Fate/Extra is Type-Moon's latest role-playing game based on Fate/Stay Night, a Japanese visual novel. Like the visual novel, the game boasts an intriguing story that revolves around masters whose servants do their bidding, and also includes stellar boss fights that bring the story's central struggles to life. Unfortunately, poor exploration and repetitive combat undermine the adventure. The result is a game with more novelty than substance--and more plot than gameplay. You should approach this dungeon crawler with caution.
Fate/Extra's unique story entices you to keep playing despite some cliches. After 20 years of peace on Earth, an alien supercomputer hidden within the moon has invited you to fight through a tournament for the Holy Grail, a device that grants wishes. The catch is that it's a tournament to the death--and you're a hapless amnesiac. Together with your legendary soul, a magical servant that fights in your stead, you must defeat other masters in weekly elimination battles to survive. Events leading to these fights are particularly interesting, with each opponent challenging you in different ways. Interacting with your servants is also delightful, because you're given three servants to choose from, and each exudes a different personality. The varied dialogue trees also keep things entertaining, prompting key plot decisions that affect the game's ending.
Surviving in this cutthroat world is difficult enough for any participant, but your amnesia severely weakens your servant. If you want to win your elimination match, you have to level the playing field by unveiling your opponent's techniques during the week before the fight. This investigation period is both refreshing and critical: you can unlock enemy secrets in interesting ways, such as by sparring, snooping, or stealing items. Uncovering the enemy servant's identity also reveals part of its attack pattern, which can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
In addition to scouting your enemies, you must do some exploring, but this aspect is severely limited for a dungeon crawler. You're restricted to 14 simple mazes that are a breeze to plow through, and each incorporates dull item fetch quests. Outside the dungeon, the tournament grounds are reduced to a three-story high school, so you may feel disappointed (and claustrophobic) if you're hoping to investigate a big, bold world culled from the visual novel. Fortunately, a few minibosses prevent exploration from becoming completely mindless.
A rock-paper-scissors mechanic generates some strategy in combat. You're given three maneuvers--attack, guard, and break--and each is strong or weak against another. For example, a guard maneuver counters any attack, while a break cuts through a guard. Though simple, this system hides most of your enemy's maneuvers, so you have little idea what a monster is going to do and how to plan around it. You're also limited to six maneuvers per turn and can issue commands--including heal spells--only at the turn's start. These restrictions turn combat into a guessing game that encourages you to memorize enemy attack patterns. Your servant unlocks pieces of these patterns the more often you fight a monster, which prevents the task from growing too overwhelming.
Unfortunately, several elements make combat frustrating, beginning with your need to slay the same monster a few dozen times to learn its attack pattern. These repetitive battles get tedious, and sparse enemy variety and easy mazes add to the boredom. A handful of skills apply status effects like reduced defense, and help freshen up combat, but you rarely need them outside of elimination fights. The game's restrictive save system is another downside. It prevents you from saving while you're inside a dungeon, which won't seem like a problem until you succumb to an enemy's lucky strike and need to reload. These deaths result from the sheer amount of guesswork involved in planning your actions around an enemy's unknown maneuvers, so they're almost inevitable. They're also highly vexing because they force you to replay dungeon floors due to no fault of your own.
Fate/Extra's most impressive element is its tough elimination matches. These boss battles pit you against an overpowered servant with a skilled master. Your investigation directly impacts these fights; learning everything you can about an opposing team reveals some of its maneuvers, which helps you plan your attacks. This information is useful for blocking your enemy's noble phantasm--a devastating special ability that only servants wield. As if that weren't challenging enough, elimination opponents possess much more health, drastically changing combat dynamics. If you play too conservatively, hoping to slowly peck away at your opponent's health, you die when you run out of healing items. Constantly attacking, however, leaves you open to harsh counterattacks when your enemy guards. The best way to win is to strategically guess at an opponent's unknown actions based on the maneuvers that you can see, although this admittedly involves some luck.
Although Fate/Extra's world seems fascinating, you ultimately experience very little of it. You spend most of your time running around a bland campus, with empty hallways serving as key investigation points. The dungeon is equally boring at the start, but the appearance of waterfalls and animals helps make later hours more vibrant. Character models feature colorful anime-style designs that fit the game's roots but are a bit rough around the edges. The soundtrack could also use some work; the game's saxophone-heavy background tunes are ultimately forgettable. Character voicing, which is in Japanese, relays minimal emotion. The game also fails to translate combat dialogue, so you miss out on your servant's witty battle remarks.
You spend roughly 40 hours battling your way through this tournament. You won't find much in the way of side quests or exploration, but additional playthroughs let you interact with new servants, and unraveling their secrets can be fun. A new-game-plus mode tries to boost replayability, but it falls short: only a few key items carry over to the next playthrough, making the feature moot.
Fate/Extra's gameplay faces some serious hurdles. Repetitive combat and an annoying save system test your patience, while lackluster dungeons add to the tedium. Great boss battles aside, there are simply better dungeon crawlers out there. This one may prove satisfying only for series fans.
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Scene It? Movie Night is a bit like a rare straight-to-DVD sequel that doesn't have as many bells and whistles as its predecessors yet still manages to deliver on the things that fans liked the first time around. It strictly follows the formula of the series and doesn't take any risks, but the movie trivia game is still fun, especially when friends and family are involved.
This Scene It? is decidedly smaller in scope than its retail brethren, but that's not entirely a bad thing. There is only one mode, which is more or less the same whether you play it alone or with up to three other players. In each game, you are given a series of questions spread out across seven "puzzles" or question types. Your goal is to answer each question as quickly as you can because your possible score per question will be counting down with every passing moment. Playing by yourself is merely a quest for a high score, where you see the possible answers to each question from the beginning and are only out to prove to yourself how much movie trivia you know.
The game is much more fun with other players. You can play it exactly the same way, with the only difference being the sense of competition, or you can turn on buzzers. With the buzzers on, the answer choices in each question are hidden until a player presses the buzzer. When one does, players have four seconds to lock in their answers and hopefully get an edge on their competition. The catch is that if a player buzzes in and gets the question wrong, he or she loses points instead of gaining them. It's enough of a risk-versus-reward system to add excitement and a little tension to multiplayer matches.
Both the first and penultimate rounds of questions are always "Movie Clips," where a film clip is played and you have to answer questions about what you just saw. Sometimes the questions are more about the film in general (or a specific facet of it, such as its director), but sometimes, they test how closely you were watching by asking, "How many times did the characters say 'friends'?" or "What color vest was Marty wearing?" These are the most traditional of Scene It? questions, and they feature a good mix of classic films like Back to the Future with some newer hits like The Social Network. You also see a lot of Tom Hanks, but maybe that speaks more to the fact that he is such a prolific actor. There are a limited number of these clips available in the game (enough for roughly 10 games before you see repeated clips), but there are a few different sets of questions for each, extending their value.
Other puzzles have their own hooks, which makes them more interesting than a simple question-and-answer quiz. If you've played previous Scene It? games, they'll likely be familiar. Invisibles removes a character from a still image and makes you guess the actor or movie shown in the image. Credit Roll forces you to deduce a film's title based on its credits (particularly the lesser-known roles). Child's Play shows a childish drawing of a film scene and makes you guess the title, while a similar puzzle, Pixel Flix, has you looking at a movie scene remade with old-school-style game graphics. Some other puzzles have you matching films with actors or related items or ordering films and their events chronologically. The final round is always Quick Pitch, which is a series of rapid-fire clues that you have to match to their appropriate answer. The variety of question types helps keep the game fresh in the handful of hours before you start seeing questions repeated. Groups of questions are randomized rather than individual questions; this allows for questions in a category to follow each other logically, which is nice.
The presentation is bare bones from top to bottom, featuring only simple backgrounds and sound effects as you play. Players don't get any personality features, such as avatar support for the Xbox 360 version or even usernames. Everybody is simply listed as Player 1, Player 2, and so on, and they all have the same icon. The game's announcer is usually OK, but he has so few phrases that you may grow tired of him quickly and want to punch him the 15th time he mentions that a certain song "was huge before you were born." There is also no online play. Granted, this is a game that is absolutely more fun when your competition is sharing your couch, but it's a shame the option isn't there for people who can't get a local group together. If you have the buzzer controllers from old Xbox 360 version of Scene It? you can use them here, but there's nothing wrong with using standard controllers.
As is probably obvious, Scene It? Movie Night is for groups of people that have a love for movies and trivia. You don't have to be a film student or hardcore movie buff, but you do need at least a basic knowledge of movie history, including tidbits about actors, directors, and even a few screenwriters. If you don't know that the time-turner is from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (or at least that it's not from Spider-Man, Star Trek II or The Terminator), then you might be in trouble. Scene It? Movie Night doesn't do anything new or exciting, but if you get the right group together, it can be just as fun as a night at the movies.
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Believe me, I know how you must feel. The gag that kept me from extolling the virtues (and lamenting the missteps) in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has been removed, and yet I don't have a full critique ready to go, complete with numerical ranking. The review embargo was lifted earlier today, and I had planned to have my analysis up by now, but there's still more ground for me to cover in this lengthy adventure before I can offer up my last word. I'm sure you're just as disappointed as I am with this development, and possibly much more so, given many individuals' insatiable love for prerelease information, but it's a situation that cannot be avoided.
Nothing screams "Zelda" quite like a montage.
As of this writing, I am just a shade under 37 hours into my sky-faring quest, and I'm currently trying to figure out how to open the door to the sixth dungeon. As a rule, a frog's thirst can't be quenched with a small amount of water, and wouldn’t you know it, a thirsty amphibian is guarding my path onward. If only there were a bright gold doorknob, maybe with a triforce insignia etched in the surface, to guide me to my next objective. But things are rarely that obvious in Zelda games. As soon as I wrap up this blog post, I'll once again dive into Link's latest adventure and hopefully grab hold of the elusive solution that has momentarily halted my progress, but I thought I'd give you a few of my thoughts before getting back to business.
I've been playing Zelda games for almost 24 years, but I don't remember ever laughing quite so hard in any of my previous experiences. There's some deceptively good writing in Skyward Sword, with subtle jokes often layered into dialogue that hits me a minute or two after the fact. My favorite of these is as much of a visual gag as it is a written one and is quite juvenile, but that doesn't diminish its comedic value one bit. I won't spoil too much of the surprise; just know there is more than one use for a love letter, and some of it can be rather foul.
As good as the writing is, no one plays Zelda games solely for their stories. It's the sense of adventure that is the biggest draw, and it's the secret-filled world that is primarily to blame for my not having finished the game just yet. There is always a new distraction luring me away from the main plot in Skyward Sword, and it's that urge to discover every hidden aspect that makes it so difficult to resist. During my exploits yesterday, I spent a good half hour trying to make my way into an oversized bird's nest to procure a baby's rattle. It may sound like a fool's errand, but I was nicely rewarded for my derring-do.
If he added a few more pounds of muscle, Link could be the next action-movie star.
However, you don't come across side missions quite as organically as in many of the previous games. The fractured overworld lacks a sense of cohesiveness, and most of the floating islands are decidedly barren except for a lone treasure chest sitting in an open field. You usually learn about quests by tromping around the main city, Skyloft, and talking to citizens that have thought bubbles over their heads. There isn't the same sense of discovery you might find in Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time, for instance, where just riding through the countryside could lead you to a hidden cave, mysterious lake, or some other natural wonder.
The overworld is closer to that of Spirit Tracks than previous console games, though you thankfully have much more freedom to move around than those confining rails allowed. Despite the more restrictive nature, there is still a strong push to try your hand at every optional mission because you never quite know what task you'll be handed. Some of them, such as carrying pumpkins, are quite lame, whereas others, such as a baffling one in which you essentially deal steroids to an out-of-shape friend, are intriguing enough that you'll be hanging on every word. Roughly half of the game seems to be made up of these side projects, and they're interesting enough to make ignoring the main quest line for hours at a time fun while you suss out the secrets of this crazy land.
I fear I'm getting a little too specific for my own good now. I don't want to commit to an overly strong position before I wrap up this game, so I must cut off this blog post and get back to adventuring. Look for a full review sometime next week, complete with a breakdown on how well the controls function, the complexity of the dungeons, and whether the bosses are giant pushovers or worthy foes. I can tell you that I am thoroughly enjoying my time with the game. Now proceed to dissect my words to parse out exactly what score I will give and hope time flies by until you can get your own hands on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword finds itself in an unenviable predicament. In the 25 years since its inception, the franchise has picked up a few bad habits. Chief among these are a predictable structure and fetch quests that force you to trudge through hours of ho-hum content before you reach the good parts. However, changing these aspects would require a complete overhaul of the tried-and-true formula, and it could ruffle the feathers of those who seek familiarity. What's a gamemaker to do? In the case of Skyward Sword, Nintendo has kept the elements that have hung like an acidic cloud over past iterations while crafting a new control system to keep it from feeling like the same old game. Unfortunately, the combination is not successful. Inconsistent controls continually torment poor Link, and the predictable structure does little to distract you from these faults. Thankfully, other staples, such as exquisite dungeon design and enticing collectibles, are also present, and the clever storytelling keeps you invested. Ultimately, Skyward Sword commits many of the same mistakes that its predecessors have made, but it still provides enough engrossing content to keep you hooked.
Link gets in all manner of wacky predicaments.
In the opening moments of Skyward Sword, Zelda is seen penning a letter to Link. However, this is not a plea to rescue her from the clutches of evil. Rather, it's a wake-up note for a boy who relishes sleep above all other activities. Zelda and Link spend time together in Skyward Sword where they enjoy the sights of Skyloft, the peaceful city in the clouds they call home. Although Link is his usual mute self, the two have an endearing rapport that makes you hope things work out for these two kids. When a twister plucks Zelda out of the sky, events are set in motion that only Link has the power to rise up against, but this is not your typical Zelda story. There is no damsel in distress here. Zelda is every bit Link's equal, and as the pieces of her own quest slowly come into focus, you appreciate the stirring sacrifice that both of these characters make. The supporting cast members--made up of an absurdly evil villain and one-note citizens--don't resonate in quite the same way. But this is still a well-written story that calls forth a variety of emotions on your quest to free the world from evil.
It's only when you enter your first combat scenario that things begin to falter. Link's sword mirrors your hand movement, so whether you thrust forward or swing horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, you see your actions play out onscreen. In theory, this should open the door to a wealth of exciting possibilities, but in practice, there are enough noticeable issues to keep you from enjoying the sword-swinging fun. The most pressing of these problems has to do with the fact that the game doesn't force you to move with precision. The first time you face a lizalfos, you may circle around until you see an opening and then unleash a horizontal strike when it lets its guard down. Once it recovers from being dazed, the lizalfos charges toward you; once again you circle and dodge until it reveals a weakness. There is some satisfaction in a battle cleanly won, but going through this elaborate charade is both time consuming and ultimately pointless. Instead, you can parry its opening attack and then flail away at its prone body until it's vanquished. By either using a shield parry or landing one sword strike against most enemies, you can stun them and then proceed to waggle your way to victory.
If you decide to be slow and precise rather than quick and efficient, new problems arise that ensure combat does not go smoothly. The Wii Remote has trouble recognizing your different swings. Often, you thrust forward in real life only to watch Link swing feebly in the game or just stand completely motionless. The sensitivity varies wildly so you're never quite sure how much force you need before the game recognizes your actions. As in the aforementioned situation, you may swing your arm while Link ignores you. Other times, you might adjust your grip so you go from holding on your left side to your right, only to see Link lash out at an enemy when you didn't want to do so. Most troubling of all is how the aiming works. There are certain items that require you to aim at the screen. However, the calibration is frequently wrong, forcing you to tap down on the D-pad to recenter. This happens with alarming frequency, and when you find yourself in a heated battle looking directly at the ground, you'll curse the game for damning you with such a cumbersome control scheme.
The control issues don't end with the combat, either. When Nintendo released the first 3D adventure in the series in 1998, Ocarina of Time set a number of standards (such as Z targeting) that are still used in a variety of games today. But that was 13 years ago, and many ideas that worked back then feel downright clunky now. For instance, your camera control is very limited. You can tap Z to center your view or lock on to an enemy, but this is a poor solution because you can't freely scan the environment without switching to a first-person perspective. There are times when you square off against giant foes but your view is almost completely blocked, placing you in a frustrating situation that could have been avoided. Automatically jumping when you run toward a ledge is also included in Skyward Sword, and combined with the troubled camera, you may find yourself accidentally jumping off of a cliff or taking inadvisable angles.
It's a shame that you spend so much time fighting the controls in Skyward Sword because the content is quite enjoyable. Dungeon design is particularly impressive. Recent entries in the series got into the predictable habit of introducing a new item in each dungeon that you would subsequently use to solve most of the puzzles and defeat the boss. Thankfully, that's no longer the case in Skyward Sword, and the experience is much better for it. Now, you need to dip into your bag of tools to figure out the best way to advance. You may need to use your beetle to scout the environment or roll a bomb into a hole, and the unpredictability of the obstacles forces you to carefully consider each scenario. Though you rarely die in combat, there are more than a few situations where you might find yourself stumped. You can solicit advice from Fi, the companion who travels with you, and this advice is usually vague enough to point you in the right direction without spelling out exactly what needs to be done.
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Aliens: Infestation is much like the xenomorph creatures that populate the game's world: fast, unnerving, and utterly ruthless. It is not a game for the faint of heart. This 2D side-scroller harks back to the golden age of 16-bit games like Metroid and Castlevania, in which there was no hand to guide you, no forgiving checkpoint system, and no regenerating health. It's just you and the aliens, locked in battle through tight corridors and unlit rooms where only one can emerge the victor; the other becomes a pile of blood and guts strewn across the bulkhead. It's a game that demands great patience and skill, but rewards you with exciting combat, intelligently designed levels, and a reverent use of the Aliens licence that fills every moment with nail-biting terror.
If a guy goes down clutching his chest in the Aliens universe, chances are it's not a heart attack.
The setting for your terror-filled journey is the Sulaco--the same ship whose fateful journey is chronicled in the film Aliens--as well as some short stints on the alien homeworld of LV-426. You take control of a team of four marines who must investigate disturbances aboard the Sulaco, initially thought to be the work of an enemy faction armed with combat droids. Of course, the droids are just the tip of the iceberg. As you delve deeper into the ship, it soon becomes clear there's something more sinister at work. Hints about what might be happening, your objectives, and references to "The Company" are dropped via messages from your commanding officer, while the dark, moody corridors you explore spring surprises on you, such as falling debris and cats that drop from vents. They might be cheap jump scares, but they do a great job of keeping you just enough on edge to find the inevitable Alien reveal and its tasty human snack a shock.
Once you discover the first alien, things get challenging quickly. The creatures move fast, clinging onto walls and ceilings and springing from underneath the floor. While your trusty pulse rifle can take them down, it takes quite a few rounds to do so, meaning that you spend a lot of time running for your life in the early stages of the game. This isn't always easy. Your marine has a stamina bar, which controls how much he or she can run or use other dodging moves such as jumping and rolling, making for some extremely tense situations. Lifts and doorways become lifelines to safety, and there's a huge feeling of relief as you make it to one with just a whisper of stamina left.
You gain more-powerful weapons such as shotguns and flamethrowers as you progress, and an upgrade system lets you power up your weapons to make fights easier. However, finding them requires a lot of legwork. They're located in hidden vents and rooms, many of which are inaccessible to you until you find an access card, gain new abilities, or find a new weapon that lets you blast your way through. As in the Metroid series, there's a lot of backtracking required to open up areas that were previously inaccessible, and this makes up the vast majority of your objectives. A map on the bottom screen allows you to keep track of your progress through the maze of corridors, with different colours marking out places you've already visited, as well as the location of your current objective.
As your weapons become more powerful, so too do the aliens, ensuring that battles are always challenging. Larger aliens present the greatest threat, but even smaller facehuggers prove difficult to deal with when they're unleashed upon you en masse. Upgrades, ammo, and health packs are constantly in short supply, adding an edge of survival horror to the proceedings. But the tight controls and the splashes of green gore that erupt from aliens make slaying them exciting and fun. Keeping an eye on your health during these encounters is important too, because although you have four marines in your command, you control only one at a time--the rest act as extra lives. (If a marine dies, he or she is dead, permanently.) can runThere are extra marines dotted around the map, but they're usually hidden away in the extremities of the ship. Each of them has a unique personality and tongue-in-cheek text dialogue that's often self-referential. They drop film quotes with aplomb, which will raise a smile with fans of the movies.
Aside from the shortage of supplies, challenging enemies, and lack of regenerating health, you have to manage without a modern checkpoint system. Instead, there are rooms in each level where you can resupply and save your game. These, too, are in short supply. It can be frustrating to have gotten so far, only to be killed and sent back to a much earlier save point, but the fact that they're scattered so sparingly only adds to the tension. Fortunately, there's always a save point nearby before you engage in one of the game's many boss battles--a merciful inclusion given how difficult they are. There's a technique to winning each of them, but it's never spelled out for you, meaning you've got to engage your brain as well as your reflexes with a rifle.
The game's challenging nature means it takes a few attempts to make it through the campaign, but even then you can finish it in around four hours, which is disappointingly short. There's little reason to play through it again either, with no new-game-plus mode or unlockables, save for a knife minigame that's fun for all of five minutes. Still, what's crammed into the short campaign is an impressive nod to yesteryear, with its intelligent level design, thrilling enemy encounters, and mysterious narrative keeping you on the edge of your seat right through to the end. The references to the films are also impressive: the sound of your pulse rifle, the wail of an alien, and the constant blip on your motion detector create a claustrophobic atmosphere that immediately conjures up memories from the films. Even the stylised 16-bit-era graphics do a great job of capturing the look of the movies. Yes, it's hard, and yes, it's unforgiving, but Aliens: Infestation is so well put together, so exciting, that mostly anyone with a DS will enjoy it…mostly.
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When it comes to scaring people, the Japanese do it right. Be it book, film, or game, some of the most shock-intensive experiences have been brought to us by their creative minds. The latest entry in this category is Corpse Story, a game that's filled with unbelievable moments and keeps your attention until the bitter end.
Where the madness begins!
The story revolves around a group of eight students and one teacher. One of the girls in the group is transferring to another high school, so they all decide to perform a ritual to keep their friendship intact, even if they can't be close to one another. Unfortunately, thirty years prior, the school was the site of a horrific kidnapping and the murder of innocent elementary school children. After the events, the school was torn down, and the new high school was built in its place. But the horrors remain.
As the group performs the thought-to-be-harmless ritual, an earthquake occurs, which transports them all to the old school. They've been split up and are unsure if this is just a nightmare, if it's really happening, or if the true nature of their predicament lies somewhere in between. Now they must try to figure out how to reunite and escape before they succumb to the spirits that haunt them.The plot of Corpse Party is broken up into five chapters, and in each one you control different members of the gang. For the most part, this is a story-driven, puzzle-solving game where you need to scour the school looking for specific objects to progress the story.
What makes the game so interesting is how the environments change from chapter to chapter and character to character. These students are technically all in the same school--it is explained that they have been split up into different dimensions--but the layout for one group may be entirely different from that of another group. In one chapter, you may have easy access to the infirmary, but in another one it is completely out of reach. Not only does the school shift from one chapter to the next, but even within a given section, earthquakes might occur that alter where a character can go. Other tricks include having areas magically appear or disappear; you may visit a section and a door materializes, but when you return, the door is mysteriously absent. Because of theses changes, it can be easy to get lost while walking, especially later in the game when parts of the school change a few times.
While Corpse Party's narrative is fairly linear, there are many ways it can play out, and your decisions can alter the adventure. At the same time, there are numerous ways of making a mistake and ending your game. In each chapter, there are multiple ways to finish. There may be items that can help your character in certain situations, but they are not necessarily required to progress. Decisions such as giving items to certain characters, reading journal entries and visiting certain locations over others can impact the plot. Each chapter has one correct outcome that moves the story, but there are also multiple mistake conclusions that result in the character's death and the appearance of a "wrong end" pop-up.
Even when the character has technically died and you are forced to reload the game, you don't get a basic end sequence or death animation if you don't reach the correct ending. These "wrong end" situations have you watch and/or listen to the characters scream for their lives as they face impending doom. There are more than a dozen different "wrong end" sequences throughout the game and very different ways of getting them. In fact, there are many wrong endings that conclude the story, so getting the correct finale requires you to make the right choices.
There are also plenty of shocking moments in Corpse Party. Not only are the various "wrong end" scenarios quite gruesome, but there are numerous situations as you progress that may be a bit unsettling. These include bloody rooms, lynched students, headless foes, and other horrifying sights. These situations add to the feeling of craziness that these children are immersed in.
Although the story flows at a nice pace and the various endings in each chapter strongly encourage a second, third, or fourth go-round, the placement of save points makes having to go through a particular area multiple times a bit of a hassle. In one area in chapter four, a character has only a limited amount of time and is faced with a situation that could play out three ways. If you make the wrong decision or fail to complete the task within the given time, you have to go through the entire lead-up sequence from the previous save point, which can be annoying. Replaying these moments again is even more noticeable considering that most ending sequences, good or bad, last at least a minute. Add the fact that you must return to the main menu and reload the earlier save, which wastes time that could be better spent elsewhere.
The original Corpse Party was released back in 1996 and has seen two remakes since then. While the game still retains the 16-bit look, new character designs for the dialogue sequences have been incorporated. The game also retains the original Japanese voice actors, and they play their parts well. Considering these are school kids, their screams and the horror in their voices only add to the intensity. Music also plays an important part in the game. Early on, the music repeats itself, but as you progress, new tunes add that extra layer and reinforce the crazy circumstances these children are in. On top of that, there are even moments when no music is used; they rely instead on sound effects, such as creaking floorboards, chimes, and other sounds, to keep your attention.
Corpse Party's main story can take roughly six to eight hours if you manage to stay alive and avoid mistakes. There are student ID cards littered throughout each chapter that can be collected. These don't serve much purpose outside of giving you an idea of the other kids who have also fallen victim to the horror. Completing chapters and experiencing certain endings, both good and bad, unlocks additional chapters that shed some light on those fallen characters. These chapters vary from having you complete a task to having you watch little vignettes. These are nice additions that help explain some of the actions of the characters you meet along the way.
Given the rarity of scary and shocking games, Corpse Party is once again a fresh and welcome experience. It's not a difficult game by any means, instead relying on keeping you interested through its gripping story, unexpected twists, and horrific situations. If you crave something that will keep you up at night, this is it.
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From the hypnotic neon landscape and constant barrage of spraying bullets to the way the playing field bends around at the edges of the screen to replicate the look of an old arcade cabinet monitor, everything about the latest entry in the ever-creative PixelJunk series from Q-Games seems designed to push your nostalgia button. That's not a bad thing, but looking past the allure of the dazzling visual design reveals a short, minimalistic arcade shooter with a few faults that almost outweigh the fun. PixelJunk SideScroller's twitchy gameplay evokes fond memories of playing games like Life Force and Gradius, but it feels weak when compared to the PixelJunk Shooter games that preceded it in the series.
Because it's based on an unlockable secret stage found in the previous PixelJunk game, it's not surprising that SideScroller cannibalizes the exact same spacecraft, some of the same foes, and a few other hazards from PixelJunk Shooter 2. Familiar environmental elements like flammable gas, water, ice, and lava also make a return. Taking damage once overheats your craft, and you can restore your two-hit health meter by flying through water to cool down as in the past two PixelJunk entries. But whereas the two Shooter games are geared more toward exploration and puzzle work, SideScroller is all about the straight-up action. Like the old-school classics that the game pays homage to, you pilot your small ship through forced scrolling stages while battling waves of enemy fighters, bullet-spewing sentry cannons, and more elaborate boss encounters. The chaotic dodge-and-shoot gameplay is enjoyable yet straightforward; it's kill or be killed. Unfortunately, some design elements make it hard to do your job.
Your ship's three main weapons options--machine guns, lasers, and bombs--offer a limited means of cutting through the swarms of baddies that come your way. Each can be upgraded independently up to five times to boost its power and reach. Sadly, none of the weapons are totally effective against every foe you face, and switching between them in the heat of combat is unwieldy at best. Instead of triggering each attack with a different button press, you're stuck with cycling through them one at a time using a single button. To make matters worse, every switch is accompanied by an irritating female robot voice whose grating nature further encourages you to pick a favorite and stick with it through much of the game. There's also a chargeable ramming attack, but it's more effective at accidentally getting you killed than taking down foes. The game's checkpoint system sometimes works against you as well. Running out of lives toward the tail end of a stage lets you restart from the last checkpoint infinitely, but it robs you of all your power-ups and makes it tough to progress without starting over. While these limitations do get in the way, it's not that difficult to look past them and still have fun.
SideScroller's biggest redeeming quality is its creative, colorful presentation. Each captivating little area is simply beautiful. The initial simplicity of the glowing geometric stage designs soon melts away into complex networks that spread throughout the foreground and background. There's a lot to soak in, even if you have precious little time for sightseeing with all of the flying bullets and other dangers to plow through. Levels feature a good blend of natural and mechanical obstacles, like crushing pistons, jets of flame, falling rocks, and combustible gas. The boss battles waiting at the end of each run of stages ramp up the clever level designs in intense, multifaceted encounters that are truly impressive. What's disappointing is it takes so little time to cut a path to the final credits. SideScroller's three main stages feature four short levels apiece, and there's an unlockable final boss battle stage too. Tougher difficulty settings featuring crazy visual filters that change the look of the gameworld and frustrating multiplayer co-op that has you sharing limited lives don't offer much in the way of replay incentive.
As visually stimulating as it may be, PixelJunk SideScroller's supershort length and bare-bones arcade shooter gameplay drag down its retro charm a few notches. While fleshing out the bonus stage from PixelJunk Shooter 2 into a stand-alone game wasn't a bad idea, this brief download flounders under clunky implementation. It doesn't hold up well next to its more robust brethren.
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Deadmund, nee Edmund before he was turned into a skeleton, is a precocious boy with a thirst for milk and violence, though not necessarily in that order. When confronted by a bone-white gang of the living dead, he dispatches them with dynamite or skewers them pointy weapons, growing stronger from every being he vanquishes. Hundreds of his cursed brethren fall to your deadly wrath on your way to the head bad guy who has caused you so much trouble, though by the time this face-off occurs, you'll have long grown tired of the repetitive action dragging you down. The novelty of transforming your PlayStation Move into a variety of deadly weapons fades shortly into Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth as you slog through this haphazard adventure.
Unfortunately, the skeletons refuse to stay in the closet.
Deadmund doesn't particularly like being a skeleton. Growing tired of seeing a lifeless skull staring back at him when he looks in the mirror, Deadmund gathers his trusty weapons in search of a powerful amulet that promises to cure what ails him. Deadmund's Quest has a charming appeal that makes your travels immediately engaging. A variety of locales plucked from the Middle Ages serve as the backdrop, and each place you visit, from creepy crypts to unsanitary kitchens, provides its own visual rewards. Though far from a technical marvel, the endearing artistic design could have been torn from the pages of a lovable children's book. However, the same cannot be said for the story. Though there are silly jokes to enjoy, the storyboard cutscenes lack the rich artistry that could have brought these characters to life.
Deadmund's Quest is an on-rails adventure that requires the PlayStation Move. Your point of view is affixed behind Deadmund, though his skeletal frame is transparent so you don't have to worry about him getting in the way. He walks where he wants, when he wants, and camera shifts line up enemies in your sights. The walking portions let you enjoy the view, and there are hidden collectibles you can snag while traveling from one location to the next. However, the majority of the game takes place once you stand still. When you do, enemies rush at you from a variety of angles, and you use one of your four attacks to dispose of them. You have access to a sword, ninja stars, a bow and arrow, and dynamite most of the time (dynamite is the only weapon that has a finite supply), and you switch between them by moving the controller in certain ways.
It's a smooth system that works most of the time. Your sword is your most used weapon and is therefore the easiest to use. Simply moving your arm results in a swing, and the game does a good job of mirroring your attacks. If you prefer an overhead smash, feel free to knock those nasty skeletons on the head every time they come too close. You're rarely forced to move with precision, so as long as you flail your arm with vigor, you should knock your enemies out with no problem. When you reach your arm behind your back, you can pluck an arrow from your quiver. It's fun mowing down attackers from afar, though the aiming execution is lacking. For instance, there are some skeletons that hide behind shields, periodically peeking out to sling projectiles at you. If you point directly at their bodies when they're exposed, your arrow sticks in their shield, so you have to point off to the side of their bodies to actually make contact. Also, the game often takes a second or two to bring up the aim reticle after you've notched your bow. These are small annoyances, but they frustrate nonetheless.
By flinging your arm forward, you toss ninja stars. Like with the arrows, you have an infinite supply of these, which is a good thing because accuracy is tough to achieve. Trying to hit a small target far off in the distance is nigh impossible, though they come in handy when you don't have time to ready an arrow. Your last weapon is dynamite, and though this is used the least, its implementation is the cleverest. To light the fuse you have to cover the glowing ball at the top of the controller, simulating how you would shield the flame from wind in real life. Aside from using weapons, there are a couple of other motions you need to perform. Tilting the controller toward your mouth lets you drink revitalizing milk, though this takes a couple of seconds to register, which could lead to your untimely demise. Finally, by holding the controller to your belt, you activate your amulet, which makes every weapon stronger. Bafflingly, though the motion for this is quite easy to perform, it doesn't always trigger like it should, which can be infuriating when monsters are swarming around you.
The early moments of this game make fine use of the cartoony visuals and immersive controls to suck you into Deadmund's journey. Using your shield to protect yourself from your adversaries' blows and then retaliating with a sword strike of your own embodies the goofy fun the Move controller exudes at its best, and there are enough secrets tucked away in the environment to make shooting your bow recklessly into the background rewarding. However, things begin to fall apart after you tear through a few levels. There's an unrelenting feeling of predictability that suffocates the carefree charm. Despite the change in settings and enemy types, you perform the same basic actions over and over again until the joy has been washed cleanly away. There are only so many times you can bash a skeleton with a sword before your actions lose all meaning, and the uninteresting puzzles and other such interludes fail to ameliorate the repetition.
It's when the difficulty ramps up in the later levels that the wheels completely fall off this wagon. Deadmund's Quest does a lousy job of balancing combat scenarios. Your only line of defense is your trusty shield, though because hunkering down behind it makes you a passive participant in events, you are at the whims of problematic enemy placement. Three arrow-shooting enemies may line up before you, and because their timing is such that your shield is being hit every second, there's no opportunity to mount your own attack. Your only option is to get hit while you ready your own shot, and being forced to take damage results in untold aggravation. Other times, you may have to fight melee and ranged attackers at the same time, monsters that obscure your vision, or pilots who unleash missiles at you, and all of these situations suffer from the same glaring issue. Because you cannot dodge or deflect attacks, you have to take damage if you're going to dish out some of your own.
Two-player competitive and cooperative modes are available if you can stomach more of this adventure once the ending credits roll, but the shallow combat ensures you won't want to spend any more time with this game than you have to. Performing the same actions ad nauseam could make for an entertaining experience if diverse combat scenarios broke up the monotony, but such is not the case here. You swing your sword and loose your arrows too many times to count, and unbalanced fighting only leads to frustration. Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest loses steam early, resulting in a tepid adventure that annoys more often than it delights.
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Tekken Hybrid looks impressive at first blush. This three-part collection includes Tekken Tag Tournament HD, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue, and the movie Tekken: Blood Vengeance. But spend a little time with it and you find a disappointing trio of products that make this frail collection fall flat.
Bryan Fury kicks a lot of Wang in this match from Tekken Hybrid.
The first, and most substantial, inclusion is Tekken Tag Tournament HD. This rerelease of a PlayStation 2 favorite slaps on a high-resolution texture update and calls it a day. For better or worse, nothing else has changed. The classic gameplay is still intact and holds up surprisingly well after 11 years. Naturally, some characters lack the tricks their modern versions have, but it's still interesting to see your favorite fighters' early years and appreciate what they have gained (or lost) since. You can duke it out in Arcade, Survival, or Time Trial mode, but the most unique is still Tekken Bowl.
This goofy minigame takes the fighters out of the ring and into a bowling alley. Instead of throwing punches, Tag's stylish scrappers throw crystal bowling balls into golden pins molded to the likeness of Heihachi Mishima. Each character has his or her own bowling style, which is reflected in the behavior of the power meters.
However, even with a new coat of paint, the game's visuals haven't aged well. The character models shine with a waxy, inhuman sheen and seem to be lit by a static spotlight pointed right on top of them. There's also a recurring graphical issue from the original that persists here. It has to do with the way the arena is rendered against the background. To give the illusion of distance, the foreground area rotates at a faster rate than the background. You can see this split between the two occur, which makes it look as if you fighting on a dirt-colored disk.
Compared to the improvements seen in Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition--which had online support and additional practice modes--Tag HD is a disappointment. Online support of any kind is absent, as are any additional modes or content. It's a shallow release and is not the sort of treatment this great game deserves. And as Tekken Hybrid's anchor, its bare-bones delivery doesn't bode well for the rest of the package.
Next is Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue. In the same vein as Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, this game is a demo for the upcoming fighter of the same name. It brings together four of the primary characters seen in the Tekken: Blood Vengeance movie--Xiaoyu, Alisa, Devil Jin, and Kazuya (also in devil form)--and gives you a painfully limited taste of what's to come. The game feels every bit as quick as its predecessor and even includes a few new tricks you can perform with your tag partner. But while the lack of other modes is expected, the lack of a character move list adds unnecessary confusion.
Tekken: Blood Vengeance is the third and final item on the Tekken Hybrid pile. Unlike Hybrid's other two offerings, this is a CG movie set within the Tekken universe. And in keeping with the bar set by Resident Evil: Degeneration and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, it's completely terrible. As you may recall, the Tekken universe has a slick, cyberpunk style centered on corporate warfare and a global fighting tournament. The movie spends most of its time fleeing from these elements and instead follows schoolgirls Xiaoyu and Alisa as they become best friends and talk about cute boys.
A conspiracy plot involving an immortal teenager and the infamous Mishima family skirts around the edges of the film but is never fully developed. That is, until the film's climax, when a massive battle royal breaks out between several characters we've hardly seen and care nothing about. From a technical aspect, it looks stunning and makes us excited for the cinematic quality of Tag 2. But as a movie, it's flashy and shallow, and is a thin excuse to throw a bunch of fantasy kung fu on the screen.
Tekken Hybrid is a weak offering that attempts to mask three shallow items under the veil of value by rolling them all into one release. Tekken Tag Tournament HD is the only real inclusion of note, but its sloppy graphical overhaul and complete lack of online support hardly make it worth a downloadable release, let alone a $40 retail product. If you simply need a Tag fix before the sequel's release, you're better off dusting off your PlayStation 2 and picking up a used copy of the original Tekken Tag Tournament.
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For a Kinect game to be fun, it has to respond properly to your actions. If you are flailing your hands in the air and there is no response--or even a delayed one--then chances are you won't play for long. Poor control is just one of the problems with Ubisoft's MotionSports Adrenaline, a collection of six "extreme" sporting activities. Unfortunately, these promising activities are rendered almost unplayable by unresponsive controls, limited options, and noticeable glitches.
Gliding down a mountain looks more like bouncing due to the unresponsive controls.
MotionSports Adrenaline offers six intense sporting events: rock climbing, kayaking, kite surfing, mountain biking, skiing, and wingsuit skydiving. Each sport has the same race objective where you complete a given course in as little time as possible while collecting coin pieces that are scattered throughout the course. Though racing fast and collecting points are important, performing stunts and avoiding obstacles that come your way also contribute to your score.
The first problem with the game is that there is no easy way to learn how to perform the given actions for each sport. Outside of the basic visual aids that appear in the loading screen, there is no tutorial to show you the right or wrong way of approaching each action. In general, the controls are pretty basic: Shifting/tilting your body left or right will move your character on the screen in that direction, but sports that have you holding onto an object do not respond to your actions in a timely manner. In both mountain biking and kite surfing, you hold onto an object--the handles of either a kite or a bike--but to turn the handles, you have to shift your hands either left or right. In almost every race with these two particular sports, the motions required for turning left and right often register only intermittently or after a noticeable delay. On courses where a number of obstacles are in your way, the likelihood of hitting one is greater because the sensor won't recognize the actions in a timely manner.
To help you earn points to better your score, certain onscreen stunt markers appear. These typically direct you to throw your arms or legs in a particular direction and mimic the image on the screen. In most races, there is a noticeable delay, and any gesture that requires you to have one arm hover over your torso is almost never acknowledged. Rock climbing suffers from the weakest recognition, though. The objective here is simple: Climb to the top of a cliff while avoiding the various obstacles that come your way. The problem is that most motions require you to lift your arms above your head, pretend to grab something, and then bring your arms down to your chest. When done properly, your character should move up to the next available section of the mountain, but in most cases, the Kinect doesn't pick up the gesture, which just leads to further frustration.
There are three modes available. Quick Play lets you play either alone or with someone else. The more you play of a particular activity, the more courses and boosts for the game's cast of characters become available. Each sport has only two or three courses available, so it won't take long to unlock them all. If you are connected to Xbox Live, race challenges pop up periodically. In some cases, you need to reach a checkpoint in a certain amount of time or collect enough coins before reaching a checkpoint.
While it's nice to have these challenges, there is no clear indication as to when they start or finish; they just randomly appear. As you race, a notification will pop up saying that there is a challenge that you need to beat. At the same time, you issue challenges to other players, but you won't have any idea of what you have specifically issued. This leaves you guessing as to what some other player will have to accomplish.
While a second person can play with or against you in all races, having a number of friends around allows you to participate in the game's multiplayer mode. In Adrenaline Party, you and up to three friends play in 10 randomly chosen activities with the person or team with the highest score after 10 events being declared the winner. The mode itself is nice because it randomly selects the games that the groups take part in, but without a proper tutorial, those who play for the first time may not have much fun alongside those who are already accustomed to dealing with the irksome controls.
Skiing a great race even with a pesky notification.
The final available mode is called You Against the World and has you competing against other online players. Unlike the challenges that pop up while racing in Quick Play mode, these offer event-specific requirements where you try to rack up a better score than other players. These challenges might have you finishing a course within a certain amount of time or collecting a specific number of coins, and they can only be unlocked by logging into Ubisoft's Uplay service and redeeming Ubipoints. It's an unnecessary obstacle that clearly exists only to ensure that you create a Uplay account if you don't have one already. It might also force you to quit out of the game entirely; upon leaving Uplay, you're greeted by a "Please stand in front of the sensor" message that obscures part of your screen and can only be removed by going back to the dashboard.
MotionSports Adrenaline is a mess. With so few extreme sports games currently on the market, this could have been a great opportunity for Ubisoft to lure in an audience eager to experience the exhilaration of skydiving from an airplane or climbing a mountain. Instead, this is a game that most people will begin to play, get frustrated with, and quickly turn off. Even after learning to cope with the game's shortcomings--of which there are many--trying to lure others to play along with you will be quite the challenge.
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BurgerTime never gets its just desserts. This '80s arcade classic from Data East was a big hit back in the glory days of the quarter gobbler, but the game never seems to hit many top 10 lists and has been all but ignored in the rush to port everything from Pac-Man to Time Pilot to contemporary consoles. But burger-tromping (and likely health department-violating) chef Peter Pepper finally makes his return in BurgerTime: World Tour as an Xbox Live Arcade effort from developer MonkeyPaw Games. Unfortunately, once you get past the nostalgia evoked by battling sinister foodstuffs and listening to the memorable musical score from 1982, the game turns into a frustrating muddle.
At first, however, this new BurgerTime comes off a bit like the old BurgerTime. You take on the role of mustachioed chef Peter Pepper (or your Xbox avatar) in a surreal world. Burgers are put together by running around floating scaffolding and stomping on patties, cheese, tomatoes, buns, and other fixings that were probably damn delicious before Pete got his size-10 loafers all over them. Every time you run across one of these items, it falls a floor down and is one step closer to its final destination on a big plate at the bottom of the level. Of course, making burgers in this rather athletic fashion isn't as easy as it sounds. Enemy foods like eggs, hot dogs, and pickles aren't too happy about Peter's love of red meat, so you have to dodge them, crush them by dropping ingredients on them, or send them on a ride down when you run over the burger fixing of your choice. With one touch from baddies, you die, so it's fortunate that you can stun them with the blasts of pepper that were your one weapon back in 1982. Or you can take advantage of new features like the ability to jump and employ power-ups that include a whirlwind spatula attack and rockets that boost you to upper levels without the use of ladders.
The above recipe could have made for a welcome BurgerTime update, but developer MonkeyPaw Games pushed things a little too far and turned the game into a complete reenvisioning of the original. The biggest issue here is 3D level design and an odd camera perspective. Instead of playing against a flat Donkey Kong-style arrangement of ladders and girders as in the original game, you express your love of artery-clogging treats in kind of a theater-in-the-round setting where the camera revolves around the whole map. This concept is totally unnecessary and confusing, so much so that the developers had to add an arrow pointing you to the next burger to be stomped. Even with this navigational tool, the circular perspective and busy level design lead to a lot of frustration. You get lost a lot and inevitably run straight into unseen enemies coming around the curvature of the maps. Giant scowling hot dogs just shouldn't be able to sneak up on you as they do.
Controls and collision detection are also off. Peter slides around on burger patties and tomatoes like a sports car on black ice, and he can even careen off of plain-old platforms. Because the game requires a lot of precisely timed jumps around collapsing and flipping floors, the lack of fine control leads to many untimely deaths. Even when you don't die, it's too easy to miss jumping targets and wind up falling down to the start of levels like you were on a bad streak in a game of Snakes and Ladders.
For what it's worth, there is a lot of content here. There are dozens of levels in the game spread out among campaigns set on the city streets of New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Mexico. Everything looks pretty good, too, although the cartoony attractiveness of the settings is offset by all of the detail. The backgrounds are as cluttered up as an episode of Hoarders. So it's easy to lose sight of enemies and even run into a corner with a pack of hot dogs in hot pursuit because you didn't notice a wall. Sound effects are updated with a nod to the old game, with a remastered version of the original score that's pretty catchy, along with cute additions like growling eggs. The challenge factor is high right from the beginning, with lots of fast-paced levels strewn with enemies, condiment-blasting cannons, giant impaling screws, loads of soaring platforms, and huge burgers you can stack. So you'll likely need a good six or seven hours to plow through the entire single-player experience, which is pretty good value for an 800-point ($10) XBLA game. Split-screen and online multiplayer let you duke it out with rival chefs in timed burger battles, but neither is very playable. It's difficult to get into a quick match because almost nobody is playing, and split-screen local play scrunches the maps so much that it's hard to see what's happening.
Stick with the original. BurgerTime: World Tour has its heart in the right place and evokes fond memories of a nearly 30-year-old classic arcade game, but the 3D perspective, control problems, and too many ill-advised additions to the basic formula make this one hard burger to get down.
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Sonic and his furry posse haven't had the best run in recent years, but the ailing hedgehog finally returns in good form for his latest outing. Sifting out most of the cruddy elements from recent games that soured longtime fans and pushed some folks away for good, the development team hits a real sweet spot with Sonic Generations. Blending the tried-and-true classic 2D Sonic gameplay of the '90s with a refined, tighter version of Sonic's recent 3D jaunts yields a nostalgia-laden experience that favors blazing speed over schlocky gimmicks. When you add high replay value and a heap of extra goodies to that winning formula, you get one of the better Sonic games in recent memory.
No matter which Sonic you prefer, Generations has something for everyone.
Generations stars not one but two different versions of Sonic that coexist simultaneously in the same realm as a result of the game's time-bending plot setup. An upbeat picnic party gets ruined when a dark, powerful menace sucks up all of Sonic's pals and scatters them through time and space. Left stuck in a void, modern Sonic meets up with his retro self from the 16-bit era, and the two team up to recover their buddies and set things right. The story is laced with pleasantly light humor and serves as the vehicle for bringing the old and new eras together. Saving your friends trapped in time on the hub world requires you to warp back to memorably reimagined stages culled from past Sonic games. You have to tackle every level twice--once with the old-school Sonic and once with the modern Sonic--and that might sound like a cheap way of extending the adventure, but each hero's run offers a very different experience.
Playing as the original Sonic has you zipping through the undulating side-scrolling stages to collect gold rings, stomp foes, and navigate tricky platforming sections in 2D in a similar manner to the old-school games. Armed with just the spin dash and a need for speed, old Sonic brings back a great classic vibe. Returning for Act Two as the newer Sonic delivers a behind-the-shoulder, forward-moving 3D perspective that sometimes shifts to 2D for intermittent stretches. They're faster-paced runs that cover familiar terrain without being copy-and-paste repeats of the same stage designs. Modern Sonic has alternate moves like midair homing attacks and a speed boost instead of the typical spin dash. Both hedgehogs have somewhat unique moves, and each handles a little differently. The controls can feel a tad clunky when shifting between the old and new characters, and it's easy to lose track of what set of abilities you're working with during the common 2D stretches in each act. That's something that you get used to with time, though. There might be moments when you jolt to a dead stop or struggle through some of the platforming sections, but the challenge isn't so steep that you can't overcome the game's tougher areas with a little practice.
While the punchy, speed-driven gameplay keeps Generations upbeat and flowing, it's the impressive level designs that really seal the deal. Outside of the hub world, all of the main areas you explore are updated re-creations of stages pulled from a handful of past Sonic games. Multiple paths are the order of the day here, and obstacles like moving platforms, springboards, spikes, water areas, foes, lasers, and tons of other varied challenges are sprinkled generously throughout each branching route. Levels are also a real visual treat. Regardless of whether you're playing as old or new Sonic, the bustling background scenery shifts and pulses with life beyond the chaos erupting in the foreground. There's a ton of detail crammed into every area, and though much of it speeds by at a breakneck pace, it's gorgeous when you spare a second to notice. More deliberate transitional sections where Sonic gets chased by a rampaging truck armed with whirling buzz saws, hops across the noses of leaping killer whales, or rides a missile skyward really add some stellar flourishes too. Though few in number, the epic boss encounters showcase a similar pizzazz.
The collection and speed-run-focused vibe in Generations naturally encourages replay, but there are also a lot of minigames and content to unlock. Some are integral to progressing deeper into the game as well. After completing the main acts in each section of the hub world, you have to collect three keys to unlock the door to the next boss encounter. Gaining access to the key requires completing a series of minigames, such as racing duels, rival battles, and score challenges. Some are more enjoyable than others, but you can pick and choose which ones you want to play to unlock the key. With the main stages, the optional minigames, and the desire to go back to get a perfect score, there's enough content to chew on for a long time if you feel so inclined.
Mixing the best elements from old and new Sonic games together into a seamless experience works out amazingly well. It's clear the Sonic team went above and beyond this time around to spit shine this game into a thing of beauty. It may have missed a few warts here and there, but Sonic Generations doesn't skimp on the speed or the fun.
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Alas, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, your time is spent. We had some fun times--remember when Sentinel was steamrolling everyone?--but now it's over. Developer Capcom has dug you an early grave to make way for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the $40 follow-up that, for some, has come much too soon. Regardless of how you feel, the game is here, and it is the superior version, with new characters, stages, and rebalanced gameplay. Of course, it's also just as challenging as before and can break your heart with a single combo. It's mean, it's flashy, but most importantly, it's Marvel, baby!
Watch the entire cast of UMVC3 line up alphabetically and unleash their hyper combos on poor ol' Hulk.
Watch enough high-level matches in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and you see a few definite styles emerge. Players gravitate toward Wolverine, Wesker, She-Hulk, and others for their ability to relentlessly assault opponents and lock them down in close-range combat. Even Dormammu, with his fancy black holes and energy pillars, spends most of his time teleporting into melee range. The rush-down game has stolen the spotlight, and now Ultimate wants to make it share. The game has dedicated almost half of the new roster to favor zoning, or fighting at a distance, in the hopes of cracking the original's single, all-encompassing strategy.
Joining the roster are 12 new fighters, many of whom personify the game's overall shift in focus. Together with the original cast, they raise the game's collection to an impressive 48 fighters--just eight shy of Marvel vs. Capcom 2's total. Some of these newcomers, such as Iron Fist and Nova, are hard-hitting, straightforward brawlers. However, roughly half favor fighting at a distance or with unorthodox tactics. Consider Doctor Strange, the sorcerer supreme whose numerous projectiles range from homing disks to a fireball that can ricochet across the screen before striking its target. His long-range antics aren't new to the series, but they were rarely used in the previous game during competitive play.
Of course, this shift won't happen overnight; players naturally stick to what they know. But as the game and the community grow, hopefully these new styles will take root. In the meantime, there are some other core design changes to explore. Team aerial combos, another rarely used mechanic in MVC3, have been granted extra incentive. Now, the direction in which you tag out your character causes different effects, such as giving you an additional super meter. X-factor, the game's comeback mechanic, has also been scaled back in power and normalized across the cast. It can even be activated in the air.
The returning characters received a lot of love in this new release as well. The strongest characters haven't been brought down; instead, the rest of the cast has been brought up to match their strength. These changes manifest in new moves for some characters and new properties for existing moves for others. For instance, Magneto has a new move that physically drags his opponent around the screen, while Shuma-Gorath's throw now drains super meter from its opponent. Take a look at your old favorites, and chances are you'll discover new tricks that weren't possible before.
Luckily, you're not on your own to discover these changes. The game's mission mode, which teaches new players the basic moves and combos for the cast, has been updated to accommodate all these changes. The 12 new characters have their own mission sets, while the veterans' missions have been updated. Unfortunately, this mode still has issues in the way it presents information, so if you don't know your Gram from your Ragtime Shot, then you'll constantly have to pause the game and dive into the menu to see the move's input. Being able to watch a demonstration of the current mission would also have been appreciated.
Aside from the tweaks to mission mode, the gameplay offerings in Ultimate are nearly as limited as in its predecessor. There's a new Galactus mode that lets you hop in the driver's seat of the game's final boss. However, stomping through the single-player arcade mode gets old fast. The Shadow Mode DLC is altogether absent from Ultimate. Its likely replacement is the upcoming Heroes and Heralds mode, which Capcom has announced will be released "postlaunch" as a free DLC. The mode has you collecting cards and assigns them to your three-person team to unlock new bonuses and abilities. For now, however, its absence is felt, and the game's variety suffers for it.
One feature that fans were dying for in the original release that has made it into Ultimate is spectator mode during online play. No longer are you confined to watching two sets of life bars tick down while awaiting your turn; now you can see all the action for yourself. Ultimate also brings with it the online performance updates the original received, leading to a more consistent connection rate. Sadly, online still lacks the replay support enjoyed by Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition; a feature which could have served as an excellent teaching tool.
Ultimately, Ultimate is still a monster hiding under an attractive coat of flashy combos and familiar characters. It may feel inviting at first, but sink a little deeper, and you discover a game in which victory and defeat hinge on a fine line. It's a high-risk, high-reward system that buries you in a brightly colored light show on the slightest misstep. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is unquestionably the superior version, and while its feature set still feels lacking compared to other available fighters, the series' unique blend of structured insanity remains strong.
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The War of the Worlds famously scared a large audience when Orson Welles adapted it into a radio drama in 1938. Today, H.G. Wells' classic tale frightens susceptible players for a completely different reason, with a game that is incredibly hard and disappointingly stale. It combines an interesting premise, appealing visuals, and 2D gameplay influenced by some of the greatest classic and modern platformers, yet it misses much of what made those other games special.
The War of the Worlds makes a good first impression. Patrick Stewart provides a great narration of the story, which takes place in London during the Martian invasion of Earth, staying true to the setting of Wells' novel. Your character, Arthur Clark, is desperate not only to survive but also to find his beloved fiancee and brother. The 2D visuals look nice, with tons of graphical layers in the background and foreground to give environments life. The character animations are all rotoscoped, which is evocative of classic platformers like Prince of Persia and Flashback. Your first few minutes running and jumping feel fine, albeit a little clunky. The controls are simple, with a button that controls both running and interacting with objects (a fact that can become problematic later), a button to jump, and a button to use an axe once you find one. There's not a lot to keep track of other than staying alive as you make your way through the crumbling environment as humanity is destroyed.
But the controls don't easily allow for the speed and precision that the game quickly starts to demand. For the context of the story, the necessity of speed is great. Death is almost always looming in The War of the Worlds, giving a great sense of urgency and a feeling of hopelessness. Martian tripods, drones, and black smoke are hunting for you. You can't fight; you can only run, which fits the source material. But the way the game controls and the things it wants you to do don't mesh well, and the result is frustrating. It's not that your obstacles become challenging in such a way that you can only blame yourself when you fail; rather, you will start cursing the game's mechanics for asking you to line up pixels just right to allow you to grab onto a ledge. If you're smart enough to recognize that an inconspicuous switch on a wall is usable, you still need to stop in the right spot to use it, which can mean death when poisonous black smoke is a split second behind you and you can't get lined up correctly. You spend more time fighting to make your character do what you want him to do than making grand escapes.
There are moments when the game comes painfully close to being great; this is the case when a promising puzzle mechanic is introduced or when everything moves smoothly in a fun and cinematic way. But something always gets in the way to ruin any momentum the game builds. This happens in a literal way during a level in which you're running across crumbling rooftops away from a Martian tripod. While running, you eventually come to what appears to be the end of the line; there are no more roofs to jump toward and taking a leap of faith would result in your death. The solution to this "puzzle" is to wait for a few seconds until a building below is levitated toward you, making it safe to jump on and keep running to the right. Up until that point in the sequence, however, the game has taught you not to stop and not to look back, lest you become another victim of its new alien overlords. Thus, stopping there feels counterintuitive.
This formula of promise and then disappointment follows throughout the game. Some areas are dark and properly moody, but they end up being so dark that you can't see essential elements like ladders or enemies, and you may find yourself dead without knowing why. Sometimes cool things take place in the background of a level, but they distract you from objects that you didn't realize were a threat to you. Some enemies might have been fun to avoid, but terrible hit box detection and other issues make them infuriating instead. If you die in the wrong spot, you repeatedly hear snippets of Stewart's narration, and his voice may begin to grate on you. Then there are the moments when the game thinks you've died, like when you've fallen just far enough for the game to think there's no way you could have survived despite the fact that you've gotten up and can control your character as the screen fades to black and reloads your last checkpoint.
The War of the Worlds is disappointing because it had so much potential. Many elements of the presentation are begging to be in a better game, but it feels like a product that was ushered out the door before it could be properly balanced and tweaked. If you're the kind of person who fondly remembers the demanding, brutally difficult moments in old games like Karateka, the first few hours of The War of the Worlds might stimulate some nostalgic reminiscing. But you're better off replaying those classics and letting the aliens win this particular war.
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Straddling a thin line between demanding and forgiving, Rayman Origins is a rare 2D platformer that owes a debt of gratitude to the past without being burdened by it. There's an unyielding level of difficulty bubbling beneath the surface of this terrific side-scroller, but it's complemented by a decidedly modern abundance of checkpoints and infinite lives so that your fate rests squarely in your own hands. Combined with a relentlessly charming art design that's equal parts absurd and beautiful, Rayman Origins is a platformer that gives you every last reason to keep running along in spite of any challenges you encounter.
As visually impressive as Rayman Origins is, its delightful music is nearly as enjoyable.
Rayman Origins is a living, breathing testament to the artistic capabilities of a 2D canvas. Every one of the game's numerous landscapes is filled with rich, hand-drawn detail, from the lush foliage of Jibberish Jungle to the flurrying snowfalls of Mystical Pique. There's an almost eccentric level of variety on display here. One moment, you swim through a haunting underwater abyss; the next, you leap across an industrial cooking pot full of molten lava in some hellacious version of a Mexican restaurant kitchen. Whether it's your own character or the many different enemies you encounter, the 2D animations are wonderfully fluid and impress a strong kinetic energy onto every last bit of movement.
And move you do; this platformer is built with the idea of player momentum firmly in mind. Most levels are intricately designed pathways built to encourage a quick pace, with rapidly transforming (often crumbling) environments, wide gaps, and enemies that frequently get the best of you if not attacked head-on. Fortunately, the tight, responsive controls in Rayman Origins give you every tool you need to accomplish this left-to-right journey. You start only being able to sprint and jump, but you eventually unlock new abilities, such as gliding through the air and running up walls or ceilings. And no matter how extravagant your move set becomes, the game always responds precisely to your inputs.
That's a good thing, too, because Rayman Origins is a deceptively challenging game. Though it starts out easily enough, the difficulty curve moves on a constant, gradual upswing. Later levels become twisted death traps outfitted with swinging radial saws, spike-covered monsters, and crashing electrical storms. Yet none of it ever feels cheap; you're always in control, and the sensation of darting through these intricately placed hazards makes for an extremely rewarding experience. You never need to worry about having to repeat entire levels over and over again either, thanks to the game's generous use of checkpoints. The difficulty exists--palpable and ominous--but there's nothing artificial about it.
The one area where the difficulty curve falters is in the game's small handful of boss fights. In keeping with the game's uniformly delightful aesthetic, these creatures are always a sight to behold, but they're an inconsistent bunch where your thumbs meet the controller. The challenge posed by these bosses holds little correlation to the sequence through which they're unlocked. It's a random smattering of encounters where one particularly harrowing fight is immediately followed up by a relatively easy one, which creates a weird inconsistency in an otherwise very consistent game.
Fortunately, boss fights don't offer the only change of pace to the game's core 2D platforming. One recurring palate cleanser has you jumping on the back of an adorably angry pink mosquito and shooting your way through a series of hazards that range from easily startled puffer fish to heat-seeking missiles. These levels are a blast and feel like a vintage shoot-'em-up covered in a thick layer of Rayman Origins' absurdist humor. Other notable examples of switching up the standard formula include levels where you have to frantically chase an equally agile target and subdued journeys through an underwater landscape of beautiful but deadly sea creatures.
Throughout all of this, one persistent element of Rayman Origins is the sheer abundance of collectible doodads strewn across every chunk of landscape. Everywhere you go, you find things like lums (the game's version of coins), hidden challenge rooms, and other scattered rewards placed in treacherous locations, which often puts you at odds with your own survival instincts. A few of the benefits are purely cosmetic, like collecting enough items to unlock new character skins. But unfortunately, the level progression system suddenly becomes very demanding once you cross into the second half of the game, forcing you to go back and replay prior levels that you didn't already scour for collectibles with an obsessive-compulsive attention to detail.
However, the forced replaying of previous levels--or any levels, really--becomes an altogether different experience when played in local co-op. Rayman Origins uses a dead-simple system of drop-in/drop-out co-op that allows up to four players to run and jump through every single level of the game. It's a hilariously chaotic form of multiplayer where the risk of being accidentally smacked around by a teammate cancels out the built-in advantage of having a few extra hands along for the ride.
Whether you choose to approach this adventure by your lonesome or with three friends, the fact remains that this is a charming, gorgeous, and thoroughly entertaining 2D platforming experience. Rayman Origins draws a lot from the past, but it does so while managing to feel fresh and full of life. This is one worthwhile journey no matter which era it's from.
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When your name is Sylvester Stallone and you decide to tell the story of a group of military mercenaries who save a country from an evil dictator, you call that project The Expendables, and you put together a dream team of action stars that includes Jason Statham and Jet Li. When you are a game developer with a similar vision, you partner with a real-life military organization and add Kinect support and online leaderboards. You try something unusual but greatly flawed, and call the game Blackwater.
Inspired by the military contracting group that was known by the same name until 2009 (but that now calls itself Xe Services LLC), the Blackwater video game is an on-rails shooter that places you in the shoes of four mercenaries who have been hired to bring democracy to the fictional North African country of Harri. Kinect support is substantial enough that you can play the entire game using this method. Unfortunately, the game demands more from you than perhaps it should. Though Blackwater takes place on rails, like the recent Resident Evil light-gun games, there are frequent stops along the way. Battles are often fought from behind crates, vehicles, or doorways. That means you are frequently forced to duck for cover, or you need to take quick steps to the side so that you put yourself out of harm's way as you reload. There are also sequences throughout each stage where you have to perform actions such as jumping across gaps or busting down doors. Kinect play can be exhausting if you don't take breaks, and it can be difficult to manage the required precision and speed even when you're energetic.
If you play with the Kinect control scheme, you'll likely feel a bit like Tom Cruise near the start of Minority Report. You stand facing the screen, and you hold out your left or right hand to direct the aiming reticle. If you want to fire on an enemy, you let the onscreen reticle hover over him for a moment, triggering a burst of gunfire. It's all too easy to fire on a nonthreatening target by accident as you swing your weapon around toward a primary target (helpfully highlighted in red so that you know it's a threat). The result: wasting ammo on civilians, and having to pause and reload while still being fired upon by enemies positioned above you or to the side.
The alternative to the Kinect is the standard Xbox 360 controller, but going that route is no less punishing. The right analog stick controls movement, but not consistently. Moving the stick left swings your perspective to the right most of the time, but occasionally the opposite is true. There's a setting in the options screen to invert the y-axis, but you're stuck with whatever potentially illogical controls the game deems most appropriate in a given situation. Until you adapt to that dynamic, it can lead to frequent instances when you're trying to duck behind a pile of crates to recover from getting hammered with enemy fire, but instead you roll out into the center of an area and soak up even more bullets.
Even on the easiest difficulty setting, the game isn't especially generous about how many hits you can take in rapid succession before you drop to the ground and someone calls for an evacuation. In some cases, you might be fighting through a garage or similar area, and step out from behind a vehicle, take a hit or two from an enemy you didn't notice, and then drop to the floor in a heap. Frustratingly, such moments are most likely to occur at the end of a mission. There are checkpoints throughout each stage, but they don't serve their usual purpose. Your time spent reaching a given checkpoint is noted and recorded, but you are taken back to the start of a stage if you fall in battle. As a result, you might need to replay a 30-minute section just because of a 15-second spot that gives you trouble.
Some of that forced repetition is likely intentional. Blackwater's campaign is short, and certain elements of the game seem specifically designed to pad its length. Worthless checkpoints are one such measure. Alternate routes are another. As you work through each stage, you can choose from two directions at key points. Differences are usually slight. You might circle left around a building instead of traveling right, for instance. The game keeps track of which routes you've taken and rewards you for exploring everything. There are also collectible items that you gather by shooting them. About half of them aren't noticeable until you're moving past them, forcing you to replay each stage a second or third time if you want to gather everything. Finally, you gain experience each time you play through a stage, and that experience unlocks automatic upgrades so that your characters can aim better or recover energy more quickly.
The problem with such measures is that they artificially extend a game that isn't very good in the first place. Better games provide characters and a story that propel you through the action, tough spots included. Blackwater fails on that score because its story is generic and badly presented. While character models for the main team are generally credible, dead eyes aside, the people you're trying to save feel like part of an attempt at parody. Poorly voiced dialogue with odd tonal inflection only worsens matters. The writers also tried to establish some personality for the team members, but too much dialogue is recycled. In combat, the chatter becomes ridiculous as men dash from location to location and call each other "old man" or "boss man" or "sire" and thank one another profusely between nearly every burst of gunfire. Almost nothing that anyone says sounds natural.
Should you tire of the single-player campaign, you can head to a competitive mode and challenge your friends. Up to eight people can take turns delivering their best performance in five arena challenges, which can turn into hour-long exercises if every player is reasonably skilled. You'll likely have the most fun with only one other player. It's difficult to imagine eight people gathering together for some Blackwater merriment. Given the number of quality shooters available on the Xbox 360 these days, Blackwater is in a tough spot. While the game could have brought something interesting to motion gaming, major control issues and uninspiring presentation add up to an experience that you should avoid.
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If you've ever played an Xbox in your life, then odds are that you've played Halo: Combat Evolved, which launched the system and captivated millions of players. But the question isn't "How good was it then?" It's "How good is it now?" The answer: It's still really, really good. The campaign tells an intriguing story full of fluid action, fierce enemies, stirring music, and thrilling moments. The overhauled visuals look great; flipping between the classic and remastered presentation modes not only makes you realize what a thorough and faithful job the artists have done, but it also makes you appreciate how well the original art design stands the test of time. Six updated multiplayer maps and one new Firefight map round out this discount package with some competitive and cooperative fun. Thus, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary provides a great way to relive the past, as well as an exciting and rewarding adventure that holds up very well in today's shooter scene.
Time travel with the push of a button.
The story of what happened when humanity first encountered a halo is still an interesting one, even if you've heard it before. It starts with a crash landing, followed by a race to discover what this strange place is all about. The emergence of the Flood and the revelation of the halo's true purpose build the momentum that culminates in the desperate deeds you must perform to avert galactic disaster. New terminals in each level trigger cutscenes that offer new perspectives on characters in the game and hints about Halo lore we might see in future games. These add some welcome depth to the narrative landscape, though they only show up when you play with the updated presentation. The campaign is an exciting ride that is enhanced by the development of Master Chief and Cortana's relationship, as well as the entertaining ally and enemy chatter that helped build Master Chief into one of the most enduring video game icons.
The fundamental mechanics of the game have also endured well. Jumping is a bit floaty, but the movement and combat controls respond with alacrity. Those who have played more recent Halo games are likely to be impressed with the range of the assault rifle and excited by the chance to wield the iconic pistol once more. Battling against the Covenant is engaging and satisfying, thanks to the enemy AI. Elites are still fierce and agile, jackals still use shields with vexing effectiveness, and even grunts can still get the best of you if you aren't careful. Covenant enemies look more ferocious and diverse with the remastered visuals, which borrow designs from more recent Halo games. The Flood are similarly updated with the grisly, antennae-rich look of recent years, but the simplicity of the classic look feels more sinister and alien. These monsters aren't nearly as fiendish in combat as the Covenant, but their swarms can be relentless and deadly if you don't maneuver smartly.
Dealing with these dual threats makes for varied and engaging combat, which helps ensure that you'll have a blast fighting your way to the thrilling final sequence. On your way there, you might be tempted to leave some enemies standing in favor of speedier progress. It can be empowering to leave your enemies in the dust, but be aware that this tactic can exacerbate issues with Anniversary's somewhat spotty checkpoint system. Nearby enemies or just speedy progress can prevent checkpoints from registering, which makes your untimely death more of a setback than expected. Slowing down in checkpoint areas can help, as can playing the campaign cooperatively. You and a friend can play local split-screen, though there is no drop-in/drop-out option. Or you can link up with a buddy online to tackle the entire adventure, though there is no matchmaking.
As you play through the campaign, you can switch between the remastered and classic presentation modes with the press of a button. The visual difference is striking, especially in outdoor areas where the remastered land, sea, and sky are enriched by vibrant details that stand in stark contrast to the flatter, more subdued scenes of the classic mode. Each remastered level is infused with remarkable new detail and abundant design flourishes, yet each still remains immediately recognizable to those who know the original well. Lighting is perhaps the most drastic improvement, transforming dim claustrophobic spaces into luminous chambers. The differences aren't merely visual; the audio has also been overhauled to make the gunfire ring out with greater impact and the signature strains of Combat Evolved's excellent score sound even sweeter.
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There's a whole lot of America between San Francisco and New York City. Need for Speed: The Run's greatest achievement is the way it sometimes captures the thrill of hitting the open road and experiencing the varied beauty of the American landscape, from the mountains and the prairies to the small towns and skyscrapers. Unfortunately, issues arise that sap some of the momentum from your cross-country trek, but The Run spends enough time doing what it does best to remain an enjoyable journey.
If you drive fast and stick to the freeways, your trip through New Jersey should be blissfully ab-free.
You play as Jack Rourke, a racer who has gotten in way over his head with the mob. His friend Sam promises an end to his problems if he can win a cross-country street race and the huge payout that comes with victory. Sadly, The Run's attempts to make you care about Jack's plight fall flat. The talents of actors Sean Faris and Christina Hendricks as Jack and Sam are wasted; their voices emanate from character models with mouths that move oddly and faces that express no emotion. What's more, the story doesn't even make sense. Certain rivals whom you pass early in the race show up again when you're in the home stretch. Thankfully, after an early cutscene that sets up the premise, the game wastes little time with its flimsy storytelling and lets you focus on driving.
The cars in The Run feel good to drive. The wide range of vehicles on offer includes sports cars that respond tightly to your every command and muscle cars that are tough to tame, but regardless of what you're driving, racing in The Run is about balancing speed with control. Sure, you've got highways on which you can gun the throttle and cruise at top speed, but more often than not, you're on stretches of road with some tricky turns. Using your brakes effectively, maintaining a smart racing line, and speedily exiting the turns is crucial to maintaining a good time, and it feels great to put these powerful cars through their paces.
Unfortunately, you may sometimes find yourself in the wrong car for the job. With a few story-related exceptions, Jack can only change cars at gas stations, and in some stretches, these are few and far between. As a result, you may get into a muscle car to power through a stretch of highway, only to wind up facing a particularly twisty road that the muscle car is not ideal for in the next event. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there's no easy way to return to an earlier event that offered a gas station and choose a different car. If there's no gas station in your current event, you're stuck, and must make do with what you're driving.
Jack's got to make the entire drive from San Francisco to New York, but of course, you're only responsible for driving a few hundred miles of that journey. The Run keeps the pressure on in each event by requiring you to meet one of a few objectives. On some stretches of road, you need to pass a certain number of other racers before reaching the finish line. In other events--called battle races--you also need to pass opponents, but here, you need to face them one at a time, getting ahead of one before a timer reaches zero and then moving on to the next. And some events are checkpoint races; just you against the clock. Many events are challenging tests of your driving talents, and it's a thrill to pass a checkpoint in the nick of time or slingshot past an opponent in the final stretch of a race.
It's not just the cars themselves that make driving in The Run enjoyable. It's also the places you go. Starting in San Francisco, your path takes you through Yosemite National Park, the Rocky Mountains, downtown Chicago, and plenty of other locations. The roads in The Run aren't entirely faithful to the real roads that inspired them, but they admirably evoke the beauty one might witness on a scenic trip across the United States. From driving in the Las Vegas dusk to speeding across the rolling Nebraska plains, the varied surroundings for your travels convey the feeling that you're covering a lot of ground, and part of the fun lies in seeing what richly detailed natural or urban landscape you'll be driving in next.
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Popular TV show begets awful video game again in Ubisoft Shanghai's NCIS. This point-and-click adventure is a mockery of the hit CBS TV series on which the game is based, with childish gameplay based on a handful of repetitive minigames, laughably saw-it-coming plots, and none of the show's leading cast members in. This game exists solely to try to con series fans out of their money.
Ties with the hit CBS TV series about a team of investigators solving various murders and other nasty crimes on behalf of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Washington, DC, are front and center, of course. The marketing here revolves around you supposedly working with the well-known team of sleuths led by Mark Harmon's Jethro Gibbs, Michael Weatherly's Tony DiNozzo, and Cote de Pablo's Ziva David. You take part in four different cases structured like episodes of the TV show, complete with opening credits, B plots that let the characters indulge in some very non-witty repartee (you will want to kill DiNozzo in mere moments), and closing unfunny moments geared to inject a bit of lighthearted fun into all the murder and mayhem. The reality sees you slogging through tedious pixel hunts at crime scenes and enduring simplistic minigames geared for children. The content and the gameplay contrast so much that the game can be quite jarring; You investigate bloody murders and conduct autopsies via minigames that could have been taken out of a game aimed at 6-year-olds.
Each episode plays out in the same fashion that the procedural TV show does each week. You watch an opening sequence showing the crime to be investigated, and then you plunge into work at crime scenes and with forensics back in the lab. All of the searching, sampling, and bagging have been distilled to simply searching rooms and taking photos of evidence, such as bullet holes and explosive residue (that magically translate into actual physical evidence like slugs and powder that can be analyzed back in the lab). The most obnoxious part of this sleuthing is navigating the crime scenes themselves, because the camera angle is locked so tight to your character that you can't move more than a few feet per button press.
When investigating, you aim and focus the camera and occasionally must access oddly placed evidence by moving furniture or standing on some handy object. These mechanics just make everything annoying, though, given how the finicky controls force you to manually do things like climb and shove tables and couches by dragging a cursor with the left stick. It all feels forced and unnecessary.
Once all of the requisite photographs have been collected at the crime scene, you switch to forensics back at the NCIS offices. Everything is based on minigames. Need to lift prints off a gun? Snap the left stick around to apply and remove tape. Need to conduct an autopsy? Scroll around the body taking photos. Need to analyze tire treads? Match up samples by scrolling through a short list of options. Need to figure out who did what to whom? Hit the "deduction board" to drag and drop clues before answering a multiple-choice quiz to solve crimes. Need to interrogate a suspect? Watch the dialogue and hit the A button every so often to ask a follow-up question. All of the games are spectacularly easy. It is just about impossible to fail any of them at any time, but even if you mess up by, say, falling asleep, you get do-overs courtesy of the Caf-Pow drinks favored by forensic Goth goddess Abby Sciuto both here and on the TV show. And even if you run out of this magical beverage, failure just means that you get to try again.
Solutions to the four cases are blindingly obvious. Each can be wrapped up in under an hour. Suspects pretty much present themselves front and center in the opening moments of each episode. They're not difficult to spot, largely because they tend to be the only characters to have spoken lines aside from the core NCIS gang. Still, you need to go through the motions to get to the laughable aha moments, made even funnier when Harmon's Gibbs yells "Deduction board!" at times when the bad guy has already done everything but confess and provide video evidence of himself actually committing the crime.
The look and sound are abysmal. The entirety of the game has been built around a half-dozen or so generic crime scenes that could have been swiped from the plots of thousands of procedural TV shows. Even worse, these settings come with all of the visual artistry and depth of the average first-gen Xbox game. Textures are flat, fine details like furniture are largely missing in action, and character models have been stricken by oddly bulbous faces and palsied gaits. Action scenes haven't even been fully animated. Instead, you get freeze-framed clips whenever the game needs to show something possibly exciting, like a police chase or an explosion going off in a bank. You get to see a lot of Harmon's steely visage in these scenes, which is kind of cool if you're into the actor who was once named People's Sexiest Man Alive. But mostly you just wonder how much Ubisoft saved by not bothering to properly animate these sequences.
Aspects of the art seem to have been assembled from older games, too. How else to explain the appearance of massive CRT monitors on desks in the otherwise high-tech NCIS offices? There is virtually no music to speak of during gameplay, and character dialogue is recited in a reading-the-phonebook manner by a cast that includes only a pair of secondary characters from the TV show. Oddly, those characters are two of the biggest names to appear on the series: Robert Wagner and David McCallum. They say next to nothing, however, and Wagner shows up for little more than a cup of coffee before exiting stage left. The roster of cheap soundalikes that fill out the rest of the cast is unimpressive at best, especially the one-note wonder taking the place of star Harmon.
The only possible plus in NCIS is that the simplistic, repetitive gameplay likely depicts the drudgery of real police investigations far more accurately than procedural TV shows loaded with lasers and sci-fi gadgets. Of course, you have to think that the developers probably weren't going for that sort of authenticity here. Stick to the TV show. Or knitting. Knitting's good.
Full disclosure: NCIS, the television show on which this game is based, airs on CBS, GameSpot's parent company. |
Rabbids are furry white creatures with a maniacal streak that's hard to resist. These two-legged, buck-toothed, buggy-eyed aliens have traveled around the world and through time, causing chaos as a result of their lofty ambitions and abject stupidity. In Alive & Kicking, the Rabbids attempt to get you in on the chaotic fun with a bevy of Kinect-fueled minigames. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of the signature craziness here, leaving the simplistic games disappointingly devoid of appeal.
There are only two proper game modes in Alive & Kicking: Quick Play and Party. The first mode unfolds in the manner that you might expect. You choose the number of players and then either play a random succession of games or personally select the ones that interest you one game at a time. There are a few dozen minigames in all. Some of them can be experienced alone, but many of them require you to bring in at least one friend. Whether you're alone or surrounded by pals, Quick Play is a good bet when you're in a hurry. It lives up to its name, and you can easily stop playing anytime you like without feeling that you've lost something as a result.
Party mode is a more ambitious alternative to Quick Play, though just barely. You still play the same minigames, but now, you need to have at least three people in the room. Each of as many as 16 players begins by creating a profile. When that's settled, everyone plays through a variety of games while the computer keeps track of placement brackets so you don't have to keep track of them. The player that loses a versus challenge must then complete a forfeit activity to minimize the number of points lost, which is really just a nice way of saying that someone has to make him or herself look like a fool. For instance, the unfortunate player may be asked to dog-paddle around the room, kiss someone (but not on the cheek), or pantomime a phone call while a shoe fills in for the phone. That performance is then rated by other players in the room. They are asked to indicate whether or not the losing player was really committed to his or her performance. Even if you deliver a performance worthy of Meryl Streep, the other players can vote you down for their own selfish reasons. After all, the ultimate victor in the Party mode is the last person who runs out of points. Self-preservation is bound to factor in whenever there's a vote, but giving credit where credit is due can help encourage your fellow players to keep being wacky.
As you play the minigames in either of the two available modes, you are given brief instructions and scored on your results. For instance, one minigame asks you to head-bang quite aggressively. If you throw your head around enough, then you'll bump a rabbid's onscreen forehead. The height of the resulting lump determines your ranking, which in turn determines the amount of in-game currency that you receive upon clearing a challenge. In another minigame, your rating is based on how quickly you properly identify the number of differences between two photographs. Any funds that you earn can then be used to purchase interactive items and decorations for your own personal rabbid in the My Raving Rabbid mode.
My Raving Rabbid is an interesting diversion for a few minutes. You appear onscreen in your play space as presented by the Kinect camera. A cartoon rabbid will wander around that environment so that it looks like you're viewing actual video of yourself playing with one of the furry aliens. You can smack it around and drop items into the scene for your amusement. For instance, you might purchase a radio and then drop it into the space so that the rabbid will dance in front of your couch. If you like, you can also take pictures and share them online with anyone you know who might care to see you posing with a video game character.
Alas, there's not a lot of good to be said about most of Alive & Kicking's minigames. Several of them, like one that asks you to swipe your arm when a plate is thrown your way, are over almost before they begin. Another minigame, which asks you to swing your arm to cut a bungee cord at the last possible second, doesn’t last much longer. There are other examples, each disappointing if you've just finished spending 20 or 30 seconds watching your performance in a previous minigame getting rated and your score tallied. Sometimes it can feel like you're watching meters fill and fumbling with menu arrows more than you're actually playing.
When you do find a heartier minigame, the pendulum swings in the opposite direction and suddenly it feels like you’ve taken on a job. In one of the more memorable minigames, you're instructed to sit on the floor and rock back and forth to steer as you cruise along a half-pipe of sorts. You're actually navigating a rabbid's intestines, but it takes too long to advance from your host’s rump to his mouth and your movements are so exaggerated that it's difficult to grab much of the available loot along the way. In another of the meatier minigames, you wave your hands to move cursors around the screen and interact with levers and ramps so that a series of rabbids can march lemming-like into container crates. You have to play through several stages in succession. When you clear the final stage, any rabbids that you have spared from a fatal fall are unceremoniously murdered by a giant propeller blade, their eyeballs flying every which way. That helps to discourage you from feeling like you actually accomplished something.
Besides suffering from length issues, the minigames also feature objectives that can be unclear when you first start playing. You eventually get a feel for what is expected of you as you go along, and in general, you should know what you're doing by the time a game ends, but until that point, the experience can be needlessly frustrating for all players involved. Most of the games also don't look very good. When the visuals aren't limited to video of your living room and some screaming rabbids, they're just plain generic. Textures are bland and environments lack detail, making you wonder why everything takes so long to load.
Rabbids: Alive & Kicking doesn't capture the boundless energy and kooky personality that sometimes makes them so endearing. There are fun moments where the "rabbids in your living room" concept comes together, like when you roll around to avoid spotlights cast by circling UFOs. But for every clever mission, there's a missed opportunity, such as an air guitar performance that fails to offer half the charm of musical sequences featured in games released four or five years ago. You should look elsewhere if you want to get a real kick out of the rabbids.
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When we last left The King of Fighters, things weren't looking good. The King of Fighters XII, which was released in 2009, looked beautiful and had a solid fighting system, but its dearth of single-player content and busted online functionally killed it for many players. Now, The King of Fighters XIII is here, and it addresses all of the issues the previous installment faced. XIII is an immensely robust game that adds a lot a new content to XII's solid mechanics, and it easily earns this series the right to stand alongside other fighting giants in the genre's spotlight.
Terry can't decide which team to fight for in this online match.
As with its predecessors, The King of Fighters XIII features one-on-one fighting between two three-person teams. When one fighter goes down, the next is subbed in--after a brief but frequent loading screen--until one side's team is exhausted. In the ring, gameplay feels similar to Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition. Though quicker than Third Strike, XIII shares the same fundamentals of smart positioning and timing. Positioning comes from proficiency with the game's movement options. With four types of jumps and a roll that can pass through anything but throws, it takes practice to navigate the battlefield quickly and efficiently.
When used well, these movement techniques make you feel nimble and keep the action focused on offense. You always want to be building momentum with fancy footwork and calculated strikes. But even at its most chaotic, the game still allows you time to think. There's a satisfying tension in planning your next strike or in deciding how to break the enemy's stride. XIII has its own rules of engagement, and understanding these rules--and when to break them--lets the game's personality shine. As with any strong fighter, the ebb and flow of advanced play is as much about strategy as it is about execution.
There are three main gauges to manage in the game: power, hyperdrive, and guard. In broad strokes, the power gauge focuses on offense; it is used for enhancing special attacks and desperation moves. Next, the hyperdrive gauge is for being stylish. You can burn this meter to cancel certain special attacks into others or activate hyperdrive mode. In this mode, your character can link together moves and build combos that aren't otherwise possible. Finally, the guard gauge depletes as you block attacks. If you let it run out, your character enters a vulnerable crumple state--so be careful.
The entire system feels very flexible. Each character has the tools for building devastating combos and quickly navigating the field. This uniform character design also carries over to vitality. Unlike in many fighting games, characters in XIII have the same amount of health, which means an attack will deal the same amount of damage no matter whom it hits. Each character's health gauge is broken down into sections for additional clarity. Once you learn how many sections a certain combo shaves off, it's easy to see when to cash it in and finish the match.
You can test your skills in Story mode, though if you're not familiar with Elisabeth Blanctorche, Ash Crimson, or why that one guy from Fatal Fury is here, then you're going to feel a little lost. This mode lasts only a few hours, but it has multiple routes and endings. Once "completed," a massive storyboard becomes available. From there, you can revisit different points in the tale and select alternate routes through it. There's also an Arcade mode that's heavier on the action and is where you can unlock the game's two secret characters.
For new players, the game has various teaching tools designed to introduce the basics. The tutorial and mission modes do a fine job of this, but they don't explain why these moves are important. Knowing the tactical merits of a hop versus a hyperjump is just as vital as their execution. This problem not only exists in XIII, but also in fighting games in general. For combo training, XIII's combo trials are well implemented. They display their inputs clearly, as well as feature demonstrations to aid execution and timing. In addition, characters have their own Time Trial and Survival modes to further hone your skills.
All of this preparation would be for naught if it didn't support a solid online offering. Thankfully, XIII does not repeat XII's mistakes. It offers an online experience that's smooth and stable, provided you find an opponent in the three-to-four green-bar range. If you fall below that, you'll encounter noticeable (though not unplayable) performance dips. When you finish, you can choose to save that match's replay for future viewing. While it's a nice touch, there is not a system in place for sharing or viewing other's replays. Sadly, Spectator mode is also absent in online play, which leads to a lot of bored players during group games.
Whether you're online or off, the game's presentation is simply gorgeous. The 2D character sprites fill up the screen with astonishing detail, such as the way their clothing flutters. The numerous stages are equally impressive--and infinitely more detailed--featuring hordes of overly excited spectators or a pack of elephants encircling the ring. There's even a color edit mode where you can alter your fighter's color scheme to your liking. All of these features, combined with the tightly balanced fighting mechanics, make The King of Fighters XIII a fantastic game that can easily go toe-to-toe with the heavy hitters in the fighting game genre.
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Harry Potter's innocent days are over. The boarding school antics have trickled to a halt, classrooms have gone silent, and even Quidditch matches--once the mark of happier times--have fallen by the wayside. In their place, a much darker picture has taken shape, marked by isolation, unpredictability, and the ever-increasing fear of death. As far as stories go, it's not exactly a walk in the park, but it's nothing that a good Lego sense of humor can't handle. Like its predecessor, Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 excels at finding the true heart of the story it is trying to tell, layering this otherwise bleak premise with its own particular brand of cheekiness without sacrificing the essence of J.K. Rowling's world. This is a fun, richly detailed game that rewards curiosity and offers plenty of gameplay variety, making it well worth the effort for Lego and Harry Potter fans alike.
Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 weaves together events from the final three Harry Potter books and the final four films. Despite the necessary liberties taken to mesh three narratives into one, the game manages to employ a multifaceted structure that is easy to navigate: each of the four chapters of the game is divided into smaller subchapters, each comprising a new part of the story. The gameplay is consistent with past Lego games: each short level requires you to complete a series of puzzle-solving tasks using a range of character abilities while knocking down and rebuilding a large part of the environment. There are also myriad side missions, quests, and collectibles. While the game's story moves along with effortless, Chaplinesque charm, it's the collectible element that adds both variety and replay value. There's a certain kind of addictive satisfaction that comes with collecting absolutely everything, and the game rewards this interactivity in a multitude of ways: 200 gold bricks, 24 school emblems, 20 cheats, and the fulfilment of becoming a "True Wizard" stud collector. It's also smart about the way it does this: only a proper playthrough unlocks all the characters and their respective abilities, and given that a lot of the game's environments feature areas and puzzles that are not immediately accessible, this adds a very good incentive for a later reexamination, both in single-player or through the drop-in, drop-out local cooperative multiplayer.
Throughout the game, you have access to eight spells, acquired in stages and presented in a revamped spell-wheel system that can be cycled through on the fly. The game has also made things a lot easier by eliminating the need for a lock-on mechanism, meaning you can shoot spells out of your wand to your heart's content or use the crosshairs when there is something specific you want to target. There's also a new, well-conceived duelling system that's both simple and efficient, requiring you to simply match the correct spell of your opponent a set number of times (usually four). As in Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, Diagon Alley serves as a hub world, where you can purchase new characters, unlock cheats, and access already-played levels. The addition of Weasley Boxes also helps to make the experience feel new; the boxes themselves--which contain numerous joke products providing special abilities for the surrounding puzzles--can be accessed only by members of the Weasley family, making red-haired companions a must in the free-play levels and providing you with an incentive to switch between characters more often. There are also Luna Lovegood's Spectre Specs, which let you see and build with invisible Lego bricks.
As in other Lego games, there are certain exemplary moments full of well-dressed charm: Dumbledore's botched escape from his office in Order of the Phoenix, Harry's awkward romantic entanglements in Half-Blood Prince, and Snape's grisly death at the hand of Voldemort for the horrendous crime of eating all the muffins. This well-maintained lighthearted tone--a hallmark of all Lego titles--is possible here due in large part to the attention to detail paid in the game's design. The well-textured backgrounds add depth and clarity to the gameplay, while each of the central characters--out of the 150 or so in the game--possesses an endearingly evocative individuality central to his or her place in the wider narrative, despite the predilection for right angles.
The game's environments are well detailed and contextually accurate, providing a rich backdrop for the action. The cutscenes re-create some of the film series' most inspired moments (the opening scene of Half-Blood Prince is a particularly fine example of this) and succeed in doing justice to the story's darker tone through the expertly crafted flashback sequences which are presented in a striking, sepia-toned aesthetic that reflects the maturity of the source material. Perhaps the most arresting of these is The Tale of the Three Brothers in the Deathly Hallows chapter, a level that retains the whimsical 2D aesthetic of the film and lets you take control of the three brothers, each trying to foil Death in his own way. The fact that you can interact with this part of the story is both exciting and satisfying. Adding to the magic of it all is a blend of John Williams', Nicholas Hooper's, and Alexandre Desplat's finest musical score moments from the final four films.
But it's not all smooth sailing. The loading times can be a bit of a bore, especially since the game requires a substantial amount of time to load even when you're walking in between rooms and scenes. There's also a slight inconsistency with some of the game's smaller tasks, which are inserted at various moments throughout the story but have little bearing on what's actually happening. For example, during the attack on The Burrow in Half-Blood Prince, you are taken out of the action and asked to spend an inordinate amount of time building a cart. A cart. This is both irritating and anticlimactic--you know there are Death Eaters everywhere, with some serious high-tension duelling waiting to happen. But these moments are infrequent, so their interference throughout the game is not uncomfortable.
For those who aren't ready to say good-bye to Harry Potter just yet, Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 is a charming way to stay inside J.K. Rowling's magical world a little bit longer. Despite the occasional slipup, the game successfully builds on the original story to offer a simple yet satisfying experience that has depth and replay value. There's enough to engage and have fun with here to appeal to fans of Harry Potter as well as fans of previous Lego games.
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Playing a virtual mayor may be a lot more enjoyable than doing it in the real world. Cities XL 2012 simplifies the messy rigmarole that comes with running a municipality; you eliminate things like labor problems, uptight councillors, and calls from angry residents about raccoons getting into garbage cans in favor of focusing on urban planning. Developer Focus Home Interactive does an impressive job on this big picture, too, thanks to a wide variety of map terrain and a straightforward interface that make it easy to build the metropolis of your dreams. But there is one big problem: You've seen it all before. This game is a complete rehash of Cities XL 2011, with only some new buildings and maps added to the feature set. While the publisher is making no secret that this is more of an expansion than a full-blown sequel and is offering an upgrade to owners of last year's game for $15, there still isn't enough fresh content to warrant a purchase.
If you're familiar with Cities XL 2011, then surprise, you're already familiar with Cities XL 2012. This is pretty much the same game, albeit with around 300 new buildings (a mostly cosmetic change that gives neighborhoods a revamped look with things like deluxe waterfront homes) and 15 new maps on which to ply your city-building talents. The heart of the game still beats exactly as it did last year. You play virtual mayor of a budding burg on maps that represent terrain of all types found in every corner of the globe. Just about everything you could imagine is represented here, from fertile valleys and deserts to rocky wastelands and island paradises. Each comes with fairly distinct challenges that mostly involve how to best manipulate the terrain and how to deal with resource shortages in crucial areas like water and oil. As with the earlier games in the series, there is no campaign here. Instead, you freely go from one map to the next and develop cities that coexist as part of a shared global economy. So even though you're not following any sort of storyline, you are building cities that can work together.
Mechanics follow the modern city-building template laid out in SimCity 4 back in 2003. You have godlike control over every aspect of urban planning, which allows you the freedom to lay down residential, commercial, and industrial zones where homes, offices, factories, stores, and the like automatically pop up as soon as the dust clears. While you do construct some specific buildings, like schools, police stations, and high-rise hotels, most of the time, you're drawing huge runs of city blocks that soon become home to apartment buildings and Dunder Mifflin-styled office complexes. So, build it and they will come. There are some complications that mainly have to do with the need to build different housing for unskilled, skilled, executive, and elite working classes, as well as balance standard residential houses with denser developments, such as townhouses, apartments, and condos, as your city grows. Regardless, you couldn't ask for more of a no-nonsense economic system.
Cartoonish graphics with laid-back sound effects and music add to the easygoing atmosphere. Neighborhoods are attractive, but they're so neat and clean that they come off as unrealistic. Lawns are all perfectly manicured, and there isn't a scrap of litter to be found anywhere, let alone something truly scarring to the urban landscape, like graffiti. If you zoom down to street level, you can spot your bulbous citizens doing things like dancing on park benches and even possibly playing hacky sack. Audio effects include a basic range of urban noises along with building-specific sounds like what has to be the world's oldest dot-matrix printer churning away whenever you click on an office building. Soundtrack tunes are an impressively diverse series of cool jazz tracks that give the game a lot of personality. This isn't quite elevator music, although some of the songs make Steely Dan sound like The Sex Pistols.
As simple as the economic system here is, you still face some challenges when managing your city. Your citizens want good return on their tax dollars and have the audacity to demand amenities. These include jobs, reasonable health care, and safe neighborhoods covered by police stations and fire departments, as well as recreational opportunities like bowling alleys and swimming pools. You have to keep the people pleased or they will move away, leaving businesses without employees and you with dropping tax revenue. Everything is quite well balanced, though. Serious pitfalls are few and far between so that you are free to build some spectacular municipalities after a short time with the game. Unlike many other city-builder games, there are no big gotcha moments, where the game design breaks down over buildings that don't work, neighborhoods that residents can never seem to escape to find a job even though there are a dozen factories just a few blocks away, and so forth.
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When the Modern Warfare scion of the venerable Call of Duty franchise branched out four years ago, the electrifying campaign and addictive multiplayer cast a new mold for first-person shooters. In the years since, this formula has been consistently refined, shamelessly imitated, and widely adored, making it one of the defining franchises of this generation. Modern Warfare 3 stays the course, delivering an explosive campaign, breakneck competitive action, and challenging cooperative play. This is an exciting and rewarding game, but the series' signature thrills have lost some of their luster. Modern Warfare 3 iterates rather than innovates, so the fun you have is familiar. Fortunately, it's also utterly engrossing and immensely satisfying, giving fans another reason to rejoice in this busy shooter season.
Helicopter-on-helicopter violence is tearing New York City apart.
The campaign picks up where Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 left off. Our heroes, Soap and Price, are in bad shape, and the villain, Makarov, is still at large. It doesn't take the pair long to get back in the hunt, and soon you're hopping the globe in pursuit of your quarry. You make a few forays into backwater outposts, but the most striking situations are when you take up arms in conflicts that consume entire cities. From New York City to London to Paris, no bastion of Western civilization is safe, and the destruction that has been visited on these iconic locations is visually stunning. As expected, PC players get the better end of the deal, with sharpness and clarity that outshine the console versions. The impressive scenery makes the action more impactful, and the campaign shuffles you around to different fronts within each city to make sure you can experience the battle from many different angles. Remote air support control, on-foot firefights, and tense vehicle sequences keep the campaign moving at a great clip in these urban environments, capturing the expert pacing that has made past Call of Duty campaigns so exhilarating.
As with its predecessors, the Modern Warfare 3 campaign has a few tricks up its sleeve aimed to shake you up or make you cry out with excitement. The latter are more successful than the former. A jet flight gone wrong and a chase through Parisian streets are highlights, using environmental upheaval to make you feel like you are struggling for control in an out-of-control situation. These sections are definitely exciting, but because Call of Duty has trained you to expect the unexpected, they lack the extra spark of surprise that kicks exciting up to thrilling. Modern Warfare 3 also takes a startlingly out-of-place shot at wrenching your heartstrings, but the outcome is so obvious from the moment the scene starts that you're left to watch dispassionately as the characters set up and fall victim to tragedy (opting to not see disturbing content at the outset of the campaign will likely spare you this unpleasantness). The game is more resonant when you encounter scenes of tragedy in the natural course of the campaign, but this is not an emotionally fraught campaign. It is, however, an engaging and superbly paced roller-coaster ride that brings the Modern Warfare story to a very satisfying conclusion.
If the five-hour campaign doesn't satisfy your thirst for AI blood, then the Special Ops mode almost certainly will. Returning after its debut in Modern Warfare 2, Spec Ops offers 16 one-off missions that complement the events of the campaign, letting you experience new facets of the global conflict in which you are embroiled. From stealthily escorting resistance fighters to slugging through a large enemy force in a Juggernaut suit, there's a lot of variety here. Though even the longest missions can be completed in under 10 minutes, the variable difficulty levels help Spec Ops missions provide hours' worth of challenging combat. Furthermore, you can now tackle almost every mission solo and make a bid for leaderboard glory. Depending on the quality of your connection, however, load times for online cooperative matches can stretch to over a minute long. It's a bummer when you have to wait so long to get into the action, but once things are under way, slowdown is infrequent.
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The province of Skyrim might be frigid, but the role-playing game that takes place within it burns with a fire few games possess. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you take up arms against dragons, and your encounters with them are invariably exciting--yet depending on where your adventure takes you, such battles may not even represent the pinnacle of your experience. A side quest that starts as a momentary distraction may turn into a full-fledged tale that could form the entirety of a less ambitious game. Yes, Skyrim is another enormous fantasy RPG from a developer that specializes in them, and it could suck up hundreds of hours of your time as you inspect each nook and crevasse for the secrets to be found within. If you know Bethesda Softworks' previous games, you might be unsurprised that Skyrim is not a land without blemish, but rather harbors any number of technical glitches and frustrating idiosyncrasies that tear open the icy veil that blankets the land. Many of them are ones Elder Scrolls fans will probably see coming, but they're ultimately a low price to pay for the wonders of a game this sprawling and enthralling. Prepare for many sleepless nights to come.
Reading, learning, and clobbering: it's all in a day's work.
Those nights traversing these lands are ones well spent. The game returns you to the continent of Tamriel, where you explore the northern realm called Skyrim, home to the Nord race. In these northern regions, snow flurries cloud your view, and platforms of ice float on the chilled waters. Nighttime often brings Tamriel's version of the aurora borealis, with its gorgeous blue and green ribbons stretching across the heavens. Skyrim's predecessor, Oblivion, featured prototypical fantasy environments--pretty but not quite evocative of the lore's darker undercurrents. Skyrim embraces its darker elements. You might feel an eerie chill as you glimpse a half-sunken ship through the mist, or watch as a dragon comes to life before your very eyes under the swirling firmament. Skyrim's atmospheric tone harks back to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, only the hazy dust storms of the earlier game have been replaced by glimmering snowfall and opaque fog.
These lovely vistas are best seen from a distance. Closer inspection reveals hard edges, plain painted-on textures, and other visual flaws that are conspicuous should you seek them out. But like many enormous games, Skyrim makes a fantastic impression not because its individual elements are sharply honed, but because they contribute to a grander whole. There's so much to do that your quest log becomes an embarrassment of pleasures, offering dozens of choices at any given time, each one as enticing as the next. You could follow the story, of course, which weaves a compelling tale that casts you as a dragonborn; that is, the soul of a dragon emanates from within you. As such, you are the key to discovering why dragons have returned to the land, terrorizing cities and potentially ending the known world. The tale has you facing dragons, of course, but also crashing fancy dress parties and scouring sewers in search of a key figure long assumed dead. It's a well-crafted tale that makes good use of those fearsome flying creatures that horrify the masses with roaring gusts of fire and ice.
Even when you aren't pursuing story quests, though, the core narrative dogs you as you trot across the land on foot or on horseback. You might travel to a quaint hamlet only to discover that it's under siege by a hovering beast. The townspeople join you, aiming their arrows and fireballs upward, and not all of them may survive the encounter. These battles impress upon you the terror in which the populace lives, and thus give you a reason to be a hero to them. But plenty of narrative delights have nothing to do with dragons, and some of them could have formed the main story of a lesser RPG. Following an early lead takes you to a lonely house occupied by a single child with a disturbing request. The story that unravels has you acting as a predator and eavesdropping from an unimaginably sinister hiding place. Other story threads embrace the element of choice. You can take sides in the ongoing conflict between Imperial forces and the rebellious Stormcloaks, and then assault enemy camps and rescue prisoners jailed by the enemy. And in one memorable if minor quest line, you can kill a creepy cannibal--or join her and her cohorts at the table.
It's impressive enough that there's so much to do; it's even more impressive that most of it is wonderful. Not every dungeon is a joy to explore. Stone-turning puzzles occasionally bring the fun to a halt, and a few repeated cave designs could dampen your spirits. But overall, every task has an excellent sense of context, and surprises lurk around many a turn. Searching for a lost dog turns into a grander quest than you could have guessed--and witty writing and voice acting shine some light into this somber world. Even a simple "go there, kill that" bounty can be a thrill. After all, how often do you face a towering giant and a couple of woolly mammoths? It's too bad that as you approach the giant's camp, one of those mammoths might spawn 100 feet in the air and fall to its death, or land on another mammoth and ride on its back for a few seconds before sliding off.
So maybe not every surprise is a welcome one. But most are, and the element of the unexpected is what lures you to explore as much as you can. The reward could be a great weapon hidden in a locked chest, a gorgeous vista to ogle, or a book of lore that enhances one of your attributes. Or perhaps you'll discover words written in the dragons' tongue--an important discovery indeed. Finding those words is key to using Skyrim's most powerful spells, known as shouts. Well, they are half the key anyway: you also must defeat dragons and absorb their souls to activate those shouts. Shouts have their own cooldown timer and aren't tied to the magicka bar that governs standard spellcasting. With one shout, you can breathe fire on your attackers. With another, you can slow down time. Shouts hardly guarantee success in a difficult battle, but they can tip the scales in your favor. Besides, the dramatic visual and sound effects of both the discovery of words and the absorption of a dragon soul are a lovely bonus.
As for standard spells, they come in the usual schools of magicka: destruction (zap skeletons with sparks!), conjuration (summon a giant frost atronach!), alteration (light the way ahead!), and so on. You can even dual-wield spells, going full-on mage, with a glowing ball of fire in one hand and a summon at the ready in the other. For that matter, you can dual-wield one-handed weapons, giving you more flexibility in how you form your character. When you create your character, you choose a race from the usual Elder Scrolls standbys (Dark Elf, Breton, Argonian, and so forth), but you don't choose a class. Rather, your skill level with certain types of weapons, magicka schools, speech, and so on is governed primarily by how you play. Wear heavy armor, and taking blows gradually increases your heavy armor proficiency. Swing two-handed weapons, and you get better at using them.
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