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I approached this game with the utmost caution. After all, the first Assassin's Creed was uncomfortably close to a critical disaster, with reviewers finding themselves as annoyed by the repetitive missions as they were awestruck by the lifelike graphics. The bad press was made that much worse when a webcomic surfaced portraying lead developer Jade Raymond as a mindless bimbo, willing to do anything to please her undersexed fans. Ubisoft unwisely threatened legal action, giving the distasteful drawing even more exposure and leaving gamers with the impression that the company was run by humorless bullies. (People tend not to buy games from humorless bullies. Unless it's Rockstar.) When the sequel was released, I watched Metacritic like a hawk, pouncing on each new review and carefully gauging public reaction to the game. It didn't take long before I noticed a pattern in how Assassin's Creed II was perceived. The critics who were unimpressed by the original sang the sequel's praises in pitch-perfect harmony, offering every assurance that the game was an improvement over its predecessor. The critics aren't always right, of course... in their rush to praise Batman: Arkham Asylum, they glossed over its most aggravating flaws. However, critical opinion of Assassin's Creed II was so uniformly positive that taking a risk on the game didn't seem like that much of a risk. I never played the original Assassin's Creed, so I can't tell you how the sequel improves upon the first game, or which flaws have remained constant. However, I can say as a newcomer to the series that Assassin's Creed II brings welcome changes to some well-worn and increasingly threadbare styles of gameplay. It's a game that's heavy on killing but mercifully light on testosterone, with an open-ended world that rarely seems aimless and stealth action scenes that aren't rigid or frustrating. The visuals are so beautiful, the atmosphere so convincing, and the storyline so carefully constructed that you'll never doubt for a second that over two hundred people were responsible for its design. The game begins with you running for your life alongside a mysterious female accomplice, who takes you to an abandoned warehouse. During the trip, you discover that you've been training to join a league of noble assassins in its eternal struggle against a sinister shadow organization called the Templars. You've learned a lot about the bloody business by playing a distant ancestor in a virtual reality simulation. However, you'll need to round out your knowledge by strapping yourself into the Animus one more time and stepping into the leather boots of Italian renaissance figure Ezio Auditore Di Firenze. Roguish and handsome, Ezio has no greater aspirations than chasing some Florentine tail and getting into occasional scuffles with the spoiled sons of the city's aristocracy. His priorities change in a hurry when his family is railroaded in a trial by Italy's powerbrokers. When his father and brothers are hanged in the town square and his mother is left speechless from the shock of their deaths, Ezio abandons his childish pursuits and begins a twenty year mission of vengeance against the men who conspired against his family. You'll hunt for these scoundrels in twelve missions, split equally between nail-biting platforming and the most refreshingly dynamic stealth action since the last Sly Cooper game. Unlike Batman: Arkham Asylum, which viciously punished the player for stepping outside the boundaries set by the designers, Assassin's Creed II gives you remarkable freedom in how you can take out your next target. Should you take refuge in a haystack and wait for him to walk past, or find sanctuary in a crowd and stick a blade in his throat when you cross paths? Maybe you'd rather deliver death from above with a throwing knife or your wrist-mounted pistol. It's your call, and there are only a handful of instances when that choice is taken out of your hands. While you're thinking about your next move, you'll want to take the opportunity to look around and sample the local color. I've never visited Venice, much less 15th century Venice, but I have to imagine it would look a lot like this. There are ornate churches towering over densely packed strings of houses, waterways with manned gondolas and cargo ships, and a cast of hundreds including crowds of bystanders, obnoxious bards (outta my way, bitch!), and the world's most modestly dressed prostitutes. There's even a celebrity appearance by Italian super genius Leonardo da Vinci, who helps you defy both the corrupt town leaders and the very law of gravity as you inch ever closer to the leader of the conspiracy that claimed the lives of your family. Assassin's Creed II comes so close to perfection, but drops the ball in one very crucial area... control. It's too clumsy and too contextual, giving you the nagging feeling that you're never completely in charge. Buttons on the face of the controller are assigned to Ezio's head, arms, and feet (uncomfortably reminiscent of Strata's ancient arcade flop Time Killers), and the function of these keys changes depending on the situation. In other words, jump doesn't always mean jump, and assassinate won't always yield the intended results. The game's "pathfinding AI" goes one step further in wrenching the control from the player's hands. Ezio climbs walls at frustratingly uneven speeds, and won't even attempt to grab footholds seemingly within his reach unless you attempt a wall-hugging jump... a skill you won't learn until late in the game. Finally, your speed is not dependent on how far you tilt the left thumbstick, as is common in action games, but how many buttons you're holding down while moving. If you've got an Xbox 360, your finger will ache from holding down the right trigger after an hour of play. If you've got a Playstation 3, heaven help you, because the triggers on its Dual Shock 3 are so slippery as to be finger-proof. Either way, you'll curse the designers for breaking with tradition in the worst possible way. Surprisingly, the awkward control isn't a fatal mistake. It could have been in a less ambitious game, but Assassin's Creed II rises above it by being nearly flawless in every other respect. All right, the ending is pretty stupid too, but that's two shortcomings in a game that addresses not only the issues of its predecessor, but the more deeply rooted flaws of the past ten years of game design. It features characters you won't regret saving, sandbox gameplay with main objectives you'll actually want to complete, and stealth action that won't whip you bloody for coloring outside the lines. If all this doesn't convince you that Jade Raymond has earned her place among today's leading game developers, you might as well turn in your Xbox Live membership, that God of War T-shirt, and the little stuffed Yoshi you've got hiding in your closet. You're out of the gang!
BORDERLANDS TRAVEL LOG FOR MORDECAI
D. HUNTER, CIRCA 2XXX JULY 17th,
2XXX: Just touched down on the planet Pandora.
Just lookin' at this place makes me thirsty... it's dry, it's
dead, and the closest thing I've seen to civilization is the
sad little shanty town where the ship landed. I'll
be honest with 'ya... this place is a dump. I've seen
better truck stop bathrooms. I wouldn't even be
here if it weren't for all them rumors about a
treasure buried somewhere on this dirtball. They call it
the Vault, and it's big... real big. Big enough for me
to retire a hundred times over. Big enough for the whole
galaxy to talk about it. Big enough to bring me here
along with who knows who else. JULY 18th,
2XXX: Taking the bus to Fyrestone. There's a
guy there who's got all the equipment I need to start lookin'
for the Vault... Zed, I think. Right now, I'm squeezed
in here with a bunch of other treasure hunters. The
chick's not so bad to look at, when you can see her, but these
big meaty guys scare the hell outta me. I think one of
'em's from the army, while the other one looks like he could
rip you in half if you got him mad. The bus stinks
somethin' fierce and the driver won't shut up... the sooner I
get off this tin can and stretch my legs, the
better. JULY 19th,
2XXX: I'm here at Fyrestone, and being shown 'round
the place by some damn robot. It's gripin' that the
bandits here like to shoot at it for fun, and after listening
to it for the last fifteen minutes, I can't say I blame
'em. The only other thing I remember it telling me is
that these green posts will bring me back if I get killed
somehow. Guess it makes a copy of you, and spits you
back out in one piece if you get your head blown off.
Gotta love technology! JULY 20th,
2XXX: Got my first toys from Dr. Zed, along with
a job... he wants me to pick off some of the skags outside his
shop. What's a skag? Imagine the ugliest dog
you've ever seen, with the biggest jaws you've ever
seen. Yep, that's a skag. I got a pretty sharp
aim, and the skags ain't too tough if you keep your
distance, so I'm not expectin' any problems. JULY 23th,
2XXX: No problems with the skags, but the
bandits! Damnation. Got blindsided by a pack of
'em and was gunned down in a hurry. The New-U works
great, though... it was like nothin' ever happened.
Guess I'm gonna have to get better guns to handle these
guys. This rusty 'ol revolver just isn't getting the job
done. Also, I sure wish I had a better GPS
system... this thing don't work worth a damn so I
gotta pull out a map every ten steps. Gets real tiresome
after a while, 'ya know? JULY 24th,
2XXX: The other folks on this planet- the ones who
ain't tryin' to kill me, I mean- don't seem to do much but
give me jobs and crack jokes. Seemed kinda strange at
first, but I guess you gotta have a sense of humor if you live
in a place like this. Also surprised that Pandora wasn't
as dark as I thought it'd be when I first came here. You
could spot a skag comin' from a mile away... and when you find
a nest of the varmints, you'll be glad you
can! JULY 27th,
2XXX: Just took out Nine-Toes and his pets, and I'm
feelin' a lot more confident about my chances here on
Pandora. Took all his money and his favorite weapon
as my reward. Not like he's gonna miss it where
he's goin', right? Lemme tell 'ya, I can't imagine how
a gun can get any better than this baby... it shoots a
half-dozen bullets faster'n you can blink, and the
bullets set anything they hit on fire! I got a
shield now too, so I'm not wastin' so much money at the New-U
stations. JULY 30th,
2XXX: Remember when I said it couldn't get better
than the last gun I had? It got better. I betcha
this place has more ways to blow bandits up than you can
count, and believe me, there's nothin' I love more than
killin' bandits. Blew the leg right off one of the
sonuvabitches with my sniper rifle... he never knew what hit
'em! Also got a Bloodwing, which is kind of like a crow
with a really big beak and really sharp teeth. Gentle as
a lamb with me, but he tears up skags like nobody's
business. AUGUST 2nd,
2XXX: Thought I was a goner last night. Got
into a fight with a bruiser... he smacked me around and tossed
a rocket my way. I was face down on the ground
and the lights got dim, but I figured out that I could still
use my guns while I was dyin'! So I filled the dumbass
with lead while he was standing there laughing. As soon
as he died, I came back to life right on the
spot! It was the damnedest thing. Sure wish I'd
known about this before! AUGUST 8th,
2XXX: Skags and bandits, bandits and skags!
Ain't there nothin' else on this planet? Only thing that
keeps me here are all them different guns... and oh yeah, the
Vault. Completely forgot about that. Whatever,
it'll be there tomorrow. AUGUST 15th,
2XXX: I'm comin' home. I'm tired, and the
bandits just get meaner 'n meaner the further I go. The
Vault can wait, and the guns can wait too. Next time I
go to Pandora, I'm bringin' some friends along with me.
Can't imagine why I came here without 'em.
Meet Rico Rodriguez. He leaps tall
buildings in a single bound... before blowing them to
bits. When he goes fly fishing, he throws back anything
smaller than a military helicopter. His favorite bar
hovers five thousand feet above the Earth. He's the most
interesting man in Panau... although there won't be much left
of it by the time he leaves. So, what's a cranky Scarface wannabee like
Rico doing in a tyrannically ruled island paradise like
this? He's been hired to bring down a rogue agent,
but after locating the target, his mission expands to
tearing down the pillars of the Panuan
leadership, allying himself with three factions all
opposed to the country's self-serving dictator.
He'll raid strongholds, gun down high-ranking military
officers, and turn valuable resources into smoldering
craters, all to break Baby Panay's stranglehold on the country
and pave the way for an American-friendly
replacement. Rico's armed with all the usual tools of the
mercenary trade, from the handy, high-capacity pistol to
heavy-duty weapons like assault rifles and missile
launchers. However, his bread and butter are the
parachute in his backpack and the grappling hook mounted on
his wrist. These serve as his main mode of
transportation, with the latter pulling double duty as an
especially sadistic weapon. Having trouble with that
pesky soldier? Hang him from the ceiling and fill 'em
with lead... or lead him to the edge of a twenty story
building and flip him over the side... or pin him to a
propane tank and puncture it with a bullet to send the poor
sap on the (last) trip of his life! There are a dozen
ways to use the hook on Panay's men, but don't expect any of
them to be humane! Thanks to the grappling hook and a "heat"
system that turns up the intensity as you pick off targets,
each mission can be a lot of frantic fun. There's
certainly nothing wrong with the visuals, either... they're a
step up from the already impressive first game, with
a greater variety of scenery and less of that artificial
plastic sheen. However, even the stunning graphics
can't make the trips to each new trouble spot in Panau
enjoyable. You'll either have to glide your way
to the location with the parachute, hijack a vehicle to
speed up the journey, or call for an extraction... but only to
a town you've already visited. The nation of Panau is
enormous, even large beyond reason, making
travel painfully time-consuming regardless of how you get
from point A to point B. Worse yet, if you attempt a
side mission and die, you're dragged all the way back to a
safehouse located several miles away, forcing you to repeat a
trip you didn't want to take in the first
place. The writing and voice acting aren't exactly a
treat, either. Rico's gruff, flippant attitude was
easier to swallow back in 2006, when every video game
character was a macho jerk, but after two Uncharted games,
players have come to expect a higher standard from their
action heroes. Unfortunately, there's nothing to like
about the entire cast of Just Cause 2. Rico's a dick,
his fellow agents are dicks, the faction leaders are dicks...
everyone with a speaking role is the kind
of arch-douchebag that will shake your faith in
humanity. Just to make sure you completely
hate them, the characters have been given accents that
run the gamut from borderline insulting (there's a mission in
the game called "Fry me to the moon," suggesting that even the
designers realized this) to mystifyingly absurd. I don't
know what Bela Santosi's native language is, but it can't be
anything that came from this planet. From No More Heroes 2 to Mass Effect 2,
many recent sequels have distanced themselves
from the meandering sandbox gameplay so common in modern
video games. Perhaps Just Cause 2 should have followed
their lead, or at least tightened the gaps between hot spots
on its needlessly oversized map. There's just too much
dead space separating players from the action, taking
much of the thrill out of this thrill ride.
Pinched by a tough economy and keenly aware
of their increasingly disillusioned fans, game
publishers are working hard to restore the reputations of
their most valuable franchises. Sega's effort
to redeem Sonic the Hedgehog in the eyes of gamers after a
half dozen stinkers has been the most publicized of these
attempts to win back a scorned audience. However,
SNK has a lot of its own bridge building to
do after burning its fans with the highly
anticipated, massively disappointing King of Fighters
XII. It'll take more than just one game to
mend those wounds, but King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate
Match is definitely a step in the right
direction. You'd expect from the title that this is a
remake of the game Eolith developed nearly a
decade ago for the Neo-Geo. While much has changed,
it does has the same goal of giving the
player a fighting experience that's both comprehensive
yet comfortingly nostalgic. Much of the fat from
previous KOF games has been trimmed away... there are no
strikers, no tagging in teammates, and no critical counters,
keeping the focus squarely on the player and his
opponents. What's offered instead are over fifty
fighters, with nearly every cast member from the long-running
King of Fighters series in attendance. A few of the less
popular brawlers were kept out of this battle
royale, but even they're on the sidelines, cheering on the
competitors in some of the most gorgeous backgrounds yet seen
in the franchise. What separates King of Fighters 2002 UM
from the original is the level of polish in its
design. It's got an entirely new science-fiction
aesthetic, bringing back fond memories of the
underappreciated King of Fighters '99 while taking advantage
of the Xbox 360's high resolution. The characters
haven't been touched up beyond an optional blur filter
(especially annoying for Whip, whose eponymous weapon was
blocky even by the modest standards of the Neo-Geo!), but the
title screen animations and the brief intermissions between
fights all look fantastic. It's also worth mentioning
the heavy metal soundtrack, which takes old favorites
from the King of Fighters music library and cranks up the
volume and intensity 'till the dial breaks off! Bring
headphones. Hell, get the compact disc if you
can find it. If there was any complaint that
could be made about the game (aside from its
relative antiquity compared to, say, Street Fighter IV or
BlazBlue), it's that some of the characters are absurdly
difficult to use. The King of Fighters has never been
friendly to novices, but late additions to the series like
Ramon and Angel will tie even seasoned players' fingers into
knots with their lengthy chain attacks. Nearly every
strike in Angel's bag of tricks have to be set up with an
opening blow that's hard to land and must be delivered at
point-blank range. In the hands of an expert, this angel
of death delivers graceful retribution to her
adversaries, but to anyone else, she's practically
worthless. Even with the handful of oddballs in
the cast, including more Kyo clones than anyone
could possibly want, King of Fighters 2002 UM is the best
game the series has seen in years; more satisfying than the
pretty but hollow King of Fighters XII and more professionally
designed than King of Fighters 1998 UM. Each battle is a
thing of beauty with the right controller (not the one that
came with your Xbox 360, of course) and there are unlockable
bosses for players of every skill level, encouraging practice
and repeated playthroughs to sharpen your gameplay to a
razor's edge. All is not forgiven yet,
SNK, but give us five more games like this and we'll
talk.
"I've always loved this series and had
wanted this installment to excel on the Playstation 2 in the
same way that its predecessors had dominated arcades.
Sadly, there's still a lot of room for improvement... so much,
in fact, that Maximum Impact feels like rough framework, a
skeletal structure onto which a more complete game can be
built." - excerpt from a review of King of Fighters:
Maximum Impact, written in 2004. ...here we go again. Five years after
Maximum Impact, SNK is repeating all the same mistakes with
another next-generation revival of its King of Fighters series
that feels half-finished. However, unlike past efforts
to modernize the franchise, the problem with King of Fighters
XII isn't a lack of ambition, but ambition poorly
invested. The graphics are nearly everything SNK
promised, but the underlying game is so shallow and
undeveloped that it can barely keep pace with fighters
released over fifteen years ago. Sure, the gameplay
works, but it's
missing something. Actually, make that a whole lot of
things. The play mechanics have been stripped to the bone,
with all the features you've come to expect from King of
Fighters quietly swept under the rug. The Advanced
and Extra fighting styles are gone, the segmented super
meter is gone, and the controversial strikers from King of
Fighters '99 are gone. What you get instead is a lame
Critical Counter system that works a little like the V-combos
in Street Fighter Alpha 3. Block an enemy's attack
and land a heavy punch immediately afterward and
he'll be briefly stunned by a flash of light, letting you
hammer him with punches and kicks until his vision
returns. It boils down to a lot of mindless button
mashing, and feels tacked on to give the simplistic game
engine some faint illusion of depth. Even the characters have
been lobotomized to lessen the burden on the artists;
often dragged back to the days of King of Fighters '94 with
just three special attacks and one super move. The Ikari
Warriors who gradually developed their
own fighting styles over the course of the
first four games are back to square one, with Clark and Ralf
losing signature moves that distinguished them as
individuals. Flame-haired David Bowie look-alike Iori
Yagami has it even worse, with a completely redesigned move
list that will leave fans of the flamboyant fighter confused
and despondent. Finally, longtime members of the cast
have been pulled from the tournament entirely. Mai's
disappearance made fans fume the most, but hardcore
players will be furious to discover that King, the wily lady
kickboxer who was the backbone of their teams in past KOF
games, has vanished as well. Filling the void are
contrived late additions to
the series like Duo Lon, Shen Wu, and Ash Crimson, which
are neither particularly useful nor have the personality of
the heroes they replaced. The graphics were clearly the focal
point for the design team, but surprisingly, even
the artwork comes up short next to the
competition. Although the cavalcade of ethnic
stereotypes offered as backgrounds are razor sharp,
the chunky character models aren't
as sleek or dynamic as the heroes from Arc System Works'
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, looking like more fitting
competition for the five year old Guilty Gear XX.
There's also a lack of
sincerity in the artwork that leaves the fighters
too polished, too processed, too... artificial. Some
research reveals why... the characters were all traced from
rendered models, a process similar to what was used in The Art
of Fighting 3 in 1996. Back when the world
was dazzled by computer rendered graphics, this was a
pretty slick trick, but now it just seems like a
cop-out. What part of hand-drawn don't you
understand? SNK was given some margin for error with
Maximum Impact, but they'll get no such charity for King
of Fighters XII. It's the
most unfinished and lopsided game to ever hit a console,
retailing at the same price of two vastly superior
competitors. It's not as beautiful as BlazBlue, it's not
as meaty as Street Fighter IV, and with the graphics stripped
away it doesn't compare to games released ten years ago,
from its own series. SNK can do better
than this... and so can you.
Yes, that's a ten. You didn't
think this site was even capable of giving ratings higher than
an eight, did you? It is possible,
but just not likely. The Gameroom Blitz grades
on a cliff wall instead of a curve, and only the best of the
best can scale that mountain of cynicism and earn a perfect
score. Such a game would have to set new
standards for its genre, and probably some other genres
as well. It would need to shatter expectations with
Emmy-worthy acting and writing in an industry where storylines
are usually the kindergarten paste that holds the
action together. It must have the unlikely combination
of diverse gameplay and a tight, user-friendly design.
Most importantly, it would have to
keep the editor up through the night and well into the next
day, unwilling to step away from the controller and get a few
damned hours of sleep. The frustratingly flawed Mass
Effect was not that game, but its sequel sure as hell
is. It's the game of the month, the game of the year,
the best Xbox 360 exclusive so far, and quite possibly the
best game of this console generation. The Playstation 3
can't touch it. The Wii can't touch it.
Even top-quality cross-platform titles like Assassin's
Creed II and Street Fighter IV can't reach its level of
excellence. Mass Effect 2 takes all the promise of the
previous game and distills it down to a perfect drug that will
leave gamers sleepwalking through work and school for the
week they'll need to complete it. It will
consume you... and you'll happily dive head first into its
jaws. Mass Effect 2 benefits most from
BioWare's decision to throw out the sandbox gameplay of the
original and replace it with a "quality over
quantity" approach. While freedom of choice is abundant
in the conversations, galactic exploration, and optional
missions, the levels are kept linear, with only a handful
of hidden paths and few alternate routes. This allows
for a tightly focused and extremely polished design that just
wasn't possible in the previous game. Every space port
you'll visit seems both distinct and tangible, with a wealth
of little details adding to the illusion of reality.
You'll know from the minute you step off the ship that Omega
is the armpit of the galaxy, a dreary city bathed in red
lights and littered with garbage and humanoid debris. By
contrast, Illium is a capitalist paradise, with visitors
surrounded by stock market kiosks and bombarded with tacky
advertisements. The action scenes are less
memorable, alternating between serpentine corridors and
slightly wider battlefields, but the driving rain in the
abandoned research facility and the lush scenery of the
uncharted jungle planet still make an impact. Although there's a stronger emphasis on
action than in the original, character development and
interaction is what gives Mass Effect 2 its RPG
street cred. After every mission, you'll have a chance
to talk with every active member of your crew, and it won't
take long before you'll relish the opportunity.
Characters who originally seem distant and even obnoxious
begin to reveal themselves in unexpected ways, forcing you to
see them in an entirely different light. As you
progress, you'll engage in heated ethical debates, settle
fights between crewmates, and learn about alien customs while
sharing a few of your own. The game's mythology
won't surprise most science-fiction fans... the Geth are Star
Trek's Borg after a sleek iPod makeover, and the hulking
Krogans (sorry) are so much like Klingons that Michael
Dorn himself was hired to play a few of them.
It's familiar territory, but the writing is so clever and the
characters so packed with personality that these well-worn
roads are worth revisiting. Like most BioWare titles, the
conversations in Mass Effect 2 are interactive, with the left
joystick used to pick dialog options. Typically, you can
either do the right thing and offer words of comfort, succumb
to the guilty pleasure of being a total bastard, or try to be
diplomatic and lose both friends and conversation options in
the future. (There's just no
room for a Captain Picard in the world of Mass Effect, it
seems.) However, there's a new wrinkle in the form of
reflex actions. Occasionally a red or blue icon will
briefly flash during a cut scene... tapping a
shoulder button on the controller will make Shepard derail the
event with a dramatic action that either heals wounds or
pours salt on them. This adds a sense of urgency to
the normally hands-off cut scenes, but has the
unfortunate side effect of prompting twitch reactions from
gamers who may not be too happy with the results! Combat in the original Mass Effect, like
everything else about the game, was dull and aimless.
However, the sequel borrows the framework of
immensely popular cover shooters like Gears of War and
Uncharted, then builds on it with its own unique ideas and
style. The basics of hiding behind waist-high
obstructions and popping up just long enough to pick off
enemies remains the same. However, the action can be
paused to select powers for each member of your squad, ranging
from gun enhancements to "biotics" that spindle, fold, and
mutilate enemies with all the brutal flair of a Sith
Lord. Throw in heavy weapons like ice grenades and a
screen clearing nuclear strike and you've got a game that
satisfies from every angle. The grown up will appreciate
the sophisticated storyline, but the kid in you will love
breaking out the particle beam and melting mercenaries
like so many ants under a magnifying glass! There are a few flaws... very few, and
mostly inconsequential. BioWare has gone a long way
toward cleaning up the cluttered interface of its games, but
every once in a while, the company will slip back into its old
habits. One mission requires you to navigate a maze of
catwalks to keep tabs on a crooked politician, but since the
target is difficult to see and the helpful navigation arrow
has been disabled, it feels more like a blind stumble to
the finish line than a legitimate challenge. The level designs in the action scenes
lean toward the contrived, although this may be more a fault
of the cover shooter genre than this game in particular.
It's rare to be surprised by an enemy attack, because an open
area with stacks of boxes is an unmistakable tip-off that a
squadron of Geth troopers is just around the corner. The
only thing missing is a flashing neon sign at the entrance
that reads "BAD GUYS AHEAD! PROCEED WITH
CAUTION!" There's a lack of spontaneity that makes
the gun battles less thrilling than they could be, and the
code breaking mini-games, while mildly diverting, do
little to hide this. Finally, Mark Meer is a dark spot in an
otherwise shining cast of experienced voice actors.
Unfortunately, he's also in the lead role. You'll
be hearing his dry Chuck Norris impression a lot unless
you swallow your pride and play as the female
Shepard instead. Jennifer Hale does a hell of a job
as the hard-nosed space captain, bringing a touch of humanity
and sensuality to the role, so you'll ultimately be glad you
put her in the driver's seat and your male ego in the
trunk. These are minor issues in a carefully
crafted masterpiece. Since the introduction of the
CD-ROM format, there's been a push in the video game industry
to bring a more cinematic quality to the gaming
experience. However, Mass Effect 2 one of the rare
titles that brings the aspects of film and game together
without letting one eclipse the other. Cut scenes are
staged with all the careful attention you would expect from an
award-winning film director, while the gameplay is compelling
enough to keep you hunting for missions, mining for minerals,
and unlocking gun upgrades for hours on end... even at the
cost of more pressing obligations. This is
a game that offers everything while compromising
nothing; a rare master of all
trades. The question you'll have to ask yourself isn't
if you should buy Mass Effect 2, but how
long you should kick yourself for not buying it
earlier.
It's probably not ethical to review a game you
haven't completed, but I'm so eager to put the smackdown on
this one that I'll use a convenient alias. Not for
me, mind you, but the game itself. Instead of
its actual title, which is nothing exciting anyway, I'll just
refer to it by the name it should have been given...
Quicktime Wankfest. See how long it takes before you can
guess which game it is! Give yourself bonus points if
you already
know. Back in 2009, veteran game
developers From Software decided to create an exclusive
for each of the current generation consoles, except the Wii,
which always gets stiffed when big-name publishers make
big-budget projects. The Playstation 3 received Demon's
Souls, an expertly crafted but viciously difficult action
RPG that became the abusive love
interest of countless gamers. The Xbox 360 got
Quicktime Wankfest, a case study in everything that's wrong
with video games today. You can tell who got the better
end of this
deal. Anyway, Quicktime Wankfest
begins with you, a faceless member of an elite team of ninjas,
preparing to purge Tokyo of a parasite infection imported from
the jungles of Africa. Hmm, the most overused video
game trope this side of the captive princess coupled with a
plotline stolen wholesale from Resident Evil 4... you haven't
even gotten past the first cut scene and things are already
starting to look grim for this
one! The real problem with Quicktime
Wankfest is that the opening cut scene never
ends. Once you leap out of the plane to confront
the Plagas, er, Alpha Worms, you're locked into the first of
many, many quicktime events. First introduced in Sega's
Shenmue, quicktime events clumsily merge real-time gameplay
with cut scenes for a hybrid that's not really
interactive, but too distracting to enjoy as a purely
cinematic
experience. When the lead character crashes
through the glass wall of a skyscraper and hits solid
ground, the gameplay switches to a beat 'em
up in the vein of Ninja Gaiden or God of War.
Unfortunately, the action is kind of pedestrian and
doesn't really stand shoulder to shoulder with the games that
inspired it. Your surprisingly meek ninja is stuck in
two gears, shifting from "slightly constipated" to "ludicrous
speed" with a tap of the right trigger, the ninja vision
is rarely as useful as similar gimmicks in Batman: Arkham
Asylum or Assassin's Creed II, and finishing blows aren't
as user-friendly or seamless as the ones in the God of
War
series. Just when you think you've adapted to
the quirks of the game engine, it grinds to a sudden halt with
a close-up of the hero's masked face and
another marginally interactive cut scene. Just tap
the buttons when they appear onscreen to proceed... or don't,
and watch the footage rewind back to the start of the
sequence. You never actually seem to die in these
quicktime events; like history, you're doomed to repeat them
until you get them right. No, you can't rewind to the
minute before you rented this and make the right decision
then. It doesn't take long before the game dissolves
into a schizophrenic farce, much like that
Tex Avery cartoon where the bulldog
maestro adopts six different personalities
while conducting an orchestra. It's a game!
It's a movie! It's back to a game again! After an
hour, you'll scream at the television to make up its damn mind
and give you one or the other. While you're making
furious, impotent demands of an inanimate object, you might
also ask for a reason to care about the atom-thin characters,
or the gravity-defying but largely hands-off fight
scenes that seem more trite than outrageous in the wake
of
Bayonetta. Ultimately, Quicktime Wankfest is
doomed not only by an identity crisis, but by a lack of
ambition in all its multiple personalities. It's not
compelling cinema. It's not a satisfying action
game. Frankly, it's not much of
anything.
Split/Second likes to think of itself as a
reality show, but it’s about as divorced from reality as it
can get. Produced
by Black Rock Studios, the developers of the underappreciated
PURE, this racing game puts you in a twelve episode long
competition where each car is armed with a detonator. Sliding through
corners, drafting behind rival cars, and launching off hills
juices up the device.
Once it’s charged, you can squeeze the trigger to
unleash all manner of hell on your adversaries, from rock
slides to way-too-close encounters with gigantic cruise
ships. If your
car happens to become a sardine can with you trapped inside
it, don’t worry… the producers will bring you back to life and
set you back on the road in a fresh ride. Forget NBC… now
that’s a powerful network! Critics have compared this game to the Burnout
series, and in many ways, it’s an accurate description. Many of the modes in
Split/Second, from the races to the elimination rounds to the
detonator time trial, are lifted straight from Burnout, with
the addition of traps spread throughout the track. Springing these traps
(referred to as Power Plays) gives the action the same spirit
of aggressive competition as Burnout, but this time from a
distance… shoving the other racers into guard rails won’t
result in anything but disappointment and a scratched paint
job. Split/Second
also takes inspiration from Ridge Racer in its heavy emphasis
on drifting.
Mastery of the power slide is your only hope of victory
in the later episodes, and the sports cars with a light,
slippery frame have a huge advantage against the sturdier but
less maneuverable trucks. Split/Second gets all the basics right… the
graphics are gorgeous, as you’d expect from the current
generation of game systems, the soundtrack has that slam-bang
action film vibe that perfectly fits the explosive arcade
gameplay, and the control is serviceable, if biased toward
drifters.
However, the problem with Split/Second is that the play
mechanic its framework is built around just doesn’t work. While it took
deliberate skill and effort to shove other drivers off the
road or into oncoming traffic in the Burnout series,
Split/Second’s Power Plays are unpredictable and
largely out of the player’s control. You just taps the
button and you takes your chances. When these attacks
send your opponents to the scrap heap, it’s a beautiful thing,
but just as often you’ll see them zip right past the traps
you’ve triggered, or run face first into them yourself. With rare exceptions,
it’s impossible to know where the sweet spot for a Power Play
is set, making them a double-edged sword without a
hilt. Another serious issue with the game is that once
a contestant (typically the computer) is in first place and
gains a strong lead, they’ll keep it for the rest of the
race. The meter
at the bottom of the screen is reserved solely for Power Plays
and the occasional shortcut… unlike Burnout, it can’t be used
as nitro. Since
you can’t close the gap with a burst of speed and you can’t
attack what you can’t see, your only hope is
that the leader of the pack makes a mistake that costs him the
lead. Unfortunately,
the computer, being a computer and knowing each course
like the back of its circuit board, rarely makes errors when
it’s in pole position.
You, on the other hand, are quite vulnerable to
dropping to the back of the pack after being surprised with a
boulder to the face or a bridge that was pulled out from under
your wheels.
Remember the rabid fury you felt when you were thrown
from your bike just inches from the finish line in Road
Rash? That
feeling is back, and it’s a part of your childhood you’ll wish
you could leave in the past. Split/Second is full of infuriating moments like
this, and they’re as much the result of designer error as the
regular player kind.
Take the Survival challenges, for instance. This battle of wits
against a series of semi trailers loaded with explosive
barrels burdens you with low visibility and barrel drops that
are just as unpredictable as the rest of the game. The blue barrels won’t
kill you outright, but they will fill the screen
with smoke and debris, setting you up for an instant death by
one of the red barrels that the semi has an uncanny habit of
unloading just in front of your bumper. When you’re driving
through the heart of Armageddon itself, being able to see
past the fire and brimstone to the road ahead is a
constant worry. It’s
even more stressful when you’re not sure where
the road ends and a momentum-killing crash begins. Burnout showed players
the way with handy navigation arrows… in Split/Second, trial
and error is the only way you’ll find the safest path through
each course. Despite it all- the small pool of constantly
recycled tracks, the pared down driving controls (there’s a
button to watch crashes during the game but no hand brake?!), and the
gleeful sadism oozing out of every pore of the design team-
you’ll have to admit that you enjoyed Split/Second, if only
for as long as the title suggests. It’s a worthwhile
rental, but the bombastic approach that helps it stand out
from other racing titles holds it back from the greatness of
the Burnout series.
Maybe a second season of the Split/Second series, with
the difficulty toned down and more bumper-to-bumper combat,
will bring it up to those standards.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD is already in a
precarious position, and it doesn't do itself any favors with
its demo. Not only does it fail to make a strong first
impression with prospective buyers, it's so completely gimped
that it's hard for them to come to any conclusion
about it. It's no surprise that the trial is limited to
the plain vanilla Ken and Ryu, and that some of the modes are
greyed out in the title screen. However, while other
Xbox Live Arcade demos let you enjoy a couple of stages
against a computer opponent before shutting off the tap and
prodding you to pay for the full version, Super Street Fighter
II Turbo HD limits you to local multiplayer fights. If
you're not living next door to a fan of the series, you can't
play the game, making this the stingiest demo since War
World's meager thirty seconds of gameplay or the constant
registration nags in Fireplace. What the hell,
Capcom? Even after you drop the 1200 Microsoft Points on
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD, there's no guarantee that
you'll fall in love with it. First, the difficulty in
the arcade mode is just short of ridiculous. The stars
from previous Street Fighter games have been replaced with
four difficulty levels, which all greatly underestimate their
challenge. "Easy" is normal, "Normal" is hard, and
"Hard" drops an impenetrable brick wall in front of you at the
third stage. Wait, when did this suddenly become Mortal
Kombat? It's also worth pointing out to purists that the
Classic mode is a complete joke. If you've come to play
Super Street Fighter II Turbo without the added bells and
whistles, you're better off sticking with Street Fighter
Anniversary, which features a faithful conversion of the
arcade game along with the flashier Street Fighter III: Third
Strike. What you get here are blurry arcade sprites
carelessly dropped onto the same high-resolution
backgrounds. Ooh, less classic than
advertised! Despite these (largely unnecessary) shortcomings,
the game does deliver the goods for Capcom fans who aren't
quite ready to step into the third dimension with Street
Fighter IV. The new hand-drawn sprites are faithful to
the originals, while offering added detail and subtle shading
that's easy to appreciate even on a standard definition
television set. The animation is a bit stiff and the
artists at Udon sometimes interpret the characters
strangely... for instance, Ken's gravity-defying mullet gives
him an eerie resemblance to Lion-O from the Thundercats
cartoon. However, even with these occasional missteps,
the sharp new artwork more than justifies the delays that kept
the game in limbo for almost a year. As for the gameplay, well, that's exactly the way
you remembered it from 1994, with a handful of new moves that
elevate it over the slightly underwhelming Super Street
Fighter II. These range from E. Honda's humiliating
Oicho throw (the original teabagging!) to the incredibly
satisfying super combos. They're finely tuned to be
useless against blocking opponents, but brutally effective if
you can squeeze them past your rival's defenses. These
powerful attacks must be earned in battle, making them
preferable to the easily abused desperation attacks in SNK's
South Town series. While the gameplay is largely the same, the key
difference between Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD and the
low-def original is online support. Although the arcade
mode lets you sharpen your skills against capable computer
opponents, you'll never fully master the game until you match
wits with unpredictable human players... and you won't have
any trouble finding them on Xbox Live! Whether you take
it easy with a laid back Player Match or claw your way through
competition-caliber opponents in the Ranked Matches, you can
be sure that each fight will be fast-paced and exciting.
You'll sometimes find poor sports who disconnect while on the
edge of defeat, as well as latency issues that take some
matches on a guided tour through the Twilight Zone, but
they're rarely more than a minor and infrequent
annoyance. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD is a worthwhile
purchase for the right audience... but after fifteen years of
advancements to the Street Fighter series that extend far
beyond pretty graphics, that audience is starting to
shrink. If you prefer the purity of Street Fighter II to
the expanded gameplay of its sequels, or are a rabid online
gamer hungry for new challengers, your fifteen dollars will be
well spent. However, if neither apply, hold onto your
cash... something better is just around the corner, as it
always is in this business.
You know, I should
be angry that Capcom released Super Street Fighter
IV. The new moves, improved online experience, and
expanded cast of characters in this update instantly
turned the original Street Fighter IV into a drink coaster
and made me feel profoundly stupid that I paid sixty
dollars for it. Despite all that, I can't hold a
grudge. If Capcom had given 110% with Street Fighter IV,
it's worked itself to exhaustion with the Super edition, which
proudly observes the history of the long-running series while
crushing the last five years of fighters under its heel.
This is the peak for the genre on modern consoles...
and if we're all very lucky, Capcom won't be tempted to
outdo itself in the near future. Street Fighter IV was a visual
powerhouse in 2009, and although not much has been done to
improve the graphics in this update, it still has the edge
over the competition with its brawny yet endearingly
comical characters and luscious, color-drenched
backgrounds. Capcom had expressed concern in the past
that polygons just couldn't capture the personality of
the Street Fighter cast, but it's clear after ten years of
technological advancement that they've put that fear far
behind them. The stars of Super Street Fighter IV have
it all, moving as fluidly as they did in Street Fighter
III and showing more expression than they ever
had in their sprite-based days. Each
character's attitude is artfully expressed in win poses, from
Dudley's classic British sensibilities to Dan's misplaced sense of arrogance, and your
rivals bulge their eyes and drop
their jaws in disbelief as you warm up that outrageous
knock-out blow that will send them bouncing around the
playfield. The gameplay is a blend of past Street
Fighter releases, with the crisp feel of Street Fighter Alpha
but some stray features from Street Fighter III and the
largely forgotten Street Fighter EX. Each
character has two super meters, with the first growing
with each successful strike and the
second rising along with the fighter's frustration
from being attacked. Like Street Fighter III, the first
meter can be used to double the strength of special
moves, with an especially powerful super move available
once the bar is filled. The second meter is
reserved for the ultra moves; flashy finishers that are
the closest thing Street Fighter will ever get to
fatalities. Super Street Fighter IV adds a second ultra
move to everyone's repetoire, but in another, less welcome tip
of the hat to Street Fighter III, these must be selected at
the beginning of the match rather than chosen on the
fly. Finally, there are the focus attacks, a holdover
from Street Fighter EX. Hold medium punch and kick
together and your character is able to shake off one hit from
an opponent, then return fire with a bone-shattering
blow which leaves the poor sap gasping for air and open
to even more punishment. New ultra moves are among the handful of
minor improvements offered in Super Street Fighter IV.
Keen-eyed players will also notice that the difficulty
settings are more honest and that the playing field has been
leveled for most characters, encouraging diversity in online
fights. Speaking of the online mode, there are more
options there as well, including a Replay Channel that lets
you watch previously recorded fights and an Endless Battle
where a small pool of players can compete against each other
until they pass out in front of their television sets.
Bonus stages from Street Fighter II are also thrown in for
nostalgia's sake, but playing them makes you realize why they
were eventually dropped from the series... and why you can
shut them off in the options screen. The new features are gravy, but the
real draw for Super Street Fighter IV is the expanded
cast of characters. There are ten fresh faces in this
update, including two completely original fighters and eight
brawlers taken from past games. The newcomers in the
original Street Fighter IV were largely lackluster... or both
large AND lackluster, in the case of Rufus.
However, Dimps stepped up its game for the
update, adding Juri, a sultry sadist with a black belt in
Tae Kwon Do, and Hakan, a Mediterranean wrestler who's always
served extra greasy. The other eight fighters run the
gamut from supremely cool (Dudley) to amazingly versatile
(Ibuki) to nearly worthless (Makoto, who makes Dan look like
Akuma). There's even representation from the twenty year
old Final Fight thanks to Guy and Cody, making this the most
well-rounded cast you'll find in a recent Capcom fighting
game. Is there any reason to own both Street
Fighter IV and its supercharged pseudo-sequel?
Well, a game save from the original release will
unlock two custom colors in the update, with the first laying
on a thick coat of ink from a Japanese calligrapher's
paintbrush and the second reproducing the colored pencil
sketches used in the introduction. You also get a chance
to double up on your achievement points, if you're willing to
do twice the work. Past that... no, not really.
That's the rub, though, isn't it? If you're a fan of the
series, you've probably already bought the
original... and it goes without saying that you'll get Super
Street Fighter IV as well. You know it, I know it, and
Capcom knows it, which is why they're able to get away with
this re-release. However, less devoted players
have a golden opportunity to skip the dress rehearsal and
head straight for the best Street Fighter game
released in years... perhaps even
decades! |
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