Classic Review: Far Cry

Far Cry is one of those games that was brilliant back in its day but hasn't aged well. The game still has a number of serious flaws that really lessened my enjoyment. In particular a punishing difficulty with no quicksave option, a slow run speed and an irritating main character really hurt an otherwise fun experience.

Far Cry back in 2004 could bring a system to its knees. It was the ultimate benchmark game due to an insane draw distance. That said, back in 2004 Halo 2, Half-Life 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 used normal mapped textures that often looked better than those in Far Cry which really makes the game look obsolete, especially since the draw distance is compensated for by a low dynamic level of detail. So despite being a game that needed a very powerful system to run, it's not all that great looking of a game, especially indoors.

The character models are especially terrible, being ugly, blocky and nowhere near as good as the models in many titles that are even older like Soldier of Fortune 2. I like the effects that bullet holes have on flesh but the characters look terrible. Far Cry hasn't aged well compared to many games released at the same time and it deserves to be condemned for such, high draw distance or not.

Also, the first level of the game is one of the hardest. This game took me thirty-five hours to beat, the first four of which were spent trying to survive the beginning of the game on the easiest difficulty setting. I'm no stranger to shooters but Far Cry's AI that can see you and shoot you through walls is incredibly cheap, as was having to clear the enemy base without any sort of scoped weapon.

That said, the game gets easier after this. Most notably because the game gives the player a silenced submachine gun and a sniper rifle that make most encounters way too easy. That said, the lack of a quicksave means that I'd often find myself reloading save files from twenty minutes ago due to the game's slow pace and lack of checkpoints. This is coupled with enemy AI programmed to flank, no regenerating health and a main character who moves like he's stuck in molasses. Up until an assault rifle with a scope can be found, success in Far Cry is entirely dependent on how much sniper rifle ammo can be found.

Sniping in Far Cry is incredibly fun and makes me feel like I'm some type of jungle predator stalking prey. Lining up headshots from a kilometer away is a great experience that's sadly hampered by the fact that the game was designed from the ground up to favor sniping over all else. There are still occasional indoor levels that allow players to make use of other weapons but they're the exception rather than the rule although still frequent enough that carrying around a shotgun and submachine gun is a good idea.

The story absolutely sucks. The plot is a 1980s B-action movie plot riddled with terrible voice acting. The main character’s voice is particularly annoying in a 90s video game way, with such an annoying tone to it that cutscenes were painful to watch. Other characters come across as either over the top or flat, meaning that there are no good voices in this game. Just a collection of hammy monotones that I couldn’t stand listening to alongside forgettable music and bland sound effects.

And for all of Far Cry's flaws, it's still a fun game but one that will forever live in the shadow of the superior Far Cry 2 and Crysis. It's still brilliant for it's pioneering use of first person stealth gameplay. Even though enemies can pinpoint exactly where I am through thinner walls, they still have trouble seeing me through foliage, which leads to some cools ways to escape and ambush foes. In fact, due to the low amount of non-regenerating health that I have, I'm practically obligated to retreat as often as possible since head-on fights in outdoor areas are always suicidal. As much as I hated first person stealth in the past since it often felt awkward, Far Cry finds a way to make it work although there sadly haven’t been many games which have followed suit.

So while it's possible to do a lot worse than purchasing Far Cry, both the sequel and spiritual successor blow it out of the water, making the original hard to recommend. Those who love Far Cry 2 and Crysis should give it a shot but in this case, it's hard to play the original over either title.

Pros: Great draw distance, sniping is great, finds a way to make first person stealth work, (mostly) great AI

Cons: Horrible voice acting, weak sound effects, low health, poor story, AI that can see through walls, the sniper rifle dominates gameplay, inability to shoot while swimming, poor character models

7.2/10

Portal 2

I held off on touching Portal's sequel in part because I really wasn't in the mood to part with sixty bucks, in part because I hadn't actually finished the first game myself due to my laptop's lagging. I changed my mind for another two reasons: Amazon had it at $39.99... and spoilers are everywhere. For those of you who want to wait for a Game of the Year edition in two years, best of luck to you, but I suggest you save up for it in the here and now -- unless you don't mind having to worry about possible spoilers on nearly every website you wander to. Besides, there are much worse recent games to be spending your money on right now. Might as well go back a couple of months for a good time.

Almost all the elements walked on this fine line between too little and too much; one small slip in either direction could ruin it. The difficulty, for instance, varies. There are many, many levels that take little to no thought because the portalable walls are lined up just so. There are also levels that I'd wander around for five minutes yelling "Where the heck am I even supposed to start?" before consulting GameFAQs in a huff. I didn't even feel accomplished on the times I happened to stumble across just the right portal combination, especially on ones that involve the blue jumping goo. The colored goo in general involved many leaps of faith, praying that jumping off them just so would propel Chell across the chasm without dropping her into the bottomless pits of Aperture's facilities.

Sometimes the strength of the goo seemed to depend on whether it was meant to be the puzzle solution: If I was supposed to hit some button to make a bridge a little longer before I tried jumping to it, the goo wouldn't fly me two feet. If the bridge was as far as it would go, the goo would have thrown me over the Grand Canyon. It made it difficult to feel confident in trying out possible puzzle solutions, as what may have worked in one room will send you plunging to your death in another. In that respect, the simpler puzzles felt much more satisfying. A simple solution could be accompanied with a tricky maneuver that involved shooting portals at just the right moment, and pulling that off was far funner than wondering whether you're supposed to run past the turrets or find a way to kill them first.

The game is a great deal lengthier than the first game and has three big "sections" where the game takes a different turn in setting. The first and last are fairly straight forward testing chambers with portal puzzles to unlock a door like in the last game, but the middle section has a habit of dragging. It has the standard test chamber puzzles, but the chambers are no longer connected by elevator and instead you must find your own way to the next one, which often involves searching for the one tiny portalable wall high, high above. I found it easily one of the least satisfying aspects of the game, as there was too much empty land to explore when all I wanted was that one portalable surface so I could get back to the actual gameplay. It did break up the pace a bit, but the game shines far more when it throws test chambers at you one after the other with no time to catch your breath.

I really can't divulge many plot details, seeing as it's near impossible to be vague about twists in a story with only three characters, but it takes a very different turn about halfway through the game. I think most of us will see the fake-out ending coming a mile away, but the results from the rather predictable twist do lead to far more interesting plotlines.

What can be said about the plot is that it covers a lot of backstory I was not expecting to see for Aperture Science and GLaDOS. In some ways it was unappreciated backstory, as it ruins the mystery of Aperture, but overall it was handled well and didn't feel unbelievable or shoehorned. That said, the best aspects were probably the least "twist"-like elements, like the small background details and all of the robot banter. The giant epiphanies tend to be fairly easy to predict.

As is not unusual for Valve, most of the cutscenes are done in real time, meaning you can look away from GLaDOS or newcomer robot Wheatley as they're talking to you, even run off if it's allowed. It's refreshing, but also makes it easy to miss important dialogue. Wheatley in particular can talk your ear off if you don't cut him short sometimes and jump off a ledge before he finishes an explanation. It will be hard not to discover something new on replays, especially for the patient player.

The graphics are sharp and detailed, making the portal gun even shinier than before. The game still maintains the simple and clean aesthetic of the first game, save for the earlier test chambers that have become overrun with plant life. About halfway through the game, the test chambers take a very sudden turn in style, showing off a darker, rustier, dirtier side to the usually spic-and-span style of the game, which is a marvel to behold but, as discussed above, also slows the game's pace to a crawl.

Similar to the last game, there is very little music in the game. It crops up from time to time -- a radio here, a dramatic riff during a tense sense there -- but the majority of the sound comes from the swooshes of flying through the air and the chiding voices of robots insulting your weight. The moments with music are made all the stronger by the fact their intrusions are so rare, to the point music almost sounds out of place. The ending song is not quite the earworm masterpiece of the previous game, but it's catchy and has a stronger robotic feel to it that I appreciated. The acting is, of course, brilliant.

One of the most striking differences between this game and the first is the inclusion of a co-op mode. It's hyped to the point the co-op characters even rule the game's cover. Sadly, it suffers from the same problem every multi-player game does: You need friends. Gaming friends, preferably. There is a mode for online play, but playing in the same room (or at least with a headset) is far preferable, especially if your partner is thick and can't take a hint on where to place the next portal.

On that note, it's pretty important that your partner is someone who is pretty clever and already familiar with the game mechanics. I played it with someone who was constantly jumping off ledges just to see what would happen, only to die, reset his portals, and start us all over at the beginning of the level. In the later levels, this type of behavior is excruciating, so make sure you don't play with a "leap before you look" type of gamer.

If you can wrangle this elusive cooperative and quick-thinking friend the game was made for, the co-op is quite fun. Four portals allows for much trickier puzzles and thinking outside the box. It's doubly hard to process what power you hold with four portals after playing single mode recently. I found solving the puzzles often involved brainstorming with the other individual constantly, which makes it a strong teamwork-oriented play. The big downside is that, if you happen to have two friends who want to play with you, the person who's beaten it tends to spout orders and drag the newcomer along, which takes a lot of the fun out of it. Given a bit of time away from the game and it becomes harder to remember the solutions to the later, harder puzzles at least, but the first eight or so test chambers might be permanently dull on replay.

The mode even includes a bit of a plot, though it's not a fourth as strong as the main game's story -- more of a sticky substance to hold the testing chambers together, rather than a "plot," really. It's not quite as long as the main game, but it can kill a few hours.

Portal 2 is an enjoyable, sometimes frustrating, and gorgeous romp through Aperture. It definitely isn't aimed at new fans, but the first game is short enough that there's not too much backstory to fill. Newcomers should probably consult a Wiki before playing, but either you'll catch the references to the last game or you won't (such as the radio that plays "Still Alive").

I may nitpick, but the bottom line is, this game is really fun. There are a lot of ways this game could have been a disaster as the follow-up to one of the most popular video games, but I'm not sure how Valve could have done it any better.

If you haven't played this game yet and plan on picking it up, do yourself a favor and read the webcomic that links the two games first. It fills in a few minor plotholes otherwise present in the sequel and I wish I'd known about it before I went scouring TV Tropes minutes after completing single player mode.

Pros:

+ Almost lived up to the hype (a near impossible feat)

+ Witty dialogue

+ All sound involved, ever, is wonderful

+ Puzzles prove to be a sufficient challenge

+ Aperture's past is fleshed out satisfactorily

+ Multiplayer actually has a storyline, albeit a minor one

Cons:

- Mid-game lag

- Some puzzles hinge on trying dangerous moves and hoping they don't throw you in a pit

- The retail price is a little high for someone who's only going to use single player

- Wheatley can get annoying if his brand of humor isn't your cuppa

9.1/10

Review of Duke Nukem Forever

I waited 14 years for this?!?

I can't believe that I waited almost a decade and a half for a game that mixes generic action with terrible “jokes.” Duke Nukem 3D may have been a genre-defining classic and pop culture phenomenon but the long delayed sequel sadly fails to surpass its predecessor by losing the series' soul. Duke Nukem Forever mixes some of the most generic shooting I've ever played in my life with genuinely unfunny humor to create an absolute mess of a game.

The campaign is short. Or more accurately even shorter than the leaked design document from 2009, meaning 3D Realms didn't even finish 2/3rds of what they set out to do, which is sad considering how long this game has been in development. To make matters worse, the level design stops being interesting during the last third of the game while Duke shoots his way through bland corridors that all have the same textures while solving some absolutely pointless puzzles. As much as I hate saying, “rushed” and “Duke Nukem Forever” in the same sentence, that's exactly what the ending of the campaign feels like which is pathetic.

Falling apart during the third act is the least of the campaign's flaws. Duke Nukem Forever also suffers from some horrible coding and some of the worst writing I've seen in a video game in years. The single player campaign seems to do everything that a game can possibly do wrong with the only redeeming feature being the fact that the easy combat makes the game shorter than intended despite being often frustrating due to a number of questionable design choices.

Moreover, the graphics coding is terrible. I'm able to play The Witcher 2 on higher settings than Duke when TW2 has a much more powerful engine behind it and more detailed graphics. The problem is decade-old legacy code ported between engines causing instability which the devs never bothered to tighten up. Engine switches normally do this but at the same time, Duke was being worked on for 14 years which gave the four development studios working on this game more than enough time to rewrite most of their code and optimize it for the Unread Engine. Having a game crash because it can't handle a game of pool at max settings when it can display explosions going off all around me is just sloppy.

The graphics are best described as uneven. Duke Nukem Forever looks amazing... except for when it doesn't. Rain effects, explosions and models look beautiful. There's no doubt about the game looking amazing in that regard. On the other hand, some of the textures look either muddy or pixelated. It's clear that many objects in this game from early development made it into the final build without a touch up. What's even more pathetic is that they're often objects the player is forced to look at up close. I appreciate how many time the graphics have been redone but Playstation 1-era pixelation in 2011 is embarrassing to look at and even playing at 1920x1080 with anti-aliasing on doesn't make these ugly textures look any better. It's even worse on some types of haircuts that female characters have and really needed to be fixed before the game hit shelves. Hair is something that the industry is finally starting to do well and yet DNF does it wrong in one of the worst ways that I've seen in years.

Then there's the game not being able to handle mirrors and windows without an insane amount of jaggies. Anything filtered through glass seems exempt to anti-aliasing is becomes so blurry it's unrecognizable. This is such a rare graphical issue that I've only seen in a handful of games which isn't easy to overlook or forgive.

Don't even let me get started on the writing. For a game that prides itself on humor, DNF is not very funny. The humor mostly consists of cock and poop jokes mixed in with more profanity than The Sopranos. While some of Duke's one liner's are actually funny (“Fork you” was perhaps the only one that really sticks out as being completely awesome) so many of them aren't, with many of the quotes being repeated constantly to the point where it becomes tiring. Hell, most of the attempts at humor mix the unfunny slapstick vulgarity of Freddy Got Fingered with the inane randomness of Bio-Dome. It's almost like the writers didn't care about this game at all and just wrote whatever they felt like before cheaply cobbling it together.

Worse than the game's “humor” is the characterization. While Duke Nukem is meant to be one-dimensional, everybody else in DNF is as well. Every character is a narrow archetype who lacks anything close to a personality. Female characters have it worse than males. Women in DNF only fill three roles: hot chick, victim and damsel in distress. I get that Duke Nukem 3D had unmoving, static female characters sprinkled around as scenery but that was more due to engine limitations. This is simply a case of horrible writing and instead of making Duke Nukem seem like the lovable horndog he is, it just makes 3D Realms' writing team appear sexist.

Speaking of 3D Realms' sexism, one level that really rubbed me the wrong way was The Hive. Depending on which version of Duke Nukem 3D you played, you were forced to either abandon or free captured women stuck in vines. Objectifying women is one thing but Duke Nukem Forever rewards the player for slaughtering captured women while uttering truly tasteless one-liners as he does it. For players unwilling to shoot crying defenseless women, they better be ready to shoot some of the most annoying enemies in the game bursting out of them at random. I'm all for difficult moral decisions in games but this was just disturbingly misogynistic. The Hive is neither funny nor sexy and anybody who finds it to be either is probably one of the subhuman animals who gets off to Max Hardcore's “Films.” No game since Custer's Revenge has made me feel this uncomfortable. For a shooter described as a fun, silly romp to include this kind of content stands out amongst countless flawed design choices that permeate the entire game.

The story then seems to no longer exist after the halfway point when the NPCs all seem to disappear and Duke gets a lot quieter. Without any women for Duke to hit on and only a few scarce one-liners, DNF loses all personality and devolves into what it would be without Duke: the most generic shooter to hit the market since Chaser. The game clearly needs Duke's personality to succeed but it manages to pull it off in all the wrong ways, creating an absolute wreck of a campaign.

For as much fault as the writers, artists and graphics programers get, the sound team was just as lazy. While the sound effects for firearms do sound powerful, the sound designers clearly didn't care about much but cool sounding weapons. The rest of the foley just so happens to be a bunch of generic sound effects that often sound like they came out of the public domain. They're just plain boring and I've heard the same sound effects for years now. Moreover, outside of weapons, nothing sounds big. Sound effects sound distant, even when it's a large gate opening or a grating being pulled off. They also didn't do much better with the voice acting. Everybody but Duke sounds bland and like they didn't care about their lines nor could they take their job seriously. DNF has given me the worst voice acting that I've heard on a AAA title in years. It just sounds like a Japanese to English localization on a handheld title. That's how banal it is. There's no emotion, just bored people delivering stupid lines.

The biggest failure of the sound team happens to be the music. It's just a bunch of remixes of Grabbag and Stalker from Duke Nukem 3D. Yes those are two of the best pieces of video game music ever written but I can only hear the same song remixed so many times before I get bored

That's just the fault of the graphics, sound and story. Duke Nukem Forever's gameplay isn't much better. My biggest complaint is that there is no quicksave feature. There is neither a hotkey nor a pause menu option for quicksaving, instead giving the player some scarce checkpoints that never occur when you need them most. Quicksaves are such a staple of gaming and have been for years that not being able to use one is so backwards that the campaign is often unplayable on higher difficulties.

Since boss fights need to begin again from the beginning, it's probably a good thing that three of them are fought twice, with the first boss also being the last. Also, bosses can only be hurt with turrets and explosives, making most of Duke's arsenal useless and ensures that every player uses the same strategy to fight every boss, giving no reason to replay boss levels. While the bosses can have some interesting tactics, the bosses are frequently pushovers that die way too easily.

Speaking of easy, Duke's health regenerates far too quickly, allowing me to circle strafe enemies until my health regenerates. This makes almost every fight too effortless for me to ever really feel like I was challenged throughout the entire game. Almost all of my deaths came from puzzles with only a few actually resulting from enemies, boss or otherwise.

Of course this could be because I used the overpowered rail gun, rocket launcher, shotgun and three-barreled assault rifle throughout the entire game. Every single other weapon in the game is horribly underpowered. The pistol takes most of a clip to kill a basic enemy, the laser chaingun is too slow, the devastator doesn’t do enough damage to be worthwhile, the freeze ray takes too long to freeze enemies and the shrink ray's projectile is tiny and travels slowly. Thankfully two of the only four guns in the game worth using are the two most common guns in the entire game. And since I can only carry two weapons at the same time, there was never any incentive for me to swap either of my main weapons except for boss fights.

The level design isn’t much better. Most of the game takes place in small corridors with the occasional open room..... and that's when level design is actually decent. The rest of the levels use everything that I usually hate about shooters. There are some first person platforming levels which thankfully aren’t as difficult or as banal as they usually are but that doesn’t mean that these are any good.

These levels can be decent, except for then they feature backtracking puzzles. While I don't mind backtracking, forcing me to solve puzzles by going through the same area is terrible level design. Oh, and while solving them, Duke is in a dark area and has to turn his night vision on and the object he's pushing back to the other end of the level makes it too bright to see with night vision but too dark to see without nightvision turned on. In other words, Duke needs to remember the layout of the level while hoping that he's still pushing the object while going through a level completely blind. It's just aggravating and took me far too long to actually finish while I just wanted to go back to running and gunning again.

The levels that truly suck are the underwater levels which suffer from horrible collision detection, making it a horrible chore for me to get through doorways. Meanwhile I'm stuck gasping for air as the timer on the bottom of the screen runs out. Thankfully those levels don't pop up until the end of the game and don’t last nearly long enough for me to whine too much about them.

And yet, the underwater levels are sadly nothing compared to the driving levels. Duke gets an unwieldy monster truck that he can barely drive but unlike the water levels, I'm stuck driving through 1/4^th of the game in a giant mechanical abomination that can barely turn. Oh, and the map design is backwards as I'm driving in the exact opposite direction of the big portal over the Hoover Dam.

What makes the truck segments worse are the physics glitches. At one point Duke has to drive over two police cars to progress and my monster truck got stuck driving over them and wasn't even able to back up, forcing me to reload from my last checkpoint.

Don't even think about doing these levels on foot. There ramps that Duke needs to boost over and glitches when exiting the truck that can send Duke flying through the air and kill him when he comes crashing back down, even if exiting only to kill enemies with Duke's weapons or get some more gas.

The absolute worst part of the level design happens to be the fact that the linearity makes the game no longer feel like the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D. No longer am I exploring levels looking for secrets or choosing which path I want to take to complete the game, I'm now being forced to travel in a single set path which makes me hesitant to even call this a sequel to Duke Nukem 3D. It no longer feels like Duke and doesn't maintain the most important aspect that I loved about Duke's predecessor.

As the final nail in the coffin, DNF is broken in the most fundamental way. I melee by clicking my mouse wheel which is also used to swap weapons, making melee useless in a game where I burn through ammo fast. There are so many other control setups but apparently I'm stuck with accidentally changing weapons when I mean to melee attack. It's a bad choice and one that should have looked horrible enough on paper to have been changed immediately.

If there is anything good to say about single player at all, it's the minigames. They actually manage to be entertaining even if one of them is a tasteless abortion joke. It's unfortunate that the pinball game is so unforgivingly hard and much more difficult than the Duke Nukem map in Balls of Steel. It's still a fun diversion, but it's also one of the most unfair and difficult pinball games I've ever played in my life. Sadly the minigames disappear during the second half of the game, as does most environmental interactivity.

If this game has any saving grace it's the multiplayer which was done entirely by Gearbox and Piranha games in the final stages in development. The weapons are now more balanced with the devastator, freeze ray and pistol all getting a boost in power while the game simply feels faster. It's the best arcade-style multiplayer that I've played in years. The lack of options is compensated for by how fun it is. The map design is great, there's very little lag, Duke's one-liners are actually funny and the jetpack makes a return. The multiplayer mode is the exact kind of shallow brainless fun that DNF was advertised as being and while the single player is bad enough that I don't feel that I got my money's worth, I'm at least glad to see that the game wasn't a total rip off. Multiplayer is indeed worth it as long as you're willing to spend a lot of time online playing it.

There is a Call of Duty style, level-up system that grants Duke a bigger, better apartment as you gain levels. It's a great way to encourage longevity and there will hopefully be some DLC that adds in new modes like Assault or Horde that will keep the game from getting too stale.

As far as the apartment goes, it's great to see that Gearbox and Piranha got Duke's attitude right. Duke's cheesy pickup lines towards the women in his apartment are funnier than anything that Duke says in campaign mode, the minigames are all unlockable for Duke to play. More games with unlockables need a thing like this.

The only complaints that I have about multiplayer are that the lobby needs to fully load before I can choose a game. Thankfully, there is a quickplay option which is good for the time being. That and the fact that voice chat just sounds like scraping which prevents me from saying over voice, “Tengo cajones del acero” when I kill people. These should be quickly patched allowing me to actually get access to the lobby before choosing which game I want to play.

It's sad to say that the only good things that came from Duke Nukem Forever were added in by Gearbox and Piranha but that's exactly the case. The first 12 years of development by 3D Realms were wasted on a game that isn't groundbreaking, falls apart at the end and only lasts 10 hours. The most anticipated game of the year that promised to redefine first person shooters sadly doesn’t live up to the hype. Gearbox is a far better developer than this and the Duke Nukem franchise deserves better. Hopefully Gearbox can redeem the franchise in the future and give gamers the game that they've wanted for more than a decade but this isn’t it.

Pros – It actually got released, the best arcade-style multiplayer since Unreal Tournament 3 (complete with countless unlockables), minigames are fun, Gearbox managed to make an absolute mess of code playable

Cons – Horrible writing, a teenage virgin's depiction of women, The Hive level is sexist and disturbing, inconsistent graphical quality, reused music from Duke Nukem 3D, bad voice acting, gameplay no longer feels like Duke Nukem, too easy, poorly designed swimming and driving levels, unbalanced weapons, your wife will divorce you for buying it

5.5/10

Review of The Witcher 2

After four years in development and an impossible amount of hype behind it, The Witcher 2 has finally seen release. Being one of the most anticipated games of 2011 despite being CDProjectk's second title ever to be released in a year when Duke Nukem Forever, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Modern Warfare 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are all being released may have set expectations too high. What's amazing is that The Witcher 2 manages to live up to that hype and become a definite Game of the Year contender. What makes The Witcher 2 stand out is the sheer amount of replay value that the game has in addition to all of the minute details in the game. The developers certainly didn’t cut corners in any noticeable area and the attention to detail is one of the highest that I've seen in any game to date. CDProject went above and beyond to add as many subtle details to this world as they possibly could but the game is better off for it, all the while mixing Zelda-style combat in with a story of political intrigue that will keep players guessing up until the game's last few minutes with a final confrontation against the game's antagonist.

The Witcher 2 begins as a good sequel to an RPG should, with Geralt already being extremely powerful and level-ups increasing that power rather than granting new abilities. Moreover, the first level - while short - is one of the best two hours that I've ever played in any game. It's truly cinematic, action-packed and one of the best intros to any game that I've ever played, even if it doesn’t prepare players for the true sense of exploration that the rest of the game provides. While linear in contrast to the open-world gameplay of the following three levels, the first level is a great way to hook gamers right off the bat while establishing the setting and characters to new players.

Moreover, the setting is genuinely mature. This isn't some childish good elves vs. evil orcs fantasy setting, it's one that manages to come across as dark, realistic and morally complex and doesn't pander to its audience with decisions that are either purely good or evil. For instance, one of the choices presented to a player is whether or not to kill an absolutely despicable monster if doing so means that you'll become a pawn of the main villain and work towards accomplishing his goals. It's those types of decisions that force players to examine what they would do in real life rather than trying to gain points on a karma meter. In fact, the choice that determines how the final two levels play out requires players to make a decision based on how they feel about an equivalent to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Incorporating that type of real world morality into a game rather than objectively good or evil decisions is one that more developers need to present to players. The fact that the story assumes that players are intelligent means that even the Die-Hard 2 level of profanity doesn’t manage to make this game seem immature while it would normally come across as juvenile in other titles since the execution is done so well.

The story itself is well written and flows well, knowing exactly when to pull off a plot twist but the localization could be better as some of the prose sounds awkward but it doesn't manage to get in the way of telling a great story and is really no worse in this regard than Final Fantasy X was. It's not that the writing is“bad” but that it's obvious that the game was translated.

The real problem with the localization is the voice acting. It's very hit or miss. Many of the more minor characters deliver wooden performances in irritating voices which detracts from the fact that some of the actors, particularly Mark Healy and Eiry Hughes manage to pull off great performances as their respective characters.

Outside of the uneven voice acting, the sound design is incredibly effective as the soundtrack sticks out as among the best I've ever heard in my life. It's a highly memorable suite of music that reminds me more of the score for an epic fantasy film like Ben Hur or Lord of the Rings than it does a video game soundtrack. It's by far one of the best scores for any game that I've heard in years and deserves praise for all that it does right in creating atmosphere. The best piece of music so far is the truly unnerving music that plays as Geralt enters a haunted mist which succeeded in genuinely scaring me with ominous whispering which is really, really hard to do. The fact that the music turned out so well is even more surprising given that this is still only CDProjekt's second game.

As far as graphics go, The Witcher 2 is the best looking game that I've ever played. After initially starting the game on medium settings, I decided to increase the graphical fidelity in order to keep Geralt's hair from looking distractingly bad in contrast to an otherwise extremely high res world and I'm glad that I did. Once I set the graphics to high, I witnessed exactly how amazing CDProjekt's new proprietary REDengine is. The Witcher 2 already manages to dethrone both Heavy Rain and Metro 2033 as the best looking game on the market right now and the option for CDProjekt's new ubersampling technology which remains playable on all but the most expensive hardware will ensure that The Witcher 2 will be a benchmark game for years to come. Moreover, The Witcher 2 manages to do forests right. While most wilderness settings in games usually consist solely of a handful of trees that are spread far apart from each other and some poorly textured grass, The Witcher 2 manages to do a wilderness setting right in a way that I've only managed to see done will before in Crysis and Metal Gear Solid 3. I'd frequently stop running around just to take a better look at my surroundings since everything around me looked so beautiful that I couldn't help but admire all of the work it took to create this world.

The characters are just as detailed as the environments. Everything from scars on faces to outfits made out of realistically detailed cloth and leather that change texture when it rains help to bring the characters of The Witcher 2 to life. The fact that even the shopkeepers and quest givers have personalities helps to make The Witcher 2 even more immersive. The fact that each and every NPC reacts to the weather and time of day just manages to suck me in that much more. This game looks and behaves perfectly and hopefully more developers will be licensing the REDengine alongside more established engines since not only does it looks great on high-end PCs but it's well optimized for less powerful machines (I only have a Radeon HD 5670) in addition to being highly flexible regarding scripting. Now that Source and Unreal 3 are beginning to show their age, it’s about time that some of the new engines debuting with games this year manage to move technology forward.

The one true weak point in the Witcher 2 happens to be the control setup. While the hack-and-slash gameplay is quick and responsive, there's still the issue of the lock-on button which manages to make battles far harder than they should be. I truly loathe having to hit the Alt key in order to lock onto my enemy. If I don't then Geralt will randomly attack other enemies on the battlefield. I was able to fix this issue by reassigning the lock -on function to the G key which may still be out of the way but anything is better then the Alt key in a game that expects you to block attacks on a dime and it's a shame that the absolute worst choice to place a combat key was utilized. This makes the default control scheme much harder to use than it needs to be. Moreover, the game seems like it was designed to use a USB gamepad instead of a keyboard and mouse which I sadly don't have and that makes the game's lack of a console port that much more baffling.

Control issues aside, the Witcher 2's story, replayablity and graphics manage to make it the best PC exclusive title made in years. The fact that it came from a still new developer with limited experience just makes it that much more of an amazing feat. While it's still too early to say what the Game of the Year will be, The Witcher 2 stands out as a strong contender for the title with not even half over.

Pros – Intelligent storyline with truly difficult choices that shape the rest of the game, impressive new proprietary game engine, the best graphics seen in a game to date, the opening level sucks you in and refuses to let go, engrossing soundtrack, memorable characters, immersive setting

Cons – Localization and voice acting aren't perfect, there's still no console version for a game designed for a gamepad, the lock-on key is placed in an awkward place

9.3/10

Why People Priase The Witcher 2 for Many of the Things That Went Wrong With DA2

After playing through The Witcher 2 and seeing that the game made many of the same decisions that Dragon Age 2 made that people usually criticize DA2 for, I'm trying to rationalize why TW2 gets so much more praise. I sure that for some, it might be because TW2 has recently managed to one-up Crysis 2 and Metro 2033 as a graphics benchmark (let's face it, this game is beautiful and ubersampling is unplayable, making it a perfect benchmark game) but I'm looking more at this from a perspective of game design rather than graphics.

1. A three-act structure.
DA2 got a lot of criticism for taking a world that was once open and then making it both confined and linear. TW2 did the same thing but the difference was that each act took place in a different location. DA2 could have been improved if either Kirkwall changed with each act or if the game took place in a different city in each act. Moreover, TW2 whet players' appetites for more while DA2 just made people happy that the game was over due to the reused dungeons and A button mashing. Also, TW2 built up to act 3, DA2 simply dumped the final act onto you abruptly and then randomly hit you with the fianl quest just as quickly. There was no real indication of what players where going to fight or what they were doing in DA2 while TW2 gives us Letho as an antagonist right off the bat. TW2 simply told a better story because of it due to it being more focused since a linear story needs an objective set for the protagonists right off the bat.

2. The took a turned based system and made it hack and slash
The real issue with DA2 was that it went halfway there and as a result felt clunky while TW2 feels fluid as an action RPG. DA2 is just uneven and I find my self mashing the A button as fast as possible to make sure that I increase my DPS instead of focusing on mobility like a true action RPG should be doing. DA3 should be either a pure action RPG with the ability to dodge and more interesting boss fights and less of a turn-based/real time hybrid or go back to DAO's combat system. The current combat system tries to appeal to everyone and instead appeals to nobody. Giving consoles auto-attack back made the game feel like DAO again which fixed this problem but did so far too late and DA3 should have this available as the default option.

3. Too few abilities and too many upgrades
This is actually a criticism with TW2 that I have but no game is truly perfect. It needs to be improved with both games and is really my biggest complaint with TW2. Hopefully both series will offer players more options for abilities in combat instead of wasting level-ups on upgrading abilities that the player already has and DA3 will actually go back to allowing players to select lockpicking upon level up instead of taking four levels to learn how to lockpick at the cost of other stats.

4. A cliffhanging ending that sets up an expansion pack to nickle and dime players
The issue here is that TW2 whet players appetites for more while DA2 made gamers happy that it was finally over since they no longer had to deal with the tedium. Less pointless delivery quests and reused environments would have gone a long way towards making gamers feel like they wanted to buy the post-endgame DLC. Also, months after release, DA2 didn't solve the conflict that the endgame created, we only got an item pack that nobody wanted.

5. Bugs at launch
TW2 currently has a number of bugs, including a memory leak. DA2 was also incredibly buggy at release. The difference is that CDProject have said that we'll be getting a patch in a few days, DA2 took a month to patch. The same comparison could be made with Fallout: New Vegas, the game was patched only about two weeks after launch which cleared up a number of issues. Bioware not fixing their product in a timely manner showed that they didn't care about their fans.

6. A Mass Effect-style dialog system
The real problem was the fact that Hawke's personalities were forced on players, instead of letting players choose what they wanted to say in each conversation rather than selecting their version of Hawke at the beginning of the game. Also, TW2 gave players more persuade options and Geralt's personality was mostly based on persuade choices that upgraded the more you used them. DA2's dialog system was a wreck and didn't even give players a neutral/laconic option on the wheel while persuades were few and far between. The dialog wheel is fine, but ditch the personalities and give players more situations to persuade people

Now for things that TW2 did right that Bioware could learn form

1. Optimization
TW2's low settings actually run very, very well on most people's machines while DA2 on the 360 had characters expanding and contracting during cutscenes which said to me that DA2 was a bad PC to console port that didn't take advantage of lesser hardware. This was really a slap in the face after Bioware promised that DA2 would run better on consoles. Crysis 2 is yet another good example of a good PC to console port while the Assassin's Creed games are good examples of good console to PC ports (if you ignore Ubisoft Montreal's horrible DRM). If consoles are that much of a priority. Just remember to not punish players for not having a gaming PC or choosing one platform over another.

2. Minigames
TW2 offers some good minigames that were genuinely fun to play. Final Fantasy VII and Fable 2 are also good examples of this. DA2 only offered distractions in the form of delivery quests that had no story behind them for a miniscule amount of gold.

3. Graphics
Playing TW2 at medium or higher is a great experience but DA2 stylized their graphics just to get away with cutting corners. While DA2 will probably age better, it's still a low-poly game that didn't detail its world enough.

4. QTE's
I personally loved these as they made conversations and cutscenes interactive and reminded me of Heavy Rain. It's a shame that DA2 didn't have these since ME2 did.

5. Exploration
I LOVED exploring in TW2, particularly since I'd frequently discover areas that sidequests wouldn't take me to. DA2's Wounded Coast was just a linear strip of land that could have been expanded.

6. Choices that actually matter
Act 2 in TW2 played out completely differently depending on how you planned on resolving the final quest of Act 1. DA2 played out the same way regardless with only a handful of decisions truly mattering. More mutually exclusive quests and ways to change the plot over the course of the game would have gone a long way to improving DA2.

7. Uncensored Nudity
The sex scenes in both DA games just looked awkward. They were done better in DA2 but mostly because the devs didn't bother to model underwear with invisible male genitalia sticking out penetrating through a pair of panties anymore due to a short dev cycle.

Pokemon Black (and, by extension, White)

Pokemon Red was the first video game I ever bought and I haven't missed a single generation since then. That said, I went into Black/White with a fair amount of skepticism: it was trying to be different, trying to age with its audience, and that could mean either a fresh new perspective on the beloved franchise or a failure of fixing something that ain't broke. As it turns out, it's still pretty much just Pokemon.

I bought Black and so that will be the game I'm reviewing, but the differences between the two games are few. If you're wondering which version is right for you, I'd recommend looking up a list of the Exclusive Pokemon in each game and decide which you'd like the ability to catch without trading. There's a small amount of aesthetic change, so the other thing worth asking is: Do you prefer a rural-style (White) or an urban-style (Black)? If you're still unsure, flip a coin, or get whatever version your friend doesn't.

The battle system hasn't changed from the old games. For anyone who's managed to avoid the series this long, a basic rundown is: With a unique team of six fighters with different strengths, weaknesses, and carefully chosen attacks, the player strategizes their way through battles with NPC teams. There are numerous ways to play, whether by hitting the opponent with status effects, switching out your party to best take advantage of their weaknesses, or just plain hitting them with brute force (which, despite the in-game insistence of otherwise, is a legitimate tactic when fighting NPCs).

The changes in the gameplay mostly stem from side-effects of the battles. The Random Encounter rate is off the charts annoying. Prepare to blow all your hard-earned cash on Max Repels. I literally, on numerous occasions, have run from an encounter, taken ONE MORE STEP, and got hit by another wild Pokemon. This would be made a little less annoying if these encounters gave any decent XP, but they're almost never worth fighting. To make matters worse, if you're only a couple of levels higher than the wild Pokemon, the battle can actually be difficult and still fail to reward you for bothering to fight it off.

As like all Pokemon games, this one strips away all the old special features of the previous generation and implements their own unique features. In this case, that's mostly a bad thing. Black completely drops the Pokewalker and introduces a "seasons" system that change what an area looks like on any given month. It's not a bad feature, but its uses are limited and it's restrained by the fact that it takes some thirty days to reach a new season. Some of us can beat the entire game in less than a month; when exactly will we have the chance to notice the changes between spring and winter if we started in spring?

They also made the touchscreen as useless as possible. While the Poketch wasn't particularly innovative, it was still handy to have on the bottom screen. In Black, the bottom screen is devoted to the C-Gear: an optional device that monitors for other players and saps your battery life. What were they thinking with this? Why does it need to constantly be on the screen? Where exactly does Nintendo expect people to play this game? Shockingly enough, I don't pass by many trainers in my own home, or on mass transit, or even at school, making this feature nearly useless. While I'm sure others will take better advantage of this than I can, I don't think anyone can justify why it would steal the bottom screen from something universally useful like a menu.

Speaking of removals/additions from game to game, Black won't let you catch any previous generation Pokemon until you beat the game, forcing you to let go of any biased parties and start completely fresh. In theory, this is great and makes the franchise almost seem brand new, but the selection of Pokemon is painfully sparse. I spent most of the game looking for a fire-type I liked and, when I finally settled on Litwick, its stats dragged it down to be the worst Pokemon in my roster. I constantly felt like I was looking for a fifth or sixth party member to round out my team, and each critter I tried out turned only into a placeholder.

The graphics are pretty standard for the DS, but they up the level of what we've come to expect for Pokemon. Some of the changes are just gimmicky -- like the Pokemon jumping about during battle -- and are hard to even notice until you go back to the older games and get startled by the comparatively mundane graphics. The environment still uses the standard bird's eye view with no diagonal movement, but every so often the world turns almost three-dimensional. One extra-long bridge seems to serve no purpose other than to show off the shiny new graphics of the skyline ahead.

The music is neither great nor awful. Some tracks are catchy, while others get played a few times too often to be enjoyable by Gym #8. They retain the feeling of previous games and have remixed certain tracks yet again, such as the evolution song. The biggest change I noticed was in the battle music: Whenever the player's Pokemon falls into red HP, not only does the game start playing a constant, anxiety-inducing "bee-boop, bee-boop, bee-boop" sound at you like all the previous games, but it also alters the BGM to be more frantic and edgy. That feature single-handedly made me want to play on mute -- the last thing I need during a tense battle is another element to put me on edge, not to mention the times my party fell to low health five seconds before I one-hit KO'd the Quick Attack-using enemy; there wasn't even an inkling of real intensity and the music only made the scene laughable.

Where this game really stands out in the franchise is its storyline. It's not that deep -- it's maybe not even that good -- but for the first time in perhaps ever it felt like the writers actually tried. They tried to have complex villains, they tried to have a story that made you stop and think, and they tried to make it relevant to the game. Almost all the gym leaders actually play a role in fighting Team Plasma and N is the most memorable villain since Giovanni. He's maybe a little annoying, but I can't remember anything about the leaders of Team Aqua/Magma or Team Galactic, so even if I wanted to slap him across the head half the times I met with him, N was still interesting.

If you're a die-hard Pokemon fan, well... you've probably already bought this. If you've been away from the franchise for a while, this is a good place to pick it up again. If you're tired of the same old, same old... don't expect too much, but you might be pleasantly surprised here and there. If all you want is a nostalgia boost for the old games, just pick up Soul Silver or Heart Gold and be done with it.

Pros:

+ Starts the franchise afresh

+ Good graphics (for Pokemon standards)

+ Gym leaders and other characters are fleshed out more than ever before

+ Game feels aimed at an older audience, from the complex storyline to the increase in difficulty

Cons:

- Waste of a touchscreen

- High random encounter rate

- Too difficult in a monotonous way (i.e., too much slow grinding)

- Not enough cool Pokemon (subjective)

7.7/10

The return of PSN! (For real this time.)

Just when it seemed inevitable that PSN would be down for at least a month, Sony released a firmware update that allowed users to login and change passwords. In fact, anyone who accesses the PSN is required to install the new firmware and anyone who installs the firmware is required to change their password. You can always cancel, of course, but you won't get access to the PSN until these tasks are completed.

The download can take a while, depending on connection speed. My first attempt on the PS3 resulted in 2% completed in maybe one minute, until I decided I just wanted to play a Bluray and I could install it later. One viewing of Cars later and the update downloaded in less than ten minutes. I hadn't bought anything from the PlayStation Store yet (thank God), so Sony sent me an email with a link to painlessly change my password by computer instead of on the PlayStation. Both the PS3 and PSP have new firmware updates, but you only have to change your password once if you own both devices.

The PlayStation Store is not yet up and kicking, but it only makes sense that Sony would return the majority of the Network while it continued to work on securing the most sensitive software. For now, we can enjoy the multiplayer versions of Little Big Planet and Mortal Kombat.

Mass Effect 3 Delayed, two new screenshots released

Learning from the mistakes of Dragon Age 2's embarrassing number of bugs, Mass effect 3 has been pushed back to a Q1 2012 release, with the three month delay ensuring that players will encounter the best experience possible when the game finally launches. This comes only days after the announcement of F.E.A.R. 3's month-long delay.

The new screenshots can be viewed here which depict the return of Kaiden Alenko and Liara T'Soni as well as a new never before seen planet: http://masseffect.bioware.com/media/screenshots/

Mass Effect 3 will also include the return of favorite characters from the previous two games like Ashley Williams, Jack and Urdnot Wrex as Commander Shepard travels across the Galaxy to unite the various races of the galaxy to make a final stand against the Reapers. New abilities include the ability for engineers to create turrets, severing the limbs from organic enemies and being able to make 180 degree turns. Expect one epic ride across the galaxy early next year.

Later this week, be the man who pulled the trigger

Kumawar are always good when it comes down to exploiting headlines and given the recent news of bin Laden's death, it was inevitable that there would soon be a game based on the assassination. While Kumawar has always been accused of pusign the boundaries fo taste, there are few who people living in the First World who'd object to being the Navy SEAL who finally put a bullet in Osama's skull.

The new content will be available this Saturday, so that you too can eventually kill a mass murderer and an innocent women that the fucking coward used as a human shield.

PSN Comes Back Online

After being taken offline for almost two weeks, Sony's PSN will finally come back online this week. The hacker responsible for the PSN intrusion has still not been caught as of yet although the FBI is currently looking into the matter. Thankfully Sony has been working on encrypting user data which should make all PSN users' personal information more secure in the future although a password change is required.

The hack attempt compromised the personal data of 77 milion PS3 owners, more than the entire population of the United Kingdom with over 10 million having their credit card information stored on PSN. According to Sony, credit card data was encrypted and not confirmed to have been stolen as of yet although Sony warns users to keep track of their bank statements in the near future.

The Playstation Store has not yet returned but should be operational by the end of the month. To compensate for the loss of new DLC and PS1 Classics purchases, Sony is offering a month of Playstation Plus to all users free of charge.