The following article first appeared in TuneUp: Blog About Windows. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

Author: Tibor Schiemann, President & Managing Partner, TuneUp

The resurgence in classic gaming has spurred both the nostalgic and the simply curious to explore treasures like Monkey Island (1990) or Wing Commander III (1994). Back in the old days, you could power on your trusty computer running DOS, Windows 3.x or Windows 9x and point-and-click the day away. But enjoying such classics on modern machines isn’t so easy, especially considering how much hardware and software architecture has changed over the past few decades. About 90% of the time, the good old DOS, Windows 3.x or Windows 9x games won’t even start. There are, however, some tricks for running these retro games on today’s PCs.

Most games from the 1980s and 1990s ran on DOS, lesser known as the Disk Operating System, a command-line operating system that powered most 286-,386- and 486-era PCs. DOS even lived on to be the backbone of Windows 3.x and Windows 95, so most games from that era continued to require the command line OS.

Of course, today DOS is extinct and no longer a part of Windows. And this means most games won’t run under the command line of Windows 7—and even if they did, what ran at 33, 66 and 400 MHz won’t be able to keep pace with today’s 3800 MHz CPU speeds. The way around this is using DOSBox, which emulates the antiquated operating system as well as legacy hardware. It’s capable of automatically adjusting a PC’s speed to the type of DOS game you’re running. While DOSBox is easy to set-up, it does require some command-line skills.

Here’s how it works. First, download and install DOSBox from this site. Then, copy all of your DOS-based games into a folder, for example, “C:\DOSGames,” and launch DOSBox. You’ll then find yourself in the “Z:\” folder.

Next, mount one of your local folders to a drive letter on DOSBox, since the tool has no direct access to your drives. Also, be sure to shorten all folder names, since you’ll need to type them all by hand when mounting. Here’s an example of how to do this step. Say that you’d like to put Sim City 2000 in the C:\DOSGames folder in order to mount this folder as the DOSBox drive letter “G.”

Then, you’d simply type “mount g: c:\DOSGames”, followed by the drive letter “G:” and then hit enter. Then type “Dir” to see the contents of this drive, which should reflect those in your local folder, “C:\DOSGames.”

If you’d like to then switch to a subfolder, type “CD game” (replacing “game” with the name of your games folder). For instance, in the example above, I would switch to the “SIMCITY” folder by typing “CD simcity.” Then, type “DIR” again to see which of these files runs the game. The file name typically would be the name of game with a “.exe”, “.com” or “.bat” file extension tacked on. After you’ve typed in the name of the game’s executable file, hit enter to run it. If you have problems running any game, check out DOSBox’s massive compatibility list or check forums to see if others are experiencing the same issues.

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments

Publisher: Remedy
Developer: Remedy
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2 GB dual core/2.8 GB AMD or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX 10-compatible graphics card, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 8 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

One of the most powerful weapons a storyteller has in his arsenal is ambiguity. Think about the ending of Inception. The spinning totem in the final shot has inspired countless hours of discussion about its significance. Now comes the PC version of Alan Wake, a third-person action-adventure game initially released two years ago for Xbox 360. Through the narration of its protagonist, a best-selling author of horror novels, developer Remedy has fashioned a world of compelling ambiguity: How much of what we see is a memory? A dream? The product of a damaged psyche? For that matter, is the narrator even telling the truth?

One thing does become clear the moment the game begins: Alan Wake is a visual masterwork. Consider this scene from the opening chapter, set in a spooky corner of New England that could’ve been lifted from the pages of a Stephen King novel: Wake stumbles onto a remote road, his flashlight illuminating the night. In the distance, he can see a lighthouse, its beam piercing a veil of quickly moving fog to show the way to safety. To his left, a fierce whirlwind — the manifestation of a character from one of his novels — starts kicking up debris and moving toward him. Alan Wake is built on scenes like this, all of which are artistically and technically impressive. The only obvious visual blemish is the flat and stiff facial graphics and animation, which betray the game’s age.

Perhaps good storytelling and superb graphics no longer impress you. Maybe you look beneath the skin, where the meat of your experience with a game lies. I have good news for you as well. When developing Alan Wake, Remedy created a nearly perfect balance of exploration, light puzzle solving, escape sequences and combat. The latter is unique in that it consists of two layers: using your flashlight to burn darkness from your enemies, and then pumping them full of lead. This design creates interesting dilemmas when more than one enemy is attacking: Do you burn them all and then shoot them down, or take care of them one at a time? Do you use your flare gun, which does the job of both the flashlight and the gun, or save it for later? My only quibble is with the camera and the controls, which feel copied and pasted from the console version. What Remedy has included works, it just feels made for something other than a PC keyboard and mouse.

It takes awhile for Alan Wake to gain traction. Remedy frequently takes control away from the player to show a scripted sequence or a cinematic, and these interruptions can be a pain. But toward the end of the first chapter, as the combat intensified, I started to feel a pulse, and the longer I played, the stronger it became. Alan Wake not only delivers a great aesthetic experience and solid gameplay, but it also creates an atmosphere of true horror. Few games have achieved this same level of chilling immersion. What’s more, when I was done, I felt as though I had read a good novel. That I still have questions about what it all means makes the game that much more memorable.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© David Laprad for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Beatshapers
Developer: Beatshapers
Genre: Arcade puzzle
ESRB rating: Everyone
Release date: Available now

PlayStation Vita, Sony’s fancy new handheld, released in early 2012 in North America with more than two dozen launch games. Many of them, such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Unit 13, were the type of game that require a considerable time investment in each play session. But most adults who play portable game systems only really use them in small chunks of time, such as on public transportation or while waiting for the end of the final spin cycle. Developer/publisher Beatshapers has helped to fill this void with Stardrone: Extreme, a fast-paced, sometimes-maddening arcade game that only takes a few minutes of your valuable time for each addictive level.

Stardrone: Extreme is the small-screen version of Stardrone, an indie game for the PS3 and the PC that was a finalist at the 2011 IndieCade Independent Video Games Festival. At the beginning of each of Extreme‘s 60 levels, a tiny space ship is launched into a colorful maze of stars, obstacles and floating enemies. Energy beacons are placed at various positions in the maze. Once the ship is launched, momentum keeps it moving constantly forward. Your job is to guide the ship through the mazes by tapping the beacons, which send out gravity beams that attach to the ship. These allow you to alter its trajectory. The beams detach when lift your finger from the touchscreen (or the rear touchpad).

Each level involves one of three general objectives. In Collect All Stars, you have to pilot the ship through the maze, lighting up all of the stars by flying into them. Destroy All Enemies isn’t as simple as it might sound. A meter at the top of the screen fills up as you collect stars. When the meter is full, your ship turns into the Stardrone equivalent of Pac-Man after he swallows the power pill. While the ship is powered up, it can kill almost any enemy with one touch and can breach obstacles that would take many impacts while the ship is in its normal state. But the energy meter slowly drains after the ship is powered up, so you have to continue to kill enemies or light up stars to keep the power flowing. The third game mode has you simply guiding the ship through the maze to the exit point. This is the toughest of the three modes, since powerup opportunities are few and one missed tap on a gravity beacon can mean failure.

The controls for Extreme can’t be simpler — the only control is your finger. You aim the cannon by touching the screen; lift your finger to fire. After that it’s just touching and releasing the beacons to point the ship in the right direction. There are times when using the front touchscreen puts your hand between your eyes and the ship, which can be fatal in the increasingly complex later levels, so learning how to play with the rear touchpad can be a game-saver. The graphics are very colorful, almost psychedelic, set against the flat black backdrop of space. And the music and sound effects remind me of old arcade games, effective and strangely memorable. Some of the enemies require more than one hit to destroy; it almost sounds like they’re laughing at you when you hit them the first time. Also, cross-platform play with the PS3 is supposedly coming through a PS3 patch.

Only a couple of things get in the way of Extreme success. Each level includes a minimap set in the bottom corner of the screen, “mini” being the important part of the description. It’s so small and translucent that it blends into the playfield, making it useless in many cases. If you fail a level (and you will, many dozens of times), you’re given the choice of skipping it and moving to the next, even after only failing one time, so you could theoretically reach the final level in only a few minutes. But most unnerving about Extreme is the frustration factor. The touchscreen controls are very precise. It can take a long time and many failures to finally become comfortable with them. And once you reach the final level (which you can’t skip), you have no stars to gather, which means no power-up mode. It will take the average player a long time and many deaths to learn the pattern of the maze (the minimap is little help) and the locations of all the elements that they have to either reach or avoid. It can take several hours to get through the first 59 levels, and perhaps just as long to get to the end of the 60th. Controller-hurlers will be in serious danger of ruining their $300 hardware. Several times I’ve managed to get my little ship within pixels of the goal, only to hit a jag-toothed wall and dying.

Stardrone: Extreme gives casual players a quasi-arcade game that has simple controls and can be comfortably played in small doses, while making good use of the PS Vita’s powerful hardware. And best of all, at $3.99 it’s probably the best value for your money of any game available for the device. An improved minimap (or perhaps putting one in the pause menu) would go a long way towards reducing the frustration that the game can generate, but it still gives you plenty of on-the-go entertainment that you can probably finance using the coins in your couch cushions.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | One comment

Publisher: Her Interactive
Developer: Her Interactive
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/OSX 10.5, 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 or better CPU, 512 MB RAM, 3 GB hard-drive space, 128 MB DirectX 9.0-compatible graphics card, 16 bit DirectX-compatible sound device
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Everyone
Release date: May 9, 2012

Nancy Drew has a long history as a book series. More recently, the PC game series is making a name for itself as a continuation of the tradition. As the 26th game in the collection, Tomb of the Lost Queen has a well established framework to not just match, but also hopefully to surpass.

Tomb of the Lost Queen takes Nancy to Egypt, job shadowing an archaeologist named Dr.Boyle at a dig site. The opening scenes tell of an Egyptian queen’s tomb, found 100 years ago by a team who supposedly succumbed to its curse, taking all knowledge of the tomb with them. Nancy believes this dig site is the location of the lost tomb. Disaster strikes immediately, however, as a wind storm engulfs the camp. As the power cuts and lightning flashes, Dr.Boyle is struck down and all evidence suggests he was attacked. After he wakes up in the hospital, Dr.Boyle asks Nancy to find out what happened.

Gameplay is much the same as it has been in past Nancy Drew games, with only a few subtle changes. An item bar is positioned across the bottom of the screen. Nancy has a cell phone for taking pictures and calling people, a journal that catalogues what she’s done so far, and a checklist to keep track of what needs doing. Movement is handled by clicking when the pointer turns to an arrow. Observing and collecting are also handled by clicking on items when the cursor changes shape or lights up.

Tomb of the Lost Queen is both the same and different from past games. Everything about it feels like the previous installments in the series. It’s the subtle but notable changes that put it a step ahead. Refinements to the UI layout and style are a welcome change, making it easier to use while being less obtrusive. As always, the background art is beautifully rendered and vibrant. The 3D character models are a step up and fit well against the backdrops. The differences between what’s 2D and 3D is barely noticeable.

There’s little negative to say about Tomb of the Lost Queen. The puzzle difficulty might seem like a hurdle for the game’s intended audience (kids 10 years old and up), but the junior detective mode with hints seems to handle that well enough.

I didn’t grow up a Nancy Drew fan. I still don’t read the books, but the game series is well done and I look forward to seeing where the series goes in the future. I’d recommend Tomb of the Lost Queen to anyone who enjoys a good mystery or a good puzzle game — or both.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Lieren Teeling for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7/Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 2.0 GHz Pentium IV or better CPU, 3 GB RAM (4 GB for Mac), 512 MB graphics card, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead graphic-novel series has become a cottage industry since its original publication in 2003. The television series based on the comics has become one of the AMC cable network’s most popular shows, several board games have been released, action figures by Todd McFarlane are available. You can even get drinking glasses and beer steins emblazoned with Walking Dead graphics. And now, adventure-game publisher Telltale has added to zombie lore with the first of five video-game episodes, giving you the chance to guide a troubled hero through the opening days of the zombie apocalypse.

You play as Lee Everett, a history professor at a college in Georgia. Things aren’t going well for Lee, even before the dead begin to rise and feast on the living. We first see Lee in the back of a police car on the way to prison (we don’t yet know what he did to deserve a trip to the big house). An auto accident leaves Lee with an injured leg and on the run from a group of zombies. He takes refuge in a suburban house, where he meets Clementine, an 8-year-old girl who’s been hiding in her treehouse waiting for her parents to return from a trip to Savannah. After she helps him survive an attack by her zombified babysitter, Lee agrees to keep Clementine safe until she can be reunited with her family.

Telltale has added a bit of creativity to their standard control scheme for the Walking Dead. The interface is the usual point-and-click that you would find in most adventure games, but selecting an NPC or a usable item sometimes reveals a context menu (controlled by the mouse wheel) that gives you immediate options for what you can do (examine or talk, for example). Your inventory is totally controlled by these context menus, so you don’t have to leave the screen to select an item. Also, conversation threads now can have time limits attached, forcing you to go with your first instinct instead of spending time pondering the choices. But the biggest addition to the usual Telltale formula is that decisions you make can have an effect on how the story plays out all the way through the five episodes of the series. This offers almost unlimited replayability, something that almost all previous adventure games lack. You can play Lee as a misunderstood hero, then go back and start again as a cold-hearted criminal, with the story adjusting itself based on your choices. There are even several spots where you have to choose which of two NPC characters lives or dies.

Just as in the comics and the TV series, the Walking Dead game story is more about the living than the dead. You meet and join a group of survivors, each with their own personal agendas, and the writing lets you get to know all of them, which makes it that much harder to decide which of them becomes dinner for the brain-eaters. Cell-shaded graphics give the game an excellent comic-book feel, and the music score is perfectly understated, blending nicely with the action. And there’s a surprising amount of real action here; failing to complete a series of mouse-button presses can quickly turn you into zombie food. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Telltale game without puzzles. They’re few and far between in Episode 1, and they’re all fairly simple affairs; expect them to ramp up in number and difficulty as the series progresses.

Hardcore gamers who aren’t fans of the source material could find The Walking Dead tedious, since most of the game is spent introducing you to the characters and their stories. It’s also perhaps the shortest adventure Telltale has ever released, running no more than a couple of hours; some MMO clients take longer to download than that. Meanwhile, those who love the comics and the show might be disappointed to discover that only one of the series’ core characters appears in the game, although we do visit an iconic location from Season 2 of the TV series. But we become quickly and easily invested in the lives of the characters in the game; I didn’t find myself wondering what those other survivors were doing, since I was too busy trying to keep myself and my new friends alive (and my personal secrets to myself).

Ever since halfway through their Monkey Island series, Telltale has been on a bit of a losing streak, with Law and Order: Legacies and Jurassic Park generating less-than-stellar reviews and receipts. But ironic as it might seem, it’s possible that a series about the bloodthirsty undead might actually breathe some life back into the company’s fortunes. The Walking Dead combines an involving narrative style, a lead character who’s as likable as you want him to be, and a significant revamping of the typical Telltale adventure mechanic to create an entertaining first episode to what could be the developer’s best series.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Hi-Rez Studios
Developer: Hi-Rez Studios
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.7 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM (XP)/3 GB RAM (Vista/Win 7), 512 MB graphics card with Shader Model 3.0 support, DirectX-compatible sound device, 10 GB hard-drive space
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: 2012

My my, what an exciting time to be a gamer. The Internet has created a host of independently developed games, digital distribution and F2P are chipping away at the $60 price point, and Kickstarter is busting up the traditional publishing model. Now, developer Hi-Rez Studios has rescued the Tribes license. Tribes 2, featuring class-based team play and pinpoint-accurate weapons, was a game before its time. Even now, years after officially being shut down, you can still find players skiing around base defenses on community servers. As unique as it is, Tribes has never truly been emulated. Soon it will come to the masses in the form of a free-to-play online shooter. Thankfully, this release is looking to be more second coming than blasphemy.

In Tribes, movement is king, and not a bit of it has been watered down for Ascend. It’s all about using the land to boost your momentum. Activate frictionless “ski” mode when going down a slope, and hit the jetpack on the other side. Time it right (most of the weapons, especially the signature “spinfuser,” require precision) and you quickly become a heavily armed bullet. In Ascend you have a game that looks like it’s from 2012, but it plays uncannily like the 2001 classic. In fact, two of the original maps make a revised comeback.

While the current game modes include staples such as Team Deathmatch, Arena, and Capture and Hold, Tribes: Ascend doesn’t truly get started until you launch Capture the Flag. Unlike most other CTFs, you have an entire base ecosystem to manage. Radar systems detect intruders, who are shot by turrets, which are powered by a generator buried deep inside the base. If a single infiltrator can sneak in and take out the generator, all the defenses go down, making the flag vulnerable. Teamwork isn’t just recommended, it’s a must.

The best news is that Tribes: Ascend is free to play. You’re given three basic classes from which to choose, and from there you can unlock more classes and loadouts by earning in-game credit. It’s not too hard to get the stuff you want after a few hours of play, but dropping some real-world cash isn’t out of the question either. Already there’s much more equipment available than in previous iterations, so we’ll see if balance becomes a concern. Tribes: Ascend is in open beta right now, so feel free to check it out for yourself before it launches sometime later this year.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | One comment

Tired of traipsing around the Elder Scrolls universe all by yourself? Reinforcements are on the way. Today Bethesda Softworks announced that The Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO set in the sprawling fantasy worlds of games such as Skyrim and Oblivion, is currently under construction. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it was revealed that the game will be available for PC and Mac, and has been in the works for several years. ESO game director Matt Firor says that he and his colleagues have been “working hard to create an online world in which players will be able to experience the epic Elder Scrolls universe with their friends.” Firor has set the bar high for ESO: “The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made – and one that is worthy of the Elder Scrolls franchise.”

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

Gaming website Mass Luminosity today announced that Gaming Tribe, the company’s in-development social network portal for gamers, has moved into Beta 2. The new version of the site features many improvements, not the least of which is its independence from Facebook. Members can now see an accurate count of the number of Tribe members, a list of giveaways in which they’ve participated, and an archive of their messages. You can also see the current status of recent giveaways. In the future, Gaming Tribe will be running promotions reserved exclusively for its first 25,000 members. Currently the site lists just better than 15,000, so you still have time to get in on the action. Cooler Master is sponsoring the first event on the Beta 2 site on May 8. Click here to sign up.

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments

Publisher: Mumbo Jumbo
Developer: Mumbo Jumbo
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c-compatible graphics card with Shader Model 2.0 support, 150 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Everyone
Release date: May 1, 2012

There are many genres of games that seem to be content to never change. Match-threes, hidden-objects and time-management games seem to cater to a market that likes their games predictable and easy. Luxor Evolved, however doesn’t want to fall into that pit. As its name suggests, it wants to take that same universal game and turn it into something even core gamers can appreciate. Hold onto your moonstones; Luxor’s evolving!

Luxor Evolved takes the classic marble-shooter core and overclocks it. This is easily the fastest and most difficult game of its kind you’ve ever played. While the original might be a relaxing time-waster for your grandmother, this one aims to leave even the twitchiest FPS player with sweaty palms. Marbles roll around their tracks at uncomfortable speeds, while goodies and powerups fly out of their ruptured geometries like so much piñata candy. With the game speed ramped up, correctly prioritizing targets is skill number one, an experience more Serious Sam than Zuma.

Like most good arcade-style games today, Luxor Evolved is drenched in a neo-retro aesthetic. Bright vector lines and colorful particle effects atop a black backdrop make it look like an arcade game that never was. Heck, even the throbbing music is heavily influenced by Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy soundtrack. It has a stimulating chaotic feel that pairs well with Mountain Dew.

Evolved might have all the working pieces of a Luxor game, but it’s amazing what just a few tweaks can do. Mumbo Jumbo has turned a casual staple into something that can fill the downtimes at a LAN party without killing the buzz. While Luxor Evolved might not transcend the marble-shooting genre, it definitely deserves your attention.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | One comment

Publisher: THQ
Developer: Illfonic
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz Core2Duo or better CPU, 2 GB RAM (3 GB for Vista), 512 MB GeForce 8800 GT/Radeon 3850 HD or better graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 3 GB hard-drive space.
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: May 10, 2012

The other day I was standing in the shower when suddenly I was stung with an awareness of my mortality. I wondered that, if I died today, would I have left anything of worth behind? My life’s achievements, the friends, the debt, that nice thing I did once, what did they mean? But one stood out: that one time I dominated so much at a UT2K4 LAN party that I wasn’t invited back. I smiled, basking in the glow of my former glory, until I realized that I was about to be late for my retail job. I might withhold these deep personal truths from my counselor, but that’s only because he doesn’t understand. Developer Illfonic, however, has an uncanny understanding of my pains and desires. Their latest game, the oddly-titled Nexuiz, seems tailor-made to let you relive your better times, assuming those times involve classic FPS action.

To describe Nexuiz, it helps to explain its lineage. In 1999, id Software released the source code of its seminal Tech 1 engine, which powered Quake. An entire community of people grew around it, fiddling with the tech bits and making their own mods and stand-alone games. One of those games was Alien Arena, which over the years grew into Nexuiz. Now, after being digested by the community for almost a decade, this little mod is getting a full commercial release.

It’s interesting to note that Nexuiz has to call itself an “arena FPS.” Once upon a time there was no need for subdivision. But today, with copy-paste marines plodding about, aiming down their gun barrels, it’s important to make the distinction. Gone are today’s hitscan assault rifles. Instead of that nonsense, there’s a full armory of alien shotguns, rocket launchers, and other things with no earthly equivalent. If you miss the days of Quake and Unreal, then you’ll feel right at home.

Far from its humbling beginnings as a Quake mod, Nexuiz is getting a full facelift to meet the demands of 2012, including matchmaking lobbies (with server browsers), leaderboards and fancy graphics, thanks to CryEngine 3. One of Nexuiz’s most interesting additions is the mutator. No, not the Unreal Tournament mini-mods, but dynamic powerups that do everything from add jetpacks to temporarily change gravity. Not content with just a handful, or even a dozen, Illfonic has created a hundred different random mutators, which can change the game anytime. Even with all its updates, Nexuiz’s heart still beats with classic FPS blood. While the game’s currently available on the Xbox 360 through XBLA, the PC release is still going through closed beta testing to ensure it gets a proper homecoming when it’s released in May.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments

Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Cyanide Studio
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista SP2/Win 7, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 256 MB GeForce 7900 GTX/Radeon HD 2600 XT or better graphics card with Shader Model 3.0 support, 2 GB RAM, DirectX 9-compatible sound device, 4 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

“Foretold by many prophecies, the Rag’narok is the war of the age of darkness, the battle during which the gods will choose their champions before putting Aarklash to fire and sword.” Yes, the setting of Cyanide Studio’s Confrontation is grim. A strategy RPG with a rather detailed fantasy setting, Confrontation sees you gathering your group of heroes and going deep into the heart of the enemy’s territory, fighting innumerable battles to overcome your foes, using swords, spells and cunning strategies, emphasizing strategy over RPG elements.

Combat is real-time, but can be paused at any point to allow for the issuing of commands. Generally, combat is initiated the moment an enemy sees a member of your party, and continues until one side or the other is dead. Every hero you can recruit has different abilities, and most fights revolve around determining enemy capabilities, how to neutralize them, and how to efficiently kill them off. While gearing and leveling is part of gameplay, in many cases it’s more important to properly apply a stun or healing effect at the right time than it is to worry about whether your strength should be two points higher or not. And while the action is in real-time, I did spend a lot of time pausing to redirect combat to my satisfaction. Tactics, not build optimization, is the key.

The single-player campaign promises around 30 hours of gameplay, divided into a series of missions that tells the story of your squad of Griffin warriors. Environments are wide and varied, and opponents range from the alchemical technomantic warriors of the Scorpions, to the beastfolk of the Wolfen and the ever-maligned Orcs. There are hundreds of small battles to fight, and I can’t say that Cyanide has skipped out on providing content. There’s plenty of fighting to do, and the difficulty is at the level where your warriors will spend a lot of time significantly injured until you learn how to fight new enemies.

With all of the work Cyanide has clearly put into this game and its combat mechanics, it shipped with a disappointing number of annoyances. I’m glad it can be paused, because I had some consistent problems getting members of my squad to move around properly in combat. There are plenty of fights in areas that have limited space. The problem is that the pathfinding AI has bouts of insanity and confusion when you try to move the whole squad at once towards an objective or target. Even individuals sometimes have difficulty moving around; I’ve watched Lanwys stand dumbfounded more times than I care to admit, despite a clear path being open to the target I ordered him to engage. I also found that the lore and narrative elements of the game are poorly done. Confrontation has a rich background (it’s based on a tabletop game), which is only blandly presented to the player. Even as I sit here writing this, I have to alt-tab back to the game just to figure out who is who and why they did that one thing.

There’s no real interaction between members of your squad, which would be fine except that the narration just plods along for minutes at a time when it’s time to bring the player up to speed on current events. When you combine this with the voice acting (if I hear anyone shout “For the temple!” in an artificially gruff voice again, it will be too soon), it becomes hard to rouse yourself to play yet another series of battles. This isn’t just because the focus is on strategic gameplay; it’s also because the RPG elements are poorly done. Cyanide could’ve improved the game (and saved money on the production and development budget) by stripping the RPG aspects out. There’s no point in including RPG elements if you aren’t going to do them right.

Priced at $39.99, Confrontation is another game that could’ve been so much better, but it just missed the mark. Had it been marketed at a lower price, it might’ve been worth checking out. But as it stands, unless you’re a fan of the material upon which it’s based, I’d just skip this one. There are other games out there that do the same things, only better.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Turbo Tape Games
System requirements: Windows Vista/Win 7, dual-core CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce GT 240 or better graphics card, 4 GB hard-drive space, DirectX 9-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c
Genre: Simulation
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

I’m not cut out for Navy life. Being crammed into poorly-lit metallic rooms filled with smelly people in the middle of nowhere reminds me too much of my college experience. There’s also my problem with authority. While I don’t think I’m cut out for taking orders in a tuna can, sitting in a climate controlled C&C bunker giving orders is entirely different. Turbo Tape Games is there to fulfill my curiosity with their new strategy game, Naval War: Arctic Circle. Featuring a depiction of modern naval combat so detailed it borders on simulation, Naval War has more than enough depth to drown in. But is it worth braving the cold?

The dynamics of modern naval combat as depicted in Naval War are more what I expected of submarines, not surface ships. Instead of hiding beneath frigid waters, you hide your 1,000-foot-long ships from the electric eye of radar. It’s a deadly cat-and-mouse game in the arctic, and the more passive your sensors are, the better. Going hot at the wrong moment can light up your billion-dollar fleet to a pack of missiles and still leave you groping in the dark. Learning to survive in the arctic might take you awhile, but a series of tutorial missions does a good job teaching the basics. Then it’s on to the two campaigns, each following NATO and Russia in the year 2030, locked in a struggle for (what else?) resources. Well-written dialogue sets the stage for each of the 23 campaign missions, with five extra stand-alone tasks thrown in for good measure.

This isn’t the kind of game you play for graphics, but Naval War actually looks pretty good. You spend most of your time looking at the wire-framed overhead display, but the 3D screen is there to give you the idea that those little green triangles are actually massive vessels. You can swap the two displays if you want to get a close view of a well-timed missile strike, but don’t expect too many theatrics. There are explosions followed by a sinking animation, but the missiles simply get within a hundred feet and vanish.

As complex a game as this is, the interface is surprisingly clean. Commanding every detail of a naval fleet involves a lot of decisions, and it’s no small feat that the interface just dissolves after a while, especially when you remember that it’s a Paradox game. Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re seeking, it’s easy to find it without rifling through menu lists. That’s not to say that Naval War holds your hand or is especially inviting to newcomers, but it’s not more obtuse than it has to be.

A few niggling issues remain. For instance, there’s no mid-mission save. This could be used to preserve the tenseness of your tactical decisions, but not having even a save-and-quit function seems harsh. Even with insane time-compression, some missions can take hours to finish. Also, like most wargames, the campaign is just sort of there. You get a lot of missions, but the lack of persistent units or customizable loadouts seems like a missed opportunity. Nor does the rollercoaster difficulty curve do it any favors. Even in the one-shot scenario missions, there are no dynamic elements or customization. Even with the sharp AI, there’s only so much to do when every placement and deployment remains the same for every mission. Multiplayer exists, but only in four scenarios and for two players. A point-buy system would have been a great improvement.

It’s the moments when you pull tight on the net you’ve spent so long weaving that make Naval War: Arctic Warfare worthwhile. The strategy the arctic demands of you is both soaked in tension and immensely satisfying when it works. Of course, there are many, many times that it won’t, and when things inevitably go belly-up, you’ll have to start back from the beginning again. The game has its issues, and hopefully they can be addressed in future patches. Even so, Naval War isn’t going to win any new converts to its brand of deep strategy. However, if you’re the kind of armchair general who enjoys games like Men of War or Combat Mission, Naval War: Arctic Circle will scratch your strategy itch like never before. Everyone else has enough sense to avoid the cold.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: 38 Studios
Genre: Action RPG
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the first adventure in the brand new world of Amalur, brought to us by 38 Studios, Big Huge Games and the mind of fantasy legend R.A. Salvatore. An action RPG with the Salvatore pedigree to live up to, KoA:R promises fast-paced, customizable gameplay and an epic story set in a colorful, high-fantasy world.

The world of Amalur is bound by fate and cycles. The Fae embody the immortal cycle of nature, while the mortal races have destinies laid out from birth to death written in the unchangeable Threads of Fate. For years the Faelands have been gripped by a war that the mortal races are fated to lose. A faction of Winter Fae has usurped the Winter Throne and is waging a holy crusade, the “Crystal War,” in the name of a new god to wipe the mortal races from the world. You take the role of an unknown victim of the war, brought back to life by a last ditch experiment to combat the immortal Fae. With no memories and no place in the Threads of Fate, you have the unprecedented ability to actively change the fate of the world around you. The Fateless One (that’s you) carries the hope of all mortals to prevent the inevitable.

Gameplay in KoA:R is that of a class-based action RPG with a little more flexibility than most. The idea of the Fateless One is brought into the combat system in the form of “destinies.” These are your character classes, unlocked based on how many skill points you’ve poured into each of the three combat disciplines: Might, Finesse and Sorcery. A small sum of money allows you to “unbind your destiny” and reset all your skill points, changing your play style at any time. Though character building is superficially simple, the combat is surprisingly fast paced and responsive.

With the hype surrounding it, KoA:R has taken heavy scrutiny since its debut. It’s more than lived up to its promises. The world is colorful and vivid; a pleasant contrast to the otherwise heavy plot. At first glance, the world around you offers little setting or context. Curiosity is rewarded, however, and a rich narrative lies waiting for those who take the time to talk to NPCs. Characters have unique insights and perspectives on the world around them, and scattered bits of history wait for you to find them and piece the whole story together yourself. These facts offer a much more immersive and engaging world than a narrator summarizing it all in a long-winded cinematic.

I want to give Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning five stars, but I can’t. There’s one glaring, overreaching flaw that cripples this otherwise amazing game and keeps it from being one of the best action RPGs I’ve ever played. Electronic Arts requires that you be connected to their servers to play it. No Internet? No game. I love KoA:R, but my PS3 does a number on my house bandwidth when I play a game with an active online feature. When something like this prevents me from playing the single-player game I purchased without being connected, it’s hard to justify paying for or playing it.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an incredible game. It offers a vivid world with a rich history, providing a great backdrop for an intuitive, customizable combat system. It’s terrible to see it brought down by something as stupid as cheap, invasive DRM. It was a tough decision to say that I still recommend buying this game.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Lieren Teeling for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | One comment

Linux gamers are a hardy bunch. One can only play Nethack and BZFlag for so long. After years of rumors, the unthinkable is finally happening: Steam is coming to Linux. Along with it, Valve is porting their Source engine, so you’ll be able to play your favorite Valve games without dual-booting. Can Valve do for Linux gaming what it did for Mac? Valve hasn’t talked about release dates, but you can expect it “when it’s ready.”

Source: Phoronix.com

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments

Publisher: Lace Mamba Global
Developer: CBE Software
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 3.0 GHz Pentium IV or better CPU, GeForce 8400 GS/Radeon HD 4200 or better graphics card, 1 GB RAM, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Indie game development has come a long way in 20 years. It started out as one lone coder peddling 8-bit shareware games on floppy disks in plastic bags to anyone willing to try them out. Things are a bit more high-tech these days, but the passion to create a great game with minimal resources is still alive and well. Witness CBE Software, a two-man Czech development team that has created J.U.L.I.A., an intriguing and visually impressive sci-fi adventure game that tries to give a fresh outlook to a shopworn genre story.

You play as Rachel Manners, an astrobiologist aboard the starship Mizuka. You and the entire crew are in cryosleep during a long interstellar voyage in search of extraterrestrial life. J.U.L.I.A. (an acronym that’s never really defined) is the ship’s computer, charged with operating the vessel while the crew is asleep. Julia awakens Rachel to repair the Mizuka after being struck by meteorites. Rachel soon discovers that she is the only passenger remaining on the ship, which is currently in orbit around an unknown planet in a six-planet solar system. Once she manages to repair the ship (with help from Julia), Rachel’s primary task is to find the rest of the crew and figure out why they’re missing.

Your entire mission in J.U.L.I.A. is to solve puzzles, although there are various non-puzzle tasks that must be completed to advance the story. You have a robot that you send to the planet surfaces to explore environments and examine evidence. There are email messages and personal log entries to read that help you figure out what’s going on. But the bulk of your time is spent solving a wide variety of conundrums, which open up more of the story until you finally reach its mildly twisty end.

The best thing that J.U.L.I.A. has going for it is its sharp, detailed graphic style, using the latest version of the almost-decade-old Wintermute engine. The astronomical images are especially impressive, giving the game an authentic-looking backdrop. The story, although filled with elements that we’ve all seen dozens of times before, still manages to keep you guessing right up to the ultimate moral choice you have to make at the end. But the game would not exist without the puzzles, which range in difficulty from tough to insidious. One gives you five blocks of nine-image clusters, which you have to manipulate to create five complete pictures. One has you using a note that you find in the ruins of a shelter to connect wires to open a vital door. One actually forces you to solve an algebra problem (relax — the game offers to do the math for you). And in one of the few repeating puzzles, you have to build a circuit board using fewer parts than are indicated in the blueprint. There’s a help button to click for instructions and hints, but you’re on your own for the most part. And since progress in the story hinges upon puzzle completion, you can’t skip any of them (but one of the developers has been known to solve puzzles for players if they send him their save files; apparently he wants you to get to the end as much as you do).

As impressive an achievement as J.U.L.I.A. is, the lack of big-budget resources raises its ugly head in several areas. There are only two screen resolutions available: the original aspect ratio of the game (which is not very spectacular when viewed on today’s large-screen monitors), or the native resolution of your display (selecting this gives you a very sharp image, but it’s the relative size of a postage stamp, with the most severe letterboxing I’ve seen in a game). The pace of the story is very slow and deliberate, especially at the beginning, during which you’re learning how to use the various interfaces. The game forces you to read every email and log entry; some puzzles are practically impossible to solve without information gleaned from those messages, so you’re stuck if you don’t read them. There’s no quick-save feature and only one autosave (just before the conclusion), so you have to exit to the title screen every time you want to save your progress, which you should do after every puzzle. Some puzzles offer narrated instructions before you begin to solve them, but many of them force you to click the help button to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. Lip-synch animations don’t match the English dialogue (and probably not the other available languages either). The voice acting ranges from merely adequate to stilted and overly dramatic; the narrator delivers his lines in a bizarre combination of Derek Jakobi and Bela Lugosi (fortunately you can choose to mute the narration in the main menu). And I had a major problem with a bug that crashed the game to the desktop when I tried to scan a new planet. To be fair, there’s no discussion about a similar problem on the game’s official forum, so there could be something in my system that the Wintermute engine doesn’t like. But my rig’s pretty standard issue, so it’s likely that others might have the same difficulty.

Lots of love goes out from me to developers Lukas Medak and Jan Kavan (aka CBE Software). They had some help in creating J.U.L.I.A., mostly in voice acting and localization, but for the most part, the two of them created the entire game, even the occasionally trippy electronica soundtrack. J.U.L.I.A. is obviously a labor of love, and it’s hard to be critical of a labor of love. But a few more hands on deck would’ve helped turn a good-looking, sometimes frustrating puzzle fest into an outstanding adventure game. The future appears bright for CBE; I look forward to their next project.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Apparently reports of the death of Prey 2 have been somewhat exaggerated. Developer Bethesda announced today that the sequel to Human Head/3D Realms’ 2006 shooter has not been canceled, but it will not meet its originally announced 2012 release date. Work on the game is reportedly not proceeding as quickly as first anticipated, so Bethesda has decided not to release it until the quality of the product improves.

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments

Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore International and creator of the Commodore 64, died on April 8 at age 83, according to Forbes. A concentration camp survivor, Tramiel came to America after World War II and opened a typewriter repair business in New York City before moving to Toronto, Canada, where he formed Commodore International in 1954. He introduced the Commodore 64 in 1982, and later purchased Atari and created the Atari ST. He is survived by his wife and three sons and their families.

Source: MSNBC

© Chip Henson for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

If you haven’t loaded up Mass Effect 3 recently, be prepared for an update when you finally return to the final act of BioWare’s space epic. A new patch has been released, the highlight of which is to fix the problem many players had when they tried to import their Shepard’s custom facial features from the previous two games in the series. Most of the other fixes involve possible crash bugs; a complete set of patch notes is available here. And before you ask: no, the ending hasn’t been changed.

© Chip Henson for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | One comment

Junction Point creative director Warren Spector has announced that Mickey Mouse is headed to the Nintendo 3DS in Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, set in the world of the 1990 Sega Genesis side-scroller Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. Mickey continues his battle with Mizrabel the Witch, but this time you can help him out by drawing items on the touch screen. “We’re honored to be able to pay tribute to this classic video game by creating a title that truly takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the Nintendo 3DS,” says Spector, an accomplished game designer with the Wing Commander, Ultima, Deus Ex and System Shock series on his resume. Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is scheduled for a fall 2012 release.

Source: Gamesindustry International

© Chip Henson for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Nerd god Marcus Persson (aka “Notch”), creator of the indie gaming juggernaut Minecraft, is reaching for the stars (literally) with his new project, 0x10c. According to the game’s official site, it’s an adventure in a sci-fi setting, 281 trillion years in the future, when a software glitch traps a group of space travelers in hypersleep for millennia. The game is promised to include space battles, loot-filled ships to plunder, and duct tape (?). A multiplayer mode will be available, but it will likely carry a subscription fee. Development of the game has just started, so no release date was announced.

© Chip Henson for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments