History has given mankind many great inventors. Alexander Graham Bell revolutionized communication when he invented the telephone. The Wright Brothers paved the way for modern travel with the advent of the airplane. You too will become an engineer with Crazy Machines 2, the new 2D physics puzzler from publisher Viva Media. Unfortunately, much like the game itself, your experiments will often leave you with mixed results.
Crazy Machines 2's gameplay is inspired by Rube Goldberg, an inventor who was fascinated with building complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect ways. The gameplay is nothing new and shares a lot in common with the older Incredible Machine games. Basically, if you've seen the original Back to the Future movie, you might remember the opening scene displaying a wacky and long-winded contraption that, after going through multiple complicated phases, opens up a can of dog food and spills it onto the floor. In Crazy Machines 2, you will be constructing similar devices that will force you to do everything from shooting crossbows at mannequins to frying fish by tuning musical instruments.
Each level starts off by letting you know what to do and gives you items to accomplish your objective. There's usually multiple ways to solve each puzzle. The initial levels are easy, and basically introduce you to the domino effect. As you progress through the game, more items will be added to your inventory, and the puzzles get much more long-winded and challenging. What adds a layer of difficulty to the game is that a lot of the time you will have to manipulate the objects before placing them onto the field. You will have to rotate, mirror, or combine items together in order to accomplish your various tasks. Certain objects will rely on other items to work, i.e. a gas boiler might require connecting pipes to function, a light bulb might need to attach itself to an electrical outlet, and so forth.
Considering Crazy Machines 2 has around 200 items to toy around with, there's a lot to manage. The game doesn't make itself any easier, because much like Goldberg contraptions, some of the puzzles are just too convoluted for their own good. It doesn't help that the puzzle instructions are often poorly worded. The directions manage to say a lot and very little at the same time. Most of the dialogue is worthless back-story that you won't care about, and you'll often be left scratching your head trying to figure out what to do.
Because some of the levels are so confusing, the game gives you the option to use three different kinds of hints. Each level usually gives you two text clues, which generally points you in the right direction. The next cheat allows you to spy on certain sections of the screen, depending on where you click. Finally there's a reveal cheat, otherwise known as the "I give up" button, which allows you to move on to the next stage. You will often be tempted to use these cheats, but using them will lower your laboratory score. However, there are good puzzles in this game, and when you do resist the urge to cheat and beat the level on your own terms, you will feel like a genius.
Even though the gameplay mechanics can get pretty advanced, the presentation is primitive from a design perspective. For whatever reason, the menu takes place in a three dimensionally rendered log cabin; I guess that's where most scientific experiments are conducted? As you boot up the game, you will be introduced to a cartoon inspired Albert Einstein. He will constantly try to have a one-sided conversation with you, but all of his jargon ends up being random and nonsensical. There were some cute ideas with the presentation, but in the end, everything comes off as unpolished and not very cohesive.
The game's graphics are also indicative of good intentions coming up short. Apparently, developer Novitas never heard of the "less is more" approach to design. The game's levels will often feel cluttered and unrefined, which can make things more difficult when you're trying to focus on certain sections. To offset this, the game allows you to zoom in on segments of the levels. However, when you zoom in close, you will notice bad looking textures and horrible aliasing issues. Even with 16x anti-aliasing turned on, the game was extremely jaggy. As you progress through the game you will be treated with different backgrounds. Unfortunately, while the change of scenery was meant to be a good thing, some of 2D backgrounds can be a little distracting. The game would have looked nicer with a cleaner and more pristine aesthetic. As it stands right now, the game looks dated and cheap.
While the game's audio does fair better, it really isn't anything to write about, but since I'm getting paid to write about the game, here it goes: some of the music you hear out of Crazy Machines 2's sounds like something you'd hear out of a theme park. One track sounds a lot like the music featured in Disney's "The Country Bears". There are also cultural tunes for when you "visit" different countries like Russia, China, and Egypt. The way the game uses sound effects are pretty cool. When you zoom in on objects that emit sound, the closer you get to the item, the louder it will become. It's a nice attention to detail that warrants brownie points.
However attention to detail wasn't used when it came to glitches. It's ironic that Crazy Machines 2 is about fixing bugs, because there are some obvious bugs in this game. The retail build would constantly lock up on me. I even tried it on multiple computers. Another problem with Crazy Machines 2 is that it does not allow you to use alt+tab to minimize the game, which is more of an annoyance. While this next gripe isn't actually a glitch, limiting players to only 15 spy cheats and five reveals is a sloppy design choice. Basically if you're stuck and run out of hints, you're going to have to start the game all over again.
While starting the game all over again does add play time, if you like the game, it already has plenty of lasting appeal. Crazy Machines 2's career mode features roughly 150 levels to sink your teeth into and you can also download more maps online. The standard levels will keep you busy because each offers optional challenging side missions. The deal is sweetened with achievements, and a solid foundation for community created content. You can download other people's levels and rate them, or build and share your own. The level builder is surprisingly easy to use. You can create your own experiments in a matter of minutes, but the most fiendish levels will take some time to make.
Closing Comments If you were one of those weird kids who enjoyed solving geometry or physics puzzles in school then you might dig this game. It's nothing new, but the core gameplay mechanics are solid. However, like the complicated and convoluted contraptions contained in this game, Crazy Machines 2 is at times poorly constructed. Developer Novitas meant well, but there are some odd design choices and flaws that keep me from recommending this game. If you're a player that is patient and likes thinking outside the box, you might be able to look over some of the game's shortcomings, and enjoy it for what it tries to be.
As tired as some of us may be of the tedious and unbalanced political process, particularly during this election year, there are too few games that focus on its wonderful ins and outs. So when a game comes out that gives players a chance to run their own version of the 2008 US presidential campaign, we definitely sit up and take notice. And when that game just happens to come from one of our favorite strategy game developers, well, that's even more cause to celebrate.
While Stardock's The Political Machine 2008 is an enjoyable, and intentionally topical, game, the publisher has taken tremendous pains to point out that it is not a "simulation." The more cynical types among you may take this as a simple marketing maneuver to ensure that the game appeals to a wider base but basically all this distinction means is that the game tries to recreate the political landscape of America without getting too bogged down in primaries and vote count controversies. Along the way you'll have the chance to run against folks from the current crop of candidates along with some notables from our political past. Unfortunately, the current political setting means the overall experience is far too predictable to have much lasting appeal. Even though the twenty-dollar price tag is appealing, only the most committed armchair politicians will find much replayability here.
We don't necessarily think that the game is biased one way or the other (at least, not any more than the country itself is), but it definitely reflects the variety of opinions and political polarization that make up American politics. The game is real enough that, assuming you know something about current events, you can jump in right away and have an idea whether or not your support of gay marriage will go over better in California or West Virginia, and whether or not to attack your opponent on job outsourcing on Michigan radio.
There's less of a sense of familiarity with the game's other campaigns. Our favorite focuses on the presidential election of 1860, and all the territories and issues are adjusted accordingly. It does require a little more research on the part of the player. We, for example, weren't sure whether or not Southern Democrats were supposed to support tariffs. Things are a little less obvious in the ersatz European Union campaign and sometimes incomprehensible (though undeniably hilarious) in the Drengin Empire campaign. Players of Stardock's Gal Civ 2 will definitely appreciate some of the in-jokes here.
No matter which election you play, your candidate starts off in their home state 41 weeks before the election. You can choose to play longer and shorter games but they're not as enjoyable. Each week you can spend your stamina points building infrastructure, giving speeches, and placing ads. Infrastructure can help you develop awareness in key states and gives you the resources to court national endorsements and hire political operatives. Speeches and ads give you the chance to promote your platform to the voters of a particular state or to the nation in general. Of course, a lot of these actions cost money, so you'll also need to save some stamina points for some good old fashioned fund-raising.
The voters of each state have issues that they care about and you'll want to state your position on those issues while keeping in mind whether or not your thoughts on that issue will make voters of either party (or the independents) more likely to support your campaign. You can pay cash to run national TV ads that blanket the whole country with your message, but you'll need to be aware that your views on immigration might be taken very differently in Florida than they are in Minnesota. Thankfully, the game presents you with basic poll numbers that show how the voters of each party feel about each issue, both at the state and the national levels.
When we saw that you could make your own candidates, we instantly set about making ersatz versions of ourselves to launch into the political arena, certain that our moderate and sometimes complicated views could sway the American voters. But in designing candidates, you're limited to a mere hundred points to determine your stance on issues from abortion to the withdrawal from Iraq. A hundred points sounds like a lot, but since each issue is rated on a scale of 100 points either for or against, you can really only take a moderate stand on four or five issues. Goodbye, school voucher program!
We were a little disappointed by this limitation until we realized that you can actually adjust your position on all of these issues during the campaign. You can get a hefty boost towards traditional values, big government, or drilling in ANWR just by courting the endorsement of various religious, business or environmental groups. You can also shift your platform based on the ads that you run and on the answers you give during your TV appearances. In the end, we were actually happier that you couldn't just spec the platform you wanted by spending points, but actually had to earn it through your actions during the campaign. We've even found ourselves crossing over to court voters of the other party whenever we saw that our opponent wasn't responding to a clear preference among voters.
The types of issues you talk about in your TV appearances and political ads can even catapult lesser known issues into the national arena. While everyone's going to be talking about the economy, or health care or the war on terror, you can jump in and start hammering away at an issue your opponent is weak on, like social security reform or gun control. This tactic can be risky though because while you're busy building up marginal issues, your opponent is gaining more and more momentum on the issues that already speak to a wide range of voters.
There are a number of map filters to help you plan out your conquest of the electorate. You can quickly see which states are important by checking the number of electoral votes they have and how wealthy they are overall. A quick check of the liberal vs. conservative voter numbers can also tell you which states are likely to vote for or against you at the beginning. By far the most useful of the map filters is the one that shows polling data. This is a real-time update of the way a state is likely to vote. This can change from red to blue during the course of a turn, even hanging on pink (or possibly gray) when the voters are just too confused to commit.
Players looking for a bit of a challenge will be happy to see that the AI has been improved since the 2004 edition. Your opponents know seem more inclined to go for the bigger states and to use their operatives in response to your own actions. You'll still get the occasional inexplicable fund-raising trip to Wyoming, but the AI plays a much smarter game this time around, particularly in the latter stages of the campaign.
The presentation has been improved a bit as well. Though it won't win any graphics awards, the new 3D engine gives the game a slick, updated feel that puts it a step above most games in this price range. And whether it was intentional or not, the bobble head figures offer a great commentary on politicians in general. The music and sound effects are equally polished, which enhances the experience.
The real problem with the game is the same problem that we have with politics in general. In short, it basically seems to be the same game over and over again no matter how many times you play. The candidates start out with lots of hope and enthusiasm, building up their infrastructure piece by piece, raising cash and giving speeches. Once they get a solid platform built up, they keep shouting the messages that they think will appeal to the largest number of voters, and in the end the only issue that really matters is whether or not the Republicans were able to take California and New York away from the Democrats.
Okay, so there is a bit more subtlety and variety to be found. Sometimes the Republican candidate picks Giuliani as a running mate. Sometimes the Democrats can get lucky and find a million dollar donor and a director who's willing to shoot commercials for half price. Sometimes Texas is undecided right up until the night of the election. But these variations are really just small shifts in the current of this game.
There are a few other small problems here and there. The biggest annoyance is the inability to distinguish between all the ads and political operatives that are bunched together in the states. It's not as a big a deal in places like Texas or California, but when you've got ten or twelve folks in New York sharing space with half a dozen print and TV ads, it can be difficult to know just what's going on. The developers should also include a handy summary screen so you can see all your ads in one place, particularly those running at a national level. We've occasionally found ourselves paying to run duplicate ads just because we weren't sure if we had one running already.
We were also a little disappointed that there's no real use for political clout late in the game. It's an absolutely essential resource during the early part of the campaign in order to pick up those lucrative national endorsements. But once you and your opponent have divided up the handful of eligible organizations, your clout just keeps building and building for no real purpose. It would be nice if there were someway to leverage that once the endorsements are all claimed.
Closing Comments For twenty bucks, The Political Machine 2008 isn't necessarily a bad deal, but it's a one-note affair that inhabits that misty gray region between comfortable familiarity and dull predictability. As a light-hearted treatment of American politics in 2008, The Political Machine definitely succeeds and we've had a bit of fun roleplaying our own values on the road to the White House. There's no doubt that it's an enjoyable experience, but the main campaign just has you playing out the same battle over and over again. The other campaigns are interesting and introduce some genuinely funny and thought provoking issues but they're not quite as comprehensible or recognizable as the 2008 US campaign.
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition was released in 2007 for Xbox 360 and PC and then later ported to PS3. The release fest continues with Colonies Edition, a greatest hits package for PC and Xbox 360 that adds new content and comes with a wallet friendly suggested retail price tag of $29.99 in the US. The core game remains the same, so we'll focus this review on the new modes, maps and other assorted bonuses. If you missed the original, catch up by reading our past reviews for Xbox 360 here. If you're a fan of the Akrid-mashing fest that the frozen action game delivered, you might be wondering if this new release brings enough to the party to make it worth another look. The answer is yes…and no.
I'll start with the good news. Colonies Edition contains the full campaign mode and online features that the original did along with a whole lot more. The visuals look the same to my eyes, which is still quite impressive all these months later even if it still is plagued by screen tearing. If you haven't played Lost Planet and are considering it, this is the definitive release. It doesn't end with the campaign either thanks to new modes and more. You can even try the game from the first person, if you like (I don't).
In addition to the original campaign, Capcom has added three new single-player modes by repurposing the base content. There's a Score Attack game which allows you to play through single stages and string together high combos in hopes of reaching the tops of the leaderboards. This mode is a great addition and adds to the underlying thermal energy gameplay mechanic that keeps pushing you forward into more action. Along with shooting enemies, blasting the destructible environment chains your combo, encouraging you to lay into everything with your arsenal.
There's also a Trial Battle mode that pits you against one massive boss after another. It's pretty self explanatory and offers a decent distraction. The last new single player mode is called Off Limit. This mode is essentially Lost Planet on speed. It's faster, awards you unlimited ammo and offers more powerful weapons. It's a kick in the pants, but if you're like me and have played Lost Planet a lot in the past, by the time you get to it you'll have had enough of playing this game and won't really care to run through the stages again.
There's more to like in the online game as well. In addition to new character models, weapons, and maps, there are a number of new modes. The crown jewel of these is Akrid Hunter. Here a few players take up control of the massive bugs themselves to take on the remaining humans. The Akrid are a bit overpowered, but it's still a great deal of fun. The other modes are takes on classic multiplayer battles with Lost Planet twists; Akrid eggs instead of flags or VS mechs as the players that must be attacked and defended. With new weapons, even the old modes feel different. My personal favorite of the 10 new weapons (split between VS and human varieties) is the Rocket Pod that launches four rockets simultaneously to carpet an area.
The big problem with Colonies Edition is that it is completely distinct from the original release last year. That means that if you played Lost Planet: Extreme Condition already, none of your saves will work here. Your online rankings won't be carried over either. This is a pretty big bummer for those that invested a lot of time in the original, but it gets worse. The online game is separate too, so those that pick up Colonies Edition can't play online against those who own the original Lost Planet. Rather than releasing Colonies Edition to reinvigorate the online community, Capcom has split it.
The upside to this is that all of the achievements are new, so you can earn an extra 1000 with Colonies Edition, and PC and Xbox 360 players can now face off online in a cross-platform match-up. That's a small consolation to the hundreds of thousands of people that bought Lost Planet in 2007 who are now being told to buy the game again. So much of this could have been made available as downloadable add-ons that the move to make it retail only and totally distinct from the original release feels a bit money grubby for my taste. And there's the fact that this move will cause the game to not have as robust of an online community as it could have. While there are enough people online to find a game now, the number of people playing at any given time isn't very big. Who knows how long you'll be able to easily find a game to play?
These issues feel magnified in light of what is considered the norm on the PC. If you don't have a Gold Windows Live account, which requires a subscription fee, you can't play in the cross platform matches. That essentially means that you can't play online as we only found one poor soul looking to play online with PCs only. If you don't want to pay for a Live account, don't buy this game. Lost Planet: Colonies Edition is crippled without it. But hey, at least the game runs online which is more than you could say about Lost Planet when it was first released on PC.
Closing Comments If you fell in love with Lost Planet in its previous iteration, you'll find a lot to like here. If you haven't given it a try, this is the version to pick up and have a go with. The new single player modes are fun, but they are just a repackaging of old content. If you felt full after Lost Planet, this release won't do anything for you. With new weapons, modes and maps, the online game is more substantial and intriguing than ever. Just remember that while you can now play cross platform between PC and 360, none of Colonies Edition is compatible with the previous release and so you're dealing with a significantly smaller potential online community and all of your old saves won't work. On the PC, a Gold Windows Live account is essentially necessary to play online. The PC only community just isn't there.
Traveller's Tales, best know for its work on the LEGO Star Wars games, has put together some of the best in recent years with its winning formula for licensed games. Unfortunately, it doesn't follow its own playbook to the finish line with The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. That doesn't mean the game is a total flop -- the basic foundation is solid -- but this game doesn't offer the excitement, depth or cohesiveness most look for in their games.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian follows the story of the second book in C.S. Lewis' epic children's tales, plus tosses in an extra sequence unique to the game in an effort to bridge the 1,300 year gap in Narnia history. In the time since the Pevensie children left the magical land, Narnia has been taken over by the Telmarines and the talking beasts have been driven into the wilderness. It's up to the player to take control of 20 different characters (including the awesome talking mouse Reepicheep) from the movie and help the titular hero defeat the despot King Miraz.
The adventure spans six different stages and a nice variety of locations, as you might expect given the source material. During the 6-8 hour adventure, you'll guide the Pevensies and various mythical creatures through impressive large scale battles, castle crashes and escapes, and various caves, ruins and forests. It's a fairly linear trek through the tale, but you are allowed to choose the order in which some tasks are tackled.
Though the gameplay can get repetitive at times (was it really necessary to make us clear out a guard tower six times in a row?), all told it has some nice variety in puzzle solving and action. The action is simple; each character has two attack buttons and one for interacting with the environment or using a special tool. The simplicity of it allows it tow make the transition from controller to mouse and keyboard fairly well and the game is entirely playable that way or with a plug-in control pad. It's undemanding, and so are most of the encounters with generic Telmarines, but the action does have its moments in the sun. Taking control of trees to smash hordes of Telmarine soldiers or riding around on a giant's back to bash catapults is fun; I don't care who you are or what your tastes are.
The lack of depth to the action doesn't begin as such an issue, but it becomes one by the end of the adventure. It simply doesn't evolve as you move through the levels. There are no move upgrades or enhancements, no special abilities to unlock, and nothing beyond simple button mashing. The only thing you get to mix things up is the occasional special sword or bow (it glows and does extra damage for a small amount of time) or a shield that ups your defensive abilities.
Like the combat, the puzzles and adventuring elements are kept basic. In fact, most of the puzzles simply involve finding a piece to a lever and then pulling said lever, but this is a game aimed at kids so it's hard to complain about simplistic design. The more fun puzzles require you to use a specific character (you can swap between party members on the fly at the touch of a button) to complete a task. Some will need a character with a hook and rope, others need a bow and arrow to shoot out specific targets. Smaller characters can crawl through tunnels while bigger ones can smash obstacles to reveal new paths.
Since you're always in a small party, the game allows a second player to hop in or out of the action at any time by plugging in a separate controller but the experience for player number two is middling at best. At worst, their presence can drag down the game entirely for both players. It's all offline which means both players have to share the same screen. And that means you'll have to decide together where to go so as not to run into the edge of the screen and hit that invisible wall. Even when things work, one player oftentimes has little to do since all tasks are designed to be completed by just one character. I tried playing one of the final boss battles co-operatively and found that the second player had absolutely nothing to do. Exciting.
To keep those of us with attention issues happy, there are a few things to collect strewn about the levels. Inside every destructible barrel, box or vase -- as well as in plain sight -- you can find small chips to collect which will upgrade your health. Less commonly, you can find golden keys which unlock treasure chests and score you bonus art, video and a few small bonus mini-games. Oddly enough, the keys respawn each time you enter an area, so by the end of the game you'll find yourself with far more keys than you need to open every chest in the game. The bonus content isn't all that special, but finding the chests does provide a reason to go back and play the game a second time. At least the game gives out achievements like free candy so you won't have trouble getting close to all of them on the first run.
The major issue with Prince Caspian is that the game rarely has sufficient context for your actions. Though the game makes use of clips from the movie and cutscenes in between the gameplay, it can be difficult to follow if you haven't seen the movie or read the book. Most people that play Caspian will probably already be familiar with the story to the point of that not mattering, but the game objectives also sometimes suffer from the same issue. Kids may find the instructions on how to complete specific tasks too vague. Heck, I found myself lost a few times. The game designers seemed to assume too much about the player.
But then, that sloppy presentation carries through to the graphics and sound. Even with the game's setting maxed out on a powerful gaming rig, it didn't look very good. The game still had vertical sync issues even though I had it locked down in the settings. All of the assets were made for a PS2 or Wii, so there isn't much hope here. The cutscenes are prerendered and ugly, the real-life cinemas are a bit blurry when blown up to a high resolution, and the game in general is no eye turner. And while the orchestral music that the game features is a pretty good listen, awkward scene cuts and generic sound effects don't help things.
If you have even the slightest interest in driving virtual vehicles, you have plenty of options. For strict simulation buffs, there's GTR; fans of arcade racers can look forward to Burnout Paradise; and off-road fans have DiRT.
The team behind the latter, Codemasters Racing Studio, thought there was room in the already crowded videogame racing market for yet another entry, a game that deftly straddles the line between arcade racer and hardcore simulation all wrapped up in a glitzy high-gloss package.
So they dusted off the DiRT's groundbreaking engine, renamed it Ego and used it as the framework for an entirely new project: Grid, an unabashedly racing-focused game that takes the skeleton of Codemasters' old TOCA/Pro Race Driver series, slips it into a high-tech skin and imbues it with a modern soul.
The result is an intense, highly focused experience that offers nearly everything a road racing game should – speed, drama, precision, competition, and a sense of hard-won progression. And it does it all with impeccable style.
From the opening montage, Grid sets a slick cinematic tone, and it's a theme that carries over strongly into the game itself. In addition to the standard driving views – cockpit, hood, bumper and two third-person – Grid has a full replay system that lets you pause, rewind, fast-forward and change views of your performance. Its best component is a cinematic replay camera that gives you an incomparable sense of the speed, sound and action on the racetrack.
Whether you smoke the competition in a flawless GT1 race or crash magnificently in the streets of Shibuya, Grid's replay cam captures it all with intimacy and flair. If you've never been one to view replays of your races in videogames, Grid's cam may just convert you. Although you can review your race as many times as you like immediately after it's over, it's gone forever once you exit the race. With such a great tool at my disposal, I found it disappointing that I could not save my races to my hard drive – not because I wanted to show off my driving skills, but rather because some of my wipeouts were so spectacular that I wanted to share them.
Codemasters paid close attention to the camera in Grid, and not just in replay. The in-game cam works consistently well, whether you're zooming along a straightaway with a cockpit view or drifting around a hairpin in third-person. Even in the menus, Grid is never quite static. You'll always see movement in the background, and titles shift slightly on-screen. In Grid, as in DiRT, choosing an option feels like you're setting something in motion rather than simply clicking a button.
Forward momentum is what Grid is all about. Once you create your character and give him or her a name and country of origin, the poor sap gets dumped directly on the track for a virgin race. There's no tutorial. You don't flip through a menu of cars and tracks. It's into a Dodge Viper and up to 100 mph. Finish that race and you're officially a freelance driver, hiring yourself out to the highest bidder in an effort to raise €60,000 toward a car of your own.
A few races later, you have the resources to create your own team, name it, brand it and choose your official colors and design, which will be applied to every car you acquire throughout the game. If you've grown accustomed to the detailed livery creation system in Forza 2, you'll be underwhelmed by the design customization options in Grid. For me, Grid includes just enough visual tweaking. To keep the races somewhat realistic looking, Codemasters had to limit the looks of the cars. You'll probably never see a Master Chief-themed car at Le Mans, and you won't see it in Grid.
What Grid lacks in visual customization it makes up for in audio personalization. After you enter your full name, the game asks you to choose a first name from a preset list. If you're lucky enough to have common name, pick your support staff will call you by that name throughout the game, praising you when you best the competition and expressing their disapproval when you slam your million-dollar prototype car into a guardrail.
If your parents hated you and gave you an odd name like, say, Talmadge, you're still in luck because Grid includes a list of nicknames you can choose instead. Want your crew to call you "Dumptruck"? How about "Dude"? I went with the former for a few rounds, and it was funny every time I heard it.
Pre-recorded dialogue is a big part of the Grid experience. Your business manager, spotter and teammate (who you'll hire later in the game) are constantly chattering at you, which at first makes for an immersive experience that gives the illusion of a real working race team. If there's an accident on the track, your spotter will alert you over the radio, saying something like, "Whoa, someone spun out up ahead. I think it's Ross Meadows."
I was able to recount that line from memory because I heard it hundreds of times. The problem with pre-recorded software speech is that it can get stale pretty quickly with prolonged exposure. A real race spotter might say it just a tad bit different every time, but in Grid, your computerized team members are limited to a few lines of canned conversation, and it begins to grate. And it's not just in-race. Back in the garage, your business manager never tires of telling you (in the same language each time) about the benefits of racing for other teams to make more money, regardless of your preferences. As you spend more time with the game, the dialogue flips from being a cool feature to a bit of an annoyance.
It would be more tolerable if your spotter was spot-on every time. Unfortunately, I found his track record to be spotty at best. He'd frequently call crashes ahead of me that never materialized or warn me late of spin-outs that already passed. That's not to say he was wrong every time – just inconsistent. Overall, the voices and audio calls in the game are a plus that add to the experience. But they're certainly not perfect, and they edge toward distraction as the game progresses.
But Grid's core racing experience makes up for its shortcomings. There are three racing regions in Grid – USA, Europe and Japan – and they're all open to you from the second you earn your racing license. As the seasons tick by and you earn more reputation points, higher tiers of competition open up within each area. The more you race and the better you perform in each region, the sooner you'll unlock the next tier there. Winning events nets you trophies, cash payouts and brand-name sponsorship opportunities.
Grid is a survey of modern racing styles and manages to include something for almost everyone. There are track races, mountain road runs, street competitions, endurance races and more. All are a blast to race and have unique thrills, drawbacks and specialties.
Want to go extremely fast for extended periods of time? Run a Le Mans 24-hour race, in which each hour is represented by a minute. Day will turn to night and back again as you rush to beat the other cars in your class to the finish line. If you're more into drifting, there are downhill, freestyle and grand prix events to tackle. Touge, tuner, touring, open wheel are all here, too, and each are specifically designed to highlight the special attributes of each class of car in Grid.
In its marketing push for Grid, Codemasters has been using the tagline "It's all about the race," a clever attempt to deflect inevitable criticism. Namely that, compared to some of its competitors, Grid's garage is a bit on the small side. There are 45 cars in Grid. And although they're all top-of-the-line racing powerhouses, their number feels limited at times. Some events have only one car choice, which can be a real downer when your only option is a Chevy Lacetti. You also can't tune your cars in the slightest, so if you crave mode understeer from your Honda NSX-R, you'll have to switch to a Nissan Skyline GT-R Z-Tune instead.
I did find myself wishing there were more cars in Grid, but I don't have many complaints (Lacetti aside) about the vehicles Codemasters chose to include. From the classic but staid BMW 320 SI to the blistering and exotic Audi R10 TDi, Grid features some of racing's modern icons. You can even get behind the wheel of the Mazda 787B, whose rotary engine earned it both fame and infamy in the 1991 Le Mans. Each car class and individual vehicle in Grid handles differently, and driving in general takes some getting used to. The learning curve is steep but brief, which means you'll crash a lot for your first couple of races and then even out soon after. That is, until you switch to open wheel cars, which will start the curve o' learnin' all over again.
But failing a race in Grid can be almost as much fun as winning thanks to an excellent damage system that's capable of crumpling your car into a rolling mass of bustedness. Using the damage modeling developed for DiRT, Codemasters has created the most dramatic racing crash effects we've ever seen in a videogame. Bumpers fall off when tapped too hard, Le Mans prototypes lose their wings and stock cars lose their doors after spectacular rolls.
Take a car into a Jersey barrier at 200 mph. and you'll be treated to a slow-mo cinematic camera effect that captures the impact and makes you feel the crunch in your gut. If you survive a collision but lose a fender, your detritus will remain on the road to harass other drivers until the end of the race. If you're lucky, your car will still function properly, but tough hits will damage your wheels, steering, engine and suspension, affecting your car's handling and performance.
To be clear, Grid is not a racing simulation. Although cars look and often feel realistic, the crashes are over-the top and handling tends more toward the arcade end of the spectrum. Take what TOCA used to be and blend it with DiRT's accessibility and you'll have a good idea of what Grid is trying to accomplish. Depending on the track and car you're racing, you'll glance off walls that would total your ride in a sim.
Car pulling to the left after a particularly nasty crash? If you're playing the game in standard mode, you can use Grid's Flashback function, an instant-replay system that allows you to pause the race, rewind for a brief period and resume the action from that point. It's effectively a time machine that lets you erase your mistakes a limited number of times each race, depending on your difficulty level. But I also found it to be a learning tool that taught me how to take dangerous turns. Flub a curve, rewind using a Flashback, take it again and emerge all the wiser.
For those concerned about the Flashback tool breaking the integrity of the game, have no fear. Racing in Pro mode eliminates the Flashback option entirely, and it's the only way to upload lap times to the online leaderboards. So if you want to set records using Flashbacks, you'll be doing so in a vacuum. Get serious in Pro mode, and you'll be glad you did once you dip your toe into the multiplayer. With 12 cars online, full damage optional and (from what we've played) smooth no-lag races, things get very intense very quickly online.
All regions are open online, and there are several events – including drift, Le Mans, and demolition derby – available to race. There's a full lobby system with matchmaking built in, and hosts can choose to turn both damage and catch-up on and off. The networking code is also split between all the racers in the game but will be distributed on the fly if lag rears its ugly head.
Of the three versions of Grid we tested, the PC looked the best. Codemasters gives PC gamers a considerable amount of control over the game's performance with several customization menus. From the level of grass detail to depth of crowd rendering, you can endlessly tweak Grid to your liking on the PC. Grid also fully supports force-feedback racing wheels and allows plenty of customization there as well.
Closing Comments There are plenty of other racing games on the market, but Grid captures the soul of the track like none other. The crashes are insane, the races are intense, the cars are coated with style and the overall presentation is just plain sexy. Although its car count is low, customization is limited and the repetitive dialogue grates a bit, Grid's stands out as a stylish but serious alternative to both hardcore driving simulations and over-the-top arcade racers.
Five years ago, Brian Reynolds arrived on the real-time strategy scene and broke the rules with Rise of Nations, a deep but manageable game that put the S in RTS. But five years before that, when Reynolds was just getting warmed up on turn-based strategy games, a fellow named Trevor Chan was already breaking those rules and putting that S into RTS. Chan's Seven Kingdoms series did things you just didn't do in real time strategy: diplomacy, espionage, hiring neutral units from the map, mixing fantasy with history, and the sort of depth you weren't supposed to do in real time. Unfortunately, the games had the dubious honor of being "cult hits," meaning they didn't sell well enough to spawn imitators. It would be another five years of Command & Conquer and Warcraft clones until Reynolds showed up.
So here we are now with a new Seven Kingdoms. The first red flag is that Trevor Chan's name nowhere to be seen. The second red flag is that you're going to have a hard time getting it to run. The third red flag is the lack of helpful documentation. The fourth red flag is that it looks awful. The fifth red flag is that it's hard to tell what's going on. And on and on it goes, red flags piling up relentlessly until there's no denying that you've got a real stinker on your hands.
Seven Kingdoms: Conquest has almost nothing in common with the previous games. The developers at Enlight have completely lost sight of what made the series special. There are a few minor nods to the previous games. For instance, you can use diplomats to try to "buy" neutral sites instead of conquering them. The major combatants are humans and demons, but Enlight opted to call the demons "demons" instead of "fryhtans", which might make more sense, but it just goes to show they couldn't care less about Seven Kingdoms' distinctive mythology. Not that I even know what a fryhtan is after all these years, but if Enlight can't be bothered to recall the terminology, it's a safe bet it's not concerned with tradition.
On a certain level, reboot wasn't necessarily a bad idea. As a design, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest is promising. Someone in Enlight's China studio knows the genre, and there are some clever concepts here. The peon-less economy is based on a simple but strategic resource system based on cities, which are also used to control the map and customize your faction. There's a bit of Rise of Nations in how each city allows a certain number of buildings, which in turn determines your economy, which units you can build, and how many units you can build.
The size and composition of your army depends on expanding out onto the map by either capturing or "buying" new sites, and then developing them. Villages can support a few limited structures, but they can be upgraded to cities, which support more and different types of structures. Humans can build units from other cultures by capturing their villages. Your army causes a constant drain on your food supply (or blood supply, for demons), so bigger armies will need more farms (or blood totems), which will take up more valuable building slots.
The dynamics vary a bit between humans and demons, and each has several sub-factions. There's a variety of units, and many of them have special abilities you can purchase with "reputation" or "fear", which is each race's global pool of experience points. Furthermore, different units have different special abilities that can be researched. Each faction has powerful hero and god units, which can buff your armies and give you even more powerful spells. When it comes to armies, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest is varied and generous.
There's even a sort of "sub-economy" based on creeps scattered around the map. They're useful not just for experience points (i.e. "reputation" and "fear"), but they also guard pools of a unique resource called demon essence. Only certain types of units can harvest this stuff, which is the sole resource for "demon powers". You can call up a menu to spend your demon essence on these powers, which range from additional resources, to buffs and debuffs, to taking over enemy units, or to calling in your heroes or gods. In the hands of a competent developer, many of these features could make for an exciting and deep RTS.
But no such luck here. The first and biggest problems are technical. This is a primitive 3D engine with fancy effects slathered on top of dated graphics. Do these blocky polygonal units really benefit from HDR lighting? Is bloom going to do any good with a palette this muted and artwork this uninspired? Seven Kingdoms: Conquest has the look of a five-year-old game dug out of the attic and repainted in the hopes that you'll mistake it for something new. The sound is also horrible, featuring screams and clangs you've heard elsewhere, presumably drawn from some cheap sound library.
But even more damning is the game's instability and utter lack of QA. On three completely different computers, I was unable to get it running until I dialed the graphics way down, turning an ugly game even uglier. Somewhere in all the settings are some seriously broken features that cause black screens, permanently opened windows, hard locks, and rampant graphical corruption. Given the variety of hardware and drivers I tried, the problem seems to go much deeper than some isolated hardware incompatibility.
Even if these problems were fixed, the interface falls far short of what this level of complexity needs. To the game's credit, there's ample information available about each unit, and you can even right click on the "train unit" button to find out more info about the unit before you actually spend money on it. But for the most part, this is an awful interface. There are hotkeys that don't work, clicks that don't take, and pathing AI that falls apart, making messy unit management even messier. There are no formations, which is a dire problem with larger armies. Features like customizable hotkeys for unit powers are all but useless when there's no easy way to specify which unit is going to use its power.
There's no handy way to get to various buildings, which makes for a lot of scrolling around the map, hunting for where you built that demon haunt. Or was it a demon portal? No, that's one's a demon void. The generic building graphics do very little to stand out from each other, which is a problem considering how unit training, base building, research, and upgrades are scattered to the five winds, living variously in several different buildings. The bottom line is that the scale of the game quickly outstrips the interface. At this point, it's a bit silly to complain about the AI, the lack of map variety, or the sluggish pacing, all of which aren't that big of a problem in a game you won't want to play in the first place.
Closing Comments This is an even worse game than Empire Earth 3 for the simple fact that the design shows promise, but it's utterly undermined by the horrible execution. With a better interface, a stable engine, and better pacing, this could have been a decent RTS, particularly for multiplayer. To the developer's credit, it didn't waste its time on a turgid storyline (see also Sins of a Solar Empire), and it knew enough to borrow from better games.
But for whatever reason, the execution completely falls apart. Even with the latest patch (v1.04), it's still an inexcusable mess. In its current state, Enlight should be ashamed for releasing it and Dreamcatcher should be ashamed for publishing it. You're better off taking almost any RTS at random from the last 10 years than you are playing Seven Kingdoms: Conquest. The only good to come from this soupy half-baked mess is that maybe it'll pique your curiosity to see how one of the original Seven Kingdoms holds up. Hmmm, I wonder if I still have those disks in a closet somewhere....
Sometimes we wonder how many little girls open up their birthday presents and find a horse themed video game in lieu of an actual equine. Based on the sheer number of horse games in the past couple years it seems like it'd be the country's leading cause of disappointed little girls. My Horse and Me for PC is just another game in the line of equine let-downs.
Instead of the American heartland farm setting of many horse games, My Horse and Me puts the player in the role of a professional show jumper. Players compete in events in scenic New England (or maybe European) areas.
The events are pretty basic, but are very similar to what we've seen in show jumping competitions that occasionally play weekdays in the mid afternoons on ESPN. There are a number of jumps that need to be cleared in a certain order, and players are ranked based on their time, with penalties given for mistakes.
The basic design of My Horse and Me isn't bad. The idea of competing in show jumping competitions has its appeal, and the courses are pretty well designed, but get pretty repetitive.
The controls for the PC version are definitely easier to master than the Nintendo Wii counterpart, though they're decidedly more boring. Players use the arrows keys to control the horse's speed and direction. It's not as engaging as using the controllers like reins, but at least it works
Despite the easier controls, the game is still fairly difficult overall. The horse just seems slower in this version. The competitions are easier to compete, but it's still hard to get gold on the later levels.
Doing well in the competitions earns the player new clothing and gear, and stuff for the horse. Some of the cooler items require gold medals in the harder events. Really though none of the items seem cool enough to really motivate going back and mastering certain events. All the times we attempted this ended up in disappointment since the clothing and gear are never as cool as they sound.
The other major aspect of My Horse and Me is taking care of and customizing our horse. In the Nintendo DS version this was done through a series of touch screen minigames, but for the PC, it's done through practically nothing. There is an option to groom the horse, but nothing tells us how that is done. There's a hard brush, a soft brush, and a sponge, but where and how do we apply this to the horse?
Worse yet, the horse doesn't even respond. We scrubbed our horse, Wildfyre, on his face with the hardbrush, and sprayed the hose all up on its underside, and our stallion stood like a mannequin. It's fine that the developers focused more on the riding aspect of the title than taking care of the horse like other games do, but they then should not have tried to market it as both. You don't take care of a horse, or share any emotional moment with it, despite the loving embrace of girl and mare on the cover.
The people within the game are barely more lifelike than the horses. The character models are decent enough, but have few animations and only one facial expression. The spectators in each course are so few that it makes the game accidentally funny when the announcer talks about the great turnout. Of course, maybe six people is a good turnout for a show jumping event.
The announcer is always really excited, but only at the beginning of each event. He doesn't comment on the results. The game barely recognizes if we somehow managed to do well. There's no fanfare when we win a big competition.
There's a share-the-pain, er, multiplayer option for the game that has players take turns competing in the events. It's a slow experience since everyone has to wait for the other player to finish, and there's no excitement involved.
Closing Comments My Horse and Me is almost a passable horse game that adolescent girls (and hey, maybe guys) could enjoy. But as it is, the game is repetitive and just kind of boring. It barely even acknowledges we're playing, so there's no encouragement to put up with its poor design and ugly visuals. If parent's get this for their kid, they better not expect to quell demands for a real horse for long.
Brad Wardell packs a universe on your hard drive with the exceptional expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II. gamespy
By: Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch
Brad Wardell and his Stardock team had an impossible challenge when they decided to create a second expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II. Dark Avatar, the game's first expansion, was everything an expansion pack should be, adding an insane amount of new features and significantly deepening the basic gameplay, vaulting an already-stellar title into the realm of strategy-game classic. We loved it so much, in fact, that we placed Dark Avatar at number six on our overall Top Ten games of 2007. Fortunately for strategy-game lovers, the Stardock team seems to thrive on impossible challenges. The result of this drive for strategy game greatness is Twilight of the Arnor, a second expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II that manages to outshine the first.
Twilight of the Arnor picks up directly after the end of Dark Avatar. The universe is still on fire with the Drengin/Korath civil war spinning out of control. Most of the other races of the galaxy, save the humans, are either beaten to exhaustion or are trying to avoid becoming collateral damage in the Drengin's destructive feud. Earth remains safely hidden behind an impenetrable force shield but the price of the Terran's security is being unable to impact galactic events. Things begin to change when a deep space Terran Alliance task force discovers the last surviving Arnor, a member of the galaxy's first sentient race, who offers the Terrans and their allies a slim chance to defeat the Korath and their unseen Dread Lord puppet masters.
The game's storyline is a cheesy pastiche of sci-fi cliches liberally borrowed from sources ranging from "Babylon 5" to "Star Trek" to the old "Star Control" games. Fortunately, the game's cornball storyline isn't the only reason to play through the well-constructed eight mission campaign. Each of the campaign's missions is built around fun strategic challenge very different from the game's main "sandbox" mode. Particular standouts include "Of the Arnor" where players must figure out how to crack the nut of a single Dread Lord planet while being continually harassed by the Korath. Players who pride themselves on their diplomatic skills will enjoy "Rock and Hard Place," a test of battlefield diplomacy that's the turn-based strategy game equivalent of yelling "Can't we all just get along?" while standing between trenches during WWI.
The true standout feature that makes Twilight of the Arnor special are the racially unique technology trees. The idea behind them is fairly simple. Alien races and alien cultures view the universe in radically different ways. These differing perspectives will dictate the ways their technology develops as each culture creates tech to complement and support their moral and cultural outlooks. The Drengin, for example, have an entire culture built around slavery and the aesthetic appreciation of other peoples' pain. The Yor, on the other hand, are a race of sentient machines determined to rid the universe of organic intelligences while the Korx are a mercantilist species willing to sell their own mothers for a decent profit. Twilight of the Arnor swaps out the fairly generic tech tree of Dark Avatar and gives each of the game's 12 pre-made races their own upgrade paths as well as race-specific discoveries.
The unique techs are a real game-changer. What was once a fairly generic upgrade path followed by every race becomes a radically different strategic experience every game. Choosing to play as the genocidal Korath will give an insanely aggressive game: the cheapness of their planet-destroying spore ships, the versatility of their weapons research tree and their host of diplomatic penalties guarantee it. On the other hand, playing as the religiously minded Krynn offers a choice of powerful cultural enhancements that can flip enemy worlds without firing a shot or a more violent path designed to create fleets of tiny suicide-bombing vessels that spread the Krynn faith by the sword
Factors change even more depending on the player's choice of rival civilizations. Playing as the Krynn against the powerful but slow-moving Arceans is very different than going up against the Korx. If there ever was a "desert island game," Twilight of the Arnor is it. It's very possible to play this game for years and never have the same experience twice. Even if it was, a powerful group of easy-to-use editing tools included with the game would take care of it.
While not quite as radical a shift as the new tech trees, Twilight of the Arnor does add a few more toys to the player's arsenal. Each race, for example, gets some great unique planetary buildings. The Drengin, for example, get "Slave Pits" rather than factories. They offer the same amount of production but also lower the race's diplomatic influence. "Ascension," a new (optional) victory condition places five randomly placed crystals on the map. Players win by building a starbase on them and holding them long enough to accrue 1,000 victory points. This, needless to say, doesn't make one popular with the galaxy's other denizens and offers a neatly thorny problem in map control and defensive warmaking. In fact, the only big-ticket feature that doesn't quite live up to expectations is the solar system-destroying Terror Stars. They're fun but incredibly resource-intensive and fragile, making them more of a gimmick or an end-game cleaner than a viable strategic path.
The expansion also sports an insane number of smaller additions and tweaks, any one of which would be welcomed by long-time GalCiv fans. A new finance management screen, for example, makes it easier to run a solid economy by collating all the information on leases and infrastructure maintenance charges. Right-clicking on a technology brings up a host of details about that tech including the bonuses it offers, the abilities it unlocks and the future advances it leads to. This is insanely valuable not only in planning research but also in negotiating with rival races. Trading technology just got a lot simpler and players no longer need to worry about giving away the keys to the kingdom because they forgot that a particular tech might give an unstoppable advantage to a particular race. There's an option for new players allowing the computer to automatically build ships for you that take advantage of new techs. The AI does only a fair job, but it's a nice way for GalCiv newbies to get a feel for the incredibly powerful (and graphically upgraded) ship-building system.
If there's one major strike against Twilight of the Arnor, it's the same criticism that's been leveled against it since the original GalCiv release back in 2003 -- no true multiplayer. While the game does have a good "metaverse" system that now includes regular tournaments, it's no substitute for a true multiplayer match-up. What makes it worse is that the game's new "immense" galaxy size, which creates games that take literally months to play, seems like an absolute natural for some sort of play-by e-mail system. Stardock has been justly praised in the past for the strength of its game AI -- and it's actually gotten better in Twilight of the Arnor -- but we still want our multiplayer.
Multiplayer quibbles aside, there's simply not that much to complain about in Twilight of the Arnor and far, far too many things to praise in this small amount of space. The technology trees alone make it impossible for someone who's sampled Twilight of the Arnor to ever go back to just playing Dark Avatar. Add to that impressive customization tools, new gameplay dynamics, better AI, graphic upgrades, new ship-builder components and completely re-done flavor text and hundreds and hundreds of smaller tweaks, fixes and changes and what you have is an absolute triumph and a new standard for turn-based-strategy games. Bravo, Stardock. This is how expansion packs should be done.
It's a watered-down PS2 version. That's not a typo. PlayStation 2. By: Greg Miller
It's not often that I'm flabbergasted at work. After reviewing five versions of Iron Man in five days, I thought I had seen it all, but I was wrong, friends. Today, Iron Man on the PC showed up, I popped it in, and my jaw dropped.
This is the exact same game as the PlayStation 2/Wii/PSP SKU.
Don't get me wrong, that fact alone isn't a reason to condemn it. It's just that in our world of multi-platform releases, it's rare to see the PC share a version with anything other than PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. I started the first mission and gave the title the benefit of the doubt that perhaps PC was the lead SKU and the muted textures and all-around sad visuals I saw on the other systems wouldn't be a factor on the PC.
I was wrong. This is literally the PS2 game at a higher resolution.
Loosely based on the No. 1 film in America, Iron Man tosses you into the red-and-gold suit of Tony Stark and sets you loose on more than a dozen missions filled with guards, laser cannons and super villains that you won't find in the movie--folks such as Whiplash and Titanium Man. It might sound cool, but the problem is that this story is largely invented and strays from the plot points and character-defining moments of the film. You'll never get to care about Yinsen, Obadiah's power-hungry from the get go, and Stark almost always seems like a jerk. Plus, the cutscenes stink. Not even voiceovers from Robert Downey, Jr. and Terrence Howard can save them from being ass--there are crazy eyes, mouths not moving the right way, characters that don't look right, etc.
However, games aren't all about story, and Iron Man does have a few things going for it. Each time you're ready to jump into your flight suit, you'll choose your mission, one of the six unlockable suits of armor, and which upgrades you'd like to use. See, rather than have you earn money from your battles like the PS3/360 version of Iron Man does, this incarnation of the game upgrades your gear--repulsor, ballistics, explosives and armor--based on how much you use them. If you're like me, you'll find yourself hovering around levels and blasting evildoers with your repulsors the most, and in no time, you'll have taken your laser gauntlet from the most basic tech (fast but weak) to the mega-awesome Optimal Beam Damage. Of course, this applies to whichever device you're using, and a few will actually upgrade to the point where you need to choose which option you'll be using in battle (i.e. which type of missile you want to launch into some dude's face).
Once you're into the actual mission, Iron Man works like most third-person shooters on the PC--WASD to move, mouse for the camera and to fire weapons, etc.--but when you want to speak specifically to what makes this an Iron Man title, it comes down to suit controls. Space makes you hover, Alt kicks on the afterburner, and 1 through 4 control your energy manager. This feature actually allows you move from a balanced energy-spending state to favoring one of Iron Man's attributes. Shift the power to propulsion to fly faster, to armor to take less damage, or to weapons to wreck shop.
While this scheme works pretty well for fighting on the ground or standing/hovering in one place and blasting foes, you can't really brawl while flying. This means that you'll rocket toward your enemies, stop, and then hover around while shooting repulsor blasts. It looks and feels nothing like a real Iron Man fight. You're just some guy somberly gliding around the map.
Luckily and sadly, Iron Man isn't hard. At all. Enemy attacks do little to no damage, but if they should gang up and whittle your armor energy down to nothing, you'll have the chance to restart your heart. Basically, a minigame pops up where you have to tap a corresponding button to register a heartbeat. If for some reason you fail at this simple task, you'll consume one of your three backup power cells and be tossed back into the game. It's not that I mind a simple game--and it's way better than the uber-frustrating PS3/360 version--but when you can just sit down and plow through the game in a day, there really isn't much of an incentive to pick it up. There's no challenge.
Still, there are two problems that are evidence enough to convict this game of crimes against a PC. To begin with, it looks terrible. Everything's clearer than the PS2 versions, but the same blocky models, blank textures, and bland colors remain. The PC version even adds visual glitches such as giant brown swatches instead of shadows underneath tanks and building windows that flicker. Next, this game just isn't any fun. I haven't called out or praised any specific levels or enemies because Iron Man just blends together. You just move from one point to another eliminating whatever is in your way.
Closing Comments Both the pros and cons of Iron Man on the PlayStation 2 led to me scoring the title as a "Meh" on the IGN scale--it wasn't awful or amazing for the platform. However, with the unlimited potential of the PC, standards are different here. Terrible visuals, straightforward/easy gameplay, and a plethora of other problems make Iron Man fail at being anything worth trying.
