The Club

A one trick pony.

By: Erik Brudvig

Sometimes a game can sound great on paper and then just not be very much fun in practice. The Club is one of those titles. It's something different in the shooter genre which is a welcome happening in the flooded market, but unfortunately the gameplay isn't as gripping as one would hope out of a title that tries to channel the arcade spirit.

The Club seeks to bring something new to the shooter genre by adding some of the racing and style game mechanics Bizarre has become famous for in the Project Gotham Racing series. The game isn't just about taking down as many targets as possible; it's just as important to do it quickly and with flair. Points are given for each kill with more awarded based on where you shoot the enemy, how far away you are from the victim, and how difficult of a take down it is. If that's not enough to think about, there's also a combo multiplier that goes up with each kill but continuously ticks down in between. Each stage lasts no more than a few minutes as you race through a closed course to gun down as many enemies as you can, staying true to the arcade feeling of the game.

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If you're not the type of gamer who obsesses over high scores, there really is no reason for you to pick up The Club. The main single player game, called the tournament, can be completed in under three hours and after that there's nothing to do except to replay the stages again and again. Of course, that's the point and you'll have to do it if you want to perfect your game and get the high score, but I can't help but find the game a bit shallow -- a one trick pony. After beating the game and going back to replay some stages, I didn't feel hooked by the game at all.

The Club claims to have five different types of events, but they essentially boil down to just two. Whether you're tasked with reaching an exit, reaching an exit under a certain time, or running several laps around a loop while killing to get extra time, the gameplay is identical. You won't do well in any of them if you don't move quickly to keep your combo up, so who cares if there's also a game clock? The other two events, siege and survivor, are so similar I thought they were the same thing until I was most of the way through the game.

So the game is really all about killing a lot of targets as fast as you can, regardless of the different ways Bizarre wants to present it. The enemies appear in the same places each time through one of the stages, as do the bonus targets hanging on walls that can be used to extend your combo meter, so it's possible to memorize each course and plan out a perfect route for maximum points. In this way, an obsessive person can find hours and hours of gameplay. Learning when to sprint and when to pause to shoot is the first step, but you can take it further. Since some enemy targets are worth more points than others and they often appear in clusters, the order you shoot them can affect your final score. Then if you want to get truly obsessive, you can go back through the levels and search for hidden targets planted in odd places in each stage.

Part of the problem with The Club is that it feels as if the initial idea was never fleshed out into something modern day gamers could get behind. It's racing meets shooting, but the only element of racing that was brought over was speed. There are eight characters, two of which must be unlocked, but the differences between them don't go any farther than speed, strength and defensive prowess. They all have equal skill with each weapon and they all handle identically which is a bit disappointing and makes each one feel generic.

Though style is part of the game in that The Club awards more points based on making tough kills or head shots, Bizarre's attempts to put visual and aural style into the game are a flop. The premise of the game, a club that is so powerful it can hold death tournaments and force contestants to kill hundreds of people in broad daylight, is rather corny. The art direction isn't much better and the characters just don't look appealing, even if there isn't anything technically bad about the look of the game. There's an overall attempt to be edgy and hip that feels contrived. The same goes for the audio prompts that come as you select a character or perform a special kill. These are supposed to be throwbacks but they essentially fall flat.

Visually, The Club on PC beats its console cousins thanks to the ability to run it at a higher resolution on good rigs. The in-engine but not real-time cutscenes were all rendered at a lower resolution and don't look as good as the rest of the game, but they are brief and heavily filtered to the point of it not really being a big deal.

The low-res cutscenes are just one symptom of a larger issue on the PC that might deter some from playing the game. Little work was done in making the PC version of The Club feel like it was made for the platform it is running on. All of the user interfaces are pulled directly from the Xbox 360 version. This works fine if you want to play with an Xbox 360 controller but looks and feels out of place with a keyboard and mouse.

To add some meat onto the game, The Club also features a series of multiplayer events that can be played online or on a local area network with up to eight players. There are eight different modes, but oddly only one of them makes use of the scoring and combo system the offline game is built around. The rest are free for all or team based games the likes of which have been seen numerous times over in other games. Unfortunately, very few people are playing online. It took me numerous attempts over several days to find anybody playing online before finally getting into a game with four others. The game runs smoothly online if you can find anyone to play with, though I did notice an odd spawning glitch that made it seem like I was appearing and then teleporting across the level each time I died and came back.

Perhaps the online community would be alive if SEGA hadn't botched the publishing process by shipping copies without product keys. If you bought the game and didn't get one, you can read about the solution here.

Closing Comments
If you get into The Club, you'll find an arcade shooter with a twist that can be played obsessively in search of high scores. I didn't find the hook all that appealing and felt left with a glorified shooting gallery. The idea is sound. There just isn't much to be excited about in the final product.

©2008-02-29, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Lost: Via Domus

When is a game not a game? When it's Lost, of course.

By: Hilary Goldstein

4-8-15-16-23-42

If these numbers mean nothing to you, then little if anything in Ubisoft's Lost: Via Domus will make a damned bit of sense. Based on ABC's popular drama, the videogame version of Lost does nothing to embrace people who've never seen the show. Via Domus gives fans a view of first two seasons of the show through the eyes of a brand new character, Elliott. A previously unseen survivor of crashed Oceanic flight 815, Elliott finds himself suffering from amnesia -- and suffering through a weak adventure game to boot.

Lost: Via Domus is broken into seven chapters that play out like missing episodes of the TV series. Each chapter begins with "previously on Lost" clips, a hook followed by the classic Lost floating logo intro, and ends with a cliffhanger. It's a smart set-up and does indeed give the feeling of a Lost episode. The authenticity ends the first time you run into a character from the show. Ubisoft only managed to secure a few Lost actors to do VO -- and most have small roles in the game. The lead characters from Lost -- Sawyer, Locke, Kate and Jack -- are all voiced by sound-a-likes. The Locke "sound-a-like" plays him as an old timey prospector and Sawyer may actually have been voiced by Huckleberry Hound. For a licensed game, the lack of star power is a major drawback.

But you're a Lost fan, right? So of course you will soldier on. You can perhaps convince yourself that one of the Island's mysterious powers is making people sound like they came out of a cartoon.

Via Domus is wisely set up as an adventure game. This makes perfect sense for a property like Lost, where exploration is more common than action. In each episode you'll talk to characters from the show, trudge through the jungle and live through one of Elliott's flashbacks.

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The conversation system is smart with different categories to sort your options. You can ask quest-related questions, general questions, get information on items in your inventory or trade items with another character. The general questions are the kinds of things we often see in licensed games that give background information to people unfamiliar with the property. The funny thing about Via Domus is that the characters' dialogue matches that of the show. So when you ask Sawyer why he was on Flight 815, he tells you to mind your own beeswax. And if you try and get any background on Kate, she remains cryptic. It's a good laugh for fans of the show, but will be frustrating to the uninitiated.

The trading system works well, even though there's little need to trade for anything outside of torches or a lantern. You will find coconuts, bottles of water and even a few books on the beach and in the jungle which act as currency on the island. Each item has a unique value that can be used to "buy" items from certain castaways. The trick is that there's no such thing as change, so you will need to be smart about which items you trade so as to equal the exact value of the items you're receiving.

You will need to trade for torches or a lantern, because a few of the earliest quests have you exploring some dark caves. This is the survival horror portion of the game, apparently. When in a cave, you will need to use some light or else your heart begins to race and then the darkness somehow kills you. There are random spills of water and swarms of bats that knock out your light, but it's otherwise fairly easy to keep from being killed in the dark. Navigating the caves can be a little tricky as there are some dead ends and looping paths meant to disorient you. Some will hate this element, but it felt like classic adventuring to me, so I didn't mind it.

The more annoying exploration element is traversing through the jungle. Here it is easy to get disoriented, so you will need to use a series of flag markers to negotiate your way through the jungle. When you reach a marker, press the appropriate key and you will be pointed towards the next marker. Trouble is the black smoke is patrolling the jungle looking to kill trespassers. If you don't know what I mean by "black smoke," again, this is not the game for you. When you hear the smoke nearing, you need to run into a thicket of trees and hide. But this changes your orientation, making it difficult to figure out which way you were originally heading.

The interesting twist is the six flashbacks that occur during the various episodes. Elliott is attempting to regain his memory, to figure out why a stranger from Flight 815 is trying to kill him. When a flashback starts, you must whip out your camera and attempt to capture a scene you initially see as a torn-up photograph. This requires proper framing of the subject and focusing the camera for a clear picture. Once the photo is captured, you can watch the full scene play out and then wander around Elliott's memory for the hell of it. It was a good idea to choose to make the flashbacks interactive, but there is almost nothing to Elliott's backstory. It's a one-note tale that shows him not just as a character in need of redemption, but as a despicable coward and perhaps the very worst of the survivors of Flight 815.

As with any decent adventure game, there are also puzzles in Via Domus. And by puzzles, I mean one type of puzzle redone a half-dozen times. In various areas you will come across broken fuse boxes. To fix the box, you need to insert any of three different fuse types to establish a current of electricity. There are multiple junctions on the circuit board each with its own green zone. Those green zones correspond to the level of electrical current and each of the three fuse types lowers the flow of current a certain amount. The challenge of this puzzle is creating paths of current that properly reduce the amount of electricity to get each junction into its proper green zone at the same time. There's no timer for this, so there really is no pressure to finish quickly. While it would have been nice to see a greater variety of puzzles (like two types of puzzles instead of one), the fuse box challenge is actually quite good.

It's not all about puzzles and talking to poorly voiced characters. Oh no, there is also action. There are two chase scenes that have you running along a path jumping over fallen logs and sliding under tree branches. Sound thrilling? Of course not. You also get to fire your gun twice, so there's that. The action elements of Lost are poorly implemented and add little drama to a game that already feels a little flat. While I wouldn't necessarily advocate adding more action sequences, there needs to be more of something. If not action, then more exploration options, more puzzles, deeper conversation trees and more story

Via Domus is one big Easter egg for Lost fans. There are lots of little inside jokes that only true fans can appreciate. Be it the random dead polar bear, Sun's unexplained change from speaking only Korean to speaking fluent English or the Others' prison for Elliott. As a fan, I had quite a few "ooh" moments. This is a game for the fans, which only fans can appreciate. But at the same time -- in a strange bit of paradox -- this is a game that will disappoint almost every Lost fan. Not having the appropriate voice actors, failing to properly retell the story of the first two seasons, and throwing in a very lame subplot about the Hanso Corporation are only going to leave fans frowning.

That said, the very end of this short adventure (literally the last minute of the game) introduces a twist that raises some questions about the Island. For that reason alone, fans should rent (not buy) Lost: Via Domus.

Closing Comments
Ask any Lost fan a question about the show and you are likely to be drawn into a long-winded conversation about The Others, polar bears and how hot Sawyer looks with his shirt off. Ask someone who doesn't watch the show why people seem obsessed with Lost and they will likely shrug, roll their eyes and say, "Who gives a damn?" If you are of the former camp -- the kind who dreams of one day crashing on the Island just so you can personally solve its mysteries -- then you should probably rent (not buy) Via Domus. If you're in the latter category, turn away. Not a damn thing will make sense to you if you haven't watched at least the first two seasons of Lost. And there's no "game" here to make it worth playing unless you are a fan. Even then, it's only good for the final minute. At least it only takes five hours to reach the conclusion.

©2008-02-29, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

Alternate history for people who don't like fun.

By: Ryan Geddes

The creators of Turning Point: Fall of Liberty began with an intriguing question: What if the U.S. had never become involved in World War II? Would power-crazed Nazi Germany, having gained control of Europe and Asia, eventually bring its military machine to bear on isolationist America?

As Turning Point begins, we're told that British diplomat Winston Churchill was killed when struck by a taxi in New York City in 1931 (Churchill really was hit by a taxi that year, but he survived and walked with a cane for the rest of his life). This alternate history provides the conceit by which the rest of Turning Point's story unfolds.

It's a solid introduction and a fascinating question of the type pondered by history nerds the world over. It's all downhill from there.

Despite its lofty ambitions, developer Spark Unlimited has delivered a shallow first-person shooter that largely fails to deliver. Set against such a grand backdrop, the game's thin, trite narrative falls flat. There is little characterization, and I didn't find myself caring about much that happened in the game.

Apparently, my name is Dan Carson, and I'm a construction worker everyman who is unofficially drafted as America's savior after the skies over New York City become black with German zeppelins. If you love zeppelins -- I mean if you really, really love zeppelins -- you'll at least get something out of Turning Point as there's a blimp around every corner.

Apparently, by 1953, when Turning Point takes place, the German Luftwaffe has arrived at the inevitable conclusion that dirigibles are the aircraft of choice for low air support. I'm not sure what bulletproof material they're fashioned from, but the only way I can ground them is to shoot them with six consecutive rockets. They're actually called "assault blimps" in the game, and they made me laugh.

Super-zeppelins and tepid storylines would be somewhat forgivable if Turning Point played like a dream, but it does not. Most of the levels are dull, and the ones that are interesting are plagued (like the rest of the game) with bad artificial intelligence. Except for the last act of the game (there are three), enemies are rarely aggressive and seem heavily scripted.

I was never once flanked or otherwise outmaneuvered by Nazi forces, many of whom were wearing bright orange goggles that made them ridiculously easy to spot at a distance. Multiple times I was able to walk directly up to enemies who were facing me but seemed to not even realize I was there. I dealt them death, but my victories were hollow. That's because there's no blood or body damage of any kind in Turning Point. There are Nazi flags, swastikas and the twin lightning bolts of the SS at every turn, but I can't have blood?

It's usually no more fun killing enemies from a distance in Turning Point, either, although the PC controls are much smoother than those in the console versions. Turning Point uses a grenade detection system like the one used in Call of Duty 4, but it's imprecise and tells you little about how close you are to a grenade or where it landed.

In the wake of recently-released FPSs like CoD4, BioShock and Halo 3, Turning Point feels archaic. But that's not to say it doesn't work fundamentally as a shooter. If you're a hardcore gotta-play-em-all shooter fan and have been longing for a return to the WWII themes popularized by series like Medal of Honor, Turning Point will grab your interest. The game works, start to finish, and there is a cohesive (albeit thin) story to be told along the way.

Unfortunately, the straight-up playability of the game is marred by some examples of sloppy execution, the worst of which is the "hand" icon that is supposed to appear over usable items in the environment. It works well enough on doors, but in many levels of the game trying to get the icon to appear over levers, valves, elevator buttons and ladders is maddeningly difficult. I'm not playing a point-and-click adventure here, and I'm not interested in moving my reticule pixel-by-pixel over a lever handle until the hand icon appears. Glitches like these kill Turning Point's pacing, which is already spotty at best.

Boring story and rough gameplay don't matter as long as it looks awesome, right? Well, wrong, but it doesn't matter anyway because Turning Point is not a graphically accomplished game. The graphics are not impressive, and clipping and framerate stutter are common. When multiple enemies or other activities are present on-screen, serious slowdown usually follows.

I tried Turning Point in both high and medium performance modes and in two different resolutions, but it still ran sluggishly at times, especially before and after loading checkpoints. For a modern first-person shooter on a current-generation console, this game performs poorly.

Turning Point is the very definition of a linear game, which would be fine if exciting things happened along the way, which they really don't. There are a few standout moments where the level designers seemed to break away and try new things, but the game is otherwise repetitive and uninteresting.

And aside from moving through the maps, there's nothing else to keep your attention. There are no secrets to be found, no hidden paths, no collectible items and few exciting scripted events.

Three or four times, I was asked by the National Guard to plant and arm bombs on vehicles and objects. As a construction worker with no military experience, I'm obviously the man for the job. This activity involves walking up to, say, a tank, where the bomb is already inexplicably placed. Click on it and match three wires, whose colors correspond to R, G, B and Y keys on your keyboard. It is impossible to fail this "puzzle" unless you are color blind. In that case, it would be a game-breaking problem.

Health is progressive, which means you'll have to take cover to heal when you get riddled with Nazi bullets. For firing back, you're allowed to carry four grenades and two weapons, which you can swap for dropped weapons as you come across them. Turning Point features some interesting boomsticks, like the MP50 submachine gun, that were apparently in actual development in Germany during WWII. On the American side, you'll have use of old standbys like the M1 Garand and Thompson gun.

For all the broad backstory in Turning Point, there is little attention paid to detail in the game itself. There are cutscenes between each level moving the story forward, though, and they actually raise some interesting questions. But again, they have little connection to the actual gameplay and are quite forgettable.

Turning Point scores reasonably well with its "grappling" feature, which allows you to grab an enemy and either knock him out, which results in a cool animation, or use him as a human shield. The latter choice is pretty useless on the lower difficulty levels but can come in handy on the harder settings. It was a nice addition to the game and resulted in some of the more satisfying moments I had with Turning Point.

Multiplayer, however, is not satisfying and was clearly an afterthought. I played better multiplayer World War II games five years ago. There are two modes -- deathmatch and team deathmatch -- available for up to 8 players online or over a LAN. Hit a loadout screen before you head into a match, pick a weapon and then fall asleep.

Closing Comments
Turning Point: Fall of liberty is a shining example of a great idea poorly executed. There is fun to be had with the game, but it's not the grand adventure it claims to be. Shooting Nazis in the streets of three major U.S. cities should be a non-stop thrill ride that has me on the edge of my seat. This game provides the opposite experience. If you're a die-hard WWII buff (or zeppelin fetishist), give this one a rent. Otherwise, skip it and read a Harry Turtledove novel instead.

©2008-02-29, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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The Sims 2: FreeTime

Keep filling up those hours, guys!

By: Jon Habib

Seven must be the lucky number in the Sims universe. Makin' Magic was the seventh and final expansion of the original core game, and it completely overhauled the conventions of the game to make playing it a definitively different experience (if you chose to take advantage of the new features). Although Free Time, the seventh expansion for The Sims 2, doesn't quite go that far, there are new features that mess with the rules of the game, making the experience feel much fresher.

First, let's address the gimmick of the expansion pack. The idea here is that your Sims have been diligently working away on their relationships, jobs, and family happiness for some time now. Once home, a Sim basically had two options: work on a job skill or relationships to get promoted, or improve on his mood meters so he doesn't die. (I can hear you hardcore fans yelling at me that that's way oversimplifying it. Remember, we're all hardcore fans of the game here too; I don't deny I'm oversimplifying.) If your Sim was already set for his job, and his mood meters were decently high, there simply wasn't anything more to do.

Free Time is here to alleviate the boredom by giving your Sims ten types of hobbies to check out when they're otherwise bored. As always, the hobbies are blended seamlessly into the rest of the experience, and can even be used to help your jobs. For example, you can use the "tinkering" hobby to mess around with electronic devices. Not only does this increase the Sim's fun meter, it increases his mechanical job skill as well. So rather than the boring methods of studying the skills, you can get some hands-on experience with the job skill instead.

The hobbies can be used to, possibly, make money on their own. Tinkering your own stereo won't accomplish anything, but you can use it to restore old cars, and then sell them for decent profits. Other hobbies including dancing, sports, games (meaning digital and others), and more, each of which has at least one way to make some cash for your efforts. Best of all, there is plenty to discover and do, and you're never limited to any one specific hobby. You can have Sims participate in all ten, or just focus on one; although the game somewhat forces you to specialize, because ignoring a given hobby for too long will make the Sim's enthusiasm for it fall.

Most of the hobbies include the option to create something, and then further customize it. The aforementioned old cars can be repainted several different colors, and you can even make some customized clothing at the upper levels of the arts and crafts hobby. The customization options are not nearly as deep as we'd like them to be (it would be awesome if we could design the clothing in a layer system like for pets' fur), but any variety is better than none at all.

Hobbies also have the advantage of being accessible by Sims of all ages, which has always been a sticky problem with expansions in the past. After all, children couldn't really take advantage of the romantic features in Nightlife, so that expansion basically left families out in the cold and relied only on romantic adult Sims. Here in Free Time however, even children can discover the fun of soccer or gardening, even if they can't quite take it the levels of adult Sims.

Still, believe it or not, the gimmick is not the strongest change to the game. Electronic Arts has added a new meter for the Sims' every day lives. Called the Lifetime Aspiration meter, this essentially measures how well the Sim is enjoying his life as a whole. Operating like experience points in a role-playing game, it goes up every now and then when your Sim achieves his daily wants, and when he has a life-changing event (marriage, kids, etc.). If it tops off, the Sim will permanently be in a good mood for the rest of his life.

That's similar to a system already in the game, but the new system differs slightly. Every time that meter "levels up," you can buy a personality perk for your Sim that changes the game's rules for him alone. These perks can range from permanently doubling the learning speed of all job skills to making the Sim's mood meters decay at a slower rate. With the right combination, an extremely happy Sim can stay up for a long time and accomplish many things that simply would not have been possible before.

The new systems give an odd trade-off. We've done nothing but praise the interface of The Sims series since it released years ago, but the new meters and buttons required to make all this new stuff work has cluttered the interface. Veteran Sims players won't get confused (we already know at a mere glance what means what), but new players really won't know what the hell is going on for awhile. The hobby screen itself, while placed logically, is a little buried and not easy to find if you're just starting out.

The sounds, graphics, and music are in the same style they've always been. Naturally, just how much that's a good thing or bad thing is up to you; it's obvious the graphical engine is aging, but really, comparing the models here to something like Crysis is just unfair. For what it intends to do, the graphics of The Sims are more than adequate, and the animations are extremely well-done as always.

Closing Comments
Typically I've closed these reviews by saying, "This expansion pack won't convert any non-players into Sim fans, but..." I think that's going to be true for the rest of the life of the series: if you have followed the series and you're not a fan by now, you'll never be one. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Free Time will go down as one of the most significant expansions for The Sims 2. It definitely blows away Bon Voyage, and is arguably even slightly better than Seasons simply because of the new content. The now-slightly cluttered interface hurts, but not nearly enough to turn off players; it just takes a little time to get used to. If you have The Sims 2 at all, regardless of your other expansions, be sure to grab this one as soon as you can.

©2008-02-26, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Rail Simulator

It simulates trains, too.

By: Emily Balistrieri

Rail Simulator is one of those games meant for a very small subset of the gaming population. Are they even gamers? They may be. One thing is for sure, though, they must love trains. This is a hardcore sim, not even the slightest hint of an arcade-y Densha de Go feel. No cute HUD, no music, no cheerful VO. Just you and the tracks laid out in front of you.

Despite the three settings of driving complexity to make it seem like they are trying to ease you into the workings of the sim, there is no handholding. Not even an in-game tutorial. Members of the community have been making video walk-throughs, while lamenting the lack of a thick, fully printed manual. What you get in the box is a flimsy booklet that barely scratches the surface, and a couple of reference cards for keyboard controls and signals. To be fair, there are a couple pdf files on the disk, but remember the spiral bound textbook that came with Sim Earth back in the day? That is the kind of documentation that would be really helpful for software like this, and it's the kind of thing that enthusiasts enjoy poring over.

Back to the game, though. Immediately after install you'll have four routes available: Barstow to San Bernardino, Hagen to Siegen, Oxford to Paddington, and Bath to Templecombe, each with a historical blurb for your edification. Besides driving across California, Germany, and the UK, you'll experience different eras, and a handful of missions for each route from rush hour commuter traffic, to delivery

While there are several different trains, they each fall into one of the three engine categories: diesel, electric, or steam. Where the diesel and electric engines are most concerned with just throttle and braking, steam is the realm of the true expert, who can keep track of steam usage, the rate at which the coal is shoveled, and more. There are six different ways to experience a game ending error in a steam engine--for example, fatal blowback caused by an open firebox in a tunnel -- as opposed to the two (derailment and collision) of the diesel and electric.

Interestingly, you can choose to play the game as a disembodied first person in the cab, pulling levers, turning cranks, and pushing buttons with the mouse. In some cases, you could get more delicate throttle control, by pulling it manually, but other times, it would flip flop a bit and mess you up. I ended up going mostly with the keyboard, since no matter what train you're driving all the controls stay in the same place there.

The hardest part of a scenario is getting out of the yard. I eventually stumbled across a tutorial explaining how to go into the overhead map (by pressing 9) and using shift + left click to set junction switches and forge a path. Once you're out on the tracks, it's mostly just scenery, screwing with camera angles, making sure you're not speeding. Being a sim, this part of the game can last for a while, depending on the trains speed. Then it's time to park it and see how well you did.

Quite a detailed performance analysis is provided at the end of a mission, with a percentage (to three decimals!) of the time you spent driving excellently, a list of each error (Improper horn use!), and in the case of speeding, at least, a complete break down of where, when, for how long, and how severely you were breaking the limit.

Some might say that the included scenarios are just to get your feet wet, because when those get old, the real meat of the package stares you down: world editor mode, big time. This is where you can create your own routes, depots, cities -- everything. There are even extra tools for download from the official site, as well as more assets. Beware the complete lack of any user friendliness, though. Despite the hellish learning cliff, the forums are full of people sharing screens and videos of their work.

Graphically, the trains look nice and cabs feel authentic. There is stuff to see out the window. Unfortunately it's all pretty jaggy. Best part is no-clip as a rule, when foliage reaches over the tracks and instead of hitting the windshield, hits you full in the first-person face with all of its big pixel-textured glory. I also noticed a passenger stuck in a wall -- there can't be much to do besides standing on that platform, so I'm not sure what he was doing there. Sound in the game consists entirely of ambiance, which can be dull until you realize the alternative is probably some awful repetitive tune you wouldn't want to hear anyways.

Closing Comments
Rail Simulator is a piece of software that seems to accomplish what it set out to do. It doesn't do it with much panache, graphical or otherwise, but it gets it done. You drive trains, and build worlds to drive them in. It's too bad they couldn't have included more detailed information on how exactly that is accomplished, but the player community seems pretty good about helping out anyone who wants to learn. Rail Simulator will probably please hardcore rail fans, but it'll bore the socks right off anyone else.

©2008-02-25, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Posted: 25 Feb 2008

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Conflict: Denied Ops

The LZ is hot! Unfortunately, the game is not.

By: Erik Brudvig

Conflict: Denied Ops was doomed from the start. The core gameplay isn't good. From there a series of uninspired levels were slapped together and some ugly graphics were put in place and a budget title was born. And it was dead on arrival.

The game follows the travails of special agents Graves and Lang as they attempt to avert all manner of WMDs from being unleashed on the earth at the hands of a Venezuelan dictator. One is black and carries a machine gun and says things like "bro" because he is "hip." The other is white, prefers a sniper rifle and doesn't like his rookie partner. What both of them can agree on is their weapon of choice. They love them so much that they literally can't put them down. That's right, you can't switch weapons in Conflict: Denied Ops. Each agent gets special attachments and upgrades to add a small amount of variety to the game as you progress from one level to the next, but what you start each level with is what you get. Graves has a sniper rifle. Lang has a machine gun. End of story.

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Each mission follows a string of cookie-cutter gameplay concepts. There are explosive barrels everywhere, nuclear or chemical weapons must be disarmed, and the majority of the stages end with a hot LZ (landing zone) that must be cleared before you can exit. The enemy AI is suspect at best, the animations are downright terrible and the dialogue is atrocious. Some bits of the environment are destructible but everything looks so bad that it's hard to care. It begins as a game that feels like a guilty pleasure shooter -- one where you just blow things up and ignore the low production value -- and then takes a nose dive. Occasionally you'll get to hop into a vehicle for a few seconds. That is the game in a nutshell.

Of course, with an odd couple pairing in the spotlight, co-op gameplay is the primary feature in Conflict. You can team up with a friend through a LAN or the internet to battle straight through the game or take on an individual level that you have previously cleared. In this way, some people might be able to find some fun in Conflict: Denied Ops, but with so many better gaming options, it's hard not to be disappointed at every turn.

You may not be able to find a friend that will suffer through the entirety of Denied Ops with you which will leave the controlling of both Graves and Lang up to you. This is bad. You can swap between the two with the touch of a button or deliver basic commands such as to rally to your position or move to where you're looking. If you don't, you'll find your other half almost completely devoid of AI. He'll shoot a bit at things around him, but he won't follow you unless told to do so ad nausea and he generally tends to just stare at a wall. Here's a fun example: In one stage you get to take command of a hovercraft with a mounted machine gun. One person drives while the other shoots, only the AI is so nonexistent that it won't drive if you get in the turret. He'll just sit there in the driver seat like a complete idiot while enemy fire rains down on his stupid face. In short, your partner a constant liability and annoyance.

And then it's over after roughly four hours. Even if you could delude yourself into thinking the game is fun, it won't last long. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

If it's possible, things get worse when you venture into the multiplayer "game." Ostensibly it's a game, though that word typically denotes some sort of fun which Conflict: Denied Ops is lacking on all fronts here. There are just three modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch, and conquest), none of which are original in any way other than the fact that, like the campaign, you can't switch weapons. Everyone plays as either Graves or Lang which makes about as much sense as green-lighting this project in the first place. The competitive outing supports up to 16 players (if you can find that many poor saps to play with) and it runs, so there's that I guess.

Closing Comments
Do yourself a favor and ignore this game. The appeal of a co-op experience is oftentimes strong, but there is essentially no merit to Conflict: Denied Ops. It offers nothing unique and has almost no production value. Shooters are a dime a dozen these days and most have this game beat at every turn.

©2008-02-25, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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SunAge

An age we don't really care to revisit.

By: Charles Onyett

It's tough to review a game like this, one that's deliberately designed as a throwback to the gameplay and presentation aesthetics of mid-90s RTSes. If I were to say it feels old and tired, many might counter that SunAge is supposed to and I'm missing the point of the experience. Maybe so, but I can't help but feel that SunAge does, in fact, feel old and tired, and given how far along RTS games have moved since the days of games like Command & Conquer and Warcraft, it's odd to see a "nostalgia" title that still manages to unnecessarily tamper with what most gamers consider to be basic elements of presentation and control.

As far as gameplay goes, SunAge relies on the old-school tenets of base building, unit cap management, and resource collection via gathering trucks. Four types of resources, green, yellow, blue, and red, represent technology tiers. So you start out gathering blue, then are forced to expand your base to grab green, yellow, and finally red to access more powerful production structures, research options, and unit types.

Base expansion in SunAge can be really quick, a result of one of the game's more unique features: an energy network. Each building needs power to operate, so you have to connect a series of pylons that link to a central power core. This means as long as you've got a string of pylons connecting your base to any part of the map, you can build structures connected to it to pump out units, construct static defenses, or set up another resource collection point.

Unfortunately, since multiplayer has yet to be released for the game (though it's been repeatedly promised by Vertex4 on their forums), you're forced to spend your time vying against a brainless AI in skirmishes or slogging through an uninspired, poorly paced, and tedious single-player campaign.

There's a story here, about how humanity ravaged the Earth through nuclear war and a group that becomes known as the Federals winds up having to take refuge in self-contained domes. Those excluded from domes are gradually warped by the harsh conditions and name themselves the Raak-Zun, mutant survivalists bent on tearing apart dome-dwellers. Their conflict is later on interrupted by the appearance of the Sentinels, a race of vicious alien robots. It's not exactly the most original tale, dragged further down by stale, cardboard characters, an awful art style and generic dialogue. That being said, the game does deliver an occasional gem of a line, dripping with camp, such as, "This must have been how earth looked before the wasteland – before the wars and radiation took their toll. Except this jungle is crawling with killer robots." That kind of thing hardly keeps the campaign afloat, though.

Since narrative and character aren't really chief components of what makes an RTS entertaining, many may be able to overlook these flaws. The presentation issues, on the other hand, will likely prove more irritating. First thing you'll notice is the poorly designed user interface, which plasters the screen with a giant blue circle to indicate each unit's firing range. Then there's the awkwardness of issuing attack orders. Instead of being able to simply right-click a visible enemy and watch your troops move into range to start an assault, you have to manually move the targets into range and wait for them to attack. Once within range targets can be "tagged," meaning right-clicked while in combat to focus unit fire, but sometimes this doesn't seem to function consistently, with units choosing targets you didn't intend.

Each type of unit can be "grouped," meaning combined with others of its unit type and then commanded as a single unit, given formation-move orders, or given time-delay orders to coordinate movement with other groups. Vertex4 here makes another strange decision by making it impossible to drag-select different types of units. Though you'll eventually get used to this, it's an unnecessary nuisance. For instance, if you've got a group of riflemen standing next to a group of rocket soldiers, you can't actually select them simultaneously to issue orders. This shouldn't be a problem for any RTS veteran, as the solution requires you hotkey numerous units, which most are used to – it's just odd to be restricted from selecting multiple groups at once.

The interface isn't all bad, though. You can queue up build orders with your construction units like you might have experienced in Supreme Commander, so that certainly helps for speeding along energy network construction and setting up defensive perimeters. Some of the units do have interesting functionalities, particularly when you start to discover all their secondary functions that can be researched at the appropriate structure. And games can actually become pretty interesting once you've developed a power network across a map, since the connecting pylons can be taken out rather quickly and you need to balance how large of a network you build versus what you can adequately defend. For me, however, I never managed to really get over the awkward control scheme – managing the battlefield proved to be too much of hassle to really be enjoyable.

Reviewers harangued the game upon its European release last year for being made available in a buggy, nearly unplayable state. With the updated version we tried out, many of the frequent complaints, such as unstable save files and crashes to desktop, seem to be ironed out. Granted there's still no multiplayer, so you may want to wait for that to release before diving in if the game sounds interesting to you.

The best part of the game is the sprite-based graphics, with maps and units sporting a surprising amount of detail. A few more flashy effects are mixed in from time to time to an effective degree, and the sight of a fully developed base, with its matrix of criss-crossing power wires can be quite pretty. The cartoon art panels that populate the cut-scenes, however, are truly awful, and you're unfortunately forced to stare at them quite frequently.

Closing Comments
With SunAge, it's really a question of whether you're willing to put up with clumsy UI and control scheme to play a game that, for the most part, feels like it was or could have been made 10 years ago, and even then it would have been a middling game. You're far better off reinstalling something like StarCraft or Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Evoking nostalgia is certainly a worthy goal for a game, but there's got to be something compelling worth staying for after the memories fade.

©2008-02-12, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Sins of a Solar Empire

Salvation awaits strategy gamers in an awesome title that mixes low-level spaceship combat and high-level universal conquest.

By: Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch

Once upon a time there were "4X" turn-based strategy games and real-time strategy games and the two philosophies behind them couldn't have been more different. A "4X" game is all about the big-picture: building an empire, sacking enemy cities (or planets) and controlling the movements of millions of soldiers to conquer the known universe. An RTS, on the other hand, is all about moment-to-moment decision making -- move your forces, attack targets, bring up reinforcements and make decisions quickly as the tactical situation changes in a heartbeat. Then along comes the team at Vancouver-based Ironclad Games who see in these two styles not incompatibility, but opportunity. The result is Sins of a Solar Empire, a simply brilliant hybrid of 4X and RTS gameplay that draws from both sides to make a wildly innovative and enjoyable game that's much more than the sum of its parts.

The story of Sins of a Solar Empire is interesting, though hardly original. The Trader's Emergency Coalition, a rigid capitalist oligarchy that comprises most of the human race, is locked in a death struggle with the alien Vasari. The Vasari -- a remnant of a much greater empire that once ruled the galaxy -- are on the run from a self-created enemy stalking them from the Galactic core. Into this mix come the Advent, descendents of an "aberrant" human culture exiled by the TEC a millennium ago and now looking for revenge. Each brings a specific strategic bias to warfare (the Vasari are tough-but expensive, the TEC cheaper and weaker and the Advent reliant on special psionic abilities) that make for three fun and well-balanced militaries for players to use.

Sins of a Solar Empire's basic gameplay won't be unfamiliar to anyone who's spent time in Sid Meier's Civilization series, Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations of any of the genre's "4X" brethren. Players begin with one little planet, a few construction ships and a burning ambition to bring the rest of the universe under their steel-toed boot. From such humble beginnings players expand out into a universe consisting of as many planets as the player wishes to set using the highly customizable map creator. These planets generate tax revenue and act as bases and resource and production facilities. Each world also has a "gravity well" surrounding it where building and eventually space combat takes place. The only way to travel from world to world is via a series of pre-defined "jump paths" that offer a variety of strategic challenges by creating a sort of "space terrain" that players need to consider when moving fleets of starships around.

The difference between SoaSE and other "4X" titles is that all of a player's decisions are carried out in the manner of a real-time strategy title. Click on the capital ship factory and it takes approximately 30 seconds for the ship to be produced. Put together a fleet of a dozen or so ships and send them on a three-jump trip to an enemy world and it'll take them eight or so minutes to get there. Once in combat, battle is decided by spaceship strengths and weaknesses, proper positioning and the use of player-controlled special abilities in the manner of a classic RTS -- all of it rendered in stunning graphical splendor.

The final result of this unlikely blending of styles is an elegant and stately ballet in which players use the mouse wheel to zoom from an overarching view of their empire down to the local level where they can tweak the placement of ship factories, defensive emplacements or direct individual spaceships in battle. Despite being in real time, the game's pace is fairly sedate. This allows players plenty of leisure to concentrate on things like developing planetary infrastructure, conducting diplomatic relations with other players in multiplayer games, buying and selling resources on the black market and tweaking their trade networks to maximize revenue. As a "4X" title, Sins of a Solar Empire is filled with the sorts of global "guns or butter?" decision-making that make these titles so much fun.

When battles do occur, players have an impressive amount of control over the makeup, disposition and tactics of their space navies. Each race has a wide variety of purpose-built spacecraft ranging from six different types of mothership down to tiny missile launchers, fighter carriers, gunships, support vessels and much more. The game's deep but easy-to-understand research tree has both a "civilian" and "military" wing that lets players further tweak both their imperial and close-combat strategies to their liking. These different varieties of spacecraft aren't just for show, either. Players can and must put together purpose-designed task forces using a variety of spaceship classes in order to be competitive. They can even take direct control over their ships, though the excellent unit AI is perfectly capable of fighting a decent battle. The result is that the game requires as much strategizing at the unit level as running the whole empire does.

The game's best innovation (and the one that makes it possible to play at all) is the "Empire Tree." This is basically the mother-of-all-minimaps, a collapsible tree that runs down the left side of the screen containing every planet, structure and spaceship in symbol form. It takes some time to learn how to sort all those little squiggles and dots, but once learned, the empire tree becomes an amazingly powerful way to track what's going on. Players can even use it to give orders to any of their own units just the way they can in the main screen, and in extreme cases it'd be possible to play the whole game from it.

That's not to say the game doesn't have its flaws. The AI is very good but never seems to surrender when badly outmatched. Some of the game's information and control screens and the hot keys that allow quick access to vital functions aren't arranged as well as they might be. End-game superweapons are a bit overpowered and tend to put the game out of reach for opponents when they appear. The NPC space pirates are pretty aggressive and need to either be scaled back or have the time between their appearances increased. None of these, however, rise beyond the "mere annoyance" level and are more than compensated for by the sheer joy of bombing whole planets back to the Stone Age and turning another player's proud space fleet into so much floating debris. The game's publisher has already acknowledged these issues and is working on adjusting them in future game updates.

If the game does have a major fault, it would be the baffling lack of a single-player campaign. That's not to say there isn't plenty to do in single-player. Sins of a Solar Empire has a large collection of custom-designed sandbox maps as well as a very powerful map editor players can use to create their own universes. Even if players never venture into multiplayer, there's plenty of gameplay inside the box. The Ironclad team went to a lot of trouble to create an elaborate back story for its fictional universe, though. It'd be nice to get a little more in-depth and continue the story begun in the game's opening cinematic. More importantly, a good campaign could help new players get over a pretty severe learning curve better than the hopelessly inadequate tutorials. Many of the game's strategic factors such as trade stations, the black market and the details of cultural influence aren't explained very well.

SoaSE's multiplayer is run through Ironclad Online, a proprietary service launched with the game. The front end of the system is serviceable, though somewhat barebones. Unfortunately, making connections to a game from the lobby has been a bit hit-and-miss and we've occasionally been forced to drop games because of lag. This is really unfortunate because multiplayer is where this game shines. The game's "bounty" and diplomatic systems create enough treachery to make the U.N. look like a model of integrity and big battles are sheer fun. Many of our best moments have come when six-player conflicts devolve into nasty bidding wars as everybody tries to sic the NPC space pirates on each other, or the times when we were able to turn the tables on "friends" who were supplying resources to the guys currently smashing through our empire.

The reason that Sins of a Solar Empire works is that it truly respects and celebrates both styles of strategy gaming. It marries the grand scope and Nietzschian will-to-power embodied by the best "4X" conquer-the-universe titles with the adrenaline-fueled immediacy and moment-to-moment decision making of a great real-time strategy game. More than that, it uses the best aspects of both styles to create a uniquely enjoyable experience that shouldn't be missed by any strategy gamer out there who thinks they've got what it takes to rule the galaxy.

©2008-02-08, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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The Sims 2: Castaway Stories

The popular life sim washes up on a deserted island.

By: John Habib

For The Sims: Castaway Stories, I believe we can dispense with the usual introductory summary of an add-on game's core title. If you don't know what The Sims is, and haven't seen any news or features of it since it debuted in 2000, then you really need to quit your job and start reading IGN more. The Sims: Castaway Stories is the newest game in the long-running franchise. It's a stand-alone game, needing neither The Sims, The Sims 2, nor The Sims: Life Stories to play. It's built on the The Sims 2 engine, although this is the first Sims game that truly feels different despite the coattails it is riding.

But before we tell you about the new features, we need to discuss the intention of the game. The Sims has always been a rather resource-heavy game that drained the life out of many a processor, especially when the series switched to an all-3D graphical appearance with The Sims 2. The myriad of expansion packs and "stuff packs" just made the game (and its technical requirements) that much higher. Personally, my Sims save folder is 1.11 gigabytes large, and that doesn't include the backups I frequently make.

So early last year, Electronic Arts came up with a solution: make a modified version of The Sims that is slightly dumbed down so it can run on machines that are below the gaming curve, especially laptops. To that end, The Sims: Life Stories, The Sims: Pet Stories, and now The Sims: Castaway Stories all succeed. We ran the game on a couple different machines, including a low-end rig that barely met minimum requirements, and it ran without a hitch (provided you keep the graphical settings low). So far, so good.

With the technical issues out of the way, what is there of the game itself? Naturally, The Sims is all about taking care of your little virtual people as they live their virtual lives, while you either play God by ordering their every action, or watch them act on their own accords with the Free Will option turned on. Again, nothing new, and nothing you haven't heard before.

However, what makes Castaway Stories different is the setting. Rather than housing your Sims in houses while they juggle work and family crises, your Sims now find themselves on a tropical island with no escape. Jobs in the game are replaced with survival options: you can tell your Sims to work as hunters, gatherers, or crafters. This will make their "job" on the island to go out and find food and the generically named "resources." The latter gives you the ability to buy items, and the former gives you the ability to avoid staring into the Grim Reaper's beady undead eyes for at least another few hours.

Strangely, despite being Sims players since literally day one, we were rather amazed at how very different the changes felt even if they, strictly speaking, were only name changes. That is, whether a shower costs 600 Simoleons (in the core game) or 480 resources (in Castaway Stories), you're still exchanging Item A for Item B. This isn't exactly the miracle feeling that will convert non-Sims fans to pick up the game, but regardless, there was something extremely appealing about the concept.

And in fact, that is what your Sims' entire virtual lives will be comprised of: going out into the wilderness, getting food and resources, converting the resources into useful objects, trying to maintain their mood meters so they don't die, repeat. There is no real "end," there is no rescue ship that you can summon after so much time. You're stuck on this island forever, baby.

To break up the monotony, and to stick with the idea of "stories," the game ships with a single scenario that tracks one Sim and his or her adventures on the island. After choosing your alter-ego, you find that your Sim has shipwrecked on the island. At first alone, your first hour of gameplay or so will simply be a test of survival as you encounter angry orangutans and poison-spewing statues. Later, more Sims will be found, and your little avatar will find itself in the middle of an evil plot involving magic staves and a possible fountain of youth.

The story will certainly not win any awards for originality or depth, but it does serve its purpose well of giving your Sim something to do as you learn the game. In fact, the early chapters of the story are basically an extended tutorial. The interface will always show an icon representing the next story goal, which can be clicked on if you ever need a hint on how to proceed.

There is enough variety in the goals that even the typical "fetch quests" that inhabit so many role-playing games these days are explained away sufficiently. You'll never feel like your Sim is wasting its time doing a quest, as every item he or she needs to grab will in some way fix a predicament. And as in the sandbox nature of the series, once you finish the story, you can continue to play the game freely using the Sims involved in it.

There are indeed problems with the story, however, mostly on the execution side. For one, it's far too short. Players with any amount of Sims experience will finish it in 10 hours; expert players will be done with it less time. It could be because the island is so limited, and unfortunately the entire game takes place within its confines. That is, of course, an unfair argument (it would be like saying that it's unfortunate Mario is confined to the same Mushroom Kingdom throughout Super Mario Bros.), but there could still have been more sights and secrets to discover that maintain the island motif.

Also annoying is the fact that your Sim decides to refuse your orders occasionally if he's feeling down with one of his mood meters. This isn't annoying in and of itself, but there is a glitch relating to completing story goals if your Sims refused an order. For example, say the goal of the story is to chop some wood, but your Sim is completely exhausted. If you order him to chop it anyway, he may cancel the order himself and protest. One time, he canceled the order but chopped the wood anyway; the result is that the log disappeared, but the game did not recognize we accomplished the goal. We had to restart the game, as the story could not be moved forward.

Of course the solution here is to simply make sure your Sim is always in peak condition when trying to accomplish story goals. This process is, however, far more annoying than it needs to be. Sims' energy depletes far too fast, and you'll frequently find yourself having to stop your story progress in order to have him take naps and showers. If you didn't have stop so often, it wouldn't be bad; as it is, you'll probably spend a solid man-hour of time interrupting yourself just because the Sim's energy couldn't hold out a bit longer. It's hard to maintain momentum on the story (especially the parts that are supposed to feel time-critical) when you're breaking for a snack or nap every other story goal.

The frustration you will feel from this frequent stop-and-go action is low compared to the frustration of the freeform mode. Quite frankly, with the whole "deserted island" motif in full-force, there simply is not enough variety in the objects and decorations you can buy for your castaways. The Sims series has always been about the customization and vast options to mix and match décor. While some sacrifices had to be made to make the game laptop-friendly, the sacrifices were just too great for the whole game itself. Again, perhaps this is an unfair argument, but it really removes a lot of the appeal of playing the game once the story is completed.

Even worse, in order to play freeform mode, the game requires you to play the story at least halfway to pick up several items such as a hatchet or a phone that cannot be acquired any other way. This means that if you decide to play freeform, you essentially have to start over and kiss your Sims from the story goodbye. It's a catch-22: do you play Story Mode and waste five hours simply to get the necessary items for freeform mode, or do you play with the same Story Mode characters after the story completes and ignore the freeform mode?

At least working in the game's favor is the music, which is extremely catchy, even catchier than all the other previous titles, including the core games. The island theme will get you hopping and put you in the mood for some survival adventures, and the ambient noises of the jungle will make you want to explore the island deeper.

The graphics don't fare as well, simply because we're working with an engine that is clearly showing its age. Also, the areas of the game are quite a bit more cluttered and larger than their counterparts in the core games, meaning you'll see a drop in frame rates if too much action is going on, even on decently powered systems. The sand and wild grass is a nice change-of-pace from the aluminum siding and cheery gardens of the other games in the series, but the stuttering caused by two dozen decorative trees on-screen at once is too great to ignore.

Closing Comments
The Sims: Castaway Stories is the first game in the entire series that really feels different despite being based on the same engine and principles. It shows the series still has plenty of room for growth, and that perhaps the endless expansion packs are not bad things.

Still, more (much more) could have been done with it, especially when it is compared to the core games. If your computer can handle The Sims 2 and its expansions, that is a much better buy, especially with the release of The Sims 2: Free Time just around the corner. Unlike Life Stories and Pet Stories though, Castaway Stories might be worth a glance if you're a huge Sims fan who just cannot get enough, simply because the island theme is a genuinely different environment than anything previously seen in the series.

I suppose it comes down to a cliche. Castaway Stories is very much like the island it portrays: great for a vacation, but you won't want to live there. After giving it a little bit of your free time, you'll be more than happy to return to the homes of your Sims in the core games.

©2008-02-04, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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