As someone who occasionally seems to really enjoy good Western RPGs so long as they are sci-fi based (ie Mass Effect and Fallout), Fallout New Vegas was kind of a no brainer for me. I really loved Fallout 3 and this proved intriguing enough for me to pull the trigger on a purchase. I seem to have the time on my hands.
While I would preferred to grab this on a console (specifically 360), the ultra low UK price of the PC version meant insta-import for me. By instant, it took two weeks to show up but it’s here, it’s installed and it’s less than half the price if I had bought it on Steam. I’m about 2-3 hours into it, right at the beginning and it’s starting to come together. I know when an RPG has sucked me, I want to sit down and play it for hours at a time. New Vegas and I haven’t quite reached that point yet but signs ar elooking positive. Of course, I have yet to come across the well-publicised game-breaking bugs and maybe that’s one pleasant side effect of having the PC version- quicker patches. Still, playing on the couch would have been my preference. Earlier DLC for 360 is also a concern, but I’m unlikely to picking up DLC for New Vegas anytime soon anyway.
Obsidian have a weird rep for picking up the IP and tech of another company and making a quick, brilliant but buggy as hell sequel. Open world games are notoriously difficult and laborious to QA but I’ve vome across nothing worse than a floating coyote so far. Of course, here’s a pro tip, the earliest parts of a game get the most QA. I expect by the time I reach the final conflict to be seeing gravity-defying rats, robots bouncing around like polystyrene and people clipping through walls as if they were in the Matrix.
Usually in RPG’s like this you spend the first few hours dieing a lot until you can work out what the hell you are doing in combat, remember to quicksave around every corner and collect weapons powerful enough to defeat your early foes. I remember finding a particular weapon in Fallout 3 that made a big difference to my ability to progress faster so here’s hoping I can find another downed UFO.
So I like it more than Fallout 3? Again, it’s too early to tell but it’s looking to be a similar experience but a different enough one to make the journey worthwhile.
Just to piss PC gamers off- Playing it on Win 7 Boot Camped on a Mac with a 360 controller. I played Fallout 3 on a 360 and I liked the Controller, that and I can recline in my office chair and play this thing for hours so I want to be comfortable dammit.
Is this the best game Pop Cap have ever released? The answer is yes.
At its core, PvZ is a tower defence game where you defend your house from the zombie onslaught. Outside your front yard, zombies semi-randomly lurch towards your property along six lanes and it is up to you to plant defenses to stop them. If one zombie reaches your door, it’s game over, but if you can hold out long enough, you can progress to the next level.
How do you defend against the zombies with plants? Well, you have to plant the rig kind of plants. Plants need sunlight and this is provided naturally, if slowly in daylight levels but you need more sources of light, namely sunflowers. Plant enough of these and they will provide you with enough points to plant increasingly more powerful and specialized anti-zombie defenses, from mushrooms that spit venom to peashooters to killer chillies and more.
As you progress through the levels you get more plants at your disposal, though you can only choose a few at a time. The zombies also get smattering and they have some specialists who can overcome your defences if you’re not careful. There’s generally a plant counter for each type of zombie specialist and you may need to replay some levels once or twice until you get the hang of the right counter measures.
The game does alter the mix by having levels set at night (where the only light sources are whatever sun plants you’ve established) and other levels set in your swimming pool. There are also bonus levels in between each stage that modify the core mechanics for a bit of fun.
And it can a be insanely addictive. When I first got my iPad, I got this and Angry Birds HD and played PvZ a he’ll of a lore more.
The presentations is both cute and great with a perfectly fitting soundtrack and cartoon graphics that suit the game and it’s great senses of humor.
Plants Vs Zombies is a great experience whether you play on PC, iPhone, iPad or XBLA.
Reviewed on PC. Also on Xbox 360. Developed and published by Valve.
Valve’s first annual sequel caused a ruckus when it was first announced in mid-2009, but here we are close to year after release and what happened? Left 4 Dead 2 is a good game but one that wasn’t perhaps the smash hit the original was (funny that).
Like its antecedent, Left 4 Dead 2 pits you as one of four survivors of the zombie apocalypse and it’s your job to stay alive until you reach the safehouse at the end of each level (or extraction). There are several campaigns, each with several chapters and you can start at any chapter. Billed as a co-op shooter, L4D2 can be played online with friends or on your own (how I played it).
L4D2, available on PC, 360 and astromech, manages to pull off a neat trick. It is almost exactly like the first game with only a few minor tweaks, so perhaps the angry L4D fans had a point in felling miffed. What it does add is the option of replacing your pistol with melée weapons such as baseball bats, guitars, golf clubs, swords, chainsaws and more. This alone makes the game worthy of your time, it is also the main reason the game was banned in Australia. Melée adds gore, and lots of it to the mix, but it’s so hectic you rarely notice what it is you’ve done unless you’re taking copious screenshots.
There are more options for thrown objects and health pickups than the first game. You can also collect vials of bile that you can throw to distract zombies, defibulators to kick start your heart. Whoa. Yeah. I found these less useful than the returning pipe bombs and molotovs. One actual gameplay enhancement are the objectives in some missions. No longer limited to getting to the safe house at the end of the level, now you have missions where you need to activate to deactivate machines, which are needed to progress, but might also attract the horde. A few missions ask you to collect gas cans to power up a motor of some description, and they crop up a few times, but every little enhancement goes some way toward making this a better game than the original.
There are a few new enemy types in the mix but they’re generally on par with what has returned. Overall, its not the enemies, but their placement thanks to Valve’s AI director. The game will give you breaks before ratcheting up the intensity. And each time you play through a level, the enemy placement will be different.
The presentation seems to have been. Improved, not that L4D was an ugly game, but now it’ even nicer. Dynamic music and sound effects set the scene for a survival horror experience that manages action and chills.
Overall though, Left 4 Dead 2 is not a must have. If you didn’t click with the first game, then there’s nothing here that will make the follow-up change your mind. If you did like the first, then I definitely recommend the sequel, and now that the game has popped up in the odd steam sale, you can at least know its possible to get it for not much more than an iPhone game.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Bungie. Published by Microsoft
After five Halo games, Bungie are riding off into the sunset, off to work on multi-platform games with Activision. Reach is their swansong to the franchise that took them from a Mac game developer to makers of the defining console FPS franchise. Bought by Microsoft and later gaining their independence, Reach is the best thing Bungie have done, and that’s no mean feat.
A prequel of sorts to the Masterchief starring trilogy of Halo 1-3, Reach puts you in the suit of Noble 6, replacement trooper in a squad stationed on the planet Reach. At the start you think you’re dealing with rebel colonists but things get shitty very quickly when you find yourself defending against a Covenant invasion. Being a prequel, it’s not a spoiler to say things don’t end well for Reach, but Halo Reach is a game where the journey is its own rewards.
Being a Halo game, you can shoot and melee opponents, drive vehicles (and steal them from foes), activate the odd switch and take control of some turrets. Reach adds new weapons and new vehicles to the Halo formula, but also adds armour abilities such as jet-packs, sprinting, holograms (to draw fire away from yourself), shields and armour lockdown (and no, I still can’t work out what the hell that last one does). If you’ve played a Halo before, you know pretty much what to expect. Bungie have given fans what they expect, but added new elements to the mix.
Each Halo game seems to have fun in rebalancing the weapons in the game. Reach gives us the DMR, which is more like an M1 or M14 semi-automatic rifle than the battle rifle of old and occasionally the grenade launcher which fires a bouncing shell. There’s still the standard assault rifle, a scoped pistol, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and a new grenade launcher on the human side, but it’s the Covenant who have received the most munitions upgrades. Easily my favourite is the Needle Rifle which is like the Needler but with a slower rate of fire, a scope and longer range. The Beam rifle and the carbine don’t seem to be in Reach in any form but the plasma rifle now has an automatic rifle version in the form of the Plasma repeater. The energy sword from Halo 2 and the Gravity Hammer for Halo 3 are back. Like ODST, there is again no dual wielding of pistols.
The above-mentioned new things include being able to drive more prosaic vehicles like Forklifts and trucks as well as Covenant Revenant (which replaces the Choppers from Halo 3) but the big ticket item are the Space Battles. Yes, you get to fly a starfighter and for about 20 minutes the game becomes Ace Combat or Rogue Squadron. While the game seems to made it very easy for you to hit anything, it is very well done and just shows that Bungie have taken the “cut and paste” design criticism over the years to hear and taken positive action.
So that’s the single-player. There’s this other thing that I hear the kids are into called co-op. Four friends can apparently play through the single-player campaign as a team, though with difficulty that scales with the extra players. I haven’t tried Reach with coop but I did find Coop useful for beating tough areas in Halo 3. There’s also Firefight which is an extension of the mode from ODST (really the only new thing ODST brought to Halo’s multiplayer), now with matchmaking.
But while I ignore most games’ online components, Halo isn’t one of them. These days, most games offer ‘new takes’ on multiplayer but in the end, most gamers stick to one or two favourite modes. Reach, whilst keeping the best of earlier games in the series, has a fair few new modes worth investigating. The beta introduced players to the objective-based Invasion mode, which pitted Spartans Vs Elites for the first time in Halo multiplayer. There’s also my new favourite, Headhunter, which is like a mix of Team Deathmatch, Headquarters and Capture the Flag. Each time you kill someone, they drop a flaming skull. To actually score points, you have to collect the skull and head to the randomly appearing collection zones for your score to be counted. Of course, if you die, those skulls fall wherever and you score nothing. And anyone can collect your fallen skulls and claim them. This is fun until all the kiddies start stealing your skulls. Mates don’t steal Mate’s skulls. Mate!
There has been some criticism of the number of maps included, some of which are all created on Forge World (bundled tools allowing you to build your own levels) but at the end of the day, whilst MS probably have designs on selling a few map packs, they are also allowing you to play other people’s maps for free (hi, Activision). Bungie have, by far, the best console network code outside of games using dedicated servers and the matches I’ve had have all been lag- free so far, even when my connection wasn’t always optimum (ie- my wife watching streaming videos on her computer-”Honey, I’ve taken out the trash but you may possibly be lagging me, dear”). A large local player-base probably helps reduce lag as well and I hope MoH and CoD developers remember to add those filters into their matchmaking solutions at launch (it took Infinity Ward several months to patch MW2 with that ‘feature’).
So whilst the gameplay in Halo has always been lauded, on area that hasn’t always had an easy ride was graphics. The first two games looked great on the original Xbox (though Halo 2 did have that horrid texture pop where the high resolution texture would load a little later than was optimum), but Halo 3‘s graphics had a far more mixed reception with horrid looking human characters. Reach looks, in a word, superb. Every model looks great, every texture detailed and apart from a few minor framerate hitches, the game runs near perfectly. And at 720p (Halo 3 was derided by pixel counters for its sub-HD resolution). The particle effects have also had a noticeable jump in quality and apart from a motion blur effect that takes some time to adjust to, this game looks better than not only all previous Halo titles, but almost any other Xbox 360 game. Gears of War, with it’s corridor based gameplay, still has the edge but without having to draw the vast open-air vistas as seen in Reach.
Sound is again great. We have an almost totally new score from Marty O’Donnell which only occasionally cribs from the Halo catalogue and some top-notch voice work all round. But the sound effects, always a high point of the series, sound beefier here than any previous game. Also, the low-gravity level has some serious audio processing that gives that space so much more atmospheric than you’d normally find (despite the literal lack of atmosphere in that level).
After playing it, you can’t help feel this is what Halo 2 needed to be, a Halo game that everyone felt beat the original game. I didn’t feel the buzz that I got when I got the first Halo game, but I didn’t feel shortchanged in the way that some fans felt they were by Halo 2, Halo 3 and ODST. It offers an excellent single player with replayability, co-op, firefight and excellent multiplayer. You sure get a lot out of your $60 (OK- add a few bucks for XBL Gold).
Controller1.com Rating 3/3 (Get this unless you really dislike Halo for whatever reason, or you can’t stand shooters)
Reviewed on Xbox 360 (soon on PS3, PC). Developed by Crystal Dynamics. Published by SquareEnix/ Eidos
Once upon a time, Lara Croft’s breasts were the biggest thing in gaming. She was featured in commercials, model shoots and Hollywood movies. And apparently there were nine videogames in there as well. Lara Croft: Guardians of Light is as radical departure from your typical Tomb Raider as you can get and still have Lara Croft front and centre. Except she’s not so much front and centre more from above and to the left. Isometric Lara Croft is a mix of platforming, puzzles and twin stick combat in a way that makes everyone think “Why did this take so long?”
So Lara’s in some South American jungle ridden with underground temples littered with fiendish traps from a bygone civilisation. So if the ancient Aztecs, Mayans and Toltecs were so smart, as is depicted in games like this, how come they never invented a bulletproof vest before the likes of Cortez and Pizarro turned up? There’s a coop character who appears if you play through with a friend but I played this as single player game so you infinitely old chum Totec didn’t figure too much in my playthrough outside of the odd cinematic.
With a new perspective that puts less emphasis on minge-cam and more of gameplay, you direct Lara to jump between platforms, manipulate giant stone balls, use an infinite supply of spears to create jumping points, pull levers, etc to progress through the level. Along the way there will be optional side rooms that allow you to pick up a collectible that may also help increase your health or ammo stats, as well. The game is a compulsive’s dream as there are red crystal skulls to collect in each level (collect ‘em all to increase your real-world wealth), a number of challenges that don’t affect the outcome of the game in any way but give you a reason to retry sections over and over (which increases the size of your genitals in real life), time attacks and weapon upgrades. Each level has its own weapon upgrade from pistols to assault rifles, rocket launchers and more. It gets almost silly how much Lara can carry tucked into her bra.
Thanks to well thought out level design, mostly tight controls and generous checkpoints, the game plays well and is fun to boot. Occasionally you’ll get a puzzle that makes you scratch your head for a bit but solving it only adds to the sense of achievement the game engenders. I did have one bit of scripting break the game and I had to restart the level but that wasn’t too much of a hardship. Ingenious use of Lara’s available tools (my favourite are the infinite bombs) in the puzzle design and the wider field of view makes this feel like how Tomb Raider games should have been all along. There’s coop with Totec with online functionality added after launch. How this changes the gameplay I can’t says since the single player doesn’t feature the second character as an AI character.
Graphics are very pretty and sound gets a good rap too. In short it’s a quality product for $15 that will easily take 6-8 hours on a playthrough, more if you attempt to beat a number of challenges. CD say a’proper’ Tomb Raider game is in the works but I think I’ll wait for the inevitable sequel to this title.
Overall, this is this one of the stronger DDD games on XBLA (And eventually PS3 and PC). It’s not an absolutely essential purchase but it is worth the 1200 points/ $15 Square are asking for.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Developed by Ruffian. Published by Microsoft.
The tale of the making of this game is a saga in it’s own right. The first Crackdown came out in in mid 2007 bundled with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. Once the beta was over, some of those people actually tried the game and found they had a fun superhero game rather than just a lukewarm open-world cop game promised by the demo. Demand for the game, driven initially by the Halo 3 beta, kept ticking over and the game eventually sold over 1.5 million copies. Of course, this slow burn meant Crackdown developers Real-Time Worlds moved on to APB (and their eventual demise) and a new studio, Ruffian, was set up to make a sequel. Ruffian, located close to RTW in Dundee in Scotland, hired several ex-RTW staffers to quickly make the DLCmission packre-skinexpansion pack full priced sequel.
At the end of the original game, there was a twist (of sorts) but here we are back in the same Pacific City ten years later. In the years since you cleaned out the three gangs terrorising the place, a resistance group called The Cell have taken over large chunks of the city, broadcasting propaganda and shooting at you as you go about running your agility orb collection business. Also, a plague has created the zombie-like Freaks that swarm the city during night time hours. You play as a new agent backed up by the dulcet tones of Crackdown Guy (he also plays almost the same role in Red Faction: Guerrilla) whose job is to clear up Pacific City. Again.
Like the first game, you have 500 agility orbs to collect and can level up other stats by driving, using melee attacks, etc. There are also the rooftop races and car races to help with stat-building. Later on your agent can even glide and this ability can be levelled up by glider races where you fly through rings. Crackdown was one of those games that catered to OCD by having 500 agility orbs to collect. CD2, whilst being a decent open-world game, is also a decent collectathon if you so wish. There’s the agility orbs, online only co-op orbs, hidden orbs and, in taking ironically a pointer from inFamous, audio logs which flesh out the fiction of Pacific City. There are types of renegade orbs, which are orbs that move away from you forcing you chase after them if you want to collect them.
Instead of the three gangs whose bosses you are looking to take down, you have the Freaks and the Cell. The Cell are in charge during the day and Freaks play after dark and the game is structured so you take on both. The cure for the freaks is Project Sunburst, which involves you powering up the network of nodes in each area so that you can enter a Freak lair (typically underground) and face the horde whilst a power beacon (think EMP for Freaks) charges up. If both the beacon and your agent survive the onslaught, the resulting flash will instantly obliterate all traces of Freakdom in the area. You also have to face off against the Cell in their strongholds which amounts to killing x number of enemies without moving too far from the start point. This is the main point of differentiation between the original game and the sequel and it’s one area where the original way is best. You don’t get that element of working your way towards the boss at any stage and the game doesn’t really give you many clues as to your progress without digging around in the menus.
You can upgrade weapons by picking them up from fallen foes and calling in a chopper to save (the closest thing to the safehouses from the original game), and you can do likewise with vehicles. I barely bothered with cars, something I always liked about Crackdown, since the cars aren’t necessary to beat the game, that’s just how I roll. On foot. There’s the assortment of assault rifles, shotguns and machine guns with a few grenade/ rocket launcher weapons as well as standard grenades and mines. There’s also the UV shotgun, harmless to humans, but devastating to Freaks but even better is the harpoon/crossbow which shoots a lethal metal bolt at your foes. There are also mounted turrets around the place you can detach and become walking artillery shooting up the place like something out of a Sam Peckinpah film. Also of note- collateral damage is not something you’re going to find easy to avoid. Just take Crackdown Guy’s remonstrations in your stride. By the end of the game, you will have no choice but to use Rocket Launchers to clear out Cell strongholds and any civvies or peacekeepers who get too close will just have to die. It’s the price of cleaning up the city.
GTAIII and GTAIV are both set in something called Liberty City but they feature different takes on the same place. Pacific City is the same in both CD games, just that in CD2- it’s a little more rundown. Buildings that housed massive gang hideouts are now nearly derelict and it’s kind of cool to see how things have changed. But if you’re someone who’s run through the original more than once (or even just recently), you might find the similarities a bit of a cheat. It doesn’t feel like it’s the same game but it doesn’t feel like a full sequel, more an expansion pack using the same code and assets as the original. It’s not worse than the original, but it does lack that wow that many felt after getting into the original back in 2007.
There’s a strong co-op component to the game- evidenced by the co-op orbs around the place. I found Cameron’s story where, after having just started to play the game he went online and some stranger who was able to get to the final level joined the game and finished Cam’s game for him. I actually find that anecdote to be a good reason for changing your online options to friends only.
The graphics are still in Crackdown’s cel shaded style but the overall look is slightly dated. In it’s favor is the sweeping vistas the game offers when you can literally see forever. Things run at a stable clip and I only once noticed some slowdown in proceedings (others have had it worse). The sound is the same quality as the first game, which is to say, very good. I did, however, find Crackdown guy to be rather verbose this time around. Funnier, but sometimes he just won’t SFTU. He’s also got a bit of a potty mouth this time around, which is fun. The Audio Logs you collect are nice because they give the game some more voices to listen to. Sure, the crowds can get quite chatty, but for the most part you want to hear more than Crackdown Guy talk about online orbs.
Overall it’s fun package and should give you at least 12 hours of fun, which is a decent amount. I say if you like open world games, you’d like Crackdown 2. It’s not an essential game that you simply must play but it is a good one.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
(1/3 if you fear deja vu or 3/3 if you have more than one Commodore 64 in your cupboard)
So after a work-induced week away from gaming last week, I’m back into it. And by it, I mean Crackdown 2.
There’s something about the game that isn’t gelling with me. It’s either open-world fatigue after Just Cause 2, Saboteur, Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands, etc or it’s just a little lacklustre compared to the original. For me it’s not the similarity to the original, it’s the lack of similarity that gets me. I loved having to work my way through the waves of gang members before attacking the boss in the original and here, the ‘enhancements’ aren’t as much fun. The games’ fun, it’s just not as compelling. I’m a fair way through the game and fully intend on finishing it soon (certainly before Halo Reach), but I’m not getting the urge to play in the morning before work (my metric for HOLY FUCK THIS GAME IS AWESOME).
I live in Australia and of course, aren’t able to buy the same version of Left 4 Dead 2 as the rest of the world due to classifications issues. A friend gifted it to me after it was more or less being given away by Valve in a sale. I mean they almost paid me to download this game. Somehow receiving the game from someone with a US account means you can DL the normal version in Australia and play it without Zombies disappearing before your eyes.
It’s also a case of too little to add to the first game and I do agree with the critics of L4D’s releases so soon after the original- apart from a few enhancements- why wasn’t this DLC or an expansion like HL2 episodes? The new crew don’t have as much charisma as the original crew and yada yada yada.
Grumpy George continues grumpily with a some Grumpy Theft Auto IV. I’ve perhaps played 90 minutes of the PC version multiplayer- and seem to play once every few weeks. I like a bit of structure. this has none. There are several modes and for some reason they always end up with everyone having Bazookas or Helicopters, even if it’s a race.
So two weeks before Halo: Reach and I’d loooove to play some Halo 3 or ODST in the meantime. Approximately two weeks after H:R turns up, I’m off overseas for a few weeks so chances are I won’t feel like playing Halo when i get back. When you were a kid, did you ever have this thing that any fads or lunchtime activities would always be bookended by holidays? In Year 6 Term 2, everyone was into Marbles but gave up in Term 3. In Year 9, everyone was playing cards on the bus after Easter but that stopped the next holidays.
I therefore expect two weeks of concentrated Halo Reach from mid September. If you hate Halo, this site might be one to avoid till October.
Available on Apple’s iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. Developed by One Man Left. Reviewed by LisVender
Dual-stick shooters don’t work so well on the iPhone. Sliding my thumbs around a touchscreen with no physical feedback makes for very imprecise control, which is no good for games that often require surgical precision. Nevertheless, there are many, MANY dual-stick shooters on the iPhone, each one hoping to be the next Geometry Wars. Hell, Geometry Wars itself is available on the iPhone, and it sucks too!
So the iPhone game Tilt to Live, an ostensible Geometry Wars clone, confused me, because of its many positive reviews. Folks were calling it unique, a blast, and perfectly suited to its platform. I scratched my head and wondered how that could be. I decided to take the chance, wire Apple my two bucks, and jump from the airplane. And holy shit, this game is good!
In Tilt to Live, you play a little white arrow in a rectangular arena that slowly fills up with magically-appearing red dots. One touch from a red dot, and you’re history. You move around by tilting the iDevice. Just imagine that your arrow is a little ball bearing that you roll around. It’s simple and intuitive. The tilt, however, is your only control. Touching the screen doesn’t do anything. All you can do is move about. No shooting!
So how do you fight back against the oncoming hordes of evil red dots? You grab pickups, which appear in random locations in the arena and float about innocuously. Colliding with a pickup instantly creates some sort of offensive that lays waste to red dots and clears a good chunk of the screen for you. There are always three pickups onscreen at any given time, and your survival depends on maneuvering through the crowds of dots skillfully to grab them.
Some of the weapons must be unlocked, but the three that are available from first play pack an effective punch on their own. There’s a purple pickup that launches a broad death wave from your arrow’s point, annihilating any dots in its path. There’s the fireworks pickup, which scatters five homing missiles across the screen, and then there’s the radioactive nuke pickup, which creates a large, lingering explosion that roasts red dots while keeping you momentarily safe. Each pickup is powerful and satisfying to use, and it’s especially fun to grab one after another in quick succession, so you can mow down red dots and build up a humongous score.
Tilt to Live has three modes of play: Classic, Code Red, and Gauntlet. Classic is the vanilla game which starts off easy, with only a couple of dots harassing you at a time, and then gets cooking after a couple of minutes. Code Red is Classic without the foreplay; it jumps from zero to intense in a second. It’s great for those times when you’re not in the mood for a gentle upswing in difficulty, and want to get right into the excitement. Gauntlet is a dodging game. You get no red dots or pickups, only a series of deadly obstacles scrolling across the arena. You have wend your way through rotating gears, walls that smash together, spinning blades, and other deadly traps for as long as you can. Thankfully the tilt controls are excellent, and when you die, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Tilt to Live is connected to a network called AGON Online, which not only means that you can upload your score to a leaderboard, but you can also earn achievements. These achievements, here called “Awards,” are pretty silly. One is earned by literally not lasting five seconds, and another is earned by building a kill combo of 42, because it’s the answer to life, the universe, and everything, you know. These awards are good for more than just bragging rights, though, because collecting enough of them will unlock the game’s most powerful weapons, such as the ice blast and the spike shield. Stupid though the achievements are, unlocking them is worthwhile.
Here’s proof that arena shooters can work on the iPhone after all. Tilt to Live, with its smooth controls, wild weaponry, and goofy sense of humor, is a winner. You won’t want to put your iDevice down, even after you’ve died fifty times and picked up the Masochist award.
Controller1.com rating: 3/3
Update: There’s been an update which adds a new game mode called Frostbite. Frozen dots scroll down the arena, and if you don’t touch them and shatter them before they reach the bottom, they’ll thaw and come after you. A powerful firewall pickup will only appear after you destroy a certain amount of frozen dots. Fun!
Available on PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. Developed by Avalanche Studios. Published by Square Enix.
I fucking love this game. Just Cause 2 is one of the few games I’ve played that actually delivers what’s promised on the back of its case: “relentless, adrenaline-fueled action.” The genii at Avalanche Studios have slapped the Rockstar trend of angry, dramatic, and satirical open-world games right in the face, and have given us a boisterous smorgasbord of outrageous excitement that doesn’t take itself seriously at all. Just Cause 2 doesn’t give a shit about providing a powerful, emotional experience, it just wants to make you smile. And smile you will, as you turn acre after acre of banana republic property into a mad and swirling inferno.
Just Cause 2 is the latest and best in the recent line of open-world, gently structured action games with big environments, oppressive governments, stupid stories, and even stupider acting. Crackdown started it, Red Faction Guerilla continued it, The Saboteur took it a few steps further up the silly meter, and now Just Cause 2 has mastered it. The story is ludicrous, but I’ll go over it anyway: The president of the tiny Southeast Asian country of Panau has died, leaving his spoiled son in charge. Unfortunately, this new prez, “Baby” Panay, won’t answer the phone when NATO calls. What’s more, Tom Sheldon, a former US agent who was called out of retirement to investigate the Panau situation, has gone missing. So the mysterious “Agency” sends in Rico Rodriguez, played by Al Pacino, to find Sheldon and, in time, bring the misbehaving Panay to his reward. You’ll take control of Rico as you cut a path across the lovely forested landscapes of Panau, exploring villages and towns, piloting vehicles, collecting collectibles, shooting shootables, and most importantly, completing missions for the Agency and the various local criminal groups who also want to see the government pushed to its knees.
You’ll accomplish this revolutionary goal by causing Chaos. Chaos is your measure of progress in Just Cause 2, and you earn it by blowing up government property, such as gas pipelines, fuel depots, radio antennas, and military equipment. When you see an object with the red-and-white Panuan emblem on it, find some way to blow it up. Shoot it, throw a grenade at it, plant some C4 on it, or crash into it with a vehicle. Whatever suits your fancy. As your Chaos number rises, all kinds of things unlock, from strongholds/safehouses, to new Agency missions which advance the story. If you find yourself unable to push forward with the game, just look around for more things to blow up. You’ll get back on track in no time.
Naturally, the Panauan military won’t appreciate your efforts to destabilize it. You can kill all the civilians you want, but if you so much as shoot a government-issued trash can, look out. As you cause Chaos, the “Heat Meter” fills up, and the redcoats will come after you in droves. You’ll wield the usual assortment of shoot-em-up weaponry (revolvers, shotguns, SMGs, rocket launchers) to battle them. Just Cause 2 features a helpful automatic lock-on aiming system, so you can run and jump all over while you fight, and as long as you keep your finger on the trigger, you’ll probably hit someone. Once you’ve had your fill of gunfighting, or once the odds start to turn against you, head for the hills. Stay out of sight for a while, and the Heat meter will empty. The soldiers will eventually lose interest in you and leave you alone again, so you can plan your next assault.
Alec Mason liberated Mars with a simple sledgehammer. Sean Devlin fought the Nazis with a fistful of dynamite. Rico Rodriguez takes on the Panay regime with two slightly more unusual tools: a parachute and a grappling hook. These two items are a revelation. With Rico’s parachute, there’s never any fear of death by falling. You can leap off of any tall building or out of any high-flying jet, and land safely. Magically, Rico seems to have an infinite number of these parachutes in his little backpack, and they never get caught on tree branches or power lines. The grappling hook is also surprisingly useful. If you can see something, you can get to it with the grappling hook. Just aim at any surface and hit L1/LB, and Rico goes soaring towards it. It works simply and performs beautifully. The grappling hook is great for getting yourself out of enemy firing lines and behind cover, crossing long stretches of land, and for quick escapes to the rooftops.
The hook also has some more creative applications than these. You can fire it at enemy soldiers to grab them and yank them. This is great for pulling them out of cover, or from behind mounted gatling guns, or down from lookout towers. By holding L1/LB to attach the hook to one object, and then releasing the button while aiming at another object, you can tether the two objects together. You can hook a big truck to a statue of Baby Panay, and then drive the truck forward to pull the statue down. You can hook a soldier to the ceiling and then fire at him while he dangles. You can hook a car to a helicopter and airlift it. You can hook a person to a gas canister and then shoot the canister, propelling it forward on a fiery leak and taking its hapless attachment for a wild ride. You can spend hours just dreaming up crazy and cruel tricks to try.
Assault helicopters, the bane of characters like Mason and Gordon Freeman, are but a minor irritation for Rico and his grappling hook. If a tenacious chopper swoops in to strafe you, all you have to do is aim up and grapple onto it, where you’ll hang from the underside. From there, you can climb to the front of the chopper, shoot out any armed passengers, toss out the pilot, and commandeer it yourself! The most satisfying part of this is hearing the poor pilot scream and scream as he plummets to the earth. Truly, the grappling hook is the heart and soul of this game.
If you don’t want to wait for the military to send a chopper after you, you can always call up your black market buddy Sloth Demon, and have one delivered. After completing the game’s first Agency mission, Rico is given a special beacon, which he can use at any time, even during missions, to have armaments and vehicles dropped at his feet. It functions similarly to the air drops in the Mercenaries games. The items aren’t cheap, and the best ones have to be unlocked by causing Chaos, but since you rack up money and Chaos just by blasting and collecting stuff, finances are rarely a problem. Sloth Demon will become your very best buddy when you get caught without ammo during a tense firefight, or when a target on the horizon looks a little too dangerous to conquer on foot. Even a broad and steely military base offers little resistance when you can just order up a tank at will, as I do in the following video:
Yes, Rico can quickly and seamlessly move from one deadly vehicle to another, but they’re not invulnerable by any means. Military installations are often dotted with SAM sites that are just waiting for you to pilot a flying vehicle so they can take you down. Good thing you have your parachute! Remember that cutscene in Uncharted where Nathan Drake and his chick are flying a plane out to an island, when they get hit by anti-aircraft fire, and they have to skydive out to safety? Well, in Just Cause 2, not only can you actually DO that instead of just watching it, you can do it several times in one gaming session!
Traveling is a big part of Just Cause 2, but it’s rarely the chore that it is in some other open-world games. Rico can pilot any of the dozens of motorcycles, sedans, sports cars, ATVs, speedboats, jeeps, tanks, helicopters, airliners, and jet fighters he’ll find around Panau, but even on foot, Rico can maneuver in some nifty ways. One of these moves is the stunt jump, accomplished with a single press of Circle/B, which makes Rico leap onto the hood or roof of a nearby vehicle, even if it’s in motion. From this position, he can fire on approaching enemies, grapple onto a nearby surface, throw the driver out and take the wheel for himself, or even stunt jump onto another passing vehicle! If you’re on a busy highway, you can perform “stunt jump combos” by leaping from one vehicle roof to another.
Rico’s other great trick is the slingshot maneuver, or as I like to call it, “grapplechuting,” which combines the utilities of his trusty parachute and grappling hook. You start it off by firing your grappling hook into a distant surface, and then opening your parachute while you’re being pulled to your target. Then, while your chute is open, aim at the ground ahead of you, and fire the hook again. Rico will keep his parachute open and reel himself forward with the grappling hook cord. If you can repeat this process often enough to maintain your momentum, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll get around.
For all the goodness it provides, I’m nonetheless willing to admit that Just Cause 2 can be pretty annoying at times. The first problem most players will encounter is the surprising learning curve. Rico’s moves aren’t especially difficult to pull off, but he has so many of them, from dual-wielding to grappling around to ordering items, that it’s easy to forget what your options are once the bullets start flying. It will take some practice before your eyes finally open up to Rico’s impressive maneuverability.
Just Cause 2 is also susceptible to a disease common to open-world games, which I call “Who-the-fuck-is-shooting-me Syndrome.” Since the game has no intentional level design, enemy soldiers can and will spawn from just about anywhere, and they’re going to hit you before you can hit them. This is especially frustrating when you think you’ve cleared an area out, and you’re trying to relax or grab a pickup, and then a new horde of bad guys starts firing from behind you.
The game’s health system is also unnecessarily complicated. Rico has the Halo/Gears/Uncharted Healing Factor that refills his health bar if he avoids damage for a short time, but it won’t fill the bar completely. To get all your health back, you need to find and activate first aid kits, and they’re not as common as you might think. This can be frustrating when you complete a tough mission with reduced health, and then have to choose between hunting around for first aid, or beginning your next task at a disadvantage. For some stupid reason, you can’t order up or carry first aid kits with you to use in emergencies. What the hell, man? Even Mega Man can do that!
I should also mention that one of the mandatory Agency missions involves an extremely frustrating escort segment. Rico has to protect some unarmed moron who can’t stop himself from charging headlong into enemy ambushes. I’ve been playing video games for a long time, and I haven’t met a single person who actually enjoys doing escort missions. Pay heed, Avalanche: no one liked escort missions in Wing Commander, no one liked them in Dead Rising, and no one’s going to like them here. I say we put a stop to this escort nonsense right now! Who’s with me?
The Agency missions can be lengthy and complicated, but the criminal faction missions are all pretty brief, and some of them can be completed in a minute or two if you use a good strategy. Unfortunately, one of them, called “Black Gold,” has a serious glitch that makes the mission impossible to complete. Your goal is to fly to a distant offshore oil derrick and blow up a certain number of its fuel tanks. If you destroy only a portion of them, die, and choose to retry the mission from the you-died menu, the mission progress meter will reset, but the fuel tanks you busted in your first attempt won’t return. This means that you won’t be able to perform all the destruction you need to do to finish the mission. Thankfully, this is not a game-killing bug, and it can be resolved by manually aborting the mission and then accepting it again, but it can be maddening if you don’t recognize it as a bug right away.
Funky bugs are all over the place in Just Cause 2. Some of them are frustrating, such as a strange one that causes enemies to spawn within buildings, where they can shoot you but you can’t shoot them, while others are pretty damn funny, like this headless fellow here:
Amazingly, when set against the undiluted craziness that this game is intentionally providing, this sort of glitch isn’t disruptive in the slightest. It’s just another thread in the tapestry, another gift from the game that keeps on giving.
Just Cause 2 isn’t just a gem, it’s a perfectly cut diamond. I know that I’ve been gushing on about it for good while here, but I doubt that I could ever run out of good things to say about it. If you’re looking for your game to deliver something “grown-up” and “meaningful,” go kick a horse around the dull and depressing deserts of Red Dead Redemption. If you want a terrific, beautiful action game that’s just a ton to fun to fool around in, Just Cause 2 is it. From its opening skydive to its hilariously stupid final objective, Just Cause 2 is so far over the top that it really should be called Just Awesome. As goofy as it is, though, I don’t think it goes quite far enough, and that’s what keeps it from dethroning Total Carnage as my favorite video game of all time. What I’d really love to see is a game with the same controls and basic structure as Just Cause 2, but which engulfs you crazy, crooked, sci-fi architecture, hordes of mutated creeps to kill, and towering, bloodthirsty bosses that you have to grapple onto and tear apart piece by piece. THAT would be, quite honestly, the only game I would ever play.
