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.
So Portal. Although we briefly reviewed it long ago, it’s back, it’s on Mac for the first time, and it’s free on Mac or PC for a limited time (if you’re reading this and the date doesn’t rhyme with Bay two thousand and Len, it’s too late). How do you describe this phenomenon? Starting off as a HL2 mod before Valve released it as a full product and as part of The Orange Box in 2007, Portal is a first person puzzle game with more charisma than a cheerleader after a half a bottle of bourbon.
The protagonist is a girl called Chell, who remains voiceless, locked in an underground testing facility with only your wits, and eventually a strange gun that opens up holes in the wall. Think of those old Looney tunes cartoons where Daffy Duck moves a hole in the ground as if it was was a piece of cloth, or more recently, the short film with the magician and the rabbit that preceded Wall-E- that’s what the Portal gun does.
Your abilities in the game are rather limited. You can walk, crouch, jump and lift and that’s about it until you get the Portal Gun, which allows you to open up one end of a tunnel in the wall, the floor or the ceiling (though not every surface). Later on, you receive an enhancement that gives you control over the other end of the tunnel, but it’s a fairly simple move set. Of course, add momentum and the game opens up to a whole new level of fiendish puzzles, each more dastardly…
YOU BASTARDS, VALVE!
So the game itself is brilliant and two and a half years later is still fantastic. We have a sequel coming later this year which is a full priced game with multiplayer aspects to it. Huh? Doesn’t take like three hours to beat? I haven’t mentioned GlaDOS yet.
Chell may not speak but GlaDOS, the computer running the Aperture Science facility you find yourself in sure as shit has a story to tell (Aperture are a competitor to Half Life’s Black Mesa and are briefly glimpsed at the end of Half Life 2: Episode 2). GlaDOS is a rather typical computer offering you hints and tips in between challenges and occasionally during levels. But the hints and tips aren’t particularly reliable as you come to realise GlaDOS isn’t particularly trustworthy. GlaDOS turns a cool puzzle game into something special. The vocoded/autotuned voice augments a fantastic vocal performance. GlaDOS is almost the only voice heard in the game but you’d have to have a pretty cold heart not to crack a smile at the inanity of its statements.
The graphics were never flashy but there were clean and gave you a good sense of the environment inside of Aperture. The sound is simple and works fantastically. There’s very little music in Portal but it has its probably the most quote song lyric of any game. Still Alive is still considered one of the best pieces of game music ever written and I love it. So does Bob Dylan.
So how does it work on a Mac? Like a PC, only you change the mouse first. Yes, one button mouse jokes in 2010 are funny. They just aren’t particularly accurate. That said, any USB Logitech or MS mouse will be a better gaming mouse than a mighty or magic mouse. OK, I have a decent machine with a decent card, not something the entry level Apple computers have featured but hopefully Valve’s entry into this more or less untapped (apart from casual games and two year old ports) market will stimulate development in this area. A few teething problems (Valve have patched it twice in the few days I played this), but nothing worse than Windows. I am looking forward to finally playing Left 4 Dead 2 when it shows up in a few weeks, a game that should be a much better showcase.
Mac’s main ting hamstringing it isn’t the reduced spec of video cards, it’s the lack of Direct X- something most PC games are based around. Open GL fills in many of the holes but wit will take more development to see both systems on par. That said, if you already boot camp for the PC only stuff, Valve allows you to play the game on Mac or PC without charging any extra. Nice. And it only takes 3-4 hours to play. If you get bored there’s also the developer commentaries, plus you can import bonus maps and challenges- though I can’t say if these are the same as those on Portal- Still Alive expanded edition released on XBLA a while back.
Get in quick and grab it for less that it costs to buy a DVD-R.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Published by Ubisoft
Announced yonks ago with a long-haired hippy Sam Fisher and retooled to higher res-version of the Sam we’ve always known and loved, SCC updates the series with a new take action-stealth. Similar to how the stealth in MGS4 was not the only way to go, SCC is an intense game. It’s also shorter than the height requirements for tag-team midget wrestling.
So Sam’s been away for a while. His daughter’s dead, accidentally hit by a car. Sam’s brought back into the fold, when Third Eschelon, Sam’s old paymatsers, come a knocking. Aided by old friend Grimsdottir and that old guy from Uncharted, Sam embarks on a mission to find the truth.
Firstly, this is a complete re-tooling of the SC formula. Gone are so many of the gadgets, replaced by upgradable weapons and a more limited, tough more useful selection of gadgets acquired during the game. Sam can run and crouch, take cover and that’s about it without the help of a context sensitive button. “A” button (on 360) is used to jump, to climb, to use, to talk, to open doors and windows, to upgrade, pick up weapons, to peek underneath doors- all depending on what you’re facing. Sam can also attack enemies who are close by using B to attack, or use them as a human shield.
Ubisoft Quality Control
Incapaciting enemies without weapons earn you executions. So if you knock out one of the chatty cathy guards, you can mark a number of targets and press Y for Sam to execute them more or less instantly provided they’re in range. You can kill between two and four enemies, depending on the weapon, some upgrades up the number of marks a weapon can offer. You may think this is a bit of a cheat but there’s nothing compelling you to use it.
You earn points for everything which act in a similar method to achievements, except each one gives you a set number of points that you can spend on upgrading weapons. Be careful though since you won’t come close to upgrading everything during the short campaign, nor will you need them. I do believe some of this may carry over into the MP and coop missions but I concentrated on the single player portion of the game. Thankfully these happen around checkpoints, where there are weapons stashes that can just refill your ammo, change weapons and, quite usefully, restock during a battle. It probably lowers the difficulty significantly but it’s not a cakewalk.
As you start the game a rogue agent, you don’t have access to the gadgets of old, at least not initially, though many old favourites do pop up during the game including sticky camera and remove mine, but you’ll also be using EMP mines and flashbangs to distract guards while they espouse the benefits of kicking your ass. Hiding in the shadows is still your number one best tactic, which sends the game black and white to indicate you can’t be seen unless a patrolling guards walks right into you. It’s a pity since the game is quite pretty, and made worse when you do reclaim old faithful later in the game, since the picture effects dirty up the screen so much that you will spend very little time using night vision in the game.
So one change is, for the most part, you don’t instafail a mission by killing guards. There are one or two areas where absolute stealth is required, but these are in fact few and far between. However, if you do decide to start shooting up the place as your main strategy, expect to see the game over screen more often ex-Infinity Ward staffers update their Linked-In accounts. Sam is not made of metal and most of the time, he can take only a very small amount of damage before succumbing to his wounds. I found the balance of checkpoints is generally well-spaced out (though not always) and the difficulty reasonable, though I did restart sections fairly often. Three difficulty levels (I played on normal) mean there should be some extra challenge for those who want it, an no challenge for those that don’t. Trial and Error is still part of the game play, but whereas in the previous games, you were scratching your head at what to do next, here, you know what to do next, it’s just making that happen that’s what trips you up. I mean, you can’t fail to miss what to do next…
The first thing you notice about the visuals are the text projected onto walls. These might be phrases telling you what to do next or reflect Sam’s state of mind. You also often see flashbacks, which are quite impressive, but the more you move through the game, they become annoying or distracting. Which of those is up to you. It is however, striking and the thing most people take away from the game.
So we’ve touched on the fact it’s an attractive game with good visuals, great audio and decent voice work from the likes of Michael Ironside and other Canadian superstars. Apart from one important respect. The guards in the game talk. A lot. Have you even been stuck in a lift with a very talkative person with verbal diarrhea, someone who has to talk for absolutely every second of the day because they are so enamoured with the sound of ther own voice. Well that’s the guards here. If they haven’t seen you, there might be a little chit-chat between two guards, sometimes recounting events earlier in the game. But if they know you’re there. They taunt you a lot. And in a frankly embarrassing way that possibly sounds better said in French.
So is it good? Yes? Is it essential- I think so but there are caveats. Are you likley to play coop and multiplayer modes as well as the single player? Are you likely to replay a quality game? If so, the game is definitely worth picking up. Are you likely to play the single player only on easy? Don’t bother, it’s too short to justify at full price. Also- are likely to play on PC and your internet connection is regularly flaky? The PC version uses Ubisofts new always on DRM.
controller1.com rating 2/3 (or 3/3 if you’re likely to explore multiplayer elements as well as single player)
Reviewed on PC. Also on: PS3, Xbox 360. Developed by Rocksteady. Published by Eidos (Square Enix)
So you’re Batman. You’ve just captured the Joker and are just dropping him off at Arkham Asylum, Gotham City’s biggest and best nuthouse. And then, shit gets real…
All hell breaks loose on Arkham Island and Batman has to track down his nemesis, as well as several other villains conveniently locked up in the asylum. It’s a mix of exploration, combat and action, telling a story in a way that sounds like an ordinary license but has so much flair and inventiveness that you will never automatically talk about Uncharted 2 as the best game of 2009. How is this possible? Let’s break it down.
Note: I played this on PC with a mouse and keyboard. And it needs a gamepad and since there’s no 360 gamepad driver for my computer, mouse and keyboard it is. I recommend playing this with a controller.
You play as Batman (duh), criss-crossing the island in search of clues, beating up roid head convicts, taking on the odd boss, exploring all sorts of nooks and crannies. You detect, you codebreak, you grapple and you beat the living shit out of things. You are, after all, THE Batman. Not just a batman. The definite article.
Unlike other superheroes, Batman doesn’t have superpowers. He’s just an ordinary roid-enhanced (as are all the men in this, it has to be said) dude with lots of gadgets such as his Batarang, a grappling hook, a decoder etc, to help him through his tasks. Gadgets unlock at salient points in the game, many of which allow Batman to get to areas you would have noticed during the early stages of your travels, areas that early on, you can merely look at longfully, ruing that you will have to come back at a later date if you’re remotely OCD. Batman also has Detective mode, which highlights areas of interest and x-rayed allies/enemies. It will help Bats to find ledges to grapple to, to find vents, track down traces of DNA, etc. And if you find yourself not playing in Detective mode 90% of the time, I would be royally surprised. Some gadgets can also be used as weapons, but these generally only have a temporary stunning effect on some foes, but useful nonetheless. Batman doesn’t use guns. He’s Batman.
Combat in the game is simple- usually just a button for attack with another for countering and a third to stun some foes who are otherwise impervious to your blows. Combat is generally not random and metered out in a fun way at intervals that help vary the game’s overall pacing nicely. Often the game will lock you in a room with a set number of foes to beat (like 90% of other games). Of course if you knock them down, you’ll still need to perform a takedown in many cases. Bosses are well thought out in general with a degree of variety (apart from Scarecrow encounters, which are really just 2D stealth missions) though your enjoyment of them may vary. Of course, the game, though it looks like a brawler, isn’t a beat-em-up. It just does the fights it does offer quite well. This could so easily have turned into fight wave after wave of enemies, monotony being your constant companion and repetition your amusingly Southern sidekick dealio.
If you end up in an area with armed foes, then the game requires you to take a stealthier approach, since if you run in expecting to take out armed guards with just your fists, you’re going to die faster than a whale on a plankton-free diet. These chambers usually have stone gargoyles along the ceiling and you’re meant to take a guard out quietly, then using your grappling hook to zip up to a Gargoyle. If you’re seen, rapidly moving between gargoyles seems to confuse your pursuers, because really, they’re that stupid. AA is easily the best stealth game since Metal Gear 3 or Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory (not to denigrate MGS4 or the latest Splinter Cell- but they aren’t really stealth games any more, are they?). Many of your gadgets also assist in combat with the batarang, explosive gel and grapple gun able to assist you in briefly disarming foes while you move in for the takedown. The game will also mix these up by placing restrictions and adds to the feeling that everything old is new but still way cool and fresher than a daisy that’s won Fresh Daisy of the Year. Remember how everyone says Grabbed By the Ghoulies is one of Rare’s worst games (I’d put Perfect Dark Zero in that slot)? Well Rocksteady obviously took something away from that game since they do the exact same thing here.
You upgrade your gadgets by finding them, but every little thing you do contributes experience points, which will unlock upgrades such as better suit armour, enhanced abilities for your gadgets etc. You also have The Riddler placing puzzles all over the island, most of which just involve finding an icon, but some others require scanning using detective mode. You can also find recordings of Therapy sessions with some of the choice inmates. Replay is a big focus with this game, with challenges unlocked as you play the game (these are accessed separately from the main game.
The game has a story to tell, something many titles based on comics don’t do very well, concentrating on action. Comics have wiz-bang action but they tell a story and here, story is well serviced by what’s happening. You feel the story unfolds around you, not just in loading mission briefing screens on games such as MW2. The story also doesn’t usurp the game as Hideo Kojima fails to understand time and time again. So we do get to see a fair few of Batman’s favourites, to name them all would A) spoil the game and B) reveal I haven’t gotten to the end. Oops, what a giveaway! Batman fans of most persuasions will get a kick out of this game (unless you can’t accept anyone other than Heath Ledger portraying the Joker).
Speaking of actors, Kevin Conroy’s more measured Batman is easier to listen to than the what-the-fuck-is-going-on with Christian Bales’ voice in the latest films. Occasionally there’s a little wood in some of his lines, such is the deadpan delivery but he’s as badass as he needs to be. Of note is Mark Hamill’s performance as The Joker. Whether in cutscenes or bombarding you with his wisdom over the Asylum’s public address system, he gets it note perfect. All’s I can say Luke- lay off the lucky strikes and Bourbon-flavoured Corn Flakes. Huskier than the Iditarod, he gives it his all. It’s probably his best villainous performances since Cock-knocker but since that wasn’t that great. Anyhoo…
The presentation in this game is uniformly excellent with this being possibly THE single most polished game of last year. Visuals are fantastic with an art style that let Rocksteady’s team bring this dense world alive. Sounds is top notch with a sound design that games will be referencing for years to come. It’s purdy and sounds nice, too. I’m assured the console versions look nice as well.
It’s hard not to recommend this game to practically anyone referring to gaming as a hobby. It’s got action, it’s got drama, it’s got Harley Quinn upskirts, it’s got a ***-**** (how the fuck to you build that under a high security installation with no-one noticing?). Also- it’s usually quite cheap by now so no excuses.
Controller1.com Rating 3/3
Review rig specs: quadcore PC with 8GB RAM and a 512MB ATI 4870 card. Monitor resolution at 1920X1200. Win 7 64 bit. Steam version tested.
Reviewed on PS3. Also on PC, Xbox 360 Developed by Pandemic. Send to to die by EA.
Pandemic’s last release before being shuttered late last year, The Saboteur is a third-person, open world action game set in Paris during the Nazi occupation of WWII. You play as Sean Devlin, a hard drinkin’, hard-lovin’, hard drivin’, hard swearin’ fecker possibly from Ireland who wreaks havoc throughout gay Paris. Released with less fanfare than a deaf marching band, The Saboteur set new records for a major release being barely marketed and therefore ignored by the buying public. It’s also a cracker of a game.
As with many Pandemic games, it’s a melting pot of other games, most notably GTA. Take GTA and set it in World War II, an idea that is surprising only in that it took so long for someone to actually do it. You’ve played GTA, right? Well add in the ability to climb up most buildings a la inFamous or Assassin’s Creed; then add the dozens of items to blow up (channeling, though not copying, Red Faction Guerrilla’s biggest thrill) and add in some rather wonky driving mechanics; add a pinch of over the top stereotypical accents and more tits than you can poke something resembling a stick at or at least something that is stick-shaped in a NSFW type of way and you have The Saboteur.
Sean Devlin is an Irish mechanic-cum-racing driver in Paris during the Nazi occupation who fast becomes the go-to guy for most of the resistance factions. You’ll meet a faction leader and they may give you a mission that’s either a side mission or one that will advance the storyline. Variety here is pretty good and you don’t get the feeling that you did the same mission for another guy earlier in the game. Now some of the story missions have a really epic scope. Not to say they’re overly long, but you don’t that “scripted by a level designer out of available elements” feeling that many of the missions in GTA /GTA-style games engender. So you might be assassinating an informant in one mission with a sniper rifle; having to kill a German general locked up safely in an armoured car surrounded by a division on men; Or take sabotage a bridge, then kidnap a defecting scientist from the train before it reaches said bridge, all the while laying waste to Germans. Lots of laffs guaranteed. Play this game and join the Laffwaffer.
Some of these side missions can be done easily by hijacking a gun emplacement or unlocking certain weapons, others can be exercises in frustration as you attempt to escape from hordes of Nazis. And I mean hordes. Not so much at the start, but around the time you hit the game’s halfway point, there is a marked spike in Nazi aggression to the point where mission restarts become commonplace. There are at least checkpoints during missions which often (but not always) lessen the sting of death.
The next type of mission is a sort of target-of-opportunity called Freeplay. This basically means that many signs of Nazi occupation, whether it’s a stationery armoured vehicle, a German general, propaganda speakers, AA gun, guard tower, etc can be blown up with dynamite or a remote detonator. And there are hundreds of these across the maps you can atatck at any time, even during missions. They are invaluable for collecting contraband and the like; though so of these targets, such as gun emplacements, can be more useful to keep around since you can use them yourself to blow up other targets or pursuing soldiers (even the Zeppelin’s hovering over Paris’ skyline). They are also a massive distraction whenever you are out and about as blowing them up becomes somewhat addictive, and working out ways to get everything in a clustered area before you are overrun by pursuing Germans is a hell of a lot of fun. Best thing is, as long as the game registers the destruction of the target before you die, you can respawn from your last checkpoint or safehouse.
Being a Saboteur implies some sort of stealth and this game uses stealth in a variety of ways. Unlike Liberty City, this is a town occupied by soldiers. If you are just walking around with no guns on show, you’ll be fine. But if you start waving your piece around, or worse, pull out a gun near a Nazi, the soldiers will often react. If this happens you can try and lower their suspicion level by walking in the other direction but if they get too hyped up, they will call for backup and that’s where the fun starts. Climbing or running near troops can also raise the suspicion level, but somehow you seem able to get close enough to parked vehicle to set a charge even with two guards nearby. They will be roused by the explosion but you have to be right on top of them for them to spot you. If you destroy Freeplay targets clustered together (as often they are), you may find the Alert level rising faster than a Swiss Banker denying rightful owners of their gold fillings. This generally means guards with bigger weapons, airships and even the odd Messerschmidt fighter attacking you with a vigour not seen since the French rush to surrender in 1940. The Germans get plenty pissed and you can get away either by driving (or running) out of the area of investigation indicated on your minimap or find a hiding place (also marked on your map). Alternatively you can find an alarm button and as long as you aren’t being watched by a German, you can deactivate the alarm. Later on, you can lead the Germans into areas where your resistance friends are fighting Germans in the streets and join them. Once you’ve killed a number of Germans, the alarm is over and you can continue with the mayhem. If you despatch a German soldier using stealth tactics or unarmed combat, you can borrow his uniform if no one’s about. This will also cancel alerts so it’s quite a good habit to get into, even if it isn’t as polished as it should be. A number of missions reply on the disguise mechanic to get you into even more trouble. You hold a button down to walk like a Nazi, which reduces the distance around you where you will be spotted as a spy, but you can get further this way that rolling in guns blazing. You can’t get too close as Germans are smarter than the average Fascist.
The Saboteur also adds free climbing into the mix, handy for evading pursuers as you seem to take less damage from enemy fire whilst climbing. It’s not as fluid as the climbing in inFamous or ACII, but it works relatively well and adds verticality to a game world that is very open. The game handily highlights what you can grab onto next but unfortunately doesn’t handle an eave or a protruding ledge quite as nicely as ACII does. If every game did things as nicely as ACII, we wouldn’t need the 2010 Assassin’s Creed II-2 that seems to be coming out.
Everything you achieve earns you contraband, the game’s currency (I can’t see why francs or marks couldn’t have been used), whether it’s the reward for successfully completing a mission, freeplay target destruction or just finding a crate from an OSS drop. Contraband can be used to unlock maps showing freeplay targets, new weapons car upgrades, etc. Or you can gamble with it in the boob room (more on that later). There are a lot of freeplay targets in this game but the reason seems to be the contraband you get for things is rather measly. A few missions need you to have a certain amount in order to bribe a black market operator which will usually mean stocking up on dynamite and going fishing. A pleasant drive through the Parisian burbs later and I’ve destroyed two sniper towers, a fuel dump, an AA gun, three propaganda speakers and two searchlights. And collected several hundred in contraband.
There are also races. I hate races. Most of them are optional apart from the few that aren’t. I hate races.
One element I’ve not found a use for, nor be able to get to work is you can apparently call back up from resistance members. Every time I try to use it, I get a big fat zip in response. Oh well.
The presentation is interesting. At the start of the game, most of Paris is black and white with the colour returning to an area after you’ve beaten a major mission. Apparently the locals are inspired by your actions to resist the Nazi’s. These areas are now in full colour and feature points mentioned earlier in the review where you can cancel an alarm by picking off a set number of Germans. So sounds great when you first see the game, and then progressively less so when you can’t see a fucking thing on the screen (especially in some night time scenes). You’re totally fucked if your screen gets lots of reflections (such as the glass screen on a Plasma or a somputer with a glossy monitor) The graphics (on PS3) are crisp and the frame rate usually behaves itself though after a recent firmware update, I did have a problem where the game constantly hard locked the PS3 (about 4 times in an hour) but it’s behaved itself since then. The audio is mostly excellent save for for the outrageously fake accents sported by most of the cast.
The main character is voiced by actor is Robin Atkin-Downes, who Babylon 5 fans may remember as the much vilified Bryon in that show’s last season but fear not her could star in a Father Ted remake. Lots of shits, feckers and pronouncing ‘I’ as ‘Oi.’ Also, UNCHARTED GUY is in here as a bald Frenchman with a hook! Nolan North represent! The worst voice is a character called Mingo, who seems like winning a race for bass with Paul Robeson. The initial safehouse is in a burlesque theatre, so there are lots of scantily clad, if not topless, ladies with really bad accents but surprisingly modern lingerie and could best be described as ‘pert gallic.’ Lastly, the history in this game is only slightly more reliable that that featured in Inglourious Basterds.
This being an EA game, it features, like Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 and Bad Company 2, a coupon inside the box with a redeemable one-use code meant for the person who buys the game new. Mass Effect 2 gave you some items and an extra character with some missions. Battlefield gave you a weapon. The Saboteur takes a different tack. There is a secret passage in the Burlesque theatre called The Midnight Room that is only accessible with the code which you can enter for free if you buy new or EA would like to charge you $15 to buy online if you buy pre-owned. Now, since the new price of the game has actually fallen to only marginally more than the DLC, let me tell you what you get. A speakeasy with even more topless girls, one (admittedly fun)betting game combining alcohol, knives and Wheel of Fortune; and a bunch of topless girls who will dance for you in close-up. YMMV.
So the design is ambitious and Pandemic manages to tie it together well for the most part. Like any open world game there will be a few annoyances in there but I’ve been mostly impressed by how Pandemic dealt with those. Fast Travel between hideouts might have been nice but overall it’s a credible effort. There are a few edges that could use a bit of sandpaper, but nothing you could cut yourself on. I’m actually surprised how polished it is considering Pandemic’s fate. It’s not an essential purchase, by any means. But if you do spring for it, it is a good time and it’s also now a cheap date as well.
You don’t hate WWII games, like Pandemic’s output, like open world games with a ton of things to do and blow up? Then get this.
Controller1.com Rating 2/3
Get it if you liked Just Cause 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, Medal of Honor Underground, GTA, Saint’s Row, Red Faction Guerilla.
Don’t get it if you like: Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Imagine: Nazis
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PC, PS3 Developed by 2K Marin, Digital Extremes (multiplayer), Irrational Games, 2K China, Arkane Studios. Published by 2k Games
The sequel no-one wanted to a decent-selling but critically-loved game, Bioshock 2 shouldn’t work as well as it does. The original’s story wasn’t shouting out for continued adventures; the original studio wasn’t involved (apart from the crew who developed the PC version of the original); multiple dev studios all served to engender the sequel with a “it should fail” aura. But here we are, the game is out, has sold well enough and the game itself doesn’t actually suck. It’s quite good without feeling like a mere expansion.
In BS2, you are a Big Daddy named Delta, stuck in Rapture several years after the death of Andrew Ryan. Dr Sofia Lamb, one of Ryan’s former advisors/rivals, has her own plans for Rapture, plans which you aren’t a part of. Melding her interest for controlling others for their own good and social experimentation, Lamb’s own daughter is the Little Sister to your Big Daddy. The story is a simple, yet unusual for a game, tale of family, megalomania and the recovery of humanity, though without the dramatic plot twists of the original game, nor the iconic philosophy of Andrew Ryan (though his sayings do occasionally crop up in some of the audio diaries).
The game itself is very heavily based on the design of the original with a few crucial changes. You can’t customise weapons in BS2 though upgrades are still available. If you choose to rescue a Little Sister, you need to hunt down corpses from which your ward will extract precious ADAM you miss out on due to altruism. Of course, this is more or less an escort mission since you have to keep the hordes of enemies away from your charge. You still have a large variety of plasmids and gene tonics to alter your character’s abilities but its’ still a case of “red M&M’s, blue M&M’s, they all end up the same colour in the end.”
So if you rescue the little sisters, you then have to guard them while they extract ADAM since you get less of the stuff this way than if you just harvested them. In BS2, once you’re accounted for all of the Little Sisters in a level, you then have to face off against a Big Sister, who are faster and more agile than Big Daddies, but still pack a mean punch.
One criticism of the first game was that many found the way the Vita Chamber/ Checkpoints worked made the game feel a bit easy, something that was made optional in a post-release patch. Here they work much the same way, retaining the option to turn them off. But, if you happen to die whilst protecting a Little Sister during an extraction, you will return to the last Vita Chamber and have to restart the extraction process. However, all the ammo you may have expended in unsuccessfully defending her is gone and you may find yourself having to fend off splicers with no ammo and no money to buy more.
So it feels like a sequel to Bioshock and feels new enough to be worthwhile. The texture work seems a bit hit and miss compared to the original and the sounds aren’t always as crisp as other games. But they do set the mood very well. The actual art and sound work is still top notch. There’s even effective lip sync here. The script is excellent even without the massive twist the first game managed so well. The shocking parts here aren’t quite as shocking but it’s an interesting story and Sofia Lamb’s philosophy provide and interesting counterpoint to that of Andrew Ryan.
There is apparently some multiplayer, which I have not tested. By all accounts it’s competent but not worth buying the game for.
A good game, worth playing if you’re after a good single player FPS. It’s as different from Call of Duty, Killzone, Halo and Battlefield as you’re likely to get yet is a better shooter than Mass Effect 2 or Fallout 3 or Borderlands.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
(3/3 if you think you’re entitled to the sweat on your brow)
Reviewed on PC. Also on: Xbox 360, PS3. Developed by DICE. Published by EA
Sweden’s DICE are back to the Battlefields with their latest release. It’s an interesting release for various reasons and it’s also one of the better games in the series. The first game in the series came out for PC in 2002 with two decent expansion packs before the law of diminishing returns started to kick in and we had the unloved Battlefield Vietnam and that’s where things went all over the place. There was the somewhat-loved Battlefield 2 with a DLC fragmented player base, its late to the party console versions BF: Modern Combat and the best forgotten Battlefield: 2142 and Battlefield Heroes. The first Battlefield Bad Company was DICE’s first designed for console-only title and was loved by most of those who played it, though the lack of a PC version was bemoaned by many (which is fair considering it was a defining game franchise in the PC shooter space). Bad Company was sold as a single player-focused game with a multiplayer component, but it felt like a single player shoehorned into the wide-open multiplayer maps. BC’s multiplayer was excellent (I played it on PS3/PSN) with its infantry combat now being useful and not 100% dominated by whoever camped long enough for a Tank or can fly a chopper for more than 20 seconds without crashing. It also brought with it the excellent Gold Rush mode, where one team attacks and the other defends its bases. Once two crates in each base had been destroyed, the action moved to the next base until the defender’s bases were all destroyed or the tickets of the attackers had exhausted. That said, it was unfortunately ignored by a lot of long-time BF fans w. many of whom aren’t interested in FPS games on a console. The still console-only but soon to be PC Battlefield 1943, which remade 3 maps from the original game using the Bad Company Frostbite engine, made a of those people sit up and take notice (BF1943 is apparently the first game on XBLA to sell over 1 million units. This also sold well on PSN, so that’s a lot of people taking notice).
BC2 came out early in 2010 and brought with it a PC version. Before release, the PC diehards were still waiting for a true sequel to Battlefield, but having played the PC version to death since release, they need not wait as this is what they need. I do, however, find the need to write a review to attempt to extricate myself from its charms and its vices.
BC2 has several modes. Single player feels like a fun version of a scripted classic Medal of Honor or CoD single player experience, though here, instead of tough and gruff professional soldiers, we have a bunch of whiny slackers. The single player campaign on its own is not worth buying the game for but could be a pleasant enough diversion if you find yourself unable to connect to EA’s servers (which occasionally happens). The real meat and potatoes (or tofu and potatoes for vegetarian readers) is in going online in Rush mode. Yes, there’s BF’s traditional conquest mode, plus Squad Deathmatch, Squad Rush, etc but I’ve only played Rush. It’s a pity that there aren’t more playing Rush on PC (surprise, surprise- more PC players are playing Conquest). Rush offers and intense experience that Modern Warfare 2 removed by going down that arcadey, badly networked path; an experience that targets the action very well, funnels you to the action quickly without having to walk across the entire map due to a poor spawn choice. Squads, first introduced in BF2, allow you to spawn alongside people already in the thick of it which can save valuable battle time. It also means, you can spawn in the middle of a mortar strike or your opponents spawning squad members in the middle of a pistol duel can shift the balance very quickly.
There are four classes you can play as in BC2. The grunt with the assault rifle and grenade launcher is not as overpowered as in MW2, though the grenade launcher is at least usable in BC2 (it was so incredibly weak in BC). The Engineer has a sub machine gun, can repair vehicles and carry mines or a rocket launcher to take out tanks and APCs. The Medic runs around with an light machine gun and drop medkits and later on can revive fallen team-mates so they can go back into battle and get shot again by the same enemy within 3 seconds or resurrection. The last class is the recon, AKA sniper AKA sniping fuckers. Snipers will generally sit back in their ghillie suits and snipe from a very long way away and pepper the field of battle with mortar strikes. Even with BC2 making sniping trickier by having bullets falling away, a good sniper will be able to make a defending team’s life miserable. However, due to the perception that sniping is easy, you sometimes end up in a game where all of the attackers are sniping, meaning no one gets around to setting charges. Oh well.
The more you play the more gadgets and weapons you can unlock. Unlike MW2, if you unlock a new sniper scope, you can equip it the next time you respawn rather than between matches (on PC, anyway). The progress and unlocks does encourage farming. I recall one sparsely populated server where there 5 members of the one clan used a public server to unlock a boating medal. That’s fine, we just used them to farm our sniping stats.
Of course, there are vehicles in BC2. You have a few tanks, armoured personnel carriers, mobile anti aircraft, jeeps, quad bikes, boats, jetskis and helicopters. And unlike previous games, you have far better tools, as ground forces, to deal with them. Some of which are improved by improving your stats to unlock specialties, better vehicle armour, improved reload times, etc. Missing, are the artillery batteries but we have the UAV which is a remote controlled chopper that can be used to send in a missile strike. Fortunately, Tamiya doesn’t build them very strong so a few hits from an M16 should see them right. Engineers can use a variety of rocket launchers to take out vehicles, Snipers can use mortar strikes or place charges on a tank, Engineers can use the LMG to pound the choppers plus there are a profusion of mounted machine guns and stationary rocket launchers dotted around the maps. It’s not like the original game where you were totally fucked once someone who could fly got into a cockpit of a Zero.
An online game is only as good as your community and it seems all popular games are going to be full of dickheads. BC2 started off well in the first few weeks when everyone was learning the ropes, but once the tricks start emerging, most games quickly degenerate. With BC2, it depends on the server you’re on but generally seems to have far fewer abusive players (or maybe the worst ones are the ones with headsets, which I have muted anyway).
The Frostbite engine produces great graphics and the sound for BC has a unique real world sound you don’t hear often in games. It sounds loud even when it’s not.One technical aspect that has cast a vast shadow over this game is network code. It’s just not as god as you’d expect from DICE on a PC title. Back wen I played the older games on PC on bog standard 512k ADSL, a ping of 70 was average for a server in the same country as me. Years later with much much faster ADSL 2+, pings of less than 150 are wishful thinking. That said, you can have a decent game playing with people in other countries, so long as you don’t use sniper rifles. The server browser was not working that well at launch and I took to using the matchmaking for a week or two.
It’s certainly a pretty game that runs well, plays well and you will have fun playing. Until the fucking snipers get you. Spawn and again. Overall, if you like shooting games, BF games and are sick of MW2 and/or the extortionate price of the ‘stimulus to Kotick’s wallet,’ give BC2 a spin.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
Play if you like Bad Company, Battlefield Modern Combat, Battlefield 1943, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Modern Warfare 2
Don’t play if you like: Single player, Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain, Tetris
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC. Developed by Bioware. Published by Electronic Arts.
In 2007, Bioware released Mass Effect on Xbox 360 (with a PC SKU coming soon after) just after being purchased by EA. It was a decent size hit for a new RPG franchise and despite its problems, many felt it was a great first stab at a Sci-Fi RPG game from Bioware that wasn’t a Star Wars game. Some of the perceived issues with the first game: cut and paste side missions, complex RPG stat screens, poor shooting mechanics if you weren’t a hardcore RPG fan, boring first few hours, terrible MAKO driving missions, long loading screens when you’re stuck in elevators, poorer 360 version, and static conversations. I don’t agree with all of those but that’s the collective wisdom. It was also a lot of fun, had great characters and a great story and felt like a cool Star Wars game without having to pay royalties to those fuckers at Lucasfilm.
Mass Effect 2 sees Shepard (who may be imported from the first game if you wish) return literally as a new man/woman after something big that happens in the first cutscene that people may or may not decry as a spoiler but it is in the opening cutscene, dammit). With a new ship and crew, and with a mysterious new paymaster voiced by Martin Sheen, Shepard sets out to build a core team to take on the new big bad for this game. You visit planets, mine them from orbit for minerals used to power up upgrades for your skills, weapons and ships. Then you’ll land on a planet/dock with a vessel to carry out a mission or visit one of the more fleshed out locales where there are multiple missions. There aren’t that many main story missions but each member of your team has at least two missions you’ll want to undertake. The first is to recruit them to your cause, and the second is to secure their loyalty. Recruitment and loyalty missions of course are the meat of the story-based missions. Along the way you’ll encounter a few survivors from the first game (if you’ve imported a save game from ME1, it does depend on what you decided back then). Some will come with you and and some will recoil in horror from you and your new boss but in the end your team is as much a part of the game as Shepard. The team you assemble is generally composed of fairly interesting people, even if most of them are damaged in some way. And almost all of them are killers with a twist (ie crazy, semi-autistic, calm).
The action parts of the game consists of squad-based shooting (or magic if that’s the way you roll), with you and two compatriots (chosen before the start of each mission) tackling an objective that seems like something out of a shooter from a simpler age. Missions are generally short, much much shorter than the first game. Shorter than a midget at a dwarf convention. You can tell Bioware went out of their way to make the game more accessible to shooter fans than the original by the way anything screaming ‘NERD!’ is flashed by on screen quickly so we can get back to the sex and shooting. Even so, you still have to select a team that is balanced. If you’re a soldier, it makes sense that at least one member of your away team is a biotic, etc. Choose unwisely and you’ll find you’re having to take down an armoured boss all on your lonesome since your selected team only have pea-shooters unable to pierce armour and with the wrong powers levelled up. Selecting teams correctly really makes itself felt in the big climax and it’s quite possible to return to the ship with a few empty spaces if you don’t give it some thought. You can of course play as a male or female Shepard, import your character from the first game and choose to play as one of a number of classes from soldier, scout, magic user, tech, etc, but the game for me is third person so how does it play as a Gears-lite game? Not too badly. It still seems to be doing a lot “under the hood” but not as overtly where you can’t do anything in the early stages of the game (like the crime of the original). When you’re not shooting you’re exploring and talking. The exploring (on foot) is a lot simpler and navigation of the more populated areas is simple since few of the environments are all that large. Think of it like GTA but when you go to a mission-giver and accept the mission, the game whisks you straight to a loading screen and voila, you’re at the start of the mission. There’s a lot less back-tracking, fewer “Go to B talk to someone and then return to A and have a conversation” than the first game as well, which is always welcome. While I’m on the subject- Fuck GTA!
In the future, in the year 2009 (which was the fashion at the time), the year was one of releasing sequels to hit 2007 games that slavishly listened to criticism of the first game and jettisoned the stuff people hated. Uncharted 2 mixed up the gameplay more, ACII ejected the by-the-numbers repetition of missions and ME2 cut anything that got so much as a column inch of hate on a message board. So you need to scan for minerals as an upgrade imperative which is the one area this game has actually made much more boring than the first game. It may have been a bit monotonous to drive around the planets looking for blips on your radar but moving a cursor over a globe is 1000 times more boring than sitting in a dentist’s waiting room with only copy of CoD: Modern Fisherman magazine for reading material. I have spent about 38 hours playing ME2 and I would estimate a minimum of 5 hours has been taking up with scanning planets. It’s sort of zen at first but as you go through the game it really slows you down. When I felt the end was near I stopped scanning even with two dozen planets left since I still had so much mineral wealth strip-mined from various planets (some inhabited) that I felt safe I could stop and concentrate on the story and side missions. It’s money you are likely to run out of before the various minerals, and missions don’t often net you all that much. It is said that you need a fully upgraded team in terms of their abilities and your ship’s upgrades to beat the game but it may on the higher difficulties. I played on normal and found I have died much less than the first game. There are no lifts. If the game needs to load, you get a loading screen. The hub areas are much much smaller than before and moving between areas is a loading screen away rather than a long corridor. The streamlining extends to the micromanagement issues of the first game, but don’t hurt the game in any major way (unless you’re a hardcore PC RPG fan). The actual missions are a lot shorter compared to the original, which had many sprawling story missions in amongst the legion of cut and paste side missions. Really only the last mission feels long and then it’s not so long that you’re hoping for a swift death in order to use the bathroom before your bladder leaps up and chokes you from inside.
It’s a highly directed experience, albeit one in which there is a lot of choice. In giving you the choice, Bioware have learned from the rather static staging of many conversations in the first game cinematics are a hell of a lot more dynamic, both in terms of animation and how choices change the flow of action. It’s almost a quick time event but without seeming like a cop out or having David Cage’s lawyers on the phone. You can follow the various prompts for Paragon or Renegade actions. The difference between Paragon and Renegade conversation options is a choice between touchy-feely and snark. The difference between Paragon and Renegade actions will stop someone being killed or something less lethal.
This being a Bioware game (and it has the hallmarks of almost every Bioware game of the last 10 years), there are romances to be had- at least four ladies are open to the idea of a relationship with Shepard (mine, as you can tell from the pics, is a smooth talking newspaper man from the 50′s). I was able to score with two difference ladies in the game. Well, at least I think they’re ladies. One looked like Natalie Portman from V for Vendetta who got drunk one night and now spends her nights looking up Laser Tattoo removal in the Yellow Pages; and the other looks like, well I don’t know. It was kinky with masks and antibiotics and such like.
The presentation is excellent with this being an incredibly polished title. So many of the rough edges that made it to the first game have been polished down so much they shine brighter than a sun surrounded by giant mirrors. On 360, there are few textures that look a little blurry , usually on minor character’s uniforms in cutscene close-ups but apart from that the game is smoother than a bottle of smooth peanut butter dropped from a plane. The frame rate is constant, slowing slightly in cutscenes but never lagging like a first gen 360 title (or even the first game could sometimes do).
Audio is also great with fantastic sound effects and a stellar voice cast. Yes, the trait of having every alien speak with standard US accents is a bit annoying but the impressive voice cast: Martin Sheen, Tricia Helfer, Adam Baldwin, Carrie-Anne Moss and of course Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski (not only the voice of Miranda, but providing the basis of her character’s visuals, with Dat Ass added through CG magic) joining the lesser known but equally impressive cast filling out the major roles. The only audio disappointment is the JMJ/John Carpenter-esque/early 80′s horror synth soundtrack of the original has been replaced with a more standard semi-orchestral score. It’s good, just not as memorable.
One thing to note. The game comes on two discs which will take 12 gigs on your HDD if you install both discs. I installed but I did have to swap discs twice in nearly 40 hours. There’s a serious amount of content here. EA has also added a sweetener to buy this game new instead of used. New owners have the option to download an extra mission, as well another playable character (who’s ok but superfluous) and a free gun and some armour, none of which is all that earth shattering (but if it’s free, why not?”) but not worth the money EA will charge people who buy used down the track. Installing is recommended if you have enough space. I would have preferred if disc swapping wasn’t necessary but you do this less than if you bought three separate games that took the same time to play.
There’s a lot in this game and there’s much I’ve glossed over. It’s just a great experience (no pun intended) for a game. Mass Effect 2 proves Bioware’s still got it. If you like RPG’s of a western bent, you will like this. If you like shooters with a bit more than fragging noobs, you will like this. If you have two lungs, you will like this. Perhaps not you, Raspy One-Lunger with your ventolin, but two lunged creatures will find much over which to be breathe heavily.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PS3, PC. Developed by Gearbox. Published by 2k Games.
So Borderlands is one of those games that shouldn’t. It shouldn’t have sold as well as it has. It shouldn’t be as much fun as it is. But it is. Gearbox, known previously for Brothers in Arms and a lot of good porting work had been showing the game for quite a while before a massive revamp in art style took place. Realism was replaced by a unique cel-shaded graphic novel look. And it obviously worked. Even though the games features many similarities with Fallout 3, Borderlands manages to escape many direct comparisons by being it’s own beast.
So you’re on this planet Pandora (Seems to be a lot of that going around these days), and while it’s a failed colony of sorts, you can’t help thinking that you’re playing Fallout 3 with better gunplay. In fact, it’s like the bastard offspring of Fallout 3, Mad Max and Firefly. It’s an open world first person shooter with a decent RPG feel so levelling whores (which, since WoW and CoD4, is almost everyone). So you pick one of four characters- the usual soldier, sniper, engineer, chick with super powers, etc and off you go, going from mission to mission (and a few side missions) looking for The Vault. You can play it by yourself or party up with up to 3 other players to explore the world and kill and loot to your heart’s content like all good social experiences. Most believe that’s the way to play this game but I concentrated on single player. Me being the solitary loner that I am, I played the game all the time thinking of the sling and arrows I suffered as a child and how I burned them all and pissed on their remains and… anyhoo.
The world of Pandora is a cel-shaded desert full of wackos and doof doof droids. You visit someone who gives you a mission, follow the way point to your mission, beat it, and then return to the mission giver to collect your reward either in the form of experience points or money or hopefully both. Missions are varied with some kill all of the xxx here, some collect all of the yyy (which usually means killing some xxx along the way) or make your way to zzz, kill aaa after you’ve killed all of the xxx). In other words, it can get just a tad repetitive after 10+ hours which is why the co-op would really lift this game if it’s an option open to you.
The game is put together well and has a fairly polished feel. Levelling and using the menus are nice and easy with a controller though I can’t help feel the checkpoint system and save system needs some work. Several times I saved a game and the game didn’t restart from the last checkpoint I was at. Another thing to note: this game respawns enemies. So when you leave Fyrestone, your jumping-off point, expect the same two or three bandits to attack you from exactly the same spots. This does tend to make the game more tiresome than it needs to be, but it least means that there will always be something to kill to get more XP. That said, the enemies scale with you, meaning it’s easy enough to go wherever you like and do missions in almost any order. The mission briefings even tell you what level you should be at and the difficulty of each mission before you make the attempt. A few corners may have been cut with animations, as briefings tend to be a text screen but the text is full of a wry sense of humour. It might just be the cel shading but this game reminds me somewhat of XIII from the PS2/ Xbox era (one of those first of a franchise games that never went any further.
Traversing the large world is made easier when relatively early on, you gain access to vehicles. While these may control like a golf cart driven by a drunken one-legged midget with blisters on his feet, they offer a decent amount of firepower to make mincemeat of respawning foes in encampments. You can get some sick air with these on ramps with your boost enabled. Just like Pedro.
Of course, one of the big draws are all the weapons you collect in this game, somewhere in the order of 3+ million. And some are good and others not so much, so you can drop them, buy them or sell them at vending machines around the world. You can buy upgrades to the capacity of the weapons and even upgrade how many you can carry and have equipped at once. There are lots of guns in this game. A lot. There are more guns in this game than there are HDTV owners who know how to change aspect ratios when watching old movies (“Say, Honey. Doesn’t Orson Wells look a lot fatter on this new TV?”).
Cel-shaded or not, the game has a unique vibe in its presentation, despite a few blurry textures here and there. The world looks like an early 90′s graphic novel come alive, the framerate is mainly solid and the audio presented well, if you can stomach the comic accents. The game could have used a slightly less old fashioned looking menu system and a bit less repeated dialogue (YES, I UNDERSTAND YOU ARE DANCING. THANKS FOR REMINDING ME, AGAIN)
It’s nice to see Gearbox try something other than trying to convince us Brothers in Arms is a popular, fun-to-play franchise. The difference is, this is fun. Is it essential? No, but if you have a lull in your schedule and can time it to coincide with a friend in the same predicament, give Borderlands a shot.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Published by Ubisoft.
In 2007, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed, a much hyped open world game set during the Crusades. Known before release equally for producer Jade Raymond’s appealing smile and interesting premise, the game received mixed reviews and sold like gangbusters anyway. Despite the problems (a very by the numbers mission system and repetition), a sequel was assured and two years later, we have Assassin’s Creed II.
Pic- Ezio Auditore- Assassin, lover, pickpocket. Hey! My wallet!
Assassin’s Creed II builds on the strong fundamentals from the original game in a way not seen often enough in videogames. Desmond is now free of Abstergo and working with a fish lipped Kristen Bell avatar and Switch from the Matrix and Wesley Windom Pryce from Angel, using their own Animus to delve into the world of the Templars. Here, Desmond enters the mind of Ezio Auditore, a Renaissance lad-about-town in 15th century Florence. Ezio becomes an Assassin and immediately sets off on a quest of revenge, intrigue and adventure. Make no mistake, this is firmly rooted in the world of Ezio with the ‘modern world’ only coming into a play a few times.
The free-roaming and combat have been refined slightly- they were pretty well done in the first game but polished a bit more here. You have high profile and low profile actions. Low profile means walking and gently pushing people out of the way, high profile means parkour, sprinting and battle and being badder-assed than Charles Bronson on a Jest Ski. It also will pique the interest of guards- they were profiling even back then. Climb on the roof and the fuckers will hunt you down like a dawg. You will gather an array of weapons throughout your playtime such as hidden knives, daggers, swords, etc and can earn money to buy them from Blacksmiths in each town. You can also buy better armour as you progress, change the colour of your robes, buy maps and even paintings to display in your villa (more later).
So if you played the first game you know how it all works. Here you don’t need to go to the Assassin’s Guild in order to be given a target, it happens far more organically. There’s more of a story being told, even if it’s the same deal- kill ‘x’ targets bit it doesn’t feel anywhere as quantized as the original game. Unlike the first one, missions are more asymmetric in that you don’t have three towns each rigidly cut up into three quarters and there are the same numbers of each type of mission in each area. Here you visit half a dozen locations but some are larger and more important than others. You will be spending most of your time in Florence and Venice with some sojourns to other places such as Tuscany, Forli and your family Villa in Monteriggioni.
Story missions are far more varied this time around with a good mix of things to do. Early on at least, you will will want to earn some money so side quests are useful if you want to be a courier, assassinate someone for money, beat-up a straying husband or race someone.
Pic- Ezio hangs out with his homes
If you don’t feel like doing that, the world is ridden with treasure chests, maps of which are available from art dealers. There are many many things to collect such as feathers for your catatonic mother, but most interesting are the six tombs which are necessary for the story’s resolution but not part of the main quest. Some tombs focus on combat, some on puzzles and others on tricky platforming. This mix of things to do and collect means you can spend quite a lot of time in this world or sneakcraft. Another of the non-optional collectibles are the codex pages, which help you on your quest via health and equipment upgrades from your friend, Lenny DV. The beauty of ACII is that the game gives you enormous freedom and lots of ways to achieve your goal (and hide from the law afterward). You can blend with crowds, hire mercenaries, thieves and courtesans to lure guards away, use bombs to get in close to an objective, etc. It’s a well designed game in almost every way. Just one question. WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE DONE THIS TWO YEARS AGO, UBISOFT ?!?!
Combat has many options such as being able to block, dodge, disarm enemies, etc. But you don’t need half of them since you can have so many health boosts that you can get by with just pressing the same attack button over and over if that’s your bag. I suppose if you want more of a challenge, don’t upgrade your medicine pouch’s carrying ability at the tailor.
Since you earn money, one of the things you can do is upgrade the town of Monteriggioni. Why? Your renovations increase the value of the town and as Lord of the manor, you earn money this way. Later in the game you earn so much from missions and finding treasure and your rental income from the villa exceeds what you need to stock up on consumables like medicine, poison and the like that you can also end up collecting artworks. And that all adds to the brilliant atmosphere conjured by UbiMon. You feel like you’re there so much that some gamers have taken to playing the game with Italian audio on. This option does also cancel out Kristen Bell’s voice in the modern scenes, and unfortunately, Uncharted Guy.
Uncharted 2 has garnered many awards for beautiful graphics but I think ACII is right up there with it’s open world that’s not only technically brilliant but gorgeous to look at. The only major graphical sin is some fairly obvious pop-in when moving though the cities, even with the games fantastic draw distance (evident when you synchronize on a viewpoint). The framerate is smooth throughout though the latter stages of the game (like many games) do tend to have some areas where scripting and cutscenes seems somewhat rushed.
The sound is also worthy of consideration as it’s very slickly produced and although there’s still way too much repetition from some of the NPC’s, it’s not as bad as the first game where you had the exact same lines been repeated in different accents depending on which area you were in. I do know Luigi the fish merchant can’t be beaten for prices or the freshness of his catch. That much I have learned from this game. Here, almost everyone has an Italian accent, mostly convincing ones at that. And no matter what language you play the game in, the script features copious amounts of Italian dialogue which is why the subtitles come in (I did think the line “what, no fucking ziti?” was out of place). Ezio may sound like a reject from The Godfather but it never grates the way Altair’s bland American accent did in the first game. Ezio has passion and sensitivity. Altair was a cock. Of course, in the few short present days scenes outside of the Animus we have the voices of Kristen Bell and Nolan North AGAIN (we was also Prince of Persia and Drake and Shadow Complex guy).
Pic- Of course, Ezio is unlikley to appear in the next game so here he is carrying his stuff home in a cardboard box after he was let go.
If Uncharted 2 hadn’t been so great, I could have seen this is as a GOTY 2009 quite easily. Why? It’s a very good game that fixes almost everything that was broken in the first game. ACII is a must play.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
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