My familiarity with High Moon Studios is only through my unpleasant collision with the demo for their previous effort, The Bourne Conspiracy. With that product failing to resonate with me in any way despite my almost physical yearning for a Bourne game (later satisfied by Splinter Cell: Conviction), the discovery that these were the minds behind War for Cybertron was somewhat ominous.
It was encouraging to hear them speak on that game; it filled me with confidence and finally made the reality of the product that much more bitter. If you’ve followed the material released for War for Cybertron, then you may have experienced a similar swell of confidence: they speak as fans, and as you fire up the disc (or immaterial Steam delivery, as the case may be) there is no doubt as to their honesty. To my infinite relief, this release has been calibrated with great care for the Transformers follower, much in the way Arkham Asylum was a love letter to Batman adherents. While War for Cybertron does not quite reach the heights of the latter effort, it represents the game Transfans have long deserved.
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With Alpha Protocol, Obsidian Entertainment has opted to take a break from their usual routine of producing sequels to established high-profile franchises in the hopes of establishing a lucrative IP all their own. Despite drawing quick comparisons to Bioware’s Mass Effect, Alpha Protocol is clearly it’s own game, though this is as often to its detriment as it is to its credit.
You control Michael Thorton, agent of the eponymous Alpha Protocol, who quickly becomes embroiled in an international mystery that’s equal parts deep and deeply confusing. You’ll be required to employ stealth and brute force to complete your missions, while, more uniquely, using your wit to navigate the conspiracy in which you’re entwined. The game offers a number of intriguing innovations designed to immerse players in the espionage experience, and many of these are admirable attempts—but a critical lack of development and numerous design flaws leave the experience awkward and unsatisfying.
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Whether you’re a fan from Lost Planet: Extreme Condition or a new player drawn in by videos of clashing mechs and monsters, response to Lost Planet 2 probably has left you hesitant to render any sort of purchasing decision. I am here to offer you some relief: I can tell you that the calculation can be refined to one variable. That is, precisely how much suffering are you prepared to endure for tremendous action?
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Racing around the track while a helicopter launches waves of missiles, which toss the car into a constant series of emergency drifts, I finally put a name to what Split/Second had first reminded me of when I’d tried an earlier build last year.
The arcade flavor of the game – that’s the part requiring players to dodge a near endless chain of explosions while trying to stick to the track – took me back to the first time I played the 2001 revamp of Spy Hunter – a game where the mission action often played second fiddle to controls that made whipping around levels more enjoyable than using the spy toys strapped to the frame.
The Michael Bay minded challenge modes are merely extras that Split/Second adds to break up the pacing of its televised Death Race sans the skulls and inmate motif. Every stage within the game feeds on the central premise of a track wired to explode at every turn like a starving man, and what this creates is a game where even something as simple as a time trial engages the player with a racing experience where survival is a victory in itself.
Mind you, crossing the finish line is still high on the to-do list.
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It’s difficult to say whether the release of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is a response to middling reaction to 2008’s Prince of Persia, or to the imminent release of the film—the truth probably exists somewhere in between. The 2008 series entry was a confused affair; more fun to watch than it was to play, the game featured a unique art style, an intriguing universe and a couple of fun characters, but little actual game. Playing like one massive, unfolding quicktime event , little challenge was offered except to those rabid completionists looking to reach every dubiously placed orb.
The Forgotten Sands fixes many of its predecessor’s mistakes, though I wonder if it was by conscious decision, or merely adherence to the conventions of the previous Sands of Time trilogy. Fans of that trilogy will find the game extremely familiar; all the old trappings are there: the Prince once again finds himself fighting an army of sand creatures, scaling questionably constructed palaces, evading ubiquitous traps, and saving himself from embarrassing falls with the power to reverse time. As someone who loved the Sands of Time games, it was immediately satisfying to sit down with these old conventions and play what, to my mind, constituted the first “real” Prince of Persia game since 2005’s Two Thrones.
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The Kingdom of Dotnia was once a tourist magnet, a place where visitors flocked to following the heroics of one brave and mythical figure who overcame evil in the classical tradition society is structured by. Unfortunately for Dotnia, the tourism industry began to suffer as people became less interested in 2D heroics, forcing the King to issue a decree that would push the Kingdom into the 3D frontier.
That decision provides the space for 3D Dot Game Heroes to unleash its block based world of nostalgia on gamers, but also severely depresses the hell out of me.
Rather than a 2D game that attempts to bring audiences back to a realm abandoned by the industry more than gamers, 3D Dot Game Heroes replicates one of the most cherished 2D legends in 3D. It’s one of those ideas you’d have in the shower and chuckle about for awhile after – and then as you realized there was little else to bring to the table you’d probably drop the idea.
Bits of Dragon Warrior drip in at times, but traveling across the overworld of Dotnia to locate dungeons, defeat the boss monsters, and collect the orbs needed to prevent evil from returning is the order of the day for this blocky link to the past.
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After Burner Climax has finally made the migration from the arcade to the consoles, serving up visuals in shiny HD that make me use silly two-string words like “retina-melting,” along with twitch reflex action that couples some nostalgic memories of the series with a new trick that really makes the game less of the trip down memory lane you might expect, and much more of a 21st century arcade love song.
The view from the cockpit is a mix of familiar Top Gun styled vistas and arcade fantasy that leaves players buzzing by volcanic islands, city skylines, and through mountainous pathways – all of it at speeds that seem ludicrous at first sight.
On my first run through I felt a bit like a high school lover again, wondering how I’d burnt out so quickly after all the pent up anticipation.
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Spending the weekend with Just Cause 2 feels like the videogame equivalent of the days when children received live ammunition as Christmas gifts, unleashed on the neighborhood to a world of seemingly limitless possibilities. Reaching for a more reasonable explanation, it was a very short ride through the fixed narrative opening before I was free to fly a jet fighter over the island of Panau, able to jump out of said plane and enter into a free fall, activating the parachute just as the buildings below slowly shifted into focus, and then proceeding to spray targets on the ground with machine gun fire. And within moments I was being attacked by a helicopter gunship, which I then grappled onto, taking out the crew and using the chopper to finish the job I’d started.
The short of it is that whatever you’re doing in Just Cause 2 has the curious ability to make the previous outrageous action seem boring in comparison. So the game is filled with opportunities for self-fulfilling over-saturated hyper-violence – and God help me I like it. The “it only does everything” nature of the game is the focus of the PR push and essentially what the back of the box conveys.
And yet it’s the little things that pulled me into taking a longer vacation in Panau. The little things are the spice of life after all, and Just Cause 2 has more than enough to prove itself a zesty game taco among the sandbox set.
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Posted: March 11, 2010 at 10:03 pm
By Jamie Love |
Resident Evil 5 left mixed reactions with me last year. If only to sound loosely scientific, the game has a 40/60 split between a meaningful co-operative experience and repetitive tricks that induce stress and leave mental scars that have yet to heal. And yet I’ve still considered replaying it several times, because my best girl is also my favorite player 2, and with so much focus on competitive multiplayer, worthy co-op titles that truly emphasis working as a team are few and far between.
Capcom’s offer to revisit the title via two smaller DLC extensions offers space for optimism, because when Resident Evil 5 finds the co-op groove, there isn’t another game that leaves us feeling like the survivors coming out the other side of a horror flick.
Taking root in the small spaces provided by Resident Evil 5’s narrative, Lost in Nightmares follows Jill and Chris’ investigation of the Spencer Estate, while Desperate Escape fills in the details on how Jill hooked up with Josh to escape the Tricell Facility before meeting up with Sheva and Chris directly following their ten rounds with Muhammad Ali Wesker.
Now that we’re up to speed on the basics, let’s do this thing.
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The legend of Valkyria Chronicles’ sometimes crushing difficulty is a subject I’m well familiar with, but I was still surprised to take on the Shocktrooper challenge and find myself facing what seemed like the entire Imperial Army, gunning down poor Rosie before I knew what was happening.
When I first heard that this latest DLC would offer challenges from each soldier class within the game, I suppose I imagined it as a potential sampler for players who still haven’t caved to the peer pressure of the Valkyria faithful. For some reason this made me think that the game might go a bit easier on players, but rest assured that these six missions are every bit grueling enough to merit the word challenge.
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