Game Curmudgeons

The short version is the simple one. Counter-Strike: Global Operations is really fun, and it made CS fun again.

It’s weird in that I’d quit CS utterly as of 3-4 years ago. I played some CS:S when it came out, it was still decent, but I basically did nothing but botmatches. I played again over the winter for some presents and it just…well, it didn’t do it for me anymore. Some of the conventions didn’t work for me, the community didn’t do it, the maps, all of it. Seeing it as it was was a rough experience. Too much waiting, too much imbalance, too many rough edges by modern standards.

A friend sent me his beta gift, I jumped in and did some Arms Race (team deathmatch type mode where you get the next gun for getting a kill, and win by getting a kill with all weapons). The speed was a bit hectic (as expected for a deathmatch), but the balance seemed a lot better. The weapons all felt a little more balanced, except shotguns which are actually useful finally. It’s a fun mode on its own, a good way to feel out guns and a good warmup for other modes. Most of all. It’s got an interesting power curve. Start at SMGs, move to shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns, and then…pistols! It’s a ramp up up up and BAM, you wanna win, you’d better prove you’re so good you can beat all those other guys just with a pistol, and the final kill is with a knife. So, it’s really entertaining.

Next up I tried demolition. It’s a 20 round game, 10 on each side, and it starts players with a mid-level rifle (M4A1, AK-47). If you get a kill in a round, you get the next weapon in the chain. More than one kill and you get a use it or lose it grenade (which goes HE, Flashbang, no idea past that). Again, it follows a power curve of valleys/peaks. It actually drops your power at first, then boosts it back up, then down, and if you manage a kill for EVERY round you end up with an AWP. It’s an on the fly balancing system, it resets at match 10 for team switch. It’s also a bunch of short rounds timed to (I think) 90 seconds, with one demolition site on small maps. It’s a very careful mad dash to the site, the terrorists have to plant the bomb ASAP if they’re going to, and it’s a nice series of quick bites of CS action.

After that I moved into the classic modes (competitive is my preference in this case). It matchmakes pretty nicely even in beta, you pick a map rotation (Demolition, hostage rescue, or Dust (yes, dust maps on their own)), and off you go. There’s a new buy method now, too. It’s a wheel instead of a list, you can use number keys for fast buying, but you can use the mouse and get detailed info on everything. It displays a chart of costs, penetration level, and ratings rate of fire and damage among other  things, so you actually have a clue what the stats of every gun are. It even gives a little more info in text. As an example, the menu explains that the AK-47′s accuracy can be suspect at best, but the accurate first shot and the stopping power are what make it a favored gun. True enough, the first shot WILL go exactly where you’re pointing. Score a headshot on that and it’s already over, but if you’re spraying at anything over a close range you’re losing the fight. Close-mid, though, spray/burst wrecks people.

It feels like everyone moves a little faster now, and the guns are a little tighter in their recoil. The obvious best method is strafe/spray/jump and be a real nuisance basically – it doesn’t work that well. It seems like now it pays off more to actually use a different approach by distance, and more wise to retreat sometimes. Long range encounters demonstrate the importance of crouching and firing from a stable platform in very controlled bursts. If you’re in close it pays to stick and move and know your ammo count. Spray with a p90, burst with a UMP, but the pattern of move, stop, shoot is pretty important.

It also seems to move faster than previous CS versions without breaking the pace that worked so well. High tension marked by short moments of intense bursts of action, high lethality as ever, but the moments come a little closer together and start a little faster, especially in the new maps.

The new maps are very well designed and have a little more verticality in spots (in one, site A is upstairs from site B via several routes). The new things, like the Zeus tazer (a one shot kill that only gets one shot for the CTs) and the decoy grenades (which simulate gunfire, as in the gunshot sounds are played by them AND an enemy marker is produced on the radar) work well. They add a new tactic that doesn’t break the feeling of CS at all. Same for the molotovs/incendiary grenades (I think they’re new, I sure don’t remember them), they light a nice patch of ground on fire. Not a ton of damage unless you score a direct hit, but spectacular for holding a corridor or small area of ground against incursion. Nobody likes to walk through fire!

In short, it’s still Counter-Strike, but with massively improved balance and a pace which has been improved from the original/source versions. Moreover, it’s a big facelift into the modern Source engine. The biggest standouts are the improved lighting/shadow, which CAN give away position, and that everyone is the same “type” of terrorist/CT. All l33t, all GIGN, all SAS, whatever, by map, but it’s 5+ individuals versus the same guy five times. It actually solves an old problem CS had, which is that you never knew what you were looking for. It results in faster enemy recognition without feeling stale, a very good thing. Even the voices are different for each team now. Collected GIGN members, excited SAS Scotsmen, and hyper hooligans running around Office.

If you never liked CS, GO isn’t going to do anything for you. If you really enjoyed CS back in the day, but fell out of it and never got back in, this is the time. It’s absolutely the heart of CS, but the improvements are so numerous that even when they’re not readily apparent, they’re obvious. I just couldn’t get myself to play CS again before now, despite repeated attempts. Now I’ve spent 13 ours playing, and that was in 4-5 days of beta alone. It’s a more responsive, prettier, better version of CS, a modern version of the old game and at $15 it’s priced just where it should be. Above budget “what’s wrong with it?” games, below the $20 “new boxed release” threshold. Enough for a triple A arcade game, basically, without making you feel angry you’re buying Counter-Strike (again). Hell, I hate multiplayer games 99% of the time, and I really did hit 13 hours in beta alone. I fully endorse this game on that value alone, I paid a dollar an hour!

I admit, as much as I love my Wii, I don’t get a lot of time on it. It’s always one of those things where the potential is so much greater than the actual results, especially with third party offerings. Combined with a ton of shovelware for the expected “kids have no taste, grandmothers don’t know better” market I’m always wary.

Sin and Punishment:Star Successor completely bucks the trend.

The name, of course, screams “weird Japanese RPG”, and while it’s definitely got the first two parts covered, the last couldn’t be further from reality. S&P:SS is apparently the sequel to Sin and Punishment. I know, shocking. It was a Nintendo 64 title released only in Japan, and recently enough via WiiWare in the US, and that’s all I know about it. That’s all that matters for backstory. What the game tells you is that you’re in the future, you’re under attack, and some bad people are after the girl who looks, but naturally isn’t, human. So you shoot them.

S&P:SS is a rare new entry into the behind the back shooter, one that never saw a lot of games even in its arcade heyday. All I can think of right now would be Cabal, Nam-1975, Dynamite Duke, and Blood Bros, maybe the Space Harrier games can count. The genre was and is obscure, partially due to being at home brutally punishing players, demanding quarters from them regularly, and this new entry is no exception.

Sin and Punishment demands a split focus of players, making it a demanding exercise to begin with. The player avatar is always on screen and under attack, making step one protecting yourself from damage. Step two, kill everything. Traditionally the cursor and player avatar have been linked on a joystick, but the Wii has either the option of playing a dual stick style, or the more natural analog+wiimote style. It’s the same core gameplay as before, with a spectacularly streamlined control mechanism. It lets players dodge and aim in different directions for once, something that always pulled the genre down.

But the developers, Treasure, love to kill their players, and they take advantage of the new options. Whereas old games of the genre only had movement left or right, this one eschews the Galaga slide for four axes of movement, each one essential to survival. There’s a helpful inclusion of a lockon mechanism, which keeps shots true to the target but lowers their power, allowing players to worry about surviving the assaults first and foremost. Melee attacks have been added in too, which both are powerful and essential to survival in many cases, and have the bonus of reflecting projectiles. Missiles and grenades can be reflected, Jedi style, wherever the player is aiming or to their locked on target for massive damage, but managing the maneuver is always a challenge when energy blasts are overwhelming the screen.

The game’s intro level is a gentle enough affair, intended to teach players the basics, and it does so effectively, only getting a little more difficult at the boss fight. As soon as that level ends, things get cranked up to “ridiculous” even on easy, with what feels like an absolute wall of enemies, gunfire from all angles, and constant danger. Even as a genre veteran, the end boss to level one took me a solid 20 minutes to beat. There are always patterns and weaknesses to bosses, particularly level end bosses, but figuring them out and exploiting them is a real challenge. The same tends to go for mid-bosses as well, of which there are plenty, and they reappear as normal enemies later as is the traditional way of the shooter.

Sin and Punishment:Star Successor is a rare on-rails run and gun affair, and it’s absolutely brilliant. The action is non-stop, the pace is undeniably frantic, and the challenge is massive. This is a game that truly takes advantage of the Wii’s mechanics. The only real problem I had with the game is setting up a good control scheme because there’s so much going on at once, and because the default zapper setup is geared toward a wiimote and nunchuck. Once that barrier is overcome it all becomes smooth, natural, and a ton of fun. Break out the PerfectShot, Zapper, or Clone Blaster, stand way too close to the TV, and feel time melt away as you end up back in a 90s arcade.

It’s a Wiio-Geo game, and I couldn’t be happier to have found it.

9/10

It’s really, really disappointing.

God of War has declined since the first title, which only really had the flaws of repetition and the Hades sections.

God of War III has a lot of flaws and a few shining moments, ending up closer to Dante’s Inferno than God of War.

Graphically, there’s no question of the quality. And that may be the biggest flaw. So much is going on at all times on-screen that Kratos disappears into the middle of it, it ends up being difficult to tell just what’s going on sometimes. There’s not enough truly defined outlines, maybe an artificial outline should have been added. A little specular shading and rim lighting, for example, as used in Team Fortress 2 would have provided clear definition against the backgrounds and enemies that isn’t there.

It does manage spectacle at an unrivaled level, in gross detail. Everything about the game’s fights is huge. Kratos swings big swords in a 30 foot radius, the enemies he fights are 30 to 300 feet tall, and the methods of dispatch are nothing short of gruesome.

Unfortunately, the game itself falls to the spectacle. Combat isn’t solid, it’s loose and repetitive, button mashing being as advantageous as any strategy. There’s no sense of actual contact with an enemy, blades just spin in circles regardless of what they hit. Walls, blocking enemies, the sun, it doesn’t really seem to matter. Rather than feeling like an unstoppable monster, you just feel like you’re floating through the world.

Except when jumping. When jumping between platforms, players are forced to doublejump, immediately and always. Though any jump can be a double jump at any point in the jump, if it’s not done instantly it won’t count, and it’s back to the last checkpoint. It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t help anything, it just annoys. Who knew that Dante would be the better jumper than Kratos? Not I, but both have been taking lessons from Simon Belmont. Six feet up, one foot forward. Yay.

Rather than fix the complaints of the QTEs, God of War III misses the point completely and moves the prompts to the side of the screen. It’s almost a good idea. At the top, triangle, bottom, x, you get the idea. The problem is players end up having to stare at the sides of the screen, and it’s particularly bad on a large screen, when it’s in peripheral vision instead of just a bit to the side. The other issue comes with it not always being immediately clear players need to mash the circle button, and the stick twisting prompts are often marred by the game being unresponsive to the input. The QTEs are hard to spot and don’t give a good window of time. Alas, if only they’d taken some cues from the excellent Heavy Rain.

The game’s camera has a tendency to be in the wrong spot as well, a real problem since players have no control over it. It likes to zoom in too close or too far, but always in a way that makes it hard to see Kratos, or hard to see what’s going around. Not that you always want to. Frankly, Kratos is the worst protagonist ever at this point. In the past he’d managed to inspire some sympathy at least, but now he’s just a psychopathic asshole and completely unlikeable. A good revenge story requires something people can get behind, and this doesn’t have it anymore. The story weakened in the second game, and in the third, well, it’s terrible.

In other bad changes, weapons and spells are tied together, though three of the four weapons have very few differences except for being a different spell, and one lets you hold the attack button to use a combo extending finisher, Bayonetta style. Aside from that, three are your standard chains, and there’s one set of big fat punchin’ gloves that really fail to satisfy.

There’s a few annoying escort sequences, though they end mercifully fast. Unmercifully long are the flying sequences, where Kratos heads up or down a ridiculously long tunnel, dodging debris awkwardly. It’s not fun, it’s not exciting, and it’s not really challenging, it’s just annoying and happens far too often. So do instant kill traps and pits. The game loves to kill players without warning in a way that requires ESP not to die. There’s a few puzzle-race sequences like that, where players WILL do them three or four times most likely to succeed, and they’re never short sequences. It’s always a drawn out series of lever pulls where anything short of perfection means starting over. Yet another flaw in a sequel full of them.

God of War III gets two stars. It’s not awful, but it’s more bad than good, and at the point it gets good, it’s over.

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.

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.

Brütal Legend is fucking awesome. My friend demanded a haiku about it. Here it goes.

Brutally awesome

Tim Schafer makes comedy gold

And spills lots of blood.

There you go. Brütal Legend is awesome, and god damn you all if you don’t buy it after what you did to Psychonauts, you ungrateful pricks. It’s got comedy, blood, incredible music, great acting, and great cutscenes. It’s a game brilliantly put together from a few different elements that always comes back to a brawler core, backed by heavy metal. Great metal. Hell, even Dragonforce is used in an acceptable way, even a GOOD use of them, and I’m far from a fan of theirs.

But hey, you need more than that, right? So I’ll give it to you.

Brütal Legend is a brawler at its core, with lots of free exploration, some RTS elements, some RPG-ish elements even. Most of the time is spent with the player driving or running around alone, taking on enemies and looking for secondary missions. Most of those are ambushing enemies, point defense from a turret, and races. But there’s a few other things to be done, and a few twists on the standards one expects from those missions, and they’re mostly fun (the point defense from a turret is less so, depending on the weapon used). Between that, missions! There are a few base types, escorts and stage battles, with a bit of variety in between, and those are all excellently done.

Aside brawling, there’s lots of driving, lots of exploring, and lots of secrets to find. None are essential, but they include new special abilities, attribute boosts, flame tribute (the currency used to buy upgrades), all of which are damned useful, some easily capable of turning the tide of a battle. Or, and they look really cool. I mean really, who doesn’t want a flaming axe or one that sprays blood when you swing it, even when you haven’t hit anything recently? Nobody I want to know, that’s for damn sure.

It’s not a complicated game for the most part, but it does include sections that are reminiscent of Battlezone, where the player commands forces as well as fights. Follow, attack, and defend orders can be issued, territory is fought for (specifically, resource points that emit fans), units are recruited. The overall execution is simple, but a lot of fun and can be a really intense experience, being on the battlefield you’re issuing commands to, defending your fans and trying to make new ones.

Even in the midst of battles, comedy and heavy metal galore. Over the top violence is standard, lots of dismemberment, harsh language, and fire. Just like the game’s cutscenes and…hell, most of the game, to be honest. Particularly out of Ozzy’s mouth. Oh yes, Ozzy and Lemmy both feature heavily in the game, as do other metal icons and some who just have plenty of cred, like Brian Posehn. It’s a game played as much for the story as anything, and it’s a mostly excellent, despite an unfortunate rush at the end, where a little more story progress would have been great. But hey, there’s always DLC, right?

The game really succeeds in the style department as well. Great dialogue, great sound editing, and amazing visuals. Not for being high polycounts or exceptional models and textures, though they are excellent. Mostly it’s the style. Everything is just…so damn metal. Especially scenery. It all looks like it’s from a heavy metal album cover, every single thing, but hey, so do most characters, most enemies, everything, really. Some from power metal, some speed, some thrash, some black, some death metal. The visual themes all fit different aspects, the various factions get their own musical styles, and everything comes together in an amazing way.

It’s not flawless, of course. Sometimes it gets repetitive. There’s some occasional jumps or oddities with in-engine cutscenes, models can lose accessories they had in an earlier piece only to magically regain them. The turret missions are…eh. The plot rushes a bit at the end, as said earlier, but…well, it just never seems to matter. The only complaint is the game is too short, clocking in at 11 hours with a light amount of exploration. But that was missing a LOT of hidden items, frankly, and there’s plenty of those.

Brütal Legend is an absolute 5/5. There’s a few small issues, but the game is fun, funny, and tremendously creative. It’s a game with definite replay value, a fun multiplayer mode based on the single-player game’s more climactic RTS-Brawler combo battles, and hell, it’s not hard to just sit in a safe place in the Druid Plow listening to the spectacular soundtrack. Go get it.

Did you buy it yet? It’s still for sale on GOG.com, damn it. It’ll take a little tweaking sure, but well worth it.

I know, I’m supposed to come here and tell you why. So here we go!

Beyond Good and Evil is the story of Jade, a surprisingly deep female protagonist. A reporter, staff fighting expert, and runner of orphanage. She’s deeply and spectacularly human (which isn’t even easy to achieve when almost the only human in a game), takes lots of pictures, shoots discs at bad guys, and has a pretty awesome charged melee ki-smack to beat up alien invaders with.

The game itself is an adventure game with platforming, brawling, stealth, racing, and vehicular combat thrown in, all of them well. Tall order, no doubt, and it wouldn’t have been faulted for missing a beat or two with all that, but it really gets it all right, even the oft-failed stealth sections, thanks to the game’s humane decision to start you right back in the same room you fucked it all up in, meaning even if you have to go with trial and error you don’t have to go very far since most rooms are quite small and only involve one or two stealthy maneuvers to advance to the next one.

Make no mistake-Beyond Good and Evil is not a sandbox game, despite the variety of things to be done. There’s some freedom in when to do what and some optional things, but the affair is driven by the story and character, despite the need to hunt down pearls and other currency for upgrades. At first, players will just see a world invaded by aliens known as the Domz, but just a short way in they’ll discover a massive conspiracy, an underground rebellion, and all sorts of “Holy crap, what?” that I won’t say here to avoid spoilers. It’s a memorable story that’s told very well through excellent characters, and it sticks with you.

The presentation is no small part of it, mind you. BG&E has a crisp, bright color palette, even in the darkest areas, with a gently stylized cast of friends and enemies (okay, not always gently, but it all blends together wonderfully). The visuals never fail to convey genuine feeling, more than location even, and they’re matched by the audio. Great acting combined with great effects and music ties it all together. Players will get lost in the world, with orchestral scores in minor keys exploring caves on foot, fast beats racing a hovercraft, and a reggae groove with the Rastafarian rhinos. That statement is not an exaggeration. There really are Rastafarian rhinos who serve as your black market connection, and you’ll need them to upgrade your ship. The world of Hylis has quite a few interesting species around (which you’re also paid to catalog), and just as many interesting characters.

Beyond Good and Evil is one of those classics like Psychonauts. You didn’t play it, but it’s an all-time classic.  The graphics have a few times when they look a little dated due to relatively low polycounts, but the textures and style keep it looking excellent anyway, along with smooth animation. The story is still fresh, and the characters are memorable. It’s one of those games that should have been instantly immortalized but never got the proper support. Fortunately it has a chance to live again now on PC, and hopefully it’ll get the Xbox Originals treatment on Xbox Live Arcade.

BG&E gets 5 out of 5 stars. Occasional frustrating moments, occasional bugs, but the way everything comes together is nothing short of masterpiece. Play it, love it.

I know, I know, everyone else does. Maybe it just wasn’t my thing, but I couldn’t bring myself to love Infamous. In fact, I couldn’t even get myself to finish it. I even tried it again before writing this review to be sure, from the good guy angle. No good for me.

I know that’s a cardinal sin with good games, as the end can turn to suck, and bad games it’s still a sin, just in case there’s something amazing at the end. And I’m sure there could be, but I couldn’t care less now.

InFamous is a third person shooter, essentially. It’s got some platforming elements which are reasonably well done, though not nearly what I expected from Sucker Punch. It’s uneven, unbalanced, and the pace is absolutely dreadful. Not just the story and escalation, the movement. Cole, the game’s hero, moves at the speed of a brooding, angry, electric tortoise, only without the hard shell. It’s strange, he can fall 1000 feet with no effects, but three bullets put him out. And those bullets will be fired at players far far far out of their retaliatory range initially, and later to an extent. The player does get the chance to clear areas of enemies, zone by zone, but the tasks, particularly the stealth ones, just become arduous at a rapid pace. Of course, it also becomes damn near essential to clear ahead to make some missions possible. The uneven difficulty curb, once again, provides problems here. Enemies spawned normally within mission areas aren’t too bad, but when you’re constantly being sniped from rooftops, they can become frustrating nightmares.

That is, frankly, my biggest problem with InFamous. It’s so easy to get ganked from nowhere, and it’s constant. Considering I’m supposed to be a superhero or villain, I never feel like a badass. I feel like a guy hiding behind a concrete block in terror of the AK-47 in front of me. Sure it gets a little better later on with a shield power, but even then enemies just show up beside or behind. And god help you on an escort mission, where you’re going to die several times, and if you hide to regen you’ll usually miss the critical target that’s attacking your ward. Even grabbing wonderful healing electricity can be too much time, resulting in a failed mission. There are, thankfully, plenty of checkpoints, and you can beat escort missions through painful memorization. I guess that’s a good point, compared to a total restart.

InFamous comes with a big block of cheese, too, in its desire for you to be the bad guy. One evil act, and your lighting turns red, for example (and looks crappy, to be honest). Cole’s appearance and clothing starts to look washed out, grey, generic smoldering evil rage, that kind of thing. The game certainly starts interestingly, but the protagonist honestly lacks appeal. His excuses for bad behavior are pretty weak, but he just keeps charging ahead mindlessly.

Now, I will say this. The game’s story does unfold very well, though naturally the overall story arc is going to be the same journey to the ending. And it is a good story, though it takes a while to start and there’s an annoying sidekick (and hey, I’m biased against annoying sidekicks named Zeke). The problem is getting there. Platforming that just never feels right, loose shooting, tremendous inconsistency, constant ambushes. Getting around is certainly a pain as well, even once you get movement upgrades like rail and power-line grinding. Jumping line to line is tricky and usually involves flying very far in a direction you didn’t intend on. And players are unable to outrun the trains on the tracks, so it’s easy to get smacked from behind by one of them, or in front thanks to an occasionally rough draw distances.

Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough. Climbing buildings can be arduous, and doubly so for the missions that involve removing devices from the sides of buildings. The combat is often frustrating, getting around is slow, and power growth feels arbitrarily limited. There’s plenty of good things in the game, honestly, and it’s easy to see how a lot of people love this one. But for me, it just didn’t grab me, it just became an average third person shooter when I expected crazy lightning action. Call it the Prototype effect.

Infamous gets 2.5 out of 5 from me. I know there’s a good game there for a lot of people to enjoy, but I just couldn’t get into it.