Spec Ops: The Line Review

System: PC, PS3*, Xbox 360
Dev: Yager Development
Pub: 2K Games
Release: June 26, 2012
Players: 1-8
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p	Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

It's As Course As The Sand
by MDPGerman developer Yager did quite a surprising thing with Spec Ops: The Line: They gave us something different from the common shooter fodder we're used to.

Instead of a global threat with international conflicts or campaigns against terrorist organizations where you triumphantly emerge the world's hero, Spec Ops maintains a narrow focus and delves into the psyche to tug at your most morbid of emotions. Though loose with controls and nothing completely transforming in the gameplay department, the mental journey you are taken through with disturbingly realistic possibilities makes Spec Ops: The Line a shooter that you don't just put down and forget. The choices you make will gnaw at your heart, making it an impactful experience, a true sign that justice was done with the story.

The setting is Dubai, after cataclysmic sandstorms have engulfed the city. The sandstorms haven't ceased either, and will continue to impact your campaign through the sand dune city, sprawling beneath abandoned and teetering skyscrapers that jut out toward the heavens.

You play as Captain Martin Walker, leading a pair of squad mates: Sergeant Lugo, your scout and tactical officer, and Lieutenant Adams, who handles the heavier work. After receiving a distress call from Colonel John Konrad, commander of the 33rd Infantry charged with evacuating Dubai after the catastrophe, you lead your three-man Delta force through the storm wall for recon. After an unexpected attack from local insurgents, the plot very quickly becomes twisted, and those you were out to help will ultimately become the enemy. The 33rd has gone rogue, massacring civilians without cause. CIA operatives are opposing them, but you're unsure of their agenda as well. You soon realize that you're on your own, unable to trust anyone

The scene continuously becomes grimmer as you witness the graphic extent of violence against the former residents of Dubai and your countrymen. Though not his original intent, Walker finds himself in the middle of the conflict as he tries to be the hero. You are tasked with difficult choices that present themselves swiftly and offer you no direction as to which is the right one. The life and death decisions do not deliver any consequences instantly, but rather impact the outcome much further into the campaign. Thus reloading a checkpoint to choose the alternate route will not give any indication as to whether it was the right one. Also, you're given little time to converse with your conscience and try to intellectually reason out your decisions; they have to come from the gut. This makes Spec Ops as real as it gets for a warfare shooter. There's still some melodrama present in the script, but for the most part the game was not designed to replicate an epic Hollywood blockbuster, but rather make it extremely personal. And it's likely an experience you will keep private, as there's not a single choice worth gloating about.

Where Spec Ops: The Line returns to normalcy and the standard conventions is in its gameplay. The controls are almost exactly what you'd expect from any squad-based shooter: one trigger to aim, another to fire, another to throw grenades, a button to sprint, reload, swap weapons, melee attack, etc. If you've played any prior shooters you will instantly be able to fly into the action and pay little heed to the constant control tip pop-ins.

That said, the controls could be a lot tighter. There are many instances where you're forced to walk to compensate for conversations, and there are spots where you'll suddenly not be able to fire your weapon. But the most frustrating is the melee button being tied to the vault button. While playing a lighter difficulty level, this won't be much of an issue, but on harder modes, hurdling over a barrier instead of punching a shotgun-toting enemy could send you back to the previous checkpoint, forced to trudge through the combat again, when all you want is to see the next segment of the story unfold.

The generic enemies don't provide much excitement either (aside from the discomfort of being asked to shoot American soldiers). They all have expected designations, with a large percentage of rifle wielders, the occasional goon with a shotgun, some snipers at expected waypoints, and even a couple kamikaze skinheads with military knives. The A.I. is very aggressive, forcing you to handle swarms of troops quickly, which is a nice way to keep the pace moving. Unfortunately, they aren't very intelligent, and they'll chase you behind cover only to run circles around you, or have a rifle barrel pointed right at your forehead and instead use the butt end of the weapon. Pair their idiocy with them obviously being brainwashed to the point where not a single one shows any sign of remorse for their atrocities, and you won't feel all that distressed about performing execution blows on your fellow countrymen.

The character models seem to randomly switch back and forth between very detailed and pixelated messes. Even when the graphics engine is performing at peak, easily discernible mistakes—like eyes not sitting properly in their sockets—indicate areas where a little extra polish would have been appreciated. Animations are decent enough, but the enemies often run toward cover inexplicably, causing a drag in movement. On the other hand, the environments and backgrounds, as well as the still imagery of corpses and other disturbing scenes, will burn into your mind and may even cause you to shudder. Also, the impressive vistas, looking down on a desolate metropolis placed between mile-high mountains of sand, delivers a spectacle you probably haven't seen in any other game.

Thankfully, the view is generally accompanied by little audio, save the gusting winds of the ever looming sandstorm. With such visceral visuals portraying the genocide, the silence compliments your personal grievance far better than any music would be able to. Every so often, you'll find yourself close to makeshift intercom speakers where a deranged disc jockey comments on the justice of the violence while mixing it up with American rock and roll tracks. Never have I been more disturbed with our rock music then when I heard it here; I almost wished I could silence it with my rifle.

The incomparable Nolan North voices Captain Walker and does a masterful job with the script. However, with his instantly recognizable voice, I had a hard time not picturing Walker as Nathan Drake, though with more swearing and military jargon.

Spec Ops: The Line also comes packed with competitive online multiplayer, with a handful of different modes such as the free-for-all Chaos, Mutiny (team deathmatch), and Rally Point. Buried and Uplink are the two objective-based modes with a little more substance, requiring the destruction of Vital Points in order to reveal the High Value Target, or controlling a central rally point. However, since combat isn't exactly the highlight of the single-player campaign, multiplayer isn't really worth more than a few quick matches here and there. It does have a leveling system, leaderboards, and unlockables, but they've been done better elsewhere and don't present anything new.

Despite criticism in all other departments, the gritty story supersedes the game's mediocrity elsewhere, and finally delivers something outside the box. It dives into a disturbing realism that war, racism, and the psychological repercussions that could ensue, going far beyond the dramatic fluff that we've seen in other shooters. The gameplay is decent enough that you won't mind playing through Spec Ops: The Line at least a couple of times to see how different choices affect the conclusion, and the lasting emotional impact you'll likely take away makes this shooter worthy of being placed at the top of your pile.

RAGE Review

System: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Dev: id Software
Pub: Bethesda Softworks
Release: October 4, 2011
Players: 1(2+ Online)
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p	Blood and gore, intense violence, strong language.

Guns, Buggies, And Mutants, Oh My!
by MDP

id Software popularized the first-person shooter genre with their breakout game Wolfenstein 3D back in 1992. Since then, id has spent the last two decades pushing the envelope and giving us one incredible game after another, including the Quake and Doom series. They could've stuck to the tried and true path and given us another installment in one of their handful of renowned franchises, but instead they decided to take a risk. That risk is RAGE, a post-apocalyptic shooter that offers a unique mixture of gunplay and frenetic dune buggy fights with some RPG elements thrown in for a little added flavor. It's an intriguing concept, but how does it stack up against their previous work?

Pretty well I'd say. In the current economic climate, fewer companies are taking risks, so that only makes RAGE all the sweeter; it's something new and different while also being familiar and approachable. This game has a little for everyone: shooter fans will appreciate the finely tuned combat, responsive controls, and the vast arsenal of weapons that you can use to mow down your foes. RPG fans will appreciate the side quests, speaking with the locals, upgrading your equipment, and the sheer amount of time you can spend exploring every nook and cranny of this beautifully realized environment. There's even something for the gamers who have a lust for driving real fast, since the buggy fights play out like Mario Kart for adults.

id is known for their attention to detail, and RAGE has benefited greatly from this. The world they've created will be familiar to fans of the post-apocalyptic genre, but this isn't a desaturated, depressing world. Despite everything being in a state of decay, RAGE's environments are surprisingly vibrant. There are a few set pieces in particular that are definitely eye-catching, and you'll probably have to take a moment to soak in all the little details. RAGE even rewards you for breaking away from the path and exploring, with hidden items and collectibles strewn about each environment. Add RAGE's remarkable ability to render all the details and action in a slick 60 frames per second, and you have yourself a game that never slows down.

The attention to detail expands far beyond the environments, reaching the enemies you encounter and the guns to dispatch them with. There's a decent variety in the types of enemies you'll encounter, ranging from buggy-riding bandits to agile mutants who can navigate the environment in ways that make me wonder if they were into parkour before they became the foul, blood-thirsty savages they are when you meet them. Sprinkle on some incredibly intimidating boss fights and RAGE's enemies are some of the most terrifying ones id has pitted us against so far—and that's saying something after Doom 3's Pinky.

Thankfully, you'll have a vast arsenal of weapons at your disposal that can be used to take out the mutants that will inevitably attack. There are the classic weapon types like rifles, machine guns, pistols, and shotguns, along with more exotic choices like the stealth-friendly crossbow. But by far, the weapon of choice for anyone who wants to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland overrun by mutants and all sorts of bedlam is the wingstick. It might not sound intimidating at first, but believe me, the wingstick will soon become your best friend. It's best described as a deadly boomerang that homes in on the target before killing it in a delightfully gruesome way, then it returns safely to your hand (most of the time).

If that's just not enough to satiate your endless appetite for all things painful, you can choose from the game's hearty selection of gadgets including remote-controlled cars that explode, deployable turrets, and sentry bots. Still not enough? How about some steamy buggy-on-buggy action? At first, the buggies are a means of going from point A to point B without having to traverse the sprawling environments. But they soon become another way to defend yourself against the plethora of enemies you'll face—some of which have their own buggies—whose sole purpose seems to be to take you out. This is where the buggy upgrades and weapons come in handy: you can outfit your vehicle with special parts that make it run more smoothly. Also, there are custom paintjobs, weapons like machine guns and rocket launchers, and special gadgets. The gadgets can be particularly fun as they include a temporary shield, drop mines, hover turrets, and more.

Story-wise, RAGE is above average, though it probably won't wow you with any surprising plot twists. The story is simple: you awake after being frozen and find yourself in the middle of a mutant-infested wasteland; now you must survive. Along the way you'll meet a myriad of memorable characters who feel as real and alive as the world they live in, and there's a feeling of progression that makes the whole experience all the more rewarding.

The missions are interesting too, and this game actually manages to give us interesting side-quests. You won't have to worry about completing mundane fetch quests that plague so many RPG games; instead RAGE's side-quests reveal interesting side stories or offer fun things to do like protecting your allies from waves of mutants as they try to repair a vehicle.

The single-player campaign is a little short and ends rather abruptly, but it's likely to run you anywhere from 10-15 hours, depending on how much time you spending completing side quests. Once it's over, you can occupy yourself with the competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes. The former pits you and up to five other players in frantic dune buggy fights that put your driving skills to the test. The latter includes several missions that can be completed with a friend online. I would've preferred a more fleshed-out competitive multiplayer, since the current offering is pretty shallow, and it would've been nice if the campaign could be taken on with a friend. But as it stands, these are still viable options to keep this game in your collection long after you've beaten it.

Does RAGE push boundaries and set a new bar for future shooters to come? Not really. But it doesn't need to. Instead of trying to revolutionize a genre, id has given us another stellar game that's taken elements from a few different games, in many cases improved them, and seamlessly integrated them into RAGE's world. Everything about this game is polished to near-perfection: the guns feel satisfying and the quests aren't comprised of the lame "fetch this" or "go kill that" missions that many of us have grown tired of long ago. This is a game that manages the impressive feat of appealing to many different types of gamers without sacrificing any of its quality. Even if you're on the fence as to whether or not this is something you'd be interested in, I'm sure that if you give it a chance you'll find something worthwhile in the savage and exciting world that is RAGE.

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Max Payne 3 Review

System: PC, PS3, Xbox 360*
Dev: Rockstar Vancouver
Pub: Rockstar Games
Release: May 15, 2012
Players: 1-26
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p	Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

Purgatory Is Worse Than Hell

by MDP

Those of you who made it through Max Payne 2 (and happen to possess a particularly well-focused memory) might recollect a hint of optimism in our hero's closing line: "I had a dream of my wife. She was dead. But it was alright."

Well, nine years later, life has proven to be far less sunny than Max Payne might have hoped for. But in a franchise whose primary gameplay mechanic is a tortured metaphor for lost time, we certainly can't expect our protagonist to have recovered from his past.

Actually, Max's pain actually seems to have grown deeper over the last decade. He's has traded his Detective's shield and crappy New York City apartment for a private security job and an even crappier apartment in São Paulo. Payne spends his days playing babysitter to the socialite family of industrialist Rodrigo Branco, and spends his nights downing pills and drunkenly stumbling into a bed that makes a wooden sound when he collapses.

His new digs are the product of an old Police Academy friend named Raul, who thought it would be a slick way for Max to take a Brazilian vacation. But when Branco's trophy wife is kidnapped by an army of ski mask-wearing, AK47-toting goons, Max's vacation is evidently over in favor of yet another damsel in distress story.

Thematically speaking, Rockstar Games is really playing to their strengths; some might even say that they've found an interesting storytelling niche. While developers like Bethesda are focusing on spells and dragons, and companies like Activision are preoccupied with military-based narratives, Rockstar places their characters into a universe that borders on our own. Sure, it's darker and more disheveled than most suburban white kids are used to, but they've managed to blend the storytelling of L.A. Noire with the composition of Grand Theft Auto to shape Payne's particular purgatory. But even as we're becoming reacquainted with the franchise, it's immediately clear that this is an entirely new game.

When Max Payne showed up on the scene in 2001, the gaming masses were quick to latch onto Rockstar's newfangled Bullet Time mechanic. However, as with most good ideas, developers managed to quickly overuse the feature, turning it into an industry cliché and relegating it to the same category as most Law and Order episodes.

And this was my biggest worry when I sat down to play the game. See, even though the Max Payne franchise practically has a responsibility to utilize Bullet Time, they also need to create an experience that's altogether different from the dozens of copycat titles that have surfaced over the last decade; just because you invented something doesn't mean you're exempted from the stereotype. Just ask U2.

But Max Payne has certainly aged well. Even after a decade off the job, the Detective still has enough finesse to casually place round after round into the forehead of any approaching enemies. If anything, it feels like he's been practicing.

In fact, in the first two titles, the transition between bullet time and standard time always involved a bit of clumsiness. Players were constantly forced to reacclimatize themselves to their surroundings before reengaging their enemies. But in Max Payne 3, the process is silky smooth. There's a bit of video lag from time to time, and the auto-aim mechanic always manages to lock onto the most inconvenient enemy. But you really shouldn't be using auto-aim anyway, so hopefully that'll teach you to turn it off, cheater.

The transition actually seems to downplay the Bullet Time mechanic, and this is a good thing. The Max Payne empire may have been built on a singular atypical effect, but Rockstar Games has managed to find ways to make it feel like just another feature. This allows players to focus on the game as a whole rather than reliving what made the original great. (Are you taking notes, Duke Nukem?)

And, whereas the original beat us over the head with its distinct lack of subtlety, Max Payne 3 manages to do just the opposite. In fact, subtleties are the name of the game in Max Payne 3. Players won't find themselves being screamed at by a drill sergeant or having to diffuse a suitcase nuke. This story is told in the twitch of Max's hand as he unscrews a bottle and the broken frame on his coffee table that contains a beer-soaked picture of his deceased family.

However, and I hate to say this, subtleties don't make the transition to multiplayer. It's not that the multiplayer component isn't fun; it is. It's just that the lighthearted pandemonium of the multiplayer seems to undermine the tone of the rest of the game. Though, even though I had my reservations, I still managed to spend several hours addictedly glued to a multiplayer game. So you should probably just ignore me.

As far as the controls go, if you've ever played a third-person shooter, you're probably ready to go. Some of the buttons that are typically allocated for grenades and hand-to-hand combat have been co-opted for the Bullet Time mechanic, but it's an easy switch to make. You utilize the slow-down controls so often that they become part of your repertoire quickly.

I should also mention, just to cover my bases, that this is not a Rockstar Game in the same way that Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption is. Players are strapped to a fairly linear storyline that lasts between 15 and 70 hours, depending on how frequently you use bullet time. However, the narrative has Rockstar's stamp all over it. There's a nouveau kind of interactive storytelling happening in Max Payne 3 that could only really be told by the people who brought you GTA and L.A. Noir.

The cutscenes, while possibly too numerous, are seamlessly integrated into the overall narrative in a way that often makes you forget when it's time to take control of your character. This, coupled with a graphical universe that undoubtedly pushes the limits of this generation of consoles, creates an immersive experience that will give titles like Uncharted a run for their money.

However, if you're looking for a fast-paced, explosion-filled, Michael Bay-type experience, you're probably going to want to steer clear of Max Payne 3. Remember, this is a game where you slow things down.

When you actually add them up, Max Payne 3 contains more played-out references than I'm typically comfortable endorsing. You've got a burned-out cop with a drinking problem who plays by his own rules, a highly funded crime syndicate bent on personal revenge, and a gameplay mechanic that's made its way into almost every video game and film over the last decade. Rockstar even added a last stand mode, à la Call of Duty, as if one overused mechanic weren't already enough. But clichés exist for a reason, and Max Payne uses them all flawlessly.

In fact, I would almost say that anyone who's used one of these clichés up till now was just trying to be like Max Payne 3.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Review

System: PC, PS3, Xbox 360*
Dev: Ubisoft
Pub: Ubisoft
Release: May 21, 2012
Players: 1-4, Multiplayer Online
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p	Blood, Intense Violence, Strong Language

Cutting Cookies
by MDP

Every studio wants to make a Call of Duty, that massive game that enthralls the masses, stirring them into a firestorm of controversial yet lucrative activity on a yearly cycle. Some studios, though, take their inspiration a little more literally than others, even going so far as to modify established franchises with elements of the CoD lexicon. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier doesn't just borrow from Activision's powerhouse shooter, though. It also takes elements from Gears of War and the Tom Clancy brand's own Splinter Cell: Conviction.

That isn't to say that Future Soldier lacks its own flavor. There's definitely something distinctive about it, and it's a something that might warrant more exploration, but when a title wears its inspirations this plainly on its sleeve, they truly do have to be addressed.

The first major change Ghost Recon faithful will notice about the game is that it's set almost entirely in the third person. Ghost Recon had always been a traditional series of tactical first-person shooters and, while looking down one's iron sights or scope does place the player in their character's head, this is a game that is, by and large, played from without. It definitely makes the game feel a little safer, a little more disconnected. The tension that came from not knowing where around you an enemy would strike from has been diminished, though not entirely done away with.

The bigger gripe, though, is that this perspective leads to an absurd amount of shaky-cam. Want to run from one cover point to another? Hope you don't suffer from motion sickness, buddy. It's more pervasive than that, though, showing up even in cinematics when it's really not justified. Does the camera seriously need to jerk and heave when the squad is climbing out of a truck? Ubisoft seemed to think so.

That said, the perspective fits with the overall theme of the game, which seems to be about battlefield awareness. A large portion of your tool belt is devoted to letting you know where your enemies are while they're still none the wiser to your presence. This is accomplished through classic means like using cover and thermal imaging, but the Ghosts also have access to special grenades that survey an expansive area around them, magnetic imaging, a portable UAV for impromptu aerial surveillance, and camo suits that turn you practically invisible as long as you're not moving quickly. If that last one sounds unbalanced, note that, in the multiplayer, this is changed so that moving almost at all shuts down the camo, preventing players from stalking around the map and chaining together stealth kills.

Multiplayer, as with most shooters put out in this day and age, is designed to be Future Soldier's bread and butter. It offers three malleable classes, equipment unlocking as each is leveled up (yes, they gain experience and levels separately; I'm sorry), which includes not only new guns to use, but new parts for the guns one already has. The level of granularity this system achieves is impressive, and it can be particularly fun since it's just so visually appealing, guns exploding out into their individual components before the camera captures the one you want to edit. This mode supports the Kinect, but its implementation is fairly forgettable, whether you're swiping or issuing voice commands, and attempting to control the gun with it on the firing range is an exercise in frustration that doesn't even hint at offering any kind of tactile pleasure.

Back to the multiplayer, though, the three classes are extremely distinctive. There is, of course, the basic grunt who carries frag grenades and a big gun, but the Scout and Engineer are something else entirely. The Scout may have flashbangs and a sniper rifle, but he also possesses the camo from the campaign, if in a slightly diminished form. This allows him to snipe from cover, not with impunity, but with a greater degree of freedom than his counterparts. He is at his best when stalking the battlefield, providing cover to his compatriots from the sides and above. The Engineer, on the other hand, is the entire team's eyes. He is equipped with sensor grenades, which he can throw to reveal foes in a sizable radius, allowing the team to quickly wipe them out. Playing as each is a distinctive experience, which is a fairly good descriptor for the game's overall multiplayer, as well.

Rather than deathmatch or basic capture the flag, games are objective-based and demand teamwork, which is aided by a system that assigns you to a squad with a couple of other players. As long as one of these players isn't in combat, detected by a sensor grenade, or too close to the objective, you can spawn on them after death. It's a nice touch, though it doesn't seem there's any way to control who's in what squad, and though the game tries to keep you from spawning into enemies, some players have found that if they follow one enemy at just enough of a distance, their team members will spawn more or less directly into their sights. Despite this gripe, the multiplayer was a lot of fun, and a far more satisfying experience than the campaign mode.

The campaign is where the game truly attempts to ape Call of Duty. While past entries in the series offered the player control of a squad of troops, to whom one could issue commands, you take second fiddle in Future Soldier. As is the trend these days, you're led from place to place, shooting enemies and watching or engaging in set pieces. It goes so far as to have a chopper gunner segment, in which you take down vehicles on a winding mountain roadway as you fend off other helicopters. It's done well enough, but it feels out of place in what has always been a relatively down to earth series. Every campaign mission, though, feels like it has a right way to play it, like it's heavily scripted around the use of a specific item or skill set, and if you try to play it differently, it throws a fit at you. I found the campaign to be at its best when it provided me with the option of using stealth, but didn't demand it. Using the tools at my disposal to determine enemy positions and setup "sync-shots" was a rush. Fighting in pitched battles, my squad and I on one side and the enemy platoon on the other, was dull and often frustrating.

Some of this frustration comes from the cover controls. It's odd to me, in a game that seems so inspired by Ubisoft's work on the most recent Splinter Cell game, to have thrown out that one's intuitive and simple cover system in favor of a snap-to cover system circa 2005. Sure, you can pick another spot to bolt to with the press of a button as long as you're aiming at it, which is nice, but it makes cover awkward and clunky to navigate instead of smooth and natural.

The plot, meanwhile, is pretty much nonexistent. It's the typical "bad guys are planning to do terrible things to America. Go kill them," and you've seen it a few dozen times before. You'll tour South America, Africa, and Russia—the three traditional hotspots for villainous activity—and see environments that range from jungle to desert, even navigating through a snowstorm (remember the first level of Modern Warfare 2?) There are cinematics between each level, but they seem to get less meaningful as the game goes on, which is a shame since it opens with such a bang.

It isn't a Shock and Awe-scale moment, but when a bomb goes off in the back of a vehicle in South America and knocks your character off a cliff, to which he clings for dear life, it's a little of the same-old, same-old. It isn't until the fire rains down from above, lights his arms up and begins to burn away the flesh as he brushes at it frantically before falling to his demise, radio blaring in his ear the whole while, that the event hits you full force. If Future Soldier had left it there, just gently and subtly referencing it with perhaps a wayward glance at a photograph of the departed or something, it would have been masterful. Instead, it spends the next few minutes pounding it into your head that this is now a mission of revenge, as well as national security. It's blunt and silly, and that really describes the entire game. A popcorn flick of a Tom Clancy game if ever there was one.

Saints Row: The Third Review

System: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Dev: Volition, Inc.
Pub: THQ
Release: November 15, 2011
Players: 1-2
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p	Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs

The Saints Come Marching
by MDP

Sandbox games are a strange breed. Traditionally, games have been a linear passage from a starting point to a set endpoint. One path, however jagged or curved it may be, that either culminated in a player's victory or was abandoned early in defeat. Most sandbox games add a meta-game of sorts to this linear structure, allowing one to pick maybe the order of missions and take on optional bonus tasks, but doing little to throw off the shackles of a straightforward canned story. In a game that inundates a player with things to do, that allows him or her to choose activities and missions, doesn't it naturally follow that one's choices should ultimately influence the outcome?

This is the theory on which Saints Row: The Third is predicated. Whereas previous entries told multiple, parallel-yet-distinct stories and then tied them together in an ending sequence, Saints Row: The Third tells one story with a large cast of important characters, intermingled and interspersed. In servicing this story, the game's illusion of choice is severely diminished. There are usually fewer missions from which to choose at any given time than in past games, and many of them are very short offshoots of the main tale. The fact that the game offers more real choice than either of its forebears is just one of the game's many paradoxes.

What do I mean by real choices? Saints Row: The Third gives the player either/or decisions at the ends of some of its grander missions. These choices don't influence an arbitrary morality meter, each instead offering immediate, pragmatic benefits for having chosen it. When I play a "moral choice" RPG, I have trouble taking the renegade/closed fist/dark side route, and will immediately gravitate toward options that are clearly good or neutral. Saints Row: The Third gave me genuine pause, while I considered not only the gameplay benefit of any given choice, but also what that decision would mean to the Saints in the context of the story thus far. They're well-planned choices that have a definite and understandable effect on your relationships with other characters in the world.

That said, there are only a handful of such decisions in the game and, while there are multiple endings, which of them a player gets hinges entirely on one choice made very close to the end of the game. In fact, after finishing the story, the game automatically saves prior to that choice and informs the player that it has done so specifically in case they want to see the alternate ending. It's unfortunate that more wasn't done to create distinct paths through the game based on one's choices, or to create a truly dynamic mission infrastructure based on factors such as these key decisions and city control. That, however, would have run counter to the game's tighter focus on its story.

Saints Row: The Third is primarily a tale of revenge, but one told in the Saints Row fashion: over-the-top and filled to the brim with violence and mayhem. There's a new city—the city of Steelport—for the Third Street Saints to explore, and a new overarching enemy (referred to by the incredibly generic nom de plume of "The Syndicate") to spur the Saints to conquer it. The Syndicate is composed of a stable of three gangs: the Morningstar, the Deckers, and the Luchadores. However, while the game is initially centered around this big baddie and the damage one does to it, the focus softens considerably in the second act as gang activity, as a whole, comes under fire from a government-supported occupying military force. Soon enough, you're not entirely sure which villain you're fighting and why, or even who is working with you or against you. Allegiances shift with little question from the protagonist as to the veracity of his newfound allies' loyalty. It's made all the more disappointing by the sharp writing, which has some incredible gems and does a lot to flesh out the key individuals in the Saints.

The story of the game doesn't have to be superb, though, it only has to provide a framework for the bombastic action, and excuses for some of the most ridiculous set pieces in gaming history. There are multiple instances in which a player is free-falling at thirty-thousand feet after having vacated a jetliner, gunning down incredibly persistent enemies as they all plummet toward the earth in unison. The game opens with a bank heist that culminates in airlifting the vault via chopper, the player hanging from the lines that secure the vault to its conveyance while shooting down SWAT team members and other helicopters . All the while, the SWAT team demands that the Saints surrender, but not without signing their guns. It only escalates from there, though the fame of the Saints is downplayed more over the course of the game, their public image addressed in only a few missions and throwaway lines.

But, I'm sure you're wondering how it plays. Well, it's very similar to the last game in actual gameplay, though the controls have been remapped a bit and the aiming feels a little looser. That may actually be a result of the frame rate, though.

The trimmings of combat have been altered: gone are fighting styles, but heavy, barehanded melee attacks now provoke beatdown sequences. These are accompanied with pseudo-quick time events that increase the Respect—which is used to earn upgrades from an extensive upgrade tree, all of which have the additional cost of cash money—gained from the beatdown, but apparently not its damage. Further, these can't be used against the major new enemy type: Brutes. They're massive, thuggish men who take an obscene amount of punishment, shrug off bullets, and knock you around like a rag doll. Some are outfitted with Gatling guns or flamethrowers, the latter of which are probably the most frustrating enemies in the game, though the Brutes in general simply aren't fun to combat. Since they soak up damage like sponges, only a few of the game's varied weapons actually have a noticeable effect on them other than to bring their life bars down.

That selection of weapons is, by and large, the game's bread and butter. While there are the standard pistols, assault rifles, and shotguns of any good shooter, the special weapons are where Saints Row: The Third truly goes for the absurd. Reaper drones, mind-control squid launchers, a baseball-bat-sized purple "marital aid," and a sonic blaster are just what immediately come to mind. The last, in particular, if charged up, disintegrates enemies immediately in a burst of blood. When the military shows up partway through the game, they bring with them additional vehicles, including a number of VTOL aircraft and powerful tanks that players can hijack and joyride, all of which control tightly (unrealistically so, but that's to the game's benefit).

The side-missions, on the other hand, seem to have been pared back from previous entries. While there are some truly standout concepts in the main story arc (http://deckers.die and Murderbrawl XXXI are personal favorites), most of the other activities just task players with driving to a location and shooting some people. Sometimes the people come to you, instead. Also, when the game first gives the impression that it's opening up, it takes the opportunity to introduce you to its entire retinue of side-missions, few of which are of any lasting value (though Mayhem missions return and Trail Blazing is a blast, as is Dr. Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax, a game show that involves shooting mascots and avoiding flames and electricity).

All of this is powered by a new engine that looks, for lack of a better term, glossy. It's a good thing, in that the graphics have character and don't appear overly staid, and the darker color palette of Steelport feels appropriate (though the crumpling effect on damaged vehicles is a little hit-or-miss.) But the engine sometimes seemed to be too much for the hardware to handle. On the Xbox 360, at least, the game would consistently chug when driving at high speeds, never to the point where it seriously affected gameplay, but it became apparent during less visually demanding sequences, when the game's frame rate spiked, that aiming was definitely affected by a sort of visual lag.

Sound-wise, stuff blows up well and gunfire is satisfying; melee attacks have a meaty crunch to them, to the point where it can draw a wince when the protagonist delivers a particularly deadly soccer kick to a downed enemy's head. The soundtrack is mostly composed of licensed music, all found on the radio except during specific mission sequences that just seem to call for a certain song. At those times, the developer's choices generally adhere to the title's absurdist nature. Joe Esposito's "You're The Best" while chainsawing through hordes of Mexican wrestlers at a pay-per-view event? Very Saints Row.

Lastly, there are the multiplayer options. No competitive play, here, unless leaderboards count. The Whored mode offers wave-based enemy slaying, but it feels pretty bare when compared to the tower defense-infused Horde mode in Gears of War 3. It's good for a laugh or two, though. The crux of multiplayer in Saints Row: The Third, however, is its co-op campaign. Besides being jump-in/jump-out, and allowing players to bring their own characters along for the ride, it consists of the entire single-player campaign, played with a partner. Players aren't forced to stick together, able to go wherever they wish in the open world, though they are given the option to tackle missions together when one player activates them. It's a lot of fun to just run around with a buddy and wreak unchecked mayhem and destruction. Or, you know, play through the missions.

Legend of Grimrock Review

System: PC
Dev: Almost Human
Pub: Almost Human
Release: April 11, 2012
Players: 1
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p

A Legendary Effort
by MDP

Legend of Grimrock was one of the first brand new titles announced on Good Old Games when the digital distribution site decided to extend itself beyond merely the classic titles of yore and into the modern era. While more recent games were announced, Legend of Grimrock was something I had never seen before. A first-person, four-character-party, tile-based dungeon crawler with slick production values, Legend of Grimrock was made by a team of only four people, based out of Finland. And, while the Norse may have the greatest claim to metal music, of which legendary beasts and fantastic legends are often a key component, the Finnish, too, are a people of Scandinavia.

Perhaps that is why, in Legend of Grimrock, the monster design was the first thing to strike me. It's what made me want the game, actually. From overgrown bipedal fungi to charging trolls and armored spear- or bow-wielding skeletons, this is a game where even the initial enemies it throws at you are intimidating to encounter. They take more than just a few hits to bring down, too, necessitating that one learn the combat system sooner rather than later, especially by the third level or so when fast-moving spiders become the enemy du jour and being swarmed becomes a very real danger.

The enemy designs are extremely detailed and beautifully animated, such that, even with their tile-based movement, they really seem to come to life and pop off the screen. Most of that comes down to their texture, which has a quality almost like that of the sort of rubber monster suits one might see in an old horror film, providing the sense that these are things that really could be standing there in front of you. Somehow, though, they don't come across as campy. It's a bit disappointing, then, that the dungeon looks fairly uniform, with pretty much the same wall texture pasted all over the dungeon with only minor variations as necessary to outline hidden buttons, or to provide a space for an object to rest.

The puzzles one encounters, on the other hand, have a good deal more range, from the basic "find the hidden button" trope to mazes of teleporters. One particularly difficult one comes to mind, involving a pair of teleporters that rotate around a central tile, which contains a drop down to the floor below (surely the most common of traps in the game). The door is straight across from where you begin, and the pressure plate required to open it is in the corner next to it, but the way from the tile with the button to the one with the door is blocked by an impassable grate. It required knowledge of both the game's mechanics (which were blessedly introduced intelligently in the beginning) to solve, but the "aha" moment was a powerful one and definitely to the designers' credit. It's a game that's good about hinting, but doesn't feel the need to spell your next step out for you, leading to experimentation and trial and error, generally without becoming trying or monotonous over extended play sessions. That isn't to say that extended play sessions won't be stressful, but that has to do with the game's atmosphere rather than any flaws in its gameplay.

It pays to remember that Grimrock is an RPG, and so has most of the trappings one would expect therein. Characters have classes that grant them distinct skills and, when they level up, they have the opportunity to put points into these skills. This can grant a warrior new attacks or the ability to wear heavier armor without penalty, while a rogue might learn how to strike from the back row or deal more damage from behind and the magic-user gains the ability to use more powerful spells in different elemental schools. This is all in addition to the stat increases peppered throughout every skill tree. Characters may also choose a few traits at character creation that affect them in more unique ways, such as one that increased a character's attack power for every skull they are holding (skulls can be found on the ground, sometimes, though they're rare enough to keep this from being a game-breaking ability). Though there are only three classes, the race one chooses also has benefits, and there are some esoteric options (insectoids, for example). But, if you don't feel like taking the time to make your own party of four prisoners, Grimrock lets you take the default party of two warriors, a rogue, and a sorcerer. Well-balanced and fairly functional.

The story of Legend of Grimrock is fairly unobtrusive, mostly disappearing after you're first cast into the dungeon (absolved of your crimes in the process, though getting out is entirely on you). Rather than climbing to the top of a tower, you're working your way down from the top level of the complex to its ground floor, slaying monsters and solving puzzles the whole way. There are, occasionally, hints from another adventurer who preceded you, as well as some equipment he decided to leave around for various reasons. The second half of the game introduces some surprisingly jarring plot twists that really take the game in a different direction than one would expect, shifting the focus from pure escape into something perhaps a bit more noble and far-reaching. I don't want to spoil too much, in this capacity, so we'll suffice to say that the story will often be out of your mind, leaving you free to contemplate the dungeon's creepy atmosphere. This atmosphere can be enhanced if one opts out of seeing damage numbers, making it ambiguous how much effect one is actually having on enemies, or turn off the game's auto-map, putting the onus on the player to memorize the layout or craft their own map, which makes getting lost a frighteningly real prospect.

This isn't to say that Grimrock is without flaws. While the combat is relatively intuitive, its interface is mouse-driven and can get a little too hectic for what it is, especially when you're managing a spell-caster, since spells are cast by selecting from a grid of nine runes. The rune combinations must be punched in anew each time, requiring that a player memorize their favorite spells for repeated use, such that, especially in the early game, most will probably find themselves falling back on the same one-rune spell in combat over and over again for expediency's sake. That you can't see the amount of mana you have remaining while casting is also an issue, and managing the inventory at all during combat is pretty much impossible, since it doesn't pause the game when you open a character's backpack.

These are fairly minor nitpicks, though, especially since Legend of Grimrock is not a combat-focused game, and even its combat is more puzzle-like than anything else. The focus is on atmosphere and brain-teasers, both of which the game pulls off with absolute aplomb and unbelievably slick production, to the point where one can almost smell the grime and mold on the dungeon's walls. It's a tense and enjoyable throwback to a type of game that seemed to have long since faded from view.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition Review

System: PC, Xbox 360*
Dev: CD Projekt RED
Pub: Atari, Warner Bros.
Release: April 17, 2012
Players: 1
Screen Resolution: 480p-1080p	Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs

A Worthy Remake
by MDP

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was a great game that didn't get the sort of recognition it could have because it was a PC exclusive. However, now the game gets to show itself off to console gamers with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition. Does the game still appeal to the console crowd, or does its PC pedigree alienate it from other AAA console blockbusters?

Not much has changed in the Enhanced Edition. In fact, if you've never heard of The Witcher 2 before,In terms of core gameplay and story, the Enhanced Edition is nearly identical. It's a rich, forty-to-sixty-hour experience with a large number of meaningful gameplay choices that make each playthrough different. You'll enjoy the game's crafting system, character development, and story, and you'll spend hours searching for loot just to outfit the perfect character. It's dark, it's controversial, and it's just a well-made western RPG. Long story short, it's good.

One of the high points of The Witcher 2 on the PC was the graphics engine, and the fact that CD Projeckt got this game to run on the ancient Xbox hardware is nothing short of amazing. The Xbox version is, unfortunately, the uglier of the two versions. There is a huge loss in resolution and textures are noticeably blurry. Animations are less fluid than in the PC version, which is a problem because the PC version's animations were stiff to begin with. Nowhere can this be seen more than in the facial animations. It may just be that the game is showing its year-old age, but character movements strike me as some of the worst of any current day AAA Xbox title. It doesn't really ruin the game, but it does take you out of the experience at times.

Luckily, much of the rest of the game is still incredibly pretty. Environments, though less detailed than the PC version's, are still absolutely gorgeous. The lighting effects are noticeably turned down, but they are still more impressive than most other games on the console. Characters models are incredibly intricate, right down to tiny chinks in individual soldiers' armor. Once again, while the textures are certainly blurrier and there's noticeable graphical loss, the attention to detail is still there. Compare Enhanced Edition to any other recent Xbox 360 RPG. It's still prettier than Dragon Age II or Fallout: New Vegas, and I'd even say it gives Mass Effect a run for its money.

The gameplay hasn't changed much though. Granted, the game has been altered to fit a controller rather than a keyboard and mouse, but this actually doesn't affect much of the core gameplay. Sure, it means certain things, like quick-saving, require a finicky amount of menu traversal, but you can still attack and cast spells at the push of a button. In fact, I'd say that the controller-based control scheme makes certain things feel more natural. Movement, for example.

And speaking of saving, auto-saves seem to be much less frequent in Enhanced Edition than they were in the original Witcher 2. They are awkwardly spaced at best and unreliable at worst. This can be alleviated with saving your game early and often, but this feels like a chore due to the game's menu system. Still, it's better than the alternative: replaying hours of progress because the game didn't feel like what you did was important enough to auto-save.

Using a controller to manage your items and equipment is, unfortunately, rather infuriating. Your inventory gets clogged quickly, and while the PC version allows you to manage everything in a few short clicks, you'll be doing the menu dance for a while in Enhanced Edition. Of course, then you find a new item of some sort and you have to do it all over again. The game introduces a new way to store your items, and this is certainly an improvement over the original PC version, but it's still more finicky than I would have liked.

A new tutorial has been added to The Witcher 2 since its original PC release, and it feels like it was designed specifically for the modern console market. Unfortunately, it's not enough to help out most people. Slip up once and you'll die before you even realize what's happening. Enhanced Edition is still unforgiving in its difficulty curve, just like the original. As it stands, the tutorial just serves to break up the intro to the game, and, as a result, it feels kind of out of place.

Enhanced Edition is on the level of Dark Souls and Demon's Souls in terms of its difficulty, much like the original. However, I never seemed to notice when I was playing on my PC. The control scheme for the console version isn't bad, but it is easier to find yourself messing up when using a controller, as opposed to the precision of a keyboard and mouse. This will make you feel as if you are fumbling into death on more than one occasion, but it's a frustration that soon passes.

However, the real reason to get Enhanced Edition is all the additional content. In a way, Enhanced Edition is like a Game of the Year edition and a mini-sequel at the same time. It includes all previously launched DLC for the Witcher 2, and that's quite an impressive catalogue. It also includes an arena combat mode, which does away with much of the story and simply asks you to survive wave after wave of enemies. In terms of brand new content, the Witcher 2 includes a brand new CGI intro, and many between-chapter cinematics that flesh out the story. There is also a ton of new end-game content that fits in with the existing game quite nicely, and the ending drops hints about what we might be able to look forward to in The Witcher 3, should it ever come to pass.

Should you buy the Enhanced Edition if you have already purchased The Witcher 2? That's a tough question. The additional content is appealing. If you haven't played the Witcher 2 yet, then Enhanced Edition is a definite must-buy. The Witcher 2 was one of the best western RPGs on the PC last year, and the Enhanced Edition just gives you more content while opening up the game to the console masses. However, you simply can't deny that it pales in comparison to the PC version in many ways. If you are a dedicated PC gamer, get The Witcher 2 on PC, which includes all of the Enhanced Edition content in a free patch anyway. Otherwise, pick up the Enhanced Edition on your 360.