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PC Review: Risen 2: Dark Waters

By
Chris Scott
– May 15, 2012Posted in: PC, Reviews

Eastern Europe has long been known as a hotbed for high creativity mixed with awkward execution. While games like The Witcher 2 have proven that highly polished product can come out of the old communist bloc, most games are still amongst the wonkiest released to retail. So, going into Risen 2: Dark Waters, I knew exactly what to expect and it mostly hits those expectations, but it also has a surprising amount of natural charm that gives clemency to a lot of the nagging issues at play.

Risen 2: Dark Waters is a follow up to developer Piranha Bytes tepidly received roleplaying game, Risen. Having not played Risen, I cannot tell if the story of Dark Waters directly follows the events of the original or not. Regardless it seems that those events are mostly inconsequential as Dark Waters takes the series out of the stock fantasy realm the original was based in, instead taking pirates as the theme. As such, with so many games where players fight generic fantasy monsters, Risen 2 is a breath of fresh air.

Players will take on the role of the nameless hero as he sets out to infiltrate the world of the pirates on a mission to track down the whereabouts of a legendary weapon. Unlike many Western styled roleplaying games, the main quest in Risen 2 is actually well thought out and thoroughly engaging and there is surprisingly some very solid writing with excellent characters in the game.

It is the story, characters and the ability to live out the life of a pirate that define Risen 2 and make it worth playing. Unfortunately, the game takes its sweet time showing these things to players, instead choosing to put its worst foot forward with a sluggishly paced opening and a tutorial area that highlights the worst aspects of the gameplay and progression system.

It seems to be a calling card of games developed in Eastern Europe to make their players suffer before getting any enjoyment out of their products. Risen 2 follows suit and during an extra-long training session, masquerading as a prologue, Risen 2 forces players to do tiresome fetch quests, complete multi-tiered quest lines with no direction, navigate an atrociously designed map, and fight monsters that cannot be defended against. While some of these things are part and parcel with roleplaying games, they generally do not show themselves in the opening act when the game is trying to hook players with a reason to keep playing. And the biggest of these issues is something you will do throughout the game, combat.

Combat in Risen 2 is designed around three different disciplines, sword fighting, gunplay, and voodoo. The default system available is sword fighting and it has major design issues that hinder it from being an all-around effective choice for battle. The biggest issue is that unless combat is against human characters, the intricate defense/parry system is useless. This makes all fights against wildlife and monsters troublesome even on lower difficulty levels. It can be highly frustrating dying repeatedly at the hands of a fire-breathing chicken because it has un-blockable attacks. And it is even more frustrating when you realize that you were mistakenly on the wrong side of an island when it happens.

Navigation in Risen 2 is troublesome to say the least. In all my time with the game I was never able to get the quest marker system to work properly with the map and without a waypoint to aim for there is a lot of aimless wandering. I will fully admit that maybe I missed the instructions for how to utilize the map but even so, it is not intuitive.

Worst of all the awkward design decisions though might be the progression system. Leveling revolves around two things, glory points (experience points) and gold. Glory points, awarded for doing just about everything in the game world, can be used to buy levels in the game’s core proficiencies like sword fighting or gunplay but each proficiency has skills that can also be leveled up. However, all this sub leveling is done through meeting trainers in the game world and paying them large amounts of gold to train these skills. Being as gold is hard to come by for over half of the game, leveling can be somewhat of a chore.

As someone that generally gets turned off by a noticeable lack of polish, sticking with Risen, despite its issues, rewarded me with a very unique gaming experience and a charming story that captivated me and made me want to continue playing. The fact that it is noticeably different in setting from every other roleplaying game out there also helps it quite a bit. In the end though, these issues may not be enough for some players to overcome but that is alright, Risen 2 is after all a janky game and will not be for everyone. If you are however, in the mood for sailing the high seas with a bottle of rum, this game will scratch your itch quite well.

Pros

  • Engaging main quest
  • Solid writing
  • Charming story and characters

Cons

  • Combat is unbalanced
  • Navigation can be a chore
  • Progression is frustrating
  • Weird animation issues and clipping problems

3 / 5

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Review: Mad Catz Ghost Recon Universal 7.1 Headset

By
Don Parsons
– May 11, 2012Posted in: Hardware, PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

 

Mad Catz has recently released a Ghost Recon: Future Soldier-branded headset for Playstation 3, X360, and PC. With so many options on the market, it’s best to shop around to find what fits your needs. This universal surround sound headset will fill the gaps for most gamers needing a new earpiece.

There is no doubt about it, the aethetics of this piece of hardware are fantastic. Being a Ghost Recon fan helps, but even the skull art could be considered “universal” and anyone could appreciate it. The cable to this wired headset is a matching blue and the lights in the ear cups light up the artwork for anyone to see – or if you set your headset on the bed and need to find them again.

In terms of sound, the quality is both exceptional and customizable, complete with Dolby Digital 7.1. While any surround sound set-up is exponentially better than listening through your TV, I felt completely engulfed in my games while wearing this headset. A small remote links into the cable and allows you to adjust both the game and mic volume on the fly. It also features a very-accessible mute switch. It’s all incredibly easy to adjust while in the game, too, as I generally had the game volume cranked up and had to turn it down once I hopped online with friends.

If you are upgrading from a TV/earpiece set-up and play a lot of online games, you are in for a surprising treat. While playing games like Battlefield 3 or even the Ghost Recon: Future Soldier beta, you hear things that you just can’t hear from a TV. Everything had a rich and crisp sound to it.

During extended-play sessions, comfort was never an issue. Once the headset was in place, I became oblivious to my surroundings and actually forgot I had them on. The mic can be completely removed, but it also bends so I generally just bent it out of the way when I didn’t need it. My only problem with this piece of hardware was that it made my ears sweat a little after a few hours of playing. It wasn’t a major issue though, and the benefit of enveloping myself with such immersive sound was fully worth it.

It is a common problem to talk louder while having headphones on, but with the optional Selective Voice Monitoring, you can hear yourself as your teammates do. The fear of waking everyone in the house while playing because you’re immersed is completely diminished.

Everything is included to hook up to your PS3 or X360 and it’s just as easy to hook into your PC. While switching rooms is a pain, if all of your systems are in the same room it is as simple as unhooking the optical cable and USB cable and switching it to the other system. There is also an additional cable to hook into the X360 controller. The quality through my computer was exceptional, too, and it just plugs in via the USB cable. The drivers self-installed and off I was, chatting on Skype with a much clearer tone than through the old mic/speakers set-up I was accustomed to (or worse, Skype over a smartphone).

This Tritton-built headset (it’s essentially a prettier AX720) offers the performance of a quality headset you would expect from Tritton, but with a much more eye-pleasing aesthetic to it. For someone that uses more than one system (consoles or PC), I couldn’t recommend this piece of hardware more; it’s one of the best upgrades you could treat yourself to.

Pros:

  • Beautiful art work, lighting and color coordination
  • Superior sound and comfort
  • Universal – so no need for multiple headsets

Cons:

  • Can leave your ears a little sweaty after long-periods of time

Score: 5/5

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Review: World Gone Sour

By
Kyle Baron
– April 27, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

The visual fidelity doesn't match up to the art design, but the music is bumpin'

By the end of World Gone Sour you will have fought a tennis shoe, thrown your allies into deep fryers for points, and watched Method Man rap about Sour Patch Kids and the dangers they pose when left uneaten.

Developed by Beefy Media and Playbrains, World Gone Sour seems like it’d just be a phoned-in game built to advertise candy. Booting up the game brings this into question, as you see Sour Patch Kids scampering across the dimly lit start screen playing with each other one minute and brutally murdering one another the next. It doesn’t take all of the four or five hours of the game to finally realize that World Gone Sour is actually a competent platformer with all the clever art design of a twisted version of Toy Story.

The story, introduced by the first of many well animated cutscenes, follows the tale of a Sour Patch Kid who was dropped in a movie theatre. Candies go insane when they aren’t eaten, apparently, and the nooks and crannies of the everyday human worlds you explore are made sinister by all of the traps and hazards added into the environment by the Sour Patch Kids and other members of the candy community that have gone insane. Usually it’s quite obvious, like yo-yos that crush you or evil pieces of bubble gum that use bottle caps for helmets; sometimes it’s more subtle, like seeing evil Sour Patch Kids torturing their brethren with pencils or trying to saw apart the ledges you use for platforms.

The boss battles are creative and never work to sour the experience. Sorry.

The hazards, be they deep fryers and spilled soda in a concession stand or table saws in a shed, are smartly designed with the progression of your abilities in mind. Safety pins stuck in gum serve as grapple points you can swing from, while popsicle stick barriers are only breakable with a ground pound. The enemies follow suit as well, with the nefarious blobs of bubble gum adopting spiked helmets that you have to knock off by throwing other Sour Patch Kids like bowling balls.

That brings me to my next point, you’ll see a lot of sour patch kids die by the end of this game. Heck, there’s a trophy/achievement tied to sacrificing 1000 of the little Sour Patch Kid candies that rally to your side when you rescue them. The game encourages you to do so, as you get bonus points at the end of each level for having your hapless buddies meet their ends by being melted, crushed, flung into orbit, burned, impaled, chopped up – you get the idea; it’s a bit like playing the Grape Escape board game from the ’90s where it was an every grape for itself run to the finish past saws and rolling pins.

A game about candy may seem like it’s geared towards children, but the T for teen rating ends up feeling partly in tune with the difficulty and not just the comically morbid ends of animate candy people. This difficulty comes from a couple tricky platforming sequences, especially if you want to go for all of the collectibles. The bad part comes from jumping physics that, although competent, never feel quite up to the precision of Mario Bros or the floaty forgiving leaps of Super Meat Boy. Also, the wall jumping feels like it works most of the time, rather than whenever you think it should; there were many times when my co-op buddy and I would leap towards a wall, only to have one of us slide uselessly into a pit of spikes. The game hands out extra lives generously, but this doesn’t make the occasionally finicky precision negligible.

Co-op lets you ham it up with a friend for sizzling excitement. Sound pun to you?

The sound design, like the atmosphere and art design, is effective.  The grunts, gasps, and squeaks of the Sour Patch Kids play colorfully overtop the growls of enemy bosses and the searing death rattles that all of the hazards draw out of their victims. The music helps too, with every world having its own catchy meld of hip hop beats and elevator music. No, really, it works. It makes it more of a shame that my [mostly] co-op playthrough saw a few glitches where the music and sound effects cut out for a few seconds.

The sound cutting out only happened two or three times, but the long load times were always a bit out of place. There were times when I was sitting around for 30-45 seconds wondering whether the game had crashed or if the bouncing-Sour Patch Kid loading screen animation was just taking a break.

Technical grievances aside, I was pleasantly surprised with World Gone Sour and I recommend it to anyone looking for a competent platformer with a sadistically comical atmosphere. Also, the end credits are tied in with a music video that has Method Man rapping about candy.

Pros

  • Good soundtrack
  • Clever art design
  • Unlockable video where Method Man gets angry and raps about candy
  • Funny narration
  • Good cutscenes and an overall effective atmosphere
  • It costs five bucks

Cons

  • Some sloppy looking textures
  • Wall jumping sometimes doesn’t work
  • Long load times
  • Two player co-op is local only

4/5

Note: The Playstation Network version of World Gone Sour was used for the review and was provided by the publisher. The game is also available on PC and Xbox Live Marketplace

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Review: The Walking Dead

By
Chris Scott
– April 27, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

I met Robert Kirkman at a comic signing shortly after The Walking Dead launched. It was a nice little shop attached to a dingy little shopping center in Levittown, PA. As much as I loved the comic at that moment in time, I never would have thought that his little black and white comic book, published by a second tier comics company, focusing on the zombie apocalypse would spawn into the cross media sensation it has today. But that is exactly where we are. AMC has brought the adaptation of the comic series to television with astounding success and now Telltale Games brings fans its own vision of the series in the gaming space.

At the first mention of Telltale developing an episodic game based on the series, I was apprehensively optimistic. Telltale after all has a history of developing great adventure games and making The Walking Dead into an adventure game made perfect sense because of how much exploration and character interactions play a part in the series. However, the content of The Walking Dead was so unlike anything they had ever done before that I could not help but worry.

While zombies are the catalyst for the events taking place in the world, The Walking Dead is really about the character interactions and choices that are made by those that are still living. Telltale completely understood what makes the series tick and nails it from the opening moments of the game. Instead of focusing on the zombie outbreak, the beginning of the game is just a simple conversation during a car ride out of Atlanta. The whole thing lulls the player into a false sense of security and because of the underlying premise, players know something bad is going to happen, it is just a matter of when and the tension mounts as the climactic delivery is waited on.

Building and maintaining tension consistently is something The Walking Dead had to do especially well, fortunately with a solid combination of good writing and smartly designed gameplay, it is able to deliver it throughout the episode. The gameplay system The Walking Dead utilizes is a hodgepodge of design elements from other games. The dialog system in particular is very reminiscent of Alpha Protocol’s timed dialog wheel, while the navigation and environmental interaction pieces seem strongly influenced by Heavy Rain, albeit heavily modified.

These design choices give the biggest boon to the game via how Telltale has implemented the action sequences in the game. Forgoing generic third person scenarios that would have lost the feel of the series, action sequences are built around disorienting the player and making them feel uncomfortable. These scenarios generally have an easy solution but ,whether it is through visual manipulation, making it hard to see what needs to be done, or by presenting to the player a choice that needs to be decided immediately, The Walking Dead makes it hard on the player. And doing something or failing to do something can have major repercussions down the line.

Cause and effect are two major players in The Walking Dead and seeing how my choices played out in the game was emotionally draining. Unlike something like Mass Effect where my decisions are recorded and played out over the course of three complete games, to varying degrees of satisfaction, The Walking Dead delivers on player choice. If I neglect to do something it could be the difference between a character living or dying. If I seemingly insult someone that person could very well hold it against me causing me potentially irreparable harm down the line. While it is true that some of the decisions are purely cosmetic because the story has to be directed down a certain path but most of them have weight, making the game quite satisfying to play.

Due to the nature of the content, The Walking Dead will not be for everyone. However for fans of the comic and television series, for fans of the horror genre, and even for those just looking for a mature take on mature content, The Walking Dead is a treat. It is too bad we have to wait a month before episode two.

Pros

  • Decisions matter.
  • Smartly designed gameplay.
  • Excellent story dealing with mature topics.
  • Visual style is eye catching.

Cons

  • We have to wait a month for the next installment.

5 / 5

Note: The Walking Dead is an episodic series, this review was done using the PC version of the first episode of the game. It is also available on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

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PC Review: Hack, Slash, Loot

By
Don Parsons
– April 26, 2012Posted in: PC, Reviews

Meet my favorite example of the genre - ADOM

As a teenager, I spent countless hours exploring dungeons. Whether it was on a quest for gold, to save some fair maiden, or to slay some demonic force, my adventurer days wove wonderful tales that I created. Don’t mind the fact that all of these brave journeys had me slaying “k’s” (kobolds) and “O’s” (orcs) at my keyboard; they are days that I miss regardless of being a lone “@”.

If you are unfamiliar with Rogue-likes, allow me to briefly explain. Around the year 1980, a game called Rogue was developed that started the player on the top floor of a dungeon, with the ultimate goal of getting to the bottom to retrieve an artifact and return with it. The whole game was designed using ASCII characters to represent both the dungeon, the player, and enemies. Rogue is still quite popular to this day and has spawned a seemingly-endless amount of copies (aka, Rogue-likes). A personal favorite of mine due to its amount of depth (Rogue-likes are generally basic in design) is ADOM. Rogue-likes are typically suicidal games, with the hope of getting further and further each time you play, and since the dungeons are randomly generated, they offer great replayability.

Meet David Williamson, developer of PC game Hack, Slash, Loot. David has been developing games for the PC as an independent/hobbyist developer for quite some time. As if reading my mind, he pairs my love with dungeon crawling, Rogue-likes with another love of mine – pixelated graphics. Hack, Slash, Loot (HSL) looks like a Rogue-like from the early-console days, only sharper. Instead of the usual ASCII characters, HSL has very charming characterizations of the heroes and enemies.

Oh, how far we've come..... the charming Hack, Slash, Loot

You’ll get your pick from different characters, each with their own perks and flaws. More characters unlock as you die  and complete games. The problem with this is the game’s difficulty and the starting characters. One would expect the difficulty of the game to come from mastering unlockable characters that, although more difficult to use, reward a higher level of playing skill. Instead, you start with basic versions of atypical classes and unlock better versions. The first character you unlock got me quite a bit further than any of the starting characters did.

Multiple scenarios are available. Each one features different environments and different enemies. One, for example, is littered with coffins that will randomly give you loot or a skeleton that will do some serious damage to you up close. A mini-map will help you on your quest to the next floor;  the brilliant aspect of this little guide is that you can click anywhere on the mini-map that you have already explored and your little adventurer will scampers off across the pixel dungeon to where ever you clicked, which is such a time saver.

Did someone order loot?

Loot is everywhere in HSL. The problem is that so much of it is specific to certain classes that it becomes tedious to even look at it. Who wants to pick up a wand when you are a Barbarian-type close-combat class?

The look of your sprite doesn’t change with the loot, which is understandable, though it would have been an amazing addition. Starting with leather garb and finding plate mail would have made me look as tough as I felt when enemies were doing little-to-no damage to me.

With a lack of character levels, upgrading your gear becomes the progression system in HSL, so it’s a very important factor and will determine how far along you get in your quest.

The brutal difficulty in the game can be off-putting so players that aren’t used to games like this. There’s also really nothing inventive to it to make it a must-play for newcomers and veterans of the genre. That said, for a $10 USD price on Steam, anyone looking to go on some difficult adventures into some dark dungeons can get their moneys worth with David Williamsons little gem, Hack Slash Loot.

Pros:

  • Whimsical graphics
  • Loads of characters to pick between
  • Great pricepoint

Cons:

  • Initial character selection
  • Wasteful loot
  • Difficulty can be steep for people that don’t play these types of games

Score: 3/5

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Review: Ridge Racer Unbounded

By
Don Parsons
– April 15, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Ridge Racer Unbounded is an odd title. The name aside, which makes sense in regards to the story, it’s a racing game that seems like the offspring of Ridge Racer and Burnout. Either way you look at it, Bugbear Entertainment took some brave steps to show that Ridge Racer was more than a high-speed drift around the park.

Taking place in the fictitious Shatter Bay, you join the Unbounded gang as they try to reclaim the city district by district. During the single-player experience, you’ll see a few different game modes that all showcase different parts of the city. Each have different focuses and will test different skill-sets. Domination has you destroying as much as possible and trying to keep the lead. Drift racing is exactly as it sounds, drifting around a track to score as many points as possible. Shindo racing is a funny term for racing in a clean, less destructive manner. Frag attacks have you crashing into a set amount of opponents (aka frags). Last but not least, is time trial racing which pits you against the clock.

The environments you race through will be littered with destructible objects and shortcuts if you are racing a Domination race. Crashes through the building are augmented with a stunning slow-motion camera shift that really highlights the beautiful graphics in Unbounded. Everything from the tracks to the cars all look fantastic, showing that Bugbear took some care to deliver a pretty package.

Car selection is a huge let-down though, to me personally anyhow. I figured the cars would have been fake, as this is a Ridge Racer game. Most cars resemble some sort of real-life car on the market too, but when choosing a color, there’s only a few selections (usually red, black, silver and orange with the occasional blue or yellow).

Thankfully, the physics are solid, albeit a bit awkward in the beginning. On the Playstation 3, the Circle button acts as a stiff e-brake. Unlike other Ridge Racer games, the track layouts feature more sharp corners than swooping curves, so learning to finesse the brake and drift around corners it a little trickier. Rear-wheel drives kick their backside out quicker, while front-wheel drive cars corner a little easier for beginners.

Unlike most arcade racing games were the difficulty slowly slopes upwards, Unbounded is relentless. This can be satisfying for some and frustrating to others. Even on easy, you have to be fairly decent to win the race. Winning on harder difficulties isn’t really required for anything, thankfully, outside of getting more XP to unlock more cars and stuff for the creation mode.

One of the big draws in Unbounded is creating a city. Each city can hold multiple races, each that can be easily tweaked to fit your specifications. You can create them quickly with the simple editor or go in depth and allow your creative juices to flow. After you are done, you can put them online for others to race in.

This is where this whole portion of the game gets messy. I hopped into a lot of created tracks. A few of them were great and offered quite a challenge. But most of them were sloppy and had me furious that I had wasted my time on them. Creating a smash-through shortcut that leads to a wall that you smash into and crumple into a wrecked pile of trash? Really? I’m sure once it is left to the hardcore audience to keep new tracks coming, playing on custom tracks will be a more fun experience.

As a pure-arcade racer, Ride Racer Unbounded can scratch many itches in one title. Bugbear successfully branched the franchise into a new path for future iterations to follow and with more refinement, Unbounded has set a good foundation. While the lack of cars and customization let me down, the beauty and spectacular set-pieces are impressive and with a lack of racers new on the market at the moment, Namco gives racing fans something to tide them over for awhile.

Pros:

  • Beautiful graphics and explosions
  • Fun drifting action
  • Creating tracks

Cons:

  • Tracks created by some are unplayable
  • Car selection is slim, and no real color selection
  • Difficulty could be frustrating to some

Score: 3/5

Note: This review was written based on Playstation 3 gameplay with material provided by the publisher. Ridge Racer Unbounded is also available on the X360 home console and PC.

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Review: Mass Effect 3

By
Tony Odett
– April 15, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Shepard first learned of an incoming invasion of the worst kind in the original Mass Effect. In Mass Effect 2, he was resurrected to battle to save humanity from that same incoming threat.  Finally, Shepard is left to face the great battle of our time, to attempt to stave off the Reapers, a race of sentient machines, from harvesting all sentient organic life. The shadow that loomed over the previous two games finally falls, and the entire galaxy faces chaos and extinction.

Mass Effect 3 is the conclusion to a trilogy, and as such, it sees both the benefit of refined gameplay and the burden of creating an adequate finale to one of the most engaging storylines in gaming history.  It’s an attempt that is largely successful, but also the videogame equivalent of kicking a field goal instead of going for the touchdown. The game largely plays it safe, and while this strategy results in a satisfactory experience, it also causes the game to miss out on the greatness of its predecessors.  The original Mass Effect’s dialogue and incredible story combined with some lackluster design decisions gave it the ultimate flawed masterpiece feel. Mass Effect 2 was able to refine the first game, eliminating the flaws, and provide a continuity of story based on player decisions we’d never before experienced in a game. Mass Effect 3 provides a similar continuity, while becoming even safer in the gameplay department. It seems that in an effort to avoid any gameplay criticism whatsoever, Bioware distilled the game merely to the “choose your own adventure” storyline and the 3rd person shooting mechanics.

Thankfully, they did not distill the hotness of Liara.

Bioware’s spectacular storytelling is center stage in this game, and the weaving of player decisions over the course of the previous two games into this effort gives events a weight they would not otherwise have. The themes of sacrifice for the greater good and perseverance are prevalent here, allowing the developers to tell a tale that is both triumphant and poignantly sad. This game will invoke your emotions, especially in its middle acts. The story starts a little flat, as it spends too much time trying to justify why the course of events are set in the way they are. And (as I attempt to avoid the ending controversy) the finale lacks the explosive emotional nature of the middle of the tale. It seems as if Bioware simply peaked too soon, and had difficultly constructing an ending that matched the powerful middle acts.

I believe I've let him get too close.

The gunplay which makes up the majority of your gameplay time is the best of the series. The weapons all seem to have unique personality and weight. The hotkeys and Kinect controls allow the player to implement their powers on the battlefield more easily than ever before. This improves the flow of the combat- the selection wheel still exist (for both weapons and powers) but skipping them in favor of hotkey selections is easier than ever before. The battles have a frantic pace, but in this effort (more than previous games) Shepard is much easier to control and the shooting is much tighter.

I like explosions.

Being that the combat is so well designed, it seems only fitting that this game would include a cooperative mode. Apparently your progress in cooperative mode affects the single player campaign, but save for an achievement for having a certain level of progress when I began the final battle in the campaign, it was difficult for me to see the relationship between the two.  The mode itself is a Horde-mode style battle of waves of enemies, as your team fights for its survival until extraction.  The battle is changed up as one out of every three rounds gives you a special objective to fill (like assassinating targets, or downloading data from a terminal). The combat is fast and furious, and proves especially tough at the higher difficulty settings. That said, the fact that there’s only one mode removes some of the legs from the co-op. The grab bag nature of the upgrades (you earn cash to buy packs filled with random equipment) is also alternately exhilarating and frustrating. The fact that it took me seven hours of play to get a weapon higher than level one was a strong strike against the mode, and I spent a lot of time wishing there was a way to buy the weapons I needed at a premium price instead of the “buy a pack and pray” method. Without any strong weapons, I was useless to my team at higher difficulty setting, and was stuck farming money at the lower levels until I could rank up in the world. I enjoyed playing the mode, but that frustration stung a bit.

Mass Effect 3 is a solid, if not divinely inspired effort. It is a must play for those who have invested so much into the previous efforts and wish to see the conclusion to Shepard’s story. The shooting is top notch, and the high points of the story telling are more than worth the price of admission. It does fail to meet the universal high quality of ME2 (which was, in my opinion, one of the greatest efforts in gaming history) but all in all, will satisfy all but the most jaded of gamers. Shepard out.

Put my woman down!

Pros:

  • Emotional and weighty story
  • Gunplay at the highest levels
  • Fun co-op

Cons:

  • Beginning and end of narrative fall flat
  • Co-op only includes one mode
  • Lack of gameplay variety of previous games
  • Too safe

4 / 5

Mass Effect 3 was released on Playstation 3, PC, and Xbox 360. This review was conducted with the 360 version of the title, purchased by the reviewer.

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Review: Worms: Ultimate Mayhem

By
Tony Odett
– March 17, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

How to fly... involuntarily.

When I was in high school, I was part of a nerdy board gaming group. The group didn’t play much in the way of video games, except for one notable title: Worms. We passed on Mario Kart and Smash Bros., and went straight for the PC, ninja-roping and bazooka-blasting the environment to smithereens. It was an excellent title, both strategic and easy to pick up and play, and the one-worm-at-a-time created a wonderful, nerve-racking tension.

Worms: Ultimate Mayhem brings the series to the HD Console age, bringing back the gameplay from my youth and matching it with both sharp graphics and three dimensional environments. The resulting effort is a game which brings back strategy worm-bashing in a new and fun format.  The worm has turned to 3D, and the results are a very solid strategy game in a console market where very few are to be found.

I don't wanna say it was a worm on the grassy knoll, but...

Worms plays just as you remember. Teams of worms cycle through, going one worm at a time, moving about the level and positioning themselves to unleash hell. You turn ends when you finally launch your attack (or if time runs out before you do so). Worms are armed (and yes, your worms have arms… at least when they need them) with a wide variety of offensive weaponry, from the classic baseball bat to more modern items like airstrikes and auto-firing turrets. The goal- to reduce the health of your opponent’s worms to zero. You can do this with your multitudes or weapons, or simply by finding a way to knock your foe into the water at the bottom of every level.

The game provides several single player options, but these are the game’s biggest sin. The AI is inept, positioning its worms poorly, making bad weapon choices, and generally doing a poor job of going for kill shots. There are some unfortunate cutscenes as well. The single player serves as good aiming practice, and really has no legitimate gaming function.

Thankfully, the multiplayer will worm its way into your heart. The game boast both local and online matches of various kinds. I prefer local (much better to taunt your helpless wormy victims in person) but the online is fun as well, and includes match making and ranked play. I found my worms getting killed like, well, worms in the ranked multiplayer, as highly skilled opponents really showed me what my crawly little buddies were capable of. Players darted in and out of the 3-D environs, using cover and skill to blast me into submission.  With further experience, I too became a ninja of 3D wormanity. The game, when you’re launching an attack, allows you a first-person (first-worm?) view, making aiming a snap. Past 3D Worms games have had issues with the camera, but my experience here was very positive. I had complete control, and it never seemed to get stuck in the environment. If there were holes, however, my worms could drop into positions where I couldn’t see them, which was a slight annoyance.

And I fly through the air with the greatest of ease...

Worms: Ultimate Mayhem is everything you’d expect from Worms game. There is drama, intrigue, cute little worms with funny voices and armed to the teeth, and airstrikes reigning down death from above. The weapons are a lot of fun (though, turrets are staggeringly overpowered) and the aesthetics are quite engaging. The unfortunate single player campaign is the one bruise on an otherwise amazingly wormy experience.

Pros:

  • Awesome Multiplayer with matchmaking
  • Design your own team of worms (pirates are best- just saying)
  • Great camera with few issues in 3D plane

Cons:

  • Single player is a glaring weakness
  • Some of the weapons are game-breakingly good

4 / 5

Hello out there... I'm a peeping worm.

WWorms: Ultimate Mayhem is available on PS3, PC and Xbox 360. This review was done on a PS3 version.

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Review: Syndicate

By
Chris Scott
– March 7, 2012Posted in: PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Note: This review was done using the Xbox 360 version of the game. It is also available on Playstation 3 and PC.

First person shooters are a dime a dozen. The market is overloaded with them and to stand out from the crowd, a new game needs to do something different. But how do you do something different in a generation where nearly everything has already been done with the genre? Well, if you are Electronic Arts, you enlist the developing talent of Starbreeze Studios (makers of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness), asking them to revitalize a long dormant franchise based on a strategy game. Yes, this Syndicate is based on the world crafted by the early 90s strategy game of the same name, however make no mistake, this Syndicate is an action packed shooter, no more and no less.

Syndicate takes place in a near future where the world as we know it has collapsed. Massive corporations have taken over for national governments and allegiance to these corporations is enforced via specialized neurochips. At the center of Syndicate’s story are two of these corporations, EUROCORP and Cayman Global. Corporate espionage runs rampant as each strives to gain the upper hand on the other and dominate the world. The game puts players in the role of Miles Kilo, an agent working for EUROCORP.

Agents are equipped with the specialized adrenaline chips to hack into anything in the environment that has been chipped, including people. This affords Kilo the ability to manipulate his enemies or their weapons. While the base gameplay of Syndicate is comparable to other shooters, it is this special ability to interact with enemies that shapes the game into something unique.

The three primary breaching skills Kilo can utilize are Suicide, Backfire and Persuade. Suicide and Persuade are hacks performed on enemy chips, with suicide obviously forcing the targeted enemy to kill themselves and persuade convincing them to fight alongside Kilo. Backfire, on the other hand, breaches an enemy weapon forcing it to explode in their face, potentially killing them but more likely acting as a stunning blow allowing for a quick follow up attack. These skills cannot be used indiscriminately though as each skill draws energy from Kilo’s body which needs to be replenished before a skill can be reused, which is done by killing other enemies in mass quantities.

Sadly for a game based on a strategy franchise, there is very little strategy involved in the combat scenarios. Learning when and where to utilize Kilo’s breaching abilities is the closest the game comes to any sort of strategic tactics but even then most encounters can be successfully completed by staying in cover to take on groups of enemies, without the aid of breaching. Fortunately, the core gunplay is mechanically sound, if not particularly fun, and generally the scenarios are staged in interesting environments that really helped to draw me in, even if the actual encounter design leaves a bit to be desired.

Leaving even more to be desired are the “boss” encounters, which pit Kilo against rival agents. While the same general tactics work in these encounters, these battles are tediously long and take place against enemies that are way more powerful than Kilo. It is one thing to make encounters challenging, it is another completely to make them frustrating and Starbreeze sadly crosses that line. The last game that had boss battles that annoyed me as much as these did was in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Luckily for players, the narrative and setting mostly make up for the mediocre to poor design and implementation. The story takes a while to get going, spending a good chunk of the early game laying the groundwork of Kilo and his role with EUROCORP, however, once it gets moving it is a roller coaster ride straight on through to the end. And the twist the game presents in the latter half delivers a real sense of feeling that made me begin to care about Kilo and his plight of indentured servitude to EUROCORP.

Syndicate’s campaign offers a solid six to eight hours of play time, which feels just right for this game, getting out just before its welcome expires. But unlike most shooters released now, Syndicate has absolutely no competitive multiplayer to keep people playing; instead they are banking on their robust cooperative multiplayer suite to retain their players. Surprisingly, it actually works quite well by delivering a better overall gameplay experience than the single player campaign.

The co-op experience is designed around a four-man team of agents performing unique and varied missions. Each of these missions is designed in such a way as to require teamwork and varying tactics, offering more strategic gameplay opportunities than anything seen in the campaign. I found great success following my team and working as a medic in a support class. All of this comes complete with a persistent leveling system.

Syndicate succeeds in offering a unique take on the first person shooter genre. Its setting and narrative is captivating and the cooperative multiplayer is a smart twist on the standard multiplayer mode. However, the lack of tactical combat in the single player, mediocre shooting throughout, and the uncertainty of the multiplayer sustaining itself for very long time make Syndicate somewhat difficult to recommend wholeheartedly.

Pros

  • Captivating setting and narrative
  • Smart cooperative take on multiplayer

Cons

  • Shooting is mediocre at best
  • Tactical combat is virtually non-existent in the single player campaign
  • Boss fights are unfun and tediously long

3 / 5

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PC Game Review: King Arthur 2

By
Tony Odett
– March 6, 2012Posted in: PC, Reviews

ZAP!

I have a confession. Ever since the first Medieval: Total War came out, I’ve used an identical strategy in every field battle in every game in the series.  Without going into too much detail, it involves keep my army in a very closed formation, while the enemy always seemed to be spread out. I would use my local superiority to smash the forces closest to me, and the resulting wave of demoralization would make it easy to defeat my enemy in detail. Think Alexander at Gaugamala (Wikipedia it… I’ll wait).

The first time in King Arthur 2 (KA2) I bunched my army up like that in a boss battle, half of it was annihilated in about 2 seconds. This, I mused, is going to take some thought.   Someone has taken one of my favorite genres and turned it on its head. What do I do now?

Getting the plague is a solution

Quickly, I found that this was a game where your armies (especially in the end game) were more of a supplement to your heroes than the main event. Your task in King Arthur 2 is to level those heroes up by completing quests. The strength of your actual army, while important, was secondary to the effort your heroes would have on the war effort. Through their special abilities and combat skills, the hero units are the stars of the battlefield, leaving piles of enemies in their wake. While there is an experience system for your regular troops, leveling up your heroes, gaining more and stronger powers in the process, is much more important. This is a game about heroes knocking the walls down. Tactics involving your armies are secondary to those involving your heroes, creating an entirely new twist on the strategy RTS elements. Battles hinge on the fate of your hero units, and swirl around them.

Being a role-playing wargame, the strategic level is less about building up massive armies and taking the war to your neighbors and more about taking your 3 armies (yes, you’ll only get three at most) and completing the quests you’re confronted with.  While it is refreshing to have clearer goals than “conquer the weakest neighbor,” I have to admit that it was slightly bothersome to be forced to ignore foes sitting just over the border because I wasn’t allowed to attack them. My territory, as it grew, also felt quite barren with so few armies. I’m conditioned to think of bigger and more as better, I suppose.

Mountains!

KA2 is, if nothing else, one of the most graphics intensive strategy games I have ever played. The level of detail on the battlefield is mind blowing.  Field objectives stick out, beautifully painted onto lush terrain.  Even the overmap is gorgeous.  If visuals are your thing, you can do far, far worse than KA2.

While I do really enjoy what King Arthur 2 has to offer, it’s difficult for me to give it a whole hearted recommendation.  While the quest system is refreshing, it feels too constricting (moreso than its predecessor). Still, the battles are fantastically fun, the powers of the heroes amazing both to use and to watch, and the game a beauty to look at.  If you are a strategy gamer, King Arthur 2 is a must play effort.

Pros

  • Great twist on RTS genre
  • Eye-popper
  • Fun abilities for heroes

Cons

  • Constricting quest system
  • Want more armies

4 / 5

Helloooooooooo statue.

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