Let Play The Game

Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot

2010-02-12T18:38:00.002+05:30

Underdome Riot is heavy on challenge and light on rewards. Only diehard teams of maxed-out mercs need apply.
The Good

* Two skill points are a juicy reward
* Lots of tough, relentless combat.

The Bad

* Lots of tough, repetitive combat
* No experience or weapon proficiency gains
* Limited number of environments
* Small bug affects loot drop visibility.

Little over a month after the release of its first downloadable content pack (The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned), Borderlands is at it again. The second serving is titled Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot in honor of the vampy ringleader who oversees the coliseum-style combat that dominates this DLC. While it has the same price tag (800 Microsoft points or $10) and follows the same naming convention as its predecessor, the similarities end there. There is no story to explore, only round after round of brutal arena combat. And though there is some good loot, you won't earn experience or increase your weapon proficiencies by killing the hordes of enemies that are thrown at you. This DLC is tailor-made for mercenaries who have hit the level cap, completed some or all of their second playthrough, and are looking to put their combat prowess to the test. Mad Moxxi provides this and only this, so anyone not interested in combat for combat's sake is advised to avoid the Underdome, and even bloodthirsty Borderlanders may find it repetitive. The Underdome is like a big three-ring circus, and Mad Moxxi is the ringleader. The opening sequence provides an amusing intro to this eccentric character, but aside from Mad Moxxi's ringside commentary (occasionally funny, often repetitive), there isn't much of that signature Borderlands humor here. The three rings are three different enclosed combat arenas inspired by different areas of Pandora. Hell-burbia is like a cross between New Haven and Jakob's Cove; Ancient Ruins is an archaeological site similar to those near the end of the main Borderlands campaign; and The Gully is straight out of Rust Commons. Each arena is dotted with structures and varying terrain, providing plenty of room to maneuver and a number of scenic elements to use to your advantage. Though each arena is well-designed, there are only three of them, and after a few hours of combat you will likely yearn for more environmental diversity.

At the outset of Underdome Riot, you pick up a quest that challenges you to survive five rounds in each arena. One round of combat is made up of five themed waves. The first is the starter wave, generally populated by bandits and skags (the only Pandoran creature featured in this DLC). The second is the self-explanatory gun wave. The third is the horde wave, which is populated entirely by psychos. Next up is the badass wave, which features a higher percentage of badass level characters than usual. And the finale is the boss stage, which pits you against such title-card characters as Sledge, Nine Toes, and Baron Flynt, as well as lesser bosses like King Wee Wee, Reaver, and Master McCloud. It behooves you to plan for the different challenges of each round (especially the maniacal horde wave), but though enemy spawns can vary quite a bit within a given wave, the action does get repetitive. You need a hearty appetite for combat to keep the repetition at bay, though there are some factors that help keep things lively.

As you fight through waves and rounds, your enemies get tougher and more numerous. They start off a bit weaker than usual, but each round brings incremental boosts to their health, shields, and damage, up to the point where they are significantly tougher and more deadly. Additionally, later rounds impose new conditions on each wave. Some merely change the circumstances, by decreasing the gravity or improving the damage done by a certain type of weapon, for example. Others increase your enemies' strength even further (for instance, enemies spawn with better guns), while still others directly hamstring you (for example, you have constantly draining health that you can replenish only by killing enemies). When these conditions stack up and combine with the aforementioned enemy attribute bonuses, you get some of the most challenging combat on all of Pandora. Meeting this challenge solo is brutally hard, so you'd better have at least one skilled teammate along for the ride. Having someone to revive you when you can't get a second wind is key, because failure will set you back many rounds or wipe the slate clean, depending on how far you've gotten. If you die while at least one teammate still lives, you are banished to the top of a tower in the middle of the arena. You can shoot, throw grenades, and use your action skill from there, but you can't escape until your team finishes the wave.

The grisly aftermath of the horde wave.

So if you're looking for a tough challenge, then you should consider paying Mad Moxxi a visit. Just don't expect to be handsomely rewarded for it. You gain no experience or weapon proficiency for killing enemies inside the arenas. And unless you have a skill that affects enemy loot drops (like Mordecai's Swipe skill), you won't be getting anything from your vanquished foes (though you can make progress toward and complete Challenges). Frantic end-of-wave resupply drops are your only chance to get ammo or health from external sources, so it's best that you rely on your own inventory or skills. At the end of each round, Mad Moxxi does offer some richer rewards in the form of guns, shields, and class mods, and the longer you survive, the better these rewards will be. Unfortunately, there's an odd bug that occasionally causes some players to be unable to see every item in the loot drop. Communication can help you work around these instances, but it's still a bit troubling. Yet no matter how many sweet weapons or solid shields you may earn, the most precious rewards you'll find are two additional skill points, which is especially tantalizing for those who have reached the level cap.

And that pretty well sums up the target demographic of Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot: those who have reached the level cap. If you and your buddies are looking to get the band of mercenaries back together, Mad Moxxi's relentless combat will fit the bill, and the skill points are a nice reward for your troubles. But the Underdome strips away a lot of the elements that make Borderlands so much fun, so this DLC may not scratch your itchy trigger finger. You don't gain experience or proficiency, the scenery doesn't change, the structure doesn't offer much variety, and there's precious little character or humor. Underdome Riot is a very narrow add-on with very limited appeal, but if you're dying for a heaping helping of pure combat, Mad Moxxi has got your fix.

If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot from the Amazon.com

Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond Review

2010-02-12T18:37:00.002+05:30

This satirical shooter is fun, but it never takes advantage of the potential of its parodies.
The Good

* Cooperative play is a good time
* Higher difficulties offer plenty of challenge.

The Bad

* Parodies are uninspired
* Less than two hours long
* $15 is way too expensive
* Co-op play is offline only.

The Matt Hazard series of games is built on the premise that even the most popular franchises are not sacred cows. Considering that the industry frequently takes itself quite seriously, the idea of lampooning all that is dear has a certain charm to it. However, as noble as Matt Hazard's motives may be, the games in which he stars fall far short of their goal. Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond places the wisecracking hero in a 2D shooter reminiscent of Contra, and though the action rarely ventures beyond the scores of games that have come before it, it is challenging and diverse enough to keep things interesting through the two hours it takes to finish your quest. But because Blood Bath fails to take advantage of its parody material, it loses any chance to stand out from the crowd. Matt Hazard has to rescue the person he holds most near to his heart: himself. Specifically, an 8-bit representation of himself, whose death would change history, causing the present-day Hazard to die an untimely death as well. It's a convoluted story that never expects you to accept the ridiculous premise. Blood Bath takes frequent jabs at its own inane logic, poking fun at the ludicrous situation and trying to figure out if time travel really can change the present. In fact, the only humorous moments in Blood Bath are when the game makes fun of either itself or its predecessor, Eat Lead. There are many jokes about the poor sales and chilly critical reception of the first game, and those instances of self-ridicule make the game more endearing and humorous than the by-numbers action and uninspired parodies do.

The eight levels play out in typical shooter fashion. You walk from left to right and spray bullets wildly while trying to avoid the slow-moving attacks from your countless foes. You can freely aim by holding LB and moving the left stick, which works well but feels clunky compared to last year's Shadow Complex, in which you could aim while running by swiveling the right stick. There are moments in which enemies will rush you from the background, and you can aim your sights that way with a tap of the trigger. It's not a particularly new idea, but it adds some depth to the typical shooting action, forcing you to keep your eyes darting across the screen to identify any potential threat. Weapon power-ups give the tried-and-true action a bit of variety. The assortment of machine guns, rocket launchers, and shotguns let you dispose of your enemies in deadly ways, but it's the flamethrower that is the gem of your arsenal. It lights up your attackers like campfire marshmallows, leaving behind a gooey residue that probably shouldn't be eaten.

A giant boss character waits at the end of each level, giving you a worthwhile ending sequence to all this bloody carnage. The bosses are purely pattern based, but they move quickly and have powerful attacks, forcing you to stay focused the whole time or you will meet a fast, and very violent, end. The most ridiculous of these battles is against a giant robotic lighthouse. There is no explanation for why someone would have equipped a lighthouse with legs and missile pods, but it sure is fun avoiding its deadly anchor and shooting its missile right back at it. If you aren't quick on your toes, you will die frequently at these bosses' hands, which makes the game pretty darn hard. On the higher two difficulty settings, your continues are finite, so you will need to start over from the beginning of the level if you fall to these giant monstrosities. The challenge never seems unfair, and it's rewarding to make it through a particularly difficult level unscathed and finally vanquish a boss who tormented you so thoroughly in the past.

Toasty!

The different levels draw inspiration from popular video game franchises, letting you walk through familiar backdrops that will evoke a pang of nostalgia when you think back on your time spent with those vastly superior games. The first level re-creates the undersea utopia from BioShock, another places you in the eerily clean city from Mirror's Edge, and a third level mixes Team Fortress 2 and Super Mario Bros. for some unexplained reason. The parodies are not always clear (the pirate-themed second level could be mimicking anything from Tomb Raider to Pirates of the Burning Sea), but it is neat when you recognize a game you previously enjoyed. The problem is that Blood Bath doesn't do anything with this material. Sure, it's interesting to blast through Rapture, but there aren't any jokes about the Little Sisters or Big Daddies. The art style is the only thing Blood Bath shares with BioShock, which feels like a missed opportunity. If the end boss destroyed itself with a golf club or Matt Hazard made fun of objectivism, the parodies would have been a lot more entertaining. As it is, the parodies are strictly visual and largely forgettable.

Although the adventure can be completed in less than two hours, there is a little bit of replay value for those who enjoy collecting. Every level has three hidden cartridges, and by nabbing them all, you unlock information on unreleased games Matt Hazard starred in from his fictional past. There is an offline-only cooperative mode as well, and though it doesn't change the action at all, it is certainly more fun blasting waves of enemies with a buddy than by your lonesome. The standard shooting in Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond is solid, but there is little in this package to entice those who have already torn through thousands of enemies in dozens of other games. The parodies are the one element that could have been interesting, but they are implemented in such an uninspired way that they serve only as a reminder of how much cooler this game could have been.

If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond from the Amazon.com

King's Bounty: Armored Princess Review

2010-02-12T18:35:00.000+05:30

It may be derivative, but King's Bounty: Armored Princess is still an outstanding strategy role-playing game.
The Good

* Brilliantly nails the traditional strategy RPG formula
* Lots of depth with units, spells, magical items, and hero development
* Colorful plot with memorable characters.

The Bad

* Difficulty ramps up too quickly
* Dated visuals and sound.

King's Bounty: Armored Princess does more of the same really well. The stand-alone expansion to 2008's cult hit King's Bounty: The Legend adds virtually nothing to the original's strategy role-playing game formula, but the game does all of the by-the-numbers stuff so perfectly that you can't help but love the deja vu. While developer Katauri Interactive isn't going to win any awards for innovation here, this is still a must-play for anyone who loves this genre. Assaulting cartoonish undead castles with a collection of D&D refugees is just part of the adventure.

Most of the plot of Armored Princess is a straightforward extension of the original King's Bounty. The demons that you fought as the champion of the fantasy realm Endoria are back for round two, and only the armored princess of the title stands in their way. Princess Amelie is the hero you play as here, a maid in mail who winds up being sent to the alternate reality of Teana on a hunt for her mentor, the knight Bill Gilbert, and eight magical stones that can save the world. This basically turns into an tropical getaway because Teana is kind of a Caribbean world divided into a succession of fairly small islands, each with distinct personalities. One is full of pirates, for instance, another loaded with barbarians, and so on. This adds an energetic atmosphere to the new game and breaks up your adventure into easily digestible chunks. This structure also bluntly lets you know how you're doing because you can tell pretty much immediately whether or not you have enough levels under your belt to take on an island. Running into a bunch of invincible barbarians on a new island is a pretty good cue that you should kick your sailboat into reverse. New islands generally have to be accessed with maps that must be taken from tough enemies, too, which also keeps you from getting ahead of yourself for the most part.

Plot and basic structure are identical to that in both its predecessor and tons of other Heroes of Might & Magic-inspired sagas. You guide Amelie across intricate maps of fairly traditional fantasy lands (enemies generally come with claws, swords, and shields, although you do run into the odd robot) with a horde of units in tow that serve as shock troops for battles. Whenever you take on some bad guys, these grunts do the fighting for you, although you give them their marching orders on turn-based hexagonal battlefields. Amelie starts off as a first-level wuss of a paladin, mage, or warrior (your choice) that can recruit only basic bowmen, clerics, and pitchfork-wielding peasants into her army. But with time, levels, and increases in her leadership stat, she will be able to field troops like giant snakes, giant spiders, ancient bears, sneaky buccaneers, creepy vampires, and many other D&D refugees. The goal is, of course, to explore the nooks and crannies of the islands, as well as slay evildoers and monsters. You'll also solve quests; buff Amelie by leveling up and tweaking her many might, mind, or magic abilities via an extensive skill tree; and progress to the final showdown. One significant addition is a pet dragon that levels up and has special abilities that can be used in combat. The beast's role isn't well defined, though, so it seems less like a traveling buddy than a way to cast extra spells during battles.

So there are no stop-the-presses moments here. The only real difference between the first King's Bounty and its follow-up is how quickly the difficulty scales up. Armored Princess assumes that you have played the original, which means that it gets right to the point. Battles turn tough as soon as you reach the second island, forcing you to really learn the ins and outs of the game's hero skill progression tree, as well as how to best recruit and employ troops in battle. You will have a rough time of it here unless you have either played the first game or have some previous experience with strategy RPGs. Still, it's not an unfair progression. The difficulty increases quickly but not suddenly. If you're paying attention at all, you won't get caught by impossible opposition. It's not as if you go directly from whomping spiders and pirates to getting scorched by invincible demons. And even when you're in tough against serious opposition, the incredibly detailed maps provide entertainment all on their own. Exploration is even more of an entertaining diversion than combat because your speed on horseback allows you to gallop away from impossible-to-defeat baddies and even occasionally snipe a big reward or reach a castle where you can recruit powerful units without fighting. Maps have goodies crammed into every nook and cranny, including buried chests full of gold, magical doodads, and the mystic runes that power Amelie's skills. Quests can be found all over the place, and they are typically offered up along with reams of colorful text that develop Amelie's personality and build up Teana as a real place through the collection of oddballs handing out these jobs. You can safely skip all this verbiage, of course, but taking the time to read it all is rewarding if you're seriously into role playing.

Battlegrounds range from sinister underground lairs to sunny tropical beaches.

With all that said, Armored Princess feels dated at times. The graphics engine is really showing its age now but the art style is more cartoony than realistic, so the game can get away with broad caricatures, chunky monster models, and whiz-bang spell effects. These consist of fireworks and cheesy animations like spooky faces indicating units being scared. Islands and battle arenas are stocked with lots of added details as well, including cobwebby corners and overgrown graveyards. But there are also some performance issues here, most notably how you get stuck on scenery when guiding Amelie around the islands. Clicking on inaccessible areas--which is easy to do because the islands are veritable mazes of narrow paths and greenery--causes her to simply stop and wait for a new order. This is both annoying and life threatening because these inopportune pauses can get you caught by pursuing enemies. Audio is also archaic. Unit sound effects in battle are almost nonexistent and never memorable even when you can hear them. Music is also a generic blat of horns that you'll forget moments after shutting down the game.

Even though it may be a slave to its genre, King's Bounty: Armored Princess is still an impressive representation of the modern strategy RPG. Story, exploration, combat, and character development come together in a great, addictive game that will keep you hooked for many, many hours.

If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of King's Bounty: Armored Princess from the Amazon.com

Dante's Inferno Review

2010-02-12T18:32:00.000+05:30

Dante's epic quest loses momentum long before you reach the end.

The Good

* Combat is bloody good fun
* Some of the creature designs are gloriously vile.

The Bad

* Final one-third of the game is lousy
* Puzzles are either way too easy or just lame
* Uneven difficulty too often relies on cheap deaths.

While Dante slices through the belly of an undead beast with his razor-sharp scythe, traverses a crumbling bridge with a quick-time event, and overthrows the ruler of a damned land with vicious determination, a burst of familiarity might flash through your mind. From the gothic art style and the vengeance-fueled story to the stationary camera clearly displaying the blood-splattering combat, Dante's Inferno is a wholesale imitation of the superb God of War series. Or, at the very least, it's desperately trying to be. Unfortunately, the impression lasts for only the first few hours. What starts as a fast-paced and epic quest to destroy Lucifer in an underworld populated by grotesque and disfigured beings, devolves into a monotonous and downright predictable hack-and-slash. Dante's Inferno gets close enough to its source material to make for a gory and satisfying few hours in hell, but its many flaws prevent it from rising to paradise. The lesson delivered by Dante's Inferno is one every person should keep in mind: Do not, under any circumstance, make a deal with the devil. You will lose, and you may not be handy enough with a scythe to hack your way out of the mess you create. In this case, Beatrice thought too highly of her husband Dante's moral character. Worried that he would lose his life while liberating heathens during his holy crusade, she comes to an agreement with Lucifer. If he stays faithful, the devil will ensure that he makes it home alive. If he loses control with a seductive slave girl, though, Beatrice will forfeit her own soul forever. The story is told using three distinct styles to chronicle Dante's descent into darkness to rescue the eternal spirit of his betrayed wife. The CGI and in-game cutscenes are expected, but it is the series of sparsely animated cartoons that stand out. These fill in the backstory of Dante's actions during the crusades and go a long way toward developing his character. The story has few surprises, but the manner in which it slowly puts Dante's entire life into perspective makes for an interesting setup for his adventure.

And the adventure does start out on a strong note. The first few hours have an epic scale that makes the descent from the earthly plain into the pits of hell feel like a momentous transition. Pathways crumble underfoot, threatening to spill you into the bubbling lava below; gargantuan creatures loom in the distance, tossing out taunts as you make you way through their defenses; and horrible abominations are introduced every few minutes. The vile enemies you battle are modeled on the circles of hell, and they do an impressive job of embodying these contemptible sins. Lust, for instance, is populated by prostitutes who were all too willing to sell their bodies while they were alive, and they are punished by having their souls sold in the afterlife. The typical anatomy of these women of ill repute is grossly exaggerated, and though you'll certainly want to avoid their disgusting makeshift lassos, their presence makes for a disturbing trip to the land of the damned.

Dante even spills blood while opening doors.

In the early stages, you will battle a number of horrific caricatures. The prostitutes of lust are followed by obese monsters who do a fine (yet gross) job of personifying gluttony, and an army of blade babies who haven't been baptized are sure to get a rise out of even the most jaded individuals. But these disgusting portrayals of the deadly sins are soon forgotten as you get deeper into your quest. After the shocking imagery used in the early going, you have only knights and wizards to look forward to, which lack the appeal of the repulsive enemies that precede them. In fact, the only memorable foes in the entire game are introduced within the first couple of hours, making the rest of the adventure much less interesting and far more predictable. Furthermore, although it makes sense that the circle of gluttony would be populated by grossly obese individuals, the fact that they pop up in heresy, anger, and every other circle doesn't mesh with the rules set in place.

The level design follows a similar descent into banality. What starts as epic and explosive soon becomes repetitive. Too much of Dante's Inferno takes place in confined rooms that don't hint at the huge world you're in, which lowers much of the impact of clawing your way through the netherworld. The puzzles that crop up only serve to artificially slow your progress rather than give you a worthwhile change of pace from the violent combat. Much of the time, endurance is the only tool you will need to complete these tests. Box-dragging or crank-turning puzzles aren't fun or mind-bending challenges. Rather they are just time wasters and only detract from the experience. The few times that they do force you to think only reinforce the poor design of these puzzles. Difficulty only exists because the camera either doesn't show you what you need to see or highlights an area that is not important. The bulk of the game focuses on Dante's expertise in eliminating forsaken souls, and the combat is the element that most closely mimics God of War. Battles are brutally violent. Your powerful scythe slashes through treacherous beasts like a hot knife through butter, and it's great fun to hack away at your enemy while you deftly roll away from its counterattacks. Quick-time events play a large part of the action, letting you take down your foes in elaborate and horrifically violent ways. The over-the-top, merciless portrayal of the combat fits in perfectly with the dark themes presented in the game, which makes it the strongest aspect of your quest. You earn souls for every enemy you kill, and these points go toward upgrading your attacks. There are both holy and unholy meters to fill, which let you personalize your moves a bit. Upgrading Dante gives you a steady stream of new attacks, and though you aren't able to unlock new weapons through the course of the game, there is enough variety to make sure combat doesn't get stale. But the combat is not without a few flaws, which results in more than a few aggravating moments. First of all, once you begin a combo, you must see it through to the end, which is maddening if you're trying to avoid an attack but Dante is stubbornly still swinging away. Second, you have a handy projectile attack, but the auto-aim functionality doesn't work right, so it's nearly impossible to hit a specific enemy in a crowded room. Third, challenge is all over the place. Most fights are fairly easy, but knockback attacks are overpowered. All too often, Dante will be caught in a chain of punishment that is impossible to break out of because enemies can attack you even when you're lying prone on the ground. It's possible to lose half of your life bar or more to these annoying situations, which makes the otherwise fun fights quite frustrating.

The quality of Dante's Inferno fluctuates wildly throughout the course of the game. During the first one-third of this eight-hour adventure, the diverse array of enemies and epic environments make for an enjoyable, hectic quest for vengeance. Things level out in the middle one-third, though. Memorable characters are no longer introduced and the level design is far less adventurous, but the frantic combat is enough to make this stretch fun, if not particularly noteworthy. The final one-third of this game is uninspired and downright bad at times, making for a wholly unsatisfying end to this derivative game. During the buildup to the end boss, level design has been virtually scrapped. Instead of tearing through the depths of hell, you are confined to a series of platforms where you must pass certain objectives before you can move forward. For instance, you will need to eliminate every enemy without summoning magic or by just using air attacks, which is just as lifeless as it sounds. This is a boring way to end the game and leaves a sour taste when the credits roll.

Oh joy, another block puzzle!

It's a shame the entirety of Dante's Inferno couldn't match the frenetic pacing and horrific imagination found in the beginning of your adventure because it could have been a worthwhile alternative to the excellent God of War series. But most of the game falls far short of its impressive beginning, which results in a repetitive and uninspired adventure that loses steam long before you reach the bitter end. Dante's Inferno is certainly fun during those hectic first few hours, but there is little reason to play beyond those parts. It's not worth visiting hell without the promise of heaven on the other side.
If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Dante's Inferno from the Amazon.com

Darksiders

2010-02-12T18:30:00.000+05:30

An uproariously fun and enjoyable post-Apocalyptic adventure that is a little too familiar at times.

The Good

* Fun, fluid, and brutal combat
* Plenty of satisfying puzzles to solve
* Constant rewards keep you wanting to play
* Large world to explore with a lengthy single-player campaign.

The Bad

* Controls are overly complicated and sometimes unresponsive
* Absurd and meager story.

While plenty of games are set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, not many let you participate in the actual end of the world. In the case of Darksiders, this is precisely where the action begins. Influenced by games like God of War and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and often dangerously straddling the line between homage and plagiarism), Darksiders offers an expansive world to explore, with satisfying combat and intriguing puzzles to solve peppered throughout. Though it falls prey to a poorly fleshed-out story and overly complex controls that don't always work the way they should, Darksiders is nonetheless a thoroughly fun and visually engaging adventure that manages to take some old ideas and make them feel fresh once again.
As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your job is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen's most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you're somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it's time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it's a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes, the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you're introduced to are fleshed out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.

While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War's weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death's scythe), and it's simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it's incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

Executions are bloody, violent, and fun to perform.

When you're not on the warpath, there's an enormous world waiting to be explored and dozens of intriguing puzzles to solve along the way. Traversing from one area to the next isn't always straightforward, for your progress is often hindered by your gear, or at least by your lack of it. As you proceed through the many dungeons on your journey through Darksiders, you find that each one includes a useful new item, such as a bladed boomerang, a grappling hook, or an armored gauntlet, each of which opens up new paths for you to travel and is used in often creative ways to solve puzzles and defeat bosses from then on out. Puzzle complexity ramps up nicely, and each new variation encountered is a fair step up from the previous one. Though some can initially look overwhelming--such as a series of puzzles near the end of the game in which you must redirect a beam of energy from its source using mirrors, moving platforms, and interdimensional portals--they never feel impossible and are extremely gratifying to complete. At the end of each dungeon is a large-scale boss battle that puts what you've learned solving these puzzles to the test. These impressive, multifaceted fights are sometimes a bit on the easy side, but not so much that it makes them any less fun.

Throughout the game, you are constantly rewarded with new pieces of equipment, weapons, and abilities--every hour of gameplay yields something new, which keeps you wanting to play to see what's next. The unfortunate downside of this is that there are so many different things to keep track of that it can get confusing sometimes. Unfortunately, the complex controls don't do much to curb this confusion. Every single face button on the controller is used (sometimes for more than one thing), and some moves require combinations of buttons to be pressed. Certain actions, such as throwing a charged boomerang at several targets, require a dizzying array of inputs to be made: in this case, you have to tap the right analog stick to enter aiming mode, hold the left trigger down, paint your targets with the cursor, and hold then release the right trigger to finally charge the boomerang and toss it. Because only so many pieces of gear can be instantly accessible through the D pad, in the latter parts of the game you'll find yourself frequenting the cumbersome inventory menu to swap out items for easy access, which can be annoying. Finally, the controls aren't always as responsive as they need to be, which can cause you to flub a jump, miss a dodge, or inexplicably fall while hanging off a wall or ceiling when you meant to do something entirely different. This doesn't happen often, but it's always troubling when it does.

War's a pretty big guy, but many of his opponents tower over him.

Though the world of Darksiders is one of decay and neglect following the premature apocalypse, it is still one of visual splendor. From the lush vegetation of the Drowned Pass to the barren desert of The Ashlands, a refreshingly bright and colorful palette is always on display. Varied and imaginative, the open world and dungeons look great, though there are some unfortunate graphical issues in the Xbox 360 version. Screen tearing is a huge problem that surfaces almost any time the camera is rotated, and it's bad enough to distract you even when you're just exploring. In addition, battles that get too big make the frame rate suffer, causing graphical slowdown. The PlayStation 3 version suffers neither of these issues. Action in Darksiders is punctuated by an appropriately moody and atmospheric soundtrack, and the vocal cast does a good job bringing the characters to life, considering how meagerly they're fleshed out. Mark Hamill in particular seems to relish his role as the Watcher, a sadistic demon tasked with keeping an eye on War (though it's a bit odd to hear him recycle his Joker voice so soon after Batman: Arkham Asylum).

Darksiders unapologetically borrows gameplay ideas and mechanics from all over the spectrum and is constantly cramming new ones in all the way up to the very end. While it's not innovative by any stretch of the imagination, neither is it entirely derivative, as these myriad features not only gel together surprisingly well, but when put together even feel fresh again. Though it's hobbled by a disappointing story and excessively complex controls (as well as some technical issues on the Xbox 360), Darksiders is a fun and entertaining adventure with a host of fair but challenging puzzles, a lengthy single-player campaign, and an engaging combat system.

If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Darksiders from the Amazon.com for just $54.99

Final Fantasy Crystal Review

2010-02-12T18:28:00.000+05:30

The vibrant world and exciting story of this action game are at odds with its repetitive and frustrating gameplay.
The Good

* Richly detailed and diverse world
* Exciting, well-told story.

The Bad

* Shallow, repetitive combat
* Absence of map makes it easy to get lost
* Character customization is uninvolving.

When it comes to creating distinct and memorable worlds, few developers have such a storied history as Square Enix. And in The Crystal Bearers, the new third-person adventure game set in the Crystal Chronicles universe, this gift for conjuring worlds is on glorious display. Your journeys will take you through a diverse assortment of vibrant locales that are alive with detail and activity, and you'll sometimes feel yourself getting transported to this vividly realized world. But that feeling won't last. The Crystal Bearers is crammed with disappointments and frustrations that are every bit the match of its charms, and each time you're starting to feel yourself absorbed in the adventure, one of those disappointments comes along and yanks you right out of it.

The opening sequence is fast-paced and fun. Unfortunately, most of what follows isn't.

The Crystal Bearers may be set in the same universe as earlier Crystal Chronicles games, but no knowledge of those is necessary to dive into this one. It has been a thousand years since the events of the original game, and the world has changed drastically. Technology is the dominant force, with magic the domain of only a handful of outcasts called crystal bearers. You play as Layle, a brash young bearer who rents out his abilities of telekinesis to the highest bidder. The game gets off to a thrilling start when the flying luxury ship that Layle has been hired to protect is besieged by monsters summoned by a member of the ostensibly extinct Yuke tribe. Layle launches himself into a hot pursuit of the enigmatic Yuke and into an adventure in which the fate of the world is at stake. The story is a good one, packed with memorable characters, rich with themes of discrimination and a sense of history, and told via frequently exciting cutscenes. The most compelling reason to play this game is to experience the tale it tells and the richly detailed, magical world in which it takes place.

Experiencing that tale means putting up with a whole lot of disappointing gameplay, though. The Crystal Bearers makes a strong first impression, with a bold opening that makes it clear right off the bat that this is an action game, altogether different from the earlier, more role-playing-oriented Crystal Chronicles titles. When the ship is attacked, Layle literally leaps into action, and as he plummets through the sky, you use the Wii remote to target and fire at the flying monsters. It's a brisk and fun opening sequence that sets a tone the game sadly fails to maintain. Other minigame sequences pop up frequently throughout the story, including an on-rails chocobo chase sequence and a simple rhythm game when Layle must dance at a high-class ball, but while these are pleasant little diversions from the core action, they aren't enough to save it.

Although the plot tries to create a sense of tension as Layle pursues the mysterious Yuke from one location to another in the early stages, the dull gameplay kills any sense of pacing. When you run from area to area, you'll occasionally come across groups of monsters to fight. But the combat is shallow and tedious. You can target an environmental object or an enemy with the remote, grab it using Layle's powers, and toss it through the air with a quick flick or a tap of the B button. You can also swing the remote to have Layle roll, avoiding any incoming attacks. This is how all combat works in the game. You target things, grab them, and toss them, over and over again. There's a small amount of experimentation involved, since it may prove to be more effective to toss certain objects at certain enemies, but the mechanics of combat never become any more elaborate or rewarding. Even the final boss battle, which to its credit has a grand sense of scale and drama to it, is as frustrating and dull as the battles that precede it.

Grabbing and tossing things repeatedly as your only means of attack makes for some repetitive, boring combat.

The dullness of combat is compounded by the camera, which, rather than smartly following the pointer when you're trying to target a monster at the edge of the screen, must be slowly rotated with the control pad. And it's made more frustrating by an imposed time limit. If you vanquish all the monsters in an area, you're rewarded with a myrrh fragment, which increases your maximum life. However, if you take too long to defeat the monsters, they all vanish, and you must wait for all of them to reappear for another shot at the precious myrrh fragment. What's particularly maddening about the time limit is that there's no countdown displayed onscreen, so you never know how much time you have remaining. If you could see the clock ticking down, you'd at least be able to cut your losses and move on when it became clear that things weren't going to go your way, but as it is, you can waste minutes trying to defeat all the monsters, only to hear a bell toll as you fail and the monsters vanish, leaving you with nothing to show for your efforts.

Of course, you're not always fighting. Much of your time is spent just traversing the world, running or riding a chocobo from one key location to the next, and this process is also marred by a glaring issue. The game has no proper map to help you get from one place to another. As a result, it's very easy to get lost and to waste long periods of time running around until you stumble on the path to where you're going.

One thing you probably won't spend much time doing is customizing Layle. Character customization may be a significant part of most games that bear the Final Fantasy name, but it's a very minor component here. As you travel and fight monsters, you'll gather materials that can be crafted into various accessories that Layle can equip to enhance certain attributes, increase the size of your target cursor, or convey other bonuses. But the overall impact of these accessories on the gameplay is generally small, and you can progress through the entire game without bothering with accessories at all.

The story and the world are far better than what the gameplay deserves.

The Crystal Bearers looks impressive. The locations you visit are designed with an imaginative flair and are imbued with a level of detail that makes them truly captivating. There's a remarkable variety to the locations as well. The architecture, fashion, and technology of each area lend believability to the rich history and diverse cultures that the game's story hints at. From the futuristic elegance of the Lilty capital to the rusty oppressiveness of an aerial prison, the world of this game will stay with you. So will its characters, thanks to smart writing and mostly solid voice acting, though Layle's lines are listlessly delivered. The various melodies that play as you travel the world provide appropriate accompaniment to the look of each region, and the sound effects suit the action just fine.

The amount of time it takes to reach the conclusion of The Crystal Bearers can vary wildly depending on how much combat you decide to bother with and how much time you spend trying to figure out how to get where you're going, but regardless of whether it takes you eight hours or 15, you won't enjoy most of that time. A game this beautiful, with an exciting, well-told story like this one, should have gameplay that makes you want to spend time in its world. But as dazzling as the characters and locations are, they can't hide the fact that the game just isn't fun to play.

If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Final Fantasy Crystal from the Amazon.com

Bayonetta Review

2010-02-12T18:25:00.000+05:30

Bayonetta on the PS3 is simultaneously gratuitous, ludicrous, and great, but it's unfortunately held back from its potential by a number of technical issues.

The Good

* Fluid, flexible, and fun combat system
* Witch time and witch walk add new dimensions to battle
* Memorable and enjoyable boss fights
* Intuitive scoring system with online leaderboards
* Excellently animated.

The Bad

* Frequent, lengthy load times
* Frame rate hiccups during high-action sequences
* Some minor camera issues.

From the moment Bayonetta's prologue begins, it's made abundantly clear that you're entering a world of pure spectacle. As the prelude unfolds, you control the titular heroine and stylishly dispatch an angelic host of enemies while standing on the face of an exploding clock tower as it tumbles end-over-end from a mountaintop. This brief and over-the-top sequence is but a first step on the long road of delightful insanity that will follow, with each and every moment pushing the limits of ridiculousness even further. But however ludicrous it may appear, do not make the mistake of dismissing Bayonetta as all style with no substance. Beneath its glossy facade lies an accessible but deep and intricately nuanced combat system that allows you to perform impressive feats and feel like part of the magically empowered. This high-octane hack-and-slash is expertly paced and further enhanced by some subtle but brilliant tweaks to the formula. These include a powerful item concoction mode and comprehensive scoring system with online leaderboards. Though the core experience remains virtually identical to the Xbox 360 version, Bayonetta's PlayStation 3 port is hampered by a number of technical issues that disappointingly prevent it from reaching its potential. In spite of these issues, however, Bayonetta remains a bewitching adventure. Five hundred years is long enough for an entire world to change, which is what the woman known as Bayonetta discovers after awakening from her slumber in a tomb at the bottom of a lake. With her memory understandably hazy, Bayonetta remembers little more than that she is an Umbran Witch and that she's looking for something called The Eyes of the World. On a tip from her informant, she heads to the isolated city of Vigrid where she begins to piece together her missing memories and learn about the downfall of her clan and its counterparts: the Lumen Sages. What ensues is a series of hilariously over-the-top moments--each of which somehow surpasses the previous--that loosely form a narrative amidst a plethora of sight gags, sexual innuendos, and gratuitously violent angelic deaths. Amidst all the absurdity is a coherent plot with some surprisingly sweet moments, but the main attraction is the combat, not the storytelling.

Having contracted with the demons of Inferno, who serve as a source of her power, Bayonetta is a mortal enemy of the angels of Paradiso who seem to emerge at every corner in Vigrid spoiling for a fight. Armed from the get-go with a unique set of four guns (two of which are attached to her high heels), Bayonetta punches, kicks, and shoots her way through the heavenly aggressors that hound her every step. Apart from the basics, she can also perform a number of stylish special attacks to punish her enemies in often mind-boggling ways. Bullet climax attacks can strike out at all nearby attackers with most or all of Bayonetta's creatively wielded guns; wicked weave attacks summon monstrous, demonic appendages in her hair for a magical sucker punch or heel stomp; and torture attacks that conjure pain- and humiliation-inducing contraptions out of thin air. You're able to dish out an incredible amount of hurt in Bayonetta, and it's hard not to be hooked after experiencing the pleasure of performing your first outrageous combo, which may or may not involve break dancing, ensorcelled guillotines, and dozens of bullets to bridge together your myriad punches and kicks. As you fight through the angelic choirs, a variety of new weapons, such as a cursed katana or an enchanted pair of ice skates, are unlocked through trade with the demonic barkeep/smith Rodin, enhancing your already impressive arsenal even further. Because both Bayonetta's hands and feet are her weapons, you equip both with your instruments of heavenly destruction and can even have two entirely different sets ready for action with the tap of a button. These two arsenals can be swapped midcombo, which offers a great deal of flexibility (particularly when fighting several different types of angels at once) and makes battle feel free-form and pleasing. Truly, angels will cry before you're finished with them.

From the very beginning of the game, dozens of different combo attacks can be performed with the right recipe of button presses and timing, but even more advanced techniques are available for purchase from Rodin as well. In a clever move, the between-level loading screens also double as a practice mode of sorts where you can play around with each of Bayonetta's attacks. Complete with a handy onscreen move list, this feature is invaluable for learning the differences between the many different combos and finding the ones that work best for you, and you can even turn it into a full-fledged practice mode at the touch of a button. Even with this helpful mode, though, it can be tricky to grasp the subtle nuances of combat. If complex combos or elaborate attack dances aren't your thing, Bayonetta's easy and very easy difficulties equip everyone with the means for performing even the most impressive of attacks almost effortlessly. But for those clamoring for a challenge, Bayonetta does not disappoint--on normal difficulty, even lesser angels can prove to be fatal, and there are two harder levels to unlock for the most skillful of players to brave.

Bayonetta rarely takes itself seriously, but that's all part of the fun.

The core mechanic that fuels Bayonetta's combat complexity is your instantaneous ability to dodge enemy assaults: Pulling the right trigger at almost any time--including midcombo--will cause Bayonetta to pirouette out of the way without any downtime to avoid an attack. Enemies hit hard and rarely drop bonus health, so it is in your best interest to exploit your dodging prowess as often as possible. Indeed, the combat system is not only built around avoiding damage altogether, but it also rewards you for doing so in more ways than one. If you dodge an attack at the last possible moment, Bayonetta activates a powerful ability known as witch time, which temporarily slows time down to a crawl for everyone else and allows her to thrash her foes and circumvent their sometimes considerable defenses. By making dodging so accessible and utilitarian, developer Platinum Games has transformed each battle into a fluid, continuous dance, with your performance graded and compared against other players via online leaderboards. This grading system judges your angel-slaying aptitude based on time spent in combat, combo damage dealt, and damage taken for each battle and stage. Obtaining the coveted "pure platinum" grade in a complete level or even a single encounter for your speed and skill is both challenging and rewarding. Going for them all is a great reason to replay and drive your scores higher and higher. Each of the 16 chapters in Bayonetta is broken down into a series of self-contained enemy encounters called verses. When not actively killing the agents of heaven, you maneuver your witch through Vigrid, as well as its surrounding areas, solving simple environmental puzzles, finding ingredients to concoct health and support items (all lollipops, naturally), searching for hidden challenge rooms, and watching as the pleasantly preposterous story unfolds one cutscene at a time. When the moon is full and visible--which happens more often than you might think--Bayonetta is able to witch walk on walls and ceilings to move about or fight. These situations are among the most memorable moments in Bayonetta, and being able to run across a collapsing wall to avoid an incoming wave of molten lava or leap from floor to wall to ceiling to continue a furious assault is not only freeing, but it also adds a new dimension to the genre. Action peaks when the most powerful of angels--the personifications of the cardinal virtues--appear and try to stop Bayonetta, and you'll need every one of the powers at your disposal to defeat these titans of heaven in awesome multipart battles. Each boss fight ends with an aptly named climax attack that summons one of the many infernal demons Bayonetta has contracted with (and seems to keep in her hair) to brutally finish them off and drag them down to hell.

Yes, Bayonetta is torturing a lady angel on a medieval device. This is a thing that happens.

Unfortunately, as entertaining as the stylish action combat of Bayonetta is, it's plagued by a number of technical issues on the PS3 that distract and spoil some of the fun. Not only are the visuals grainier and more washed out than in its Xbox 360 counterpart, but there are also noticeable frame rate dips that occur when the action gets too heavy. Most commonplace, however, are the frequent, excessively long load times. While the loads between levels are partially mitigated by the useful practice mode, it can only cover up so much and doesn't do anything at all to help all of the other loads. You're met with an immersion-breaking, several seconds long loading screen every single time you want to pause the action, access your inventory or switch between submenus there, save or load your game, or pick up a new item. All together, these problems notably affect your enjoyment, and in a game where high-energy combat is king, these are pretty significant.

Though technical difficulties take some of the fun out of Bayonetta, the core combat experience is still very entertaining, and it's clear that a great deal of effort was spent in making everything look as stylish as possible. Each of Bayonetta's ridiculous, hypersexualized poses are expertly animated, and watching as she suplexes a dozen angels at once or jumpstarts a motorcycle by using her middle finger as a key is delightful. Even the more mundane actions are carefully detailed--Bayonetta doesn't so much bleed as she blooms roses, double jumps are assisted by the butterfly wings that sprout from her back, and so on. Angels have a fantastic yet grotesque art direction that blends together elements from classically beautiful Greco-Roman statues with avian, insect, or even technological bases to form unique designs. Some of them, such as the virtue Fortitudo--a twin-headed dragon whose central body is itself yet another inverted head--stand out more than others, but all are memorable. Though the dynamic camera generally does a fine job of ensuring that the action is front and center--particularly during witch walk sequences--there are a few enclosed areas where it seems unsure as to what to do. This is a rare occurrence, however, and it's overall a minor annoyance at worst.

Matching the over-the-top action of Bayonetta is a suitably ridiculous soundtrack that is equal parts annoyingly catchy pop, epic chorus, and retro arcade synth. Like the rest of Bayonetta, the soundtrack is very tongue-in-cheek, particularly an upbeat remix of "Fly Me to the Moon" that is used throughout the entire game, and most often as you gleefully dispatch angelic foes in a whirling dance of death and display. Accompanying the soundtrack is an all-star voice cast, the real star of which is, of course, Bayonetta herself, who is voiced with just the right combination of sultry, sass, and self-confidence to bring her to life and keep her from devolving into the realm of stereotype and cliche. With nearly every ridiculous stunt, she delivers a double entendre in her feisty British accent (all the time with a wink in her eye), the complete spectacle of which brings a smile to your face.

You'll sometimes find that the ground is anywhere but down.

With its flexible fighting engine, innovative use of bullet time and wall-walking mechanics, and the competitive online scoring system that is weaved into its very fabric, Bayonetta isn't so much a sister to other combat-oriented action games as it is an evolution of them. Though frame rate issues, frequent and extended load times, and less-crisp graphics make the PlayStation 3 version inferior to its Xbox 360 counterpart, it is nonetheless still a very enjoyable experience. Combat controls feel natural and responsive from the very first moment you experience them, and the magic remains throughout the journey; whether you're throwing a bus at a boss or hitching a ride on a ballistic missile. Chock-full of often silly but always memorable moments, Bayonetta can stay with you even after you've stopped playing it. Regardless of which version you play, its host of hidden items and secrets, multiple difficulties, competitively balanced scoring system, and charismatic heroine make Bayonetta a game that will be revisited time and time again.

If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Bayonetta from the Amazon.com for just $54.99

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 King of gaming

2010-02-12T18:22:00.000+05:30

AMD has got a new flagship in town: the Radeon HD 5970. It's fast, it's long, and it's about as understated as a rocket-powered Ferrari with lasers for headlights.

AMD has been on a tear releasing new DirectX11-capable Radeon HD 5000 series parts. Over the past month or two, the company released the Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon HD 5850, the Radeon HD 5770, and the Radeon HD 5750. All of those cards were apparently just the appetizers. Today, the company unveiled the Radeon HD 5970, a beast of a card that weighs in with dual GPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a $600 price tag that should make more than a few people dizzy.
Like other Radeon HD 5000 series cards, the Radeon HD 5970 comes with support for DirectX11 and triple monitor outputs capable of Eyefinity. Each of the GPUs has 1,600 stream processors, giving the HD 5970 a total of 3,200 stream processors. The core clock is set at 725MHz, and the memory is set at 1GHz. By comparison, the Radeon HD 5870 has an 850MHz core and 1.2GHz memory. When you get down to it, the Radeon HD 5970 is the equivalent of two Radeon HD 5870s slapped together and running slightly slower. ATI made it a point to tell us that the card is highly overclockable: ours made its way up to a 795MHz core clock and 1150MHz on the RAM.

To say the card is large is an understatement. It's roughly a foot long, which means it's going to be a tough squeeze fitting it into anything but the largest of cases. Forget the card exists if you have a small form-factor PC, and quite likely if you have a medium-sized computer. If you're even vaguely contemplating picking up a Radeon HD 5970, do yourself a favor and pull out a ruler to see if it will fit. In all likelihood you're going to have to move a hard drive and likely even remove an entire hard drive cage.

The Radeon HD 5970 gets difficult to test if you're not a computer store. We've got a room full of stuff, and even then we're outclassed by this video card. We've got 24-inch monitors that run at 1920x1200, and the Radeon HD 5970 trots all over them. Even a single 30-inch monitor with a resolution of 2560x1600 wouldn't stress it enough. Our results show that the Radeon HD 5970 is quick, but it's capable of much more. We're actually going to have to defer to Anandtech if you want a full performance rundown.
If speed's the name of the game, the Radeon HD 5970 qualifies handily. With a $600 price tag and performance that falls off the right end of the charts, it gets hard to recommend simply because you're going to need so much more to tap its potential. At the very minimum, you'll need three 24-inch monitors, which cost roughly $750 or more combined. To seriously use the Radeon HD 5970, three 30-inchers will cost over $3,500, and at that point you might as well spend the extra $600 on a second Radeon HD 5970 (since the Radeon HD 5970 is the only Radeon 5000 series card capable of Eyefinity support in Crossfire at the moment). For the rest of the population (all 99.9999999 percent of us), we're better off scratching that pixel-pushing itch with something considerably less expensive.

You can buy ATI Radeon HD 5970 for more cheaper price at Amazon.com

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned Review

2010-02-12T18:18:00.000+05:30

Moody new environments, diverse new foes, and even more of Borderlands' signature humor make this new content very entertaining and very worthwhile.
The Good

* Environments and enemies offer welcome variety
* Great humor throughout
* Good number of quests and areas
* Same great gunplay, loot, and artistic style.

The Bad

* Difficulty is based on your story progress rather than character level
* Occasional visual slowdown.

While it may be mixed up about which holiday season it belongs in, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is right on target when it comes to entertainment. This undead-themed add-on freshens up your Pandoran adventuring with swampy new environments that provide a great backdrop for satisfying gunplay. Your innumerable zombie targets crawl, lurch, and run at you from every direction, and bigger, quicker Halloween-flavored foes spice things up in some clever ways. There's a lot to do on the Zombie Island, and though you can complete the main quest in a little over four hours, side quests can extend your play time significantly. While there are some minor issues to consider, the overall package is strong. And with much more humor per pound than the original game, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a lot of entertainment for only 800 Microsoft points ($10). When you download The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, a new location becomes available from any fast travel kiosk, even if you haven't unlocked fast travel yet. Jakob's Cove is a mill town owned by the gun manufacturer ("Remember, if it took more than one shot, you weren't using a Jakob's!") and is set on a swampy island covered with massive trees. These gnarly plants loom overhead, and dark green vines dangle from their branches, creating a gloomy, verdant atmosphere. Other environments feature hillside graveyards, ramshackle towns, and familiar zombie-filled streets. Throughout your adventures, you are treated to a much heftier dose of humor than you are in the main game. Amusing recordings give you silly glimpses of other adventurers, and a cheerfully coldhearted company representative reminds you to never, under any circumstances, engage in oral contact with the undead. Dr. Ned himself has some great lines, and he preserves his general apathy throughout the revealing campaign to hilarious effect. This liberal dose of humor, combined with the new environments, helps create a healthy variety both within the add-on and when compared to the main game.

Pretty much every place you go is crawling with zombies. They drop down from trees, emerge out of the ground, and otherwise stand around waiting for fresh brains to wander by. You'll fight torsos that crawl, midgets that leap, and shambling workers with beer helmets. Some zombies spit on you to cloud your vision and slow your movement, while another sprints toward you and explodes just after ripping his own arm off like a gruesome grenade pin. Many zombies explode more enthusiastically than their living counterparts, and you'll see limbs popping off in a variety of amusing ways. These variations can be humorous as well as strategically relevant. Scoring a headshot on a zombie will cause its brain to pop out, and these can be collected as part of an amusing quest, provided you find the right fellow. And the hulking Tankensteins don't just look like their cinematic inspiration, but they share his affinity for electricity, so you'd be wise to avoid dealing them shock elemental damage. Though sometimes the hectic action can result in visual slowdown, these moments are few enough that they won't hinder your enjoyment. As you blast your way through quests and mow down hordes of the undead, you'll be treated to the steady stream of loot you've come to expect from Borderlands. To get loot and face enemies commensurate with your level, it's important to keep the following in mind: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned scales everything according to your progress through the main story of Borderlands, not according to your character's level. So before you head to Jakob's Cove, take stock of your situation. If the enemies and the level of your current main story quest are about on par with your character's level, then you'll find a good challenge and good loot on the Zombie Island. If you've been spending time leveling but not advancing the story (that is, by doing lots of side quests or playing cooperatively with someone at a different point in the story than you), you may be overleveled for your current story progress. This could make Zombie Island too easy and make your loot haul unsatisfying. You'll get the most out of it if your character level is on par with your story progress, but, of course, once you complete Zombie Island and go back to your campaign, you'll likely be a bit overleveled. Still, it's better to tackle this content straight on and be overleveled when you return to the main game. Aside from getting more bang for your buck, you'll get to experience boss battles and set-piece battles as you were meant to.

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a nicely distilled slice of Borderlands that bodes well for future DLC potential. The dramatic moments that are fairly strung out in the main game happen with invigorating regularity. And the flashes of comedy are much more frequent, giving the action a lively, entertaining vibe. From voice recorders chronicling the exploits of unsuccessful zombie hunters, to the casually maniacal hilarity of Dr. Ned, to heartbreaking Claptrap-on-Claptrap violence, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned delivers the game's distinctive humor even better than the original and has all the great gunplay and satisfying loot to boot. If you've got any kind of desire to seek out further adventures on Pandora, you should definitely pay the Zombie Island a visit.

If like it or you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned from the Amazon.com

Bit.Trip Void Review

2010-02-12T18:14:00.000+05:30

The Bit.Trip series' score multiplier goes up again with its third and most original entry yet.
The Good

* Checkpoints and continues make gameplay more forgiving
* Great new risk-versus-reward mechanic.

The Bad

* No online leaderboards, still
* Only three levels, still.

The Bit.Trip series is a celebration of the past that blends 8-bit-inspired visuals and nostalgic chiptune music with simplistic goals to create memorable experiences. As its predecessor did before it, Bit.Trip Void mixes things up by introducing an all-new gameplay system and control scheme while maintaining the audio/video building blocks that make the series so distinct. Though unmistakably true to its roots (so much so that it too lacks online leaderboards), Void presents a very different challenge that is not only fun and addictive but also forgiving and accessible. Series fans will undoubtedly enjoy the twists and turns of this latest entry, but even if you've never experienced the Bit.Trip before, you'll find a rewarding challenge that will keep you on your toes and stick a catchy beat in your head. This time around, you control a pixelated black hole called the void with the analog stick on either a Nunchuk or the Classic Controller. You have complete freedom of movement and must guide the void into the path of incoming black pixels called beats while avoiding their white counterparts. Each black beat consumed increases the size of the void and your combo multiplier at the cost of decreasing your mobility and making you more susceptible to those pesky white beats. At any time, you can exchange your collected beats for points by pressing the A button, thus returning the void back to its original size. It's to your advantage to keep the void as large as possible to maximize your score, but if you make a mistake and collect a white beat, your void shrinks back down and your combo multiplier is lost. This risk-versus-reward mechanic adds an entirely new dimension to scoring in that you can choose when (or even if) you want to go big at the risk of losing it all or to just play it safe by keeping your void small and maneuverable the whole time. No matter how you play it, you can finish the game, but high-score enthusiasts will have a blast trying to figure out how to best rack up their scores.

As you progress through each of the three levels by successfully consuming black beats and avoiding white ones, you transition into higher score modes. By colliding with white beats or missing black ones, you run can lowering your score mode until you eventually find yourself in a black-and-white purgatory world. Success here sends you back to the Technicolor world of high scoring, but this is your last chance to prove yourself before it's game over. This intriguing system lets you come back from the jaws of defeat, but even if you don't, each stage now has three checkpoints from which you can continue. Levels last from 12 to 15 minutes, and being able to earn extra lives through high scores is a huge improvement on the formula, especially during your first few attempts when you're trying to learn a level. As with the other Bit.Trip games, you encounter a series of surprising bosses based on classic arcade games that are as fun as they are demanding. To reveal much more about these bosses would spoil them, but each and every one is a memorable experience that stands out even among Bit.Trip Void's peers.

Near the end of the game, the white beat patterns you have to dodge get pretty tricky.

Though the series is known for its boisterous and psychedelic background visuals, that aesthetic has actually been toned down a bit in Void, which tends to focus less on trying to confuse you with the backgrounds. Levels still consist of constantly evolving synthesized songs in which you play a part--collecting beats, shrinking the void, and changing the scoring modes all contribute to the soundtrack--but this time, performing certain actions can also affect the sorts of visualizations you see. Keeping your eye on one void can be difficult enough given the twists and turns of each stage, but if you like, you can have up to three friends join your game with each taking control of a different black hole. Though you all share the same score, coordinating more than one void through wave after wave of beats brings on an entirely new type of challenge as you soar to ever higher scores.

With each step the Bit.Trip series takes, it manages to radically redefine itself while somehow hanging on to the core audio and visual elements that thematically tie it together. Bit.Trip Void's unique void mechanic and risk-versus-reward system puts a refreshing spin on the bullet-hell genre. Though you're still unable to share your high scores with your friends through online leaderboards, Void surpasses its predecessors in terms of fun and addictiveness. If you're looking for an exciting, fair, and accessible challenge on the Wii, you should definitely let yourself get sucked into the Bit.Trip Void.

If like it you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Bit.Trip Void from the Amazon.com

WorldShift Review

2010-02-12T18:12:00.000+05:30

Impressive multiplayer modes make WorldShift an engaging old-school real-time strategy game, but bugs and an afterthought solo campaign dampen the appeal.
The Good

* Wide range of multiplayer modes
* Compelling co-op and deathmatch multiplayer
* Beautiful, almost surreal visuals.

The Bad

* Mostly generic RTS game mechanics
* Solo campaign seems like an afterthought
* A few serious bugs, including one that occasionally cripples mid-mission saves.

WorldShift is an intriguing real-time strategy experiment, with a weird far-future story and three complementary races. It also has a wide range of solo, co-op, and Deathmatch modes of play, which means that it comes with plenty under the hood. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself is mired in the past. Although the multiplayer games have been intricately designed with a lot of strategic depth and many elements borrowed from massively multiplayer online games, much of this has been wasted on a boring point-and-click RTS that seems to have traveled through time from 1997. This problem, along with a range of serious single-player bugs, make the game look better on paper than it is in reality.

Most of WorldShift centers on old-fashioned RTS combat.

Worldshift's storyline, backdrop, and three factions are almost surreal. The time is the far future and the place is Earth long after an asteroid called Shard Zero went all 2012 to create a plague that destroyed and reshaped the entire planet. Everything has changed so much that the game might as well be taking place on an alien world. Flora and fauna consist of extraterrestrial additions like the sort of giant exotic plants that decorated the strange new worlds in old Star Trek episodes. Huge mushrooms can be found all over the place in some maps, and many are big enough to house hundreds of Smurfs, along with sinister-looking refugees from the Little Shop of Horrors. Overall, the look of the game is odd and effective, succeeding in transporting you to a colorful take on the future even while the repetitive, generic RTS order acknowledgements and corny militaristic music often beam you right back home.

Modes of play have obviously been built around multiplayer. You need to log in online whenever you start the game, whether you are entering the single-player campaign, playing cooperative missions, or taking on all comers in Deathmatch modes that range from mano-a-mano games to three-versus-three team contests. Finding an online match isn't particularly easy, though. Few seem to be playing either Deathmatch or co-op, although if you stick around for an hour or so, you can likely find a game. It's something of a shame that more people aren't playing online, too, because it features some really good ideas taken from MMOGs like World of Warcraft and multiplayer role-playing games like Diablo. Co-op maps let you team up with two buddies to scrap your way through levels, taking on computer-controlled mobs and bosses with big loot. The one drawback is that games often suffer from noticeable lag.

The three sci-fi/fantasy mash-up factions featured here have also been designed extremely well for multiplayer matchups. Humans come from five big cities that survived the cataclysm, employing battle robots and armored troops. Tribes consist of mutated humans living in the wild that use fantasy-standard weapons and magic. Here, you deal with shamans, spear-throwing heathens, and the like. And the Cult is an alien civilization that features units with shape-changing abilities and futuristic hardware. This trio fits together very well because each comes with pluses and minuses that you need to deal with in multiplayer matches. They also have a variety of troop types that use very similar melee and ranged attacks. The rock-paper-scissors formula is solid here. Factions also have unique looks, so you can always tell who's who at a glance. There isn't a huge range of units available to each side, although there are enough to keep things interesting and force you to rely on tactical planning during matches.

Yet despite all the great multiplayer trappings, the hybrid sci-fi/fantasy storyline, and the superb unit matching among factions, gameplay is rudimentary. If not for the modern 3D graphics, you might think that the game had originally been released a decade ago. Focus is mainly on combat strategizing and action. Additionally, you'll do some very limited base-building, collect a mineral resource known as xenolite, and order up troops from a command HQ in multiplayer. But even though this battle-first philosophy is front and center all the way, there is no way to give special orders, set up formations, or guide your troops in any detailed fashion. A little depth is added with hero-like officers and other units that have special abilities like casting spells, launching missile barrages, healing themselves and others, and so forth. Skill trees allow you to configure and boost these talents, and items awarded at the end of solo levels and in multiplayer can be used to buff specific units. But you can't lean on them too much. Units with the best special traits are expensive, and the power stat that enables you to use them (mana, essentially) drains fast and can take an eternity to regenerate. This can be a real problem at times, as you're often fighting with small groups of units and can wind up in trouble if you're stuck waiting around for the power needed to fire off special attacks. So you often seem better off using loads of cheap grunt units with single ranged or melee attacks instead. This leaves you spending a lot of time simply band-selecting and right-clicking on targets to start shooting. In the end, you feel sort of hamstrung; there is a lot of strategic depth here, but the limited controls mean that you can't always get at it.

Many levels feature striking and strange visuals. If only the gameplay was as memorable as the scenery.

The campaign also seems like something of an afterthought, with a plot that skips around like a stone over water. You're just dropped into the middle of a story about a prophecy and some human prince or whatever dealing with treason. It feels like you're expected to know what's going on, which leads to some head-spinning moments. Many levels are unbalanced. You'll storm through a level and then get stuck for an hour in a battle with a virtually invincible pack of goons. Sneaking is the only way to get past hordes of enemies in some areas, yet the game often doesn't inform you of this fact. Because you can occasionally outrun enemies to the level exit, too, this leads to a lot of trial and error. Bugs are another major concern during the campaign. Hard lockups occasionally force system restarts. Malfunctioning level checkpoints are even more aggravating because they don't always save your progress, forcing you to start a level from the beginning after being killed. Since there is no way to save manually, this makes the campaign awfully tough to play after you reach the midway point when levels start to get long and tough. Failure can also come quickly in a campaign mission because the death of a hero unit is an instant fail. All it takes is one enemy to hone in on a weak officer like the typical spellcaster to end your mission in a few moments.

WorldShift is a smooth, mostly well-executed game with some compelling multiplayer concepts, but it sticks to a familiar formula for the most part. The strange and distinctive races, bizarre visual take on a far-future Earth, and excellent faction balance certainly give it a fresh feel in the first couple of days of play, though. For many players, that will be enough, especially if you're a multiplayer gamer who couldn't care less about the snoozy solo campaign. Still, there is no denying that the action can grow somewhat repetitive for RTS veterans after the initial thrill fades, leaving you with a game that isn't quite all that it could be.

If like it you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of WorldShift from the Amazon.com for just $32.98

Ninja Blade Review

2010-02-12T18:10:00.000+05:30

Ninja Blade Review

Some technical troubles notwithstanding, this derivative action game is a bunch of silly, stylish fun.
The Good

* Riotous cinematic sequences
* Fun, flashy-looking swordplay
* Swift pacing moves things along at a nice clip
* Great set-piece battles.

The Bad

* Overly reliant on quick-time events
* The combat isn't very deep or original
* An array of glitches and technical foibles.

When an action game lets you dress up in pink pinstripes before carving up hordes of gruesome mutants, you know it doesn't take itself seriously. Ninja Blade is such a game, but it's so ridiculously over the top, so rambunctiously insane, that it's hard not to get a total kick out of it. It's an uneven product, both technically troublesome and derivative to the bone. And yet Ninja Blade maintains a breakneck pace while throwing you into one preposterous scenario after another until you need to catch your breath, simply because the onscreen action is so absurdly dazzling--or because you're laughing too hard. So don't expect deep combat, extreme visual prowess, or a finger-breaking challenge. Instead, just prepare for lots of good, frivolous fun that will keep you entertained in spite of some technical flaws.

One leg down, seven to go!

You should also prepare for more memorable moments than you can shake a katana at. Ken, the star of Ninja Blade, is so sensationally acrobatic that he makes Dante's antics in Devil May Cry seem practically mundane. During the course of the game, he'll sky-surf on missiles, perform gravity-defying stunts on a motorcycle, and ride a wrecking ball to glory, among many other gymnastic feats that would make even Ninja Gaiden's Ryu green with envy. These glitzy, cinematic scenes are laughably ludicrous, and yet they're an absolute hoot to watch and bound to get your pulse pounding. However, you aren't relegated to being a simple observer. Most of this visual insanity is accompanied by quick-time button events, which means that you'll need to keep your eyes glued to the screen even when you'd rather than sit back for a breather. A close-up of Ken's keen eye signals these events, so they'll never catch you off guard--and should you miss a button press, the scene will rewind (a cool-looking effect) and let you try again. Unfortunately, Ninja Blade's QTEs are all too frequent, taking up a huge chunk of gameplay time and all but requiring you to use a controller (hammering on keys and mouse buttons isn't very satisfying). These are fine-looking QTEs, but as well implemented as they are, the game relies on them so often that they become tedious after a while.

You'll thankfully spend plenty of time wielding some powerful blades and wreaking havoc on the rooftops of Tokyo. Using the titular single katana, a pair of fast-acting blades, or a heavy but effective sword, you'll slice up a variety of mutated meanies as you seek to liberate Tokyo from a nasty epidemic of demonic, symbiotic worm thingies. Ninja Blade is a fairly straightforward button masher, so you can string your two main attacks, blocks, and jumps into various combos that you unlock as the game progresses. The combat system isn't terribly deep; you won't perform Ninja Gaiden II's wall-leaping slices or use Devil May Cry 4's numerous fighting styles. However, the action delivers a nice feeling of impact and fills the screen with a lot of flashy visual effects. It doesn't deliver much of a challenge, though, and you could finish the game without exploring some of the more snazzy-looking moves. That doesn't mean you can choose a single weapon and mash your way to triumph; some enemies need to be softened with your heavy blade, whereas the speedy dual blades are more effective against certain foes (and helpful when trying to block oncoming projectiles as well). Nevertheless, if you want a decent challenge, you should crank the difficulty up to the highest available setting from the get-go.

This is where the ‘wax-on, wax-off’ training pays off.

This kind of button mashing may seem par for the course, and it's derivative to the extreme, but what Ninja Blade lacks in originality, it makes up for with its snappy, enthusiastic pace. The action moves quickly from one scenario to the next, mixing in one boss fight after another and reveling in its gleeful cinematic excess. You'll fend off winged demons in freefall, operate turrets in a number of on-rails shooting sequences, and slice up ghastly fiends on the wings of a soaring airplane (don't ask how Ken defies the laws of physics--he just does). It's all larger than life, particularly when you face the various bosses liberally thrown your way. Many of these encounters are fun, or at least they are the first time around; you'll battle a few of them several times during the course of the game. Some of them, such as a beast-riding femme fatale, are even legitimately challenging. Others aren't tough but require you to whittle away at their health, testing your patience if not your skill.

There are other activities that help alleviate any potential tedium. You can run up or along certain walls Prince of Persia-style, though these moments are highly scripted and can't be mixed into battle. Nevertheless, they control pretty smoothly for the most part, and the minor bullet-time effect makes it fun to watch Ken leap from one wall to another. In some places, you'll use a grapple wire to zoom to your next location, or break through walls with your giant sword. You can also enter ninja vision (yes, it sounds cheesy), which slows down time and lets you inflict more damage and see potential spots of interest in the area. More notably, you can unleash the wrath of three different types of spinning blades: fire, wind, and electricity. You'll need them to solve certain types of puzzles (for example, the wind shuriken douses flames), though they can come in handy during battle, if not always because you need them, but because they light up the screen with vibrant special effects.

Ninja Blade's visual splendor comes from its boisterous special effects, fantastic in-engine cinematics, and some sparkling city environments. That's not to say that the game is a technical powerhouse, however. The repetitive environments aren't all that imaginative or detailed, and the animations are good but not as slick as in other similar games. Furthermore, technical flaws occasionally intrude on the hacking and slashing. The frame rate tends to dip when battles heat up, and trying to quit the game from the main menu may cause the game to freeze. The audio is equally lively and inconsistent. Ninja Blade sounds appropriately loud and rambunctious, but dialogue cuts out every so often. In addition, sometimes there is an odd delay between the onscreen action and the accompanying sound effects.

Riding a missile is awesome, but not the most awesome thing you do. Really.

And then you have those unlockable costumes, a common extra found in these types of action games, but delivered here in an uncommonly hysterical manner. You can dress Ken up as an evil ninja and scowl while you play if you prefer, but for a curiously ridiculous treat, don the clown costume and mess around with its color scheme. Such a look doesn't befit a proper ninja, of course, but then again Ken does prefer to leap around Tokyo with flair, so unless you insist on high levels of seriousness in your ninja games, you'll enjoy kicking bad-boy butt in purple paisley. But even if you keep Ken looking prim and proper, Ninja Blade is so much fun you'll want to return once you've vaulted your way through the eight or nine hours it takes to complete it.

Even if the amount of content here doesn't rival what you can find in the best action games, Ninja Blade still delivers plenty of boisterous entertainment. This is derivate fun, delivered with panache and a touch of lunacy. While it suffers from a few too many technical flaws, Ninja Blade is still a blast to play.

If like it you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Ninja Blade from the Amazon.com for just $32.25

Modern Warfare Reflex Review

2010-02-12T18:05:00.000+05:30

This belated port successfully brings the greatness of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to the Wii.

The Good

* Excellent campaign is full of thrills and surprises
* Online multiplayer is engaging and addictive
* More online modes than World at War.

The Bad

* Campaign is short
* Occasional control hiccups.

Wii owners who have been waiting since 2007 to experience the excellence of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, your time has come. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition is a successful port that includes the intense, breathtaking campaign and engaging, addictive multiplayer that made Call of Duty 4 such a hit. While the visuals lack a certain sharpness, the environments still convey the drama and diversity that help make the campaign so excellent. And though there are some minor aiming hitches, the controls are precise and customizable enough to let you be all you can be. The multiplayer system that first arrived on the Wii last year in Call of Duty: World at War is even more robust in Modern Warfare, making it the best online shooter experience the Wii has to offer. If you've already played COD4 on another system, there's no reason to pick it up again. But if you have yet to experience Call of Duty's first foray into the 21st century, Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition will entertain you immensely. In the modern world, wars are no longer fought as massive clashes between sovereign nations. Conflicts are much more isolated and far flung, requiring mobility, flexibility, and, of course, superior firepower. The campaign in Modern Warfare embraces this philosophy, and you undertake a wide variety of actions playing as a few different soldiers. There are tense infiltrations behind enemy lines in which silenced weapons and stealth tactics are the order of the day. These missions require you to quietly eliminate enemies or just sneak past them undetected. Then there are full-blown firefights through Middle Eastern streets where the bombed-out buildings are crawling with enemies and a friendly tank is your only sure cover. In these missions, enemies continually pressure you, so not only do you have to dispatch them rapidly to avoid being overrun, but you have to push forward to your next objective. The environments are more or less linear, and though they have occasional lapses in sharpness or detail, they do a very good job of accurately depicting a variety of locations. In most levels, the terrain allows you to take a number of different approaches to any given section, giving you an invigorating sense of battlefield freedom while still spurring you onward.

Many of the missions throughout the campaign are intense and exciting for various reasons, but there are a number of dramatic set-piece levels that ratchet things up to a whole new level. From the first mission in which you race to escape a sinking ship, to the levels in which you become the powerful air support that you have previously relied on, to one of the most electrifying sniper sequences to ever appear in a game, Modern Warfare's campaign keeps you on your toes. You'll see some things you never expected to see in a shooter, and these dramatic turns are used effectively to create an expertly paced, immensely exciting experience.

You get a whole new perspective on the battlefield when you're airborne.
Unfortunately, it's all over pretty quickly. The campaign doesn't last much longer than five hours. You can play through individual levels again once you've beaten them, and there's an arcade mode that scores you on your performance, but there's no way to share those scores online. You can also have a friend join you and add some extra firepower as a disembodied target reticle, but this feature is novel at best and ends up being pretty distracting. Still, despite the short length and so-so replay options, there's no denying that Modern Warfare's campaign is an intense, diverse, and exciting shooter experience.

And that's just the campaign. Once again, Call of Duty's online multiplayer is a standout. The core system is largely the same one featured in World at War. You earn experience for killing opponents, accomplishing objectives, and completing challenges. This allows you to level up and unlock new guns, new equipment, and new perks. Equipment includes explosives like grenade launcher attachments and claymore mines, and perks are battlefield bonuses that bestow a range of abilities. Some of these are similar to those in World at War, but many are either tweaked versions of old perks or entirely different ones. They are still a lot of fun to unlock and employ, and you can outfit a number of custom classes with different weapons, equipment, and perks to suit many different gameplay styles. There are also different kill streak perks that fit the modern setting, so players who string together kills can call in an airstrike or an attack helicopter to decimate the enemy.

One of the biggest improvements is the number of online game types available. While World at War was limited to a handful of Free-for-All and Team Deathmatch variations, Modern Warfare includes objective-based modes like Sabotage (plant a bomb on an enemy target) and Domination (capture and hold control points). These modes add some much-needed variety to the online scene, and the 10 player cap (up from eight in World at War) fits the well-designed maps very well. There is still no support for Wii Speak, and the Kill Cam has been lost in translation, so you won't get to how your enemy got the better of you. Yet despite these omissions, Modern Warfare's multiplayer not only more robust than its predecessor, but it's also the best online shooter action the Wii has to offer.

Never underestimate the effectiveness of a good stabbing.
There's just one other wrinkle in this otherwise excellent package, and that's the occasional aiming hiccups. When you look down the sights of your weapon and are aiming near an enemy, your targeting reticle will snap onto that enemy. This assist is helpful when it works, but sometimes your reticle will jump back to where you were originally aiming or otherwise dislodge from your opponent. Sometimes the problem seems to be the result of frame rate stutters, and other times it happens while things are running smoothly. It's disorienting and possibly fatal, but fortunately it doesn't happen enough to become a full-blown nuisance. Extensive customization options that allow you to find your preferred aiming style go a long way toward mitigating this issue.

All told, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition does right by the source material. The expertly scripted and intensely exciting campaign is just as entertaining as it was two years ago on other systems, and even the occasional lapses in visual fidelity and control precision can't keep it from being a must-play for Wii shooter fans. Though the multiplayer will feel familiar to World at War veterans, the modern guns, equipment, and perks will make it feel new again, and the expanded gameplay modes offer a lot more variety. Though there are a few hitches to deal with, the core excellence of this game shines through, giving Wii owners a great shooter to keep them entertained for months to come.

If like it you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of Modern Warfare Reflexfrom the Amazon.com for just $66.99

NCAA Basketball 10 Review

2010-02-12T17:57:00.001+05:30

NCAA Basketball 10 closely mimics the real sport, but a number of small glitches and a lack of modes limit the long-term appeal.
The Good

* Action accurately mirrors real sport
* Motion offenses are lots of fun to run
* Great competitive matches, online and off
* Awesome commentary with Gus Johnson.

The Bad

* Players sometimes have lousy court awareness
* Not enough unique modes.

College basketball players frequently try to emulate the professional stars. It makes sense that they would strive to mirror their high-profile brethren, given that the NBA has a much larger following, has more recognizable stars, and just loves giving out massive guaranteed contracts. This imitation is fully realized in NCAA Basketball 10, which plays almost exactly like NBA Live 10. The teams are obviously different, and the players are represented by numbers rather than their birth names, but the on-court action is nearly identical. Although this is largely a good thing, considering that Live is a fun and accurate representation of the real sport, NCAA feels a little too familiar for those who have already shown off their skills on the virtual court. Furthermore, NCAA is a little stripped down in comparison. Unlike Live, you cannot take control of your favorite player in pick-up games with friends, so you're limited to the standard five-on-five action. Despite a lack of modes and a strong feeling of deja vu, this is a well-made and exciting basketball game for those who love the collegiate experience. The offensive structure in college basketball is a little more fluid than in the NBA, and this slight difference is captured well in the play calling for NCAA Basketball. There are a number of unique motion sets to work out of, and these give you a smooth, free-flowing take on the sport, with lots of screens and quick passes to keep defenses off balance. Without an interactive tutorial to guide you through the subtle differences between the Princeton and Flex offenses, it can take a bit of practice before you figure out which way the ball should rotate and how best to attack. But once things click, it's a joy to run your offense through the high post, hit cutters racing to the basket or spot-up shooters getting open outside the arc. If things start to get bogged down, your coach will yell out helpful advice from the sideline, making sure you run the offense the right way instead of repeatedly getting into one-on-one situations and ending up with poor shots.

If you can't quite grasp the wonders of an unimpeded curl toward the basket, there are a number of individual plays you can fall back on to help you thrive in a two-man game. Calling for a screen is easy and effective. You can command a player to set a screen for you by holding down a button, and when you release it, the screener will either roll toward the hoop or step outside for an open jumper. Attacking the defense in this way doesn't allow for as many options as a well-run motion offense can, but you can still create good scoring opportunities, and it's a lot of fun as well. The post-up game isn't quite as effective, but you can still find success if you can deliver the ball to your big man when he has good position. Because you can go to a number of banks, leans, and fadeaways--depending on which direction you hold the stick when you shoot--you can punish players in the post if you can keep them guessing which way you're going to go. It can be easy to stop this with a well-timed double team, so post play takes a back seat to other offensive sets.

Unfortunately, there are a number of small problems that disrupt some of the realism. Although players can intelligently run an offense and react quickly on defense, during loose-ball situations they are completely lost. Even a freshman point guard would know to dive on the floor if the ball gets knocked away, but players in NCAA Basketball frequently stare longingly at their lost ball without making any effort to recover it. Players also have questionable court awareness. If you can enact a double team just after a player crosses midcourt, they will frequently step back behind the half court line, stupidly turning the ball over for no real reason. While running an offense, players will all too often run out of bounds and never come completely back in, which leads to frustrating turnovers if you mistakenly pass them the ball. Baffling enough, oftentimes players will clearly step out of bounds but won't be called for it, which is just maddening if you are the one getting jobbed. None of these small complaints destroy the overall experience, but they crop up often enough to dampen the energetic fun.

Thankfully, the presentation doesn't run into the same blunders. There are two different broadcast teams, and though both groups have a tendency to repeat themselves, they provide a unique analysis and their own energy. Dick Vitale provides commentary for regular season games, and though his enthusiasm is hard to ignore, Gus Johnson is just amazing. Gus brings his unbridled passion to March Madness, and it makes these already-exciting games even better. Although he doesn't quite burst with happiness as he so often does in real life, his glee for the sport is clearly present, and he calls the action with the same gripping style that makes his real-life broadcasts so memorable. There is nothing quite like hitting a game-winning jumper and having Gus Johnson joyously scream at the same time. NCAA Basketball also uses the overlays and stat updates you would see during real-life broadcasts, which brings even more authenticity to the experience.

With a name like Coach Illinois-Chicago, his career options were pretty limited.
Unfortunately, as intense as the on-court action is, there just aren't enough ways to experience it. You can play a one-off game, start up your own dynasty, or compete in the big tournament, but there aren't any unique modes to play around with in NCAA Basketball 10. You can create you own player, give him a silly name and game-changing attributes, but you cannot take control of him through his career and refine his skills into a potential Wooden Award winner. The lack of direct impact lessens the appeal of this feature, making the player seem far too separate to actually care about. Instead, the only rewarding long-term aspect is building a championship team through wise recruiting, but it's a predictable system that pales in comparison to crafting your own superstar. The on-court action is deep enough to hide the lack of interesting options, but it's a shame there aren't more ways to experience this often-thrilling simulation.

At least competitive matches are top notch. You can challenge a buddy either online or on one system, and it's a blast to drain a killer three in his face or execute a perfect trap to force an opportune turnover. And that's the best part of NCAA Basketball 10. The game so closely mirrors the real sport that it's satisfying whether you're struggling to pick up the intricacies of the motion offense or punishing ill-prepared teams with a full-court press. NCAA Basketball 10 is too similar to NBA Live 10 to make it worthwhile if you already own that game, and the lack of diverse modes hinders the long-term appeal. But the core action is so fast and rewarding--plus the broadcast-style presentation so close to reality--that NCAA Basketball 10 is a good alternative for those who favor the style of amateur athletes over highly paid professionals.

If like it you want to try hands on this game go take a copy of NCAA Basketball 10 from the Amazon.com for just $59.99

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines Review

2009-12-20T16:23:00.002+05:30

Bloodlines offers a few good moments, but it fails to capture the joy of its console brethren.
The Good

* It's fun to pull off a bloody counterattack
* Great sound effects.

The Bad

* Platforming is awkward
* The areas are small and barren
* Heavy on combat, light on everything else.

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines doesn't get it. On the surface, it offers many of the features you'd want from an Assassin's Creed game on the PSP. It puts you in control of Altair, the first game's nimble protagonist, and sends you on a mission to assassinate your Templar enemies, who are equally eager to plunge their swords into you. If you delve a little deeper, however, you'll find that Bloodlines skimps on what makes the console games so special. The joy of rooftop running has been diminished by flawed platforming and smaller environments, bustling cities have been replaced by barren districts on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, and AI problems render the stealthy approach all but irrelevant. Bloodlines still delivers the brief bloody thrills you get from a well-timed counterattack, but on the whole, it is a neutered and unsatisfying adventure. If you're an Assassin's Creed fan looking to further delve into Altair's life of intrigue, you'll likely be disappointed by the blandness of both the story and the hero. Smartly, the actor voicing Altair has been replaced by a more expressive and appropriate one, thus making it easier to identify with the protagonist. While the game's interface oddly utilizes interface elements and terminology that relate to Assassin's Creed's real-world elements (a synchronization bar, animus menus, voice-overs), Bloodlines is grounded firmly in the past. Unfortunately, the story fails to meaningfully expand on the conspiracy that drives the franchise, delivering instead a halfhearted tale that elicits plenty of yawns but few thrills or surprises. Maria, the Templar Altair spared in his original adventure, is the lone bright spark and provides a bit of sharp-tongued energy in the plain narrative. But even her liveliness can't overshadow the poor voice acting of the minor characters, scattered misspellings in the subtitles, and the generally disinterested manner in which the story is told.

A dreary story could be forgiven if Bloodlines delivered the joy of movement that characterizes the console games, but in time, moving about the rooftops becomes a chore. When the level design and animations work together successfully, which isn't frequent, you can string some enjoyable moves in quick succession by jumping across roofs and platforms, as well as climbing to the tops of tall towers. Unfortunately, city areas are small and there's too much space between the scattered buildings. As a result, you can never establish the momentum that would have made jumping about fun. Other problems further sully the platforming. It's easy to get stuck midstride as you run across slanted roofs, too many walls are smooth and can't be scaled, and multiple sequences hem you into specific platforming routes. Any groove you may establish will also be hindered by the in-game camera, which you manipulate by holding the L button and pressing the face buttons, forcing you to often stop midrun to adjust your view. The camera is largely a consequence of the PSP's lack of a second analog stick, but the resulting micromanagement will make you wish the game had sported a unique design that took advantage of the platform's strengths while minimizing its limitations. Eventually, you'll find it easier and quicker just to stick to the streets, which is a shame in a series that usually inspires you to rise above them.

Altair's blades are still razor sharp.

The combat is more successful, though it isn't without its troubles. Engaging other enemies locks you onto your target and initiates an unhurried skirmish that will be familiar to Assassin's Creed fans. Combat isn't difficult, but it's still satisfying to pull off a successful counterkill. During a well-timed counter, Altair will spin about, the camera will zoom in, and he'll slice his sword across his target's neck or jam it into his chest. At first, it's a bloody treat, but the action gets tiresome. This is partially because there are too few stealth elements and missions to balance it out and partially because enemies seem to spawn out of nowhere to join the fray, which makes individual encounters drag. Some of the final kills also frustrate. In some cases, an enemy will fall to the ground, giving you the chance to hit the square button one last time and make a particularly gory example of his treachery. Unfortunately, the move doesn't always work, and your sword will just clip right through him if he's begun to stand back up. If you want to avoid full-on combat, you can take the sneaky path and silently stab unsuspecting guards or leap onto them for a high-profile hidden-blade assassination. Like standard combat, assassinations are initially enjoyable, thanks to the dramatic close-up and metallic sound effect that accompany them. But while Assassin's Creed wasn't known for groundbreaking AI, the guards in Bloodlines are out-and-out stupid. Some will wander past battle, while others will fail to notice a high-profile assassination occurring directly in front of them. Thus, kills with your hidden blade are just as unsatisfying as standard combat.

The missions tying all of these disappointing elements together are fine: timed deliveries, chases, key assassinations, and so on. However, the level design and flawed mechanics often interfere. For example, one timed chase mission is made frustrating by imprecise platforming; in other cases, the restrictive level design makes it tough to figure out what route you must take to reach your destination. Boss fights enliven things somewhat--pitting you against tougher enemies that require a bit more strategy--but not so much that they provide much challenge. Outside of story missions, you can climb towers, make a leap of faith into a hay bale beneath, and rescue besieged citizens, but the world isn't big enough and the cities aren't full enough to make these tasks feel particularly enjoyable. A few scholars and citizens wander about, but this world doesn't feel lived in, so you can't blend with crowds because there are no crowds. Thus, Bloodlines buries the series' concept of social stealth and does little to make up for the loss.

You just can't go home again. Even if Cyprus is home.

That doesn't mean Bloodlines is devoid of Assassin's Creed flavor. Altair looks great and is animated extremely well, which makes it a delight to watch him climb towers and leap across alleys. Many of the sound effects are pulled directly from the original game, and they're still fantastic, though it's disappointing that Bloodlines didn't also recycle the fantastic music of the tower top synchronizations. The game also captures some of the visual delights, like suspended platforms, crisscrossing beams, and nice lighting. It isn't quite the looker you may have expected, however. Plain environments, seams between geometry, and bland colors prevent Bloodlines from looking as good as its PSP competition.

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines features a basic level-up mechanic in which you can spend the coins you find scattered about the world on upgrades like extending your synchronization bar or increasing your chances of a critical hit. But this feature is poorly implemented, forcing you to leave the game and return to the main menu if you want to spend the coins outside of the predesignated intermissions. It's just one more clumsy element that makes Bloodlines feel like a by-the-numbers spin-off that not only fails to deliver an experience worthy of the franchise, but also fails to be very good on its own terms. If you were hoping for a bustling world of agile assassins and testy Templars to fit in your pocket, Bloodlines will disappoint you.

James Cameron's Avatar: The Game Review

2009-12-20T16:17:00.002+05:30

This disappointing film tie-in transforms the magical into the mundane.

The Good

* Branching story provides replay value
* Some nice-looking environments
* Melee kills are fun
* Conquest mode is a neat idea.

The Bad

* Conquest mode is ultimately all but useless
* The story and characters stink
* The action gets tedious
* Absolutely awful vehicles.

Bigger doesn't mean better. Developer Ubisoft Montreal disregarded this mantra when creating James Cameron's Avatar, delivering a mediocre game loaded with unnecessary padding, rather than a tight and enjoyable package that could have gotten players excited about the upcoming film of the same name. In fact, if you're eagerly anticipating the upcoming Avatar movie, it's probably best that you avoid this bland and overlong third-person shooter altogether, because there's nothing fantastical or compelling about its story or characters. That isn't to say that Avatar is all bad. A branching story featuring two disparate factions makes this a two-games-in-one experience, so if you like wringing the last drop out of your $60, the single-player campaign might keep you busy for 15 hours or so. Unfortunately, while a few of those hours are entertaining, Avatar's action is too bland and tedious to justify the game's length, and a variety of bugs and bizarre design elements put a further damper on the fun. Avatar takes place on the planet Pandora, which the human-controlled Resources Development Administration (RDA) is stripping of its resources--much to the dismay of Pandora's indigenous population, the blue-skinned Na'vi. Meanwhile, the RDA has established a way of transferring a human's consciousness into an artificially created human/Na'vi hybrid called an avatar. You play as Ryder, an RDA operative who soon finds himself (or herself, if you choose a female persona) in over his head as he discovers the consequences of the RDA's destructive presence on Pandora. About an hour into the campaign, you'll be faced with a choice: side with the RDA, or live as an avatar and take your chances with the Na'vi. Yet no matter which path you meander down, you'll meet a series of unmemorable characters, played by unexceptional voice actors who deliver their poorly written lines without a trace of enthusiasm or urgency.

More disappointingly, the game assumes a familiarity with the nature of avatars. Cutscenes are abrupt, and moments that should carry weight, such as the first time you enter the body of your giant blue avatar, are presented without a shred of wonder. Your own character embraces that same matter-of-fact approach, reciting the dialogue in monotone, even as events unfold that would make most folks' jaws drop. With few exceptions, humans come across as resource-hungry simpletons, while the Na'vi are reduced to monosyllabic native stereotypes. And no matter which faction you align with, the flabby ending sequence will make you wonder why you bothered to see the story through. The blend of sci-fi and fantasy seems conceptually solid, but the ideas were given a treatment so cavalier that it's impossible to care about the fate of this world, of its people, and of your own character.

You won't find any more magic in Avatar's world than in its story, because though it too seems conceptually solid, it's similarly diminished by a general lack of energy. Pandora is at first sight a beautiful place, covered in lush foliage and teeming with beasts both savage and submissive. If you follow the RDA route, some of the monstrous plants will even spew poisonous fumes at you or knock you over with a powerful swipe of their leaves (really). The environments are attractive in the way most jungles are, and sights of flying beasts overhead and winsome waterfalls in the distance make Pandora's beauty simultaneously inviting and imposing. Yet over time, the environments lose their allure. Dark greens and darker greens melt into each other, and the visuals start to feel heavy, which will make you long for a change of scenery. A few of the areas you visit provide much-needed variety, but even so, the atmosphere grows wearisome and eventually wears out its welcome.

A bow is as useful as a gun. Who knew?

Each of Pandora's explorable regions is relatively large, and missions often involve traveling long distances to get to your next objective. Along the way, you'll run into a number of different types of enemies that seek to destroy you. If you side with the Na'vi, you have a few instruments of death to keep you well protected. Your default bow will likely be your go-to weapon. It snaps to targets when you hold the trigger, which is a real boon in the busy environments, given that it can be tough to spot camouflaged RDA foes. You can also sport a machine gun, though it's rather feeble, so you're better off replacing it with another choice, such as the enormous spiked club, which is good for mowing down a few viperwolves at once. In fact, melee combat leads to Avatar's most consistently enjoyable kills: it can be a lot of fun to cartwheel toward your target and slice him up with your dual blades. You equip four weapons at a time, but you can switch them out for other available options, and over time, your weapons level up and you gain access to better armor. Leveling up isn't a game-changing mechanic--your core abilities remain more or less the same--but there's still something rewarding about rising to the next tier of weaponry.

If you go the way of the RDA instead, you won't wield any melee weapons and will instead shoot your way to victory. You've got a pair of pistols to get you through if the better guns run out of ammo, but they're all but useless; luckily, your shotgun, flamethrower, and other weapons seem appropriately powerful, if not exactly satisfying to use. Imprecise targeting and inconsistent hit detection make it feel like you're spraying bullets around willy-nilly much of the time, and humanoid enemies are too stupid to make shooting them exciting. Your foes often will ignore comrades falling over dead right in front of them, engage harmless creatures and ignore you as you pick them off, and walk directly into walls and continue to walk in place. Not that AI characters are the only ones prone to technical weirdness. You might get stuck in a crevasse while flying a banshee, fall into an inescapable fissure, or dismount from a direhorse directly into the geometry of the plant right next to it and be unable to get out. Each of Pandora's explorable regions is relatively large, and missions often involve traveling long distances to get to your next objective. Along the way, you'll run into a number of different types of enemies that seek to destroy you. If you side with the Na'vi, you have a few instruments of death to keep you well protected. Your default bow will likely be your go-to weapon. It snaps to targets when you hold the trigger, which is a real boon in the busy environments, given that it can be tough to spot camouflaged RDA foes. You can also sport a machine gun, though it's rather feeble, so you're better off replacing it with another choice, such as the enormous spiked club, which is good for mowing down a few viperwolves at once. In fact, melee combat leads to Avatar's most consistently enjoyable kills: it can be a lot of fun to cartwheel toward your target and slice him up with your dual blades. You equip four weapons at a time, but you can switch them out for other available options, and over time, your weapons level up and you gain access to better armor. Leveling up isn't a game-changing mechanic--your core abilities remain more or less the same--but there's still something rewarding about rising to the next tier of weaponry.

If you go the way of the RDA instead, you won't wield any melee weapons and will instead shoot your way to victory. You've got a pair of pistols to get you through if the better guns run out of ammo, but they're all but useless; luckily, your shotgun, flamethrower, and other weapons seem appropriately powerful, if not exactly satisfying to use. Imprecise targeting and inconsistent hit detection make it feel like you're spraying bullets around willy-nilly much of the time, and humanoid enemies are too stupid to make shooting them exciting. Your foes often will ignore comrades falling over dead right in front of them, engage harmless creatures and ignore you as you pick them off, and walk directly into walls and continue to walk in place. Not that AI characters are the only ones prone to technical weirdness. You might get stuck in a crevasse while flying a banshee, fall into an inescapable fissure, or dismount from a direhorse directly into the geometry of the plant right next to it and be unable to get out. Of course, what fantasy game would be complete without special powers? You get a number of skills to play around with no matter which side you choose, though it's odd that these abilities are never given any context--you just have to accept that they exist. Nevertheless, they're good to have on hand, and like weapons, skills become more effective as you level up. Your healing ability will become the most useful, because though you regenerate health quickly when not in battle, you'll need to heal yourself when engaged with enemies. There is some overlap between the factions aside from health regeneration. Both sides can sprint for a short period of time, and both can activate camouflage to remain hidden for a short time. Faction-specific skills include the Na'vi's ability to summon a swarm of insects, and the RDA's airstrike. Avatar isn't a difficult game, so you won't often need to employ your special skills, but it's still fun to watch a barrage of missiles devastate a crowd of Na'vi or to summon a viperwolf to fight at your side.Don't forget: Your mount cannot be used as a flotation device.

In spite of these special skills, Avatar soon becomes tragically predictable: shoot a group of enemies, travel toward the next hotbed of activity, and shoot some more. The pace rarely varies, so while its goodly length should seem like an asset, Avatar instead feels like it drones on for far too long. There's never a sense that the action is ramping up, and the few boss fights sprinkled about are too tepid to make things more interesting. For example, you take on a huge beast in a large clearing, which is easy to avoid in spite of the poor collision detection that allows it to knock you over even if it misses you by a few feet. When it dies, the creature falls to the ground with little fanfare and dissipates seconds later. Talk about an anticlimax. The by-the-numbers missions don't help matters and serve only to artificially extend Avatar's length. Go here, collect these herbs, and report back. Go to these locations, shoot down some towers, and check back in. Go there, collect these different herbs, and bring them back. This tedium is particularly evident when playing on the Na'vi side, so it's hard not to feel like a big blue personal assistant.

Luckily, you can cut down on your travel time by using Avatar's vehicles and mounts, and in this case, the Na'vi get the better deal. You can ride a few different creatures, and there's a bit of a thrill in flying through the air on a colorful banshee, at least until the loose controls suck some of the joy out of it. If you want to stick to good old Pandora firma, direhorses will be your standard choice. These horselike creatures get the job done, though weak animations and sound effects make riding one seem more like floating about in a hovercar with legs than riding atop a great beast of burden. But direhorses are preferable to the RDA options, in particular the buggies. When you get behind the wheel of a buggy, the camera swoops and sways with every bump and bounce. The effect is so nauseating, it's better to stay on foot and keep your lunch than to take a rover and lose it. Luckily there are a few other options, though not all of them fare better. Gunships, for example, are awkward to pilot thanks to an unusual--and noncustomizable--control scheme.

Avatar's most intriguing idea is its implementation of a turn-based strategy minigame called Conquest, which you can access from the game's fast-travel stations. As you play through the campaign, you earn funds that you can spend on units in Conquest mode. In Conquest mode, you capture territories, thereby earning boosts in the campaign, such as earning more experience points or increasing damage. This is a terrific idea, and it's fun to play around in Conquest for a short while, as simple as it is. However, Avatar is not a challenging game, so the enhancements you receive from capturing territories aren't noticeably helpful, and you could easily finish the game and reach maximum level without even knowing that Conquest exists.

Tan Jala is willing to trust any outsider who can beat him in a staring contest.

Avatar's multiplayer modes aren't quite as useless as Conquest, letting up to 16 players compete in a variety of modes like Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, and Capture the Flag. The multiplayer suite feel less like a throwaway than you might expect for a movie tie-in but the factions play so differently that weird imbalances become quickly apparent. A Na'vi player can crush an RDA player with a single swipe of his club, while an RDA player can jump in a mech suit and mow Na'vi down without much fuss. (Though oddly, the swarm of insects Na'vi players can unleash make short work of those big hunks of metal.) The factional differences make for some initially appealing variety, but the disparity is too great--and the basic mechanics too bland--to support long online sessions. The mechs don't feel heavy enough to make them fun to pilot, and the cavorting camera renders buggies as uncomfortable to drive in multiplayer sessions as they are in the campaign.

One of Avatar's main selling points is its use of 3D technology, so if you own a high-definition television equipped with stereoscopy, you may get a kick out of seeing Avatar pop out of your screen. Yet even if you're one of the few lucky enough to see the game this way, no TV yet has the capability of making James Cameron's Avatar: The Game play any better than it does. It's not a bad game, and portions of it are competent, if not quite remarkable. But Avatar wears thin quickly, and the story is too fragile to compensate for the deficiencies.

The Saboteur Review

2009-12-20T16:15:00.002+05:30

It's a lot of fun to paint the town red in this black and white open-world game, but the weak stealth elements limit your options.
The Good

* Striking art design seamlessly mixes black and white with color
* Shooting action is fun and chaotic
* Perks system gives valuable rewards for being creative
* Freeplay targets are an interesting diversion.

The Bad

* Stealth elements are underdeveloped
* Driving and melee controls are clunky
* Climbing buildings is boring.

Sean Devlin is one tough Irishman. A single Nazi bullet may have ended the life of his best friend, but the protagonist of The Saboteur isn't going to succumb to death's waiting embrace nearly as easily. He absorbs rounds of German artillery like a plant sucks in sunlight, exhibiting an uncanny ability to regenerate his health in a way that would make even Wolverine envious. Despite the 1940s trappings--the dreary setting, old-fashioned weaponry, and painfully familiar foe--The Saboteur has very little in common with World War II. The strange thing is, once you get over the obvious clash between the real war and this over-the-top portrayal, The Saboteur is a really good time. It may not make a lick of sense that you can single-handedly shoot your way through a burning zeppelin, or dispose of waves of angry Germans with careless ease, but it's so much fun that the ridiculousness of these situations only adds to the enjoyment. If you can get over a few rough spots and put your real-world knowledge of World War II to the side for a while, The Saboteur is a goofy reenactment of some of history’s darkest days. It's a shame the story doesn't mirror the devil-may-care nature of the action. The cutscenes drip with drama, documenting the terror the Nazis are exerting on Paris. Sean Devlin has a score to settle with the invading army. Sure, the city he calls home is occupied by aggressive forces, but his beef is much more personal than that. His best friend was killed, murdered before his eyes, by a high-ranking Nazi with no moral qualms holding him back from committing unmitigated atrocities. Each new cutscene brings with it dark news from the war front, adding fire to Sean's quest for vengeance. Taken by itself, the story is well done, despite some visual discrepancies during the cutscenes. However, the overly dramatic tale serves to further highlight the jarring disconnect between the ridiculous action and the depressing reality. Unfortunately, even though the story goes out of its way to put a damper on the fun of rebellion carnage, it can't even keep a straight face long enough for you to care about the horrific events being told. The characters act in predictably stereotypical ways, which makes it difficult to confuse them with real human beings. Sean Devlin may be upset when his best friend is killed before his eyes, but after making his 10th whiskey crack in just a few sentences, he becomes an Irish caricature.

The story may not be able to decide if it wants to be goofy or serious, but the intriguing atmosphere definitely adds to the experience. The depression and fear cast on the city by the occupying forces are expressed visually through striking black and white backdrops. The buildings and roads in the Nazi-controlled sections of the city have a bleak, suffocating feel, making your actions to free these areas carry more weight. The most interesting aspect of this art design is the way in which color is carefully placed. During cutscenes, a scarf on the person Sean is speaking to may be drenched in shocking blue, standing out brilliantly against the dire background. Action scenes are even more impressive, using the orange flash of a gunshot or the glowing red of spilled Nazi blood to create a dazzling look. When you finally kick those evil Nazis out of parts of the city, the color comes flooding back, giving you a visual reward for your hard-fought progress. Ironically, the colored sections don't look nearly as impressive as the black and white areas, although the pristine countryside is a pleasure to take a leisurely drive through. Just make sure you don't hit any cows. They explode as if filled with dynamite, which could ruin your mood.

An imposing zeppelin hovers over Paris.
The Saboteur is an open-world game that lets you roam the streets of Paris at whatever pace you desire. The city is comfortably European, and does a good job of capturing wartime Paris. The world-famous landmarks are intact so you can visit the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower when you need a break from the Nazi-killing action. Your main method of travel, when you aren't running wildly down the somber streets, is a variety of cars pulled straight from the dawn of the automobile. They certainly blend in with the 1940s aesthetics, but their handling leaves a lot to be desired. They feel every bit as old as they look, which makes it difficult to quickly wind your way through these narrow streets or pull off a smooth hairpin turn during the many chase scenes. That isn't to say the vehicle controls are broken; they're just stiff, which makes the cars less fun to drive than they could be. You can also get around town by climbing straight up the sides of buildings. However, although this gives you a unique view of the City of Lights, it's clunky and unsatisfying. Getting to the top only requires you to rapidly mash on the climb button, and it takes an awful long time to finally reach your destination. Thankfully, this is a mostly optional way to travel, so you can ignore it if the sluggish nature gets to you. As you progress through the game, you meet up with a variety of contacts from various resistance organizations. These rebellion leaders give you different objectives to take part in that not only get you closer to fulfilling your vengeance, but help to kick out the Nazi occupants as well. Your goals take many different forms, but they usually boil down to two distinct operations--kill a specific Nazi or destroy a valuable tool of tyranny. Regardless of what your ultimate goal is, The Saboteur is filled with lots of explosive action. Wave after wave of angry Nazis will attempt to stop you dead in your tracks, but you can withstand so many bullets and your health regenerates so quickly that it's only a matter of time before all of your enemies are lying motionless at your feet. Because you are so powerful, the game is frequently easy, letting you lay waste to everything that moves without much fear of losing your own life. As you get deeper into the game, the enemies become more powerful, requiring you to use a more thoughtful approach to dispatch them. Although it never becomes too difficult, the shooting stays fun and exciting throughout, serving as the driving force behind your adventure.It's a good thing shooting up Nazis is so fun, because the stealth elements are not developed nearly enough. You can steal the uniform off the back of a defeated soldier, allowing you to blend in with your oppressors, but it's almost impossible to stay undetected for the duration of a mission. Your cover will invariably be blown at some point in the operation, forcing you to ditch the quiet approach and go out with guns blazing. It's still worth scouting buildings beforehand to discover the easiest way in and at least attempt to blend in with the crowd for a little while, so you can limit the number of Nazis you have to face, but it's disappointing that playing this game as a stealthy saboteur is not a legitimate option. Furthermore, unarmed combat, a necessary tactic if you wish to complete missions quietly, is sloppily executed. You cannot lock on to your enemies, which makes it way too easy to miss them with a punch, and the haymakers and kicks lack impact. It's much easier to ditch the disguise and whip out your pistols than have to deal with the lousy brawling mechanics.

Aside from the main missions, there aren't a lot of different activities to take part in. There is a Duck Hunt-inspired minigame that will struggle to hold your attention even the first time you play it, and there are a few different races that are fun only if you can come to grips with the vehicle controls. You can also sign up for a number of optional quests from your rebellion contacts, but these missions are very similar to the story missions. Your best chance at finding some fun variety are the freeplay targets. The Nazis have a number of valuable supplies scattered all over the city, and you make extra money for taking these out. Some of these objects, such as barrels of oil, can be destroyed by shooting them with an automatic a few times, but most of the targets are large and heavily shielded, forcing you to plant dynamite at their base. Wiring an explosive and then sprinting away before you get caught in the blast is a lot of fun, and seeing the angry Nazis investigate the charred remains of their precious war machines is quite rewarding.
Sean can't go five minutes without making something blow up.

Throughout your quest to free Paris from Nazi rule, you can earn a number of perks that make overthrowing the occupying forces easier and more fun. For instance, stealing a certain number of civilian cars lets you call for your own getaway mobile whenever you're in a pinch, sniping a few Nazis from far away steadies your aiming sights, and you can earn all sorts of fancy guns by dispatching Germans in clever ways. The perks system is a great incentive to try different methods to complete your objectives and builds upon the foundation that makes the game so much fun. The action in The Saboteur is well executed and rewarding, so even though World War II is merely a backdrop and the stealth elements are underdeveloped, it's still a blast to spill gallons of Nazi blood and blow targets sky-high. The Saboteur may not be the most original sandbox game around, but it certainly stands out from the glut of other World War II-themed adventures, and it's a darn good time as long as you can put up with its minor problems.

King Arthur - The Role-playing Wargame Review

2009-12-20T16:12:00.002+05:30

Arthurian role playing is superior to the hit-and-miss strategizing in this hybrid epic about legendary Britain.
The Good

* Captivating role playing with text quests for knights and unit leveling
* Strategic innovations, such as victory locations on battlefields
* Beautiful, detailed visuals that give a real English atmosphere.

The Bad

* Very hard even on the easiest difficulty setting
* Campaign is unbalanced and rather haphazardly designed
* Some overpowered units.

The sword in the stone, the lady in the lake, and the knights of the round table are all present and accounted for in King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame. But this mix of role-playing, real-time strategy, and turn-based grand strategizing doesn't quite work out as smoothly as the infamous accident that resulted in Mr. Reese's blending of peanut butter with chocolate. Hungarian developer NeoCore Games has created a compelling epic here that delves deep into Arthurian legend and builds a strong fantasy role-playing atmosphere but at the expense of some of the strategy. So even while you can easily get hooked on guiding King Arthur to the throne of Britain by vanquishing enemy monarchs and negotiating with watery tarts throwing swords at you, taking armies into battle is more problematic because of balance issues and grueling difficulty in the campaign. While the overall game is well worth playing because of the outstanding development of the Arthurian theme and some innovations on both the role playing and strategy sides of the fence, the flaws that mount up after a while will leave you hoping for a patch.
Real-time battles in King Arthur draw from many inspirations, including the Total War series.

In the beginning, however, King Arthur is one impressive game. Visuals strike you right away. The rolling green fields of the countryside and the sunshine glimmering off the sea really provide an old English atmosphere. The detailed soldier models and the ability to zoom in for close-ups of battles also lend wargame credibility. It's all a bit more grim than one would expect from a King Arthur game, with a Warhammer influence evident in the painted art seen on loading screens, although it still sets a great dark mood. Only the occasional typos in the onscreen text, along with the forgettable music and sparse voice samples detract from the otherwise immersive atmosphere. And even then, the game sometimes surprises you with some spooky sound effects during battles or when scrolling across the map screen of Britain.

Basic gameplay is at first reminiscent of the Total War series or even a more hardcore game of grand strategy, such as the Europa Universalis franchise. You take on the role of King Arthur himself in the single-player campaign (one-off skirmish scenarios and multiplayer battles are also offered, although the meat of the game is in the campaign) and must work to unite all of Britain by using turn-based tactical moves on a countrywide map screen consisting of numerous provinces. The strategic component of the game should be pretty familiar to most players. Most of your time is spent building up armies by recruiting in towns that you control, shuffling them around the map to attack rivals, and expanding your kingdom. Running your empire has been streamlined in a straightforward system that sees you advance through a season of the year in each turn. Recruiting new soldiers is handled by simply heading to a town with enough citizens to press into your service. Troop types are relatively standardized, with the expected mix of axemen, cavalry, spearmen, bowmen, and the like. All gain experience and level up, though, so you can customize your armies by buffing skills--such as attack, defense, or shooting accuracy--during the winter turn when attacks are halted while everybody hunkers down to wait out the snow. Managing the economy is also a snap because you only have to look after a pair of automatically collected resources in food and gold.
Quests play out almost exactly like Choose Your Adventure books from the '80s.

Battles themselves take place whenever two armies clash on the map. At this point, the action shifts to a real-time battlefield where you maneuver columns of troops and deploy them with basic formation commands. Battles play out just as they do in other similar strategy games, albeit with a couple of interesting innovations. Attacking, for instance, gives you the option to choose a specific battlefield. This lets you decide if you're going to fight in a forest, on an open plain, amidst hills, and so forth. This can be very useful because the game gives pluses and minuses to attack, as well as defense calculations based on terrain (as an example, you can launch surprise attacks from the woods). But perhaps the most rewarding new feature here is the addition of victory locations to every map. Each battlefield comes with a handful of key strategic spots that can be captured to provide boosts to your overall army morale (which can fall enough to trigger the loss of a battle even if your numbers remain strong, so you have to keep a close eye on how it ebbs and flows).

Battlefields also include specific buffs, as well as access to special healing abilities and spells. So these locations provide both in-game rewards and ways to emphasize the tactical importance of certain areas on each map. These locations always make perfect sense. They can be found on high ground or in buildings, such as old churches and Stonehenge-like stone circles, in critical places on a map--sites that any army would naturally attempt to seize at the onset of a battle. Going after such multiple objectives typically presents you with a tactical challenge because you need to divide your forces and tackle at least three victory locations simultaneously to have a hope of winning most battles. This really makes you think first instead of just band-selecting everybody and hurling your army at the enemy en masse. With that said, King Arthur has some battlefield problems. While long and dense with plot developments that hinge on what you do with sword and shield, the solo campaign is marred by weird pacing. Everything kind of lurches forward. One moment you're easing into chapter one events, but then you're bombarded with events from chapters two, three, and four. These will offer up all sorts of options that involve taking sides between squabbling brothers, searching for the Lady of the Lake, promoting pagan faith over Christianity, and so forth. These developments build a great story, although you may not be powerful enough to take on many of the scenarios. Such an open-ended campaign increases your sense of independence, making you feel more like a freewheeling real King Arthur instead of some schlump watching Excalibur for the umpteenth time. But you're given so much latitude that you can easily get your armies wiped out.
Winter turns are the time for leveling up and consolidating your position. No fighting allowed.

Also, objectives are not spelled out properly. You don't have to accept them formally by clicking a box to take on an alliance or agree to fight a common foe. Instead, you just read a description of what's going on in the objectives screen, which arranges all the revealed options into a flow chart, and have at it. The game only later tells you what you've been successful at and locks you onto a path heading forward. The end result of this vagueness ranges from the mildly annoying (you click on the wrong town and wind up making an enemy out of the guy you intended to befriend) to the totally exasperating (you take on an enemy you cannot defeat who then destroys all of your armies and forces you to retreat to a save). There is just too much trial and error here. Even something as simple as a warning pop-up asking if you really want to, say, seize King Mark's town would be a big improvement over the current don't ask, don't tell system.

Poor balance also plagues both armies and enemy forces in the campaign. Bowmen seem overpowered in comparison to other troops. They do a tremendous amount of damage, so you need to load each army up with at least four or five of these ranged units to have a reasonable chance of surviving battles. This isn't intuitive in the beginning, which means that you're again stuck with trial and error when recruiting armies. Even more aggravating is the dramatic way that the difficulty quickly soars. Enemy forces appear to level up troops faster than would seem to be possible--even on the easiest difficulty level. You might send out an army that comprises mainly third- or fourth-level troops and run into armies made up of seventh- or eighth-level enemies. Not fun. With the campaign being so wide open in structure, it can be tough to figure out what you're going to encounter until you commit to a course of action. And by then, you're pretty much stuck.

Role-playing aspects of King Arthur are sort of secondary to the strategic play, although they are actually the most well-realized aspect of the game. As the legendary monarch, you manage a team of knights of the round table who serve as heroes with set classes and special skills. Divine powers allow the casting of spells with varied effects that blast enemies with meteors, heal allies, or even send down a fog to obscure the view of archers. Base class skills and default abilities can be selected whenever knights level up. You can even acquire and equip magical weapons, as well as other artifacts, allowing you to treat these heroes like an extended adventure party as in a fantasy RPG. That fantasy angle is quite strong here, too, as you eventually take on magical faerie foes that provide some of the toughest opposition in the entire game. So you wind up with a quasi-historical D&D style of game when it comes to the role-playing side of things. Art is a little darker than you might expect in a tale about King Arthur, who has become something of a comic book hero over the years.

Even more interesting is a quest structure that runs alongside the battle events. Quest locations are marked on the main map with glowing scrolls. If you visit one with a knight, you take on a story mission told by interactive dialogue sequences. Quests play out like one of those old Choose Your Adventure books, with you answering questions, choosing between sneaking and fighting, and so on. Most quests are exhaustive and span a dozen or more questions that take you through a whole adventure. Some recount new stories about dealings with your rivals to the throne, while others delve into key tales of the Arthurian mythos, such as finding the Lady in the Lake. All are enthralling, and the final results always have an impact on the game in an important way. Actions are tracked on a wheel of morality that shows how you've been behaving as both a ruler and a religious leader. If you stand up for a friend, you gain a point or two toward righteousness; but if you betray him, you drop a point or two toward being a tyrant. The same goes for old-faith paganism and Christianity. If you spend too much time helping the druids, you gain points with the pagans; if you commit to making a Christian province, you earn points with churchgoing folk. All of this influences how you are seen by others and changes how you go through the game because pagan tyrants have different options from nice guys who are keen on Jesus.

Even though King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame can hook you for a great many hours in its present state, you can't escape the notion that the game could use a pretty comprehensive patch. This is a great concept but only a good execution, which leaves the end result sort of dissatisfying even while you find it hard to stop playing. Let's hope that NeoCore Games keeps at it until the game is brought to its full potential.

Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble Review

2009-12-20T16:09:00.002+05:30

It's not the best brawler around, but this memorable adventure has style to spare.
The Good

* Characters have tons of personality
* The story mode is memorable and offers plenty of replay value
* Wide variety of customization options, from the awesome to the absurd
* Frequent unlocking of new moves makes brawling rewarding.

The Bad

* Brawling is stiff and slow
* Environments feel lifeless.

High school can be a difficult time. On top of things like homework, attempts at romance, and just trying to sort out who you are and what you want to do with your life, you also need to prove that you're the best fighter in the country. It's a lot for any young person to deal with. Kenka Bancho tells the tale of one young man's struggle to rise to the top of Japan's bancho ranks. The brawling at the game's core is unrefined, but the characters make this zany, distinctly Japanese adventure an entertaining one. You don't need to know your shibui from your shabai to enjoy Kenka Bancho--these tough-talkin' high school street fighters are cool in any language. Menchi stares and smashtalk are a goofy and fun way of initiating combat.

Kenka Bancho takes place during a senior class trip to the fictional city of Kyouto. (Any similarities between the fictional Kyouto and the actual Kyoto are, of course, purely coincidental.) Your character is a rebel with a cause--becoming the coolest, toughest fighter in all of Japan. Upon arriving in Kyouto, he wastes no time in proving himself to be the greatest fighter, or the bancho, of his home prefecture. Conveniently, the banchos of every territory across Japan are gathered in Kyouto throughout the week, giving you a chance to beat every sorry, snot-nosed one of them and take your rightful place at the top.

Part of the fun of Kenka Bancho is in deciding how to spend your time. Your school has scheduled morning trips to castles, temples, and shrines, which you can choose either to go on or to blow off in favor of prowling the streets for rival banchos. The class trips are always eventful and usually give you a chance to break someone's face while defending a lady's honor, perhaps improving your chances for romance. You're always free to do as you please in the afternoon, and in addition to the 46 banchos hanging out in Kyouto, the streets are crawling with run-of-the-mill tough guys and gals you can clobber. You're rewarded for your victories with experience points that strengthen your attributes, and you'll also get money and helpful restorative items from defeated thugs. Most useful of all are the itineraries they drop for their school's trip, which you can use to track down that school's bancho. The goal of defeating every bancho is one you can pursue as aggressively or as calmly as you please, and regardless of how you choose to spend your time, you'll come away from your class trip with some fond memories.

The actual brawling in this third-person, open-world brawler isn’t great. In typical brawler fashion, you can tap buttons to punch and kick, and string your attacks together for combos. You can also hold down attack buttons for a few seconds to put more power behind your attacks, and press two buttons at once to perform a powerful special move. Frustratingly, even when locked on to an opponent, it’s all too common for your punches and kicks to hit empty air. Also, your movements are slow and stiff, and there's an odd delay between the time you press a button and the time your character carries out an attack that keeps the action from feeling as immediate and intense as it should. Still, there's a satisfying sense of power behind your attacks, and the fisticuffs are kept fresh by the constant unlocking of new moves. You'll frequently learn new variations on the punches and kicks that are the backbone of your fighting style. And from each bancho you defeat, you acquire a stylish and powerful new move, called a local specialty. In your hotel room or while waiting for a bus, you can customize your fighting style with these new moves to make yourself an even badder bancho. And as an added reward, the banchos you defeat become your peons, ready at your behest to follow you into battle. They're not brilliant fighters, but just having someone else around to absorb some of your opponent's blows is a great help during some tougher fights.

Some of the banchos you encounter are cool. Others try to be cool and fail miserably.But there's more to being a bancho than fighting, and it's not the unremarkable brawling that makes Kenka Bancho memorable. It's the sheer determination of every bancho. There's a code you need to abide by to be a true bancho, and part of that code is to not attack anyone without warning. The prelude to a fight is often more entertaining than the fight itself. To initiate combat the bancho way, you must first stare at your would-be opponent with great intensity. Your menchi stare, as it's called, is so fierce that beams shoot out of your eyes. Some targets will bow in submission to your obvious superiority. Others will simply run away in fear. If your marks think they have what it takes to stand up to you, they'll cut a menchi stare right back, leading to the next phase of pre-combat intimidation: smashtalk. In smashtalk, a phrase appears on the screen briefly, something savage like "I will end you!" or "Shove it, you pile of crap!" You then need to re-create that phrase by quickly hitting the right buttons to select parts of the sentence from among several sentence fragments that are briefly displayed. Do it successfully and you'll land the first blow. Slip up and you'll say something a bit less intimidating, like "Eggs are giving a pedicure!" and you'll get a mouthful of knuckle sandwich. You may find yourself wishing you had more freedom to craft your own fearsome taunts from the supplied sentence fragments, but these two phases to initiating combat are fun, humorous, and full of personality.

Also dripping with personality are the banchos you encounter. Some of them come across as legitimately cool, while others are way out of their league and only make bigger fools of themselves by trying to talk tough and look good. And no matter what your personal concept of cool may be, you can customize your character so that he embodies it. Whether you want to sport a leather jacket and a comically huge pompadour, a Mohawk and a trench coat, or anything in between, the boutiques and barbershops of Kyouto will offer a style that suits you. Or you can throw every conceivable definition of cool out the window and deck out your hero in something truly absurd. Story cutscenes reflect your character's clothing and hairstyle, and seeing him talk trash while wearing a giant banana suit is an endless source of amusement. No matter what you're wearing, the game is frequently hilarious. Atlus has done an excellent job on localization, making the dialogue sharp and funny and lacing it with the occasional pop culture reference, while keeping its Japanese flavor intact.

Unfortunately, Kyouto itself doesn't have much character. Rather than being a vibrant whole, the city is divided up into a number of small sections, each of which is rather featureless and sterile. People pop in to the environment only when very close to you, and details like cars rigidly driving along roads don't do enough to make the neighborhoods feel alive. Character models look decent, though, and the colorful effects that accompany your menchi stare and your local specialty moves elevate the brawling action above the mundane visuals of the rest of the game. The sound is unexceptional, with appropriate but forgettable tunes accompanying the action and sound effects that lack the passion and intensity of the game's characters.

You didn't just lose, pal. You lost to a guy in a banana suit.

In addition to the story mode, there's an option called Night Out, which lets you take to the streets at night to do nothing but brawl and earn experience, and it can be played with a friend via ad hoc. But the brawling isn't the highlight of the main mode, and it's even less interesting when removed from it. A single play-through of Kenka Bancho takes roughly eight hours, and you can carry over your character, items, money, and any itineraries you've found to subsequent play-throughs. With so many banchos to fight and plenty of secrets to discover throughout Kyouto, there's lots of replay value here. As a brawler, it leaves something to be desired, but in spite of its flaws, this is a senior trip you won't soon forget.

LocoRoco Midnight Carnival Review

2009-12-20T16:06:00.004+05:30

New gameplay mechanics and multiplayer support are welcome additions to the series, but they come at the cost of accessibility.
The Good

* New Boing! mechanic is great
* Online scoreboards and replays.

The Bad

* Steep difficulty curve
* Requires repetition to progress
* Limited multiplayer options
* Short single-player campaign.

Since bursting out of the rainbow, kitten, and smile factory, the LocoRoco series has kept its identity firmly rooted in cute, family-friendly fun. This has included a simple-but-charming art style, world-rotating gameplay, and an infectious soundtrack. But while this latest instalment keeps the foundation of the series intact, new gameplay mechanics, darker themes, and tougher difficulty make LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival much less accessible.

Midnight Carnival is much darker than LocoRoco's bright outdoor environments.Regardless of whether you're a rolling veteran or a first-time LocoRoco toe-dipper, the basics are simple: Use the PlayStation Portable's shoulder buttons to tilt the world left or right, steering your amorphous blob toward the finish line and avoiding environmental hazards. Along the way, you collect objects that help increase your score, aid your survivability, and serve as currency to purchase rewards from the in-game store. The next level is unlocked by completing the one preceding it.

Like in previous LocoRoco games, tapping the L and R buttons simultaneously causes your character to jump. But for the first time, you're now able to perform a series of bounces to improve your speed and the heights you can reach. Starting a new jump as you hit the ground initiates the new "Boing!" system, making your next jump higher and awarding a score bonus that increases the length of time you're able to maintain the rhythm. Used to bounce off walls or onto ledges in the environment, boing can grant access to hidden and otherwise inaccessible areas filled with bonus items, as well as act as a temporary speed boost as you travel through narrow channels throughout the levels. The timing window to trigger your next bounce is generous, while the mechanic adds a strategic element by forcing you to bet on the accuracy of your landing, as well as the fastest path to complete the level.

In addition to providing extra points, a successful run of boing includes visual and aural rewards with vibrant-coloured trails following your character, as well as instrumental flourishes in the music. These extra touches don't impact gameplay, and you're never required to keep time, but you'll return to the level's slightly more subdued ambient theme if you misjudge a bounce or take damage from an enemy. LocoRoco's soundtrack retains its cutesy charisma and is as catchy the hundredth time as it is on the first listen.

The new Boing! bounce allows you to reach areas you wouldn't be able to reach with a normal jump.
Early in the game, zones are made up of gentle rolling hills and tunnels. But as you progress through the 16 levels that make up the single-player campaign, you'll be transported out of snow- or jungle-themed settings and into thematically darker locales. These have heavier colour palettes, tougher platforming challenges, boss battles, and valleys of spikes to negotiate at speed with little margin for error. The difficulty curve is sharp, and because there aren't very many levels, it transitions from cruising to challenging in the blink of an eye.

Honing your world-tilting accuracy to stick landings on small platforms or avoid traps placed by the game's evil forces, the BuiBui, becomes crucial, but you shouldn't ever be left wondering which way to go or what it is you need to do next. Backtracking to explore often becomes impossible because of the game's level design, but while it may be a frustration initially, the short length of the levels encourages replay to find hidden objects and optimal speed paths. The challenges don't ever feel cheap or artificially inflated to hamper your progress, but while objectives may be easy to identify, getting to them is often tougher than it looks. It's not uncommon to fail a single element of a level several times over, such as mistiming a jump, overshooting a gap, or jumping early to keep your boing ticking. Most levels clock in between two and three minutes in length, while longer levels run to about the five-minute mark. Longer levels often include halfway save points, which allow you to continue to try a section at a cost. Having another go from the marker will cost you some of your collected pickories--the small flies you collect that act as the game's currency. Continuing repeatedly from a halfway marker without success bumps the cost of retrying with every unsuccessful go and begins to cut into your pickories purse quite quickly.

Restocking your supply of pickories is as easy as taking part in one of Midnight Carnival's two skill-tester-style minigames: a UFO catcher, where you control a metal claw and catch LocoRocos; or a pinball game, where you shoot LocoRocos into goals. Bonus stages are rewarded sporadically during the single-player campaign, so you should never be too poor to purchase continues. Pickories can also be spent to unlock antidamage charms and vanity clothing items from the in-game store. Putting a sombrero on your LocoRoco makes it look a little more personalised, but it won't help you perform any better. Dress your LocoRocos up with items purchased from the in-game store.

Midnight Carnival breaks new ground for the series by allowing up to four players to race against each other in ad hoc multiplayer mode. It's one of the more poorly fleshed out components of the game. The clunky matchmaking process requires all players to select the same level (you won't be able to play levels you haven't already unlocked in single-player), while one nominated player hosts and the others attempt to join. Once in the game, you'll be able to see other players and interact by bouncing against them, but there are no shared collectible resources, which means you'll collect only what appears on your screen. Worse still, once all players have completed the level, there are no details indicating who has won, and the lack of any kind of lobby means you'll need to reconnect each time you want a game. There's no infrastructure play here, but a nifty online scoreboard allows you to track and compare your scores and times per level, while the top five players can upload videos showing their best runs, which aspiring LocoRacers can download for tips. You won't be able to view replays ahead of your progress in the single-player game, but it can provide some helpful guides for how best to deal with a level if you're stuck.

While ultimately the new boing gameplay, local multiplayer, and competitive online leaderboards will appeal to those with a penchant for speed runs and full clears, at $14.99 (A$23.95) LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival isn't as feature-rich as its more robust series counterparts, LocoRoco and LocoRoco 2. If exploring zones or crafting and executing the perfect run is up your alley, then the handful of levels here will suit you to a tee. However, if you come expecting the same gentle, cathartic blob rolling that popularised the series, you may find yourself frustrated by Midnight Carnival's more complex gameplay.

MX vs. ATV Reflex Review

2009-12-20T16:06:00.001+05:30

A new dual-stick control system breathes life into what is otherwise a well-worn and sometimes frustrating game.
The Good

* Intuitive controls reward skilled riding
* Tons of races and events on smartly designed courses
* Track deformation looks good and really works.

The Bad

* Physics go bananas sometimes and send you flying off track
* Disappointing visuals, especially on the PlayStation 3
* Freestyle event judging is unpredictable.

The MX vs. ATV series seems to not only represent the battle between motocross bikes and all terrain vehicles, but also the differences between arcade and simulation racing. The newest entry, Reflex, attempts to combine the best of both worlds: outlandish tricks and environments with finely tuned control. The result is a thrilling, yet flawed racing game. It features intuitive controls and a ton of content, but it's only worth checking out if you're a racing fan with patience. Despite the name of the game, you’ll be driving more than just bikes and quads in Reflex. You'll also steer UTVs, buggies, and sport trucks through the game's large collection of races and events. The different vehicles make for a considerably different experience, depending on what you're driving and how you have it customized. The options are nice, but the improvements made to the series aren't as apparent in the larger vehicles.

Those improvements include track deformation and rider control. Cosmetically, the deformation is convincing--your tires dig into the terrain and the dirt they kick up actually piles up into new mounds--but it doesn't alter gameplay too much, especially if you're in a larger vehicle. The bikes and ATVs can get tripped up in muddy lines, but deformation rarely causes wrecks. Still, it's a welcome addition that inches the series closer to its competitors and makes for a more realistic racing experience.

The other new addition--the dual-stick rider control--adds a layer of strategy to the series. You control your vehicle with the left stick and your rider with the right stick. You can lean into turns, lean back to preload for a jump, or lean forward to climb hills or right your bike in mid-air. You also use the stick to execute tricks by flicking it in different directions while in the air. The system is intuitive and satisfying once you get the hang of it, and it also addresses a problem that plagued the last game: constant wipeouts. When you land a little wonky from a jump, a green arrow will flash on the screen; if you press the direction quickly, your rider regains his balance. You'll likely end up playing this racer in the same way you'd play a first-person shooter--both thumbs on the sticks making constant, quick adjustments. It might feel a little weird at first and requires a greater level of attention because you have to keep your eyes on the terrain, as well as your rider, but it's a rewarding system when everything works correctly.

Unfortunately, things don't always work correctly in MX vs. ATV Reflex. Kinks in the physics system can lead to some unpredictable, chaotic rides. There are times when everything syncs up so that you're rhythmically soaring over muddy ramps, as well as leaning into turns like a true MX pro, which is both satisfying and fun. Then, you'll hit a random little bump or piece of scenery and your hefty vehicle will tumble around the track like a tissue box down a flight of stairs. This inconsistency can be intensely frustrating, especially when it happens at the end of a close race. The sharp controls help a bit, but even after you master them, you'll still have to battle an occasional violent gravitational oddity.

A new deformation system makes this track bumpier the second time around.

Some of the game's courses are more treacherous than others when it comes to physics freak-outs. The outdoor waypoint races, in which you race through the open wilderness to reach checkpoints before your opponents, are the worst thanks to some dangerously uneven terrain and road hazards. At times, you'll feel like you're barely in control as your vehicle ricochets off trees, logs, and other drivers. Other courses, like the guided organic tracks through the mountains or the more traditional dirt tracks, are easier to handle and, consequently, more fun to play. Those courses feature smart designs with challenging elevation changes, as well as surprising twists and turns. Even without a minimap, you'll rarely get lost on the large, lengthy tracks.

You've got a bevy of racing options to keep you busy throughout the lengthy career. These include elimination races, time trials, trick competitions, a free ride mode that lets you cruise around an open environment to take on different location-based goals, and more. The variety of events and vehicles keeps the racing fresh, even when some environments are reused. The freestyle trick events have improved since the last game, thanks to the intuitive trick controls, but the judging needs work. Instead of just assigning a score based on your tricks, you're judged across four categories: difficulty, execution, flow, and variety. It's a novel system that takes a holistic approach to judging your performance, but like the physics, it's inconsistent. Sometimes you'll pull off an unbelievable stunt and your score won't budge. At other times, you'll land two out of 10 tricks and ride away in first place. It's a good thing there are a ton of other events available because this one needs some more tweaking.

You can compete in all of the events online with up to 12 people or three others with split-screen multiplayer. The multiplayer-only minigames--Snake and Tag--seem to be getting the most play time. Snake is a Tron-like game that has you trying to box in your competitors with a colored stream, while Tag is a game of keep-away where the person to reach the end of his allotted "it" time, which runs down while in possession of a weird-looking giant flaming head, wins. Both games can be a blast to play when a dozen players are frantically ramping up and down the environment trying to outrun and outdrive each other.

Reflex is not a particularly good looking game on either system, with blurry, low-res textures that are distracting in the open world tracks. The track deformation is a pretty addition, but there are better looking alternatives, especially for the Playstation 3, where the game looks considerably worse. The textures are grainier, and they tend to get drawn in slower, sometimes right under your wheels, and background objects like trees and fans often pop in just as you pass them. The PS3 version also suffers from a spotty frame rate. It's a bummer to crest over a huge jump only to see blotchy scenery stutter into view below you. Load times are also longer on the PS3 version. It's not bad before race events since the game lets you drive around an arena and practice some tricks while it loads, but they'll slow you down in the menus when you're trying to customize a vehicle. The one positive standout is the rider animation, which reacts fluidly and realistically to your commands.

PlayStation 3 owners get the short end of the visual stick.

The sound doesn't offer much variety. The engine sounds differ between vehicles, but not between models, so when you're close to other racers using the same vehicles, it just sounds like one deafening engine roar. The musical set list is filled with hard rock and screaming vocals. If that's not your favorite genre, you might want to plug in some of your own tunes.

MX vs. ATV Reflex takes the series two steps forward and one step back. The new controls, terrain deformation, and plethora of events make it a fun, often-exciting racer. But the squirrely physics sometimes throw water on the fire, leaving you frustrated and annoyed. If you can put up with the occasional gravity hiccup, though, there's a ton of quality MX and ATV action available here.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review

2009-12-20T16:01:00.002+05:30

This brilliant reimagining of the spooky series' progenitor is a breath of fresh air that will stick with you despite its shortcomings.
The Good

* Deeply emotional story with great pacing
* Incredibly haunting atmosphere
* Your experience depends on how it profiles you.

The Bad

* Far too short
* Puzzles and nightmares are always the same.

From the moment you turn on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and are informed that the game "plays you as much as you play it," it's evident that you're in for something quite different. Indeed, this is not the Silent Hill you may have come to expect. The fog, rust, and awkward combat of the past have been replaced by snow, ice, and lots of terrified running. Developer Climax Studios has reinvented the aging franchise for the better by removing the tedium, as well as going back to the basics of strong, psychological storytelling and intense, chilling atmosphere. Regardless of how you feel about previous Silent Hill games, Shattered Memories is a fresh and welcome new beginning that's good for a scare. When loving father Harry Mason loses control of his car on the icy streets of a town called Silent Hill and crashes, everything begins to unravel for him. Awaking in the snow, Harry is horrified to discover that he can't find his seven-year-old daughter, Cheryl, and sets off into the darkness to find her armed with little more than a flashlight. As he traverses the dangerously snowed-in town, Harry meets and interacts with several of its residents, from a local cop to an overly familiar party girl, struggling to come to grips with the fragments of memory the accident left him with, as well as his constantly shifting reality.

There's a dark side to Silent Hill, and every so often, the world freezes over before your eyes as supernatural glaciers rise from the earth to consume almost everything. Trapped within the mazes of ice formed in these frozen nightmares, Harry must run, jump, climb, and crawl his way out as he is stalked relentlessly by the pale-skinned, shrieking ghouls that emerge to hunt. They are many and cannot be harmed, so Harry has no choice but to run for his life as these hideous monsters give chase. Each nightmare is its own self-contained maze of twists and turns, but without any sort of useful map to guide you to freedom, you need quick thinking, a strong sense of direction, and a little bit of luck to find the way out. If the monsters succeed in bringing you down, you're returned to the beginning of the maze to try again, but while they can sometimes take several tries, these mazes are rarely frustrating.

Though these nightmares represent the only moments in the game in which you're actually threatened, you're constantly vigilant because of the fantastic and haunting atmosphere of every area in Silent Hill, from Midwich High School to Lakeside Amusement Park. Power is out across most of the town because of the snowstorm, and with everything bathed in darkness, only your flashlight--guided by where you point your Wii Remote--can light the way. Similarly, nearly every major action you perform, from opening up cabinets to casting off the monsters that pounce on you in a nightmare requires some sort of gesture, which produces an almost tactile sense of immersion. The simple puzzles you encounter also require motions, such as twisting a radio dial to the proper station or adjusting a planetarium projector. These motion controls not only work without a hiccup, but they're also extremely forgiving and intuitive, which helps to pull you into the haunted town almost immediately. And haunted it is, for Silent Hill is a swirling vortex of paranormal activity with something new lurking around almost every corner.

Paranormal phenomena is hidden all over for you to find.As you travel throughout the town, you'll encounter everyday objects with strong emotions attached to them. When in the presence of such an item, Harry's flashlight will begin to flicker and a burst of static will emerge from the Wii Remote speaker. Finding the source of this disturbance will lead to a spooky moment and the receipt of an eerie voicemail or text message on your cell phone, which helps to explain the significance of that particular localized haunting. Occasionally, you may also catch a glimpse of a ghostly flickering image just out of focus to the naked eye but not to the digital sensors in your camera phone--snapping a photo reveals the hidden truth and also triggers the delivery of a voicemail or text. In Shattered Memories, the town itself is a main character, and everything from the haunted objects to the kitschy mementos you find lying around help to establish it. You can even call up the phone numbers seen on billboards and wanted ads all over the city for hidden messages.

At regular intervals throughout Shattered Memories, you're temporarily pulled out of the action to interact with an extremely unconventional psychologist in first-person sequences. During each of these sessions, your therapist asks you to complete simple exercises or answer uncomfortable personal questions about fear and sexuality. Your performance and answers to these questions can have wide-ranging effects on your gameplay experience. Characters, dialogue, and ghostly messages can drastically change; the forms of the monsters you flee from are customized to your personal fears; and even the areas you visit, as well as the ending, can differ, which makes this a great game to replay in different ways. For example, in one game, you might encounter a friendly country cop, but in another she's a frigid, shoot-first-ask-questions-later type. There are many possible permutations of story elements, but no matter how much the world changes from one play-through to the next, the nightmares you experience and each of the puzzles you solve remain identical. Thus, an experienced player can easily complete Shattered Memories in six hours or less, though your first time will usually last around seven hours.

Shattered Memories is very dark and moody, and from its impressive use of lighting and shadows to the creepy, real-time freezing effects of the nightmares, the titular town on display is at its finest--except when running through doors. For whatever reason, there is some graphical stuttering that frequently occurs when opening up doors, particularly in nightmares. It's not a game-ruining problem, but it does negatively affect your immersion in a game that is all about getting immersed. Fans will be pleased to know that series' maestro Akira Yamaoka returns to score Shattered Memories and produces one of his most distinctive soundtracks yet, but whether you're familiar with his work or not, this Silent Hill features an engrossing sound design that keeps you on your toes at all times.

No matter how fast you run or how well you hide, these things will always find you.

Throughout the years, the Silent Hill franchise has gradually lost focus of its psychological roots and moved instead toward an ultimately subpar, more action-oriented experience. Shattered Memories is a fantastic return to the core concept of personal fear, and though its developers made some unorthodox decisions--such as removing combat entirely--those decisions have paid off handsomely. This is not the Silent Hill that may have terrified you more than a decade ago but an entirely new experience that is truer to it than any other game bearing the name since Silent Hill 3. Despite a few issues, including its surprising brevity, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a great game for anyone looking for a scare, whether you've been to the haunted town before or not.

Rogue Warrior Review

2009-12-20T15:58:00.001+05:30

This dreadfully boring, expletive-filled, extremely short shooter is an absolute rip-off.
The Good

* Close-quarters kills look cool.

The Bad

* Just over two hours of solo gameplay at full price
* Dialogue is a constant stream of disgusting language
* Super linear and super boring
* Terrible AI
* Useless stealth mechanics.

In Rogue Warrior, lead character Dick "Demo Dick" Marcinko (based on the real-life ex-Navy SEAL, and voiced by actor Mickey Rourke) doesn't just drop an F-bomb--he drops an entire nuclear warhead of repulsive language that would make even the most world-wise among us reach for a set of earplugs. As depicted in developer Rebellion's newest first-person shooter, Marcinko is a shallow, potty-mouthed antihero without a single redeeming quality. Unfortunately, the appalling dialogue seems to have inspired Rogue Warrior's gameplay, which is characterized by useless stealth mechanics, inconsistent hit detection, incredibly linear level design, and abysmal AI. Yet the boring, one-dimensional gameplay and terrible dialogue aren't the game's most insulting blemishes; that prize belongs to Rogue Warrior's total lack of value. You can finish it in just over two hours, and the stripped multiplayer consists only of deathmatch and team deathmatch, yet publisher Bethesda Softworks is asking full price. Don't be a sucker: Steer clear of this garbage. You'll at least sniff one sweet smell amid the stench--that of Rogue Warrior's momentarily satisfying close-quarters kills. If you get close enough to your enemy (not exactly difficult considering the putrid AI), you can plunge your knife into his back, snap his neck, or smash his head into the wall. The thrill dissipates quickly, however. Every level is linear, and opportunities to sneak up behind your Communist foes are laid out in a predictable manner. There may be three or four enemies milling about at a time, all placed in such a way as to make it a cinch to sneak up behind them and play grim reaper. These easy stealth opportunities are further simplified by the morons you assassinate, who appear to have no peripheral vision and won't notice you creeping up on them from the most obvious angles. They also appear to be near-deaf; they won't react to the cries of their nearby comrades as you dump them over a railing, and they won't notice the sound of your footsteps, even if you're sprinting at full speed.

Perhaps the shallow stealth mechanics would be easier to stomach if the shooting were fun, but Rogue Warrior is easy, boring, and predictable. Every firefight occurs in much the same way: You wander down a corridor, encounter three or four enemies, and shoot them. Sometimes your foes barge through a door, drive up in a truck and jump out, or break through a skylight and slide down grapple lines, but this always happens right in front of you, and opponents are generally happy to remain in your line of fire. With few exceptions, AI enemies won't attempt to flank you, won't react to getting shot once they are behind cover, and will run towards the grenades you toss--and they'll throw their own grenades at each other and shoot the exploding barrels that stand right next to their teammates. In your adversaries' defense, however, the levels don't give them many opportunities to flank. While there are some medium-sized warehouses and other somewhat open environments, the path to your next objective is always a straight line. There are no alternate routes and no hidden rooms to explore, and the only door that will open is the one you are meant to charge through. Rogue Warrior only has one direction (forward), one speed (slow), and one intelligence level (stupid).

Rogue Warrior tries to mix things up with a few other elements, such as lights you can shoot out to darken rooms, night-vision goggles, and a basic cover system, but these elements seem out of place and make the game feel like a poor man's Rainbow Six. Once Dick is behind cover, you view him from a third-person perspective; you can peek above or to the sides to shoot targets or even fire blindly if you so desire. But while the cover system works well enough, it's ultimately unnecessary in light of the game's slow, straightforward pace. And enemies are too easy to kill to make shooting out a light or using night vision worthwhile. Yet Rogue Warrior doesn't even get the straight-up action right. The hit detection is all but broken. You might kill a Russian soldier with a few shots to the knee, but others may survive what seem to be six or seven obvious headshots. Bad animations further diminish the quality of the gunplay, because there's little sense of impact when your bullets hit their mark. Your Communist foes sometimes stagger and then regain their composure when under fire, but sometimes you can unleash a barrage on them without getting any kind of physical reaction.

While your Korean and Russian rivals don't seem particularly troubled by being filled with lead, Dick himself is never afraid to express his dissatisfaction. The mix-and-match obscenities he spouts while under fire would almost be funny if they weren't so obviously meant to be taken seriously. Sadly, you hear a lot more about Dick's genitalia and aversion to Commies than you do about the story, which occurs during the height of the Cold War and follows North Korea's sale of nukes to the USSR. You'll fight in hedge mazes during a heavy snowfall, in a hydroelectric dam, and at a shipping dockyard, and some nice lighting gives some of these locales a touch of atmosphere. Otherwise, plain textures, jittery animations, and heavy aliasing make Rogue Warrior look bland and dated.

So what's there to do once your two hours are up and the credits roll? Well, you could check out Rogue Warrior's stripped suite of multiplayer options, which let up to eight players shoot each other up in deathmatch or team deathmatch. But that's it. There are no other modes, no persistent rewards (unless you count the all-but-empty online leaderboards), no classes, no customizable loadouts--and no fun. There's nothing to draw you back in, making Rogue Warrior a waste of time and money. If for any reason you still feel compelled to check it out, consider this: Dick's atrocious lines were mixed into a rap that plays during the end credits. It's a summary of everything that makes Rogue Warrior so excruciating to play, condensed into a three-minute song.
Always stretch before a long workout.

The Sims 3: World Adventures Review

2009-12-20T15:54:00.002+05:30

World Adventures introduces a number of fresh ideas and a bunch of great new content to the series.
The Good

* Tombs are fun to explore and give you lots of great rewards
* Charming and attractive presentation
* The new content blends well with the old
* Lots of new items, tools, and other goodies.

The Bad

* Scattered technical issues.

Upon initial consideration, it seems unusual that the first expansion for The Sims 3 would revisit a concept the series has already trod. After all, in 2002, The Sims: Vacation let you visit three different travel venues and introduced a few new (but minor) concepts to the formula in the process. The Sims 3: World Adventures sends your digital counterparts back on the road, but don't assume that this expansion simply retreads what has already been done. World Adventures isn't just a bloated content pack, but rather it introduces new ideas to the series, fun rewards, and great new areas to explore. If you've somehow overcome your addiction to The Sims 3, the expansion feels so fresh that you'll be able to overlook its scattered flaws and devote yourself once again to the happiness of your little computer people. The puzzles won't tease your brain, but they will tickle your fancy.

Like Vacation, World Adventures introduces three new locations to discover--in this case, France, Egypt, and China. Traveling costs a few simoleans, of course, but even if you haven't been playing The Sims 3 for long, you should be able to afford a visit to the Egyptian tombs or the Terracotta Army. You simply tap a few buttons on your in-game cell phone or computer, choose a destination, and you're whisked (if you can call it whisked, what with loading times lasting upward of two minutes) away to your overseas adventure. The first thing you may notice upon arrival is the job board outside of your base camp. Using the board, you can select an adventure, which may entail a task like talking to a local in need, who in turn will send you off to retrieve a priceless artifact, search for items lost in the desert, or have a chat with the neighbors about their lights. Most of these tasks involve exploring tombs, dungeons, and other subterranean environs; collecting loot; avoiding traps; and pushing a few statues around to solve puzzles. It's like a role-playing game, just without the sword swinging and spellcasting.

And like with dungeon-crawling RPGs, it's hard to tear yourself away from the tomb raiding once you've started. The actions you take during your subterranean jaunts aren't complex: pull a lever, examine a strange-looking wall, stand on a plate to trigger a door, and so on. However, the moment-to-moment balancing of your sims' needs (such as energy or bladder) enrich the exploration, and the loot you find sweetens the deal, because it affects you outside of the adventure. You'll find relics that you can sell or display in your home, ancient coins that you can use to purchase cool items from a specialty merchant, and more. Additionally, completing adventures raises your visa level, which in turn allows you to take longer vacations and get access to better items from the specialty vendors, among other perks. Yet while the rewards are the biggest part of what makes adventuring so involving, the exploration is entertaining in and of itself. You may need to navigate a hedge maze while retrieving artifacts, look for secret doors, or pray to the statues adorning the area. And, of course, you'll want to take a tent, some morsels of food, and the charmingly illogical "shower in a can" to keep your standard needs met while you trudge about the dim dungeons.

Even when you've left your vacation behind and returned to your life back at home (time stands still in your own neighborhood while you're away), you'll find that the new content is expertly woven into the old. For example, if you are a musician, you might get an opportunity to learn about the musical traditions of Egypt. Completing the task entails learning several different folk songs from the Egyptian populace--which you can in turn teach to other sims in all locations. As you play, the game frequently prods you to visit your homes away from home, and each visit is rich with the charms and surprises for which the series is known. The new Simlish phrases and sim animations are whimsical and enchanting, and the new areas are fun to investigate. The new music is quirky and upbeat, and while occasionally plain, the villages and tourist attractions are lovely to look at. However, like previous expansions in the Sims series, World Adventures doesn't fix any faults, and in fact, it calls attention to existing ones. As you run (or bicycle or motorbike) to your next adventure, texture pop-in and visual jitters become more noticeable than before, and the camera gets shaky when you traverse the newer hilly areas and navigate tight tombs. You can meet your daily needs at the base camp, though eventually you'll be able to own your own vacation home.

The quests and ensuing rewards aren't the only delights you'll gain from playing World Adventures. If you like the scenery, you can snap a photo and sell it or hang it on your wall, which is a great way to enhance a themed room. And if you're into theming, the fun doesn't stop there. The expansion includes all sorts of new furniture and decor, so if you want to turn your backyard into a Chinese garden, you've got new foliage and lighting to do it with. If you stared with envy at your new Egyptian friend's furnishings, you can purchase them for yourself and turn your dining room into a mummy's paradise. In fact, should you really get into the tombs, you can even build one yourself. The new basement tool lets you build up to four floors underground, and you get access to all the traps, levers, and other accoutrements you encounter during your adventures. For an extra good time, add a dungeon to a community building and share it with others using The Sims 3's sharing tools. Additional goodies include pagoda-style roofs, new traits and lifetime rewards, new books and food items, and a lot more.

The Sims 3: World Adventures further explores the series' continued focus on performing specific tasks for specific rewards, yet offers enough new tools, items, and social interactions to please those who prefer the free-form play for which The Sims is known. From martial arts and nectar (that is, wine) making, to firetraps and puzzle solving, there's a lot to do and a lot of playthings to muck about with. This expansion may not fix the few technical troubles that still ail The Sims 3, but it adds enough to keep your mind off the drawbacks and centered directly on the fresh and wonderful new content. In other words, Sims fans should expect plenty more sleepless nights ahead.

Star Trek: D-A-C Review

2009-12-20T15:51:00.002+05:30

Blandly go where no Star Trek game has gone before in this unexciting multiplayer shoot-'em-up.
The Good

* Conquest and Assault modes are fun in small doses
* Survival mode is a nice, fast-paced addition .

The Bad

* The license has little impact on the game
* The new missile cruiser class isn't fun to use
* Loose controls make for unrewarding shooting
* Dumb AI leads to frustrations.

Deathmatch, Assault, Conquest: These game modes form the acronym in Star Trek: D-A-C's unusually uninspired title. While the game was first released to Xbox Live Arcade in May of 2009, the more recent PlayStation and PC versions add new ships and other new features in an apparent effort to enhance the shallow original. (It's worth noting that the Xbox 360 version has since been updated to include all of the features of the more recent versions.) The additions are welcome, in particular the single-player Survival mode that pits you against increasingly more challenging waves of enemies. However, the D-A-C experience is still characterized by its bland top-down space combat, which is pleasant in small doses but lacks the thrills of other shoot-'em-ups. Furthermore, the game does not reflect the wonders of the franchise, thus making the license seem less of an inspiration and more like window dressing.

Survival mode features some pretty backgrounds.
Basic gameplay is standard fare for a shoot-'em-up. The three ships of the original Xbox 360 release--the fighter, the bomber, and the flagship--appear in this edition. Fighters shoot lasers, bombers drop bombs behind them that explode a moment later, and flagships let you hover a reticle over your target and let loose a blast of energy. The two additions for the new version are the missile cruiser, which moves slowly and fires balls of energy that may be charged up to do even more damage, and the support frigate, which emits a steady beam that can damage enemies but is more useful for restoring health and power to other ships. In most modes, you choose to fight for either the Federation or the Romulans, but while the ship designs are different for each faction, the ship classes play the exact same way. Once you choose a ship type and a faction, you do battle with AI-controlled enemies or fellow human combatants.

The two new ships bulk up the possibilities, but they don't do much to energize the action. The new missile cruiser moves slowly and shoots slowly, and while its laserballs do a lot of damage and even hit enemies offscreen, it controls too sluggishly to feel satisfying. In fact, that looseness is part of the experience regardless of the ship you select. The floaty controls might be meant to approximate what it would be like to fly in the vacuum of space, but their imprecision saps much of the excitement. Rather than the quick and accurate moving and shooting you would hope for, you get loose turning and a slower rate of fire than you would expect, which is further limited by your ship's quick-to-diminish power reserves. Power-ups add a bit of variety, letting you create a clone of your ship to fight alongside you or giving you a temporary cloak, among other possibilities. But the power-ups do little to make the action more compelling, so while you might get enjoyment out of two or three successive matches, Star Trek: D-A-C gets tiresome quickly.

The Romulans are coming. Quick, look busy!Team Deathmatch is the most predictable and least exciting of the three competitive modes, because it relies solely on the dull shooting to entertain. Conquest and Assault modes are a better source of amusement. In Conquest, you take over the map by capturing rings, which keeps the action concentrated on a small number of hot spots. Assault works similarly, only an assaulting team must capture the rings in sequence on its way to the defending team's base, while the defenders must thwart the assaulting team's plans. The newer version gives Assault mode a twist, adding turret defenses and a final base assault that the attacking team must undertake, assuming it makes it that far. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find many competitors on either the PC or the PS3, which means that available slots in online games will be filled by AI players. Star Trek D-A-C's AI isn't very good. This is most noticeable in Conquest, where the entirety of your computer-controlled team will clump together in a single capture ring and ignore what is happening elsewhere, and multiple AI-controlled support frigates may follow you about and restore your health at the expense of other ships in greater need.

The most notable addition to this version is that of Survival, which is a single-player mode in which you fend off waves of enemies that become harder and harder to defeat. It's the new D-A-C's best add-on, because the action occurs at a faster pace than in other modes and leads to attractive displays of laser fire and explosions. But Survival also highlights the floaty controls, which make it difficult to evade the balls of energy that missile cruisers lob at you and to grab the power-ups and point-increasing drops that destroyed ships leave behind. Nor is there any context for this mode, or any other mode. There is no story, no introduction, nor even a voice-over telling you to boldly go where no man has gone before. It's just one-off matches, and were it not for the naming conventions, ship designs, and melodramatic soundtrack, you'd never know this was a Star Trek game.

Expect to have the AI fill most of the slots when you play online.

Star Trek: D-A-C's sole spark of originality is that upon defeat, you eject a speedy escape pod that you can control. If you can avoid enemy fire for a few seconds, your ship will spawn back onto the battlefield more quickly than if your pod is destroyed. Otherwise, this is a humdrum top-down shooter that neither takes advantage of its illustrious license, nor supplies the explosive joy you'd seek from the best shoot-'em-ups. The mild pleasures D-A-C initially offers are soon replaced with apathy for its shallow and repetitive gameplay. The improvements over the original release are notable, but they don't remove the game's fundamental flaws--they only veil them

Tekken 6 Review

2009-12-20T15:45:00.002+05:30

It may be light on gameplay modes, but Tekken 6 is still a great fighting game sporting some serious good looks.
The Good

* Fighting is fun, fast, and tight
* Plenty of characters
* Solid training options
* Looks great.

The Bad

* Not a great variety of modes
* No game-sharing or online support.

Tekken 6 on the PSP may not have all the bells and whistles of its console counterparts, but it still packs a hefty punch. This portable brawler offers the most comprehensive roster in the history of the series, introduces new mechanics for veterans to master while retaining its button-mashing accessibility to newcomers, and is simply a visual treat. This great-looking game is an altogether welcoming fighter, so whether you're a complete stranger to the series, an occasional masher, or someone who can pull off 10-hit combos without dislocating a finger, Tekken 6 has plenty to offer you. While it strips out the console version's lengthy beat-'em-up campaign and doesn't have the same depth of character customization, this is an otherwise pitch-perfect conversion. In fact, it feels and plays exactly like the console and arcade iterations of Tekken 6. The game has a robust lineup that features 41 fighters, including old stalwarts such as Kazuya, Lei, Paul, Nina, and Jin, as well as recent additions from Dark Resurrection, such as Lili and the emo-Nazi look-a-like Dragunov. Experienced Tekken players will see that the tweaks and changes made to the move sets of returning characters are, for the most part, minor. Most characters get a new attack or two, some stances have been modified, and the damage dealt by some of the more powerful combos in the past have been slightly toned down. Despite this, most of the returning characters feel completely familiar, so you'll never feel like you have to relearn your favorite fighter from scratch.

It's not all veterans, of course, with six new characters making their debut in Tekken 6. These include: Bob, a rotund American fighter who is deceptively speedy for his size; Leo, an androgynous German martial arts specialist; Miguel, a Spanish brawler who relies more on power than speed; Zafina, a member of a mysterious secret order who sports some creepy and unusual stances; Alisa, a seemingly naive young girl who's actually a jetpack-and-chainsaw-wielding android; and Lars, who has some relation to the sprawling Mishima bloodline (hence his move set similarity to Jin and Kazuya). Of the new recruits, Zafina is the most unique, thanks to her distinctive-looking moves that incorporate stance-based attacks, such as the off-putting tarantula, which sees her get down on all fours to creep low along the ground. Alisa is just sheer fun to play as given her frankly bizarre move list, which includes using her own head as an explosive and a whole series of attacks based on her chainsaw appendages.

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Tekken 6 Review

It may be light on gameplay modes, but Tekken 6 is still a great fighting game sporting some serious good looks.
The Good

* Fighting is fun, fast, and tight
* Plenty of characters
* Solid training options
* Looks great.

The Bad

* Not a great variety of modes
* No game-sharing or online support.

Tekken 6 on the PSP may not have all the bells and whistles of its console counterparts, but it still packs a hefty punch. This portable brawler offers the most comprehensive roster in the history of the series, introduces new mechanics for veterans to master while retaining its button-mashing accessibility to newcomers, and is simply a visual treat. This great-looking game is an altogether welcoming fighter, so whether you're a complete stranger to the series, an occasional masher, or someone who can pull off 10-hit combos without dislocating a finger, Tekken 6 has plenty to offer you.

Old and new characters duke it out in Tekken 6.

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While it strips out the console version's lengthy beat-'em-up campaign and doesn't have the same depth of character customization, this is an otherwise pitch-perfect conversion. In fact, it feels and plays exactly like the console and arcade iterations of Tekken 6. The game has a robust lineup that features 41 fighters, including old stalwarts such as Kazuya, Lei, Paul, Nina, and Jin, as well as recent additions from Dark Resurrection, such as Lili and the emo-Nazi look-a-like Dragunov. Experienced Tekken players will see that the tweaks and changes made to the move sets of returning characters are, for the most part, minor. Most characters get a new attack or two, some stances have been modified, and the damage dealt by some of the more powerful combos in the past have been slightly toned down. Despite this, most of the returning characters feel completely familiar, so you'll never feel like you have to relearn your favorite fighter from scratch.

It's not all veterans, of course, with six new characters making their debut in Tekken 6. These include: Bob, a rotund American fighter who is deceptively speedy for his size; Leo, an androgynous German martial arts specialist; Miguel, a Spanish brawler who relies more on power than speed; Zafina, a member of a mysterious secret order who sports some creepy and unusual stances; Alisa, a seemingly naive young girl who's actually a jetpack-and-chainsaw-wielding android; and Lars, who has some relation to the sprawling Mishima bloodline (hence his move set similarity to Jin and Kazuya). Of the new recruits, Zafina is the most unique, thanks to her distinctive-looking moves that incorporate stance-based attacks, such as the off-putting tarantula, which sees her get down on all fours to creep low along the ground. Alisa is just sheer fun to play as given her frankly bizarre move list, which includes using her own head as an explosive and a whole series of attacks based on her chainsaw appendages.

Zafina is the creepiest new addition to the roster.

A fembot with chainsaws for hands may seem overpowered in a fighting game, but Tekken 6 manages the tough task of presenting a well-balanced brawler despite the abundance of characters. Tekken's fight mechanics--each limb assigned to the four face buttons on the PSP, with special moves usually performed via button combos and directional pokes on the D pad or control stick--are eminently suited to the PSP's layout. Thus, novices and experts alike should have no problem in getting their heads (and hands) around the controls. Most of the hundreds of moves in the game are a cinch to perform individually, which means you'll be able to pull off some flashy moves from the get-go. Stringing them together into increasingly damaging combos, however, will take some practice, which is where the game gets deliciously deep. Juggle combos--where you launch your opponent into the air and try to keep him or her there--are still integral to the Tekken experience for expert players. Other important moves include throw counters, wall juggles, roll evasions, and various in-depth strategies.

For those already comfortable with their various 10-hit combos, Tekken 6 introduces a new way to deal extended damage. The bound system essentially allows you to extend combos by slamming an airborne opponent into the ground, leaving him or her momentarily vulnerable for further strikes. Just as with juggles, each of the characters has his or her own bound launcher, and it's a great new addition for Tekken fanatics to explore. Another new addition is rage, a power-up of sorts, which activates when your pugilist's health dips to about 10 percent. It's pretty exciting when you're able to pull off a miraculous win, thanks to your rage-fuelled strikes, but the rage system is one that's unlikely to change the course of most matches because by the time it kicks in, you're usually only one or two hits away from oblivion.

Previous Tekken ports have been known for their wealth of game modes, but Tekken 6 is rather bare, Tekken 6 is rather bare, omitting the extras seen in previous home and portable versions (such as bowling in Tekken Dark Resurrection). Apart from the stock-standard Arcade mode, you can play through Story mode, Ghost mode, and challenge battles. Arcade allows you to gain ranks for each individual character, with the game emulating the experience of playing against real people by having your AI opponents appear with their own individual gamer names, win/loss ratios, and ranks. The AI here is strong--there are five difficulty levels to choose from, ranging from ridiculously easy to frustratingly tough, so there's a good chance you'll find a fit for your own experience level. Story mode is where you can unlock each character's full video ending, which has been a highlight of previous Tekken games and definitely a winner for Tekken 6. Challenge battles feature Time-Attack and Survival modes, as well as Gold Rush--a mode where you earn cash with every attack (although repeating the same moves will earn you successively less cash). You'll actually earn cash with almost everything you do in Tekken 6, which can then be used to customize your character's costumes. You won't find anywhere near as much variety here as you will in Tekken 6's console versions, however, with only a handful of choices available in each category, such as headgear, new tops, pants, or even comic-book-style exclamations every time your character makes a hit.

Multiplayer is also pretty threadbare, offering only wireless ad hoc play. Playing with a friend is a generally smooth experience, but you'll need to find someone who also has a copy of the game because Tekken 6 has removed the single-UMD game-sharing option found in Tekken Dark Resurrection. But if you do have a friend with his or her own copy of Tekken 6, you can also exchange ghost and ranking data. Character video endings are a highlight yet again.

Tekken 6 may be light when it comes to game modes, but its presentation is outstanding. While there have obviously been some concessions made to cater to the PSP's technical limitations--some of the textures on characters aren't as refined, for example, and stage backgrounds aren't as packed with detail--the game still looks great. Character animations are uniformly smooth, while there's still plenty to see in the game's varied stages. Sound is also quite impressive, with bone-crunching effects adding a great deal of believability to your every strike. What the PSP version does trump its console cousins on is load times--even off UMD, load times between fights in Tekken 6 are only a few seconds, and this is shaved to being almost negligible if you install the game onto a memory stick.

For fans, Tekken 6 is the most complete Tekken experience so far thanks to its large and varied roster, while for newcomers, it's a visually dazzling introduction to the long-running series. While it could have benefitted from more modes, if you're hankering for a portable puncher, then Tekken 6 is the game for you.

Dragon Age: Origins Review

2009-11-18T13:43:00.002+05:30

Dragon Age: Origins Review

Incredible storytelling, great characters, and exciting battles are just a few of the things that make this fantasy role-playing game so extraordinary.

The Good

* Intricate, involving storytelling
* Amazing dialogue and voice acting bring characters to life
* Rich fantasy world filled with interesting lore
* Enjoyable questing with plenty of twists and surprises
* Lots of spells and abilities make combat fun.

The Bad

* A few glitches.

When was the last time you felt totally lost in a fantasy gameworld? When was the last time you played a game with such a well-crafted and enjoyable story that you knew you’d remember it for a long, long time? Dragon Age: Origins is that kind of game, so rich and involving that you are powerless to resist its wiles and whims, so touching and triumphant that your mind and heart will be moved. In the fictional land of Ferelden, you meet memorable characters and fight for a cause you believe in, and it's this backdrop that makes developer BioWare's newest role-playing game so extraordinary. Dragon Age is more than a well-crafted story, however: It's a lengthy, intricate, and thoroughly entertaining adventure that's easy to fall in love with. Dragon Age's plot, which deals with the impending invasion of a horde of demonic creatures called the darkspawn, isn't where the story's biggest surprises lie. The shocks, the joys, and the disappointments spring from the repartee among a number of remarkable characters; they lurk within books of lore and stories of martyrs; and they burst forth during spine-tingling moments when you must choose from a selection of difficult choices that affect the tale's direction--and the way your associates interact with you. Ferelden is a colorful and fascinating kingdom that takes enough cues from well-known fantasy tropes to be familiar, but bends enough conventions to feel original. Dragon Age features dwarves, but their caste-based society and the social paragons that rise above it twist the norms enough to keep you intrigued. Mages remain under the constant watch of templars, a restriction that doesn't sit well with those who view such policing as virtual slavery. The role of religion in human circles is of particular note. Chantries provide refuge to those worshiping the all-powerful Maker, and chanters recite the holy word near their houses of prayer. But lest this world sound too serious, don't despair: One such disciple slides food references into her chant, and a few dwarves warn you not to fall into the sky. Small, humorous touches like this are plentiful. Even if you aren't the literary sort, Dragon Age may inspire you to read every note, every character bio, and every creature description, thanks to the richness of the world and the consistency with which it's presented.

You'll learn even more from the companions who join you, and you'll grow to care about them on your quest for glory. There's Morrigan, the cynical apostate mage bound to your cause for reasons that become clear only late in the journey; Sten, the strong, silent type who isn't so quick to reveal his innermost thoughts; and Zevran, a darkly mischievous would-be assassin with a wild streak and a playful disregard for the law. There are others too, including Alistair, a wisecracking, vaguely insecure member of the Grey Wardens, an elite group of champions that recruits you early on. Great dialogue and fantastic voice acting make these characters leap off the screen as if they were real friends, and the way they interact with one another feels authentic. Morrigan and Alistair banter about the role of templars in the lives of mages, and the sweetly devout Leliana tries to communicate with your trusty canine cohort in some amusing exchanges. You may even develop a romance (or two) before all is said and done. The course of love isn't always a smooth one, though it can be a bit steamy, in a PG-13 sort of way. Uh oh--this can't be healthy.

Relationships must be nurtured; in the world of Dragon Age, love doesn't develop at first sight. Rather, you must improve your standings with available party members by giving them gifts and fulfilling quests in ways that please them. Doing so opens more dialogue options and may even reward you with unexpected gifts beyond the private pleasures of your tent. Your personal relationships aren't all you need to worry about when facing a difficult decision, however. On significant quests, you'll encounter complex choices that force you to weigh the risks against the rewards, even as you try to stay true to your own vision of your character. Are werewolves heartless killers, or is there a method to their madness? Should you wholeheartedly embrace a political candidate, or will some unexpected information have you playing double agent--or just killing the opposition? Such open-ended quests have become staples in many similar RPGs, but few make these decisions feel so momentous. The anxiety that results when you encounter important choices is a result of superb writing and character development: When you care about your destiny, decisions have more weight.

Even Dragon Age's initial moments present important decisions that affect how your adventure plays out. You'll customize your own avatar's look from a variety of presets, but more importantly, you'll choose a race and class. The choices may seem initially limited, but your options eventually expand. Later, you can choose up to two subclasses once you reach the necessary level requirements, and there are a few different means of unlocking additional skill trees. Your initial race and class choices don't just determine the kinds of skills and spells you will have access to, however; they influence how the first few hours of the game progress. You will experience one of six different "origin stories" that follow the events that lead you to the elite Grey Wardens. Every origin story leads to the same place, but that doesn't mean you leave these events behind for good. Characters you met early on will cross your path again, and crucial moments of your origin story will continue to haunt you. The varied origin stories not only provide plenty of replay value, but allow you to see familiar characters from a different angle. A prisoner you meet within a dank dungeon may not have much impact on you if you are playing as a Dalish elf, but if you play as a human mage, this encounter is a bittersweet reunion. Meet Morrigan. Sharp tongue not pictured.

You aren't a lone adventurer, however. You can take up to three companions along with you, and eventually you will meet more willing (or unwilling, as the case may be) darkspawn slayers. You can switch out party members back at your camp or in other friendly areas. Party members you don't use will remain at camp, though they thankfully level up even when you don't take them along. Your comrades aren't just AI-controlled henchmen; you can take full control of any party member at any time, though how you do so depends on the platform. PC owners get the most versatile and rewarding experience in this regard. You can zoom the camera in to a close third-person view when exploring and conversing with non-player characters, or pull the camera back to a tactical view, which makes it a breeze to quickly and easily micromanage every spell and attack, in true Baldur's Gate tradition. On consoles, you always view the action from behind a single character, and you use a shoulder button to switch among them. It's a great way of experiencing the buzz of battle, though occasional pathfinding quirks are more apparent in the console versions, simply because you experience the action from a single perspective at a time, rather than while managing four characters simultaneously.

If you've played a BioWare fantasy RPG in the past, you'll feel right at home with the combat system. By clicking on your target or pressing the attack button, you don't just swing a sword, but you approach your target and queue up your attack. Once your party has gained access to a good number of spells, stances, and skills, battlefields explode with bright colors and raucous sound effects, and it's a lot of fun to switch back and forth between party members, managing your abilities and taking advantage of various spell combos to wreak havoc. There are dozens of different types of enemies to slice up, from giant spiders and darkspawn, to ghosts and walking trees, to demons and, of course, dragons. Allies will join you in the biggest battles, and the best of these, particularly those toward the end of the game, are thrilling. On the PC, they're particularly challenging, and many battles benefit from frequent pausing and tactical thinking, so that you can queue up attacks across your entire party. The same battles on consoles are noticeably easier. Nevertheless, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions have their challenges, and no matter which platform you choose, you can customize your cohorts' AI behavior to be more effective in battle. Using the tactics menu, you can set characters up to drink potions when their health gets low; have Morrigan cast helpful crowd-control spells when enemies are clustered together; and program sturdier characters to draw enemies' ire when more vulnerable party members are under attack. As you level up, you will earn additional tactics slots, allowing you to implement even more intricate actions. You can also apply basic behaviors to your team members, making them more aggressive or defensive, and you can switch them around on the fly if an experimental custom tactic isn't working as you intended. When things come together as you plan--such as when Morrigan freezes a hurlock in place and Alistair smashes it to smithereens--battles are even more rewarding.All of these elements coalesce wonderfully, making for a memorable and exciting adventure that keeps you on the move. The flow of loot and pace of leveling are both highly satisfying, and because you have four active characters to consider (in addition to others back at the camp), you spend a lot of time poring over armor and weapon choices. The tempo is even quicker than the Dungeons & Dragons games that preceded Dragon Age, thanks to important tweaks that minimize downtime. For example, you do not need to rest between encounters to replenish your health and recharge your spells. Instead, health and stamina are replenished quickly once the skirmish ends, allowing you to string encounters together without unwanted breaks in between. Should a party member fall during battle, he or she will be resuscitated once the battle has ended, albeit with a stat penalty applied (though it can be cured with an injury kit). These factors, and more, give Dragon Age an excellent sense of forward direction.

All the spells, tactics, and skills sound like a lot to organize, but the interface does a great job of helping you keep track of things. The PC interface is brilliant, letting you browse through your inventory and tweak your quickbars quickly and easily. The console versions do a surprisingly great job as well, making it simple to sort through your quests, and to queue up actions while battle is paused. One particularly useful feature is the ability to identify inventory items as trash and sell them all with a single button press once you're back in town. There are some console-specific interface irritations that could have been cleaner, however. For example, identifying new codex (that is, lore) entries can be troublesome, because the list doesn't scroll down until your highlight cursor reaches the bottom of the window. As a result, you can't always distinguish new entries from old ones, which is an issue that doesn't plague the fantastic PC interface. The consoles' radial menu, on the other hand, is an excellent way of letting you access every battle skill, and it works somewhat like the similar interface in Mass Effect--albeit with a few more layers.

The differences between versions aren't limited to the interface. Dragon Age doesn't look amazing on the PC, but it's an attractive game nonetheless. Zooming from an isometric view to a third-person perspective is slick, and while environments don't hold up quite as well when viewed up close, they're consistently lovely when viewed from above. On the flip side, the Xbox 360 version looks positively disappointing. Textures are highly compressed and colors are washed out, though the upside is that this version maintains a smoother frame rate than on the PlayStation 3, where things might get jittery when swiveling the camera around. The PlayStation 3 version features higher-quality textures than those on the Xbox 360, better color saturation, smoother facial animations, and shorter load times. Minor visual hiccups, like corpses that disappear and reappear, are a bit more common on the PS3, however. The PC version is the superior experience, but if you're choosing between the two console releases, the PlayStation 3 has the upper hand. Some minor glitches are shared between the console versions, however, such as rare occasions when the soundtrack or voice-overs disappear. We also ran into a few quest malfunctions that could be replicated on all three platforms, though they were relatively minor and did not interfere with the progress of the main quest. This particular origin story is not a peaceful one.

No matter which version you choose, however, there are plenty of audiovisual details to note. In many ways, Dragon Age looks and sounds like other high-fantasy games, but while the towers, forest paths, and underground caverns are what you've seen before, the art style is attractive, and a few sights, such as an underground dwarven city, are particularly eye-catching. Character models don't exhibit Mass Effect-level expressiveness, but they look good and animate smoothly enough. Also of note are the splatters of blood that appear on your party members after battle. It's a nice idea, but the splotches look like they've been splashed across you with a paintbrush. The crimson stains are a cool thematic touch, however, because blood plays an important role in Dragon Age. The sound effects are excellent, console glitches notwithstanding, and the soundtrack, while typical for a fantasy game, swells and murmurs at all the right moments.

Few games are this ambitious, and even fewer can mold these ambitions into such a complete and entertaining experience. You might spend 50 or more hours on your first play-though, but there are so many paths to follow, so many details to uncover, and so many ways to customize your party that you'll want to play again as soon as you finish the first time. PC owners even get an extra dash of depth via the downloadable toolset, which lets you create new levels, spells, skills, and even cutscenes. But any way you slice it, here's the fantasy RPG you've been waiting for, the one that will keep you up late at night, bleary-eyed, because you have to see what happens next. Like the best fiction, Dragon Age will sweep you up in its world, so much so that when you're done, you'll want to experience it all over again.

Fairytale Fights Review

2009-11-18T13:42:00.000+05:30

Fairytale Fights Review

There's no way to break the curse on this staggeringly bad action game.
The Good

* Some interesting character designs.

The Bad

* Incredibly shallow, repetitive combat
* Poor platforming
* Lousy boss fights
* No sense of pacing whatsoever
* Weak sound effects.

Fairytale Fights is an action game that puts an emphasis on slicing lumberjacks, gingerbread men, rabbits, wolves, mice, and other storybook characters into messy little pieces as gallons of blood spill on the ground. So perhaps, in a twisted way, it's appropriate that the gameplay feels sloppy and the experience of playing the game is nothing short of painful. You start your terrible trek in Taleville, playing as one of four famous fairy-tale characters: Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, the naked emperor, or Jack (of Jack and the Beanstalk fame). Now forgotten after being usurped from the leading role in each of their stories, they set off to make names for themselves again by undertaking a quest to recover a stolen magical kettle. It may take its inspiration from many classic stories, but if you go into this game expecting a tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm, you'll be deeply disappointed. The story is paper-thin and serves only as the flimsiest pretense to bring you face-to-face with Pinocchio, the Pied Piper, and other famous fairy-tale personages.

In each linear level, you run along a set path through forests, candy castles, quaint hamlets, and other storybook settings. You'll occasionally need to make tricky jumps over spinning blades or onto moving platforms, but the controls aren't tight enough to make this maneuvering enjoyable. The camera also maintains too great a distance from the action at times, making it difficult to tell just when you should leap to land on that drifting log or rotating waterwheel. But the platforming is a minor part of the experience. By far the majority of your time will be spent killing off the waves of enemies that hinder your progress. To attack, you move the right thumbstick in any direction. To chain attacks together, you just keep wobbling the thumbstick, and to charge attacks, you hold the thumbstick in one direction and then quickly push it in another. The gameplay isn't just shallow; it's also sloppy and imprecise, feeling largely disconnected from your actions, and as a result, it's thoroughly uninvolving. You can't effectively target specific enemies, and there's no meaningful variety to your attacks. All you can do is move the right thumbstick around wildly to pummel your attackers. The lack of control also leads to other frustrations. If you're unleashing attacks anywhere near an edge, it's very easy for your character's combo to carry you right off of it to your death.

Not that this matters at all. The only penalty for death is the loss of a portion of the money you've gathered from chests and defeated enemies on that level. But since the only thing money is good for is the completely unimportant funding of a statue of your character in Taleville, losing it is of no real consequence. That doesn't mean that dying can't get annoying, though. Particularly on the hard difficulty level, there may be times when the instant you respawn, you're mobbed by so many foes that you barely have time to get an attack in before you've been ripped to shreds and need to respawn again. There's nothing satisfying about this kind of difficulty, though. Since there's no depth to the gameplay, there's no skillful way to respond to these kinds of situations. It's just frustrating.

Hate blood and gore? This isn't the game for you! Love blood and gore? Still not the game for you!

Gore is the gimmick with which the game tries to distract you from its shallowness and repetition. Scattered throughout each level are blunt and sharp objects you can wield as weapons. These include axes, clubs, swordfish, swordfish skeletons, rulers, waffle irons, lollipops, rolling pins, pitchforks, and bratwurst. Each weapon has an effectiveness rating in stars or skulls, but for all that variety, there's no real difference in how one sharp weapon or one blunt weapon behaves compared to any other. Blunt weapons are particularly useful with charge attacks, while sharp weapons are particularly useful when you want to cut your enemies to pieces and spill blood everywhere. Once that blood has been spilled, you can slide around on it like a skater on ice, and if your glory bar is fully charged, you can perform a glory attack in which your character dismembers an enemy with movements that match your inputs with the thumbstick. All this gleeful grisliness may be good for a laugh in the first few minutes, but it's quickly overshadowed by the crushing boredom of the gameplay. There are also ranged weapons, such as blunderbusses and candy guns, that you can pick up, but the inability to aim with any precision limits both their effectiveness and the enjoyment you're likely to get from them.

Making matters worse, unlike most real fairy tales, this game doesn't have the sense to keep things brief. It's the equivalent of a heavy, bloated tome that desperately needed a merciless editor to look it over before publication. Many of the 22 levels feel as if they go on forever. Stop to slaughter a dozen gingerbread men, and 20 seconds later you'll have to slaughter a dozen more. By the time all is said and done, you may never want to see another gingerbread man as long as you live. Just forcing your way through each interminable level is an act of heroism worthy of being chronicled in legends. But there's no reason to soldier on in the face of such unwavering tedium, no pot o' gold waiting for you at the end of this nightmarish rainbow. Just more, more, and still more of the same. You experience the same shallow combat against the same brain-dead AI in the eighth hour as you do in the first. Sometimes less is more, and in the case of Fairytale Fights, more is definitely less.

A scene from the classic fairy tale The Game With the Really Bad Boss Fights.

The occasional boss battles do nothing to break the monotony. In fact, they often contribute to it. An early boss battle pits you against a giant beaver who telegraphs all of his attacks, making the battle pretty easy, but this encounter demonstrates the same lack of pacing that characterizes the entire game. After you've pounded or sliced him endlessly, an animation plays that leads you to think it's all over. But then the beaver gets a second wind, and you have to go through the whole dull process all over again. A later boss battle has you fighting the Pied Piper, who is at the keys of a deadly, fire-spewing pipe organ. Here, the timing necessary to avoid the constant jets of flame is so precise as to border on the absurd, making this battle an exercise not in boredom, but in frustration.

Fairytale Fights offers local or online multiplayer for up to four players, but while enduring the experience with friends makes it a mite less painful, it still doesn't make it fun. There's something to be said for the charms of simple, arcade-style multiplayer mayhem, but this game is so basic and repetitive, your eyes may glaze over. There's also a competitive free-for-all multiplayer mode in which you battle it out to slice each other to bits or beat each other to a bloody pulp, but it serves only to emphasize just how shallow and unenjoyable the combat system is. Unsurprisingly, very few people are playing the game online as of this writing, so don't expect a lively multiplayer scene. Alone or with friends, cooperating or competing, this game is beyond redemption.

The visuals and sound are on par with everything else about Fairytale Fights. It's true that there's a touch of maniacal inspiration to some of the character designs. For instance, you may not soon forget the sight of Hansel and Gretel, reimagined as candy-crazed conjoined twins. Unfortunately, this visual inspiration is rare, and most of the character models are unattractive. The environments show some basic charm, but the overall look is too simplified to be appealing. The sound is equally disappointing, with forgettable tunes and minimal sound effects. Your characters express themselves only through occasional grunts, screams, and laughs that sound oddly muted and don't have much personality.

Even if it were a downloadable game for a fraction of the price, Fairytale Fights would not be recommendable. The very idea of this shallow, repetitive, bloated, excruciating adventure as a full-priced retail offering is nothing short of ludicrous. If there's any moral to be gleaned from this demented fairy tale, it is this: Don't play this game.

Lego Rock Band Review

2009-11-18T13:40:00.001+05:30

Lego Rock Band Review

This charming rhythm game is especially good for first-timers, but it's a little light on content.

The Good

* Charming aesthetics
* Rock Power Challenges provide an interesting combination of story and gameplay
* Setlist has plenty of variety
* Rocking out with friends is still great fun.

The Bad

* No online mode
* Shorter versions of songs often end too abruptly.

It's impressive how much the minifigs have accomplished through the years, particularly when you consider that they have curved yellow pincers where their hands should be. These easily recognizable Lego figures have already starred in a series of action games that parody popular films, but they are taking a brief break from their lightsaber swinging and whip wielding to rock out with some instruments that are just as plastic as they are. Lego Rock Band is a kid-friendly entry in the ubiquitous rhythm game genre, and it has just enough style and humor to stand out from the sea of note-strumming clones. Sadly, as charming as this accessible rhythm game is, there are a few omissions that make it seem stripped next to other games in the series, most notably the ability to play online. Even though this is a little short on content, Lego Rock Band is still a ton of fun with some friends and has a setlist that's good enough to keep even Rock Band veterans entertained. The opening cutscene for Lego Rock Band borrows the same imagery popularized in Rock Band: the band balancing precariously atop a speeding van, whaling on their instruments as they weave down a barren stretch of road in a desert wasteland. However, it doesn't take long for the game to delve into the slapstick humor that has worked so well in previous Lego games. As soon as they enter a city, a charging dinosaur begins to chase them, and in their zeal to avoid his chomping wrath, they crash their van into a million pieces. Luckily for them, Legos can be reassembled in a variety of ways, and they quickly turn their van into a few other vehicles, all while they stand on top rocking. There are a few of these elaborate, always ridiculous cutscenes during the course of your trek to superstardom, and they add a lot to the otherwise predictable experience. It's goofy fun to watch the mute minifigs grunt and gesticulate wildly to get their point across, and these serve as a good reward when you reach a milestone.

Another Lego-themed highlight pops up when, during certain performances, the story and gameplay combine in a unique way. Rock Power Challenges have you curing the ailments of your cheering fans through the power of music. In the first such competition, a demolition crew is having trouble razing a dilapidated skyscraper. When they find that their wrecking ball and dynamite are ineffective against the sturdy brick foundation, they turn to you for help. Turning that bass dial up to 11 gets the ground shaking, and by belting out a particularly intense rock song, you can cause that building to topple to the ground. Although Rock Power Challenges do not change the basic gameplay in any way, it's a lot of fun watching your music have a tangible impact in the world, even if the scenarios don't always make much sense. Why would ghosts be chased away by music? If anything, it would make their haunted abode seem even more welcoming. Once you throw logic out the window, these challenges provide a solid detour from the standard jamming.

Like the other games in the Rock Band series, Lego Rock Band can be played with up to three friends, and a full band is composed of a bassist, guitarist, singer, and drummer. The gameplay hasn't changed at all from the first Rock Band game; you still strum along as notes pour down from the top of the screen. But it's still a lot of fun, especially when you have a few friends really getting into the music. The setlist is an odd blend of classic rock, modern hits, and recent tracks that have quickly lost relevance. The eclectic mix works well because there are just enough good songs to hide the less-than-thrilling ones. For instance, the inclusion of "Ghostbusters" is inspired. The catchy riff and infectious chorus are known by just about everyone, and it's awesome to sing along while everyone laughs at the ridiculous subject matter. This camaraderie also makes it easy to stomach lesser tracks, such as the inane Good Charlotte song "Girls & Boys," since it can be just as much fun to mock their embarrassing lyrics. That microphone fits perfectly in her clawed hand.

There are a few features in Lego Rock Band that help make it accessible for a wide audience. The most important inclusion is the ability to turn off the kick pedal for drummers. It can be difficult for less-experienced musicians to coordinate all their appendages into a coherent beat, so being able to focus on keeping time with just your arms alleviates many of the frustrations that go along with using the full kit. You also have the option to play a shorter version of any track in the game. This is perfect for players who don't have quite enough free time to play through the entirety of some of the meandering tracks, but the editing leaves a lot to be desired. Songs often abruptly end right before a chorus or guitar solo begins, which can be jarring, even if you aren't familiar with the full-length versions. Furthermore, overdrive notes often appear right at the end of a song, which makes it impossible to take advantage of them.

You can export the 45 tracks from Lego Rock Band into either of the first two Rock Band games for $10, which lets you enjoy the music even if you don't care about the cute aesthetics. You can also access the Music Store, although the selection has been trimmed to feature only family-friendly tracks. It’s hard to tell where they drew the line on what to cut, though. The stalker-happy "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" by Stephen and the Colberts and three Iron Maiden songs are still available, but Pearl Jam’s love ballad “Just Breathe” is strangely absent. Another difference from standard Rock Band games is that you cannot play online, which limits the long-term replay value. Even with those omissions, this is another solid entry in the popular franchise. The charming visuals and goofy story make this a good place to start for Rock Band rookies, and the setlist is quirky enough for everyone else.

Band Hero Review

2009-11-18T13:37:00.002+05:30

Band Hero Review

Band Hero makes fake plastic rock easy to pick up, family friendly, and a whole lot of fun.

The Good

* Party Play mode is welcoming and fun
* All songs available from the start
* Slick visuals
* Jamming in the music studio is fun.

The Bad

* Fewer songs than Guitar Hero 5
* Limited song downloading and importing functionality
* Vocalists need controller to activate star power
* Trimmed-out lyrics aren't particularly inappropriate.

Just two months after the release of Guitar Hero 5, Activision has rolled out Band Hero. These two games are functionally the same, so Band Hero benefits from all the improvements that made Guitar Hero 5 so great, including the excellent new Party Play mode. However, Band Hero is aimed at a more specific demographic than GH5, and this is reflected in the main difference between the two games: the songs. Band Hero's tracklist reads like a setlist for a DJ at a middle school dance; there's a lot of pop and Top 40 rock, with some R&B and oldies thrown in for good measure. Many of the songs are fun to play, though nostalgia and guilty pleasure are just as likely to play a part in your enjoyment. Despite the variety, the scope still feels a bit limited, and the censored song lyrics that concerned parents will likely appreciate may not go over as well with others. Still, there's no denying that there's a lot of fun music here, and even if you're not a big Taylor Swift fan, you'll still have a rockin' good time with Band Hero. The new Party Play mode introduced in Guitar Hero 5 is in full effect in Band Hero, and it's just as great. When you start up the game, it begins playing a song. Then, with the push of a few buttons, you and your friends can join in without missing a beat. You can use any collection of instruments you like, so if three of you want to sing along to "Heard It Through the Grapevine" while a fourth lays down the bass track, that's A-OK. Should you want to change the difficulty, skip the song, or throw together a quick setlist, you can do so using a little menu that only obscures your own note highway. There's no failing in Party Play, so even if you're at the bottom of the red zone, the screen won't flash red and you won't hear any awkward clanks unless you're actively playing the wrong notes. You can jump in and out as you like, rotate in other players, or just take a break. The music keeps playing, and you can tailor your experience on the fly without any abrupt pauses or song restarts. The result is a casual play environment that is accessible, welcoming, and delightfully low key.

If you prefer more deliberate and finite sets, then Quickplay mode is a great option. Here, you can construct a setlist and play with up to four players. Again, you can use whatever instrument combinations you see fit. Quickplay also makes accommodations for more casual players, allowing only those playing on hard or expert difficulty to lose their note highways. Your bandmates can restore your highway and prevent band failure by activating their star power, but Band Hero also offers a more flexible way to come to a friend's aid. When a bandmate fails, a crowd meter appears onscreen. If the rest of the band plays well enough for long enough, the lapsed bandmate is revived and the band keeps on rocking. There is no limit to how many times you can revive a bandmate, though it does seem to get harder as the number of dropouts increases. The crowd meter makes your band less dependent on star power opportunities that may or may not appear in time, which means you don't necessarily have to save your star power for a flagging fellow rocker. Quickplay is also a good place to make a bid for a spot on the extensive leaderboards. There are high-score categories for each song, instrument, and difficulty, so score seekers of all levels can participate.

That's a whole lotta curly blond hair.If you like to earn more substantial accolades for your performances, Career mode once again provides a place where you progress through different venues, playing songs and unlocking new gigs. In Band Hero, you earn up to five stars for each performance, and the more stars you collect, the more gigs you unlock. This mode will feel very familiar to Guitar Hero veterans, but there's one element that prevents it from going stale. Each song has a bonus challenge associated with it that allows you to earn up to eight stars per song instead of the usual five. These three-tiered challenges (one extra star per tier) can either be specific to an instrument (whammy for a certain amount of time as the guitarist) or apply to the entire band (maintain a 4x multiplier for a certain amount of time). This variety encourages you to mix up the instruments you use or to play with a few friends, and there's a handy onscreen meter that tracks your progress throughout the song. Some of these challenges will be easy for confident players, while others are much more difficult, though in general, the songs in Band Hero aren't as difficult to play as those in Guitar Hero 5. Earning a few extra stars is nice, but completing challenges can also earn you bonus unlockables, including new outfits, sponsored equipment sets, cheats, and new playable characters. In addition to franchise standbys like Axel Steel and Judy Nails (who have gotten serious makeovers for their Band Hero appearances), you can choose to use the likenesses of a handful of real rock stars. You unlock many of these celebs just by playing through their songs successfully in Career mode. Once unlocked, these stars can join Guitar Hero characters and your user-created rockers onstage. Because you can use characters to fill multiple band roles, you could rock out with a veritable clone army of Taylor Swifts. Xbox 360 owners can add their avatars into the mix, making for some truly ridiculous situations. If you replace three of the members of No Doubt with avatars, you've got something that resembles Gwen Stefani hosting The Muppet Show. Regardless of whether you find these strange pairings hilarious or utterly stupid, Band Hero's visuals are slick and lively. Character animations are more fluid, and lip synching looks good, even on the avatars that are just cycling between a few different mouth icons. The crowds still look like a patterned mass of clones, but the lively performance camera angles ensure that they only seem odd at the beginning and end of your song. Band Hero also features the much improved music studio from Guitar Hero 5. The overhauled interface makes it much easier to lay down tracks, and you can learn more about the different options simply by holding down the fret button you would use to select those tracks. It still requires a lot patience and skill to make a decent song, but the barrier of entry has been significantly lowered. If you're not at the composition stage yet, you can flex your music muscle in the new jam session mode, which allows you to choose a background loop and play over it to your heart's content. This feature makes it much easier to experiment with your not-actually-musical instrument, and noodling around with some cooperative friends can be fun.

There's a substantial setlist on the disc, though Band Hero's 65 licensed tracks don't seem like much when compared to Guitar Hero 5's 85 tracks. Players can download user-created tunes, as well as official downloadable content tracks, though not all of the tracks in the downloadable catalog are compatible with Band Hero. The game also censors lyrics more vigorously than Guitar Hero 5, which can lead to some odd and disappointing silences. Apparently, in order to earn an ESRB rating of E10+, the word "whiskey" was nipped out of Don McLean's "American Pie," so those "good old boys were drinking…and rye." (Spoiler alert, kiddos, rye is alcohol too!) Band Hero also charges you if you want to import songs from your other Guitar Hero games and will only transfer a limited number of songs. Paying to play songs you already own is a bummer, and you can't use your celebrity characters in imported songs.

Sing it, Suzie Avatar!Aside from new celebrities, songs, and venues, Band Hero isn't that different from Guitar Hero 5. You can compete online in a number of different modes, and vocalists now have to use a controller to activate star power. Like Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero is a well put together, robust rhythm game, and Party Play mode is a great way to entice shy friends to join in the fun. There's a lot of good stuff here, unless, of course, you already own Guitar Hero 5, in which case it is little more than a full-price track pack. But if you're looking for more songs or interested to see what this plastic video game rock craze is all about, Band Hero is a great option. It may not blow the roof off, but it will definitely get your party rockin'.

Left 4 Dead 2 Review

2009-11-18T13:34:00.002+05:30

Left 4 Dead 2 Review

With exciting new content across the board and plenty of it, Left 4 Dead 2 outdoes its predecessor and makes the zombie apocalypse an absolute blast.

The Good

* New campaigns are very well designed
* Explosive new guns and deadly new melee weapons
* Scavenge mode is a great short-form Versus mode
* New survivors have more character, and new infected have fun abilities
* Realism mode delivers a new level of tension.

The Bad

* No major leaps forward in gameplay
* AI allies can still trip you up.

Last year Left 4 Dead unleashed a harrowing and entertaining vision of what it's like to be on both sides of the zombie apocalypse. Whether you were shooting your way through hordes of infected (the preferred nomenclature) en route to possible rescue, or scheming with your fellow superpowered zombies (an acceptable colloquialism) in an effort to choke, eviscerate, and otherwise kill the intrepid survivors, Left 4 Dead was enormously fun. The only real drawback was the shortage of content. Left 4 Dead 2 does not have this problem, offering five new campaign maps that can be enjoyed across five uniquely engaging game modes. These campaigns are more diverse, more atmospheric, and more exciting, thanks largely to the stellar level design. Left 4 Dead 2 also improves on the original in almost every other way, featuring new weapons, new items, new enemies, and new survivors that make the game richer across the board. Though the core action remains largely unchanged, the widespread enhancements make Left 4 Dead 2 even better than its impressive predecessor. This is one zombie apocalypse you do not want to miss. The heart of Left 4 Dead 2 is the five campaign maps that take the survivors through a wide variety of terrain in the Deep South. From murky swamplands to a creepy carnival ground, from flooded suburbs to claustrophobic city streets, every environment is detailed and immersive. Clever design touches abound, some of which are clues that show you which way to progress. It's deceptively easy to get turned around, especially since you aren't the only ones who have been leaving piles of bodies around. Left 4 Dead 2's environments help tell a story, and as you travel through the remains of a massive government-organized evacuation effort, you get a better sense of how it all went down. The campaigns now string together to make one long adventure, and though the oppressive, desperate mood seethes more potently this time around, there is still plenty of levity and high-impact excitement. Well-timed survivor quips make trudging through zombie-infested swamps a bit less nerve-racking, and thunderous rainstorms make a tense final stand (the moments right before your rescue) even more dramatic. The sound design is a standout once again, filling the air with eerie strains and helpful cues, as well as conveying the full range of the survivors' emotions. This rich atmosphere is enhanced by the wider variety of choke points and final stands, all of which give the campaigns their own unique pace.

Into these grim landscapes come four new survivors. This new crop is more lively and talkative than the first bunch, and Ellis' good-ol'-boy stories about crazy stuff that he and his buddy Keith did one time are bound to make you chuckle. There is a new crop of guns as well, including multiple versions of pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, and assault rifles. These different flavors go a long way toward spicing up the gunplay, but the standout new addition is the melee weapons. A fire axe, a crowbar, a cricket bat, and a frying pan are just some of the objects you can use to slice, bludgeon, and decapitate your enemies. They take the place of your secondary weapon, but you still have a sidearm you can whip out if you are incapacitated. Using these weapons forces you to get up close and personal with the infected, affording you a better view of the carnage but also putting you at higher risk. Still, nothing stops a horde like a katana-wielding survivor standing tall in a doorway. Melee weapons are a great new strategic asset and add a very enjoyable new dimension to combat.

Infected are not particularly fazed by gaping abdominal wounds.Part of the reason melee weapons are so fun to use is that the infected die in a lot of gruesomely entertaining ways. Dismemberment and gibbing have been ratcheted up in Left 4 Dead 2, so you'll be chopping off limbs and blowing holes in zombie abdomens like you were born to do it. The common infected models are more diverse and detailed, and there are a number of tougher variants that pose a bit more of a challenge. Some of them can take more damage, like the ones in hazmat suits and riot gear, while others move more quickly and can obscure your view, like the swampy mudmen. These "uncommon common" won't throw a huge wrench in the works, but they add some welcome variety and help further diversify your enemies.The foes that will derail your progress are the special infected. These zombies have superpowers that make them seriously dangerous, and all the baddies from Left 4 Dead make an encore appearance. There are a few new nasties to contend with as well, including the Jockey (jumps on your head and steers you off course), the Spitter (shoots a pool of deadly acid on the ground), and the Charger (rams into you, carries you away, and pounds you into the ground). There's also a variety of Witch that actually walks around as opposed to just sitting and weeping, and she rounds out the formidable roster of special infected. These enemies are tricky to contend with in the field, especially when a few of them descend on you at the same time. They are even nastier when they are controlled by your fellow players. One of the best parts of the zombie apocalypse is being part of the problem, and unlike its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 makes every campaign available for Versus play right from the start. Playing Versus mode allows you and your team to spawn as special infected and coordinate attacks in your efforts to make sure the survivors don't make it out alive. Nothing eases the frustration of being dragged away from your fellow survivors by a Smoker's tongue like jumping on a survivor's head and jockeying him into a pool of burning acid. Versus mode plunges you into an engaging mix of competition and cooperation as you and your team alternate trying to survive and trying to kill.For those who don't fancy this sort of competition but are looking for a challenge beyond the range of difficulty offered by the Campaign mode, the new Realism mode is the place to go. Here you'll play through the campaigns with many of the game-y aids removed. There are no glowing outlines around your fellow survivors or around helpful items, zombies are tougher to kill, and dead comrades won't respawn until you reach the next safe house. You won't know how much you rely on the glowing outlines until you walk into a clearing and realize you are utterly alone and have no idea where your friends are. Or worse, what happens if you get grabbed by a Smoker and dragged away, but no one sees it? Realism mode very effectively ramps up the tension, and you'll be even more thankful for the new equipment items that offer help. Adrenaline shots not only give you a health boost, but they allow you to heal and rescue teammates more quickly. Defibrillator pads allow you to bring dead survivors back to life, and explosive and incendiary ammo packs help make sure you don't need defibrillator pads as often. And then there's the bile bomb, which lets you spray enemies with the Boomer's horde-attracting vomit. If you chuck this on the Tank, you'll get some help killing him. And if you chuck it over a ledge or into a fire, you'll kill a lot of infected and get a good hearty chuckle to boot.

Rounding out the package are two modes that offer all the excitement of Campaign and Versus play in a fraction of the time. Survival, introduced as downloadable content for Left 4 Dead, is like playing a last stand in which rescue never comes. Survivors try to stay alive on a well-stocked map against endless waves of infected, and they earn medals and leaderboard-worthy times for their troubles. Without the joy of escape, this mode isn't as satisfying as its longer counterparts. The same is not true for the new Scavenge mode. Here, survivors try to collect gas tanks from around a map and pour them into a generator to add more time to the dwindling clock. A team of infected try to stop them and kill them. This mode more adeptly mirrors the frustrations and rewards of Versus mode. On the one hand, you have the challenge of survival and the thrill of each can successfully deposited; on the other, you have the task of foiling the survivors' well-armed efforts and the grim satisfaction of taking them down. Each team plays both sides per round, and the first to three round victories wins. The short format makes it easy to enjoy in quick sessions, though more than likely you'll be tempted by rematch after rematch.

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

Assassin's Creed II Review

2009-11-18T13:27:00.002+05:30

Assassin's Creed II Review

Assassin's Creed II is what you'd want an action sequel to be: bigger, better, and more beautiful.

The Good

* Huge, beautifully realized world to explore
* Ezio is a terrific new character
* Tombs put a spotlight on the excellent and enjoyable platforming
* A greater variety of missions, weapons, and stealth techniques than in the original
* Incredible production values.

The Bad

* Some additions are a little contrived
* A few gameplay and visual quirks.

"Nothing is true; everything is permitted." We learned this adage in the original Assassin's Creed, and Assassin's Creed II carries on the tradition beautifully, inspiring you to rethink the conspiracy at the heart of the series--and to reconsider what you should expect from a sequel. The franchise's second console outing is an impressive piece of work. Developer Ubisoft Montreal has addressed almost all of Assassin's Creed's flaws by filling its follow-up with fresh and enjoyable mission types and layering on new and mostly excellent features, while still retaining the joy of movement and atmospheric wonder that characterized the original. These enhancements range from the subtle (you can swim now) to the game-changing (there's an economy), but aside from a few small missteps, every tweak makes for a more enjoyable, more engaging adventure. The cohesive story and a terrific new character will draw you in, and you aren't apt to forget the memorable and explosive ending that will have you eager for the third installment. Like in the first game, Assassin's Creed II occurs across two timelines: a modern-day chronology starring bartender Desmond Miles, and another featuring one of Desmond's ancestors. When you start the game, you'll catch up with Desmond right where the original left him, though as fans of the original can guess, the Abstergo labs are no longer a safe haven. You'll spend a bit of time with Desmond during the course of the game, though the shoes you most frequently fill are those of Ezio Auditore di Firenze, the charmingly impetuous son of a 15th-century Italian banker. Ezio is an instantly likable firebrand, as passionate about family and honor as he is about wine and women. When you first meet him, Ezio is living a carefree life and has not yet donned his assassin's robe, nor is he familiar with the creed. However, Ezio's devil-may-care freedom is soon cut short by murder and betrayal instigated by the assassins' greatest threat: the Templars.

Assassin's Creed's Altair was an interesting character, but only for the stealthy order he represented, not because you ever got to know the man under the white hood. Ezio is far more appealing, for he's not just quick with a secret blade, but he's a fully realized protagonist. He isn't at the mercy of the plot, but rather, the narrative evolves from his need to uncover the truth behind his sorrows. It's the personal nature of the narrative that makes Assassin's Creed II's story more compelling than its predecessor's. The few modern-day segments featuring Desmond pack a lot more punch this time around as well, and the conspiracies driving that story arc become a lot clearer and, as a result, more provocative. While the original ended on a vague and unsatisfying note, the latest chapter's climax is downright electrifying.

Ezio isn't Assassin's Creed II's only headliner. The Italy he inhabits is a character in and of itself, filled with visual and sonic details that infuse the world with life and elegance. The cities you explore--Florence, Venice, and more--are larger and more detailed than the environs of the first game. Citizens go about their daily lives, and they look authentic doing so. Merchants sweep the street in front of their shops; small groups stroll along, making conversation with each other; and courtesans smirk and cajole as you pass by. These folks aren't cookie-cutter character models. They are dressed differently enough from each other and are animated so expressively that it's as if the population would go about its business with or without your presence. More impressive are the cityscapes themselves as they unfold in front of you, inviting you to take in their splendor. This is an incredibly good-looking game: the lighting is sumptuous, the draw distance is vast, and textures are crisp. The PlayStation 3 version does suffer from some frame rate jitters, more frequent texture fade-in, and lesser color saturation. Both versions are still attractive, however, and apart from a few small flaws, you rarely get the feeling that visual compromises were made to make the game's open world run smoothly.

Make the leap of faith. You'll be glad you did.Assassin's Creed II's sense of place and time isn't due just to its visuals, however. Its high-quality sound design is equally responsible, delivering a busy-sounding Florence while still allowing the little quips of citizens commenting on your acrobatics to shine through. There's a good variety of such dialogue now, so you won't tire of repeated lines, and because the citizen rescues of the original Assassin's Creed have been excised, you won't hear the monotonous whines of complaining peasants. Two aspects of the sound design are particularly noteworthy: the music and the voice acting. The game's splendid orchestral score is subtle and soothing when it needs to be, never intruding on the exploration and never manipulating your emotions with inappropriate musical melodrama. The simple but effective cello and double bass motif you hear when climbing to a perch and synchronizing your map is the perfect example of this smart melodic restraint. As for the voice acting, it is uniformly excellent. Not only is Ezio voiced with charm and energy, but the surrounding cast is mostly superb--though one particular line delivered by Ezio's uncle Mario might make you cringe.

The greatest beauty of Assassin's Creed II's exquisitely detailed environments is that you can run and jump across the rooftops with ease and climb the tallest towers to get a bird's-eye view of the game's glorious vistas. You control Ezio much as you did Altair, though movement feels a bit tighter and even more fluid than before. The game strikes an excellent middle ground between responding to player input and automating actions like leaping from one surface to the next, so it's simple to leap about the city smoothly without worrying that you're going to plummet to your death on the next hop. You'll still encounter a few awkward moments here and there: simply walking off a ledge onto a rooftop a few feet below can still be bit clumsy, for example. But these moments are few, and in fact, you'll pull off some awesome-looking moves without even trying. One of the many wonders of Assassin's Creed II is that the cities look so natural that they don't seem as if they were created for you to jump around in. Yet you might leap onto a wooden outcropping and find yourself skipping across a series of them, swinging and jumping with fluidity and style. Not only are there more opportunities for organic platforming sequences like these than in the original, but there are entire closed environments called tombs tailored to this kind of jumping.

Ezio interrogates his victim. Bonus: Death soliloquies are much shorter now.Tombs are more intricate levels in which you must retrieve an important artifact (and if you collect all of them, you are in for a special treat). Some of them are platforming puzzles of the best kind, in which you must figure out how to get from your starting point to the destination, in the manner of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Ezio can't run on walls like the Persian prince, but he's incredibly agile nonetheless, and swinging and hopping about rafters and chandeliers within the tombs is great fun. A few tombs throw some additional challenges at you, such as a time limit in which to reach your goal. The best tombs, however, are those in which you pursue an enemy but run into obstacles that force you to give chase using an alternate route. The chases are excellent, and they require quick reactions, but not so quick as to be unreasonable. Flawlessly keeping up with your target without breaking your momentum is one of Assassin's Creed II's greatest thrills, and as long as you are paying close attention, you can pull it off on the first attempt.

The climbing and jumping wouldn't be as rewarding if Ezio weren't so graceful, but he is one of the best-animated characters yet seen in a game. You'll admire his footwork early in the game in particular, when his assassin's garb does not veil the incredible animations of his legs and feet. When Ezio climbs, his hands are grabbing something and his feet are resting on something. Except on rare occasions, you won't see him pulling himself up using an invisible handle or stepping on a nonexistent ledge. It's a small touch, but it goes a long way toward making these acrobatics look believable. Ezio seems even more nimble than Altair; his legs move inward and cross a bit differently during a climb, and moves connect even more slickly. The only imperfection you are likely to notice is the lack of a transition animation when you bend to loot a body or treasure chest (more on this to come). Of course, Ezio is more than just a talented gymnast without a fear of heights. He's not afraid to shed blood when the time is right, and he's got a number of ways to exact revenge. The dual hidden blades are his best deadly toy in this regard. You can still stealthily pull off a low-profile assassination (sneak up behind a guard and stab him in the neck) or conduct a high-profile kill (pounce on your target and plunge your blade into him in a single, dramatic move). But the best addition to hidden blade kills are double assassinations: Walk between two unsuspecting guards, sink a blade into each of them, watch them crumple to the ground, and keep walking as if you were none the wiser. If you get really enamored with the dual blades, you can hang from a ledge and wait for an enemy to walk above you, stab him, and toss him to the ground below. It's particularly satisfying to do so above the Venetian canals, because the body will splash into the water and then float to the top. Or if you'd rather conduct your bloody business from above rather than below, you can wait for your target to walk below and then assassinate him in one spectacular move.

Courtesans possess many talents, not the least of which is distracting guards while you glide past.If you want to take the direct approach instead, you've got more to unsheathe than a basic sword. One of your brand-new combat moves is the ability to disarm an opponent and take his weapon. For a treat, try taking a giant axe from one of the heavily armored guards and planting it in his head, or skewering another with a stolen spear. If you like, however, you can stick with what you've got and simply pick up your fallen foe's weapon off the ground once the skirmish is done. As before, you can toss throwing knives at pesky archers, but Assassin's Creed II also gifts you with a special ranged powerhouse late in the game. Or perhaps you like to play with your victim before it's time to recite the requiem. If so, stab him with your poison blade and watch him stumble about as he tries to gain his bearings before you slice his throat. If that weren't enough, you can purchase improved weapons and armor pieces from blacksmiths scattered around the cities. By the time you are finished, Ezio may be decked out in some impressive-looking gear--and sporting some highly effective weaponry. The essentials of combat remain the same throughout, however: When battle is initiated, you lock onto targets, dance about each other looking for an opening, and time counter moves to pull off a bloody and satisfying kill. Combat isn't difficult, but the addition of larger-scale battles makes it more exciting in this outing. Nevertheless, it's disappointing that enemies still dutifully wait their turn to attack.

Blacksmiths aren't the only vendors willing to take your cash. Assassin's Creed II sports an entire economy. You earn florins by completing missions, looting treasure chests, pickpocketing strangers, or stealing from dead bodies and covered Venetian gondolas. Your main source of income, however, will likely be your uncle's villa, which serves as your base of operations and is a tourist destination. The adage "You have to spend money to make money" is true. You can spend florins on villa upgrades, such as purchasing a brothel or a church, and in turn, the villa will earn more florins from tourists, and you can take the profits from a chest inside the living quarters. You can then use your florins to dye your garb, purchase treasure maps to point out the locations of all those glowing chests, or buy a new pouch to hold more throwing knives. Most importantly, you'll want to visit a doctor, who not only will inform you that a weekly bleeding is part of a healthy lifestyle (yuck), but will keep you stocked in health packs. That's right: Your health does not replenish on its own any longer, so you'll need to make occasional visits to the doctor to replenish your inventory.

A deadly assassination can look like a harmless hug to the untrained eye.If you'd rather just avoid physical damage altogether, you can still keep a low profile, and there are many improvements in this regard as well. You've still got a few old tricks to rely on: benches to sit on and haystacks to hide in, for example. But contrivances of the original (remember Assassin's Creed's scholars, and walking at a snail's pace in prayer?) have been replaced by more natural and sensible mechanics. If you want to blend with the crowds, you can walk into a group of citizens and be automatically hidden. It's fun to move smoothly from one roving group to another and avoid the watchful eye of nearby guards, though there are sadly few occasions when doing so is essential. Or you can slink past guards by hiring a group of courtesans to distract them with their feminine wiles, or by hiring a group of thieves to engage them. You can even throw smoke bombs and use the resulting cover to sneak past. You can still fight your way through most situations, but there's something uniquely satisfying about taking the stealthy approach.

Yet even if you don't often need to be sneaky if you don't wish to be, you'll still need to stay out of the public eye if you can by keeping your notoriety levels low. Notoriety works much as it does in the Hitman games: The more bad deeds you're caught doing, the higher your notoriety levels rise, and the more likely it is that guards will recognize you. If you want to roam the city without worrying about being chased by every group of guards you pass, you can reduce or eliminate your level of notoriety by bribing town criers or by assassinating key guards. The easiest way to reduce your notoriety, however, is to remove the "Wanted" posters that appear whenever your notoriety meter begins to fill. This is one of Assassin's Creed II's more artificial elements, simply because "Wanted" posters appear in places that no guard would ever see. Nevertheless, "Wanted" posters give you another reason to clamber to the rooftops, which is never a bad thing.

The story missions tying all of this exploration and combat together are vastly improved over those of the original, often stringing multiple objectives together and usually making good use of Ezio's skills. Eavesdropping missions are gone completely, and beat-'em-up tasks are mostly optional. Instead, you will be rescuing prisoners, tailing important targets from the rooftops, assassinating wrongdoers, and plenty more. Some of the best missions act as set pieces and often involve Ezio's ever-positive friend, the resourceful Leonardo da Vinci, who will not only upgrade your synchronization (health) bar, but provide you with a few amusing gadgets, like your poison blade and smoke bombs. In one exciting scene featuring your talented comrade, you drive a horse-drawn carriage at a breakneck pace. In another, you take to the skies in one of da Vinci's flying contraptions, using the heat rising from the city's chimneys to stay aloft while kicking archers out of the way. If you thought Assassin's Creed lacked variety, you'll find plenty in the sequel.
Solve every glyph puzzle to reveal one of the game's many secrets.

Optional tasks are compelling as well. You can still climb to the tops of towers and make a leap of faith into a bale of hay or autumn leaves beneath, and doing so is just as unrealistic and awesome as it ever was. The flags of the original have been replaced by feathers, which tie in to story events early in the game. New missions include assassination assignments retrieved from messenger pigeons and timed rooftop races, which are always enjoyable in a game that makes the simple act of moving from one location to the next such a pleasure. You also run the risk of being pickpocketed, in which case you can chase after the perpetrator and tackle him, pilfering not just your stolen funds, but the florins of other victims as well. Another intriguing addition is the hidden glyphs you locate on certain buildings by activating your eagle vision. These glyphs tie the story's dual timelines together in an intriguing way and initiate puzzle sequences that in turn unlock short video snippets. The puzzles aren't that great, but the snippets are so weirdly fascinating that you'll want to collect all of them so that you can watch them in sequence. There are enough historical and religious conspiracy tidbits in here to keep you interested, and they're just outrageous enough to delight Dan Brown devotees.

At first, Assassin's Creed II might seem as if it has added more than its foundation was meant to handle, but once all the new features are completely introduced, it develops that magic that so few games can cast. This is the rare sequel that offers fans of the original the basics they would expect, while adding and changing so many other aspects that even those who didn't appreciate the first should take the plunge, without hesitation. A few more contrivances notwithstanding, Assassin's Creed II is a better game than its forebear and is a beautiful and memorable experience on its own terms. But it's more than just a game--it's an escape to a place and a time that feel so welcoming, you'll be making return trips even after your initial adventure is over.

Machinarium Review

2009-11-18T13:24:00.002+05:30

Machinarium Review

A picture is worth a thousand words in this charming point-and-click adventure.
The Good

* Tells a delightful story without a word of dialogue
* Excellent, challenging puzzles
* Lovely hand-drawn visuals and offbeat soundtrack
* Great in-game hint system.

The Bad

* Non-adventure elements aren't very good
* A few interface and presentation quirks.

Machinarium's robotic hero is one of the year's finest leading men: He's dedicated, resourceful, and oozes charisma--yet he doesn't speak a word of dialogue. Nor, for that matter, does anyone else in this traditional point-and-click adventure game. Yet in spite of their vocal silence, Machinarium's mechanical inhabitants communicate more effectively than many of the wordiest game characters, using often hysterical gestures and diagrams within speech bubbles to clearly establish their roles in the world. These delights are further enhanced by enchanting visuals and quirky music that immediately provide a sense of place and personality. Moreover, the puzzles that provide the bulk of the gameplay are excellent, and a few of the brainteasers are tough and clever enough to tax the noggins of even the most seasoned adventurers. In spite of a few missteps, such as a painful action-oriented sequence near its conclusion, Machinarium is a great game that makes an age-old genre feel fresh again.
All these aging robots need is a bit of oil to feel young again.

It won't take you long to be drawn in by Machinarium's beautiful 2D visuals. This world of rusting robots and intricate machines is drawn in clever, quirky strokes. A hulking guard coddles his inoperable teddy bear, seeking out batteries for his friend in front of an orange-hued industrial landscape. Cobwebs stretch between winding pipes that lead to no discernible place and have no discernible purpose. Aging brown buildings are weathered by jagged cracks and dull stains while distant leaning towers covered with rivets and antennas spew smoke into the atmosphere. A wonderful clinkety-clank soundtrack enhances the mechanical mood with its alternately tuneful and discordant strains. This isn't really a place you'd want to live, but it's a place you believe robots would want to live.

And what characters these robots are--expressing devotion, boredom, and frustration through deft animations and cute-but-sparse sound effects. One woman (if she could be called that) protects herself with an umbrella while wheezing into a whistle, apparently seeking an unseen taxi. A trio of street musicians toots and bangs on the corner, much to the dismay of the unhappy tenant in the apartment above. And then there's your own character, an unlikely hero seeking to be reunited with his one true love. It's a simple journey, but the spirited protagonist is so lovable that every step closer to your goal feels like a big triumph. A few wonderful visual touches add extra poignancy. For example, in one section, the screen goes dark and you see only a few prison cells, which makes the scene feel claustrophobic. Machinarium often manipulates your monitor's real estate in this manner, and not only is this trick effective, but it also makes the fuller environments that follow feel even more spacious.

As with most point-and-click adventures, your progress is hindered by a number of brain-busting puzzles, but Machinarium tweaks conventions enough to be fun even for adventure veterans. You can't just hunt for pixels, but you must maneuver your bot within reach of the interactive object. Environments aren't loaded with interactive knickknacks and your movement is limited, so this is rarely a chore. Most object-based puzzles are clever and intuitive. For example, you'll obtain a metallic mutt for the umbrella lady by moving a floating oil drum near the dog and luring it over with a few drops of the stuff. (Well, there's more to it than that, but you should figure out the specifics on your own!) Sometimes you'll have a few items in your inventory at once, but it never gets cluttered: Once you're done with an object, your good-natured pal just tosses it aside in an adorably dismissive gesture. You'll also encounter some shape-manipulation and pattern-recognition puzzles, with a few tough ones toward the end of the game. Your gray matter is in for a good workout, yet while many of these puzzles are difficult, most can be worked out with clear thinking and a little patience.

In this puzzle, the wrong answer is actually the right one.
If you do run into trouble, Machinarium's excellent two-tiered hint system is there to lend a helping hand. You can click a button and get a quick illustrated hint of your general objective--or you can click another button to view an entire diagram outlining the steps you need to take. In order to view the more elaborate hint, however, you have to endure a little side-scrolling shooter minigame. The minigame isn't awful, but it isn't very good either, though you might see it as an appropriate way of discouraging you from seeking frequent assistance. A few other arcade-style minigames are unavoidable, including an annoying and overly long sequence in which you maneuver a minuscule avatar around a seemingly endless maze of 2D corridors, shooting at other little specks. Machinarium's other flaws are much less significant. For instance, once your rambunctious robot is on the move, he'll continue to move until he's reached the next predesignated stop. And the Flash technology powering the game leads to a few minor annoyances as well, such as the game not filling your entire screen.

Those quibbles are small blemishes in an inventive and endearing adventure that will have you rooting for the good guy and sneering at the bullies that have caused him so much trouble and heartache. Machinarium, much like its personable protagonist, has a big heart and a plucky attitude that will win you over. Like the best games in the genre, it will excite your eyes and ears, but more importantly, it will stimulate your psyche.

Force Unleashed Sith Ed. Review

2009-11-18T13:12:00.000+05:30

Force Unleashed Sith Ed. Review

A slapdash porting job turns the Force into a farce in this Star Wars action game.
The Good

* Intense story is one of the best Star Wars tales in years
* Fantastic physics engine lets you pull off all sorts of cool moves
* Includes three extra chapters not included in original console release.

The Bad

* Unstable frame rate and other performance issues
* No effort to tailor the port to the platform
* The new Hoth mission isn't very good.

The first sign that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a mediocre port comes as soon as you boot up the game: you can’t navigate the menus with a mouse. On its own, this isn't an awful fact, but it's an omen of bad things to come. Aside from resolution and brightness options, there are no visual options to tweak. There is no antialiasing and no way to enable it. And frame rate troubles will haunt your every saber swing. It's too bad that so little respect was shown for the platform--and to those that will spend money on this product--because the underlying game is rather good. As Darth Vader's secret apprentice, you slice through grunting Rodians with your glowing lightsaber, go head-to-head with slobbering rancors, and punt jawas into the distance as if they were pigskins. You might be lucky enough to avoid this troubled port's technical flaws and experience the full pleasures of The Force Unleashed, but be warned: Picking up a copy of this physics-heavy action game is one gamble that may not pay off.

The only thing that stinks more than the trash on Raxus Prime is this port.

The Force Unleashed's main campaign is the same as the one that appeared on consoles in 2008. For more details, check our full review of that version, as all of the ups and downs of the original release still hold true. When the action comes together, it's hard to stifle your excitement. As Galen Marek, aka Starkiller, you execute your foes by carving them up with your lightsaber, using your Force push ability to propel them down corridors and zap them with jolts of Force lightning. The best moments come by way of the Force grip power, which you use to lift objects and foes and fling them around, leaving a trail of death, destruction, and Wookiee corpses in your wake. Unfortunately, the difficulties of the earlier console version are along for the ride, too, such as the imprecise targeting that makes it too difficult to pick up the object you intended. Thankfully, the keyboard and mouse controls don't usually add more to the frustration, and they do a good enough of job of letting you chain your powers together during most battles. The fixed-camera boss battles, which are more comfortably played with a controller, are an exception. As a result, you'll probably want to stick with a gamepad for the most consistently rewarding experience.

Sadly, technical problems may hinder your chances for enjoyment. On two out of three test systems--all of which exceeded the game's recommended hardware requirements--we encountered performance issues that heavily interfered with the experience. The frame rate was wildly inconsistent, taking huge dips whenever there was a lot of action onscreen, and on one system, frame rate troubles were accompanied by snaps and crackles in the audio. Should you run into visual issues, there is no way to adjust graphics settings to improve the game's performance. The Force Unleashed allows you to only adjust the display resolution and brightness levels, so forget tweaking your lighting and anisotropic filter settings. Even if you can run the game without trouble, you'll lament that the widescreen cinematics are stretched on a monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio. It's a shame that these issues will overshadow some absolutely excellent art design for so many players. Environments like the robot graveyards on Raxus Prime look fantastic, and swirled, stylized textures add fantasy flair to the overall look. The visuals won't blow you away when compared to other PC games, but they have plenty of dramatic appeal.

While at the Jedi temple, be sure to pray for a smooth frame rate. Just don't expect your prayer to be answered.

This edition of The Force Unleashed includes three stand-alone missions, two of which were released as downloadable content for the original console version. The Jedi Temple mission is excellent, pitting you against large groups of foes that will have you on the move and exploiting every Force power to its fullest. It drops you right into the action from the outset and maintains a high level of excitement, particularly during a thrilling battle against a crowd of droids. A few puzzle sequences help break up the tempo to keep the mission fresh, and lots of destructible objects make the action seem especially explosive. The visuals are lovely--in keeping with the best levels from the main campaign--and some ethereal music plucked from the Star Wars library makes one sequence feel, appropriately enough, otherworldly. The second of these missions takes place on Tatooine and features familiar characters, as well as more great art design. There are also a couple of fun boss fights and an intriguing alternate-history story. For more information, check out our review of the Tatooine Mission Pack.

The final additional mission was not available as console DLC and is exclusive to the Ultimate Sith Edition. Compared to the other stand-alone journeys, this mission on Hoth is a disappointment--though not from a story perspective, thanks to a fascinating ending that will give Star Wars fans an opportunity to munch on all sorts of non-canon fodder. The gameplay is less compelling and involves moving from one ice cave to the next, chopping and zapping rebel soldiers and wampas. The action is broken up only by a couple of boss battles and a few light puzzle elements. The mission is fun, but its predictable pace and bland level design hinders it from reaching the heights of the other two added missions.

If you need to warm up, you won't find any tauntaun corpses to shelter you.

It's a wonder that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition for the PC was released at all considering the insignificant effort that seems to have been put into it. Even in the realm of sloppy ports, this one seems particularly egregious, considering its almost total lack of visual options and performance troubles. It's unfortunate that this version feels so rushed because in spite of the core game's scattered flaws, it's an ultimately enjoyable adventure that tells a great story populated by memorable characters. Alas, if you're a PC enthusiast who is tired of rushed console ports, The Force Unleashed is another game to add to that ever-growing list.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review

2009-11-18T13:08:00.002+05:30

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review

Modern Warfare 2 boasts an exhilarating campaign, engaging cooperative play, and addictive multiplayer, but the high price and limited multiplayer features may tarnish its appeal.

The Good

* Intense, action-packed campaign
* Engaging cooperative missions
* Richer, deeper, more rewarding competitive multiplayer progression.

The Bad

* Costs more, has fewer multiplayer features than other PC shooters
* Campaign is short
* Plot is muddled and inelegant.

As one of the most critically acclaimed shooters of all time, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a prime example of a tough act to follow. Yet, amidst a raging storm of anticipation and expectation, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has done it. The new campaign is chock-full of intense action and dramatic moments, and though it is more muddled than its predecessor (in more ways than one), it's still an absolute blast. The new Special Ops mode allows you to experience some campaign-inspired thrills with a friend and it's an engaging challenge to coordinate your maneuvers and tackle the varied objectives. Last but not least, the competitive multiplayer that took the online shooter community by storm two years ago is back. Though the addictive action remains the same at its core, there are a host of new elements that make matches more accessible, more strategic, and more rewarding. Unfortunately, these improvements are marred by limited online flexibility that may leave the PC shooter community out in the cold.

The campaign takes you to some dangerous, claustrophobic places.

If you compare Modern Warfare 2 on the PC to its console counterparts, the game is every bit as awesome and enjoyable. Yet when compared to other online shooters on the PC, the multiplayer component is decidedly limited. Players cannot set up dedicated servers to host their own custom-tuned matches, and the player count for each match has been capped at 18 as opposed to the possible 64-player matches of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Furthermore, there is no support for user-created content, so rather than enjoying free mods and community maps, PC users will have to pay for downloadable content. And the money issues don't stop there: Modern Warfare 2 costs $10 more than most full-price PC games. Paying more and getting less is abhorrent to consumers, and this deterrent, along with the online restrictions, make Modern Warfare 2 much less appealing from a multiplayer perspective. Yet despite this disappointment, there is still a lot to love about the online multiplayer, and the other elements of the game remain unblemished.

The campaign picks up where its predecessor left off, and there's a new violent ultranationalist terrorist on the scene. Once again, you play as a few different soldiers who are part of the effort to make the world a safer place. Your missions take you around the world to a number of exotic locations and engage you in a variety of different conflicts, ranging from stealthy and silenced to crowded and cacophonous. The action is smooth and exhilarating, thanks to sharp shooting and movement mechanics that allow you to be as quick and deadly as your skills permit. Environments are well designed and detailed, though many textures don't look particularly good upon close inspection. Modern Warfare 2 isn't a beautiful game, but it looks great in action. The diverse levels not only provide varied sights, but they are also cleverly designed to allow the action to flow at an exciting pace. Opportunities for cover and flanking present themselves naturally, allowing you to move through the battlefield in a variety of fluid ways. The aggressive enemy AI will keep you on your toes, and achieving your hard-earned success is satisfying.

Modern Warfare 2's campaign, like that of its predecessor, is quite short, and you'll likely finish it in about five hours. Though it is disappointing that there isn't more of it, what you do get is a relentless barrage of tight combat and thrilling set pieces. In one early level, you man the turret of a Humvee patrolling the claustrophobic streets of a Middle Eastern city. Enemies seem to be around every corner, but you are ordered not to fire until fired upon. The tension builds, and once you are engaged by the enemy, all hell breaks loose. After a hectic (and unsuccessful) flight from danger, you end up fighting door-to-door in the streets and ruined buildings. This frantic combat ratchets up when you head to the slums of Rio de Janeiro and reaches a whole new level when you find yourself engaged in similarly intense firefights on the grassy lawns and paved driveways of suburban America. The fight on the home front has some very cool moments, but it doesn't mean you're done adventuring abroad. A dramatic prison rescue, a marine infiltration, and a snowmobile chase are just some of the other exhilarating moments that make this campaign so enjoyable.

Downed military helicopters aren't exactly a boon for Nate's restaurant.
Though completing the campaign is an intensely satisfying and exciting endeavor, you may not feel very triumphant when all is said and done. Modern Warfare 2 features some dark plot turns, and your missions sometimes have drastic unintended consequences. In one mission in particular, you infiltrate a terrorist cell and are called upon to do the kind of things that terrorists do. What follows is a neutered attempt at portraying the grim reality of terrorism, and concessions are put in place to keep the plot from getting too dark. Despite these limits, the scene in question is undeniably disturbing and undermines your sense of remaining on high moral ground. The game gives you the option to skip this particular level entirely, but the shocking consequences of this grim mission ripple throughout the game, making it difficult to feel like a hero. Subsequent developments further muddle your overall objective, and it doesn't help that many of the subtleties and connecting threads are mumbled during voice-overs between missions. The plot ends up being a bit disorienting, and you may get the feeling that, rather than being the tip of the spear, you are just along for the ride.

If you're looking for some campaign-style action that is unburdened by any sort of plot, then Special Ops is the place to go. The timed missions are campaign excerpts from Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that you can play solo or online with a friend. The missions cover a variety of objectives, which include surviving waves of enemies, moving from point A to point B stealthily (or not), eliminating a certain number of enemies, and racing snowmobiles. You earn a rating based on your completion time or difficulty level and unlock new missions as you progress. Though the missions will adjust to allow you to play solo, Special Ops missions are made to be played cooperatively. Two guns are better than one when clearing out a crowded slum full of enemy combatants, and coordinating a simultaneous sniper attack is much more fun when you are counting down with a buddy. There are also a few missions in which one player uses an airborne vehicle-mounted gun to clear the path for the other player on the ground, and these are frantic and explosively awesome. There is no matchmaking, however, so if you don't have any friends online and need a teammate, you'll have to go fishing in the multiplayer lobbies. As is the nature of cooperative play, missions can fall flat if teammates don't communicate or go off on their own. It can be tough to find a communicative teammate who is willing to let one player take point, but it is certainly worth the effort. When you have a strong team assembled, cooperative play is uniquely fun, and Special Ops provides a great variety of engaging missions. Of course, you could completely ignore both the campaign and cooperative modes and be very happy with Modern Warfare 2, despite the aforementioned online limitations. The insanely addictive, intensely exciting multiplayer formula pioneered by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is in full effect here. The action is even faster and deadlier than the campaign, and killing enemies, accomplishing objectives, and completing challenges earn you experience points. These points increase your level and unlock new guns, new equipment, and new skill-boosting perks. You can design different classes to highlight different skills and then switch between them to adjust for the ebb and flow of battle. The core action remains largely the same, so folks who didn't enjoy it the first time around aren't likely to have a change of heart. And players who thrive on the diversity of dedicated servers and the creativity of mods and community maps will feel a keen sting of disappointment. Yet despite these omissions, Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer action is so expertly balanced and riotously fun that it's hard not to have a great time with it. And a number of new tweaks and additions make the action more engaging than its predecessor.

If the blood splatter bothers you, don't sweat it too much. You'll probably be dead soon.
First off, weapon loadouts have been restructured. Guns you may have previously equipped as primary are now only available as secondary, so you can equip both an assault rifle and a shotgun if you so desire. This restructuring creates an intriguing array of gun combinations, and one of the new options isn't even a gun. The bullet-resistant riot shield can be equipped in your primary slot and used to assault heavily contested positions. Having multiple-shielded teammates can change the battlefield significantly, and new equipment items deepen the strategic possibilities. The blast shield can protect you against grenade-happy opponents, while the tactical insertion flare (allows you to designate your next spawn point) can be a powerful asset in objective-based modes like Demolition and Domination.

The perk system has also received an overhaul. Perks can now be upgraded through use and will eventually grant a secondary ability. These bonus abilities are often just as potent as the primary perk, though they aren't a linear extension of the primary ability. Upgrading the perk that grants increased melee distance, for example, will cause you to take no fall damage (allowing you to perfect your drop-and-stab maneuver). The new death streak perks may seem familiar to those acquainted with the infamous martyrdom perk from COD4, but they also provide some welcome (and cleverly implemented) aid for new players. These perks kick in after you die a few times in a row without getting a kill. Painkiller grants you increased health for a short time upon respawning and makes it easier to resist getting spawn killed. Copycat allows you to mimic the class of the last person that killed you, potentially granting you the guns, equipment, and perks of a much higher ranked opponent. Nothing mitigates the frustration of getting killed by a weapon you can't access like getting your hands on that weapon and doing some killing of your own.

Customizable kill streak rewards are the other significant addition. In COD4, kill streaks of a certain length would earn you rewards like air strikes and attack helicopters. In Modern Warfare 2, there are a host of new rewards that you can unlock and then equip as you see fit. The rewards themselves range from tactical aids like unmanned aerial vehicles that reveal enemies on the radar (or counter UAVs that block the enemy's radar) to powerful assaults like gunships, air strikes, and the exceedingly fun laptop-guided predator missile. Each kill streak requires a certain amount of kills to activate, and you can only equip three at a time, so there's a risk/reward mechanic at play. The chopper gunner reward is superpowerful, but if you aren't confident you can score the required 11 kill streak, you'll essentially be wasting a reward slot. Even if you can't string together 11 kills, you can still use some of the more powerful rewards courtesy of care packages. This reward drops a crate onto the battlefield that either contains an ammo resupply or a kill streak reward, such as a precision air strike. Not only do these rewards add an engaging strategic dimension, but they also do so in a way that allows all players to enjoy them.

In the slums of Rio, a scoped assault rifle is a man's best friend.
The result of all these multiplayer tweaks is a richer, more strategically nuanced experience and a busier battlefield. Fortunately, the action generally remains on the good side of hectic, and the stream of rewards is as satisfying as ever. Two new elements, title and emblem, are little graphics and titles that you earn through your match performance, ranging from serious to totally goofy. While not exactly in keeping with the serious tone of the campaign, they add an amusing way to further customize your online presence. Though it features a robust variety of playlists in which to ply your deadly trade, Modern Warfare 2's competitive multiplayer is still limited compared to modern standards and will likely disappoint many hardcore shooter fans. The high price point sharpens the sting of these restrictions, but the core multiplayer action is still very addictive and very rewarding. The inelegant campaign plot may make you feel like you're just along for the ride, but it is such an intense, roaringly great ride that you will be glad just to have played it. And the cooperative missions provide a uniquely fun angle on the action that rounds out the package superbly, making Modern Warfare 2 thoroughly entertaining and thoroughly rewarding.

Borderlands Review

2009-11-17T21:04:00.002+05:30

Fun combat and a steady flow of rewards make this journey a massively enjoyable one, especially with some fellow mercenaries along for the ride.

The Good

* Satisfying gunplay
* Tons of weapons, shields, and helpful items
* Four unique and equally fun-to-play characters
* Distinct, appealing artistic style
* Great system of rewards.

The Bad

* Lonelier, slower-paced for a solo player
* Massively unsatisfying "climax"
* Lackluster loot sharing system.

On the hostile, bandit-ridden planet of Pandora, there is one thing that draws off-world attention: The Vault. This mysterious alien structure is rumored to hold treasures of fantastic power and wealth, and so it attracts fortune-seeking corporations and individuals alike. In Borderlands, you are one such individual, but the satisfaction of unlocking the Vault's secrets pales in comparison to the rollicking good time you'll have on your way there. Borderlands is all about the journey, not the destination, and like most trips, this one is much better when you have some friends along for the ride. Solo players can still have a good time, because the bloody and entertaining combat is paired well with rewarding loot and engaging experience systems. But Pandora is a lonely place for a solitary mercenary, and lone wolves will find the pace deliberate and the friendly characters too few and far between. Those who take advantage of the four-player online cooperative mode will experience the game as it's meant to be played. The pleasing rhythm of killing enemies, gathering loot, and cashing in is punctuated by fighting bosses, completing quests, and leveling up. As a solo merc, this rhythm is slow and methodical, but as a team, the pace quickens to an invigorating clip and pretty soon you've spent hours having a riotously rewarding time.
All in a minute's work.

The world of Pandora has a dusty, run-down feel, yet it manages to be vibrant and eye-catching at the same time. The art style features black-line borders and a colorful palette that give the game a not-quite-comic, not-quite-cel-shaded look. It takes some getting used to, and its technical execution is less-than-perfect . Yet what Borderlands lacks in precision it more than makes up for in style, and hours into the game you'll still be appreciating the thoughtful design touches that bring this world to life. Though the different environments occasionally feel too similar, there is enough distinct detail to keep them from blurring together. Your vanquished enemies also do their part to keep things visually interesting by dying in a variety of gruesome and entertaining ways. Bodies explode, limbs fly off, and burning enemies occasionally disintegrate from the ground up until only the mask of their face is left hanging in midair. It sounds (and is a bit) horrifying, but when the mask drops comically to the floor and finally burns up, don't bother stifling that chuckle. The art design resonates well with Borderlands' irreverent sense of humor, and the game is playful without feeling too goofy.

You travel through this world as one of four characters, each with a unique look and attitude. You don't really get to appreciate the character designs if you play solo because you have no AI teammates, but you do hear frequent quips that give you a little bit of character-specific flavor. The most important difference between characters is the action skill, which is a special ability that can give you an edge in combat. The Hunter can release a vicious bird of prey, the Soldier can throw down an automatic turret flanked by shields, the Siren can turn invisible and speedy, damaging all enemies in the vicinity, and the Berserker flies into a damage-resistant rage and delivers brutal punches to his enemies. You unlock these abilities after playing for a short while, and not only are they all fun to use, but each one can be customized in a couple of strategically distinct ways. You can tweak and upgrade your ability by investing skill points in appropriate skills. So, for example, upgrading the Hunter's bird of prey not only can increase the amount of damage it does, but can make it attack multiple targets, steal health from them, slow them down for easy sniping, and cause them to drop more loot. Expanding your action skill makes you more deadly in combat, and it's one of the most rewarding parts of leveling up. Killing enemies, finishing quests, and completing in-game bonus challenges earn you experience points, which in turn earn you a new level. Leveling up boosts your overall fortitude and grants you a precious skill point to use however you see fit.

You can also spend your skill points on other improvements, and each character has three different skill trees that highlight different tactics and abilities. So the Soldier can essentially become the team medic by developing the skills that allow him to shoot teammates to regenerate their health and that make his turret create a healing radius. Or he could choose to become more deadly, increasing his turret damage and combat rifle performance. Though your weapon proficiency improves based on how much you use a given weapon type, different characters have skills that favor different types of guns, so it's to your advantage to play to your character's strengths. The Berserker can certainly become proficient with the sniper rifle, but his melee-focused action skill and preference for rocket launchers make him a better choice for wading into the fray. Though the branching skill trees offer intriguing ways to specialize, your initial character choice has the biggest impact on how you'll go through the game. Fortunately, each character is fun and deadly in his own way, so you can't choose poorly, and you'll probably want to experience what each one has to offer. Playing cooperatively allows you to enjoy and benefit from the other characters' abilities, something you don't get to appreciate when playing solo, unless you start a new game.

Go ahead. Look inside. You know you want to.

Expanding your abilities and leveling up is one of the main ways that Borderlands consistently rewards you. Loot is another. Loot can be found in containers, dropped by enemies, or given to you as a quest reward. It includes money, ammo, shields, mods that boost and alter your grenades, mods that boost your skills, and, of course, guns. Guns are classified in familiar categories: pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, combat rifles, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and so on. Each class feels distinct, and the shooting mechanics are well tuned and satisfying, which makes it fun to blast baddies. Base damage, clip size, fire rate, accuracy, and bullet spread are just some of the variables within each class, and some guns have more exotic features, like bladed pistols that increase melee damage or a shotgun that also shoots rockets. They can also do elemental damage, which comes in a variety of flavors that put a special kind of hurt on and can even do damage over time. Equip an incendiary gun if you want to burn flesh, or a corrosive gun if you want to deal extra damage to creatures with tough hides.You will come across a huge number of guns in your travels, though most are only good for selling back to the many vending machines around Pandora. However, you will continually find better guns throughout your journey, and because a sweet gun or awesome shield could be be found on the remains of any human or animal and in any inanimate storage container, you'll spend a lot of time searching and picking things up. There is a lot of stuff to pick up in Borderlands, and it can be a bit unsettling when you realize just how much of the game you might have to spend looking down at the ground, pressing a button to grab your loot. Initially, it feels like you're looking down and pressing a key far too often. But as you progress, you'll become a more proficient loot-grabber, and you won't be bothered by the action. You'll even grow to love the sight of a battlefield littered with the tiny towers of light that seem to proclaim, "Grab me!" Watching your loot fly towards you and hearing it lodge in your inventory is satisfying, though there is another kink in the works. You can hold the reload key to pick up all the ammo and money nearby (something you'll want to do often), but if you hold the button while looking at a gun, you'll immediately equip it. This can cause you to equip some bogus guns if you're not careful, but this is quickly remedied and rarely too bothersome. You can compare guns within your inventory, and if you've used up your limited space, you can check the specs on a fallen gun easily and drop one from your inventory if you like.

Vending machines supply a wide variety of goods to the intrepid mercenaries of Pandora.

Unfortunately, dropping items is also the only way you can give them to your teammates, and there's no way to exchange ammo or money. If teammates are using the same type of gun, this can lead to some problematic ammo shortages, which is another reason to play to your character's strengths. This can also lead to disputes over who gets that fancy new shotgun, so it's best to have a gentleman's agreement in place over how to handle these issues. Borderlands allows you to resolve disputes by melee attacking a friendly player and challenging him to a duel. If your teammate melees you back, a colored dome pops up and the two of you fight to the death. The loser doesn't actually die, just loses some health, and there's no way to put a wager on the match, so the victor doesn't necessarily receive the spoils. As long as you're playing with a respectful group, you should be able to avoid loot-hoggers and the like, but it's still a bit disappointing that there isn't a better way to pool and equally distribute your collective resources. Still, joining other players online is easy, even if you all have characters at different levels. Borderlands does a good job of adjusting enemy difficulty to accommodate more players, though the larger the level gap, the easier it will be for higher level players, and the tougher it will be for lower level players. It's worth noting that the story-related missions--that is, the ones you have to perform in sequence--reflect the host's progress, and players who are behind the host may not get credit for completing certain missions.

Having some friends on your side makes things a lot more pleasant, given that about 99 percent of life on Pandora is your enemy. Human enemies range from bandits that are smart enough to wear shields and take cover to psychos that light themselves on fire and sprint toward you, screaming about rending your flesh from your bones. The local wildlife is universally hostile and includes skags (toothy dog-beasts), spiderants (armored insect monsters), rakks (raggedy death bats), and scythids (wriggling prehistoric grubs). Every type of enemy appears in various incarnations, ranging from young and weak to badass and on fire. These variations are generated anew during each encounter, so even when you kill a clutch of enemies in that same gully for the fourth time, it will be a different bad-guy loadout. You'll fight hundreds of each enemy type throughout the game, and the fact that groups are varied goes a long way toward staving off repetition. The two-seater vehicles also offer some locomotive variety, and many of the areas are much more fun to traverse on four wheels than on two legs. You can conjure the lone vehicle type from the many Catch-a-Ride stations. The touchy handling takes some getting used to, and you can run into some exaggerated physics problems when crashing into rocks. However, there's nothing quite like vehicular homicide to stave off bandit-killing fatigue. In or out of a vehicle, the simple act of killing enemies is pretty fun, and since you're constantly reaping loot and experience rewards, even repeated encounters have some incentive attached to them. Turret lock-on increases your potential for vehicular carnage.

The combined incentives of killing enemies, gathering loot, cashing in, and leveling up are the main driving forces in Borderlands. The various quests you undertake cover a good variety of motivations, but most follow the pattern mentioned in the previous sentence. The 1 percent of life on Pandora that isn't your enemy will often have quests for you, though only a handful of characters are voice-acted. Of these, there are a few standouts, including the bumpkin car-rental mogul and the borderline sociopathic archaeologist, but for the most part Borderlands offers precious little in the way of non-player character contact. This makes playing solo a lonely experience. Though the action is still satisfying and the world is still interesting, solo players will have a slower-paced adventure in which the flashes of comedy also serve to underscore how sparse those flashes are. The main story is thin and the final encounter is pointless and thoroughly unsatisfying, so anyone hoping Borderlands will deliver a climactic conclusion is almost certainly going to be disappointed.

After you uncover the secrets of the Vault, you are once again set loose into Pandora, where you are free to quest on and remember why you enjoyed your previous hours with the game. Borderlands has tens of hours of quests to fulfill, and you'll likely find yourself enticed back to explore new skills, find new guns, and kill more enemies. Though the core action doesn't change drastically over the course of the game, it is woven together in such a way that once it ensnares you, you'll want nothing more than to plunge into Pandora at any chance you get. Combat is satisfying, and upgrading your skills and equipment is engaging. The constant stream of loot and experience is rewarding, and sharing it with some friends makes the experience that much richer and more exciting. Despite its hostile (albeit stylish) environment, Pandora is a great planet to visit if you want to shoot some stuff. Just be sure to bring some friends along for the ride.

EyePet Review

2009-11-17T20:59:00.000+05:30

The EyePet's creative gameplay and varied content is marred by a lack of proper instruction and a short-lived experience.
The Good

* Fun and satisfying challenges
* Good use of PlayStation Eye
* Plenty of content
* Effective motion-sensing interactions.

The Bad

* Lack of instruction and feedback
* No evolution of virtual pet
* Limited online functionality
* Slow loading times.

AU REVIEW--It's hard not to fall in love with Sony's EyePet. This weird little amalgam of puppy, monkey, and kitten is an expert at furry cuteness and wide-eyed wonder, but sadly, the love doesn't stick around for long. While the game successfully uses the motion-sensing capabilities of the PlayStation Eye camera to create an immersive experience, it's ultimately short-lived. The virtual pet, while creating a very good illusion of being real, shows no signs of growth and, perhaps most disappointingly, lacks individuality. The first thing you'll be taught is how to correctly position your PlayStation Eye--knee height and pointing at the ground--before being introduced to the magic card, a rectangular plastic aide that is read by the camera to produce all sorts of in-game objects. Your EyePet will appear in front of you in the shape of a large egg; to hatch it, you must hold the magic card upright, let the camera read it, and use the heater that appears to heat the egg. Once the egg cracks, you must use your hands to rock it back and forth--this is the first instance where you'll directly interact with the onscreen environment without a controller, and it takes some getting used to, particularly because there's nothing to guide your hands to the right place. Reaching out and touching an object that doesn't exist is, predictably, a bit strange, but the lack of helpful reference points means you'll go through a lot of trial and error.

Once the EyePet appears, things become a little easier: you'll be asked to tickle, push, and chase your EyePet around the room; stick out your hand and watch it jump; or playfully push it over and give it affection. This is a fun and engaging experience--it's definitely exciting to interact with a virtual being on such a close and personal level. You'll then be guided through a series of pet care activities that include feeding, washing, styling, and keeping your pet healthy. However, there's no real incentive to feed, wash, or exercise your pet: if you leave it without food or a bath for more than a day--or, as we did, for up to a year by putting the date forward on the PlayStation 3--the only visible change will be a swarm of flies buzzing around its head and the occasional impulse of the pet to drag its food bowl into view and stare at it. While these signs may be an obvious indication of what you should do, you will not be reprimanded in any way if you don't, nor will your EyePet get sad, sick, or stop participating in the challenges.

The main component of the game is the Pet Program, composed of 60 challenges split evenly between 15 "days" (however, you can play through about three days' worth of content in one session before the game stops you). The challenges start off rudimentary. For example, you must use your magic card to create a trampoline on which your pet will bounce until it reaches the goal set by the game. There is also a good mix of challenges that use the camera and the magic card and ones that use the console's controller, including challenges that are one-off and some that you can come back to for a high score. One of the most intuitive and immersive of these is a simple game of Snap: you and your EyePet will match off against each other with a deck of facedown cards. You use your hand to pick up a card, and your EyePet will do the same by nudging the deck with its nose. Once you see a matching card, you beat the pet to the deck by literally snapping it with your hand. Simple and elegant, this challenge is as real as it gets, and it's hard to shake the feeling that it's just like playing a real game of Snap, only with a furry little thing inside a video game. There are also photo challenges, where you take a picture of your pet by activating the in-game camera, as well as outdoor challenges that involve planting flowers in a makeshift garden or helping your pet run on a treadmill by clapping your hands whenever he comes to an obstacle to make him jump over it. Once completed, challenges win you prizes--mostly new clothes, hats, and outfits for your pet.

Smashing melons with the help of the EyePet proves more challenging than it looks.
While it's intuitive to expect that challenges will progress in difficulty as the game does, a lack of instruction and feedback makes some challenges impossible to complete. Each challenge begins with a one-sentence instruction that in most cases doesn't tell you what you have to do but rather gives you an overall objective. For example, in one of the challenges you take control of a small toy robot to smash watermelons with the aid of a toy baseball bat. The instructions are simple: "Use the robot to smash all the melons before the time runs out." That's all very well, but how do you smash the melons? You are left alone to work that out. Using the baseball bat doesn't seem to work, because the melons don't smash when you hit them. Running into the melons at full speed doesn't work either; nor does spinning around really fast and trying to ricochet the melons off each other. With no further feedback or instruction to go on, no melons are smashed, and that challenge is left uncompleted. The singing challenge, which uses the PlayStation Eye's microphone, is equally troublesome. Here, you must sing a note and hold it until a wine glass on the screen breaks. Besides the fact that the game is picky about which octave you're singing in (telling you to sing lower or higher if you don't get it right), you must hold the note for what seems to be a very long time, making it hard to imagine how younger players will cope.

EyePet's customisation options, while varied, don't have an impact on gameplay--if you feel like dressing up your pet in a bee, pirate, jester, or pilot costume, then you can. While this is certainly very cute, and a bit of fun, the excitement is short-lived. The game continues to go awry with the realisation that your EyePet will not grow, evolve, or change as you complete the challenges, nor will it learn anything that will make one day different from the last. There's nothing to make your EyePet your own, nothing to tie that furry ball to you other than a name. As far as the virtual pet genre goes, this is a pretty big disappointment: while not all interactions with virtual pets have to be goal-oriented, it feels like the EyePet is not living up to its potential by excluding this aspect. The lack of character and individuality present here means there is no way to build a relationship with the virtual pet, and the interactions become less and less enjoyable over time for this reason.

No matter how many clothes or hairstyles you give it, the EyePet lacks individuality.

There is also a big gap in online functionality, which isn't particularly fleshed out: online activities boil down to either purchasing items from the EyePet store or visiting an online gallery, where you and other EyePet owners can post videos and photos of your EyePet taken in-game. This could have been stretched out to include some sort of system where friends can swap EyePets or even play together in an online area specifically decked out with challenges and games designed for more than one player.

There's no doubt that the EyePet can fill a good number of hours with creative and enjoyable gameplay, most of which makes excellent use of the PlayStation Eye camera and creates a very immersive experience. However, the lack of instruction and feedback make some of the 60 challenges frustrating and confusing, and because your pet doesn't grow or change, the playful fun eventually loses its luster. The experience ends up being fun but altogether unrewarding.

Trine Review

2009-10-31T19:25:00.002+05:30

This gorgeous action platformer is fun on your own or with a couple of friends.
The Good

* Sublime visual design
* Fun and breezy physics-based puzzles and platforming
* Smooth, satisfying controls
* Co-op play can be riotous fun.

The Bad

* The physics can lead to frustration
* Interface hides co-op play.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it's hard to imagine any beholder finding Trine to be anything but beautiful. Few 2D platformers have been rendered with this kind of visual grace. Elegant backgrounds bring Trine's fairy tale to life: Rays of golden light stream through dreamy forests, giant mushrooms glow as if lit from within, and ivy and brambles climb the walls of crumbling fortresses. This is the kind of world we imagined when we read storybooks and dreamed of far-off kingdoms and enchanted woodlands as children. A narrator intones each chapter in a soothing baritone and a glockenspiel chimes, setting the stage for a dreamy journey through a magical landscape. The journey is not nearly as resplendent as the paradise crafted around it, but it is great fun nonetheless. Trine is a side-scrolling action platformer that can be played on your own, as well as with one or two friends in local co-op. If you play on your own, you switch among three different characters at any given time. Playing as the thief, you shoot arrows and swing about using your grappling hook (always a joy). As the knight, you bash skeletons and bats with your sword, though you won't be limited to just that weapon by the time Trine comes to an end. The wizard is the trickiest of the three. When easing into his velvet boots, you can create boxes and platforms out of thin air and move objects around telekinetically, but you don't have any immediate offensive skills--though it can be great fun to crush enemies by conjuring a box above their heads and letting it fall on them.

When you play on your own, only the character you directly control appears on the screen, and you leap, swing, and float your way from left to right, puzzling over how to get to your destination while bashing on the baddies that would hinder you. You need the abilities of each character to progress; as the thief, the grappling hook comes in mighty handy, while the wizard's conjurations are a real boon. You need the knight from time to time as well, and not always just to slice up skeletons. Often, there are multiple ways to move forward. You may be able to stack some boxes and planks as the wizard to bridge the necessary gaps, but the thief's hook may make swinging across the simpler solution. Either way, the platforming is slick and satisfying. There are obstacles to overcome--spikes, moving platforms, giant swinging axes, and so on--but the platforming isn't very challenging. Nevertheless, great animations and tight controls make jumping and swinging feel silky smooth.

All it takes is a robe and a pointy hat.
Likewise, the combat is straightforward but enjoyable. When controlling the knight, fighting is mashy in a Diablo kind of way, but its simplicity feels like it fits within the equally simple story of a mysterious magical artifact and the three unlikely heroes it binds together. There is a helpful but rudimentary leveling-up system where you can upgrade the skills and combat prowess of your heroes. However, you may find yourself occasionally wishing that undead archers would stop respawning and bats would stop fluttering around you so that you can leave combat behind and get to the more clever parts of the game. That's because Trine's best bits revolve around using physics to solve the simple puzzles that stand in the way of progress. This often involves using the wizard to swing suspended platforms to and fro; spin large wheels; and, in later levels, hop on floating platforms and mentally move them--and yourself--to your destination. But as with other games based around physics-oriented puzzles (Little Big Planet springs to mind), you'll need to put up with some annoyances. For example, jumping on a big wheel and spinning it around using telekinesis isn't always as easy as you'd like, so things can get fiddly. This wouldn't be much of an issue if the wizard had unrestricted use of his abilities, but his limited energy bar means that you could come up against a literal wall when you run out of juice and have to run back to the previous checkpoint to replenish it.

Small annoyances aside, Trine encourages you to throw ideas against it to see if they stick. Simply fooling around with the physics can be enjoyable enough on your own, but it's even better when you add one or two other players into the mix. The levels of fun rise when you have three players on the screen, with each controlling a different hero. Here, the game takes on a distinct Lost Vikings vibe because you have to ensure that each character can overcome obstacles, though the puzzles won't tax your brain. It's still really enjoyable to mess with the hanging platforms or jump on a plank and ask the wizard to ferry you across a chasm, using teamwork to make your way through the levels. Puzzle-solving is even more enjoyable here than in the PC version, which allowed one player to switch places with another in three-player co-op and permitted you to essentially cheat your way through a level. If your idea of co-op fun is to cause grief for your teammates, it can be even more enjoyable to push them into a wall of spikes or do something else that is funny and counterproductive. Unfortunately, developer Frozenbyte didn't learn its lesson regarding the PC version's buried cooperative options. Trine allows players to drop in and out at will, which is a welcome feature, but there is no onscreen prompt, menu option, or any other hint as to the existence of co-op play. Again, players who don't know of the feature are unlikely to stumble across its presence, which is a real shame.

When facing a skeletal archer, beauty is in the eye of the bow-holder.
Trine is undoubtedly beautiful, and that beauty will draw you in from beginning to end. The visual magic doesn't translate into equally superb gameplay, though the action and platforming are smooth and rewarding on their own--a few minor rough patches aside. There are reasons to return after your initial five-hour play-through, including hidden secrets and, of course, terrific cooperative action, which makes the $19.99 price easy to swallow. Trine is a fun and beautiful game that delivers a lively and refreshing jaunt through a spellbinding kingdom where fairy tales really do come true.

Undead Knights Review

2009-10-31T19:14:00.002+05:30

Adding zombies into the mix isn't enough to revive Undead Knights from its stale, typical hack-and-slash action.
The Good

* Interesting premise
* Amusing zombie-toss multiplayer mode.

The Bad

* Tedious gameplay and level design
* Environments only get remotely interesting toward the end of the game.

These days, if you want to create instant fun, it seems as if the solution is to "just add zombies." Undead Knights for the PSP, from publisher Tecmo, takes this philosophy and runs with it by injecting a healthy dose of reanimated rotting corpses into mundane, screen-filling hack-and-slash action. The idea of transforming hordes of enemies into your own personal army of shambling doom is an intriguing one, but in the case of Undead Knights, the end result is little more than a Dynasty Warriors-style game sauteed in extra zombies.

You play as one of three pallid, undead warriors hell-bent on revenge. They were once loyal knights serving under King Gradis in the kingdom of Cavalier, but because the knights suspected the king's beautiful (and overly buxom) new queen of foul play and witchery, they are murdered at the behest of the king. After their deaths, a mysterious being known as "The Beast" offers to revive them as undead and grant them the power to turn their enemies into zombies under their control. Though there's a twist or two thrown in for good measure, the plot mostly serves as a straightforward excuse to make a soldier-slaying and zombie-making mess.

Yes, you can turn this big lug into your very own pet zombie.

Undead Knights attempts to play up the drama with cutscenes, but a few strange elements make it difficult to take the presentation seriously. The major enemy characters in the game are voiced-over with dramatic acting that is appropriate for the game's fantasy medieval setting, but your characters sound like rejects from heavy metal and punk rock bands. The dialogue is scripted to match the voices; thus, your enemies speak lines that are--again--appropriate for the setting, but your own characters will throw in vulgarities for no other purpose than to titillate the player (or perhaps the writers), and no one's mouth moves at all during spoken lines. The only explanation for this odd mixture is perhaps that the game is going for unintentional humor.

Thankfully, none of these odd decisions get in the way of the gameplay. On the field, your characters can slash, jump, evade, and grab. Grabbing an enemy turns him into a zombie; grabbing a zombie allows you to either throw it or smash it into the ground for an explosive attack. There's a delay--determined by how strong he is--from when you grab an enemy to when he's fully converted into a zombie. This encourages you to weaken said enemy enough to the point where you can instantly convert him. With each successful conversion, you fill up a meter under your health bar that, when full, allows you to unleash a devastating combo attack that renders all victims zombies. Beyond this, though, there's little technique you'll actually need to employ. Because you're likely to be crowded by a mass of soldiers at most points during combat, you'll be just fine if you mash on the weak attack button for a few swings and then repeatedly hit the grab button.

Having the zombies on your side is advantageous because they'll keep lesser enemies distracted, but their most notable use comes when you have to overcome obstacles. You can command your zombies to destroy archery towers, as well as siege machines and barricades. Comically, you can also throw them onto spiked wrecking balls so that they roll into enemy forces, and you can command them to form a bridge across chasms. If you've ever craved a game in which you can walk across the backs of undead minions, then this is it. Once the initial glee of controlling an undead army dies down, however, the game's tedious pattern becomes painfully clear. Most of the level design boils down to fenced-off kill rooms, so more often than not, you'll simply enter an arena-style environment, slash at soldiers, convert as many zombies as you can, and then hold down the R button to command them to wreck something. Occasionally, larger and more powerful enemies will visit to make things interesting (at which point you'd best employ your special attack), but it's not until the last one-third or so of your playing time that things get really challenging and the whole repertoire of enemies comes at you supplemented by multiple traps, such as land mines, cannons, and spike traps.

You're encouraged to slaughter as many enemies as possible while completing each chapter as quickly as possible because the game ranks your performance and awards you dark energy with which you can upgrade your characters' abilities. Sadly, the list of upgrades isn't exciting: All you have to look forward to is maximum health, increased attack power, two combination attacks, and a few peripheral abilities and buffs. There aren't any new weapons to discover. There aren't any magical abilities or new special attacks to learn. What's most disappointing is that the possibilities for powerful, inventive, or even amusing new zombie techniques are never explored.

You'll be hard-pressed to find another game that lets you walk across the backs of your zombie servants.

The zombies themselves are almost all the same--shirtless blue-bodied detritus--which makes sense because a great majority of the enemies are the same armored soldiers differentiated only by the colors of their smocks. With a few of the larger executioners and monsters thrown into the mix, combined with some of the more detailed fortress environments, Undead Knights looks decent enough. The frame rate never bogs down to unplayable levels, so some of the flatter character models can be excused, given that you might see dozens of enemies on the screen at once. Again, though, it's not until much later into the game that you'll see anything more interesting than rocky paths, dirt trenches, or the inside of a stone fortress. (One embarrassing note: Enemies will spawn out of thin air, sometimes right in front of your face.) The music fares slightly worse because it consists almost entirely of wailing electric guitars churning out angry yet generic riffs that all start to sound the same by the third hour. All told, the presentation is almost as tedious as the gameplay.

Undead Knights offers you three difficulty levels from the start, allowing you to go through any of its 20 chapters on "Hell" difficulty if they get too boring. It also has its own list of achievements (dubbed Revenge Titles) that unlock for such things as throwing a certain number of zombies, turning a certain number of soldiers or larger characters into zombies, destroying a certain number of structures, and the like. They've been given amusing names, too, with some favorites being "Boom Goes the Dynamite", "Tenacious Z" and "World's Greatest Boss" among others. The game allows you to revisit any chapter to improve your rankings and throws in three multiplayer modes for good measure as well. These are actually more interesting than the main game: One mode has you throwing zombies at a second player to see who can score the most hits; another has you racing through several areas before fighting to the death; and the last one is a token Survival mode. The amusement of chucking corpses at each other or pummeling each other after a race isn't necessarily worth playing through six hours of the single-player game just to unlock every multiplayer map, but it's nice to have these options.

There's nothing entirely terrible about Undead Knights, except for maybe the soldiers that infinitely spawn out of nowhere. It's just disappointing that the action remains so simple and unremarkable when many similar games exist for the PSP. This is especially true when you consider that creating a zombie army--its one leg up on such games as Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi--doesn't let you do anything much more exciting than demolish an iron gate.

Panzer General: Allied Assault Review

2009-10-31T19:11:00.001+05:30

It's not the Panzer General that you might remember, but this card-based XBLA game is impressively deep and addictive.
The Good

* Simple, elegant card-based battle system
* Strategic depth provided through card variety, support rules, and terrain effects
* Lengthy campaign.

The Bad

* Somewhat repetitious
* A little sluggish due to too many "do this" prompts and unskippable animations.

Panzer General: Allied Assault is not the game that you might remember. The beer-and-pretzels SSI wargame from the 1990s has been revived in name only for Xbox Live Arcade by Petroglyph Games, returning to life a decade after the fact as a card-based game. So although old-timers may initially be disappointed at not finding the turn-based strategizing and hexes of the original franchise, they should stick around for the game's captivating matches set during the closing days of World War II. Mechanics are simple, but the gameplay is deceptively deep, only limited a bit by repetition when it comes to mission goals and battle terrain.

Who knew that the Greatest Generation fought its battles on perfectly arranged boards with giant dice sitting in the background?

In many ways, Panzer General: Allied Assault is more reminiscent of a set-piece WWII board game, such as the Memoir '44 board game, than its '90s namesake. It's Americans versus Germans in turn-based battles on what looks like a chessboard, with cards and dice rolls handling virtually all of the unit placement and fighting. Every scenario sees the combatants starting on opposite sides of the board with set victory conditions, such as taking over tiles in the enemy's home row, conquering a percentage of spaces, wiping out all rival units, or taking the enemy's home base. The game system is a no-muss, no-fuss arrangement where you play cards to place units and then move around the battlefields assaulting enemies and using cards to assist in combat. Playing cards costs prestige points, which are earned through conquering territory and removing it from your enemy after victorious battles. Cards are varied, and the deck consists of three different classes. Unit cards include paratroopers, artillery, and various types of tanks and armored vehicles. Action cards add a range of special abilities, such as the chance to sabotage the enemy hand and strip away cards or lay down pre-battle damage to bad-guy positions through strafing attacks and bombing runs. Combat cards provide bonuses during engagements, which are handy when you want to increase your offensive or defensive values or soften up the enemy courtesy of something like a hit-point-draining sniper attack.

Combat is surprisingly deep. Board spaces all come with unique terrain features that have dramatic effects on battles. So you have to be careful about attacking enemies in forests and on hills, because the pluses gained from these locations stack the deck against you when calculating battle results. You also need to watch out for no-go areas for certain types of troops. Planning an infantry assault that runs through a swamp tile, for instance, isn't a smart idea. Tiles also have varying prestige value, so a town is worth more than a plain forest, for example. Units support one another from both adjacent and far-away tiles, making it a necessity to employ tactics when defending as well as attacking. Having a few howitzers in range of the enemy position being assaulted is key, as is surrounding the baddies with armor and infantry units prior to moving in. If you don't layer your forces and take their attack abilities into careful consideration, you'll quickly get chewed up by the enemy.

Cards are varied enough to provide a fair amount of variety to missions and give you a range of tactical options to consider, but not so numerous or convoluted that you get lost in their rules and intricacies. Chances are good that you'll have a couple of doubles in your 10-card-max hand at all times. And even when you encounter a new card, you can figure out its effects from a quick glance at the text summation and the black-and-white photo illustration. Cards can also be used outside of their stated abilities during battles. Every scrap has a stage where you can sacrifice a card for its stated combat value, adding that number to your attack or defend values. This adds a strategic layer to the entire game, because you have to be very careful with card management. If you burn through all of your cards during your turn, you'll hamstring yourself during the enemy phase, because not having cards to sacrifice during battles is tantamount to suicide. Unless you're in the mop-up phase at the end of a mission, taking out already weakened rival units in your final turn or two, you have to make sure you're loaded up with cards, or you risk being surprised by what the enemy plays. This ever-present danger, plus the damage-altering dice roll that the attacker throws, can flip what looks like a lopsided battle on its head.

Card management is crucial for winning battles, especially when you can sacrifice these poor suckers for combat bonuses.

All of these features really pull you into Panzer General: Allied Assault and make it awfully hard to stop playing. Just a few issues conspire to hamper your Nazi-smashing fun. The single-player campaign where you play as the US (Germany is available as a playable side only in skirmish and multiplayer) is impressively lengthy, starting with the D-Day landing and taking you through much of the last year of the war as the Allies roared across Europe toward Berlin. But the victory conditions are pretty static, so in some ways you feel like you're stuck in repeat mode. Skirmish play and multiplayer over Live are similarly limited. Being able to set up custom rules and victory conditions in these modes isn't a big plus when there are so few options to choose from, and deck customization suffers from a clumsy interface. Map terrain and unit types aren't varied enough for a video game where you can whip through multiple levels in a sitting. They seem more appropriate for an actual tabletop board game, where the number of cards and terrain tiles would be offset by the longer time it would take to play a mission. Things wouldn't grow so familiar so fast on the dining-room table. Yet despite the speed of matches, battles themselves are too drawn-out, with too many unskippable animations, slow dice rolls, and text prompts telling you what to do. The game isn't great-looking in the first place, being a simple board game with rudimentary frills such as planes making bombing runs and infantry tossing grenades. So you really don't need to sit through this stuff eternally.

Even though this isn't the wargame that you might have played on your 486, Panzer General: Allied Assault is an impressive strategy game in its own right. It might not please hardcore grognards, but anyone looking for a quick card-based board game with a WWII atmosphere will find this a great way to spend 800 points.

WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 Review

2009-10-31T19:09:00.003+05:30

An intriguing new creation tool and widespread refinements make it another good year for Smackdown vs. RAW, but it still hasn't received the overhaul that it needs.
The Good

* New story creator is easy to use and full of possibility
* Action flows more smoothly than last year
* A lot of single-player content
* Training mode is great for experimentation
* You can design your own logo or tattoo.

The Bad

* Incongruously weak sound effects
* Online matches have nagging lag
* Imprecise targeting system
* Matches can last way too long.

Just like the big-name pay-per-view events that regularly punctuate the WWE's show schedule, Smackdown vs. RAW is back for another year. The latest entry in the long-running series picks up where last year's game left off, continuing to focus on user creation and true-to-TV action. The biggest new additions this year are on the user creation side, but the action itself also benefits from some refinements. There are a lot of little touches that make matches feel more like those you see on TV, injecting some dynamic excitement into the proceedings. Yet what spices a match up can also make it last far too long and feel like a grind. The game also suffers from many perennial problems, such as weak sound effects, imperfect online play, and nagging animation issues. While this year's Smackdown vs. RAW is definitely better than last year's entry, it's more of an incremental improvement than a substantial upgrade. One of the first improvements you'll see is the training facility, which pops up at the beginning of the game. The controls are largely unchanged from last year, but the training facility is a great place to get familiar with how different moves work in different places in and around the ring.Smackdown vs. RAW's controls are largely dependent on position, and getting to know what moves character can perform in specific situations will not only make you a better wrestler, but it's also just plain fun. Characters have expanded move sets this year, and it is much easier to maneuver your opponent around the ring to take advantage of their repertoires. The training facility is also a good place to get familiar with abilities, which play a more concrete role this year. Each wrestler has certain abilities, ranging from passive ones (like being more resilient to pins and submissions) to active ones (like quickly escaping the ring or regaining some health by hitting yourself in the head with a chair).

Using your character's special abilities can give you an edge in the ring, but odds are you won't need them much while playing solo. The computer doesn't put up much of a fight in one-on-one matches, and you'll easily dismantle opponents without taking too much damage. It's still fun to whale on another wrestler, but when your opponent sends you across the ring with an Irish Whip and then just stands there waiting for you to recover, you'll long for a more realistic challenge. When things do get tough, it's almost always because more wrestlers are in the mix. Two-on-one handicap matches, tag-team contests, and pretty much any other match with four or more wrestlers ringside are difficult to win. This is not because your opponents are tougher but because there are more of them, and they will vigorously try to break up any pin you attempt. These matches last much longer and capture that satisfying struggle that is characteristic of some of the most epic real-life matches. But when you've been beating on your opponents for upward of 30 minutes, it reaches a point where it stops being challenging and starts being frustrating. And because both manual and auto-targeting can be finicky, it can be even tougher to single out an opponent for a punch or a pin.

Still, this move toward more thorough realism has many advantages. Aside from the astounding list of match possibilities, there's an interesting new rivals mechanic in place. Previously, you could move superstars between shows, change their crowd reaction, and make whatever tag team your heart desired. Now you can tweak each character's allies and enemies, which will affect who comes to help or hinder your character during matches. For example, in a normal one-on-one match between Triple H and Undertaker, Kane decided to show up and prevented Triple H from pinning Undertaker by distracting the ref. This random occurrence made a regular match feel more lively and dynamic, like an event on Smackdown or RAW.

Any closer to the ropes and John Morrison is likely to make John Cena's life a little tougher.

The action feels more fluid this year and characters generally respond better to each other's positions, so your high-flying attack off the turnbuckle is less likely to go wrong. There are fewer animation hang-ups and things tend to flow more realistically. Yet, there are still noticeable problems, especially when multiple characters are in the ring and you still have to endure your fair share of moves gone awry because of interrupted timing or awkward positioning. Though the mechanics have been refined, they haven't received a significant overhaul. Thus, the action has been improved, but it still relies on the same underlying system from previous years and suffers from the same inherent flaws.

Smackdown vs. RAW's presentation continues to impress, with accurate character models and bustling crowds. The heads-up display is minimal, giving the game a more realistic feel. The crowds still don't look great upon close inspection and superstars do some strange things with their mouths, but on the whole, the game looks very good. The announcers are on point most of the time and inject the proceedings with some much-needed drama and flair. But even lively announcing can't mask the still-disappointing sound effects. A title match in the ring still manages to sound exciting, but if you're fighting in the parking lot or the locker room, all you're left with are limp smacking sounds and dull, muted thuds. Though these effects may be more realistic, they sound weak and out of place in a game that's all about loud, exaggerated action.

Fortunately, the game knows its strengths and once again delivers a lot of content. From Superstar Careers to the Road to Wrestlemania, there are many hours of fights and melodrama to enjoy. Of the six Road to Wrestlemania paths, perhaps the most entertaining is the one you take with your created wrestler, which contains a good amount of humor and some clever gimmicks, as well as a lot of interesting match situations. Unfortunately, some of your matches have goals that are poorly stated, and it can sometimes be tough to know what you need to do to progress. In one early match, you can beat on your opponents all you want, but unless you destroy Vince McMahon's office in the process, you'll never progress. Though this lack of clarity can be frustrating, it's still a lot of fun to guide your superstar to WWE prominence.

A 7-foot, 485-pound man steps on a 5-foot-6-inch, 175-pound man. You do the math.

The stellar creation tools are back and as robust as ever, with expanded options and clothing customization. The ability to customize your own logos and tattoos adds a whole new dimension, and you can even compose your own entrance movie. But the addition that folks will get the most mileage out of is definitely the story designer. This mode lets you script shows over weeks, months, and years. You also get to choose which matchups happen when, who interferes, and who runs their mouth on the microphone. It's easy to create short sequences, and those who put a lot of time into longer arcs will be able to create some epic stuff. Fortunately, even if you aren't the time-investment type, you can download stories that other folks have uploaded and reap the benefits. It's easy to sign on and grab user-created content, but online matches are still a bit problematic. Matches often have a low level of lag that is just enough to disrupt your timing. And the single-player action does a poor job of preparing you for the online arena where opponents are fast and merciless. Though there are generally a fair number of games available to join, many of them don't have great connection speeds and players will often abandon lobbies while the host waits for the match to fill up. Still, if you are looking for some serious competition, you can definitely find it online.

Smackdown vs. RAW 2010 offers a lot of subtle improvements over last year's game and includes a lot of new, diverse content. The story designer allows anyone to script their own road to Wrestlemania and could conceivably provide new storylines for as long as players embrace it. The game is still plagued by some lingering problems, however, and one has to wonder how much mileage this series can continue to get out of its current model before there isn't enough new stuff to entice players to make another purchase. Whether or not next year brings a significant overhaul remains to be seen, but until then, wrestling fans are sure to enjoy this well-rounded and entertaining product.

Tekken 6 Review

2009-10-31T19:02:00.002+05:30

With its beefy cast, impressive Scenario Campaign mode, and expansive customisation options, Tekken 6 is the new heavyweight in the fighting game arena.

The Good

* Fighting is fun, fast, and tight
* Great training options
* Plenty of characters
* Wealth of customisation options
* In-depth Scenario Campaign mode.

The Bad

* No offline Scenario Campaign two-player mode
* Long load times
* Online can be patchy.

Despite the dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of moves available per pugilist, intricate juggle combos, complex counters, and esoteric gameplay quirks that have evolved through five prequels, Tekken 6 is an altogether welcoming fighting game. For veterans, the game offers the most comprehensive roster in the history of the series, a new way to extend damaging combos, and enough change to--whilst not exactly feeling brand new--make it feel exciting to play Tekken again. For newcomers, the game's comprehensive training modes and expansive single-player beat-'em-up campaign serve as an enticing gateway into the world of the King of Iron Fist Tournament. For everyone else, Tekken 6 features the same outstanding qualities that have made the series a fighting favorite on consoles: deep yet accessible mechanics, as well as excellent extra features not seen in arcades. Whether you're a complete stranger to the series, an occasional masher, or someone who can pull off 10-hit combos without dislocating a finger, the superb Tekken 6 has plenty to offer you. That abundance begins with Tekken 6's roster, which is a beefy lineup that features 41 fighters, including old stalwarts, such as Kazuya, Lei, Paul, Nina, Jin, and others. It also includes more recent additions from Dark Resurrection, such as Lili and the emo-Nazi look-a-like Dragunov. Even series veterans may find Tekken 6's jam-packed character selection screen a little overwhelming because it's initially tough to identify characters from their small portraits alone. But once you've found your favorites, experienced Tekken players will see that the tweaks and changes made to the move sets of returning characters are, for the most part, minor. Most characters get a new attack or two, some stances have been modified, and it seems the damage dealt by some of the more powerful combos in the past have been slightly toned down. Despite this, all of the returning characters feel completely familiar, so you'll never feel like you have to relearn your favorite fighter from scratch.

It's not all veterans, of course, with six new characters making their home console debut in Tekken 6. These include: Bob, a rotund American fighter who is deceptively speedy for his size; Leo, an androgynous German martial arts specialist; Miguel, a Spanish brawler who seems to rely more on power than speed; Zafina, a member of a mysterious secret order who sports some creepy and unusual stances; Alisa, a seemingly naive young girl who's actually a jetpack-and-chainsaw-wielding android; and Lars, who has some relation to the sprawling Mishima bloodline (hence his move set similarity to Jin and Kazuya). Of the new recruits, Zafina feels the most unique, thanks to her distinctive-looking moves that incorporate stance-based attacks, such as the off-putting tarantula, which sees her get down on all fours to creep low along the ground. Alisa is just sheer fun to play as given her frankly bizarre move list, which includes using her own head as an explosive and a whole series of attacks based on her chainsaw appendages.

A fembot with chainsaws for hands may seem overpowered in a fighting game, but Tekken 6 manages the tough task of presenting a well-balanced brawler despite the abundance of characters. For novices, Tekken's fight mechanics--each limb assigned to a button on the controller, with special moves usually performed via button combos and directional stabs on the D pad or control stick--are just as easy to get into as they have been in the past. Most of the hundreds of moves in the game are a cinch to perform individually, which means you'll be able to pull off some flashy moves from the get-go. Stringing them together into increasingly damaging combos, however, will take some practice, which is where the game gets deliciously deep. Juggle combos--where you launch your opponent into the air and try to keep him or her there--are still integral to the Tekken experience for expert players. Other important moves include throw counters, wall juggles, roll evasions, and various in-depth strategies. For those already comfortable with their various 10-hit combos, Tekken 6 introduces a new way to deal extended damage. The bound system essentially allows you to extend combos by slamming an airborne opponent into the ground, leaving him or her momentarily vulnerable for further strikes. Just as with juggles, each of the characters has his or her own bound launcher, and it's a great new addition for Tekken fanatics to explore.

While those with only moderate Tekken experience probably won't be performing too many juggle or bound strings, everyone will be able to make use of Tekken 6's other biggest gameplay addition: rage. Rage kicks in when your character's health drops to about 10 percent, bathing him or her in a red aura and significantly increasing the damage he or she dishes out. It's pretty exciting when you're able to pull off a miraculous win, thanks to your rage-fuelled strikes, but the rage system is one that's unlikely to change the course of most matches because by the time it kicks in, you're usually only one hit away from oblivion.

Zafina is one of the most interesting of the new characters.

Tekken 6 packs in plenty of gameplay, which starts with an Arcade mode. As in Tekken 5, Arcade allows you to gain ranks for each individual character you decide to try out. If you're an utter recluse or just don't have access to the Internet, the game also tries to emulate the experience of playing against real people by having your AI opponents appear with their own individual gamer names, win/loss ratios, and ranks. The AI here is strong--there are five difficulty levels to choose from, ranging from ridiculously easy to frustratingly tough, so there's a good chance you'll find a fit for your own experience level. If Arcade mode isn't your bag, then you can take on a virtually endless lineup of opponents in Ghost Battle, which is a mode that pits you against the ghost data of real players downloaded online. There are also the stock-standard fighter modes of Survival and Time Attack, as well as two dedicated two-player modes--VS Battle and Team Battle, the latter of which allows you and a friend to choose up to eight characters to fight in consecutive battles.

If you find yourself getting pummeled too often by your friends or the AI, Tekken 6 features a comprehensive Practice mode that allows you to polish your moves. Practice won't take you through the very basics (such as movement, blocking, throw counters, and more), but newcomers will still get plenty from this mode, thanks to the helpful way the game demonstrates every move. This includes showing you the specific timing required for each button and direction press. Practice can also help you shore up your defense, with a dedicated mode that lets you set an AI opponent's attack so you can better identify each move and counter it in a real match. While previous Tekken home releases featured several extra modes outside of the one-on-one fighting core, Tekken 6 only has one extra: the beat-'em-up mode dubbed the Scenario Campaign. Unlike previous Tekken bashers, such as Tekken Force or Devil Within, this is no short-lived distraction. The Scenario Campaign is a surprisingly addictive multihour marathon that takes place over a wide variety of environments. It's also a must-play if you're at all interested in the story of Tekken 6, since it follows the adventures of two new characters--Lars and Alisa. During their adventures, they try to unravel the global-war-raging machinations of the Jin-controlled Mishima Zaibatsu, find out what part the Kazuya-controlled G Corporation plays, and discover just how the game's end boss (the Egyptian godlike Azazel) fits into the whole story. The Scenario Campaign is also the only place you'll see each character's full video ending, which is another highlight of previous Tekken games and definitely a winner for Tekken 6. After completing the first few levels of the Scenario Campaign, an Arena mode becomes unlocked. Acting like a truncated Arcade mode, Arena allows you to play through the storyline for all of the characters. It starts with captioned still images that outline their involvement in the latest King of Iron Fist Tournament and culminates in their ending movie. Unlike Arcade mode, however, you won't have all of the characters unlocked immediately--you'll have to unlock them by playing through the Scenario Campaign and defeating them when they appear as boss characters at the end of each level.

Item drops make the Scenario Campaign quite addictive.

But figuring out the convoluted plot of Tekken 6 isn't the only reason to play through the excellent Scenario Campaign. This mode could almost be a full game on its own, taking five or six hours to complete and having plenty of replay value, thanks to its compelling item-drop system. While the Scenario Campaign tells the story of Lars and Alisa, you can play the mode as any character you've unlocked, although all of the major cutscenes will still feature the two main protagonists. In terms of gameplay, the Scenario Campaign isn't too taxing on the old synapses--you and your AI-controlled partner Alisa will have to fight through waves of enemies. And while the controls are initially fiddly to come to terms with, you'll quickly get used to them. You can move freely anywhere on the screen using the left thumbstick, and when enemies are within view, you can use the D pad to pull off your character's moves and the right bumper to switch targets. It's a lot of fun, if a little repetitive, although it's a mystery why two-player offline co-op play wasn't included in this mode.

As opposed to Tekken's previous attempts at a beat-'em-up, the Scenario Campaign mode actually features a decent number of different enemy types and environments. And while it's easy for most of its duration, the difficulty ramps up considerably in its final few stages. But what makes it most worth playing are the items that certain enemies drop when defeated. These items are pieces of clothing for every Tekken 6 character, and there are literally hundreds to collect. These items include new shirts, pants, shoes, headgear, accessories, weapons, and more, with each item having its own unique properties that confer special bonuses when worn. You can find clothing that will increase your health; increase defense; add elemental properties, such as fire or ice, to your attacks; improve the value of items dropped, and much more. It's an almost role-playing-game-like loot system, giving plenty of incentive to keep playing Scenario to get better gear for each of the game's 41 characters.

But even if you don't play Scenario, you can still buy any of the hundreds of different costume items for each character using money earned in almost every other mode in Tekken 6. There's a ton of customization available here: Ever want to know what Panda looks like wearing a pink bikini? Don't like the particular shade of Lei's shirt? Think Eddie looks better wearing a baseball cap? Or would you prefer your Ganryu with angel wings? You can mix and match to your heart's content; thus, with some truly wacky costume options, it'll be easy to come up with a unique look for your favorite fighter.

Wacky character endings are a highlight.

You can show off your uniquely costumed character in Tekken 6's online modes, although any bonuses that piece of clothing may have in the Scenario Campaign won't carry over into proper bouts. The game has both ranked matches for battle points and friendly bouts where you can set up lobbies with up to three other people. The matches we played since the servers went live this week globally have been mostly stable with very few dropouts, but lag seems to be an issue with most matches. With slower connections, you'll notice a definite gap between your controller input and what's happening on screen, and there seems to be a very slight lag with even the fastest links. It's not unplayable, and if you're just after a few fun games against players online it plays well as long as you're on a decent connection. But anyone serious about their Tekken will recoil in horror at the input lag present.

A much more interesting online option is the ability to download ghost data from players all over the world. You can download up to 100 different "real" personalities, which you can then play in the offline game to help improve your skills against the top players in the world (your own ghost data becomes uploaded automatically). These ghost players do act noticeably different to the game's AI, and they're often a better option than trying to find stable connections to play online when you're hankering for some real competition. You can also download replays of people's matches, which is another great training tool if you want to see how the best go about their brutal business.

Tekken 6 looks impressive, but it's not the prettiest fighter out there. There are definitely some impressive details to be found on each character model, and the whole game runs smoothly at 60 frames per second, but some of the game's textures look rather bland. Skin, for example, looks pretty waxy, giving near-nude characters like Ganryu a mannequin-like look. There's also some noticeable aliasing to be found on the game's various stages, from which both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions suffer. The game's stages, in fact, can be a little too distracting. There's plenty going on in each level, such as helicopters crashing, jets flying by, and even livestock milling around, but some of these aren't rendered in impressive ways. Seeing a poorly animated sheep or pig bounce away as you accidentally hit it, for example, just serves to draw your attention away from the solid fighting. Thankfully, the sound is quite impressive, with solid and bone-crunching effects adding a great deal of believability to your every strike. But perhaps Tekken 6's most apparent technical downside has to do with its load times. They're not so long as to break the game, but there are noticeable lags when matches load and character models appear on selection screens. Installing is practically a prerequisite on the PS3 version to get it on par with the Xbox 360, which features shorter load times from the get-go.

Make your characters appear as rad--or as bad--as you want.

While a bouncing pig may be a slight distraction and the online can be disappointing, it's nowhere near enough to dull the outstanding qualities that Tekken 6 has to offer. For fans, Tekken 6 is the most complete Tekken experience so far. It features a large roster, strong customization options, and tight mechanics, and it's sure to be a time sink as you enjoy battle after battle and strive to perfect your skills. If you're a newcomer, the game is as welcoming as ever, and there's plenty here to keep you occupied until you're ready to start busting out your own combos. If you're a fighting fan or are just curious to dip a tentative fist into the genre, then Tekken 6 is the game for you.

Forza Motorsport 3 Review

2009-10-31T18:55:00.002+05:30

Turn 10 Studios' latest racer is bigger and better than its superb predecessor in every way.

The Good

* Hundreds of desirable cars to drive, paint, and tune
* Great and varied selection of tracks to race on
* Presentation is uniformly excellent
* Superb online multiplayer options
* New storefront features make it easier to buy and sell your creations.

The Bad

* AI drivers occasionally fall asleep at the wheel
* Career bug sometimes lets you use cars that far exceed event restrictions.

Do you like cars? If so, Forza Motorsport 3 is the game for you. In fact, provided you don't hate cars, Forza Motorsport 3 is the game for you. Turn 10 Studios' latest racer is an ambitious game that tries to be a lot of different things for a lot of different people, and the great news is that it succeeds at just about every turn. It doesn't matter how good you are behind the wheel; you can find a difficulty level and a handling model to suit you. And while there are plenty of options available for those of you who enjoy painting or tuning your rides as much as you enjoy driving them, you don't have to devote any time to those features to reap their rewards. Forza Motorsport 3 is a bigger and better game than its predecessor in every way imaginable, and while it's not flawless, it's certainly way ahead of the competition. Your first race in Forza 3 is spent at the wheel of an Audi R8 loaner, and by default, there are several driving assists--including the series' familiar dynamic racing line--turned on that serve as your water wings as you're thrown in at the deep end. From there, you're free to take your career in whichever direction you choose, though with limited funds at your disposal your first car is more likely to be a Scion than a Shelby. Career mode is divided into seasons, and each season you compete in a world championship that spans several races. You don't get to choose which championships you're entered into, so you start with relatively slow showroom cars early on and must get some miles under your belt before competing in thoroughbred racecars later on. With that said, championship races are generally two or three weeks apart, and so after every race you're invited to choose another, shorter series of events to take part in. You can also ignore the calendar completely if you choose, and just compete in whichever events you want to at anytime. Either way, the options you're presented with are determined, at least in part, by the cars that you own, so if you manage to get your hands on an Enzo Ferrari or a Porsche Carrera GT early on, you don't have to wait around before putting them to work. You might even find that you can use one or two of your cars in events for which they far exceed the maximum performance restrictions, though this bug doesn't rear its competition-trivializing head very often.

Regardless of what you're driving, you're free to pick and choose which assists you want to use, and you have an opportunity to quickly alter your settings before every race. This is definitely a welcome feature, because while you might not feel the need for antilock brakes or stability control when you're driving something modest, you might not be nearly as confident climbing into a Bugatti Veyron supercar for the first time. It's tempting to make things easier by keeping all of the assists turned on, but there's a great incentive to turn them off, because every time you do so, your potential earnings increase. For example, turning off the autobrake (which you'll probably want to do right away) increases your winnings by 10 percent, and if you opt for "simulation" damage, fuel, and tire wear as opposed to "cosmetic" or "limited," you can add another 15 percent on top of that. This setup ensures that while anyone who picks up Forza 3 can spend their entire career feeling like a winner, better drivers will earn more money in the process, and rightly so. Similarly, you get to keep more of your winnings if you don't have to spend them paying for damage incurred during a race, so although it's possible to win some races by driving aggressively and using opponents or walls to slow you down for corners, you won't be doing yourself (or your opposition) any favors in the long run.

Ever wondered what the interior of a Ferrari FXX looks like?

That's especially true if your opponents are other online players or a friend that you're playing split-screen with, because retaliation is likely to cross their minds at some point. Forza 3's AI is more focused on the finish line than on forcing you off the track, which makes it superior to some of the players you're likely to meet online, but it's not an intelligence that's going to pose a threat to its human counterparts anytime soon. At times, AI drivers are superb: they jostle for position, they look for openings when other drivers falter, and they know when to back off if their attempt at an overtake starts looking perilous. Occasionally, though, these otherwise believable opponents will make such silly mistakes that you'll swear they must have fallen asleep at the wheel. At Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya, for example, it's not nearly as uncommon as it should be to see opponents accelerate toward the Seat hairpin and fly off into the gravel without ever appearing to touch the brake pedal or the steering wheel, and it's not unheard of to see different opponents making the exact same error on consecutive laps. Race incidents like these aren't something you'll see often, especially if you're spending most of your time at the front of the pack, but if you're in a closely contested race, it's less satisfying to win as a result of an opponent's incompetence than it is to beat him out of a corner or slingshot past him on a straight.

It's also slightly less satisfying to cross the finish line first if you've felt the need to use Forza 3's new rewind feature during the race, but it's a great (if unoriginal) addition to the game regardless. If you consider yourself a purist, you might feel inclined to look down on this new feature and on anyone who uses it, and that's fine, because you don't have to use it if you don't want to, and nobody is ever going to have the option of using it while competing with you online. Furthermore, if you're from the no-rewind school of racing, your leaderboard times will always appear above those of drivers who have used the rewind to correct any number of their mistakes. The leaderboards also clearly display which assists drivers were using when they recorded their posted lap times, which might ultimately end up being a better incentive for you to turn them off than extra winnings are.

With so many cars to choose from you're sure to find some of your favorites.

As in Forza 2, your winnings in Forza 3 can be used to buy new cars (more than 400 different models are available at launch), either direct from manufacturers or from other players via an auction house. However, it seems unlikely that Forza 3's auction house will be the hive of activity that Forza 2's was, not because it has changed for the worse, but because unless you're looking for a bargain or want to offload a car that you've been awarded, there are few reasons to go there. In Forza 2, one of the main reasons to buy a car from the auction house was that it had a great custom paint job and/or because it had already had money spent on upgrading and tuning it. You can still buy and sell cars this way if you choose to, but in Forza 3 you can also deal in tuning setups, paint jobs, and individual vinyl designs without having to attach them to cars. For example, if you re-create a favorite video game character on the hood of a car and you want to earn some credits selling it, you now have two options. You can either sell it as a vinyl that other players will be free to paste onto any car that they choose (safe in the knowledge that they won't be permitted to resell it subsequently) or incorporate it into a design for a specific model of car so that players who own one of those cars can apply it to their vehicle. It's a vastly superior system to that in the last game, and because potential buyers can search for designs either by typing in keywords or by using presets like "retro," "anime," and "realistic," there's a good chance that players who are interested in the kinds of things you create will find their way to your in-game storefront. Forza 3's car models look fantastic in their showroom and real-world race liveries, but it's the designs being created by the community that are really making them pop. That's no mean feat, because the tools that designers have to work with, while clearly powerful, don't make life easy. If you're familiar with the design tools in Forza 2, then you might be disappointed or at least surprised to learn that they haven't changed much in Forza 3. You still work primarily with geometric shapes and generic-looking icons, you still group large numbers of them together to create race team logos or photo-realistic images of your favorite Brazilian supermodels, and it still takes a lot of work to create something worthwhile. It's time well spent, though, and because there's now an option to create designs on a perfectly flat surface before applying them to a car, you no longer have to use the roof of a Mini Cooper for a canvas. Would this aspect of the game be better if you could import images from Photoshop or just scan them in? Absolutely not. Sure, it would be easier, but it wouldn't be as rewarding, and more importantly it wouldn't be fair for players without access to the necessary hardware or software. It's also unlikely that the end results would look significantly better. Spend some time checking out the top designs, as rated by other players, and you'll realize that just about anything is possible with Forza 3's design tools; you just have to get good with them. If you're more inclined to spend your time racing than playing with geometric shapes, there's still no reason you can't have great-looking cars. Just make sure you win enough credits to buy all of the designs you want. Whether you're racing in your single-player career or online with up to seven opponents, all of your winnings go into the same pot, and so do your experience points. Leveling up in Forza 3 doesn't benefit you in the way that you might expect it to in other genres, but every time you reach a new level, you're awarded a new car, so it can be a strong incentive to keep playing long after you've told yourself "just one more race." This is especially true later in your career, because the cars you're given are among the most desirable in the game--assuming you haven't rushed out and bought them already.

Just as you would in real life, it's not a bad idea to test-drive cars before you buy them. None of the cars in Forza 3 handle poorly, and all are delivered to your garage with perfect bodywork and spotlessly clean, accurately re-created interiors. Inevitably, there will be cars that suit your driving style better than others, though, and if you don't know much about tuning, it can be tough to tame a car that's proving problematic for you--even if you take advantage of the new quick upgrade option that optimizes your car for the class of competition that you want to use it in. In Career mode you're only able to use cars that you own, but every car in the game (as well as those in your garage) is available to you from the outset for use in single races, hot lap events, and multiplayer.

Even if you don't win, using custom car designs in online races is sure to set you apart from the opposition.Online play was one of Forza 2's greatest strengths, and the same is true of Forza 3. It doesn't matter if you're looking to enjoy a private session with friends or hop into a race with random opponents--getting your car onto the starting grid couldn't be easier, and it's hard to imagine how the subsequent races could be any better. Even in multiplayer, detailed environments from all over the world fly by at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour without ever posing a threat to the frame rate, and the game is very smart about knowing when to "ghost" players who have tried to take shortcuts or are in the mischievous minority who think it's hilarious to drive the wrong way and try to crash into other racers. In addition to regular races, online options include Drag and Drift events, as well as three different Tag variants, Elimination races, and team-based Cat and Mouse competitions. As the host of a session, the options that you have to customize these game types number in the dozens, and you can even force players to turn off certain assists or use a specific camera angle.

Those camera options include all of the usual suspects: bumper, hood, cockpit, chase near, and chase far. Another great feature of Forza 3, which will be familiar if you played the previous game, is that at any point during a single-player race or during a replay of a multiplayer race, you can pause the action to take a photograph. The in-game camera has more settings for you to tinker with than the cameras that most of us use in real life, and if you're good at photography (or even if you're not) it's possible to create some impressive images. This is especially true at new tracks like Italy's Amalfi Coast, Japan's Fujimo Kaido, and the United States' Sedona Raceway, which are great additions to the sizeable roster not only because they offer very different and enjoyable driving experiences, but also because they're set in some quite beautiful locations. If you choose to share photos by uploading them to your storefront they'll also appear on the official Forza Website, from which you can download them for posting in forums and the like.

The new tracks offer some very distinct driving experiences.

Other than some load screens that stick around long enough to outstay their welcome before each race, the quality of Forza 3's presentation is uniformly excellent across every aspect of the game. The menus are clean and intuitive, the in-game visuals never fail to impress, and the default audio options prioritize the satisfying roars of the cars' respective engines over the 30-plus licensed tunes playing in the background. Artists on the soundtrack include The Hives, The Fratellis, Fall From Grace, Alkaline Trio, The Qemists, DJ Drunken Master, Logistics, and many more. Regardless of whether or not they're to your liking, there's no denying that the vast majority of the songs on the playlist make good driving tunes.

There's also no denying that Forza Motorsport 3 is a truly special racing game. Not only does it make simulation-style racing accessible to anyone with the inclination to give it a try, but it looks and sounds superb doing it and manages to foster an unusually strong sense of community along the way. If you have any interest whatsoever in racing games, even if you've never played one before, you'd do well to pay a visit to your local video game showroom and become a member of the Forza Motorsport 3 owners' club at your earliest convenience.

DJ Hero Review

2009-10-31T18:52:00.002+05:30

This new frontier in rhythm gaming is electrifyingly fun, but the cover charge is steep.
The Good

* Diverse, entertaining tracklist
* Well-crafted turntable peripheral
* Difficulty levels range from very welcoming to very challenging
* Captures the thrill of creating a hot mix.

The Bad

* Costs as much as two full-price games
* Crossfader tab can be tricky
* Doesn't embrace creativity of actual mixing.

As is the case with almost every rhythm game out there, playing DJ Hero will not prepare you to be an actual DJ. The songs are premixed, the sound effects are preloaded, and the wheel (just one) of steel is actually plastic. Yet, as is also the case with many rhythm games, this is no barrier to having a whole lot of fun. DJ Hero comes with a turntable peripheral that is well engineered and responsive, though it may take a little ingenuity and creative furniture rearrangement to find your optimal playing position. There's a large, diverse catalog of energetic mixes to choose from, many of which are fun just to listen to, let alone play. As you get the hang of tapping, scratching, and crossfading, DJ Hero grabs a hold of you like the best rhythm games do, drawing you into the music and triggering the adrenal rush of performance. Unfortunately, the price of admission to this show is steep: the game and the required turntable cost as much as two full-price games, and significantly more than other single-instrument rhythm games. And those hoping to flex some creative muscle will likely be disappointed with the limited opportunities to do so. Yet despite these drawbacks, DJ Hero is immensely entertaining, and manages to earn its place as a sparkling new star in the rhythm game heavens.
The key element is the wireless turntable peripheral. It's a few inches longer than a horizontally positioned Xbox 360, half as tall, and much, much lighter. It's made up of two pieces: one contains the spinning circular platter, and the other houses the crossfader, effects knob, and other buttons. It is built to accommodate lefties and righties alike, and though it features a few aesthetic touches (like the silver bumps that ring the platter edge), it definitely focuses on function over form. It is so light that it initially feels a little flimsy, but once you get used to it, you'll find it very well suited to the task. The lightness actually encourages you to be more deft with your motions, something that comes in handy once things get hectic.

But don't worry--things get hectic only if you want them to. There is a wide array of difficulty modes to help you get the hang of the relatively few actions you'll have to perform. On the platter are three buttons (green, red, blue), and you tap these to correspond with the note jewels that come down the note highway, much like in Guitar Hero. You hold down one of these buttons and move the platter back and forth to scratch (that is, make that "wikka wikka" sound that people make when they are pretending to be DJs). On easier difficulties, you can move the platter in any direction you want, but as things get tougher, you'll encounter directional scratches that require you to move in certain ways. The noise the scratch makes is prerecorded in the mix, so you don't have any creative control there. The only chance you get to add your own sounds comes courtesy of the effects knob. This allows you to tweak the timbre of the mix during certain sections and lets you choose which of your five preset samples will play when you tap the red button during freestyle sections. You can also earn the ability to briefly rewind the song and play a certain section again. This can be used to boost your score or repeat a favorite section, though it works only in single-player and will occasionally ruin your score multiplier as if you had made a mistake, even if you think you're in the clear. From a creative standpoint, these outlets are minimal, but it can still be fun to add your own spice to the mix.

If a gator-mauled hillbilly can master the crossfader, so can you!

In addition to tapping and scratching, you'll have to start crossfading once you hit medium difficulty. Every track in DJ Hero is a mix of two songs, and crossfader is used to highlight different songs at different points in the mix. The crossfader is a simple gray tab that moves on a slider between far left, far right, and a central position marked by a small divot. When the crossfader is in the center, both tracks play equally and the screen shows your three colored paths of light (green, red, blue) evenly spaced. The green and blue paths represent the two songs in the mix, and pushing the crossfader all the way left or right will also bump one of those two paths out to the left or right. When you are done highlighting one song, you slide the crossfader back to the center position to resume playing both, and this can be a little tricky. The divot in the center serves as an indicator of the center position, but it doesn't catch the crossfader tab. This allows you to fade from far left to far right unimpeded, but it also makes it easy to overshoot the center. Leaving a finger in the middle can help, and applying some downward force can help you hit the divot a little harder, but it's one of the toughest things to master, and it feels like the turntable design could have been a little more helpful in this regard. So you're going to need to practice if you hope to crank up the difficulty. DJ Hero is very accommodating to all skill levels, from rhythm game newcomers to hardcore plastic thrashers. Lower difficulty levels start out with simple requirements, and no matter what level you're on, you can never do so badly that you fail a song and it abruptly stops. If you make a mistake, you may hear awkward static or scratches, and one of the tracks may drop out temporarily. Hitting a note or nailing a crossfade will bring that track back up immediately, and the track will come back automatically after a certain amount of time. DJ Hero is geared toward letting you enjoy the music, and the difficulty levels range from super easy to blisteringly hard. Tougher difficulties require faster and more frequent tapping, scratching, and crossfading, and they challenge you to do many of these things at the same time. You'll also see crossfade spikes, which require you to move the crossfader out and back in a quick stabbing motion. If you nail certain sections, you'll earn euphoria. Activating euphoria with the quick press of a button doubles your score multiplier and automatically performs your crossfades for as long as it lasts.All this can add up to some pretty hectic action, but if you get the hang of it, it's much more exciting and rewarding. This is not just because you are challenging yourself and succeeding, but because you are more deeply engaged with the song. What might be one long scratch section on a lower difficulty can turn into a number of quicker sections with some directional scratches and rhythmic button taps thrown in. You are more active, and your actions more directly correspond with the music pumping out of your TV. It feels less like you're just playing along, and more like you're helping to create music. This is the thrill that the best rhythm games manage to capture, and DJ Hero does it in a unique new way, thanks to the new peripheral and diverse setlist.

From 50 Cent to Blondie, from Dizzee Rascal to Queen, and from Herbie Hancock to Daft Punk, there is a huge breadth of artists represented here, and many of the mixes were produced by famous DJs like Grandmaster Flash and DJ Z-Trip. Some songs are reused in different mixes, like Rihanna's "Disturbia," but each one feels like a unique track, and there are an impressive 93 different mixes. In single-player, you play through themed sets and earn stars for your performances, which in turn unlock new sets, venues, DJs, and gear. You can face off with a friend if you both have a turntable, or you can hop online and find some competition. You can also put another peripheral to work in the DJ and guitar mixes. These mixes aren't the best the game has to offer, but they are a way to get another player involved without two copies of the game. You can also plug in a mic and add your own emcee chatter, but this isn't a big improvement over just yelling.

Background dancers spice up your performances, but your eyes will be glued to the note highway.

A great tracklist and a solid new peripheral make DJ Hero a lot of fun to play, and the music is more likely to get your party going than that of most any other rhythm game. So how much would you pay for it? Games bundled with peripherals are naturally going to be more expensive, but with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $119.99, DJ Hero feels overpriced. It's a great game, but it costs as much as two great games, and though there are downloadable tracks lined up, there's no guarantee you'll be able to use the turntable in any other game. Yet despite the sizable cost, DJ Hero is an enticing purchase. It captures the thrill of spinning together hot songs to make an electrifying mix, and it's one show that fans of rhythm games will not want to miss. Just hope you can afford the cover charge.

GTAIV Ballad of Gay Tony Review

2009-10-31T18:48:00.002+05:30

This superb downloadable episode for GTAIV would be easy to recommend even if it were a full retail product selling for three times its actual price.
The Good

* Luis Lopez is a great protagonist
* Lengthy storyline with loads of varied missions
* New vehicles and weapons freshen up the familiar gameplay
* Option to replay missions for leaderboard high scores once you beat the game
* More new content than many full-priced games.

The Bad

* Visuals are starting to show their age
* Little in the way of new multiplayer content.

The current iteration of Liberty City is home to a great number of interesting people, but until now you've been able to play only as two of them. In Grand Theft Auto IV you assumed the role of illegal immigrant Niko Bellic as he stepped off a boat from Eastern Europe. In The Lost & Damned downloadable episode you played as biker gang member Johnny Klebitz. And now in the The Ballad of Gay Tony, which is being released both as a downloadable episode and as part of the Episodes from Liberty City stand-alone retail product, you play as nightclub owner Tony Prince's business partner and confidant, Luis Lopez.
Despite the fact that he shows no remorse, and even appears to enjoy killing people for money, Lopez is a multifaceted and extremely likable protagonist. In part, that's because he's clearly someone who wants to better himself after doing a stint in prison for dealing drugs as a teenager, even if he's not going about it in a way that any parole officer would approve of. Lopez is loyal to a fault, so while the missions you undertake in his shoes are rarely selfless acts, you often perform them primarily to help other people out. A lot of the time it's his business partner, Tony, whose life needs sorting out, but missions also come courtesy of childhood friends, the always-amusing son of an Arab billionaire, the older brother of a previously prominent character, and a disapproving mother who has fallen on hard times, to name but a few.

Depending on how you play and choose to move around the city, Lopez's never-a-dull-moment story will likely take you around 10 to 12 hours to play through. Mandatory missions are significantly more varied than those in either the original game or the previous downloadable episode. To cite examples would be to risk spoiling some of the most memorable moments, but in addition to the regular gunplay and driving, you can expect missions to incorporate plenty of helicopter combat and parachute jumps, a handful of cage fights, and even something resembling a game of golf. You can also expect to experience some missions from both Niko's and Johnny's stories from a different perspective, which will bring a smile to your face if you've played through them before. All of these missions are a lot of fun, and your performance in each of them is now rated based on the time taken, damage sustained, enemies killed, and other mission-specific criteria. Scores are then uploaded to online leaderboards, and once you've beaten the game, you have the option to revisit any mission in an attempt to improve your rating or just to play through your favorites again.

Base jump challenges with unique objectives are scattered all over the city.
In addition to story missions, Liberty City is again filled with all manner of optional activities--many of which expand upon gameplay mechanics introduced as you progress through the game. For example, base jumping isn't something that you're required to do very often, but it's so easy to grasp and so much fun to do that after your first freefall you'll almost certainly want to check out all 15 of the optional jumps that are scattered across the city. Furthermore, there's a good chance that you'll end up making some of them multiple times, not only because riding a motorcycle off the roof of a skyscraper and then parachuting down onto a moving boat is a blast, but also because each jump has its own objective (typically a target on the ground or a moving vehicle) and is scored in the same way that missions are.

Drug Wars, another optional undertaking, are another great addition. Early on, there's a distinct lack of gunplay in Lopez's storyline, and while that's certainly not the case for the duration, you're undoubtedly going to be looking for an excuse to play with some of this episode's new weapons. Sticky bombs, a .44 pistol, an advanced sniper rifle, and an automatic shotgun with explosive rounds are all excellent additions to the GTAIV arsenal, and they're way too much fun to just have them sitting in your inventory. And that's where Drug Wars challenges come in: There are 25 in total, and they generally involve plenty of shooting as you help a couple of smalltime dealer friends to rip off their rivals.

Are you sure this is the way to the eighteenth tee?

If you'd rather test the expanded arsenal against other players than against street gangs, you can hop into The Ballad of Gay Tony's multiplayer suite at any time via an option on your in-game cell phone. Unlike The Lost & Damned, which introduced a number of brand-new modes to GTAIV, this latest episode only offers modes from GTAIV, albeit enhanced with a few new features. The Free Play mode now seems designed primarily for players who want to make parachute jumps and impress one another with stats that let everyone know how long you were falling for and how close to the ground you opened your chute; Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch games benefit from the inclusion of new weapons and location options; and Race and GTA Race contests (the latter are races that encourage the use of weaponry) play quite differently now that every vehicle comes equipped with a nitrous tank that gradually refills after every death-defying use. New street circuits have clearly been designed with nitrous use in mind, because they incorporate lengthy straight sections and some spectacular jumps.
When you're not taking down drug gangs, jumping from tall buildings, or racing exotic sports cars that have never been seen in Liberty City before now, you might opt to spend some time at one of the nightclubs that you partially own, either partying or putting in some hours at work. If you do the former, you can take part in a simple champagne-drinking minigame in the VIP area or strut your stuff on the dance floor in a rhythm-based game that starts out simple but has the potential to get more challenging if everyone else on the floor decides to join in with a full routine. Other potential outcomes when you start dancing with a girl don't involve gameplay at all, and while they're hardly surprising, they're still pretty amusing.
Working in the club is a quite different experience, and while there's still some interaction with members of the fairer sex to be had, much of your time is spent walking around and keeping an eye on things. Standing in certain spots will shift you to a first-person perspective so that you can look for trouble more easily, but it's a message in your earpiece that alerts you when, for example, a drug dealer is operating inside the club and needs to be ejected. Time spent working in the club isn't particularly entertaining, and it would more or less be a waste of time if it weren't for the random missions that crop up and bring your shift to an end prematurely. These play out a lot like story missions and can include anything from helping a high-profile patron escape the paparazzi to running halfway across Liberty to fetch a snack for a supermodel while her assistant calls you every two minutes for an update.

As you'd expect, there's no shortage of humor in The Ballad of Gay Tony, and while plenty of it comes in the form of phone conversations during gameplay, a great deal of it is deftly delivered during cutscenes that are noticeably longer than those in previous games. Both Lopez and the titular "Gay" Tony Prince are wonderfully voiced and animated, but it's tough to call them standouts because there are so many other characters who are every bit as impressive. The cast is arguably even better than that in GTAIV, which perhaps isn't surprising given that a couple of the best characters from Nico's storyline make cameo appearances in Lopez's.

If you've revisited Nico's storyline recently, or Johnny's for that matter, you've probably noticed that GTAIV's visuals are starting to show their age. It's still impressive to see an environment the size of Liberty City rendered with such attention to detail, but jagged edges and frequent, noticeable texture pop-in are a little more difficult to overlook now than they were almost 18 months ago. The audio, on the other hand, continues to be impressive. The city sounds like a city, vehicle engines have satisfying roars, conversations between pedestrians often raise a smile, and there are even additional radio stations up and running in Liberty now, such as Vice City FM, which you'll love if you were a fan of the '80s music in 2002's GTA: Vice City. Incidentally, you can find new content on the TV as well as on the radio, including not only the latest episode of the Republican Space Rangers cartoon, but also an amusing anime spoof titled Princess Robot Bubblegum.

Liberty City is starting to show its age, but it still looks great from up here.

The Ballad of Gay Tony wouldn't be difficult to recommend as a full retail product, so at 1,600 Microsoft points this downloadable content really is a steal. There's a lot of content here, even if you just play through the superb story without ever checking out any of the optional activities. You might be disappointed that this episode doesn't bring much in the way of new multiplayer content to the table, and it's true that one or two of the optional activities aren't as much fun as they might have been, but the incredible value offered by The Ballad of Gay Tony is undeniable. This is superb additional content for one of the very best games of last year, and you won't want to stop playing it until you've sat through the entertaining and enlightening end credits.