Homefront (PC)(Review)

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Also on: X360, PS3

Genre: First-Person Shooter

Publisher: THQ

Developer: Kaos Studios 

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First-person shooters are becoming more and more numerous these days, with all new titles trying to achieve some of the big profits earned by Activision's Call of Duty or EA's Battlefield franchises.
Homefront is the newest contender, coming from Kaos Studios and THQ, which tries to break the mold through an original story coming from Red Dawn director and writer John Milius, in which the USA is invaded by a united Korea in the near future.
THQ promised that we would see the birth of a new shooter franchise that would add fresh things to the classic genre formula.
Has it succeeded or should Homefront see the firing squad? Let's find out.
Story

One of the high points in Homefront is its story, in which the USA are invaded by a united Korea and subjugated under a totalitarian rule by the Asian super power. But while the idea is pretty original, the execution is pretty much on par with writer John Milius' previous work on Red Dawn, except the Koreans have now replaced the Russians.

You play as silent protagonist Robert Jacobs, a former Marine pilot that is being sent to a reeducation camp in Alaska after failing to serve his new country. He is quickly freed by the resistance in his native town of Montrose, Colorado, and urged to join its efforts in order to score a win against the Koreans.
What follows is basically just like a movie and, seeing as how I completed it in around 4 hours, is about the same length, except you get to push buttons and act out during its firefights.
While the story feels like a whole and doesn't wear out its welcome, Kaos should have really added a few more missions in the middle part of the game, in order to at least match up to the length of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, another short title that still managed to impress.
In those four hours, however, you get to experience quite a lot of intense fights and, if you keep your eyes out for newspapers, can get lots of information about the events that lead up to the invasion of the USA.
The story isn't all about firefights, as you bear witness to slower moments, specifically at the beginning when you're riding in a bus and seeing Americans being tortured by Koreans on the streets. You also have certain moments in which you can catch your breath, around the Resistance headquarters situated in one of the battered suburban neighborhoods around Montrose.

Witness America under Korean rule ...	... and then set it free

Gameplay
You won't find lots of new things in Homefront, as it plays out basically just like any other first-person shooter powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 3. Colors in the gray spectrum occupy most of the screen during urban firefights, but you do manage to catch some more intense colors here and there.
Unlike other shooters, however, Homefront practically forces you to use the iron sights or tactical scopes of your weapons as if you attempt to shoot from the hip, without actually aiming, the bullet spread is all over the place. In quick firefights or when enemies pop up from cover, this can cause a lot of missed shots and subsequent deaths.
Speaking of deaths, Homefront has quite a lot of cheap ones, not just because it's a difficult game (which it is even on the easy setting) but due to the grenades thrown by your enemies towards your own location. The game does show the grenades on your screen, like in Call of Duty, but doesn't allow you to throw them back, like in Activision's franchise. In one certain case, three grenades were thrown at me in just a couple of seconds, killing me instantly.
When the grenades don't kill you, the big number of enemies will, as Homefront is pretty much filled with the so-called monster closets, infinitely spawning enemies until you trigger a cut scene or checkpoint. They'll shoot at you from every possible direction, and the on-screen prompts can't really show you where your opponents are targeting you from.

Homefront does have one special gimmick, in the form of the Goliath, an all-terrain robot tank of sorts, fitted with automatic chain guns and rocket launchers, which you can guide through the use of special aiming binoculars. This makes quick work of Korean armored vehicles and, over the course of its short campaign, you do get a bit attached to it, more than even your actual comrades.
Seeing as how you play as a former Marine pilot, you do get to control a helicopter later in the game, while you escort some of your Resistance colleagues, but that portion isn't something that will blow your mind.
Homefront does manage to drive the point home that you're fighting a war in the USA, with its locations including football or baseball stadiums, shopping malls or restaurants like White Castle or Hooters.
The AI, at least the one for your companions, isn't particularly clever, but they do manage to draw some of the bullets towards them, leaving you to flank your enemies and take them down, except when you're not getting stuck in invisible walls. They're also a bit slow, and aren't in any rush to get into position, which is pretty bad because you seem to lack the skills required to open doors or at least smash your foot into them.
Enemies are pretty smart, and make good use of available cover, sometimes sitting behind it for extended periods until you're distracted by another enemy.

Multiplayer
Seeing as how Homefront's single-player campaign is done in around 4 hours, the multiplayer mode has a lot to make up for. Sadly, it's also a mixed bag.
Kaos studios added two modes to the multiplayer, your classic team deathmatch and ground control, in which players must take over control points and keep them under their guard until the end of the round.
While that may sound a bit boring, players earn battle points for their actions, which they can spend on upgrades like flak jackets or better weapons to drones or armored vehicles, adding fresh elements to the traditional multiplayer.

Homefront's multiplayer makes up for this rather dull description with its special AI-controlled Battle Commander system, which aims at adding a new layer of strategy on top of the mindless system. As one of your enemies accumulates a kill streak, the battle commander tasks you and the rest of your team to take him out, showing his last known position and giving you extra points for completing the mini-mission.
The target, on the other hand, gets buffs and bonus items like flak jackets, in order to withstand the enemies that will come barreling down on his last known position, and also gets bonus points for his kill streak.
There are 7 maps on the PC and PlayStation 3 editions of Homefront, and 8 on the Xbox 360, all of which are pretty large and allow for massive and chaotic battles when all 32 player slots are occupied. Sadly, even if the maps are varied enough, they have large vantage points allowing for snipers to take out other enemies from one side of the map to another.
The vehicular combat is quite nice, reminiscent of the Battlefield franchise, but it does require a bit of patience and practice until you can easily spend battle points to call forth drones or tanks to eliminate the opposition.

Choose your loadout in multiplayer ...	... and follow the Battle Commander's objectives

Graphics and Sound

 In terms of visuals, Homefront isn't something out of the ordinary, as it's pretty much par for the course when compared to other military shooters out there, like Call of Duty, Battlefield or Medal of Honor.
Sound-wise, things are a bit better, with the orchestral score highlighting intense shootouts, while slower, more melodic tones join the less hectic moments of the story. This is extremely nice when you go around the Resistance base in Montrose, talking to people and seeing how they're coping under the threat of Korean rule.
Voice acting is decent, but the characters that appear in the game are one-dimensional and you won't really grow fond of them, despite the fact that a lot of tragedies will happen. The main protagonist is a present-day Gordon Freeman of Half Life fame, so he doesn't stand out through anything.
Conclusion
Homefront is a pretty decent shooter, with an out of the ordinary story that would've been better if it had been developed more thoroughly by at least a couple of more hours.
Its mechanics are a bit annoying, with shooting from the hip one being extremely aggravating, but it will please shooters that can't wait until the release of the next Call of Duty or Battlefield game.
The multiplayer is interesting, especially when playing with the Battle Commander turned on, but some balancing issues need to be fixed in order to encourage teamwork and playing as another class than the sniper.

Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed(PC)(REVIEW)

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 Also on: PS3, XBOX
Genre: Racing
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Slightly Mad Studios


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Oh, what a difference the racing line makes. For me having it around means that I have a reliable way of judging my own driving decisions. Its absence makes me feel lost in an ocean of driving possibilities out of which I am only extracted by the sickening sound of crumpling against another concrete barrier.
It does not take more than 2 or 3 races, all of them probably accompanied by quite a few restarts, to see that Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed is a serious racing sum, the kind of game that can lead to controllers being thrown in frustration and to loud curse words being uttered in the general direction of the other racers.
Shift 2 Unleashed is well put together, with a nice catalog of cars on offer, some very well built tracks, good intelligence for the other drivers, full implementation of the Autolog feature that debuted in the rebooted Hot Pursuit, a lot of options when it comes to modding cars and tweaking settings and enough events to keep a gamer occupied for more than one month as long as daily racing time is at about 2 hours. The big issue that the new Need for Speed has is that it's difficult right from the start and that it might discourage more casual virtual drivers from spending too much time earning levels and discovering new events.
Gameplay
For anyone that knows the series, even if only by name, the concept behind Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed is pretty straightforward: player creates account, engages in racing, picks favorite car, tweaks performance, beats opponents, crashes hard, watches replay, gets creamed by superior opponents, learns new tricks, beats all computer opponents, shifts difficulty up.

Damage system	Good line

The experience in Shift 2 Unleashed is similar to other games in the simulation genre, but there are quite a few differences that stand out: the level of detail included in the simulation, the tough opponent Artificial Intelligence, the amount of tweaks that can be made to a car and the way each track is broken down into sections that can be mastered independently.
One of the best things that happens in the game is the first pre-race drive around, which allows the game to test the performance of the player, starting with whatever settings he wants, in order to then propose a better selection of options, better suited to the skills one has.
Then Shift 2 Unleashed throws the player in one of the most powerful and hard-to-guide cars in the game, on a pretty tough course, again testing the player on his skills while offering an attractive incentive for the future in the form of money to buy the first car in the proper game.

Despite being at the very beginning of the game, it's one of the toughest races of the whole Need for Speed and can be really frustrating for newcomers, especially if one is trying to win it outright. After doing quite badly a couple of times, I just let go of trying to win and just got through the race to get to the career progression. Going with the flow and learning to only get the minimum result for progression is a must for anyone who plans to spend a lot of time with the new Need for Speed.
The Artificial Intelligence in Shift 2 Unleashed is pretty capable, able to keep the line as long as the road is clear but also capable of fighting with the player for the best line and taking him out on gravel or on grass in order to slow him down. There are some issues when it comes to the city-based races, mainly because some of the stars involved a slow corner after a long straight and this can lead to multi car pileups that ruin the rest of the race.

Restricted look	City type

Of course, the game suffers from the long-running illness of all racing simulation: the race to first place. I found I was often restarting in the first half of the race to make sure I got as good a position as possible going into the most important corner sequence. Keeping the first position for the remainder of the event then became rather simple.
Shift 2 Unleashed emphasizes the need to mod the cars in order to win the toughest races. This can be a problem for those players who are not car enthusiasts, but the game has a solid system in place which shows what various modifications mean for the car, though taking the car out on a track is the only way to get a real feel for how things change after a few new, better parts are put in.
The best way to enjoy the game is by using a wheel and setting the realism settings high, only scaling them down if one event proves completely impossible. A controller appears to be the second best option and a keyboard is, unfortunately for pure PC gamers, the worst control method for Shift 2 Unleashed.
The game feels harsher than that of Gran Turismo 5 and all of the cars seem incredibly nervous, ready to spin out at the slightest provocation, but the constant danger is a good way of injecting some more adrenaline into each twist and turn.
A final warning: Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed is a tough game when striving for full realism. Make sure you are prepared for quite a few setbacks, otherwise first drop the difficulty and then the realism until you find a set of settings that feel comfortable and where three run-troughs for one race achieve the desired result.

Graphics and audio

Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed is quite the good-looking game, no matter the perspective the player chooses to drive from. The tracks are detailed, the information from the heads-up display blends well into the actual racing action, and the cars are all detailed, even though at times a little too many shining surfaces for my liking.

Take it in	Green rocket

The out-of-the-race presentation is also slick and engaging with the only real problem being that pre-race intro sequences cannot be skipped, which is a problem when retrying for that elusive number one position for the ninth time or more.
But, the bigger highlight of the presentation for Shift 2 Unleashed is the sound. The team has clearly taken a lot of care with making sure that all vehicles, from the entry level to the fastest, sound powerful, like racing machines ready to destroy the opposition. There are many cars in the game which players will probably never hear going 200 kph in real life, yet every sound in the game feels incredibly realistic and expands the immersion.
Conclusion

Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed makes it pretty clear that Electronic Arts is looking to split its premiere racing franchise into two very distinct lines, one dealing with the road-racing experience, complete with the concept of an open world and police chases, and another one that is more simulation focused and is more interested in the pilot's experience.
Shift 2 Unleashed very successfully fills the requirements of the second title and, following the success of the last Criterion made Hot Pursuit game, it's safe to say that Electronic Arts has a series which manages to cover all the bases of the driving game genre well.
The challenge will now be to think of the future of the Need for Speed series and see how both games can evolve and keep players interested in the long term, when the surprise of Autolog and good simulation mechanics begins to fade.

Crysis 2 (PC)(Review)

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 Also on: PS3, X360
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Crytek Studios

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When it comes to beautiful looking games, few developers can come close to the pedigree of German company Crytek, which is responsible for titles like the original Far Cry, Crysis or Crysis: Warhead.
Now, the studio is back, with Crysis 2, the next installment in its first-person shooter, running on the brand new CryEngine 3 technology, which promises to not only achieve even more impressive graphics than the ones that made the first games so popular, but also achieve them on a wide array of PCs, not just on extremely powerful ones, and on consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
Crytek has been hyping up the game for the past few months, so it's time to see whether Crysis 2 manages to blow the competition out of the beautifully rendered water or remains a niche hit, just like its predecessors.

The upgraded Nanosuit ... ... and its new powers

Story

It's hard to talk about the story of the Crysis franchise as a whole, let alone the one of Crysis 2, as things are pretty much a huge mess. While you were deserted alongside your squad companions on a tropical island in the first two games, in the new one, you're taking on marines, mercenaries and aliens right in New York city.
The game struggles to keep some connection to the first two titles, but it's extremely convoluted and you'll get a headache just trying to follow the different plot threads.
You're playing as Alcatraz, a marine that gets the upgraded nanosuit from Prophet, who briefly appeared both in Crysis 1 and Warhead. The switching of hands, or more like bodies, is extremely fast, and you'll immediately start following orders from a researcher that you were tasked to find.
For the remainder of the game, you'll be going through all of New York, getting orders from all sorts of people and trying to uncover the source of the destruction while staying alive in front of mercenaries and/or new types of aliens called the Ceph.
While at first you may be inclined to start trying to follow the story, it's best just to go with the flow and follow your objectives, not worrying about the different one-dimensional characters and their various connections.

Gameplay
While the story does a poor job of trying to keep you interested in the single-player campaign, the flawless gameplay will certainly make up for that, as Crysis 2 has pretty much perfected the already quite impressive recipe of its predecessors.
The biggest changes were made to the nanosuit, which is now more streamlined, in order to complement the fast action in the new game. While in the original titles you had multiple modes to choose from, ranging from stealth to armor, speed or strength, in the new one, you have just two, stealth and strength, while the rest are just bonus powers, allowing you to sprint or achieve massive jumps.
This is all for the better, as Crysis 2 feels much more responsive and dynamic, motivating the player to improvise tactics in its firefights. You can start with a stealth approach, sniping enemies from a distance, then run up to a ledge above their location, jump on top of them and then use the armor mode to thrash the poor guys around.
The developer even threw in a customization mechanic, which, after collecting enough tissue from the aliens you take down, will allow you to upgrade your abilities, from obtaining a better suit energy regeneration rate to unlocking more powerful jumps or slams.
The game is still a first-person shooter, and the mechanics are very impressive, with Crytek managing to make weapons feel great. While there are quite a few guns in the game, you won't be using all of them, as you'll almost always fall back to the Scar and the sniper rifle. The special weapon customization mechanic carries over from the first two games, as you'll be able to choose different attachments, like silencers or scopes, on the fly, depending on what sort of situation is ahead of you.
Strategy plays a big role in tackling the objectives in the single-player campaign, as the title recommends you to use special binoculars that highlight different strategies for the upcoming location. You can swipe a mounted machine gun and wreak havoc or you can climb a ledge, infiltrate with the stealth mode a sniper position and take the enemies down.
The AI is quite impressive, with enemies managing to pull off squad maneuvers and really giving you a run for your money. While you may think that the nanosuit takes you to god status, the enemies will certainly dial down your ambitions by providing ample resistance against your efforts.
The relatively tough enemies, together with the pretty rare checkpoint save system is a bad combo, however, as you can progress through the entirety of a complicated firefight without getting hit and find yourself taken back to square one after being hit by a stray bullet or an explosive barrel.
There is a short vehicle section, but even that can be skipped completely if you prefer just super sprinting through the stages. You'll be forced to use different strategies in other areas, however, as Crytek, always keen on showing off its CryEngine technology, cuts the power and leaves you in complete darkness from time to time, forcing players to equip the special heat-sensitive Nanovision power.
Speaking of the CryEngine 3 technology, this allows its developer to really go to town on the things you can do in the game, from interacting with a wide array of objects, especially doors, to just allowing players to mess around with the game world, similar to how you would do in an open-world sandbox game. Basically, after completing Crysis 2, it's going to be a bit hard to go back to shooters that only let you interact with a few items and go through extremely linear paths.

Go invisble ... ...or fully armored

Multiplayer

Crysis 2's multiplayer mode may seem a bit chaotic, at first, but it will no doubt impress those who are eager to try something new after shooters like Call of Duty or the more recent Homefront.
While it has multiple modes that are variations of popular experiences, including Team Deathmatch or King of the Hill, what really makes Crysis 2's online mode that special is the sheer unpredictability from its players.
The matches will certainly amp up your paranoia factor, as gamers can use all of the nanosuit powers, from stealth to armor, nanovision or super jumps, in order to get the advantage over their opponents. As such, you always need to move carefully through its levels, because you never know who might be hiding in a corner with stealth on or who'll jump on top of you as soon as you exit a building.
While this sounds a bit fun, it can get frustrating at times, especially considering the fact that a lot of cheaters are still plaguing the online matches. Thankfully, Crytek is taking care of them by issuing multiple updates, so things are going to get better and better.

Graphics and Sound

Simply put, there aren't a lot of games that can even try to steal the thunder from Crysis 2 in terms of graphics and visual quality.
The game is, in lack of any other word, stunning, amazing players with detailed textures, small and subtle effects that complete the environments and very big levels, both in the single and the multiplayer modes.
What's even better is that this fidelity is kept on a pretty big range of PCs, not just extremely powerful and expensive ones, as well as on the consoles, with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 getting a very beautiful experience, despite not being the newest of machines.
After seeing what Crytek did with the new CryEngine 3 technology, we should definitely be on the lookout for any other titles that will be licensing it in the future.
We need to mention that Crysis 2 doesn't support DirectX 11 at the moment, but, at least judging from our playthrough on the PC, with everything set to extremely high, this isn't exactly a dealbreaker. Crytek, sadly, hasn't mentioned anything concerning support for DirectX 11, so gamers that want absolute performance and the best visuals possible need to look elsewhere until the studio decides to implement it in Crysis 2.
In terms of audio, the soundtrack is great, with massive orchestral scores playing during intense firefights, while slower tunes highlight the normal moments. You can see that famous composer Hans Zimmer collaborated with Crytek, as you wouldn't be surprised to hear these tracks in the next blockbuster Hollywood movies.
The main character, Alcatraz, remains silent throughout the game, which can get a bit annoying, especially because he is witnessing some shocking events unfold before his eyes, all of which not managing to get any sort of reaction from him.


Use all your weapons ... ... and defeat the aliens

Conclusion

Overall, Crysis 2 is by far the best-looking game of the year, with Crytek managing to truly showcase the power of its CryEngine 3.
Even if the story fails to attract players, the gameplay, especially once you start getting used to the nanosuit's powers, will definitely keep you connected to Crysis 2's campaign, while the multiplayer offers a very different experience than other shooter games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Dragon Age 2 (PREVIEW)

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Also Known As: Dragon Age 2
Also on: PS3, PC
Genre: RPG
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: BioWare 

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I’m sitting in a dark room on the third floor of BioWare’s Edmonton offices, and everything has changed. PC Gamer loved Dragon Age, slapping a 94% score on it and proclaiming it the best RPG of the decade. No developer could be blamed for simply jamming the existing framework with more quests and calling it a sequel. But BioWare aren’t doing that.

Dragon Age 2 is a tectonic shift in approach, a game that has actively learned from feedback, from criticism, and from the techniques of the studio’s mega-selling stablemates. This is Dragon Age fundamentally altered and upgraded, with three core areas – dialogue, combat and visuals – comprehensively gutted and redressed by its Canadian developers.

The game’s sharpened and tightened look demonstrates the team’s commitment to the revamp: BioWare are aiming for visuals that truly represent Dragon Age’s violent world. Stark, clean lines dominate, high contrast environs as the counterpoint to spiky, angular enemies. It’s a galaxy away from Origins’ muddy browns and indistinct texturing.

An upgraded, lightning-fast combat engine drives home the changes. The player character – going by the name of Hawk and referred to as ‘Champion of Kirkwall’ – moves faster than anything in the first Dragon Age, his attacks thunking into flesh with visceral force. BioWare’s mantra is ‘when I press something, awesome happens’. It’s proven as I witness the sword-wielding player-hero flitting between mano-amano scuffles. Special abilities are deployed liberally, twatting hurlocks and genlocks in the air, into the ground, rending bone and flesh exactly as you’d expect an angry man with a humongous sword would.

Nothing highlights Dragon Age 2’s refocus as much as the moment the Champion turns to his companion and starts to speak. Up pops a conversation wheel, peppered with choices of dialogue. Selecting one sets Hawk talking. Gritty of tone and fluffy of facial hair, he’s an obvious badass in a way Origins’ user-defined specimens could never be. This is Dragon Age as viewed through Mass Effect glasses, and Hawk is your Commander Shepard.

Speechless

These revelations are a genuine shock to me, sitting in that dark room. With the demonstration over and my brain overflowing with new information, I try to coalesce my questions into a coherent sequence to launch at the trio of developers who sit opposite me, grinning broadly. I fail.

“Speaking character! Wha-?!” I gibber at Mike Darreth, Dragon Age 2’s executive producer. He smiles knowingly: “it was a long discussion.” The decision has been made, the game having been in development since March of 2009, but BioWare’s development team still discuss the topic over burgers. “I told the Mass Effect team they were crazy for having player voiceover,” Mike confesses. “I’ll happily admit I was wrong.”

Mike explains the consequences of the team’s decision: “it’s a big change, it requires that the writing be done in a different way. In Origins, we had to write it out word for word.” For inspiration, they’ve looked two floors down in their Edmonton office, and incorporated a Mass Effect-style paraphrase system. “When you see the choices, you don’t want to read something, and then have the protagonist just say it out loud. What Mass Effect did was to paraphrase it, which allows you to get the gist of what’s going to happen.”

It’s a proven system: dialogue gets unwieldy if you need to provide a menu with choices like ‘stab the bad man then totally do sex on his girlfriend’ displayed across half the screen. The new approach can simply replace that with ‘dick move.’

A speaking protagonist also gives cutscenes much needed pep, as Mike outlines: “it’s a more cinematic presentation. If you walk around the corner and there’s a guy stapled to a board, you’ll be like ‘Oh my God, there’s a guy stapled to a board!’ Before, that had to come from the followers”

The first game’s conversations were stilted, awkward things, obscuring the quality of the writing and the impact of the game’s choices with stop-start vocal cues and a character perpetually staring into the middle distance. Matt Goldman, Dragon Age 2’s art director, agrees: “you get everyone standing around waiting for your mute character to make a decision. If you just whipped out your murderknife, everyone has to stand there and look surprised for two minutes when you figure out what you’re going to say next.”

Speedy reactivity is the goal. Skimreading single words gets players to the action quicker, while little symbols will indicate the intended result of each option. Faced with overwhelming Darkspawn odds in the demo I was shown, the Champion turned to his sisterly companion. Selecting the dialogue option decorated with a little sword, Champsy growled an aggressive challenge at the onrushing foes. Pick the comedy-mask option, however, and he’ll take the piss, drawing an exasperated sigh from Bethany but lightening the mood.

Another icon occasionally pops up on the dialogue wheel, signifying specific actions open to your followers or your own character at that moment in the conversation. When a stream of Darkspawn is approaching, one of these pops up. Selecting it causes Bethany to launch a pre-emptive strike, squishing the forerunners with a fiery blast. Mike explains how these mid-chat abilities extend further than spellcasting: “if you had a staminabased skill like Shield Bash, we might have an option with a specific icon where you can smash faces with your shield. We want you to be making choices to determine your actions, and how you do things that cause you to take a stance, or to take an actual, physical action.”

Relax and rewind

Facts on the player-character are thin on the ground: you’re stuck as a human, but Darreth confirms you’ll be able to play as either a male or female. All that’s locked down at the opening of the game are three simple constants: the Champion is a famous figure, he/ she has an unclear past, and the family name is Hawk. The rest is blank, ten years of history that you’ll fill-in by playing the game. The choices you make across this decade will patch together to form the Champion of Kirkwall’s legacy.

Dragon Age 2’s lead designer and creative director, Mike Laidlaw, explains the theory behind the game’s decade-long framed narrative: “Rather than ‘there’s an ancient evil that’s awoken and you have to defeat it,’ the issue is ‘you are awesome, but you don’t know why. You made decisions and the world is shifting.’ I wanted to approach it in a different way, I wanted to say, ‘What if you changed the world and you don’t know how you pulled it off?’”

Isn’t there a danger this will disempower the narrative, and Dragon Age 2 will just play like a hurlocktwocking greatest hits package? Not so, says Laidlaw. He explains how the game’s framing structure uses two characters as narrators: the dwarf king Varic and Cassandra, a woman trying to ascertain the Champ’s true background. “It’s tricky because you never want to take away the player’s sense of agency. Varic knew you when you were younger: if his information is wrong, it’s going to be wrong in your favour. That’s where I think it can really work. ‘Yeah, I can trust [my character], but can the person asking the questions?’ Probably not. It’s harder than just ‘here are things you can go do, go do them.’ But having that reactivity is totally worth it.”

Origins was positively dripping with lore, background info seeping from every orifice – as you’d expect from a world crafted by a team of writers blessed with a solid year to work on the setting. But strip out the wandering, the choice of objective and the campbased fireside natters, and you’re close to losing the game’s soul. How’s it going to work?

Mike Laidlaw: “There’s still lots of opportunity to meet and talk to your characters and things like that. I want to play through the most important moments in this one character’s life. That gives us a nice filter to hold each event and plot up against. ‘Is this significant? Does this advance the themes of the game in some way?’”

Matt Goldman nails down the issue: “It’s not like one little level: ‘here’s where he punched a guy in the face.’ It’s: ‘this is his escape from his blightravaged home town’. The entire escape and the emotion, the side stuff around that event, not just the actual running. I guess the danger of focusing down on key moments is that you might think that we’re focusing down super-tightly, and that’s actually not the case.”

Mike Laidlaw again: “The framed narrative only limits choice if the narrators say ‘the Champion was a man who decided the following things…’ Instead what we’re doing is have the narrators come in, and even though they lived in the future and they know the kind of things the Champion decided, it doesn’t mean that they have to lock that down until the player has made those decisions. They’re the perfect reaction, like our epilogues in Origins. What we’ve done is to move that to a pair of narrators who know the future, but as you make your decisions they then talk about the significance of them.” He smiles, slightly breathless from the quickfire explanation. “I still wanted to keep that element of RPG, that sense of exploration, progression, sidequests, looting, all that stuff is key, and losing that would be a shame. To me, this is really exciting because we can get even less linear, and less predetermined.”

But what’s up with this world, why does it need changing? Origins saw the end of the largest blight in living memory, so what could possibly be wrong now? We’re told there’s a revolutionary war brewing, but BioWare are keeping their cards close to their chest at present.

The continent of Thedas, where Dragon Age is set, is gigantic. All the action of Origins took place in Ferelden’s southwest corner. Now we’re moving up to the Free Marches. Mike Darreth: “the Free Marches are a loose collection of city states… it’s more of a melting pot, a little more frontiers-y. You get more different cultures coming together, so it’s more plausible to have you, over the course of a decade, moving from a refugee to a position of power and wealth.”

Geography test

The year spent brainstorming Dragon Age’s universe into existence meant the groundwork was already laid for Dragon Age 2. As Mike Darreth put it: “the setting was established, so we didn’t have to spend all this time deciding how magic worked, or what the countries looked like. We know what the Free Marches are, we know what the Fade is. All this stuff is already there, so that lets you start from an established setting and more quickly get to a final story.”

I tested this claim, jabbing at points on a six-foot map of the continent hung from the office wall and demanding answers. “That was where the first blight was. That’s the town Leliana was from. That’s the sea. That’s my nose.”

Mike passed the test.

A new setting yields new scope: as art director on the series, Matt Goldman makes regular reference to a new, ‘hotrodded’ art style. “Marketing told me to say that,” he sighs.

Actually it’s a doddle to see the change between Origins’ muddy, bleary visuals and Dragon Age 2’s stark, highcontrast lines. Clearly the artistic blandness of the first game still rankles for Goldman.

“Damn cheese-wheels,” he semimutters, referring to the ubiquitous hunks of Edam deployed around Origins’ dungeons. Put in place solely to fill up space in sparse areas, they – and similar cliche-fantasy ephemera – distracted from the game’s overall motif, softening the point of swordblades with down-home pointlessness. Matt snaps back from his frustrated reverie and explains: “The props are to help give context for what the area is, but overall I’d say Dragon Age 2 is a lot more minimalist looking. The intent is to create a strong personality without getting in your face and without distracting you with all these details that don’t really do anything – they just screw up your path line and make shadows a lower resolution.”

The Free Marches provide a less stained canvas than Ferelden to carry off this strong personality. Like Italy in the 15th century, each sub-city of the region is set to have its own notable flavour. Mike Darreth’s example is the Champion’s adopted city of Kirkwall. “It’s a former quarry, and also an old slave city. Because you’ve got that mix of cultures you can have an impact on the specific architectural elements.” Also, the team develop characters and races further, pulling them away from Origins’ visual trio of human, short human, and skinny human.

Matt Goldman agrees: “It was pretty hard to tell elves and humans apart, so we’ve done a lot of work to make them different from one another. Our visual watchwords for DA2 are ‘grim, bloody and sexy.’ Morrigan somehow pulled it off in Origins, but because of the way the rigs and the animations were being shared, a lot of the females didn’t exactly hit the right mark.”

Matt’s background gives him a uniquely artistic perspective: “we’ve stripped off what’s extraneous and as a result made the environments and characters sharper. The environment is basically – in terms of a band – the bassline. You have to lay down a nice thick bassline to set the mood: it’s the backbone of the picture-making, story telling. But if it’s too detailed then you get this disrupting camouflage problem where you can’t tell what’s going on. So by stripping away things and looking for opportunities to create some more dramatic silhouettes, you can focus attention on the character.”

Real life

Dragon Age: Origins’ characters were its masterstroke, surrounding the mute player with genuine wit and sparkle. This pillar remains the very core of all of the team’s discussions, as Mike Darreth confirms. “It’s very important that the followers be characters, people, in and of themselves. With their own motivations, their own goals.” Unlike Origins, where unused party members presumably sat around the campfire, twiddling their thumbs until you returned with tales of adventure, Dragon Age 2’s brood of followers will get on with their own lives. Darreth again: “they have jobs beyond adventurer – which doesn’t pay very well obviously. You’ll meet them in their day-to-day lives.”

The ten-year timeframe makes possible monumental character growth – both visually and in terms of personality. “You’ve got a home, but so do your followers,” Mike says. “You’ll interact with them more out in the world. Additionally, they’re going to react more to the world around them when you’re adventuring with them. So you might be in the deep roads, and a dwarven character might be able to spot something he recognises.”

As characters react, so too does the environment. Save-game imports are confirmed: the near-infinite combination of endings from the first game will colour Dragon Age 2’s future. Meanwhile, the choices you make throughout this game play out across the decade. “One of our principle things is that the story is all based on your choices. A large time-span means that if you make a choice early in the game, we can react to it in the middle of the game, rather than having to wait for, say, the epilogue to find out that Bann Teagan got married to Bella. I mean, that’s cute and all, but you don’t remember who Bella was.”

But, as with Origins, there’s no morality system to pigeonhole your choices. “For me,” says Mike Darreth, “by us not applying our moral stance to you, the choices become more meaningful. We’re not telling you this is good or evil – ultimately in the real world, no one thinks they’re evil, no one thinks they’re good. Everyone thinks they’re doing things for a justifiable reason.” My justifiable reasons are usually that I’m an awesome mega-hero and anyone who says otherwise can shut the hell up: trust BioWare to accommodate me in this endeavour.

The team consider the idea of goodness in Dragon Age’s bleak world: “You know you eventually become the Champion: how you got there doesn’t have to be pretty. The big thing is to create scenarios that the game can then recognise going forward. If I save the man, I want to meet that man later. If I save the town, I want someone from the town to come thank me.” Matt Goldman steps in. “Or you can be EVIL, and dynamically grow a moustache for twirling.”

There’s no path of non-violence, though. Saving every kitten on the continent won’t save you from having to face Dragon Age’s infamously tough battles. The PC got the far superior version of Dragon Age: Origins’ combat engine: pausable and easily controlled, it’s returning in much the same shape for the sequel. The party size is still set at four – forcing the player to make “meaningful tactical choices” according to Mike Darreth – and Origins’ toolkit of hotbars and selectable party members is all present and correct.

Twhpp!

Watch it in motion, however, and it’s a notable shift in gear. Get to play it – as I did – and it feels a much more lethal experience. Attacks are sharper in every way, landing with none of the usual stylised RPG combat dance: ‘you swing then I’ll swing.’

Mike Laidlaw is ecstatic that the feeling of speed is noticeable. “In Origins, if you wanted to do a critical shot, your character would draw, line it up, and then fire. Why couldn’t my character just have a bow out, have an arrow knocked, and when I press that ability -twhpp!-. Then they have to shake it off and take a minute to draw. It’s still got the same feel, but what I’m doing has impact the moment I press ‘3’. That’s the thing we wanted to get rid of – that feel of lag.”

Animations look smooth and feel taut. Transitioning between a shield bash and a follow-up stab no longer requires polite shuffling: Hawk lunges forward like his foe’s stomach is full of treasure, ripping his belly open as he languishes on the floor. I take control of companion Bethany and lob a fireball at the disembowelled Darkspawn’s friends. It smacks home with a ‘ba-woosh!’ unexpected from such a basic spell.

Origins’ magic was a pleasure; weighty and powerful there, it’s been buffed further here, maelstroms of psychic energy tearing Darkspawn in half. Bethany fires off an attack at an onrushing ogre, and a seven-foot fist materialises in the mountain air. Opening quickly, it clutches the stricken creature, cradling him for a moment before clenching, squashing the lifeforce from his tubby form. There’s a sickening crack as his massive bones break, before his flesh flickers in the air and he disappears, removed from existence by mystical energies. Combat has got a crunch you didn’t feel in Dragon Age: Origins.

As it should: Bethany’s spells have been levelled up. “You pick fireball as a spell and to start with maybe all it does is damage”, explains Mike Darreth. “Then, rather than spending a point to get a new spell, you might spend some of your points so it sets light to enemies, so there’s damage over time. You’re able to take your favourite spells and deepen them.”

This tech-tree-like system also applies to non-magic abilities, and is intended to buff Origins’ weakest class, the rogue. Darreth describes the issue: “The problem we had in Origins was that the rogue is just a warrior that wears crappy armour. In Dragon Age 2, he feels more mobile, so he’s more about getting in close, doing damage quickly, and getting away.”

As a pure killing machine, the rogue will stay handy for die-hard roleplayers, the kind who didn’t flinch at Origins’ challenging ‘Normal’ mode. Mike Laidlaw is aware of the complaints directed at the first game’s difficulty level, but isn’t aiming to make the experience notably easier for us.

“What I want to do is pull Normal down a bit, and keep Hard nice and ballsy, but we don’t want to make it that that’s the only way, because there are a lot of hardcore gamers who want to feel like, “I gotta roll that crit!”

I was caught off-guard by Dragon Age 2. PC Gamer’s glowing review of the first game in the series stands, but the speed and fluidity with which the team have addressed Dragon Age: Origins’ flaws is astounding. Asking players to fill in the gaps in an preexisting story is a daring narrative manoeuvre, but with exemplary writing, a deep tactical combat engine, and a world well-worn from a good few years of habitation, BioWare’s game is in a perfect position to soar.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood(Review)

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Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood(Review)
 
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Genre: Action, Platformer
Release Date: N Amer - 11/10/16
Platforms: PlayStation 3 Xbox 360

Brotherhood begins precisely where the last game ended, with Ezio defeating the pope and hearing Minerva’s message to Desmond. After a brief transition, Ezio’s home in Monterigonni comes under attack and he is forced to relocate to Rome, where he plans to take on the Borgia and put an end to the evil family once and for all.  

To do this he will need the help of several guilds, and building this network is what drives forward the progression of the plot. The courtesans, thieves, and fighters all have a dozen or so missions associated with them that unlock over the course of the nine memories Desmond must complete. These missions range from assassinations to escort missions, but I was a little disappointed that there’s no reward for completing all of them. Even the guild challenges—a list of tasks that “rank up” each guild upon completion—have very little worthwhile reward, usually unlocking a weapon that was inferior to the one already equipped.

The titular Brotherhood itself comes into play nearly halfway through the game, where Ezio just ups and decides to start recruiting people to become assassins. I was a little disappointed at the execution of this feature, as it feels totally half-baked despite being the namesake of the entire game. Ezio literally just walks out on to the street, finds a random peasant getting their ass beat by soldiers, saves them, then they join the assassins guild. Just like that.

Once recruited, there is a system of missions you can send your assassins on to level up and gain new equipment, but the customization possibilities are very limited. Eventually they all end up looking exactly the same, and having the same abilities. Even the assassin ceremony seems rushed, like the game wants to show you everything else that is going on. But the actual utility of the assassins knows no ends, as you’ll be able to call them in to take out targets or even help you in a fight. By the time you have a pack of fighters and six master assassins by your side, there really is no obstacle that can stand in your way.

And there is a lot going on; Brotherhood is one of the most robust open-world games ever created. My biggest complaint about the second AC was that you eventually get all of these cool abilities and toys and then the game ends. I only fired my gun once in ACII, and that was mandatory for a mission. In Brotherhood, the gun and the throwing knives and the poison all play a much larger role, if you want.

Aside from a few snags, Brotherhood has some of the most refined and fluid combat and free-running ever seen in a game. Rome is three times larger than the setting of the previous game, and yet I didn’t mind running and climbing my way across all the beautiful architecture because Ezio controls so damn well. Truly, Ubisoft Montreal deserves to be commended on how superb Brotherhood feels.

Brotherhood’s biggest addition is, of course, the multiplayer. It was a letdown that no combat modes were included, but what is here is one of the most unique and compelling multiplayer offerings available. The basic idea is that players assume the roles of Abstergo assassins-in-training, and use the Animus to practice their skills by hunting each other down.

Each match starts with players being given an assignment (ie. another player to find and kill), but the catch is that someone else is also looking for you. So you’re both hunter and prey simultaneously, and that’s as never-racking and exciting as a multiplayer game can get. Sure, you know you’re going to encounter enemies in first-person shooters, but none of them have a picture of your face with a bullseye on it.

The virtual world you’ll be playing in is made up of a bunch of clones, so it’s easy to blend in with the crowd. If someone starts running or climbing up a wall, you know that’s a player. Many times your prey will simply come to you though, as heading in their general direction while maintaining your own cover will allow you to sneak up on them and perform a stealth kill. Hopefully your own hunter won’t see this though, otherwise yours will be the next throat to be slit.

There is a Modern Warfare-esque leveling system which grants the use and customization of abilities, perks, and even killstreaks. These really do change the game up a great deal, as once pistols and smoke bombs get involved, it’s basically a bunch of Ezios all out to kill each other. You might not expect this all to work well, and yes there are a few kinks, but I’d rather play this than Black Ops any day of the week. It’s nice to have an experience that isn’t a carbon copy of what’s currently being offered for multiplayer.

It becomes immediately obvious that Brotherhood is the missing piece of Assassin’s Creed II. Not that ACII was lacking on content, or that Brotherhood does not stand well on its own two feet, but there are a lot of ideas carried over from last year’s title that have evolved or been fleshed out far better. I find myself comparing Brotherhood to Fable II; both are incremental releases to a pre-established formula, and both have a ton of ideas that are not implemented to the fullest of their potential. The difference is that what Brotherhood does, more often than not, falls just short of brilliance, yet even when operating at 80 percent Ubisoft has crafted a game far better than most others on the market, and the superb multiplayer puts it over the top.

Splatterhouse(Review)

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Splatterhouse(Review)

Publisher: NAMCO BANDAI Games America
Developer: Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
Genre: Action, Horror, Platformer
Release Date: N Amer - 11/10/23
Platforms: PlayStation 3 Xbox 360

Have you ever wondered what a video game would be like if the developer never held back on the gore or violence? Perhaps it could be littered with decapitations, excessive blood spilt all over the environment and countless limbs tore off of unlucky enemies. If that sounds enticing then Splatterhouse should be right up your alley as it doesn’t hold back any punches and goes beyond the normal conventions of being a mature-rated title.

Splatterhouse does itself a favor with the over-the-top violence as the blood being thrown at the screen and numerous bones being broken help hide how shallow the title truly is. As an action game, Splatterhouse does very little to push the genre forward and relies on enclosing the players in a room until they eliminate all the enemies within it to move on. Room after room players will wade through demons and are able to dismember many of them from their torsos, necks, shoulders and many others via Splatter Kills.

Splatter Kills allow the player to take a weakened enemy, enter a darkened cutscene where Rick Taylor, the hero of the story, viciously attacks them to showcase a glorious death. Whether it is yanking their head off or ripping their arms off, the Splatter Kills take anywhere from 3-7 seconds and allows the player to bask in the brutality of Splatterhouse. After the first few hours, I tended to avoid the Splatter Kills to push forward and complete the title as they tended to slow down the action more so than I enjoyed.

Without the blood, Splatterhouse is much less of a game than it is a B movie in the video game form. While Splatterhouse does permit players to perform combinations, there’s very little technical requirement to the combat. Continue to press the face buttons in succession and you’ll be able to tear through waves of enemies in no time. Players are eligible to use Necro Moves that demonstrate even more wicked maneuvers, but players have to build up their Necro Meter by slaughtering the enemies set before them. There’s also Berserker Mode, a mode where the Terror Mask takes over and unleashes carnage that Taylor never could have done without the influence of the diabolical mask.

Another area that Splatterhouse trudges forward and doesn’t relent on is the dialogue and voice acting. Yes, it’s terribly cheesy, but that’s excusable as it never attempts to deliver Shakespearian dialogue. It’s a good ole’ survival-horror action title that wants to bask in the glory of violence, so the writing fits exceptionally well. It also helps that Jim Cummings, a popular voice actor who is known for his works as Tigger and Winnie-the-Pooh, provides hilarious one-liners one after another as the Terror Mask that takes Taylor on a journey he’ll never forget to win back his girlfriend Jennifer Willis from the clutches of the evil Dr. Henry West. The only downside of the voice acting is that the one-liners do tend to become repetitive, but it was easy to overlook them due to the sheer amount of grotesque violence taking place.

Aside from the bloodshed that takes place in hundreds of enclosed rooms, there are boss battles to encounter but they never bordered the limitless potential that a game like Splatterhouse – a title that takes mature themes to the max – has. At least Namco Bandai had the courtesy of including a survival mode, and the three original games – Splatterhouse 1, 2, 3 – as unlockables to raise the longevity. As an eight hour game on the easiest difficulty, the repetition did set in halfway through and hampered the overall effectiveness of the brutality that took place.

As blood splashes on the ground, walls, on Taylor’s body and even on the screen, Splatterhouse shows that not all video games have to take the route of melodramas. It’s simple. It’s fun. Most importantly, it does its job at giving action fans a fantastic romp through a violent backdrop. It also helps that the soundtrack chosen is right out of a metalhead’s dreams.

Flight Control HD(PC)(Review)

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Flight Control HD(PC)
Publisher: Firemint
Developer: Firemint
Genre: Other / Miscellaneous, Puzzle, Strategy
Release Date: N Amer - 11/10/23
Platforms: PC

The premise of Flight Control is as simple as can be: draw flight paths for never-ending waves of airplanes, directing them to the correct airfield and avoiding mid-air collisions. It really is a perfect fit for the iPhone and its kin, given the short and simple gameplay, plus the visceral feel of directing aircraft with your fingertips. However, a high-definition port was released on Steam, so how does it stack up on PCs and Macs?

Visually, Flight Control HD is a rather pretty game. The various aircraft and levels are simplistic in a good way, and are overall charming; for a game as casual as this, they are a perfect fit. As you would expect from a game with HD in the name, it continues to look good no matter what the resolution. The game also adds a few little visual touches that weren’t present in its iOS predecessor, such as landing lights on the airfields.

The control scheme is what makes or breaks the game, however. Directing the planes with the mouse is easy enough, but it simply isn’t as fun compared to the touchscreen controls, especially when the screen becomes crowded with planes. The game makes a few conceits for PC users, such as a reticule highlighting collisions and a few moments of slowdown, but these training wheels don’t entirely make up for the mouse controls.

The gameplay has an unfortunate lack of variety, too. While there are nine maps, the only things that change between them are the positioning of the airfields and the visual appearance of aircraft. The exception to this is the Steam-exclusive “stunts” map, which introduces an admittedly rather fun gameplay mechanic. However, it is just one level, and it feels like Firemint could have done a lot more to make it unique to the PC platform.

So is Flight Control HD a bad game? No, not really. Like I said before, it is absolutely perfect for the iPhone and other touchscreen devices, but loses a little something when played with a mouse, and for more than a few minutes at a time. After having been spoiled by the abundance of Flash games available online, I’m not convinced that Flight Control HD will have anywhere near the staying power of its mobile counterpart on the PC. Casual gamers will find something to love, but don’t feel bad about giving it a miss.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PC)(Review)

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Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PC)

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Criterion Games
Genre: Racing
Release Date: N Amer - 11/10/16
Platforms: PC PlayStation 3 Xbox 360
 D O W N L O D

Calling in Criterion to reinvigorate the Need For Speed franchise is one of the best decisions EA has made in a long time. Longtime developer Black Box continuously beat the Most Wanted formula into the ground in an attempt to recapture the magic of this generation’s first truly great racing title, and bringing in a seasoned developer to put a fresh spin on things will no doubt keep Need For Speed from becoming the embarrassment it very well started to be. Ironically, Criterion’s “fresh” spin was to take the series back to its roots, resurrecting the Hot Pursuit moniker and most importantly, the signature cops-versus-racers gameplay.

The game is broken up into two separate, sizable campaigns: Cops and Racers. Although it will ultimately come down to personal choice, I was far more interested in the Racer offering. There are five tiers in the campaign, each featuring increasingly powerful vehicles and longer, more dangerous tracks. The many missions you’ll take on include A-to-B races, time trials, duels, and the titular Hot Pursuit mode, which is where the game truly shines.

Hot Pursuit mode sees a number of racers attempting to cross the finish line first (or at all, in many cases), while also contending with an entire police force out to crush them. The police will use everything at their disposal—road blocks, helicopters, spike strips, EMPs, and their own vehicles when all else fails—in an attempt to bring the racers down. This three-way battle royale is extremely exciting, and the ability to launch a counter-attack with technology such as turbos, EMPs, and radar jammers gives you a fighting chance.

The officially licensed vehicles all feel suitably powerful and weighty in an arcade sort of way, but the game’s power-sliding will take some getting used to. I’m not asking for an on-rails system similar to Ridge Racer, but many cars don’t take corners well whatsoever, losing too much speed no matter how perfectly you drift. However, there are a handful of specific cars that handle like an absolute dream; I’ll gladly sacrifice the engine power of more advanced vehicles for the ones with far superior handling.

As with many racing games, Hot Pursuit’s tracks are laden with shortcuts that are particularly integral to your survival and success. Although some shortcuts are actually deceitful dead ends, many of them are extremely useful and can help a struggling racer go from last to first, or a winning racer to extend his lead even further. In Hot Pursuit mode, it’s an excellent way to bypass police traps altogether. The downside is that if the other racers take the shortcuts too, you will be at a great disadvantage if you miss them or a police car rams you right when you were about to cut off to the side. Similarly, time trials and previews should not have included shortcuts as they’re basically mandatory at that point.

Part of what makes the whole experience so exhilarating are the superb visuals. Need For Speed and Burnout games have always looked exceptional, but this one is by far the best yet. For the first time ever, Criterion has gotten their hands on some of the most sought-after officially licensed exotics in the entire world. Aston Martins, Lamborghini, McLaren, and a slew of companies I can’t even pronounce. 

Likewise, the virtual locales of Seacrest Country, ranging from the beach to the desert, are beautifully crafted. The number one reason Forza and other simulation racers bore me to tears are not because the cars don’t have frickin’ lazer beams attached, but because the tracks are so plain and repetitive. This is not the case in Hot Pursuit, as Criterion has truly outdone itself with the level design. Dynamic weather effects and time of day cycles round out the visual assault, proving to Polphony that it does not take five years to make a game with realistic rain.

The audio nearly rivals Split/Second’s remarkable, subwoofer-rumbling sound design, but the soundtrack should be turned off immediately. Seriously, who picks the music at EA? I guess we should take comfort that at least Avril Lavigne wasn’t included this time…

So what’s not to like about Hot Pursuit? It makes an extremely strong first impression that lasts for several hours, but it doesn’t take long for the cracks in the foundation to start to show through. The enemy AI is unfairly capable of inhuman feats, for example. Even after playing racing games all my life, I struggled to master Hot Pursuit’s drifting technique, but the AI will take every turn so perfectly that not only do they not loose speed, they actually gain a considerable amount upon exiting a corner. This problem is mirrored in their respawning capabilities as well. In one duel, I was driving alongside my rival at maximum speed when they suddenly hit a car and crashed, hard. I not only continued along the straightaway at max speed, but also hit my nitrous to increase the gap between us. All of the sudden, the enemy respawned far behind and caught up to me in a matter of seconds, far exceeding the limitations of his vehicle and especially the limitations placed on human players. That rubberband AI drastically tarnishes any racing experience, and I’m disappointed that Criterion, after all these years and all these games, still has to use it.

Although I stated Hot Pursuit mode as my favorite part of the game, it’s also one of the most potentially frustrating. With everything you have to contend with all at once, it’s quite common for the road to become impossibly congested with a combination of spike strips, wrecked cars, and police barricades. The barricades themselves are a source of constant frustration, as they require Matrix-like reflexes that only, of course, the AI seem to possess. There is an achievement for driving through a police road block without hitting anything named “Eye of the Needle”, which sadly, is not an exaggeration. It’s called “Need For Speed”, not “Need to Come to a Screeching Halt so I Don’t Crash Again…Goddammit”. Not only will the AI avoid the road block 9 out of 10 times, but even if they do hit something that would undoubtedly cause you to wreck, they are barely troubled by it and proceed on their marry way.

You might think that with so much power at their fingertips switching to the Cop campaign would be a great deal of fun, but the tables turn once the control is handed over to the player. On paper, the Cop campaign seems to match the Racer campaign pound-for-pound, but that’s not quite the reality. The law-enforcing counterpart sees you taking the role of a new Seacrest County PD recruit, tasked with earning promotions by bringing justice to high-speed criminals using any means necessary. Cops can do nearly as much as the racers are eligible to do, such as Time Trials (now “Rapid Responses”) with the added bonus of losing time for hitting things, but Hot Pursuits are, in my opinion, considerably less exciting from the side of the law.

Whereas Hot Pursuit races are an amalgamation of everything this game has to offer, cops must simply chase down and wreck as many racers as they can before they cross the finish line. It removes several layers from the gameplay, and basically invalidates several others—shortcuts, for example. Turbo and EMP have been replaced with Helicopters and Road Blocks, but good luck getting these to make a difference against the AI. As a racer, the police can catch up to you no matter how fast or far you’ve gone almost as if they’re teleporting, but as a cop, your magical pursuit powers have been greatly diminished. Given that you only have a set amount of time to bring everyone down, the fact that you can’t take on the lead racer until the game “allows” you to is outright bullshit.

Just thinking about the one-on-one Interceptor missions, where the AI will take shortcuts and flip u-turns in an attempt to lose you, makes me want to eat my keyboard. The player can never reset their position if they get stuck (usually after a road block collision), yet the AI can. So while you try to Austin Powers your way out of a pile-up, the target will just teleport away and carry on about their business. Again, many of the tools at your disposal are no longer effective either: I had a racer down to virtually zero health and called in a road block, which he rammed at full speed… then kept going. Twice. Needless to say, this game could have used another six months of solid playtesting and balancing.

Speaking of which, while the broken AI adds no end to the frustration you’ll have with this game, the things that are actually missing altogether are equally disappointing. Gone are the Chasebreakers from previous this-gen NFS titles: no exploding gas stations or giant donuts to cinematically crush your pursuers. Gone are all the things that made Burnout Paradise’s multiplayer freeroam so much fun. Although you can freely drive around Seacrest Country, there’s no reason whatsoever to do so; no hidden collectibles, no freeroam challenges, nothing. Seems like a major oversight, as is the lack of instant replays. F1 2010 allows replays over an hour long, yet Need For Speed can’t even manage playback of five-minute races?

The only instant replays will be the ones of a rival or pursuing officer crashing by your hand. This is similar to the Takedown cam in Burnout, but there’s no option to disable it, leading to another source of frustration. While you can use the crash cam to skip through road blocks and other hazards unscathed with precision timing and a bit of trickery, more often than not you’ll be propelled into oncoming traffic or another crash-inducing object that you can’t avoid because the game took over control at the worst possible time. It’s literally like someone grabbed the controller out of your hands and then gave it back just as you’re about to T-bone a wall. Why does Criterion hate fun? Yes, there’s a car crashing. Awesome. We don’t need to see it in super-slow motion every single time!

When you’ve had enough of the single-player cheating you out of wins and achievements, you can try your luck online against other players. Races, duels, and Hot Pursuits are all available, and can be quite a bit of fun with the right crowd. Best of all, you unlock points for multiplayer races that will reward you with single-player vehicles and ranks, so your time is not wasted even if you don’t place. Just be careful of randoms, since even when they’re on your team everyone seems to want to ram you.

Upon firing up the game, you’re immediately introduced to the Autolog, a “Facebook Lite”-esque system which acts as the social backbone throughout your Hot Pursuit experience. The Autolog records all of your progress and race milestones, then posts them online for your fellow NFS owners to see, and to challenge your race times. It’s an excellent way to keep the player plugged in with their friends, even when sticking to the single-player, though it is unfortunate there aren’t more achievements or rewards built around enticing players to get more involved with the Autolog.

Although it ultimately comes down to personal taste, not only did I not enjoy the police campaign whatsoever, it actually greatly detracted from my overall experience with Hot Pursuit. The more I played it, the less I liked the game. It’s admirable that the two campaigns exist independent of each other, but racing is where it’s at, whether it’s alone or online.

There are a number of major features missing from the game, as well a number of things included that just don’t work well, but then there’s a great deal that does: the cars, the visuals, and when a Hot Pursuit race comes together perfectly—with all of the game’s eccentricities working for you rather than against—it’s safe to say that Need For Speed is on track for a comeback. I’m willing to bet that history repeats itself, and Hot Pursuit 2 ends up being everything that this year’s version should have been.

Borderlands: Claptrap's New Robot Revolution

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Borderlands: Claptrap's New Robot Revolution (PC)
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software
Genre: Role-playing, Shooter
Release Date: N Amer - 09/10/28
Platforms: PC PlayStation 3 Xbox 360

I love any excuse to jump back into Pandora with my level 50 Soldier to shoot up some maniacs and skags. In Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution, I faced off against cute Claptraps who were faster than past enemies and traveled in deadly packs. Maybe it’s because I am a girl, but I couldn’t help but adore all of the silly little war outfits the different Claptaps were wearing. Some looked like Rambo with magazine clips strapped across their metal chests, while others wore World War II helmets. But, all of them were hell-bent on seeing me dead. And here I was thinking me and Claptrap were old buddies. I guess times have changed.

Times have indeed changed. The weapon powerhouse, Hyperion Corporation, is at war with the Claptraps who are being lead by Ninja Assassin Claptrap, and you have been chosen to shut those pesky robots up once and for all.

This DLC pack lacked the spark of difference. The world felt completely familiar to me. Even the caves gave me that “Hey, I have been here several times already!” feeling that I would not have expected from a Borderlands DLC. Despite the clever and witty revolution posters everywhere, the environments still felt stale. I had hoped for new locations and new missions within the same caliber of The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned DLC. New Robot Revolution was more like leftovers from the Borderlands drawing board. The Claptraps, for the most part, were hard to spot as they easily blended in with the environment. /the idea of re-fighting old bosses from past DLC sounded interesting at first, but turned out to be the same old routine in a slightly different context.

A huge part of Borderlands is the looting. Who doesn’t love seeing a purple item laying on the ground, ready for their taking? In New Robot Revolution, I was still picking up items that were incredibly underpowered compared to the weapons I already had. I was disappointed in the lack of variety and in the levels of the weapons I was finding in weapon chests and being dropped by bosses.

At least the wit and charm that we have come to expect from Borderlands was still fully intact. The revolution propaganda hung all over the walls and the dialogue being projected from loudspeakers everywhere from Ninja Assassin kept me giggling throughout my playthrough. The Claptraps were adorable, even as they hurled themselves at me, ready to explode on impact. Cute as they were, they were still fun to kill as they sputtered out silly robot nonsense with their last mechanical breaths.

Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution is still Borderlands and I still enjoyed it immensely. Yes, the environments, missions and bosses were too repetitive from what we have seen already, and the loot was not satisfying, but Borderlands never needs much help to be entertaining. I would recommend this DLC for any Borderlands fan who just wants to get back in the game, but for those of you who want something completely new, you might want to spend your cash elsewhere.