Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Make fate your b1tch.

When the final bullet was fired at the end of the Universal Pictures movie Wanted, were you thinking: "I wish I could continue the adventure on my own"? If yes, then Wanted: Weapons of Fate was made for you. Continuing the story of the film, Wanted follows Wesley as he tries to uncover the truth about her mother, a journey that allows players to take control of Wesley's father, Cross, in several flashback levels.

Is a video game based off a movie (which itself is based off a comic), the expectations for Wanted is pretty low. But Wanted's producer Pete Wanat, the man responsible for gaming's few good movies-to-game adaptations: The Chronicles of Riddick, Scarface and The Thing. Are Wanted up to these standards? No

Wanted: Weapons of Fate fails to recreate the look and sounds in the movie, although the 360 version has some poorly compressed before rendered cutscenes. Blending some of the artistic sensitivity of the comic with the established world and cinematic style of the film, developer Grin has created an interesting hybrid. You get the average Joe-portrait photograph of the film's star, James McAvoy, as Dons costume from the comic. It's the best of both worlds, a third element (you know, the whole gameplay thing) that fail to live up to both.

A third person shooter cover to cover, Wanted has a slick style worthy of the film, but lasts about as long. This is not Gears of War or a similar cover shooter, moving slowly from point to point. Wanted to move quickly with a cover that attaches to the chain from one piece of cover to the next with an interface that shows your available cover options. You can quickly slide behind a box, then jump over to a wall, so then dive for the safety of a second box. It just is very responsive, and no doubt it is one thing Wanted means that there really is excellent. The rest ... not so much.

Whether you play as Wesley and Cross, you want to run through the same motions across all linear level. The enemies change only superficial ways and your strategy remains essentially the same from start to finish. Get to cover, use your bullet-crumbs abilities to kill enemies, continue forward.

And yes, you have the gift to bend bullets like in the movie / comic. It is a neat system indeed. Keep a shoulder button and the arc of your bullet is projected on the screen. You can adjust this with the thumbstick, increasing and decreasing the angle, and change your firing position. That white line when the path is clear that the target red if there is an obstacle. At first, you'll probably spend half a minute to get a perfect shot, but when you get the hang of curved balls, you can create a straight line in a second or two.

Crumbs balls do not come cheap. You have an adrenaline meter (represented by bullets in the upper right corner of the screen). Kill an enemy, and you fill an adrenaline bullet. And it costs a bullet of adrenaline to curve a shot. If you have the ability to kill enemies in a single curved shot, your meter will constantly be refreshing. But often a bullet will not immediately kill and instead sends the enemies lags in the open (each time with the same animation). You will see that a few hundred times over Wanted.

Wanted is at its coolest when you get an instant kill with a curved and bullet camera chooses to follow his way into another's brain. You will hear sounds from the movie - you know, really authentic bullet-to-brain sound - which is a nice touch. Watching bullets fly in slow motion in the soft flesh bits thugs never becomes old. Even as the rest of Wanted become redundant (a true art piece for such a card game), slow-mo bullets in the brains remains fun throughout.

But Wanted never takes the idea of curved balls very far. You never go into interesting situations where you want to do something more than curve a bullet around a simple piece of cover to cap anyone. Even the boss battles have a uniformity to them. You will either need to curve a bullet to get them out of cover before blasting them in the open, or use slow-mo slide the cover to catch them in the open. Neither be particularly satisfactory.

In an attempt to spice things up, there are several shining moments in Wanted. In these particular sections, you can not control your character movements unless he targets. This allows for some cinematic flair. It is not bad, but it does little to keep it very short arms of Fate in getting old at the end. Oh, and there was another shake-things-up moment. Unfortunately, it stinks. Twice you have to man a turret and take out enemies in a courtyard. Neither time doing Wanted clue you in how to defend yourself (pro tip: lift up turret). And you can die in about five seconds without doing so. So the first few times I tried one of these sections, enemies stormed in and I was dead before I winked.

Wanted has some innovative ideas, but never really breaking through at any point. I had fun with it, but there was not a single moment that wowed me. Wanted real case is its length. It took me less than four hours to beat, and replay incentives are piss-poor.

You can try a few different modes, but none are as good as they sound. There is a Head Shot mode, for example. Sounds cool, right? We all love the head shots, after all. But give it a go and you will find it is just the normal game with the demand that you kill all the head shots. Bo-ring. You can also unlock new characters to play, but they share Wesley's animations and because Wanted uses pre-rendered cutscenes, new character models do not appear in the cinema tics.

Concluding remarks
I have nothing against short game, as long as there is proper incentive to play repeatedly. Wanted lacks such incentives. Something as simple as an arcade points or in depth stats interval could have been enough to make a second play through interesting. Although the first time through is fun (yes, it's fun at times!) There is a real shortage of content. It is best as a rental, since you can turn Wanted in a meeting.

© 2009-03-30, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

By: Hilary Goldstein

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Grand Ages: Rome

They could have built it in a day if they had tried.

First, there is a flaw in the marketing message for this game. Some of you will be affected by the field's mention of 4X strategy and massive armies "but it is only through ignorance or deceit, that this game would be advertised as anything other than

"Once a Roman town Builder with shallow combat." Perhaps it is an attempt on the publisher's part to take the title away from lackluster by Builder genre, after all, they have certainly distanced the game from the previous two games in the series, Glory of the Roman Empire and the Imperium Romanum, which was rather unspectacular. Someone who has played any of these games will see continuity in Grand Ages: Rome, but it is not something that the publisher apparently eager to promote.

Anyway, Grand Ages: Rome attempted to clear the name of the franchise, but ultimately not to bring any compelling new ideas for gameplay. This is essentially a fairly predictable city builder that apart from some visual improvements, will not hold any surprises or new challenges for people who have not played a by-Builder since Caesar III. And if you have not played a by-Builder since then, you may not mind the Grand Ages: Rome so much. If on the other hand, you came up through the game Views Zeus and Emperor, you will certainly find yourself wishing more from this latest offering.

The basic format is fixed. The player is tasked with creating a functioning and self-sustaining city by balancing the inter-related services and functions in a variety of structures. Houses provide workers who can work on the farm that sends wheat to the mill, which will send flour to the baker who send bread to the stores to feed workers. It's just one of the more complex chains of production in the game. To build and maintain your structures, you need wood and brick and the occasional rock block. To preserve peace, you must prefectures, which can only be staffed by members of the senior class who have more complex needs than the populous. Throw in some other buildings for learning, entertainment, health and commerce and things quickly become complicated.

At least that is the way it looks on the surface. In practice, the Grand Ages: Rome makes things relatively easy. It seems like the AI is much better than previous titles in the series, so the public to manage their own affairs at this time, leaving the player to worry exclusively about building placement-targeted and resource balance. Resources immediately shown where they are needed and many of the buildings is an area of effect, making the concept of traffic flow completely irrelevant. There are no more gender-specific job this time so you do not have to worry about the manning of distaff industries. In addition, the game has simplified the work to the point that one house provides enough workers for infrastructure building. It is an inelegant solution, but so does balancing your cities a little easier.

Grand Ages: Rome has a much more open campaign than his predecessors. After completing the basic introductory mission, players let loose on a map of the Roman world, and can choose from a wide range of tasks that are focused on key locations and events during the first century BC. Players will sit Spartacus' slave revolt, establishing outposts in Gaul, and even slipping into the wars in the triumvirate. History and timing of these missions are quite irrelevant as far as gameplay goes, but it gives a little background for the player's own imagination. What's more interesting is that you can ally you with a special group that can open or close the new missions later in the game. As you complete missions, you can even level up your character, adding new talent and resource bonuses that you purchase with points earned in each level.

Players who want to try their hand at competitive and cooperative city building can even head online and try their luck there. Of course, the tactical aspects of the game is not going to rival even the original Age of Empires, so these online contests are more about marketing than the general ship. An interesting thing that set the previous game in the series apart was the inclusion of objective card, the player would take the entire course of a mission. Although they presented some scripting problems at times they are offered plenty of smaller goals that gave the player some rewards and direction during the mission. This system has been removed from Grand ages, so now players are just aiming at one or two goals in each mission with a few choice targets thrown in as well.

The interface has been improved significantly. Where previous games in the series have required players looking for information about their city's overall performance, Grand Ages: Rome contains lots of useful overlays to show you in bright colors, which of your buildings are in danger or short of a necessary resource. This new feature makes locating your support buildings so much easier. In addition, the summary function of the Forum have been removed and placed in the overall interface of the game itself, so you can easily access all the numbers you need to plan your future growth.

Combat seems to have been improved as well. The animation looks great and AI is much more aggressive. As with the original game, but fighting is still relatively simple. Players have a handful of very basic unit types, and no real military maneuvers that are more advanced than "move" and "attack." As in most city builders, the key to military victory has far less to do with general ship than it does to build enough units to steam roll your enemy in the general mêlée. The good news is that if you like the approach, there are many more combat missions focused this time around.

Besides the simplified combat, there are two other major problems with Grand Ages: Rome. First, satisfying the demands of your citizens are not really that difficult, and because you have access to all buildings at the start, there is no sense in expanding the possibilities. Really, you are just building the same basic city again and again in every mission. The only variation comes from the inclusion of specific design goals and the presence of the enemy barbarians. The lack of consistency in the flow of traffic or the movement of goods means that the location of your building is really more a matter of aesthetics rather than function. Although disasters have been scaled back. Now, as long as you keep all employees, you do not have to worry about the game sinking riots, fires or resource shortages.

Second, there is just not much personality there. Yes, there are some interesting meetings and animations to look down to street level, but you can not play games from this perspective. Once you've zoomed out enough to actually work interface properly, it's just impossible to see much life in the game. Although it may seem the realistic presentation is a purely artistic preference, it also impacts the player's awareness of his city is working properly as well. I challenge all to spot the prefect's tiny bucket of water as he walks to a fire.

Otherwise the graphics are quite good. Each card has plenty of atmosphere and lots of detail. The architecture is truly phenomenal and the people look perfectly at home in mid-marble columns and tiled roofs. Even better, it is all located in a natural environment, looks magnificent and benefits from a broad spectrum of Moody lighting and weather effects.

Concluding remarks
Grand Ages: Rome is a fun game, but if you've played any of the other city-builders who have come together in the last ten years, you will quickly grow bored of it. The pieces are all in place in the city's structures and jobs, but keeping people happy is relatively easy and is repeated in every mission to the point of being boring. More variety and more challenge will definitely help to improve the game's appeal, which would be a more lively visual style.

© 2009-03-20, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

By: Steve Butts

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Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Where are all the sweaty dudes playing volleyball?

By: Nate Ahearn

What is one thing that comes into the awareness of all warm-blooded American when you mention dogfighting fighter? If the answer is not a movie starring a bunch of sweaty dudes playing beach volleyball in tiny jean shorts with Anthony Edwards wearing a painfully awkward Cutoff T-shirt, so you lie to yourself. Fortunately, that same flick is home to some of the coolest aerial battles ever put to the silver screen. It's called "Top Gun, and the husband has more material than anything you find on Cinemaxx.

Ever since then the game companies have tried to imitate the feeling that so many imagined with Goose and Maverick in the cockpit. The latest game to try his hand, Tom Clancy's HAWX Ubisoft Romania from the studio that brought us two Blazing Angels titles. HAWX is a sort of spiritual successor, but the benefits of being in a slightly more distant future, which means that players have benefited from some moderately futuristic flying aircraft and some practical DANDY navigational technology that is a little too smart for its own good.

It is important to note that HAWX (High-Altitude Warfare Experimental Squadron) is not a flight-sim. There is no fuel gauge to worry about, no real ammunition control - aircraft carry up to 200 missiles - and no worries of blackouts, red-outs or any other form of 'outs. "While I fully understand not want players to be mindful of their gas use as they are in a Chevy Suburban, the planes in HAWX move with very little realism. They look like their real life counterparts, but you can essentially fling them around the the sky with reckless abandon, regardless of brand or model.

One thing I had with each airplane, and it is a common event for games like HAWX is that there just is not a good feeling of speed as you career through the skies in more than 1,000 miles per hour. Even get close to the ground is not so inspiring. It feels more like you are flying an aircraft than a fighter jet goes faster than the speed of sound.

So why are you zooming around turning hostile aircraft in mangled metal? Well, it turns out that there is something of a conflict taking place in the world. You play as Captain Crenshaw, a former U.S. flyboy whose squadron was disbanded for whatever reason. Seeking work and money, Crenshaw switched to private groups and stumble when a company called Artemis. Long story short, Crenshaw works for Artemis Artemis is committed to protecting Brazil; Crenshaw follows. So, Artemis decides to attack the United States; Crenshaw revolt. Before you know it Crenshaw is fighting for the red white and blue again, trying to attackers attacks by Artemis at some of our nation's landmarks.

Flying above locations, such as a pitch black Los Angeles, Washington DC, Cape Canaveral and Tokyo, players will see some recognizable spots. Flying low to the ground may reveal some ugly texture work, but it is still cool to be defending these famous cities from an off-shore attacks. That said, the characters are quite forget table. The stars are of course the planes themselves, but the hat to at least try to make a wholesale singalong story line and tied up in a few other Ubisoft franchises (Ghost Recon and EndWar) on the road.

There are 19 missions to fly throughout the campaign, all of which are available for four-player cooperative play online. For the sake of fun, I recommend that you set up a friend to be your wingman (or Iceman would say you can be his) as AI and your control over their actions is very limited. You can tell them to attack or to cover you, but that is about it. Assign them to attack a ground target is working out pretty well, but tells them to attack an incoming group of warriors typically gives poor results. My biggest problem with the campaign is inconsistent with the design of each mission. Some are funny, like a later level, you provide air to the three squads of ground troops as they make their way to a nuclear weapon to be disarmed one way or another. Other missions, however, is just plain annoying. It's almost as if instead of making enemies more plentiful, or make them more cunning in battle, the developers decided to add the annoying limitations to the player. Perfect examples are the missions where you can not fly above a certain altitude for fear of being shot down by a radar tracking system. It is an unnecessary thorn in your side that will result in lots of deaths. Then there is the mission that starts with a terrible version of "hot and cold." I'll let you discover this for yourself.

In addition, the combat HAWX is not all that engaging. Ubisoft Romania threw in a camera mechanic similar to what we saw in Blazing Angels, which means that with the push of a button, the camera pulling back from your fighter and focusing on your goals as you move independently around the screen. It gives more maneuverable dogfighting moves, but can disorienting for newbies. The angles (known as "aid off") is a good attempt at spicing things up and add skill to dogfighting, but even play through the game on hard not force me to flip ping assistance in terms of strategy.

The strategy is an element that could be worked in HAWX bit harder. Too often I found myself just trying to fire missiles and cycling through the targets as quickly as possible, so do not have to make a second pass. I was not worried about taking down minions before working towards a larger warship, instead there is just a bunch of flies swarming in the air for you to slam one at a time in any order you choose.

Assists with the mindless gameplay is the ERS (Enhanced Reality System) which, when activated, brings a series of gates, which will lead you to the goal. It plays as a pseudo mini-games that you have to pilot your jet through each gate to keep the pathway active. This is a seriously smart system also handy if you ask me, you will finish with a perfect shot lined up every time. It takes the drama out of dogfighting, which is something that is lacking as it is.

As I said before, there is no real physical limitations on the aircraft. Each craft has a set of turning radius, depending on speed, but then you can frenetically whip your scrap metal through the air, however you want. The best way to avoid a missile is just thrashing around in random circles and turns. Forget flares, just act crazy. I would have preferred to have some kind of physical constraints on my crafts, so I had to strategically plan a route to safe ground. Since it is all quite silly, ERS on or off.

An important thing to note is that I played through HAWX with Xbox 360 controller, but the game supports PC flight sticks. I recommend playing with the flight stick, if you have one. The experience was much more fun with the flight stick that I used for the Xbox 360 version of the HAWX.

There is no doubt that's HAWX gameplay have questions, but many jets and weapons packs that you unlock throughout the game, and the fact that you get to fly jets said about American landmarks is cool in its own right. The fight may not be all that inspired, but it is exciting enough to push you through the campaign a mission at a time. A word of advice, never use the ERS, unless absolutely necessary. The dumb the experience down a little. HAWX has a handy dandy experience points and leveling system, which crosses between single-player and multiplayer gameplay. You can unlock things such as aircraft and weapons packages that can be taken into battle. Little challenge acknowledgments pops up when you kill X amount of enemies with a weapon and you get a nice sense of accomplishment every time you rewarded with a chunk of XP for the time you have put in. I think I would have preferred a system costs, let me unlock the items from a set list, however I wanted, but the auto-lock system that is in place works well enough.

Multiplayer, as it is right now is pretty Barebones. There is only one condition in which eight players can join up and take on the usual team death-match affair. Granted, flying against the human pilots are much more exciting and challenging than flying against AI, but the fact that you are fairly cramped in the number of players and conditions are alarming. Multiplayer support has cool powers to chime in when players string together multiple kills. Things like an EMP strike, which sends all enemy aircraft in a stall or the ability to reduce all evils to the gun is absolutely cool and can change the flow of a battle very quickly.

Of course the upside to a substantial reduction in the number of players comes in the form of no delay. Admittedly, we here in the IGN office bet on a T1 line, I saw no sign of delaying or dropping frames. At least not more than I saw in solo play.

Sights and sounds of HAWX doing a good job of creating a world that is clearly within the universe of Tom Clancy games, while still invent an identity for High Altitude Warfare. The picture-in-picture cutscenes can safely use a lot of work, but the planes (the stars in the show) has some nice details, especially when you enter the cockpit view. The exterior of the aircraft has all the right angles and parts, but they seem a bit lifeless. There is no point, no match ar; no real signs of life on the outside of the aircraft.

Similarly, land in all these major metropolises across the country is pretty barren. They are accurately modeled a T and you will spot things that Tokyo Disney on earth, but it looks a bit too much as they took a satellite picture and wrapped it around objects.

Sound-wise HAWX performs slightly better. The music pumps through while not up to Hans Zimmer quality is still solid. Explosion effects also provide adequate thump if you are close enough to the impact. I would like to have if your jet had more of a roar when going max speed, but the clash between breaking the sound barrier would have to do.

Concluding remarks
Tom Clancy's HAWX is very close to being a great game, it's just missing a few of the intricate pieces that create a border experience. Since it is the mission design is lacking combat is unimaginative, and the multiplayer is shallow. Still, there are plenty that will be able to enjoy the soaring 40,000 feet above the ground, destroying dozens of enemy aircraft. All the while belting out lines at risk. It is not surprising is it?

© 2009-03-18, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Impressions from our early experiences in the newest World of Warcraft expansion.

By: Charles Onyett

It has been nearly two days since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard's second expansion to its popular MMO World of Warcraft, and if the login queues are any indication, there are quite a few players coming back into the fold. We were online at 9 PM Pacific, 12 waiting for the boat to Menethil Harbor to get us to the new continent of North Rendsburg, and it was quiet then. Fast forward 24 hours, how many would have picked up their copies and we're waiting for an hour-long queue of around a thousand others can simply log into the game.

The launch itself seemed pretty smooth. We have installed the expansion of the new content to go live after our Saturday Draenei Paladin on Menethil's docks and a few minutes after nine, a boat swung around to bring us to the howling Fjord, one of two starter zones. Then dumped us in a nearby swamp. So we restarted the game, let it sit a few minutes, logged back in and within moments we were sailing the middle of towering cliffs of the fjord to start the leveling process to the new cap at 80, bumped up from 70

Engaging in new quests and content in North Rendsburg was not the only choice when deciding what to do first. The other big draw of Wrath is a new hero class, the first new class implemented in the game since the original release back in November 2004. The first expansion, The Burning Crusade, which was released in 2007 added new races, the Draenei for the Alliance and blood elves for the Horde and the Alliance players the ability to scroll the Shaman class and the Horde to roll Paladins. The Death Knight, therefore, is a pretty big deal in World of Warcraft because it is the first opportunity for a four-year player base to test a really new skill sets.

Instead of having to start over from level 1, Blizzard made it so they will start at level 55 in a special Death Knight given zone. Provided that you have a sufficiently high level character you can dive in, create one of these focused mêlée fighters and plow through the first areas until it is time to jump through the Dark Portal and into Outland, where you have to chew through content from The Burning Crusade again before they reach North Rend.

Regarding the new continent yesterday, it is shaped as a triangle. At two corners are launching zones howling Fjord and Borean Tundra, and the top is the high-level content. The way it is designed splits incoming players between the two areas, presumably to prevent overcrowding and offer a few alternatives afterwards. It is definitely a different feel from the opening section of Outland for Burning Crusade, a huge area known as Hell Fire Peninsula, where all players let loose at once. Beyond 71, the players can continue grinding through quests in the starting zones or move to Dragonblight, a large central zone or the green forests of the Grizzly Hills, which are intended for players up to around level 75 Mid to upper 70s are intended to be used in two zones, Sholazar Basin, and Zul'Drak until the players finally wind up in Icecrown and Storm Peaks to tangle with the highest content.

As with any launch of a major on-line product that overpopulation is a problem. In some cases the density of the search target, be it creatures to kill or ground spawn items to pick up, was too thin to accommodate the flood of players, but it is something that will balance out when the first wave moves through and more people spread across the continent. We're playing in a PVP server, which means Horde and Alliance players are free to smash each other in the face. And because of this and the overabundance of players in a small room which has been quite a bit of conflict. You get the more honest situations where Horde and Alliance teams will see each other across an expanded grass, then charge each other to determine a victor, but you also get everything else that comes along with open PVP. Like for example, enemy groups patrol days spawning areas or just roaming the countryside trying to make it as difficult as possible for others to try to achieve their search goals. As annoying as it sometimes is the idea of the free movement of conflict in these types of server is something that we still enjoy.

Ultimately, however, question how Wrath of the Lich King's release affects PVP in World of Warcraft is something we still need to test in-dedicated PVP zone, Lake Wintergrasp, which sits between the Borean Tundra and Dragonblight. After all, we've just turned 71 and has not had many opportunities to explore all that much of the new world and what we've seen so far should be familiar to those who were around in The Burning Crusade.

By that we mean the iterative upgrades for all game systems, from new types of clams meat when you loot dropped murlocs to the profession. Now enchant would be to break down items found in North Rendsburg in new components, infinite cosmic dust and essences instead of the arcane dust and planar format essences from Outland, and use them for all kinds of new recipes. Skill-intensive point cap for all business has been bumped up to 450, which will ultimately allow for a wide range of extravagant armor, weapons, enchant, and more to be pumped out of the player base. Added in a pre-launch patch was a new profession, inscription, which, among other things, allows players to power up their class skills, and this is something the player base will certainly appreciate it when they finally encounter the game's toughest challenges waiting for them in the highest level zones.

But more important to many than leveling their professions are leveling their character, something Blizzard has done fairly easy to do through a wide range of tasks, some that feel old and some new. In the howling Fjord area are a few bombing run quests, something the players should recognize from The Burning Crusade, where the goal is to fly around on mounts or Zeppelin to drill targets far below the area of impact explosive projectiles. New types of tasks related to vehicles that are both, which should provide a nice momentary break from the standard kill, capture and collection quests that make up the majority of the content. With a vehicle search in howling fjord, where we had to jump into a flying machine and move around some issues with a struggling corner. Unfortunately, the quest was not in operating condition at the time, so we were not able to complete it.


As in previous quest content, Blizzard managed to pack in quite a bit amusing text in dialog boxes. Although many rockets through cities filled with NPCs snatching up available quests like gold in a valley of the thieves, it's really worth it to read and enjoy the quirky types of stories built in to help strengthen the overall fiction of the world. In some cases, lead to unique quests, such as one in which our character had a protective buff and accused of running through an underground chamber filled with hundreds of shambling Undead. The buff worked to blast away all attackers in gouttes steam and dust, until we were able to retrieve a sword at the back of the room. This search type, like the vehicles serve as a nice break for a person wants to do more than simply gather experience as quickly as possible.

Activating an element to enter a ghost realm was the hook for a second line of quests where we listened to the conversations of spirits to fill bits of narrative. While wandering around in this alternate ghost world, we at some point came across a spectral version of the Lich King himself, standing on a stairwell just outside the city, starting in the fjord. After spewing some pretty therein Remnants languages the way he crushed our Paladin in Midair, forcing us to respawn.

In an alternative to the bombing run quest type, we also encountered some content, where we had to use a harpoon gun to rain shot down on a village. With each shot that hit the intended target group draw would attack our position, and the task of blasting them out of the sky was then our task to perform. Upon completion of the task that we drove a flaming harpoon down from the bluff where the weapons were anchored to the town below so we can show in our quest for experience and cash.

Quest rewards can be a problem points to the hardcore gamers as if they are too strong some might be unhappy to give up a piece of coffin they spent hours and hours to snag the former contents of something more powerful manufactured in only a few minutes in the expansion. Our character does not have particularly strong tools, so we were swapping of items fairly soon after entering the area and was glad to see some new armor and weapons designs feature a little more detail than older items. Compare the appearance of the quest rewards from the original version of World of Warcraft (which Blizzard took the initiative to label 'classic') or even higher level quest rewards from zones like Shadow Moon Valley and Netherstorm, and the difference is striking. Of course, if anyone has any pieces of tiered armor sets, like so many do, they're going to look prettier than everyone else, but it is still refreshing to see a more realistic style chipped and gritty defense cuts than the more fantastical design some of the basic quest rewards in Outland.

As before, complete quests earn you reputation with various factions and the Wrath of the Lich King there are a few new ones, including the walrus-like Kalu'ak and Alliance Vanguard. The latter is interesting because it is an umbrella faction's position, which comprises several sub-fractions below instead of holding all items separately. With high enough reputation gains, it is possible to purchase special items through the arms suppliers. For example, a reputation of exalted rank is required before you can buy a fishing rod from a high Kalu'ak seller that bumps up your fishing with 30 and allows underwater breathing noise.

For anyone looking for points in a little better quality than what is offered for standard quests, each of the starting zones also with its own dungeon. In the howling Fjord is Utgarde Keep, located right near where the boat is making it easy to access. It houses some impressive graphical features, including furnaces blasting out a fire that fits into the overall attractive visual style Wrath of the Lich King. While ribbon skies of Outland's Nagrand was certainly very pretty, the Aurora Borealis effects howling Fjord combined with impressive mountains, rough terrain, and ice floes off against its sea borders make for some striking and probably more natural-looking scenes. It is not something that is going to blow you away or cause you to horse-collar tackle a nearby friend, but for those who have been in play for a while, it is a step up, and we look forward to more.


Proposed top of all this is the new performance system that, like the inscription was carried out in pre-expansion patch. These functions as those on Xbox Live or steam, where the performance of certain acts, such as finding all the sections in a zone that rewards you with a point total that feeds into an overall score. Sometimes tasks are straightforward, just killing time dungeon governors, and sometimes a little more curious, which falls 65 meters without dying, but all add another layer of filling on top of never ending quest for better loot, better statistics and better looking equipment.

If you have not yet taken the plunge into the North Fuck you probably ask whether it's worth it. Since we have not studied a lot about what Blizzard's available we can not really say, although the prospect of playing a whole new class is tempting. Wrath certainly seems to work well as a major content addition, the stacking test on all the features the player base, Blizzard fans in general have come to expect this time, it is difficult to argue against its level of polish. We have encountered some problems with questing here and there, but it is still a remarkably slick experience considering all the cogs and gears whirring beneath the surface. There is definitely an appeal, even if you make the same kinds of quests overlaid with a new tale skin from different enemy types in more attractive environments, to see new content and discovering new types of skills, equipment and possibilities for tweaking styles of play are available to your class at a higher level.

Included in this preview are some screenshots and videos from our experience around the howling Fjord. Come back next week for more on our experiences from North Rend, and a review at any time afterwards.

Oh, and just in case you're curious, you have 1523800 experience points to get from 70 to 71 and you get about 20k per quest turn significant in and around 900 per kill the enemies around your level. On level 72 you need 1,539,600. Although it may seem like a lot, it is not enough to stop those who feel urge to merge the new CAP as soon as possible, as a quick review of our server showed a pair of 76s running around the time of writing. So much to enjoy the content.

© 2008-11-14, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

Kill, loot, and repeat in Ascaron Entertainment's action-RPG sequel.

By: Charles Onyett

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is a loot grind, no doubt about it. In that sense, this is not a game, going to offer anything compelling in terms of narrative structure or quest. Its purpose is to offer a gigantic world for you to run around, whack stuff with weapons and explains grab the loot it drops, and repeat. Developer Ascaron Entertainment's successor certainly delivers on those elements, and offers up six interesting character classes to build and customize however you like. So if you're looking for a good old-fashioned loot grinding to play for yourself, or better yet, with others online, this will satisfy, although you can expect a number of technical problems both small and large.

If you have played Blizzard's Diablo, Iron History's Titan Quest, or Ascaron's Sacred 2004 original, for that matter, the setup here should not be surprising. You click the mouse buttons to attack enemies, hack away at their power bars, quaff drink as a crazy against hard-hitting boss characters, and greedily SCOOP up all the cash and loot the fallen spill on the battlefield. Sacred 2 is unable to distinguish himself in a few ways from other types of high-fantasy, hack-and-slash action RPG out there, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

First you have played world Ancaria, which is impressively massive. Even the places you drive through the wooded areas to Elven jungles, desert plains, and the dragon caves laced with rivers of magma, is not particularly novel, the world is nicely detailed. But mixed into this seemingly standard high-fantasy universe filled with orcs, kobolds, lizardmen, evil wizards and monstrous, fiery demon bosses, you get this strange magic drug, called T-Energy, which gives rise to some of the more interesting bits on fiction. You must go across a field of swaying trees and green grass and suddenly see a pipe jutting from the ground carrying the glowing blue energy, which is the source of conflicts in Ancaria.

In some cases affects only appearances, so instead of fighting a battle you fight Beetle Beetle with a giant glowing blue limbs, but also account for the dog-headed Cyborg Temple Guardian character class. This guy, perhaps modeled on a combination of the Egyptian god Anubis, and Donald Sutherland from Viruses, Ancaria runs around with a laser blast. Honestly, it seems a little strange, because all others are tossing around magic or smacking each other with medieval weapons, but here is the Temple Guardian with his laser gun, which for some reason, still feels the need to carry around old-tech bladed weapons.

His personality differs from the rest of the field as well. The main quest missions, he would call out sarcastically replies with a Moon Intendance from Aqua Teen Hunger Force vocal pace of quests given to him by NPCs, and he will randomly break out absurd phrases to work to break the fourth wall. For example, do not be surprised to hear him say things like, "Look, a number over your head," refers to the genre standard damage totals that appear as you whack at enemies, or "one step closer to planned up "after killing an enemy, ridicule or hum a song for himself, if you leave him idle for too long. It is certainly a refreshing change to play something that feels more traditional, like DRYADES or Seraphim.

Temple Guardian's quirky personality aside hectares each class will have some interesting ways to level up and customize how they work. There is the standard statistical strength level, where more strength bumps up the damage you do, and more dexterity affects damage and defense spokesman ratings. While you will be managing hit points, you do not have to deal with mana or spell points of any kind. Instead, you make decisions about adjusting settings to reduce the cool down timers of your abilities, known as combat arts. As you move through the world can you find Runes to learn new combat arts, and can power up individual combat arts and spend skill points needed to add other special effects. You can also sell combinations of Runes to vendors and buy different. Moreover, combat arts can be combined into combo template chaining attacks together, which proves to be useful as the game only allows you to slot a certain number of active control of the arts at a time.

So clearly there are many ways to diversify how your specific character performs in battle and the game offers a number of useful and diverse skills from the Shadow Warrior's ability to summon spectral soldiers Temple Guardian's devastating Archimedes jet. And on top of everything you have to choose God's powers, when first creating your character, which can have extremely powerful effect, but has much longer cool downs than any of your combat arts. All in all, it is an interesting system to keep people busy and to create an incentive to level the six classes in different ways to enjoy the different play styles.

When you take these classes in the large, open world, you find there are very few load times, but will also find little that is surprising about the overall structure. The main quest can be aptly described as rambling and unfocused. Although NPC text boxes along the main quest line is complete expression, they are not a particularly good one. Before long you'll be whipping through the city and the collection side quests with little regard to what is written in text logs, because a large number of them are "X went missing, please download Y Z types of things from enemies!" or a derivation thereof. That said, a few of the quests are more interesting, like the one to retrieve the lost instruments game licensed bands, the German metal group Blind Guardian, so they can play a show in Ancaria. You can also find strange underground chess boards, a mission to test chemicals at a pumpkin to win to have a cause to explode with Gore, and other types of Easter eggs that will reward the more adventurous gamers or those who are willing to to read the quest descriptions.

The narrative ennui you undoubtedly experience with the game does the absolute best played online, something Ascaron gives you plenty of opportunity to do through their own servers, over LAN, the player versus player or player versus environment-type servers, and with up to 16 players running around in the game world. When playing with others is not your thing and you're not someone who becomes obsessed with gathering more and better equipment, you probably will lose interest long before you see all the game has to offer in its light and dark variants of the main quest. It is certainly a game best played with friends so you can fight, trade and level up together, since without the social element of the game feels more like a complex slot machine than anything else. Of course that could describe all hack-and-slash, but some, like Diablo II, do a better job of covering their roots.

However, there is a wealth of subjects of different quality and different bonuses and the game models, and there are plenty of normal and elite enemies to kill. Finally you will also find class-specific mounts appropriately named "Isle of mounts, which allows each class to the dramatic effect up. Temple Guardian, for example, get a Mobiculum, a giant wheel machine that lets him attack like normal and maintain buffs, but also benefit from increased movement speed and health. It is a strong incentive to pull you along through the game, and when you get the mount, serving as one of the moments when you really feel like you've significantly powered up your character.

Then there is the game's interface, which sometimes works well and serves to make the game more enjoyable, but can also cause frustration. For positive, there is a nice auto-swap function, which at the touch of a button retrieves all around you and you can set parameters as to what kind of loot get snagged. You can actively chain wire gates and check points around the game world in order to allow for quick, easy trip, and in multiplayer you can chain to the party members' locations, so you do not waste too much time to meet. All the quest objectives are displayed on your main map, which you can activate by clicking on the moment at which an arrow will direct you to appropriate places and a handy Loss-activated mini-map will help you navigate the sometimes labyrinthine terrain .

Despite this level of convenience, you'll still run into problems. Some quests attach an NPC follower to your party, and there seems to be no way to dismiss them, unless you complete the appropriate quest. Of course you can always completely quests, but it would have been welcome to include a soluble opportunity. NPC AI is another issue which NPCs or subpoena tagging along, if this is the type to attack, driving all over the place and trigger any number of enemies to attack. And there is virtually nothing you can do about it. If you are in an area around your character's level you should be fine, but trying to solve a higher-level content with the kind of issues can be problematic. Call mounts also seem finicky. They will sometimes appear as soon as you press the corresponding button, but other times they will get stuck in the doorway and force you to save and exit out of your game then reload in order to solve the problem.

Bugs also have a clear presence in the game world. Overheads maps will occasionally become unreadable, forcing us to restart our game. Targeting enemies can be frustratingly vague, especially when bits of the environment, and friendly NPCs stand in your way. Companion AI members, for some reason, float several feet above the game world, sometimes they would disappear, sound effects would play with no corresponding action, and there was the biggest problem in the game down. While playing on two different platforms, we have experienced random crashes and from checking the official forums it seems we are not the only ones. It is nothing that ruins the game, but it is a disadvantage that could potentially affect you. Ascaron has been releasing patches so far, so it is probably these types of issues can be resolved quickly, but for now the game in a pretty buggy state.

The game also has some performance issues, which means it's just not all that optimized. On one machine, we used to play Far Cry 2 on a smooth clip on high graphic settings, Sacred 2 was chugging on medium settings, which is not exactly a good sign. Provided you have a fairly powerful rig, but you will be able to run it okay, and be treated to shimmering, moving water effects, nicely detailed character armor and enemy models, some interesting architecture, decent spell effects and animations Nice . World terrain is also very varied, with cliffs and ravines throughout. Although it makes for a more natural-looking world, but also creates navigation problems. Even with your mini-map, it's still possible to lose your way when tying to track distant targets, and wind up in situations that require extensive withdrawal.

Sound design is pretty solid overall. Otherworldly summer and crackles accompanying magic spells, weapons clink and go down when they make contact, and whistle when they miss. You get a nice array of ambient sounds like animal calls, the rippling water and wind through the grass, and music appropriate for each section of Ancaria. The comments submitted by enemies in battle, and the temple guardian sarcasm, helping to keep things entertaining. The quality of the voice acting can be quite poor at times.

Concluding remarks
As far as Diablo-style hack-and-slash action-RPG go Ascaron Entertainment's Sacred 2 is the best genre entry since Titan Quest. It makes a huge world to explore, tons of loot, lots of monster types, and plenty of opportunities to bring its six character classes. Although it has a quirky personality, it offers little in terms of its narrative, it is convincing, and the game suffers from many bugs and technical issues, including poor friendly AI, the game crashes and performance problems, hopefully something that will work over the coming months through patch updates. Nor is it a game to try something really novel, just a lot of tried-and-true quest, kill, loot and repeat mechanics. In other online, it is a much more pleasant experience, but as of right now the U.S. servers are more or less empty, something that will hopefully change in the days and months after release.

© 2008-11-12, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 -- Premier Edition

EA goes to war, tongue firmly in cheek.

By: Jason Ocampo

You may think you know the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, but you do not. In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3's alternate history, the allies to launch a surprise attack on Hawaii, a long-time stronghold of the Empire of Rising Sun, and it is only the top of the famous iceberg. Red Alert 3, tongue firmly in cheek and dream up a bizarre world where armored bears parachute from the sky, transformable Japanese mecha wreak havoc, and Mount Rushmore is actually a secret military installation where honest Abe main shoot deadly laser beams out of his eyes .


Red Alert has always been more "colorful" of the Command & Conquer franchise. Its precondition of time travel Messing up space-time continuum allows it to come up with some silly scenarios that are transferred by natural-chewing performances of the actors in live-action video sequences. So with the Soviet Union are facing defeat at the hands of the Allies, a trio of Russia's finest (played by Peter Stormare, Andrew Divoff, and Tim Curry) travel back in time to whack Einstein. This is a tip of the hat to the original Red Alert, where Einstein traveled back in time to whack Hitler. Job done, the Soviet Union to return home only to discover that, like Eckel stomping on a butterfly in A Sound of Thunder, Messing with time have unforeseen consequences.



What are three campaigns, which lets you play from the perspective of the Allies, the Soviet Union, and the new empire in Rising Sun, basically a Japan that is led by Sulu from Star Trek and armed to the teeth with almost every notable Japanese Coming into a unit. There are above diverted mecha as well as non-diverted samurai robots, high-tech ninja, suit-clad engineers, and, yes, even a skirt-bearer school girl armed with Akira-like mental strength. Not to worry, because the Allies and the Soviet Union can play dumb, too, by helicopter to shrink opponents to pint size, smoking-dressed spies, armored Zeppelin, and leggy female command soldiers.

The big new addition in Red Alert 3 is that the entire single-player game has been designed with co-op in mind. You can either play with another human or computer, but basically you each control your own base and forces. If you're playing with a man who has built-in voice chat and an ability to drop markers on the map to get their attention. If playing with a computer, you can issue orders to them to seize a place or find a specific target. It is a good dynamic, because it can make what is traditionally the shorter length, you actually have double the forces, as you normally would in a traditional RTS. Quite often, I leave my computer partner tackle half of the map while I tackled the other.



There is also a naval base element in Red Alert 3, as many cards incorporate bodies of water. You can build submarines, dolphins, carriers and warships, although the line between the naval and land warfare is not exactly cut and dry due to the amphibious nature of many units. Vessels can sprout legs or wear runways and scroll up to dry land and some land units can flow. It adds an extra dimension that was missing in previous C & C game, and it also makes it possible for developers to show the cool water tech.

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Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? Make the Grade!

Jeff Foxworthy dispenses a special kind of justice.

By: Ryan Clements

Despite not being a huge trivia nut, I can recognize the potential for trivia / quiz game, and why they would be so addictive that info junkies. Unfortunately, you're smarter than a 5th Class? Making the Grade is not only a bad trivia games, but it's just not well put together in any way. There is really nothing to say when I was reviewing my notes before writing this article and found that all my comments were included in the "negative" section and "positive" section was empty.

If you are unfamiliar with Are you smarter than a 5th Class? TV shows, Jeff Foxworthy hosts and guides the participant through a series of grade school about money. A "class" of school children is on standby and get one at a time to help the participant answer questions, which are categorized by topic. During the game, the participant can fall back on a couple of "cheating" options, including peeking at his or her 5th Class answer, copy it directly (which automatically locks him or her in that match) or participant can only be saved once by the fifth grade, if the participant answers wrong, but his temporary partner is entitled.

This is essentially the structure Make the Grade, but there are a couple of extra multiplayer elements thrown into the mix as well. For the most part, this is a very boring and poorly done stake. First and foremost is the only reward you get to play, do it much thought to earn money. Besides hoping for inclusion in the Honor Roll, I see no incentive to play this game beyond the satisfaction you would receive for answering questions correctly. Each main Home Room game plays out as a condensed version of the TV shows and in the end you either walk away with nothing or a fistful of imaginary cash.

The most obvious problem with Make the Grade is the gruesome pictures that are terrible Buggy, at best. Character animation and facial expressions are ridiculous and when schoolchildren run out at the time, I could not help but imagine them as zombies - the sprinting variety of Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake. Other cases include a hysterical 5th Class is not correct to go up to the podium and teleporting in place at the last minute as the camera initially showed an empty spot. Or when one of the kids ran up to my taking part to give him a high five, and he just stood there, ignoring her. I laughed, even though I cried a little inside of the girl.

More problematic is the extremely repetitive gameplay. Last trivia games like Buzz! and Scene It? not only offer a smooth presentation, but also spice up the types and keep things exciting throughout. It is not the case with Make the Grade. And in the course of an hour or two with the game, I already started to see some questions repetitions, which is embarrassing.

And while I am well aware that the game is to ask grade school problems, some of the questions are stupid and have really no need to be kept in the game, including the classic true or false pearls from the PS2 version: an adult is bigger than a newborn baby. Yikes.

If all this were not enough to dissuade you from playing, do so, the clips are identical in almost every game, which means you'll hear Foxworthy and participant spout the same three or four lines constantly. It is really an exercise in annoyance.

Multiplayer does little to brighten the experience. You can play a normal Bout of Home Room game and play hotseat style, or you can go into a game Flash Cards or Spelling Bee, which started two players against each other in timed matches. It is a little more exciting than the single-player option, because a competitive element has been introduced into the equation, but I would never have wanted to play it again. And it is in the multiplayer department, the PC version suffers most, given the lack of online games. As I have said countless times before, no one has a multiplayer PC games on the same PC, so it is unlikely that you ever go up against a comrade here.

Closing remarks
The only redeeming quality I could point out the Make the Grade is that it at least, works properly, and do not seem to go down. That is about it. I'm not even sure I could recommend this game for hardcore fans of the television show, but I will admit to get a bunch of people together to laugh at the game is fun enough. Watching the fifth grade girl is denied a high-five was definitely the highlight of my time with Make the Grade. Hopefully that tells you everything you need to know.

© 2008-11-04, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved

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Dead Space

Dead Space offers the best mix of action, customization and plot since Resident Evil 4.

By: Gabe Graziani

Drawing heavily on a wide range of science fiction and horror themes, Dead Space may first seem a bit formulaic, but rest assured that by the end of this roughly 15-hour saga of terror, you will be left a blubbering mess huddling with your Controller slack in your shaking hands. But surely, there must be exaggeration ...

It is no exaggeration.

Dead Space is a performance that rivals great like Half-Life 2 and BioShock. His nuanced and labyrinthine plot, fully realized characters and destructive attention to the minute graphical detail is irreproachable. There are a few small quibbles you could dig up (and will), but these are not in March, what is one of the better-realized gaming experiences to date.

Call Me Isaac

Chief among Dead Space's success is the quiet and humble heroes that you control. Isaac similar to Half-Life's Gordon Freeman in his curious ability to elicit empathic responses despite the fact that he never uttering a word (The Legend of Zelda's Link is another with so calm cool). Isaac is not totally without means to express themselves, and his screams of pain and sorrow, when attacked by a twist of alien necromorphs or wheezing Gaspe after running out of oxygen serve to emphasize the terror and despair you share with him about his damned travel.



There are hundreds of tiny examples like these that make you aware of Isaac's character during the game, and what is amazing about Dead Space is how remarkably relatable Isaac is. This relatability pulls you to worry about him, worry about him, necessitating what it takes to keep him safe and see him through his goals and objectives. And it is only a character in the game, albeit the most important.

There are a handful of other major players in Dead Space, and each adeptly plays his or her role as sci-fi/horror archetypes. Hammond's fierce military persona puts his mission at the highest priority, while maintaining the welfare of those serving under him in a close second. Isaac's love interest Nicole practical haunts the poor guy throughout his trials and misadventures. Daniels plays the essential support geek, chasing Isaac through the ship's digital systems and free up the doors to open roads ahead. These characters may begin as typical troops to be used as a sci-fi sidekick, but Dead Space takes them in directions that you probably will not expect, and the richness they add to the plot makes this one of the best-scripted game in recent times.

No U-turn

Video games are not just about big stories (although it has a good plot certainly helps). Fortunately, Dead Space shines sweetly in both control and user interface. Isaac May lumber clumsily together on the game's outset, belabored by cumbersome technology gear, but it underlines his character as a non-action hero. Of course, acquiring new equipment upgrades also increase the mobility, so you end up with serious responsiveness. You just have to work for it.



Isaac's hosting the cobbled-together weapons and abilities provides more than enough ways to handle his highly varying circumstances. What is surprising is that Dead Space does not insist that you kill everything, if you prefer to simply strike out for your goals ... Of course, you would be to deprive you of the fun of eviscerating some really horrible monstrosities, but it is nice to know that you can skate past enemies when you really want.


Increase Isaac's treasure trove of energy-projecting blasts, most of which focus on the delivery of le Sizzling plasma, is his ancillary talents: his stasis / sludge field and his telekinetic kinesis module. The stasis / sludge module temporarily freezes objects and enemies, slowing them down briefly, so you can sneak by or taken seriously injuring them. Stasis / sludge is mandatory for violence against some enemies, and focusing on design philosophy rooted in variation.



Meanwhile, the kinesis module can be used in a surprising variety of ways, and although they may not all be visible from the start, you will come to rely on it heavily at the end. Or maybe you will not, because Dead Space gives you the freedom to decide on how to approach each meeting. If you run out of ammunition, but the kinesis module is a life Saver, thanks to its ability to hurl objects (especially claws removed to murder foreigners) at lethal speed.

Although Dead Space's core fighting mechanic trumpets "strategic split" as its primary method, you do not necessarily have to be a precise surgeon. While blowing off strangers limbs definitely pay big dividends in the form of ammunition conservation (enemies go faster when you take them off piece by piece), simply blasting away at the middle mass get the job done so well. Still, if you really want to see what Dead Space does best, will you take the time to line up your images correctly and vivisect your enemies. The Gore factor is incredibly cruel and entertaining.



If you really love to see things splashes, Isaac's melee attacks are satisfyingly brutal. In no way is the fastest method for dispatching aliens Stomp melee and give the reader a sense of real mass Isaac grunts and swings his arms in an exaggerated arch, which detects a small additional follow-up, because he simply is not strong enough to stop his swing when he gets going. One of our favorite ways to preserve valuable ammunition is to take the legs of a bipedal alien, and then run up and STOMP it ... fewer wasted rounds with a little extra Gore? Great.

User-friendly lasers

We were a little frustrated that the console versions of Dead Space does not offer a 180-degree Insta-round (as in Resident Evil 4). On the PC, there is less of a problem when you can zip around rather quickly with the mouse, assuming you are not already zoomed to an end. And of course you can always use the handy sprint button to put some distance between you and your enemies.



It may seem like a small thing, but Dead Space menu system and user interface is fantastic. Using a simulated holographic display, emanating from Isaac's breastplate, book, video logs and a readable 3D cards all seem to hover just in front of Isaac, luminescent hanging in the air. It is oddly satisfying to pan the camera around and look at the inverted images of Hammond or Daniels, as they chatter on about where you have to go and what to do when you get there. When you do it (and you almost certainly will at some point), be sure to notice how the images are placed beside the text box in the text logs floating just above the frame, sticking a little from the rest of the message .. . It is that kind of attention to detail, drawing you deeper into the drama, because the science behind it seems to be working overtime.


Locator is especially useful, and for those of us who can not be bothered to keep a laundry list of tasks in our brains for more than half a second, it is essential. A laser-guided breadcrumb trail of forms, the locator will plot the quickest route to your next objective with the push of a button, tracing a beam of coherent light and refocusing the camera to follow where it goes. It is very precise and never fail to point you in the right direction (even when your goal is not entirely clear). It makes us wonder how we ever got along without this kind of mechanic before.

Inventory Management

You can cruise through the Dead Space without ever upgrading a single weapon, but the rich equipment advancement system is really a pleasure to use, so you really only be cheating yourself. While you start slowly, take only a few of the Power Nodes that serve as currency upgrade, add more damage and more ammunition capacity to Isaac's arsenal can be addictive. If you want to splurge, you can even purchase additional music from vendors scattered around the Ishimura. For those of us that like a little RPG in our action games, it is a dangerously attractive feature, which enables Dead Space apart from your average run-n-Gunner.



Even if you do not have to increase weapons performance, auto sales make it easy to increase Isaac's space suit. Simply fork over some credits and the seller will slap additional reinforcement of your arms, raise Isaac appearance and provide more inventory slots and greater toughness. Dead Space manages to smoothly integrate these largely optional features without taking the focus off of its oppressive atmosphere of terror.

Integrating some nice variety in a game while preserving its decidedly action-oriented dynamics, dead space is appealing across a wide range of gameplay styles. Wrap an exciting plot, which is a veritable Warren for spinning together themes about this and you've got a game that is basically a guaranteed experience. Dead Space is a solid achievement of several of our favorite gameplay mechanics in a way that we have only seen in the blockbuster like BioShock, Half-Life and Resident Evil 4th Its quality is undeniable, and we have no reservations about recommending its potent mix of panic-inducing plot line, furious action and profound adaptation.

© 2008-11-03, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved

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James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace

Worthy of Double-O status?

By: Nate Ahearn

Put a nice guy in a hot sports car, throw in a fantastic tax for him to boink and then keep a flock of would-be henchman to stand in between our whole and his goals, and you have the recipe for nearly every Bond film in history. With many of the newer films have made a game of the same name and Quantum of Solace is no different. It takes Call of Duty 4 engine and hidden it around the James Bond universe with a few new trimmings to try to keep the action feeling as fresh as possible.

It's just a bummer that virtually everything that was added in an attempt to keep the game feeling fresh is not done all that well. They are not bad additions, they just do not sign or work especially well with the rest of the game, and therefore comes out feeling very forced and artificial.



As you'd expect, Quantum of Solace is played almost exclusively from a first-person perspective. The major deviation from the COD4 gameplay formula is actually one of the few moments when you will be removed from Daniel Craig's point of view. Treyarch, reckon that they had a star that most want to look at, decided to implement a cover system in standard first-person shooter gameplay of QoS. It works similarly to what we've seen from the likes of Gears of War and others.

Basically, any surface can be by pressing E and you can even strike out in a piece of cover by holding the key. The cover system is better than some (Kane & Lynch), but not as functional as others. There were times when I felt I should be able to cower behind something in front of me and I could not. Only to find out that I was perfectly adapted, and it was the cover system screwing me up. It was not a huge nuisance, but the few deaths that I was able to chalk up to the defective cover was a nuisance.



Another problem with the cover system is that the levels are built around the mechanic. This means that the free-flowing way of dispatching enemies from different angles, as was available in COD4 is no longer available. Instead, there are too many situations referred to the standard stop and pop gameplay. It's fine when things are bright and flashy with lots of blood and guts, but when you are fighting a bunch of henchmen things can feel a bit tired.

Fortunately, there are moments when things are not so simple. When the game trying it does do a good job of delivering intensity and flare but these moments are spaced too far apart. Also try to keep the action fresh is the levels of stay varied throughout. They are all a bit predictable - there is the necessary faster trains and museum levels - but at least you are not running down the hallway again and again.



You can tell that the developers really wanted to make this game different from COD4, but it does not stop the roots of Infinity Ward's blockbuster from the blue sky in the package. Each second mechanic just falls a bit short. There is a balancing act, where players have to keep a wavering dot in the middle of the screen, a hacking mini-game where you must match the directional keystrokes in a kind of Simon Says variant, and then there are the QuickTime melee events, which actually fare a little better on the PC. Instead of a simple press the button you must adjust your mouse reticule with a spot on the screen. None of them are bad, but the mechanics just not convincing.

Aesthetic game is pleasant to the eye, but can also see a plain bad at times. General appearance of the game, from Daniel Craig's Bond character that the environments are well detailed and fits perfectly with Bond descent. When QoS stumbles is in the enemy designs and a few of the frills that COD4 delivered so well. Each enemy that you see in the game are the same. Not only do they look the same, but they act the same. They pull off the same death animation, the same towels and slide to come in and cover the same intelligence (as lacking at times) throughout the game. At first it is exciting to see guys jumping over desks and sliding behind a box, but when they do it for 213 time, and it looks identical to the rest of the game, it becomes a little grating.



Explosions do not look good on the PC, but at least they are better than what's available on consoles. Yes, there are explosive canisters everywhere, but this time they did not look quite so cruel to burst. Even when they do not make sense, as on the inside of a museum or on a construction site, there will be a bevy of explosive possibilities. They have a nice, unrealistic Sheen so it's very obvious what can be destroyed, and what can not. Not just the most organic of playing experience, when you have a hydrogen can gleaming at you.

The most disappointing thing was not enemies, it did not cover the system, and it was not the incredible amount of explosive articles about the environment instead it was the sheer length of the game. I enjoyed most of my time with missions - stumbling out of the car to electrify your heart back to life is cool and gun play is funny enough - but it's all just too damn short. You can turn Quantum of Solace in about five hours, maybe four. And it is structured in a way that takes you through most of the events in Casino Royale, and then only affects the plot of Quantum of Solace. It feels like they intended to make this a Casino Royale game, but do not make the first movie so decided to tack on a couple of QoS places and battles a new name on the box.



The multiplayer offering is standard with plenty of Bond-theme modes. There is one in which everyone plays by its members with a Bond on the map, there is one, where two teams each have a VIP Bond, who must stay alive and there is the Golden Gun mode. There are other, perhaps more standard multiplayer varieties, but they are the ones who put you into the Bond universe, there are stars in the show. Multiplayer performed well and was fun enough during my time with it. There was some noticeable lag at times, and the fact that there is no perks or reward system beyond the standard cash-based equipment and weapon unlocks are disappointing. It was good to see the PC version perform as well as it did through Games for Windows Live.

Closing remarks
Quantum of Solace is not the game that it should have been. It is not bad in any way, but what brings them out of the pits of despair is the foundation for a much better game, as we all know and love. The action is less convincing and the world, which is built around Bond does not do much to improve the fun factor. All the additions do little to push the game in front of other first-person shooter and instead take you out of the world to be Bond.

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