Game Curmudgeons

After tons of conjecture created by Valve’s newest patch additions to Portal, today, Portal 2 has been announced officially. Considering Portal was god damn perfect, this is a big deal. Does it also herald Half-Life 2:Episode 3? A new Orange Box? Only time and press releases will tell.

VALVE ANNOUNCES PORTAL 2

Sequel to 2007’s Game of the Year Coming This Holiday

March 5, 2010 – Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam, Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal was originally released in 2007 and earned over 70 industry achievement awards.

Short version: Did you play the first? Get the expansions.

Long version: Do you like 4X games? Do you like RTS games, and are you potentially cynical about them like me? Get this.

Verbose version:

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity is the original Sins of a Solar Empire game combined with its two expansion packs, Entrenchment and Diplomacy. Sins is an RTS with strong 4X elements, and rather than the standard open map, the game focuses on key points. Most of the action takes place around planets and asteroids, near stars, and all connected by hyperspace paths.

Micromanagement is generally put on the back burner in favor of good fleet variety, resource exploitation, and careful, precise strikes at weak points. There’s a lot of cat and mouse, a lot of distraction, and a lot of waiting. Sins is much more akin to chess than Starcraft. Of course, that’s just the base game, which is excellent, but the two included expansions add a ton.

Entrenchment fills in the gaps in the defense of the first game. Players needed to sit fleets around previously, now they can place star bases (devastating defensive placements that can hold planets and phase lanes with serious offensive abilities to quickly take an area) and deploy mines, among other defensive enhancements. There are also new entries on the new defense tree, helping to keep defenses up to snuff late game. There are also devastating structure-killers, changing the nature of the game from cat and mouse chasing open systems to countering the strategy and building/replacing ships on the fly. Battle lines, defensive lines and drawn, trenches are dug out, and players are going to slug it out. Improved AI means better battles and stronger assaults, as well as smarter defenses, making those wins harder to get.

Diplomacy adds, of course, cheese steaks.

Oh, and diplomatic options.

Envoy ships play a major role, and pirates have been upgraded to be pickier about targets. The AI is smarter too, and no longer is reliant on ganging up on the player to make up for its lack of intelligence. It’s closer to the Galactic Civilizations AI, which plays more to win for itself rather than just make the player lose. Diplomacy pushes players to focus less on military research and more on science and cultural advancement to gain influence which can be more useful than any weapon when you pay another player with a powerful army to hit a target for you.

Players can also reach a diplomatic victory, thanks to a score that goes up or down based on relations with other factions. The game is great at explaining interfaction relations, specifying just what’s going on even, but that doesn’t make it easy to keep everyone happy, of course, but it does help players who want options beyond “Destroy them all” to advance in the game, and take the heat off themselves as well.

The expansions also improve the control and visuals. It’s easy to zip around the galaxy and select specific fleets thanks to the very well designed interface, and the galaxy just looks great, with icons handling things for far zoom levels, and beautifully rendered ships showing up once things are close. The game’s performance is smooth and relatively easily navigated, a pretty small learning curve overall, something often lacking in the RTS and 4X genres. There’s a lot of game to learn, of course, and it’s not an easy game because of the scale, but it’s satisfying as can be.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity gets 5 out of 5 stars. It’s a deep RTS with surprising 4X depth. Looks great, sounds great, plays great. The nature of phase lanes and resources helps keep the game focused and keep conflict high without ever burning players out thanks to the supreme pacing.

Without question, Mass Effect was one of the strongest releases of 2007. A groundbreaking RPG, it was recognized for great characters, a fully realized setting, top notch graphics, an excellent score, and some fun, if flawed, combat. While it wasn’t perfect, players were definitely left wanting more, and after no short wait, the sequel has arrived.

It’s been just over two years now since the first came out, and in game time, it’s been just over two years since the fall of Saren, Sovereign, and the battle of the Citadel that took place in the first. After the passage of two years time quite a bit has changed in the galaxy, and after two years of development, quite a bit has changed with the game itself.

Right off the bat, it needs to be said that Mass Effect 2 is absolutely a worthy sequel, building on core elements and improving on some of the flaws, though unfortunately a few new ones show up as well as a logical gap or two.

The most dramatic changes in mechanics are in the combat system, and the move away from the unlimited ammo/overheat system of the first game is a prime example. Players will need to pick up thermal clips from fallen enemies to replenish ammo stocks now, with a limited number of shots before a weapon’s clip needs changed, the system that’s standard to modern shooters. Ammo reserves tend to be low, keeping players on the edge most of the time with the risk of running out of ammo being very present. For the soldier class, which lives bullet to bullet, running dry is going to be a common occurrence.

The system also opens up a few logical loopholes in the name of better gameplay mechanics. Players need to collect universal thermal clips to keep firing so weapons don’t overheat. Each clip adds more shots to each weapon. However, ammo is subtracted only on the weapon in use, when the idea is that ammo itself us unlimited, but the clips themselves are limited in use. What it results in is an empty assault rifle, but a loaded shotgun. The idea is presented that the clips are the actual items being used up, but players can reload as often as they want without expending a clip, and the clips should count for every weapon.

Ultimately, it’s a nitpick, but because the game sets such a high standard for itself, it’s strange that such an illogical occurrence was left in. It’s one of the few logical loopholes players run into, and as such it’s really a damning praise.

Beyond that nitpick, combat has been significantly streamlined. Many of the more miscellaneous skills are out, as are weapon specific skills that were needed for accuracy and damage. Each class gets a unique skill which really focuses on its strengths and needs, now. Soldier, the class which gets the most weapon options and is the only one to use assault rifles, gets an adrenaline rush that puts thing into slow motion, allowing them to line up those critical headshots with ease. Adept, a mage-type class which focuses on using psychic abilities to deal damage instead of weapons, can create a singularity that lifts large groups of enemies into the air, rendering them vulnerable to other abilities and to weapons fire. Ammo powers, which several classes have, are selected and applied to the weapon for the duration of a mission, unless another is used to override it.

The other primary class, engineer, focuses on tech skills.              They’re able to deploy combat drones which can force enemies out of cover and deal damage while the engineer stays safe. They’re masters of fighting synthetics thanks to AI hacking, and like adepts, lack a variety of weapon options. Where soldiers deal direct, even damage to most enemies, adepts are best against organics and deliver reliable damage to single enemies. Engineers don’t deal heavy damage, but they can hurt groups and are able to prevent enemy regeneration, movement,  and flushing them from cover.

In addition to the primary three, there are three combination classes. Vanguards, a soldier/biotic hybrid, who focus on devastating offense. They wield powerful shotguns and have the ability to charge into enemies, bullrushing them with devastating force, firing their weapons the whole time. Infiltrators, on the other hand, a soldier/engineer combination, do best at a distance, picking targets and opportunities with sniper rifles. They have the ability to cloak, rendering them invisible to enemies while they gain better position, and causing higher damage from catching enemies unaware. Like engineers, they’re particularly effective against synthetics, but can flush enemies out with fire, or halt them with cryo ammo.

The final class is the major support, the sentinel. They’re the adept/engineer combo, and among the most versatile fighters. They’ve got tech armor which boosts their shields, and if it’s destroyed it sends out a damaging pulse which knocks enemies down. They’ve also got warp and overload abilities, which can do serious damage to armor or shields. They can freeze enemies in place, and force them away. They’re a powerful defensive support class as a result, keeping enemies at bay and taking their defenses, even if they can’t deal heavy damage themselves.

In the past, health and shields were completely separate factors. Shields recharged quickly, but health damage was only fixed with med kits. Now the systems function more as one unit. Health still drops after shields, but it regenerates quickly alongside shields, and med kits are reserved for bringing back fallen teammates rather than just healing.

Just like players, enemies have a layered health, armor, and shield system. Dealing with the layer is a matter of using the right powers, be they tech attacks, biotic attacks, or ammo types. Rapid fire weapons do more damage to shields, as do disruptor rounds. Armor is best dealt with by high caliber weapons that have more impact at a slower rate, or skills that damage materials like incendiary ammunition. Using the wrong weapon or power just leads to wasted ammo and wasted recharge time, and can easily result in failure when powerful enemies still have their protection by the time they get up close and personal.

Returning players will need an adjustment period to get to know the new systems, but it quickly becomes clear how superior the new combat mechanics are, logical holes notwithstanding. Just don’t think about it, and it works out fine. It’s hard to remember when combat is getting frantic anyway, though when your favorite gun for the situation is empty and you’ve got a full stock of heavy pistol ammunition, you may lament the oddity for a moment.

When not locked in combat, players will spend time exploring various hubs, often cities or space stations. These areas generally function as quest hubs, where players will talk to NPCs, learn more about what’s going on, get directions on how to find someone or something they’re after, or pick up information from conversations already being held.

The game’s conversational system uses a quick wheel of simplified dialog choice option where there are up to six responses to choose from, presented during conversation. The position on the wheel, left or right, up or down, determines whether they’re responses that fall under the paragon path, renegade path, move the conversation forward, or gather more information.

Players can pick a response as others are speaking; it keeps the fully voiced conversation flowing, allowing the acting to shine. It does a great job of removing ambiguity that’s occasionally been a problem in RPG dialog trees, removing the worry of unintentionally insulting someone, or unintentionally complimenting them!

Occasionally players can take a bigger, more dramatic action during dialogue when a paragon or renegade option pops up. Instead of waiting for the next piece of dialogue, the character takes a decisive step. Could be shooting someone, could be hacking something, could be pushing someone out of the way. The actual event is quite variable, but it adds that touch of drama that many RPG conversations lack. It’s an unpredictable element added to conversation, and also one that adds depth and realism.

Most hubs contain areas specifically for combat, dangerous sections NPCs will send them to. Usually they’ll have small amounts of resources to find as rewards, and items which are needed for NPCs in the main areas of the hub. Most of the time combat takes places in these special areas. Tension is lost, admittedly, by that decision, as it’s easy to feel safe in an area where one would have been ready for ambush in the first game. But, it also allows for more dynamic areas. Because there’s a special set piece for it, the area can really have some unique features that would be too much for the exploration and conversation areas.  Permanent changes to the area are possible as well, since changing that area doesn’t require a before and after version of a hub.

While there is lots of run and gun gameplay, this is still a cinematic RPG at the core, the story of a man (or woman) building a team of specialists to take on the impossible. Since players and teammates have fewer powers this time around, there are 10 teammates at release, each with their own skill set, and two can be taken on any mission. Creating a diversely skilled team will make the difference between a frustrating struggle or demolishing everyone in the way.

Adding additional depth are the loyalty missions, teammate specific missions that involve something deeply important to them. These missions tend to involve some hard moral choices beyond the standard paragon/renegade choices. They often end up as unique situations, intense combat, or some very tricky choices to make in a non-combat situation. Several of the loyalty missions are among the most emotional points in the game, and they really pull you into their histories. As an upside beyond the standard credits, materials, and experience points, these missions unlock a third special power for the squad mate. Players can use one of those powers themselves, and given the broad range of functions they can help fill a class weakness easily.

One of the many small changes that add to the world’s depth is a basic email system. Receiving only, but those messages come from people you’ve helped, hurt, those who have missions for you, and occasionally spammers. Morlan’s Famous Shop has an offer for you!

While it sounds like a small thing, and it is, it’s something that really adds to the depth of the universe. RPGs tend to suffer from a lack of consequences, or an appreciation that your actions mattered. Now it’s made clear by the people affected most.  And it’s just funny, of course, to get a 419 scam even in the future. It’s the small touches like that which help to really sell the game’s universe to players.

For all the improvement, there’s one system that stand out for its flaws. That mechanic is planetary scanning. Players launch probes from orbit while scanning, a slow, arduous dragging of a cursor along the surface of a planet, moving it closer to materials needed for upgrades.

The upside is that if there’s something to do on that world, it’s immediately noted and easily tracked down. The downside is that to get the materials needed for upgrades requires slogging through a lot of planets. This means a lot of holding down a trigger, slowly rotating, using up the probes, flying back to the nearest fuel station to buy more and repeating. The collection of materials is an absolute chore and a tremendous time sink in a game which otherwise effectively minimizes downtime.

Really, that’s the biggest complaint to be made about the game. Planetary probing is downtime, plain and simple. Everything else is great. Mass Effect 2 is a game that any RPG or action gamer should pick up, hands down. It walks the line between the two genres in a way most can’t quite manage. A feat that may very well not be done again until Mass Effect 3 hits stores.

It’s a cinematic experience at, a hard sci-fi movie that just happens to clock in over 40 hours of play fairly easily.  It offers solid acting, a great musical score and all kinds of spectacle. Bioware has gone back into their world, and even with one or two logical holes, it’s a truly believable one. More importantly, it’s fun one to be in, to explore and to fight through. In short, Mass Effect 2 is game of the year material.

God of Inferno.

Dante of War.

God of…Dante.

Okay, you get it, it’s a God of War clone. Perhaps the cloniest of the clones, even, whereas most God of War clones seem like the second or third generation down, this game feels just like someone grabbed that fairly lame Hades sequence from God of War and expanded it into a 6 hour game.

God of War. Sorry, just needed to say it again.

And yes, that does imply what you’re thinking, it is, itself, fairly lame. It’s not for lack of effort, to be honest. Dante’s Inferno gets some things right, some very, very important things. For the most part, the game looks good, and the game does a surprising job with the source material. I didn’t think a story about someone walking through hell could turn into much of an action title, but the team behind the game found an angle to work.

Dante’s Inferno is a simple enough revenge story. Man goes to war, wife is killed while he’s gone, wife is…taken by Devil, man goes to carve path of destruction through hell to reclaim wife guided by Virgil. Still fairly simple, overall, just extraordinary circumstances. Inside that story is lots and lots of hacking and slashing, starting with a fight against Death, and culminating in the “if you didn’t see this coming welcome to Earth here’s a sample of our historic literature that’s been heavily influential in one of our major religions” fight against Lucifer himself. To get there, Dante has to carve through armies of demons and the damned, though those armies don’t have much variety.

There are a few varieties of the main grunts, but they’re generally only going to take a few hits before dying. There’s a few grunt-leader types, occasionally upgraded with a better weapon or a shield, but nothing overly special considering they’re big demons until the end of the game. A fast unit with an upgraded version, a berserker unit, a priest unit…there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but the designs work well with the theme.

The good news in all this is that the combat is quick, it’s furious, and it’s smooth. Visceral Games did a great job of making the control responsive as can be, and the game manages to keep 60 FPS throughout, a damned important thing in an action game that often doesn’t end up being the case. Props for that. Bad framerates mean slow responses, either due to not seeing something in time or because the system takes too long to get to the command. Dante’s Inferno blocks when you tell it to, the combos key in correctly, and the timing isn’t too picky without being so loose to make people do something other than they wanted. It’s a shame that the platforming doesn’t hold up to the high standard of the combat.

The platforming is a mess of bad angles and strange jump arcs. Dante seems to jump eight feet high and two feet long with a running start, aided by one of the worst jump animations I’ve seen in a long time, which is stranger as I think it’s motion captured. But it just looks off somehow. Dante needs to get right at the edge and jump perfectly, even off a swinging rope where he seems to forget the laws of physics exist and shoot straight up from any point in the swing, even right at the bottom. Woe be to ye who fail to read the bad camera angle as well, not going far enough away from the camera, or too far, slamming into one of the many invisible barriers.

Other times, the camera will just get too damn close to an area so players can’t see where they’re jumping off to, forcing a leap of faith which often ends two inches to the right of the needed goal, meaning a respawn, a trek through an annoying jumping puzzle, and another fountain smash/soul redeem. It’s telling that two of the game’s items serve no function but to lower tedium, even at the cost of benefits in one case. The camera is the deadliest thing in the game, and this is a game that has far, far too many instant kills players have no way of successfully navigating the first time.

When the game is at its peak, it’s got a strong artistic style and fluid combat. Unfortunately more often it’s in the Malebolge, flailing at players angrily. The climbable walls look like Disney’s Haunted Mansion really, surfaces that are supposed to be textured like a stack of coins just look like gold circles with poorly drawn shadows rather than any bump mapping or depth. There’s a lot of nudity for shock value, rather than for actual artistic design, and the circle of Lust, naturally, falls victim to this in particular, though it’s not a surprise there. Some of the design is clever and subtle, some is as ridiculous as Cleopatra’s breasts having tongues.

There’s also a lack of an artistic palette too often. Most of the game glows bright orange when a significant portion of Inferno is indeed lacking in flames. It’s too bad, because Limbo has some excellent setpieces and designs, as do the lower levels, beyond the city of Dis. The fiery theme is great for Heresy, but it feels wrong in Limbo and the other places it shows up, especially compared to such strong areas like the Suicides.

Ultimately, Dante’s Inferno really tries, but ends up in the realms of cheese or derivation far too often. The combat is a high point, the platforming is a very, very low point, and everything else swings wildly back and forth. And for a game that can be finished in 7 hours or less, there really needs to be more than two hours of great compared to the five of “meh.”

Dante’s Inferno gets 2 out of 5. Enjoyable moments, great spectacle, brilliant framerate. Terrible platforming, terrible cameras, and too many “gotcha!” kills and nitpicks. Major God of War fans should give it a rent, the rest, pass on it.

Space dungeons ahoy!

Greed:Black Border is a recently released dungeon crawler available on Steam. The setting tends toward sci-fi, though from the start it’s quick to throw in zombie horrors to match the security droids and giant alien insects/crustaceans. No surprise, it doesn’t really deviate from the roots, though it focuses on ranged combat for the three classes which equal out to long, medium, and short range guns. There’s very very little variety within those options. You’re packing a rifle, a minigun, or a flamer. That’s it. It will, eventually, do slightly different things (like a bi-directional spray for flamers), but players pick a role and stick with it.

As a result, the pyro class tends to show off the game’s deficiencies with a lack of long range weapons and abilities. Most of the time enemies come to the player, but ranged ones keep some distance. Pyro players are stuck chasing them into corners and using the dodge ability constantly.  They’re also likely to get stuck on an enemy. The game is too sensitive in deciding what a player is trying to do, and even when it seems like there’s a wide range, they’ll get locked onto a target when they were trying to run away. Since pyros are up close and personal they have a bigger problem with it, especially in crowded fights or boss fights.

Somewhat a genre weakness, boss fights really tend to drag out, and a lack of checkpoints means a big timesink and loads of frustration; to make matters worse, the game has a tendency to have a framerate drop in the midst of those fights, usually when the boss is entering bullet hell mode. Losing because you messed up is one thing, losing because the game doesn’t work right is another. Even in normal exploration with lowered settings the game likes to slow down with crowds, and when combined with the overly-eager targeting, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Somewhat an issue of the genre’s isometric nature, Greed tends to hide enemies behind walls. When the cursor is over them and they’re in the player’s line of sight, they’re highlighted. But that’s only when the cursor is over them, meaning unless you have ESP, you have to get guessing, only aware of the problem at all when you start taking damage.

There’s also quite a few “gotcha!” moments as a result, frustrating deaths that should never have happened, really. Often they’re just BEFORE a checkpoint, and after an already significant fight players were intended to have just scraped through. Being jumped by an overpowered enemy around the corner just isn’t fun in this kind of game.

A critical oversight is the lack of pausing for menus and windows. Inventory, skills, or the computer menu leave things running. Normally it’s not a big problem, but plot critical items pop up a new window, and that two seconds can be exactly the amount of time it takes a swarm of enemies to overwhelm you.

Unsurprisingly there’s occasional pathfinding issues when going to open containers, but for the most part characters find their way around without too much difficulty, a common genre issue. There’s a lack of inventory space, but toward the end of the first level players can start selling items, and they can be converted into raw ore at any point, which converts large items into a single square stackable material. Instantly being converted into actual cash would have been better, but it’s a reasonable solution, if tedious since every item has to be done individually.

Outside of all those complaints, there is some fun to be found really. The environments are nicely done, and while they tend toward meandering they’re well built and believable. The artistic style is a semi-realistic design with a bright palette. Enemies are large and the most dangerous enemy types have distinctive silhouettes. Enemies that tend toward support roles or have particularly high damage usually get a particle effect or a glow to help them stand out as key targets, a nice touch for the all-important prioritizing that has to take place rapidly.

The game’s voice acting is cheesy in just the right way, helping to lend to the overall feel of 1980s sci-fi that it runs with. The weapons, the audio, the visual styles all have a level of camp that’s hard to not enjoy. The enemies too, giant crabs, zombies, and powerloaders, all feel like they belong in mid-80ssci-fi/horror movies, being mowed down by Jessie Ventura.

And when the game is in its groove, it’s fun. Searching new areas, figuring out new enemies, mowing down hordes. It’s just a shame it falls out of it so often, into the conventions and failings of the genre.

Greed:Black Border gets 2.5 out of 5. Really fun moments marred tedious bossfights and some big oversights. There’s a tendency toward tedium, inherent in the genre, but it does try to throw in some surprises that can end up being quite entertaining.

Today only (1/16/2010), 100% of your spendings at PopCap games go to Haiti.

$20 or less gets you a great game AND does something important with the money. Go on. Buy something.

Oh boy.

Disappointment.

A bullshot loaded trailer is always a hint toward disappointment. In this case, the game’s footage has been sped up for the trailers, making it look a lot more engaging than it is. And a lot more entertaining, considering most of the minigames move at a glacial pace, and there’s a horrible lack of variety considering there’s 101 of them. Really, I expect some repeats at that number, but in the unfortunately significant number I played, I found four that were enjoyable, and a ton that were poorly thought out.

Most of the action based games require supernatural reflexes and a little too much luck in having a controller in the right position to hit the A button when you’ve been bouncing it up and down already, and the puzzle based games are…well, just so damn slow they’re strongly prone to being boring. Too much down time, games run too long, the amount of loading screens is ridiculous, and there’s no sense of competition for the most part. Games run between one to four players, often one player taking a long, slow turn, and they’re as far from memorable as can be generally. The only game I remember is “Deadly Distraction”, where players have to play a Space Invaders clone and clear the board in a certain timeframe. Excepting there’s no shields, and aliens just blink to a full body length to the side at about 1 FPS.

There’s also a game called “Monster Exercise”, wherein you run from a t-rex and jump obstacles. But the obstacles appear too fast and there’s very little warning before a player sees them, particularly when running at full speed, which is needed often to stay in the lead and gain points. Players could work on this by running slower, but the camera is ahead of the players, facing back, and there’s a whole two feet visible before getting hit by an obstacle and losing points. If you’re not psychic, and not an AI, you’re hitting it.

It’s just a sadly standard example of the games. Either you need superhuman reflexes or it’s boring as hell, waiting for a cue of some sort.

Another example! Explosive Quality Assurance. Hit a bomb with a hammer until it’s ready to explode. This could be amusing, were there real feedback, instead the bomb and conveyor belt start shaking. And by shaking I mean the object looks like it’s teleporting randomly around the screen. The angle doesn’t change, the color doesn’t change, it doesn’t spark, it just starts to teleport around wider and wider, in the same effect for explosions used during the Atari 2600 days as one yellow pixelated dot flashed around a tight area. It worked well for drawing flies too! But it doesn’t work well for this.

Everything about the game feels cheap. Bad German art (Elf Bowling, Polar Bowler, Yeti Games, yeah, that generic style, big noses, small eyes), poor animation, little optimization, constant loading, and a minimum of creativity. The little bit of speech is COMPLETELY unsynced from the animation, the sounds are uninspired at best, and the games…they all feel the same, and that often translates to a range of boring to actively bad.

101 in 1 Party Megamix gets 1.5 out of 5 stars. It’s not 100% awful, but it’s very bad in most regards, and what little good there is isn’t worth fighting to get to. Once again, the genre of good party games seems to be limited to Mario Party this generation.

Well, the name is misleading. You drive through them, not for them. Nor are you one.

But when the game is about plowing down the undead, I can forgive the little things, like…well, a bad camera angle, odd controls when reversing, and a few clipping issues. Unfortunately, there’s also a few larger issues.

Zombie Driver maintains a simple mission structure. Pick a vehicle that’s unlocked,  buy an upgrade, and get cruising through a city full of zombies. Every mission involves two things. The first is a passenger pickup. Survivors are scattered around the city in desperate need of rescue. They’re rarely particularly close together, but their distances from base are usually the easy indicator of what order to tackle them in. Players will zip over, kill nearby zombies by way of weapon or old fashioned vehicularly-induced trauma, Carmageddon style.

Secondary missions are generally about killing as well, though without survivors to worry about. Clearing an area or killing a certain number is standard, though sometimes there’s a speed goal instead. It’s not a highly varied game, by any means, but it does entertain.

It’s very much an arcade game, with an intended quick pace and a rush to survive and accomplish your goals in that limited timeframe provided (at least for the primaries, most secondary have no time limit as long as you’ve gotten primary goals finished and they’re not time based). As a result, the levels tend to feel very much the same, minus a new zombie type sometimes, or new weaponry. It’s mostly just an escalation from the last level, though, like any arcade game. Unfortunately, the ramp-up is mostly in the form of “more zombies”, instead of new types or new things to get around. And that wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the camera, truly the greatest enemy in the game.

The game uses a 3/4 overhead perspective that stays mostly behind the car, with a little delay in turns. It’s just too close too the ground, though, to provide a good look ahead of the player, and there’s no minimap, meaning players see around forty feet in front of them when they’re going straight. Not nearly enough at a decent speed, and it’s enough to make the sports car genuinely useless, too fast and too unarmored to use effectively. It also turns slow enough to make spinning the car around and lining up another attack run very difficult, more than it should be, and tall buildings can obscure the car’s location, leading to a failed mission if there’s an exploding zombie around the turn.

The addition of a minimap would be good, and a camera that was a little higher or pointed more ahead would be make a tremendous difference for the game, allowing players to reach that speed the game wants them to, without slamming into clusters of zombies or walls. And of course, those walls mean zombie clusters catch you and once again, you lose, but not for the right reason, for a technical issue.

The game also has some clipping issues on occasion, or physics bumps. More than once I found myself outside of the map’s intended boundaries. While there’s unbreakable fences lining 98% of that boundary (fortunately, it turns out), I ended up somehow going over it twice in my 4 hours of play. Once I ended up flying over the water and landing, fortunately, on the other side of  the bridge I missed. The second I went out entirely, landing in decorative trees and managing to drive my way into blackness outside the map. Fortunately, after some searching, I found an area that wasn’t fenced off at the train tracks, letting me back into the map. I finished my mission, and…the passengers didn’t get out of my car. I don’t know if the incidents were related or not, but it was 15 minutes of time lost on one of the most difficult secondary missions in the game.

There’s also the unfortunate oversight of the game being a straight linear 16 level run, and after that, you start right back at the beginning. No new game plus, no level select. No backtracking. You’re playing straight through, and once you finish, that’s it. It’s something that could add a lot of replay, particularly in an arcade style game. Even a free play mode where players just mow down zombies would be a great, simple addition, but it’s not there.

In the end, it’s all the little things that keep Zombie Driver as a good game, but never let it excel. A few patches and camera tweaks will go a long way, and those additions would go very, very far, pushing the game from “a little above average” to “really, really fun.” It’s a game that wants to be more than it is, and it’s not without charm; most of the character pictures look like they’re pictures of the staff, and the voices are likely in studio. Even the background sirens or zombie noises sound like someone going “WoooOOOOOOooooooo!” into a microphone.  The basic idea is fun, and the gameplay, when working right, is fun. But it’s always fighting problems it shouldn’t have, even for the value price tag.

Zombie Driver gets three out of five stars. It’s entertaining and it’ll get you a few hours worth, at least, for the $10 it costs, but it’s held back by myriad nagging issues. It’s repetitive, and players never get to that full speed zombie smashing experience they want thanks to the camera holding them back.

The Complete Overlord Package is available on Steam right now for $8.75. That’s 1, Raising Hell, and 2, for under 10 dollars, normally 35 dollars. Overlord is a ton of fun, best described as an evil Pikmin game, with adorable goblin minions who wear pumpkins as helmets and attack with candlesticks they find.

Really!

If you feel the need to crush your foes and commit comically evil acts, jump on this immediately, it’s the Steam Weekend Deal.

Call of Duty 4 was great, don’t get me wrong. But it was FAR from flawless, and a few points were absolutely frustrating.

For one, as much as it’s supposed to be a challenge, veteran mode was WAY out of line and it showed a few real weaknesses in level design. CoD4 was loaded with infinitely respawning enemies, traps for non-psychic players, and areas that required a multitude of plays before being completable on veteran. They’re old trappings of the series, but they’re ones that need to be shed.

Veteran mode, when it works, is fun. It’s a serious challenge and makes players rely on their squad as much as themselves, and use cover wisely. But without any ability to see around a corner without being exposed, and no ability to retaliate when wounded thanks to a tremendous screen jerk, it’s an exercise in memorization as much as anything. What it should be is slow, careful movement, peeking around corners, and judicious use of flashbangs and flanking enemies through teamwork. Instead, players are the only target that the AI cares about, have to make suicidal charges to unmarked enemy respawns, and die often from bad luck. It forces players to exploit the code, and that’s where something has gone wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the levels were great. But then you had hells like “No Fighting in the War Room”, “Mile High Club”, and “Heat.” Ones where you just had to memorize the level and pray that the enemy was in place for a flashbang to work.

Hopefully, Modern Warfare 2 remembers veteran should punish players for mistakes, not kill them for a lack of prescience.

Oh, and seriously, the clipping planes. I’m pretty sure CoD4 exists in an alternate world where every surface is coated in adhesive of some sort, because touching a wall or barrier of any sort will stick you in place, and often it takes up such a tiny portion of the screen, if any, you don’t realize you’re going to be stopping until it’s too late and you die. It’s annoying with walls and objects to the side of the player, it’s downright awful with low barriers that are below the camera. And there’s a ton of it.

Seriously guys. Implement some kind of feedback at least that it’s a wall stopping a player from moving. I died more from walls and boxes than bullets, and that’s even with my aim relatively low. If I’m aiming for the ass, I should see low obstacles.