As video games evolve, our view of them as mere entertainment has grown, with many games challenging what is possible in an interactive medium. Arguably, first person shooters have seen the most radical change out of any other genres in the past decade. Some notable titles have put meaning behind all the bloodshed and managed to carve out some honestly impressive works of art. Serious Sam 3 is not one of those games. Acting like the past 10 years in game development never happened; Serious Sam packs some heavy retro charm, yet stands out as one of the more refreshing releases of this year.

To say Serious Sam has a story would be a generous statement. There is a plot, in which Sam is sent to Egypt to kill some aliens and discover the secrets of some long lost civilization, but it is so paper thin that is it barely worth mentioning. Nonetheless, it is unobtrusive as to allow for the action to keep a constant pace no matter what. Something that does stand out are the hilariously bad one liners from Sam, which are never repeated and spaced out enough so that you don’t grow tired of them. His selfishness and overconfidence come off perfectly. In a way, he is what Duke Nukem should have been.

The gameplay is maniacally simple. Literally the entire game consists of blowing away hundreds of enemies as you find better weapons. While it may seem like a crime that a game like this can exist in this day and age, developer Croteam have crafted a nearly therapeutic experience. The level of challenge does not increase with smarter enemies or clever puzzles, they just send more enemies at you at an even faster rate. One does not think as they play Serious Sam, they simply shoot. To add to the compulsion, at the end of each level you will be presented with stats of how you did as well as a par time, begging the manic completionist to come back and better their run.

Staying true to its roots, Serious Sam does not include regenerating health. Health packs and armor will be your only salvation from the hordes of enemies vying for your flesh. Iron sights were added to certain weapons, but it seems like an irrelevant tweak meant to appease some angry blogger. The only notable new additions are melee weapons and attacks, which can get you out of some seriously tight situations when needed.

Despite the old school charm, the game does suffer from the same flaws games faced back then. The enemies are as dumb as a box of rocks, they will simply charge at you until you shoot them. The few puzzles you do encounter seem out of place and act as a poor way to break up the action. There are some obviously cheap moments as well, with very little health and scarce ammo forcing you to reload an earlier save.

The game runs on the Serious Engine 3.5 and it scales beautifully. Texture work leaves a lot to be desired, yet there are some fantastic smoke effects at work. The animations are laughably bad, but add to the charm of the experience. However, the crowing jewel is the amount of enemies it can produce. The odds placed against you are staggering, with literally hundreds of enemies littering the screen at once. Thankfully, there is never any slowdown, even on a medium range machine.

In a way, he is what Duke Nukem should have been.

Multiplayer is back, with the classic deathmatch and capture the flag game modes feeling as tacked on as ever. On the other hand, the co-op presents a ridiculously good time. It supports up to 16 players at once in both survival modes and the entire campaign. The game does slow down significantly when multiple players are playing at the same time, yet the commotion present is unlike any other.

When Serious Sam 3 was announced, many fans feared that Croteam would try to apply changes to their formula as a means to attract a wider audience. Amazingly, yet somehow not surprisingly, Croteam has not changed a thing and Serious Sam has not aged a day.

BLAST FACTOR: Throwing away literally every modern shooter convention, Serious Sam 3 stands as a time machine to a simpler time. Croteam have shown that simple gameplay coupled with a well balanced engine can deliver some seriously good entertainment. Hardcore to the bone, this arcade shooter will entertain anyone who has ever found enjoyment in blasting a virtual foe.

Perhaps the most telling tale of Battlefield 3’s complicated existence comes before the game even enters your system. Certain versions of the game come in multiple discs, one for the game’s multiplayer suite, which comes first – and the other for the single player. After more than a decade,  EA and DICE  surely know their audience and have justly put the majority of their time and development into the game’s online gameplay, but as a result, the single player suffers and you’re left with a mixed and uneven shooter that fails to deliver on all of the hype it’s generated since being announced. No, Battlefield 3 is not a bad game – it’s just not as good as it could be.

Before you go any further you should know something about me — I’m a single player campaign first kind of guy. Before I even touch the online multiplayer I want a game to tell me a story, I want the game to take me places, to make me care. Quite simply, Battlefield 3 failed to do that for me.  That’s not to say that there aren’t any edge-of-your-seat moments; when Battlefield 3 fires on all cylinders, it’s great action, just not great drama. Take for example on sequence early on in the game where you’re asked to take out an enemy held up in a hotel balcony. It was thrilling to run up to the top of the building and strategize with my squad-mates as to how to take them out; but for the life of me, I can’t tell you just why we were doing it.  The uninspired story of Battlefield 3 feels less like a fleshed out plot, and more like a device to move you from set piece to set piece, and they’re just not all thrilling enough to make you care. You can only take so much military jargon before you just find yourself just pointing at something and shooting.

It’s almost impossible to write this review without mentioning the 800 LB gorilla in the room – the rivalry that’s played out between Battlefield and Call of Duty over the last year. In the midst of the verbal sparring; a strange thing has happened, Battlefield has become everything they’ve spoken out against. Modes from previous Battlefield games have been removed (where’s my commander mode EA?), and the team at DICE seems insistent on making this feel like a Modern Warfare game. All of the plot points are here, the stolen nukes, the gruff commanders and the stereotypically evil Russians; hell there’s even a few missions that feel like they were lifted directly from previous editions of the rival series.  What’s most disappointing about the campaign experience is when it’s clear that they didn’t do the necessary research. In fear of spoiling some key moments, I won’t get into much detail, but there are some moments that defy military law that are sure to take you completely out of the game.

That being said, I can’t deny the sheer enjoyment I had when the campaign worked. When Battlefield 3 fires on all cylinders and gives you frantic action, it’s hard to argue that it delivers.  Lessons are learned quick in the world of Battlefield 3, like the time I was facing down a sniper and mistakenly got up from my cover in an effort to get a better vantage point, only to be instantly shot down. It’s moments like these that make Battlefield enjoyable, where you’re forced to make split second decisions in the face of a coming onslaught. These edge of your seat moments don’t come often in Battlefield 3, but when they do, they’re more than worth it.

Let’s be honest though, myself aside, the majority of gamers are going to jump in to Battlefield 3 for its online play – and this is where the game undoubtedly shines. On the PC version up to 64 players (24 on console versions) can load out in nine different maps which vary from industrial to urban and even some jungle locations. What makes these maps so interesting is not their size (though, they are quite large), but how varied in scope they are.  One map for example had me dodging sniper shots from multiple roofs, while the other had me scurrying between tunnels to try to get an advantage. Of course, this is a Battlefield game, and that means you’ll have access to plenty of vehicles, which can be a great addition to the game, but can also be a pain in the ass. Getting a vehicle, like a tank or a helicopter can turn a battle around completely, but they’re so powerful that each game becomes a mad dash to occupy each vehicle, and if you you’re not the lucky one, you better turn around and run. We also experienced a slew of issues with the EA servers while playing Battlefield online. These issues mostly cropped up with the console versions, and they’re likely to be fixed via a patch, but it was incredibly frustrating to not be able to get in to a game on launch week.

The entire Battlefield package comes together with the new Frostbite 2 engine. There’s no denying that the game is nothing short of gorgeous; from the detail on characters and buildings, to the views of the city around you. Most impressive perhaps is the level of detail Frostbite allows for in its destruction. Remember that scene early on I was talking about? The one where you’re trying to take out the enemy in the hotel? It’s extremely satisfying to watch as the entire building rumbles, smoke starts to billow out and pieces start to fall off. At times its almost impossible to not marvel at how well it all comes together. It’s not all perfect though, as we did notice a few oddly muddy textures and a bit of slowdown – especially in the console versions.

The Blast Factor: Battlefield 3 may be the toughest game I’ve yet to review; it’s majorly flawed, but at the same time, it does so much right that it’s almost impossible not to at least enjoy your time with it. After all the hype and the name calling, Battlefield 3 is here. Was it worth the wait? The easy answer is an emphatic yes; it may not be the end-all-be-all first person shooter you’re looking for, but it is a remarkable one, that you’re going to want to play – especially if you’re into multiplayer.

Battlefield 3 is available now for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 from EA and DICE. The Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game were used for this review and provided by the publisher.

If nothing else, 2011 will be marked as a great year for first person shooters. Killzone 2 and Bulletstorm have been burning virtual ammo with aplomb, but perhaps they were merely the opening act to the main attraction—Crysis 2. The original Crysis was a PC-only release known mostly for its hardware-crippling requirements. The focus of how much raw CPU and GPU power Crysis needed to run overshadowed just how great the game actually was.

Crysis never made it to console systems. So, it’s likely that most gamers who jump into Crysis 2 won’t have the experience of the first game to guide them. Thankfully, that’s not much of an issue. While the game certainly has historical ties to the original, you won’t feel like you’re missing anything substantial by not having experienced part one of what is apparently due to be a trilogy.

Going cross-platform has helped immensely to streamline the game mechanics. The original’s convoluted controls are gone, replaced with an elegant and intuitive method for using the super-human abilities of the protagonist’s nanosuit. Interface changes aside, the focus of Crysis remains on intense action in huge areas while utilizing different tactics to take on the enemy.

In the spirit of big budget action movies, Crysis 2 starts with a bang. Players take the role of Alcatraz, an otherwise-nameless grunt sent in with his squad to extract a scientist from New York City. Far from the bustling metropolis it used to be, New York is a burning husk. A rampant alien plague has wrecked havoc through the populace, killing thousands. An alien race called the ceph has invaded and entrenched themselves into the city’s underbelly. Finally, the heavily-armed internal security troops of the corporation behind the suit’s development are searching high and low for you.

This three-way fight dynamic plays a huge role through most the game. Although the environments aren’t as huge as those from Crytek’s previous games, Crysis 2’s rendition of NYC is stunning. The levels generally feel huge and offer an incredible variety of urban settings. You’ll fight on rooftops, ground levels, in buildings, and sewers. Almost every level offers a variety of ways to take on the combat.

The suit will inform you of specific tactical choices and their locations. Switching to the visor mode enables a HUD display that points out specific points you can use to approach a situation with stealth, sniping, flanking, and other tactics. Even without such promptings, the abilities of the suit enable players to utilize an incredible number of combat styles.

The main functions of the suit are armor and stealth modes. Armor mode lets you take heavy damage and high falls. Stealth mode turns on camouflage that makes you effectively invisible under most circumstances. The suit also lets you run and jump at a superhuman level, and see the world with thermal vision. All these abilities cost energy, so you have to use them strategically.

The suit recharges its energy fast, but frequently finding cover to duck behind and recharge is a necessity. This ability to use stealth or run and gun tactics at virtually anytime, in addition to the sheer mobility afforded by the suit, makes Crysis 2 feel different than any other shooter. As you progress, you’ll also earn points that can be used to modify the suit and your weapons.

The mod system is surprisingly simple to use, and allows the player to customize their abilities to accentuate stealth, power, speed, and other elements. There are a lot of guns to choose from as well, and while most are the usual fare, being able to modify them makes even a standard assault rifle seem much more original. Where the gameplay is terrific, however, certain other elements are merely stereotypical cliché.

The story is generally fine, but hardly original. Most of the side characters are two-dimensional, and the many suffering plague victims you encounter are completely non-interactive set pieces. The plot has some cool twists in it and the evolution of the suit is clever, but the writing never approaches the quality of the rest of the game. Also, the use of a hero who is just another nameless grunt taking orders from voices over the radio is really disappointing.

The single-player campaign is surprisingly long—easily 12 or more hours. When you’re done trampling through the streets of New York killing AI-controlled bad guys, there are endless more hours of killing to be done online. Adding the abilities of the nanosuit to a team game or standard deathmatch provides a fantastic alternative to standard multiplayer fare like Call of Duty or Halo.  Since there are even more suit modifications for multiplayer, the more you play, the more you can customize your gameplay experience.

Finally, it’s no surprise to say that Crysis 2 is simply gorgeous. The sharp, HD graphics are stunning and the stereoscopic-3D support is superb—adding an intense sense of depth to the visuals. The audio work is equally as impressive. The score is dramatic, the voice acting decent, and the surround mix is enthralling.

The Blast Factor: Crysis 2 is easily one of the best games of the year so far, and the best shooter on the market. The gameplay is truly distinctive, the action is intense and addicting, and the game provides a topnotch shooter experience in both single and multiplayer. Although there are certainly some disappointing holdovers of old school design, the game as a whole is absolutely worth having.

In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu rose to claim the title of Shogun in Japan after leading his clan to victory in the Battle of Sekigahara. That battle was the culmination of the Sengoku period, a time when the clans of Japan grappled for supremacy and the power to rule over the entire nation. Total War: Shogun 2 recreates the Sengoku period by providing control of a single clan in an attempt to rewrite history by unifying all Japanese territories and claiming power. It succeeds resoundingly in its goal to recreate the experience of a daimyo’s rise to Shogun by delivering a fun and historically accurate war game.

What has separated the Total War series from other strategy games since the original Shogun: Total War was released almost 11 years ago is the unique blend of turn-based and real-time strategy elements. The campaigns are played out in a fashion similar to those of theCivilization series with territories and armies being managed in a turn-based system. However, in a significant departure from the detached battles of other turn-based games, Shogun 2 provides the opportunity to resolve each confrontation in real-time which functions as a game within the game.

The campaign begins by selecting one of nine different clans. Each of the clans comes with different special abilities, such as bonuses to a specific unit type, and a unique starting location that determines how difficult the early stages of the game will be. The game uses real clan names, symbols, unit art, and city locations which provide an authenticity that resonates throughout and is evidence of the attention to detail used by The Creative Assembly in development. A thoroughly encompassing in-game encyclopedia that provides information on every unit, person, and location in the game also speaks to this.

Gameplay focuses on becoming Shogun by acquiring and controlling various provinces of Japan and, ultimately, Kyoto where the Emperor keeps his home. To accomplish this task requires turn-based management of the clan, armies, and occupied territories.

Each province has a central city which is where buildings for production are constructed and military units are recruited. Capturing foreign provinces requires military force to besiege a city so the core emphasis of the game is on building an effective army. A wide variety of units are at your disposable including samurai, archers, cavalry, naval ships, and many more. Agents like the ninja and metsuke can also be recruited and used to assassinate enemy leaders or to bribe armies. Both agents and Generals gain experience which lets you tailor their skills to your preference.

There are a number of other tasks that require attention such as leveraging diplomacy, stimulating economic growth, and religious direction. Diplomacy has some particularly nice new touches beyond the usual treaties and trade agreements such as the ability to arrange marriages or provide children as hostages. More depth and noncombat victory conditions would have been welcome but the turn-based systems as they stand provide a fun, alternative strategy aspect beyond army building.

Commanding the real-time battles is a pulse-pounding experience due to the frantic action that comes from managing hundreds-to-thousands of warriors. Despite the massive quantity of soldiers taking part in each conflict, combat is manageable because of the elegant unit system and user interface. A unit of samurai warriors may contain 50-150 soldiers but are manipulated as a single entity by clicking on their banner.

Battles can get a bit hectic when managing 10-20 large units but the interface helps streamline the process. Multiple units can be grouped together with a single keystroke, hot groups can be assigned, and formations can be established that work to the strengths of the group makeup. Also, control of the game speed is thankfully provided which allows for pausing, slowing down, or speeding up the action. Pausing the game to issue orders is a great way to handle situations that have become too frantic.

One drawback to the large real-time battles is that it can sometimes be hard to accurately order melee units when more than two or three are clashing. The banners have small, similar icons that can be tough to distinguish and they also have a tendency to overlap in heated skirmishes. This can cause it to be difficult to order a unit to attack a specific enemy and often requires camera manipulation for a better view. The battle camera has been improved with WASD-style controls but these moments can still be rough.

Shogun 2 sports land, naval, and siege battles. Battlefields reflect not only the current season but also the terrain on the campaign map where the armies meet. This presents opportunities to use the land as an advantage or to surprise enemies. Naval battles make their return from Empire: Total War with slight tweaks to combat due to the different style of ships used. Most of the Japanese ships are oar-propelled making them easier to maneuver. Naval combat features new options such as laying mines but is primarily a mixture of ranged combat and boarding enemy ships and is generally a lot of fun. Sieges, which take place when either attacking or defending a city, are particularly thrilling. The greatest sense of fulfillment in the game –other than becoming Shogun, of course—comes from holding out in a siege against a force that largely outnumbers your troops.

While the conflicts in Shogun 2 are superb, the greatest strength of the campaign is the way in which it effectively portrays the balanced responsibilities a daimyo had. The game works to recreate the harrowing experience of a ruler solely responsible for all decisions affecting his clan and territories. Constructing massive cities and conquering armies is gratifying but the more subtle emotions that the game evokes make it shine. There is fear for your daimyo and his heirs as the threat of assassination from lowly ninjas is constantly present. Sadness when a General that has served long and well falls in battle. There are also moments of shock such as the appearance of pirates raiding trade lines or a tsunami striking a province; the latter is especially poignant in light of the previous week’s real world events. Political intrigue is a constant source of anxiety as allied clans may declare war at a moments notice and Generals can defect if their loyalty falls.

The Creative Assembly is able to pull off this experience with help from consistently outstanding game presentation. Nice artistic touches include the campaign map which appears hand drawn until fog of war is revealed, rice paper texturing on all interface menus, and unit cards done in the cartoonish feudal Japanese character style. The tech tree in the game is divided into bushido (warfare) and chi (growth). Even the loading menus contribute with painted Japanese scenes and quotes from classic texts such as The Five Rings and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

Total War games have always been impressive in their ability to render thousands of units in combat and Shogun 2 ups the ante with even more unit and terrain detail. Visuals look very good even at the ‘Medium’ setting and are stunningly beautiful on a machine powerful enough to run everything maxed out. One particular graphical highlight is the water rendering which is by far the most realistic looking I’ve seen in a game. The campaign map visuals have been improved by utilizing a combination of 2D and 3D which causes the terrain and units to stand out. Less impressive are the daimyo and advisor models whose low quality makes them come off as an afterthought. Also, some texture and geometry popping is noticeable in close-up shots such as during Generals’ pre-battle speeches but the issues are not show stopping.

The sound design conveys everything in Shogun 2 as expected but is not outstanding in any one sense. However, the music is quite good with appreciable variation. Drums pound during intense phases of battle and beautiful flowing samisen pieces provide a mellow background for more peaceful times.

One of the biggest new features in Shogun 2 is the online Avatar Conquest mode which lets players create a character to take part in conquering a persistent online game world. The avatar is fully customizable and can gain experience and bonuses as online battles are completed. Avatar Conquest mode interacts with the single player campaign in two innovative ways. First, there are a large number of achievements that are shared between on and offline play. Completed achievements provide a piece of armor and when a full set of armor is acquired a new bonus that the avatar can use is unlocked. This provides a tangible asset for achievement completion beyond pride which is a welcome gaming advancement.

The other intriguing multiplayer inclusion is drop-in battles. Players choosing to take part in drop-in battles will be matched with someone starting a battle in their single player campaign and then take the place of the enemies that would normally be AI-controlled. Drop-in battles should keep single player campaigns fresh for even the most seasoned Shogun 2 players.

Multiplayer campaigns can be completed either competing against or cooperating with a second player. It would be nice if more players could be incorporated into the online campaigns but the limitation is reasonable due to the turn-based gameplay. Rounding out the online features are team battles, clan implementation, leader boards, and custom battles while a lengthy tutorial, custom AI battles, and historical battles complement the single player campaign.

With the lone campaign map of Japan, one concern is that Shogun 2 might get old sooner than games which can randomly generate new maps like Civilization. However, with a good selection of clans to experiment with, a nice set of single and multiplayer modes to keep things fresh, and the unique new Avatar Conquest, there is plenty to keep busy with for a long time.

Blast Factor: Shogun 2 delivers on its goal of providing players the chance to experience life as a daimyo in pursuit of total power. The turn-based gameplay may not be as deep as other genre stalwarts but it is quite fun and more than made up for with superior real-time battles that are a blast to play. Anyone who enjoys strategy games should give Shogun 2 a look and players that have even a passing interesting in feudal Japan or samurai culture should pick up the game immediately.

Isaac Clarke is back for another wacky adventure! If by “wacky” you mean dark, disturbing, grotesque, and ultra-violent. The original Dead Space was one of the best games of 2009 and certainly one of the best horror-themed games in years. The game’s take on science fiction terror took the typical survival-horror stereotype and revitalized it with a hefty dose of pure action, along with the ever-entertaining dismemberment-focused gunplay.

Isaac Clarke may have destroyed the bizarre alien-created marker that the Scientology-like cult, the unitologists, worship in the first game, but you can’t keep a good monster infestation down. Dead Space 2 doesn’t waste a second throwing Isaac into a new nightmare. He wakes up in a straightjacket, having horrible visions and questioning his own sanity, when the horrors he faced on the USG Ishimura are suddenly back.

Now aboard a giant space station city known as the Sprawl, Isaac finds deja vu all over again, but on a much larger scale. Where the Ishimura felt like a more intimate and claustrophobic environment for horror, the Sprawl lets the vile necromorphs wreck havoc through schools, churches, shopping districts, apartments,  and everywhere else that the creepy crawlers can reach. As a result, there’s some truly twisted stuff here.

Familiar monsters return, but with a broader environment come creatures that use the open space more effectively. Infected children have become pack-hunting creatures that use surprisingly effective tactics to trap Isaac. There are exploding babies, vomit-spewing pukers, spitters, and some truly foul and massive boss creatures. Thankfully for Isaac, pretty much all of them can be shot apart with a wide-array of fire power.

While the guns from the first game return, new toys include a spear shooting javelin gun and a mine layer. The javelin gun in particular seems a bit redundant since Isaac can telekinetically pick up any sharp object (of which there are a shocking amount, including the limbs of necromorphs) and shoot them at high velocity. Mines are a particularly good tactical choice, since the hunter creatures are exceedingly good at tracking you, so laying traps for them can help thin out their often overwhelming numbers.

Numbers is a big part of Dead Space 2. Everything feels bigger, even if it’s often merely the illusion of scope. Though a fair portion of the end game moves into the close quarters and corridors, most of the levels open up into huge rooms with massive windows. There are a lot of apartments to stalk through and unlike the first game, there’s no doubt that the Sprawl is someplace where civilians were living right up until the point where they died truly horrible deaths.

Gored bodies are everywhere and the game is full of indiscriminate carnage. The necromorphs spared no one, and the addition of the unitologist families who were so brained washed that they actually prepared for their last moments happily makes the gruesomeness even more effectively disturbing. So, there’s no doubt that Dead Space 2 works as a horror game.

Even though the pacing is frequently action-oriented, the nature of the enemies and how they attack makes the game the most effective monster game you’ll likely see all year. On the standard difficulty level, the levels can be brutal, but not unmanageable, and the superbly refined gameplay and atmosphere make Dead Space 2 insanely addicting.

Targeting is vitally important here, since dismemberment is key to quickly killing things, and controls are tight, intuitive, and effective. The camera is amazingly adept at keeping up with the action, while still keeping the view slightly claustrophobic. It seldom gets in the way, and you won’t have to adjust it in an unnatural way like so many third-person games.

That said, Dead Space 2 still sticks close to the formula of the first game and most similar games in general. Isaac is hardly his own man here. Missions are relayed from strangers via video or audio comms, and he is ultimately just an errand boy through the game. While this narrative-heavy method works in keeping the plot and action moving forward, it just feels amazingly cliched at times. Thankfully, Isaac actually speaks this time around, so he feels like an actual person this time around.

The one aspect of the game that is completely new is the multiplayer. Like a more horrific take on Alien vs. Predator, these team-based games pit teams of necromorphs versus humans. The result is an amazingly distinct online game. Short of AvP, there’s no other multiplayer game that will let you play as a standard marine-type human or a scary, wall climbing monster. Humans inevitably will be trying to use switches to complete goals, while the necromorphs are simply trying to stop them.

Since the necromorphs can respawn anywhere on the level they want and see human skeletons through walls, devious players can effectively act like a monster and sneak up on unsuspecting prey. While the overall survival horror nature of the multiplayer might not distract players from Black Ops in droves, it’s the most creative take on deathmatches since Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.

There’s no doubt that you could nitpick Dead Space 2. The gameplay is hardly changed at all, and too much of the time, you’ll feel like little more than a badass errand boy. That said, the pacing, atmosphere, controls… well, nearly every other aspect of the game is refined, tense, and enthralling. Dead Space 2 is so addictive that it will suck your hours away well into the night. Just make sure you’re not too squeamish.

This review originally appeared on ReviewCenter.com in 1997. It scored 4.5/5 stars at the time.

By: Jeffry J Brickley

Wing Commander Prophecy is the fifth game in the series (prior games in the series named Wing Commander and Wing Commander II-IV). It is a return to the original concept of the game, reducing the gameplay options for more effort in the actual space simulation. Although it was enjoyable to have more decision-making capability in Wing Commander IV, the return to the simplicity makes the gameplay smoother and more movie like. Wing commander Prophecy is like taking part in a movie. Although you can choose not to talk to people, talking is always in your own benefit, so there really is little choice.

Warning there are a couple of double missions that force you to leave right away after you return to the ship, so always make sure that you have a time for two more missions before you play one more…. These game-play emergencies make the gameplay exciting and unpredictable, bringing back some of the excitement lost in the lack of options from Wing Commander IV. Some missions require a little luck to complete successfully, but ALL missions can be completed successfully (at least by the scoreboard, there are a couple that are mandatory failures from the mission you are sent out on, but you do not loose points for not succeeding).

Note that the “Gold Edition” is not a true sequel but rather it is an addition that includes all of the original Wing Commander Prophecy. The “Secret Ops” are additional missions to keep you “in the mood” until the next release of Wing Commander.

If you saw the movie and expect the game to be the same, you will be surprised or disappointed. The movie is based loosely on the original version of the game from the early 80′s. If you manage to find THAT game, it is like all games of that era, rather cartoonish, yet still exciting. I look forward to the next movies as well as the next games or even a remake of the original game based on the new graphics engines! (Origin are you listening?)

Ups:
3D Graphics and sound are superior in this version. It seems Origin has a ‘style’ of releasing the Wing Commander series. Each odd number in the series is a BIG change from the prior version, each even number in the series is an improvement on the gameplay and graphics engine. I look forward to the improvements that they will manage to squeeze out for Wing Commander’s 6th in the series.

Downs:
Lack of game-play options, you are always flowing with the game, you are only truly in control when you are behind the stick in space. And then your only hope is to take out the enemy as fast as possible and take care of your wingmen.

Despite the attention lavished on big name, AAA titles, indie games have had a pretty good run lately. The Unreal-engine-powered the Ball is about as indie as you can get. The game started as a runner-up mod for the “Make Something Unreal” contest a while back, and luckily the developers were given the chance to turn it into a full-fledged release. While the final result isn’t as refined as it could be, the Ball is still a creative take on familiar themes.

The story places the player as an archeologist in the 1940’s. While exploring an ancient Aztec dig, you find yourself trapped in a subterranean labyrinth beneath a volcano. Unarmed, confused, yet apparently with a super human ability to fall absurd heights, this Indiana Jones-wannabe trudges forth to discover the most bizarre discovery of ancient man… ever.

As the title implies, you soon discover a giant ball, apparently powered by alien technology. The ball is controlled by something that looks like a cross between a hand cannon and a jack hammer—allowing you to both fire the ball away and call it back. As expected, the game’s entire design revolves around manipulating the ball through a series of room-sized puzzles.

Puzzles usually boil down to using the ball to remotely trigger switch plates, often while you are busy triggering another in tandem. It’s a fun and clever mechanic, though nothing here feels particularly new or overly creative. This is also a mechanic used far too much over the course of the short (four or so hour) game.

The Ball finds some interesting ways to remix the task of hitting a switch, but it’s only later in the game when it really attempts to add much variety by giving the ball other properties. There are entertaining gravity-based puzzles once the ball gets a magnetic field, and some nice uses for fire. Yet, these examples should have been spread much more frequently throughout the entire adventure, instead of using level design that relies far too much on simple switch puzzles.

Just the same, the puzzle solving in the Ball is engaging enough to ride players through the sharp and attractive Central American motif. Levels look good, if a bit old school in their scope. The maps are designed to accommodate the puzzle mechanic, not any real world sensibilities. This leads to areas only reachable through falling, crazy jumps, and of course, conveniently having a giant magic ball in your possession.

Beyond puzzles, the Ball also throws combat into the mix. Here, the game really fumbles. Since the ball is your only weapon, there’s a lot of awkward ball rolling toward mindless mummies, then quickly calling the ball back to get the next wave. It all feels a bit like Aztec bowling, but the novelty of it runs out quickly. Boss battles spice things up, however, mixing the combat and puzzle solving elements more smoothly.

Once you’ve played the main story mode, the Ball also offers up a survival mode. Shipping with four stages specifically designed to task players with endless waves of enemies and one big ball to fight them, the survival mode makes the mistake of focusing on the weakest part of the game. Although fun for short bursts, these levels enunciate the flaws with the combat and are of limited use.

It would be easy to dismiss the Ball as a mostly failed experiment. Yet, this cheaply priced download is still worth checking out. It’s a clever concept that remains fun through the game, even if the developers didn’t take the design ideas nearly as far as they could have. The use of cooperative gameplay with a giant ball is great, the level design is solid, and this is a good looking game.

Blast Factor: While there’s not enough variety in the puzzles, the Ball still packs enough play value to make it a nice alternative to the much more serious first person shooters out there.

It’s hard to believe a series about opposing teams of worms blowing the snot out of each other on destructible 2D landscapes has been around longer than almost any modern gaming franchise. Originally an Amiga game from British developer Team17, Worms has migrated to almost every platform since and even briefly bumped over to the realm of 3D. But Worms remains a true 2D experience at core, and Worms Reloaded is a perfect example of just why the game continues to endure.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of Worms, it’s pretty simple. Assault teams of four worms each are dropped onto a cartoony 2D battleground, where they simply take turns attacking each other in the hopes of destroying the other teams. The cavernous environments are entirely destructible islands offering opportunities to destroy a competing worm with direct hits or explosive blasts that can send them flying to a watery doom. Wind speed, elevation, and other physics-based variables often play a key role in aiming.

There are almost 50 different weapons and gadgets to make use of during these battles, and the sheer variety of tools at your disposal is both astounding and amusing. Standard weapons like grenades and the bazooka have long been mainstays of destruction. There are plenty of other guns — pistols, machine guns, the shotgun, rocket launcher, and more — but when Worms gets creative with its destruction, the game really takes off. While longtime fans might lament the omission of the exploding old woman and mad cow, the 14 new weapons like the sentry gun, seeking ferret, and other amusingly useful aids make up for any absences. Also, the super sheep and ninja rope remain firmly intact.

Granted, the added goodies are only new to the PC version. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 players of Worms 2: Armageddon will find most of the enhancements here rather familiar. The gameplay is basically completely unchanged from previous versions, so if you’ve played any of the past Worms there’s not going to be any shocking changes or revelations here. That said, Worms Reloaded is certainly the most refined and sharpest looking addition to the series.

Like a bizarre, horribly violent, yet utterly cute cartoon, Worms Reloaded enacts it’s scenes of annelid destruction through amazingly sharp and colorful 2D visuals. Reloaded really isn’t a complete visual makeover, but the graphics are strikingly good. There’s an incredible array of scenery styles—ranging from different climates and far-out themes—and the battleground configuration is randomly generated each time. If you do get tired of the standard backdrops, you can easily create your own and trade them with friends.

At the start, you’ll be able to customize your team of worm warriors. You can give your little buddies a flag, a funny voice, and plenty of other customizations before sending into battle both online and off. The single-player game is tons of fun, with an impressive variety of different scenarios to hone your skills. Internet play is where the true value of the game comes in though, and as usual, Worms Reloaded works fantastically online.

The Blast Factor: If you’re new to the series, this is the perfect time to jump aboard. Yet, veteran players who intend to stick with the PC version will find Worms Reloaded absolutely worthwhile. The simple gameplay is immensely entertaining, yet mastering the game will still take hours of practice. Endless online games, randomly generated battlegrounds, and a plethora of crazy weapons and items all give the Worms incredible replay value.

For the last few years, there’s been a not-so-quiet war brewing over the Civilization series. On one side; the strategy series’ purists craving the depth and formula they’ve known for years. On the other, the fans brought in by the series’ first console iteration; Civilization Revolution, which featured a much more streamlined and approachable interface for casual fans. The game’s upcoming fifth iteration would surely be the breaking point for fans on either side as developing veteran Sid Meier choose and 2K games had to choose which side to embrace. Or did they?

Civilization V takes the best parts from each version of Civilization and rolls them into one glorious ball of strategic fun. Purists, everything you love about the franchise you’ve invested so much time into is here, just with that little extra. Oh, and don’t let all of the talk of becoming more accessible scare you away — Civilization V is everything you’d expect it to be — and more, it’ just easier for everyone to enjoy.

Like all of its predecessors, Civilization 5 is all about player choice, and each of these choices has an impact on just how your game plays out. Let’s start with the most basic of choices — which civilization you’re going to play as. Each is led by a different historical leader, and offers different challenges and benefits. Play as a world power and you’re sure to have all of the latest technical advances, but you’ve also got so much more under your watch then if you were to play as a smaller nation in the process of building itself up. Offering even more depth, Civilization V offers players the ability to change the era in which they’re playing, which completely changes the experience. Playing in one era, the world powers are different, and you’re going to have a whole new set of challenges to finish.

It’s this, above all else that serves as Civilization V’s greatest asset — you’re going to want to play it, and play it…and play it.  There are a wealth of options throughout Civilization V, and you’ll find that you’re going to spend a lot of time tweaking them to ensure you’re playing the game that’s best for you. Civilization V is about creating stories, and there’s no one here to hold your hand and tell you just how things have to be. Take my play through as the Aztecs for instance, I was able to take them from nearly dying out society to a thriving futuristic empire ahead of any other. That’s where most are going to find they’ll spend the most of their time with Civilization V, crafting alternate takes on the world’s history.

The maps in Civilization V are crazy big

Even the most dedicated Civilization players would have to agree that the series was in danger of becoming a little bit too complicated. Yeah, get rid of your gamer bravado and you’ll see it too. The latest installment does a great job stripping away some of those elements, and while they’re sure to be noticeable to those who really invested their time into Civilization IV, they improve the game’s pace dramatically. First, now only one unit is allowed per hex on the battlefield, which evens the playing field dramatically. You now have a clear vision of just what you’re up against, and your opponent won’t be able to hide their units and sucker you into a battle that you have no idea in unwinnable.

Another key change is the fact that there’s a ton less micromanaging required in Civilization V. Now, some may not find this as a negative, but I found that it makes the game much more approachable and much easier to dig in to. Since you’ll spend a lot less time in the menu system, you’re going to spend a lot more of it in the game proper, and be better able to manage your entire civilization at once. Of course, some of the choices here are lessened in favor of the new system, like the lack of religious options, but when a system works this well, it’s excusable.

The Blast Factor: The Civilization series needed a revolution of its own, and say what you will about it, Revolution was it. Now, Civilization V takes the best aspects from the long running series, and combines them with a more approachable interface to create what could be the best version of the franchise to date. Though it falls short of a masterpiece, even the most hardened players are sure to fall in love with the series all over again.

At the risk of spoiling this review in the first ten words, I’m driven to make clear very early just how completely devoid of fun and entertainment I found this title to be.  It was a truly dreadful experience to have to play it and I feel confident saying I would never recommend it to anyone for any reason. In fairness, however, I am apparently alone is this assessment.

Sam and Max are a 50′s-style cartoon detective duo (animals — mind you: a chubby, insecure dog and a twisted bunny) that have gained most of their popularity through the consistent release of games they are featured in (this is the third season), rather than through traditional comic book success. Previous entries in this series have reviewed reasonably well.

The Tomb of Sammun-Mak is a digital offering for PC, PS3, Mac and iPad from Telltale Games that is the second in a series of five point-and-click adventures under the umbrella title, ‘The Devil’s Playhouse.’ I reviewed Episode 1, ‘The Penal Zone,’ a few weeks ago and had little great to say about it, but tried to give it some benefit of the doubt since it was an introductory episode and my first experience with the franchise. It did have a terrific villain and some genuinely funny moments that led me to believe there may be value in the remainder of the series if I gave it a chance.

Unfortunately, these hopes were dashed by my two playthroughs of Episode 2. In response to past criticisms that the series was becoming too linear and predictable, Telltale decided to employ a confused chronology scheme that, on the surface, seems like an inventive and fun idea. Max uses his latent psychic abilities to take control of a projector that plays four film reels of the duo’s ancestors from the turn of the century. These powers allow he and Sam to warp into the films, inhabit their ancestor’s bodies, and control the events that lead up to the initial discovery of ‘The Devil’s Toybox’ – the only consistent plot point between the first two games. The Devil’s Toybox is a chest full of wild gadgets that Max’s yet unexplained psychic abilities allow him to manipulate in order to overcome the various obstacles presented in the game.

While a good idea in theory, the execution here is just a frustrating mess. On several occasions, it’s difficult to tell whether you’re missing a clue within a given scenario or need to retrieve it from one of the other selectable segments of the adventure. This would be no big deal if there weren’t significant load times involved in switching between the various parts of the story. If you’re having any trouble whatsoever figuring out a particular problem, you are likely to go back and forth between episodes at least a few times, enduring more and more load times and, even worse, the same stupid jokes over and over again. It all goes a long way toward undermining the entire point of the game, which is to be funny.

Blast Factor: While I could speak on some of the technical issues that hampered my experience here, the major problem I have with ‘The Tomb of Sammun-Mak’ is the same one I had with ‘The Penal Zone’- these games are just not funny. And they are supposed to be. If you have a comedy "game" that incorporates no tangible "gameplay elements" and subsequently falls flat on the comedy side of things, then you really don’t have much.

This is not to say that the writing is not often smart and the voice acting is not good, just that the end product does not deliver the credible, comedic experience that it should. Adding to this, the disjointed time-line of Episode 2 only amplifies the lack of real humor with mind-numbing dialogue repetition.

The worst thing about ‘The Devil’s Playhouse,’ however, is that these various episodes are not currently available individually. If you want to play any of them, you are forced to plop down the full-season price of $34.95 and just pray that, even if you happen to like the first two, the remaining three will continue to hold your attention. It’s not a risk I would recommend taking.

Note: This review was done on the PC version and a copy was provided by the publisher.

PC System Requirements:
Operating system:
Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7
Processor:
2.0 GHz + (3 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent rec.)
Memory: 1GB
Sound: DirectX 8.1 sound device Video:
128MB DirectX 8.1-compliant video card
(256MB rec.) DirectX(TM): Version 9.0c or better

Mac System Requirements:
Operating Systems: Mac OS X 10.5 or newer
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
Not Recommended For:
Macs with integrated graphics

With a name like, ‘The Penal Zone,’ you know you’re in for something ridiculous. Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse: Ep.1 – The Penal Zone from Telltale Games is a pretty casual experience that is heavy on dick jokes and, sadly, somewhat short on overall entertainment.

Sam and Max are a 50-style cartoon detective crew (animals — mind you: a chubby, insecure dog and a twisted bunny) that seem to have gained most of their popularity through the consistent release of games they are featured in (3 seasons worth now), rather than through traditional comic book success. Previous games in this series have reviewed reasonably well, though this game was my first experience with the franchise.

The Penal Zone is the first in a 5-episode series of point and click adventures that relies heavily on nerdy bathroom humor to try to coerce you through a series of elaborate brain teasers. You walk around as Sam, the dog in a suit, and collect items of various consequence, after a suspicious space-gorilla has landed in the middle of your block. It’s up to your crack detective work to determine what to do with the items and when to use them. Some can be given to other characters in order to advance the story, some will be useful only through further analysis and others will be placed in the environment at appropriate spots to trigger puzzle solutions or advance plot points.

Sam’s sidekick Max serves as a wild card character that has been bestowed with a set of powerful psychic abilities. He is able to use the ‘Toys of Destruction’ that give him the power to see the future and teleport between phones, in addition to some other briefly used but notable abilities. One very interesting trick is the ability to teleport to a phone that you have on you. You can leave it in places or get separated and teleport back to it for clever solutions to several problems and puzzles in the game.

There are some fun elements to The Penal Zone — just saying it for one – and a number of wacky tools the game offers you to be used in a number of creative ways. The lead villain, General Skun’ka’pe, meaning skunk-ape, is for sure the best character in the game. He’s an overly articulate space gorilla with a a heavy penchant for BS-bravado and a bitchin’ ship that has been crafted to resemble his own likeness. With the general headlining the show, much of the voice acting is extremely good – even if the dialogue is mostly so-so.

Blast Factor: What you realize as you get into it is that The Penal Zone is really attempting to be a comedy vehicle more-so than it is a video game. The main problem for me was that I never quite felt like the comedy aspect of it ever got off of the ground. There is an onslaught of jokes, many of which are just not funny and yet very long-winded at the same time. This led to impatience for me, as I often just wanted to get to the point. The game does allow you to skip through all the jabber-jawwing, but it’s easy to miss important clues in doing so. You are faced with the painful choice of enduring bad dialogue or run the risk of severe frustration down the road.

Sam and Max will have to get a lot funnier to interest me in ‘The Devil’s Playhouse: Ep.2′.

In spite of all this, you do drive a really sweet car — a 1960 DeSoto Adventurer. Its usefulness is limited with the ability to teleport, however.

Somewhere between completely loathing the difficulty of the last level and finishing the game, I finally "got" Osmos. You see, Osmos was able to do what no other zen (or ambient) game has actually made me do—chill out. Osmos has made me contemplate the very essence of human existence, evolution, consumption, and so much more. The difficulty of Osmos’ later levels was very frustrating at first, and often caused me to quit the game rather angrily; I was approaching Osmos like I would any other game, swiftly trying to complete all given goals in the pursuit of completion. Once I started approaching Osmos as not a game, but as an experience, I was able to fully appreciate the genius behind it.

Osmos is an indie game developed by Hemisphere Games, a startup development studio of six contributors. In Osmos, you control an organic "mote", which is essentially a one-celled organism with hopes of one day devouring everything around it. There are two important laws of how things work in the world of Osmos. Firstly, bigger things consume (and thus gain the volume of) smaller things, but never the other way around. Secondly, in order to accelerate forward, an object must expel some of its own mass behind it; much like Newton’s third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

A mote.

With a few exceptions, the goal in Osmos is to "become the biggest”. In order to do this, you must hunt down smaller motes and dodge bigger ones. In order to hunt the smaller motes down, you must propel yourself by ejecting chunks of your own mass behind you. This dynamic alone is what can make the game so challenging, as an edible mote can quickly become your predator after you expel the mass necessary to chase it down in the first place. Even worse, perhaps you’ll see two tasty motes ahead, both a bit smaller than yourself; while on your way to snatch them both up, they collide and one devours the other entirely, suddenly you have no choice but to flee or die. Though most motes are just dummy organisms without the ability to think or move at will, if you wait too long to hunt down prey these dummy organisms will eat each other up and make it impossible for you to win. Things get a bit more complicated when you encounter more advanced organisms like the Biophobe. The Biophobe has the ability to sense danger, and will avoid being eaten by you at all costs. The more advanced organisms are skilled hunters, and will quickly become very large if the player does not act fast.

Every moment is Osmos is beautiful.

Once you pass the initial tutorial segment, you are given a choice of three paths to follow in the game. Following one path will have you facing off against other sentient organisms (like the Biophobe) and testing your instinctual survival skills. Ruthless consumption and hunting is the only way to survive this part of Osmos, bringing Darwin’s concept of survival of the fittest to mind. The second path contains some of the most head-scratching portions of Osmos. Some of the levels on the second path put you into a big space with many other motes just floating around, like previously mentioned, these levels require speed and accuracy to win. Later on you will encounter "impasse" levels which are incredibly cramped with huge motes sitting in your way. These impasse levels require players to employ creative strategies, and will take a lot of thought and patience to win. Finally, there is the third path which focuses on physics. This third path introduces "attractors" and "repulsors". Repulsors simply push away from any other mote, and can be tricky to hunt down. Attractors act as potent gravity wells which will suck in and devour any mote smaller than itself. Some levels will start off with you and hundreds of other motes orbiting one attractor; as usual, your goal will be to "become the biggest", or possibly "absorb the attractor", something which will destroy the gravitational balance and send the remaining motes into the distance. These orbiting levels become more advanced later on, and will require plenty of patience and skill to perfect.

If patience really isn’t your thing, Osmos features the ability to manipulate time. With the press of a button, you can instantly slow down or speed up time. This can make long trips from one side of an attractor to another fly by, while making precision movements in impasse levels much easier to pull off. Time manipulation even has the neat side effect of eerily speeding up or slowing down the game’s soundtrack.

Sentient motes are your prime target.

Osmos features ambient music from various artists. In most cases, the tunes match the gameplay perfectly. The music and sounds work together to make a very chilled-out environment, and will even dynamically change in certain levels. Occasionally, however, the calming music will directly contradict with the frantic competition between you and another mote. Graphically, Osmos is fantastic and minimalist. The color palette helps drive home the soothing essence of the game, while the swirling and glowing of the motes can be absolutely entrancing.

Blast Factor: Whether it’s relaxing meditation or challenging gameplay you seek, Osmos has you covered. Hemisphere Games has produced a zen gaming experience unmatched by any developer before it. For the price, Osmos is the perfect end to a long work day or stressful gaming session.

Osmos is available for PC, Mac, and Linux for $10.00, it can be downloaded directly from Hemisphere Games, Steam, Direct2Drive, or Games for Windows. A copy of this game was purchased for reviewing purposes.

Saying goodbye is hard to do. And after five months and five installments complete with swashbuckling humor, adventure, and gripping emotional engagement, the Tales of Monkey Island saga came to end this week with the release of "Rise Of the Pirate God."

This final chapter does its job well and properly caps off what I felt was my most satisfying PC gaming experience of 2009 and leaves me absolutely thirsting for more.

If you didn’t play Chapter 4, you’re probably going to want to duck out right now because there are some heavy spoiler details about to be gushed.

Guybrush Threepwood. Mighty Pirate

Chap. 4 ended with the demise of Guybrush, or so we were lead to believe. The very first scene in "Rise of the Pirate God" begins with main character Guybrush thrusting his hand through his own grave in a dark and gloomy underworld graveyard. All Guybrush has is a his Shred of Life as he travels the land of the dead, meeting series antagonist’s victims, Morgan LeFlay most notably, on his trek to assume his body again and return to the land of the living to defeat the sinister Pirate once and forever. Oh, and of course, to rescue his beautiful "Plunderbunny" wife Elaine.

I'm not dead...yet!

Where chapter 5 excels most, compared to previous installments, is in its cinematic intensity. The production values in this episode are so much higher than the others; you might wonder why the series isn’t more mainstream and well-known.

Telltale pulled out all the show-stoppers in this episode to make damn sure the finale was indeed a true finale and left a more than pleasant taste in the mouths of gamers. Aesthetically, the game looks superior to previous ones. Perhaps that’s because the environments in Chap. 5 look nothing like the ones seen before (except for a few returning locations), but however you slice it, the game looks better, and this is great.

On the narrative side of the game, Telltale wrote a much stronger tale than ever before. Gone are the lines of corny dialogue in favor of more substantiated yet still funny, but more appropriate, engaging, and believable.

The Boat Man of Death.

Complementing the excellent narrative is superb beyond belief voice-acting. Guybrush sounds like a living, breathing, though bumbling, pirate. LeChuck’s tone and emphatic and stressed deliverances are the kind of mastery one could only dream for, and the entire set of sub-characters are so well performed you’ll wish they had more lines.

The puzzles in Chapter 5, and there are loads of them, as these sequences of mysteries are the backbone of the game, are fun and engaging, but not on par with those of previous episodes. Far too many times was the task at hand merely "go here, collect that, bring it back here, use it to do this." That formula is okay, I just wish Telltale varied the quests a bit more.

Here boy!

Are there more Tales of Monkey Island to be told? Ultimately only TellTale knows, but based on the way events ended in this chapter, it seems more than likely that there’s grander adventurers in stock for Guybrush.

Blast Factor: Ultimately, Tales of Monkey Island: Rise of the Pirate God is a wholly entertaining, engaging, and pure fun point and click adventure. Though it may not be equal in wonder to past installments, it remains a better than average tale. The seas have been sailed, the evil; vanquished, and the girl rescued, what more could a pirate wish for?

Tales of Monkey Island: Rise of the Pirate God is available today from the Telltale store. A digital copy of the game was given to us by its publisher for review purposes. Shiver. Me. Timbers.

Swashbuckling pirate stories, when executed properly are great fun. They’re tales of fortune, misfortune, love, greed, lust, betrayal, and violence and altogether comprise epic fantasy worlds we love to escape to. From the Pirates of the Caribbean saga, to our nation’s “Talk like a Pirate Day”, these Arrr-speaking, sword-wielding fiends of the sea undeniably entertain us.

Telltale Games, makers of the Sam and Max and Wallace and Gromit series of point and click adventure games, released the fourth installment in their own pirate franchise Tales of Monkey Island with The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood last week, but don’t lose hope: the title is bleak, but the game is wonderful.

The Tales of Monkey Island series is an episode-based saga. The stories began in July with Launch of the Screaming Narwhaland today’s installment Trial and Execution is number four in a five-part drama, culminating next month with Rise of the Pirate God due out sometime in December.

Another essential bit of preface is that Trial and Execution just like those before it, is a point-and-click action adventure game and is rooted on its magnificent storytelling and multitude of dialogue lines.

Now we’re ready.

Trial and Execution begins with a detailed yet brief cinematic introduction that will remind past players of the last chapter’s events, and will catch up newcomer’s to just what the hell is going on. I found this inclusion very helpful, because with short games like these played a month prior, it’s easy to forget what you’ve already accomplished, or, as is more likely, the mess you’ve gotten into.

In the game you play as Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate, who, for as ambitious as he is, lacks restraint and a fully operable brain. This is not to say you’re guiding an empty-headed buffoon around the game-world, because you’re not, just that the comedic value of his bumbling nature is apparent.

The basic plot synopsis for this installment is, without giving too much away, you’ve returned to the once-friendly Flotsam Islands, only to be seized and tried in a court of pirate-law for high seas crimes you’ve allegedly committed. It’s your job to defend yourself, using your dashing wit, in the court and save yourself from an untimely death. Oh, and at the same time the sinister French Marquis is plotting, and he’s plotting hard. To live through the day, a lot is asked of Guybrush, but hell, he’s escaped the belly of a Leviathan, how hard can this be!?

With four titles already under the thick belt of the Monkey Island series, there isn’t a heck of a lot to say here. The incredibly solid foundation Telltale laid in the preceding titles is applied to Trial and Execution with wonderful execution.

Voice-acting and character-recognition (through the voice acting), arguably the focal points of point and click games, are spot-on and without flaw in this latest game. With every line spoken, and there are many, many lines of dialogue, I became more attached to Guybrush and the entire supporting cast. Their lines aren’t corny; save for a few, and through this genuineness, the character’s truly come to life and become an emotional investment on you.

The story and dialogue are so good that it’s scary. The events unfold like a great storybook, and one you’ll find yourself steam-rolling through, as events transpire just like that (I snapped my fingers).

The lines of dialogue are eloquently crafted pieces of prose, and truly speak to the writing staff at Telltale. I’d really like to meet these guys and gals; they have some bona fide talent, that’s for sure.

The music element in Trial and Execution is again beautifully done. It intensifies tense moments, relieves stress at others, and is generally appropriate. I wouldn’t put it up for any soundtrack award, but it works, and it works very well.

As far as plot is concerned, I won’t give specifics, as the game lasts only about three hours, but I can say there is more going on in this tale than any of the others. Yes, the first was intriguing on account of its newness, but Trial and Execution is a rollercoaster ride of emotion that’ll keep you actively engaged right up until the stunning and unexpected conclusion. Alliances are formed, backs are stabbed, and hot peppers are licked! But best of all, this installment ends on the most slippery of cliffhangers and I am truly excited to play next month’s fifth and final episode.

What I found most compelling about the game was the fact that a main character dies. It’s a tense moment in a light-hearted franchise. It was wholly unexpected, but masterfully executed. Death was shown in previous games, but only at a comedic and light level. This tragic occurrence is just that; tragic, and for me, was a compelling reason to finish the game. I had to know what’s next!

My only gripe with the game was its return to a familiar location instead of branching out to new environments, a la the belly of a leviathan in the previous installment, because there I feel Telltale strutted their digital stuff and as a result wowed fans and I alike. Now, the game introduces some new environments; the courthouse, De Singe’s laboratory, and brings the darkness of night to the world, which elicits a second opinion of a locale you thought you knew, but still, I think Telltale could have and should have done more.

The game’s humor is also worth noting. Unlike the comedic value of another Telltale property, Sam and Max, which is more direct, the jokes in Trial and Execution are light-hearted and for lack of better term, less funny, but still funny. You won’t be laughing the way you do during your favorite comedy film, but you’ll have a giddy little smirk fixed on your face during much of the game.

Aesthetically, the title looks wonderful. I have a decent PC, a laptop no less! PC gamers go ahead and heckle me, but the game runs smoothly and looks gorgeous on my rig (if I can even call it that).

From the expansive jungle to the detailed docks to the uncivilized courtroom, Telltale’s attention to detail yet again shines through a fog of drear often associated with games of this nature. I experienced no slow-down or texture issues throughout my stay at the Flotsam Islands and at times stopped and reveled at the beauty of creation, as some of the environments really look splendiferous.

Blast Factor: Tales of Monkey Island: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood is a wonderfully thought out, executed, and enjoyable point and click adventure. Excellence in story-telling through voice acting, attention to detail in regards to the game’s environment and memorable characters combine to make this one of the best installments. Telltale Games have proven they have the chops to excel in the genre and I am both excited and saddened to know there is but one game left!

Tales of Monkey Island: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood is available today on PC. $34.95 gets you all five episodes. A copy of the game was given to us by Telltale for reviewing purposes. Arrrrrr.

You’re a stowaway on a boat that has just been through a storm and an attack by a sea monster.  Now you find yourself washed up on a beach where ruins have recently "risen" out of the ground and caused creatures to come into existence in this land. A group called the Inquisition has come to take control over the local town, removing its Don, controlling the gold and artifacts from the ruins, and forcing anyone who opposes them to be sent to a monastery for a "mindset adjustment."  The exiled Don and some of his men now live in one of the ruins in the swamp area. The game is open world and the choices you make effect the storyline. You can help the Inquisition which leans more towards magic and combat. Alternately you can help the Don who has more of a combat and hunting approach.

Quests consist of gathering items, killing monsters collecting information, shaking down shop owners for protection money, sneaking around, stealing, and general helping out. You can also see two sides of one quest depending on who you speak to. So if you help out one person instead of the other for similar goals, you will never be able to help the other person with conflicting interests.

Character interactions were also enjoyable and realistic to a point. If you robbed someone right in front of them they will likely not talk to you and will remember what you did. This sometimes leads to quests that cannot be finished. Luckily though there are spells that can be cast to force someone to forget any misdeed. Pick pocketing is an enjoyable and useful technique that allows you to recover items stolen from you.  This skill has different levels and has a bit of a learning curve; once you initiate a pickpocket attempt, you only have a certain amount of time to grab what you want. Pick pocketing is also useful if you know someone stole one of your items when you were knocked out to get them back.

Risen takes place in a setting that looks very much like South America. The lighting in the game is rather dark making monitors with high contrasts or deep blacks rather hard at times to see what you’re playing unless you turn the brightness settings way up; unfortunately this washes out some of the great graphics and cinematic lighting. Some parts of the game are intentionally left dark as you need to use torches to see where you are going inside of caves or the catacombs of the ruins. The ground in the light has a lush glow and the city looks great in the moonlight. In fact I rather enjoyed the graphical style, though I wish I could have customized my look a bit more as I look like the main character of the show Prison Break with my ultra short buzz cut look.  The water was also well rendered and the thunderstorms and rain effects at night have to be the best I have seen in a game, with the whole setting going from really dark to super bright all around me when the lighting clashes. The games NPC’s were also more detailed and much easier to tell apart than similar games I have encountered.

The game leveling up is done with experience points, but other attributes like strength, dexterity, and weapon and crafting skills are gained by talking to people and asking them to train you. This, of course, will cost you a bit of gold. There are 3 types of close combat weapons such as swords, axes and blunt objects. For attacking from a distance you can use bows, crossbows or magic. Casting spells will use up Mana that needs to be replenished with potions and the like.

The game also has a cooking system in which you can take the meat off killed creatures  and cook it to regain heath or Mana. You can also obtain special recipes and collect the ingredients to make special foods. The same principles can be applied for the alchemy for potions and smith skills for making weapons and armor.

The combat for handheld weapons is done with the left mouse button for attack and the right mouse button for shielding or blocking by turning your weapon on its side. You can also parry the attack if you press the right mouse button just before the enemy is going to attack. The system for locking on enemies is automatic and very well executed. I rarely found my back turned to one enemy while fighting another. For bow attacks you go into a 3^rd or first person view to fire. The closer you are to hitting the enemy’s head the more damage the enemy takes.  Casting spells can be very useful while fighting in hand to hand combat.

One thing I really liked about Risen was that the enemies don’t seem to fall into too many western RPG stereotypes—sure there were gnomes and ghouls but the majority of them seemed very fresh. The AI was also well done; even though you could figure out some of the enemy attack patterns it never seemed monotonous, always giving a good challenge as these patterns were never set in stone and could always be a bit random.

Blast Factor: Besides some slight graphical issues and lots of trouble with the game’s DRM (which they will hopefully have fixed by the time you read this) I really enjoyed the game and can’t wait to play through it again following a different storyline path.

Risen is available on the PC, and an upcoming Xbox 360 version. It retails for $49.99; a copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Most games these days are hyped, marketed, and promoted, to infinity and beyond. From small scale productions to AAA titles, it’s very rare that a game hits the market without at least minor expectations from both journalists and consumers based on hands-on previews, early-looks, and the like. Iceberg Interactive and Vertigo Games released “Adam’s Venture” last week. The game has flown primarily under the radar but that didn’t stop Iceberg from priority shipping me a copy straight from their offices in the Netherlands.

The game, available exclusively on PC, was built on the much-beloved Unreal 3 Engine and is episode 1 of the Adam’s Venture series, a tale of adventure, danger, and lots, and lots, of Christian themes. In the game you play as Adam Venture, an adventurer searching for the actual Garden of Eden, believed to be found in a mysterious labyrinth of caves where the four mighty rivers, Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Eurphrates meet. Adam, his girlfriend Evelyn, and a antique professor, make the journey deep underground and are the game’s only characters, if you don’t count non-tangible ones.

First and foremost, “Venture” is a third-person action-adventure, puzzle-solving game, that utilizes the keyboard exclusively, not even the mouse. The game is similar to that of Telltale’s Wallace and Gromit and Monkey Island games, only the mouse is absent in “Venture.”

Also worth nothing upfront is the game’s clear Christian agenda. The game prides itself on being non-violent, and this holds true to the very end. As Adam, you’ll never wield any sort of weapon. Rather, as you’ll have to use your mind exclusively to solve the game’s many puzzles. This pacifist approach is not a detriment to the experience whatsoever; rather, it is a point of excellence in the game. It was not until a few hours in that I realized I hadn’t victimized anyone in any way in the game. Violence, whether it be petty and comedic, or blood-soaked and heavy, is a mainstay in video games today, and Venture is refreshing in its lack of.

The game takes place primarily in an expansive set of caves and dark dwellings. For this reason, Veritgo Games decided to stick a torch in your hand at all times as your means of sight, and this works quite well plays into more than a few puzzles. Additionally, the game has some Uncharted and Tomb Raider aspects to it. Sequences of crouching, sprinting, jumping, a very intriguing first-person crawling mechanic, and hanging from ledges are everywhere in “Venture” and all the actions are executed very well.

The camera system in “Venture” is one of the better approaches I’ve seen. With all the lighting predicaments, cavernous area, and expansive environments, you might even excuse a camera system for faltering from time to time, but in “Venture” I never ran into a single issue with it. Additionally, the system’s excellence coupled with the third-person perspective allows for a great overall cinematic experience.

Venture is a tad on the easy side of similar games I’ve played, but, as a matter of personal taste, I very much enjoyed it this way. Save for a few occasions, I never felt angered at a puzzle I just couldn’t figure out. The game, marketed as a “family game” is indeed just that. The puzzles are rudimentary at best, but this fact allows the game to flow like a children’s book, from chapter to chapter, sequence to sequence.

Voice acting in the game wasn’t where I hoped it’d be. The characters are hardly memorable, and the lines of dialogue they speak are corny at best. Great dialogue and character interaction can truly cement a games excellence, but Venture just isn’t there yet. At the same time however, for a good chunk of Venture you’re on your own, fighting the spirits of darkness, and dialogue is scarce. The voice acting and characters in Venture are by no stretch of the imagination the worst I’ve seen and heard, they just need work.

Sound effects and the soundtrack of Venture also aren’t exactly great. Certain sequences do a decent job heightening the intensity of a situation, but generally, the game lacks in the sound department.

Visually, Venture looks terrific. It was built on the much-praised Unreal 3 Engine (the same one used in Gears of War games) and thus is capable of smooth running and gorgeously rendered environments. The environment artists could have lazily slapped the same texture on every cave wall and overflowing water spring, but they didn’t. The game’s many wooden bridges, caves of spider webs, flowing water streams, and much more pop with life, in a way I was not expecting. Additionally, Vertigo Games did great work creating main character Adam and the two others. Though, if you’re looking for different, Venture doesn’t have it. Adam resembles Commander Shepard from Mass Effect, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, and Desmond Miles from Assassin’s Creed, just to name a few. And Adam’s girlfriend, Evelyn, yeah, she’s the cute and concerned sidekick we’ve seen before. These aren’t detriments to the game, rather something I feel the entire community needs to break from.

Finally, and likely the make or break aspect of the game, is its clear and direct Christian roots. The story and its many elements highlight good and evil, as depicted by the Christian faith. Adam is constantly tested by dark beings telling him to “stray from the herd and become a wolf” and a primary part of the game is solving these quick little mini-puzzles where you must correctly arrange a jumbled bible verse. Now, I grew up, and remain, a member of the Catholic Church, so I actually knew many of these verses. But for anyone that doesn’t, they’re easily discernable. The game’s final puzzle requires you to recall, or re-learn, the seven days of creation, and piece them together in the correct order, and even I had a tough time with that one.

Blast Factor: Adam’s Venture has its flaws, but is generally an above average, and most of all fun to play, adventure game. The game’s cavernous environments look beautiful running on the Unreal 3 Engine, and for any Christian-gamer out there with a decent PC, this game has your name written all over it.

Adam’s Venture is available exclusively on the PC. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for review purposes.

Order of War is one of the first steps for Square Enix to appeal to a broader audience”"it’s published by them, but developed by Wargaming.net, and is quite unlike the kind of title you expect from the RPG behemoth.

Order of War is set during World War II and has the player playing through famous historical battles as either Americans against Germans in France or German forces versus Soviets in Poland. You control almost all the aspects of the battles including airstrikes, ground troops, paratroopers, tanks, artillery and even managing reinforcements.

Each level in the game starts out with some black and white video footage of actual battles that have lead up to the scenario about to be played, which I found gives the game much more depth, as opposed to just dropping you into a battle. The game then zooms in on all the units, tanks and vehicles and begins to display many statistics on the screen at once: everything from number of troops to the firepower of missiles to almost blueprint like schematics of certain vehicles. You are then briefed on your objectives as parts of the map are revealed to you. The objectives range from protecting allied convoys, capturing occupied villages and holding positions.

The onscreen HUD displays the number of platoons you control and each of their conditions, a mini map and your resource points. Resource points increase at a steady rate over time and can be used for a variety of things, including paratroops and airstrikes. Each option may cost you a different amount of support, further adding depth to the game play. Many factors can affect success such as varying geography/topography. Tanks and artillery having longer range when on top of a hill and vice versa when firing from downhill; infantry have better cover when in a wooded area. Infantry can hide in trenches or houses for added cover which can give you a great advantage.

The enemy forces have pretty much the same abilities and resources as you do and it is especially challenging to get through a location when the opposing forces are in the houses all around you. Infantry can also load into trucks to faster get to a map location faster, though loading and reloading the trucks can use up valuable time which you don’t always have. There are other disadvantages to using trucks as it puts an entire platoon in one place which makes an easy target for the enemy, and when a truck full of troops is destroyed the whole platoon dies. There are also trucks for artillery that carry anti-tank cannons that take some time to set up but once set up they can become a key to victory in any battle.

Statistics are displayed after each mission is completed and, based on your performance, you are awarded medals, such as purple hearts, and points to upgrade your units in future missions. The upgrades are broken down into Infantry, Artillery and Tanks, and include increases in accuracy, speed, etc. For example you can upgrade your infantry’s accuracy with firearms to level 1 and, if you have enough points left, increase to level 2 and so on. These changes permanently effect the performance of your units through the whole game.

The graphics looked nice at an aerial view, but can zoom in so close that you get a great feel of how it would seem to forces on the ground, though the troops can seem a bit blocky zoomed in. There is also a cinematic function where the screen goes into a letter box view and weaves through the battlefield at different angles and speeds to give you the feel of watching a war movie. Though this function is well done I never found many times to use it as there was so much going on.

In the first level I found there was so much going on I wondered how I could ever command so many units in real time. But after some practice and finding out just how useful and important the pause function was to the game, I started to really enjoy myself. I soon felt rather engrossed in the whole experience. Though the game has some problems, the minimap did not rotate with the camera so it was hard to navigate at times. I also felt the game assumes you know WWII lingo like what a Howitzer or Nebelwerfer is. The strength of the infantry felt weak and I found them more useful as distractions then actual fighters, as the game seems to rely heavily on tanks. The infantry AI seemed lacking as at times, and became rather annoying when they wanted to crawl on their stomach all of a sudden. The distance you could zoom out also felt rather small.

Blast Factor: Order of War is a solid game despite some balance issues. The game really shines the most in the heat of battle and the way it sets up the scenario for you. From someone who was never really interested in WWII based games, I surprisingly found myself enjoying Order of War.

Order of War is a PC exclusive, available at retail for $39.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for review purposes.

Everybody loves pirates. From Jack Sparrow to Davey Jones; we’re all mystified by their abnormality. There’s something about the swashbuckling lifestyle that draws us in, even amidst its absurdity.

Telltale Games, makers of the beloved Wallace and Gromit series are at again, today releasing the third installment in the five-part “Tales of Monkey Island” franchise for PC and WiiWare. This issue, dubbed “The Lair of The Leviathan” is the best one yet and will satisfy any adventure-thirsty Pirate enthusiast.

Leviathan begins directly after the events of “Siege of Spinner Cay“ and commences with a short but detailed cutscene narrated by the prophetic Voodoo Lady that’ll get you up to speed on past events if you’re new to the series, or will softly remind you of what’s happened, if you’ve forgotten.

The plot this time around is the zaniest it’s ever been. In Leviathan you reprise your role in controlling protagonist Guybrush Threepwood but this time the adventure begins not on land, or in the jungle, rather the action commences at sea, as the ship you’re steering is swallowed up by a Giant Manatee. You, your shipmates and the ship itself, The Screaming Narwhal, are slurped into the Manatee’s stomach, where much of the game takes place.

Voice acting in the game is yet again outstanding and should be seen as a model for games, spanning all genres, moving forward. You might think a swashbuckling pirate adventure would set up well for troves of corny dialogue lines, but this isn’t the case. Every line, save for a few, are well executed with each conversation flowing naturally from line to line, person to person. Leviathan is an adventure game, yes, but its comedic value is priceless, as countless hilarious quips are littered throughout the story. For example, the “Democratically United Brotherhood of the Manatee Interior” is what the assembly of Manatee-dwelling Pirates called themselves. In short, Leviathan, like its two predecessors is very funny in more ways than you’d expect.

Where Telltale also succeeded so very greatly in Leviathan is in the character creation department. If you thought you knew everything about main character Guybrush Threepwood by playing the first two and are ready to write your biography on the man, think again. With each chapter Telltale not only introduces new characters, as they did in this installment, but also adds deeper character elements and faces to those you’re already familiar with. It’s difficult to talk at length on this matter without spoiling anything, but trust me, there’s something stirring in the waters.

Additionally, a character only mentioned in the first two episodes, Coronado DeCava, appears in the flesh in Leviathan and, with his infatuation with the Voodoo Lady and other oddities, is one you won’t soon forget.

You’d think the whole “I’m trapped in a Manatee’s gut” would be a bad thing, but really, it’s not. Telltale did a wonderful job in designing and digitizing such an unknown and gross setting and truly made it a, dare I say, enjoyable, environment to play in. Additionally, you might also think the belly of the beast is an inhospitable hut of glut, but you’d be wrong. Treasure, enemies, allies, and lots of mystery are yours to embark upon, all within the pink and oozing walls of Mr. Manatee.

The contrast in setting to the first two games, where you traversed jungles, ships, and small seaside towns, is a welcomed modification and one that shows off Telltale’s range in environment design capability. The same determined level of detail and dedication to subtleties is applied to Manatee innards, and this is downright awesome.

You’ll finish the events of Lair of the Leviathan in about 2 to 3 hours depending on your play-style, and I strongly believe this is the absolute perfect length for episode-based adventures. The Tales of Monkey Island series began in July and will run an entire 5 months until November. So yes, it’s short, but the taste it leaves in your mouth is so delectable you’d be crazy to jump ship mid-series.

Of note: I ran into a game-breaking, critical error at about 75% completion, and a quick email to Telltale told me the issue was known but rare. But since the build I played was a non-final one, barring disaster, you won’t run into the same bug I did.

Blast Factor: Tales of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan is a superb point-and-click adventure game. Its hilarious dialogue, unexpected and zany plot twists, memorable characters, the very unique environment of the inside of a Manatee, and yet another drastic cliff hanger, I couldn’t be more excited to play Chapter 4 next month.

Played through entire game. Exhausted most of the dialogue. Did not wear an eye-patch or a bandana.

Tales of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan is available today at the Telltale Store exclusively on PC for $34.95 for all 5 episodes delivered monthly.

As the video game world careens toward a Fall 2009 chock full of triple A titles including the latest Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Modern Warfare, one studio, Telltale Games, offers a unique, both creatively and economically, way to spend your hard-earned scratch and thoroughly enjoy your time spent in the virtual world we’ve come to know and love.

“Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay” released today and is the second installment in the five part “Monkey Island” series which began in July and will run straight through until November. Does the high-seas, swashbuckling, pirate adventure sequel live up to its predecessor, or walk the plank and drown? Let’s find out.

“Siege of Spinner Cay” picks up, to the second, where “Screaming Narwhal“ left off. You’re immediately thrust back into the boots of main character Guybrush Threepwood and are tasked with evading the swift sword blows of a female assassin who is diligently pursuing the removal of your Pox-stricken hand.

However, once the danger is quelled, albeit with limb lost, the main task of finding your beautiful lass Elaine and the treacherous voodoo pirate LeChuck come front and center ultimately landing you and your ship, the Narwhal onto the shores of the ominous and hilariously named Jerkbait Islands.‚  Once on the main island, Spinner Cay, you’ll quickly discover there is far, far, far, more to what you maybe thought was a simple plot, and tasks, conversations, and head-scratching moments will be aplenty as you trudge through the game’s many puzzles ultimately culminating in yet another head-scratcher of final scene.

Much like Telltale’s Wallace and Gromit four-part series we loved to death, Spinner Cay rehashes everything that was truly wonderful about its predecessor and slowly, but surely, builds upon those digital bounds.

Where the debut title “Launch of the Screaming Narwhal” was simply oriented within a few simply designed locales, “Spinner Cay” branches out from the full-on, multi-level, and downright gorgeous focal point of attraction, the cay itself, to the aptly shaded blue waters of the ocean, to the soft sand beaches, and even to a lush green jungle teeming with mystery.

Telltale also expanded on the basic humor employed in the original by buffing Guybrush and company’s jokes to include multiple counts of pretty clear sexual innuendo to slight anachronisms while keeping the general hilarity amidst danger the series is so well known for, well intact. To solve one of the game’s more hilarious puzzles you must properly insult an evil pirate captain.‚  But this is no easy task. Calling him a “smelly bloke” just won’t cut it. You’ll have to be more creative!

Where “Spinner Cay” soars past “Narwhal” and sets itself apart in the point and click genre, lies in the game’s glorious soundtrack. Moments of tension, grief, relief, and love are charted wondrously, but sadly, if you’re running audio straight from your bundled computer speakers you’ll miss a lot. That said, should you be running a 5.1 surround sound system or better, you’ll fall victim to a case of the wowzers at the hands of the game’s varying, but always solid, sound pieces.

Most importantly is Telltale’s recognition that episodic content should balloon in creative value with each iteration. It is so very clear that “Siege of Spinner Cay” is not simply the second chapter in the five part series. It is so much more than that. “Spinner Cay’s” plot obviously lies in direct accord with the original, but there is enough fresh material, that when combined with the general familiarity earned in the debut episode, you’ll feel right at home but also challenged in unique ways before your epic swashbuckling journey is over.

Blast Factor:

“Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay” is a truly first-rate point and click adventure game that will leave hardened puzzle-solvers reveling in Telltale’s masterful creation. The narrative is compelling, the visuals are stylized and gorgeous, and the title is virtually glitch free. Enjoy!

Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay was released today exclusivley on PC. $34.95 gets you all five games spanning from last month’s to November.

Trine, the most recent release from Frozenbyte, is a new unique fantasy-based RPG. It is a 2D side-scrolling game, reminiscent of older platform games (think Super Mario Bros.) but with a modern twist “" it has absolutely beautiful graphics. The focus of Trine is solving tricky puzzles to progress through different environments, as well as bits of combat against an undead army. The most unique part of the game however is its superior physics engine; every little thing your characters do can affect your surroundings and help you move forward. This extends as far as shooting a rope with arrows to cause it to snap, to placing heavy objects in certain places to act as counter-weights.

You are able to play one of three types of characters in Trine “" the wizard, the thief, or the knight. You can switch between these three characters at will and without penalty, which allows you to easily maneuver through the environment and create a mix of ranged and melee combat. The wizard starts off with the ability to conjure boxes and move objects via a telekinesis-like ability, but learns new and upgraded spells as you progress, such as conjuring planks you can walk on. The thief uses a bow for offensive combat, and a grapple to help move around her surroundings. At first the bow is simply used for combat or to knock objects over, but later on you can even light torches via flaming arrows! The grapple is a staple tool to solving puzzles in Trine, and also fun to use. The knight is the typical sword-and-board character, equipped with a sword and shield to fight off the undead. At first it doesn’t seem like the knight is very helpful, but eventually you can learn new skills to pick up heavy objects or make yourself more effective in combat. Also, thanks to the very realistic physics engine, the knight is a poor swimmer and will sink when you jump in water due to all of his heavy armor.

As you move through different areas in the game you will have to overcome many types of obstacles. On top of fighting off the undead, you must also find ways around cliffs, moving platforms, spikes and deadly ooze. A nice thing about Trine is that you aren’t locked in to one way of doing things; instead almost everything can be overcome in various ways depending on how you wish to play and how you interact with the environment.

Character-environment interaction is really where this game shines though, as combat isn’t anything special.‚  When fighting the undead skeletons not much more is needed than jumping around and clicking your attack button, giving the game a kind of hack-and-slash feel versus a need for a strategy. Enemy AI isn’t very creative either, leaving you with the impression that combat was more of a side-note for this game.

As you move through different areas you will notice little blue, green, and red vials hidden in different areas, or drop from monsters you kill. The blue and red vials replenish lost energy and health, and these are rather abundant thankfully because you will notice that you may sometimes spend energy rather quickly. The green vials give experience, and are typically in hard to reach places and require much more effort to get to. Some mobs do give you XP as well, but it is not guaranteed. The leveling system in Trine if extremely basic in this way, and once you collect a certain amount of XP you will level up, allowing you to boost each characters skills a little bit.

There are also little chests you can find as you progress, typically located in places that require some thinking to get to but sometimes right in the open, that offer different rewards. Chests may drop items for your characters, or teach new skills for one of them to spice up gameplay. Most items have special bonuses to them and can be swapped between the three characters very easily via the character menu.

A hidden little fact about Trine is that you have the option to play the game cooperatively with up to two others. I say it is hidden because though the game boasts co-op play, when sitting at the main menu screen it isn’t very clear that you actually can do this. You have to first navigate your way through the options menu, then controls, in order to set up other players controls. This is definitely a pain, as it could take someone quite a while before they even realize how to utilize this option.

Blast Factor: Ultimately, Trine is definitely a fun game to play and has a captivating storyline. Combat is fun, though nothing special for sure, and the environmental puzzles remind me of the times I played games like Prince of Persia. Beautiful graphics pull you into this game, and the shockingly real physics and fluid gameplay keep you playing. However, if you don’t plan on replaying the game or playing co-op, which can get tough on a single PC, at $29.99 ($22.49 until August 19^th via Steam) Trine is a bit expensive considering I finished the game in about five hours of playing.

Trine is available internationally on PC, and will see a North American retail release in September. A Playstation Network version is also forthcoming.

The Lone Wanderer has saved Alaska, saved Pittsburgh, woke from the dead and visited Point Lookout; all in a span of a few months.

Now, Fallout 3′s protagonist has one more frontier to conquer: Space!

Mothership Zeta, Fallout 3′s fifth and final Downloadable Content, takes the Lone Wanderer on a galactic adventure filled with Aliens, spaceships and, best of all, advanced weapons.‚  However, with many other DLCs to compete with, how will Bethesda’s most recent Fallout 3 add-on stack up against the competition?

Mothership Zeta opens like most other DLCs; with a mysterious radio signal that ultimately reveals a new location on your map.‚  The location, aptly named Alien Crash Site, is where a small round ship called Recon Craft Theta had crash-landed in the Wasteland.‚  Upon arriving at the location, the Lone Wanderer will notice that there is fairly heavy radiation surrounding the ship.‚  Eventually, when players approach the ship, the Lone Wander is beamed up to Mothership Zeta.

Once the Lone Wander teleports to Zeta, players find themselves trapped (and stripped of all armor and weapons) in a holding cell with a Waster named Somah.‚  Somah doesn’t know much more than you when it comes to general information about the ship, but she has learned that your Alien captors would prefer to keep their human specimens alive.‚  With this in mind, Somah suggests that you should fight her, making the Aliens have to open the cell and break up the scuffle.‚  Once you agree to the plan, it is executed perfectly and the escape begins.

One of my favorite parts about Mothership Zeta is the unique cast of characters you meet during your attempt to escape.‚  First, the Alien enemies on the spacecraft were very cool.‚  Each Alien looks similar to what we all imagine an extraterrestrial would look like: small, green and with a big head.‚  Still, even with this classic interpretation of extra-terrestrials, the natives of Mothership Zeta are quite interesting because of their beautifully animated armor and masterfully recorded voices.‚  These aspects alone were probably two of the best things about this DLC.

Also, the Aliens of Mothership Zeta seem to have been in the abducting business for quite a while, judging by the types of folks you encounter.‚  The Aliens cryogenically froze many different types of NPCs, good and bad.‚  Some of the frozen enemies that are frozen (and possibly unfrozen) include Slavers, Super Mutants and those ever-pesky Feral Ghouls.‚  The allies you meet on Mothership Zeta are from Earth’s present and past.‚  Characters such as a cowboy, a little girl who survived the Great War (and is very helpful throughout the DLC) and a medic from the liberation of Alaska.‚  My favorite NPC was a cryo-frozen Samurai, complete with ancient Japanese armor and weaponry.

Speaking of weapons, the Aliens on Mothership Zeta really know how develop some tools of destruction.‚  In addition to the massive device called the Death Ray (useable only at the end of the DLC), the fallen Aliens usually leave behind impressive loot.‚  Items such as the Shock Baton and Electro-Suppressor serve as viable weapons for melee characters.‚  The Alien Atomizer and Disintegrator are found often throughout the DLC and do considerable damage against your extra-terrestrial adversaries.‚  My favorite weapon in Mothership Zeta was the Drone Cannon.‚  This weapon, which is found on the Aliens’ security robots, fire large spheres of energy that bounce around and eventually explode.‚  This was especially helpful when I wanted to eliminate enemies who were hiding around corners and behind objects.

Sadly, the characters and the weapons were the only things I really liked about the Mothership Zeta DLC.

The great thing about Fallout 3 is the fact that it is driven by such an interesting storyline.‚  Unfortunately, Mothership Zeta fails to provide anything resembling an intriguing plot.‚  I found myself becoming bored with this DLC very quickly, not caring about whom I talked to or what information I uncovered.‚  Instead, I seemed to just be playing Mothership Zeta so I could get my character to level 30 and be done with it.‚  Though I was able to get to that pinnacle level, I still wasn’t happy with the story that got me there.

Similar to the plot, the quests in Mothership Zeta were quite bland.‚  Many of the tasks that the Lone Wanderer must complete tended to be tedious and uninteresting.‚  There was no real problem solving during the quests.‚  Instead, the Lone Wanderer is forced run from one location to another, having no say in the way he or she completes the task.‚  Fallout 3 is all about making the right or wrong choice.‚  However, for the developers of Mothership Zeta, it seems that this DLC is all about making *their* choice.

Not helping the entertainment value of the quests was the confusing nature of the spacecraft’s environments.‚  Though each room and hallway on Mothership Zeta looked clean and futuristic, I found it very easy to get lost while trying to find important points of interest.‚  The use of teleportation pads came in handy quite often, but they often made things much more confusing than they needed to be.‚  I applaud the effort by Bethesda, but they just didn’t do anything for me.

Blast Factor: Overall, Mothership Zeta was a real letdown for me.‚  Though the characters and advanced weaponry in this DLC were a pleasure to interact with, important aspects such as the plot, quests and environments were either flawed or just plain boring.‚  If $10 means little to you, Mothership Zeta may be worth purchasing if you have all of the other Fallout 3 DLCs and would like to reach level 30.‚  However, if you’re still lacking any of the previous DLCs, I suggest you invest in those first.

Mothership Zeta is currently available exclusively on Xbox Live and Games for Windows for 800 Points / $9.99.

Since late March , Telltale Games, a California-based developer, arguably most famous for their determined work in the Sam and Max universe, have released wave after wave of episodic content under the famed Wallace and Gromit license, to the tune of four titles, and glowing reviews from yours truly.

Late last month (July 28), Telltale released The Bogey Man, the fourth and final installment in the now epic “Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures” series.‚  I spent a great deal of time and effort, and experienced many moments of pure point and click bliss over the past weekend as I played through the title, and today I feel a bit saddened to know the series is over, but am also warmed at the feeling of passing my thoughts on to you, dear reader.

Does The Bogey Man capture and build upon the essence of the three to come before it, or does it shank the drive into the rough, and leave us face-palming into eternity? Only one way to find out”¦.

First and truly foremost, for beginners to the series primarily, The Bogey Man, and the entire series for that matter, is a point and click adventure puzzle-solving game. No, this isn’t the FPS Wallace and Gromit we are so yearning for (we kid), but in all the same ways it is a fully-encompassing experience, which could be called an acquired taste, but really, if you love great games, The Bogey Man is it.

Every character from the previous installments (including the sinister Monty Muzzler from Muzzled!) returns in The Bogey Man and at this point, having known the characters for over four months, the level of emotional attachment and general knowledge for said characters will be a remarkable feat to experience. Is it weird that I know Felicity Flitt is an avid gardener with a stuck-up mentality? No, it’s great gaming!

Obviously the two title characters, Wallace, the bumbling inventor, and his vastly intelligently superior canine companion Gromit are the centers of attention in The Bogey Man, and you’ll be treated to your fair share of daft statements from the former, and saving graces from the latter. By now we’re used to it, aren’t you?

Wallace’s zany inventions, including his notorious Trousers, play a vital part in The Bogey Man, and without giving too many critical plot elements away, you’ll certainly need to master the art of mechanical sleuthing!

Graphically speaking, The Bogey Man is downright sexy. The artsy claymation style of both the films and the series’ prior installments is again rehashed in this golf-oriented iteration. Nothing gained, nothing lost in terms of detail or style, but this is no problem, as The Bogey Man adds new locales, including a club house and a sewer, all drawn in the adorable style the series is so darn famous for.‚  I ran across a few slowdown issues and some awkward moments due to graphical hang-ups, but these can be attributed to the fact that A) my graphics card isn’t the hottest, and 2) I was playing a review build, not the one you’ll receive.

Sound in The Bogey Man, following suit of its predecessors, is wondrous. The light and melodious background tunes morph into all shades of emotion as related to the scene depicted, and you’d do well to stop for a moment, enjoy the melodies, and then proceed on solving the game’s many puzzles! From the familiar tune of the opening credits to the emotional climax at the end, the music only adds, never detracts to the total experience, and is always fitting. I ran into a few slight audio clipping issues, oddly only with the talkative shop owner Mr. Paneer, but this slight hiccup is truly a non-issue in the overall scheme of things.

As far as plot is concerned, The Bogey Man is arguably the most preposterous yet. Yes, we’ve seen an entirely too large Queen Bee, a canine-operated amusement ride, and a basement-based sandy beach vacation spot, but some of the hi-jinks in The Bogey Man truly trump them all. On a scale of believable to shut the f*ck up, The Bogey Man is heavy set to latter. However, we’re talking about video games here, namely Wallace and Gromit video games, so come on. Even if it feels as if Telltale ran senselessly from idea to idea, it works, and that’s what matters!

The general plot scheme in The Bogey Man ties in directly with its predecessor, Muzzled!, which ended on the greatest of cliffhangers, as Wallace inadvertently proposed to neighbor Felicity Flit. In this latest episode the main struggle and origin of the game’s many puzzles stem forth from this unusual predicament, and, as one hilarious event leads to another, Wallace strives to become repulsive to Felicity in order to nullify their faux-agreement. We’ve all been there haven’t we?

Pacing and difficulty in The Bogey Man are both well constructed. Puzzles begin in a welcoming nature, but quickly, as the title lasts just a tad over 3 hours, they’ll escalate to pure head-scratching ponderings deserving of all your attention. The aforementioned pacing is wonderfully assembled. There is truly never a down moment. Depending on the scene, you’ll guide either Wallace or Gromit around the game’s multiple environments, and you’ll never be short of tasks to complete.

Blast Factor:

The Bogey Man is the stunning conclusion to the epic four part series that point and click adventure game fans should not miss out on. Diehard fans of the Wallace and Gromit universe should absolutely play this title, as it is the closest thing to another properly made film we’re going to get. Voice acting is beyond superb, pacing is excellent, visuals are familiar and adorable, and the conclusion leaves nothing in question. Go play!

Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures is a four part episode-based title developed and published by Telltale games. The Bogey Man retails for $8.95 in the Telltale online store, or $34.95 gets you all four installments.

The point and click adventure genre has never been a tickler of my immediate fancy. I love all the elements of a great point and click (storytelling, adventure, humorous situations), but have never found a game, or development studio that cooked a delectable enough recipe for me to wholeheartedly experience the joys of such a feat.

Enter Telltale games, a company founded in 2004 and arguably most famous for their work on the Sam and Max series, who, in a unique fashion release their games through monthly episodic installments, instead of, as is normative, all at once.

Telltale are also the blokes behind Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures, a four part whirlwind of a story that we absolutely. Loved. To. Death.

It was through Telltale that my love for the genre ballooned back up to where all I can do is sing the praises of the genre, as told by the studio. No, I am not a secret agent, stealthily blogging for Blast, on Telltale’s payroll, I simply feel when a studio is on their game, the laudatory remarks should be ubiquitous.

Tales of a Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, the first part of 5 in the epic Monkey Island series launched this month, and I enthusiastically and excitedly took part in the swashbuckling mayhem. Did Telltale yet again strike a resounding chord with the oceanic puzzler, or should you patch up both eyes and skip over this gallivanting endeavor? Time to find out!

There are three major game-play elements that Telltale excelled at in Screaming Narwhal and they are storytelling, visuals, and sound. Sound familiar? They should, as every major game, with some exception, is centered on that trifecta, but, in a simplistic point and click style adventure game their importance is heightened to say the least and Telltale was more than up to this task of delivering on all counts.

Without giving too much away, Screaming Narwhal is all about main character Guybrush and his humorous attempts at solving the mystery of the swirling winds that rule Flotsam Island, a location the pirate is washed up upon after an encounter with a voodoo pirate named LeChuck.

Dialogue in Screaming Narwhal is downright scary awesome. Conversational options, a la Mass Effect, allow for multiple emotional responses, and voice acting is absolutely superb. Main character Guybrush Threepwood is a hilarious fellow, who will constantly amaze you with his wit, charm, and total tomfoolery. Dialogue, arguably the penultimate facet of Screaming Narwhal is what makes this game great. If you can’t stand listening to line after line of conversation, don’t play this game.

Visuals, there’s a word gamers have grown to love, and Telltale has crafted a beau-ty with Screaming Narwhal. As you probably guessed, the drama goes down on the wooden rafters of ships, but also in a beautifully rendered town, jungle, and a French scientist’s laboratory! Characters models are highly stylized, with kind of a Team Fortress 2 look to them, and couple that with some the gorgeously cute town setting and lush green jungle, and you’ve got more than enough to enjoy for your entire stay on Flotsam Island.

Maybe my keen ear and love of music skews my attention towards the melody facet of games, but I firmly believe that the musical composition for Screaming Narwhal adds that extra oomph to the experience that, when coupled with the aforesaid wondrous storytelling, is a dynamic and emotionally attractive aspect to the entire experience. From the game’s opening sequence of escalated drama on the high seas to the many humorous encounters Guybrush enters into, the music never detracts, always adds, and enriches the sense of immersion Telltale was so yearning to achieve.

Storytelling, sound, and visuals are all integral elements to the experience of the gamer, but what about how the game actually plays? In a word: excellent.

The pace at which events unfold in Screaming Narwhal is so well constructed that you’ll never feel rushed, dragged, overburdened with tasks. The game is, at its root, a puzzle-solving experience. Sure, your ultimate goal is to learn the mystery behinds the whirling winds, but along the way you must first tackle a number of varied tasks to meet that end. These tasks never, ever feel trivial. Every move you make is important in the ultimate struggle, and you’ll know this, as the game’s inventory system (kind of like your backpack) shows you what items you’ve collected and a simple conversation with a local NPC will remind you of the task at hand.

The control scheme in Screaming Narwhal is executed wonderfully, as it is so simple, yet to useful. A simple click of the mouse can elicit conversation, place a lit bomb in pink underwear (you’ll do that), or shoot a canon, just to name a few. Hovering your mouse over the right side of the screen or hitting the tab button will open up your inventory to make use of the many wares you’ll collect along the way. Basically, the simple system Telltale has borrowed from Wallace and Gromit, works very, very well, and trust me, you’ll appreciate its simplicity.

Finally, Screaming Narwhal is just part one of five in the Monkey Island series, and, as you’d expect, the game ends on a seriously exciting cliff hanger that raises so, so many questions to be answered in the sequel, due out next month. Ahh, what a business model indeed!

Blast Factor:

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is a truly excellent point and click adventure game buffed by superb voice acting, gorgeous visuals, alluring and encompassing storytelling, and warm, welcoming, and appropriate sound resting in the background. The only caveat I can throw your way is that the game features a ton of dialogue, and if you’re impatient and choose to skip the conversational scenes to simply finish the game, you’ll end up spending more time on Flotsam Island, as the dialogue is so, so important, and full of clues, not to mention it’s the best voice acting I’ve heard since Mass Effect. Bottom line, if you’re into point and click games, Monkey Island, or just great games in general, you won’t want to miss this one!

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is available today exclusively on PC. $34.95 gets you all 5 episodes releasing on a monthly schedule from now until November.

The Sims 3 has been a long awaited release this summer, promising a ton of new features since the franchise’s previous release. One thing is for certain, whether or not you are a huge fan of The Sims, the available features are definitely entertaining to play around with!

The game starts off with the new Create-A-Sim program, where you are able to completely alter almost every aspect of your Sims. The standard facial changes are allowed along with the ability to adjust all preset models to your liking, and many new haircut styles are introduced, as well as the ability to literally create your own wardrobe for the Sims. Another very cool feature is being able to choose a voice for your Sim, then adjusting the pitch to your liking.

This new feature is the Create a Style tool, which allows you to create a new style of clothing or add your own flavor to existing patterns. This also lets you copy styles from one type of clothing and carry it over to anything else so they can match! Another bonus is that this isn’t limited to your Sim’s clothing “" the Create a Style tool can also be used on anything you can buy for your Sim, so you can add your own touch to almost every design element of the game.

Depending on what age you make your Sim, you are able to choose a different number of personality traits. There are 63 personality traits to choose from, from being absent-minded to hating being naked to being evil! This gives you an endless variety of combinations to completely shape how your Sim acts and views the world. On top of personality traits, you can also choose a few of your Sims favorite things and their life goals!

When I was able to play The Sims 3 it was the first time I had played The Sims in at least two years, so the creation phase alone took me a solid hour to explore the different features and be happy with my Sim. Not being an avid Sims player, I am happy to say that the character creation part of the game is very simple to learn even with all of the given options. So how better to begin playing the game than with an evil computer genius with a good sense of humor?

When it comes to The Sims 3 world, it allows much more freedom than previous The Sims titles and it is now seamless. This is always a very nice touch to a game, providing a much more sandbox-style feel to game that already lets you do whatever you wish.

Whether you decide to buy a house for your Sim and decorate accordingly, or build a new house from scratch, you will spending a lot of time in Buy Mode. This is standard in The Sims games, but from what I remember from the other titles The Sims 3 offers a much simpler UI and it’s much easier to cycle through tools and items. The only thing I found that was a pain was the way to move your camera view around, as it was extremely awkward.

During my play time I created my own house for my Sim, with fully outfitted rooms with custom styles thanks to the Create a Style tool. After a while it becomes a bit captivating as you take the time to carefully design each room while building houses, then having so much freedom to decorate and outfit them with many types of appliances and furniture.

Another new feature is the Create a Movie tool, which lets you record up to 1 GB of gameplay at a time. After uploading the recording, you are presented with many tools for video editing to give your movie a polished look. I was unable to get the chance to play around with this feature as of yet, but it is something I look forward to experimenting with.

This game expands on the previous style of gameplay in other Sims games, providing new jobs and choices for your Sims as well as more items to purchase for them.

The Sims 3 was overall a fun a game to play, with many new features and tons of new items to improve gameplay. The game is even more sandbox than ever, allowing limitless amounts of customization and the choice to do whatever you please, making your experience more unique than ever.

The Sims 3 is available on Windows and Mac OS X, retails for $49.99, and comes with $10 worth of Sims Store points upon registration.

With such heavy cultural attachment fixed to the “Wallace and Gromit” series, primarily fueled by the rampant success of the films of yesteryear, how could a new tale, told via a different electronic medium “" the video game, penetrate that user-base and leave fans with a renewed sense of love for the unlikely duo? A difficult task indeed, but one that developer Telltale Games went to the moon and back to bring to loyal fans in their four part episode-based adventure, and their astounding level of determination in doing so is truly a model for others to aspire to.

Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures has been just that thus far: a grand adventure. Both Fright of the Bumblebees and The Last Resort were stellar episodes, but if you don’t believe me? Read our reviews!

Following the proven success recipe that is short and sweet storytelling, Muzzled!, the third installment in the series, went live for download this morning, and leapfrogs the first two episodes by a considerable clip based on a number of determining factors.

First off, you’ve got know what you’re getting muzzled into here. Muzzled! is, as said before, just one of four pieces of the Grand Adventure, and while the story elements have changed, the fundamental puzzle-solving nature of the game remains rigidly intact and fundamentally important. As episodic content goes, Muzzled! is a short experience, and what I mean by short is between three and five hours of gameplay bolstered by prolonged cut scene periods of story-important dialogue. If you’re the type who elects to skip these cinematics in order to “save time” be warned, as each and every conversation between characters contains nuanced clues of how to proceed. Except for maybe Major Crum. What’s he rambling on about all the time?

The story unravels very, very quickly in Muzzled!, so I’ll sum up the narrative without spoilers, and in a simple way.‚  Wallace is still inventing quirky contraptions that ultimately are more trouble than they’re worth and Gromit, his four-legged canine mute counterpart, again leaps into the fray to save the day. Every character from the original two games makes an appearance in Muzzled!, but one man, Monty Muzzle, arrives on the scene with a proposition that may not be as righteous as the shady bloke says it is. Muzzle has organized a weekend fair to take place with all proceeds going towards endangered canines. If only, and you’ll soon discover his motives are quite a bit more dastardly than what the man preaches.

As said before, the narrative in Muzzled! races along at a very brisk pace, much faster than the original two, and, only as a cartoon could, the action cruises from place to place, with rampant adventure spilling forth throughout. It’s awesome, I promise.

Where Telltale truly succeeds in Muzzled!, and throughout the series, is via glorious storytelling bolstered by believable and engaging voice acting. It is truly remarkable how much I have come to learn about and grow attached to the games’ many characters and this can only be chalked up to a dedicated effort to create authentic personalities. My British humor vocabulary and understanding is not great so I can only assume many jokes flew straight over my head, but the ones I did catch had me smiling cheek to cheek and laughing at the games’ many subtle jokes, often not even spoken.

As far as gameplay is concerned, Muzzled! introduces no new game mechanics not found in the prior two, which would have been a welcome addition, but an understandable move on Telltale’s part. If it ain’t broke?

The familiar point, click, investigate, and manipulate mechanism remains intact and never becomes problematic or irksome. A simple drag and click of the mouse, and a toggle of the shift key is really all you need, besides a keen and inquisitive mind (and you’ll need a lot of that).

Telltale did a remarkable job creating a memorable world through the first two games and now, in Muzzled!, West Wallaby Street has an oddly familiar sense to it. The kitchen? Oh yeah, that’s down the hallway and to the left!

However, Telltale did add a new playable zone, and in Muzzled! you’ll spend the bulk of total play time in a brand new location “" the Faire Grounds. Leaving West Wallaby Street, traveling past the bus stop and through the town square lies the Grounds, upon which lie a mess of puzzles, everyone from town, a high-flying and well animated amusement ride, and some precarious situations.

After the great danger is quelled and the cheese is eaten, a “proposal” of grand sorts is extended to Wallace from an unlikely source and, should he accept, the face of the Wallace and Gromit series will forever change. Guess you have to play to learn about this highest cliff of all cliffhangers!

Overall, Telltale has yet again told the tale of excellence in every facet of game design. From dynamic and alluring storytelling buffed by memorable characters, to the authentic feel of the familiar claymation style presentation, Muzzled! succeeds so very well.

Muzzled! released June 16 for PC and is currently available for individual purchase for $8.95 or $34.95 for all four episodes via the Telltale Store. Fright of the Bumblebees is also on Xbox Live; download it here for 800 MS Points.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is an odd game to review, as we are looking at two distinct titles within one package. First, you have the remake of Escape from Butcher Bay “" which, by the way, despite being one of last generation’s better games, was not part of the Xbox backwards compatibility program-and secondly, you have the sequel to that game, Assault on Dark Athena. The names alone do a good job of explaining the differences between the two titles; in Escape, you sneak in the shadows and deliver as many stealthy kills as you can, like some kind of demon in the shadows that is terrorizing the prison. In Assault, you still have stealth kills, but there is more of an emphasis on gun play and blatantly open attacks on your pursuers. This is a problem, one that is obvious to anyone who has tried to utilize Riddick’s gun play over long stretches of time before.

That is not to say that the new content found in Assault on Dark Athena is bad; it’s just that after replaying an improved version of one of the last generation’s gems, the issues stand out and take away from the experience. In the end, depending on your level of tolerance, you’re going to end up with a fantastic remake that has yet to really show its age coupled with either a decent sequel in Athena or one that ultimately disappoints.

As Richard B. Riddick, you help out some prisoners by doing them some favors “" favors which often involve killing other prisoners “" and they help you get on your way to escaping from Butcher Bay, a prison in the desert that no one has ever escaped from. You hide in the shadows, shoot out lights, snap necks, drop from the rafters “" all of these stealth kills are highly satisfying, and if you limit your gun play to involve shadows, even that is fun as the AI struggles to find where you are versus where you were when you fired. The AI is not stupid in this game, as they will find you and come after you once they sense you are in the area. They will turn if they hear you coming as well, so you need to be sneaky and quiet, not just unseen. Luckily, Riddick has a stealth mode that allows him to walk quietly, and also lets you know if you’re in anyone’s line of sight; blue vision means you are unseen, while a return to regular vision means someone has the potential to catch you. You do have to be careful in making sure that guards are not hiding in the shadows like you were, as once you pop out they could converge on you. Like I said, the AI is not stupid.

Escape from Butcher Bay is a game that had tons of attention lavished on it in the past, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here given that there’s an entire other game to review; just know that if you loved the original, this remake is fantastic, and is worth revisiting just for the visual upgrades, given that it comes in a package with another game.

That game is not up to par with Butcher Bay though; Assault on Dark Athena tries to mix run-and-gun gameplay with stealth, and it doesn’t do a great job of either. Here are some issues you need to deal with: there are tons of weapons and ammunition available, and the level design is set up in a way where there are tons of open spaces “" that means there isn’t anywhere to hide. Combine those two together, and you realize the game is telling you to shoot first and hide in the shadows later, which takes away from Riddick’s core gameplay. When you move from the confines of corridors into a more open world, this is magnified. Fewer places to hide, more shooting to be had, and as you will realize, that AI that is not so stupid is now also nearly impossible to kill with ease.

They could sense your presence in corridors when you weren’t visible if you made too much noise, but now you can’t even hide effectively. They have better accuracy and range than you do with Riddick’s limited (and imperfect) gun play, and they have far more health than you do as well; the imbalance between the number of shots you can take and the number you need to fire shows that this is meant to be a stealth game, but it’s tough to pull off when the level design screams run-and-gun. This is not a one-on-one thing either, as Athena often pits you against groups of enemies, or against a turret that can maul you in no time.

Again, this is a worthwhile package, even if you’re just buying the remake of Butcher Bay. You get two games for the price of one, and now Riddick gets to experience multiplayer as well, which is a neat addition to the series when you’re talking about the Pitch Black mode. If you have never experienced Escape from Butcher Bay before, you’re in for a wonderful game, while the remake is worth owning just to play through it again in it’s prettier form. The greatness of Escape from Butcher Bay is quite an experience (let’s say it’s a 9), while the disappointment that stems from playing ‚ Assault on Dark Athena is unavoidable (let’s give this one a 7), but at least you purchased both for the grand total of $60.

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC, and retails for $59.99.

It is difficult to believe the original Wallace and Gromit short films released over a decade ago, and yet I can still recall the silly yet memorable plot lines, twists, and conclusions.‚  Who could forget the deceptively evil and kleptomaniac penguin from “The Wrong Trousers?” or the intergalactic adventures of a man and his dog based on an incorrect lunar cheese assumption?

The same elements that built the Academy Award winning films undoubtedly spill over into this well constructed and thoroughly enjoyable episodic title, Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures.

“Fright of the Bumblebees” is the zany first episode in the four part series and is the focal point of this review, as the three remaining titles have yet to release.

Upon entering the game and hearing the initial Wallace and Gromit brass and reed instrument theme music, a flood of nostalgia rushed through my body and definitively and effectively created an atmosphere in which I felt comfortable, relaxed and ready for the mayhem I knew would soon transpire.

Immediately you are introduced to two well known and admired characters, you guessed it, Wallace and Gromit.‚  ‚ The fusion of the bumbling, accident prone inventor and cheese lover and his sophisticated canine companion make for a compelling team that succeeds so very well in FOTB.

You can either fire up a tutorial level that calmly walks you through the basic mouse, pointer, and key movements, interactive measures, and inventory system in the title, and while it may be useful for beginners to point-and-click games, skipping it won’t hurt either.

First and foremost, FOTB is situated in three major locations, the front yard, the house, and the town square, exploration is limited to items you can click on and interactively emote with ‚ in a number of ways.‚  This is no sandbox, open world type game, there is no jump, kick, or punch button, story progression advances through speaking with characters, collecting and assembling items to solve the games’ many puzzles.‚  If you want to exact revenge on the neighbor and pee in her garden while playing as Gromit, well I’m sorry, “Pee on lady’s shrubs” is not an accepted interactivity feature.

In the same way the films begin, so does FOTB, Wallace is awoken from his slumber, presses a button on his morning contraption, slides out of bed dumptruck style, flies through the opened floorboard while being simultaneously dressed, and lands directly at the breakfast table ready for his meal.

The first task in FOTB, which is indicative of the style and manner of future quests, is for Gromit to assemble the necessary materials; eggs, toast, and honey from the kitchen, prepare them through the use of one of Wallace’s “helpful” contraptions and finally deliver them to the big man.‚  Certain tasks can be difficult to complete without hints and very generously, Telltale Games created a widget that you can toggle from low to high dependening on the number of hints and tips you’d like during gameplay.‚  There are many moments where you will traverse the entire house, venture outside and even travel to the town square looking for one small item, only to realize it was hidden in a trash can in the corner of the room!‚  Frustrating yes, but you learn quickly.

The game plays as if it were one of the films, cutscenes are long and filled with detail, but the voice acting is pure gold and adds to the emotion of the various sequences.‚  You guide either Wallace or Gromit depending on the scene and without spoiling any plot, the *availability* of the other.

The controls are fluid and simple, directional walking is controlled in the normative WASD orientation with the point of the mouse used as an operative mechanism to access doors, engage in a sequence of hilarious dialogue, or even control the misunderstood “Sniffer 3000.”

Throughout the game to complete the various tasks given to either Wallace or Gromit, the need to store items and call them up for future use becomes necessary and the simple and effective inventory system does just that.‚  At one point in the title, while Wallace is yapping away on the phone in his underpants and oblivious to his neighbors’ predicament, Gromit must pull out an S.O.S. sign from the inventory and flash it at Wallace to gather his attention. ‚ The inventory system is basic but does exactly what is needed from it.

In recent years, the‚ Need For Speed series has been going through what you could call an identity crisis. The last few titles have been a mix of track style and open world gameplay, incredibly cheesy cut scenes and action sequences that would even make the‚ Die Hard movies blush.‚ Need for Speed Undercover plays as if someone took all of these ingredients and smashed them together into one game. What results is a fun and entertaining title that get’s it fair share right, but strangely manages to fail–miserably even– at the fundamentals.

Undercover offers players the freedom to cruise around the game’s world–the fictional city of Palm Harbor freely. In theory, the sandbox style gameplay should be a welcome change from the tried and true, point A to point B track race formula, but the developers seem to have missed the point entirely.

Other than driving from mission to mission, there doesn’t seem to be much of incentive to explore the city. There are no hidden missions, no way to hunt down opponents–everything happens in a linear fashion in‚ Undercover. A number of the missions almost scrap the open gameplay by sectioning off an area of the map you’re allowed to go. The true allure of these open world games is to explore, and it seems like‚ Undercover is more interested in a leisurely drive. Palm harbor is an immersive setting, it’s just a shame that the developers at Blackbox didn’t go the extra mile and take advantage of the setting — especially when Burnout Paradise did just that in amazing fashion earlier this year.

That’s not to say that Palm Harbor is void of all life. Yes, the cops are back in‚ Undercover — and yes they’re pissed. While the AI starts off easy going and fun, that quickly changes, and it becomes aggressive and frustrating. In fact, about halfway through, the AI becomes so obnoxiously aggressive that players, especially those new to the series may be tempted to put down the controller.

It’s not like the game is hard either. Apart from the enemy AI, it’s a safe bet to assume that this‚ Need For Speedtitle was aimed at the casual market. It’s not unusual to beat a slew of high performance cars, with a much lower rated car. It’s understandable that with the success of movies like the‚ Fast and The Furious and the incredibly hot street racing scene, the developers would want to open their game up to a wider audience, but the uneven difficulty levels distract from the overall experience.

It would be nice to say that using the game’s new RPG like leveling system helps deal with the horrid AI and uneven gameplay, but in reality, it manages to do the exact opposite.‚  This new system, which borrows heavily from games like‚ World of Warcraft, rewards players for completing missions and races with stat points which can in turn be used to better your driving skills. These stats are also used almost as a rep system; the higher your stats, the more cars and missions are available to you.

While upgrading your “driver level” seems like a logical way to get on an even field with your opponents, the game’s AI seems to ramp as your stats do the same. This tactic of games adapting to the level of players has been done successfully in games like‚ Zelda: The WindWaker,‚ Resident Evil 4 and even this year’s Madden;‚ Undercover’s system comes off as unfair and frustrating.

When Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was released in 2003, it was hailed as nothing short of a masterpiece. The modern-day retooling of one of the biggest franchises of gaming’s golden age received immense critical acclaim, and game of the year awards for its inventive control scheme, stunning visuals and revolutionary gameplay controls.

Naturally, the success of Sands of Time paved the way for two sequels; Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. Sadly, the sequels were similar in name alone, and seemed to focus more on blood, gore and button mashing combat than any of the elements that made Sands of Time so special.

When Ubisoft Montreal decided to revamp the series completely, it took on an immense challenge — create a new Prince of Persia title that went back to the series’ roots, yet was good enough to make players forget about The Sands of Time.

They succeeded — for the most part.

The newest chapter in the Prince of Persia series is a fun, innovative and rewarding experience that nods back to the franchises early days, yet takes a big step towards rewriting the rules of the entire platformer genre. Sadly though, a few slight hiccups in the design of the Prince’s world will hinder its chances of joining the ranks of The Sands of Time.

More often than not when developers use cell shading for their titles, the ends result comes off as little more than a hokey gimmick, but in the case of PoP, it works, and it works well. From the start, the developers wanted to make players feel like they were in a storybook throughout the entire PoP experience, which the cell shading achieves tremendously. The incredibly detailed characters stand out well against the vibrant backgrounds. Incredibly, as you progress, the game’s visuals only get more stunning — playing through each completed area brings new life, and new color to an already vibrant landscape. Prince of Persia has every right to be considered along with Fallout 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4 as one of the year’s best looking games.

Unlike the two most recent sequels, PoP is less about combat, and more about platforming, though it’s unlike any platformer you’ve ever played. Though you’ll be doing plenty of running and jumping, thanks to a few minor gameplay tweaks, it feels so different than anything you’ve played before. PoP is not about jumping to one ledge, slowing down and looking for your next platform, like Mirror’s Edge earlier this year, you’ll have a much more rewarding experience if you’re able to keep the Prince in a constant state of motion. Each world is setup so players are able to string together lengthy combinations of acrobatic maneuvers (it doesn’t hurt that most of the animations are simply phenomenal) to advance through them. There is a definite rhythm to PoP’s gameplay, and when you actually take a step back, and allow yourself to move along with it, the feeling is incredibly rewarding.

Grand Theft Auto III‚ changed everything.

Featuring a brave, bold and truly open three dimensional world where players could come and go as they please; and their actions had deeper consequences then a game-over screen, coupled with innovative graphics and an incredibly deep branching storyline, one thing was evident “" the gaming industry was growing up.‚  Now, nearly a decade later, the series is rewriting everything we thought we knew.‚  From the massive size of Liberty City, to its strikingly gritty, yet gorgeous visuals “" everything about‚ GTA IVis truly an achievement.

Fresh off the boat from Eastern Europe, Niko Bellic,‚ GTA IV’s protagonist, is looking for a fresh start and his shot at “the American Dream.” However, the visions of an endless supply of money, women and fame his cousin Roman promised quickly fade and reality sinks in as Niko finds himself in the middle of a gang-war that will grip Liberty City by its core. Of course you’ll be stealing, shooting and killing like in previous installments of the series, butGTA IV‚ manages to make even these series standards seem new and exciting.

Sure, Niko is the game’s poster boy, but undoubtedly‚ GTA IV’s main character is Liberty City itself.‚  Yes, you’ve been to Liberty City before, but not like this “" not even close. More than ever, Liberty (clearly based off New York City), is alive. From the bums in the back alleys to the suits in the financial district, Rockstar has done a great job creating a‚  believably rich and populated environment that seems like it could go on even without you there. You’ll get stuck in traffic, watch construction jobs go from start to completion, even establish relationships with your fellow city folk, but remember “" this is‚ GTA, and most people you meet aren’t the type to bring home to mom and dad.

Truly,‚ GTA IV‚ is the deepest title of the franchise, if not the entire industry has ever seen. Think of it as the love-child of‚ The Godfather‚ and‚ The Sims. Like‚ Vice City‚ and‚ San Andreasbefore it,‚ GTA IV‚ gives players the freedom to truly explore and enjoy the city around them. Feel like hitting up the local bowling alley, but don’t want to leave the house?‚ GTA IVfeatures its own fully functional bowling-alley complete with bowling mini-game and purchasable snacks. You can go out to nightclubs (and yes, that includes those nightclubs), restaurants, amusement parks and even famous landmarks like the Statue Of Happiness; Liberty’s version of the Statue of Liberty.

Even with all of its functionality, Liberty City looks amazing. In the game’s opening moments, we’re treated to a cinematic opening that rivals that of most major Hollywood productions, and things just keep getting better from there. The city and the characters (especially in the superbly acted cut scenes), the entire world that‚ GTA IV‚ pulls us into is covered in a brilliantly gritty art scheme that seems to combine real life with the seedy side of New York City we see in the movies. It’s hard not to marvel at certain moments in the game “" watching the sunset over the river or standing in the middle of Times Squa…excuse me, I mean Star Junction… is nothing short of breathtaking.

If you have ever experimented in the kitchen, trying to mix different elements of your favorite dishes together, then you have an idea of how “Dead Space” came to fruition. Many times, you come away with something that has its high points, but in the end is somewhat unsatisfying and unfocused, something that is missing just that little extra flavor or attention to detail that could have pushed your experimental dinner over the edge.

On occasion though, you will do everything just right, adding just the right amount of flavors and spices to a dish and coming away with something that defies your expectations and, in some ways, rivals or surpasses the products you were borrowing from in the first place. Luckily for developer EA Redwood Shores, “Dead Space” is much more of the latter than the former, a triumph in the field of survival horror and a game that no one should miss out on during this pre-holiday influx of top-grade titles.

The title borrows heavily from some heavy hitters in gaming’s history: the atmosphere is ripped straight out of “Metroid Prime,” though in a more mature and gory setting. Your manipulation of items through the use of telekinesis is very much like having “Half-Life 2″‘s gravity gun at your disposal, especially since anything you grasp with your suit’s powers can be utilized to slow and injure the enemies that give chase.

Cut scenes come from the in-game engine, which allows your character able to walk around the area freely much like Gordon Freeman did in both Half-Life titles. Enemies pop out of corners and from behind you, much like in “Doom 3″-mercifully though, your meager flashlight comes from your weapon, meaning you can both shoot and see at the same time. The balance between action and survival horror is something anything who has played “Resident Evil 4″ knows well, especially late in the game when everything except for enemies to dispose of is at a premium.

You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer who is supposed to be on the mining ship Ishimura in order to do some maintenance. His name comes from a combination of science-fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke-the developers at Redwood Shores have impeccable taste in sci-fi, if you could not tell by now-and, much like the aforementioned Freeman, ends up being pretty useful when his back is against the wall against mysterious creatures looking to cut his mortal coil. He’s placed in an incredibly gory setting, one that helps to make the atmosphere more mature than the titles it borrows ideas from.

After you are attacked by the Necromorphs, the alien creatures who seem to be all over the ship, you and the surviving crew of the shuttle you came in on attempt to get the Ishimura working once again, while holding off the creatures in order to stay alive long enough to accomplish this task. Clarke is also looking for his girlfriend, who was on board the mining ship and is seen via video in the opening sequence prior to landing the shuttle.

One of the first things you may notice when you gain control of Isaac is that there is no on-screen menu. Your health is on the back of your suit, or “rig”; your remaining rounds for your current weapon are displayed via hologram when you take aim and your inventory is accessed in real-time via hologram as well. There is a shortcut button that is easily accessed in order to use health while in the midst of battle, so as long as you remember to hit that you won’t be killed while rummaging through your inventory, but it helps to keep you immersed in the experience and puts you further into that survival horror feeling.

This game is gorgeous; yes, it’s full of colors from the darker end of the color spectrum, but that makes sense given the whole thing takes place in space in a half-destroyed space ship. Almost everything is well detailed, and the attention paid to Isaac’s suit and movements is delightful and is something you will notice throughout the game. The enemy creatures are designed wonderfully as well; you will catch yourself admiring the art design and genuine frightful nature of the beasts as they sprint towards you for the first time, before remembering that yes, you need to mangle them-and fast-if you want to live to admire later variations.

There are various ways for Isaac and the Necromorphs to die, and you will more than likely get a chance to view a few of these on your first play through. Many of them are too good to be spoiled by a review, so you will have to trust me when I say that you will at least be entertained when you fail to survive a mission. These deaths are as gory and detailed as anything you can do to the Necromorphs-and this is game where your right trigger defaults as a “melee curbstomp” button.

I’ve been in a pissy mood lately when it comes to card games.

Since moving to Boston in 2002, it’s been all poker, poker, poker. I like poker. I’ve made money at poker. I’ve paid for a trip to Vegas in the Harrah’s poker room. Though, I’m an awful tournament player (ask Mark Scalia).

It seems like computerized card games have boiled down to solitaire and poker, with every geek’s dream of going to the World Series.

I didn’t learn how to play poker for real until college. Growing up, we had two games: setback with my friends and pinochle with the family.

I’ve been really pleased to see Pinochle making an appearance on more and more commercial products, but no one has gotten it right yet with the rules and the artificial intelligence. (you’ll see an Old Shoebox article in a few weeks about someone who DID get it in 1993)

Reel Deal Card Games ’09 includes but doesn’t at all understand pinochle, but I’m not going to dwell on that fact any longer.

What you do get is more than 80 games and free online multiplayer, which is nice, but there aren’t exactly a ton of people lining up to play.

Phanton EFX, the game’s publisher, did manage to put together a good platform. What they should have done was give it away and just sell advertising on the multiplayer servers.

The artificial intelligence, while cute and often entertaining, is just really stupid. They get the rules wrong a log, they bet, raise and fold without any obvious reason in the poker games, but most of all they just aren’t programmed to understand the subtle nuances of most of the complicated games. (pinochle)

The game, packaged on two CDs, includes Harts, Bridge, Cribbage, Canasta, Golf, Rummy 500, spades, War, Pinochle, Gin, All Fives, Wist, Euchre, Pitch, Old Maid, Spite & Malice, Go Fish, Skat, Pepper, Crazy Eights, Memory Match, seven poker games, Blackjack, and 45 solitaires. As you play the games, you earn points towards virtual prizes, and that’s just ducky.

If you’re looking for a PC cards game, I’ve seen worse, and better.

Minor spoiler warning. We’re not giving away anything vital.

Every once in a while, a game comes along that plays out like so:

You sit down at 5:30 in the afternoon to play the game. You open a box of Cheez-Its. You figure on playing the game for an hour or two and eating a few handfuls of crackers.

Suddenly the sun is coming up, the box is empty, and you’ve just gotten started in the game.

This caloric description doesn’t even begin to do justice to Fallout 3. Not only is Fallout 3 the best game of the year, but it’s one of the best games ever made.

That’s a lofty statement, but you’re reading a magazine that has a track record of telling the truth. So listen up.

The game takes place in post nuclear apocalyptic Washington D.C., and you’re one of the lucky few that got to live in the secure Vault 101, free from the radiation, deadly super mutants and certain death in the barren wasteland outside.

You begin Fallout 3 at the moment of your character (male or female) is born, and you age through the game in quick chapters until you one day when you wake up to discover your father, a scientist and doctor, has inexplicably left the Vault – a big no-no. Now the Vault director is after you, and your life is in danger.

Right from the start, Bethesda shows you the sheer volume of choices, side-quests, and adventures in Fallout 3. As you’re escaping the authorities, you’ll find that an infestation of giant radioactive cockroaches has swarmed the vault. You’ll run into a childhood bully begging you for help because his alcoholic mother is being attacked by the roaches, and he’s too scared to do anything about it. You’ll find that your father’s assistant – who was like an uncle to you – has been murdered for information about dad’s disappearance. Seeking revenge, you’ll find the vault director, but wait, he’s the father of your potential love interest and childhood best friend.

And that’s all before the game really even starts.

Leaving the vault, you’ll then spend the next, oh, month of your life exploring and re-exploring a visual masterpiece. Washington D.C., the surrounding area, and all the monuments have been reconstructed and then devastated by nuclear war. It’s eye-popping to walk through this virtual world and see the Washington Monument in ruins as you approach it and the museums of the Smithsonian in various stages of decay, squatters taking up shelter in their strong construction. It’s not just up-close either. From far in the distance, you can see the Washington Monument or the Capital Building, and it’s eerie.

Let me tell you what else is eerie: listening to the radio stations in the background. From the start, you’ll have your choice of Enclave Radio, the propaganda channel for a faction that claims to be the resurrected United States Government, and the rebel free radio wasteland station and its eccentric disc jockey, Three Dog.

You have the choice to be good or bad. You can be a hero, defending the helpless, saving cities and having townsfolk shower you with gifts (that does happen). You can walk into the slave trader’s village and kill all the slavers. Or you can be an asshole. You can exploit children, beat up women, destroy towns. You can be evil, corrupt, and terrifying.

That all starts when you’re a kid or when you’re escaping the vault. Your best friend steals a gun from her father to “aid” in your escape. When the childhood bully begs you for help, you can help him, save his mother and be the hero.

Or you can shoot him in the head and put two in the mother for good measure.

These are your choices, and don’t let emotion get in the way — yes, it’s just a video game, but we’ve all been there.

Even your own health is a series of carefully balanced choices. If your hit points are low, you can drink water from a stream or sink or even down a soda from a vending machine, but this increases your radiation level, which is bad for you in the long run.

You will also encounter a variety of drugs and chemicals that will raise HP or boost your abilities temporarily, but if you take too much, you’ll get addicted and dependent on the drug. If you run out, you’ll go through withdrawal and lose abilities.

The game is bloody, gory, violent, and full of sexually suggestive and explicit dialog. But the game doesn’t include swears in the same way that Kane and Lynch did — just for the hell of it. Fallout 3′s dialogue is tactfully woven together.

There are a lot of little things that I would have liked to have seen built up more, like sitting at a bar and ordering a drink, settling up two lovebirds and then going to the wedding, going to restaurants. These features all happen, but could have been a bit better designed. You don’t have food delivered to you or a drink poured for you; you just buy it and it appears in your inventory.

The game’s inventory system works exactly like Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls titles. You can carry items up to your strength limit, and then you have to drop stuff strategically.

The game world is massive. It takes many, many hours to go through it, and you can bet that expansion packs and downloadable content is coming.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m a little biased in favor of the post apocalyptic genre. I grew up playing and reading Shadowrun for Genesis, Super Nintendo and tabletop — still have all the books. I number Blade Runner, Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. in my list of favorite movies.

But forget about the genre for a bit. The visuals are unparalleled and the audio is sublime. Walking down a bombed out road in Washington is that much creepier when “America the Beautiful” is playing in the background, seriously. The controls are intuitive and can be inverted or adjusted for sensitivity. The plot is complex and gripping.

When I discovered Interplay’s Wasteland in the early 1990s, this was how I imagined the game would look in real life. Technically Fallout 3 is the fourth installment in the franchise. Interplay made Wasteland and then Fallout 1 and 2, as technical sequels. They also made two spin-offs: the combat-heavy Fallout: Tactics on the PC in 2001 and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (the first console Fallout title) in 2004. Interplay started making Fallout 3, (see Van Buren) but they were broke and struggling. Bethesda scooped up the Fallout franchise last year for just under $6 million. Bethesda completely threw out Interplay’s work and built this game from scratch.

It does use the same gameplay engine as The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

Fallout 3 is artistic and timely. It has a message to it — a frightening message. But unlike other games with a social context, Fallout 3 doesn’t push these factors down your throat.

It is, however, a quiet indictment of corrupt politics, unscrupulous foreign policy and an increasingly insular American populace.

Blast tested the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game. Joe Sinicki and Terri Schwartz of the Blast Magazine staff contributed to this report.

Way back in the mid 1990s, the computer game magazines were full of whole page advertisements in the back of the book for a 3D Dos game called Cylindrix. It wasn’t necessarily a visual marvel, but it was an intuitive game and one of the first real 3D experiences in Dos.

Cylindrix was coded to run in Dos DJGPP Protected Mode so that it could address more than 640 KB of memory, something that the Dos programmers felt was impossible at one point in history.

I had an original copy on 3.5″ diskettes that I sold on eBay for over $100 about eight years ago. I actually wish I held onto it, because it’s a museum piece. But I still have my two-disk demo.

So what is Cylindrix?

Cylindrix is a fast-paced battle game set in a round cylinder. To play the game, you use teamwork and fast reflexes to tap the enemy pylons scattered around the map. Tapping the pylons turns them to your team’s color. The more pylons you have on your side, the most powerful your hover tank’s (did we mention you’re in a hover tank?) weapons become. You’ll find yourself constantly struggling to maintain a favorable pylon count, or your enemies will gain the upper hand.

You play the commander and you have to assign each of your wingman tanks a task like “Get Pylons” or “Attack Enemy Ships.” Knowing which commands to issue and when to issue them is the key to winning the game.

One of the game’s developers, John R. McCawley, obtained permission to license out the game for free. He’s also working on Windows and Linux ports of the game.

Definitely try his new versions, because his team completely rebuilt the game from scratch.

You will absolutely need DOSBox for my version, or it ain’t gonna work.

From the game’s readme.txt file
The playing field

THE CYLINDRIX. This is the playing field in which the game takes place. Your vehicle can either skim along its surface or detach from the surface and fly freely within the Cylindrix. Each end of the Cylindrix is capped with a force shield preventing you from escaping combat.

All of the cylinders are the same size, but the various lighting conditions will make some feel smaller or larger than others. Each square on the surface of the cylinder is 40′ x 40′.

A cylinder’s measurements are: Height: 382 feet high, or approximately 27 stories high Length: 1200 feet, or 87 stories long

Square foot area: 1,440,000
Total cubic feet: 137,000,000

Pylon: Average height, 7 stories
Radar Base: 45 feet high

PYLONS. Towers of energy called pylons jut from the surface of the Cylindrix. When your vehicle collides with a pylon, the pylon becomes charged to the polarity of your team, turning it whatever color your vehicles are. As a result, your teams weapons will do more damage. Capturing pylons is of extreme importance.

RADAR BASES. Each team has a radar base somewhere on the surface of the Cylindrix. The radar bases will fire relentlessly at any enemy vehicles in range. The radar bases control the homing of energy missiles, and update each vehicle’s radar display. If your radar base is destroyed you lose both of these.

ENERGY SQUARE. Each Cylindrix has on its surface an energy square. If you move your vehicle over the square its shields will be recharged.

HEADS UP DISPLAYS
Each of the eight ships has a uniquely designed Heads Up Display, but they all display the same information.

ON SCREEN RADAR DISPLAY. This is an actual 3D display of the cylinder and always moves in relation to your view of the cylinder. Your ship is represented by the white square that is at the bottom of the
cylinder when you are on the ground and when you are in the air the white dot will move in relation to the cylinder. The blue squares represent the blue team, the red squares represent the red team.
Any time your radar locks onto a ship, the square representing that ship will have a yellow box around it. If your radar base is destroyed, your radar disappears.

CROSS HAIRS AND RADAR LOCKING. These cross hairs allow for the aiming of lasers by eye or missiles when your radar is inoperable. When you lock radar on an opponent, a diamond shape will appear between the radar lock box, and your ship. When the cross hairs, the radar lock box, and the diamond are all lined up, then you are facing the enemy directly.

SHIELD STRENGTH DISPLAY. The shield strength level is indicated by the bar on the screen with the ‘S’ on it. Every time your force shield is hit with a laser or a missile it is weakened. If your vehicle is
shot after your energy shield has been depleted, it will be destroyed. There is a brightly colored square on the cylinder’s surface, called the Energy Square. If you move your vehicle on top of it while on the surface, your shield’s strength will recharge.

MISSILE DISPLAY. The number of missiles you hold is displayed here. Missiles regenerate automatically.

WEAPON DAMAGE DISPLAY. The relative amount of damage you are able to do, the number energized pylons you have tagged on the Cylindrix surface (see “The Playing Field” above) is indicated on the bar on the screen with the “D” next to it.

WINGMAN 1 And WINGMAN 2 – COMMAND DISPLAY.
Every time you give a command to your wingman, it is displayed here.

WINGMAN 1 And WINGMAN 2 – SHIELD STRENGTH DISPLAY.
The shield strength of your two wingman is displayed here.

KEY CONTROLS:

NOTE: Cylindrix allows the reassigning of keys, but the default settings are as follows.

AERIAL AND SURFACE CONTROL
“s” Take Off and Land
“v” Change viewpoint, in or out of ship.
“Esc” Pauses game and brings up an options menu.

SURFACE ONLY CONTROLS
Up arrow Move forward
Down arrow Move backwards
Right arrow Rotate right
Left arrow Rotate left
“Alt” Sidestep Right or Left using arrow key (Strafe).

AERIAL ONLY CONTROLS
“a” Throttle Faster
“z” Throttle Slower
Up arrow Nose down
Down arrow Nose up
Right arrow Rotate right (Clockwise).
Left arrow Rotate left (Counterclockwise).
“Alt” + arrow key Step Up, Down, Right, or Left (Strafe).

WEAPONS CONTROLS
“Ctrl” Fire laser
Space Fire energy missile
“x” Engage Special Weapon

COMMANDS TO WINGMEN KEYS
W 1 W 2
F1 F7 Get Pylons
F2 F8 Attack
F3 F9 Attack Enemy Radar Base
F4 F10 Defend Home Radar Base
F5 F11 Group – Surround and Defend
F6 F12 Orders Canceled

Ye Olde System Requirements

• 486/66 DX (SX will not work)
• Soundblaster compatible sound card
• Double speed (2x) CD Rom Drive
• 10MB of HD Space
• 8MB of RAM

Video gaming has grown leaps and bounds as an industry in Russia, turning into a $500 million industry.

Akella is at the forefront of all that, and we recently had the opportunity to play one of their upcoming games, A Stroke of Fate, which is a WWII adventure title coming out in a few months.

“Fate” is looking like a pretty solid game. It has beautifully detailed scenery and compelling mini-game puzzles like playing poker with Nazi officers to earn their trust and flirting with a receptionist to get information.

Here are my concerns: The English script needs work. It still feels like the Russians translated it into English. They need to have a native speaker rewrite it entirely to adapt it to an American audience. Also, some of the puzzles are not very intuitive and require going back and forth between four or more rooms.

Finally, there’s no voice acting, just text. I called Akella out on that, especially since they’ve been working on the game for almost two years. In response, they’re adding an ethnic German voice track — it won’t be English, but it will breathe some life into the characters.

“We’re working on voice over. All NPC and male hero speak perfect German,” said Akella’s Boris Tolkachev.

What really impresses me about this game is the amount of research and work that has gone into it so far. They recreated the “fuhrerbunker,” where Hitler took refuge as the war turned against him. The developers also researched Nazi artwork and German decor at the time.

The game’s developers from SPLine Games spoke to Blast through Tolkachev, who is our English-language contact over there.

Tolkachev said SPLine worked with a history consultant and pulled a bunch of history books, and bear with me because I’m going to list some things here –

• Walter Warlimont: “Inside Hitler’s Headquarters”
• “The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel”
• Antony Beevor: “Berlin: the Downfall, 1945″
• William L. Shirer: “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”
• ¯‘€¾²¾¹ ‘€º°´¸¹ ¤µ´¾‘€¾²¸‘‡: “’¾»‘‡‘Å’¸ »¾³¾²°: ´¾»‘Å’‘„ "¸‘‚»µ‘€ ½° ²¾¹½µ, ² ¿¾»¸‘‚¸ºµ, ² ±‘‹‘‚‘Æ’”
• Leonid Mlechin: “Hitler and his Russian Friends”
• B. V. Sokolov: “Hunt for Stalin, Hunt for Hitler”
• Chuev S. G.: “Special services of the Third Reich”

I have no idea what the book is that’s in Russian, but they also gave me a list of like 30 website references too. Take a look at that here.

“In other words, we were very serious about it,” Tolkachev said.

But enough of that, people work hard to make every video game that comes out there (okay, most of them). Why is Stroke of Fate any different? It’s really a self-answering question. This is a chance to play a WWII adventure from an authentic Russian perspective, and I guarantee that no matter how many History Channel specials you’ve seen, there’s a lot about the Russian involvement in WWII that Americans don’t get exposed to.

The game, with voice acting and maybe a few more interactives like non-linear elements and repeatable minigames, has real potential. It’s mouse-driven, so you’ll do a lot of clicking, but what we seem to have is a good, cerebral adventure game with real historical backbone.

This is not a game you may have heard of. Gamespot hasn’t covered it. Blast is the first American media outlet to take an interest in the game, and we’re publishing the first hands-on review of it. Don’t expect Fallout 3 or a billion-dollar game. It’s a gutsy, conversational, alternative history lesson.

This review originally appeared on Reviewcenter.com in 1999.

We reviewed the PC version, but it was also released on PlayStation. Click here to download the original demo!

Taylor’s review

When I first saw the box for KKnD 2 Krossfire, I thought “Wow, this game doesn’t look that bad!”

Little did I know how wrong I was. Installation was probably the best part of this game — smooth and quick with no restart afterward.

Even the opening movie was informative and actually looked good, but this is the only part of the game that has good graphics. The rest of the game did not impress me at all.

The graphics, in my opinion, were no better than Command & Conquer, which is 3 or 4 years old. Why they didn’t try to the improve graphics is beyond me. With such games as Command & Conquer 2: Tiberium Sun coming out soon, you would think that they would want to get an one up on the competition.

KKnD2 Krossfire ran exceptionally well on my system, probably because of such of its low quality graphics etc. Levels took only a moment to load while the movies would only take a few seconds.

The Sound for KKnD2 Krossfire was nothing special. When you click on an unit, it makes the same sound every time you click on the unit. Not to mention that it makes the same sound for every unit for your race. Now, I don’t mean to complain, but hearing the same marine saying the same thing over and over and over again gets on my nerves and I found myself often turning down the sound because of this.

The gameplay is quite boring. There are almost too many units in this game. You cant even figure out what you are making as a unit sometimes. It’s such a stupid design for making a unit. You click on “Constructibles” then a submenu pops up and you choose a base (small, medium, huge) then pick parts. Unfortunately, there is no way to know what these parts do however. Then there is the control factor of these units. To select a unit you left click on it. To move a unit you left click where you want it to go. This is okay, except if you have a lot of units together, and you try to move a unit away from enemy fire, but accidentally click on another unit, the unit is toast.

Despite the genre, this game requires absolutely no strategy to play. It’s just get money, build units, die, build even more units, more, more, more. You get the idea. There is no balance in the units. It’ll take a million archers to take out one sentry gun. The only way to win is to mass-produce units from the very start.

There are only one or two units that can attack air units, so air dominance is key in this game. It kinda makes the game unfair because if you have air and the other person is still researching things to make anti air, they will never win.

To sum it up, if you really want to play a game that bores you, and needs no thinking at all, this is for YOU! If not? go play StarCraft, a much better game. 2 out of 5 stars

Stormy’s 1998 analysis/preview

I guess this must be a pretty popular game cause it comes in several languages, they are English, German, French, Spanish & Mandarin. (I think that is the first time I’ve seen a game available in Mandarin!)

There are two CD’s, one containing the installation and Survivor missions, the other containing the Series 9 and Evolved missions. When you start the game with disk one in, you must pick a Survivor mission. If you pick either one of the other two, the game will bounce back to the desktop, and that’s that. The only way to play the other two missions is to start with disk 2 in the drive, BEFORE you choose the mission. There will be no “please insert disk 2″ prompt, which of course surprised the heck out of me, I thought the CD was broke.

The folks that wrote the instruction manual are aware that a lot of people don’t like to read manuals, so they wrote it humorous. Unless you already know how to play, you ought to get a kick out of learning how to play this game.

The game has 51 missions, and your objective is to gather resources to build your own buildings and fighting units while looking for the enemy so you can crush everything he’s got, in some of the missions, and in some of the missions your only objective is to kill. You can kinda tell right away, either you have the stuff to gather resources, (oil rigs, tankers, buildings, etc) or you don’t. If you don’t have all the extra stuff, then you gotta figure out how to kill the enemy with what you got, cause you can’t build any more. However, there are surprises lying around, there is buried 21st century goodies, and during a mission where I found myself with just one fighter, (he was a nasty one, but not invincible) suddenly I found a repair bay out in the middle of nowhere (thank god!) You can play this game alone or 2 people over Modem and Serial connections, or up to eight players on TCP/IP, or IPX.

Ye Olde System Requirements

• Pentium 133 or faster
• 16MB RAM
• 4X CD
• 2MB DirectX compatible video card
• DirectX compatible digital sound card

Official website

This review of one of the best games ever appeared on Reviewcenter.com in 1999.

Your adventure begins in the year 2100. Your job: colonize a hostile and unforgiving planet and save the future of mankind.

The problem: six other factions are out to stop you at any cost.

In Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, you play as one of seven ideological factions, battling against six others. Choose from The University of Planet, a science and information related faction, or Morgan industries, a faction bent on economic issues. You can also play as Gaia’s Stepdaughters, an ecology related faction, or the Spartan Federation, led by a great military power. You can also be the Lord’s believers led by Sister Miriam, the Human Hive, or the Peacekeeping forces of Brother Lal.

Every faction has its strengths and weaknesses. You really have to find your niche in this game, and that can take time. In Alpha Centauri, the follow up to Civilization II, Sid Meier has created the ultimate colonization and battle game.

We’ve never seen graphics as stunningly good as these in any game. The 3D rolling terrain is awesome. The military units are well shown, and the videos are just as good. Each faction fights for technical superiority, and we’ve never seen a tech-tree as cool as this one. All the technologies are based on ones today. Make your way up the tree, as you concentrate research in different areas. You reach your peak when you make Transcendence: The next step in human evolution.

This game is infinitely playable. There are so many variables available. You can choose from one of many levels of difficulty, randomized terrain and map sizes. You can pick your faction and even design your own map. I think that this game is difficult, yet fun. It offers a challenge to all those who get bored playing typical build and conquer games. Games can last lots of time. I found myself immersed in a game for over ten hours one day. This game is truly a step above and beyond typical games.

Another good element to this game is Diplomatic Relations. You must maintain a constant balance between friends, choosing allies and enemies carefully. You must vote on different planetary issues, including the UN Charter, planetary governor, and whether to salvage the ship you crashed on. This element of the game is very difficult, and makes the game even more interesting.

The units in this game are simply amazing. They range from simple conventional troops with conventional weapons to specially trained amphibious marine troops that can drop out of the sky that carry chaos guns. You can choose from infinite variables to design and implement your own troops or naval units. Use these troops to crush your opponents or defend your borders.

I totally recommend this game, for those who own high-end Pentium based computers. Although I did play this game on my minimal P133, I recommend at least a P266. The graphics are infinitely better, and the game play is much faster. You should also have a computer stocked full of RAM. I again recommend at least 32 MB.

There is only one true gripe I had with this game. You could only quit when it was your turn. This leads to waiting a few minutes before you can quit. If you have your own PC, great, but if you share it with a family, they’re bound to get mad at one point or another. But, in my experience, I have never seen a better build and conquer game than Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Ye Olde System Requirements

• Pentium 133 MHz
• 16 MB RAM
• 60MB hard drive space
• 2MB video memory

This review originally appeared on Reviewcenter.com in 1999.

Your uncle has apparently committed suicide, leaving you a mine on Luna Crysta, which is “booming” like a California town in the late 1800s. You travel to Luna Crysta to do something with your new mine. After you start meeting people, from the suspicious manner in which everyone acts, you start wondering about Uncle Jake’s “suicide.”

You meet a beautiful woman, (wow, that’s a plot twist we didn’t suspect, did we?) a sinister man, an oily official, a belligerent cop and an oh-so-accommodating bartenter. Your girlfriend whines on the phone, and your sister talks like she wants you dead. And that’s all in the first couple of hours! You do manage to meet two friendly faces, an older female miner, and a young Cephid child, both of who have heard all about you from your uncle, and seem willing to help you.

You have very little money to start, and you might be thinking of selling out. A trip to the casino shows you that beautiful woman is a blackjack dealer, who is welling to cheat for you, (at least until her boss shows up). This gives you a little money to start building up a “kit.”

All the while, people are out to get you. The oily official says he’s sorry out one side of his face, and suggests you pay for the damage uncle Jake’s death caused. The belligerent cop can’t wait for you to misstep, so he can “get” you. The sinister man reveals your darling sister hired him to get your claim — and the words “one way or another” run through your mind while he’s talking. The oh-so-accommodating bartender offers you a price that you “just can’t refuse” on any ore or crystals you find. And the beautiful woman? She’s been hired by the boss to get close to you and watch you.

Boy, do you ever need a friend, huh? Do you feel like you’re in the middle of an afternoon soap? Well, just wait until the game really gets started.

Dark Side of the Moon is mostly a puzzle solver, although there is plenty of opportunity to get killed along the way, so trust me kiddies, save, and save often! This is not a game you want to space out and forget, even if you think you’re safe because no monsters have pounced on you yet.

There are several mysteries to solve, (like starting with what REALLY happened to your uncle,) and various puzzles to solve. Very early on, the sinister man gets blown away, and of course, they think that you did it, so you become a fugitive, which makes for many opportunities for you to get blown to smithereens. That is cool too, if you get killed, you see your atoms floating in the cosmos, you state that while you are dead, you can’t stay that way, you have places to go, and people to see; and the big programmer in the sky-gives you another chance! How many games ya played that returns you close to where you were zapped-and doesn’t even penalize you?

Now for the bad points. There are 6 CD’s and you will spend a LOT of time swapping them. I would have liked it if they could have grouped some stuff you had to do more on the same CD. When you are talking to someone, as good as the graphics are, the action gets somewhat jerky, and I think the jerkiness shows up even more because the graphics are so good. If you don’t like “tongue-in-cheek” acting, you might be tempted to say that the acting is poor. I prefer, the sinister man is very sinister, the oily official ‘drips’, etc.

The movement and conversation are somewhat controlled. About half of the conversation on your side goes down without your control, when you are offered a choice of comments to make, I noticed that it didn’t seem to matter what you asked first, you will have to check every comment to exit this screen. As far as the movement, when you click the mouse to move, and you stop; look around, cause you only stop when there is an intersection, or when there is something next to you to look at. The reason I mentioned this as a bad point-this opinion will vary from player to player. Some people won’t care, some people that are used to having more free rein in the games they have played might feel this is confining.

The big bad point however — the game tends to lock up. When I first started to play, I got stuck in the same spot a half a dozen times; and I mean locks-up-need-to-hard-boot-your-computer lock-up. I finally had to uninstall, re-install, and start over so I could get past that one screen. I did some research on the web, looking to see if there might be a patch, and I did find out that it wasn’t my system. Enough other people mentioned it that it has to be a universal problem. I also noticed that I couldn’t play for too long, maybe a half an hour to 45 minutes at a time, and then Norton started to interrupt with messages saying that my memory load or CPU load was too high. I had to quit the game. My CPU usage was 97 percent and my memory load was 95 percent. I might mention at this point that I have an 8 MB video card, and a 450 P2 with 128 MB of RAM.

OK, so now you’re going to ask why bother since there were so many bad points, and I’m going to tell you why. Some of the bad points won’t be considered bad by everyone. As far as the lock-up glitches, I’m hopeful that SouthPeak, after working on the game for 2 years, will have a fix for these bugs soon. You don’t put as much work into a project as was obviously put into this one, without being willing to clean up those stupid bugs that crop up after production, though some beta testing might have helped.

I just would not let a few lock-ups keep me from getting this game.

The graphics are gorgeous, the sound is great and the story is quite good. If you like RPGs, or science fiction, or you just want to check out something different, give this game a try. I think you’ll be very pleased.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Southpeak Interactive
Developer: Southpeak Interactive
Platform: Adventure
Players: 1
Launch Date: Nov 30, 1998

Playability: 3.5 out of 5 stars
User friendly: 5 out of 5 stars
Sound: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 4 out of 5 stars
Ratings were determined in 1999

Ye Olde System Requirements

• Pentium 166 MHz
• 32 MB RAM
• 8x or faster CD-ROM
• 60MB hard drive space
• 2MB SVGA graphics for 640×480 resolution
• PCI or AGP video card with 2MB RAM strongly recommended

The ultimate goal of Boss Rally is to play through several seasons of racing, earning points and unlocking faster cars and harder tracks to become the ultimate rally champion. You can play against the computer or via modem, LAN or serial cable to play with a friend. You can control your game with either a gamepad, joystick, mouse, or keyboard.

There are several ways to play. The championship game is the primary game mode, pitting you against 19 other computer controlled cars, looking to win the for the season. There are 6 seasons per year, and this game does include weather to ruin your year. There is also Time Attack, which is a single player game, for bettering your time by racing against a previous race or recording a new race; or Quick Race, which pits you against a single computer controlled opponent, and allows you to practice and/or get used to the different options you have available.

There are 3 driving perspectives, cockpit view, chase and first person. You can also select an automatic or manual transmission, change your tires and shocks to better control, steer and ‘grip’ the road, depending on conditions. You need to pay attention to that, cause at some point you will be racing in the snow! You also have a lap counter, a lap speedometer, a regular speedometer and more on your screen while you are racing, and if these things bother you-you can shut them off.

The game suffers from serious control issues, however. The cars and courses are fake too. You’re also limited to two cars and courses when you first start out. This is supposed to be an arcade racer, but you have to spend hours unlocking all of the arcade game features.

If you really like racing games and have the right touch to get past the control issues, you might want to give it a try.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Southpeak Interactive
Developer: Boss Game Studios
Platform: Nintendo 64
Genre: Racing
Players: 1
Launch Date: April 30, 1999

Playability: 3.5 out of 5 stars
User friendly: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Sound: 3 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Ratings were determined in 1999

Ye Olde System Requirements

• P2-233MHz
• 32 MB RAM
• DirectX 6.0
• 60MB hard drive space
• 16-bit sound card
• 4 MB video memory

Before sandbox games and deathmatches via dial-up and Wifi battles, only one thing mattered: the high score.

Gamers from arcades to living rooms would spend hours trying to best the score of those who came before them by any means necessary. Yes, it was a much simpler time.

Enter The Club, Bizarre Creations new run-and-gun action shooter harkens back to these golden days, mixing modern day shooter elements with an old school, points-first system.

But sadly, once the nostalgic rush wears off, it will become painfully evident just how thin of a package The Club is. Imagine one of those akward moments where everything suddenly just stops, and you’re left with a big, dumb grin on your face that slowly fades away.

The premise is simple. Compete in the aforementioned club, existing only as an urban legend to most, where a small group of rich contestants competes to see who can rack up the most points by killing off criminals paid to try and off them. Points are awarded based on kills, with bonuses for style, accuracy, what kind of opponent you killed and the weapons used.

It’s a simple system, but it can also be highly addictive. You’ll find yourself replaying entire contests just to see what scores would be if you approached different situations from different angles and using different methods.

The key to The Club is to not look at the game as a shooter. It can more aptly be compared to a racing game — you know, with guns instead of cars?

In all seriousness, making this comparison allows you to see just how hectic the game can be.

Your goal is to score as many points as possible by quickly going through a very linear course, while picking up power-ups and hitting special targets for bonuses. In this sense, The Club relies heavily on strategy. What’s the clearest way to clear a room while still garnering the most points?

Sadly, the single player game can be completed in roughly 3-4 hours. While The Club was never meant to have the massive scope of a title like Mass Effect or Lost Odyssey and a bit of forgiveness can be given for the replayability, that’s still a ridiculously short time. This is made all the more disappointing that the game’s advertised five different single player game modes are all quite similar and can fairly be brought down to two or three original modes that aren’t complete retreads of the others.

Something about The Club just feels so uninspired. Even the characters come off as mere stereotypes of characters from other games or action movies. There’s Finn, the hard on his luck southern gambler being chased by the mob. And there’s Adjo, the former Nigerian gangster who is looking to repent for the horrible things he’s done in the past.

While The Club’s visuals are quite solid — minus a few frame rate issues when the action becomes increasingly hectic — it still feels like a dated game. Characters move rigidly and get stuck behind invisible walls, a real issue when you take into account just how much timing plays into the core gameplay. Perhaps the developers were merely trying to level the playing field as the enemy AI is quite lacking. Sure, they’ll duck behind cover, but they don’t seem to stay there for long and you won’t have much trouble adding them to your kill count, even on the higher difficulties.

Those still obsessed with getting the highest score (I’m looking at you achievement point junkies) could find The Club to be entertaining enough for a few go-rounds, but with an amazingly short single player experience and no real story to speak of, The Club will offer little more than a diversion to most gamers.

While the original idea was executed in a passable fashion, there’s simply not enough secondary content to support it.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Bizarre Creations
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3
Genre: Shooter
Players: 1-4
Launch Date: February 19, 2008

Playability: 3 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Sound: 3 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 2.5 out of 5 stars