The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica TV series is deep, complex, funny, and moving. Strange, then, that Sierra thought the best digital translation of the show would be a light, simple shooter that can be breezed through in about an hour and a half. There is fun to be had with Battlestar Galactica, but it is short-lived. At twice the cost of the same game on Xbox Live Arcade, this battle really isn't worth it.
The single-player campaign missions are based on episodes of the TV show. Players are placed in the cockpits of several recognizable spacecrafts and must carry out a variety of tasks such as escorting transport ships or defending the Galactica from nuclear attacks. There isn't any voice acting, though, and none of your favorite characters from the show make appearances in the game.
It's great that your objectives are always changing from level to level. But Battlestar Galactica is a pretty easy game. You can blow through the ten single-player missions in around a couple hours. There is no limit to how many times you can be killed; you simply respawn in a few seconds. Colliding with other ships and space debris won't damage your vessel.
The Fratricide level requires players to command a Cylon Raider and stealthily take out enemy ships. As long as you're not firing, the enemy won't bother you. But since there isn't any penalty for being noticed and shot down, you don't have to use stealth at all -- just fly into the thick of things with guns blasting and you'll eventually wipe them all out. Granted, Sierra was very open with the fact that this title is aimed at casual players. But that doesn't mean a game has to be shallow or can't offer a nice challenge.
The default control scheme is a little awkward, mapping forward and reverse to the "W" and "S" keys and steering to the arrows. Controls can be re-mapped to your liking, but we found the game wouldn't always recognize our customized input. If you're aiming for a casual audience, ease of use is crucial.
Once the short single-player campaign is over there is a limited multiplayer game. Up to eight players can battle it out in Firefight, Skirmish, and Domination modes. Good luck finding anyone to shoot down, though. It would appear the Cylons have already decimated the galaxy and there is no one left to play against. Killing your friends is always fun, though, and if you have enough for a match Battlestar Galactica offers some mild amusement.
The game does an admirable job of recreating the quick-zoom camera work of the television series. Where it fails in imitation, though, is the music. It's a tribal, jungle drums affair, but it sounds really cheap and amateurish. Kind of a step back for videogame music, actually. And cut scenes lack any sound effects, a detriment that robs them of their effectiveness.
Closing Comments The single-player campaign in Battlestar Galactica is mildly amusing, I just wish it were longer and more challenging. When you consider this same game is half the price on Xbox Live, the reasons for enlisting become difficult to find. I'm not really sure who the target audience for this game is -- Battlestar Galactica fans would probably appreciate a game that comes closer to matching the depth of the show, and if you don't watch the show you probably aren't interested in a Battlestar game. This is a waste of a property that could be great game fare.
The follow-up to 2006's Shadowgrounds, Frozenbyte brings back the frantic alien-blasting arcade-style shooting that made the first so entertaining with Shadowgrounds Survivor. For anyone who played the original you'll find quite a bit familiar here as it has basically the same background story and many of the same enemy types as in the first. That being said, you still get a quality top-down arcade shooter that's been improved in many ways, and it serves as a nice break if you've been slogging through some of the more complex releases of 2007's holiday season.
On June 20th 2096 a colony on Ganymede was attacked by hostile aliens who had to be exterminated, and that's basically all you need to know. Over the course of the game's missions you'll flip between three playable characters, all with their own unique weapons and upgrades. The weapon upgrade system is a little more involved in Survivor than in the original, as you're given the option to unlock character abilities, like better bonuses from health packs and activating a personal radar. In addition to a few general traits, each character also gets unique abilities, both for themselves and for their weapons. For me, this made for a more interesting experience, as it added extra layers of gameplay to a title which didn't really need a whole lot to be entertaining in the first place.
Here's how it works. You start the game as Luke Giffords, a soldier capable of wielding pistol, pulse rifle, and rocket launcher, which unlock as you progress through the game. Blasting baddies will yield experience, leveling up Luke and making available new upgrades for himself and his arsenal. Splattered foes also drop upgrade power-ups of weapon and personal types, which can be allocated as you see fit. With Luke you can eventually unlock cluster bombs, better damage resistance, nuclear warheads for the rocket launcher, an instant-kill target lock for the pistol, and radiation bullets for the rifle, among other things. Bruno Lastmann, the second playable character, totes a shotgun, flamethrower, and minigun. These can be upgraded with things like improved loading and accuracy on the shotgun, double damage minigun bullets, and the need to reload flamethrower canisters can be removed. Eventually Isabel Larose is unlocked who brings a railgun, plasma rifle, and pistol into combat. She gets a few useful upgrades like poison bullets for her pistol that do damage over time, a ricocheting shot for her railgun, and the ability to slow time.
As you can see, for a mindless overhead shooter there's a decent amount of depth here. Running around on the ground unloading ammunition at foes is broken up by "survival" sections, in which invisible barriers trap you in large rooms, forcing you to fend off waves of vicious insect-like invaders. You also get armored turret and mechanized walker sections which, along with the upgrade system, keep things from getting stale. Foes include everything from puny crawling bugs to hulking armored lizards with arm-mounted cannons. The latter type don't show up until later in the game, and considering every other type don't do all that much damage you can expect to breeze through roughly the first two-thirds of the game if you're not playing on the hardest difficulty setting.
After you've run the campaign gauntlet the game provides a few options for continued play. Six survival sections in the game can be shot through as self-contained stages on which you're scored. Then there's co-operative play, which is done locally, meaning you'll need to have a bunch of extra control inputs lying around. Like any good arcade game, there are also a bunch of extras hidden away within each of the stages. Should you take the time to explore every hole in a fence or darkened facility room you'll find little glowing symbols that unlock bonus features. Once you've beaten the campaign you can go back through with these activated, which can do things like unlock all weapons and give you bonus upgrade points or enable "super physics" which makes environmental objects fly all over the place. In terms of control there's not much to learn – you move around with WASD, can lock the camera to your aiming cursor or rotate the screen independently, and otherwise use a small selection of keys and the mouse buttons to obliterate enemies and consume health packs.
While the story and presentation are bland and downright bad in some spots, the action in Survivor manages to shine thanks to fluid controls, fast action, destructible environments, and some flashy lighting effects. Though gameplay should generally stand out as a reason to play a game, the visuals and physics in this one really do add incentive as they've been upgraded from the original. After all, with top-down arcade shooters, what else is there really to be done? There are lots of enemies and lots of ways to shoot them, and that's basically all you need. The destructible boxes that splinter and bounce all over, cartoonish gore effects when enemies are blown to pieces, the shimmering air above flamethrower fuel fires, and an eye-catching flashlight beam that helps show off some impressive lighting effects really add to the game's intensity, creating a more engaging experience.
Then there's the sound, which ranges from excellent to grating. The latter descriptor might be a kind way to describe the voice acting. Horrid might be another, but then again you're not really playing this game for believable characters, you're playing to kill things and, ideally, set things on fire in the process. The music, though, is generally well done. During battle you'll be treated to some textured electronic pieces that do a solid job of complementing the onscreen chaos of exploding bugs, gunfire flashes, and your frantically shifting flashlight beam to immerse you in the fighting. Toss in some serviceable weapon effects and it's a pretty good audio package overall, especially for a budget game.
Though it's hard to dislike Shadowground Survivor, there are a few glitches here and there. The graphics, which we cranked all the way up, chopped up occasionally on our system with an Intel quad core, 8800 GTX 768 MB, and 4 GB of RAM system. Though you don't need to run the game on the highest setting to enjoy its visuals, the performance is still something worth pointing out. There also seemed to be a problem with AI pathing, as enemies would occasionally run into walls and get stuck against obstacles. This wouldn't happen all that often, but enough to be noticeable. It shouldn't deter you from checking this out in any way, because ultimately any enemy is going to wind up a pile of mush anyway.
Closing Comments Maybe I've just been playing the wrong kind of games lately, but Frozenbyte's latest caught me off-guard with its mindless yet entertaining action. It had moments that brought me back to the days of playing Smash TV and Robotron 2084 at bowling alley arcades. Once the nostalgia faded, I was happy to find the game still played great. Shadowgrounds Survivor isn't anywhere close to as difficult as the top-down shooters of yore, but it's an excellent throwback title to a type of gameplay that doesn't require 600 hours of dedication to get to the good part, memorization of unnecessarily complicated technology trees, or the need to page through thousands of lines of dialogue options to get anything accomplished. It's simple, enjoyable, pretty, and perhaps best of all, it's cheap.
If you're reading this, you're either a Sudoku fan and want an honest review of this game or you're some sick bastard hoping I'll tear Carol Vorderman a new one for bringing cleavage-exposing blouses and math into videogames.
Sorry to disappoint you, jerks, but this is going to be a pretty positive review because as far as videogames about Sudoku go, Carol Vorderman's Sudoku is tops. This title from Empire Interactive features three PC modes including a career with seven skill levels, tutorial videos, the chance to create your own Sudoku puzzles and the ability to print off puzzles for when you're away from the PC.
With the print version of Sudoku dominating newspapers across the country, I'd like to believe most people have a grasp of how the game works, but after having to explain it to several IGN staffers and watching their heads nearly cave in, I can see that isn't the case.
In Sudoku, a square is broken into nine smaller squares and each smaller square is broken into nine mini-squares. At the onset of a Sudoku game, numbers appear in some of these mini-squares. It's your job to fill in the rest of the numbers. The numbers one through nine must appear in each column and row of mini-squares without doubling up, and the numbers one through nine must appear in each of the original nine smaller squares without doubling up.
On a piece of paper, this process involves a lot of scribbling and erasing as you backtrack to find your mistakes, but on your PC, it's pretty simple - move the mouse to your square of choice, click on it and either press the number you want on your keyboard or click the integer from the list on the right side of the screen. If there are still multiple options for the mini-square, you can press the "Pencil" option from the toolbar and jot down a small number in the square. You can put all the possibilities into the square and continue to work hoping the process of elimination will solve the puzzling piece.
Aside from not having to use an eraser over and over, the electronic version also beats out the newsprint standby in terms of the big picture. Blue row and column highlights focus your attention on the numbers that would affect your current choice, and a grid at the bottom of the screen lets you know how many times you've used each number.
Confused? Vorderman is here to help. Aside from the assists you can turn on and off in "Classic" mode, a plethora of Vorderman vids are ready to give you a leg up on the game from the moment you boot up your system. There's even a history lesson from the peppy Brit -- Sudoku was originally called Latin squares.
However, she never answers the most important question - who the hell is she to be telling me how to play Sudoku?!
Turns out Vorderman - no relation to the guy who iced Harry Potter's folks - is kinda like the Bob Barker of the UK. She co-hosted Countdown, a game show that tested the intellect of contestants, for more than 20 years.
For a game that revolves around the same grid screen after screen, there's a lot to do in Carol Vorderman's Sudoku. You can choose the classic mode and choose puzzles that range from easy to "super-difficult;" select to start your Latin squares career and complete close to 40 puzzles as you rise form a lowly white belt to a Sudoku black belt; or "Challenge Carol" and try to beat more than 20 puzzles in less time than it took Vorderman to do the same.
Closing Comments Most folks are going to think I’m being too generous with my rating, but it’s important to recognize that this is a Sudoku videogame. Vorderman’s not trying to pump out a Zelda title or something with characters and a story – this game is all about furthering the addiction that is Latin squares. If you’re into number crunching for fun, this is the PC title you’ve been waiting for.
An MMO about pirates seems like such a good idea, it's a wonder that it hasn't been attempted before. And, for the most part, the recently launched Pirates of the Burning Sea lives up to the promise of its premise. A lively world of multiplayer mayhem across the beautiful Caribbean, complete with treasure maps, rum factories, saber duels, colorful parrots and all the other clichés you'd expect from the setting. Great ship combat and an intricate economy make for another an attractive feature, but the game may run aground owing to a lack of in-game help and a completely chaotic dueling system. The game's been up and running for a short while now and while we're not entirely ready to pass our final verdict, we thought we'd dive in and offer up some early impressions.
Again, the concept is great. Think of it as a sort of Sid Meier's Pirates! online with an incredibly sophisticated economic model and a full-on PvP system where players can fight for ownership of the ports around the Caribbean. Eschewing (most of) the Hollywood clichés, Pirates of the Burning Sea takes a much more historical approach to the swashbuckling concept. That's, of course, excluding the tremendous popularity of huge-breasted lady pirates.
Players can take up service in one of three nations -- Britain, France or Spain -- and opt for careers as enlisted naval officers, unofficial privateers or profit-minded traders. If none of those careers appeals to you and you'd rather strike out on your own, you can opt to play as a Pirate, beholden to no nation and able to set your own course through the game. The game takes place across the entire Caribbean in the year 1720. Each of the European powers hopes to gain the edge over its rivals, while the Pirates merely want to profit at the expense of the general welfare. The class and nation you select largely determines your overall role in this conflict but there are ample opportunities to seek out your own fortune in the service of your country.
Though it departs from the traditional MMO setting, Pirates nevertheless follows many of the standard conventions of the genre. Giant floating question marks direct players towards NPCs who are ready to hand out quests that reward players for defeating other NPCs by offering wide varieties of cool loot. The missions are generally combat-oriented, forcing players to duel with local crime lords in their opulent mansions, or escort wealthy merchants through a gauntlet of plunder-hungry pirates. So far, so good.
On the other hand, there are some obvious flaws in the presentation that seem like they ought to have been corrected. The interface itself is rather inelegant, both in its appearance and in the way it sorts information. The quests are listed solely based on their distance from you, leaving you to manually dig down into such important details as their difficulty, type or general location. The economic interfaces are equally obtuse, partly because of the amount of information presented.
Pirates also tends to fail to orient players towards important information. After a series of brief tutorials which consist of a single splash screen showing controls followed by a playable segment where you're not really given much direction in how to use those controls, the player is plopped down in their home port and forced to rely on vague descriptions by NPCs to figure out how the rest of the game works.
This is particularly disappointing in the case of the game's more important systems. The economy, for instance, still isn't very clear to us, despite its obvious importance to the overall game world. The game also fails to reveal the importance of claiming prizes during a battle, which is something that we fortunately just started doing out of sheer vanity. It's a good thing too, because those prizes are incredibly important but you'd never know because the game never mentions it.
If you can manage to work out the intricacies of ship combat however, you'll find yourself rewarded with a rich and satisfying tactical system that really allows players to flex their strategic muscles. The whole experience takes so many factors into account -- shot type, wind direction, facing, sail state, crew morale, sailing point, line of sight, and so forth -- and combines them with class specific abilities that the captains can call upon to tweak their ship's performance. There are dozens of ships here, from speedy schooners to massive ships-of-the-line, and each can be outfitted with a variety of components to make them faster, sturdier and generally more awesome.
We've had no end of fun mixing things up in multi-ship battles, using chain shot to slow an enemy ship down, then getting behind her to take out her rudder and then pounding her mercilessly with grape shot until her crew was so depleted that we could attempt a boarding. We also just like slamming bronze shot into the hull over and over until they just sink. Adjusting sails to take advantage of the wind and trying to find good grappling positions and trying to screen off more vulnerable ships in our escort group; all these techniques and tricks are part and parcel of the experience when you take to sea in Pirates.
And as an added bonus the AI is generally pretty good. Ships seem to know when to use specific tricks and how to gang up on opponents. The only real downside is that the friendly AI seems not to know much about the right of way rules on the ocean so you'll occasionally find yourself colliding with your fellow escorts when they could just as easily have given you a wider berth.
As good as the ship combat is, the sword combat is just terrible. They've tried to build some unique elements by including meters for initiative and balance that determine which attacks you can use and how effective they are. But trying to set up attacks so that you can more effectively use the skills you've got is a freaking mystery. You can learn a bit more about it in the manual, but the game never really gives you any clues that you've got opportunities to use unique attacks. In the end it's just too unwieldy trying to keep track of how to use yellow prep attacks to reduce balance, soften them up with orange attacks, and then smash their balance with more yellow attacks before landing a massive red attack that might actually kill them. It's bad enough in one-on-one encounters but when you've got over a dozen enemies in a big pile during your boarding actions, it's a just a chaotic, button-pressing mess.
The economic system also has tremendous potential but, again, seems underserved by poor documentation and orientation. Players need buildings to take advantage of the raw materials offered by each of the ports, and each of those raw materials needs to be processed and made into a useable good that's stored in a warehouse. There's a tremendous opportunity for real supply and demand trading, from pints of rum all the way up to new ship types. Unfortunately, the game doesn't seem to do as much as it could to orient players towards this gameplay. The auction houses in our servers aren't really offering much of anything at this point, leaving us to assume that most players are still trying to figure out how things work.
Still, the economic model definitely has potential both in terms of creating a real economy and in terms of creating motivation for players to capture ports that produce a rare type of resource. Like the economic system, the game's PvP options haven't really been explored in depth yet, but the potential is there for players to engage in large fleet actions to gain control of certain ports for their home nations. The pirates, of course, exist merely as a destabilizing, predatory influence that accelerates and profits from this type of action. We're still not entirely convinced that it works in practice, but the theory behind it is interesting enough.
While the interface is a little stodgy, the ship graphics are definitely a high point for us so far. Watching sailors climb up and down the rigging and seeing tiny specks of cannon shot hurtle across the water add that little touch of life that keeps the player from becoming too detached from the drama. Of course, we'd love to be able to direct these battles from the decks of our ships but you can get in close enough to see the guys working the cannons and that's almost as good. The scenery also deserves special mention. While it's not as lush as say, Crysis, the whole tropical environment benefits from a first-rate color palette and some superb lighting effects. The character models and town architecture are generally quite good but they're not the real stars here.
Pirates of the Burning Sea has tremendous audio, from start to finish. The sounds of the sea are so authentic that I honestly thought during one particular battle that there was a seal under my desk. The sound of waves and rigging and broadsides really helps to put you in the right frame of mind for the game, while the excellent score provides a great sense of drama to your ship fights and port calls.
So far, Pirates of the Burning Sea definitely has our interest up. The trouble is that the game makes the player responsible for uncovering the basics of many of its important systems. We certainly don't want too much handholding, but none at all is tough to handle, particularly if you're new to the genre.
We'll be back with our full review in a couple of weeks. Until then, swash those buckles!
Games that are "direct" translations of movies generally don't turn out very well, and The Golden Compass game is a perfect example of a title that suffers from this tragic tradition. Developed by Shiny Entertainment and published by SEGA, this quasi-adventure/platformer is all over the place and pretty much does nothing well. Even its rare positive elements can't brighten the infinitely dull experience that the game provides.
The Golden Compass is based on the film and follows the story of Lyra Belacqua and her journey to... well, that's the first big problem, really. This title does an absolutely horrendous job in telling a story, even when it's already been told in film and novel form. In fact, we can only assume that the game was designed with the pure and unbridled assumption that the player has already read the book or, more probably, seen the movie. We were flabbergasted at how convoluted the game narrative was, because so much dramatic potential is utterly lost in the transition.
Roughly speaking, the game is poorly attempting to recreate the story of Lyra's journey as she seeks out a bunch of missing children, including her dear friend Roger. Although there are clips from the movie featured throughout the game's narrative, they seem to be thrown in rather haphazardly and are often spliced together with a hasty narration dubbed on top. It's almost laughable at how cluttered the end result feels while playing.
The Golden Compass mixes (about) four main elements together to create gameplay, but only one of those elements is remotely interesting. A good portion of the game involves you controlling Lyra as she runs, jumps and hides in a variety of bland, usually linear environments. It ends up being typical platforming/adventure fare, but it controls poorly and fails to satisfy. The only notable aspect of playing as Lyra is the presence of Pan, the embodiment of her soul, who can transform into four different animals and supplement her abilities. For example, turn Pan into his Hawk form and help Lyra glide from one platform to the other.
The second main element involves repetitious and unexciting mini-games, which are usually connected to Lyra deceiving people. When interacting with certain NPCs, you successfully lie to them by succeeding in a series of ten-second mini-games. The games usually involve a bunch of glowing orbs and either avoiding them, controlling them, collecting them, or some other nonsense. It's completely unrelated to the weak narrative -- and it's not even fun. There are a few Quick Time Events also, but they're even less exciting than usual.
The third mechanic in Golden Compass is controlling Iorek as he bounds through a bunch of easily beatable enemies. The combat system is entirely simplistic and almost epitomizes the button-masher, so these segments did little to alleviate the pain of the slow-moving Lyra sections.
The final gameplay dynamic features Lyra's truth-telling Alethiometer. Even though these segments were repetitive, they were at least a touch more interesting than their counterparts. Throughout your journey, you actually collect the meanings behind the Alethiometer's symbols, which you can then use to divine the answers to questions. However, if you haven't yet uncovered a symbol's meaning, you can guess at it. For example, say the one keyword you're missing is "Sin." You can actually look through all the different symbols and choose the one you feel best communicates that word. In this case, the answer would be the Apple, but there are many others to choose from. This aspect of the game easily had the most promise and could have been even better with more polish and depth.
We should quickly mention now that if this does sound like your type of game (somehow), you may want to consider playing it on a 360 controller. The keyboard works fine, but controlling a platformer with anything other than a joystick can sometimes be tricky.
Besides lousy gameplay, The Golden Compass has little else worth mentioning. The graphics, regardless of which system you play on, don't push the hardware at all. The sound is almost never properly synchronized with what's happening on the screen, and the overall presentation is embarrassingly cheap. Truthfully, there's only one genuinely great thing about this game: the orchestral score. We were shocked at how beautiful the music was -- music that was written specifically for the game. It was almost surreal to hear such majestic, charming pieces streaming from the speakers when the game itself is pitiful.
Closing Comments Even if you were completely charmed by Philip Pullman's work or enjoyed the movie adaptation, there's absolutely no reason to give this game a try. Even the music, as pretty as it is, can't redeem such poor gameplay and atrocious presentation. There have been a ton of great game releases recently, so just give one of those a try instead. We assure you that you're not missing anything by sitting this one out.
Just about every popular cartoon from the 1980s seems to be destined for a major motion picture and a videogame tie-in. Transformers was released earlier this year in theaters, while an adaptation of G.I. Joe is in the works. The latest one is the child-targeted title, Alvin and the Chipmunks, which returned to popularity in the early '80s and will hit screens next week. In time to capitalize on the movie, Brash Entertainment and Sensory Sweep recently released Alvin and the Chipmunks to stores. But the gameplay (if you can call it that) does such a disservice to the animated characters that it's not even worth a Chipmunk fan's time or money.
The basic premise behind the Story Mode is that the intrepid trio of Alvin, Simon and Theodore want to get their band to play on stage at the concert to end all concerts, Rockathonapalooza. Unfortunately for Alvin's ego, they have to start off small and work their way up to the main stage by jamming through sets at smaller gigs such as proms and malls. As they finish performances, they gain access to larger spaces like clubs and resorts before they finally hit the big time. Eventually, the furry threesome will have graced nine separate locales, playing their renditions of billboard hits and favorites.
What the game essentially breaks down into is a rhythm game where you keep time with the music. Instead of watching the notes scrolling down the screen like other rhythm games, you match key strokes as different colored stars approach target icons in the corner of the screen. Based on your timing, you get more points and even combos to boost your score. Hitting the right notes also sustains your Rockometer, which determines whether you succeed or fail at a particular song. However, this setup is where the game immediately starts to fall apart. Constantly hitting the right notes doesn't affect anything on stage, such as how the Chipmunks are playing or the animations that they pull off. In fact, the action on stage carries on in the same way regardless if you're getting everything or missing notes.
However, it's practically impossible to fail a song, even if you happen to have the worst sense of rhythm in the world. The Rockometer is easily maxed out and even if you don't hit the proper notes for ten or fifteen seconds, one correct note is enough to pull any failing attempt out of serious danger. Considering that the hardest difficulty setting doesn't adjust this issue but merely throws more notes at you, it's possible to screw up a ton of notes and still come out with four stars at the end of a song. Even worse, it's practically impossible to tell which section of the song the game is generating notes from. At times during a song (frequently during solos), it seems like notes come out of the percussion from Theodore, while at others it's the bass line from Simon or the vocals from Alvin. However, for the most part, it's just a large number of stars being flung, which isn't so much rhythm as it is an exercise in quickly smacking keys.
As you play through the three songs per stage in Story Mode, you'll unlock these tracks for the Quick Play mode and Video mode. However, there is no multiplayer mode found within the PC version (although it is included in the console version of the game), so if you want to test your skills against another person, you're going to need to create two profiles and try to progress through the Story Mode song by song. That's pretty lame. The only thing that rivals how lame the lack of multiplayer is, along with the uselessness of the Rockometer, is the inclusion of the Video mode, which is non-interactive video with a song being "performed" by the trio.
I highlight "performed" because as I said earlier, accurately hitting stars or missing them has no real impact on the animations on the screen. In fact, none of the Chipmunks appear to even be singing or even playing their instruments at times. When you witness the robot or characters spinning on their backs, while notes for their instuments or lyrics should be coming from their mouths, you realize that the onscreen action is much more of an animated backdrop. A weakly designed backdrop, but a backdrop nonetheless. The few fans of the artists that pop up onscreen are poorly drawn shadows or weakly animated arms waving around, and regardless of the stage setup, each pyrotechnic explosion or light demonstration looks extremely generic and unimpressive.
That's a shame because the Chipmunks themselves animate quite nicely and look pretty good. In fact, the PC version of the Chipmunks look much better than their console counterparts, but that's not really saying much. Their backdrops, while improved, are still rather bland, but their backdrops look horrible. Fortunately, the slowdown that plagued the console version of the game is gone. As for the songs, it's a diverse list of artists from groups like R.E.M, Jesus Jones and Blues Traveler, but unless you're a serious fan, you'll only be able to put up with constantly going through Chipmunk renditions of these tracks for so long. While the voice over work during the story is good, there's so little of it that it has practically no impact on the overall game itself.
Closing Comments The concept of Alvin and the Chipmunks as a rhythm game totally makes sense, considering that they are a musical group. However, when you can't fail a song, your character models don't even seem to be performing while tracks are playing in the background, and there's no impact on how the Chipmunks play, you realize that this is a weak attempt at cashing in on the movie, and it's being sold at full price instead of at a discount, no less. If you need a Chipmunk fix, look elsewhere.
On the surface, Universe at War: Earth Assault is your standard base laying, resource harvesting, unit building affair. But what Petroglyph has done is to take that basic framework and use it to create a game with three wildly unique but finely balanced factions that each offer a level of real-time customization that gives players a chance to really adapt to the changing circumstances on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the game's campaign doesn't do justice to the overall design while a number of sticky interface and performance problems add to the frustrations.
In brief, Universe at War tells the story of an alien invasion of Earth, our timely rescue by an otherworldly benefactor and the eventual arrival of a third group of aliens who have been awakened by the whole mess. Of course, any one who's paid any attention to anything vaguely resembling science fiction has seen all of this before. We have the requisite giant multi-legged walkers, the flying anthropomorphic anime robots, and, of course, the ancient mystics who were long thought dead. It has a real paint-by-numbers feel that hides any of Petroglyph's original ideas behind a thick coating of overused cliches. We might be more likely to accept it all if we were more convinced that Petroglyph intended the whole thing to come off as kitsch rather than homage. Unfortunately, the jury is still out on that one.
The one really nice thing about the story is that Petroglyph pushes humanity to the side pretty quickly. We've about had our fill of games where the plucky humans fight back against cruel invading aliens so having a game where the real fight is among different groups of aliens who are merely using humanity as a backdrop is a welcome change of pace. Of course, we'll see what happens come expansion time.
Now, with all that said, the actual gameplay concepts behind each of the races are amazing, not just in their individual strengths but in the fact that they each feel like they might have come from completely different games. Better still, each faction has some far-reaching universal powers that they can adjust on the fly to give their forces an edge in one particular area or another.
The Novus are a high-tech but fragile force that relies on an amazingly interesting system of energy towers that give them a level of mobility that I don't think we've ever seen in any other game. Being able to move large forces around in a matter of a few seconds gives them the opportunity to strike virtually anywhere on the map with lots and lots of inexpensive units. Their resource gathering units are so numerous and agile that it's hard to strike at their economy in the field, meaning you'll have to actually hit them at their base to keep them from continually swarming you.
The Hierarchy are pretty much the opposite. They're much slower but they have the distinct advantage of lacking a sizable base infrastructure. Instead, their force revolves around self-sufficient resource gathers (who aren't too terrible in defending themselves) and massive walkers that can be upgraded with hardpoints either for powerful direct fire weapons or for unit production. The Hierarchy player is basically working with three mobile bases that act as siege weapons and barracks at the same time. Marching them right up to the edge of an enemy base and pumping out fresh troops while their guns are pounding the base defenders is one of the most fun moments you'll have in the game.
Finally, there's the Masari. These ancient, godlike people are soon drawn in to the conflict between the Novus and the Hierarchy and they bring their very own, very unique play style to the mix. Their resource collection efforts are actually centered at their base, giving them a chance to consolidate their power until they can really let loose with their late game powers and heroes. Their builders can actually be tasked on different buildings to improve their functionality, giving the Masari a tremendous versatility. If you want a slight edge in resource production, unit training, or research speed all you have to do is shuffle your architects around. The Masari can also shift the focus of their entire strategy by switching back and forth between Light and Dark mode depending on whether or not they need to put more of a premium on speed over protection. The chance to drastically change the overall abilities and strengths of the army make them a hard foe to counter.
Since each of the factions here has such unique strengths there's a lot of variety. Do you use the Hierarchy's Science Walker as a mobile air defense platform or do you install mind control devices on it? And if you do, can you be sure that your Masari opponent won't counter by using Seers to find out what your units are doing and adjust their own strategies accordingly. Toss in three unique heroes for each side and their own unique abilities and you've got a lot of options. Fortunately, it all seems relatively well balanced. We're sure that as more and more data comes in from online matches that Petroglyph will have to tweak values here and there, but it doesn't seem that there's any obvious deficiency or advantage that can be exploited.
It's sad then to see that so little of these options are put to good use in the campaign. We complain a lot about how games are sometimes stripped of complexity for the sake of appealing to a wider audience, and it really seems like that's the case with the Universe at War campaign. The flexibility of the units is restricted solely for the sake of fitting within the narrow and overly scripted missions. The research tree itself, which is a big part of customizing your army to fight they way you want it to fight is completely missing from the campaign. The depressing possibility here is that players might try out the single player experience and give up on the game entirely, never realizing that the skirmish and multiplayer options are really where the game design starts to come alive.
Nevertheless, there are still some issues with AI and the overall interface. Pathfinding is hit or miss and we've had quite a few missions ruined when our own units moved towards objectives completely independent of our command or, in one memorable and frustrating case, actually left an objective they were supposed to be guarding. We're not sure if this is a problem with the AI or with certain triggers but whatever the case, our units aren't always doing exactly what we tell them to do. Trying to assign group numbers is also a hit or miss affair. Sometimes assigning a number simply deselects the entire group, and using the SHIFT key to collect distinct groups merely binds them altogether permanently as part of the last group selected. Fortunately, the unit cap is relatively low here, so you can almost always work around these issues, but it's simple stuff that should have been fixed before the game was released.
Moving past the campaign, there are some intriguing Risk-style scenarios where players compete in a three-way fight for control of the entire Earth. (Well, everything except Canada. Sorry, Charlie.) Even at the strategic level, things play out in real time, with players being forced to determine whether or not to spend their resources to augment their leaders' armies, fortify their home territories, spy on enemies, or invest in greater resource production for the future. The different territories all have their own unique maps, which is great at first but can become tiresome if you have to fight back and forth for control of the same area. These maps are all available for one-off skirmishes as well for players who don't have the patience for the larger strategic game.
On the online front, there's a clear difference between the Gold and Silver Live! memberships. The issue of course, is that PC gamers are used to getting their online content for free and aren't convinced yet that the rewards of the Live! infrastructure are worth their Gold level membership fees. Frankly, neither are we. That's why more and more developers are being encouraged to reserve certain online features for Gold level access. It's a bitter pill for PC gamers who are used to getting everything for free but rather than debating the philosophy of the approach, the important question for us here is whether or not it's worth an extra fifty bucks to get access to the Gold level stuff in Universe at War.
In this case, the rankings and global matchmaking of the Conquer the World version really don't seem to justify the cost. Of course, the idea is that Gold membership adds to the value of all your PC games, but even then the argument is a bit thin. In any case, there simply aren't enough people playing online yet to make it worth your while. The online matches are fun but you're better off finding your own opponents and scheduling matches in advance. That will certainly change as the service (and this game in particular) become more popular but for right now, we say skip it.
Gamers who are familiar with Petroglyph's Empire at War will be happy to see that the visuals are much better in this game. The textures are much cleaner and blend together more naturally here, and the entire layout of the levels seems a lot more realistic. There are still bridges and ridges and all the other geographic features that you'd expect from an RTS, but here they're all laid out in a way that makes seem more like natural parts of the environment than walls thrown up by the designers.
The units are nicely detailed as well with clear visual styling and smooth animations. Personally, I think the Masari are a little bland compared with the other two races, and I would love it if the Hierachy and Novus used more than just red or silver but the units are as original as can be expected given the predictable nature of the overall concept. In other words, Mirabel still looks like every other Robotech rip-off, but at least it's a good-looking rip off.
It's the effects that really win us over. Watching as the Reaper drones smash down from out of the sky, or seeing the Novus zip around as blue surges of energy really adds some life and originality to the visual side of the game. The super weapon effects are even better. Some might like watching fire rain down on enemies but, for my money, there's nothing cooler than the swirling distortion of the Novus black hole weapon.
Universe at War's default graphics settings reveal the complete uselessness of DX10. After playing through more than a handful of missions where the slightest effect or grouping of units dropped our framerate down into the four or five per second zone, we switched off the DX10 effects and discovered that the game ran very smoothly, even with (nearly) all the other sliders bumped up to the highest level of detail. Petroglyph's advice to limit shadow detail and turn down anti-aliasing improved the performance even more.
We had liked the original music that was used for Tyber Zaan in the recent Forces of Corruption expansion pack and we're happy to say that the music in Universe at War is just as good. Personally, I'm a little sick of hard rock as a sci-fi backdrop but that's just me. The music here is still quite good and definitely adds to the action. The voice acting definitely takes a bit away from the drama and as we said at the beginning still leaves open the question of whether this is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek or not. Sound effects are generally good but you really need to turn things up to get those giant robots to sound like you'd expect them to when they're stomping around the USA.
Closing Comments Universe at War is a great, well-balanced design that's marred by a predictable sci-fi concept and a disappointing campaign. The individual factions have remarkably inventive and flexible strengths that allow for tremendous variety in terms of tactics. That they could all be so different and still remain relatively well balanced is a testament to the time and attention that Petroglyph spent on this game.
On the other hand, the giant robot, alien invasion, woken gods angle has been done to death by this point so there are bound to be some RTS vets who give up on the game before they can appreciate the strength of the design. The campaign's lack of freedom only underscores this problem.
Fans of the standard RTS approach will find a lot to love here, but it may require too much digging to get down to the good stuff.
Many games claim the "exciting combination of dynamic action, adventure and traditional role-playing" that Avencast Rise of the Mage has printed on the back of its box, but how many actually live up to it? There's always a danger in trying to do too much, but somehow Avencast manages to make an RPG with action-based controls and tricky puzzles like an adventure game should have.
First and foremost, let's call it an RPG. You play as Moses—errr, or you could name him Moses if you wanted and it would be apt, since he was found floating down a river in a basket. After showing a particular aptitude for magic, his benefactor sends him to the magic academy to unlock his potential and the plot picks up near the end of his studies. This lends everything a rather Harry Potter-ful flavor, but luckily there's more to it than that—yes, including healthy amounts of loot.
Quests range from infuriating side tasks like keeping some overheating pots from exploding, to main story missions like exploring crypts beneath the school and hunting ghosts. You'll level up as you go, earning ten stat points with each. Allocate them as you please either among your four main attributes (Health, Mana, Soul Magic, and Blood Magic) or unlock one of the many spells available, which all cost a cheap six points. You never have to hoard stat points, as opposed to some games where leveling up is often anticlimactic because you're not earning anything new while saving.
Blood Magic consists of more melee range spells, while Soul Magic allows you to attack from a distance. Since you can dodge flaming skulls and other projectiles, enemies' melee attacks are far more dangerous, so getting close enough to throw out Lash of Rage or Fire Thrust seemed risky. The most useful spells were the "Wave" type under the Soul umbrella. In addition to looking really sweet, they allow you to attack multiple enemies in one rolling hit. There are also a number of summons, and Killer Flies are awesome. Not only do they make whichever enemy they attack flail and run in circles, but they distract his friends, too.
Using WSAD to move doesn't necessarily equal action, but it sure feels like it does in this type of game. I preferred the "Follow" camera option (where the camera is always behind you) for its MMO-y feel, but no matter what style you choose…no click to move. Breakthrough! Double tapping any direction causes your character to do a roll, while spacebar is a one step dodge. Magic spells have an even fresher scheme, where instead of a hot key, each spell is assigned its own combo (e.g. down, up, down, left click for those wicked Killer Flies). There are still some monsters that are big and lunky that you can just kite out of existence using your default purple magic shot, but for the most part you'll have to be a little more active.
Once you make it past the minions, though, bosses tend to be needlessly long and tedious. If you know the pattern and that's all there is to it, it probably doesn't need to take more than a few minutes to whittle down the HP. Plus, there's one particularly lame bug that seems to have not be addressed yet involves bosses disappearing, which leaves you with an obsolete life bar and nothing to whack on.
Completing the trio of genres here is the adventure puzzle segments. You don't always expect puzzles in an action-RPG, and certainly not ones that put you to the test (or to the forums) as much as in Avencast. While figuring out how to operate the machines in the Planetarium or put your magical imprint on your special glowing crystal could be very frustrating, it was also really nice to have something outside of the dodging, spell launching, and staff wielding to accomplish.
The well-rounded gameplay is complemented decently by the sound and graphics. Instead of not really noticing the music at all, I found it to be actually sort of good, and mood-fitting. The battle theme seems to come in with its fat staccatos at a slightly higher volume for an extra alert. Voice acting is pretty consistently good, even if the dialogue is sort of bland.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the in-game graphics, but I was happy to find that cut scenes played out in artistic stills rather than generic fuzzy CG. The inky parchment look gave the events a more classic fantasy feel anyways, and it's getting to the point where having a discrepancy between in-game and cut scenes feels really outdated. That may not be why they made the choice, but it's still a really great alternative, and it even managed to make me pay attention to the dull story.
Closing Comments With so many typical fantasy RPGs coming out all the time, it�s nice to see something a little different in Avencast Rise of the Mage. Despite the clich� setting and plot, it manages to differentiate itself well by incorporating environmental puzzles and an action-oriented control system. Even if you don�t always feel terribly invested in the events, at least the thinking and dexterity required provide a more involved experience than your typical hold-the-left-mouse-button hack �n slash. Avencast may not be for everybody, but while it could use a bit more spit polish in places, it�s more than the generic box art lets on.
Fantasy Wars suffers from some of the problems the uninspiring title might hint at. The presentation values aren't grand, the story is not worth remembering, and it features unremarkable visual and auditory accompaniments. While on the surface the game might seem rough, the turn-based gameplay is actually very decent with a good use of terrain for strategic purposes and enough units and upgrades to make movement and combat decisions worthwhile and entertaining.
Fantasy Wars is a turn-based strategy (more like tactics) game that uses a hex board and sets various units of humans, orcs, and elves against each other. You're charged with moving your units across the board to kill enemy units, capture enemy towns, and eventually complete whatever objective has been laid out (usually the capture of a castle somewhere).
The story here is completely forgettable like many orc vs. humans vs. elves stories are and follows the emergence of an orc leader that unites the warring tribes into one huge army because, hey, orcs just gotta fight. But like I said, it's almost completely forgettable and is only there to provide a little bit of context for the various scenario maps.
Units are set up to work basically the same on each side. You'll find skirmisher units that can attack from afar without engaging and then withdraw to a safer distance, ranged units that can fire missiles over multiple tiles, and melee units, both mounted and on foot, that can attack directly but can then be counter-attacked. Each of the factions seems to have what basically amounts to the same units. There's a heavy melee unit on each side, basic archers, and so on. There are some differences farther down in the unit tree like the manner in which the flying units attack more ranged or melee type units and so on. In some cases the differences may be subtle, but they should be enough to really keep commanders on their toes in order to make the right decision about which units attack which enemies.
Fantasy Wars uses an experience system that allows each unit to gain bonuses through participating in combat. A choice of three skills pops up when a level is gained. These can be active, which means you'll have to activate them yourself, or passive, such as a trait that provides better defense in forests. These specializations really help make the units feel different in combat and useful for varying situations. It would have been nice to see some more visual cues to differentiate the units with certain abilities on screen, but it's easy enough as a right click to find that information as well. The experience also has the added effect of making you care more about your units since the upgraded ones can be much more useful. When one of your level four units dies, you'll be sad.
You'll want to check all of these skills out to make sure you're using your units wisely by sending them to the best terrain, using the urban assault crews to attack cities, put the ranged units behind the melee units for protection, and so on. There are plenty of tactical decisions that can be made in Fantasy Wars when it comes to both the units and using terrain effectively. Getting enemies to attack you on territory with a higher defense rating or one which is good ground for a particular type of unit is part of the trick. It also makes some of the map design very important. Assaulting a castle, which has a huge defense bonus, from a river, which has a huge defense penalty, is just asking for death. Moving units across a river at all can be dangerous because of the movement penalty, which often results in them getting stuck in the river and becoming easy prey for enemy units in the area. The approach to terrain here is good and gives an added layer of depth to the scenarios.
These factors are what make the strategic decisions interesting. Should I ford the river here or hope to move my men across the bridge quickly? Should I hold back and assail the castle with ranged units or do I have units that can risk an all out assault? The main issue is that patience is not a virtue here so decisions have to be made that will most likely put your units in peril. While you can sit and think as long as you like during a turn, there's a turn counter constantly going up. Once you've passed a certain number of turns, the day is lost and you'll need to either load up a save or start over. For those players that are even more aggressive than the game requires, there are extra trophies that can be earned by completing each level in fewer turns. Some of the gold trophies seem ridiculously out of reach, but I suppose that must mean that the level of skill that can be obtained after playing for a while must be pretty high.
The system definitely pushes the action out into the field, which can be good, but there's often little room for error, which might frustrate some of you turn-based fans that are used to exploring maps a little more thoroughly before time runs out. Because there are often so many enemies coming from so many directions, it can be very difficult to complete all of the secondary objectives with the limited number of units. You can place more units on the field (when the cap isn't filled) or reinforce existing units, but that takes money and money is almost always gathered by capturing cities, which can take a few turns. It'll push you towards the final objective even if you don't want to move on quite yet, usually for no well explained reason.
Visually, Fantasy Wars is full of bright colors and uses a fairly cartoony style. It's certainly not what I'd call impressive and manages to look better from afar. While it's nice to see some of the battles zoom in for an closer view of the action, it shows off the lower quality models than we've become used to on the PC. The character design is pretty standard stuff for the most part. There are a couple, like the main orc hero, that are pretty terrible designs, but otherwise there isn't too much to get vocal about either way.
Sound is either forgettable, as in the case of sound effects and music, or bad, as in the case of many of the voice-overs. The orcs in particular have cringe-worthy voices that at one moment mimic a constipated gorilla and the next a weasel having it's testicles squeezed in a vice.
Closing Comments Fantasy Wars has some gameplay features that make it worthy enough to check out. It’s not as complex as many turn-based strategy titles out there, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A great use of terrain, decent number of units, and large number of unit upgrades make the strategic decision about where and when to attack both important and interesting. The turn countdown is a decent idea as well and forces players out into the field a little quicker, but can tend to cut off the chance to fully explore a map in some cases. Either way, the challenge for those that choose to try and grab the gold medal in each level is going to be pretty extreme. Fantasy Wars doesn’t have the slickest package around, but its heart is good and those looking for a pretty active turn-based combat game will likely find enough to enjoy.
Let's say you're plagued with extraordinary nightmares. The kind where you wake up days later, shaken by visions of specters and demonic rites, and are slowly being driven insane by events beyond your control. How do you think you'd react, especially if you were a cop? Maybe try to get help? Not detective Howard E. Loreid, protagonist in Zoetrope Interactive's Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder, one of several issues I experienced while playing through. Based on a haphazard amalgamation of H.P. Lovecraft-inspired locations and themes, Darkness Within tracks Howard's investigation of Loath Nolder, a peculiar murder suspect. In true Lovecraft fashion, expect to plumb the depths of tombs and wells, visit several stuffy New England residences, and slowly link together connections with an ancient evil.
Darkness Within is a slow-paced, methodical, conventional adventure with point-and-click gameplay and lots of cursor scrolling to find objects and curiosities. Though you'll find the occasional unnecessarily convoluted puzzle, such as a tedious sequence of prepping a paintbrush to further your investigative efforts, much of the puzzle solving is done in Howard's brain.
At nearly every location you'll find books which Howard, being an investigator, must read to fill in bits of local history and illuminate the relationships of the characters involved. While reading in adventure games is absolutely fine, and something I personally enjoy, the mechanic through which you pull thoughts and facts from the text is rather frustrating. As you read, you're given the opportunity to underline sections of the text. If you've tagged the right spot, Howard "learns" the information and writes it in a journal. Often you'll have to piece together these bits of thought by placing them in UI slots and hitting a button to combine them. If they mesh, they'll form a new thought and the way forward is made more obvious.
Thought combinations seemed to be equal parts sensible and trial-and-error, but the real frustration was simply that as a player, you've often figured out what you need to do long before Howard does. You'll be staring at a marked map, knowing you have to go to a specific location, but the option to travel won't be available simply because you haven't underlined the correct passage yet. Zeotrope included a few options to make procuring the right thoughts easier, including a clue counter showing how many can be discovered, and an option to auto-scan pages instead of manually underlining, but the whole system seemed unnecessary. Also unwarranted are the often ill-conceived collection requirements, where you can't actually pick an item up until you've discovered something else. In one section, you can't pick up a flashlight until you've discovered a secret passage and encountered a dark area. You wind up backtracking and, in some cases, might not realize the item or note you passed over before could only be acquired later on. The prevailing notion in adventure games is if you can use an item, immediately or in the future, you can pick it up and add it to your inventory. Darkness Within plays with that convention, producing muddled, confusing results.
As mysterious earthquakes, secret meetings, and strange chemical mixtures are dealt with, Howard seems to have an amazing tolerance for all things demonic and supernatural. His most common expression uttered during supernatural encounters is "what was that?", his most common solution being to run away and go sleep. Like in most Lovecraft or Lovecraft-inspired stories, the protagonist gradually parts with sanity as more of the mystery is uncovered. The motivation for Howard, however, isn't really developed beyond a simple curiosity. In his stories, Lovecraft always made a point of focusing on the process of logical disintegration, describing how curiosity leads to fascination and eventually inescapable obsession. Howard merely bounces between locations, reading books, and reacting to demonic encounters by simply walking out and closing the door behind him.
He also has a cell phone, which must periodically be used to contact Arthur, an associate. Shortly after the adventure's beginning Howard is told to take it easy for a while, yet he continuously harasses Arthur for help with analyzing substances and such. Arthur barely shows any interest at all, instead politely inquiring if everything is all right. It's just odd that Howard has absolutely nobody checking on him, and that he's continually surprised by horrific occurrences when they're exactly what he sets out to find. The game needed to go further into the reasons why Howard was so obsessed, make him seem like more of a person than a dolt who, after reading a few books and having a bad dream, is suddenly willing to risk life and sanity for nebulous purposes. You could argue he's merely following his professional instinct, but given the nature of some of the circumstances it's hard to believe anyone would willingly proceed, especially when they're off duty, as Howard is.
Yet for all the tedium of making sure I had all the clues, testing thought combinations, and traveling from mundane location to mundane location in Howard's modest automobile, I still felt drawn in by atmosphere. Howard isn't much of a character, but there's something about the elaborately carved wooden panels in the New England homes' walls, shelves of ancient, forbidden tomes crammed in amongst sinister alembics and guttering candles, and the periodic unsettling sculpture or idol that set me on edge. I wouldn't call anything about the experience gripping or terrifying, but there were a few tense moments where I found myself to be simultaneously apprehensive and curious about what might lurk in a well's secret passage, or beyond a puzzle door in a cult's vault lined with stone lizard men. I know it's all cliché Lovecraft, but I enjoyed what was there as far as mood is concerned.
If you have picked up a copy already, we should mention there's a game-stopping but fixable bug that occurs when trying to underline the clue that uncovers the location of the cemetery. I was playing in 1280 x 800, which apparently caused the text in the book I was examining to shift and prevented the clue from being discovered. Switching to 1280 x 1024 resolved the issue.
Closing Comments This isn't a novel story, but Howard Loreid's descent into Lovecraftian insanity can be entertaining if you can put up with sloppy puzzles and a slow, deliberate pacing. There's also the question of your tolerance of production values. We all know graphics shouldn't affect how enjoyable a game turns out to be, but there's no denying the visuals here, even for a low-budget adventure game, are particularly poor. The sound, as sparse as it is, actually works well, occasionally fostering mood, and Zoetrope included some blurred vision and breathing effects in some sequences to try and generate tension. Though you may be caught up in the ambiance at times, the adventure often stagnates, as the majority of the game features Howard traveling to nearby surroundings to snatch notes from other people's books.
Activision has quickly become the company to beat with its World Series of Poker franchise. In a few short years, it's gone from a lackluster title to a game that almost encapsulated the gambling experience perfectly. Building on the strengths of last year's title, Activision and Left Field Productions have recently released World Series of Poker 2008: Battle For the Bracelets. Thanks to a slicker presentation, larger sense of WSOP Tournaments and some additional features, Activision has once again produced one of the best poker games around.
The main career mode has a different twist on this year's play. As the fresh face on the WSOP block, players are no longer being taken underneath the wing of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson like they were in last year's game. Instead, you join the tour along one of three difficulty levels: amateur, semi-professional or professionally ranked player, which determines the number of events that you can enter and your starting bankroll. Of course, the object of the career mode is to expand your starting stack with prize money that you win in tournaments, but the other end of it is to gain additional Player of the Year points by performing well in tournaments to end your season with the overall Player of the Year award. Considering that means that you'll need to knock off Phil "The Poker Brat" Hellmuth, that could be a tall order for some beginners, but it's an interesting challenge to extend to people.
Once again, like last year, the progression from tournament to tournament feels a bit throttled back since you're dealing with events on the calendar as they come up. On open days, or those moments when you end your tournament run a bit early, you'll sometimes receive phone calls from fellow gamblers inviting you to cash only events at different hotels. This will give you another chance to increase your bank roll and points totals, with a much further reduced number of opponents. As you play, you'll earn different awards, such as collector chips for earning different hands or defeating tour pros, which you can wager online against opponents or rivals. Rivals in WSOP 2008 are online players that have defeated you in internet games or showdowns, affecting your overall standings on the online leaderboards.
While the inclusion of rivals in online play provides an additional competitive nature to the game, you won't particularly find the same thing extended to you in the single player experience. Defeating someone like Annie Duke or Mike Matusow over a series of tournaments isn't going to make them antagonistic towards you, or talk extra smack to you whenever you get to the table. Since some of the "entertainment" of watching WSOP is to witness the wilder personalities clashing over the tables, you'd think that having a poker rival or two over the course of your career would be a natural fit for the game, but it's not to be. That isn't to say that the computerized versions of the tour professionals won't give you a challenge at all; for the most part, they'll intelligently play their hands, making effective bluffs or wisely getting themselves out of losing hands without giving up a ton of money. However, you'll still run into a couple of situations where pros and random players will try to make runs with a pair of twos or a junk pocket hand, keeping their fingers crossed for a card that just isn't going to come.
WSOP 2008 features many variations of poker, including Omaha, Razz, Seven Card Stud and of course, Texas Hold 'Em, as well as extensive tutorials and tutorial options for beginners. Players can also play No Limit Hold 'Em against specific pros, create their own custom games and tournaments, or enter a speed game with continually increasing blinds and limits, as well as a clock that limits the amount of time you have to weigh decisions at the table. It also features video poker and blackjack, which is an interesting diversion, but feel like an afterthought compared to the other game modes. As you play more hands, you'll unlock tools that can be used through every round of poker. For the most part, novices will probably rely upon the pot odds tool, which continually gives you an update on how weak or strong your hand is across your initial deal, as well as the flop, turn and river. However, some of them aren't nearly as useful as they could be. While the opponent's tool gives percentages of raises or folds on a hand, I'd rather have a sense of a particular tour member's playing style as well because that dictates whether or not they're following typical behavior for that person.
A lot of extra attention has obviously been placed on the presentation of WSOP 2008, sharpening up the menus and the look of action at the tables with the screen split into three areas: one that focuses on the table, one with a close up on the player and another one at the bottom of the screen that has an extreme close up on the cards in play. While this doesn't particularly help you as far as tells or getting a sense of what your opponents have in their hand, it gives an additional television styled presentation to the action at the tables. This is evident with the large amount of video that's scattered throughout the title, including the introductions of tournaments at Las Vegas casinos and poker tutorials. This re-tooled presentation also makes it easier to determine information like how many players are still in your particular tournament, or who the chip leaders are. Some of the video aspect ratios can be off here and there, particularly with the cell phone tutorial sections, but it's nothing major.
However, even with the increase in attention to making the game seem slicker, the game still has a number of issues with long pauses between command inputs and onscreen character responses, as well as incorrect chip count animations during bets. This is something that should've been fixed from last year's title, and is a nagging hold over that slows down and hampers the feel of the game. It also winds up exacerbating some of the other visual problems that stand out with character models, such as some of the seams or texture pixilation that crops up in hair or other parts of the body. Hopefully this will be smoothed out in future titles.
Closing Comments Almost as good as pocket aces, World Series of Poker 2008: Battle For the Bracelets further strengthens Activision's claim to the best poker franchise around. Computer AI is still as solid this year around, and the inclusion of Player of the Year points for the career mode and redone presentation, coupled with online rivals makes this game one of the best poker games out there. If you're looking to polish up your skills before you hit Vegas, or want an engaging card game, you'll want to check this one out.
One of the great joys of these EverQuest 2 expansions is in rediscovering areas that we loved in the original game and seeing how they've been changed in the sequel. Coming upon a familiar landmark or location brings back some awesome memories for those of us who remember what Norrath used to look like. Such is the case with the latest expansion, Rise of Kunark. Though it wasn't one of our favorite areas in the original game, we were anxious to see what the team had to offer us this time around.
While the style has changed quite a bit, geographically speaking, it was the overall changes in the way the world is put together that really impressed us most. Rather than relying on the hard zone edges of previous titles in the series, Kunark uses a new method of zone blending that really makes the world feel more real. Instead of passing over glaring zone lines that have entire climates changing in the space of a single pixel, Kunark gradually eases players into new zones with absolutely no breaks for loading and no harsh transitions between the visuals.
Now when you journey up to the icy peaks above Dreg's Landing, you'll actually see the environment start to turn chilly bit by bit. Of course, for the sake of manageable travel times, the transitions are still pretty drastic but they blend contrasting areas together so nicely that you really get sucked into the world. What's especially nice is how the transitions get you ready, mentally speaking, to experience an entirely different kind of content. The sickly haze of the Fens or the oppressive gloom of Karnor's Castle help set the mood perfectly.
Of course, the serious mood is somewhat ruined by the Chokemon quest, but that's a minor issue.
Since there are no hard zone lines, you can be prepared to have some long running trains that chase you across multiple areas. They'll still give up after a while, but you may find yourself running a bit farther just to make it happen.
The transitions are just as spectacular when you're flying over them, either on the back of a griffin or, later in Kunark, a sokokar. There are plenty of flying posts in Kunark and Timorous Deep but you'll have to unlock their use early on by completing a specific quest. This is a nice little addition that adds a bit of story around the otherwise under appreciated mounts.
The new player experience focuses on the new playable race, the dragon-like Sarnak. Designed as magically-bred fighters, they can definitely hold their own against the rest of the player races. Some players like the customization options for the Sarnak -- lots of horns and such -- but, to me, they really just look too much alike. Apart from a surplus of horn arrangements and colors, the only thing you can really do to distinguish your Sarnak from another is change the shape of his or her muzzle. Hey, at least the helmets are custom fit to the Sarnak's unusual head shape.
The starting character experience is very attractive. Players will begin taking part in the initial conflicts between the Sarnak and their neighbors, the birdlike Spiroc. Eventually, the quests will take players farther and farther away and put them into conflict with pirates, panthers and predatory plants. Personally, I don't like it as much as the Faydwer content, but it's still a very attractive package and one that held our attention all the way up through level 20. As in other new player expansions, the content here is kind of isolated from the rest of the world but that gives new players a chance to get their feet wet without lots of other distractions.
The geography and the quest spaces are well designed but the Sarnak city of Gorowyn is a bit of a mess. It's all platforms and ramps and there's very little to distinguish one area from another, making it nearly impossible to recognize which area you're in without targeting the NPCs that are standing there. The platforms and ramps are connected in a very linear fashion but a series of elevators and moving cars makes it easy to get a little disoriented, especially when you're trying to find an area above or below you. Nevertheless, the city has everything a player needs, practically speaking, so it serves its function as a convenient hub towards the latter part of the Sarnak story.
Unfortunately, the Sarnak quest line dies out right in the middle of the story. We won't spoil things by giving away the last quest, but let's just say that it seems to be building to something and then just cuts it off with no payoff. It's just as bad that the game doesn't really make much of an effort to give players some direction towards the game's existing content. Sure, the emissary from Freeport is nice and there are a couple of portals you can use to get to the other continents, but once you complete the hundred quests on Timorous Deep, you're left too much on your own.
Players will definitely need to head off to explore the game's other content before coming back to see what the rest of Kunark is like. Kunark is as deadly an area as you're likely to see in all of EverQuest II, so it's not to be entered into lightly. There are a couple of ways you can get your veteran characters there. In our case, we found a helpful griffon trainer near the Butcherblock docks who was happy to point us in the right direction. As an added bonus, there's even a Sarnak quest giver in Butcherblock to help tie the new content into the rest of the world.
Once you land in Kunark, you'll have a number of quests right in front of you, from bashing some nearby baddies to investigating some larger playing areas. Although there are some stunning vistas here, Kunark does a great job of limiting the wide-open views found in the rest of the world and carefully positioning landmarks so that players will be drawn to areas of interest. Whether it's a ruined tower in the distance or a path that turns out of sight beyond a hill, there's almost always an obvious indicator of where you can find something new to do. As always the quest givers do a good job of constantly enlarging your playing area by sending you out into new areas and eventually even handing you off to quest givers in other towns and camps.
One of the bigger challenges (or aggravations, depending on your patience) is that the game eventually asks you to start interacting with quest givers and merchants in towns where you're attacked on sight. Thankfully, there are quest lines that help you find favor (or at least tolerance) with the Rilissians, but most of those quests require you to fight your way through the very people you're trying to help. It's certainly an interesting approach to content design, but it still causes some irritating complications.
Still, since Kunark is designed specifically to take players from the current level cap of 70 all the way up to the new cap of 80, it makes sense that the area is deadly, all the way from the start in Dreg's Landing to the Skyfire Mountains. Along the way players will have to battle a wide range of creatures and beasts, including Iksar soldiers and giant wyrms. Some of those enemies you initially encounter can even become your allies and open up entirely new stories that see you fighting against new opponents.
Things have improved on the economic side as well. Tradeskill level caps have been raised and the entire crafting process has been made easier, from start to finish. Your crafting career actually begins with a sort of tutorial quest that does a better job of introducing players to the concepts. Further streamlining is offered by not requiring players to equip harvesting implements every time they want to gather something from the environment. It's a little weird seeing players fish with their hands but what can you do?
Of course, Kunark contains all the qualitative additions you'd expect from an expansion. There are plenty of new monsters and loads of new equipment, including Epic Weapons for each of the character classes. The new visual assets fit well with the game's overall aesthetic. The sokokar are definitely a highlight of the game's graphics, not just for the stunning vistas they reveal but also for their intriguing design. On the other hand, the Throm seem like they were taken out of the oven a bit too soon. Their droopy feature and bland textures stand out from the rest of the game.
Finally, Rise of Kunark comes packaged in a new retail box that includes all the EverQuest 2 content released to date, making it a fantastic deal for players who want to take their first steps into Norrath.
Closing Comments As with the previous expansions, there's nothing here that will convince you the EverQuest II is worth playing if you've already decided to pass on it. But for players who are looking to extend the life of a game they already love, Kunark offers lots of amazing diversions.
The new player experience is solid (if a little isolated) and the high level content is something you can't find anywhere else. If you're not already bumping your head against level 70 then you can safely hold off on getting Kunark for a while. The new Sarnak content is bound to be attractive to some mid-level players, but it's clear that Kunark is being aimed at the hardcore and newbie crowds.
"Well, since we don't know what the Absolute is, there is no need to bother finding it out." Well said, Arthur Measely, magic shop owner whose name is totally not a Harry Potter reference. No need to bother. Dawn of Magic is a click-to-move fantasy RPG in the vein of Diablo. While aspiring to be "classic," this iteration of the formula is feeling kind of tired.
The Absolute is essentially the afterlife, or something like it. A fellow with a head of flames named Modo has been banished to the mortal plain as punishment for being a power hungry jerk. Unfortunately he continues to be a power hungry jerk even then, so, as one of four "unlikely heroes" players have to decide whether to help or hinder his cause. They do this by selecting one of three alignments during the character creation segment.
I chose a Fat Friar as my character—for his high strength stat. You don't get to customize appearance, but you do get one very unusual choice: mortal or immortal. Mortal means what you would probably guess: no respawns. The instruction manual encourages us to try this mode, calling it "more fun." More realistic, sure, but even immortals have to go scouting for their skull to find all the gold they dropped, which feels like punishment enough.
Every character starts off at the Magic Academy in Avon. Your first task is to specialize in three types of magic, of the twelve in the game, except you don't actually to get to pick three from the full list. Instead you're limited by talking to three different professors who have three separate short lists. Later on you can find or create a scroll to learn other types of magic, but from the get go you can't, say, be radioactive and curse people.
The best part of Dawn of Magic kicks in right about here. As you learn different types of magic, your character's image is embellished with different physical features. As luck would have it, my combination of Bone, Light, and Fire ended up giving me an absolutely insane-looking character, almost like a Satan clown, with a tail, hooves, huge bone horns, and curved golden spikes for hands. My evil Baker's Wife grew mantis-like claws, possibly because of the poison spell.
Your final exam begins and the assignment depends on your alignment. Good characters have to hunt for eggs to help a sick student, neutral characters have to challenge other students in a hunt, and evil characters have to hunt while being attacked by the other students (who often shout "Go away!" or "I hope you die!" as you walk down the halls.) You'll notice that either way it amounts to a kill quest, but with varying degrees of difficulty.
Once you get to town, if you decide to bust up everyone's stuff to find gold the townspeople will shout at you to stop, and if you keep going they will start attacking you. Supposedly, holding Shift targets civilians, but magic spells seem to always hit them, which can be frustrating if you didn't mean it, because the guards tend to be overwhelming.
Questing is pretty much a pain. The side tasks are things like protecting a citizen, taking out smugglers, stopping the unholy church members from busting in on the holy church, and at least once playing hit-man for a shopkeeper looking for a little less competition. The least obnoxious kind of mission is the ubiquitous kill quest, while the most annoying are the kind where you have to chase people (e.g. someone's children, robbers) around, frantically clicking to round them up. Then they escape as you try to turn them in, starting the process again. Equally frustrating is the quest tracker, which keeps some active even after you change acts, but cancels others if you move to a new area.
Leveling up is a four step process, since you earn plusses with skill and spell points to get with them over the first three quarters of your experience point bar. Skills are easy enough to add points to, but spells require specific scrolls to level. I can understand needing scrolls to learn a spell in the first place, but having to track down one every time you have points available seems overkill.
Skills include Dark Path, a short range teleportation spell, which is useful for short-cuts or getting out of a mob of enemies, but also as an analogue to the /stuck command. You can also put skill points into different proficiencies, including the ability to craft and enhance gear with better materials and runes.
Enhancement has one interesting tweak: each rune has a syllable attached to it and you can use them to spell words if you have the scroll for the runic spell by inserting them into weapon or armor slots in the correct order. For example, Nostalgia uses Ho and Me to increase regeneration of both life and Chi (magic.) This system adds a bit of strategy to rune placement, since you don't just want to be enhancing and removing ad infinitum—that drains an item's durability.
Overall, Dawn of Magic looks pretty old school. Not too fancy, more than a couple jaggies. There are some nice lighting effects, though, lending the colorful environments a lot of warmth. Butterflies and falling leaves sometimes flutter by. Bizarrely, bits of the UI sway or flex in hypnotic motions—perfect for contemplating while letting your HP recharge after nearly getting schooled by a Goblin Matron or some such baddie.
Except when the exact same voice (not even the same guy, but the same voice) is used for a zillion lesser NPCs, the voice work is decent. Mullog sounds predictably like…well, spell Mullog backwards—that is, until he morphs into a huge boss monster. The dialogue is lovably strange, with the innkeeper shouting at a town meeting, "I guess it's time to rip his damn legs off!"
Sadly, the multiplayer scene here is pretty dismal. Capture the flag? Deathmatch? The trading map seems cool, but it's a very poor substitute for what really should be a co-op adventure.
Closing Comments The box proclaims �A new era of hack �n� slash,� but Dawn of Magic strikes us as more of the same. Tweaks like the character mutations based on what spells you�ve learned are neat, but don�t have an impact on the gameplay itself. Lack of co-op is a disappointment. Despite a promising beginning to the story, general boredom ensued. Go ahead and hit snooze this morning.
