controller1.com

The Podcats: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Talking about Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.

Standard Podcast Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Review: Medal of Honor

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PC. Developed by Danger Close (single player, DICE (multiplayer. Published by EA.

After Saving Private Ryan was released in 1997, Steven Spielberg hadn’t yet gotten WWII out of his system. A gamer as well as adirector, he helped found Dreamworks Interactive to make games like Medal of Honor for the original Playstation. FPS’s had never really taken off on the PSX but the first MoH showed you could make a pretty good shooter on the hardware, even if the Germans looks more like Autons than Teutons. Both MoH and it’s first sequel, MoH: Underground were well received at the time and it is these games that laid the foundations for a franchise. Unfortunately for EA, that franchise just happened to be Call of Duty…

Several things happened. MoH was a hit so EA absorbed Dreamworks Interactive, then gave Medal of Honor to 2015 for them to make a PC game and the result was MoH: Allied Assault, which is still recognised as the series’ peak. After AA, several of the team left to found Infinity Ward making the original Call of Duty and the rest is history (and we know history repeats like a bad taco). Medal of Honor, as a franchise, floundered (as did 2015 who made a poorly received shooter Men of Valor and promptly disappeared like Amelia Earhart) through an ill-advised and badly executed foray into the Pacific Theatre; then slowly attempted to rebuild with various console titles such as European Assault and Airborne, all of which tried to alter the classic formula with promises of less scripted levels and open worlds;  before we arrived back at Medal of Honor, now set in the present and so thoroughly copying Modern Warfare that it makes Dante’s Inferno look like an outstandingly original piece of art with no basis in God of War.

Ok, so you know how to play CoD right? Well close your eyes at the loading screens and pretend it is. It’s not hard and that’s obviously what EA were going for. The result is a CoD game that is locked at 30 frames per second on consoles (unlike the acyual CoD games) and using Unreal Engine 3 for single player and DICE’s own Frostbite engine for multiplayer though you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. So apart from temporal resolution, it still looks and plays like CoD.

You play as various soldiers in Afghanistan. Like Black Ops, you generally have someone with you for most of the game telling you what to do at each and every turn. Listen to his advice and be glad it’s not Sam Worthington. While the controls and missions are much like CoD, one thing is missing from most of the game and that’s the hyperbole and hysteria that the action in single-player CoD is now all about. Less bro, more schmo. MoH has its intense firefights but they really don’t get to the level of the latest from Activision (though they try). But while this lack of constant intensity is a nice change, it also means the game doesn’t have a tension that other slower shooters like older Ghost Recon games had. It’s like playing CoD on mute. It’s just missing that spark.

I did have fun with the single player as a sharp relief to the over the top wall of enemies I experienced in Black Ops but it seems for all of EA’s hype before the game’s release (a game they seem to be publicly disowning now), things like enemies facing the wrong way and other rough edges with presentation lead you to conclude it’s missing some of CoD‘s spit and polish as well a the charm. It has beards but so do the Taliban Opposing Force combatants so in some missions it’s often hard to know who you actually are shooting.  To mix things up there are some turret levels, helicopter gunners and the like and occasionally you get to site weapons for air support, but this doesn’t give you much of a thrill since it’s doled out fairly regularly.

As I received my copy the day after Black Ops was released (I’m not using Zavvi again for anything I’m busting to play), multiplayer was a ghost town of 30 fps CoD-lite. It’s been described as being part way through DICE’s own Battlefield games and CoD. No, it’s CoD. It was good but with no one to play against it was a bit sad since the multiplayer was probably the strongest part of the package from what I could see. I played a decent game with the three others and I think they must be desperate for people to play against (I received friend requests from all three afterwards). Listen guys, never talk about marriage on the first date!

The graphics are mostly good and the sound is great but at the end of the day this is one of EA’s most egregious examples of “Hey let’s make a competitor to the market leader and just copy them exactly without offering anything new ourselves.” It’s an opportunity squandered as the talent was there but I get the feeling the pressure from above was just to remove anything that would scare off CoD fans.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with MoH. Multiplayer is a bust not because it’s bad but because it’s got less life in it that King Tut’s cat. The single-player (which is not all that long) may entertain you but you’d want to be getting this game supremely cheaply (ie when it comes down to Brutal Legend levels)

Controller1.com rating 1/3

Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Reviewed on PC. Also on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii Developed by Treyarch. Published by Activision

A year after Modern Warfare 2, which was either the worst game ever or the besterest, depending on to whom you are talking, their age and the pitch of their voice; we have another Treyarch CoD game. But a funny thing happened on the way to the web forum. BLOPS isn’t all that much more than World at War, yet the internal combustion at Infinity Ward has guaranteed BLOPS would be released without being in someone else’s shadow.

The Single player campaign starts off in the early Sixties’s during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. You play (mainly) as Alex Mason, a bland Australian actor posing as a CIA agent (which is ironic since that also describes Mason’s voice over artist Sam Worthington) as he recounts, seemingly under duress, a number of his recent missions (it’s right there on the menus when you boot up so it’s not really a spoiler). With action splintered across several locations such as Cuba, Vietnam, some icy place in the USSR, some shanty town in somewhere or other; it follows the hyperkinetic story-telling techniques as used in MW2, but without the most important story info imparted to you in boring-as-plain-cardboard loading screens. The game never lets up on the excitement. It’s quite a contrast to the rather muted and serious MoH reboot.

There’s nothing particularly new in terms of movement or combat (you can swim now and then, but only when the game wants you to) but this is a formula adhered to by every clone game (Medal of Honor) so why shouldn’t Activision? The use of flashbacks and disorienting graphics perfectly complement the all-over-the-place story (i.e. it covers the silliness with a veneer of credulity like dressing a clown in a tuxedo). Does it make any sense? No. It’s no worse or better than MW2 it seems, but it is a pretty cool roller coaster ride if you don’t think about it too much. Even if every mission has someone to tell you what to do every step of the way.  Even though the action is scripted you have giant HUD elements pointing you in the right direction and NPC’s reiterating your current objective as nauseum. Even more action and even more jam on the lens!

But because it doesn’t mess with success, it plays really well and Treyarch have managed to produce a great set of levels with less of the overt me-too rehashes of IW’s more successful missions. One new element pushed to the fore here are the missions where you control a vehicle such as a chopper or gunboat. They control as well as the rest of the game (something too many FPS’s don’t get right when they add a new element for one mission-think of Alan Wake‘s awful driving) although the controls don’t let you get into too much trouble. Yyou can’t crash your chopper, for instance. Thing aren’t as finessed as the vehicles in Halo:Reach for example). I rather enjoyed these almost fail-free missions a lot more than the skidoo/ seadoo levels of previous CoD games.

WaW’s standout contribution to CoD was always the Zombie mode that is unlocked once you’ve completed the single player campaign. It makes another appearance here and although I won’t spoil it for you, I will say it is definitely worth playing through the game to get to it. The character you play as nearly made me soil my pants from laughing so hard.

Of course, being a CoD title, there is a large proportion of the game’s playerbase who don’t care and just want Multiplayer. It’s probably the most balanced MP of any Call of Duty game to date with only a few Killstreak rewards ruining the game for the rest of us (those damn attack helicopters turning a close game into insta-lose!). I’ve had quite a bit of fun with MP though I can’t say I’ve had the burn I’ve had where I’ve NEEDED to play it a lot (ie several times over the course of a day, every day). I still anticipate playing it for a few more weeks at least (though I am tempted by the Vietnam expansion for Bad Company 2), but then I can’t see much else in the short term that’s going to compete with it. One nice thing- PC gamers get dedicated servers back (albeit heavily controlled) and gosh wouldn’t it be great if more devs took Epic and EA’s lead to introduce dedicated servers on more console games. CoD on consoles always had one thing going against it and that’s IW’s peer to peer networking code/ matchmaking is awful compared to Bungie’s. Bungie doesn’t have radio controller explosive cars, though. I love me some RCXD.

The presentation looks as good as previous CoD games (or as decent as my gaming rig can handle. Word on the streets is that the 360 version is slightly prettier than the PS3 (probably in such a small increment that it hardly matters) and the PC, if it’s beefy enough, would probably outshine the console versions, particularly the Wii (at least Treyarch caters for Wii owners). CoD sound has always been great. Stirring music and sound design is only let down slightly by a lead actor who hangs on to his accent with such a tenuous grip that you feel like giving him some supaglu. Enunciate, Sam.

So overall, it’s a good to great game (though not quite excellent). You will not lose sleep if you don’t play it, but if you have any interest in shooters, BLOPS has much to recommend it. If you think the score is low, get a life. It’s a very good game just not a must-play.

Controller1.com recommendation 2/3

Review: Fallout New Vegas

Reviewed on PC. Also available on PS3, Xbox 360. Developed by Obsidian. Published by Bethesda

War never changes and neither, so it seems, does Fallout. Released in what some would say is a ‘broken’ state, it’s been patched numerous times already in the 6 or so weeks it has been on the market, upgrading the games status to be slightly less broken. But when it’s not “forcibly making you spend more quality time with your desktop,” AKA crashing, its great.

Fallout 3 came out in 2008 and proved that the combination of Bethesda’s experience and tech from their acclaimed Oblivion title was the recipe for a great RPG, albeit one with a few rough edges that occasionally conspired to stab you in the eye. New Vegas takes the assets and codebase from F3 and lets the team at Obsidian run amok. NV takes the balls, runs with its, plays a rough and dirty game but ultimately wins. It’s like a genius doctor who keeps dropping his cigarette ash on you while he operates.

Set several years after the events of Fallout 3, New Vegas tells the tale of a Courier who’s attacked by some hoods from New Vegas and left for dead. Revived by a kindly small town doctor, The Courier sets off to find the men who shot him/her down. Along the way, the Courier will carry out several missions for various people, faction and towns. Choice is big in this type of game, and it’s not just the number of choices that can change the story, it’s the breadth of choice that’s available to you. You can be whatever the type of person you want to be from a saint to a sinner to everything in between; up to and including robiality (sex with droids), near-necrophilia, cannibalism, addiction, treason and more. It’s an open minded game when you want it to be. It doesn’t judge you, but I do, you sick puppy.

New Vegas’s fiction is set in a completely different part of the country compared to Fallout 3, so the factions and towns are mostly different, apart from some members of the Brotherhood of Steel hanging around. The big doggies here are the NCR (New California Republic) and the Legion, a group of Roman Empire wannabees with New Vegas as the sandwich filling both sides are looking to control. Of course, the big boys controlling New Vegas aren’t interested in being ‘looked after’ by anyone, though they’re happy to do business with either side. One of these interests is the reclusive Mr House who drives a lot of the action, particularly towards the end of the game. You can do more or less the same missions from two entirely different motivations (ie attack the cannibals, or procure them “raw materials.” Occasionally when I would need to restart a section, I would try a different approach and the story outcomes can vary wildly. It’s undeniably one of the game’s strengths. Also, Obsidian can do this without going on and on about it in interviews (you listening, Lionhead-head?)

Just like the first game, you start by walking around Vegas but once you’ve found landmarks, you will be able to fast travel between them, eliminating the tedium of too-much backtracking. In games like this, I generally spend a large part of the early game ‘mapping’ the world to get those landmarks and then being able to whiz between them quickly to churn out missions. The Mojave Wasteland is full of fun places to visit and things to do, and in hindsight seems a lot more interesting to traverse than the decaying ruins of Washington DC depicted in Fallout 3. There are casinos aplenty, factories, saloon, bars, brothels, prisons, camps, bases and more casinos. And when you’re done you can go play cards with random traders. I actually felt it a little better laid out than Fallout 3 (I spent much too time in the subway tunnels in that game) and apart from having to fight wave after wave of those damn giant flies whenever I ventured across the wasteland, it’s mostly fun.

It looks and controls like an FPS for the most part with a well-presented menu system. You spend lots of time in the menus and Bethesda set up a very good scheme that works well on PC and consoles. From trading, managing your inventory and stats, it shows other games how to manage a fairly complex system with ease. It doesn’t hurt that the Pip-Boy is rather iconic. The speech options are also well handled as are those for combat which can either be shooter style or use Fallout 3‘s VATS targeting system. I found I used it a lot less in NV for some reason, perhaps because I better understood it or maybe I prefer shooter controls. Also, I had a lot of fun playing NV on PC using a 360 controller so you can tell these guys know how varied the audience for this game is these days.

It’s also a game that’s both easy and hard to spoil at the same time. You can’t really describe what the game is without giving away something that may be key in any playthrough, but by the same token, the choices offered by the game are such that no two playthrough will be the same. I found the intrigues in New Vegas to be fascinating, each new twist was like reading a thrilling novel- a page turner in fact. It’s interesting to see how similar it is to F3. New Vegas is a refinement of that and perhaps the more frivolous Las Vegas setting has allowed a stronger humourous streak to come to the fore.

Presentation is Fallout 3 revisited though bear in mind I’m comparing my experience of F3 on the 360 and NV on a PC. The ageing Oblivion/ Fallout 3 version of the hopefully now defunct Gamebryo engine (thanks Scott). I found the voice acting to be mainly good for main characters, less good for lesser characters. There are a few stars in there such as Ron Perlman, Felicia Day, that guy from Battlestar Galactica with poor depth perception and they put the right amount of emotion into their readings. Where it falls down is in some of the lesser characters such as ‘Generic Guard A’ or ’2nd Mutant Whore Father’  who are either flat in their delivery or just plain repetitive. There are lots of lines they can say but for some reason everyone seems to say “Patrolling the Mohave makes you wish for Nuclear Winter” a lot. Obviously Fallout has nice sound effects and the music, used sparingly, is really fitting.

And it breaks a lot. You can’t review the game without talking about bugs. There were small things like some weird animation issues, physics bugs, mesh issues, floating or skating characters, etc. But they don’t stop the game being good. What’s less good ares the sidekicks who stop following you and the constant crashing to the desktop. It crashed a lot. Probably more than any game I can ever recall playing. But the game is so good, I just reloaded the game to continue. F3 may have hung on me three or four times over 40 hours, whereas New Vegas would done likewise on close to thirty occasions over 50 hours of play.

In all, New Vegas is a great title but a game where the only thing wrong with it is the stability. It’s close to being my personal game of the year as I can say I enjoyed it more than nearly everything other than Halo and Mass Effect 2.

Highly recommended but be patient.

Controller1.com rating 3/3

Review: Plants Vs Zombies HD

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.

Controller1.com rating 3/3

Review: Left 4 Dead 2

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.

Controller1.com rating 2/3

Review: Lara Croft: Guardians of Light

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.

Controller1.com Rating 2/3

Review: Just Cause 2

Review: Just Cause 2

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.

Controller1.com rating: 3/3

Review: PORTAL

Reviewed on Macintosh. Also on: PC, PS3, Xbox 360. Developed by Valve. Published by Valve (EA for consoles, EA co-developers of PS3)

original C1 review of Orange Box

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.

Controller1.com rating 3/3 (or Free/Free)

Review: Splinter Cell Conviction

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)