Ok, I know, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 came out, and it is awesome. It has gotten perfect scores all over, and hardly, if any, criticism. With all that said Borderlands kicks CoDMW2′s digital behind. It might just be my opinion, but seriously, play Borderlands.
Review barrowed from Gamespot.com
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. Continue reading »
When it comes to promising new indie games, a dash of originality is usually what gets people’s attention – some memorable feature or twist that helps the game break away from the herd – but in the case of Trine, from Finnish developer Frozenbyte, it’s actually the warm feeling of familiarity. Certainly, anyone who’s been gaming since the early nineties will find it delivers a tasty blend of beloved old flavours, served up in a tangy sauce of modern physics.
The danger when discussing such a classically constructed game, of course, is that it’s tempting to rely on a soundbite tick-list of influences to set the scene, so let’s get that out of the way. The obvious reference points are the side-scrolling exploration of the original Prince of Persia and the three-way ability-based puzzling of Blizzard’s cult 1992 gem, The Lost Vikings. Mash those two together, add a splash of LittleBigPlanet’s physics-heavy gameplay, and you’ve got Trine.
You’re in control of three characters. The first we meet is Zoya, a thief. You guide her through a sacred temple, in a neat opening section that doubles as a simple tutorial, until she stumbles across the Trine – a magical artefact of unknown power. Next we meet Amadeus, a wizard, who investigates the disturbance in the temple and also finds himself bound to the Trine. Finally, there’s Pontius, a gruff knight whose bullish determination to defend the realm makes him the third hapless soul to be caught up in the adventure about to unfold.
From this point on you can swap between each character at will, and use their unique abilities to explore each stage. Pontius has the most obvious default ability – he’s a fighter, and his sword and shield offer essential protection against the various foes ranged against you. His strength also means he’s ideal for smashing through weak obstacles or cutting ropes, and he can also lift heavy blocks and throw them. Zoya, on the other hand, excels in ranged combat. Her arrows can be charged up to shoot across the screen, while her grappling hook makes her the most nimble of the trio, able to swing and swoop to platforms and areas beyond the reach of her companions. Continue reading »
OK…I know this game has been out for a while now, but I
had recently just gotten around to playing it.
After seemingly vanishing from entertainment after the disaster that was “The Pacifier,” Diesel has been popping up with the redone and extended game “Escape from Butcher Bay” newly titled “Dark Athena”, The new “Fast and Furious” movie, and now he’s playing a driver in Wheelman. It’s a game that I wanted to love; the concept shouldn’t have worked, but Diesel has just enough anti-Hero charm that it could have turned out to be a fun title. Unfortunately, all of that charm is completely overshadowed by clunky execution at just about every turn.
While your character may have the likeness and voice of Diesel, you’ll be spending your time in Wheelman as Milo Burik, the persona you take on to go undercover as a wheelman to criminal organizations in Barcelona. A man in a suit explains to you at the start that there’s some sort of incredibly dangerous item on the loose in Barcelona, and it’s up to you to get it. You’ll also get some occasional hints via in-game e-mails that you’re on the right side of the law, and that’s about as much of the story as you’re going to get.
Video games are often knocked for having weak writing when compared to almost every other form of media, and Wheelman is really a perfect example of this. When I say that a story is “difficult to follow,” that means it wasn’t a very interesting story, so keeping track of it can be tough, since I don’t really care. The story in Wheelman is impossible to follow. I really tried to figure out what was going on in the game, and while some missions have very obvious connections to the others, I was never able to figure out what was going on in the main story.
An extreme example was a mission that didn’t have any lead-in. There weren’t any cut scenes to vaguely explain the situation to me beforehand, so when I started the mission, I was given a text prompt that told me, “The tube is at the construction site,” and I needed to get it. When I got there, a three-way gang war going on, and no one was on my side. Everybody wanted this cardboard tube, and I had absolutely no idea why.
Continue reading »
Manhattan Island has suffered all manner of fates in movies over the years. It was attacked by monsters in Godzilla and Cloverfield, hit by tsunamis in The Day After Tomorrow and Deep Impact, and targeted by aliens in Independence Day and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. But though I am Legend comes close, the New York borough has never before been subjected to a disaster quite like that depicted in Prototype. In this fast-paced open-world action game, the military is doing what it can to contain a viral outbreak that’s turning the island’s population into mutants. As amnesiac Alex Mercer, who’s trying to figure out what’s going on, you spend much of your time caught in the crossfire. Fortunately, what Mercer lacks in memories he more than makes up for in agility and superpowers, and as a result, he’s an incredibly fun character to play as in a game that also counts an intriguing story, varied missions, and some memorable boss battles among its features.
At the outset, Mercer is a much easier character to control than he is to understand, especially if you opt to play with an Xbox 360 controller on your PC, rather than a mouse and keyboard. Making giant leaps, gliding through the air, and even running up the sides of skyscrapers are effortless actions. You could probably make it from one end of Manhattan to the other in a straight line using nothing more than the sprint button if you really wanted to, since it’s the only one you need to scale buildings, barge through crowds, and overcome obstacles like cars and rooftop air-conditioning units parkour-style. No fall will ever hurt you, no obstacle is impassable, and there are very few enemies who can keep up with you when you’re at full clip. Combat is also relatively simple early on, but as you progress and learn more about who and what Mercer is, his repertoire of moves grows exponentially until remembering which button combinations or keys trigger which moves in which of his five forms becomes something of a challenge. You certainly don’t need to remember how to use every single move you unlock with evolution points, which are earned by doing just about anything, but it’s unfortunate that even after picking favorites you might find yourself having to hold down up to three buttons (a trigger and two opposing face buttons) simultaneously to perform them. You don’t need to do anything quite that crazy on your keyboard, but there are a lot of keys to remember. Continue reading »
Innovation is risk, and Mirror’s Edge puts everything on the line.
In the opening cinematic, lithe protagonist Faith tells us of the Flow, the way that Runners — information couriers in the game’s sterile, totalitarian metropolis. “Rooftops become pathways and conduits, possibility, and routes of escape. The Flow is what keeps us running, keeps us alive.” While narrative in its delivery, her sentiment echoes the design aspirations of Mirror’s Edge, a first-person adventure like no other where the world is viewed as more than a shooting gallery or a tactile means to an end.
It gets things very right very early, distilling its first-person platformer ambitions into a very manageable control scheme. One button stands in for all “up” actions — jumping, hurtling over obstacles, scuttling up vertical surfaces, and pulling Faith onto ledges — while another is for all “down” actions: sliding under pipes, ducking into vents, and tucking and rolling out of dangerously high jumps. It’s a sublimely simple setup and allows for the level design to take center stage. Once you’re familiar with Faith’s abilities and their limitations — imparted through a much-needed tutorial — it’s easy to see potential routes through the world.
As the setting and story establish themselves, you receive plenty of reasons to run. And Mirror’s Edge is simply at its best when you’re doing so — the game subtly funnels you through its environments, and the visceral momentum of running communicates a need to keep going. Seeing Faith’s hands and feet in her field of vision (when appropriate) and the physicality of her animations — like throwing her weight into opening doors and picking up speed as she runs — goes a long way toward conveying that same urgency.
The surroundings — mostly rooftops, office buildings, sewers, and subways — are meticulously built, aesthetically and structurally. The glimmering, over saturated world is striking in its composition, a vivid but effectively stark interpretation of Mirror’s Edge’s conformist culture. It straddles the line between solitary and lonely; sure, police are regularly at your heels, and dispatcher/fellow runner Mercury is always an earpiece away (assigning objectives and barking at you to keep moving), but the world feels sparse at times and vastly underpopulated with normal people. Scurrying through abandoned office floors is exhilarating, but this could have been even more so with a bustling crowd of worker bees dropping their coffee as you hurtle over their heads. And I’d love to see, say, a mission amid a pack of fellow runners. The game’s few foot chases really get your blood pumping and hint at the possibilities of what a more scripted design focus could accomplish in places.
The zombie apocalypse. Be honest: You’ve thought about it. When most humans have been turned into shambling, flesh-hungry monsters, how will you fare? Whether you fancy yourself an intrepid survivor or an infected savage, Left 4 Dead is the game for you. Battling your way through the grim, desolate world is always tense and challenging, thanks to the unpredictable, relentless enemies. It’s equally thrilling to play as one of the zombies (aka the infected), coordinating deadly ambushes as you try to kill the survivors. Nevertheless, Left 4 Dead’s well-crafted game play simply must be experienced in multi-player. Human teammates (or enemies) make each play-through dynamic, mitigating the game’s two hang-ups: limited map selection and uninspired friendly AI. Despite these hitches, Left 4 Dead is a remarkably fun, excitingly tense game that will make you want to revisit the apocalypse again and again.
There are four campaigns in Left 4 Dead, each spanning five levels. The first four levels end in safe houses (places to heal and rearm free of the zombie menace), and the final level ends in a desperate stand as you wait for your rescue vehicle to arrive. You’ll travel through urban, suburban, and rural areas, each one grim, desolate, and littered with evidence of the apocalyptic event. You never learn exactly what happened, but the rich environments and thoughtful graffiti set the stage expertly. One campaign on normal difficulty (the second of four tiers) takes about an hour to complete, so you’ll soon become familiar with each set of maps. Although the limited selection and grim, overcast color palette can sometimes feel a bit repetitious, the dynamic enemies, varying weapon and ammo spawns, and ever-changing human factor combine to make each play-through feel surprisingly unique.
Left 4 Dead stars four charismatic survivors whose appearances and personalities add an immersive element to the game. They each banter in appropriate, often amusing ways when healthy, and they become more subdued and anxious when injured. The character models are top-notch, and there’s nothing quite like looking at the macho biker when he is injured and seeing fear creep across his face as he begins to doubt that he’ll survive. Seeing the relief on his face when you heal him is almost as satisfying as the relief you’ll feel when your AI allies heal you. Their team spirit doesn’t stop there: they’ll shout out when the find ammo or health, and, crucially, will pick you up when you’ve been incapacitated by an enemy. Continue reading »
A lot of games make a big deal out of player choice, but few in recent memory offer so many intricate, meaningful ways of approaching any given situation. You fulfill or dash the spiritual hopes of an idyllic society, side with slavers or their slaves, and decide the fate of more than one city over the course of your post apocalyptic journey through the Washington, DC wasteland. Your actions have far-reaching consequences that affect not just the world around you but also the way you play, and it’s this freedom that makes Fallout 3 worth playing–and replaying. It’s deep and mesmerizing, and though not as staggeringly broad as the developer’s previous games, it’s more focused and vividly realized.
This focus is obvious from the first hour of the game, in which character creation and story exposition are beautifully woven together. It’s an introduction best experienced on your own rather than described in detail here, but it does set up Fallout 3′s framework: It’s the year 2277, and you and your father are residents of Vault 101, one of many such constructs that shelter the earth’s population from the dangers of post nuclear destruction. When dad escapes the vault without so much as a goodbye, you go off in search of him, only to find yourself snagged in a political and scientific tug of war that lets you change the course of the future. As you make your way through the decaying remnants of the District and its surrounding areas (you’ll visit Arlington, Chevy Chase, and other suburban locales), you encounter passive-aggressive ghouls, a bumbling scientist, and an old Fallout friend named Harold who has, well, a lot on his mind. Another highlight is a diminutive collective of Lord of the Flies-esque refugees who reluctantly welcome you into their society, assuming that you play your cards right. Continue reading »
