GAME REVIEW RESIDENT EVIL 5

GAME REVIEW RESIDENT EVIL 5

The biohazard threat has not ended: Just when it seemed that the menace of Resident Evil had been destroyed, along comes a new terror to send shivers down players' spines. Chris Redfield, returning Resident Evil hero, has followed the path of the evil literally around the globe. After joining a new organization, Chris heads to Africa where the latest bioterrorism threat is literally transforming the people and animals of the city into mindless, maddened creatures. He is joined by a new partner, Sheva Alomar, who lends her strength, intelligence and sharp-shooting skills to the mission. In order to survive, Chris and Sheva must work together to take on the challenges of discovering the truth behind this evil plot. Utilizing a revolutionary new 2-player co-op mode of gameplay, players assume control of either Chris or Sheva and experience Resident Evil in new ways. In Resident Evil 5, Capcom has players fearing the daylight as much as they have feared shadow in previous games.

KILL ZONE 2 (PS3)

REVIEW KILL ZONE 2

Two years after the Helghast assault on Vekta, the ISA is taking the fight to the enemy's home world of Helghan. The ISA goal is direct: capture the Helghast leader, Emperor Visari, and bring the Helghast war machine to a halt. Assuming the role of Sev, a battle-hardened veteran and a member of the special forces unit known as the Legion, players lead a group of highly trained soldiers on a mission to take out the Helghast threat. For Sev and his squad, the invasion of Helghan is just the beginning. Tasked with securing Pyrrhus, the Capital City, the team quickly discovers that the Helghast are a formidable enemy on their home planet. Not only have they adjusted to the planet's hostile conditions, they have also harnessed a source of power they can now use against the ISA. Sev discovers his squad isn't just fighting enemy forces their fiercest opponent may be the planet itself

Fable II (XBOX360)

REVIEW Fable II

I normally don't review games but with all the hype surrounding this game and my expectations for it coupled with how I felt after finishing it I felt I needed to make one.

I truly enjoyed Fable 1, it was a unique game of it's time and perhaps that's what helped get my hype up so much. I had expected to enjoy Fable 2 as much as I did Fable 1. What I did not realize is that I would end up getting the exact same experience as Fable 1. While that is not bad in and of itself it does not compare to what it should be considering the games that have come out since and the standards this game should have been trying to set and/or surpass.

That being said when I review this game I'm not going to compare the elements in it to the elements in Fable 1. It's a game that should be able to stand on it's own two feet and not rely on the success of Fable 1 to sell itself.


Graphics 7/10: The graphics were sort of disappointing for me. I had expected something more. What I got was something on par with games several years old. When I played it I felt like I was playing Oblivion all over again, and while I enjoyed the graphics from Oblivion I expected better. Overall the color choices and detail of the immediate surroundings was great, but there are some serious flaws combined with out-dated graphics that seriously cause it to be less than expected.

There were some serious issues with the graphics as well. The dog would often phase out and become see-through. The morphs it had would change continually and would not stay consistent with the purity/alignment that you had chosen. Also the morphs the Hero possessed also would not stay consistent. I had the halo appear once when I was evil.

In addition trying to find dive points at night was an exercise in futility. You could forget about it entirely. While it's semi-realistic, considering everything else, that sort of realistic addition was more of an annoyance than an adherence to the way the game was played out.


Sound 8/10: The sound was not bad. The spell effects, death effects. The ambiance and other aspects of the sound were great however there were certain things that prevented it from being top notch.

First off were the civilians. Listening to them for the first couple hours of the game was entertaining, but after spending a couple dozen hours playing through it and doing the side quests I was nearly brought to the breaking point. I wanted to go on a murderous rampage and slaughter them all because they would never shut up and they would always say the same thing. That combined with their other problems which I'll cover later made them probably one of the aspects I hated the most about the game.

Another poor aspect is the music. Looking back at it, I can never remember a time I heard the music. I know it was playing since all my sound settings were maxed out but I can never remember hearing it play. It was that lack luster that not a single song stuck out.


Story 4/10: Yes, 4 out of 10. It was that bad. It can be summed up in a single line. Go here and do this, Go there and do that, Help him and then beat the game, the end. Yes, there's literally that little to the story. That's not a repetitive theme throughout the game, that's all there ‘is' to the game. 2 fetch quests and a rescue and boom, you're done. It's short, unimaginative, boring and quite frankly, I really could not care about it. There are other main characters you get to interact with. Actually, no you don't. You meet them once or twice and then the game ends. You don't care about them at all, the only one that was even remotely interesting, and more so due to the humor value than anything, is obtained mere minutes before the game ends. How are you supposed to ‘care' about someone when the game ends within 30 minutes of meeting them? Heck, I cared more about my dog then I did about the humanoid main characters. At least he was there for me.

The 4 out of 10, is actually in reference to the side-quests. There were some really interesting and neat side-quests in the game that I found were enjoyable to complete and ultimately had characters with more back-story and development than the main story-line characters.

I wish I could give more detail but that would be saying spoilers. The only redeeming quality of the main story is that there were a few humorous parts in it, but that's about it. If I had rushed through the game, I probably could have beaten it in less than 10 hours. If you do the side quests it adds another 40 hours. You don't buy a 60 dollar game for side-quests. Side quests should be just that, a side to the game. It should not be the focus which it apparently seemed to be in Fable 2.


Game play 5/10: This is going to be long since I have a lot to talk about.

Menu and Items
First off is the menu. It is slow, clunky and there's no way of rapidly going down a long list of items. Every potion/book you use kicks you out of the menu screen and back into the main world. Since it takes about 5 seconds to get back to the inventory and probably longer still to find the right item it becomes a very tedious process if you have more than 1 item to use at a time.

However the menu isn't all bad. There are a lot of categories and sub-categories so it's very easy to find what you need, provided you're willing to put up with the sluggish response time. Because of this everything is very well organized so you're not slogging through 500 different items/clothes/whatever to find what you're looking for since every item type has it's own section.

Secondly is the automatic food dispenser. When you're hurt you can press right on the directional button to eat some food. The game eats higher quality food the more you're hurt, to heal you better. This is good, unfortunately it doesn't bother to check your purity/corruption levels or anything else for that matter so if you happened to have picked up some chicken from a closet and hadn't gotten around to selling it and you happen to be playing a pure character, well you can say goodbye to some purity points. You can inadvertently become more pure/corrupt without even meaning to simply because the food that's selected isn't dependent on purity/corruption.

Alignment/Corruption
I'll move onto the Alignment\Corruption system now. This is an aspect of the game I did like. It's awesome how various acts will affect how pure/corrupt or good/evil you are. Although I don't believe in good/evil I can still appreciate how the system was implemented. The reactions people have to you based on your alignment is very well thought out and implemented, in some cases. The morphs are very interesting and correspond with the alignments/corruption levels as well going from an almost angelic figure to a more demonic one with flies buzzing around you. There were some small minor problems like a halo popping up around a completely corrupt individual when they had maxed out their Alignment (it should only appear around a Pure/Good person, not Corrupt/Good).

Unfortunately that alignment system can lead to one of the games most annoying aspects. This is the civilians. They react to how corrupt/pure and how good/evil you are. This is good, and bad. I played through as a Good/Pure character and I was forced to change it about 3/4 the way through the game. Every time I entered any part of Bowerstone I was swarmed by civilians. They would constantly beg me to marry them. Not only would females beg me, but males too. Children would chase after me asking for autographs and what-not and it got to be very annoying. It fits with what they're doing, but try getting into a shop, or heck even crossing the bridge, when there are 20 people surrounding you. I had to constantly resort to casting spells to chase them away. Eventually I just got fed up and started shooting them. And they kept asking me even after I had gotten married like I was some sort of Pure, Goodly person who was going to sleep with half the town.

Marriage
Which brings me to marriage. This was probably the biggest selling point for me; the ability to marry and have a family. I like a good romance story despite being male; it's one of the high points in games for me. It is something I look forward to a great deal. In this game I didn't bother until half-way through. None of the females had any depth. They were all just a bunch of shallow women who only seemed to care about getting laid. The only one that was even remotely interesting was the one obtained through a later side-quest, and only because she was completely unique from everyone else. She still had no depth, but she was at least different enough to be tolerable. For someone hoping for a little bit of romance, this game delivered none. The final clincher is that my wife disappeared after I beat the game even though my child was still there.

Combat
And then there was combat. I'm not sure how they messed this up but it was very… boring I suppose. The only good part about it was the spell casting, even if half the spells were novelty more than anything else. All you need to beat the game, combat wise, is Slow Time and Inferno. That's it. Slow down time, and cast an AoE Inferno and everything dies. There's no strategy involved, there's no skill. You just cast slow time, run up to the middle of the enemies, and let lose with inferno and the battle is over. Some enemies ‘may' required 2 or 3 inferno's but it's essentially the same thing. The lightning spell was the only other spell worth anything. But even then it was really only a replacement for inferno. It did more damage but took longer for the full-effect to be felt. The rest of the spells were simply a novelty. You could use them but they would give you the same bang for your buck that the other 3 spells would.

If you wanted to use melee combat you were given the option of a regular attack, combo attacks, counter attacks, flurry attacks and blocking. Blocking was never really required. It was much better to keep up a constant stream of attacks then it was to block. Regular attacks and combo attacks were useless since the enemy could block them. While they didn't early game, about half-way through they started to and essentially made those 2 skills useless. Counter was too hard to time and it required you to block, which you didn't really need to do anyways. Flurry was all you needed, grab a fast hitting weapon and you could use flurry almost as fast as a regular attack and it did 3-4 times the damage and gave out about 5 times the exp orbs. There wasn't any reason to use anything other than Flurry.

Range combat was a little better than melee. You had the option of free aim, which helped in side quests, zooming and sub-targeting. Free aim was a great help in certain cases, like I said before, but worthless in combat. Zooming took too long to be of use and you couldn't readjust your aim after you zoomed in meaning if you were slightly off target, you had to zoom back out and waste another 10 seconds getting a bead on the target. Never mind that zooming doesn't let you target so it's just like free-aim, once again useless in combat. Sub-Targeting however was great. You could choose to target the hands to disarm them, groin to down them, chest was basic default and did more damage than normal hit, or the head and decapitate them. A decapitate was usually a 1-hit kill for all except the most powerful monsters and humanoids. Combine it with a powerful long range rifle and you could take out most groups of creatures long before they reached you. But once they did it was time to put it away since you couldn't use any abilities since any time you were hit you were knocked out of them, all of them.

Now for the creatures you fight in combat. They had very simplistic and basic AI's. You'll find either 1 of 2 things happening as you fight them. You'll either A) Be stunned/juggled/staggered for several minutes before you finally get control of your character or B) You'll run in and instantly destroy the entire group effortlessly without even trying. A) Never happened in the beginning since for the most part they just stood there and fell over. It happened in the second half of the game where they would charge you and never ever stop attacking. In the second half every creature seemed to have the ability to do 50 hit combos. You had to pray you were knocked out of range for one of their spells/attacks so you could put some distance between you and them to ready and attack or a spell. Once you got that attack/spell off though, usually you just proceeded to slaughter them. It takes them a long time to figure out what to do, but once they start swinging they don't stop.

Probably the single most annoying thing with combat is probably the slow motion death with range attacks. With melee or magical it's not so bad, because it doesn't hinder your ability to cast the next attacks. But with range, it takes you out of whatever zoom/targeting/sub-targeting mode you were in and makes it impossible for rapid targeting. This could mean life or death in situations where you've been swarmed by a large group of monsters with your range weapon out.

Experience
The experience is done well enough, I have no complaints. Blue orbs are Strength, yellow is Skill, Red is Will and Green is General experience. You get green whenever you kill an enemy. The harder the enemy, the more general experience you get. Strength, Skill and Will experience is based not only on the difficulty of the enemy, but also what you used. A Flurry attack will gain you more experience than a regular attack just like a headshot will get you more skill experience than a regular non-targeted attack. The higher the level of a spell, the more Will experience you get. It's simple, effective, and done in such a way that it's possible to max out Strength, Skill and Will by the time you beat the game without having to grind so long as you do the side-quests and a few jobs.

Economy
The economy was good however. NPC's would buy things from the stores, or sometimes neglect them all-together, leading to massive sales or shortages of items. If you played smart you could use the economy to buy and sell items and make a lot of cash very fast, so long as you dealt with high value items like weapons. Also the more you spent in an area the better the economy became and generally the better items that were sold in the stores. Taking on jobs also seemed to help improve the economy too, and you made money in the process. This made it worthwhile to spend a little time bettering the economy.

The jobs were handled perfectly. The hardest jobs were the first ones to appear. This made making a lot of money early game harder than later on. It was still possible but it helped to balance the influx of gold. The greatest source of money ended up being renting out/buying up houses and shops since the cash that began to flow in quickly added up. You made money when the game was turned off as well, but instead of coming in every 5 minutes like it did when you played it came in every 30 minutes.

Free-Roaming
Another thing about this game is that it was supposed to be a free-roaming adventure. It's not. What they mean by free-roaming is that you're allowed to back-track to all the areas you've been to before at any time, which is pretty much a common factor in all action and/or rpg games. All of the new areas are usually quest restricted meaning you cannot go there until a certain part of the game has been cleared. This game is as restrictive as any other non-first person shooter game to be released.

Equipment
There is no armor in this game. I suppose it's supposed to make the game more tactical but the AI is so basic that you have to stand there to get hit. As long as you simply keep moving, you'll very rarely get hit, even by the most dangerous of enemies. That being said there's a large variety of clothing as well that fit all types of game play. There are clothing for rich, poor, evil or evil. Whatever way you wish to RP your character, there are clothing to fit them, at least in most cases.

That being said there are quite a few different ways to paint your body, either with hair, tattoos and/or different colors. Being able to use dyes to change the color of your hair and clothing is a nice addition since some of the clothing looked bad with the original color palette. I suppose my only real complaint is that there was not any way to wear armor. A huge hulking beast wielding a massive hammer and dishing out huge amounts of physical damage looks odd wandering around in plain clothing. Even tossing in tattoos instead of clothing does not offset the lack of armor. The aesthetic value of it would have done much to finish up fleshing out the clothing section.

The weapons however were varied and interesting. There was actually a reason to have more than 1 type of range weapon. There was short range, high damage shotgun type weapons or more precision type long range slightly less damage dealing rifles. There were also pistols for rapid fire and crossbows for someone that liked a little of everything.

However the melee weapons were slightly lacking. While the legendary range weapons were of use only a single melee weapon, something obtained late game, was of any value. And it was only of value because it was a fast hitting weapon. There was no point in having a slower weapon since the katana always seemed to do just slightly less damage than the other weapons but they hit much faster.

The Yellow Orb Road
For all quests, side quests, jobs and sales you could usually count on either you dog or the bright yellow line to guide you. While it may seem cheesy and unrealistic, it helps a lot. You'll really come to appreciate having it since it saves a lot of time and effort. No more will you be spending 30 minutes looking for the specific person/spot you need to go. You can just follow the trail and you'll be at it within 1. Some people say the journey is half the fun, but in Fable 2 it's the destination that's the best and the yellow line gets you there very fast, very efficiently and is a convenience I wish more games had.

Bugs
There were plenty of bugs in this game; several of them were game-breaking. However with all products it's never perfect on release date and in time they will be fixed. I can't really comment on them since they will eventually be worked out but for the time being it's made an average game worse because of it.


Overall 6.0/10: Overall the game was average. It starts out slow, becomes enjoyable, and then tapers off into annoyance and disappointment. The story is short, uninspired and uninteresting. The graphics, while not bad, have problems and are slightly dated. The sound is great, aside from the lack of memorable music, and the game play has equal shares of ups and downs.

This is a game I would rent before I bought, but even more than that, it's a game I would wait until the bugs are fixed before I did either. There are several game breaking bugs in this and quite a few minor ones. If you want to experience the game for what it really has to offer, I suggest waiting until the bugs are fixed and then renting it. If you like it, go out and buy it. It's a good bit of short, mindless fun but for people that are looking for more depth and oomph to their games, I would look elsewhere. This game sacrifices it's core for the peripherals and does neither well.

Game Release: Fable II (US, 10/21/08)

Halo Wars (XBOX360)

REVIEW HALLO WARS

Halo Wars, if it's not obvious enough from the name, is the latest addition to the incredibly popular Halo franchise; set 20 years before the plot of Halo: Combat Evolved, its storyline revolves around the endeavours UNSC Spirit of Fire, along with Captain James Cutter, Sergeant John Forge and Professor Ellen Anders as they come up against the Covenant forces across a number of worlds.

The game itself, developed by the now-dissolved Ensemble Studios, is an RTS similar to the likes of Command & Conquer with some Starcraft and Age of Mythology elements. You command the UNSC in the 15-mission-long campaign (which can be played in Single Player and XBL/System Link co-op), and also have the option of commanding the Covenant in Skirmish and online Multiplayer. Further to this, similar to recent Ensemble Studios games, as part of the two races, there are six individual leaders (three per side) that slightly change the base UNSC or Covenant forces and give some extra personalisation.

The UNSC and Covenant forces are fairly different from each other, with the leaders only amplifying this fact; the UNSC leaders, for example, differ through economy perks (Cutter adds a level to your bases, while Anders halves research times and costs), along with unique units and 'super' units (which are upgraded versions of common units). The UNSC leaders also have leader 'powers'; expensive abilities that can easily change the course of a battle, similar to the God Powers in Age of Mythology (Forge's Carpet Bomb sends a Shortsword to deliver a huge explosive payload while Cutter's MAC fires depleted uranium for huge damage in a small area). The Covenant leaders, however, actually appear on the battlefield and have their own unique abilities and units, all of which upgradeable; the Prophet of Regret has a Cleansing Beam at his disposal, the same beam used for 'glassing' planets, and the weaponry on his hovering chair can be upgraded from weak lasers to a fully-fledged flying Fuel-rod firing fortress. The Covenant leaders also get their own unique units. This does enough to differentiate the three leaders in each faction in order to make your leader choice an actual serious decision rather than a matter of 'ZOMG ARBITERRRRRRR'.

There's still the same Halo classics that we all know and love. Wraiths, Scorpions, Banshees, Warthogs, Ghosts, Hornets, and yes, even Spartans (but not Master Chief) are all present and buildable, along with some new additions including, but not limited to, the Covenant Locust (pretty much a miniature Scarab), UNSC Vulture (a flying weapon platform), UNSC Wolverine (an anti-air rocket vehicle) and a number of other new vehicles make their inaugural appearances.

These two factions are actually very well balanced; the Covenant are strong in the early game while the UNSC get better the longer the game goes, however if the Covenant can hold off long enough, a Scarab can be built for an enormous amount of resources to tip the balance back in their favour. This makes for an intense game at all times, from the early game where you forage for supplies with your scouts to the late game where ODSTs are raining from the sky and multiple Scarabs tower over the battlefield.

Resources in this game are extremely simple; you have Supply, which is basically what you use to build everything, Tech, which allows you to get stronger units and better upgrades, and Population, which limits the number of units you can have at once. Each unit requires a set amount of supply (ranging from 100 for a simple Marine squad to 3000 for a Scarab), a high enough tech level (between 0 and 3 for Covenant, and 0 and 4 for UNSC) and a chunk of your population cap (which is 40 at maximum for UNSC and 50 at max for Covenant). The pop cap is indeed fairly low, however the fast-paced gameplay tends to keep your army size, even after an hour of playing, pretty low.

The gameplay is very fast paced; basic units and buildings only take a few seconds to create and it's likely that you'll be fighting heavily before the 2 minute mark against an experienced foe. You spend the first minute or so searching for resources in the form of supply crates around the map with your handily provided scout unit, before moving your Supply generation to a more automated method in the form of Warehouses or Supply Pads, built around your base in 'sockets'. Once you've got a decent economy up, units are made in categories; Infantry, Aircraft and Vehicles.

Halo Wars follows a rock-paper-scissors (or RPS) balance method; Infantry > Aircraft > Vehicles > Infantry, with the usual counter-units (Hunters are Infantry but counter Vehicles, and Wolverines are Vehicles but swat Aircraft easily, for example) thrown in to keep things interesting. What you'll usually find is that there is a general-purpose unit (Marines, Grunts, Scorpions, etc), and two counter-units (eg Flamethrowers, Jackals, Wolverines) that are strong against certain types of units and very weak against others. Both sides also have Uber units; the aforementioned Scarab, which costs multiple fortunes and takes 20 population slots gives the Covenant a wickedly powerful endgame unit while the Vulture, a more modest 900 Supply and 6 Population, dominates the skies for the UNSC. Indeed, the UNSC, despite only having one mainstream air unit, has a dominant air game while the Covenant have excellent infantry.

What this means is that diversity in armies, rather than just massing a single unit type, tends to be particularly strong; Scorpions are powerful units, but faced with an army of Banshees and Hunters they just don't cut it. However, mix some basic infantry in with those Scorpions (Marines > Banshees and Flamethrowers > Hunters) and you have a whole different story. This 'RPS' balance method, while not exactly the most creative or original, makes the game even more well balanced and makes every leader and unit useful and viable.

The multiplayer modes, while lacking in quantity, are definitely great quality. There are only two different match types, Regular and Deathmatch (with Deathmatch giving you all techs and a huge amount of resources at the start of the game so you can get right into the action), both of which having their ups and downs in terms of strategies. You can play as any of the six Leaders in Skirmish or Online; that means you can have Covenant v Covenant, or UNSC + Covenant + Covenant vs UNSC + UNSC + UNSC or whatever. As you would come to expect from a seasoned multiplayer RTS developer, the multiplayer is fairly lag-free (with only a .5 second forced delay to make latency not so big an issue, as is the standard in most RTSes now) and quite popular. It takes only a few seconds to find a game, and there is plenty of party support as well as extensive leaderboards for multiplayer and single-player.

The single-player campaign is deep and varied; you won't see two objectives the same. The first few missions have you liberating a base, then entering a relic and rescuing trapped units; and, depending on difficulty settings, the campaign could take anywhere from eight to twenty hours if you go for the achievements, bonus objectives, Skulls, Black Boxes, gold medals and Legendary difficulty.

As you can see, there is plenty of replay value in the campaign; high scores are uploaded to the leaderboards, skulls can be unlocked for use in private Skirmishes and future missions, there is an extensive timeline showing the events leading up to the Halo: Combat Evolved storyline, the Legendary difficulty is, as usual, a complete pain in the ass and there's a full 1000 Gamerscore to be unlocked through the vast array of achievements.

Single-player skirmish is surprisingly good fun. The AI has been very well made, not due to its difficulty but due to how it actually plays as a human would. It can only see what is on its screen (and in team games, you can actually see where the AI is looking in the minimap), it responds only to what it sees (so if you kill its scouting parties, it won't know to build Cobras in response to your massed Wraiths) and as far as I can tell, outside of the campaign there is no 'cheating' element where the AI has extra resources or stronger units. The difficulty settings are the same as that of the FPS Halo games; Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary (with Legendary obviously being the hardest), but a great feature is included in the Automatic setting. When playing the Automatic difficulty AI, after each match the game assesses how well you played - did you completely destroy the AI or was it a close battle? - and raises or lowers the difficulty setting accordingly, even past the Legendary difficulty. This not only allows for much closer-matched skirmishes, but also gives you something to practice on as your skills increase over time. While the difficulty in 1v1s isn't exactly stellar, you can expect the AI to work extremely well as a 2v2 or 3v3 team; just like a team of 2 or 3 humans using voice communication.

The maps are detailed and varied; in Multiplayer you can find 'hooks' dotted around the map, each with its own perk; you can get Supply Lift Hooks to increase your supply rate, Sentinel Hooks to allow you to produce Sentinel units, Building Hooks give you extra slots to make buildings and of course the enormous Mega Turret can give a 'tug-of-war' feeling as you fight over it and its incredible destructive power. In Campaign, you go from an icy wasteland to a sprawling city to an enormous alien colony and even to the outside of the Spirit of Fire - to name a few of your destinations.

The graphics in this game, while they have received mixed reviews, are quite good for a game of such scale on a system such as the Xbox 360. While the graphics aren't quite as detailed as in recent PC RTS games such as Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance and Company of Heroes (and to a lesser extent Dawn of War II), the framerate remains fairly solid in all but the most intense fights, which is a positive in its own right.

While the graphics aren't exactly jawdropping, the music is fabulous. A combination of orchestrated and synthetic music produces an excellent score with a huge range of diversity (there's a song for each map, pretty much), and the audio cues in the game are an integral part of gameplay. The music crescendos in the middle of a huge fight, and if you're winning it becomes triumphant and victorious; get pushed back and you'll have a more solemn theme.

The controls are somewhat of an issue. Being a console RTS, it's hard to expect all control aspects that would be normal in one on the PC while still retaining functionality and simplicity. Ensemble has done a decent job of the control scheme for Halo Wars; selection, especially regarding the excellently-designed 'paintbrush' tool and a number of other selection options, is a complete breeze and the circle menu, despite already being done to some extent in other console RTS games, is very intuitive. That said, however, a few rudimentary basics have been left out; the ability to form control groups is practically non-existent (with the only actual method of doing so being through manual grouping); while you can form pseudo-groups by moving troops together and using the D-Pad to cycle through these groups, it's both unintuitive and cumbersome. Furthermore, while the selection interface is intuitive in itself, the lack of any ability to 'shift' select units, i.e. adding units to your selection (performed using the 'shift' key on a PC RTS, hence the name) can make intense micromanagement extremely difficult.

Halo Wars appears to have been designed as a 'simple' version of a PC RTS; its control scheme, fairly low unit count both in terms of population available and actual unit diversity, graphics and few multiplayer modes does give off an air almost of lacking. While what is there has been polished to a mirror shine; the maps are excellently designed, the balance is great, the units that we have are both true to the Halo canon and have a definite use, and multiplayer is very well done (even with a Bungie.net style online stat tracker), one can't help but feel that the game does have some things missing. That said, however, I can safely say this game is the best console RTS I've played so far, and I'd say it'll stay that way for quite a while.

Game Release: Halo Wars (Limited Edition) (AU, 02/26/09)

Halo 3 (XBOX360)

REVIEW HALO 3

"Fair - game is okay, but there are many better."

And that is Halo 3 in a nutshell. Is it a bad game? No, not really. Parts of it are bad, but as a whole it's not. Is it an amazing game? No, not really. Again, parts of it are amazing, but on the whole it's not. Instead, it's content to walk that line of mediocrity.

SINGLE PLAYER

The single-player campaign is, by far, Halo 3's weakest point, which is sad considering to what lengths Microsoft has gone to hype it and the fact that Bungie has had unlimited funds to develop it for the last three years.

The story picks up relatively where Halo 2 left off. Master Chief has apparently jumped off the ship he was on at the end of Halo 2 and plummeted to Earth. Why did he jump off? No one knows. Seeing as he's the only person in the entire human army aside from Johnson who is not completely incompetent, I don't see why he didn't just take down that entire ship by himself. He spends enough time being sent off alone as it is.

Anyway, the Covenant are still laughably evil. Their prophets want to destroy all existence. Why? Again, who knows. They murmer something about humans being heresy or something like that, but that's about the extent or their reasoning. See, me, I'd think that destroying all existence was a bad move, but I guess I'm not an evil alien overlord with unlimited funds and technology. They have, however, more or less conquered Earth. Still, Bungie makes this as un-epic as possible by never showing the effect the occupation has on civilians. Because of this, the five levels set on Earth don't really feel that way, and they might as well be set on yet another Halo due to the lack of any life you actually see.

In Halo 3, the Elites (who now fight alongside the humans) have been replaced by the Brutes, who are basically comparable to fighting the Elites but less fun. They have very little personality, and I find it kind of hard to take a giant talking gorilla seriously.

Oh, and the Flood are back too and, big surprise here, they still suck. I guess Bungie never got the memo. The Flood are not fun to fight. They have never been fun to fight. They are up there as some of the worst enemies ever created. They are basically the polar opposite of what most people enjoy in the Halo series' single-player levels: the fun AI. Granted, six years ago when the first game came out the Flood mindlessly rushing at you made sense in context, but now we know a bit more about them and the Gravemind and it's much less forgiveable. The Flood operate as a collective consciousness, and it would be nice to see them utilize it from time to time.

The writing in the game ranges from campy to bad in varying degrees. Dialogue basically sounds like it was written by a guy whose only experience doing so was watching Full Metal Jacket a single time and then filtering out the profanity. The story itself is pretty mediocre. As mentioned above, the laughably evil Covenant want to wipe out all existence and, naturally, Master Chief has to stop them pretty much single-handedly. It's all very cliche and melodramatic, and the writers never go out of their way to develop any particular character, which effectively ensures that you care for none of them. When characters die, it's supposed to be either sad or epic, but in Halo 3 it just seems tedious, like my time would be better spent killing things instead of watching other people do so.

The levels are very inconsistent. About half of them are great, but there are a few that are mediocre and two and a half that are just plain bad. Level Eight, titled "Cortana," is definitely a nomination for the worst level ever designed in the history of gaming. It is the opposite of fun. It's tedious, forces you to backtrack back through almost the entire level, and basically made me want to not finish the game.

The graphics in Halo 3 are similarly inconsistent, and it stands out as one of the few games I've played that can simultaneously wow me and make me wonder how certain things made it past QA. For example, you can look at the environment in Tsavo Highway and be floored by how great it all looks, but the faces of Marines look vaguely like someone drew markings on a turd. The game also retains much of the high level of shine (as if someone came by and polishes items every day just for the sake of doing it) from Halo 2, but it's not quite as ridiculous, so I'll let it slide.

No one can fault the developers at Bungie for the amount of weapons they put into Halo 3. There are a lot. Unfortunately, their impact is lessened because they all look and sound like toys. The human rifles pack very little punch. Sure, I can tell I've shot an enemy, but I can't feel it. The plasma weapons...well, I suppose they sound how plasma weapons would sound, except a bit weaker. Even something such as the rocket launcher doesn't provide a suitable "boom" when it hits something, and the same goes for the grenades.

People always praise Halo for its excellent AI, and while I certainly don't feel the AI is bad, I think it's somewhat unwarranted. Basically, 90% of your fights will contain a Brute, a group of Grunts, and possibly two of those little guys with the shields. Occasionally, you'll fight Hunters, snipers, or those stupid flying things that are annoying as all hell, but for the most part get used to the group above. Similarly, you can peg the reactions of the group based on what you do. As soon as you shoot most Brutes, they'll drop a bubble shield, which basically makes the pace drop to a crawl because, nine times out of ten, it's safer just to wait until the shield dissipated before doing anything. Sure, you can charge in guns blazing, but on anything above Easy you'll probably die doing do.

If you take out a Brute, the Grunts run almost every time. Occasionally, you'll get a suicidal Grunt running toward you with two plasma grenades, but even I can program a handful of statistical reactions. If you shoot a Brute to the point the his shields go down but you leave him alive, his helmet will pop off (every time) and he'll go berserk if you don't kill him. What this means is that he'll mindless rush at you, which sounds scary in theory but in practice just makes it easier to kill him since he's no longer shooting a gun at you. Again, the AI isn't bad, but I don't call amazing AI the same thing as the enemies reacting almost the same every time you fight them. They're programmed better than a lot of games, but they are still highly predictable. Oh, and the Flood still have no AI. They just rush at whatever they want to die mindlessly and shoot or bat at them until one of them is dead.

The AI of the Marines that fight alongside you, though (and the Arbiter/Elites, for that matter) is just awful. They will get you killed. That is, if they don't kill you themselves. They can't drive either. They are fond of driving around in circles or straight into obstacles/each other. This generally sucks the fun out of the game because, unless it's a tank or a flying vehicle, I'd rather be manning the guns, and Halo 3 doesn't seem to want to let me because the damned AI can't figure out which way to turn, which forces me to take over most of the time. Anyway, a game that has good AI has to have it on all sides. Good enemy AI means nothing if the friendly AI sucks ass, and Halo 3's friendly AI sucks a massive amount of ass.

Which brings me to gameplay. The gameplay in Halo 3 is pretty much the same as it was in Halo and Halo 2. Master Chief still moves too slow and can still jump too high (and the jump is too floaty). Bungie added equipment (which is the fabled X button that was going to change the way we played shooters forever), but that's really more of a diversion than anything useful. It can occasionally save your life on higher difficulties, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it necessary. Other than that, if you've played Halo 2 you've played Halo 3, the levels just look a tad bit different and prettier. There are a few new weapons, but they generally border between reskinned old weapons (the Mauler is the same as the SMG, for example) and totally useless (the flamethrower, which in theory should be perfect for taking out the Flood but in practice just lets them kill you while on fire). Thankfully, Bungie brought back the standard assault rifle, though, and it remains one of the most consistently useful guns in both single and multi-player. The controls are as solid as they ever were. No complaints in that department.

And that brings me to sound. As mentioned above, the weapon sounds leave a lot to be desired. They are all too weak and quiet. The voice acting is passable, but not great, especially if you've played other recent shooters like Half-Life 2 or BioShock that really set the bar for voice acting in an FPS game. Most of the characters sound very stereotypical for their roles in the game, which is one of the problems with the narrative as a whole. Master Chief has your standard "Solid Snake tough guy" voice. Johnson has your standard "black guy in charge" voice. The Prophet of Truth has your standard "evil mastermind" voice. It's all very predictable and disappointing. The one saving grace of Halo 3's sound is the music, although I can't really tell if they actually recorded any new music for the game. It all sounds like the same tunes I've heard in the first two games, but I guess Bungie's motto is to not fix it if it isn't broke, or even if it's a little broke they can kind of let it slide. Still, when the music starts playing during an epic battle, it gets your blood pumping, and that's what game music is meant to do.

Overall, the campaign is kind of sad considering how much time and money Bungie had to perfect it. It lacks in almost every area, from length to sound to writing to graphics.

5/10

MULTI-PLAYER

Now, all the Halo fanboys generally say that Halo's single-player campaigns shouldn't matter, because the game series is all about the multi-player (lest they forget that the first game was very much about the single-player). I don't feel that way. A truly great game has to excell in all areas, and Halo 3 certainly does not. That said, even the multi-player in Halo 3 suffers due to a variety of different reasons, which I will now cover, followed by what's good.

First, the map selection in Halo 3 leaves a lot to be desired. None of the maps are really terrible (except maybe Snowbound...see why below), but only a few of them stand out, those being Sandtrap, Valhalla, Isolation, and maybe one or two others. Compared to the first Halo, which had over half a dozen standouts, the offering here isn't all that great, and why graphically updated versions of popular maps from the first two games (all we got here was an updated Zanzibar) aren't included as a default is beyond me since it should theoretically take very little time to port them on over.

Second, Bungie's matchmaking system is basically broken. They are updating it, yes, but right now the same few maps tend to come up over and over again, and for some reason it's rarely the good ones that do this. The horrible Shotty/Snipers problem appears to have been fixed (although it still shows up a bit too often for my liking), but the fact is that the matchmaking system is totally inadequate, especially given that Bungie promised to put in a feature allowing users to search for games. It's annoying playing online and nine times out of ten not getting to play on a map or game mode that you want to play on, and it's really a problem that shouldn't exist in this day and age.

Next, the melee system is broken as well. You've got to realize that something is wrong with a shooter when 90% of the players have melee kills in their top two or three methods of dealing death, and I'd wager that most of that 90% has it at number one. Melee kills are ridiculously unbalanced, and it's beyond annoying when you clearly lunge before an enemy and they still end up killing you with their lunge. This immensely decreases from the enjoyment of the game because half of your firefights (especially those on the smaller levels) basically becomes two people running at each other shooting assault rifles and then both hitting melee when they come within range. Shooters should be deeper than this, and hopefully it's something that Bungie fixes real soon.

Finally, the custom games mode, while great, needs to be updated so that you can play against strangers. It's ridiculous when a game has a dozen great game modes, but you can't play any of them online against people you don't know, which essentially screws over most of us gamers who don't have fifteen friends who own a 360. It's annoying that, in order to get the most out of my game, I have to organize a dozen people together ahead of time rather than just hopping online and playing my favorite modes against strangers like I can in every other game on Live. This problem wouldn't be that big of a deal if most of the custom modes were terrible, but the problem is that most of the custom modes are better than the regular game modes because they actually add some originality into the mix.

And now on to the good. If you're a fan of Halo's gameplay, Halo 3 keeps things about the same. There are minor tweaks here and there and more weapons (see the single-player section for details), but for the most part this is the same Halo you know and love (or don't, that's your choice). Equipment can spice up the occasional multi-player match, but I don't see it used enough to actually call it game-making. It can help win the occasional game or, if used incorrectly, facilitate the terrible loss, but for the most part it's just kind of there.

The vehicles, as always, are fun in multi-player, but as always, not enough maps use them. Luckily, customize maps (see Forge section below) allow us to add tanks to some maps or a Mongoose to others, which should lead to some fun times if you're able to organize a custom game.

Bungie has again given us a wealth of options in multi-player. There are social matches and ranked matches, and each of those two has several additional ways to narrow down which type of game you'd like to play, be it Big Team Battle, Team Slayer, or an objective-based game, among others. Again, these modes suffer from the problems listed in the first few paragraphs, but on the whole they offer some nice and varying options for people with various interests.

The graphics in multi-player are similar to those in the campaign. Overall, multi-player probably looks a bit better because you don't have the horrible human models weighing down the overall score.

Sadly, something that can't go without being mentioned when speaking of Halo 3 is the Live community. Sadly, the Halo series seems to bring about some of the worst gamers out there. They are rude, obnoxious, racist, and a variety of other negative adjectives. This detracts a bit from the overall fun of the multi-player because you just know you're bound to get stuck with some jerk who doesn't want to use a microphone in a team-based game, which in turn leads to your team getting dominated by the other team that is composed of four friends who work together. This isn't the game's fault, but it is something that needs to be brought up in any good review.

Overall, the multi-player is a lot of fun, but Bungie sure seems like they tried like hell to keep it from being that way. The poor matchmaking system coupled with the repetitive bad gametypes and maps really hurts what could have been such a great thing.

7/10

EXTRAS

Halo 3 also comes with two additional features...Forge and Theater.

Forge allows users to edit maps, although not in the traditional way PC gamers or fans of the TimeSplitters series are used to. Rather, it allows you to add or subtract items from the map, but not to alter the geography. This effectively allows users to block off areas of maps, add new weapons or items, throw in teleporters, and make items fall from the sky at a regular interval. It also facilitates the creation of brand new game modes which can be easily downloaded from Bungie's web site. All in all, it's a great little feature that, while not as powerful as most would have liked, serves to add life to a title that already has a ton of replay value. Sadly, though, any custom game types you download can only be played in custom games, which means the masses probably won't see some of the more awesome ones like Pirate Ships.

Theater is exactly what the name implies: a feature that allows users to view their last twenty-five (if I recall correctly) games, take small chunks of them, save them, and upload them to Bungie's website. People can either watch another user's videos there or watch them from inside Halo 3. Theater is a great concept, and one that I hope more games implement in the future. It allows users to save visual proof of their greatest accomplishments, and it's something I really wish I had during some of my better Team Fortress 2 games. However, it has a ton of limitations. You can't really do any editing with the tool, and rewinding/fast-forwarding is a huge pain and moves far too slow. I also can't help but feel that the game as a whole (particularly graphically and in the single-player campaign) suffered as a result of the feature's inclusion. Still, it's a really cool feature.

Overall, these two features are just that...features. They don't have a big enough impact on the game as a whole to make them all that important, and at the end of the day are just little things to waste time with if you've got a lot of it free.

8/10

OVERALL

Sadly, Halo 3 was quite a letdown to me. I shouldn't have been surprised seeing as Halo 2 was the definition of a let-down, but at the same time I kind of hoped that Bungie would use their infinite finances and extended development time to really turn in something special.

Unfortunately, it almost seems like the company phoned it in. They knew they couldn't deliver a terrible game, but they also were fed up with Microsoft and it's "Halo, Halo, Halo" mentality, so they ended up giving us a very mediocre game that would appease the die-hards (who would like the game regardless) and leave everyone else wondering what all the fuss was about.

If all you care about is the multi-player and you don't particularly care about being able to choose what game modes or maps you play on, Halo 3 is definitely for you and I highly recommend you purchase it (although if you're that type of gamer you assuredly have it already). For anyone looking for a solid single-player experience, however, I recommend you browse elsewhere in the aisle where they're keeping BioShock and The Orange Box. If you like a bit of both worlds, you could certainly do worse for your money, but you could also definitely do better.

Game Release: Halo 3 (US, 09/25/07)

STREET FIGHTER 5

REVIEW STREET FIGHTER 5

First off let me say that although this review is in the PS3 section, it is meant to evaluate the game in all it's incarnations. PS3 is the one I have. I'm sure everyone reading this has played more than their fair share of Street Fighter, so I'll spare you the trip down memory lane and get right into my analysis. After playing this game for a couple of weeks, watching matches between top players online, and having seen how players have adapted to the game since it first debuted in Japanese arcades, I've reached the conclusion that while the game makes an admirable attempt to create a game that both casual and hardcore fans can enjoy, it ultimately isn't very well suited to either one.

In talking about a fighting game, the emphasis has to be on how it performs as a fighting game. In this respect, the game comes off with the usual grace and high level of technical achievement you've come to expect from Capcom. And it should. They have been in the business of making fighting games since the late 80's. All of the standard conventions from Capcom are present: the six button control scheme with three punches and three kicks, joystick rotation and charge special attacks, super meters and so on. Street Fighter IV is a 2D game using 3D rendered sprites. Although not bearing the name, this is no different from their Street Fighter EX series, which was Capcom's first attempt to bring Street Fighter into 3D. Awhile back, I played a location test version. I remembered how sluggish the characters were in the EX series and hoped that Street Fighter IV with it's 3D sprites wouldn't be the same. To my dismay, it was. I suppose many people felt the same way, and Capcom wisely sped up the gameplay in the final release.

That being said, it still doesn't move with the speed and fluidity of hand drawn 2D games. The jumps are floaty and the characters seem to get stuck in attack animations. What I mean is that it's harder to do 2-in-1s, canceling the animation of one attack and going into another. This is a staple of all 2D Capcom fighting games, and in order to get moves to chain in this game, your controller inputs have to be slower and more deliberate. As a result, you will likely find yourself messing up a lot of your combos as you overcompensate the timing of your attacks. This was how the EX games played, and in those games, there was a Challenge Mode to practice combos so that you could get used to the game's awkward timing. It was nice and something that Street Fighter IV includes as well. Unfortunately you probably still won't get used to the timing. Try any combo of more than three attacks and you will likely be at it for a good 20-30 tries to pull it off, which obviously doesn't fly in a real match.

The most important thing that separates modern fighters from the earlier ones such as Street Fighter II is movement. Freedom of movement is tantamount in developing rich and diverse playing styles. Street Fighter II was very basic in that you could only walk or jump to move around. There were very few moves that propelled you forward, so your only options to approach someone were to walk up to them or jump towards them. Again, basic. And in the world of fighting games, basic is a synonym for predictable. Contrast that with Street Fighter III where you can walk, jump, high jump, dash, feint, hit overhead with ground attacks, use moves that travel safely through projectiles, and it's easy to see that early fighters were more a game of keep away than an up close affair.

In this respect, Street Fighter IV's gameplay lies somewhere in the middle of Street Fighter II and III. You can dash, use overhead attacks, and certain moves pass through projectiles. The dashes are somewhat compact, and don't lend themselves well to covering ground quickly. Every character's dash animation is different, and there are very few who have a reasonably effective one, like Makoto's or Ken's in Street Fighter III. This is unfortunate because if the dashing isn't going to help much, why include it?

Capcom has admitted that the gameplay was simplified to entice the players of old back, yet there are still elements that will allow for depth of gameplay that will please the more serious fighting game fan. Enter "Focus Attacks". Initiated by pressing and then optionally holding and releasing the medium punch and kick buttons, they were supposed to be simple enough for beginners to use, yet versatile enough to enhance gameplay at higher levels. In theory, they do just that. In practice, they don't quite meet either standard.

Focus Attacks used simply, have the ability to absorb one hit during the charging phase. This can be an alternative to blocking, like the parry system in Street Fighter III. However, you can still incur damage from this and it can't be performed in the air. If charged long enough, the attack will become unblockable and stun the opponent. The problem is that a second hit will knock you out of the Focus Attack, and charging it the 2 seconds required to make it unblockable can be easily seen and avoided. Used in a more advanced way, they can cancel certain attacks, and then themselves be canceled by dashing forwards or backwards, allowing you to extend combos. The problems I find are that the combos that can be created via this technique are very limited. The only way Focus Attacks can be used in combos is if you first knock the opponent into the air, then cancel with it and dash forward for a one time air juggle chance. You can't dash forward after a hadouken for example and continue your combo on the ground. This is a bit disappointing as a flexible and creative combo system is one of the things that helps fighting games' longevity. With all the things the Focus Attacks are supposed to bring to the table, a quick look online at any high level match will show that they are really only being used as a way to combo into supers a little easier. That's a huge letdown considering that this is about all they did to try and satisfy the hardcore gamers.

But the biggest draw in any new fighting game is the new characters. There are six: Abel, C. Viper, Rufus, El Fuerte, Gouken and Seth. Rufus and El Fuerte I could do without, but they all are unique and play differently from the other more established characters. The rest of the cast is made up of everyone from Street Fighter II and select people from Super Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha. Capcom wanted people who played in the 90's to be able to pick up this game and for it to be familiar, hence the inclusion of 75% old characters. I personally admired Capcom for their courage in the Street Fighter III series in making an almost entirely new cast of fighters. I've done 50,000 shoryukens with Ken, can I try something different now? It's pretty much par for the course these days to recycle most if not all the existing characters in new games, so I can't fault this game specifically for it's lack of growth and evolution in the personnel department.

Now that all the critical commentary is out of the way, let me say that this is still a very fun game to play. The decision to render the characters in 3D has afforded them the ability to include a lot of animation. The characters all have multiple taunts, and say quite a lot. Their mouths move as they talk which adds to the realism and charm. The move set, in particular the number of supers per character, has been cut down since Street Fighter III, but they are mostly of high quality and exciting to watch, even after numerous times.

The game comes bare bones, and there is a lot to unlock by either beating the game or challenges in Challenge Mode. Unfortunately most of the unlockables are just titles or icons for your online profile, or things that shouldn't really have to be unlocked, like costume colors. Extra taunts can be unlocked, and a handful of characters, which for me is the main draw. You may not find much value in what they have to unlock, but it at least gives you some replayability when alone.

The online play runs quite smoothly, although I've found that your opinion of it will be largely shaped on how you play. If you are a less skilled player who needs more time to think and who doesn't play an aggressive style or do anything fancy, you will usually find no problems with it. If you do however play aggressively and try to move around quicker, you will find your controller somewhat unresponsive due to lag. Still though, you can have a decent match usually even with the lowest possible signal strength, which speaks volumes of Capcom's efforts to reestablish the competitiveness of Street Fighter.

All in all what you have is a game that is fun to play, both alone and with others. The game is very artistic and high quality. It's also a step backwards in gameplay with only a half hearted attempt to include something that veteran players would take an interest in and want to master. But there has never been a single Street Fighter game to not see multiple remakes, so don't be surprised to see whatever issues this game may have ironed out in Street Fighter IV: Rebirth

Game Release: Street Fighter IV (US, 02/17/09)