving section. Both are fairly short and inoffensive.

Weapons are varied as you would expect, pistols, machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades, all the usual cast. The flamethrower is fun, as is the lightning gun. As with most overpowered weapons they are rationed heavily, however, their little time to shine is fun. You can only carry a limited number of weapons at a time which makes for some strategic decisions at times.

Enemies wield different weaponry and this serves as mostly the only distinction and difference in enemy types. There are armoured heavy troopers which need to be shot in the face and then shot in their gas canisters carried on their back to kill. There are bugs and spiders in some sections that attack you. Snipers have telltale red line sights to warn you of imminent demise. There are also laser trip mines left littered around.

The squad A.I. deserves mention, they are fairly usual in their behaviour, what annoyed me often was their knack of getting in your way at critical moments and getting you killed. I ended up melee attacking them whenever they got in my way.

The greater portion of the game employs a fixed amount of enemies in an area; once they are dead you know there won't be any more. At two or three stages in the game they change this system for the Call of Duty style infinite respawning enemy mechanic. I personally dislike this system; it rewards recklessness and punishes tactical play. It is also at odds with the slow and steady cover mechanic which is used in eighty percent of the game.

The final stage of the game deserves special mention for game design; it throws out the corridor shooter mechanic used so far. It brings in a sandbox type area with set objectives, which, can be taken out in any order. If only the rest of the game had used this system it would have made for a better experience. As it stands it's a reminder of what the game should have been throughout.

There are two real boss battles, the first with the flying ATAC is fairly traditional with you learning to survive and work out the pattern and tactics used to destroy it.
The final boss is a horrible almost game breaking experience. You basically end up in a square room with a balcony running all the way around it. You are forced to fight wave upon wave of heavily armed soldiers before facing off against Radec himself, who uses a cloaking device and his trademark knife attacks. I played every stage until this one on the hardest available difficulty. On reaching Radec I had to yield after much cursing and swearing and knock the difficulty down a notch to finish the game. This boss battle was just hell, not even fun. I know last battles should be hard, this one just felt cheap, mean and unfair.

Helghan is a dark industrial world a colony built with function in mind over beauty. The Helghast are portrayed as faceless fascists impassive and menacing behind their masks with their trademark red eyes. The levels are thematically similar, slums, shanty towns, industrial plants, cities; some of the indoor environments are imposing and reminiscent of Nazi German grandeur. For the most part the areas are believable as places built for a function other than gaming.

Graphically Killzone 2 is an impressive game, it runs at a good frame rate which very rarely dips below 25-30 frames per second. There is little to no screen tearing. Lighting is particularly good in most areas, while not true dynamic lighting for the most part gives a good impression of it. The character modelling is good if slightly less detailed than most. Textures are adequate if a little muddy in places. I have tried to put my finger on what is improved here over say Resistance 2. The answer is smoke and mirrors.

There is lots of particle and fog effects going on, not I stress to hide draw distance, simply to provide grime and constant movement. Dust storms howl, explosions and smoke billow, camera shakes, flashes and bangs, blood sprays. It's all a peripheral system to the actual geometry and textures. It's this atmosphere, grain if you will, that sets Killzone apart. With that basic understanding it will be easy for other shooters to emulate Killzone. I expect developers have known this since they first saw real game play and have been working to insert these weather and environment effect into their own games. Expect to see a lot of games set in dusty smog filled windy environments. There are little freezes that make you fear for your PS3's stability until you realise that these are loading pauses.

The game is mostly glitch free, for a flagship game it should be as the competitors eyes are on this game watching for a sign of weakness. There are few flaws, I did once get run down by an ally jeep as I stood on a bridge listening to instructions. Once I saw Rico wading chest deep through the metal deck of a train as if it wasn't there, on the whole though it's a very stable bug free game.

The animation of the characters is superbly motion captured; only Call of Duty 4 is in the same league and it's a tough call to make between the two. The characters seem to have good weight and grounding in their environments, essential for believability and immersion.

Music is stirring and militaristic, explosions and bangs are all present and correct. The voice work is above average.

The game employs the checkpoint system well, with only the aforementioned dog of a boss battle spoiling the perfection.

Trophies are implemented, with the usual level completion, collectible and difficulty awards. There are a good portion of online trophies to be earned for those wishing to put in many hours online.

The multiplayer game is given a lot of weight as it should be in a serious first person shooter. There are spins on the usual game modes with a rank up system which unlocks abilities. I am not a huge online gamer and didn't play too far into the online mode. I don't rank games on their multiplayer component. Sorry if you were looking to read about the online. I am afraid my reviews will never really take multiplayer into account.

Score

Story 8
Gameplay 8
Graphics 9
Level Design 8
A.I. 7

Total 8.0

50Cent : Blood on the sand Review

2009-08-15T19:01:00.001-07:00

First of all, I am not a fan of rap music; I don't know any of 50Cents songs and know nothing of his history or character. Hopefully the events portrayed in the game are gangster wish fulfilment and not a quiet Sunday for Mr Cent.

The story is painfully thin, 50Cent is doing a gig or tour and is in some way underpaid or double crossed out of money. A man called Anwar who is his contact in this unnamed country offers him a valuable diamond encrusted skull as payment instead of cash. On the way to the airport 50's vehicle is attacked and the skull taken by an unknown female adversary.

On speaking to Anwar a man named Kamal is blamed for the theft of the skull. 50Cent then embarks on an increasingly bloody vendetta against Kamal looking for revenge and his skull back. The trail of the skull twists and turns leading to a shadowy gangster overlord nicknamed the Harvester. Many individuals stick their oar in and get killed for their trouble after double crossing 50Cent. It seems that everyone wants the skull for themselves.

By the halfway point I was screaming at the cut scenes telling 50Cent to just shoot the people he was talking to as surely they were going to double cross him later. They always did, though 50 never listened.

The fragility of the human body is grossly underplayed in this game. For example helicopter fireball crashes are not really survivable; yet two characters come out relatively unscathed.

The background to the game is prostitution, gun running, the drug trade and organ harvesting also rears its head, all really wholesome family value type stuff. Is it possible that a certain section of popular culture operates on the premise that the more vile the better.

I have never bought the ruse of most bands who present an image of hardcore partying and gangster lifestyles. The whole thing just doesn't really gel with the study and work needed to write music and play an instrument. Surely the media can't be being manipulated to suggest that our icons are superhuman machines in whatever field of debauchery they choose.

Rap stars almost always have drugs and criminal convictions in their past. They come from the hood where they started with nothing and now have money and women dripping from them. This is the ultimate cliché action game for the ultimate cliché rapper. Still it's a shooter I like shooters, I don't like rap so what have we got as a pure shooter?

The game does one huge thing right, it allows drop in drop out co-op throughout the campaign. You are asked to choose an a.i. companion if playing alone.

The controls are the default standard for third person shooters in the past three years and work well. The Army of two syndrome is evident in the specially constructed shoehorned in areas for character interaction like boosting each other up to higher areas, pushing heavy doors open etc.

Melee kills are given some importance by the developer, though it was something I hardly used. There is a timing button pushing QuickTime type sequence when one is initiated and you can unlock more graphic and violent killing moves as the game progresses. You unlock weapons and moves with money obtained by shooting crates handily filled with the stuff that litter the areas. On occasion you find a payphone and you use these to have an arms dealer teleport weapons to you.

There are also posters and target collectibles which help the achievements along.

Score multipliers seem fairly useless and I never paid them much attention. If you are interested though it seems that headshots and killing people in quick succession multiply your scoring.

On dying there is a long load before you get back into the action, which though understandable from a technical point of view seems needless sometimes as you die in the same room a few seconds after the last load.

Killing the bad guys fills a meter, when it's full enough you can trigger it by pressing Y, this puts you into bullet time which makes things a lot easier.

For the greater part of the game you are just making your way from point A to point B, usually chasing or looking for a person. In some sections you are looking for certain objects to blow up in the map before being able to progress.

There are tanks that need C4 planting on the side, bits of the buildings sometimes collapse and block your way, occasionally you have to blow things up so that the environment changes for you to progress. One example of this is blowing up a crane so that it drops a pipe, which becomes a bridge for you to cross. It's in these situations that the game tends to mix things up and give you a solution before you have found the problem. For example at one point a mission objective tells you to find an alternative route as the way is blocked by fire, this happens before the explosion sets fire to the environment. While not a huge problem it happened enough for it to be noticeable.

There are several driving sections to break up the shooting, you get to drive and your human or a.i. partner shoots. These are mostly short and fairly banal. At least they aren't frustrating or hard. Best thing you can say about them is they are over quickly and you can get back to the shooting. There is also a helicopter mounted gun section which reminded me of the ones found in the GRAW games. This is fairly well done and cinematic.

I found there to be two main problems with the core shooting game-play. Grenades were present but fairly useless, the animation for throwing took so long and could not be done from cover. This meant that death usually came before 50 threw the grenade from incoming fire. Normally when you are in cover and want to lean out to shoot you move the stick in that direction. Here you have to actively point the camera in the direction you wanted to pop out from behind a pillar. It took a while of sticking my head out on the wrong side before I realised this. Once I knew it was easy enough just an unnecessary addition which felt unintuitive.

At one point I was given a choice of opening a security system, which would make it easier for 50 but harder for partners elsewhere in the game. I chose to make it harder for myself. Pity I never found out what happened if I made the alternate choice. Therein lies the faults with choices in games, non-linearity really means that people don't see the alternate choice.

Character animation is adequate; though I have the feeling these mo-capped files are part of some middleware that every developer who can't make their own buys.

Unreal engine is used here and it's a fairly good example, little texture loading after the game is already in progress and a good polygon count with little slowdown.

The art design can only be described as generic, lifted from a string of similar games,
Levels are the usual streets deserts, theatres. Only one or two areas stand out as being imaginative. A graveyard type area in particular.

There are only about five character models for the enemies, ones in yellow shirts, ones in red shirts, oh and blue shirts too. They carry a specific weapon, like shotguns, rocket launchers, grenades and machine guns. Each enemy type only uses that specific weapon and does not vary at all.
The a.i. is very predictable, they will run to the same spots, never really try and flank you and pop up from cover at set time intervals that could be timed with a stopwatch.

Boss Battles occur in the form of five fights with helicopters. When 50 eventually catches up with the person he is after they take to the air in a helicopter and try and kill him. We have to use rockets to shoot them out of the air. Simple as that, which is fair enough as huge tentacle beasties would be out of place. Also, I hate games that suddenly give normal people the ability to soak up a thousand bullets before dying.

The last encounter takes a lot longer and takes place over three stages with waves of enemies in between. There is also one other encounter with a boss type character who attacks you on foot, gratifyingly he takes the same amount of bullets to kill as everyone else he just attacks you with loads of other enemies in an area with little cover.

Music is of course 50Cent's back catalogue and there seems to be around two CD's worth of his back catalogue here. Any fan will already have these songs I presume but it's a good idea to include a music player. Really you get quite a 50Cent package here; two CD's and some videos are unlocked for in game exploits. Not that I am recommending a string of video games featuring bands, but if this was actually music I liked I would have been really pleased by the package. Sound effects are of a good standard.

I played through once on hard taking around 10 hours and received 610 achievement points. I felt that this was satisfactory.

Checkpoints are as usual satisfactory at the start of the game then become a little too widely spaced later on. The game would have benefited with more checkpoints, the final boss battle being a spectacularly bad example of check pointing.

The only multiplayer is the co-op and this works well with little lag and with another human the game becomes slightly better. The only problem I had was that none of my friends bought the game.

It is probably a different game for a 50Cent fan, I can see how that would make the whole package more attractive. For everyone else it's a generic bland shooter that will occupy 10 hours or so of your life. A reasonably fun third person shooter of the type familiar since Gears of War brought the genre back into fashion. I would recommend a rental here only if you are starved of shooters and really enjoy the genre.

Story 5
Gameplay 7
Graphics 7
Level Design 6
A.i. 5

Total 6.0

Halo Wars Review

2009-08-14T19:10:00.001-07:00

Halo wars is an attempt to broaden the Halo universe, taking out mostly everything that the previous three games comprise of and leaving only the universe itself. The game is set in a time period earlier than Halo combat evolved. There are Spartans involved in the game, however, Master Chief does not make an appearance. The story is told in a series of cinematic and outstandingly well rendered cut scenes. The game begins with the humans starting to lose the war against the Covenant.

On a planet called Harvest the humans have won back the planet after a long fight. The Covenant remains stubbornly dug in around a structure buried in ice and seem intent on keeping the humans away. The structure turns out to be forerunner in origin. It leads to another planet where the Covenant also make life hell. The plot unfolds to show that forerunner technology could also create Dyson spheres as well as Halos. The Covenant wants hidden forerunner super-weapons and it's up to the humans to stop them.

The characters and art design of the Halo universe are already well established, the Covenant with their religious zeal and the differing alien races that comprise them. The soldiers of the UNSC are also drawn with the same broad brush strokes. Flippant ship a.i. seems to be the norm, gruff commanders and gung ho soldiers.
Forge is a fairly cookie cutter main hero, although no harm to him he does his job. Anders comes through as showing a bit of character as the feisty female scientist trying to decipher all the Forerunner shenanigans.

The story excels in its cinematic action sequences. In particular the ship near miss entering the Dyson sphere is as good a sequence as any sci-fi movie of the last ten years. The obligatory scene where we see the Spartans in action will have hardcore Halo fans wiping away a tear.

This being a real time strategy game rather than an fps means that the cut scenes feel more distanced from the actual game action. It feels like you are watching a movie where you only get to see the next scene by completing a task. I know a lot of games are like this, it's just that there seems to be a bigger divorce between the story and the game than usual. That is not to say that the missions are unrelated to the story, they all follow the story perfectly. It's just a feeling I came away with due to the real time strategy genre being far from cinematic.

The story is interesting, I found myself eager to see the next scene. I felt nothing for the characters but the story itself I enjoyed. Grand space opera on a massive scale, clearly and simply told.

Halo Wars is a real time strategy game (RTS). They have taken the tried and tested RTS formula created by Westwood in Dune and Command and Conquer and simply applied it to Halo with no real attempt to do anything other than just that. This isn't an RTS that is trying to break any moulds or innovate in any way. The brief seems to have been to make a Command and Conquer clone with a Halo theme. If any innovation exists it's the fact that the whole thing is story driven.

If we work on that theory that all that was wanted was a solid RTS with a Halo skin then how did Ensemble studios do? Rather well actually, the game seems to tick all the genre stalwarts. Small square maps, tick. Fog of war that obscures your view until a unit is there to scout, tick. Clicking on a unit, moving the cursor to where you want to go or what you want to attack and pressing go, tick. This game would have been so much better if they had just let you plug in a mouse, I have posted rants about this before, so won’t go on too much here. How hard can it be to write a mouse driver? As it is the controls work, though the entire time you are playing the mantra "better with a mouse" is playing in your mind. The controls are designed to make it easier to fight against the pad, why bother though when mouse would have been easier? You can select all units on the screen easily and also all available units with one button press.

The units available to you progress throughout the game, starting basic and progressing as you learn the game. All units have basic and special attacks. These special attacks are triggered by pressing Y on an enemy rather than X to attack, once used they have a recharge time before being able to be used again.

Soldiers come in many types, from lowly grunts to Spartans. Each has their own upgrades and special attacks. Spartans in particular are one unit wrecking machines, able to capture and drive enemy vehicles and use powerful weapons. There are the signature Halo Warthogs which drive around recklessly like they do in other Halo games. Tanks and special units include Elephants, Rhinos etc. There are air vehicles including fighters and bombers, also airlifting equipment in the form of Pelicans. Special units like the Gremlin which release EMP burst wrecking themselves in the process. The Covenant has their own armoury of creatures and hardware, all familiar as adversaries from the Halo series.

Fights tend to become less than strategic. Lack of precision fast control means that you tend to select all available units and throw them at the enemy, selecting what you want attacked in order and clicking on the next as the first target is destroyed. There is scope for splitting up teams of units and using pincer attacks etc. Though in practice it's far too fiddly and the results tend to be the same anyway.

It's possible that the brief included making the RTS genre less complex and it certainly needs to be as a pad isn't suited to making complex control easy.

Base building and resource management is the real mainstay of an RTS. There is no real disappointment here. You start with a Fortress and attached to it are little plots that you can fill with other buildings of your choice. At the four corners of the base are turrets that can be upgraded with various types of weapon. These turrets take care of most base defence, freeing your units from having to guard it.

Cash to buy new buildings is in the form of supply pads. You need landing pads to bring down resources from your base ship in orbit. The more supply pads the more money builds up. Upgrading the supply pads also makes the cash count grow faster. Reactors supply power and also when upgraded increase your base tech level which allows more complex units to be manufactured. Other structures include barracks and field armouries which allow for better weapons to be created and added to your soldiers and hardware.

There is a unit cap for each single player mission which increases as the game progresses. You will find yourself butting against this level cap frequently. It really is trying to tell you that you have enough units to win. I tend to build huge armies in RTS games and then steamroll the opposition finding I only needed a third of what I have built to win.

At certain points in the game you come across units under different control than your own. These either do their own thing or become available to you to control. When you destroy a Covenant base the site become available to you to build a second base. There are environmental features in the landscape, rivers and mountains are impassable. Force field bridges can be turned on and off, hopefully off when the enemy are crossing them. You can also use your mother-ship to lance targets from orbit, there is of course a slow recharge time on this weapon.

Halo has its own Borg type enemy in the flood, the hive mind which takes over dead corpses of both sides and reanimates them for its own ends. The flood has its own structures and units.

Inventive mission design is evident in small doses, mostly the design is traditional RTS fare. The mission where you fight flood forces on the outside of the mother-ship as it flies into a solar system sized forerunner Dyson sphere has to go into the top ten of RTS mission designs.

The objectives in the missions are story based and varied, mustering scattered forces, retaking bases, storming bases, escaping from locations overrun by Covenant/flood and destroying various locations and pieces of hardware. I played on normal difficulty, only the occasional time limit and the final mission gave me any real trouble.

I played for roughly 10-15 hours and got 285 achievement points. I felt this was a little mean, the remainder of the achievements being given for playing on the harder difficulties and for the multiplayer component of the game.

The game allows you to save progress at any time which is welcome, A word of warning though to consider when you save. I saved once and found myself having to restart the level after finding I hadn’t left enough time to complete the against the clock objective, my own fault, however, a point to consider when playing yourself.

The multiplayer is fairly solid as seems to be expected in Halo games. They might be known more for their multiplayer than the single player. This is no exception; if you are into RTS multiplayer then I am sure you could find a lot here to occupy your time. There are many maps available. You can play as either side, Covenant or human, choosing from a range of commanders who have different super weapon abilities. You can play online or offline skirmishes against human or a.i. opponents. This lengthens the game considerably if you really love your RTS gaming.

RTS games can be graphically punishing, though I question the need. I tend to play with the zoom feature out at maximum, never zooming in close at all. I tend to keep the view facing north unless I need to move it to see units. What I am trying the get at is Command and conquer got by well with 2d sprites on bitmap landscapes, and personally I feel that nothing has been improved by the switch to 3D engines in RTS games.

Comparing this to other RTS on the Xbox360 like Command and Conquer and Supreme Commander this comes of as adequate and certainly has nothing to be ashamed off.

Music is excellent throughout the game, the Halo musical theme was good to start with, a mixture of Gothic synth chants and rock guitar on a truly cinematic scale. The music comes with familiarity due to being remixed from the other Halo games and as such is already in your head and suitably stirring. Weapon sounds are also familiar from the FPS games.

Being an RTS there are no real boss battles. The level design is adequate, cities, landscapes of the snow jungle and grassland variety. Animation of the units is fairly good for an RTS, though comparing it to animations in an FPS for example would be unfair.

Halo wars suffers from being a reasonably good concept on paper, or as a PC game. In practice the game is supposed to appeal to RTS fans, however, they will find it too simplified to tear them away from Starcraft, Command and Conquer and all the other huge PC RTS franchises. Where does that leave us, with Halo fans, caricatured as screaming 12 years olds who love to frag you and shout obscenities, will these fans buy Halo wars and enjoy it? I doubt it, which is a shame as this is a good game hampered by design choices firmly based on it being a console game. I think people who have dabbled with RTS games in the past and found them overcomplicated and intimidating would find this a good game to introduce them to RTS games in general.

Having just soundly rubbished the whole existence of the game I have to confess to enjoying Halo wars. The story is good fun and stylish, the replay-ability is there for those who want to spend time with the games multiplayer.

Microsoft obviously wanted to broaden the Halo franchise, I can’t help thinking that a Mass effect style RPG or Arbiter skinned God of War would be more in keeping with the roots than an RTS.

Story 8
Gameplay 7
Graphics 7
Level Design 7
A.i. 7

Total 7.2

Gears of War 2 Review

2009-05-11T02:22:00.001-07:00

The story picks up a short period after the first game, after the light mass bomb ended Gears 1. The locust have been regrouping from their severe bloody nose. Jacinto is the last city safe for humanity due to is foundation on bedrock. Dom is searching for his Missing wife Maria and delta squad are garrisoned in Jacinto. Imulsion sickness is on the rise as a new plague which can’t come at a more inopportune time.

Rather than cower and wait for the locust war machine to get back to full strength and attack Jacinto. The human leadership has decided to take the fight to the locust again and launches the landown assault on the locust breeding grounds. Using huge rigs with drills that send two man grind lifts down into the underground, every last soldier is sent underground to take on the locust horde.

Underground things don’t go exactly as planned and Delta squad find a new locust super weapon that can destroy a city. Marcus takes on the task to destroy the weapon. Also introduced is a backstory about secret government experiments, which raise a lot of questions as to the origin of the locust. Marcus and the rest of Delta squads journey takes them into the heart of the locust territory and an encounter with the queen herself, who is nothing like you will expect. There is also the revelation that all is not well within the locust ranks and they may be as factional as humanity. Dom’s personal quest to be reunited with his wife has an inevitability that will bring a lump to your throat, and possibly a tear to your eye.

The finale sees a desperate plan that will hurt humanity almost as much as it will the locust and leaves the events to come in the last game anyone’s guess. There are also plenty of unanswered questions about the locust and the experiments. Marcus’ father it seems will also play a role.

The characters have been given greater depth, Dom’s quest to find Maria may seem tacked on, but it does provide strong emotion. You understand that though these men might seem like stupid adrenaline junkies that love to fight, they are also people with hearts that can be broken and they are all on the edge of extinction. Cole is as brain dead as before, I found myself actually warming to Baird, who this time seems to play a mothering role to the rest of the squad and is constantly tired of them breaking equipment and doing stupid things.

Gears 1 had a fairly confused story, there was a great premise, but some confusing game type make work plot elements made for a muddled pointless plot arc. The characters were big muscled and dim witted and mostly unlikeable apart from Marcus. That didn’t matter though, because as a game it really shone, and the story was adequate. Epic had two options here, leave things as they were and probably not have any dent in sales whatsoever, or takes the story and the characters and work on them. Everything has been pumped up this time around. The characters have all been given bigger biographies and story arcs. The locust have been beefed up from being generic cannon fodder evil bad guys to a species with a hidden history and their own factions and internal struggles. The possibility of their origin being alien is also hinted at, as is the possibility that they may be a human creation or humans have been poking them in the past with the experimental secret government lab stick.

The worms and underground food chain have been introduced, there is also a broadening of the Cog government and the introduction of the President as a character.

In short when Cliff Blezinski said that it was going to be bigger and more badass, he was also talking about the story, not just the bangs and the flashes. For me this was the biggest surprise of all. I never expected to have a teary eye whilst playing Gears of War.

Gears uses a third person view which combines with a cover system. I am not going to go into detail about the controls, as most people will have played Gears 1 and know what to expect. If you haven’t by the way you really should, it is a great game.

Many new elements have been added to the game play. If I was to criticize Gears one I would say that it was a series of set piece fights in box like areas carrying on until all the enemies were killed and the door to the next area opened. Though any game can be boiled down into a few words like that to make it sound bad that is essentially what Gears 1 was. Epic has addressed that criticism mostly by breaking from the formula for short periods and opening up the areas in the game to make the square footage of real estate bigger. This means that the player can be more mobile, rather than being penned in a small area of cover for large parts of the time.

There are many large and small additions to the gameplay, little additions that seem obvious but were missing in Gears 1 like climbing ladders, your chainsaw opening light barricades and exploding barrels have been added.

The amount of enemies on screen has been given a huge boost. While you don’t actually fight hundreds of locust at once you do find yourself in the middle of battles that include lots more of each side. There are also helicopters and Reavers buzzing around to add to the chaos. The first game felt like four men alone against large odds, and although that does happen this time around, there is much more sense that you aren’t the only ones fighting this war.

The Reavers are flying locust horse analogues ridden by two grubs, these were mainly cannon fodder for emplaced gun sections in the first game, this time around they fly around freely and can land and stomp you to death if their guns don’t shoot you first.

The locust now have the ability to revive injured soldiers, shoot and wound a grub and he will crawl along the ground and eventually die from blood loss, however if one of his squad get to him they can revive him back to full fighting strength again. This system was employed in the first game for your own squad, but not for the locust. There is also an enemy type later on in the game called a Kantus Guard and they can revive downed soldiers without actually going near them. This means that taking out the Kantus becomes a priority or you just fight the same soliders in an infinite loop.

The first novelty game mechanic comes in the form of your ride on the rig. Basically an on rails section where you fight through various set pieces from the deck of the rig. The rig gun is powerful and only limited by overheating, which can be aided by cooling the gun using the right bumper. Boarders with grappling hooks and the huge Brumaks only seen in cut scene in the first game are targets for your gun here. The only enemy from the last game not to get much screen time is the spider like corpsers. They do put in an appearance here, in the distance jumping around like the spiders from eight legged freaks.

The one enemy that I did want removed from the first game was the exploding lambent wretches. These were so annoying, simple enemies that run at you and explode in large numbers. They are thankfully gone, although the normal wretches are still present. Tickers are their replacement as annoying exploding enemies, though these seem a little easier to dispose off.

As with the first game you spilt the squad at a few points in the game and go off in different directions, most often you can see the other team mates in the distance and end up helping them by providing covering fire or flanking enemy positions for them.

Weapons in games are never my strong point, I am not a weapon geek, I can’t be bothered with technical details of weapons. The most prominent of the new weapons is the mortar, which you fire, and set a distance then watch as the world explodes where you fired. Like most powerful weapons it’s rationed fairly heavily. The flamethrower puts in an appearance and is ok as weapons go but not really a stand out weapon. The Hammer of Dawn puts in a cameo late in the game. There are some small additions and changes to the other guns, however the lancer remains a staple weapon throughout.

Moveable cover is introduced in several ways. There are small rock centipedes that are great to crouch behind and are almost indestructible. Shooting their food supply from cave roof onto the ground can herd the centipedes around. This makes them shuffle over to the food and eat, while all the time a firefight blazes around them. In the Locust city there are walls that raise and lower at the press of a lever. This makes for fun and games as the enemy try and lower your cover leaving you exposed.

Finally you can pick a shield dropped by enemies and also hold downed enemies in front of you as a shield.

The locust horde has been added to since the first game, Grubs can ride blood mounts into battle which are monstrous creatures which bring the enemy close fast and can also attack you themselves once the rider has been killed with a swish of their tail. The boomer type enemy has been given different weapons and a new look to make the grinder chain gunner and mace and shield wielding varieties

Similar to the rigs are the prison barges, huge locust creatures with a structure akin to a sailing ship on their backs. There are several fights in and around these impressive creatures.

Top of the list for gross bodily intimacy is the section of the game where you run around Fantastic Voyage style inside a huge creature. You must avoid being crushed by peristalsis, being digested in the stomach in pools of acid, and don’t get me started on the choking gas in the bowels. You also make your way into the beast’s circulatory system and have to avoid drowning in blood.

Someone does needs to let the designers know that nature does not make bowels with dead ends; it would be fatal to have dead ends filling up with feces with nowhere for it to go.

Small additions in the secret lab area include the carrying of a box between two team members, which limits them to pistols while they carry it. There are laser tripped security guns to deal with also. Razorhail is introduced here as incredibly dangerous rain, which means getting out from under a roof sees you being chopped to pieces, it reminds me of the Kryl sections in the first game.

Driving is present and again much more has been made of it. Much bigger environments and a vehicle with proper weight and inertia make it look much less shoehorned in than Gears 1. You drive up into the mountains and have various skirmishes with Locust and some fun navigating cracking frozen lakes. Mention must be made of the Scooby Doo moment in the dark. If you have watched Scooby Doo at all, you will know what I am talking about.

There are many sections of the game where traditional fight box game play is missing in action. You encounter an underground river system and there are fights on and around gunboats. Tethered fish like creatures at either side powers these boats. This section ends with the boat plunging down a waterfall and being attacked by a huge leviathan sea monster.

There is the section where you fly on the back of a Reaver and the game becomes something akin to Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon. There is a section where you get control of a Brumak and ride it into locust territory. At one point you have to hack into a locust computers system.

While this is all good and well sometimes novelty game mechanics can overstay their welcome, this is not the case here with each change having it's time in the spotlight and not being repeated.

The game takes place above ground in the ruined landscapes of Sera and as defined in the first game there is a grey broken vision of a once beautiful city. The architecture is grand and striking in a kind of fascist way. The underground caves are done as well as underground caves can look, there has been some attempt to vary and add to the cave scenes, however a cave is a dark hole in the ground. The city of the locusts is well done with a busy Goudy inspired look.

The character detail is again amazing with all of Delta Squad and the Locust being eye catching.

The game engine is obviously cranked up several notches from the first game with an awful lot more happening at once and little slowdown or glitching noticeable.

There are many fights with monsters dotted around the game, Reavers, Brumaks, Corpsers etc. Two battles stand out as being traditional boss battles rather than just another monster you have to fight to get past. There is a long complicated showdown with a sea monster and a fight with a super locust named Skorge, the queen’s personal guard.

The final showdown at the end of the game is, well, far too easy. Maybe this is in response to criticism of the first game, where the final boss was annoying. I didn't really feel any disappointment at this easy end scene, it was actually a little bit of a relief after all the effort of getting to the end not to have a boss battle that takes me hours and hours to learn patterns of and learn the skills needed to defeat it. I can see why some might not like that though and they do have a point I have to grudgingly admit.

There were no problems with checkpoints. I can’t remember a time when I was placed further back than I would have liked by death. This is really quite refreshing for an action game.

Multiplayer was an interesting experience for me. I enjoy multiplayer games, which have modes like Rainbow Six Vegas where teams of human players take on the a.i. Horde mode promised to be exactly that. It was and it was great fun, I was enjoying it very much. I play multiplayer games online mostly with a group of friends. They were all enjoying long sessions of horde mode for the first few days of release, indeed I was finding it hard to get to the single player game for constant invites to horde mode games. Then it all stopped, I don't know what happened. Were people burned out with horde mode, were there other problems with the online that I was not seeing. I don't know, my friends stopped playing online and went back to Gears 1 and Modern Warfare. I was happy because I could get around to the single player; I have never gone back to the online component. I know you might feel disappointed reading this but I am not an online gamer really. I play only with friends for the social aspects. I can't really be counted as being qualified for reviewing online components of games. For what it's worth then I enjoyed horde mode and had no problems getting into a game with my friends. Any other aspects of the multiplayer I can't talk about.

I did my first play through on hardcore difficulty and got 365 achievement points for my trouble, I hope to go back soon and try some co-op and the insane difficulty level.

Scoring

Graphics 9

Gameplay 9

Story 9

Level Design 9

A.i. 7

Total 8.6

Haze Review

2009-04-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

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 2^nd 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

2009-04-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

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

Medal of Honor : Airborne Review

2009-04-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

There is no real story in this game. I should leave it at that and mark the game down heavily. I am a very story orientated gamer, I like a game with a good story-line. That isn't to say that I prefer story heavy games but I will look more favorably at a game with a good story. If the story drags me in and keeps me hooked then I can forgive any number of gameplay sins.

So were does the lack of story leave Airborne? There is homage to real war events. The game is educational you could say. It present six battles of world war 2 that the airborne division played a heavy role in. From Operation Husky where the Italian town of Adanti is liberated, through to the Attack of the Flak Tower in Germany. Several countries are visited and I presume we play the same soldier throughout the game, however I can't recall ever being told his name. Some soldiers accompany you for the most part of the game, they are cut down regularly and are replaced just as quickly, so there is no sense of camaraderie with your a.i. allies.

The game is a typical First person Shooter, the only novel system presented is the cover system. You move to cover and duck down, as with most FPS's you are now looking at a wall texture in close up, which isn't the best. Now as is the norm these days if you hold down the left trigger you sight along your weapon, which makes you more accurate but your looking around movemnt half the speed. The cover system comes in as now if you use your movement stick which is the left analogue stick you move your character's upper body only and can poke your head above and around the sides of cover to take pot shots and release the stick to duck back into cover. This system takes a while to get used to after the likes of Rainbow six and Gears of war but it is very effective and changes the pace of the game from run and gun to slightly more cover based tactics.

The game is a sandbox type game which is a deviation from the usual corridor shooter associated with world war 2 games. The six missions have a fairly large area of map associated with them and objectives are dotted about the map. You parachute in at the start of the mission and can choose from a ususal three safe landing spots. You have the option to land anywhere you can make your chute take you, however you better pull of a good landing and be ready to fight as you will probably land in heavily enemy occupied territory if you stray from the safe zones. You can land with a perfect landing, a flared landing and a botched landing. The time taken to recover and be ready to move and shoot differs with each.

Health is in the form of a four segmented bar. When you are shot it drops down, when you get in cover it goes back up but only to the nearest segment. Therefore you need to find health which is found around the maps and dropped by the dead.

The enemy seem to keep on coming unless you advance. Sit still and you will be shooting the same people all day, advance and it seems to stop them coming. This leads you into recklessness as a way to avoid repetitiveness, similar to the Call of Duty series.

The various objectives can be tackled in any order at the start of the mission and there comes a point where the story on the ground changes and you are presented with more linear objectives around the latter half to halfway point of the missions. As you approach objectives your allies are attacking, as is traditional for a.i. the fights seem to be going nowhere until you arrive. They kill each other but another re-spawns instantly to take the place of the fallen.

Objectives include the destruction of anti-aircraft guns, munitions depots, motor pools, fuel depots, communications aerials, radio equipment, spotting and radar towers, bunkers, pillboxes, machine gun nests, tanks, rail-guns, pressure valves, trains, half-tracks and ammunition lifts, You also find yourself assembling at specific points on the map, saving snipers teams, taking out german commanders, avoiding ambushes, securing towns, setting signal flares and picking up various objects of use in the missions.

Your guns have three staged upgrades and every person you shoot gains you experience with them. Shooting people in the head and in quick succession gains you more experience. The guns become more accurate and some have upgrades like grenade launcher which are added as you gain experience..

The a.i. is puzzling, sometimes there are never ending soldiers coming from a room with no other entrance than the one you are shooting into, which suggests infinite respawns. At other times there seems to be a finite number of troops in an area. Sometimes your a.i. helpers are totally ineffectual, at others they make a difference, sometimes they just vanish completely and you are left feeling you are fighting the battle alone. It's just not consistent and seems to work to an internal game logic that changes depending on circumstances that you are not privy to., This means you can never really get a good strategy worked out as you never know what the competence of the ai helpers will be like or how many or how never ending the enemy are going to be.

Puzzlingly the grenade danger icon does not show up when you are zoomed in using a scope, which leads to some annoying deaths for reasons that could have easily been avoided.

Boss fights are mainly just harder areas to storm like town halls and pillboxes. There are around 10 different types of soldier all with their own equipment load-out and abilities. The final troops you meet are Storm elites and they have huge chain-guns which are almost instantly fatal. They form the final bosses on the last mission, though they are around in smaller numbers on the later levels.

The level design is actually quite good surprisingly. The areas are all themed around the real world locations where the various historic battles took place. Environments range from italian towns to rolling countryside. factories to familiar beaches. the most impressive level is kept until last and is the Flak tower, which is imposing and excellently rendered.

The game engine is sound, with everything running mostly smooth, despite the huge aerial views you get when parachuting in.

Sound is average, rousing scores in the style of war movies, lots of bangs and whizzes from the bullets.

Checkpoints come at the end of each mission. For the most part you are only a drop away from where you left off, although when the going gets tough near the end a more liberal sprinkling of checkpoints would have been welcome.

I received 360 achievements, which seemed a bit meagre after the hardship I endured playing it on expert level. The cardinal sin of achievements is broken here and the casual and normal difficulty achievements remain locked after doing the higher level. If I want to play a game through three times I will. A game I am not enjoying to the fullest won't get my time just to get 1000 gamer points.

Multiplayer is something I never got around to, I don't give a high priority to multiplayer in a game and won't mark a game down for any multiplayer related sins or omissions.

There is little wrong with this game, it's a solid FPS which brings some innovations to the table. It just feels like another WW2 game however, harsh, but honestly how I felt. I would like to see the FPS sandbox style being used again and improved upon. I would certainly recommend a rental or bargain bin purchase.

Scoring

Graphics 8
Gameplay 8
Story 4
Level Design 8
A.i. 5

Total 6.6

Fanboys! A question for you.

2009-03-02T01:50:00.000-08:00

My question is this.

What is it that turns normal game fans into rabid fanboys?

I have been thinking about this in the last few weeks. There are several factors that i have identified involved in fanboy generation.

1 The lack of money to own all games systems

This is the simplest to understand, if you can't get enough money together to own a PS3 Xbox360 and Wii then you will probably be under 15 years of age. You will get one of these systems from your parents for Christmas and that is all that is needed, instant fanboy. Imagine the scenario, little Johnny gets a PS3 and after a few months is spewing lies in every forum he can manage to log into about how Gear of war and Halo are rubbish. The simple truth is that Johnny looks at the videos for Xbox and Wii exclusives that look cool and is jealous. He then tries to feel good about it by denying that these games are worth playing. It is very easy understand the logic in this and I doubt many people will argue with this point. If PS3 fanboys are about to stop reading then reverse the analogy and say Johnny gets and Xbox and rants about Killzone2 and God of War looking last gen.

2 The need to identify with a club/gang/belonging

Imagine the scenario, Johnny buys an Xbox, he goes online playing Halo and has a good time with his team mates, one or two of them add them to his friends list, and they chat along whilst playing other games. They mention forums they go to. Johnny joins them as well. Johnny meets more and more like minded people and enjoys it. Now notice that I am not stereotyping Johnny as a nerdy no mates in real life. The sharing of interests has long been the building blocks of friendship in any area of life. Simply put Johnny finds friends through his gaming Hobby and feels a part of something.

3 The instinct to defend the underdog

Now I am looking mainly at the community surrounding the news aggregator N4G when I thought of this argument. I have been reading the news on N4G from before it was named that, when there used to be individual news sites for each console. Well I remember going to a news for 360 gamers site that N4G eventually became. Then the comments were added. It stopped being news only and became a battleground. Xbox fans would dig up anti-PS3 news and visa versa. The comments were full of open hostility. A bubble system and agree/disagree system were introduced to actively give fanboys weapons against each other. They could report and shut each other up.

As time passed the Xbox 360 was released and it's news ruled the roost with only previews and talk of hardware and pricing of the imminent PS3 release to fan the flamewars. PS3 fans pointed to games on the horizon and told the Xbox fans that their brief rule would soon be at an end when the PS3 arrived and blew everyone away.

Once the PS3 arrived it was full scale war on the comparison video articles for multi-platfrom games, both sides pull down the exclusive games of the other console. As the PS3 slowly catches the Xbox360 in sales and popularity PS3 fans smell the scent of victory and Xbox fans become more viscous. Now if you read between the lines in the comments section there seems to be a group of mainly PS3 fans who state on many an occasion that when the 360 was at it's peak before the PS3 release on N4G. Which is a lie as N4G in it's present form only existed around the PS3 launch. Never mind that though, these PS3 fans claim that there were more XBOX fanboys than PS3 fanboys and the comment sections were a biased mess in favour of the Xbox. The reason they say that is that today N4G is around 90% PS3 fanboys arguing with themselves about what they perceive XBOX fans will say about their consoles failings and victories. Look at it now, go on, almost any article. Sure there are some diehard Xbox fans still around poking the beehive for fun, but mostly it's just PS3 fans warding off the bogeymen with mantras of victory for a console and a company that doesn't need cheerleaders, it only needs them to part with the cash for said games.

Now how does this generate a fanboy? If you take the motive of revenge or defense of the underdog as the root of the fanboy phenomenon then it makes a little sense. Imagine you have one of the consoles through choice/loyalty or financial constraints. You come to N4G and see nothing but a front page full of attacks on your console, how does it make you feel. Angry, confused? After all you have a great time playing games on your console. What do you do about it? You might even be angry enough about the unjust and unfounded attacks by a group of people hiding behind their keyboards to respond to them. There it is, the start, you get angered by something you see that isn't true, because in these comment section fanboys lie to you.

They say that Gears of war 2 has broken multiplayer, that Killzone2 can't manage to get a co-op mode because the PSN is rubbish. At that moment you are not responding as a fanboy, it's all rational thought. You played Gears 2 horde mode just ten minutes ago and had a great time. PSN is for the most part lag free due to dedicated servers you think, because Warhawk always plays as smooth as butter. At that moment something is set in motion like a snowball rolling down a hill. You start looking for the comments to see what people are saying about game x and y. You start to argue back. Someone name calls you and you argue with them on a personal level. You start getting private messages from other same console fans expressing admiration for how you stuck it to the enemy. You add them on your friends list, and so it begins. Back to the second point of joining a club and belonging.

4 You have a genuine thing about only having one games console.

I have heard people talk about this many times. For reasons know only to the individual they will prefer a certain brand of electronics for instance. I think Sony encapsulate this trend more out of all the console manufacturers as they produce televisions phones etc as well as the console. People that I know have only Sony hardware because they feel they have a reputation for the best products and reliability. If they are shopping for something they will check to see if Sony make it and buy from them even if they can find the product at half the price from another manufacturer. The reason is simple that Sony have a good reputation for products that work well. Now I could argue that until the cows come home, but I would never change their mind It's something that person seems genetically predisposed to do, and good luck to them, nothing wrong in that inherently.

For similar reasons games fans gravitate to a console and it's perceived traditional games. There is a big Japanophile trend in gaming and many will go with Sony or Nintendo for that reason. Some people got a NES as a first console as a kid and stick with Nintendo religiously, staunchly ignoring with not even a hint of jealousy the exclusive games on other consoles.

An awful lot of casual gamers buy a console for one game, in the UK I know a lot of men who bought a PS2 for football games like Fifa and PES and buy nothing else, same can be said for girls who buy Singstar and nothing else. The old casual gamers that Nintendo is trying to catch and make sure they keep on buying different casual games.

5 Some people like the arguing debating and in some cases bullying that goes on in forums.

It can get ugly on N4G, people are cruel, spelling, grammar and debating skills all better be up to scratch. You have to be able to spin like a politician if you want your console to look good after reports of depressing sales numbers for the month. It's hard work being a fanboy, you have to have a good standard of education to avoid being owned out there, (how I hate that term "owned"). Some people seem to get off on that, they will stalk their prey, the one or two word commenters, the ones with poor spelling or the propensity to use swear words instead of language. They stalk them like lame animals through a jungle and pounce with their razor sharp wit. It is a form of bullying, the jock picking on the nerd if you will. Safe behind the anonymity and the keyboard where some feel powerful, and the pen can indeed be mightier than the sword. This adds to the list then, power tripping.

So we have

1). Can't afford more than one system

2). Belonging

3). Anger and defense at perceived injustice

4). Genuine unbiased brand preference for a system and it's games

5). Enjoy a debate

6). Like bullying people online

Now I really want to hear from people in response to this and ask the question is it any of the above that makes you a fanboy. If you have any other suggestions for the root cause of fanboyism then I would love to hear that also.

Xbox 360 V PS3 Exclusive warfare

2009-03-01T08:44:00.001-08:00

Watching N4G comments and news articles over the first two or three months of this and the past year there seems to be a trend developing. The News articles written in December and January, traditionally a slow two months for video game releases, are usually filled with Game of the year and speculation articles about the next year. A lot of console X or console Y dominated the year articles are now increasing. Games that are coming in the next year are touted to be better than the games on a rival console and arguments ensue.

Microsoft seems to have adopted a policy since E3 07 of not talking about games unless they are six months away. Peter Moore said this on stage, all the games that he showed were going to be on game store shelves by Christmas, and he wasn't lying. This policy has continued ever since for Microsoft. The reveals of the past can't be erased, as evidenced by the continual no-show of Alan Wake. It does seem that they are trying to keep games in development hidden until the game is six months from release. This policy is good in a way. No vapor ware games being shown and eagerly awaited stroke hyped to oblivion before release, no disappointment if a game is delayed.

The negative side to this is that Sony continue to carry on the policy of a large majority of the gaming sector and hype products that are little more than preliminary renders or concept art. Now this isn't a swipe a Sony. The industry as a whole does this. If your product only gets released once a year it pays to keep your company in the public eye by showing preliminary work on your game before release. Good internet and word of mouth buzz on a product is the difference between say Littlebigplanet and Too human. The latter having such a shocking cloud of negativity attached that a reasonably good game was totally sunk. Whereas Littlebigplanet had a long time in the public eye before release but almost all the press was positive.

With this in mind looking at the exclusive slate for the Xbox360 for 2009 the cupboard seems bare. Alan Wake might come, there is the Halo Wars and the Halo 3 expansion. Whereas Sony have been carrying on releasing tidbits about many of the games they have in production. Infamous, Heavy Rain, MAG, God of War 3 Uncharted 2 Gran Turismo 5 etc. None of these games has a release date most of them will come out in late 2009 and more than likely a few will release in 2010. I would be prepared to put money on God of War 3, MAG and Gran Turisimo 5 not coming this year. Infamous, Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain I think we will see mid year or around the November Frenzy of releases.

So taking away the uncertainties of the future, how do past exclusive releases stack up?
I have taken a list of 21 games exclusive to each console. Looked up metacritic and vgchartz for sales and scores figures.

This list is not meant to be complete, it's 21 games chosen mainly by looking at my own games collection. I decided to limit it to the same amount of games for both consoles and any missing games you may think of, like Tales of Vesperia, Star Ocean 4, Socom etc are missing simply because I live in the UK and those games are not released here yet. I have listed only games for the Xbox 360 that are at time of writing exclusive to the console. I could have added in Gears of war 1, Mass effect and Left 4 dead, which have PC versions as well, but I have decided to go purely with titles that are only available on the Xbox360 for it's list. Which probably hobbles it's scores quite a lot, however this is platform exclusivity we are arguing about here and Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot in this area by releasing PC versions of most of their games.

PS3 only games
Little Big Planet 95 2.02m
Killzone 2 91 N/A
Metal Gear Solid 4 94 3.88m
Resistance Fall of Man 86 3.54m
Resistance 2 87 1.44m
Ratchet and Clank Future 89 1.61m
Valkyria Chronicles 87 0.35m
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 88 0.39m
Gran Tourismo 5 Prologue 80 2.94m
Everybody's Golf World Tour 81 0.70m
Uncharted Drakes Fortune 88 2.60m
Motorstorm 82 3.83m
Motorstorm : Pacific Rift 81 0.79m
Warhawk 84 0.49m
Heavenly sword 79 1.41m
Ridge Racer 7 78 0.65m
Folklore 75 0.20m
Eye of Judgement 75 0.27m
Disgaea 78 0.21m
Lair 53 0.41m
Haze 55 0.67m

1706 out of 2100 = 81.2%
28.4m total sales

Xbox 360 only games
Halo 3 94 9.13m
Gears of War 2 93 4.62m
Forza Motorsport 2 90 4.38m
Fable 2 89 2.60m
Project Gotham 4 85 1.77m
Project Gotham 3 88 1.52m
Halo Wars 82 N/A
Saints Row 81 2.80m
Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts 80 0.55m
Viva Pinata : Trouble in Paradise 82 0.36m
Crackdown 83 1.54m
Ninja Gaiden 2 81 1.00m
Perfect dark zero 81 1.47m
Lost Odyssey 78 0.91m
Amped 3 72 0.14m
Kameo 79 0.74m
Blue Dragon 79 0.62m
Infinite Undiscovery 68 0.46m
Too human 65 0.58m
Viva Pinata: Party Animals 56 0.31m
Bullet Witch 55 0.10m

1661 out of 2100 = 79.0%
35.6m sales

Now, how can we spin these figures, lets have a go for each console.

PS3
21 PS3 exclusives have sold 28.4 million copies, with an install base of only 20 million. These 21 games have a combined score of 81.2% on metacritic. 13 games have scored above 80% on metacritic. Three games score more than 90% making them AAA games. PS3 exclusives score higher on metacritic than Xbox360 comparable games.

Xbox 360
21 Xbox360 exclusives have sold 35.5 million copies. These games have a combined score of 79% on metacritic and 13 of them score 80% and above. Three games score more than 90% making them AAA games. Xbox 360 exclusives have sold 7.2 million more than comparable PS3 exclusives.

As an aside to doing this research for this blog post I also came across 23 games for the xbox 360 that are multi platform but not available on PS3. They are:-

Mass Effect
Gears of War
Left 4 dead
The Last Remnant
Shadowrun
Viva Pinata
Hitman : Blood money
Far cry instincts Predator
Condemned
Prey
Lord of the rings : Battle for middle Earth
Just Cause
Tomb raider legend
Dead Rising
Rockstar table tennis
The Godfather
Battlefield 2 : Modern Combat
Superman Returns
Two worlds
Call of Duty 2
Quake 4
Eragon
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Where does this leave us? I'll tell you where, right back where we started with a huge swathe of time wasted that I could have spent playing games. They both are fairly equal, sales are slightly higher for the Xbox360 scores slightly higher for the PS3. Nobody is winning apart from the people that make the games and have seen a combined income from 64 million game sales. $3,840 million dollars if you take $60 as the unit price. Wow that is a lot of money, do you really think the people in the offices at Sony and Microsoft need you to argue their case and business strategy? It's time to just buy all the consoles, Wii, Xbox360 and PS3 and just play the games that you like on all platforms.

It doesn't matter if someone who can barely rub two words together and is 10 year old come onto a games forum and spouts utter rubbish about the console of your choice. It really does not matter, look at the evidence above, both the software developers and platform holders are making a huge amount of money out of you. They don't care how much we gamers squabble amongst ourselves. Let's just stop fighting and talk about the games.

It's a common tactic when an article has sensational content designed to make flame wars to say that it's only written for hits. Where do you think the console war has got N4G. How many hits and cash does N4G get out of fanning the console war. How much advertising revenue is made from keeping all this going. The gamer zone is meant to be policed to keep the console war out. Is it? The stupid articles are repeatedly passed, the blogs keep coming. Hell here's one right here :-)

Official Playstation magazine UK to be the UK's Qore?

2009-02-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

While reading Edge magazine dated February 2009 I noticed a full page advertisement which seemed to be saying that The official playstation magazine was going to become available on the PSN in 2009.

Touted to have exclusive betas and videos, which sounds very like the Qore magazine that is available on the USA PSN store. Is this finally a UK alternative?The magazine print advertisement directs you to a webpage. On the website is pretty much the print advertisment and a sign up section which wants name, age address and email. Submitting these results in a thanks page and little else. The site promises to enter you into draw to win a copy of Killzone 2.

Apparently the product will only be available in the Uk at launch. It seems to be run by future publishing the publisher behind an awful lot of the UK magazines.

Viking: Battle for Asgard Review

2008-10-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

The game is set in Midgard where the Legions of Hel have invaded and all seems lost. The character you will play, Skarin, is wounded and dying and all seems lost. The God Freya comes to him and chooses him as her champion. She gives him an amulet of great power and restores him to health. She then performs magic, which banishes the legion from the village, and leaves Skarin to do her will. Which is to raise an army and lead it against Hel.

During the long course of events as Skarin rebuilds the infrastructure of war, we meet Drakan who is Hel's champion and our nemesis. We find out about Drakan's past as Freya's fallen champion and are led into a quest to find out about Skarin's own heritage. The story builds to a suitable apocalyptic conclusion.

During the game I was enjoying the story, however it did seem to build and build to a great last act only to just stop and give up. Hel is defeated and Skarin sees that he has been used by Freya as a pawn in the God’s games and is left wanting revenge. This game feels more like the start of a trilogy, as if it was meant to have a cliff-hanger to be continued ending. Shame it didn’t as this game wraps up the rest of a two game epic story line in a two or three minute voice over with concept art. The fact that there seems to be no sequels planned leaves a bitter aftertaste.

The game is set in a series of three free roaming islands each one larger than the last. The first two look similar and summery and the final one is in the grip of winter and has an active volcano with lava all over the place.

The view is third person from behind Skarin. Controls are the usual sticks for movement and camera control. There are slow and fast attacks with various combination button presses leading to differing attacks.

As you wander you can speak to various a.i. characters that give you objectives to complete.

The objectives are fairly varied though by far the largest mission type is reaching an area where Vikings are imprisoned and freeing them, where they will aid you in battle to free the area from legion occupation. The locations for these skirmishes include farms quarries, distilleries, and lumbar mills. There are also guard towers to liberate, enemy patrols to destroy and items to recover for characters.

Some factions need you to go somewhere specific, kill the larger enemy there and bring back a trophy to prove your worth before they pledge their aid for the cause. You also find yourself looking for dragon stones and amulets to give you control over the dragons of the land.

Combat is fairly repetitive stuff, and you find yourself getting by without much skill until the later islands where the introduction of armoured and shield carrying enemies mean that you need to learn to block and have a bit more strategy than simply hitting the nearest enemy. Bosses, giants and Champions need their health taken down a bit and then quick-time button presses come into play to finish them off.

The unique part of the game is the two huge battles on each island, one to open the other half and the other as the climax of events on the island. These battles can be triggered when you have met criteria, e.g. having enough troops, having dragon air support etc.

Once the battles are triggered it's a matter of storming the castle or fortification with your mass of troops, there is only one real objective for the player here, to kill off the enemy shaman who are responsible for spawning endless replacements for the enemies you kill. Once they are dead the legion's reinforcements are cut off and you must bring your shaman to the summoning stone, where they perform magic that banishes the legion from the area.

The battles are huge with an astonishing number of characters on screen. There are siege weapons and giants amongst the melee. Your dragons can be summoned once you have enough dragon runes. Killing a shaman gets you a dragon rune, there can be up to ten shamans to be killed in the later levels.

The dragons can be used to air-strike certain targets taking them out of the game, for example, archers or giants that are making it difficult, or the shaman's saving you the trouble of killing each one individually. Shamans are killed by destroying the four posts surrounding them, which breaks their magic shield, it's then a swift sword thrust to kill them off.

The first time you see the battle it is astonishing. There is true chaos and everything seems exhilarating. After 6 battles you know the drill and the effect wears off. Don't get me wrong the battles are still a spectacle, it's just that you know you are just going from place to place killing shaman. That is your only role, maybe a bit of variety of objectives in the battles might have kept it fresh.

The fortresses have two roles, to be the site of the final battles and also the site of stealth missions. You are tasked with obtaining a certain item from inside the fortress, and have to sneak inside. If you are seen then the alarm is raised and you will find yourself fighting against overwhelming force. To progress you must find a very deliberate route into and through the fortress killing using a stealth attack which is instigated when you are near an enemy that has it's back to you by pressing x, which silently kills in a satisfying manner.

The stealth missions are almost on a par with Splinter Cell and Metal Gear games here. Which is a bonus and it mixes up the game-play. The only thing I can say in criticism is that the stealth missions are necessary to complete the campaign. Those that bought a hack and Slash open world sandbox game might not have wanted to play a stealth action game It would have been nice to have been told that stealth would play a big role in the game before purchase. Might also have gained the game more sales from the stealth action fans.

There are the obligatory shops where you can upgrade your sword with combat runes and buy ranged weapons like axes and firebombs. You can also buy maps, which show the location of gold on your radar, this makes the collection of money for buying said items much easier. There are in addition to the gold barrels of mead dotted around which will be paid for by innkeepers.

Collecting rage orbs from the dead allows you to use the magic of fire and ice for a limited period until the rage energy runs out. Giving your blade the ability to freeze or set on fire the legion.

There is also a ghostly warrior trainer who in return for gold will teach you newer and more devastating combat moves.

There are a large number of ruins and caves, which can be explored in a tomb raider style to find gold. Sometimes just getting from place to place due to the landscape can be a bit of a puzzle.

Finally ley lines can be used to fast travel across the island once the stones have been found by walking to the location.

The a.i. is average, they do stupid things like walk off ledges to get to you, and usually just approach you and stand in a circle around you waiting their chance to strike.

The boss fights are fairly simplistic with you basically hacking and dodging until their health is down and a quick-time sequence finishes them. The bosses like the champion are introduced slowly then used increasingly throughout the game. There are two real main boss characters, Drakan and Hel herself.

Drakan is fought twice and Hel is the end of game boss. I have to heavily criticise the Hel fight however, the difficulty spike here will kill you. From being a fairly easy game the final fight is a real problem. I spent about four hours trying to kill Hel and screamed at the screen and threw controllers around. I will go as far as to say that the final fight tarnishes the whole game.

You have to fight many enemies in tight confines while destroying Hel's shaman pillars before finally getting to her. It's not the actual fight with Hel, it's the sheer weight of numbers of advanced hard to kill enemies that force you from being average at the game the whole way through to become a master of it's combat.

One tip for anyone playing Viking after reading this review is to stock up on health potions and firebombs before attempting the fight. Be warned though, once used they don't re-spawn with you when you come back for another go. I know it's the end of game boss and it should be hard, however this really is a huge jump in difficulty.

The islands are very well designed. Beautiful locations and thoughtful real world places. The areas look drab and lifeless when controlled by the legion, once liberated the sun comes out and everything looks idyllic. The art direction is perfectly in sync with the Viking legends.

Graphically the frame rate is good for the most part with understandable drops in the huge battles. This isn't a criticism, the number of objects on screen is staggering, on a par with Kameo and Heavenly sword for huge battle melees.

I don’t know what game engine was used here but it should be used more often.

Sound is good with some good voice work, especially the perfectly cast Brian Blessed. Checkpoints come after each mission or item pickup, and are handled transparently by the game to good effect. There are a few checkpoint gaps near the end of the game which are a little unfair, however not a real problem. Menus are sparse but functional.

I played Viking for around 20 hours and received a very nice 960 points. Most of the achievement flow from completing the story and upgrading the character, which really is necessary anyway. No real achievement hunting points, apart from finding hidden skulls in the fortresses. Which is a little unfair, as you can't travel back to an island once you leave for the next.

No multi-player at all, and it isn't missed. I doubt it would work well.

I had a lot of fun with this game, it never got as much hype as some games. Leading to many dismissing it as a purchase or even a rent. Having played two games recently with Norse mythology I know which one was better and it isn't Too Human. I would urge everyone to play this game. One of the better releases of 2008.

Scoring

Graphics 9

Gameplay 9

Story 5

Level Design 9

A.i. 5

Total 7.4

Too Human Review

2008-09-30T14:13:00.001-07:00

What if the stories from myth about viking Gods were all true? That there really were Gods that ruled over our ancestors? What if the theories about us reaching a technological level only to obliterate ourselves are true? That for many cycles humans have developed computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence etc and been destroyed by our own creations or nature.

Too Human suggest that Norse Gods were in fact representatives of an advanced technological civilization. An elite ruling class tasked with the protection of ordinary people. Baldur, Thor, Odin, simply people evolved beyond baseline human by staggeringly advanced technology.

Who do these gods protect the humans from, goblins and elves who are the a.i. that ran amok, however there are two factions, the norn are benevloent a.i. who control a cyber world woven into the fabric of being by nano tech viruses inside every living or non living atom. they know far more than they are telling us about everything we see.

These God's fight the goblins and trolls on one side and amongst themselves on the other, over the direction of policy. Loki believes one ideology and Odin another. The clash will shake the world.

Baldur is introduced to us as he is rescued from Hel. Why is was there? The next time we see him he is stalking the Grendel in a bar that is part viking with huge tankards and the other part holographic strip club.

We find out Baldur's history in bits a pieces from his shattered memory. We get the sense that Baldur is not being told the full story of events about his wife or his recent history. We know that his wife is dead and Freya wishes to comfort him and become his wife, however, Baldur is distant with her. Loki is imprisoned and Baldur takes his army of men to hunt down the Grendel, a new species of machine threat.

The scene is set for a story with many twists. The problem is in the execution. The makers of Too human have had this story in their heads for too long. they have a huge library of information I would wager on the back story. The problem is none of it shows in the game. Most of what I know I had to piece together from many sources. Some of the clever parallels drawn I have read about in forums for game, not gleaned from the game itself.

Some plot points regarding death for example are not explained. Maybe this is due to the final revelations that will come in later games, however leaving the player wondering if there is a huge plot hole is not the best policy.

For example Baldur does not die, nor it seems does any of the a.i. helpers. The valkyries come and carry them away and bring them back seconds later. Conversely we are also told that Hel claims the corpses of the fallen and that In taking Baldur from Hel once he died the Aesir broke a pact leading to war.

Death seems to be a state of being here, alive you are free in midgard, dead you go to valhalla or Hel. I am getting irritated thinking about it, if the final reveal at the end of the trilogy is that Midgard is a virtual world and the characters are living in a matrix style world that they didn't know about I won't be happy. The game already plays with Baldur's perceptions once with him thinking he has left cyberspace back to reality and finding that he never left cyberspace. To fully confuse me at one point, one of the Aseir Gods is killed for good and doesn't come back again or get a valkyrie, why? I never saw any explanation.

The story has some points to make about technology being a double edged sword with manipulation of media fed to a character making him act against character. Never quite seeing the real world and worlds within worlds seems to be a heavy plot element.

The story feels episodic, however, it does have an introduction middle and resolution. It's just that one crisis has been resolved, only to make wider matters worse and the future look bleak for the Aseir. A large war is now now being waged on two sides, which look like they might unite in their hatred.

Baldur is a cold and an unlikeable hero, his treatment of his wife feels wrong. Thor is a horrible mix, a cybernetic superbeing, who drinks like an alcholic and seems terminally stupid. All the aseir seem cold and aloof, and not a bunch of people that feel like they need your support, I might actually start rooting for Loki and the Goblins.

On starting a game you are presented with 5 classes to choose from, which I don't like, there I have said it. It's fine to upgrade your character all you like, but to have to choose before you even know the game, which attributes you will like best is just stupid. I am not going to play any game that takes 15 hours five times over to see all the variances, no matter how interesting they are.

I think I have played only a handful of games more than once through in my life, games like Doom, Half life 1 and 2 and Mass effect. I have to really, really like a game to give it that much time. To suggest to me before playing that I might want to take five classes through a fifteen hour game is a little much. I want one character that all abilities are open to. I chose bioengineer at random. After all the stats meant little too me with know experience. Five times fifteen is seventyfive hours. If you want the full levels in each class that is doubled to 150 hours play time. Later on in the game you are given the choice of staying human or having technological implants, again the implications of these choice isn't clear enough and they are unchangeable.

The combat is fairly deep. As it should be being the main focus of the game. Using the right stick swings whatever weapon is equipped, swords, hammers, poles. The left and right triggers shoot pistols or fire grenades and bullets from rifles. If you are near an enemy and facing it you lock on, pushing the stick in the direction of the enemy strikes it or slides Baldur towards the enemy and strikes. Double tapping the stick will make Baldur deliver an uppercut which throws then enemy in the air where good timing with your guns will keep it in the air with the force of your firepower.

You can also lock onto various body parts of the larger enemies and shoot pieces off of them. Pointing both sticks in a direction at once sends a larger blast from your current weapon which is very useful.

Baldur has a Norn spider weapon on his back which performs special attacks depending on your class with a press of the Y button. The X button performs healing spells, at least on the bioengineer class. As you fight a combo meter fills and once full you can unleash an explosive type special attack called a finisher with the right button.

There are about seven types of enemy robot, all with their own attack patterns and combat strategies. They drop weapons and armour when they die and there are pillars dotted around which also unleash collectibles. Note must be made of the sheer amount of attackers, usually no less then seven at one attacking you for the most part of the game.

Some enemies explode or freeze or poison on contact, making their destruction a priority as they charge at you. The enemy simply run at you, or stand still and shoot bombs until you get close. No prizes for a.i. here.

Cyberspace takes the form of a well, where once you enter you are transported to a small area of virtual real estate where actions taken impact on doors and machinery in the real world. The cyber environments are forests and rivers which clash with the bleak frost ravaged world of Midgard which seems to be in the grip of an ice age caused by the Aseir themselves.

When you die a valkyrie comes down from above and lifts you up and vanishes with you. You then respwan a little further back from where you died. The enemies are left with the damage you dealt them and you simply have to wear them down. Each time you are respawned your current armour becomes damaged and less effective leading to a quicker and quicker death unless you change the armour.

There are four main levels, and they are huge. each one takes a good hour or two to complete. Between each level you return to a city where story cut scenes are triggered and you can wander around and buy armour and weapons at the shops.

There is a huge variety of weapons and armour. Swords, poles, hammers, pistols, rifles. Armor consists of helmet, gloves, chest piece, trousers and boots. Each item can be given upgrades in the form of runes making it more effective. Weapon blueprints can be found in cyberspace and then manufactured at a cost in the real world. Weapons collected can be sold to make money for newer models. The combinations are huge and you spend a lot of time juggling your inventory. Which is fun, however the menu's are a little more confusing than needs to be at first. A steep learning curve. Though I am sure if you have played similar games before it will be a breeze. If you haven't be prepared to spend a long time weighing up armor points, weapon damage stats and buying and selling endless lists of weapons. A best possible button would have made a lot of micro management redundant. Still a lot of people like this kind of thing. I have to say I do too, though I feel a bit nerdier for admitting it.

There are many large robots which could be considered bosses, well they are earlier in the game and then repeated on the later levels a lot. There is a fight with another Aseir called Hode, also a huge dog which belongs to Hel and Hel herself is the final boss. Her fight is long and protracted, chasing her through her Fortress.

The boss battles are wars of attrition really, there is never any doubt you will win, it's just how effectively you can manage it.

The levels have a feeling of grandeur, which is carried by scale alone, there is little opulence with basically big halls and tunnels. The characters are an interesting cross between viking and cybernetic futuristic. It has to be said that some armors make Baldur look a little daft. There is no real design to the levels, they are simply just big long corridors punctuated with the odd area open to the sky. The first one is meant to be something to do with barges that take away the dead to Hel, referenced by the odd moving coffin. The last Hel's fortress with it's undead hordes. The other two levels have themes, ice forest and the ship of the world serpent. In the end though there is little spectacle or of memory. The city is the best looking area and it is rather small.

The engine seems fine, however, there are various clipping issues, especially the valkyrie and the floor never seem quite well matched. The frame rates seem pretty good for the most part with a large number of enemies and explosions going on. There is slowdown but it isn't really that noticeable.

Sound is average, with theatrical music and good sound effects. Checkpoints are very regular and death only ever seems to send you back a small distance. Menus are a little cluttered, but that is excusable by the amount of information they contain.

I received 535 achievement points. I'm happy with that for one play-through. Again to get all the points they seem to be asking far too much of your time for one game.

Multiplayer is fun, I have worked through a few levels with strangers online. You never really get much of a sense of teamwork however, you tend to get attacked by a circle of enemies each and only come together when attacking the larger robots. I never take off any points or give them for multiplayer in my review scores. I do comment on multiplayer when I play it, however only a few games get much play from me online. Those I have to say tend to be the ones my friends play. I don't have anyone on my friends list playing this game and to be honest I don't really fancy hours on end with strangers one on one in this game. Same goes for Fable II to be honest, which is a shame that all my friends want to play is shooters like Bad Company, Rainbow Six and Call of Duty. I think it could be fun if you had a good rapport with someone who was enthusiastic to play Too Human.

The biggest problem i have with the game is the wisdom of leaving out weapons and abilities that need a game to be played through two times to unlock. If I walk into a restaurant I don't expect to be given a meal that is only three quarters compete only to be awarded the full meal on the second or third visit.

If you only buy one game every month then yes there is replay value here. You can happily run through the game ten times with the five classes and upgrade them all to the maximum. I am sure if you really liked this game then you could do that happily.

The problem I have is one of time. I am not rich, nor am I poor. I buy on average a game each week. I play some games for longer than others and I have a backlog of games sitting on my shelf that I have bought and never got around to playing yet. So with Too human completed I have Mercenaries 2, The Force Unleashed and some older games still sitting to waiting to play. I don't have the time, nor unfortunately the inclination to play Too Human over and over looking for the best from it. If I can't see it at it's best first time then I am sorry I am going to miss out on the best.

Scoring

Graphics 7

Gameplay 7

Story 7

Level Design 5

A.i. 5

Total 6.2

Tomb Raider: Legend Review

2008-09-30T14:12:00.001-07:00

It's Tomb Raider one remade using the 10 year advance in hardware and engine technology. Is it any good? Will this game stand up to the test of time and can they make a better game with ten years practice?

Most people who play this will have some knowledge of the original or will have played other Tomb Raider games. Therefore they may have played the original and already know the story and levels presented here. Will a remake do a genre justice that tends to have little re-playabilty, once you have worked out the puzzles, it's never the same again replaying a Tomb Raider game. The magic is lost, and it becomes an exercise in memory and repetition. The fun is in scratching you head working out what to do and where to jump to.

Lara Croft is approached by a man called Larson on the behalf of a woman named Natla, who happens to own Natla industries, a very large multinational. Lara is asked to look for the scion of Atlantis, at first Lara is skeptical as there are no leads to it's location. Natla provides her with one and she cannot resist going after the fabled artifact. Lara finds herself deep in Qualopec's tomb searching for the scion. After much work she finds it only to have Larson who has followed her try and kill her to claim the scion from her. Lara escapes leaving Larson unconscious and goes back to Natla for answers. Finding Natla missing from her offices she goes after the second of three parts of the scion, which Natla has leads on. The story progresses to some dangerous reveals about the nature of Atlantis and Natla, who isn't what she seems. Leading to Lara desperately fighting to save the world from subjugation from a horde of genetically engineered monsters controlled by an evil godlike power.

The story is told through cut scenes at the beginning and end of each level, there is little dialogue and interaction in the actual levels, Tomb raider for the most part is a solitary game, Lara spends many a lonely hour with only the tombs and some wild animals for company.

There has been an attempt to inject some emotion into the story, which is mostly the same as the first game except for a little streamlining. Lara's guilt at taking a life and her subsequent doubts and temptations about her descent into darkness are new to the story. Looking at the blood on her hands you almost feel sorry for what Lara has been forced to become in her quest. At first a desire to complete her fathers work, and ends up with her becoming a monster to fight another much more dangerous creature.

How would I define a Tomb raider game? Well you have large enclosed rooms with platforms, somewhere in the room is an objective and you have to manipulate objects and work out a path to reach the objective before moving on to the next.

Lara has a few abilities, she can shoot at things using a variety of weapons, shotgun, pistols, machine gun. She can also use a grappling hook to swing from, wall run and pull objects with. She can also climb on vertical columns, swim underwater, move crates and balls around, and finally perch on top of thin columns.

The environment is the puzzle for the most part, it is also hostile, falling too far, spikes from walls and floor, collapsing rope bridges, moving platforms and poles, huge indiana jones style rolling balls, flaming platforms and steam jets. crushing walls and ceilings, huge scythe like whirling blades. collapsing platforms.

Some platforms, poles and grapple hooks, lower or recede into the wall when you reach them or run out of time making timing important. If you take too long you fall to your death or have to reset and try again.

Puzzles take the form of finding keys, missing cogs from machinery to repair a dam, shooting certain jewels in fresco's to open doors, moving water levels up and down to reach certain areas. On several occasions you are asked to insert three or four artifacts into an object to open access to the next area. There are a few places where there are little mini-game puzzles, involving rotating scarabs, turning pillars so that symbols match. These have a logic, or a handy guide located on the hieroglyphs nearby. Though there was one of them that I half got the idea of and managed to do only by trial and error.

In one room there is a good puzzle where you have to bring down pillars so that light reflections make a pyramid shape that shines on a lock and opens the door. For variety at one point you have control of a crane which you must use to make jumps possible and also to smash down a piece of the scenery to progress. Another neat puzzle is one where a dopple ganger of Lara mirrors your actions in a symmetrical room. the problem is if you flip the switch to open the door she also flips the one that closes it. You have to use the environment to your advantage to take her out of the equation.

The puzzling in the game is balanced and logical for the most part, however maddeningly at time the developers use some dirty tricks. There are a few well hidden switches that really should be more obvious. I can see the developers quandary when it comes to making certain puzzles, some explanation should be given when the player is really struggling, a hint system that could be turned on or off even.

There is one particular puzzle that I am thinking about. You have a handhold and a path that is clearly visible as the right way to go, but you can't jump up to it as it's only a finger stretch out of Lara's reach. I spent ages trying to work out what to do. I eventually caved in an watched a you tube video walkthrough, where I learned that you have to swing on the grapple hook that swings you to that area twice or thrice increasing momentum which makes the jump achievable. There are other sections like this, in one area you cant seem to get into a room, it's easy you shoot out the glass window and you can easily get in, the only thing is there is no reason for you to suspect you can shoot out the glass, it's near the end of the game and the first time that glass has been seen, as there is a shortage of glass windows in most of the Tombs. It is just a new concept, and as such hard to make the logic leap to. The game needs a system, once a player has been wandering around aimlessly in an area for say half an hour that the game just displays a hint of what to do. Surely play testers give this sort of advice to the developers and they can add this to the areas where it's most needed.

Solutions just aren't always as obvious as they should be, which is a problem with Tomb Raider as a game in general. You are presented with large rooms, with lots of interactive scenery, and most of the time the objective is unclear. To be fair the game does sometimes shows you a hint by showing you a view of where to go, but not always. You are simply presented with the ability to explore the area trying everything you can think of until you realize the objective and then work out how to get to it and achieve it. There were a few times during my playthrough of the game that I felt disenheartened by completing a huge area, moving on to the next and finding yet another huge challenege. I didn't feel this way with Tomb Raider Legend.

It seems to be a problem with my familiarity with the game. Having played and really enjoyed the original on Playstation one and PC, completing it on both. I was familiar with the story and my memory was jogged by most of the levels, which are certainly not exactly the same as the first game, but the settings are. At times I found myself wishing the game was a bit shorter. That might sound silly, by the time I finsished this game the savegame clock said that I had spent very nearly twenty hours with Lara. That is almost the same as My first playthrough of Mass Effect. It felt like twenty hours though, playing Mass effect I was ready for another twenty. Gta IV I spent forty hours on and lost track of time. I am not sure why I felt like this, maybe I shouldn't complain about a game being good value for money and a challenge. I just got weary with this one, maybe it was a case of deja vu that caused this, that is what I am going to pin it down to. If you haven't played the original take it as a glowing recommendation, that this game will take you nearly twenty hours to complete and is excellent value for money. Especially if you take the option of buying this as downloadable content for Tomb Raider Legend, which makes it much cheaper.

The enemies are there to add some variety and a use for your guns apart from the boss fights. They include bats, bears, wolves, raptors, rats, gorillas, crocodiles, cougars, mummy cat humans things and big mummified birds that shoot fire. The objects you have to find are keys to doors in all but name, though some are interesting, at one point you have to find lead bars and turn them into gold using a statue of Midas whose hand had the ability to turn anything to solid gold, including Lara if she is silly enough to land on it.

A big questions that has always baffled me is why are these previously unexplored for thousands of year old tombs littered with guns, ammo and health. Surely it's time to let go of the old health bar and have Lara's health rebuild over time as long as no further damage is incurred. Also her pistol weapons have infinite ammo which is unrealistic, so why not have the other guns the same. I am aware that I want to swap one unrealistic feature for another here, but everyone I have ever spoken to about Tomb raider has mentioned the question of who leaves the ammo lying about, if there was a skeleton or decomposing corpse of a failed adventurer lying beside the ammo that would also be a good way of explaining the issue.

Thrown in for added value are quicktime events in the cut scenes. Something I never really like, especially when they get as complicated as guitar Hero on expert to complete, Spiderman III i am looking at you here.

There are also collectibles scattered in areas off the beaten path, which unlock concept art, outfits for Lara and also achievements.

At it's heart Tomb raider is a platform game, and it does it well, jumping around as Lara is a great experience, she is agile and strong, with her gymnastics. For anyone who loves the 3D platform genre, it's a must play. Be aware though, that there are some times when you scream at Lara and feel nothing but glee as she plummets to her doom and breaks every bone in her body in a sickeningly convincing thud. Her controls are excellent, just sometimes a little finicky as to which direction she will jump when swinging or hanging from things. The camera can be a pain in smaller area, especially when fighting monsters, one area near the end has targets you shoot which start time clock mechanisms, each time you shoot one for the first time two monsters are spawned, trying to get the lock on to choose the monsters and not the targets can be very hard when you are on a small ledge avoiding fire bolts.

The a.i. is very simple, the monsters basically run at you and attack, the shooting monsters shoot if you are at a certain distance otherwise they attack physically if you are close enough. At one point I saw two wolves running on the spot facing a wall, and shot them down, while they continued in the same locked animation. To be fair a.i. isn't a problem, this is a puzzle for your intelligence, not artificial.

There are four boss fights, all of them challenging, the first two especially. Dinosaurs, mythical beasts, all with good animation and a different strategy for beating them. The boss fights however are good examples of the lack on intuitiveness that the game displays. The first two bosses both require certain actions that aren't made very clear, both require a lot of practice to get past on the hard difficulty setting. Expect to look up a FAQ for these bosses, which I feel is a failing, as you should be given enough of a clue to get through without needing a guide.

The bosses all require use of the enraging system. This means that as you shoot a creature it becomes enraged, as shown by a bar that goes up when you are locked onto it. Once the bar is full a sparkle comes from the creatures head and it will charge you, at one point in it's charge a button press shows on the screen, hit it right and the game goes into bullet time and two targets converge on the creatures head. Hit the fire button at the correct time and the monster will be killed outright or suffer massive damage. When two or more baddies are attacking this can be confusing a glitchy.

Level design has always been a triumph of Tomb Raider. Each area is a lovingly crafted puzzle box designed to look like an ancient tomb, Roman, greek, egyptian, peruvian, and the mythological Atlantean architecture are well designed. Mostly workmanlike, but occasionally breathtakingly beautiful. There are fourteen huge levels to work your way through.

Graphics aren't actually bad, though they don't push any technical envelopes at all. workmanlike and dependable, frame rate can vary when the amount of details changes when panning the camera, but it's never a noticeable slowdown problem when playing properly. The character models when seen in the in game engine cut scenes show their lack of polygons, Natla especially.

Sound is there, yes, some dramatic music when beasties leap out at you, some tinkly relaxing music at other times, which is needed as you scream and throw the controller when Lara misses a ledge you were sure you were going to be able to reach.

Checkpoints are employed well. There is an ability to save, but it only saves at the last checkpoint, not at any point in the game.

There were no places where checkpoints were too widely spaced. Someone has made a study of seeing where in the game you would get killed and has placed a checkpoint before each one, this must be applauded as there are a whole lot of frustrating jumps, and knowing that you will be placed only a few paces back after trying something stupid that might or might not pay off encourages you to experiment.

The front end is satisfactory, some clear, plainly written menus and some nice extras including artwork etc. All unlocked during in game exploits.

There were a few glitches that I noticed, at one point the game froze and when i switched off and rebooted the save game insisted I was about an hour further back that I was, the only option was to repeat about an hours work. Which probably took half the time when you know what you are doing.

There was one area where a box that was moveable sank into the floor leaving only the top of it showing, I could still drag it around the room, sunk deep into the concrete floor.

There were a few jumps which seemed to only work when the game was feeling in an especially good mood, one in particular which I did about ten times in an area i couldn't work out, and would only let Lara catch the ledge on one out of ten tries. maybe I was going the wrong way, but I knew it worked, and was the only way I could see back up out of the pit. There are also a few areas where Lara sunk into the floor to her knees.

I received 185 achievement points for completing the game on hard. The achievements I didn't get are for completing the levels and finding all artifacts, and without dying, also under a certain time. To get them all would require several passes through the game, as some of the artifacts are very well hidden and death is only a mistimed jump away. Rock hard achievements then, in a game I was wishing over after about halfway, looks like I will have to settle for my 185 points.

There is no multiplayer, and it's not needed. Co-op might be an idea for these types of game. Might be fun to have a friend work out the puzzles with you.

Scoring

Graphics 7

Gameplay 7

Story 8

Level Design 8

A.i. 5

Total Score 7.0

The Club Review

2008-09-30T14:11:00.001-07:00

The premise behind the club is simple. An organization employs or blackmails 8 individuals with superior firearms and athletic ability to perform in an extreme murder sports league. The heroes are tasked with various goals in a series of filmed gunfight events for the entertainment of the ultra rich.

That's it, no real plot, just the tournament. It's really rather akin to a racing game, in that you have events and you are looking for the best score.

There are several introductions to the characters and the owner of the club. Also once the game is completed on tournament mode with each character you get another cut scene for each one showing more of their brief story.

The game is viewed from a third person perspective, there is no cover system. Though you can duck behind objects by pressing the left stick. You can zoom in for more precise aiming. Your character can vault over low objects and break through some barriers. Pressing Y turns your character 180 degrees which can be quite handy when fire comes from behind.

You can melee attack and throw grenades. The game is very much run and gun, with several of the events against the clock there is little time to stand still.

There are several ways of playing, however the intended first choice is tournament where you play through the game in a set way.

There are 8 locations, a steelworks, Venice, a prison, an ocean liner, a warehouse, a manor house, a bunker and a war-zone. In each of these locations there is a selection of eight events. There are 5 types of event siege, sprint, survivor, time attack and run the gauntlet.

Siege

This game-type sees you hemmed into a small area by markers, if you stray outside the markers for more than five seconds you explode thanks to explosives implanted in you. You basically have to shoot as many of the hordes of attackers as you can and survive for the length of time specified.

Sprint

You have to go from point A to point B as quickly and as efficiently as you can, you are given marks on time taken, amount of bullets used, head-shots etc.

Survivor

Much like Siege only with a larger area.

Time Attack

This game-type has an area marked off like a track and you have to complete a set number of laps without dying or running out of time. Time can be gained by shooting enemies or little signs placed around the level.

Run the Gauntlet

Very like sprint except this one is against the clock as well.

So, basically, instead of the usual eight levels strung together and the player working their way through them. You have 5 event types in each area. Some events reuse parts of the location, others don't, think of the locations like small sandbox levels with each event fencing off or laying down chalk marks to denote the area for each event.

Personally I found the sprint levels to be the best for my playing style. I tend to spray and pray a little and the basic getting from one end of the level to the other felt right. The survivor and siege sections were averagely tolerable.

The time attack and run the gauntlet spoiled the game for me. Running out of time was a real pain. Yes there is a lot of skill involved and perversely taking your time on the time attack and shooting each and every enemy and time sign works best. It's just that on the hard difficulty the time limits are very very tight.

The actual difficulty of the game isn't that hard. I know I could have breezed it, however I was forced to go to the normal and ultimately the easy setting for the last location time attack.

The problem is compounded by the fact that you get five goes at each event before being sent back to the start of the tournament. For example you have to complete 7 events to find that the last event in the tournament for a location is time attack. You then fail that time attack five times and are dumped at the menu. Where to get back to the time attack you have to do seven events that you have already completed again. I hated time attack, really really hated it to the point i considered stopping playing this game.

Playing with different characters is slightly different, with some being slow damage sponges and others faster. There is little to distinguish all 8 of them however other than their looks. Like the difference between fine wines some people it will just be lost on, and I was one of them.

There are various collectibles like health and ammo, also the signs to shoot for time a score.

I can't help but wonder if this game would have grabbed me better if it had been presented in the normal fashion. Having a story with all eight levels strung together is a semblance of plot.

I understand the idea here. Bizarre creations have taken the menu system from Project Gotham racing and implemented it into a shooter. Bringing the Kudos system with it for luck.

You are playing for score, to see your name on the leader board. I imagine people playing these events over and over again so they can run faster than seems possible through the levels killing each enemy with a single headshot and hitting each hidden sign. Ranking up huge scores and sitting at number one on the leader board to the envy of their friends. Just like a racer, practice makes perfect.

It's innovative, even if the game itself isn't, I have to give them that. I don't like it though. Against the clock gaming now goes down in my pet hates list.

I managed to complete the tournament technically finishing the game, but this is a game you can never really finish until you have the highest score.

The a.i. is satisfactory, it takes cover and runs at you. Nothing innovative there. There are no boss fights at all. The levels are video game cliches from every other shooter out there and there is only really corridor level design shown.

Graphics are average, good frame rate, though nothing that taxing anyway. Sound, what can I say, it has some. There are no checkpoints or save system as they aren't needed due to the short event style structure. Menus are instantly familiar to players of PGR, everything seems clear enough.

I played the game for roughly six hours, around three of those were too long. I only got 360 achievement points, I felt cheated I should have got the whole 1000 for the amount of frustration that time attack caused me.

The multiplayer I gave a try and it seemed to be still populated, and not actually that bad in an old school way. No ranks or xp points to nerd over here.

I actually wanted to snap the game disc a few times, not a good thing really. Though what that says about me is about as much as it says about the game. I hated it, it pushed my buttons in all the wrong ways. What I think is so stinging is that the sprint events were really good fun. I liked them a lot. The game could have been good, as it is for me it's something I wish I had never bought.

This must be tempered though as for the person that enjoys playing a game with style and grace it might just be a perfect fit and deserve a higher score. The score it gets here would be upgrades to the 6.0 area if there were no time attack events. Even so the content here is slim pickings and experienced shooter experts can expect less than the six hours I spent with the game.

In short flawed and too short, a real missed opportunity.

Scoring

Graphics 7

Gameplay 5

Story 0

Level Design 5

A.i. 5

Total 4.4

Battlefield: Bad Company Review

2008-09-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

Preston Marlowe has been a naughty boy, instead of being court marshaled he is transferred into Bad company. Landing at the base he meets Sarge Redfield along with Sweetwater and Haggard. Bad company it turns out is a place for the rejects and nutjobs. The army hopes they will all get blown to bits and hence solve the problem. Sometimes though the nutjobs actually do a good job, even if they destroy half the country in the process. The four guys spend most of the time alone directed by a female radio operator that Sweetwater has a thing for.

In the wreckage of the first mission the boys discover a mercenaries body and a bar of gold. This sets in motion a chain of events that sees the boys trying for a little private financial enterprise inside their objectives from the Army. However, once the scent of a truckload of gold is sniffed they go awol looking for the gold. By the end of the game we see them invading a neutral country all on their own, getting in tow with an insane dictator and taking apart half of Eastern Europe to get their hands on the mercenary gold. there are many twists and turns, and the hero's go from being official sanctioned warriors to awol terrorists, to being back into the fold, but unofficially, if they are caught then the army will deny all knowledge.

Sweetwater and Haggard are the stars of the show however. The pair of them are huge stereotypes, but they are funny. Sweetwater is a geeky nerd and Haggard an explosion loving idiot redneck. His antics nearly get you all killed too many times to mention. The best one I remember is when he fills a helicopter with fuel in the wrong nozzle, necessitating Sweetwater to clean it out before you can escape the enemy army that is descending onto your position. The one liners and dialogue that Haggard especially comes up with are very entertaining. What is essentially a generic and cliched dull first person shooter story-line is made one hundred percent better by the use of comedy. Who would have thought it would work, I for one enjoyed the characters and dialogue in this game immensely.

Bad company is the latest in a series of games which take the normal FPS gameplay into large free roaming maps, giving you vehicles to traverse the distances.

You start with a quick tutorial to explain weapons and controls and introduce the drill which restores the health of vehicles.

One of the things you realize early on is that there is no real penalty for death in this game. There is a finite amount of enemies in the areas and when you die the only inconvenience is that you might re-spawn at some distance from where you died. There is no amount of lives as in similar games like Frontlines fuel of war. This leads to what I am going to term the Bioshock syndrome.

Remember in Bioshock, if you died you simple re-spawned at the nearest chamber. The damage done to the enemies stayed the same. You could go through the entire game with the wrench bashing the big daddies to death. It would take you about a hundred respwans per big daddy, but it was possible. There is simply not enough punishment for sloppy play. You can run around in the open getting shot to hell without fear. Simply shoot one guy, come back again a few seconds later and kill another, there is no incentive other than personal pride in taking out a hundred enemies before dying or taking out one. This really means that the game will be finish-able by everyone irrespective of their skill. To be fair in one or two areas you do fail and have to restart from the last checkpoint if you loose a mission specific object like a helicopter that is needed for progression.

There is the, now obligatory, arsenal of similar weapons, of course there are shotguns and sniper rifles and assault rifles. You can call down air-strikes, mortar strikes and put down c4 charges. grenades and grenade launchers etc. The vehicles are varied, jeeps, tanks, apc's, golf buggies, helicopters, dinghies. All control well and allow you to switch seats and use guns or drive. Thankfully the a.i. characters don't drive.

The a.i. characters have the usual appearance of doing some shooting but never really seem to be getting anywhere unless you do it all for them. Which is I suppose as it should be. Grenades i must comment on as although they do seem to blow up buildings etc. they don't seem to kill soldiers as easily as you would expect. Although an exploding barrel seems to take out more than it should.

Missions are fairly basic, you start at one point and must get to another, then new objectives until the end of the level. Examples of what you are asked to do include, blowing up a cast of thousands of objects including tanks, artillery emplacements, fuel dumps, radar installations, missile launchers, radio equipment, antenna boxes, anti-aircraft guns, a small town, bridges, and a silo. In addition to these missions you have protecting convoys, storming locations like a palace, harbor, monastery and armory. You get separated, reunited, have to save people.

There are some on rails sequences where you ride shotgun on tanks and jeeps etc driven by others. Some stand out missions include driving a fuel laden truck around a battlefield, which is like driving a bomb. There is also a mission where you have to take down a helicopter after running the gauntlet along a railway line with a crashed train littering the way.

You can blow most walls down, though the structure of buildings can't be broken. However, you can leave them as shells, which means cover for the bad guys is a thing of the past.

There are gold bars and weapons littered around the maps to make you explore for collectables.

The health system employs the age old chestnut of a number counting down with damage from 100 percent. The gimmick here is that you carry a hypodermic that restores full health without you having to search out health packs. You can take damage as much as you want as long as you get out of the way of fire and use the hypodermic. Which is controlled with a flick of a button and a trigger press. This is slightly more sane as a game mechanic than just taking cover and recovering from bullet wounds, though only just.

The checkpoints usually come when an objective is reached. Ammo is freely available from enemies dropped guns and crates littered around the maps.

The a.i. is standard, there is nothing really to praise here. I doubt the a.i. code has been touched since the first battlefield. If it has been, and i am sure it has then it escaped my attention. They use cover, sprinkled with running at you. They don't seem to go into cover just spawn there. This isn't a criticism of Battlefield rather than most FPS games. Compared to Rainbow six Vegas the a.i. needs work.

No bosses as such just storming heavily guarded areas to get to objectives. The helicopter at the end of the game could be classed as a boss battle i suppose.

There are seven single player maps which are huge with realistic looking countryside and buildings. The golf course level stands out for sheer originality, a tank on the fairway should have golf-course keepers throwing a stroke.

Graphics are excellent, especially detailed are the characters, Preston's polygon count easily tallies that of Snake in MGS4, his armor having similar texture style. The frostbite engine looks to have a bright future, with little frame rate drop even when you take the helicopter to it's highest altitude. The graphics are above average, on a par with Call of Duty 4, maybe if the size of the maps are taken into account actually a bit better.

Sound is acceptable with some nice oddball goofy music choices when you are in vehicles and can hear the radio.

After playing through the game on hard i was awarded 415 achievement points. Which is I suppose acceptable for a game with such a large multiplayer focus. The biggest complaint here is that you don't unlock the easy and medium level achievements which cheats you out of 120 points you should have got for playing through on hard. To all developers, never do this, it is a real turn off. If I want to play your game three times I will, making me do it for achievement points you should get for going through on hard the first time won't do it. That said though I will play through this game again.

I don't play enough multiplayer to really review the multiplayer portion of this game properly, so I won't, suffice to say it has it's fans and I am sure it is very enjoyable for it's fans. I simply put don't really rate multiplayer unless it's co-op. Co-op should have been included here in the single player game.

I only saw one glitch, which occured when a tank got stuck under a bridge. the problem was blowing up that tank was a mission objective. I was lost and waiting to be told how to progress, I eventually found the stuck tank and blew it up and the game carried on as normal. I have to say that is the only isolated glitch that i encountered.

Scoring

Graphics 8

Gameplay 8

Story 8

Level Design 8

A.i. 5

Total score 7.4

Army of Two Review

2008-09-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

At first I thought this game was going to have little to no story whatsoever. The player is thrown into the action with little introduction. From what I had heard of the game before playing it I wasn't expecting a huge story either. I was surprised to find a rather intriguing story.

The game follows the fortunes of two Soldiers Rios and Salem. At the beginning of the game they are soldiers in the US army. Tired of following orders that get them into situations rather more deadly than they would like they take an offer from a man called Dalton to join a private security company called SSC. During this first mission the player is introduced to Clyde, another mercenary who is in charge of the mission. From the off the two heros are given cause to hate the very deadly and arrogant Clyde.

The heroes come into good fortune through misfortune, the war on terror in full swing gives SSC plenty of work. As the story progresses Our heroes find themselves uncovering a huge plot which will affect the entire US army. Having discovered the plot the Heroes are duped and framed for a murder of a prominent Senator. This leaves them on the run and having to decide wether to vanish with their fortune or do the right thing and go back and take down the plotters.

The story is told in cut scenes and also plays out to a certain extent in the actual game itself which is to be applauded.

The debate opened up here about the ultimate aims of a company that profits from human misery is actually very deep for a shooter. I wasn't expecting it at all. The tone is a little off however, Rios and Salem seem a little unlikely as guys who would do the right thing. With their Gears of War style grunt look, that suggest more muscle than nervous tissue.

Army of two uses a third person perspective. There is no stick to cover mechanism which makes it feel more like a run and gun game than Gears of War. There is plenty of cover, and you can duck behind it pretty easily, there is just less incentive to do so than say in Gears or Uncharted.

The title of the game is Army of Two and it does make a big play on just that, the game is meant to be played with two co-op players or with the games a.i. partner. There are a whole host of what feel like shoehorned mechanics to emphasize the two person motif.

The first is an aggro meter which basically goes up the more you aggravate the enemies. If both players shoot at the same time then it stays the same. If one player shoots and the other does not then the non-firing player will change color to blue and the shooting player turns red. Not entirely, just a translucent tinge. This means that the a.i. will practically ignore the cool player and concentrate on the hot player. This can be used to tactical advantage to sneak up on emplaced guns and flank enemy positions. It becomes a necessity to use when playing with the a.i. partner.

Secondly there is a mechanic where the two players stand back to back and everything goes into bullet time and enemies come from all around. These sections trigger by themselves at set points in the game, and while fun don't really add that much to the game.

There is also certain moments in the game where two guards can be taken out simultaneously by sniping at the same time. When co-op snipe is initiated both players choose a target and headshot them together. This means that the alarm isn't raised and less enemies attack you in the next section.

There are larger armored soldiers who are only vulnerable to bullets hitting them in the back, which means that one player must attack them from the front to draw their fire while the other flanks them.

There are also areas of the map where both players have to press buttons to simultaneously lift heavy objects together and use each other to vault up to high areas.

Ultimately all these gameplay mechanics feel tacked onto the gears of war style maps. There are a succession of mostly open areas where a set number of enemies reside and you must kill them all or most of them to proceed. There is even a familiar for whom the bell tolls sound when all enemies have been killed in an area.

There are what seems like little airlocks, which are really to hide the joins between two levels loading.

Weapons are bought from between level menus with cash you accquire for completing missions and in game objectives. There are a few objectives that are optional in each mission, such as destroying a certain truck or person. Also there are collectible laptops and suitcases with intelligence which is paid for by the SSC if collected.

There are a few times when you are parachuted into an area, sometimes you drive the chute, other times you shoot at enemies from the chute, both of you are tied to the same chute.

On a few occasions you rescue a person and have to carry them out of the area. They can be picked up and put down while you clear the area of enemies.

If one player is killed then they fall to the ground wounded, the other player then has about thirty seconds to come and administer first aid. If this is done then it's back to the fighting otherwise it's back to the last checkpoint. This is fine when playing with a friend, when playing with the a.i. partner it can be a lesson in frustration.

On one occasion i died at the edge of a map behind a large crate, the a.i. circled three sides of the crate, but was unable to get to my position to save me. That is an extreme example which happened only once, however, there are many times when you scream in frustration at poor decisions the a.i. partner makes when hauling you to cover to heal you.

You also have to save the a.i. if it gets killed. You have several commands to give it however, you can make it move forward aggressively, hold position passively or follow you like a lap dog. This give you the option to allow it too attack aggressively but also keep an eye on it's health and order it to retreat to safety when it's getting pounded.

There is a section where you get to drive a hovercraft, which is fun, though it does feel a little tacked on and feels very like the similar section in Perfect Dark Zero. Also there is an on rails section in a monorail car.

The a.i. in this game takes a target and sticks it to it's head. Having both enemy a.i. and partner a.i. The enemy a.i. is pretty standard, they take cover, use gun emplacement, run at you shooting when you get too close. Nothing new, and fairly effective in large numbers. They make no effort to flank your position or anything clever.

The partner a.i. is actually reasonably good. Though I have to qualify that it is once you learn to allow it to fight and then reign it back when it's taking too much damage. Once you have that balance and really learn how to control it then it does a good job. It will annoy you and if you want a good experience from Army of Two then play it online with a real human partner.

Enemies are a variety of soldiers, and armored soliders. There are enough character models to provide variety, but you will know all the models well by the time the game is over. There are also some exploding enemies, which is a personal hate of mine, in the form of arabs with bombs strapped to them.

Boss fights are present in that in most missions there is a certain person that has to be stopped. When you meet up with them they have more health than the normal soldiers but they don't really do that much different other than having bigger guns than the usual soldiers.

The game does have some nice environments. With the story ranging around several countries including Iraq, Somalia, China and Hurricane torn Florida. There is a rather good shoot out on the deck of an aircraft carrier which was well designed. The levels all felt fairly accurate to the real world. There were some areas which felt like box rooms joined by endless corridor. But for the most part the levels felt like areas modeled on real world locations.

Graphics are good, there is little frame rate drop and everything seems to be running at around 30 frames a second for the most part. The game uses unreal engine. It's not doing anything new or pushing new boundaries, but it isn't doing anything wrong either.

Sound is satisfactory, Music and effects are as you would expect from a shooter.

The checkpoints are for the most part excellent, you do only have one save slot which is really not the best option. The checkpoints are sometimes a little unfair around the later levels but not that annoying.

I found the menus functional and clear, however when starting a game the most common options should be under the gamers fingers. You shouldn't have to scroll through menus to start the game at the last checkpoint you played from. If you weren't paying attention it could be easy to start a new game rather than start at the last checkpoint, its an unnecessary frustration. And one save slot is a stupid idea really.

I came away with 340 points over 5 days play, playing a couple of hours each day. I played on the contractor difficulty which is the highest you can play on without completing the game to unlock the hardest difficulty. The remaining achievements are for shooting a certain number of people with each gun or using melee attacks. Also whilst at the highest aggro level. In short they would need a little bit of effort spent on each one to target a specific weapon and use it until the achievement pops up. There are also multiplayer achievements.

Multiplayer is present for those who are interested, It took too long to find a game suggesting that the multiplayer isn't the busiest. Co-op is fun if you have any friends that are playing it, or like talking to strangers for 10 hours.

Scoring

Graphics 7

Gameplay 8

Story 8

Level Design 8

A.i. 8

Total 7.8

Alone in the Dark Review

2008-09-30T14:07:00.001-07:00

You are dropped into the midst of the story, using one of the best gaming and indeed all kinds of narrative gimmicks. Having lost your memory. Edward is being held captive along with a priest named Theo, the baddies seem to have already achieved what they want i.e. having you both captive. The head bad guy is named Crowley, which must be a reference to Alastair Crowley, famous author of similar tales. Funny that, I thought the Alone in the dark series was based more on H.P. Lovecraft. Maybe this new iteration is borrowing more from Crowley. Crowley sends you off with a henchman to be killed, since it seems we are no longer useful.

As we are being taken to the roof living cracks in the walls appear and suck the henchman in with a fountain of his own blood left as the only trace. The whole building comes apart and it's a race to escape it and the deadly cracks. The dead start to come back posessed by a creature that tells us that Edward was once also possessed by it and is now free much to it's disgust. It wants him back, naturally Edward wants to get as far away as possible.

Meeting up with a woman called Sarah and Theo again the trio escape by car through a New York that is exploding around them to central park. Once there the mysteries behind the demon and central park itself are explored. Edward finds out about his past, which is much more than meets the eye. Demons are battled and sacrifices are made, but will it be enough to stop Hell from breaking out all over the world?

The story is adequate for the most part, it does seem confused at times, with various elements that I will not go into for fear of spoilers, adding a murky confusion. I was never sure about the demon in the stone's identity. The Templar's intentions in building the secret of central park, or Hermes's intentions. Was edward being played for a fool by everyone involved? Did he save the day or bring about armageddon?

I just can't be sure, I can think what I want to think, but the story just wasn't explained enough for me to be one hundred percent sure of the outcome. Which reeks of sloppy storytelling. Also most of the plot is given in info dumps by side characters via telephone or face to face cut scenes. There are some nice shock moments and some good dialogue between characters. The first time Edward is confronted by a possessed girl he was helping earlier was genuinely creepy. There is an interesting point where a ghost helps you. Also it has to be said there is a fair amount of cheesy dialogue. I was never sure where the bat monsters and crab things were coming from, also the cocoons and eggs. Where did they spring from?

For a story based adventure the story was rather murky and confused.

The controls for this game are at first very complicated. You can switch between first person and third person view at will. At first it doesn't seem apparent but the first person view is only really for exploring flat open areas and fighting. While the third person view is for the more tomb raider style puzzles. Though both can be used according to your own taste and play style.

If you are failing in a certain area it probably is a good idea to try it in the alternate view.

The inventory system is based on real world physics. You can only carry a certain amount of items, which are displayed in pockets inside your jacket. There are a range of items in the game which can be used to combine with others. For example a bottle of flammable liquid can be combined with a rag to make a molotov cocktail. Bullets can be dipped in flammable liquid to make incendiary bullets. Molotov cocktails can be combined with tape to make sticky bombs. The problem with the inventory system is that the game does not pause while you access it. While this is lifelike, it means you end up rooting in your pockets and struggling with the interface while a monster chews your head.

To save the day there is a favorites system, which allows you to map four buttons to a set of actions. This is invaluable to your progress, I can't stress this enough, I was becoming frustrated with the game until I realized that getting your bullets and dipping them in flammable liquid and loading the gun could be mapped to one button press. It made a particular section that I was finding game breaking easy, and set the tone for the rest of the game.

The problem with the controls is that the game is almost finished by the time you work out all the nuances and actually get good at it. Once I was at the end of the game I was actually ready to play. If I was to play again I would probably enjoy the game much more. The problem is that there is no real replay value here.

Combat is complicated with many ways of dispatching the enemy. Fire is the only way to finish them for good however, if you batter them to the floor with a blunt object they will just get up again. Setting them alight or shooting the cracks on their body with flame bullets is the only way to finish them for good. At first you have to batter them around the head a bit by swinging objects. You hold the object and use an analogue stick to swing it in the desired direction, a novel approach although in practice it's not as fun as it sounds. As you progress you get more equipment and can throw sticky Molotov's at the bad guys or just shoot them with flame bullets which I found the best approach. At first I found that picking up a certain object amongst others was a hit or miss affair, however it comes with practice.

The collapsing building is well done with some tomb raider style jumping and grabbing puzzles. It feels similar to the opening of Half life with the whole place falling apart around us and a cast of extras being bumped off horribly.

The game allows you to get into cars and drive around. There is an open world section inside central park, and another race through the city as it falls apart. The driving is satisfactory, the car handles well, but sometimes you get stuck on scenery that you might think you wouldn't. The drive through the city is frustrating as you have to learn your way through the chaos and sometimes other cars just get in your way at random making death unavoidable and not your fault.

Once into the park though driving is mainly for getting from point to point quickly, cars are also a source of consumable objects.

There are a few tomb raider style sequences. One especially under central park could be ripped from a tomb raider game lock stock and smoking barrel. In these sections you have weighted puzzles, moving blocks, switching off flaming pipes, avoiding electricity, laser trip beams, simple puzzles with bugs following a set pattern, etc.

In some areas there is a black oil on the floor that seems to eat you if you stand on it. You can shine your torch on it and it sizzles and moves away, this allows you to drop flaming objects or glow-sticks around the area and make a safe path. There is also a boss battle with Crowley that sees him flying in a helicopter above you shining the spotlight beam down giving you a safe path to stand in, however the cruel devil makes you dance around for your life for about two minutes before leading you to safety. Apart from a few showdowns with Crowley there is only two other boss fights one with a tentacle made up of thousands of bats and another with a spider centaur demon.

There are some small details that make a difference, for example at some points you have to get lights or elevators working and have to juggle wires to get the connection right. This mechanic is also used to hot-wire the cars you find around central park.

At one point after having been separated from Sarah you struggle to save her only to find her cocooned in a huge monster, having got her out she has gone into cardiac arrest, you have to perform cpr using a sort of rhythm game. This was a nice touch although they got the medical details of the compression to breath ratio way off.

There is also a nice scene where a ghostly figure points in a room at things you need to understand. Although you can spend a while wondering what to do, i spent ages trying to blow open a door until I actually realized the the ghost was pointing to a newspapers clipping on the wall. If you zoom in on the clipping you get a cut scene. I know this might be a spoiler, but honestly it's one you will want to know to prevent half an hour of stumbling around grumbling to yourself getting frustrated.

Sometimes the puzzles can be a little glitchy, at one point when trying to get a forklift truck to raise a ramp i thought it wouldn't work, only to try again a few minutes later at a slightly different angle and have it work perfectly. The forklift is used for a few stacking box type puzzles also, which is variety at least.

One of the biggest sections of the game away from the main story-line is where you have to destroy some evil looking trees, which are called the roots of evil. You have to destroy a certain amount of them to lower a barrier to allow you to lob a Molotov at the beastie creating it. This lets you into an area to continue the plot. There are about 30 roots of evil. Though I think it's possible to complete the game by only doing half of them the score-whore in me did them all for the achievement.

Some are simply out in the open and need set on fire once you have killed all their guardians. Others have some fairly complex puzzling involving timing puzzles, driving puzzles and a bit of logic. A map shows you where each root of evil is on a big enough reconstruction of central park. By the end of the roots objects are getting sparse and there is a lot of backtracking to find firebomb materials.

You can also use your torch to shine through a lens which projects templar symbols onto walls, one big puzzle sees you exploring a castle filled with hazards and tomb raiding to light up all the symbols carved in the rock of the castle and open a door.

Inside the central park tomb area there are some fairly complex puzzles, and some are real lateral thinking headscratchers. Including crushing walls, dropping ceilings and burning wood to collapse masonry. A final driving scene against a tight clock is tense and nail-biting finale, probably more challenging than a boss battle.

Blinking must be given a mention, in several occurrences you must click an analogue stick to blink and clear Edward's vision. The first time this is introduced it's a novelty, by the time you have blinked green gloop out of your eyes for the hundredth time while fighting the scuttling monsters you will be wishing the developers had left out that idea.

Depending on your point of view about difficulty levels this game has no settings for difficulty. It is pitched as usual fairly easy to start with and hard at the end. I doubt adding difficulty levels would have been appropriate to the game, which is why they were probably left out.

The health system is a weird one. As Edward takes damage he is shown as having cuts and scrapes all over him. These affect him as when they get too much he limps a bit. If you are dealt serious damage a "bleeding out" wound is formed which will kill you inside a certain time unless you apply a bandage. Medical spray erases the smaller cuts and you inspect your own body and spray the spray on realistically.

For the most part you are on you own against puzzles and enviomental hazards. So the a.i. is not really a prominent feature. The monsters that are present simply come at you and bludgeon you to death for the most part. Some shoot at you, but they also try and hit you as well. Only firing when you get a set distance from them.

The a.i. would be classed as rubbish in a first person shooter or any other game that needed good a.i. For this game it's appropriate. There seemed to be no real glitches with the a.i. either. Zombie hordes are meant to be a bit dumb anyway, aren't they?

There were a few glitches or bugs that I noticed while playing, at one point my character froze and would not accept input from me, though strangely enough the game hadn't crashed, flames were still moving and i could go in and out of pause. At one point I jumped onto an area between forklift truck and wall and began floating in the air for a few seconds before dying for no reason. These bugs were few and far between however.

Graphics are adequate, Edward and the other characters are well done, The environment graphics aren't anything special. The physics engine is used extensively and at times impresses at other disappoints. The collapsing building is reasonably impressive graphically. The engine seems robust with everything ticking along at a reasonable if not earth shattering frame rate. The game wasn't meant to push graphical boundaries, only get the job done, and it does so well.

The level design is to be commended here, everything feels reasonably real world. I don't know how accurate the central park map is, never having been there, but it feels real enough. The hotel is well designed. The only level that feels like a game is the underground tombs, though since there are no real world counterparts then a comparison is unfair.

Sound is reasonable with some creepy music and sound effects to add atmosphere.

No multiplayer, this just isn't that kind of game, don't know if co-op would have worked. Might be worth a try for the sequel.

Checkpoints are spaced fairly well, I can't recall any unfair ones at least.

Achievements are handled well, They are mostly doled out for completing story related tasks and completing the game. I received 855 points during my time with the game which is to my mind a fair score. The remaining points are for finding and juggling around most of the objects in the game, only the handyman achievement needs serious work. For people hoping to get all 1000 points here it should be a breeze compared to some games.

Scoring

Graphics 7

Gameplay 7

Story 6

Level Design 7

A.i. 5

Total score 6.4

GTAIV Review

2008-07-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Grand Theft Auto IV Review

LIberty city, based on New York, the fastest most vibrant city in the world, dangerous and beatuful, ancient and modern, melting pot of humanity, all life is here and now so are you. Niko Bellic arrives on a slow boat from hell escaping a past of violence and mistakes. Ex soldier turned expert criminal odd job man.

Niko's cousin Roman has invited him to stay in his mansion, the problem is that Roman is an eternal optomist and liar. He has a business and a flat, but both are low rent, the mansion is coming or so he he says. Niko enters Romans world and is introduced to a few characters. Michelle who he will have a romance with, Vlad who will lead him back into his old ways and Mallorie Romans girlfriend. After a few gentle driving around the block missions Roman is soon in trouble with the loan sharks and Niko takes his first lives in Liberty city. Events spiral out of control and through his abilities with a gun and behind the wheel Niko is soon courted to work for practically every gangster and drug dealer in Liberty city. He will find love, have his past catch him up and shoot or chase his way through every street of the city. The story is long and winding, with many good balanced characters and plot lines. There is also comedic relief in the from of steroid crazed Brucie and other similarly off the wall characters.

Choices are given in the narrative that effect the story, but don't worry they only affect things in small ways. twice in the game after tensions build up between two factions, both ask you to kill the other person. Niko has the choice. Mostly it's rewards that differ. Taking the morally wrong choice usually ends up with the greater rewards. One of those choices will have you saying to hell with the reward you just have to kill the more annoying/bad character. Cut scenes play out differently depending on your choices.

The last few missions give you a moral choice, take revenge or be bigger than that, take the money and go against your principles. The cost of either choice is pain and ultimately suffering for those around you, Niko might not pay for his life of violence but those around him do. Remember to make an extra save before the choice moments. You might want to go back and replay choosing the alternative options.

Can Niko really go straight in Liberty City? we will have to wait for the DLC to find out.

The first thing that hits you when you take control of Niko on foot is the swagger to his walk and the weight he seems to carry. His feet are independent of each other, stand on a step and one knee will bend and he will place one foot on the higher step and the other on the lower. When people are hit by cars or explosions they fly with convincing ragdoll physics.

Driving is hard at first, each car has differing handling and some drift terribly while sports cars hold the road like glue. Motorbikes are things of beauty and they fly at terrifying speeds down the roads of Liberty city and crash in the most spectacularly painful fashion. You can drive the whole gamut of vehicles available from people carriers to forklift trucks, trucks to trash collectors. Helicopters provide fast transit across the city and control in a satisfyingly arcade/simulator fashion. Sea is covered by speedboats and yachts. The water physics are good, you are able to create waves and splashes. Other modes of transport are the train network and taxis which can be flagged down and used as you would expect.

Weapons include the usual shotguns, sniper rifles, pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades and molotov cocktails. There are also knives and your fists. Aiming is simple enough and there is a cover system where you can stick to walls and pop your head out for a better shot.

Combat is tricky at first, with a steep learning curve, stick with it though as it's worth the mastering and by the time you are halfway thorugh the game you will be an expert and enjoying every gun battle. There are some long drawn out battles in tower blocks and factories, plus plenty of fighting out in the open. Shooting from moving vehicles is hard to co-ordinate but immensely satisfying when you kill or cause your target to crash or explode. One particularly chase on motorbikes through the subway system stands out as a high point.

Missions are of the usual gta type. Go to a waypoint, kill a person, or collect and object and take it back to the employer. Some are more convoluted but all essentially boil down to the same thing. Side missions are many and varied. They include the usual assassination, racing and collectibles, however there is also the new friends system. Niko has several friends who he hangs out with. Little Jacob, Roman, Packie etc. They will call Niko on his mobile or email him wanting to do normal everyday things like go bowling, play darts pool etc. Also girls will need to be taken out on dates which can include going to restaurants the theatre or just out drinking. Male friends like to go to the strip joint for a lap dance. Sometimes these activities get in the way of progress in the main story, though if you want certain things to be available to you it pays to keep your friends sweet. For example Little Jacob can be a mobile weapons dealer when he likes you enough.

The use of mobile phones and the internet has been integrated into the game, with missions involving email and internet dating. On entering an internet cafe you can use a computer to get on to a fully working web browser which has a huge spoof world wide web to surf, with parodies of many existing real world sites. Logging onto a child porn site immediately gives you a huge wanted rating and sees you dead in seconds. Microsoft need to tap Rockstar for the web browser to implement it onto the Xbox360.

The mobile phone is used as in game menu. It seems fully functional, you get texts, answer and make calls and even use it to take pictures and send photo messages. It really does feel natural and organic in the game and I don't think I have seen any other game use these communication mediums in game to such effect before.

Television also gets an appearance with tv's in all of Niko's safe houses. The programs are spoof documentaries, thinly veild jabs at Halo and attacks on advertising and modern life. I have sat and watched it for longer than I should have. Though don't expect hours of viewing, it does repeat fairly regularly. Only other game that I think beats it in this respect though is The Darkness, which had a few full movies I believe. Though i never watched any of them to find out if they didn't stop twenty minutes in.

The gameplay is top notch, there are no real surprises for players of any previous GTA games. The main criticism I have of these games is the lack of mission checkpoints. Some missions can take up to thirty minutes to complete. Some missions are screamingly hard. After being shot down thirty minutes into a mission you might replay it once, after dying another thirty minutes later and being put back thirty minutes you scream at the screen and go and do something else instead to save your arteries blowing in frustration.

A checkpoint after you drive to the mission site. After securing the mission objective and before escaping your wanted level and at the end of the mission would save a lot of frustration. It would make the game easier but it would also see less people give up in disgust. Not that I did though, so maybe Rockstar know what is good for us after all. I finished the main story after 92 missions with 62% on the progress meter. I don't have the time at present to shoot all the pigeons and complete the races and other side missions. I am sure I will go back to this game in a quiet time or for some multiplayer.

A.i. in sandbox games is different from say an fps. You can follow the civilian population around and not interfere, they are there to populate the world and make it look lived in and real. Their behavior has to be at least somewhat believable or it will suck you out of the game. GTAIV has similar a.i. to other's in the series. Improvements come in the sense that they seem to be able to problem solve. rarely do you see enemy drivers stuck against walls. They seem to be doing their best to get away or alternatively get you. There are instances of pedestrians getting hit by cars, though they seem to limp out of the way eventually instead of holding up traffic forever. The game does still suffer from the look this way see three or four cars, turn away and look back and they are all gone syndrome. Though there does seem to be a huge amount of vehicles and pedestrians on screen. Much more than any other sandbox game that I can think of.

My first impressions of the graphics were that they were slightly unconventional, with nice detail in the foreground and distance and a strange blurring in the middle distance. As familiarity crept in i lost sight of that first impression that i jotted down on first playing. I thought I would include it here though as it's often the case that first impressions of games change once you have scaled their learning curve. The city is a work of art, a living breathing human place that looks like it evolved rather than was designed by a team of artists for a game. The architecture is varied and impressive. Buildings are mostly facades with only a few having any interiors. These being the settings for missions.

The attention to detail in all elements of the game is stunning. You can see every hour of work from the hundreds of people involved in this game. I have not played every sandbox game out there, but in my opinion if the awards for sandbox world design were to be handed out GTAIV wins by a miles, followed at a long distance by Crackdown and even further behind Saints Row. Oblivion was nice but there was a little too much random number generation in it's design I feel. Physics are handled very well, the handling of cars seems to have come in for a bit of criticism. I never found it a problem once I got used to it. Lamp posts seem to be a strong as tissue paper and stick like wooden fence posts sometimes stop buses, but on the whole the physics are pretty much as you might imagine, and that is high praise for a game. The water physics deserve a mention for having waves and splashes that reminded me of Waverace, only better.

Good diverse soundtrack, the usual gta radio stations to pick your listening taste or just accept the random setting from the cars you get into. I love the rock and the inclusion of Songs like One vision by Queen and Dominon by the Sisters of Mercy shows a diversity and willingness to step away from what was popular with the teen demographic on the month before release.

As is usual in Rockstar games there are a tremendous amount of statistics available. These deserve a mention for their obsessive compulsiveness and due to the fact that I spent a while looking through them on more than one occasion.

Achievements are fair, for between 40-50 hours play and completion of the main story-line I received 285 points Which does seem a little tight but I can see that there is still so much more to do in the game. The racing side missions are easily on a par with burnout Paradise. The city is just so damn beautiful that exploring and looking for the pigeons will be fun. The remaining achievements are multiplayer and side mission orientated. So while this isn't a game for people looking for a quick score boost these achievement points are earned with hours of your time and not insane hyper reflexed kiddie skills.

Multiplayer seems excellent with the mobile phone being used to enter a lobby system which consists of the game itself, you can meet your team and wander about a bit, then choose a game mode and play a multitude of objective based games. races, straight deathmatch etc. One mode deserves a mention, one player at random is the Don and they have to be taken to a point win, the other team have to take him down. It's chaotic and fun.

Simply being able to wander the city with a few others is enjoyable. I think I would still be looking for pigeons if you were allowed to do this together. A few co-op missions would have been good. Still there is patches and downloadable content to come. I vote for being able to do the pigeon hunt with friends for the patch. The fun really is endless in this game if you want it to be. I spent some time just playing with friends in the sandbox. One of us would take a bike and flee. The others would chase him in helicopters and all sorts. Don't get me wrong it did get old, but this game does have excellent multiplayer opportunities if you are into experimenting with it. Those who prefer their Halo and Call of duty probably will go back to them quickly, but that does not mean that this isn't a robust multiplayer game. I think it boils down to the size of the city. Deathmatch for me has always been better in close proximity and frantic action. That is why I enjoy things like the shipment map in Call of Duty 4.

This game is a must. There is no excuse for not owning it. I fail to understand why any PS3 or Xbox360 owner does not own and play this game. It is a master-class in design, gameplay and fun.

Scoring

Graphics 9

Gameplay 10

Story 8

Level Design 9

A.i. 8

Total 8.8

Devil May Cry 4 Review

2008-07-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

First of all this is the first Devil May Cry game that I have played. I was away from playstation gaming around the time they came out and more into pc, work was also crazy around those times. Anyway excuses out of the way. I am apologising for not knowing the story or the moves. If I was familiar and had played through the previous games in the series I may have seen the game in a different light.

The story is told through several cut scenes at the beginning and end of each level though none of them are much more than five minutes long. The scene is set with Nero going to a church service. He seems bored and only there to be with Kyrie who seems to be his friend soon to become more than friends. During the service Dante bursts in shoots the church leader Sanctus mid service. Kyrie's brother Credo tasks you will hunting down Dante. As you leave the church demons enter the city and begin tearing it apart. Nero sends Kyrie off to safety. As the story progresses there are many twists and turns and things are not what they seem at the start of the game.

It has to be said though that the storytelling is cryptic and more concerned with flashy action in the cutscenes that telling a coherent story. At the start of the game you are intended to be in the dark about the events, it's just that unless you pay close attention you might never be entirely sure of the ins and outs. There are too many revelations that are not foreshadowed. This ensures the player is left wondering what on earth is going on for far too long. Eventually the story becomes clear, but you have to work at it. There is a story there, it's just buried by a desire to be cryptic. For example I am still not sure if Dante's levels occur in a time period after Nero's or before them and we are playing a flashback.

For me characters were introduced as if they should be known, no introduction at all. I didn't know the history and it was never explained. Though you can go into an extra on the options to read about the history of the game. unfortunately some of this is only accessible as an unlock after completing most of the game. It would have been good to have a primer for new players, especially since this is the first time Xbox360 only players have had a chance to play the series. A "previously in Devil May Cry," video would have helped a lot.

Japanese storytelling is very quirky. Style is everything, Nero and Dante are achingly cool in an emo/goth sort of way and their dialogue is of the one liner or corny variety. I am never sure if this is a translation or a cultural issue with japanese originated dialogue. There is a difference in flow and beats of language that just never seems quite right on a subliminal level with translated dialogue. However the story does have a beginning middle and end and could be construed as a political stab at the Bush administration and the crazy conspiracy theories around The Twin towers terrorist incident. Governments bringing down attacks on their people and then stepping up to save the day for furthering of their own agenda.

Expect overblown histrionics, anatomy defying wounds and lots of confusion.

These games are all about the combat. combinations of fast, slow, jumping and pushing and pulling with the devil bringer hand to chain hits together for long combinations bring style points which increase your overall score at the end of each level. The moves are varied and satisfying, you feel the pain that Nero inflicts, a necessity for a good combat game. You have to wince and say ouch for the monsters at some point or it just isn't doing it's job. For the uninitiated moves pop up with a quick button press tutorial as they are introduced so that you are not overwhelmed, and while there are lots of moves there are not countless similar and therefore redundant ones.

You can use pistols and swords and collecting orbs from enemies and broken furniture allows you to power up in an rpg like fashion depending on which weapons you like best. If you don't want to decide the game will spend your points in what one would hope to be a wise fashion for you.

What else is there in the game besides waves and waves of monsters to practice chaining stylish moves together on?

Progression through levels is simply a matter of finding your way, with some simple puzzles. There are buttons to press to unlock doors. In some areas you use big spinning tops with blades on to open the way and kill enemies.

There are moving and disappearing platform areas. trampoline type rune platforms, big whirling blades that need you to slow time to achieve jumps. In some levels you have floating lights which seem to attract the devil bringer and hoist you towards them, you can chain some spectacular pinball style leaps with these.

There are some old chestnuts that take me back, for example, having small areas with four exits, with only one being the right one, the others loop you back to the same area. At first you wander aimlessly until you realize there is a method for deciding which direction is the right one.

There also some innovative levels. For example in one area you play a kind of board game. When you enter the room a chess piece of yourself appears on the board and the exit only opens when you get your piece to the final square. You whack a dice and move the designated amount of steps. each square has either a bonus or a hoard of monsters spawning into the room.

This is great the first time round, then later on in the game it is reprised in an almost game breaking fashion. the dice is semi random, if you hit it when the number you want is on top it will land on that number, but you have to have excellent reflexes. In this later section the squares on the board form a loop and progress through four game boards depends on landing on one spot. This sees the player spending ages reprising boss battles, and fighting almost as many enemies as they have fought throughout the entire game so far trying to get through. It is the penultimate level of the game and as such meant to be hard, as it is it's screamingly frustrating. Way to turn a nice idea into a torture Capcom.

Twice in the game you are expected to win a boss battle only for the cut scene afterwards to show you losing, which story wise just really jarred.

For the first 11 missions you control Nero, and for the remaining 9 or so you play as Dante. His control scheme is similar but different and his move set ramps up quickly to a dizzying array of weaponry and tricks. Again, for previous players this must feel like slipping on a comfortable item of clothing, relaxing and really enjoying the game. For new players it's like being handed a new game halfway through and being expected to know how to fight as Dante.

There is quite an array of different monsters, and some move in interesting fashions, not simply coming ambling towards you, the shark fin like creatures and the floating ghost like things come to mind. The enemy design is interesting with possessed clothing, suits of armor and even ice being animated for the demon will.

Boss fights are very traditional and very spectacular and fast paced. It's all about learning the patterns of attack and exploiting a weakness once you find it. There are three huge animal demon hybrid bosses and four human/demon hybrid ones/ They have loads of variety and I am sure that fans of boss battles with be happy here.

The most impressive levels occur in and around the Saviour which is a 200 foot tall animated statue, you climb up it in one level and fly around it in another, the graphics are really impressive here.

One thing that has to be said about the game is the repetitiveness. Basically you go through several themed areas as Nero. City, ice/castle, underground lab, forest, church/headquarters. Then you go back through them as Dante, with levels in and around the saviour. If you count the missions there are around 20, though there are only six locations in which they take place. The game is long enough, though there is a bit of padding here to make it feel bigger.

Graphics

The graphics are excellent, the frame rate seems fairly stable at more than 30 frames per second for the most part. Without a frame rate counter it's hard to tell, but the game moves slickly for the most part. Perhaps for the fanboys all games should come with a toggle-able frame rate counter.

In small areas the camera is fixed and at others the player can control it. There are some issues when moving between static camera angles. I lost count of the amount of times i inadvertently walked into a new camera angle and was pushing in a direction with the controller which suddenly changed and i went back the way I had came. Though for the most part the camera does it's job well.

The game looks wonderful. Lush forest, old italian style city scape, huge gothic architecture, and the saviour is breathtaking. The characters are stylish and very well drawn. Females are here only to titillate with little clothes and jiggling breasts and bottoms, with one exceptions the hero's perfectly innocent love interest. Everything drips hardcore gamer cool. Think of that statement in relation to your own tastes and decide if it's a good thing. The amount of enemies is kept to a manageable amount, you fight a few and then more teleport in.

Music is thrashy hardcore metal type stuff, and seems to be pattering away in the background annoyingly with the drums mixed high and the guitars lows. Sound effects are inoffensive. Voice acting does well with the corny dialogue.

Checkpoints are scattered fairly. There is no multiplayer whatsoever. Co-op might have been a nice option, but I don't think there are any games in this genre with co-op so we will not hold that against it.

The menu's are fairly bland and bad fonts with garish colors don't help, though there are some nice character bios and history lessons which help the uninitiated.

With respect to achievements I played through the game on normal. I only acquired 100 points, which i feel was quite stingy. The game seems to have a lot of small achievements Possibly these are for the little bonus rooms which pop up and ask you to perform tasks against the clock, or kill so many enemies in a certain style. Not a game for easy achievement hunters, hardcore only need apply, and I would imagine anyone having 1000 points in this game would have clocked up many many hours on it and it's earlier incarnations.

A great game for fans of the genre. If you are at all skeptical of this genre then steer clear. It's a hardcore gamers game from a hardcore gamers company. Old school in many respects. Spectacular graphically, but is that enough. Frustration is waiting here for the uninitiated, joys for those who know what to expect from the son of Sparda.

I was tempted to give this game a score for fans and a score for new players. I suppose all games in franchises have to be measured up against their past and others in the genre. I will hold up my hands and say I am really too much of a novice in the genre to really say what true fans will score this game. As a newbie i give it my score. Be aware that I would agree with long time hardcore fans that it might score a high 7 in their eyes. I doubt much more as this is really a new polish on an old genre.

Scoring

Graphics 9

Gameplay 7

Story 6

Level Design 5

A.i. 5

Total 6.4

Frontlines: Fuel of War Review

2008-07-23T12:56:00.001-07:00

I think I know what went wrong here. imagine the scenario In Kaos studio. There must be many different offices, imagine one belongs to a writer, maybe there are one or two writers, I don't know, but I doubt it. There must be many more offices for programmers, level designers, artists etc. Now The writer works away in his little office. He might have been given a brief by game designers. Possibly he might be giving the brief to the game designers but it doesn't feel that way.

The point is, it looks like he worked away on his little story while the tech people worked away on the game and the two were slotted together at the end. It could even be possible that these people don't work in the same building and might actually have never met in person.

Why do I have this theory? Well, there are missions, set in a distinct location, with objectives and a clear story like point. There are about 8 missions and each one seems to be set in a different game. The job of the writer seems to have been to come up with a scenario that all of these can fit into and link them all together with story cut scenes. The problem here is that the cut scenes are for the "short of attention span" and only last a minute at most. The characters in these cut scenes don't have enough time to imprint on us to care about them. Most of them are too generic to actually be called character rather than archetype.

While we are in the game these characters are absent and we only have generic grunts to assist us who have no real character whatsoever. This means to me that I could hardly learn the various characters names, nor did I want to because they showed up too infrequently.

In one scene the people who fight their way deep into the bowels of a missile silo to stop a missile being launched are left with only one option to stop it. By closing the silo doors it means that the nuke will launch inside the silo and be destroyed and them along with it as there is no time to get out. We see their demise from other characters point of view and are expected to be moved by their loss and sacrifice. I never even knew their names. I thought that the character I was controlling for the whole game was the same person? It was all a little too close to some scenes in Call of duty 4 for my liking anyway.

The writer did a good job on the whole universe of the game. We are asked to believe that once oil becomes scarce the whole world will degenerate into war for control of the remaining resources. The story seems to be suggesting that the russians and chinese have clubbed together against the rest of europe and America. Whatever has happened it seems that middle eastern powers seem to be incorporated into the alliance.

The irony of using so much of a dwindling resource to fight a world war isn't lost. The cut scenes suggest that rioting and loss of societal norms has become commonplace when cars run out of fuel and homes stop getting electricity, leading to disease and looting.

We are never shown any of this however. It is all narration from the Reporter who is tagging along with the stray dogs squad. The story takes the squad from routine defense duty where they are ambushed, to full scale war with the Russian/chinese coalition. The game takes us through many engagements until a full scale assault on Moscow ends the game.

I have criticisms about the total degeneration of society as portrayed in the game. I am sure that society would go through a dark time when fossil fuel runs low. However, I hope that alternative energy will play a bigger part and society will lose its shackles rather than eat itself. Still this is one alternate future, which is reasonably plausible. The crying shame it that the writers work might as well be about a different game than what we are playing here.

Gameplay mechanics

Aiming seems slightly dodgy using sniper rifle, seems to hit girders etc in the way when it shouldn't and doesn't kill instantly with a headshot.

At one point you are asked to do a stealth mission, however, there seems to be no way to go about the job stealthily. the first shot alerts the enemy. I don't really do stealthy anyway, maybe it was my mistake.

Take a bit of getting used to to aim with standard guns, clicking the stick to zoom seems to be necessary at first until you get used to the game. Something seems to make the game hard work on first play, which requires persistence and a learning curve that is just that bit too steep, first rule of gameplay should be that nothing irritates the player too much on the first level. You don't want them to get turned off and stop playing. Which for some might have happened with the demo of this game which game some time before release and didn't seem one pixel different from the finished game.

There are the usual fps conventions and weapons, guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, grenades. In addition there are many additional weapons. There are drones which allow you to charge into heavily guarded areas and run around in the open all guns blazing and take out a few soldiers without endangering yourself. There are three types of drone, robot remote guns on tracks, little helicopters or fast moving remote control tiny car bombs. There are also moveable turret emplacements with weapons like rail-guns. Enemies also have a few tricks, in the form of emp generators which keep vehicles out of a certain area until they are taken out.

The player can control a range of tanks and jeep type weapons with varying mounted weaponry. Helicopters are also used infrequently in the single player campaign.

The areas are large and open world, though this still feels very much like a corridor shooter. It's not, they just put all the objectives in a line instead of making you run for your money around the maps.

Good terrain and a realistic feel, areas are designed well for the type of conflict that is to take place in them. The missile base being particularly well designed, with its heavy fortifications and one main entrance leading down to a believable generator room and launch silo. Missions require the taking of certain areas as if it were a capture the flag multiplayer game or the destruction of certain features like generators or pumping stations. Various enemies and tanks are in the way. There is a limitless amount of them unless you keep pushing forwards as seen in games like call of duty instead of there being a certain amount of enemies in the map. Though once you push into the latter stages of an objective then once you shoot all the enemies at the objective none re-spawn. There are no boss fights at the end of each level you have big areas inside buildings with lots of enemies shooting from all sides.

The a.i. is typical of low end old school a.i. They stand in the open, run straight at you or just stand there in cover shooting and ducking. When they are in cover they pop up at timed intervals right into your waiting shots. Weight of numbers is their only real hope of getting you.

The game allows you 5 or so respawns per mission. Checkpoints are spaced well. When you run out of re-spawns you have to restart the mission from the start rather than the last checkpoint, which means going back a fair amount. However, you really only need those respawns to count on the last few missions even on the hardest difficulties.

The audio is adequate, with no really irritating music to speak of. The usual bangs and whistles with no problems with the mixing of the sound.

Graphically the game has an adequate engine which moves smoothly most of the time. the graphics are nothing that hasn't been seen before in a thousand other fps games. Deserts towns cities. The Moscow level shows the engine to be capable of grandeur but it's too little too late in the game. In short not bad, very average and nothing we haven't seen in countless other games.

Achievements are badly handled I completed the game on hard and was given 155 points. 50 of those were for playing a multiplayer game with two other people. Two of us against one poor guy who must have been playing it for the first time also. We won a flawless victory, probably by virtue of only seeing the guy once and blowing his brains out with a sniper rifle. Hence what should have been a hard as nails online achievement being relegated to a joke. I may as well have played on normal as the achievements were for normal for completing a level. To get the points mother-load you have to complete levels in a certain time limit or do it without dying or have a certain accuracy. All obtainable on easy if I could be bothered. I might do it sometime, but I am not in any hurry.

Multiplayer seemed mostly empty when I tried. Which is damning in itself. If a game can't keep a thriving online community then it's lost the battle before it started. If a couple of months after release it's hard to get enough players to fill a game then there is no impetus to return to the game.

Which is a shame, as with the large playing areas and variety of weapons and objectives the game could have been good. Shame it just doesn't have that popularity factor that Halo COD and BFBC have at present. Harshly put Battlefield imitators are put in the shade when the real Battlefield releases a new incarnation.

I can't really put my finger on what is wrong with this game, I enjoyed it, it seemed a little short. I would put my playing time at around 10 hours. Which actually was just long enough, any more and it would have been tiresome rather than gripping.

It's one of my little things. I don't want shooters like this to run to 80 hours of gameplay. Sure if multiplayer is your bag and you spend 80 hours on Frontlines in multiplayer then great. But single player campaigns that last more than 15 hours are usually full of padding levels. Halo 1 for example which seemed to go on for an eternity in that cartography level in very similar rooms.

The problem with Frontlines isn't that it's a bad game, it's just that it's very similar to the Battlefield games. We have seen it all before, and since it isn't better than those games then it doesn't have a lot to recommend it. Comparing it to the crop of shooters that came out around the same time as it, it was actually the best of the bunch. I am thinking of Turning Point, Conflict Denied Ops and Turok. Though I am basing that comparison on the demos of those games, which is all I have played of them.

Scoring

Graphics 7

Gameplay 7

Story 5

Level Design 8

A.i. 5

Total 6.4

Mass Effect Review

2008-06-11T01:49:00.000-07:00

Mass effect steps games out of the old guard of science fiction and drags it kicking and screaming into the world of Iain M Banks, Peter F Hamilton and Alistair Reynolds. There are probably other Authors who whould be name checked but these will do for me.

The story is set in a future where several alien races inhabit our milky way galaxy, at the start of the story at least, almost peacefully co-existing. Humans want a bigger voice in wider affairs and are being held back and seen as young upstarts by the galaxies old guard. There are several alien races and for the most part they seem to avoid the usual star trek cliches, although Krogans sounds and acts an awful lot like Klingons. The aliens are not constrained by tv budgets however and are of varying shapes and sizes that would never do for star trek as there is only so much you can do with some make up and feathers.

The galactic stage is set by an ancient race named the Protheans, who, though now extinct, seemed to rule the galaxy and have left behind many of their more interesting toys and ruins. The most important of which are the Mass relays which all races use to travel faster than light. These seem to be wormhole generators of some kind.

At the start of the game our hero commander Shephard is involved on a mission to investigate a Prothean artifact discovery on a human colony world. It turns out that a spectre agent named Saren has turned rogue and allied himself with a machine race named the Geth. Together they have attacked the colony looking for the prothean artifact. Saren gets to the artifact and activates it and receives a vision, Shephard hard on his heels arrives and also is given the visions, which are jumbled images of war between alien and machines. Shephard is knocked unconscious and when he awakes it's back to the citadel for debriefing.

The citadel is another ancient Prothean space habitat which has been taken over as a centre for galactic politics and commerce. Sounds very like Babylon 5 which I feel Bioware might have a little soft spot for. Don't take that as a criticism, I loved Babylon 5 when I watched it on first airing. It's a little hard to watch over now, however, there are still some fine sci-fi moments there. The citadel sees Shepard being made a spectre agent, think James Bond style free roaming agent, and given the task of finding out just what Saren is up too. You are given command of the Normandy one of Humankinds best warships and let loose on an unsupecting universe.

The game feels truly cinematic, it's structure is tight, with a good beginning, middle and end. I could imagine a Mass effect movie and I would be first in line for a ticket. I know it is derivative, but I think I might be more likely to see a Mass effect movie than the Night's dawn trilogy by Peter F Hamilton being made into a movie, but beggars can't be choosers.

Once in Command you can use the Normandy to fly to a large number of worlds and each of them have a main mission or side mission. The game is huge, possibly not oblivion huge but getting there. Like oblivion though the side missions become repetitive and I could never see myself completing each and every one.

As the story progresses you are drawn into an ancient story involving ancient enemies of all life. Again the shadows of Babylon 5 come to mind, or much closer the wolves from Alastair Reynolds revelation space series. The side colorings include racial hate between humans and aliens, and various love and politics sub plots. Saren is a interesting nemesis who for once isn't bad because it says bad guy after his name on the front page. He has looked at the situation and the coming storm and chosen a route that us emotional humans would never take. You may not agree with him, but in his mind he thinks he is saving the galaxy while the player is bringing down the storm with greater fury.

The game uses the unreal engine, it looks very good for the most part though the environments were a little sparse I felt. Virmire and the citadel were the only environments that actually held any beauty for me. The characters are excellent with the alien race designs being particularly effective if slightly derivative. There is a motion blur and grain filter applied which takes some getting used to. Take note though you can go to the options screen and turn these off which I felt made the game look much better. I only found this out on my second play-through. The facial animations are also excellent. Though sometimes eyelids seemed to being doing their own thing in comparison to the rest of the face. On the whole though the graphics are good. There is a lot of texture loading, sometimes when a scene starts there is a good thirty seconds before all the textures are in place. I don't normally notice this too much but recently Rainbow six vegas 2 and Mass effect have been games I have been playing and it is really apparent in both. I presume the reason for this is to cut loading times and actually have the game up and running while the textures pop in. Note to developers, loading times are not really a problem for me, i would rather have a few more seconds sipping my coffee and waiting for the textures with a blank loading screen than seeing peoples armor textures pop up.

Mass effect is an rpg, It has all the trappings, xp points, huge range of customization of characters and differing classes, some are good with biotics, read magic some are good with technology and others are grunts. The game has a few basic weapon classes, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, pistol and there are grenades and various armors and upgrades to them. As you level up and find or buy weapons your characters go from being unable to hit a target an inch away to sniping for miles and taking out lesser enemies with one shot instead of forty.

There are the usual sandbox conventions, you can go to any mission in almost any order and go off the beaten path and level up before taking on the big missions, which I would recommend. Missions are broken up in bite-size, or maybe unreal engine sized chunks with loads in between disguised by elevators. There are missions, mostly on the citadel which include meeting a certain character and then doing something or killing someone for them. The main missions basically move you from point a to point b with lots of enemies in the way. There are small puzzles and the usual little blind alleys to go down and find better weapons upgrades etc.

The conversations in the game are interactive, which means you are given a few responses to choose from a list at each junction in the conversation. Some interactions will go a certain way whatever you do, others will be dictated by your choice of diplomacy or idiocy. There are a few times when your choice will mean the life or death of certain characters. In some instances you must have your charm levels full before certain options become available. One particularly memorable instance is when you are given the options of saving one person or another, both are in different directions and going one way to save one of them mean that you won't have time to go back for the other before a nuke goes off. Either choice doesn't affect the outcome of the game greatly but if you want to have some romance I suggest saving the girl.

Combat is unwieldy at first and it seems like a case of spray and pray with wide reticule weapons. As you level up you see your shots hit the cross-hair dead on and you sniper rifle doesn't wave around quite so much. Finding or buying better weapons improves your damage with each shot greatly and adding special ammo and upgrades to each weapon also improves their effectiveness. You see you character from a third person view, though you can hold the left trigger in to zoom into a first person view. there is also a cover system which is sometime clunky to get in and out of but is worth mastering as it helps greatly. The vehicle section of combat in the mako is reasonable, though I have to confess I did prefer to fight on foot. It does get you from A to B quickly however and it's weapons are satisfactory. It has a rapid fire pulse weapon and a rocket launcher type weapon. With all the upgrade capabilities on offer to the rest of your armory and technology I found the omission of upgrades to the Mako puzzling. The a.i. for the most part is fairly basic and standard though at times they can be really really stupid and stand still in the open allowing you to pick them off, not even moving properly into cover after you shoot them a few times. There are some good set piece battles and all the environments for the major missions vary and make a good stab at structure being dedicated to function rather than nice level design.

The soundtrack to the game is adequate, there are some nice scene setting mood musics. Weapons and explosions are suitably heavy sounding although tinged with a little sci-fi electronica.

The game allows you to save at any point unless you are in combat which I found very helpful. There are some checkpoints where the game saves automatically, though you can turn this off. The menus for upgrading and buying and selling seem complex at first but after a few hours into the game you soon find them simple. On second play-through familiarity really does pay off.

Achievements are solid enough, mostly given out for using each of the weapons, and abilities a certain amount of times. There is 100 points for completion, and also more points for a second completion, which certainly encourages a second play-through of the main story. I received 390 points on my first play-through, this was only really completing the main story, and it took me 18 hours. I will play through the game again and will probably attempt to grind my character up to level 70 for those achievements. The game has much replay value as you can go back and find out what it would have been like to say all the nasty things you were too frightened to say the first time in case you wrecked the game and didn't get the proper ending.

There is no multiplayer here, and nor is it needed, it isn't that sort of game.

I would recommend this game to anyone, yes it's a hardcore rpg. It doesn't feel like say Blue Dragon or Eternal Sonata though, for one the story and dialogue make those two seemed penned in pre-school. The combat is real shooter style combat. The stats are all there but hidden under sneaking up on a Geth while your team keep it pinned down and placing your shotgun to it's head and blasting it into pieces. When I completed the final boss fight I felt truimphant, I genuinely am really looking forward to Mass effect 2 now, and I was never really waiting for this one. I hope our next adventure with Commander Shepard is as much fun as this one was.

Mass effect has a steep learning curve, everyone should persevere with this rewarding and brilliant game.

Spoiler warning for Mass Effect 2: I think the Reapers will transfer their consciousness into the Mass relays and in that way stop all ftl travel as a first strike and then convert the resources of the mass relays into ships and soldiers and then fan out and take over planets. This will confine the game to the citadel system or whatever system Shepard is in at the start of the game. Until they can get the small mass relays working and fight back.

Scoring

Graphics 8

Gameplay 9

Story 10

Level Design 8

A.i. 7

Total 84

Rainbow six vegas 2 Review

2008-06-11T01:46:00.000-07:00

Rainbow Six Vegas is a first person squad based shooter, it is set in Tom Clancy's Rainbow six counter terrorism squad universe and follows the exploits of an elite counter terrorism squad as they combat a terrorist threat in Las Vegas. This game follows on from the first Vegas game, though you will have to try real hard and do some research to follow the story.

To be fair this is the type of game that doesn't really need much story, you go here shoot all the bad guys and then go on to the next place and shoot all the bad guys, sure a story would be nice but in all fairness Ubisoft know that the audience for this game doesn't really give a damn. There is some nods to the first games story where you find out that one of the Rainbow team has turned traitor and is arming and aiding the terrorists, in this game you are ultimately on his trail while you stop his terrorist chums from blowing things up.

During the game you save some hostages and a stadium full of people get gassed before you can save them, however it all feels disjointed this time compared to the first game. There are no real cut scenes of note with the longest coming at the end of the game and the story is mostly thrown at you by talking heads in your helmet heads up display, similar to Graw. By the time I got to the end of the game I didn't even remember the bad guys name, possibly I never knew it.

The biggest criticism of Vegas 2 is that it is really just a new campaign for the first game, maybe if they had labelled it as such and charged a tenner less they might have got less backlash and whole lot more sales. Still I may sound harsh but I would not hesitate to recommend this game to any fans of the first, if you liked the first Vegas then please get this one, you won't be disappointed.

Vegas is a first person shooter with elements of third person built in, when you hold the left trigger near a wall you switch to third person view and go into cover, where you can blind fire or pop your head out and snipe carefully, the game is built around this mechanic and you will have a much harder time if you play using the normal fps view and neglect the cover system. The weapons are many and varied, the usual rifles, pistols, sniper rifles etc. with a smattering of grenades. You can rappel down the side of select buildings and take pot shots using your pistol from the ropes. Tactics play a big role in the game, though you can get by being gung ho and going it alone your squad can be very effective, there are literally hundred of times in the game where you are outside a room with terrorists, how you enter the room is paramount to the ease of the game. You can slide a snake cam under the door and examine the amount and position of terrorists inside and then send you men to one of the mandatory second doors into the room, you then tag terrorists for them to take out and enter the room together and headshot the lot in one go, well that is what you try to do, sometimes you pull it off, others you don't.

The games levels are well designed, there is always a thought for form and function in these games which is to be applauded, all the structures are real world structures with good reasons for you being there. There are sports centers, a theatre, convention centers, construction sites, rail-yards, industrial factories and plush villas. All seem logical and correct, maybe even modeled on real world locations.

Vegas 2 uses the unreal engine, it has terrible texture loading at the start of each scene, why? just keep the screen black while they load! That aside the graphics are satisfactory, the characters are well detailed and animated, the environments are at times good, but mostly adequate, there is no real wow factor with the graphics in this game but also no real game breaking flaws either.

The multiplayer and single player game give you points for killing enemies, you get five to ten points per kill plus a 2-3 point bonus for style, say killing using blind fire, at long range or close quarters. As you gain XP you rise through ranks which unlocks weapons and clothing. There is no real benefit to this, the weapons are only slightly different, and it's just as easy to kill with the first weapon you are given than the last unlocked, same goes for the armor and clothing, it's all for looks, as four bullets to the body will kill irrespective of your gear. Certain camouflage and guns show that you have played the game a serious amount of time, it's all about social standing online.

It also appeals to the completionist and the score junkies. There is a gauge along the bottom of the screen at all times which shows how close you are to the next rank. The just one more go syndrome is there to get your score just that little bit higher and rank up. It's as usual completely pointless, but it can and does suck in an awful lot of people and that isn't a criticism.

One of the best things about vegas in my eyes is the co-op story mode. You simply have a friend take over from one of the team and have them jump in and out seamlessly from your game. Stuck on a particular area, call a friend in to help, simply put I think that co-op story modes are essential and within reason every game should have one. Things like Dark Sector, Call of Duty 4 Bioshock and Orange Box were crying out for co-op play. GTA 4 really should have had co-op play in every single player mission. I realize that this is a processor intensive and lag inducing feature, but surely Call of duty 4 would have been much more fun to work through the story with your friends.

The normal multiplayer modes are all there, death-match, teams etc. It is the terrorist hunt mode that I feel is genius. You have up to four human players against 50 a.i. bot terrorists. It's hard work but it's fun and I have met and chatted with some entertaining people while playing it. It's a great fun watching others after you have lost your two re-spawns, urging them on with mounting excitement as the number of terrorists dwindle. This mode has it's flaws though only five or six terrorists are in the map with you at any one time and once one dies another spawns, sometimes right behind you.

A.i. is excellent especially in terrorist hunt probably due to the flaw mentioned above, you can be guaranteed that if you can't see them in front of you then they are about to sneak up behind you. When in battle they use cover well, though sometimes stay in cover beyond being sensible as you get right in close and hammer them when they reload. There are no real boss fights, just areas with many terrorists that take a lot of working through, the final battle with a chopper and about twenty terrorists is a doozy and I never even tried it on my own. With two human players it becomes much more manageable.

The now normal checkpoint system is used and there are a few times when you wish that the checkpoints were a little closer together, however it's nowhere near as game breaking as some games.

I played through the games single player mode twice, once on my own and another time with a friend, also played a ton of multiplayer, I ended up with 405 achievement points, which I feel was a little stingy for the amount of time I put into the game.

Scoring

Graphics 7

Gameplay 8

Story 4

Level Design 9

A.i. 9

Score 7.4

The potential problem with Trophies on the PS3

2008-06-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

First let me state my position on Achievements on the Xbox 360. I really like the whole concept that Microsoft introduced here. It might not be the first time a game has given out awards and unlockables. There have always been easter eggs and unlocks for playing a game through on Hard mode or collecting all the hidden objects etc. The clever thing that Microsoft did was make a console wide system out of it. What are the components of this system?

Each game has an points tied to in game actions like completing the game or doing something which can take minutes or hours.

1000 points for each retail game to be given out by the developer as they see fit

200 points for each arcade game as above

Games may add up to 250 points for downloadable content

A score that is visible to others, wether you are online or off, thanks to the gamercard system which is essentially a microsoft hotmail style passport. Your achievements are stored on a microsoft server for all to see.

The hard drive is a closed system. You can't copy to it practically in any way without hacking or additional hardware. Only recognised authorised software can put anything onto the drive.

These are the main components of the achievement system. The third point has led to many criticisms, for example you can copy music from a cd to the hdd but not video from a memory stick. Why restrict the freedom of the user to use the drive as they wish? especially when big name games like unreal tournament need it for user mods. One quick and easy answer, if you could copy freely you could take your game save, where for example you have 1000 points unlocked in Call of duty 4 and upload it to the net and allow anyone who wants to cheat their way up the score rankings an easy ride to the thousand points by downloading it and copying to the xbox 360 hard drive.

Now achievements have changed the way I play games. I think about the achievements before I play, go online and see the best tactics to get the most points. Games now reward multiple playthroughs, collecting all the collectables etc. What does the score mean? Nothing at all, and everything when you compare yours to a friend who also has an xbox360. The friendly rivalry for points has seen me buy stinkers of games just because they have an easy 1000, for example King Kong and Avatar: The Burning Earth.

Now as someone who has been playing games since the late seventies, I have never really needed much motivation to play games. Sure, I have had times when girls or some other hormonal imbalance has seen me leave games alone for say six months at a time, I have always game back. However, not since I could see clearly and simply that I was more of a game geek than my friends list, have I tried so hard to complete games fully and on the hardest difficulties.Think of this what you will

Now with rumours of trophies being implemented onto the PS3 I felt I had to write some of my fears down.

Firstly There must be a clear score or ranking system, I can understand that there may be some copyright issues here, but all the controllers look the same and hardly anyone sues. Surely Sony can get a work around and have a system where I can clearly see a score which shows time and effort put into my games without having to go into my home apartment which probably will need me to be online. Maybe a ranking like call of duty with an awful lot of subdivisions.

The trophy system sounds pretty silly, as in the first point it's the score that counts. Sure I can go into someone achievement history and see that they completed Halo 3 on legendary if I want to, and all the thousands of other achievements that they have. Sometimes I meet someone online and go into their profile and compare games, I hardly go much further than seeing that I have same or higher scores in certain games.

The point is that if they implement a similar system you are going to end up with thousands of trophies after a few years. not even the PS3 has enough polygon pushing power to show all of these on your virtual mantlepiece. So they will be scrolled arounds in a menu just like the xbox360. With no score you are going to have to do an awful lot of digging to see how good someone is.

The last point is the most important, as mentioned before microsoft locked the xbox360 drive into their own rules. Some might say that it so that you can't have custom themes without buying them, The main reason I think is copy protection for xbox live arcade games. What about gamerscore boosting? Think about it if you could copy savegames then you could get a hold of a save with all the unlocks and voila instant gamerscore godhood.

As is usual with computers anything can be hacked, and for a while people were indeed doing this. Microsoft were clever though, going on in the background of an achievement is all sorts of technical trickery, like recording the time and date of the achievment but more importantly the gamertag and the console serial number. Once devices had been sold to allow save trading microsoft simply banged the lid on it by wielding a hammer from on high and wiping the false scores out. Score cheating is a dirty word in most circles and from my standpoint here it seems like they won and you can pretty much say that a gamerscore is a reflection of the amount of time, money and to some extent skill and dedication of someone you meet on Xbox live. Xbox live being the main weapon here, with Microsoft having copies of the data they can run searches on it and find irregularities like all achievements being unlocked in a microsecond etc.

Now where does the PS3 stand here, on a quick inpsection using google I found numerous saved games that i could easily download and copy to my PS3, I don't even have Call of duty for it but at the moment there is a savegame on it's drive which shows that I have played it all through on veteran and unlocked everything possible. What will happen when the Trophies go live, will I be awarded them all for Call of duty, a game I have never put inside my PS3?

If so isn't the whole system completely invalidated right out of the box?

Have Sony even paused for thought on this? The open nature of the PS3 is touted as a plus.

Before i get hate mail I am sure they have, however the question is valid and how are they going to work around the fact that there are loads of savegames out there to download which could potentially see me getting every trophy created first day.

If I was them I would not look at old savegame data. The first thing to do would be to tag each savegame with an encrypted tag which shows the psn id and the console serial number, and any other identifying into they can think of and then start from scratch. It will be a bummer to have to play old games again to gain trophies, but I am sure if the game was good enough then that isn't too much of a hardship.

Otherwise the outcome will be a farce, with rampant trophy cheating rendering the whole system invalid.

If anyone has any info on this then please provide me with a link.

Dark Sector Xbox 360 Review

2008-05-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

Hayden Tenno is a agent for the agency, an American group involved in biological weapons. At the start of the game Hayden is sent to assassinate a scientist and ascertain if there has been an outbreak of a virus. The setting for the game is Larissa in Russia. The virus has escaped into the civilian population and there are teams of soldiers culling the infected. Hayden is confronted by a man named Mezzner who also works for the agency and seems to have gone rogue. Mezzner infects Hayden with the virus and leaves him for dead. Hayden begins to change and his infected arm grows a metal armor skin and a throwing weapon called the glaive grows out of his hand, an extension of himself that he can use as a deadly boomerang to slice and dice the soldiers who shoot on sight.

Hayden is thrown into this situation feeling guilty about an unexplained event in his past where it seems everything went wrong and he was responsible for a few deaths. He makes contact with other agency people and finds that Mezzner and his bodyguard named the nemesis are controlling events for their own ends and Hayden must stop Mezzner's madness from spreading the virus around the world. For every one person who gets infected and has wonderful abilities gifted to them there are another thousand who go mad with agony and become deformed shambling zombies.

The story is intriguing, however the way in which it is told is over concerned with being stylish and moody. The past is never explained, possibly there will be a prequel. We are never sure if Mezzner is worse than the agency Hayden works for. The only person who seems to be on the level is Hayden and he doesn't really seem to have an agenda or know what he is doing. The story moves along through various cut scenes and the ten levels are linked to the story in that we understand why Hayden is going wherever he is fighting towards. The game seems to be setting up the character of Hayden for big things, however most of his supporting cast are bumped of during the game only really leaving one other supporting cast member alive when the credits roll. If Hayden is going on to another game with all his new found super powers then he is going to have to have a new set of antagonists because he slaughtered everyone he had issues with this game.

The game borrows heavily from others in it's genre, it owes much to Gears of War, and yes I know that Gears of War wasn't the only game to use over the shoulder third person and cover mechanics but it is the most recognized example of the genre at present time. The controls are very similar, and the cover and roadie run are ripped straight from Gears. The game has more that just shooting at it's heart however, while gears was primarily a shooter Dark Sector wants to involve many other elements, as shown by Hayden's virus induced superpowers, he can throw the glaive and direct it in mid flight, he can shoot the glaive into fire, ice and electricity to charge it and double it's effectiveness, shocking, burning and freezing enemies accordingly. The glaive is also used as a melee weapon. Good timing unleashes a power throw which chops enemies in half first hit. Other powers include the ability to throw up a protective shield which also reflects back enemy fire. Finally Hayden can become invisible and sneak up on his foes stealthily. When you get used to the abilities Hayden becomes formidable and conventional weapons for me became a bit of an afterthought.

This seems to have been a design choice that I was funneled into. The games weapons that are dropped by soldiers can't be used by Hayden for more than about thirty seconds due to an anti-infected device set into them, presumably to prevent the infected civilian population gaining any firepower to fight back or possibly to prevent infected soldiers turning on their former allies. This means that guns dropped can be picked up and used but only for a limited time. To gain a weapon you can keep you have to pick up money littered around the levels and buy guns at the black market. The market is in the form of manholes which when activated take you to a shop where you can buy and sell weapons and upgrade and store previously bought weapons. Hayden can only carry two guns at a time so choices need to be made.

You start with small arms and when you gain enough money you can buy some formidable firepower. This system makes the game feel almost rpg like in your character development, I know it's pretty basic but the fact remains that the Hayden who starts the game is nothing like as powerful as the Hayden who finishes it. Money is fairly scarce and I tended to save money and make do with the glaive and it's powers to progress and bought the best weapons at about the seventh level of the game. The upgrade system merits criticism in my eyes as once you apply the powers you find in briefcases around the levels you can't remove them, I applied things willy nilly to start with and then ended up regretting it later when I couldn't change bigger magazine and rapid fire for enfron shells and double damage etc. I tended to sell the upgrades as I got them and save for guns instead, the same with grenades, i just forgot about them and sold them whenever i found a black market manhole.

The gameplay seems similar to Gears of war in some areas and yet never seems quite as fluid. There is a stop start progression which sees you moving from one set piece area to another. With puzzle areas in between. I found myself stuck several times during the game, at a loss as to what to do next and having to actually go online and research how to progress. When you find out what you have to do then you kick yourself and see the obvious. However that is also a problem, I am sure some people saw what was meant to be done straight away while others like me will struggle. For example near the start of the game you encounter heavy resistance in a large open area. Once you have killed everyone I spent literally an hour wandering this small square shaped area trying to figure out where to go next, there were two cellars, and several scaffolds and doors, all of which looked promising, there was also a cracked looking wall which seemed to be sticking out like it wanted to be blown up. Nothing seemed to work though. I kept looking at a locked gate, but there were other similar locked doors so I thought it might have something to do with it , so there I was stuck, a quick look online shows me that I have to use the glaive to hit a switch which is behind the gate, the switch wasn't flashing like most other interactive objects in the game however. I felt stupid and a hint to developers, making your audience feel stupid isn't helping them buy your next game.

Another example saw me pounding away on a boss until my ammo ran dry. Only by going online did I find out i had to set fire to a truck, light some infected goo on fire to expose some electricity and then use electricity on the back of the boss to get at it's driver. I hadn't even seen the driver because the thing never turns it's face away from you. I know it's a cliche to paint huge targets on bosses where you should hit them but in this case an electrify here sign would have been most helpful. The point I am trying to make here is that the game is less than intuitive in my eyes, far too often I was left wondering what to do next or how to proceed.

Mention must be made of two scenes where you control a vehicle called the jackal. The jackal is one of the early bosses and once you defeat it you can get in and control it. It moves like a mechanical horse and is built like a tank. With a machine gun and rocket launcher it is quite fun to control. When you are shot at with rockets you must launch chaff to divert incoming fire. I enjoyed these sections though they were quite short, though possibly the Jackal would have been boring if it's sections were much longer.

The a.i. is a little dumb in places. The soldiers especially seem to be a bit dull and usually just sit behind cover and pop up now and again. Too many times you are left waiting with your cursor over the spot you know they are going to appear, waiting to send the glaive spinning into their skull. The further into the game you go you begin to meet infected who have gained powers like yourself, and they tend to jump around like fleas and flank and use invisibility. Their a.i. is passable. There are some annoying riot shield soldiers who come at you relentlessly and have to be stunned by banging the glaive off their shield and looking for an opening at head or feet to shoot them down.

There are several boss fights in this game, large mechanical beasts and huge infected, along with the Nemesis and Mezzner himself. All the boss battles are different and quite fun. The last one with Mezzner got a bit repetitive. The bosses were all satisfying and there is a plot twist revelation with one boss battle that I won't spoil, though I will admit it was one I could see coming. The boss fights do tend to suffer from the player not having a clear goal however.

The areas looked and felt lived in and dirty, the buildings seemed functional. Level design was very good. The only criticism here is that the color scheme was drab. The graphics were excellent throughout. Dark Sector uses the evolution engine and the game seemed smooth and glitch free with some impressive textures. I have to say I was more impressed that I thought I would be, having seen some early footage almost a year ago that never looked as good as the finished game.

The sound is minimal with sparse music and lots of eerie sound effects. Guns and explosions sound like well guns and explosions. The sound is adequate.

The game employs the now standard screen going red and eventually you die if you take too much damage in a row format. There are checkpoints and I never once found myself going back too far after dying. The menu presentation is good with a good artistic style. If you want gothic, dark and moody then this game is for you.

The achievements are well balanced. I have played the game through once on normal difficulty which unlocks the brutal difficulty mode. I gained 550 points from a first play through. The game gives out another 110 for completing it on brutal and I am sure I will gain some of the kill 30 enemies with fire, electricity etc achievements on a second play-through. There is one achievement that i kept trying for and has still eluded me, double decappe latte asks you to lop off two heads in a row. I am still trying for this one. Maybe on that second play-through.

There is a reasonable stab at multiplayer. I haven't played it much yet as Rainbow six vegas is taking up my time with all my friends list asking me to join them for terrorist hunts. I might give Dark Sector a go, but in all honesty I can't really see it happening, ranking systems are the in thing in multiplayer at present.

Scoring

Graphics 9

Gameplay 8

Story 6

Level Design 6

A.i. 6

Total score 7