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PS3 Review: Starhawk

By
Kyle Baron
– May 18, 2012Posted in: PS3, Reviews

Creating your own bases and changing the combat landscape is a great idea

My experience with Starhawk began with an intoxicating jet-bike ride through the space cowboy desert wasteland of a fringe world and ended with me hanging out in an online lobby and sharing complaints with Don Parsons, our head of PR.

The brilliant Firefly-esque slide guitar melody of that bike ride hit the pleasure centres of my brain alongside the garbled whine of the engine. Moments later, I lept off the bike and sent a bunker crashing down from orbit to fend off mutated humans. The next level of Starhawk’s single player had me piloting the walking robot-mech form of a Hawk, the game’s fighter jet, before a press of a button had me transforming into jet fighter mode and blasting off into an aerial space dogfight. The entire single player campaign was just as well put together and was full of these moments where everything felt right, despite the tame and predictable brother vs. evil brother plot. Unfortunately, the rest of the game falls apart.

Starhawk is developer Lightbox’s next step in the land and air multiplayer third person shooter concept that began as Warhawk, a game developed by several Lightbox employees back when they were a part of developer Incognito.

The intuitive flight controls make the most complex dogfights exhilarating and approachable

Don’t worry if that obligatory history lesson doesn’t sound familiar to you, as the single player component of Starhawk brings you up to speed well before the end of its conclusion. You’ll be introduced to the shooting right before you’re thrown into several situations where you have to use in game currency, called rift energy, to call down buildings from space and watch as they construct real-time in a matter of seconds. This leads to countless situations where you have to defend a point from an increasingly varied mix of infantry, ground vehicles, and fighter aircraft. By the end of the game, you’ll be manning the parapets of turret toting walls to gun down infantry right before you salvage them in a button’s press to jump into the seat of anti air turrets after they burn through the atmosphere – it’s an experience more exhilarating than many I’ve had and it makes for a crushing tragedy that this formula collapses in the realities of online multiplayer.

In the over 14 hours of time that I spent playing Starhawk online, the game modes of team deathmatch, capture the flag, and zones (a variation of capture-and-hold gametypes) devolved into some of the most unenjoyable multiplayer I’ve played in years. This is because of players exploiting the build and battle system as well as the incredible power of tanks and hawks. At the beginning of these game types, several players usually stay behind in the home base gathering rift energy automatically while their teammates run out and skirmish with those of a similar mind on the other side of the conflict. Within minutes, the players that stay behind gain access to the structures that construct hawks and tanks. Because players spawning into the game immediately have enough money to create a tank at one of these buildings, this leads to one side having an incredibly large swell of powerful vehicles and quickly overpowering the opposing side. Well before the end of the match, one side inevitably ends up bombing, shelling, and obliterating the other force’s last remaining area.

Spawn camping never ends up being this fun for either side

It’s almost impossible to combat this behaviour, too, as the defensive structures necessary to do so have a prohibitively high cost and even the readily available rocket launchers do little against vehicles that can kill several infantry players with a single shot.

In all of my time with the above modes of Starhawk’s online play, I only partook in a match that wasn’t a landslide loss or victory once, when a stale mate ended in several well fought skirmishes and changed the course of the match. Sure, it was still due to the overwhelming force of tanks and turrets occupying the one contested and vital area only accessible by air, but it was something.

The most fun to be had with Starhawk is arguably with the online deathmatch mode, which puts all players in hawk jet fighters and throws them into a massive dogfight. Even when you spawn into one of these games after connecting, you can already see spiralling contrails of exhaust behind countless players as they swirl around each other in banks and swooping loops to avoid laser and gunfire. It’s not all that hard to learn, either, as missiles are easily avoidable by holding the X button and using the thumbstick to swoop away in a lilting barrel roll or loop-de-loop. Adding to the depth is the ability brought over from Warhawk to drift, similiar to a car in a street race, in mid-air.

The brilliant air combat and the conceptual appeal of calling down structures from orbit all seem like they’d go incredibly well together, and the talent behind Warhawk’s development has such promise. It makes it one of my biggest disappointments of recent years, then, to say that Starhawk isn’t recommendable on anything other than the merits of its online dogfighting and single player components.

“I hope they patch it,” was said by many of the players I met online, even the ones who were winning. The hope for a patch is mirrored by my own thoughts, but it’s hardly something to recommend a game on.

Anyone looking for a good land and air third person shooter should stick to the still thriving Warhawk game, while anyone looking for the build and battle concept done right should stick to Section 8: Prejudice (don’t look at me like that, really, it’s good).

Pros:

  • Fantastic soundtrack
  • Intoxicating space cowboy atmosphere
  • Solid framerate and good online connectivity
  • The best arcade flight gameplay in years makes online dogfights in Death Match mode fantastic arenas for fun and skill
  • Fantastic visuals, sound effects, and animations
  • Good single player campaign
  • “Build and battle” system is a lot of fun…

Cons:

  • …but it makes for some of the most exploitable, unbalanced, and unenjoyable online multiplayer I’ve played
  • Co-op has an unrealistically steep difficulty curve
  • Party system is confusing and rarely works
  • Online split-screen often results in disconnects
  • Many elements, such as loadouts, medals, and online character progression, are left unexplained

2/5

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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: Silent Hill HD Collection

By
Chris Scott
– May 10, 2012Posted in: PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Horror comes in a variety of flavors and while Resident Evil ruled the game scene with its campy B-movie approach, there was always room for something more serious. That is where Silent Hill came along. Until the original Silent Hill, on the original Playstation, I had never been scared by a game before. Silent Hill rectified that through effective use of their unique sound and visual design paired with mature subject matter, generally not found in games. Needless to say, Silent Hill was a smash success for publisher Konami and the series continued in sequels on the Playstation 2.

Konami, seeing the success other games have had with HD re-releases, has brought fans of the series, and potential newcomers, Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 in one package called Silent Hill HD Collection. Notably missing from this HD collection is Silent Hill 4: The Room. While The Room was less well received by both critics and fans, its exclusion from this collection diminishes the value of the package somewhat. That said, there are plenty of other things that diminish this package, that the exclusion of a mediocre title is the least of its worries. Developed by Hijinx Studios in conjunction with Team Silent, the Silent Hill HD Collection is a mixed bag of excellence marred by technical flaws and poor design choices.

While many games do a great job of putting their best foot forward, hiding their inherent flaws until one is too invested in the goings on to turn back, this HD Collection slaps users in the face on the main menu screen. Actually that is being a bit harsh; it waits to slap users until after they choose whether they want to play Silent Hill 2 or Silent Hill 3. Accidentally choosing the wrong game will require players to exit the game fully and reboot from the dashboard as there is no menu option to return to the game’s root menu. Some might be willing to overlook this issue but when grouped with the rest of the game’s technical issues and wonky design decisions, the menu issue is just the first check mark on a shoddy production job.

My personal experience got even worse. Using a wired third party controller that I have used to play other games before and after playing the Silent Hill HD Collection, the game was near unplayable. Character movement was jerky and unresponsive in both Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, to the point that I actually felt the collection was completely broken. On a whim, I decided to try a Dualshock 3 and magically a lot of the unresponsiveness disappeared, albeit not all. Characters still controlled somewhat wonky until I switched the in game control toggle from 3D to 2D, or standard tank controls.

While things became playable after the switch from 3D to 2D control, the games themselves suffer from incredible amounts of slowdown. The frame rate fluctuates constantly, often with no rhyme or reason to it. This slowdown creates atrocious drops in playability, especially if it happens during an action sequence. There is absolutely no excuse for these drops in performance.

There is also no excuse for how little improvement has been made to the visuals. This is supposed to be a high definition collection but the textures only look fractionally better than their last generation counterparts and much of the visuals in the two games look muddy. The muddy visuals could actually be overlooked, and might have been overlooked, if Hijinx had not upped the brightness level of the game. With the added light, the visuals, in some cases, actually look worse than when the games were originally released.

I do not want to sound completely negative after all Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 are two of the best horror games to come out and this HD Collection does pose the opportunity for players to experience them both, that is providing one can look past the bugs and outright poor design choices. Both games are fantastic in terms of writing, puzzles and scares. Silent Hill 2 in particular deals with some extremely mature subject matter that most games today would not even dream of touching.

Silent Hill 2 anchors itself on the theme of loss as protagonist James Sunderland sets about exploring the mysterious town in search of his dead wife. Instead of overloading the player with jump scares, cheap scare tactics and tons of enemies, Silent Hill 2 works a more psychological angle utilizing smartly designed levels and effective use of sound. Sure there are still enemies to defeat but figuring out the mysteries of the town and James relationship with his wife are the most interesting and terrifying aspects of the game.

Where Silent Hill 2 deals with loss, Silent Hill 3 deals with revelations. Heather, the protagonist of Silent Hill 3, is the adopted daughter of the original game’s hero, Harry Mason, and the game sets out to reveal the secrets behind the mysterious town. As a fan of the original game, Silent Hill 3 is a great piece of fan service that continues the fine tradition set forth by its predecessors. It may not be as deep in its messaging as Silent Hill 2 but it holds a unique charm. However, the appeal of the game may be less to people that have not played the original game, still it lays a smart, cohesive horror story out that few games have matched since.

Neither game would be nearly as effective as they are without the stellar sound design. Hijinx mostly gets this transfer correct. For whatever reason, new voice acting was recorded and it leaves a bit to be desired but nearly everything else is spot on, from the soundtrack to the ambient noises that accentuate the terrifying atmosphere. I say nearly everything else because gunshots in the games sound muffled and less crisp than I remember them being. That said, regardless of if my memory is correct or not, gunshots sound flat and lack power which is extremely noticeable compared to the rest of the sound design. Still the sound design in these two games is excellent and shines amongst everything else in the package.

HD Collections should be celebrations of classics, providing fans the experience they remember while presenting newcomers with the evidence to support the acclaim these games received. The Silent Hill HD Collection fails to do this and as such it fails to be something that can be recommended.

Pros

  • Excellent sound design
  • Fantastic writing
  • Smart puzzles
  • Genuine scares

Cons

  • Subpar HD conversion
  • Brighter environments accentuate muddy visuals
  • Buggy and unresponsive controls
  • Unwarranted slowdown causing performance issues

2 / 5

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

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PS3 Review: Skullgirls

By
Khristopher Reardon
– May 4, 2012Posted in: PS3, Reviews

I went in head first for Skullgirls. When I started playing it I decided to go as deep as I could, opting to buy a fighting pad, downloading a document with all the characters and movesets, training and writing down combos I discover as a kind of ‘cheat sheet’, I even went so far as to watch people play online to see if I could pick up a few things.

To be honest, I haven’t played a lot of fighting games as of late. But Skullgirls appealed to me, probably because the hyper comic stylized and sexy girls who’s styles straddled the line of gothic and horror lunacy reminded me a lot of the classic Darkstalkers Capcom video games of old. For those not in the know, Darkstalkers is where the iconic succubus Morrigan and cute little cat lady Felicia come from, two characters that have made a come back in the Marvel vs Capcom style fighting games.

To be honest, because of my unfamiliarity with a lot of the newer style fighting franchises, I was preparing myself to be punished mercilessly by this game and I wasn’t disappointed.

Skullgirls has to be one of the most beautiful, fluid and absolutely frustrating fighting games I’ve ever played. It’s visuals pop with an undeniable flourish on the screen and as gorgeous as it all looks, it’ll deliver you your ass, priority mail, Cash On Delivery.

The first thing people will probably notice when booting up the game the first time is the small roster, as compared to the legions of characters which seem to be on offer in other fighting games these days. Eight choose-able characters seems like a really small selection, for example Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 has a starting roster of 48 characters, last year’s Mortal Kombat had 27 characters and even the lesser known BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extended has about 24 characters. However, Reverge Labs says there will be downloadable characters coming about soon enough.

So at first glance the roster of Skullgirls is going to feel skimpy, however, it’s worth noting that every character has a very distinct style of play. Whereas in some other games characters can feel somewhat interchangeable, every Skullgirl feels like she was crafted for a very specific reason.

Cerebella with her huge biceped hat is a beat stick with more muscle than mobility, Peacock can spam the heck out of projectiles and keep an opponent at a distance. The game is working on an economy of characters that are built to the very rigid molds they were designed for, it means a lot more thought as to the kind of characters you will want to utilize and how.

The cool thing about this kind of specialization of characters is the game allows you to go for the tag moding of a lot of other games right now or to keep it to a single character. The developers balanced this out by making it so that at the three character cap you’ll be weaker and take more damage than usual but will have more tag attacking options. On the other end, if you choose a single character you’ll be very powerful and have a lot of endurance but have no tagging options, this allows players to spring for a singular specialty while learning the ins and outs of a character or to mix it up with two or three characters in any given match.

There’s a nice tutorial included in the game to allow players to become familiar with everything from hit confirmation, canceling to just learning to set up ground to air combos and push blocking. This was really helpful to me as a bit of a novice because it taught me the techniques I would have to learn in order to really play the game. There’s also a training mode, like the ones in other games except for it has a lot of advanced options for the skilled fighting game player like hit-box mode, which allows a player to see the hit boxes of himself and the opponent in play.

So after picking up my fighting pad, working all the way through the tutorials and spending time in the training room, I thought I was good to go. I boot up my first game on Normal and get beaten easily by the AI in my first match. I did this several times and failed to beat my first opponent, so I exited and started again this time on Easy, same result. Then again, this time in Sleepwalk (thank goodness five difficulty settings) and I finally got somewhere, I still struggled a bit but I was pulling myself up slowly.

This game is certainly not easy. It’s a steep climb for a newb like me and despite feeling like I’d learned a lot through the tutorial mode, finishing it was difficult. At first I was gripping the controller with the muscle tension I’d imagine a viking used to grip a battleaxe in the throes of war. This game is anti-button mash, it’s very much about the way you approach, your ability to block in a split second when needed and how to follow your hits with intricate combos. When I eventually loosened up and started picking up more combos and blocks, I started taking to the game a lot better. But the first few days were filled with game over screens that I can still see etched into the backs of my eyelids when I sleep.

The controller layout in Skullgirls has three strengths of kicks and punches with two buttons that you can assign multi-button presses to. It’s much more complex than UMvC3, which is streamlining fighting games with three attacking buttons, two tags and a ‘special’ button for launching.

With tag attack you can customize the kind of attack you want the tagged character to do when they get in. This allows you to perform a nearly limitless amount of tag attacks from special moves to simple forward + strong punches.

Also, to pause the game you have to hold down the Start button for a few seconds. This feature is meant for people who like to take their fighting skills on the tournament circuit because if you accidentally pause the game in a tournament you are automatically disqualified.

Games online feel lagless, largely due to the GGPO netcode. I let people pound the tar out of me for a couple of hours and only noticed any lag for about three seconds.

This is a game that has been designed for core fighting game enthusiasts. Everything about this game really feels like it requires you to dig down to it’s core to really understand what’s going on on screen beyond the flashy characters and bouncy visuals. I have fun playing this game until I start turning up the difficulty, at that point I feel like a kid left at the controls of a nuclear reactor, all these shiny buttons and levers but I am completely out of my depth and I know nothing good can come of this.

It’s a steep climb and I’m certainly up for the challenge but I don’t know how many other people would be in my shoes. If you can come to this game with a little bit of humility and meet it at the table on it’s terms, the depth of the gameplay and the precision design will keep you wrapped up in it for a very long time. But if you’re the kind of person who idles near the fighting games watching others play because you’re afraid of embarrassing yourself in front of them, this might be one to steer clear of.

Pros

  • Gorgeous artwork and character design
  • GGPO netcode makes online fights seem lagless
  • A lot of design choices were made to make this game tournament fighter friendly

Cons

  • Small roster may disappoint some
  • Difficulty and depth of gameplay will be overwhelming for new players
  • Doesn’t have the online community other fighting games have yet

4/5

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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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Review: I Am Alive

By
Don Parsons
– April 19, 2012Posted in: PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

You’ll be hard pressed to find a survival game without some sort of supernatural gimmick playing into it such as zombies or ghosts. Ubisoft Shanghai knocks that stigma away with its latest digital release, I Am Alive. Instead of surviving horrible creatures with limited supplies, you are tasked with surviving the elements and the harsh survivors within it.

You play the part of Adam, a man who has traveled across the country in hopes of finding his wife and daughter. The world has been devastated by “The Event,” something the game never touches on, but traversing the fictional city of Haventon leads one to believe it was unapologetically brutal. While the overlying story is you trying to find your wife, you eventually meet up with a few friendly characters that you help out through the duration of the game. I won’t spoil anything, as that is the joy of such a game, but I found the story arch to play second fiddle to the gameplay; though the end sequence was quite a surprise and ended the game with a thoughtful moment of “what just happened”.

The strength in I Am Alive is the platforming. This is the selling point, in my opinion, and anyone who enjoys platformers should take interest. Stamina sets I Am Alive apart from every other platforming game I have played, and it’s so well done that anytime I got to a combat situation I grumbled because I wanted to scale more buildings. Some of the jumps and climbs Adam performs are a little unbelievable, but the stamina bar is the key element in creating tension.

As you climb around the environments, your stamina bar slowly drains and once you hit your limit you begin permanently stunting your stamina. You’ll find items to replenish the damaged stamina bar but these items are rare in the beginning of the game. The situations are so well placed and designed that, as you are making your way up to that open window, you really don’t know if you are going to make it into the window (climbing up to a standing position replenishes your stamina, though, if you lost of the bar itself, you’ll need an item to correct it) or if you’ll have to exert extra energy.

The environments themselves are a little wasteful, though. You can spend an hour of your five hour playthrough roaming around looking for hidden items only to come up empty handed. That’s not to say roaming won’t get you anything, as there are some people that need help scattered across Haventon. But the majority of the time I spent checking around corners and what-nots, I was left disappointed. I kept expecting little notes to fill in the details on what exactly “The Event” was, but nothing ever came up. That said, the areas you will roam around all look fantastic. The character models may look dated, but the environments look great.

Combat is handled in an interesting way, and even though I didn’t particularly care for it, it was because I enjoyed the platforming so much that combat just felt unnecessary. Most of the survivors of “The Event” are territorial, so the moment you walk into view, they will start to approach you. Thankfully, each situation is different, so you may get approached by one person with a gun and two with a machete, or vice-versa. The combinations make you think, because you can quick-kill one of them and then have the option to scare the others off by aiming a gun at them or outright shooting them. Bullets are in short-supply, so you really have to think about each situation carefully. It’s a genuine system, I will say that. After you have played through it once, you can go back through on a harder difficulty and try your hand at surviving the harshness with even more limited supplies.

My biggest complaint is the checkpoint/save system. Being an autosave-only game, you have to rely on the game saving at certain intervals. I didn’t actually know this in the beginning, and thought maybe a checkpoint would have been a good stopping point during one play session. When I booted it back up, I have lost 15 minutes of playtime and had to redo a few things I had already had a problem getting through. It’s not really the games fault, more-so the system the developers chose to work with. Much like quick-time events, I will state this is a personal preference thing, and I can’t stand these systems in games.

I Am Alive is a tense survival game. It stacks the cards differently and plays a great hand despite the few shortcomings. If you are looking for something with a gripping story that will keep you playing to see what happens, though, I Am Alive may wind up disappointing you. If you can get past the last-gen character models, and get into what the game is going for, you will find enjoyment and won’t regret your purchase.

Pros:

  • Very tense, edge-of-your seat gameplay
  • Unique combat system that makes you think
  • The platforming is top-notch

Cons:

  • No explaination what “The Event” is
  • Sub-par story-telling
  • Save system

Score: 3/5

Note: This game was played on the Playstation 3 console with a code provided by the publisher. It is also available on the X360 console.

 

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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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PSN Review: Wheels of Destruction

By
Christopher Coke
– April 12, 2012Posted in: PS3, Reviews

Wheels of Destruction, Developer Gelid Games’s foray into the world of Playstation Network exclusivity, is a car combat game with all the intensity of Twisted Metal at a fraction of the price. It looks good, and its five different car-types give you enough diversity for some serious re-playability.  At least, that’s what should happen. During my time with the game, I ran into a number of issues that hold what would otherwise be a fun bargain-bin romp securely in the land of repetitiveness. All the worse is that the game’s potential peeks through annoyingly often, highlighting a number of near-miss design decisions. It pains me to write this because those peeks of potential could be realized if Gelid opts for regular support.

Visually the game looks good if not impressive. For being a PSN exclusive, it compares to disc-based titles well. Environments are highly textured and the backdrops look nice; however, I found them to be very similar and not too reminiscent of the real world locations Gelid sought to emulate. Car models are also well done and have a distinctive style visible from a distance. There is a damage model in the game which allows for tires to be blown off and fire, sparks, and smoke to spew, but your final death always takes the form of a small and bland explosion.

The included audio is generic but fits the theme of the game. Gunshots sound like gunshots, and missile-explosions sound like missile-explosions. It didn’t blow me away but it also didn’t stand out in any noticeable form.

From the outside, the game seems to play very similarly to other car combat games. Getting behind the wheel is another situation entirely.  Instead of using the left stick to control the vehicle and the right for the weapon reticle, Gelid opted to consolidate gun- and car-control solely to the left stick. Want to shoot a guy to the right? Turn to the right. The vertical axis is less important since most playable areas are level; however, you are freely able to aim up and down. Unfortunately, shooting at someone in the air is often a lost cause unless you’re using the missile power-up which has a lock-on function. For this sole reason, the missile is the defacto long range weapon.

Most reviewers criticize this control scheme, but I found that it grew on me the longer I used it, similar to learning an FPS for the first time. Each vehicle has the ability to boost, drift, jump, and do a 360 degree turn in mid-air. The physics powering the game allow you a great deal of control once you assimilate them. Until that happens, though, be prepared to feel awkward and to die frequently. This is a skill wall and one of the ways the wheat will be separated from the chaff.

Both online and offline play are available, but offline is more of a training tool than an experience. It’s fully functional, but lacks a narrative and challenging AI to make it worthwhile for the long-term. It is easy, if a bit buggy – for example, if you capture a flag, your enemies will get harder, real quick. Still, the mode allows you to learn the controls in a competitive setting without being subjected to completely helpless deaths.

In short, offline-mode acts as your training wheels before getting into the real game. Online play, when it works, is a lot of fun. It is readily apparent who is new, however, so be prepared for a learning curve. Matches last twenty minutes and maps are large. When you master the controls, you’ll find yourself racing around those maps, picking up power-ups, and blasting away. The driving model is fun. Once you get comfortable with it the simple act of driving and rocketing over ramps is exhilarating.

So why did I introduce this review with such caveats? First, throughout my week and a half with the game, I found it extremely difficult to get a match with full, 6v6 teams. More often than not, we were unevenly matched with less than 10 people total. Maps are simply far too large for such small match-ups, and in fact the game would be better suited to an 8v8 or 10v10 setting. Unfilled matches are game-breaking with maps this large and matches so long. The most often outcome was for players to congregate in open areas and remain there. Wheels of Destruction does not work as a small arena game and these types of behaviors make dropping games the most appealing option. Thankfully, this criticism is one that will likely fix itself as more players pick up the game.

The second issue is a more core to the central design.  There is simply not enough variety to make Wheels of Destruction a long-term stay. Once you’ve played a map a handful of times, the designs begin to feel repetitive. The lack of real character progression means that you’ll enter with everything you’ll end with. Five cars. Cliché yet functional power-ups. All of this is fun for a while, and especially so if you get a good match, but the games lacks a certain flair to keep you coming back for more.

Wheels of Destruction isn’t a bad game. No one ever said that games needed to be 100% original, and I see real value in creating affordable takes on AAA franchises.  Gelid Games should be commended for that. At a fraction of the development budget and a $10 buy-in price, I think we can be forgiving of some generic audio samples or in-progress match making. All of that said, there is still work to be done if Gelid hopes to bring this game to its full potential.

It may take some time, but when everything clicks – when you’re in control, when maps are played well, when opponents are skilled and competitive – Wheels of Destructions hits the high notes of the car combat genre. At the moment, however, those times are too infrequent and too late-in-coming. Buy it to support these types of games coming to PSN; buy it to show Gelid that it’s worth supporting. But if you’re looking for an instant-in, something as polished as that $60 Eat, Sleep, Play game, you may be better off looking elsewhere.

2 / 5

Note: This review is based on gameplay on the Playstation 3 console with material provided by the publisher.

 

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