Publisher: Snowbird Game Studios
Developer: Snowbird Game Studios
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2 GHz Pentium/AMD 2000+ or better CPU, 512 MB RAM, GeForce 7300/Radeon 9200 or better graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Back in 2010, Eador: Genesis was quietly released to Russian-language audiences. Developed almost exclusively by one man, Alexander Bokulev, it was a mashup of various strategy games into one pot of dreams. It took the best of games such as Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic and became something that would punch you in the face but leave you begging for more. It didn’t get much attention for many years because of its odd interface and the lack of an English translation. But now, Bokulev is back with a team and a budget. Eador: Masters of the Broken World isn’t just a prettier face, it’s an all-around better game.

As the title suggests, the world of Eador is a shattered one. Shards of the planet spin about the cosmos as various immortals try to piece together as much of it for themselves as they can, yourself included. The campaign consists of you leaping from shard to shard as you take out all the local leaders and bring the shards under your dominance. You start by selecting a mortal hero to do your bidding. From there, you travel about with your army, battling monsters and clearing out territory. Floating land masses are relatively small, but there’s a lot packed in there. Even city tiles can have lists of encounters you can do. Once you clear out a territory, you have the option to build things on it and garrison troops. Once the opposing heroes are defeated, you add the shard to your collection, granting you bonuses for future invasion. This ends up grafting a fantastic long-term strategy layer onto the whole experience.

Whenever you move to an occupied tile or go into a dungeon, you hop into turn-based combat. You place your troops on the hex map and move about, casting spells, attacking, counter-attacking and defending. Combat is made of many simple rules layered on top of each other. Certain tiles (such as forests) boost ranged defense, others (such as hills) increase melee attack. Each side takes a turn as units expend energy to move and attack, while your hero unit casts game-changing spells. Units gain persistent upgrades, so it can behoove you to keep your peons alive. These encounters can be very difficult, even right outside your capital, so you have to dive into dungeons and grind for a bit to outfit your army. If an encounter ever seems too trivial (or impossible), then you can either auto-resolve a given turn or skip to the end.

The first couple of hours feel pretty typical. They echo a lot of past games, especially Heroes of Might and Magic. Once you get past that, you realize there’s a ridiculous amount of depth, most of it coming from how the campaign is structured. Each mission is about conquering various floating land masses and adding them to your empire. Each new shard opens up new tech and buildings that you can take into future missions. The tech tree is complicated and serpentine enough to make a seasoned Civ vet squirm. That’s when you realize that there’s a new layer of depth here. For example, you unlock new unit types, which can lead to interesting situations. A hero with holy powers might not play well with those undead troops you just unlocked. Even if it’s not the ideal combination of forces, at times it’s your best option.

Masters of the Broken World makes some definite improvements on the original Eador game. Most of them are in the interface department. Too many menus are circular wheels, but in general, the interface is much more usable. At least all the buttons and symbols have tooltips. While the game is almost as difficult as before, the inclusion of a real save system means you can undo your mistakes (assuming you keep multiple saves).

Eador: Masters of the Broken World is comprised of so many layers within layers that it simply begs for an Inception joke. It’s a game that rewards you the more you put into it; it’s a love letter to the entire genre. Despite some initial bugs, the game’s made good progress. A few quick patches have fixed some serious performance issues and have added missing features (such as multiplayer) into the mix. Casual fans of the genre might not have the patience it requires, but it wasn’t made for them. If you’re among the joyful gamers afflicted with “just one more turn” syndrome, then Eador will gladly play into all your desires and tantalize your tactical mind that much longer.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | One comment

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Paradox Development Studio
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Pentium IV/AMD 3500+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800/Radeon X1900 or better graphics card, 2 GB hard-drive space, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9, Victoria II (base game) and A House Divided expansion pack
Genre: RTS
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Victoria has always been a franchise I’ve loved, and it’s one that has always been built on complexity. When your game is built around an economy that tracks the purchases of every single person, business and government in the world, you’re not catering to those with poor attention spans. The catch, though, is that no matter how complex Victoria II gets, there’s always something more I want from the game. It’s been a year since the last Victoria II expansion was released, and Paradox has decided that there are enough people like me who want even more from Victoria II to justify another expansion. Heart of Darkness focuses on four main areas of gameplay: colonies, navies, armies and diplomacy. Any fan of the franchise, while happy with improvements to warfare, will no doubt be intrigued more by the possibilities offered by diplomacy and colonization. And I’m happy to report that, aside from a few warts, HoD delivers the goods.

Since colonization is tied to naval overhauls, we should first talk about ruling the waves. In prior versions of the game, capital ships were meant to be spammed. While the historical Royal Navy, the most powerful in the period, fielded 29 dreadnoughts in 1914, it was not uncommon for multiple Great Powers to deploy 200 or more at a time during the game. This is no longer possible, as navies have been completely rebalanced. Now, instead of making ships more expensive, the soft cap on shipbuilding comes from existing naval bases. Each country can build and upgrade a single base in each state, and these contribute to naval supply. A navy can have any combination of ships that doesn’t exceed the naval supply rating; if you go over the limit, then your entire military is hit with a supply throughput penalty that cuts the received supply of every unit. You might be purchasing all of the ammunition needs for your military, but being over the limit might mean only 70 percent or less is reaching your units. Added to this is a complete redesign of naval combat. Dreadnoughts and battleships cost horrendous amounts of naval supply, but they have enough firepower and firing range to kill just about anything. But cruisers and commerce raiders now have torpedoes they can use in combat; if even one gets through to a dreadnought or battleship, those big expensive ships are in trouble. Thus, balanced fleets with plenty of screens and capital ships are now required to win sea battles. And thanks to the limitations of the new system, you have to be the world’s most awesome naval power to even hope to employ 40 dreadnoughts, never mind 400, making naval combat reasonable and historical.

Colonization is affected by all these naval changes, so things just get better. To colonize, you must still meet technological requirements and be a Great Power or secondary power. But now, instead of just planting your national foci on the states you want to colonize, you have to invest colonial points. These are generated by your naval bases and actual ships in your navy. When you are in range of a place to colonize, you spend your points to begin the process. You can’t colonize more places than you have points, and you’re still restricted by the range of your naval bases. If no one opposes your colonization, then you gain a protectorate, which is a low-end colony. It generates a little tax income, gives you access to goods, and costs colonial points to maintain. You can upgrade to a colonial state, which costs even more colonial points, but makes the colony generate more revenue for you. If you can manage enough assimilation in your colony, you can still upgrade to a full state. This costs a substantial number of colonial points unless it’s on your own continent (Russia and the USA benefit the most from this). Also, conquering uncivilized countries further eats into your available colonial points because they count as colonies, just like areas you colonize outright. All of this means spamming colonies is no longer possible, because even the British don’t have infinite colonial points. If two countries try to colonize the same place, they must both keep investing colonial points until either one side stops investing points, someone voluntarily withdraws, or a crisis decides who gets the colony. This can cost a lot of colonial points, and leads to the other change in the system. Dominions can be created out of colonies; you get a semi-permanent ally, and you gain your colonial points back to invest somewhere else. Every place where colonies can be built can be turned into a dominion, so everyone can follow the British model if they so choose. Hard choices must be made when colonizing now, because a single colonial race can easily consume 10 to 20 times as many colonial points as just investing somewhere else where there is no competition. Just how badly do you want to colonize the heart of darkness?

The crisis system for HoD is my most anticipated feature. It’s also something that worried me. The AI isn’t really known for doing well with brinksmanship, which is more or less the entire point of having crises in the first place. I’m pleased to say that the system works rather well. There are about a dozen ways in which a crisis can occur, ranging from colonial competition to the ever-popular competing claims between minor powers in the Balkans. When a crisis develops, the minor powers ask Great Powers for help in resolving the issue. If a Great Power backs both sides, the crisis develops and all Great Powers on the relevant continent are asked if they want to participate. Declining results in loss of prestige. Participating takes it to the next stage. The Great Powers involved decide who to back in the crisis; in some cases, to get the cooperation of other powers, the leaders of the crisis might even offer diplomatic concessions to sweeten the deal. Russia might offer France Alsace-Lorraine if Prussia is involved on the other side of the crisis, or perhaps France will offer to humiliate Germany to entice Russia to her side. As the negotiations continue, the temperature of the crisis increases. Random events can increase the temperature further, as can a preemptive mobilization of reserves (the WWI effect). If a peaceful solution is not found to the crisis before it boils over, then a war breaks out. Otherwise, prestige is gained and lost by the participants. Note that once a crisis develops, the minor powers involved get no say in anything anymore. Greece might create a crisis about Macedonia and get the UK to back them, but after that, the UK gets to decide how to resolve the crisis and Greece must accept the outcome. The system also ignores currently existing alliances. Russia and Prussia might be allies, but if they take opposite sides in a crisis and a war breaks out, then the alliance is over and they’re now at war. This means there’s no such thing as late-game complacency anymore. You could have the best allies in the world, but if no one can agree on how to deal with Hungarian nationalists rising up in Austria, then half the world can be plunged into a war that no one expected. The good news is that the system allows for peaceful resolution to territorial disputes. Sure, you might lose some prestige for letting Greece gain Macedonia from the Ottomans, but do you really want to plunge Europe into a five-year war and kill thousands of people just because you don’t want to lose some prestige? It’s these kinds of tough choices that keep things fresh and fun.

Land combat has also been revamped. Now all different kinds of cavalry serve a purpose, so there are no more useless units. Also, reconnaissance and province fortresses have been reworked. Now armies have a recon percentage that dictates their effective occupation rate, along with siege effectiveness that reduces the effects of fortresses. Combined with changes to engineers so that they play a useful role in combat, and changes to guards and infantry that make guard spam pointless now, land warfare is much more interesting and rewards smart army construction. Uncivilized nations have also had a revamp to their militaries. The differences in the tactics technologies are now smaller, and uncivilized countries have access to basic cavalry, making them a bit harder to conquer by western powers.

By and large I was impressed by this expansion, but it suffers from two minor annoyances. The first is the colonial race between two powers. If you’re in a colonization race with another power, you have to continue to manually send expeditions to the state in question. There’s a cooldown timer involved, but the problem is that you might need to send 20 or more expeditions to win the race. So, every time the cooldown expires, you have to go into the province interface and manually send an expedition. During a war, this is mind-numbingly tedious and distracting, not to mention that you can lose the race just because you forget to do it. Instead, the game should have a check box that just keeps sending expeditions until you run out of colonial points or win the race to automate this process. The second problem relates to the AI and creating dominions. The good news is that the AI creates dominions to recoup the colonial points so it can colonize elsewhere. The bad news is that the AI does this in situations that don’t make any sense. Take the United Kingdom as an example. In 1836, Australia is not finished being colonized, but the AI on Day 2 of the game creates Australia as a dominion. This might be fine, except that it then continues to colonize the interior of Australia, creating a “donut” Australia with British colonies in the middle. Also, secondary powers cannot have spheres of influence, yet Portugal creates dominions out of its African colonies in the first year of the game. It loses the income from them and gains no benefit because there really isn’t anywhere else to colonize at that point. The AI really needs a rewrite in these cases to make better decisions, not because the map looks funny, but because these blatantly poor decisions hamper it in the long run.

These minor problems only somewhat detract from an enjoyable experience. In many ways, this expansion is the one I’ve been waiting to play. The congress system from the 19th century is now in place, navies are really important, and colonies aren’t just a spam issue. In fact, while I’ve enjoyed all iterations of this franchise, Heart of Darkness gives the game a truly 19th-century flavor that distinguishes it from other strategy games, doing a better job than even Pride of Nations. Victoria II will never be for all strategy gamers; its indirect mechanics and emphasis on economics and diplomacy make it a niche product. Yet, at the end of the day, I feel more like Otto von Bismark after playing a game of HoD than any other game on the market right now. If that’s not an indication of success, then I don’t know what is.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Phoenix Online Studios
Developer: Phoenix Online Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/iOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 2.0 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX 9-compatible graphics card, 2.5 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

I think we can stop using the “adventure games are dead, but…” line. Along with platformers, adventure games are low-cost laboratories where creative indies can play around within well-established genre conventions. If the subtitle didn’t tip you off, Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller is an adventure game in the vein of the airport thrillers of Clive Cussler and James Patterson. Think Castle without the snark, or the Alex Cross movies without the suck. It’s a world where murder happens like an elemental force, and killers leave puzzles and traps behind like rats leave droppings. With remarkably high production values and Adventure Goddess Jane Jensen attached as a story consultant, Cognition seems to have everything going for it.

While most adventure games use retro stylings for the aesthetics (or to simply mask budgetary constraints), Cognition really goes all out. It uses a blend of cell-shaded 3D models and painted backgrounds to great effect. The feel is that of a comic book, complete with text boxes. Don’t let that give you the wrong impression, as Cognition can be remarkably violent. The whole setup revolves around a creepy serial killer, and the game doesn’t hesitate to shoot Erica in the face when you screw up.

Yes, you can die, but thankfully it avoids reaching Space Quest levels of self-destruction. Where Sam and Max might have you in a comical steady state where a gunbattle might last an eternity until solving the magic puzzle, Cognition gleefully puts a bullet in Erica’s head. You can always text your father for a hint if you get stuck (that’s Erica’s father, not yours. He’ll just be confused).

The trick here is that Erica has a special intuition that lets her see the history of any object she touches. Considering that’s the entire job description of a police investigator, it seems like cheating. It’s not just a gimmick, it’s pretty central to a huge range of puzzles. Everything from bomb disarming, finding murder weapons, and even walking through memories with witnesses. It’s a neat addition; something different from the genre-standard inventory puzzles.

Cognition is hardly a gory game, but it is relentlessly dark. It’s the kind of game in which people get their eyes gouged or they get tied to tables laced with crossbow traps. One puzzle requires you to drive spikes into your shins to unlock a door. It never outright shows the bloody bits, but that often makes things worse. It’s a thick atmosphere that can be cloying if you’re not into crime thrillers. When your plot involves a psychic FBI agent versus Saw villains, you’re bound to stray into cheese. What works so well is how the plot is woven into the intuition game mechanics.

These two episodes are fairly similar. While the second one is shorter, it’s also bound with more taut puzzles. Hopefully the trend continues in the upcoming final two stories. Phoenix Online Studios has succeeded in beating Pendulo at their own game. Cognition lacks the odd idiosyncrasies that make modern adventures such as Yesterday seem strange to those outside of the adventure bubble. It does supplement with a few oddities of its own, but on the whole, Cognition is a far more engaging experience than most of its kin these days.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
System requirements: Windows Vista SP2/Win 7 SP1, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.7 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX10-compatible graphics card (GeForce 8800 GT/Radeon HD 3870/Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics or better), DirectX-compatible sound device, 20 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG/Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

You find yourself in a rowboat headed towards a lighthouse in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. You have a cigar box that contains a picture of a pretty, nicely dressed young woman, and a pistol. A chattering couple sporting British accents argues about who’s rowing and who isn’t. Once the boat reaches its destination, you pause in your seat to take in the scene. “He’s not moving,” one of your boatmen says. “He will…eventually,” is the reply. Substitute the boat ride and the pithy banter with a fiery plane crash and the scene becomes all too familiar for those who played developer Irrational’s 2007 masterpiece, BioShock. The parallels between the games don’t end here, as you will discover during your journey through Irrational’s new magnum opus, Bioshock Infinite.

You play private detective Booker DeWitt, a haunted former cavalry officer who participated in the massacre of 150 Indians at Wounded Knee in 1890. It’s 22 years later, and DeWitt has gotten himself in deep debt to an unknown creditor, who has offered him a get-out-of-debtors-prison-free card: Go to the floating city of Columbia, find the girl in the picture in his cigar box and return her to New York City. After reaching the aforementioned lighthouse, he’s treated to a Close Encounters of the Third Kind-style exchange of colored lights and musical tones, after which he’s shot into the air, chair and all, coming to rest in a religious shrine on Columbia. From here he begins his search for the mysterious young woman, who becomes more closely entwined in his fate than he could ever imagine.

For a game as expansive as Infinite, it’s good that the control scheme is very simple. Unlike the original BioShock, which forced you to switch from weapons to Plasmids, in Infinite you use weapons with the left mouse button and Vigors (the salt-powered version of Plasmids) with the right. Switch weapons with the mouse wheel, switch Vigors with a single button press (hold the button to reveal a rotary menu, from which you can equip two of the eight possible Vigors). Ammunition and cash are everywhere (at least at Normal difficulty), and vending machines are spread throughout the maps, so staying stocked is never a problem, provided you take the time to look around.

And look around you should. Infinite is one of the prettiest games you’ll ever play. Hummingbirds hover in mid-air in ornate gardens, filled with statues of The Founders (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin) and The Prophet, Zachary Hale Comstock, spiritual leader of the citizens of Columbia. The city itself is a collection of giant buildings, floating on the updraft generated by enormous fans, bobbing up and down like apples in a barrel. It took me almost four hours of gameplay to finally find the elusive Elizabeth (the woman in the picture) because I spent so much time looking around and appreciating the look of the place. Once you find and rescue Elizabeth, the action part of the game kicks into high gear. Elizabeth is probably the best female video-game character since Half Life 2‘s Alyx Vance. Liz is resourceful, smart, and excellent in a fight since she requires no hand-holding; she gets out of the way, can take care of herself, and even functions as a support character, finding you health and ammo when you need them the most. She also has the ability to open tears in space-time and bring objects through the tears to your reality. These can include cover structures, a floating high-caliber machine gun and several varieties of sentry guns. The ease in which you can combine your weapons and Vigors during fight sequences makes the combat in Infinite more fun than in most shooters. I usually find one or two weapons that I like and ignore the rest, but in this game I found myself trying out lots of different weapon and Vigor combinations tailored to the situation at hand. Also, there are little things that give Infinite a special touch, such as the excellent use of period music and, conversely, a barbershop quartet singing a Beach Boys song 50 years before it was actually written (if you miss it in the game proper, be sure to watch the closing credits).

So, why no Seal of Excellence? Because there were enough nagging problems to keep Infinite from achieving Avault greatness. One of my pet peeves with RPGs and shooters is the necessity of turning over every rock and twig to find powerups and collectibles, and it’s a major factor in this game. Especially worrisome is the idea that you can walk into someone’s home, steal all that they own and never be challenged for it (although there are certain points later in the story when stealing turns you into a target). Most of my 20-hour initial playthrough was spent searching trash cans, purses and safes (provided I had enough lockpicks to give to Elizabeth to break into them) for important items, not just the ones that help you get your 100-percent achievement or your platinum trophy. Of the three brands of vending machines, the one for the Vigors is the least useful, because almost all of the items it sells are much too expensive. As for health, I wondered why the game doesn’t stop you from eating all the food you can find when your health bar is full. You can’t use a medicine bag with a full bar, so why should you be allowed to waste apples and popcorn and such when you might need them later on? Then there’s the tone of the narrative, which gets decidedly dark and unsavory as you move along. Columbia’s residents gleefully practice all flavors of racism, and children can be seen smoking like chimneys. These might’ve been the norm in the early 20th century, but they’re very risky themes in the current climate. On a more practical note, Irrational has bowed to console pressure and has replaced the save-anywhere mechanic used in the original game with a checkpoint system that has far too few checkpoints. The game autosaves when you move to a new area, and you’re revived where you fall when you die (with a cash deduction), but if you quit you could find yourself having to replay large chunks of the game because of a lack of checkpoints. Combat is fairly easy until the final battle, which is ridiculously frustrating to win, even on Normal. And the battle leads immediately to a very long, interactive cutscene and a very trippy ending that deep thinkers will be debating for months. And almost every cash register in Columbia shows its last sale was for $4.53. Be sure to play 453 in your local lottery.

Bioshock Infinite is an amazing gaming experience that should definitely be part of every player’s wish list. It looks fantastic, the pace is fast (once you find Elizabeth), and it has much in common with the equally outstanding BioShock, all the way down to the layout of the interface. But it also has a dash of ugliness, a bad save-game system and some other unfortunate problems (not to mention a nasty bug that can erase your progress if the game crashes — take my advice and disable Steam Cloud saving). But even with these issues, Infinite remains one of the best games of 2013 thus far, and will no doubt be a frontrunner for Game of the Year.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | 3 comments

Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.8 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GTS or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 16 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Resident Evil is one of the industry’s most financially rewarding franchises. Say what you want about Call of Duty, but Capcom has managed to sell books, movie rights and spin-offs of its popular series of zombie shooters for years. While the word “multimedia” gets tossed around a lot these days, basically the only form Resident Evil doesn’t come packaged in is a vacation cruise (although I’m betting the idea for a Resident Evil getaway has been discussed). With the release of Resident Evil 6 on consoles late last year, critical opinion was divided, but consoles and PC are not the same kind of platform. How does the latest iteration of this venerable franchise stack up on PC? The short answer is this: it ain’t survival horror anymore. The long answer is a bit more complicated.

The franchise has been moving in the direction of more action in the past few installments, and RE6 takes it even further. While there are some creepy, slow sequences, where the characters stumble around in the dark, waiting to be ambushed, this game is all about killing lots of enemies with a variety of weapons. There are plenty of guns, explosives, incendiary devices, and opportunities to curb-stomp. I was also surprised at the seamlessness of the controls. It takes a little time to get used to them, but the designers have made sure to make it easy to shoot one zombie and then kick another in the head. Unless you’re grabbed by an enemy or out of stamina, the action is fast-paced and fun.

RE6 is also made for cooperative multiplayer. While the AI can competently play the second person on your team, the game really shines when you and a friend team up to take out your enemies. It contains just the right amount of fighting together, moments where you have to assist your friend, and even places where you have to separate from your companion and fight alone to reach a new location. And even in cooperative multiplayer, there are often AI-controlled NPCs involved in various fights who at least perform competently. One of the problems with NPCs who fight alongside you is that they can screw everything up through idiotic actions. While there are some occasional goofy moments, I never felt that NPCs caused me to die through their action or inaction. And the zombies were, well, zombies. Unlike the Aliens in Aliens: Colonial Marines, their behavior is both appropriate and effective in the context of their character.

I won’t spoil the plot of RE6, but I found it passable. It made more sense and had more pathos than the most recent installments in the movie franchise, including a nice opening scene for Leon when he shoots the zombie President after pleading with him to stop eating someone. While there’s plenty of shooting and curb-stomping of zombies, Resident Evil 6 also provides puzzles, lots of Quick Time events (QTEs), and plenty of cutscenes with dialogue. All of these non-combat elements are designed with a definite cinematic feel. You might have to dodge a subway train or use a sniper rifle to ring a series of bells at a distance to open a secret passage, but in just about every case, the camera is set up so that you’re treated to well rendered scenes that show off the game’s visuals. In fact, in some cases the game looks better than anything we’ve seen in a Resident Evil film. And the sound effects are top notch, with an appropriate amount of squishiness when finishing off zombies. The game’s performance on PC is fine, even with the excellent graphics. While I haven’t seen it directly on a console (videos on YouTube are probably not a fair assessment), I have to say that Capcom has fully utilized the capabilities of the PC.

All of these things should add up to a wonderful game. Yet, at the end of my time playing Resident Evil 6, I found myself a little underwhelmed, but it has nothing to do with Capcom’s choice to move further away from the franchise’s roots in survival horror. It’s clear that the developer wants to create drama in their horror franchise, and that’s a laudable goal. The problem with RE6 is that the various diverse elements, though individually good, don’t cohere well together. The fight in the subway is a great example. There’s plenty of zombie shooting, but the action scenes are interrupted by QTEs involving the train in more than one instance. Individually, they work, but when you’re killed three times in a row by the train until you learn the proper timing of the event, it breaks the pacing of the zombie killing. In a sense, the game tries to be an action movie, with people jumping onto helicopters, throwing zombies off themselves in combat, and avoiding environmental hazards. It works in a film because the writer and director can arrange the pace and make it consistent. In a game like this, it tends to be distracting and annoying in cooperative multiplayer since both players have to respawn if one is killed. So, while it looks and sounds neat, and while the game mechanics are fairly well balanced, you find yourself wondering if certain elements needed to be included. Sometimes less is more, and Resident Evil 6 is an object lesson in the disadvantages of unfocused gameplay.

Is it worth the cost? Steam is selling it for $39.99 (as of this writing). If you have a bunch of friends who’ve pre-purchased it, and you know you’re going to play together online, it’s probably worth the price. But if you’ve been sitting on the fence, my advice is to wait for a Steam sale. Capcom has moved completely away from survival horror, and I’m okay with that. However, they were over-ambitious in their inclusion of gameplay elements. While no individual element was done poorly, Resident Evil 6 doesn’t provide as enjoyable a game experience as it could have.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments

Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
System requirements: Windows XP SP 3/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 1.8 GHz Core2Duo E6300/2.1 GHz Athlon 64 X2 4050+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce 8600/Radeon HD 2600 XT or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c,10 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action-Adventure
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Let’s face it: Lara Croft isn’t an interesting character. Impossibly athletic, remarkably good-looking. There’s no problem she couldn’t overcome by climbing on walls and shooting endangered animals. She didn’t have a personality, she had breasts. She was part sex symbol, part wish fulfillment, and entirely plastic. Now that the franchise has creatively bankrupted itself for a second time, developer Crystal Dynamics has decided to go back and rework Lara from the ground up. Just as film director Christopher Nolan saved Batman from decades of one-dimensional edginess, Crystal Dynamics has breathed new life and humanity into a previously synthetic (and sexist) character. But to make this new Lara, first they had to put her through hell.

Tomb Raider isn’t just traumatic, it’s outright terrifying at times. After a violent shipwreck, Lara wakes to find herself bound and hanging from the ceiling of a creepy cave, complete with mounds of skulls and the remains of human sacrifices. After freeing herself (by setting herself on fire), she gets impaled on a nasty piece of rebar. The first half of Tomb Raider borders on survival horror. It uses log bridges and wolves where Resident Evil trundles out scary tentacle monsters, and because the very environment itself is the enemy, there’s no fighting against the “dark hoard,” which creates an existential horror. Crystal Dynamics didn’t hold back, and the game is filled with wincing, jaw-dropping moments. Squeamish people beware.

It’s pretty difficult to talk about an action-adventure game such as Tomb Raider without mentioning Uncharted, and yeah, they’re fairly similar games. You nimbly maneuver through the environment, climbing, leaping and crawling through the landscape. The levels really open up at times and are utterly filled with collectables and upgrades. The largest puzzles are optional chambers with rewards squirreled away behind ancient contraptions. If you want to spend your time and get 100-percent completion, you’ll really get your money’s worth. Combat is scattered throughout and fluid. Unlike Uncharted, it isn’t as constant and usually requires a good bit of stealth. Once enemies are nearby, Lara unslings her weapon and ducks into a crouch. If you stick to cover and take your time, you can take out a guard squad without much worry. But if you slip up, they’ll light flares and call in reinforcements.

The combat works great, largely because of the smooth cover system. Anytime you’re next to a chest-high wall or outcropping, Lara simply crouches behind it. No attaching, no manual button to press, nothing. It seems like a silly thing to harp on, but the simplicity of this one feature lets you plan your ambush assaults without frustration. This same principle applies to pretty much all the mechanics. If you get stuck, you can use Survival Mode to highlight every nearby element in the environment. Nothing’s more frustrating than trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces. The leaping and climbing feel better than ever, much improved upon the clunky feel that even the previous generation of Tomb Raider games had.

While the controversial E3 trailer definitely captures the horror, it misses the redeeming second act. Once she realizes what she can do, Lara stops reacting and starts acting. Instead of running away from the cultists, she dares them to try to kill her while she stalks them from the shadows. Now she’s risen up to the challenge and is ready to take on any ancient mythological power. Her confidence is genuine because we’ve viscerally seen/felt/played the truly horrifying obstacles.

It would be silly to call Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy the best Batman movies out there. As far as most people are concerned, they’re the only Batman movies. Similarly, Tomb Raider doesn’t just reboot the franchise, it wipes the previous games out of existence. With a powerful, thematic story and a strong female lead who rivals Mirror’s Edge’s Faith, Tomb Raider transcends its action-adventure genre. It’s too early to call Game of the Year, but if this doesn’t make it on some best-of lists, then there’d better be a darn good reason for it.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | 6 comments

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Visceral Games
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Win 7, 2.8 GHz or better CPU, 1 GB RAM (2 GB Vista/Win 7), 256 MB GeForce 6800/ATI X1600 Pro or better graphics card with Shader Model 3.0 compatibility, DirectX 9.0, 10 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now
Review by Christopher Lazenby

I’m not sure what to make of Dead Space 3. I’m happy to see a new chapter in one of the greatest new series of this gaming generation has been released, but three games in just four-and-a-half years? Isn’t that pushing it a little?

Naturally, Dead Space 3 picks up a little while after the previous game. Unitology is still running rampant. Isaac’s new girlfriend has left, and he’s currently spending his days locked in his apartment trying to manically figure out all the symbols that are locked in his brain. Things don’t stay calm for long. Isaac is forced to leave his colony as Markers are activated across the galaxy. This is where things tend to get rather convoluted and confusing. Ellie has returned, and she’s found herself another man, which causes problems between her and Isaac. And then there are aliens or something. I honestly struggled to keep on top of the mess; I never really felt that I knew what I was truly doing. I just seemed to explore endless corridors or wastes, blowing up Necromorphs as I went.

Fundamental changes have been made to the gamplay. The first thing you notice is the inclusion of co-op, which isn’t really a bonus; it’s actually the way the game is meant to be played. Cutscenes show Isaac and Carver together, and certain events play out differently in co-op, but here I’ll admit, I barely played with a partner. I intended to play through the entire game in single player. I swore to myself that it would be far more enjoyable alone, but seeing Carver in cutscenes, only to flash away suddenly, is almost unnerving and a slightly annoying design choice.

While playing in single player, you also miss large chunks of events that are rather crucial to the story. Isaac’s severe hallucinations are present in the cooperative sections but are strangely omitted in single player, and Carver is barely introduced. It’s easy to see that DS 3 was designed as a game to be played with a friend. The beloved Dead Space arsenal has had a major change-up. Guns are now fully buildable and customisable to your specification, some with hilarious results, such as a Gatling Rivet Gun with underslung Kinetic rifle, modified with acid rounds. I spent hours finding perfect killing combinations. My only gripe was designing a weapon that seemed like a fine idea but turned out to be useless at killing enemies, forcing you to stick with it until a weapon bench could be found.

I ran into several camera issues with Dead Space 3. The FOV is far too tight, and in close-quarters combat, I found myself desperately trying to get a shot at an enemy. I modified an .ini file to increase the FOV, which made the game far more playable and enjoyable, but my console cousins will have to put up with this annoying choice. Enemy designs haven’t evolved. Many of the classic enemies remain with new skins, while the totally new enemies didn’t impress me as much as the exploding babies I found quite so devilishly hilarious in Dead Space 2. Unfortunately, DS 3 has brought back one of my biggest pet peeves in gaming: backtracking. Roughly four times I was presented with a challenge, earning me another task that involved going back the way I came and grabbing something else vital to the mission. This is unforgivably lazy and a crappy way to treat the player; rather than feeling accomplished, you’re treated as an errand boy.

Dead Space 3 is a pretty game. Interior shots are nicely detailed, as are sunrises and sunsets on Tau Volantis and the character models, which are still fully destructible; blowing up a few Necromorphs is still satisfying. Don’t expect a huge wealth of visual customisation on PC, but there’s enough to satisfy most users. Audio seems to have taken a back seat compared to earlier games in the series. Using audio cues to find enemies isn’t as prevalent when compared to the previous games.

It hasn’t been a totally smooth ride with Dead Space 3. Forced co-op, a confusing story, lazy design choices and some rather tedious backtracking has hampered what is generally an enjoyable game.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Criterion
System requirements: Windows Vista SP2/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.7 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX 10-compatible graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound device, 20 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Racing
ESRB rating: Everyone 10+
Release date: Available now
Review by Christopher Lazenby

Need for Speed: Most Wanted is the 19th entry in the popular racing franchise, and Criterion’s second foray into the series. Gone are the cheesy plotlines, bad acting and cringe-worthy cutscenes. Most Wanted is just pure racing and chasing, and I actually think it’s a better step for the franchise.

Developer Criterion’s intention with Most Wanted was to remove menus from the game. Instead, we get EasyDrive, an in-game utility that allows you to modify or change your car, set waypoints and join multiplayer games, all while never leaving the game screen. It’s functionally perfect, and it’s easy to use. The main issue is, when you try to navigate this utility while being chased by rival racers or the ruthless police force that patrols the city, your map and speedometer vanish. So not only are you trying to drive, but you also lose two visual indicators. This can lead to some serious road rage, especially when you’ve racked up a nice score in a chase and lose it, all while trying to change to road tires.

Fairhaven is your new home. It’s a decent size and features a varied layout of roads. Whether you’re speeding along the highway or tackling the rough trainyard, Fairhaven manages to mix it up nicely and offers multiple routes to race on or avoid the police. Unlike many other racing games, progression in Most Wanted is fairly open. Most of the cars are scattered around the city, in secret and not-so-secret places. Once you find a car, it’s yours to use as you wish. Each car can participate in five races, and has around 25 challenges to complete. The overall selection of cars is rather lacking, with just 44 to choose from (including 10 locked cars that need to be beaten to use them).

Driving the Caterham R500 is very different from the SVT Raptor. Each vehicle has its uses and weaknesses. The R500 ducks and weaves neatly through cop cars, while the Raptor is more at home driving through roadblocks and ramming cars off the road. Finding each car’s niche is part of the charm that attracts me to the game. Handling is slightly heavy, but the cars provide a lot of feedback, and drifting is pretty easy to master. Race types include sprint, circuit races, ambushes and speed runs. Sprint and circuit races are self-explanatory. Ambushes pit you against a sizable police force and give you a time limit to escape, while speed runs challenge you to reach the highest average speed on the set course. With just four modes, things can get a little bit stale, but the varied environments of Fairhaven keep things fresh.

Each car can be modified by winning races and unlocking the appropriate mods. Don’t expect any crazy spoilers or body kits. These mods are based on changing the performance abilities of your car, such as off-road tires, reinforced chassis or aero body packs. Using these correctly can easily turn the tide of a race or a cop chase. All of your currently unlocked mods can be accessed on the fly using the EasyDrive menu.

The Multiplayer features and the inclusion of the well known AutoLog system really bring Most Wanted into it’s own. Fairhaven is filled with jumps, gates and billboards to destroy. These are all calculated in real time. Showing how well your friends did can be infuriating and addictive. You can repeat each jump over and over to try and grab a couple of extra yards so that you can take the glorious top spot on the leaderboards. If you have active friends on this game and are competitive, I’d strongly suggest canceling all future social events, family gatherings and funerals. Multiplayer is a free-roam affair. Joining a game is relatively easy, and you can compete in varied races and challenges. Multiplayer also supports up to 12 players on PC. It’s just a lot of fun.

The graphics in Need for Speed: Most Wanted are also worth mentioning. Built on the Frostbite 2 engine, this game simply looks beautiful. Daytime fills the screen with bright, rich colours, while night offers a dark, moody landscape. Sunrise and sunset offer the best views. The lighting at sunrise is a little over the top; I once crashed because sunlight obscured my view of the road. Cars are nicely detailed and deform when damaged, but don’t expect horrible, twisted wrecks after crashes. The cars hold their basic shape and drivability after crashes, but you can still dent the panels and lose the odd bumper or two.

While Need for Speed: Most Wanted doesn’t make major changes in the series, it’s fun, loud, obnoxious and enjoyable. What more could you want from it?

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | One comment

Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Ninja Theory
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.8 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800GTS/Radeon HD3850 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 9 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Censorship might seem so Nuremberg 1937, but don’t forget that we Americans have many systems in place to insure that every medium has its own classification ghettos. Sometimes, this results in the R-rated action movie, which is labeled as including “mature content” despite having no maturity whatsoever. Like cartoon cigarette mascots, it’s always been known that Schwarzenegger movies are made with the 14-year-old male demographic in mind. DMC Devil May Cry, like those action movies, revels in its violence and gore in a way that only an adolescent can. With a new reboot by a decidedly western developer, the series takes a more colorful approach with the juvenile demon-vs-the-system series. Even though it’s the kind of game that literally scrawls obscenities directed towards the player on the walls, it doesn’t play dirty. In fact, it just might be the best action game to come out in years.

DMC revolves around the iconic character Dante and his brother Virgil (get it?), who use their half-demon, half-angel ancestry to take down Mundus, the demon who secretly rules the world from within the bloated flesh of a CEO. That’s right, demons control the world, keeping the populous docile using capitalist satire. While the game’s plot might revolve around demons and monsters, its style consciously avoids the expected gothic tones and travels a more urban route. Psychic sidekick Kat doesn’t laboriously prepare spells, she uses an aerosol spray can and a template. Histories aren’t told on epic tapestries, they’re found in sprawling alleyway graffiti. Dante, like every adolescent male, is talented, gets all the girls, doesn’t struggle with acne, and fights the system. It would be sickening if it wasn’t told with such sheer panache.

With a setting this kickass, the gameplay had better follow suit. Developer Ninja Theory keeps the same precision hacking and slashing the series is known for, but adds their own twist. While you still have a huge list of combos and moves to pull off between your sword and pistols, you also have new angel and demon weapons to use. By holding down the left or the right triggers, Dante can access a whole new set of moves, many of them involving movement. For example, RT+X pulls an enemy towards you (or simply rips his shield away), while LT+X pushes you towards him instead. It’s a kind of swift action that doesn’t translate well in pictures. After you acquire the mental dexterity to pull them off, you can combo your way around like the badass demon slayer your mother always wanted you to be.

By the end of the game, you have a deep move set to pick from and scant seconds to choose the right string of combos to perform correctly. Yet, the game paces this complexity well enough that you never feel lost. DMC is like a piano teacher who shows you where to place your hands, then slaps you with a ruler whenever you miss a note. Not brutal, not unfair, but demanding nonetheless. It reaches the right balance point where your palms sweat and you start to feel a bit shaky, but you never rage at the game for cheating. Playing on Normal, DMC leads you through the steps of a brilliantly gory ballet. After that, it challenges you to try it again without the hand-holding through the successively higher difficulties.

The idea of Limbo being a separate, spiritual layer opens up DMC to some creative possibilities, and Ninja Theory takes full advantage of them. What starts out as a normal, boring warehouse suddenly explodes into a twisted, colorful dreamland. It’s part Inception, part They Live. A particularly standout level involves Dante entering a demonic prison tower hidden in a reflection. What follows is a ridiculously creative series of levels that takes place upside down, complete with rising rain. Immediately after this, Dante leaps into the digital world of a news bumper and battles a Tron-like demon. Another game might use one or two of these ideas for set-pieces, but DMC does stuff like this all the way through.

Most games revolve around adolescent power fantasies. As a grown man, I should hate Dante for being a stupid, cock-sure punk, but I can’t. I keep cringing, expecting a whiny moment to break out when Dante’s hormones catch up with him, but the moment never comes. He starts out badass and ends badass. You don’t need a character arc when you’re just that awesome. Meanwhile, the gameplay echoes every bit of that, demanding that you play to a level befitting a rebellious teen-demon, or it lops off large chunks of your health bar. It’s an imaginative game with well-built mechanics that will leave you with sweaty palms and wanting seconds. What more could you ask for?

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments

Publisher: Dark Vale Games
Developer: Dark Vale Games
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 512 MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant graphics card, 2 GB RAM, DirectX 9.0c, DirectX-compatible sound device, 6 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now
Review by Peter Gore

In December, those of us who write for Avault were asked to submit their wish lists for potential reviews in the upcoming year. I threw in some of the more interesting Tier 1 games such as Crysis 3, but I had also just finished reading a teaser for a soon-to-be-released game that combined multiplayer PvP play with RPG elements, entitled Forge. Not long after, a key code arrived in my inbox with the offer of a review. I grabbed the chance to play what I thought would be a unique gaming experience.

Forge is a third-person multiplayer PvP combat fest. There’s a backstory to how players ended up fighting for supremacy on the world called Forge, but it’s immaterial. You choose between five classes and engage in team-based combat on four semi-constricted maps. To begin competitive play, you’re required to complete a multi-step tutorial on gameplay basics (movement, targeting, blocking, and the special ability to which your chosen class has access). Modes are familiar, including team deathmatch, capture the flag, and objective-based goals. There are RPG elements, but I didn’t find they had any true impact on my character’s ability to compete in matches. It sounds simple, but Forge throws in some unusual twists for a PvP RPG that challenge players of the genre.

To begin with, the traditional tab-based combat associated with most PvP games is absent. Instead, Forge adopts the first-person shooter model of real-time targeting. If you want to score damage points, then you need to keep your target in your sights. The five classes (assassin, warden, pyromancer, shaman, and my character choice, the pathfinder, who specializes in ranged bow attacks) offer a variety of playing styles. Movement is accomplished using the W, S, A and D keys. Constant motion is critical in Forge; despite its FPS roots, you won’t find many opportunities for camping or sniping. The frenetic pace of the game, along with the relatively small maps by many game standards, doesn’t accommodate that style of play. Each class has access to nine abilities, and these are mapped around the movement keys rather than the 1 through 0 buttons, as most RPGs use. It’s possible to score individual kills, but the game is designed to encourage coordinated team combat; an arrow shot will score damage points, but having your teammates join you in targeting an enemy does massive damage more quickly.

I had high hopes for Forge, but for me, playing enough to develop a feel for the game became a chore. That’s not good news if you’re looking for some diversionary fun. The game feels unfinished. The developers make no bones that additional content is forthcoming, but for nearly 20 bucks the game feels like an advanced beta rather than a completed product. I can look past the unfinished nature of Forge because what is presented for the most part looks good and plays without any discernible bugs. The maps and characters are well rendered, and the attack effects are very impressive. But the server browser function is inoperative. The only method of accessing a game is through quick play, which might not drop you into a populated server. In addition, I found the choice of character classes uninteresting and even a little disappointing. For example, there’s no true “tank” class, and I like tanking above all other options in an RPG. The warden is designed in part to fill this void, being able to take heavy damage while healing and buffing those around him. But the warden deals minimal damage in attack. What good is being a bad-ass tank if you can’t truly punish your enemies with devastating melee blows? It seems an odd design choice to me. Perhaps it’s one of those elements the designers intend to address in later updates.

I found Forge‘s biggest drawback to be its inaccessibility for the new player. Yes, the tutorials give beginners enough of a feel of how to move their characters, but they don’t really show you how to play the game. The pace of a match is frenetic, and perhaps that’s an understatement. As far as I could tell, individual contests are limited to 10v10. I seldom found a server that populated. But even at 5v5, a match moves at lightning pace. You must utilize continuous movement and draw on skills that allow you to run up walls or catapult yourself across the map, all while coordinating your attacks on other players or objectives to maximize damage. It’s all simply overwhelming for a newbie. You either get lost, or get killed. I can’t count the number of times I saw in-game chat in which players acknowledged they had no idea what they were supposed to be doing, or that they couldn’t locate their objectives. It became easy to identify veteran players who had spent considerable time mastering Forge from the rest of us. I never felt unwelcome on any server; I just never had all that much fun. It seems to me that, with the sheer volume of shooter-type games available now, a niche game such as Forge should strive, above all else, to provide a reasonable entrance point to the casual or new gamer. The learning curve might be too steep to cultivate the number of players who can make the type of PvP match envisioned by the game any fun.

If I sound like I’m being hard on the game, it might be because I’m hoping someone at Dark Vale will hear my call and provide us with greater direction. While I was ultimately disappointed with my “wish” game, I can’t say I didn’t like it. It’s just that I didn’t like it enough to put in the effort needed to become an accomplished player. Forge truly does offer a unique twist on the usual PvP RPG world. If you have the desire and time, I’m guessing there’s considerably more depth to the game than first appears. Perhaps future updates will address what I see as flaws. But for now, there are more interesting and accessible games out there.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | One comment

Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Firaxis
System requirements: Windows Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8800GT/ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0, 20 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

In 1994, Mythos Games and MicroProse released XCOM: UFO Defense, a game regarded even today as the best of all time. It was simple and frustratingly difficult, all at the same time, and PC gamers loved it. After 18 years of waiting, gamers of all platforms (it would be rude to let PC players have all the fun again) have the chance to see what all the fuss was about with XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

If you boil XCOM down to the basics, it becomes a simple proposition of Us vs. Them. Aliens have begun an invasion of Earth. You are tapped to command a secret international combination of military and scientific assets to eradicate the invaders. You do this by leading a squad of up to six soldiers in turn-based strategic combat in various places around the globe.

But there’s far more than just pointing and shooting to be done. Success in XCOM depends upon how you manage the XCOM Circle of Life. Completing missions generates income. You use the income to hire more soldiers (you can have as many as 99 on your roster), build facilities in your underground base (there are five from which to choose, spread out on five continents), research new technology, and most importantly, build and launch new satellites and maximize and upgrade your squadron of fighter planes. Satellite coverage keeps the various member nations happy and locates alien ships. Fighters shoot down the alien ships, leading to more missions for your soldiers, bringing things full circle. Unless you want to spend 50 or more hours on one playthrough, you should keep these facts firmly in mind.

Developer Firaxis brings a wealth of strategy experience to the table (XCOM is their first game in 15 years that doesn’t have strategy legend Sid Meier’s name in the title, although he did contribute to its development), and it shows. They’ve given you the tools to play this game almost any way imaginable. You can bull rush the aliens, or you can go for a more subtle approach. You can use Batman-style grapples and jetpacks to gain the high ground, you can become invisible and gain great tactical advantage. Or you can be more conservative and use ground cover to flank your enemies and catch them in a crossfire. But be warned: permadeath is in play here. Once one of your soldiers dies, he’s dead forever. This can become a major factor in your strategic planning. You could spend most of the game leveling a soldier to maximum, only to see him cut down by friendly fire from a panicked squadmate. And then there’s Ironman mode, in which the game autosaves after every turn and doesn’t allow you to reload an old save point, making your personnel decisions all the more important.

XCOM has a cartoonish look that fits with the action, but it does have some glitches. Heroes and enemies both have the ability to fire their weapons through solid objects without damaging them. Touchy mouse controls make it occasionally difficult to line up shots from projectile weapons. Voice acting is borderline bad, and the script can be puzzling; a soldier can say that the enemy is pulling back when it’s actually advancing. Your soldiers are such bad shots that you wonder how they managed to graduate from boot camp; I had an alien surrounded by all six of my fighters and it took almost all of them to finally bring it down, since half of them missed their target from close range. There are only three mission types (search and destroy, escort, bomb disposal) and a limited number of maps, which start to repeat if you play long enough. Soldiers with heavy weapons such as rocket launchers aren’t allowed to move and fire in the same turn until they reach a certain rank, something that can be very annoying if you forget it. There are five bases spread out across the globe, so why is my base the only one sending troops out to fight? It would seem a waste of resources to create the other four outposts and not use them. Once you find a strategy that works, you can use it throughout the game and be guaranteed success; at that point, victory is denied only by bad shooting and/or your mistakes, since the aliens’ tactics never evolve. And the biggest missing piece: there’s no undo button. Once you click that right mouse button, you have to live with what you’ve done. More than once in my 56-hour playthrough I sent a squadmate to his or her death by a mistake that I couldn’t take back.

It might seem that I’m being unnecessarily hard on XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but it’s tough love. It’s like a favorite old car — you can see the flaws, but that doesn’t stop you from driving it until the wheels fall off. XCOM‘s one of the deepest, most involving gaming experiences out there now, with a retro visual style and gameplay mechanics that challenge you to think beyond your trigger finger. It has quite a few nagging problems, but none of them prevent you from having an enormous amount of fun playing it.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | 5 comments

Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Developer: Project Aces
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/2.4 GHz AMD Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8800GT/ATI Radeon HD 3850 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 16 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Flight sim
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Ace Combat holds a special place in my heart, mostly for its childlike disregard for reality. It’s a high-budget projection of what goes through a 14-year-old boy’s mind when he obsesses over back issues of Jane’s. Decades of fighter jet technology swooshing over a city, unleashing dozens of missiles at each other as they dive and roll in close knife fights. Reality is so much more boring, as planes sparingly launch their handful of ordinance from miles outside of visual range. Ace Combat takes the shape and names of the real world and paints them atop a much more interesting reality. The latest in the series, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon has now landed on PC in the form of an Enhanced Edition. With a new cinematic presentation and aircraft that aren’t jet planes, Assault Horizon tries to do something new with an old formula, but keep that romantic fantasy alive.

A new Dogfight Mode has been added to the traditional aerial combat. Far from being a new Madden minigame, dogfight mode lets you lock onto nearby enemies and trail behind them as if on a string, landing highly accurate shots and getting close-ups of the results. In effect, it adds combos and reversals and works out pretty well. Occasionally you encounter an enemy who simply won’t die because he’s supposed to lead you through a scripted chase, zooming low through a cityscape only to crash monumentally into a building. It looks cool enough, but it’s obvious that it was supposed to happen, which removes the punch. There’s also a similar system for ground attacks, which sets up a target-rich strafing run for you to methodically demolish. They might seem like Easy-buttons, but I found the later missions to be as exacting and difficult as before. It’s not the least bit realistic, but you didn’t come here for a 1-to-1 simulation; you came here for something that looks real, but is as fake as cotton candy. While the same turn-and-burn gameplay remains, everything takes on a new cinematic angle. Assault Horizon is as obsessed with destroying airplanes as Burnout is with cars. The new dogfight mode brings the camera up close behind enemy aircraft, then turns into a slow-motion pan to watch them disintegrate into a shower of explody bits. I used to joke about making an air combat game with the violence of an FPS, where little windshield wipers would wash away blood from an aerial kill. Assault Horizon gets shockingly close to that puerile fantasy by having oil spray all over your virtual camera.

Helicopters also make their first appearance. They might not be jet fighters, but it’s pretty entertaining to dodge behind buildings and hills to evade missiles. What’s not so fun are the rail-shooter segments. Whether manning a turret or a gunship, they’re not nearly as interesting as, well, everything else. While they might be heavily featured in the trailers, these two new weapons only show up twice and then it’s back to jets, for better or worse.

So what makes this edition so enhanced? It comes prepackaged with all the DLC, which amounts to new planes, new free-play missions, and a handful of skins. While it’s nice to have it all in one place, most of it amounts to kitsch novelty items. Even so, it was great fun to shoot down the final boss in a plane with an Idolmaster paint scheme. Oh yeah, most of the new skins are girly Idolmaster themes, because prepubescent anime sing-a-long games contrast well with the olive-drab world of the military industrial complex.

Instead of the generic real-world-but-not landscape common to the series, Assault Horizon takes place in our world. Thankfully, it never tries to paint a detailed political fiction. There are rebels who are backed up by larger, badder bad guys, and that’s all you need to know. It starts promising, but about halfway through it gives up and stuff starts to happen for no apparent reason. Wait, I’m protecting the Prime Minister’s yacht now? Prime Minister of what? But before you can panic, Ace Combat lays a firm hand on your shoulder, points off into the horizon and says, “Bogies on the horizon, son. You know what to do,” and everything makes sense again. Still, when you have genuinely good storytelling in classics such as Ace Combat 4, it’s a bit of a let down to settle for mediocrity.

In PC land, we don’t get too many arcade air simulators anymore. It’s either DCS or load up Crimson Skies again (which is always a good option). We stomached HAWX because it was the toilet-bowl prison hooch to tide us over for the real thing. Unlike that game, Assault Horizon is engaging, challenging, and enjoyable for what it is. Say what you will about the changes; at least this one has personality. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon wants to tell a personal fantasy story about people flying fast planes that make things go boom. There’s limited replayability, and the final boss isn’t worth the effort, but the gristle is sparing enough. It might not be the best Ace Combat game, but as far as PC games are concerned, it’s the best we have.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | 4 comments

Publisher: Soldak Entertainment
Developer: Soldak Entertainment
System requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/Win 7/Mac OS10.4, 1.5 GHz Pentium IV or better CPU, 256 MB RAM, GeForce 2 or better graphics card, 200 MB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Every once in awhile, I get something new and interesting across my virtual desk. Drox Operative is one such game. In many ways, it plays like a space version of Diablo, but it has victory conditions like any of a hundred RTS games. It also has espionage action with planets that brings to mind some older CRPGs. My experience with Drox Operative was interesting, and while not the most addicting game I’ve played, it certainly has appeal for those looking for something altogether different.

When I say this game is like a space version of Diablo, I’m talking about its core gameplay elements. While you’re piloting a ship in space, it might as well be an isometric display with 2D tiles that are planets and stars instead of deserts and forests. You gather your quests, take your ship into space, and fly around by pointing the mouse at tiles. You engage enemies in much the same way, selecting special weapons and attacks with the number keys. Outfitting your ship is much like outfitting a character with equipment. You put gear in slots that you hope will improve your performance. The only catch to all of this is, your ship has power restrictions, so the best item to use might be something with less flashy stats simply because it budgets your limited power better.

But the real meat and potatoes of Drox Operative are the victory conditions. In most Diablo clones, the goal is to kill progressively tougher enemies until you defeat the biggest and toughest of them all. Then you win. Drox Operative is a bit more complicated. The NPC races spend their time doing RTS things. They’re fighting wars with each other, killing random monsters in space, and conducting trade and espionage, in addition to asking you for help with quests. Your goal is not just to kill bad guys, but also to achieve any of the following conditions: ally with the last living race (Military Win); unite all remaining races, including the Drox (Diplomatic Win); earn the Drox Guild enough money in this sector (Economic Win); destroy race ships, planets, and powerful monsters (Fear Win); or destroy powerful monsters and solve noteworthy quests (Legend Win).

It’s also possible to lose the game without ever dying. If one race manages to conquer a sector and you aren’t allied with them (Military Loss), if you’re at war with all of the remaining races (Diplomatic Loss), or you lose the Drox Guild too much money in a sector (Economic Loss), then you’re toast. As a result, while you’re a hero with a job to do, the universe around you is busy doing its own thing. If you get lazy, or make everyone angry, or become a black hole of money, it doesn’t matter how heroic you are; you still lose. Adding to all of this, while the various NPC races are doing their own RTS thing, they also try to solve their own problems. This means if they ask for your help in killing Enemy X, and you spend your time doing something else, then they might just kill it themselves. That’s a dangerous precedent to set as a member of the Drox, and it’s quite refreshing to find a game in which NPCs aren’t just lazy idiots who never try to kill the nasty enemy that keeps destroying their ships/homes/favorite curios.

While the gameplay found in Drox Operative is an interesting mash-up of different genres, the game comes with some issues. If you want sexy graphics, then this isn’t going to be your game. While I don’t mind low-end visuals as long as the gameplay is solid, I know that some of you think this is important. Aside from that, I found that the game’s mechanics don’t always mesh well together. At a certain point while playing in every sector, you really have the power to do just about anything. Conquer everyone else? Sure. Become a legend? Yeah, you can do that, too. In fact, when you become an intergalactic hero with a ship that can annihilate entire fleets of NPCs, the victory conditions kind of merge together, because being powerful in one way makes you more than capable of achieving all victory conditions. It’s better than just pursuing better gear as a game goal, but I wonder what might be achieved with better or more carefully planned win/loss conditions.

So, would I recommend the game? It has a free demo, so anyone looking for something really different ought to give it a try. While not perfect, Drox Operative shows a commitment to out-of-the-box thinking about game design. And priced at $19.99, it’s not a bad independent game.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.2 GHz or better CPU, 512 MB RAM, 32 MB DirectX 8-compatible graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 250 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Apparently thinking that the edutainment sector was looking a bit thin, Dennaton Games has made an electronic simulacrum of what it might feel like to go on a coked-up shooting rampage. With a strong retro 80s style, Hotline Miami is fast, fun, and will make you feel terrible about yourself by the end.

Hotline Miami has an odd psychedelic feel that a druggy might experience while trying to merge with his ZX Spectrum, Detroit electro playing in the background. Hotline’s Miami is built in a lo-fi, pre-PC era and painted in bright neon colors. Meanwhile, a pulsing chiptune soundtrack drones along, making the violent proceedings feel like a rave. Yet, something feels deliberately off. The world seems to stop at your doorstep as buildings float in an endless neon sea. There’s madness out there, between the flashing lights and throbbing bass. If the look isn’t weird enough for you, the story should do it. It’s told sparingly through short cutscenes, but the core idea is that you’re a hitman of sorts. After receiving cryptic messages, you don an animal mask and off buildings full of people in very brutal ways. Yet, it’s always hinted that perhaps not everything is as it seems.

In many ways, Hotline taps into the quick-but-difficult style of play that Super Meat Boy found. Any single bullet or thwack on the head will end your killing spree, but a quick tap of “R” will get you back on your feet again. Once you kick down the door, Hotline becomes a strategy game that plays out in a matter of seconds. Kick down the door to stun the guard, grab his gun, shoot the guy as he walks down the hall, and thwack (“Press R to Restart”). Ok, I forgot about that other guy; let’s try it again. Kick down the door, stun the guard, etc. More than once the game had me cursing impotently at the screen and pounding my fists as an excellent ballistic ballet was cut short at the very end by a single misstep. However, all those tears make the victory that much sweeter, until you realize just what victory means in Miami.

After each kill, points and blood spill out of broken skulls in equal measure. The more varied your kills, the more points you receive. More points unlock more weapons and masks. Beyond simply being a creepy thematic piece, each animal mask grants you a different ability to help you plan your rampages. For example, one lets you kill guards with a door bash, while another increases the effectiveness of your melee attacks.

The chilling part is when you realize there’s very little difference between “planning” and “premeditated murder.” When you return home with a fat sack of points, Hotline proceeds to rub your nose in the mess you’ve made. After every mission, you have to slowly walk past the terrible carnage you’ve wrecked, silently get into your car and drive away. After that, you usually stop at a gas station or a bar for a quick drink, and then head home. After the breakneck violence, these interludes feel incredibly jarring. Oh yeah, here’s a normal life that you’re totally not able to live. When returning home from an early mission, your character drops to his knees and retches a nasty green puddle onto the ground, only to quickly get back up again and act like nothing ever happened. This one moment encapsulates the psychosis of Hotline.

It never gets quite as pretentious or blunt about things as Spec Ops: The Line does, but Hotline is slyly self-conscious about its madness. Its garish style is part 80s period piece, part commentary on violence. As much as I admire Hotline, it’s hard to coalesce my feelings about it. I have a similar reaction to Tarantino films. I adore how they’re put together, but I feel terrible by the end. Somewhere between Little Green Bag and the camera closing in on a terrified Mr. White, I realize that a switch has been made. I offer a similar qualified recommendation for Hotline Miami: Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Renegade Kid
Developer: Renegade Kid
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.8 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, DirectX 9-compatible graphics card, 23 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Platformer
ESRB rating: Everyone
Release date: Available now

Retro-nostalgia is a many-layered cake. One one level, it can simply be a way to advertize that “I remember my childhood.” That’s why Walmart sells shirts with the NES controller over the word “addict,” despite the fact that whoever actually buys those shirts likely spends far more time yelling at 10-year-olds on Xbox Live than actually interacting with their NES. But rose-colored glasses aside, there’s a general feeling that gaming has lost something. Don’t be so ignorant to ignore that we’ve also gained so very much, but it’s OK to acknowledge that perhaps there’s something nestled within the pixels of a 2D platformer that you won’t find inside the quad-core renderings of a blockbuster game. It’s from here that Mutant Mudds comes. It has it’s own reason to exist, but it’s heart is in love with the past, for better or worse.

Mutant Mudds is unabashedly steeped in retro-nostalgia. The setup is told through a refreshingly quick cutscene. Aliens invade, you grab your jetpack and ray gun and go! Pixel art isn’t a dead art form, and it’s well expressed throughout. Even the music sounds like it’s right off of an 2a03 chip. The look and feel of Mutant Mudds can be summed up in a word: authentic.

It’s a basic coin-snatching platformer, but the twist here is that you can jump between the foreground and background. Occasionally you reach a point where you can leap into either perspective, effectively creating three different 2D levels that you play in parallel. Meanwhile, as you leap about, you blast mutants using your ray gun and hover about with your jetpack, which doubles as an “oops” button to help you out with failed jumps.

All those coins you collect don’t just go for extra lives. You save them up to buy upgrades. Eventually you hit a wall in a level and you have to go back to the store to swap out for higher jumping power, a better jetpack, etc. It’s a good modern mechanic that’s well implemented to give a better sense of progression to the leaping and shooting action.

Mutant Mudds doesn’t just look old school, it plays like it, too. You have three hearts of health. Once that’s gone, you start the level again. “Ahah!” I hear you say, “finally a game that respects my skills!” However, after a few levels, you begin to see why things such as “health pickups” and “checkpoints” were invented. It took me a half-dozen tries to finish the second level, which lasts a good five minutes. That’s not to say it’s a particularly difficult game; the difficulty curve has a few ill-placed spikes in the way.

Mutant Mudds is a neo-retro trip with its heart in the right place. The lack of health pickups and checkpoints makes some of the longer missions a chore, but otherwise it’s pretty well built. If you enjoyed Duke Nukem before the shotguns and strippers, then there’s likely a place in your heart that Mutant Mudds can fill.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: LudoCraft
Developer: LudoCraft
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2.6 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, DirectX 9.0c-compatible graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 1 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now
Review by Peter Gore

One of my favorite all-time games combined tanks, combat and racing. Treadmarks was an indie multiplayer game that had you racing your tank against others in wide-open vistas and enclosed tracks, allowing for combat as well as a race to the finish line. It never made the big time, but it had a cult of online followers that still plays today, even 10 years after it was published. So when I was assigned to review Air Buccaneers, I was reminded of odd combinations that could work. Buccaneers have been known to have a cannon or two. How is any self-respecting pirate-buccaneer type going to plunder the high seas without one. But Vikings? I’ve seen my share of Viking movies (13th Warrior remains an eternal favorite), and I don’t remember Vikings having either cannons or gunpowder. And neither buccaneers nor Vikings had hot air balloons in which to tool around the skies. But Air Buccaneers throws the entire mish-mash into one place, creating a sort of “chocolate meets peanut butter” collision with the hopeful result of an entertaining gaming experience.

If you’re looking for some deep backstory regarding how the protagonists have found themselves in this position, then you need look somewhere else. Yes, there’s some narrative on the loading splash screens, but it’s irrelevant. This is pure PvP with a touch of skills role-playing thrown in for good measure. In researching the game, I was surprised to learn its origin comes from a relatively popular mod created for Unreal Tournament 2004 a few years back.

In Air Buccaneers, you choose a team (obviously either a Viking or a buccaneer), grab a glider and head to the skies. You land on a hot-air balloon and engage in a variety of objective-based aerial combat scenarios. There’s no single-player aspect to Air Buccaneers. There isn’t even an option for SP. What’s more, newcomers face a somewhat steep learning curve. There’s no real tutorial on how to play (although the online Wiki set up by the community is a helpful place to start), but it’s not rocket science. Movement and glider/balloon flight is accomplished by the typical WASD setup, and the mouse controls appear to be reasonably intuitive. I found the character and balloon graphics to be pretty good; in fact, the aerial views are really nice. There are no set class systems; you play your role on the balloon based on the situation and your personal preference. Flying feels like flying, but the real challenge is figuring out the correct cannonball azimuths to become a good shot. Leading a target is one thing; leading a moving balloon in your moving balloon, while figuring out the correct trajectory to score a hit on your opponent, is quite something else entirely. This takes practice. After awhile I got to the point where I could, using the winds and movement, toss a cannonball curve ball. You feel a sense of accomplishment the first time you do that in the heat of battle.

You feel that accomplishment because this is a team-based game first and foremost. This is Air Buccaneers‘ greatest strength, and also its biggest weakness. The learning curve is off-putting. Your newbie mistake can cost your balloon or your team the match. But once you play a few rounds, and understand the different roles and nuances, it becomes one of the most enjoyable multiplayer games released in ages. To be successful, each player has to contribute, and that includes more than just captaining the ship or manning the cannons. The player who assumes command is critical to success; their orders determine victory or humiliating defeat. But any player on board can contribute, including repairing the ship, assisting the cannoneers, repelling boarders or laying air mines.

Is there glory in these back-up roles? Not necessarily, but there are experience points to be gained. These points give you access to perks (and an accompanying flaw), as well as new accessories for your character. But more than anything, the game gives any player access to any role, and that, along with just being plain-old fun, is an excellent selling point. Want to shoot down the opposition? Grab a cannon in one session. In the next, be the captain and take the wheel. Learn to function as a team and you win. Lone wolf it and get used to that hilarious death scream. If there’s a weakness in Air Buccaneers (and it might not be a fair criticism, but it’s a reality all the same), it’s that there aren’t enough people playing to really get your sea legs, so to speak. On most nights I was lucky to find one populated server, and even then if we had a dozen players we were lucky. This could be caused by a variety of factors, many of which are out of the control of the game developer. Regardless, if you can’t learn to play a new game because of a lack of players, or the folks you’re online with that session are a bunch of chuckleheads, you aren’t likely to stick around, nor come back. And that’s too bad, because Air Buccaneers is a winner.

Like my first experience with Treadmarks, I went from a skeptic to a convert when it came to Air Buccaneers. It takes an investment of time to recognize that it’s more than just a run-of-the-mill PvP experience. It truly has those exciting elements I’ve found missing lately in the many retreaded tier-one shooters available now. What it needs to truly succeed are players to enrich the experience. Ten years later, people are still racing tanks, so there’s hope for Vikings and buccaneers.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Krystian Majewski
Developer: Krystian Majewski
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX Leopard, DirectX 5, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 200 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Math classes occupy similar places in my life where dentist appointments are usually found. It’s not that I can’t do math (my weekends of Dungeons and Dragons prove that much), but when it comes to the classroom, all the joy leaves me. One day I stumbled upon Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, quite by accident. I barely even knew what it was about, only that it sounded interesting and had Escher pictures in it. Soon, enthralled by stories about pretty high-end mathematical theories, the nature of numbers, and formalized logic, I was enraged. Why hadn’t my teachers showed me how beautiful math truly was? I felt like I had been eating grape skins and wasn’t told about the fine wine next to it.

In a similar way, a small indie game programmed in Flash opened my eyes to the possible humanity that games can offer, but rarely try. Trauma wasn’t made in 2012. I didn’t even buy it in 2012. I got it as part of a Humble Bundle a year ago, and it’s been lingering in my Steam list ever since. Don’t be like me. Go play the full version right here online.

Trauma is a Myst-style adventure about a young woman who’s recovering from an auto accident. You explore her dreams through a series of photographs. The photos don’t fill the screen, which leads to a great sense that these small scraps of film are windows into this woman’s mind. To interact with the world, you draw gestures, which look like smears of light on a long-exposure photo. Each of the four dreams has a different gesture to learn. Once you know them, you can go back to any of the previous ones and find alternate endings.

The stunning part is how Trauma‘s design allows you to explore who this woman is through her dreams. While nothing is spelled out, she does narrate bits, as if she’s giving you a tour. From there you infer details about her life though the symbolism of her dreams. In one dream, you have to catch a ghost that leaves light trails behind. As you hunt it down, you realize that the ghost represents all the role models in her life, particularly her late parents. Capturing this ghost drives both you and the character, and once you finally grasp it, all your purpose is gone, and the dream fades. This is just one of many fantastic setups scattered throughout the game.

Too many “art games” seem to have minimal gameplay and inscrutable narratives. I found Dear Esther to be moving, but only in spite of its own discordant nature. Trauma strikes a great balance by being interpretive without being vague. It’s an intimate mirror of humanity, one that reflects our fears and insecurities, but without being judgmental. When we look into it, we’re startled to see parts of ourselves, but Trauma is a comforting whisper, saying “It’s ok, I’ve been there too.”

In the end, it only lasted for about an hour. I didn’t find all the alternate endings, but I tried. Yet, that hour was the richest gaming experience I’ve had in recent memory. It stuck in my mind like a splinter, and it’s given me a hunger to experience art genuine to human nature. Trauma is an experience that has made every other game I played this year look like the time-wasting fodder it is. Now that I’ve savored this sweet, intrinsic experience, it’s made the extrinsic reward of leveling up and gathering points in other games seem so hollow as to be repulsive. It’s a game so good that it’s ruined me for other games.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

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

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Zeal Game Studio
System requirements: Windows Vista/Win 7, Dual Core 2.4 GHz or better CPU, 4 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8000/AMD Radeon 2000 or better graphics card with Shader Model 4 support, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 10, 3 GB hard-drive space, broadband Internet connection
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

What would it be like to run a kingdom of dwarves? This is the central question posed by A Game of Dwarves. As it turns out, it takes some real effort to run a kingdom of short, ill-tempered, mythological sentient beings with a penchant for digging their way through the world. In the tradition of memorable games such as Dungeon Keeper, A Game of Dwarves asks you to manage your people, build them a home that satisfies their needs, and lead them to victory against their enemies, while digging to find riches and materials for them to use and trade.

And digging there is aplenty. The game features a three-dimensional map. Your dwarves can dig up, down and sideways. You can even tunnel up to the surface and run some agriculture in the sun if you’re so inclined. The only real limits on your exploration are blocks of undigium (which cannot be mined) and your willingness to endanger your dwarves by delving into dangerous areas. And it’s not just about living space, either. Silver, gold, platinum, stone, marble, titanium, iron, and a host of fictional and exotic ores are waiting for the pickaxes of your miners. And you’ll need all of them, because your crafter dwarves need a steady influx of materials to build up your kingdom. Those stone beds, marble chests and fancy training dummies aren’t going to build themselves. And since the more valuable and rare exotic materials are deeper in the ground than plain ol’ iron, you must balance your greed with caution, lest you dig too deeply, too fast.

But you can’t mine for food and wood, and therein lies the other half of the game’s economy. There are fertile patches of earth where you can plant both trees and vegetables. The catch is that trees and vegetables generally require wealth, minted from silver and gold, to plant and harvest. Thus, on every map, you’re asked to balance the population with their ability to harvest the bare essentials of life. Dwarves can and will starve to death without food, so you might have 20 percent of your population devoted to farming plants. The catch is that once a dwarf has a specific job, his task can’t change, so every dwarf you dedicate to farming is a dwarf who can’t mine, research, or fight in battles.

Did I mention fighting? The deep places of the Earth hold a variety of residents that aren’t happy when dwarves burrow into their homes. Some of them are easy to dispatch, such as gnomes or goblins. But the further down you go, the nastier they become, with wizards and shamans killing dwarves in significant numbers if you’re unprepared. Military dwarves must be trained and supported; you, as the player, can’t directly attack enemies. Thus, you must manage your kingdom and its military resources in such a way that your military dwarves are able to respond to threats, rather than sleeping comfortably on the third layer of your underground kingdom while the miners are dying in droves 20 layers below them. And if you want them to take on specialized advanced classes, from grenadier to berserkers, you have to mine the exotic materials they need, which places them in danger.

A Game of Dwarves has both a free-form custom game option, in which you have a random map and can build up your kingdom however you want, and a campaign in which you must complete missions and conquer the whole map. Because the game clearly labels all blocks in which you might find a hive of enemies, there isn’t too much difficulty to any mission. This is a game in which the challenge might be in accomplishing a goal quickly or building a kingdom whose beauty rivals Moria at its zenith. And in that sense, I really enjoyed the gameplay. However, there are some issues that mar what should’ve been a streamlined and perfect gaming experience. There are serious performance problems when you issue large dig orders. I have no idea why, but tagging a 20×20 layer of blocks for your miners to dig out causes performance to drop considerably, framerate and all. It’s weird because nothing else in the game does this, and it doesn’t seem to matter what circumstances are involved. This is a real problem because there are plenty of times when you just want your miner dwarves to strip-mine layer after layer as you pursue some goal or strive for a needed resource. Another problem is the lack of warning from dwarves who are cut off from critical services. The game has alarms for combat and dwarves nearing death. But your dwarves won’t tell you if they’re cut off from beds, dining tables or their places of work. Since you don’t get a warning until they’re nearing death from starvation, you can’t correct the issue until it’s too late. Even teleporting them to a good location isn’t helpful when they’re too far gone. I might be a cold-hearted ruler, but even I don’t want to waste the time and resources of promoting dwarflings to replace miners who starve just because they won’t tell me, “Hey, Prince of Dwarves, we broke through to some new area and we don’t have a ladder or path to food and rest. Could you give us a hand?”

If you play this game, and you have a living memory of Dungeon Keeper, then you’ll be struck by the similarities involved. However, A Game of Dwarves is by no means a replacement for that classic franchise. It’s also a smaller, less costly game, so it’s unfair to compare them too closely. Does it justify its $9.99 price tag on Steam? I feel it does. Despite its issues, it’s a satisfying and simple game that can keep you occupied for hours. It isn’t going to revolutionize the gaming industry, but it’s not priced to do so, either. I enjoyed the time I spent with it, and I hope that Zeal Game Studio capitalizes on their experience to take it to the next level.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

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

Publisher: UTV Ignition Entertainment
Developer: Golgoth Studio
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 2 GHz Intel Core2Duo or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GT or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 500 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Review by: Peter Gore

I’m not a puzzle guy. Oh sure, I’ve had Tetris on my cell phone as a time-waster, but I never joined the cult of Bejeweled or any of the similar knockoffs that have come along. So when I received Magical Drop V to review, two questions sprang to mind: How am I going to review a game of a type I know nothing about, and what do you suppose happened to Magical Drop I through IV?

After doing a little research, it turns out that Magical Drop originated in the mid-1990s as a relatively popular arcade series. While the games have been available on some of the console platforms, Magical Drop V is the first version accessible to PC gamers. Puzzle games are popular here in the US, but are extremely popular in some Asian countries, particularly Japan, and this one clearly caters to the Japanese audience. You begin by choosing from a list of roughly a dozen characters to compete in matches. The ultimate goal is to defeat all your opponents, and thereby receive the “magical drop” of your wishes. This magical drop is only available once every 10 years and is achieved through total victory over your opponents.

You compete in story mode against the CPU or in multiplayer in a contest in which you try to catch falling colored balls, then toss them back up as more lines of orbs descend from the top of the screen. You win your match one of two ways – fill your quota bar before your opponent fills theirs, or fill their side of the screen with dropping lines of colored balls. The key to victory is catching the right balls and throwing them back up to create combos that accelerate the filling of your quota bar, while at the same time overwhelming your opponent’s side of the screen with dropping lines. You can control your character using the keyboard or game pad, the default method being the Xbox controller.

On initial download from Steam, I wasn’t able to remap the keyboard controls, but at some point the game was updated so that limited remapping was available. The lack of mouse support had me puzzled, but again, this was originally an arcade series that continues to show its console roots. The game installs easily enough, and the graphics are serviceable, with lots of bright colors, but limited animation; about what you would expect from a 2D game. MDV shows its nods to Japanese appeal with very Pokemon-looking characters who spout poorly translated English dialogue. I was never sure if this was purposeful or not, but it did leave me scratching my head at times. Perhaps more problematic is that the game makes you repeatedly go through the same screens time after time before you play, making what might’ve been cute or humorous once, incredibly annoying the fifth or sixth time.

MDV is poorly documented, so a relative noob like myself didn’t know where to begin. I opted to play with my keyboard and settled on the default layout, chose a character, set difficulty to easy, and proceeded to get totally owned by the CPU. After a few matches I decided I was overthinking the whole thing and moved to just trying to have fun. And to my surprise, I did. I got into the fast pace, the strategy of making combos, and improving my performance grades, which you get at the end of each match. I slowly got the hang of it, ultimately earning my character the elusive magical drop after seven matches that took me a total of 10 minutes to play. A good puzzle gamer could rip through all dozen or so characters in an hour or two. Other than improving your match grades, on solo there really isn’t much replayability. Multiplayer might have been interesting, but repeated attempts to find a head-to-head match proved fruitless.

Many Avault readers are likely hardcore gamers, people who spend hundreds of hours creating a level-cap character or exploring every nook and cranny of a game world. The reality is most people who sit down to play a video game do so casually; 10 minutes here, a half hour there, playing social media-type games. As I reviewed Magical Drop V it was important for me to keep this difference in mind. Despite the quirkiness of Magical Drop V, I had fun with the game. The graphics won’t make your head explode, the controls are less than desirable, and the language translations are obnoxious at times. But it is what it is – a brief, old-school time-waster that might appeal to the average gamer.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments

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

Many players complain about the stories in games, or the lack of them. These folks should be flocking to The Walking Dead, Telltale’s five-part odyssey through graphic novelist Robert Kirkman’s zombified universe. You’ll find more honest-to-god storytelling in a single episode of this series than in any three AAA releases. But is all of this narrative emphasis too much of a good thing?

Picking up at the end of Episode 1, escaped convict Lee Everett, his young companion Clementine and the rest of his group of plague survivors are holed up in a suburban motor inn. Their food is almost gone, making an already contentious situation much more dangerous. Circumstances force them to hit the road, where they pick up new traveling partners, lose a few to death and misunderstanding, and encounter people and situations that could only possibly be found at the end of the world.

The strength of the entire series lies both in the storytelling and how you react to it. Your decisions at pivotal points of the story can have a significant impact on how the rest of the plot plays out, making the series almost infinitely replayable. “Immersive” is one of those words that we game reviewers aren’t supposed to use, but there’s no way around using it to describe these games. But as the series progresses, it starts to get weighed down in exposition, almost to the level of Dear Esther, an indie game in which you do nothing but spend several hours wandering around an environment, triggering voice-over dialogue. This is especially true in Episodes 3 and 4, which lull you into a sense of complacency, then hit you with quick-time events and mouse-aiming combat out of the blue (don’t let your fingers stray far from the keyboard). The developers also couldn’t resist the temptation to throw in some tried-and-true adventure-game mechanics; at one point, Lee puts a blowtorch and a heavy acetylene tank in his back pocket. And there are some problems. You have to use the arrow keys to select dialogue choices instead of being able to click them with the pointer, and there are some audio issues later in the series (low volume, stuttering, etc). The final chapter is better focused than the previous two, but the ending is abrupt, leaving too many dangling threads (be sure to stay with the game after the closing credits of Episode 5 for a setup to Season 2).

The Walking Dead is unquestionably Telltale’s best episodic series thus far. The combination of an involving, sometimes heartwrenching story, comic-book-style graphics and the player’s ability to shape the narrative has spawned a new kind of adventure game. However, the focus of the series shifted too far towards plot exposition in the last three episodes. Hopefully Telltale will be able to refine their technique and make a better-balanced Season 2. Because I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Our Recommendation (all five episodes):

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