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: 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: 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: 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: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software
System requrements: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7, 2.3 GHz quad-core CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce GTX 560/Radeon HD 5850 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0-compatible sound device, 20 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

I’m rarely apprehensive about playing games. Usually the only thing I lose if one disappoints me is whatever I paid for it (and a few hours). I had seen the hype (and the dubstep) that promised me great things from Borderlands 2. But this time around, my fond memories of the original Borderlands were a stake. What if the sequel was a repackaging of the original with little more than a shinier veneer? Are a bazillion new guns and loot items going to increase the game’s fun factor? Would Claptrap still exhibit the ridiculous humor that was simultaneously annoying and entertaining? Once I dove into the world of Pandora again, would any of these questions even matter?

Set five years after the original game, BL2 has you returning to the planet Pandora. New dictator Handsome Jack has taken credit for discovering the Vault and is actively killing all who attempt to locate it. After an ambush, your Vault hunter awakens in a frozen wasteland to the robot voice of Claptrap as he scavenges the dead for anything valuable. While following Claptrap back to his hideout, you’re visited by the Guardian Angel and given a purpose: rescue the original Vault hunters and kill Handsome Jack.

The mechanics of BL2 should be immediately familiar if you’ve spent any amount of time in the original game. If you haven’t, then here’s the skinny. Borderlands is essentially three things: lots of guns, lots of killing, and lots of loot. The four classes of Vault hunter are Commando (tactical gunning), Assassin (sniping and stealth), Gunzerker (run and gun) and Siren (guns and energy weaponry). Your Vault hunter’s main defense is a regenerative shield that can be upgraded by finding improved shields throughout the world. On Pandora, however, the best defense is a good offense.

Guns are everywhere, and you’ll constantly find yourself checking the stats of new weapons against your currently equipped arsenal. Not all weapons are created equal, and the rarer ones (distinguished by color coding) usually yield the highest damage. Weapons are also identified by their manufacturer (Maliwan produces weapons with elemental damage that are more effective against biological enemies, for example). In addition to the guns you hold in your hands, each Vault hunter has their own perk tree that supplements their strengths. The Commando, for example, can deploy an auto-firing turret that can act as a distraction while you reposition your character in a less vulnerable firing spot. I recommend playing each class for a few hours to find your favorite weaponry and perk combination. I favor the Commando, as he’s somewhere between the Assassin and Gunzerker classes.

In describing the pros and cons of BL2, I run the risk of labeling something as a “con” when it might be a “pro” to another gamer. So I’ll just go ahead and mix it all together under the umbrella of “my first impressions” and let you decide. I honestly couldn’t come up with a verifiable con in my hours of gameplay. There were things that bugged me, but nothing as objectionable as a glitch, poor control mechanics or busted physics. Is BL2 an awesome game? Absolutely. Does it feel like you’re playing the original Borderlands? No doubt. But I’ve consulted the game review gods, and we’ve come to a unanimous decision: in this case, a sequel being alarmingly like the original gets a pass.

What captivated me in the original Borderlands is 100 percent present in Borderlands 2. Seeing the red “CRITICAL” text above a perfect headshot is just as rewarding as it was before. The weapons are familiar, but with enough variation and enhancements to make looting as enjoyable as it has ever been. Claptrap still annoys me, but I find myself wanting to hear what he has to say next. His humor is hit or miss, but it somehow makes this trash can-shaped robot as awkward as he is endearing (similar to Disney’s Wall-E). Somehow Gearbox has managed to create a sequel with the perfect balance of familiarity and novelty, while dodging the mistakes of many sequels that are so familiar they’re boring or so novel they’re destroyed by gimmicks. If you’re expecting something groundbreaking from Borderlands 2, don’t. If you want more Borderlands with some cool new additions and a new environment, you won’t regret paying full price for the sequel. The only possible con of Borderlands 2 is that it’s an enhanced version of the original. As it turns out, that’s exactly what I wanted it to be.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Matthew Booth for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Reflections
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 3.0 GHz Pentium D/2.2 GHz Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or better CPU, 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista/Win7), 256 MB graphics card with Shader Model 4.0 support, DirectX 9-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 10 GB hard drive space
Genre: Driving
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Driving games seem to fall into two camps: simulation and arcade. This division shows just how stagnant the genre has become. Just because a game’s based around cars, doesn’t mean that they have to all be so similar. Of all things, Driver: San Francisco comes along to stir the pot. After its first smash hit a decade ago, the franchise was dragged down by a series of poorly received sequels. Can developer Reflections revive both the property and the entire genre?

While hunting down the notorious kingpin Jerico, our hotshot cop protagonist Tanner lands himself in the ER. Shortly after, he’s back on the streets, seeking revenge. Not only does he recover quickly, but he also can possess other drivers at will, shifting from car to car. It’s pretty obvious that the entire game is just a hallucinatory dream Tanner’s having while he’s in critical condition. With the pesky fly of plausibility firmly crushed, Reflections can open the throttle.

In Driver SF, all you do is drive. That might seem obvious to you, but seems like a new idea to the franchise. First off, the handling is solid. It’s neither as floaty as the cars in GTA4, nor is it as tight and grippy as in Saints Row: The Third. All the cars have an appropriately weighty feel to them, and trying to fling them around corners takes a good bit of concentration. In addition, you get a boost move. Instead of a traditional nitro boost, you can slow down a bit and charge up for a boost, either to leap ahead or to ram an opponent.

And where else would you be driving but in San Francisco? The entire city is yours to rule, as you accomplish side quests and ultimately hunt down Jericho again. To use a crude analogy, it’s like a form of Burnout Paradise mixed with the mission progression of the first Assassin’s Creed. Only unlike Creed, the side missions are diverse and interesting. Also, you earn “willpower,” a celestial currency you can use to unlock and upgrade cars, making this one of the few times you can wish yourself into a new car.

There’s an undercurrent of joy that seems to run throughout Driver SF. You can feel it in the tongue-in-cheek story, the frictionless car physics, and the driving controls. Shifting between vehicles feels like a fun way to get around town, until you get creative with it. Why race fairly when you can grab a semi and hurl it into the path of your opponents? When all of this joy is blended together and poured into the open-world mold, it comes out in a cream-filled pastry that has a similar taste to Just Cause 2. It’s a happy place made out of American chrome and gasoline fumes.

I never thought that a driving game could be witty. I usually reserve that adjective for games with more plot and character interaction. Yet Driver San Francisco is filled with Quantum Leap-style exchanges, as Tanner jumps into the bodies of random drivers conversing with their passengers. Sometimes that means he’s a cop talking to his partner about retirement, other times he suddenly becomes a teen taking a driving test. It’s small details like these that make the game so gloriously fun. Driver SF isn’t just a great recovery for the franchise. It’s a fantastic game, period.

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

Publisher: Penny Arcade
Developer: Zeboyd Games
System requirements: Windows XP, 1.6 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, DirectX 9.0c-compatible graphics card, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device, Windows Media Player, 200 MB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

It’s another day at Strange Developments, Inc., and investigators/god-killers Tyco and Gabe await their next case. The phone suddenly rings. On the other end, a dark, brooding silence with hints of fear. This can only mean one thing: a phone call from someone inside a dark mime cult. Our dashing heroes dash off heroically to investigate. Thus starts the third chapter in the On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness series, an utterly delightful JRPG spin on the venerable web comic Penny Arcade from retro-masters Zeboyd Games.

The first two installments of the series were developed by Hothead Games four years ago. While warmly received, they didn’t gather enough steam to complete the trilogy. Now, Zeboyd has stepped up to do what must be done. Following the previous game’s JRPG roots, RSPD3 is done up in the 16-bit pastiches Zeboyd does so very well. If you’ve played their previous games Breath of Death VII or Cthulhu Saves the World, then you’ve got an idea.

Of course, the Penny Arcade comic itself lacks any true narrative, and perhaps that’s why RSPD works so well. It takes characters you already know and fits them into archetypical roles in a genre story. It’s like a murder-mystery dinner party, only Cthulhu shows up (note to self: DO THIS). While this third chapter follows right after the previous two, you won’t feel like you’ve missed something if you just pick it up now.

While traditional RPGs are about managing resources between fights, here everything regenerates between combat, even items. While this might sound like a shocking heresy, it actually removes a lot of frustration and needless tedium. Fights now play out like grand strategic affairs as you try to desperately use every resource available to you to survive to the next fight. It’s interesting, it’s fast, and it’ll hold you in its grip even if you despise traditional RPG combat. The traditional three-character party consists of our two heroes and guest characters who file in and out as the story progresses. Meanwhile, you can attach a number of different class badges to Tyco and Gabe. These range from the Cardboard Tube Samurai to the Crabomancer, and while those might not seem like polar opposites, there’s also a wide range of creative classes in-between.

Jerry “Tyco” Holkins’ writing is in true form. That man could write a daily essay on his sock drawer and it would still be an engrossing piece of literature. This is the one JRPG in which you utterly devour all the text you find, not because you must trigger the next sequence, but because it’s just that delectable. The wit utterly drips from this game. Every item description, monster text, even the monsters themselves are hilarious. For example, there’s the Mime Pirates (“’talk like a mime-pirate day’ never caught on”). Meanwhile, Zeboyd faithfully recreates Mike “Gabe” Krahulik’s expressive artwork in sprite form, a feat as impressive as it is delightful. The very best of Penny Arcade has been distilled and sprinkled liberally across the entire game.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 isn’t just a witty concoction of JRPG tropes, but a uniquely inventive game that can stand on its own. This isn’t just for Penny Arcade fans, but those who enjoy strategy and wit of any kind. Not only is RSPD3 a fairly meaty game that clocks in at around 10 hours, but it’s also only $5 and available on PC, Mac and Xbox 360. Currently, Zeboyd is promising future content updates and a fourth (and final?) installment next year. If its anything like this game, it’s something to mark on the family calendar.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

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

Publisher: xii Games
Developer: Wadjet Eye Games
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.8 GHz Pentium IV or better CPU, 512 MB RAM (1 GB for Vista/Win 7), 256 MB graphics card, 1GB hard-drive space
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Resonance is a puzzle/adventure game that revolves around a murder mystery, dangerous technology, and the memories and motivations of its four characters. When a scientist is murdered in his lab after making paranoid ramblings, it’s up to you to figure out who did it, why, and what’s in the secret vault. Utilizing some innovating game elements, Resonance is more interesting than its modest price tag implies.

Like most adventure games, Resonance involves a ton of puzzles that need solving, but unlike more tired releases in this genre, it shakes things up a little bit. Once you reach a certain point in the plot, you end up controlling four different characters, each with their own inventories, memories and abilities. The more difficult puzzles generally require you to coordinate between two or more of your characters; there are times where you’re required to jump around to different characters, using their inventories, memories and specialized abilities to accomplish all of your tasks.

But the innovation in Resonance isn’t in the four-character framework. I keep using the word “memories” because the game has a multi-format inventory system. Each character has a physical inventory, a short-term memory and a long-term memory. The physical inventory is just what you think it is: physical objects currently being held by that person. The long-term memory acts as a journal for that character. Important things that happen in the game are recorded here so you can review them later. The short-term memory is the most interesting part. It’s used to “record” items in the game world that cannot be physically removed from their locations. For example, when trying to shut off the water pouring from the pipes in front of the lab, you can put the shut-off valve in your short-term memory. Now that you “remember” it, you can carry that object with you and, thanks to the nice interface in the conversation system, drop it into conversation at any time. Instead of trying to open conversation trees or trying to spell/use the correct name for an object in conversation, you can just drop your memory into the conversation and see if the person you are talking to has anything useful to say about it. This makes interaction with other characters much more interesting (there are some nifty side discussions you can open up this way) and less frustrating. You can also drop long-term memories or physical objects into conversations, which is especially useful when two of your four characters are interacting. And since developer xii Games took the time to put in tons of things that can be remembered, this mechanic is not so much a gimmick as it is a vital factor in solving puzzles.

Resonance borrows heavily from old-school 1990s adventure games, but it’s a bit more adult in its plot development and characters. I don’t mean that it has sexual content; I mean the four protagonists are wrestling with issues that are less “hey, let’s go on an adventure!” and more “I’ve got some baggage from my past and this whole murder thing isn’t helping.” Some sequences are clearly the work of a writer who wants you to feel empathy towards the characters. There are moments when you navigate through a character’s nightmares, while others have you relive moments in the past when abuse and neglect occurred. And because the plot is mystery-driven, the game drops enough hints and red herrings throughout so that you begin to suspect treachery from even the characters you control. The 256-color graphics and low resolution can make the game look like another cheesy ’90s knockoff, but the writing demonstrates this isn’t just some throwaway adventure.

However, when I say 256-color graphics, I really mean it. If you’ve read my reviews, you know I don’t think this is a big deal. However, the game’s blocky graphics come through all the more clearly on a big monitor. While it’s not a strike in my book, those who love their graphics might want to look at videos and screenshots before making the decision to purchase. Aside from that, I wish there was an easier way to lasso all four characters to move them around the city. If you want to move more than one character at a time, you have to enter into a conversation with each character you want to take with you and tell them to walk with you. I would have really preferred a simpler approach involving the mouse.

But even these flaws are fairly minor. As far as I’m concerned, Resonance is the reason indie games exist. You don’t need a $10 million budget, a staff of a hundred and a selling price of $69.99 to have a good game. Sometimes a great experience can be had for $9.99. This is one of those times.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: BioWare
System requirements: Windows XP (SP3)/Vista (SP1)/Win 7, 1.8 GHz Core2Duo or better CPU, 1 GB RAM (XP)/2 GB RAM (Vista/Win 7), 256 MB Nvidia 7900/ATI X1800 or better graphics card, 15 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG/Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

The word “epic” is passed around liberally in critical media, be it the movies or videogames. The unquestioned master of the epic film was director Cecil B. DeMille, whose films carried such massive scope and reach that only Cinemascope could hold them. In gaming, developer BioWare has crafted perhaps the first true epic story in the industry’s short history with the Mass Effect series. The 80 to 100-hour journey finally reaches its end in Mass Effect 3, in which one person truly shapes the future of billions.

Following the battle at the Collector base at the end of Mass Effect 2, Cmdr. Shepard has been relieved of his duties and brought to Earth. He’s been trying to convince galactic leaders that the Reapers, a devastating alien force bent on universal destruction, are on the way to cull the herd in the Milky Way galaxy, but none of them seem to want to believe him, in spite of past events that make an invasion seem imminent. His warnings prove correct when a Reaper force arrives on Earth and starts reducing the world’s cities to rubble. Leaving his friend Adm. Anderson to organize a resistance, Shepard reluctantly returns to his ship, the Normandy, and heads to Mars, where plans for a superweapon that could defeat the Reapers are said to have been found.

During the next few dozen hours of gameplay, you guide Shepard across the galaxy in search of alien races to join you in your quest to stop the Reapers. But it’s not as simple as dropping by and saying “pretty please?”. The various galactic powers have their own problems that have to be solved before they consider taking up your cause, so you travel from system to system, scratching their backs so that they would scratch yours. As you gain allies, a bar graph fills in from left to right, indicating your fleet’s readiness level and troop strength. You can move on to the end of the story at any time, but how well you might fare in the final battle is determined by your readiness level.

One of the great things about the Mass Effect series has been the small but significant improvements in the gameplay from the first game to the last. Combat has evolved from a simple, cover-based squad shooter to a more balanced combination of shooting and melee action. Resource-gathering, the bane of RPG players everywhere, has seen the biggest improvement. Instead of strip-mining every planet in the galaxy for raw materials (used to buy upgrades for weapons and the Normandy), now you scan each star system for anomalies, then only launch probes at planets where those anomalies are found — but scan too thoroughly and you can attract the attention of the Reapers, who can chase you back to hyperspace if you linger too long. The fruits of these explorations include fuel, alien artifacts, and lost military assets that help to grow your fleet. The acquisition of side quests has been changed, as well. Now all you have to do is eavesdrop on casual conversations to receive new quests; no exclamation points over the heads of NPCs, and your journal automatically updates to let you know what you need to find, where you can find it and to whom to deliver it when you’re done. And there’s one new (and slightly controversial) addition to the series: a multiplayer mode. This takes the form of a four-player co-op survival mode, played on various maps from the single-player game. Completing a dozen or so waves of enemies gains you XP to improve your MP character, as well as a bump in your battle-readiness percentage in the campaign, which helps determine which ending you get after the final battle. I’ve never been a fan of online multiplayer, but I found myself really enjoying it here. Waves are short but fast-paced, there’s plenty of ammo, and each wave is a little bit different from the one before. Fans of the series who’ve complained about the inclusion of MP should try it out; if a lone-wolf gamer such as I can get into it, then the haters might like it, too.

I feel sorry for the poor souls at BioWare who had to write the voluminous descriptive material for the game’s codex and the planets that you visit and scan; most players never bother to read it, since reading all of it would add another couple of hours to your playtime. But it’s this attention to detail that has helped make the series what it is. However, there are still a few blemishes that need to be mentioned. The battle scenes tend to be the same on every planet you visit: first wave is cannon-fodder, next waves are a bit more challenging, final wave is very tough (be prepared to die frequently); a little variation would’ve been welcome. Actually, there is one mission that’s considerably different from the others, but it takes far too long to finish and tries to fill in backstory that doesn’t really need filling in. The cover mechanic can sometimes be unreliable, exposing you to enemy fire longer than you might want. There’s a graphics glitch in the cockpit of the Normandy in which your Shepard can get stuck and not be able to move, requiring a reload. NPC crewmembers can be found in exactly the same places, doing exactly the same things, through the entire game; don’t these people have duties to perform? (And a minor gripe — only one crewmember ever salutes Shepard as he moves through the ship; aren’t these people in the military?) The galactic map indicates where any uncompleted quests can be found, but there’s no way to tell where the fuel depots are; this is important, since travel between star systems uses fuel. Moving a tiny little Normandy through the galactic map is the cheesiest thing in the entire series, and unfortunately it returns in ME3. I also had some serious sound glitches; some dialogue sounded muffled, as if the voice actors were standing too far away from the microphones. And then there’s the ending. I won’t go into the extreme drama that has been generated by the ending (that’s for another forum), but I found the ending to be completely appropriate. The fight scene leading to the final sequence is the most unrelentingly intense battle scene in the entire series. However, I did want to know what happened to my friends whom I didn’t select to go with me in the final fight. Also, BioWare has made it very inconvenient to go back and see the endings that you didn’t select in your original playthrough; the quick-save feature is disabled in the final sequence, and the last autosave is overwritten after the credits, so you have to sit through 15 minutes of exposition three times to see all of the endings.

Let’s take a look at the Mass Effect series as a whole. BioWare has crafted a story that Mr. DeMille himself would envy, a story in which the Butterfly Effect is definitely in play (a single decision that you made way back in the first game can have serious ramifications at the end of the series). You meet dozens of memorable characters for whom you feel actual emotions; few games get you so personally invested. The series is a landmark achievement in gaming, and Mass Effect 3 is a fine conclusion. It’s not the prettiest game, and it has more than it’s share of controversy attached to it, but it’s the ending to a gaming experience that should not be missed.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 12 comments

Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Developer: From Software
Genre: Action RPG
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

I’ll be the first to admit I have a problem when it comes to games: I’m a gaming masochist. The first thing I always do is crank up the difficulty. But I wasn’t prepared for Dark Souls, the spiritual successor to Namco Bandai and From Software’s Demon’s Souls. The sequel takes everything you thought you knew about fairness in games and crushes it under hordes of undead and massive dragons.

The world of Dark Souls is a bleak one. Once a vast ashen waste ruled by immortal dragons, it is now ruled by the “lesser” races who discovered fire in eons past and used it to overthrow the dragons. The Age of Fire they created is waning now, and the once-great Anor Londo, City of Lords, is now a crumbling ruin filled with the cursed undead. Dark Souls places you in the role of one of them, a human marked by the Dark Sign. Though you’ll never truly die, you pay for this immortality with your sanity, as all undead eventually go Hollow. These sad souls are herded into a great asylum and locked away to rot until the end of the world. Old half-forgotten legends, however, speak of a chosen undead who will journey to Anor Londo, rekindle the Flame of Lords and begin the Age of Fire anew.

Dark Souls has been marketed using one key phrase: Prepare to Die. It lives up to all of its promise. Death is the central mechanic in a punishing risk-vs.-reward system. On the surface, Dark Souls is an action RPG with an easy-to-grasp combat system, but there’s so much more to it than it appears. Enemies killed reward you with a quantity of souls. Souls are your everything: your experience for leveling and your currency for buying and upgrading. You rarely have enough to do both at the same time. If you die, then every soul you haven’t spent is dropped. Of course, you can go get them if you can get back to where you died in once piece. Enemies hit hard, though, and no matter what level you are, it’s always possible to be maimed even by the weakest of enemies. Another important resource is Humanity. These little black consumable sprites play a number of roles and are nearly as precious a resource as souls, and far more scarce. Humanity count influences your item drop rate and overall defenses. It can be spent to reverse your hollowing, kindle your bonfire checkpoints and allow you to engage in the multiplayer aspects of the game. Even that has its risks, however. Humanity spent is lost forever, and not only is your humanity count dropped with your souls upon death, but also your human state reverts to undead. Being “human” allows you to summon other players to fight at your side against bosses, but it also opens your world to invasion by black phantoms seeking to slay you for souls and humanity. Everything you do is a risk, the benefits of which you must weigh against your potential downfall.

Dark Souls is a punishing, punishing game. The difficulty is unforgiving, and not once does it hold your hand or guide you through anything. NPC interactions are sparse and dialogue is short. Bonfire checkpoints, your only safe havens, are few and far between, and sometimes hidden. This game will beat you savagely into the ground for the slightest misstep, but no matter how hard it hits you, you always come back for more. The risk-vs.-reward system makes your eventual victory incredibly sweet and grants a feeling of true achievement rarely found in games. Deserving high praise in particular are the online features. Perpetually connected to the PSN, players in Dark Souls catch echoes of others around them and in the light of the bonfires; they can even see each other clearly for a few brief seconds. It’s a surreal but effective way to ease the game’s otherwise suffocating sense of isolation. Those glimpses of other worlds and other people fighting the same fights lend a sense of community with no words needed. Even when summoning allies for a boss fight, there’s no way to chat, only a series of motions.

There’s very little negative to say about Dark Souls. It’s not for the casual gamer. Those who can take the heat, however, will find an amazingly deep game, filled with strategic combat and interesting characters. I can argue that the graphics aren’t the best I’ve ever seen. I can nitpick that it doesn’t give you much direction, or that messages players leave can be misleading. All of that, however, is honestly minor. There’s nothing big enough to truly take away from the sense of pride in victory, the exhilarating combat that keeps you on your toes at all times, and the grand, epic landscape of Anor Londo.

Dark Souls is difficult to describe without waxing poetic in the length of a small novel. There are so many small, intricate details to praise. These little things add up to a game that is truly epic in scope and offers a feeling of accomplishment found nowhere else.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

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

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Paradox Interactive
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Pentium IV/AMD 3500+ CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800/Radeon X1900 graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound card,
2 GB free hard-drive space, DirectX 9, Internet connection for multiplayer
Genre: RTS
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: February 14, 2012

It’s hard to find something new when it comes to strategy games. Part of the reason so many of them are formulaic is because those formulas work. An examination of sales for games such as Total War: Shogun II reveals that no matter what strategy gamers say they want, they really want the ability to drive their virtual enemies before them in gameplay that is difficult, but not too difficult. They want big battles, economic things to manage, and special perks that are unlocked through strategic choices of some sort. Crusader Kings II is not that kind of strategy game. Yes, it has armies, an economy to manage, wars to fight, and all the other elements you might expect, but it’s really about building up your dynasty and interacting with people. To play Crusader Kings II is to spend time pondering potential marriages for your children, worrying about your in-laws fighting you about claims to your titles, plotting against your liege, ingratiating yourself with the church, making sure your spouse isn’t trying to kill off your older children, and, when all that is accomplished, maybe going on a campaign to conquer your neighbors.

At the heart of its gameplay, CK2 is about managing your family and its titles. You don’t play a nation-state or faction; you control your lands and vassals. Your personal lands generate troops and revenue, giving you an economy to manage. But your vassals owe you taxes and troops in exchange for your protection as their liege. And if you have a liege, you owe him or her taxes and revenue, too, in exchange for protection. Thus, you might be an emperor with a hundred vassals or a duke with both a liege and a few vassals, even if you are both a part of the same empire. But because you’re not playing nation-states, personal relations are all important. Even if your vassals legally owe you a certain amount of troops and taxes, they might shortchange you if they hate you. If you and your liege have a good relationship, he might just give you additional lands and titles. Your sons might desire titles; if you grant them their own lands, your sons are now both your children and your vassals, further complicating your relationship with your children. And just because your neighbor is also a vassal of your own liege, it doesn’t mean you can’t fight one another. There are provisions that allow vassals to fight their own independent wars, sidelining their liege as they settle their disputes on their own. This ensures that whether you play as a minor earl or a major king, there is always something to do and important things to manage. It also means that you are never really totally secure. There’s always someone who is mad at you for some reason.

And there are plenty of things to manage. Paradox has borrowed their plot mechanic from Sengoku and has taken it to the next level. Plots allow you to interact with the hundred or so NPC rulers and characters in the game to work towards common goals. Obvious plots you can initiate or join include things such as deposing your liege or modifying the ruling laws of your realm to something more to your liking. You can also plot to kill people (getting those close to your target to join the plot makes it much more likely to be successful) and even plot to change the succession of your realm. And since Paradox has programmed the AI to plot and scheme with the same gusto as a human, it’s not uncommon to see five to 10 plots occurring simultaneously in any major kingdom. Plots, combined with the character traits system, ensure that the AI behaves in a fairly rational way and in a way in which human players can work together. Instead of the AI randomly declaring wars against its liege or vassals, you see it plotting in such a way that the ambitious NPCs team up against their enemy and invite humans to join them. There’s never a moment when you say to yourself, “What is the AI trying to accomplish?” It’s all very clear, and since you only know about plots you detect, it’s always possible to wake up one day and suddenly find yourself being blackmailed by a coalition of enemies who have every reason to want to see you brought down.

Warfare becomes the continuation of politics by other means in CK2, as it fits fairly well with all of the plotting and complex interpersonal relations that occur. You don’t tactically control your armies. Instead, you direct them to march around the strategic map, and when battle is joined, your character and his/her vassals and courtiers take the field, fighting the battle for you using all of their competence or incompetence. Further regulating war is the need for a legitimate reason to go to war. That reason determines what you can demand when the conflict is finished. You can’t just attack and conquer France without either having a legitimate claim to the throne or having the head of your religion sanction such an action. Wars between fellow Christians tend to be limited affairs, since claims are required to fight. If you’re looking for a game in which you can just annex Christian states quickly and efficiently, this isn’t the game for you. For those interested in fighting wars of expansion, you need to attack non-Christians, as infidels aren’t given the same political status. Reflecting the nature of warfare in the period, aggression under the pretext of religious conversion is acceptable. But it works both ways, so it always pays not to overextend. While you can indiscriminately fight with non-Christians, they can do the same thing, and the last thing anyone fighting in the Reconquista or defending the Kingdom of Jerusalem wants to see is a coalition of well-armed Islamic powers banding together to wipe you from the face of the Earth. The AI isn’t stupid, and things get even more hectic when the Mongols show up, since they can attack everyone.

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments

Publisher: Iceberg Interactive
Developer: InterWave Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX 10.6.7, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or better CPU, 2 GB memory, 6 GB hard-drive space, 128 MB DirectX 9-compatible graphics card with Shader 2.0b support, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound device
Genre: FPS/RTS
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

My PC brethren, turn in your hymnals to #1337, and sing along with me: “Mods are good, mods are great, mods are things we appreciate.” Some of your favorite games started out as mods, and the others were undoubtedly influenced by them. Indie developer InterWave has been in the Source mod scene for a while now. Both Stargate: Last Stand and Insurgency (which is quite nice) are notches on their collective belts. Tossing the budget-o-meter up from “freebie” to “costs money,” they’ve cranked out the generic-titled Nuclear Dawn, which proclaims to offer a “full FPS and RTS experience within a single gameplay model, without crippling or diluting either side of the game.” Featuring six maps and 32-player matches, Nuclear Dawn isn’t just a funny pun on my mother-in-law’s name. It’s the best multiplayer FPS that you should be playing right now.

On the FPS side, Nuclear Dawn features four classes, each with different loadouts. Each class is marked by its own activated ability. The Exo can go into lockdown mode, turning into a living chaingun turret. This is countered by the Stealth, who can use (gasp!) stealth to run around and stab said Exos, who in turn are countered again by Soldiers and their stealth-detecting thermal goggles. Meanwhile, the Support class decides to stay out of it and tosses medkits, repairs buildings, or barbeques everyone. All classes are bolstered with the gradual unlocking of attachments. The unlocks simply add tactical versatility instead of greater power. If you’re a skilled player, you can top scoreboards regardless of rank.

Yet, this old formula gets really interesting when you have two commanders playing the game like an RTS against each other. Now you have to capture and hold resource nodes so your leader can build, using a deep tech-tree to unlock goodies or drop turrets on the field. Forward spawn points, fueled by a network of power relays, let the battle change momentum in ways that static control points never do, as you push forward to knock down the enemy’s command bunker.

The RTS/FPS crossbreed makes for some truly engaging team play. Even as a foot soldier, you’re engaged in the macro-level strategy. Defending critical power stations or sneaking behind lines to swipe a secondary resource node, you’re constantly aware how your actions affect the battle. Ideally, the players and commander work together to reach goals, each informing the other as situations arise. However, we all know that things never go quite like that, and mutinies are remarkably common. Pub games can be rough on commanders, but on a good server, the experience is unmatched.

Even though its built on the latest Left 4 Dead 2 build of Source, Valve’s venerable engine is certainly showing its age. If you want flashy graphics that use all eight cores of your rig, this isn’t your game. Nuclear doesn’t have much, but what it does have it uses very well. The maps are not only well constructed, but each also has its own feel. Pre-war ads flicker across urban walls, adding the right splashes of color. The floating HUD isn’t just functional, but pretty spiffy to boot.

There are many multiplayer shooters that compete for your time and your wallet, and InterWave has made sure to make more than just another copycat. While many of Nuclear Dawn‘s features, such as squads and unlocks, are borrowed from larger games, its soul is all-original. The RTS/FPS hybrid concept isn’t a gimmick, it’s a huge feature that makes the game stand out in a crowded field of look-a-likes. For $20, you get far more bang-per-buck out of it than most AAA games give you.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments

Publisher: Zachtronic Industries
Developer: Zachtronic Industries
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX 10.5.8 (Leopard), 2.0 GHz CPU, graphics card with frame buffer support, 1 GB RAM, 300 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

SpaceChem doesn’t seem to have a lot going for it. It’s a simple-looking 2D game about programming machines to build molecules. Yet, under this unassuming surface lies a game of such seething excitement that it’ll have you shouting and yelling more than when you play an FPS. I myself spoke such dark utterances that Khorne himself shivered. How can a science-themed puzzle game go so right?

As the title correctly suggests, SpaceChem does indeed involve chemistry in space. As a Reactor Engineer for a leading chemical synthesizer, it’s your job to take base elements and construct them into usable ones. Your reactor has two mechanisms, lovingly called “waldos,” which you program by dropping clearly-labeled instructions into the reactor. The entire process is demonstrated through a series of tutorial missions that teach you the techniques, step by step.

When you think you’ve got the basics down, the game starts layering upon itself like an insane Escher Sonata. Suddenly you have to manage entire pipelines of factories, some with limited functionality. When you’ve got that down, then you get inputs that provide variable atoms, forcing you to add if-then statements into your machines. Then there’s the occasional timed boss battle, just to make sure you’re still breathing.

Like the enshrined Portal, SpaceChem does a wonderful job of slowly layering mechanics, leading you to complex solutions without explicitly giving away the answer. After completing a level, it shows you where you fit in the bell curve of players. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself replaying missions again and again, trying to find ever more efficient solutions each time.

The soundtrack in particular deserves special praise. There’s something about Evan Le Ny’s soaring orchestral music that adds an element of urgent danger. The fact that it provides something of an immersive atmosphere is nothing short of astonishing.

Space Chem hits that gooey sweet spot in the center of your analytical cortex and explodes into a thousand splinters. Every new puzzle looks more impossible then the last, yet finally clicks with such immense satisfaction your roommates might rat you out to the narcs. Once you’ve finished all 50 levels, gnawed at the expansion pack and its “quantum junction” addition, there’s also a sandbox mode that lets your creative beast free from corporate restraints. SpaceChem is more than just a Gainful Employment Simulator for out-of-work post-grads. It’s the best piece of brain candy for those of an analytical bent to come along in a long time.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

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

Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Developer: Rocksteady
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/Athlon X2 4800 or better CPU, GeForce 8800GT/ATI 3850 HD or better graphics card, 2 GB RAM, 17 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Developers take their careers in their own hands when they set out to make a superhero game. If they want the legions of comic-book fanboys to give their game their seal of approval, it has to be almost perfect. All of the canonical i’s have to be dotted and the t’s have to be crossed, over and above the things that the rest of the gaming public want to see (good story, great graphics, etc). Rocksteady accomplished this with Batman: Arkham Asylum back in 2010. Now they’re trying to make lightning strike twice in the same place with the sprawling action/adventure Batman: Arkham City. In most ways, they’ve succeeded. In some others, not so much.

Since the conclusion of Asylum, Gotham City leadership decided to adopt the Escape From New York theory of criminal rehabilitation: they built a wall around a large section of the city and turned all of their criminals loose inside to fend for themselves, under the watchful eye of prison administrator Hugo Strange and his private security army. For some reason, billionaire playboy/industrialist Bruce Wayne has been arrested and sent to Arkham City. After a hearty welcome from his fellow inmates, Wayne finds his way to a waiting storage container, dons the iconic batsuit and begins his search for Strange, who can be heard periodically counting down to something called Protocol 10. But before the search can begin in earnest, Bats has to come to the aid of his old pal Catwoman, who’s suspended over a vat of acid by a group of thugs.

From this point, you have the run of the city. You can go anywhere, do practically anything (except escape to the outside world). You’ll run into some of your favorite DC villains, and even help some of them (Mr. Freeze is pining for his kidnapped wife, so you try to find her in exchange for his scientific expertise). Of course, no Batman game would be complete without his primary adversary, the Joker, and the Riddler has scattered 440 (!) glowing question marks throughout the city for you to collect. And from time to time, you leave Batty behind and guide Catwoman through a side story of her own.

Artistically, very few games can hold a batsignal to Arkham City. The art direction is stunningly beautiful and amazingly detailed, from the views atop the various structures to the unkempt squalor of the city streets. Combat is almost completely melee-based (Batman has an aversion to firearms), and the fight animations are the smoothest you’ll find in any game; I’ve never been good at hand-to-hand fighting, and even I managed to learn to use the dozens of unlockable combat abilities and takedown moves (not to mention those wonderful toys). The open-world concept is similar to the one found in inFamous. Side quests become available as you travel around the city. You can choose to ignore all of them and stick to the story quests, but you’d be missing some of the most interesting parts of the game. But if you do choose to speed through the main story, you can go back and do the side quests after you complete the final boss battle (and watch the 21 minutes of closing credits). Actually, there is a veritable mountain of content in this game, including the challenge modes that you unlock as you progress. Nick Arundel and Ron Fish’s soundtrack is sufficiently brassy and effective, with more than a few Danny Elfman influences present. And let’s not forget the outstanding voice work (once again) by Kevin Conroy as Batman, Mark Hamill as the Joker (somewhat underused this time but still entertaining), and “It’s that voice guy again” Nolan North as the Penguin. Also, fans of the TV show Castle might recognize the sultry tones of Stana Katic as Talia al Ghul.

Unfortunately, with all of this freedom to explore there are bound to be a few hiccups here and there. The most annoying of these is the constantly respawning enemies. Those of you who’ve played Far Cry 2 will recall wiping out all of the baddies at a remote crossroads, only to come back five minutes later and have to fight all of them again. So it is with Arkham City. You can choose not to fight (being able to reach a rooftop in seconds is a big advantage that you don’t have in Far Cry 2), but there are times when engaging multiple times is unavoidable. The Riddler trophies are much more difficult to grab in City than they are at the Asylum. Some of them are inaccessible unless you’re far enough into the game to unlock particular gadgets. But more troubling than how tough they are to acquire is that you are required to grab all 400 of the Batman-targeted trophies to complete one of the side quests (the other 40 trophies can only be picked up by Catwoman). The issue of collectables has been a touchy one with me. There are tons of them in the Uncharted games, but you don’t lose anything by not finding them. The blast shards in inFamous at least add strength to your character. But to close off one of the Arkham City side quests to those who don’t want to scour the city for green question marks strikes me as ill-advised. All this does is artificially lengthen the game, to the point where I got tired of swinging from building to building like Spider-Man, searching for a trophy that I can’t get because I don’t have the right gadget. Oh, and about that chalk outline on the ground where Bruce Wayne’s parents died. After all these years, you’d think it might’ve faded a bit by now…

In 2010, Rocksteady made a pie that everyone loved to eat from the first slice. So, they figured that it would be great to bake a bigger pie, so folks would eat that much more of it. And we gobbled it up just as they planned, and so we should. Batman: Arkham City is an unparalleled artistic achievement, with great melee combat, an interesting (though wandering) story and lots of gameplay options. But it really is possible to have too much of a good thing, which is why Arkham Asylum will always be the better game. Sometimes just a slice is better than the whole thing.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

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

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Naughty Dog
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Nathan Drake, the man with the strongest fingertips in gaming, returns to close out his debut trilogy in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Developer Naughty Dog has thrown in everything save the kitchen sink: foot chases, car chases, scenes on horseback, puzzle solving, fast-paced combat sequences and lots of personal moments, all framed with gorgeous graphics and another evocative music score. It does more interesting things in 10 to 15 hours than half a dozen lesser games combined, yet somehow it also manages to be somewhat less fulfilling than its predecessor.

After all of the tomb raiding and outdoor adventuring that has gone before in this series, it’s surprising that Deception begins with a bar fight. Drake and his crusty sidekick Sully meet a dark-suited villain named Talbot, who is prepared to pay big money to buy Drake’s ring, a keepsake that ties Drake to 16th-century English seaman Sir Francis Drake. Things go pear-shaped and a classic movie-style bar brawl breaks out, after which they meet the big bad of the story, Katherine Marlowe, who will stop at nothing to acquire Drake’s ring. From here the story trots the globe, from France to Syria, Yemen and the Arabian Desert as Drake and company search for the lost treasure city of Ubar, the “Atlantis of the Sands.”

Gameplay in Deception is pretty much the same as in the previous games. You move through the world as Drake, usually accompanied by at least one NPC companion, all but one of whom you’ve met before in the series if you’ve played the other installments (newbies, have no fear; you won’t be lost if this is your first trip through Drake’s universe). Combat controls are the same as before, with the exception of the grenade mechanics. Tossing back grenades thrown at you has been made simpler, and tossing one of your own is as easy as tapping the left trigger, while holding it down generates an arc of trajectory, similar to the one found in the Gears of War games. There are also many opportunities for hand-to-hand combat, which is a combination of button-mashing and short QT events. Unlike many recent shooters, it’s possible for you to take a wrong step and plummet to your death, so you have to be careful where you walk or jump. For trophy hounds and completionists, there are 100 hidden objects to find in the world. Some you blunder into by accident, others can be identified by a slight glint of light in the background. Multiplayer includes six competitive and three co-op modes featuring up to 11 maps and as many as 10 players, and requires the now-dreaded Online Pass (a one-time-use code found inside the DVD case) for access.

Deception is the biggest, most diverse game in the series. From crawling around the dark ruins of the London underground, to chasing (and being chased by) villains through crowded streets, to chasing an armed convoy through the desert on horseback, there’s something fun to do at almost every turn. The graphics and sound are amazing once again, including the little touches that many developers overlook, such as the slow change in contrast when you move from bright daylight to shade. Difficulty-wise, the game is no cakewalk. Your shooter skills are well-tested, even at Normal difficulty level, and there are one or two devilishly tough fight scenes that should have most players frequently reloading a quicksave. Weapons and ammo drops are plentiful, yet you still could find yourself frequently going mano-a-mano with enemies (Drake fights dirty this time; lots of boots to the groin). Unlike other games such as Two Worlds 2 and Red Dead Redemption, Deception gets horseback controls right; just push the stick forward to ride. Enemy AI is very smart; villains frequently attempt to flank you and can move around in groups as well as alone, and some of them are bullet sponges, requiring you to figure out the most effective weapon to use on the various bad guys. Deception is also one of the growing number of AAA games that present an effective, involving story to go with the bloodletting, featuring well-acted and animated cutscenes that are just the right length to keep the plot moving without dragging down the pace (a la Metal Gear Solid 4). Nolan North, Richard McGonigle, Claudia Black and Emily Rose once again provide excellent voice-overs; it’s so much easier to care about these characters when they are brought to life so well. And composer Greg Edmonson has delivered yet another score that perfectly supports the action on screen.

Deception has lots of great things going for it. So why am I not totally fulfilled? Well, it could be the strangeness of some of the combat; if you’re surrounded by enemies with guns while you’re melee fighting, the guys with the firearms miss you most of the time, even from point-blank range. It could be the occasional loss of camera control at crucial times; there are several instances when you have to run towards a fixed camera without knowing what’s ahead of you. It could be the length of some of the scenes, making it tough to remember what your ultimate goal is (after a particularly lengthy sequence, Sully sits down and says, “I’m losin’ the plot here.” He wasn’t the only one). It could be the multiplayer graphics glitch that respawned my character inside solid objects, making me a sitting duck, or the lack of multiplayer matchmaking, which constantly puts newbies into the same matches with much more experienced players. And it could definitely be the very disappointing final fight scene; unfortunate that so much action and adventure ends with such an unimaginative climax.

Naughty Dog has wrapped up the Uncharted trilogy in a nice box and bow, just in time for the holidays. The story has all of the off-the-wall antics of an Indiana Jones movie, with a group of characters who make the outlandishness of the plot easy to ignore. The visual presentation is spectacular, the pace is excellent (unless you take time out to go treasure hunting, which can add quite a bit of time to your playthrough if you’re not careful), and the music is good enough that you might want to buy the soundtrack. There are some annoying little problems; there’s no such thing as a perfect game, after all, and Uncharted 2 is a more satisfying total product for my money. But even with its faults, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is still a quality game that anyone with a PS3 should hope to see under the tree this Christmas.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2011. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: November 11, 2011

In the early days of the Xbox 360, new adopters found one game to rule them all. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was released in the Spring of 2006 (a scant six-months after that console heralded this new generation of game systems), and it proved to be one of those bridge titles that united the hardcore RPG elite with the mainstream. Western RPGs have always held court in the console space but unlike the welcoming PC world, they remained a modest, niche success. Since Oblivion’s successful release, big, brawny role playing games have slashed their way to the tops of sales charts. Since then, Fable, Mass Effect and the Fallout series inspiring more and more players to drag dungeons, slay dragons and journey there and back again. With news that the next iteration of consoles is being prepped by the Big Three for debut over the next few years, Bethesda’s latest Elder Scrolls release, Skyrim, makes for a nice bit of symmetry – potentially a fitting swan song.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim opens 200 years after the events in Oblivion. At the outset, players choose there gender and select from the ten available races utilizing the expected robust character creation toolset. In the early moments, the game is on rails as Bethesda hammers down the dramatic stakes. Amidst a crippling civil war that has rocked the Skyrim region, a new, dire threat has emerged. After centuries of slumber, fearsome dragons have returned to the world. With factions warring for control of Skyrim in the wake of the King’s assassination, this new development upsets the geographical and political landscape. War is hard enough to wage without the omnipresent fear of fiery death from above. Into the rising tempest, your character plunges. Soon he (or she) may emerge as an important cog in the machinations, as in the grand Elder Scrolls tradition, the choice is up to the player to decide whether to follow their destiny or simply ignore the main plot and live the hard life of Skyrim.

Skyrim builds off of the narrative drive established in Oblivion. While the Elder Scrolls series has always been known for its open-endedness, allowing players to explore the world and play the game in whatever way they choose, it was Oblivion that took large steps in implementing a compelling core plot without disrupting the persistent world around it. Story quests could be picked up and chased down at any point while players were free to wander off the beaten path should they find some shiny new obsession to hunt down along the fringes. Or, if a player was content to simply pick flowers and make potions for a living, that livelihood (among so many other options) was available to pursue as well. Both Oblivion’s quest and story scripting proved that Bethesda could organically plant an overall plot, one that the player helps shape, without taking anything away the feeling of freedom that set this franchise apart from its more linear counterparts.

While Skyrim does not represent the revolutionary leap that Oblivion was over the meandering Morrowind, it certainly stands as a huge evolutionary step for the series. Everything that worked well in Oblivion is back in Skyrim, and Bethesda takes pains to craft a game that doesn’t simply echo past accomplishments. Jaws dropped when Oblivion capped its extended prologue with that eye-opening gaze at the whole, wide world that stretched beyond the player once you scurried through those claustrophobic sewers. It’s a move that the studio’s follow-up, Fallout 3, mimicked to similar success. Skyrim may open with another carefully choreographed introduction, but the studio refrains from going to that well once again, intent on ladling out just enough information about the political strife, the dire threat building and your hazy role in it all to push you forward before releasing the reins. In that, they continue to perfect their handle on world-building – realizing that as many players love to have a reason to fight there are others who just want to get lost in the world. Once the player has a handle on their character, they are free to go wherever they please while the main plot remains identifiable and within reach for those who want it.

© Ed Humphries for The Adrenaline Vault, 2011. | Permalink | 31 comments

Publisher: Sony
Developer: Team ICO
Rating: T (Teen)
Available: Now

In the age of HD gaming, backwards compatibility is a mixed blessing. While it makes for a “nice-to-have” feature on the back of the console’s box, the truth is many of your old favorites are more visually pleasing when revisited in your mind’s eye. Once you get these ancient treasures running on spiffy new hardware, and splashed across a pristine 1080p widescreen, all those ugly blemishes once hidden by reduced resolution tear at your peepers. So, the loss of backwards compatibility on later iterations of this generation’s consoles is not that big a burden when you consider the care and craftsmanship that Sony has implemented in spit-polishing some of the PS2’s most prominent releases. Taking a long-awaited place alongside the previously released God of War and Sly Cooper collections are two of the PS2’s crown jewels – the sublime Ico and Shadow of the Colossus – fully remastered for a new generation to play and the past to covet.

A few years ago, gamers waged a no-win battle with film critic Roger Ebert over his blind faith assumption that video games could NEVER be art. It’s classic oil versus water with two sides coming at the debate from completely diametric viewpoints. At one point, Bioshock’s creator, Ken Levine, inserted himself into the dialogue offering up a sane and rationale bid for cease fire. Why does anyone care if games are art, he questioned in an editorial. While he makes a great point, many gamers pointed to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, two modern classics, that had done more than entertain them. Through the course of sending their heroes, Ico and Wander, through their motions, gamers had forged an indelible bond with a pile of pixels. A plaything had done more than entertain, it had aspired to something greater. Many who played these epic adventures reported the same findings. They had been affected at an emotional level and while the definition of true art remains elusive and subjective, the fact that these games had charmed their way deep into the collective soul of a whole legion of players was all the supporting evidence they ever needed.

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are works of art. At least that’s my opinion. Reviewed individually, at the time of their release, I would slap them both with a 5-star, spoiler free review and lead readers just far enough along to entice them to dive in and draw their own conclusions. Taken as a whole, both titles share kinship with the same developer, Team Ico, who carefully embraces gaming archetypes of the past to give gamers something new. The intrepid young hero facing seemingly insurmountable odds is the same story trope that drives the treasured Legend of Zelda series; a vaunted property that equals these two games in their shear unbridled creative craftsmanship.

In both games, Team Ico wove simple story threads through a remarkable feat of world-crafting tapestry, plopping the player down into massive, haunting landscapes that looked lived-in and long since forgotten. It’s this attention to atmosphere that elevates their work, and both titles possess a transporting quality. This is true role-playing that focuses less on stats and experience and instead pulls all of the elements together, from the taut narrative to the intricate puzzle solving and awe-inspiring art direction, to make players forget the cares of this world as they quest in another. People can argue whether these games are art but there is no question, they are fully formed experiences that my life would be lessened without.

That’s really all you need to know about my take on the games. Ico came first and it shows as the experience is slight when compared to the brawny Shadow of the Colossus. While Ico is the foundation upon which Colossus was built, the two co-exist in seemingly interconnected worlds. Toss away the lofty artistic aspirations and at their core both titles exist as compelling adventures. With the focus primarily set on exploration and environmental puzzles, both games frequently tax the brain more than the trigger finger.

© Ed Humphries for The Adrenaline Vault, 2011. | Permalink | One comment

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Insomniac Games
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Perhaps it’s a product of recent economic uncertainty, but the entertainment media seems to be infatuated with the idea of global catastrophe. Whether it’s alien invasion (TV’s Falling Skies; Hollywood’s Skyline or Battle: Los Angeles), viral pandemic (Contagion), zombie apocalypse (Dead Island) or nuclear holocaust (the Fallout series), we seem to be more and more interested in “what if” scenarios these days. But most times, these stories are told in stark terms without a real human component. Insomniac’s Resistance 3 is one of the few entries in the end-of-the-world genre that takes time to tell a human story amidst the universal carnage that surrounds it.

A quick recap for the uninitiated: In 1908, a meteor impact in Siberia released an alien virus known as Chimera. The virus transformed almost every victim into a hideous, murderous creature. Some of the infected managed to fight off the transformation, such as American soldier Nathan Hale (the hero of the first two Resistance games). Humanity tried to hold it’s ground against Chimera, but eventually it conquered Europe and spread to North America. Hale dealt it a serious blow at the end of Resistance 2, but the alien scourge recovered, either killing or converting 90 percent of the human population.

You play former soldier Joseph Capelli, dishonorably discharged in 1953 for killing Hale, who was in the final stages of total conversion to Chimera. Capelli moved to Oklahoma, started a family and tried to put the war behind him. But four years later, the war has found him. The Chimera are in the process of transforming Earth into a more hospitable planet for their race. A doctor arrives in town saying that he knows how to stop the terraforming process and defeat the Chimera, but he must be safely escorted to New York City. Thus begins your perilous cross-country journey to put an end to the Chimeran invasion and return Earth to its rightful inhabitants.

At first glance, you notice how amazingly detailed the environments are. There are very few structures anywhere in the game that haven’t been practically decimated by violence and the rapidly changing climate. Families hide in underground warrens, trying to eek out a normal life despite the violence and death that surrounds them. Many of them have stories to tell if you pause long enough to hear them. Once topside, you have a full compliment of both human and alien weapons to select once you’ve discovered them. You can equip two weapons at a time, with the others accessible in a rotary menu. One of the best things about the combat in Resistance 3 is that you’re a human being, not a superhero. There’s no regenerating health or shields, and you don’t have any mutant powers or magic spells. If you’re hit, you lose health, which you have to replenish with one of the game’s few modern shooter conceits: the health powerup. Most of the maps are large outdoor locations, but progress is still fairly linear, and the marker that points you in the direction of the next objective isn’t on the screen all the time, allowing you to explore once a firefight is done. Also, composer Boris Salchow’s score is a symphonic masterpiece of game music writing, effectively enhancing the on-screen action without becoming intrusive. But the strength of Resistance 3 is its story. There are moments of moving human drama mixed into the mayhem of the combat. Some is perhaps a bit too manipulative (such as the mitten Capelli’s child drops just before his mother takes him to safety near the beginning), but the writers at Insomniac have taken great care to make the characters endearing and the cutscenes more than just connecting material between battle scenes. Anyone who really cares about narrative in video games is going to appreciate the effort.

My only real serious complaint about Resistance 3 is the erratic pace. You start out fast with battles involving many NPC companions, but as the story progresses, you find yourself alone in vast spaces against a large group of enemies, all of which have to be defeated before the next save checkpoint. Health becomes scarce, so you find yourself crouched behind cover, desperately searching for the one or two remaining enemies standing between you and the next area. This turns the fast early pace into a slow crawl with lots of reloads; expect to spend anywhere from 10 to 15 hours on the single-player campaign. The game also features two-player co-op, which is only open to players on your friends list online, and eight competitive multiplayer modes that are not particularly noob-friendly, since the matchmaking system doesn’t seem to make an attempt to match you with other players of comparable character level. So noobs, be prepared to be pwned until you learn the maps. Resistance 3 also supports Playstation Move. I tried the first few levels using Sony’s snow-cone wand. The navigation controller, which is the PS3 version of the Wii nunchuk, is the better choice than the standard controller, especially if you have small hands; you move the character with the left stick, with the wand controlling the camera. It took me some time to get used to the layout (after tweaking sensitivity settings in the options menu), and the Move reticule is considerably thicker and more prominent than the one used for the dual-shock. The early moments of the game are fairly easy to play with Move, but the later stages would be frightfully tough to survive, so the gamepad is your better choice. You can also play the game in 3D if you have the appropriate TV or monitor, which I don’t, so I can’t offer an opinion of that. Hopefully the 3D fad won’t die out before the price of the hardware decreases; there are parts of this game I’d love to try out in 3D.

Resistance 3 is an easy sell for me; apocalyptic stories are right in my wheelhouse. But even if they weren’t, I’d have to give Insomniac full marks for taking the time and creative energy to craft not just a game, but a compelling, human story to go with it. There’s always a place for a mindless shooter in my game collection, but sometimes I want a good tale of right and wrong, good and evil, sacrifice and reward, and that’s what I love the most about Resistance 3. Hopefully other developers and publishers will see the value in this and follow in Insomniac’s footsteps.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation:

© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2011. | Permalink | No comment(s)

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Paradox Interactive
System Requirements: XP/Vista/Windows7, Intel® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+, 2 Gb RAM, 2 GB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon® X1900, Direct X-compatible sound card, Internet connection for multiplayer
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

With the release of Total War: Shogun 2 this year, it seems inevitable that clones will appear on the market cashing in on Creative Assembly’s success. Fortunately for strategy gamers, Paradox Interactive has decided not to bother making a Total War clone when trying their hand at depicting feudal Japan. Instead, Paradox has finally released Sengoku, a game that they describe as a “…deep character driven strategy game, [where] you play as the head of an illustrious Samurai family.” While armies fight one another and ninja conduct covert operations, at its heart, Sengoku is a game that focuses less on warfare, and more on feudal Japanese politics and people. This is a strategy title that wants players to worry equally about whether a neighboring clan might declare war and whether a disloyal vassal might plot the downfall of your clan’s ruler.

Sengoku covers the historical period in Japan from 1467 to 1620. Civil war has broken out, and your clan leader must control over half of Japan for three years in order to solidify his claim as Shogun, thus winning the game. In order to be successful, players must be able to manage the game’s resources: money, manpower, honor, and people. Cash finances armies and provincial construction, while manpower restricts the number of soldiers you can levy at one time. Honor is very important because not only do you spend it when you declare wars or are caught doing something underhanded, but it also regulates how you interact with other characters. A clan leader with low honor will find his vassals very uncooperative and other characters plotting against him. If honor dips too low, your clan leader may opt to commit seppuku in order to pass the leadership of the clan to his heir and reclaim some honor; if it drops to zero, you lose.

The most difficult resource to manage is not cash or armies, but people. At any one time in the game, there may be a thousand different characters active. They don’t wander the countryside looking for adventure like their RPG counterparts. Instead, they sit comfortably in your interface, interacting with your clan leader. You have to appoint advisors to positions in your court, not just because you need their help to rule the clan, but also because you need your advisors to oversee the construction of buildings or to hire ronin. Furthermore, a single character finds it difficult to rule more than five kori (provinces) at one time; thus, you have to surround yourself with vassals you can trust who rule in your name. And every ruler needs at least one wife, if not four. Women in Sengoku find themselves saddled with the historical limitations placed upon them in the period, however, they still have importance. Not only do they help you create heirs to inherit your clan and territories after death, but they also boost their husband’s abilities. Whether genius or imbecile, a ruler can benefit from surrounding himself with smart women.

All of these characters are not static. Characters have personalities, competency in various fields, and even ambitions. Paradox has developed a system whereby characters like or dislike one another based on a variety of factors. A clan leader might find that he has some vassals who just don’t get along well with him because of his arbitrary personality, making domestic politics interesting. But rather than just randomly deciding to revolt or secede from the clan, all characters can engage in plots. This mechanic allows AI controlled characters (meaning everyone but you and your multiplayer friends) to mimic human politics. A plot has a pre-defined goal, like “overthrow the leader of the clan” or “attack clan X.” Once a character initiates a plot, he can invite other characters to join him. When the plot has enough backing, it is unleashed. This mechanic neatly sidesteps the usual problem of AI not being able to understand the point of a political alliance. Instead of the AI randomly deciding to attack enemies or make poor alliance decisions, it is always clear what the goal of a particular alliance is and what the desired outcome should be. While it can take some difficult diplomacy to convince characters to join your plots, when they do it means that the AI will actually work towards a common goal with clearly defined parameters. As a human player, you have no one to blame but yourself if you can’t get other powerful characters to help you take down a common enemy.

Sengoku is a grand strategy title. When I said it wasn’t a clone of Total War, I meant it. Armies fight in an abstracted fashion inside of provinces without direct tactical control on the part of the player. If you are looking for a game where you move armies around on a battlefield, this is not going to be the game for you. That being said, Sengoku brings so much to the table in terms of gameplay, that its few flaws only slightly mar its excellent qualities. Among these flaws are some problems with how inheritances from father to son are executed; there are cases where provinces end up being owned by nobody, and in at least one case, my ruler’s son inherited land from an uncle, only to form an independent clan with the same name and heraldry as his father’s clan, causing immense confusion. There is also an elusive crash that happens sometimes, which I suspect is tied to these inheritance problems; but these problems are only intermittent and the patch scheduled for release the day the game goes live addresses these concerns. My only complaint about gameplay itself is that I wish the game had even more possibilities for different kinds of personality traits and interaction between characters who exhibit these traits. The existing mechanics for the interaction between characters are so entertaining, it left me wanting even more. Even the AI, which I can normally fault in any strategy game, is reasonably competent. It’s not a genius, but the AI effectively uses plots to take down powerful enemies and to scheme about taking control of the clan. I never felt for a moment that I could just coast along and not mind what both AI vassals and AI clans were doing, even when I was close to winning. A final concern some players might have is replayability. The game only has one historical starting date, which might indicate to some people that there is less to offer. After all, if the game only has one scenario, then there is a lack of variety, right? As it turns out, even when I played the same clan three times in row, all three games turned out very different within a few short game years. Because Paradox has chosen a historical date that coincides with multiple clans already at war, and because the AI effectively utilizes plots, there are no guarantees early in the game. You might carve out a sizeable chunk of territory for yourself, or be subject to a civil war because one of your vassals decided to plot on day one. This was very satisfying, even as I swore at the computer screen when I lost control of my clan to the AI within a few years.

Sengoku is more focused than some other grand strategy titles. Each game lasts fewer hours and has a more defined victory condition than other titles Paradox has released; no one should think that this game is just their flagship title, Europa Universalis, set in Japan. On the other hand, Paradox is not charging a flagship price, either. Priced at $29.95, Sengoku offers a quality, and unique, gaming experience for players looking to take up their katana and fight with honor and courage… or take up their quill and plot with skillful deceit.

Our Score:

Our Recommendation:

© Jason Pitruzzello for The Adrenaline Vault, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments

Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Eidos Montreal
System requirements: 2 GHz dual core CPU; 1 GB RAM (XP), 2 GB (Vista and 7); GeForce 8 or Radeon HD 2000; Windows XP, Vista, 7 with DirectX 9.0c; 8.5 GB disk space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: August 23, 2011

2011 has so far been a great year for games in general and for highly anticipated sequels in particular. A lot of favorites got follow-ups; some were impressively good, while others were of the sort not mentioned in polite society. Different types of gamers looked forward to different game worlds getting expanded, and quite a few of us were holding our collective breath for Deus Ex: Human Revolution – a prequel to one of the best role-playing games of all time: Deus Ex. The classic PC masterpiece was released in 2000, and blew away the critics and the audiences alike. In 2003 a sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War was released for PC and consoles, and although it was a decent game in its own right, it failed to live up to the glory of the original and has always remained something of a disappointment to the hardcore fans.

It is no secret that measuring up to one’s predecessors is often hard, and when Human Revolution was announced, there was a lot of skepticism. Those upset by Invisible War were quick to voice their fears of shoddy narrative and gameplay. Others doubted the ability of the developers to do justice to the franchise. PC-purists (such as myself) were worried that shortcuts would be taken that might result in dreaded “consolitis” – a dumbing down of the game in terms of the controls and visuals in order to make it more accessible to the console audiences. As new details continued to emerge, however, the skeptics found it harder and harder to to raise objections. The developers turned out to be avid connoisseurs of the original. A competent writer was recruited. The PC version was being enhanced by a separate developer, resulting in DirextX11 implementation, high-resolution textures, mappable controls, skippable cut scenes and other things we’ve come to expect on the PC. When the download code arrived in my mailbox on Friday I took a deep breath (a number of those actually, as the game is 8 gigabytes and takes a while to download) and went in.

The year is 2027 and you are Adam Jensen, a former SWAT operative now working as the head of security in a firm that builds augmentations – the kind of advanced prosthetics that will undoubtedly exist one day but can seem almost magical in comparison with today’s technology. Passions revolving around the use of these enhancements are running hot in the dystopian world of tomorrow, and Dr. Reed (the company’s chief scientist and also Adam’s ex-girlfriend) is about to fly out to DC for a congressional hearing. Suddenly the corporate office comes under an attack by a group of augmented mercenaries. Many of the researchers are slaughtered and Adam is wounded so grievously that an immediate surgery is the only option. A surgery that sees him being heavily augmented as there is no other way to save his life.

That was just the prologue, and the real game begins when Adam is called back to work six months after the attack. Dr. Reed is dead, and he should still be recovering, but a new crisis requires his presence. Anti-augmentation terrorists raided the company’s factory and took hostages. In the trademark fashion of Deus Ex games, you are given a problem and it is up to you to find a solution. You can grab a gun and mow down those who would oppose you. You can take it to the air-ducts and dark corners, sneaking past your enemies without them so much as suspecting your presence. You can hack doors, computers and security systems, turning turrets and robots against your adversaries. In addition to that you have the option of reading your opponents during conversation, and manipulating them into doing what you need them to do. Naturally the game can play very differently depending on what path you take, but you can be sure that whatever you do, you will be rewarded with XP points – yes, even for crawling in the vents.

Most people opt for a combination of the above approaches, but Adam Jensen as played by Alaric Teplitsky is a bit of a special case. You see, MY Adam doesn’t kill people. Not for any philanthropic reasons, of course. He just feels that he is so far superior to the rest, that he allows them to live as an ultimate display of contempt and disdain. There is nothing they can do to thwart him and he doesn’t mind a bit of an extra challenge. Firearms are of no use to him; his weapons are a tranquilizer gun and an electroshock. Many an armed thug have had their arms dislocated and lights punched out when Adam drops in on them unexpectedly. They get to live, all of them, but nowhere does it say that their lives must be pleasant. Altogether combat is satisfying, challenging and looks and feels great. The game is not at all shy about killing you, and that adds to the immersion. Mechanics-wise, an excellent third person cover-based system is implemented, which I used more often than not, though it is entirely optional and if you are a Deus Ex classicist and don’t need no stinkin’ cover, you are free to do your fighting and sneaking the way JC Denton did. Same goes for the highlighting of usable objects and so forth. To me that feature makes perfect sense, but turning it off is just as viable an option.

© Alaric Teplitsky for The Adrenaline Vault, 2011. | Permalink | 21 comments