Modern Combat Domination

Modern Combat: Domination is now available across the Playstation Network and currently we’re here in the office taking the game for a spin. The game is only $7.99 and compatible with both the Dualshock 3 controller and Playstation Move. Modern Combat Domination comes with 5 maps 6 game types and 2 factions to explore.

With up to 16 players, 8 on 8 battles we’re certainly having fun with the game so far. There are some gameplay elements to get used to however, such as the slightly slow weapon switch and reload mechanics, but this is nitpicking seeing as the game only 8 bucks. We were getting owned when we first starting out playing as we needed to used to the maps and feel for the game. However, you will quickly get used to everything going on as the experience is standard fare multiplayer goodness. As you rank up by racking up kills and winning matches, you’re rewarded with hard currency where you can unlock better equipment, optics and so on.

he map seemed well-made with a lot of different approach points and winding corridors to move around in, but I noticed the missile defense point spawned in the same location every round, which helped to made things predictable. The map design seemed to reinforce teamwork and planning. I died a lot being shot from behind, a function of a square map with inroads and nooks on all sides. Playing as a lonewolf without someone watching your back isn't a great approach.

Domination also supports PlayStaiton Move, which controls quite smoothly at this point. If you've played first person shooters on Wii, you'll be able to get up and running very quickly here. The cursor movement is smooth and there's a nicely scaled acceleration for turning as you move your aim closer to the edge of the screen, something that Red Steel 2 did very well. This control won't be to everyone's liking, but I much prefer the connection of direct pointer controls for first person shooters.

Modern Combat: Domination is the company's newest installment in the series, attempting to make the jump from mobile to the hyper-competitive console space with a multiplayer-only PSN game.

MAPS
Factory
Headquarters
The Hideouts
Soliks and Sandstorm

FACTION
Special Forces
Mercenaries

Battlefield 3 is Beautiful

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was an amazing first-person shooter. But with every Bad Company release and spin-off, I couldn't help but wonder what DICE was doing with its main Battlefield franchise. As it turns out, it had something to do with earthquakes.

The core games, including Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2, helped define what's possible in multiplayer first-person shooters. It's been more than five years since Battlefield 2 on PC, and now DICE is finally getting ready to deliver the next numbered entry. Battle Field 3 has a release date for this fall on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, and from what's been shown off, it looks incredible.

That's because Battlefield 3 is being built using all-new technology developed in-house at DICE. It's the next version of the Frostbite engine used in the Bad Company games, appropriately called Frostbite 2. It allows for a range of advanced graphical effects and destructible terrain. "We actually started with the engine three years ago," said executive producer Patrick Bach. "When we finished Battlefield 2 and 2142 we talked about what's the next big step that changes gaming. We're good at technology and we wanted to create something that scaled better than Frostbite 1 did. The PCs were already -- three years ago -- starting to get ahead of the consoles. How could we make good use of that?"

The result was, at the end of a demo recently shown to members of the press, a detailed scene of a US Marine unit getting tossed around on a quaking bed of asphalt in a war-torn city on the border of Iraq and Iran. Buildings crumbled into pieces, sending up plumes of smoke and dust as the ground fluttered like a flag in the wind. One even toppled over onto an attack chopper hovering in mid-air. It looked strikingly realistic.

"We knew we could do better stuff with audio, we needed a core streaming system for the whole game," said Bach. "Everything from animations to objects to textures to audio we can stream. If you look at the consoles today they still have the same amount of memory, so how do you make a denser experience with the same amount of memory? You need to be able to flush things in and out of that memory that you have. Frostbite 2 was more or less a necessity for us to be able to build Battlefield 3. If we didn't build the engine we couldn't build the game because then it would just be an iteration instead of a big step forward."

So far DICE isn't showing off any gameplay footage of the multiplayer component, which is too bad. I really wanted to see jets streak across the sky and launch precision strikes against unsuspecting targets. But even without the spectacle of controllable vehicle sequences to gape at, the story mode still looks pretty good. The characters are in no way related to those in the Bad Company games. What you get in Battlefield 3 is a fresh start. It's set in 2014, and an early mission follows a squad of Marines as they charge through cramped, dangerous streets and take cover from sniper fire on rooftops. "It's based on a 'what if' scenario," said Bach. "We see the world as quite unstable. We see it as the shot in Sarajevo where a small event can create a butterfly effect to start a world war." Even though the mission was early in the game, it sounds as though the scale of the conflict shown is going to ripple out into the rest of the world.

Though the mission features a group of Marines, DICE notes that these characters won't necessarily be in subsequent sorties because it's not a squad-based game like Bad Company. You play as Sergeant Henry Blackburn who, at the mission's outset, emerges from an armored personnel carrier with an M16 equipped with an ACOG (that's a scope). The road ahead is packed with smoke and fire, cowering citizens, military humvees and an LAV reconnaissance vehicle.

According to Bach it's not possible to simply hop into these vehicles and start driving, as many Battlefield veterans may want to do. While there will be several vehicle sections in the single-player portion, the game makes it clear when you're meant to hop into a machine and when you're supposed to proceed on foot. "When you tell a story you need to control the player in some ways, even though we have very sandbox-y elements as well. We make sure you get to try out everything…so we pace the game as a tutorial so when you go into multilayer you don't feel scared. If you play through single-player you will feel quite safe to go online because you tried everything once."

The PC version was beautiful even in its current pre-alpha state. DICE is focusing on using lighting and animations to create a more realistic look for Battlefield 3. For animation, DICE is utilizing Electronic Arts technology called ANT, developed for sports games like FIFA. So what does that actually mean? "We can now more or less blend from any animation to any animation without any glitches. Some animation systems are very rigid. The cool thing with this is that you can blend from one animation to another at any time. You can see that with FIFA --, it's super quick and nimble."

The animations were especially impressive to watch during a first-person hand-to-hand combat sequence. Black was underground in a bunker attempting to disarm an explosive device when he was accosted by a waiting enemy. To subdue the assailant you need to hit buttons at specific times to deliver viscous strikes and chops. The attacker eventually crumples to the ground, but not without getting in a few solid shots on Black, which causes the perspective to tilt and whip appropriately with the force.

A lot of work is being done at DICE on the moment-to-moment mechanics of gun fights too. When you open fire the screen shakes, your weapon effects dominate the speakers, and the bits of user interface flicker when . "The challenge with weapons is actually not to get them to look realistic or record sounds, the research is quite easy. The hard part is to transform the emotion when you fire a gun and turn that into picture and sound."

Crysis 2 Review

Review:-

Crysis 2 has to live up to a high standard. Not only did the original Crysis pack a lot of high-quality action into its good-sized campaign, but its stunningly authentic rendering of lush jungle vistas set the graphical standard by which all modern shooters are judged. Fortunately, this sequel does an admirable job of living up to the original's reputation of sheer technical prowess. It doesn't feature all the visual bells and whistles you might expect in a game from a developer known for pushing the limits of modern hardware. But, this sequel still looks amazing, and it plays that way too. The jungle is now of the urban variety--New York City to be precise. You make your way through office buildings, across crumbling bridges, and around broad city squares, where robotic aliens infest hallways and swarm across rooftops. Large environments give you room to maneuver and grant you freedom to approach battle in a number of ways, which makes Crysis 2 a great alternative to the plethora of first-person shooters that usher you down corridors on your way to the next action movie set piece.

Crysis 2 does an excellent job of portraying a city under siege without indulging in constant action-film cutaways. There is still plenty of cinematic excess here, though it's delivered organically. Yes, there are a few scripted moments in which you are more of an observer than a participant; and, yes, you might be able to hold a key to peer at the imposing alien structure towering in the distance. But rather than wrest control away from you to highlight every falling skyscraper, collapsing passageway, and hovering alien ship, Crysis 2 allows these events to simply happen. And, because they are often so momentous, your attention is drawn to them. The few occasions when the game stops to consider how the average citizen might be affected by an alien invasion lend humanity to your militaristic actions. Familiar landmarks are defaced, lay in ruin, or explode as you watch. There's an eerie contrast between the untouched trees of Central Park swaying in the wind and the rubble stretching behind them. The visual design eschews artistic flair in favor of authenticity, and it mostly succeeds at providing a frightening real-world backdrop for large-scale shoot-outs.

If you appreciated Crysis as a technical benchmark, as well as an excellent shooter, you might be surprised by Crysis 2's more modest menu options. There are a few preset graphics options (high, very high, and extreme), but the menu doesn't allow you to tweak antialiasing settings and such, as you would expect in the sequel to the highly customizable Crysis. (You can adjust these settings by entering certain console commands, but that is not an acceptable alternative to built-in menu options.) Furthermore, the game does not support DirectX 11, so you won't see the advanced lighting techniques here that you see in games like Metro 2033 and Dirt 2. But to pick these nits with much vigor would be unfair to one of the best-looking games in recent times. Crysis 2 looks stunning, runs smoothly on even modest systems, and suffers from few obvious bugs and glitches.

It's a shame that it takes an hour or two of nondescript FPS action before you get to see the spectacular devastation. In fact, if you haven't played the original Crysis, the first stretch of the sequel might make you wonder why it is so beloved. You spend the early going pitted against relatively dumb human enemies who run past you towards some distant cover spot but fail to shoot, stand around staring straight ahead, and otherwise act as if they don't know you are pumping them full of lead. Later on, you catch friendlies and aliens standing around together, looking like they might be enjoying each other's company. Aliens and humans alike crash into objects and then just run in place rather than go around them or leap over. Other times, the invading ETs get confused when trying to leap to higher vantage points and make it easy to turn them to alien goo. The AI simply isn't good, and its mediocrity stands out all the more against the otherwise convincing climate.

Fortunately, the AI is an infrequent concern once the invasion is in full swing and you're surrounded by dozens of foes roaming the maps and surrounding you. The aliens come in a few varieties. Some armored creatures might pounce on you and knock you off your feet or fire energy bolts at you. Many of them hop onto ledges and rooftops to gain higher ground. Miniboss types pummel you with rockets and are tough to bring down without a C4 charge or a few rockets. Crysis 2 offers a nice challenge, particularly in its second half; some of those aliens soak up a lot of bullets before going down. You get an array of military-grade weapons, and you can tailor them with different sights (reflex sights, for example) and other enhancements (say, a silencer). You also collect the glitter that dead aliens leave behind (called nano catalyst) and use it to upgrade your nanosuit. For example, you can improve your suit's energy regeneration, or you can unlock a fun ground-pound ability. The suit works a bit differently than it did in the original Crysis. For instance, you no longer activate power mode to jump to higher levels; you just hold down the jump key. Rather than activate speed mode, you sprint.

changes detailed

Who was there: A massive panel of ArenaNet employees, including lead content designer Colin Johanson, game designer Jon Peters, community manager Regina Buenaobra, senior vice president Randy Price, lore designer Jeff Grubb, and more.

What they said: The Guild Wars 2 panel spoke to a packed house at this year's Penny Arcade Expo East. An extensive trailer for the game preceded the discussion and highlighted several of the talking points to be covered, including the game's active combat and the focus on player choice. When the trailer finished, the room erupted into thunderous applause.

Guild Wars 2 will, in fact, be an MMORPG.

After the audience had quieted down, Johanson spoke first. He had three key points to knock out of the way. First, is Guild Wars 2 going to be a "true" massively multiplayer online role-playing game? The answer was "yes," GW2 will be one giant, persistent world. Second, will there be jumping in GW2? Again, the answer was "yes," which was met with an excited round of applause. Third, will GW2 have a monthly subscription fee? This time, the answer was "no," which received even more applause than before, plus a little cheering.

With that out of the way, Johanson turned the conversation to how GW2 will be innovating on its predecessor, including the player's personal story, dynamic events, and combat. Beginning with personal story, Johanson stated that the team at ArenaNet has attempted to get players more invested in their characters by creating numerous branching paths in the story. The choices that can be made have tremendous consequences, including altering a character's unique home city. All of a player's actions will also be logged in a player journal, which the player can review to see past achievements.

Next, he spoke about the changes to how quests will be structured in GW2. The traditional setup of collecting a quest, completing it, and then retrieving a reward has been completely reimagined. Now, the world of GW2 will be populated by numerous dynamic quests--quests that are ongoing for the player to discover. The example given was of a pack of savage centaurs terrorizing the countryside. Players will battle these beasts for control of a settlement. Anyone can jump in once the fighting starts, and the event will scale according to how many "active players" are present.

If the players lose the battle with the centaurs, then they lose the use of that settlement. This marks the beginning of a quest chain and advances the scenario to the next level. Now, the centaurs have a foothold and will attempt to reinforce it by collecting wood from the forest. The players can engage them again in the woods, and whether they win or lose the chain will advance in another direction. This constant splitting of the chain means that once the chain resets, the content that can be experienced could be completely different.

Johanson then transitioned into his third point: combat and its focus on teamwork and active participation. One of the base rules of the game, he explained, was that rewards and experience are shared among those who participate in a fight; the player should always feel excited to see another player rushing over to help. For the combat specifics, Johanson turned the microphone over to Peters who explained that in GW2, they didn't want to pigeonhole characters into specific roles, such as tank, damage per second, or healer. Instead, no matter what the class, they want players to be switching between roles in combat on the fly.

Before handing the discussion off to the audience for a question-and-answer session, the panel loaded up a skills compilation video, which highlighted the abilities of the recently announced thief class. The video included snippets from five different thieves, including some who used high-explosive projectiles and others who preferred to teleport in and out of melee (or turn completely invisible).

The Q&A session began after that. One early question started a discussion about the recorded character audio in the game. Peters revealed that there are about 400 lines of dialogue for every player in GW2. "We've recorded over 60 feature films worth of dialog for Guild Wars 2," he added.

Two other attendees asked about the specifics of the dynamic events. From the ensuing banter, it was revealed that there are more than 1,000 of these scripted events throughout the world of Guild Wars 2, and while they are ongoing, players shouldn't see the events play out the same way every time. Grubb also mentioned that the rewards for these events are tiered based on participation and that players don't have to participate in the whole event to get a reward (but it helps).

The next person asked about how the developers were going to keep Guild Wars 2 interesting for those who complete its end-game content. Johanson jumped on this one and launched into an explanation of the five-man dungeons, each having two modes: a story mode and a repeatable mode. He also mentioned the numerous minigames available and all of the different player-versus-player options. In GW2, PVP battles will run the gamut from five-on-five skirmishes to massive world-versus-world events where three game servers are pitted against each other in one massive battle royal.

Another question shifted the discussion to how the game's AI accommodates mixed-level groups in dynamic events. The panel took this opportunity to introduce GW2's side-kicking system. If a player has a high-level character who has gone back into low-level territory, that player will be side-kicked down to the appropriate level for that content. This will allow players to adventure with those of a lower level without having to create an entirely new character. In addition, high-level characters can side-kick friends up in level so that they can adventure together in the later areas of the game.

The panel then discussed the inclusion of the jump and swim abilities, as well as possibilities opened up for designing maps. One participant asked about navigational aids for players who need more direction. Johanson responded with an explanation of GW2's scouts. These scouts will highlight areas on the map where players can go and help people, and when finished, there is typically a dynamic event nearby.

The next question was about ArenaNet's plans for future content for GW2. Price spoke up and pointed out that even though the original Guild Wars is almost six years old, the team just sent out a major content release last week. "It's inevitable that you'll see new events out there [in Guild Wars 2] over time."

The panel then talked about how the game's AI will accommodate players who enter a dynamic event and either do not participate or participate very little. In brief, it knows if a player is helping or not and will scale accordingly. Then, the question of auction houses and their inclusion in GW2 came up. Peters addressed this, saying that there will be marketplaces where players can post advertisements for items they want to sell or items they want to buy.

Quote: "The human city has a perpetual bar brawl you can jump into at any time."--Johanson on the minigames in Guild Wars 2.

Takeaway: Guild Wars 2 looks as if it's really coming into its own and drawing a hard distinction between itself and the countless other MMOGs out there. A world driven completely by dynamic quests is an ambitious goal, and it's exciting to see if ArenaNet can pull it off. The packed house brought plenty of energy to the discussion and made sure to slip in a few jabs about a certain online competitor. Guild Wars 2 still doesn't have an official release date, but the team hopes to see the title released sometime this year.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Hands-On Preview

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a game that puts you in a robotic body (against your will) at a time when augmentation is still a taboo subject. Set as a prequel to the original Deus Ex, the game takes place in the year 2027, and you play as Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT guy turned security guard for a biotech company.

We recently got our first hands-on time with an Xbox 360 version of the game, and since the game is filled with multiple paths and different choices, we thought it was worthwhile to give you our own experiences during our lengthy play session. We will warn you though, since our demo covers content in the first few hours of play, it comes with a healthy spoiler alert for those wanting to keep the opening part of the game a surprise. For backstory and more information on the franchise, check out our previous coverage of Human Revolution.

Our demo began in the office of biotech scientist Dr Reed, and it's clear from the outset that we have a history with her. Her demeanour conveys a certain level of urgency, and as she prepares to address the government on research she has been conducting, she suggests that we take a walk together. She explains that the room, and indeed Deus Ex's gameworld, is filled with e-mails, files, and newspaper articles to read, as well as TV bulletins that help explain much of what's going on. Almost counterproductively the game is also set against a clock of sorts, and by spending too much time trying to catch up on the news, you may inadvertently reduce your options or alter the way characters interact with you (there's no real way of knowing how your actions will affect outcomes, since there's no timer or bar to watch). In the same way, choosing one dialogue path over another may yield more information or shut down a conversation.

The future's so bright I gotta wear shades when I'm capping fools.

As you leave with the good doctor, both your conversations with her and the chatter from characters scattered around the building begin to indicate that the organisation you work for has its fingers in government military contracting pies. Needless to say, after this brief introduction to some of the key characters, things go pear-shaped when an emergency breaks out in the labs and Dr Reed drops off the grid. IT-turned-security-guy Pritchard attempts desperately to locate her, only to find that there is some form of abnormal signal causing interference. This early part of the game acts as a story primer and action introduction as you come to grips with gunplay and the game's slightly unorthodox cover mechanic--holding the left trigger to stick to cover and peeking out using the left analog stick. In what can only be described as a scene inspired by the Terminator film series, the screams of company workers are silenced as a huge robotic humanoid walks through flaming doorways; a piece of ballistics glass the only thing shielding him from the gunfire of your automatic weapon.

While developers on hand were keen to point out that you can play Deus Ex: HR as a modern Call of Duty-style shooter to some degree, it's not always the best approach (as anyone who has played a Deus Ex game knows). Taking the opportunity to try it out that way we encountered the need for careful surveillance, tracking the paths of enemy combatants and keeping an eye on which direction they were facing before sneaking in or breaching a room. Your approach to combat is as flexible as you want it to be. You can perch high, picking off attackers from raised walkways, take things down to their level to get personal, or blow out explosive canisters and gas lines to perform impromptu area-of-effect attacks MacGyver would be proud of.

Hot on the heels of the assailants, we barged into a hallway and came face-to-face with them. They weren't a friendly bunch, and the glint of neon lighting on cold steel was the last thing we saw as they pulled the trigger, loading up the game's intro credits. Six months later you're back at Sarif, sporting a spiffy new pair of sunglasses built into your head. This early in the augmentation process your parts clearly aren't all working as intended yet, and before we ship out on a critical mission we need to visit Pritchard to realign our retinal units. Again, there's the option to wander around, searching offices and climbing through the building's air-duct system in search of nooks and crannies to explore. Time is always a consideration though, and we're told to report to the helipad where the big cheese of the company is waiting to brief us.

Human Revolution continues the series trend of offering players the option to approach play in a variety of ways. The first decision we were presented with was the choice of either lethal or nonlethal engagement. The decision will have direct bearing on your loadout and will no doubt match your preferred play style and augmentation upgrades. Going nonlethal equips you with a stun gun, while selecting lethal grants the additional choice of either an up-close-and-personal revolver or a longer-range rifle. Since we knew we were infiltrating a factory, most likely with cramped corridors and hand-to-hand combat scenarios, we went for the pistol. Conscientious objectors in the crowd will be pleased to hear that (with the exception of a small handful of scripted boss encounters) the game can be played completely in stealth and doesn't require that you take any lives.

The truth is…I am Iron Man.

Our briefing included information that hostages were being held captive inside the plant; we were able to go on the secondary mission to locate and rescue them, or stay on the main storyline path and leave the hostages to their fate.

Once on the ground we were confronted by some of Jensen's former SWAT buddies who were clearly agitated at being asked to guard the exit rather than being allowed to bust in with guns blazing. Depending on whether or not stealth is your forte, each environment includes multiple points of entry and places to hide and observe. We took the low path, climbing down a ladder into a back alley, waiting for guards to patrol past alone before using our augmentation takedown moves. Each kill uses a bubble of energy and is performed by holding the B button. This generates a killing blow to nearby enemies, stabbing targets with blades that come flying out of your elbows. Unfortunately, while we assumed striking from behind with a blade would be a silent method of dispatching victims, on a few occasions enemies out of sight would be alerted by the sound of the thudding body, rushing to the scene to attack us. We're hoping this was just a symptom of the work-in-progress version of the game, and hopefully it will be fixed before the game ships.

Picking off foes one at a time and sneaking our way into a warehouse, we were presented with multiple hostiles in a small space. Rather than fight there, we shimmied our way up a ladder into some venting and quietly plopped down on some shelving. Unsurprisingly, firing our revolver had about as much subtlety as punching someone in the junk, and the AI scrambled to locate our position. Oddly, the hostiles seemed unable to look up, which left them sitting ducks, and we were able to them pick off at our leisure.

The game features Praxis Points, in-game currency that is used to upgrade and alter your augmentations at will. We were given six points for the purpose of testing out the skill trees, but normally you would have fewer than that. Unlocking a new ability, such as improved strength to lift heavy objects, requires two points, but each subsequent upgrade requires only one. Not all abilities are available on the first play-through, and the method of expenditure means that you will need to focus on improving key areas of skill rather than using a scattergun approach that sees you throwing points all over the place. Augmenting the limbs will reduce movement impairment when you take damage, while vision upgrades act a bit like Batman's Detective mode in Batman: Arkham Asylum, highlighting enemies on your screen and giving you the chance to plan your approach in advance.

What's with all the augmentation hate? You'll never need to look for a can opener again!

Not all doors will be unlocked and waiting for your exploration, necessitating some crafty engineering. Hacking plays an integral role, and you'll be required to take part in a minigame where you select various nodes and attempt to gain entry to the data you need before you're traced by the system. The early minigames we saw were quite basic, though we can see the challenge escalating greatly further down the line, perhaps even requiring hacking augmentations that give you more time or make hacking easier to give you access to some restricted areas.

Our demo ended when we made it to one of the game's boss fights. Forget everything you thought you knew about boss fights with their glowing weak points and repeated patterns. Our final encounter involved one of the pro-human Purist revolutionaries holding a woman hostage. Our job was to end the situation, again with whatever outcome we felt appropriate. He kept his gun firmly pressed against her head, and we could have shot him, but in doing so we ran the risk of injury to the prisoner. Instead we went for the diplomatic route, navigating the treacherous waters of negotiation by first appealing to his base human emotions, throwing in a dash of flattery, and then ramming home the hard facts. Each dialogue option is spelt out clearly before you make your choice, so while there's very little room for crossed wires about choosing your approach, it did take some of the pressure and mystery away from the decision. After a brief verbal scuffle he released his victim, dashing out a nearby door. Our demo guide explained the various possible outcomes available and that as a result of saving her, the woman would appear further along the story to repay the favour, supplying valuable intelligence information.

Some minor quibbles and bugs aside, we enjoyed our first hands-on with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The slightly unusual controls take a little rewiring of the old grey matter, but it becomes more natural as you continue to play. Fans of nonlinear story will have a field day replaying scenarios to find the points where the various subplots intertwine, and this certainly isn't a game that fans will be content to leave at a single play-through. Get ready for blade arms when Deus Ex: Human Revolution hits the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on August 25 this year.

Dragon Age II Review

The Good

• Player choice manifests itself in interesting ways


• Spectacular writing and voice acting bring each character to life


• Fascinating world characterized by moral ambiguity


• Combat is fun, fast-paced, and colorful


• Great symphonic soundtrack.

The Bad

• Main story lacks focus and drive


• Multiple elements have been inexplicably simplified over the original


• Combat is much less tactical.

Dragon Age II is an enjoyable and complex role-playing game, featuring expansive questing in a fantasy world tinged with political intrigue. During this lengthy adventure, you face gigantic dragons, villainous mages, and greedy slavers, all while exercising the power of choice to steer various story elements as you see fit. It's often terrific, even if it doesn't meet the standard set by Dragon Age: Origins. Several areas, such as inventory management and skill progression, have been stripped down in one way or another--a case of developer BioWare inexplicably fixing that which wasn't broken. The story, too, has seen a downward turn, failing to connect its various (albeit excellent) quests to a clear central goal. It's easy to see these and other blemishes because the game that spawned this sequel was so exceptional, and ultimately the superior game. And yet on its own terms, Dragon Age II is still a great experience, depicting a kingdom threatened not by invading monsters, but by the demons of fear and distrust.

That Dragon Age II has made important changes over the original is obvious from the beginning. You might feel a slight twinge of disappointment when first creating your character. You no longer select a race; the game's story insists you play as a human and lets you choose only a gender and one of three classes (mage, rogue, warrior). You are also assigned a surname--Hawke--though you can select a first name. Hawke is fully voiced; in this way, Dragon Age II resembles developer BioWare's own Mass Effect--one of many changes to the series clearly inspired by that spacefaring RPG. If you enjoyed how the original Dragon Age looked to Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights for inspiration, playing a voiced protagonist may initially disappoint you. However, even RPG purists will likely embrace the change once the game is in full swing. Gone are your own character's blank looks during cutscenes, replaced by communicative facial animations and expressive voice acting that properly correspond with the dialogue options you choose.

The story has you escaping Lothering with your family during the early events of Dragon Age: Origins and arriving in the city of Kirkwall. From here, your vague primary goal is to make a name for yourself in the region over the ensuing years, rising from freeloading refugee to local champion. There's an odd lack of direction here. There is no overall sense of purpose, no main villain, and no opportunity to save the world from marauding darkspawn. While you do get a few chances to square off against such beasts, the stakes are never clear because there's no central plot to pull you through. As a result, the story is scattered--a series of missions and events without a center. The most heartfelt moments come from peripheral tangents and side quests focused on individual party members, where you explore loss, love, and betrayal. Nevertheless, there's a discouraging lack of epic-ness and focus, and no final prize to set your eyes on.

 

This is one game that lives up to its title. 

The narrative's most extraordinary features aren't in the story proper, then, but in the element of choice. Dragon Age II is split into three chapters, and in each, you face difficult decisions that don't necessarily fit into standard definitions of good and bad. This is in part because of the world's politically charged climate. A family connection might make it initially easy to empathize with the plight of apostate mages, who long to free their brothers and sisters from the shackles of the Circle. After all, you meet the blank-faced, passionless former mages who have been made tranquil--that is, cut off from their connection to the dream world known as the Fade. And yet you also come face-to-face with the horrors of blood magic and the powerful influence the Fade's demons can wield on magic-wielders angry with the oppressive establishment. The stoic, horned Quanari race suffers from similar persecution, and they may earn your sympathy, considering that you and your family are also outsiders. And yet, single-minded devotion to their creed, known as the Qun, leads to shocking cruelties that you witness firsthand. There are some not-so-coincidental correlations to real-world religious and political conflict, which gives immediacy to these circumstances. However, the particulars--mages on leashes treated as pets, aristocratic houses involved in mind games and one-upmanship--are typical fantasy tropes. Expect to encounter themes and elements famously explored in other fantasy works, such as The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and A Song of Ice and Fire, among many others.

In any case, you must choose how to respond to the game's events, using a dialogue wheel that clearly labels the attitude governing your response. (The red icon is the aggressive option, for example, while the green icon is the kind one.) Sometimes, your choices don't have gameplay consequences at all and amount to smoke and mirrors, giving the illusion of choice but nothing more. This is perfectly reasonable for the most part, given that such dialogue choices allow you to role-play, even when they carry no further weight. There are events that play out much the same way regardless of how you respond, however, which makes some of these illusions disappointingly transparent. Yet there are many more weighty decisions in this game than in its predecessor, and they affect your progress in some really fantastic ways--some of them subtle, some of them not. Should you encourage a confused adolescent with magical abilities to seek refuge with the Dalish elves, that character may write to you later, offering a quest that furthers his tale. Having a particular party member with you might let you steer the conversation in different directions than you otherwise might have. Plot threads are tied up in a number of ways, depending on what character you side with, if any, and potential future paths are then opened or closed. Even your initial choice of class influences certain aspects of your party composition.

 

The Qunari are a proud folk. Proud, and violent. 

The characters that join you on your journey aren't as memorable as those of the original Dragon Age. Alistair and Morrigan, among others, had vivid personalities that made it easy to immediately identify with them. The sequel's ensemble cast doesn't make the same strong first impression, which works both for and against the game. On the bright side, Dragon Age II's party members rarely seem like single-minded caricatures. An escaped elven slave called Fenric despises his former master, who used the magical element called Lyrium to brand him with bodily markings with supernatural properties. Yet Fenric's softer side occasionally emerges, such as in a side quest in which a demon attempts to exploit his weaknesses. Each character--a self-centered lady pirate, a dwarf that enjoys weaving tall tales, and more--is similarly nuanced, and their story arcs develop over the course of the game, allowing you further chances to bond. The downside is that these characters are sometimes so subtle that they lack the lasting impact of their Dragon Age: Origins counterparts. The dwarf Varric is amusing, but Oghren made for a stronger dwarven presence in DA:O. Merrill's brogue and occasional social awkwardness make for some charming interactions, but she isn't as delightful as the original's Leliana. A few blasts from the past that you encounter not only establish emotional and thematic ties to the first game, but confirm how memorable its characters were in comparison.

Back to the Future: The Game - Episode II: Get Tannen! Review

The Good

• Story continues to evolve in fun directions


• Great characters with stellar voice work


• Good pacing.

The Bad

• Puzzles lack challenge.

If there's anything to be learned from sci-fi-drenched tales of time travel, it's that fiddling around with the past and altering key historic events almost always has unintended--and potentially catastrophic--consequences. It's a hallmark of the classic Back to the Future films, and a plot mechanic that's getting a lot of clever play in Telltale's new episodic adventure gaming spin-off of the series. The debut episode set the right tone with a strong story and engaging characters, making up for its gentle puzzles and limited scope. Things get rolling more steadily in Episode II: Get Tannen with its snappier pace, entertaining character developments, and some minor but meaningful tweaks to the formula.

New locations offer nice snippets of action. 

Following a time-traveling romp to Hill Valley's Prohibition era to track down his missing pal Emmet "Doc" Brown in Episode I: It's About Time, Marty McFly finds that his celebration of a job well done at the cliff-hanger conclusion is short-lived. His heroic meddling in the past has the unfortunate side effect of setting events into motion that will erase his existence if he can't find a way to stop them. As the spunky protagonist is starting to fade, he hightails it even further back in time to try to set things right. But what seems like a quick fix to a big problem soon makes the situation even worse, and Marty gets stuck trying to infiltrate and take down a drove of gunslinging mobsters to save himself, his dad, and his future. Like the first episodic installment, Get Tannen features excellent character interactions and a gripping plot that feels faithful to the spirit of the films. It's easy to get sucked into the events that unfold from one time period to the next, and the blend of carryover characters from the last jaunt is beefed up by some colorful newcomers. A love-scorned lounge singer, mullet- and mustache-adorned hooligans, and an impressionable cop with a bit of a drinking problem are just a few new faces that spruce up the tale. Humorous moments abound throughout this episode too, making the few short hours it takes to complete this installment absorbing from start to finish.

Get Tannen plays out across some of the same settings explored in the previous episode, though you also visit a couple of new spots that offer some welcome changes of scenery, like a seedy nightclub that transforms into an "ice-cream parlor" at a moment's notice. Changes in perspective and different camera angles minimize the feeling of deja vu when you're returning to familiar areas like Hill Valley's park and downtown. Beyond making old scenes feel fresh, the way the camera works this time around is a definite improvement. There are still moments when sudden changes in the camera angle during transitions from one area to the next make adjusting your direction in mid-walk a little awkward, but many sections switch things up with dynamic views that shift as you go. Some puzzles feature a static first-person perspective that lets you pan around a scene a full 360 degrees to interact with your surroundings. There are even a few spots where the camera offers a more traditional third-person perspective and moves closely behind Marty as he meanders. This constant shifting blends well with the new areas to explore and keeps the episode from dragging. You never have to stay in one spot for too long, and the time it takes to hike between areas is minimized.

 

Tackling these brutes makes for some funny puzzle work. 

Back to The Future's puzzles are still a cakewalk compared to those in other similar episodic adventure games like Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island, and Wallace & Gromit. That said, the puzzles are exceedingly clever and fun to play around with, even if they're a little on the obvious side. Get Tannen features a handful of the standard "use item X on hotspot Y" adventure game puzzles to bridge the gap between dialogue-based challenges and more elaborate conundrums. Some of the episode's more entertaining puzzles include creative challenges that have you fiddling with sheet music to influence important characters, jockeying for position among a gang of ill-dressed ruffians seeking to cave your face in, and using your surroundings to pick off mobsters without being caught. Overcoming these obstacles isn't very hard--the game's multitiered hint system is rarely needed--but they fit so well into the context of the situations you find yourself thrust in that the lack of a real challenge is forgivable.

On the whole, Episode II: Get Tannen shows a marked improvement over Episode I. The pacing flows better, the latest installment has a broader variety of locations and character interactions, and the creative puzzles evolve in interesting and enjoyable ways. While heavy-duty adventure gaming veterans may turn their nose up at the meager difficulty, there is something to be said for not having to pore over pages of a detailed walk-through every few minutes. Strong writing and great personality continue to carry the series upward and onward.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review

As one of the most critically acclaimed shooters of all time, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a prime example of a tough act to follow. Yet, amidst a raging storm of anticipation and expectation, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has done it. The new campaign is chock-full of intense action and dramatic moments, and though it is more muddled than its predecessor (in more ways than one), it's still an absolute blast. The new Special Ops mode allows you to experience some campaign-inspired thrills with a friend and it's an engaging challenge to coordinate your maneuvers and tackle the varied objectives. Last but not least, the competitive multiplayer that took the online shooter community by storm two years ago is back and better than ever. Though the addictive action remains the same at its core, there are a host of new elements that make it more accessible, more strategic, and more rewarding. This all adds up to a thoroughly excellent package that is sure to thrill shooter fans and deprive them of sleep for months to come.

The campaign picks up where its predecessor left off, and there's a new violent ultranationalist terrorist on the scene. Once again, you play as a few different soldiers who are part of the effort to make the world a safer place. Your missions take you around the world to a number of exotic locations and engage you in a variety of different conflicts, ranging from stealthy and silenced to crowded and cacophonous. The action is smooth and exhilarating, thanks to sharp shooting and movement mechanics that allow you to be as quick and deadly as your skills permit. Environments are well-designed and detailed, though many textures don't look particularly good upon close inspection. Modern Warfare 2 isn't a beautiful game, but it looks great in action. The diverse levels not only provide varied sights, but they are cleverly designed to allow the action to flow at an exciting pace. Opportunities for cover and flanking present themselves naturally, allowing you to move through the battlefield in a variety of fluid ways. The aggressive enemy AI will keep you on your toes, and success is hard-earned and satisfying.

Modern Warfare 2's campaign, like that of its predecessor, is quite short, and you'll likely finish it in about five hours. Though it is disappointing that there isn't more of it, what you do get is a relentless barrage of tight combat and thrilling set pieces. In one early level, you man the turret of a Humvee patrolling the claustrophobic streets of a Middle Eastern city. Enemies seem to be behind every corner, but you are ordered not to fire until fired upon. The tension builds, and once you are engaged by the enemy, all hell breaks loose. After a hectic (and unsuccessful) flight from danger, you end up fighting door-to-door in the streets and ruined buildings. This frantic combat ratchets up when you head to the slums of Rio de Janeiro, and reaches a whole new level when you find yourself engaged in similarly intense firefights on the grassy lawns and paved driveways of suburban America. The fight on the homefront has some very cool moments, but it doesn't mean you're done adventuring abroad. A dramatic prison rescue, a marine infiltration, and a snowmobile chase are just some of the other exhilarating moments that make this campaign so enjoyable.

Though completing the campaign is an intensely satisfying and exciting endeavor, you may not feel very triumphant when all is said and done. Modern Warfare 2 features some dark plot turns, and your missions sometimes have drastic unintended consequences. In one mission in particular, you infiltrate a terrorist cell and are called upon to do the kind of things that terrorists do. What follows is a neutered attempt at portraying the grim reality of terrorism, and concessions are put in place here and elsewhere to keep the plot from getting too dark. Despite these limits, the scene in question is undeniably disturbing and it undermines your sense of having the moral high ground. The game gives you the option to skip this particular level entirely, but the shocking consequences of this grim mission ripple throughout the game, making it difficult to feel like a hero. Subsequent developments further muddle your overall objective, and it doesn't help that many of the subtleties and connecting threads are mumbled during voice-overs between missions. The plot ends up being a bit disorienting, and you may get the feeling that, rather than being the tip of the spear, you are just along for the ride.

 

Riot shields can deflect bullets. Grenades are a different story. 

If you're looking for some campaign-style action unburdened by any sort of plot, then Special Ops is the place to go. The timed missions are campaign excerpts from Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that you can play solo or with a friend, either split-screen or online. The missions cover a variety of objectives, which include surviving waves of enemies, moving from point A to point B stealthily (or not), eliminating a certain number of enemies, and racing snowmobiles. You earn a rating based on your completion time or difficulty level and unlock new missions as you progress. Though the missions will adjust to allow you to play solo, Special Ops missions are made to be played cooperatively. Two guns are better than one when clearing out a crowded slum full of enemy combatants, and coordinating a simultaneous sniper attack is much more fun when you are counting down with a buddy. There are also a few missions in which one player uses an airborne vehicle-mounted gun to clear the path for the other player on the ground, and these are frantic and explosively awesome. There is no matchmaking, however, so if you don't have any friends online and need a teammate, you'll have to go fishing in the multiplayer lobbies. As is the nature of cooperative play, missions can fall flat if teammates don't communicate or go off on their own. It can be tough to find a communicative teammate who is willing to let one player take point, but it is certainly worth the effort. When you have a strong team assembled, cooperative play is uniquely fun, and Special Ops provides a great variety of engaging missions.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit Review

Like all the best video game locations, Seacrest County is a completely ridiculous place. The roads are universally pristine and peppered with awesome shortcuts. The national parks are gloriously free of gigantic RVs. And when people decide to break traffic laws, they do it at 200mph in exotic supercars. If that sounds like a slice of heaven pie to you, then you're going to want to check out Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, a reboot of Electronic Arts' cops-and-speeders driving series from veteran developer Criterion Games.

You might recognize the Criterion name from such over-the-top virtual driving experiences as Burnout: Paradise, the 2008 open-world racer that placed a premium on high speed and crazy crashes. Criterion has brought its amped-up aesthetic to the Need For Speed series, and the result is a slick and surprisingly focused driving experience that's positively bathed in adrenaline.

The concept of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit could have been dreamed up at a middle-school boy's sleepover party. What if there was a place where both cops and the illegal street racers drove Lamborghinis, Mercedes, Bentleys, Porches and other drool-worthy marques around a gigantic network of roads at supremely high rates of speed? Oh, and wouldn't it be sweet if they could crash into each other and drop spike strips and call in helicopters and run each other off the road? And when you crash into someone, it should drop into ultra-slow motion and give you a ton of points!

What I love about Hot Pursuit is that it completely embraces that spirit of adolescent madness and just runs with it. There is no wedged-in storyline here. You can play as a cop or a racer, and you increase your rank or wanted level as you run people off the road, drift around corners, drive into oncoming traffic (as a racer), and generally behave like a motoring maniac. Along the way, you'll earn Bounty to unlock new cars, expand your arsenal of weapons/gadgets and open new sections of the Seacrest County map. The more you drive, crash, smash and win, the more cool stuff you get. It's simple, and it works.

This is no racing sim, but the cars do have their own distinct personalities. The Bentley Supersports, for example, is basically a tank with leather seats. But it handles surprisingly well, making it a great choice for Pursuit events where the goal as a cop is to smash racers into submission. If you're entering an Interceptor event where it's just you against a single wily racer who's liable to pull constant U-turns and shortcut maneuvers, you're better off in something light and agile, like the brilliant Pagani Zonda Cinque.

Hot Pursuit isn't a car collecting game. Although you unlock vehicles as you progress, there's no real garage to speak of. The focus is on driving these cars, not upgrading, tweaking or painting them. But that's OK because the list of vehicles in Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit reads like a multi-billionaire's Christmas list. The Bugatti Veyron, McLaren F1, Lamborghini LP 670-4 SuperVeloce, Mercedes SLS AMG, Nissan GT-R SpecV and Porsche Panamera are all here. And that's just a sampling.

Yeah, it really looks like this.

Criterion has created a racing landscape that feels alive. Traffic (all licensed vehicles) comes and goes, aircraft fly by as you're driving, weather effects are realistic and dramatic, and the buildings along the roads just seem, well, real. Hop into Freedrive mode, and you can hop into any car you've unlocked and just tool around the entirety of Seacrest County. As you motor along, weather will come and go, the sun will rise and set, and the world will just sort of roll along.

Freedrive doesn't affect your career, so all the damage you do to your car will just slide right off (if you choose). It's a great mode for taking perfectly-staged screenshots of your car in action. Unfortunately, there's no way to access the Seacrest County overmap while in Freedrive mode, so you'll have to rely on your smallish mini-map to explore the landscape. It's a bit of a frustration in an otherwise nice addition. Another frustration -- the PC version of Hot Pursuit has no mouse support. Not a huge deal, but if you were planning on playing with a mouse and keyboard, well, you're going to have to stick with the keyboard. A game controller is really the way to go, though, and the PC version of Hot Pursuit worked swimmingly with an Xbox 360 gamepad.

But most of your time will probably be spent in the Career mode. Unlike Criterion's last effort, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit isn't an open-world game. You won't be driving around randomly in your race car or cop car waiting for something to happen or triggering it from your vehicle. Hot Pursuit's single-player mode is far more focused than Burnout: Paradise. In order to start off an event, you'll choose a marker on a map of Seacrest County and bring up a list of available events. Choose one that strikes your fancy, and you'll be taken into that event after a brief (and skippable) cutscene. And there's no decision to be made up front about which side you'd rather be on – you can alternate between cop and racer events at will.

Dead Space 2 Review

Dead Space 2 is an amazing game. I'm going to write about its scary moments, cool kills, and how much I dig the main character's internal struggle, but Dead Space 2 is about more than this. When I beat it for the first time, I sat on the couch with my heart racing and dissected the journey I had just taken. Then, I started my second playthrough, and when that was done, I jumped into a new game for the third time. Dead Space 2 is just that good.

It's been three years since the events of the first game, but protagonist Isaac Clarke still can't catch a break. At the beginning of Dead Space 2, he wakes on a space station known as the Sprawl and finds the place is overwhelmed by an outbreak of reanimated corpses called Necromorphs. From the very first moment of the game, Isaac's fighting for his life.

This is where you come in. As Isaac, you'll pick up your plasma cutter, don an engineering suit and take the fight to the beasts out to kill you. The overarching goal is to find and destroy the religious idol (known as the Marker) causing all of this, but the story that makes Dead Space 2 great is the internal war Isaac's fighting. Unlike Uncharted's Nathan Drake who can kill a few hundred pirates and never seem worn down by it, Isaac is totally ruined by the events of the original Dead Space. He saw things no man should have to during his time on the spaceship USG Ishimura, but it's the fact that Isaac's girlfriend died on the vessel after he encouraged her to work there that really haunts him.

Isaac's losing his mind in Dead Space 2. The guilt is tearing his very sanity apart. That's heavy stuff and it makes for a really engaging story. Isaac doesn't let anyone else in on the fact that he's coming unglued, so as a player I get to see who he really is and the facade he presents to the other characters. Isaac's internal conversations and hallucinations are among my favorite parts of this game.

But I have lots of favorite parts to Dead Space 2. Right behind Isaac's struggle on my list of cool stuff is the combat. It's more satisfying than it was in the original. Isaac's fast and light on his feet. You can stomp crates in a jiff and melee attack bodies for loot, grabbing things with your telekinesis is responsive, and mixing all of this together with the different weapons in the game is a blast. Slowing down a Necromorph, blowing off its arm, and using the severed limb to impale the foe on a wall is a thing of beauty that doesn't get old.

The cast is fleshed out, but Isaac steals the show.

Dead Space 2 is pretty much the best haunted house attraction ever. Visceral stripped out the stuff that slowed down the original game (backtracking, getting disoriented, etc.) and ended up with a fast-paced game that's suspenseful and scary at the same time. You're funneled down these halls and corridors on your way from Point A to Point B, and ghouls pop out for you to blast. I know that "linear" is a bad word in the video game industry, but the package is so well done here that I can't knock Dead Space 2 for taking me on a very specific ride that's marked by awesome moments, environments that range from a cheery schoolhouse to pitch black rooms, and sound that's so well done I'd find myself trying to figure out if it was a monster making its move or my dog rummaging in the living room. Toss in some new disturbing enemies and surprises I won't ruin for you and you have a game that can feel like "the same old thing" at times but becomes much more than that as a whole.

I've already said that I've played the game over and over, so it's important to point out that no ride needs to be the same. Dead Space packs returning weapons such as the saw blade-spitting Ripper as well as brand new items like the Detonator and its trip mines. Each of these weapons -- along with your suit, telekinesis and stasis module -- can be upgraded for maximum ass-kicking, and then the progress can be saved and carried over to your next playthrough. These options and rewards are what kept me wanting to come back. There are tons of new suits (with new bonuses) to unlock and I always wanted to see what my next pimped-out weapon could do.