LOS ANGELES — Two of the four main characters in Heavy Rain were playable at E3 this year. The first is Norman Jayden, an FBI profiler who has been asked by local police forces to investigate the case of The Origami Killer. The second is a sexy photographer named Madison Paige.

Here’s a look at both:

LOS ANGELES — Heavy Rain is the very definition of a sleeper. While most of the focus was on The Beatles Rock Band, and Assassin’s Creed 2, and some of the well-hyped sequels discussed at E3 this year, one of the best playable games at the expo was Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain is the latest work of cinematic adventure by French developer Quantic Dream, the studio behind Indigo Prophecy, the best adventure game of the 21st century so far.

I first heard that Quantic Dream was collaborating with Sony for a PlayStation 3 exclusive about a few years ago, and I pushed my contacts at Sony Computer Entertainment America for answers, only to come up empty. So I forgot about the game for a while, and going into E3 I really didn’t have it on my mind.

Then I saw this cinematic, dramatic, dark, dreary, realistic adventure game being demoed at Sony’s booth, up some stairs, above the audience, appointment only.

So I played through a demo of Heavy Rain, which is currently in the alpha stage of development.

The game is definitely dark and mature. It combines exploration with cinematic, and instead of drawing your machine gun and blasting everyone in sight, you have to make conscious decisions and make certain movements with the controller or push certain buttons with split second reflexes to determine gameplay.

I died three times before getting past the first few minutes. After getting the hang of it, it was easy to see how decisions and even simple conversation points could dramatically change the story.

Controls are unique. It’s not a shooter or a fighting game, so buttons usually used for firing a weapon or punching or kicking are open. Thus, you actually use a trigger button to move your character forward. It actually feels strangely natural.

The entire game is voice acted and very well animated with lots of detail and ambiance.

When it was over, I told Sony’s Alex Armour that the game reminded me of a PC title called Indigo Prophecy. He smiled and said “yeah, it’s the same studio. The CEO is right over there. Do you want to talk to him?”

Yes.

Read the next page for an interview with Guillaume de Fondaumiere, the Co-CEO and executive producer of Quantic Dream

Moral dilemmas are in no short supply throughout Fable II.

The starting quest, involving bird crap landing on your hero’s head, sets you up for the rest of the game with a series of moral choices and dilemmas. Do you find the five prison warrants, or do you hand them to some criminal to rid of? Do you give the bottle of booze to an alcoholic, or do you hand it to his wife to stop his drinking? As a gamer, you probably don’t care, but what if you were told that, in the future, these choices may come back to haunt you?

Your completely customizable hero can be a guy or a gal, but either way, your sister is going to be with you in the beginning. Eventually, you buy a magic song box which has the power to grant wishes. You and your sister are orphan children that live in complete poverty, so you have quite the long wish list. Your sister wishes that you lived in the castle in Bowerstone, hoping that this will lead to a better life for both of you. But the box disappears and you are left to return, bewildered, to your life of poverty. You are then rudely awakened and informed that Lord Lucian, who is reeling from his family’s recent death, has requested to meet you at the castle.

As you enter his chambers, you see the lord distracted and milling over some paper work. Although he is initially warm and inviting, his manner quickly turns angry and he proceeds to shoot both you and your sister. Your sister dies immediately, but a voice tells you that death is not your destiny, and this sets the tone for the game.

Flash forward 10 years later, and you are stronger and wiser, knowing that you must find Lucian and destroy him. You already know you must save the world, however, the true beauty of Fable II is that it doesn’t hold your hand and instruct you on how to do so. Your choices matter. Are you going to sacrifice your own happiness for everyone else, or will you horde all of the riches for yourself? Every choice you make is going to have a consequence, whether it be for your benefit or for another’s.

Fable II’s combat system is truly one of its strongest points. At first I was skeptical about the idea of one button combat, but I’m now a huge fan of the fact that it allows you more options with regard to aim and technique. Seemingly minuscule decisions that wouldn’t be given a second thought in many other games will affect everything from the game’s story and play, to your character’s skills and demeanor. The system reward syour timing — in fact, you can get to the point where you can hit faster and harder just by stringing your attacks fluently

The Star Ocean series began in 1996 with a Super Famicon release in Japan. Americans got to experience the sequel, Star Ocean: The Second Story, on PlayStation in 1999, but really this has been a back seat RPG series for Americans on focused on the other RPG series from Square Enix.

With a title now on the PlayStation Portable in Star Ocean: First Departure, we get to see a alternative battle-based adventure with some very good animation, voice acting, and cutscenes.

The game takes you to the planet Roak, where a group of friends — Roddick Farrence, Millie Chliette, and Dorne Murtough –are in the small town of Kratus. Bandits descend on the town, and you have to fight them off. Pretty simple stuff so far, but after the first few hours of gameplay, you get to board a space ship. The fun really starts there.

This is a very basic RPG with a few twists. As your character levels up, you get to spend skill points as you please to raise your strengths. Instead of getting lost in a half-hour battle every few minutes, the fights take place in real time and go by really quickly.

Old school Golden Sun and Shining Force fans will defintiely appreciate the look and feel of First Departure. With the popularity of the DS and the PSP, we get to relive the old school-looking RPG games, but don’t underestimate how good the graphics and sound are on this game.

After all, it is a Square RPG.

How many times have you dropped your phone on the ground? Can you even remember the last time it fall out of your pocket and the cover split into tiny little pieces? Have you had waking nightmares of dropping your phone and never being able to put it back together?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme — or maybe it’s just us — but the fact is: phones are breakable. Before the only solution was an unattractive protective case or an expensive insurance policy, but now Motorola and Verizon are teaming up to come up with a better solution: an unbreakable phone.

And oh, did we try to break it.

The most damage we did to the new Motorola Adventure V750 was the plastic outer-coating protecting the battery falling off. The battery remained intact, the plastic piece was resilient, and the phone continued working unscathed.

While there is no guarantee that the phone will be able to survive a trip the bottom of a lake or being run over by an 18-wheeler, (our resources are only so vast) the Adventure can hold its own against whatever its owner wants to put it through.

The phone is a bit bulky and the material used to make it feels a bit cheap, but all that is part of the package: you can’t expect a sleek, flashy phone to survive a tumble down concrete stairs or falling to the ground while flipped open — yet.

The Adventure offers a great camera with 2.0 megapixels and loud speakers that make it easy to hear conversations over speakerphone or blast some downloaded music. The phone sports VZ Navigator and push-to-talk technology, but beyond that, it felt like just an average phone.

It’s not that the phone was lacking in anyways, it just didn’t have any features that put it above and beyond the rest. It just felt like one of the cheap phones that you get when you sign up with Verizon, albeit an extremely durable one. The Motorola Adventure is the phone for those who want a phone to just be a phone, but might need that extra bit of protection.

The Adventure can be bought on the Verizon website for $119.99 with a two-year contract or for $299.99 with a month to month contract.

While it is the right step in the right direction, the Adventure didn’t offer enough beyond a sweet camera, clear music playing, and a durable outer coating to really “Wow” us at Blast. If an unbreakable Blackberry Storm comes out, though, maybe we would be willing to dish the cash out for it.

Written by Tall Writer

This medieval fantasy adventure features fun chaos and disorder gameplay, allowing players to be bad or really bad by indirectly controlling other characters. This full price adventure, an extension of last summer’s Xbox 360/PC game, lets players conquer with an iron fist or a somewhat cooperative hand. It’s all up to players how bad they want to be in order to succeed … evil or really evil!

A dark sense of humor, maiden capturing and a wide scope create a nice format. Reading the manual definitely helps players through missions, especially understanding status icons that appear above characters. Knowing about battle engagements and movement limitations also help players avoid mission failures and turning fun game time into a stale mate. The map helps strategize key maneuvers and conquest tactics through five single player maps.

Violent graphics and solid sound boost the bloodless excitement. As overlord, you rule and base operations in the Dark Tower. In the field, the overlord gets full control of minion creatures, sending them into action using the R2 button (circle button calls them back). These ravenous and helpful guys possess unique skills to fetch, fight and die for their Overlord. Minion types vary from blue (very valuable resurrecting healers), to red (fireball archers), to green (stealthy assassins) to the most common brown (basic melee fighters). The only annoying thing about these minions is that they are constantly talking over each other. The dialogue and voice work is pretty entertaining and satisfying…in an ego boosting sort of way.

Overlords can also get in the action by locking on targets for various purposes using the L2 button. Players have plenty of save spots and items to create (a.k.a. forge) new ones at their disposal. The game becomes as complex as players make it. Multitasking and simulation managements skills play a big role here as the “God-like” players amass their empire. Game statistics measure your might, horde power/size, treasury and minion status.

Be sure to master that control/power scheme before joining head-to-head network games where you get a few special minions (even if they’re not unlocked in your current single player game) and strategy becomes an important requirement for success. Specially colored circle icons help players strategize their pillaging and attack (e.g. green raises corruption and red shows your forces are being attacked). Co-operative domination quests and split screen mode help create a well rounded title.

This game touches so many genres – developers should be commended for creating a good balance. More content and variation is still needed though. The overlord character has most of the control, but the loyal minions constantly steal the show. Players don’t have to micromanage very much or make the minions happy – a nice relief.

Lighthouse Interactive announced Thursday that their new conspiracy Adventure game Belief & Betrayal has been released to retail shelves across North America.

GAME SUMMARY

As journalist Jonathan Danter, you discover that a ten year old murder is somehow part of a greater mystery that could destroy humanity itself. Filled with baffling plot twists and conspiracy theories, you must uncover the mystery that reaches back through history from 1194 A.D. to the time Judas received 30 pieces of silver to betray Christ.

Travel to exotic locations throughout Europe including: London, Venice, Rome and the Vatican, to uncover skeletons hidden deep within the closets of some of the most powerful leaders around the World.

FEATURES

• Play as 3 different characters throughout the game to solve the mystery
• Find lost ancient manuscripts and decipher mind-boggling codes and symbols
• Explore stunning environments and incredibly re-created historic locations
• Strong action/adventure storyline creates a compelling gameplay experience
• Use the memories and thoughts of the intriguing cast of characters to solve puzzles and expose dark mysteries
• Game based on historical events though the story is pure fiction
• Easy to navigate 3rd person point & click interface using the Virtools engine

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: Windows 2000 / XP / Vista
CPU: 1 GHz Intel Pentium processor or AMD Athlon processor
RAM: 512 MB (1 GB recommended for Windows Vista)
Video: 64 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible or better video card
PC DVD-ROM: 4x
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Available Hard Disk Space: 2 GB
DirectX: 9.0c
Other: Mouse, Keyboard and Speakers

Lighthouse Interactive and dtp Entertainment announced that their latest adventure game, Belief & Betrayal has gone gold and will be released in North America June 10.

B&B is a point and click adventure game wrapped around a cold case murder mystery.

“The adventure game community has been very patient,” said Erik Schreuder, CEO of Lighthouse Interactive. “We are confident they will appreciate the optimizations made to improve Belief & Betrayal to meet their expectations.”

Game summary:

As journalist Jonathan Danter, you discover that a ten year old murder is somehow part of a greater mystery that could destroy humanity itself. Filled with baffling plot twists and conspiracy theories, you must uncover the mystery that reaches back through history from 1194 A.D. to the time Judas received 30 pieces of silver to betray Christ.

Travel to exotic locations throughout Europe including: London, Venice, Rome and the Vatican, to uncover skeletons hidden deep within the closets of some of the most powerful leaders around the World.

Game features:

• Play as 3 different characters throughout the game to solve the mystery
• Find lost ancient manuscripts and decipher mind-boggling codes and symbols
• Explore stunning environments and incredibly re-created historic locations
• Strong action/adventure storyline creates a compelling gameplay experience
• Use the memories and thoughts of the intriguing cast of characters to solve puzzles and expose dark mysteries
• Game based on historical events though the story is pure fiction
• Easy to navigate 3rd person point & click interface using the Virtools engine

For more, check out the game’s website.

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

From 1998

Myst is a classic adventure game created in 1994. The journey begins on a mysterious and somewhat magical island world that seems like a ghost town, but despite the lack of inhabitants the isle contains several buildings and a hidden ship in the harbor.

The game is a puzzle/adventure novel in which you have to solve different mysteries. Myst is completely made up of several Quick Time movies and was one of the first games to incorporate actual movies into a game.

I found the game, intriguing, yet desolate. There are almost no actual characters or enemies, and the puzzles take forever (or a hint guide) to solve. I also found the game play to be way to slow to keep up with today’s rapidly unfolding game plots. The adventure takes too long to become an adventure. This is rather unorthodox of a computer game, because most games start an adventure or action sequence early on in the game, and some games start the adventure in a hostile world with instant action, but this is one of the reason why Myst found a niche in the adventure realm.

Despite the age, Myst is still a classic adventure game, and there are more people that like Myst than there are critics. I recommend this game to the slow paced adventure fan. Myst has a lot to offer to the experienced gamer.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Broderbund
Developer: Cyan
Platform: Windows/Mac
Genre: Adventure
Price: Varies, often bundled with new PC’s

Performance: 4 out of 5 stars
User friendly: 4 out of 5 stars
Support: 3 out of 5 stars
Cost: 4 out of 5 stars
Ease of Installation: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 5 out of 5 stars
Sound: 5 out of 5 stars

Ratings were determined in 1998

Myst was a game so beautiful, so technologically revolutionary and so cerebral that it was the best selling computer game of all time until millions of screaming girls started playing “The Sims.”

The game also spawned a generation of gaming. Many people call it the phenomenon of the “Myst clone,” but make no mistake, the entire genre of mouse-driven adventure games pays homage to Myst. (Read The Review Center’s original review here)

Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder is no Myst.

But it is a mouse-driven adventure game with deeply challenging puzzles as you play detective Howard E. Loreid, lead investigator on the case of the Clark Field murder. The game inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, and if you’re familiar with Lovecraft’s works, Darkness Within is a familiar yarn about estranged family members’ secrets and the occult. The plot is jaded, but it’s a video game, so I let the clich©s go usually. No, the plot doesn’t hurt “Darkness,” it’s the terrible gameplay and lack of character interaction.

Loreid is having nightmares lately, and the game opens in one such dream about a mental institution and a dead body. He wakes up to the sound of his cell phone ringing and his office calling. Loreid has to get out of bed and head over to his office, finding his phone and car keys in the process. No shower, no getting dressed, no animation, just clickity click click and you’re suddenly headed to the police station.

The “police station,” like most scenes in the game, is a beautifully decorated, wholly un-interactive experience. Loreid’s office is just that, a one room office with no people, no activity, a phone you can’t use and a computer you can’t interact with. Comeon folks, they were letting people click more items in rooms in 1995 games.

You do a ton of clicking in Myst, but not nearly this much. In Myst, every click results in something interesting. In “Darkness,” every click results in another click.

What really gets me is the sheer lack of any character interaction. The game starts with a ringing cell phone and a coworker calling, but there’s no bustling police station, paternal captain or fellow officers — just an empty office.

Still, the one room jobs are far better than some of the larger scenes. There’s just too much clicking. Like going up a flight of stairs — you click once to go up halfway, then again to move across the landing, then again to go up again, then another click to open the door at the top of the next landing. You also have to be in the correct step to interact with items and evidence. If you can see something, you can’t click it until you’re right up against it. Then you click it and the item zooms up. Then you click it again and you can finally look/analyze the item.

And that’s what turned me off of Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder. It takes so long to move around and find things, that I didn’t have any mental energy left to dedicate to what are actually pretty well-crafted puzzles.

That’s all in spite of the fact that Darkness Within is a beautifully well-designed game. For a low-budget title, the graphics are excellent, the lighting effects are superb and the item detail defy it’s system requirements (set at 1 Ghz/512MB RAM).

Sure the occult angles and soap opera family troubles are brilliantly unoriginal, but really it’s the terrible controls and the awful gameplay that make Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder fail to make the grade.

The game also takes up over a gigabyte of hard drive space, and since Lighthouse and Zoetrope decided to distribute the game on CD-ROM instead of DVD-ROM, you have to install the game from both CD’s. Installation alone takes 20 minutes.

This is all a damn shame because the PC world is desperate for a strong adventure game. Next Life, anything Agatha Christie, Anacapri: The Dream, Operation Wintersun, and now Darkness Within have all been god-awful. Sadly, Darkness Within is the best Adventure game on that list, and for an adventure game whore like me, it’s a sad time to play video games.

I know we get a cut of the proceeds, but click the link to the right, do yourself a huge favor and buy Indigo Prophecy. It’s a few years old, but it’s the best adventure title of the 21st century, and you can get it for 10 bucks.

Play that game and learn what’s missing in the modern adventure game, and without going too far into a tangent, let me just say that the latest games, including Darkness Within are missing the mark on cinematics and creating bland, stale, detached characters. Even in Myst, players grew attached to the plight of “The Stranger.” Howard E. Loreid? Not so much.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive
Developer: Zoetrope Interactive
Platform: PC CD-ROM
Genre: Mouse-driven Adventure
Players: 1
Launch Date: November 6, 2007

Playability: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 4 out of 5 stars
Sound: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall: 2 out of 5 stars

Ubisoft’s ambitious stealth sim, Assassin’s Creed seemed like it was destined to join the year’s growing list of must-have titles. Each time it was shown in public, it was met with long lines and auditoriums packed with throngs of fans cheering its completely open and intuitive gameplay.There is a kink in the hype-machine.

Assassin’s Creed is not a bad game, in fact sometimes it’s down right impressive, but playing through it I was disappointed compared with what I was initially promised.

Poor design choices, a weak, hard to follow story and some of the year’s worst AI lead Assassin’s Creed into the realm of average, run of the mill adventure games.

Assassin’s Creed follows the story of Altair, a member of the group of assassins that performed politically motivated killings during the third crusade in the Middle East.

One of the best parts about the game is that it is so steeped in actual historical events. But it’s a shame the developers felt the need to make such radical choices in the game’s story. Fans looking for a story of betrayal and murder in the middle ages may be disappointed as the game takes a very sharp turn that seems to do nothing but detract from what should be the core of the story.

Sure, surprises in storylines are great — but when it’s revealed in the game’s first five minutes, it confuses more than surprises. Were there too many stealth games set in the third crusade that the developers thought they needed to be different?

Assassin’s Creed is very heavy on story — almost to a fault. At certain points in the game, especially when the above plot twist is mentioned, the game borders on preachy, as you’ll sit in agony waiting to play rather than listen to an old man talk back-story in a temple.

Speeches are long winded, but voice acted well — except for that of Altair, who turns out one of the worst voice acting performances of recent memory. Seriously, it’s laughable — for the half hour. At least the in game music, performed by Jesper Kyd, is top notch.

Visually, it’s hard to deny that Assassin’s Creed looks stunningly accurate to what the Middle East would most likely look like a long, long time ago. The buildings in the bustling marketplace look disheveled as the sun and all of the amazing lighting effects bounce off them.

Even the character animations are top-notch, as everything from climbing and running look fluidly realistic — with the more involved maneuvers (most having to do with the actual assassinations) bordering on works of art.

The assassinations are at the core of Assassin’s Creed. You’ll find yourself doing recon work to gain information on your target. You’ll stalk in the shadows to hear conversations, pickpocket useful items from passers-by and intimidate people with more information than you. These tactics seem to get tedious faster than they should, as each mission — though a little different — proves to be very repetitive. Shake up this guy, get this information, gain entry — repeat.

What’s worse? Most of these investigations force you to take little or no action — take the eavesdrop action for example; you literally sit on a bench, waiting for someone with information to spout it out. That’s it. You sit.

The assassinations themselves are fun and rewarding, if not a bit too simple. Like the Hitman series, players have the choice of how to go about their kills. Do they go in through the shadows, and do your job site unseen? On the other hand, do you go in like thunder, taking the life of anyone who opposes you? Sadly, most attempts to take the stealth route turn into clumsy, kill-everything-that-moves slaughter fests. — a real tragedy in a game that preaches stealth.

After shuffling your victim loose from the mortal coil and hearing them babble on and on, the guards will be notified of your presence (did a "Hey! Our guy just died alarm" go off somewhere?). From here, you have two options; first you can take advantage of the game’s horrible AI and find a quick exit. The guards will come to your location in a hurry, but don’t bother to look up or at anywhere around them. Even worse, they give up and go back to their normal patrol routes after too long at all.

The second option is to try your hand at the game’s awkward and clunky combat system to fight the guards throughout the city. Combat essentially consists of holding down one button to guard from oncoming attacks, and pressing another to strike — or so it seems. Get into enough battles and you’ll see that like most Hollywood fights; they follow a distinct rhythm. While button mashing will lead you to moments of frustration, taking a step back and watching your opponent’s actions can lead to some very cool moments.

Assassin’s Creed takes a unique approach with its control scheme. Players basically act as a puppeteer, using different buttons to control Altair’s different actions and using the right trigger to change between high profile and low profile actions.

While the developers must be commended for trying something new, this tactic hurts gameplay more than its adds to anything. In most games, running is simply done by holding down the left thumbstick, but in Assassin’s Creed you must literally press three different buttons to run. First, you hold down the right trigger to change into high profile mode, then the a-button, then press the left thumbstick. This is unnecessarily complicated and puts a damper on some of the action sequences.

With a bit more focus and a little more tweaking, Assassin’s Creed could have been a great game.

Quiting Wired’s Chris Kohler: “Ubisoft spent an incredible amount of time and energy lovingly crafting this living, breathing world, and then, from all appearances, nearly forgot to actually put a videogame into it.”

Assassin’s Creed fails to deliver on many of the promises we’ve heard over the past year.

While the game does do some things well, including visuals and the first few assassinations, there are far too many flaws that keep it from being a great game. And with so many other great games available this fall, it’s hard to give Assassin’s Creed more than a passing look.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Genre: Action/Adventure
Players: 1
Launch Date: November 13, 2007

Playability: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 3 out of 5 stars
Sound: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars (that’s 7/10 if you swing that way)

Operation Wintersun is a boring game.

I knew I was in trouble when it took me a half hour to get past the tutorial-style intro. I finally had to turn to the manual to find out that I needed to — no lie — dig in the trash, find a potato, scatter the potato onto a special part of the ground so that a crow would fly off a branch to eat it. I then needed to tear down that branch and “combine” it with a loose bar sticking out from a nearby window.

I was then supposed to use the stick/bar to open another window that was too high. This was all done so that I can overhear two British spies talking, but as soon as I got the window open, one of the spies came outside to talk to me and the level was over.

…

Then the gameplay started to get slow.

The rest of “Undercover” is summed up best by Brett Todd, a Gamespot reporter “Anyone who can solve this spectacularly hard game without resorting to a walk-through deserves a ticker-tape parade like the kind they used to give generals and astronauts.”

The game is hard. The puzzles are completely non-intuitive. But worst of all, the gameplay and movement is so ridiculously slow that you don’t want to go spend days going through it all.

I really tried to like this game. It has a pretty interesting plot, good graphics and landscapes and a full voice cast. I even tried to forget the fact that Lighthouse Interactive, the game’s publisher, is largely European-based, so slowly developing, verbose, detailed plots are natural (just watch any British or Canadian crime drama).

The film-noir plot casts you as British physicist John Russell, drafted by intelligence to check out a Nazi plot to build a nuclear weapon.

The script is solid enough, but in the end I just couldn’t get past the fact that I was falling asleep at the mouse. And I don’t mind a slow, noir-style video game (Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, Tex Murphy: Overseer) — the fact is that Undercover: Operation Wintersun just isn’t a good game, period.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive
Developer: Sproing
Platform: Windows PC-CD
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
Launch Date: August 28, 2007

Playability: 1 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 2 out of 5 stars
Sound: 3 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 1.5 out of 5 stars