Rhythm games may not be all the rage anymore, but the unique ones really stick out. You can’t pick your own songs; there are no fancy instruments; it’s just you and the controller/keyboard jumping to make a good techno beat. The idea of the game is to get through each of the three worlds through 12 levels each while jumping, kicking, and sliding your way through each level. If you get hit just once, you reset back to the very beginning. While on the early levels, this is fine; the later ones take up to 4 minutes or more to complete, so getting reset is so frustrating.
Obstacles range from blocks you have to jump over to low-hanging objects to slide under, stairs that require quick taps, and even some stops to fool you, like a bouncing cube that you slide under and jump over. There are spring pads and other obstacles to block your path, but precise timing will be required to get all the gold blocks to get to the bonus stages, which are 8-bit variations of the 16-bit/3D levels. It’s very unique, charming, extremely addictive, and fun. I am currently stuck on 1-11 and have been for weeks, but I keep going at it because I just want to play every level.
The music is pretty good and full of life, despite it being the same track through each level. During parts of the level, you will pick up a giant plus sign that will add tracks to the beat and also add to the visuals. BIT.Trip is really a game for casual players and hardcore platformers who miss the days of the 16/8 bit era. The game has a brilliant level design that adds a lot of challenges while still being manageable. I haven’t really played a 2D platformer this addictive in years.
The visuals are stunning, with wonderful 16-bit to 3D translation, and the game has a wide color palette that sticks to the 16-bit and 8-bit eras. Everything is made of blocks, but it has built-in 3D and can really be a mind-trip sometimes, especially when you first start playing. Don’t let the hard levels keep you from playing, because being able to play the later levels is rewarding and challenging. I highly recommend this game to any 2D platformer or even for someone just looking for a fun arcade game.
Hydrophobia was a game that was announced a few years ago but quickly forgotten about. It seemed to have gone into the way of vaporware, but suddenly it came back as an XBLA game. The game boasted excellent water and physics to support it, as well as a mantra of “the water is your enemy” as a selling point. Upon release, the game seemed highly overrated, with dated visuals, poor combat, and lackluster level design. While most of this is true, there is still something to be had in hydrophobia.
The PC port boasts better graphics and refined gameplay mechanics, but there are still some issues. The water physics are really incredible, and I haven’t seen anything quite like it with water bursting in through a door and making Kate act as if you were actually in an ocean or being bombarded by waves. While it feels a bit stiff to maneuver through this, it makes you feel like you are trying desperately to escape this sinking city. While the physics are good, the story is a bit lacking, with little to go by due to the short length. You are trying to stop some crazy Russian woman named Mila from using a corporation’s nanobots as a biological weapon, and that’s about as far as it goes—literally. Why is the game called Hydrophobia? Does Kate have it? It seems that way because when you get close to drowning, you can hear her thoughts of maybe in her childhood she almost drowned? The game never explains this.
While you trudge on through the watery depths, you can clamber your way up to areas for platforming segments that are far and few between. The beginning of the game mainly consists of this, which slowly becomes very combat-heavy. Combat isn’t very fun in the game due to a poor cover mechanic (there really isn’t one except ducking), and the shooting feels a bit stiff. You have one pistol that you can swap ammo with, such as semi-auto rounds, explosive gel, and electrocution rounds, and your main ammo type is a charged kinetic shot that can knock enemies dead. Later on in the game, they throw so many enemies at you that it detracts from the watery atmosphere.
Another issue is level design because everything is very claustrophobic and is built of just tons of hallways. It’s another problem when your MAVI unit tells you to go in one direction, and sometimes it will be a pain to find out how to get there because of the lack of natural clues. Sometimes you have to go into a hacking minigame; sometimes you have to find a decipher code on a wall that you can only see with the MAVI; and finding these will drive you nuts sometimes.
The visuals are good for the level that they are at, but even with a high-end system, you will experience frame rate drops and stuttering. They have gotten better since their initial release, but it still exists. The visuals overall have some low-resolution textures, the characters have terrible lip-syncing, and the art style is pretty stale. What should you play the game for? It’s a decent 5–6 hour adventure with great water physics that hasn’t really been done before. That’s pretty much it, and for the low price point, it’s well worth it.
Dragon Age: Origins was Bioware’s gift to gamers missing the old action RPGs of yonder, such as Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale. Dragon Age II has come along and is really a love it or hate it type of thing. It’s almost nothing like Origins, but there’s a lot of good in this as well. The game does have more flaws than the original, but I will get to those later.
DA2 tells the story of Hawke, who is the Champion of Kirkwall, in events that take place right after the last game. DA2 really concentrates on a more personal level with the companions and Hawke instead of an overall save-the-world-type story. The Darkspawn play a very small role in this story, and you only encounter them a few times. Don’t mistake DA2 for a poor linear story because the moral outcomes become the usual Bioware head-scratchers, and as the game goes on, your choices make bigger and bigger impacts. The story is broken up into three acts, which respectively have you rising to power, using that power, and finally completely unleashing your abilities as Champion of Kirkwall to either save the mages or help the Templars destroy them. The character in DA2 is absolutely amazing in both looks and personality, plus some cameos and appearances from the last game. You really get attached to each one and want to use them all during battle.
The story is probably the best thing going for DA2, but it does have a bit of a slow start. If you are used to Origin’s huge, overarching story, you might actually get bored for a while with this one. Little things help influence the story, like romances (yes, gay romances work here), but there are so many choices during the dialog that the story could turn in so many different directions, so you always feel like you have complete control. The dialog is more like Mass Effect with a wheel that has several options. You can choose from the usual good/bad dialog, but a new sarcastic one has been added in the middle, and I always chose these because they were just clever. Just like any Bioware game, relationships with characters can also impact dialog and give you advantages or disadvantages depending on that.
So, if you go into DA2 expecting an excellent story, you won’t be upset there. What you will probably hate are the more action-oriented combat and the more linear and repetitive environments. The combat has fast, fluid animations instead of the clumsy combat from Origins. Characters strike hard and fast, and there is a lot of gore, which I didn’t mind. Of course, you can have up to ten quick slots equipped for abilities, and the new tree is very intuitive. There are different ability classes, and then each ability can also be upgraded within that. Loot collecting and leveling up work just like in Origins, including junk, but you can’t equip armor on companions. Yeah, it’s one of those “What the hell?” type issues with the game. Sure, you can add runes to their armor and weapons, but just don’t expect to change their armor.
There are a lot of changes from Origins that really shouldn’t have been touched, including the linear and extremely repetitive environments. You move around a map and just follow the arrow on your map to each goal. Since you are just in Kirkwall, you are moving around the same hallway dungeons and the same main map cities. After Act 1, you have probably seen 75% of the game. I really missed the open areas from Origins and the feeling of being in an open world. Sure, the graphics got a huge upgrade, and it all looks nice, but there isn’t much variety. What disappointed me more than anything else in the game were the repetitive areas that kept you strictly in Kirkwall. There are some outdoor environments, but don’t expect a lot of them. There is also constant loading between areas, and this drove me nuts early on.
Of course, there’s a lot of good looting and resource collection, and you can use poisons and grenades like before, but what I hate still is the potion cooldown times that are set at 30 seconds. This can make hard boss fights very frustrating because later on you’ll have a ton of money and have over 100 potions, but you can only use one every 30 seconds, and this goes for stamina droughts as well. The only thing I like about the new combat system is its faster pace and speed. There are so many abilities that you won’t even unlock them all in one play-through.
Overall, DA2 feels like a Dragon Age game, but that nostalgic feeling from Origins is gone, and I really missed that. DA2 will keep you busy for a good 30+ hours, and there are even some great side quests. The visuals are great with DirectX 11 support and high-resolution textures on the PC, so if you have the rig, this is the way to go. However, the graphics seem more sterile than Origins due to linearity, so it loses its charm in that area a bit. I highly recommend DA2 to fans of the past game, but don’t expect this to be a true-to-life sequel.
Action RPGs these days are really iffy due to the fact that they tend to feel too formulaic. They usually have good stories, but the graphics are horrible, the combat is clumsy, and the quest system is yawn-worthy. The Witcher 2 takes what was great from the first and makes it even better to form one of the greatest action RPGs of this generation.
You play, once again, as Geralt of Rivia, a witch who got framed for assassinating King Demavend and must prove his innocence. The story is heavy on politics but is also very deep and feels just like the novels. Triss Merrigold also returns with her beautiful red hair and all. You will also see other familiar faces, such as Zoltan Chivay and Dandelion. The new faces are strong, likable, and memorable characters that you will grow to love or hate, respectively, throughout the course of this 20- to 30-hhour game. Geralt himself is even stronger this time around, with more problems than you can shake a stick at. You learn to respect him more and see just how much this poor man can take. CD Projekt really shows you the roots of both good and evil in humanity in such a realistic fashion, and that’s what really drives the characters home.
The combat in The Witcher 2 is better than the first game because gone are the timed sword swings and stances. You now just have light and heavy attacks, but you can block and counter-attack (when you unlock the skill), and you still use the steel/silver sword combo. Steel is for people, and silver is for monsters. Combat was very hard to do when the game first launched, but patches as of late have fixed this for multiple blocking and faster responses. The combat isn’t great and is clumsy, especially early on when you aren’t very strong and towards the end of the game. Combat will make you smash your monitor in frustration in the beginning because you have to learn to just hit once or twice, dodge, run around, hit another couple of times, rinse, and repeat 50 times. Yeah, it’s one of those games in the beginning. After you level up enough, you can cut down enemies in just a couple of swings, and groups of 7–10 won’t really bother you.
Of course, you can equip better armor, weapons, and so forth, but The Witcher lets you do other things like equipping trophies that are found on bosses that increase stats, using sword enhancements such as oils, whetstones, runes, and armor enhancements (kind of like Monster Hunter?). This adds a lot of depth to the customization of your loadout, which has endless possibilities. I think the biggest improvement is resource gathering and alchemy because it’s so simple and easy now. Just gather resources as you go, and you can meditate and create potions that increase your vigor (for signs; more on that later), vitality (health), a potion that lets you see in the dark, damage-increasing potions, etc. The only problem is that you can’t drink them from the menu; you have to use them before a fight. This is my biggest beef with the game because if you are low on health in a fight, you’re screwed unless you took a swallow potion beforehand. The premeditated potion drinking is a big flaw in the game, I think, but some hardcore RPG players may like this.
The Witcher is also famous for its signs because witchers can’t use magic like sorcerers or mages can. There are six different signs, and they use chunks of vigor but recharge over time. These signs are vital to winning in combat, especially against bosses, so learn to use them in tandem with sword combos, and you can win even the toughest fights. One last thing you can use in combat is Places of Power, which you find with your wolf medallion. Activate it, and you may find, out in the woods or in wild places, signs of power that give you temporary stat boosts. These come in handy early in the game (especially in Flotsam) when you are at a low level.
The story also has moral decisions thrown in there that really change the outcome of the story. Of course, there are multiple playthroughs (but no new game, sadly), so you can see what each decision will bring. There are a lot of plot holes in the story that aren’t filled until the very end during dialog, which I found odd, so if you get confused, just hang in there until the final moments of the game. Overall, my biggest issue is the potion use, combat, and the huge difficulty spikes. The graphics are groundbreaking, with gorgeous lighting, highly detailed textures, amazing landscapes, and varied environments with nice weather effects. The character models look superb, and the voice acting is top-notch. This game just shows that indie developers can make games look great. You do need a monster rig to run the game on high settings (especially with Ubersampling enabling you to probably need dual GPUs and a high-end quad-core CPU). Other than that, The Witcher 2 is amazing in every way and should not be missed by anyone.
If you believe in “story over graphics,” this game is the epitome of that. It always saddens me how indie games can’t get AAA budgets because there are some out there that have better elements than AAA titles. Deadly Premonition is one of them when it comes to story, characters, and atmosphere. The game looks, plays, and feels like a pre-2003 PS2 game and is just downright ugly. I’ll get to that later, but right now you have to know how excellent this riveting story is. You play FBI agent Francis York Morgan, who is investigating a murder in the small countryside town of Greenvale. You meet the Sheriff and other citizens throughout the game, and the story is always unwinding with plot twists and revealing dark secrets about every single character.
The premise is a legend of the Raincoat Killer that rampaged through the town in the 1950s. It appears that there is a “New Raincoat Killer” mimicking the old one, and Morgan must stop this guy before he kills everyone Morgan grows close to. There are two parts to the game: driving around the regular world and entering the “Other World” to investigate crime scenes and find clues. This “Other World” is a lot like Silent Hill’s, but the game never explains what this world is or why it appears in the town. I hate how that was never answered, so it feels like it may just be tacked on. When you are in this “other world,” you get to use your guns and shoot creepy zombies. These zombies are really brain-dead and can only really hurt you if you are overwhelmed or backed into a corner. The AI is cheap, but that’s fine because you just want to know more of the story.
When you enter this world, Morgan will start profiling fuzzy clues together, and it’s up to you to find them, but thankfully the game scraps Silent Hill’s labyrinthine maze-like levels for straightforward linear ones, and I never got lost. There are red areas that show where to go, so you never get lost. The puzzles are very simple and don’t even require exercising your cerebral cortex, but it’s OK because you just want the game to move on to uncover more of the juicy story. The controls are very unintuitive, but the game works around them, so it’s never really frustrating. You hold X down to run, but you hold down RT to aim and A to attack, but LT is to lock on. The controls are strange and archaic, but they work for the most part. The weapons are your typical survival horror stuff like shotguns, pistols, and melee weapons, so don’t expect much in that regard.
The rest of the game is completely boring and downright yawn-inducing. Driving around Greenvale from place to place will make you fall asleep because the cars feel, sound, and drive like something from pre-2000 games. The game doesn’t even use real-time or dynamic lighting, but static lighting! Cones for headlights? I felt like I was playing a PS1 game sometimes. The cars sound like dying lawnmowers and drive like one too. There aren’t any people walking around, and the cars appear out of nowhere, like they just came out of hyperdrive. The developers even put in side quests and some sort of collectible card hunt, but why would you bore yourself so much? It’s dry, dull, and just not fun at all.
There are some RPG elements like having to watch Morgan’s hunger, tiredness, and even how dirty his suit gets, plus you can shave. Yeah, it’s WTF moments that are thrown in like that that really make no sense. They are unnecessary, but hey, they’re there. What really saves Deadly Premonition is that the developers knew the game’s flaws and built everything to accommodate them, like quick-time events during boss fights instead of a dodge button. It makes the game very playable, and I applaud them for doing this.
The only reason to trudge through is for the amazing story. You really care about the characters, and there is some freaky crap in this game that would even put some stuff in Silent Hill to shame. The game does drag a little bit with about 15 hours of gameplay, but they could have cut the fat out and made it about 8–10 if there wasn’t the terrible “open-world” part thrown in. If you can forgive horrible graphics, terrible animations, abysmal sounds, and archaic controls, you will be rewarded with a thrilling and deep story that is unforgettable.
First-person shooters are trying to get smarter, but being the most criticized genre in the game industry is not easy. Homefront tries to deter this but delivers a sickeningly surreal atmosphere never really delivered in an FPS before. The writer of Red Dawn creates a too-close-for-comfort storyline where North Korea tries to take over the world in 2027. The beginning cut scene set this up in a scary way with live-action footage (both real and made up) of how North Korea allied with the south and then made friends with our enemies. They used an EMP satellite to knock out our defenses, and that’s where the game begins.
You play Robert Jacobs in Montrose, Colorado. You start out in a wrecked home, and the Norks (as they’re called in the game) take you as a prisoner and stick you in a bus. As you’re driving down the road, you see the horrors that the Koreans are doing. This is where it really starts to hit home because this is America, and the game is so detailed that it looks like it, not just some bland, everyday country. You see people getting lined up and shot, and this is the part where you really feel the atmosphere. A child has to watch as his mother and father are executed. They tell him to look away, and it’s OK, and then you hear blood-curdling screams from the child as the Koreans walk away. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s like this throughout most of the game.
Yes, I said most of the game. After you get halfway through, it kind of forgets its atmosphere (mainly when you get to San Francisco for the main fight), but the first half really gets to you. I’ve never hated an enemy more in a shooter than in Homefront, and thanks to the detailed world, you feel like you are nobody trying to fight something you can’t beat. That’s also another great part of Homefront; it takes you along and makes you feel like you accomplished something, only to tear you down and make you feel helpless again. Other than the incredible atmosphere, it’s a standard shooter, for sure.
You have standard military weapons, but they feel good to shoot and have a good punch and weight to them. There are a lot of them, and you have to use them in a strategic way and where they best fit. I love shooters that do this, so it doesn’t just feel like a rail shooter. The AI is also good at hiding and trying to draw you out of cover with grenades, so there’s quite a challenge here. Thanks to constantly changing environments and a mix-up of vehicle shooting, you never feel bored.
Some sections have you shooting from a mounted machine gun on a vehicle, some have you controlling a Humvee-type vehicle, and towards the end of the game, you get to fly a kick-ass helicopter that you can fully control. There are some stealth sections, but they feel dated because you just follow the NPCs around scripted paths, so you can’t really get caught, but they are tense thanks to the atmosphere of the game. There are some sniper sections as well, but overall, it all gets super intense, and the climax is grand thanks to the huge battle on the Golden Gate bridge at the end.
And then it ends just like that. Obviously, it’s open for a sequel, but I hate abrupt endings, and the campaign is fairly short, with only about 4-6 hours to the finish. Homefront could have added some new elements to the genre, but there’s nothing exciting here gameplay-wise, and it loses steam towards the end. The game looks fantastic even though it uses the Unreal 3 Engine, but the game is highly detailed, and that’s what sells it. The multiplayer is a standard affair but isn’t nearly as exciting as the single-player, so after a while, you just move on. For people into atmospheric shooters, Homefront sets the bar, but only for a while.
A lot of games wind up getting overhyped and overall pissing off the entire gaming community, especially if it’s a game with a huge and strong backbone of fans. Star Wars has always been this way, whether it’s books, movies, games, or cartoons; there has been a huge following with the Star Wars universe, and this is one such game to be buried under the overhype train. LucasArts promised a huge sequel that would make the first game seem like a pile of doo, but it’s only slightly better. Sure, the mechanics are tighter, and the fat has been cut away, but we’re just left with the bones because they somehow fed the meat to the dog.
The developers even had to come up with some absurd way to resurrect Starkiller by having Vader clone him. He’s possessed with memories of his former self and wants to find Juno Eclipse, his lover from the first game. The story is really bare and is really one-dimensional, and only in the last cutscene does it get interesting at all, and this is so lame and cliche that it makes you want to smash your computer in frustration. We’re at the end of 2010, and LucasArts can’t hire writers who can write better than this! You could probably write the entire plot on a napkin. Oh, wait.
Other than that, the combat is fast but still flawed. While Starkiller is dual-wielding here, he still feels stiff to control and a bit chaotic. You have all your powers from the original game, so you’re not trying to find them again. You can use lighting, pushing, mind tricks, tossing crap around, and charges and upgrades of these Force powers, but you’ll mainly stick with Force lightning. I never used the mind trick and only used push when the game called for it. The enemy variety is even less than the original, with your usual Storm Trooper grunts and some bigger guys that are taken down with QTEs, but these are repeated dozens upon dozens of times and get very boring.
Other than that, the actual fighting is okay if only Starkiller could move more than two inches when swinging his sabers around. Mashing X will only kill people next to Starkiller, so you have to stop and move next to the enemy, then start mashing away. That’s why you end up using lightning so much since storm troopers are easy to kill. The combat animations can’t be interrupted, and when he gets stunned during a fall, you’re still vulnerable—and even vulnerable during some QTEs! What’s up with that? Even allowing you to change your saber crystals for stat effects doesn’t really do anything, and you’ll forget it’s there once you discover it.
The game doesn’t have many epic moments, and the only good one is the second level facing off against a giant creature, and it’s completely God of War-style and hugely epic. The only other memorable moments are the few free-fall sections, and that’s all. The game lacks any moments that are memorable, and this is a huge kick in the teeth for a game with such potential. The game is just really repetitive, highly unbalanced, and just isn’t what it could be. The game looks pretty good in some spots, but it could look a lot better. Unleashed II just feels like it’s half done, and even the short length helps this along. There are challenges and extras, but after spending 5–6 hours with this game, you’ll just uninstall it and forget it, just like the last game. If there is ever a Force Unleashed III, please take your time and make it what it should be!
Castlevania and 3D have not mixed well, and everyone since Castlevania 3D for N64 has been a total failure. When Lords of Shadow was announced, everyone expected another terrible 3D iteration that no one wanted. Lo and behold, the game finally redeems itself and becomes one of the best action/adventure games of this generation and one of the best Castlevania games ever made.
You play Gabriel Belmont, who is trying to find a way to bring his love, Marie, back, and while fighting alongside the Brotherhood, he must defeat everyone in his path to get to her. He must reunite three pieces of a mask, and each piece is held by a lord of shadow: the Lycanthropes, the Vampires, and Death himself.
The game is voiced very well and even has some well-known actors like Patrick Stewart narrating the game and voicing Zobek. The game does borrow elements from other games, such as God of War’s combat and Uncharted’s platforming, but LoS crafts them in its own unique way. The part about combat that sticks out the most is using light and dark energy to defeat enemies and bosses and solve puzzles. You have both meters, and they are both used separately. Light magic is a form of healing that will replenish your life gauge as you whip hit after hit until your meter runs down. Dark energy allows you to make more devastating attacks. Switching between these two on the fly is key to beating the game and staying alive.
There is an array of moves you can buy with points, but there are also separate sets of moves for both energies. You can earn points by killing enemies or solving puzzles. Puzzles have a way to reveal the solution, but at the cost of not earning points. I was able to solve every puzzle without revealing a solution, but it’s there for the less cerebral. Combat is swift, tight, and fluid, and Gabriel swings the series’ iconic whip around with ease and flash. Counterattacks can build up your focus meter quickly, which will give off mass amounts of orbs you can absorb for energy. You can even bring down large enemies and use them as mounts for as long as you like to complete climbing puzzles or just wail away at enemies.
The game also has an array of objects you can use as weapons, such as fairies, holy water, daggers, and a crystal that summons a screen-wiping demon. Each of these powers can be infused with light or dark energy, and reading the game’s huge bestiary can tell you what the creatures are weak against. Regular fairies can distract enemies, and while infused with light energy, they become bombs. Holy water can do a number on certain enemies, but infused with light magic, it can create a shield around you as well.
The game has a lot of platforming, and it’s solid, but it does have its share of minor quirks, like Gabriel not jumping at the end of a ledge and just hanging off or dying. Using your whip like a grappling hook works, but most of the time you’ll forget to press X and jump away from the wall to get to different ledges and avoid traps since this isn’t used very often. Platforming even works well in the Shadow of the Colossus Esque massive boss battles.
The game is also fairly difficult. It copies the series’ difficulty with lots of twitch reactions, constant dodging, counterattacking, and blocking. You can’t just wail on an enemy and expect to take a lot of damage. A few hits from a boss, and you die, even if you’ve leveled your health bar all the way up. You get a few hits, dodge, wait for the right moment, and repeat. Each boss has a unique set of predictable moves, but it’s up to your skills and quick reflexes to stay alive, so predictability won’t help you here like other games can.
The game features a huge number of enemies, probably the largest variety seen in an action/adventure title. The game has a good 30+ enemies, and each is unique and requires a different tactic to defeat. Not only this, but the environments vary often, and not one level is the same. The game is also beautiful and probably one of the best-looking games to date, with a gorgeous art style. The camera angles are chosen perfectly, and each shot is a masterpiece to take in. Sleeking castles, forests, and even a massive indoor library look amazing.
The game also has many secrets and will take a couple of playthroughs to find them all, such as gems to upgrade your meters, scrolls, and other items, to get a 100% completion rate. There is artwork to buy and different difficulties to beat, and even just enjoying the game a second time is well worth it. This game is just completely different from your standard Castlevania games and is probably going to be the new standard for the series. You really have to come into this game not expecting typical Castlevania stuff and really expecting something totally different. With an imminent sequel, LoS is one of my favorite games of this generation.
All the great World War II shooters are going away from that genre since it’s been beaten to death. Medal of Honor went the way for Call of Duty and was adapted to modern warfare, which works for this series. The single-player campaign is nothing really special, but it does showcase the realism of war and really makes you feel like a helpless nobody warrior in the middle of a Taliban shootout. It does this better than Modern Warfare, but not the multiplayer.
The single-player campaign has you playing as four different parties: a regular soldier, a Navy SEAL, a pilot, and a Tier 1 operative. Like most war games, you never get attached to the characters, but you do care for them enough towards the end. The game’s pacing is pretty good with you moving from night to day levels, and there is even an ATV level (why choose the loudest vehicle to do a night raid?), and the flying levels are pretty fun but extremely linear and limited in control. You can actually move the helicopter, but instead, just aim and shoot. There are some great moments, like the Tier 1 sniping sections and cinematic arts, but these are far and few. Most of the game consists of moving from cover to cover and shooting everything in sight. Sound familiar? Sure! Is it still fun? Why not! You seem to always be equipped with the right weapons, and ammo is unlimited since you can just ask your fellow teammates. I never had to pick up a weapon off the ground, but it’s there for variety.
My favorite moment in the game has you playing as army soldier Adams, and you and your squad are stuck on a hill inside a tiny little mud shack, and the Taliban are raining down on you from the mountain. You hear military chatter an awful lot, but it sounds more authentic and not just silly babble. Your team slowly runs dry on ammo, and after the cinematic music plays, almost all hope is lost to the helicopters! During this sequence, it seems it never ends, but the surrounding chatter makes the whole experience more intense and authentic to real-life battle warfare. But the whole game isn’t like this. There are a lot of moments that seem more like the rest of the shooters, so the pacing is off a bit, but it doesn’t fall apart.
You’ll mainly come back for multiplayer, which is your standard military shooter affair. There are only three classes, a few maps, and that’s pretty much it. It’s fun since DICE (Battlefield: Bad Company) makes it, but it’s no Modern Warfare. You have your usual three classes of ranger, sniper, and specialist, so everyone is pretty much the same person. It basically shoots whatever moves it makes and racks up a score. There is an objective-based type of game mode, but it’s essentially the same.
The game also does one of the weirdest things, and that uses two different game engines. The single-player uses an outdated version of the Unreal Engine, and it’s obvious that it looks outdated due to low-resolution textures and some low models. It uses the Airborne engine, which was a poor move on Danger Close’s part. The multiplayer uses the Frostbite engine that’s used in Bad Company 2, and it looks great! Why the weird design choices? I don’t know, but I hope MoH2 changes its engine. Is the game worth a purchase? Not really, but maybe a weekend rental. After about five or six hours of multiplayer, you’ll be bored and probably just switch back to a better shooter. If you get bored, you can go into Tier 1, which disables everything and times you. Yes, health restores slowly; no ammo refills, no reticle, nothing. So enjoy the super-hard mode.
The original Mafia may not have been the best shooter in the world, but it gave us a great narrative and likable characters, and Mafia II tops this. You play as Vito Scaletta, whose parents migrated from Italy to New York, and you follow him through his ups and downs in the Mafia. The game’s narrative is amazing, with lots of plot twists and excellent character development. The game isn’t just mind-numbing shooting, but it’s delicately spread out with menial tasks and interactive narrative bits that really keep you hooked.
For example, you start out during WWII in Italy, helping the rebels. This is completely unexpected and is a nice touch to delivering the background of Vito. Another bit I cannot explain (due to huge spoilers), but let’s say you do some gross tasks and some hand-to-hand combat in a place you don’t want to ever end up. You will actually go through 3–4 chapters with no shooting at all, and this makes you savor the shooting bits because they get thrown in a lot in the last few chapters.
The shooting has tight cover mechanics, and the 50’s-era weapons pack a punch and really feel powerful. Knowing a guy out with a shotgun or even popping a guy in the head with a.44 Magnum just feels right. I never experienced issues during firefights with controls, and this is great, so the shooting part is pretty much perfect.
Of course, you have a huge open world, but I guess the biggest flaw of the game is that it’s only used as a “portal” to mission objectives. You don’t go around and get missions from people a la Grand Theft Auto, but maybe this is a good thing and keeps you sticking with the story. Each chapter has you waking up in your apartment, and you have to complete missions as told, and they are varied and never get old. Driving around town feels right, and the cars handle really well. There’s a large variety of them, and driving down the road listening to 50’s-era tunes just feels so authentic. If you aren’t careful and follow the speed limit (there’s a speed limiter button), cops will try to pull you over. If you want, you will have to either change your plates or your clothes.
You can pull into body shops and change the color of your car, repair them, change rims, tune them up, and store them in your garage, or just go sell them at the junkyard. You can buy threads, guns, and food, and it really feels authentic and doesn’t pull too far away from the main game. One thing that you can collect that will completely surprise people are Playboy centerfolds. Yes, fully nude centerfolds, and while finding them may be a pain since they are well hidden, it’s well worth it. These are 50’s Playboys, and they are interesting finds. You can also collect artwork and read about cars in the Carcyclopedia.
The game looks really good with well-animated characters, excellent lighting, and highly detailed textures, but up close, some of the characters look a little lacking in the texture quality department. The game sounds great too, and it’s just all the little details that make the game that much more authentic for its time setting. People arguing in the streets, cops pulling other people over—it’s just really great to see all this detail. However, the 2K Czech could do a lot more with Mafia III, and I’d like to see side missions, a bigger world, and more little extras.
Overall, Mafia II is an excellent game with wonderful characters that you truly care about; the voice acting is top-notch, and everything just feels almost perfect. The game needs more extras and a little something to stray away from the main game, but what’s here works and is solid with excellent shooting mechanics, driving mechanics, controls, and just enough content to keep you going. There isn’t really any incentive to play through this again at all unless you really need those Playboy centerfolds.
Collector’s Edition: If you want to shell out the extra $20, you get a nice poster of ads in the game, the soundtrack, a steel case, the Made Man DLC pack, and a color art book. Is it worth $20? Probably not for most, but hardcore collectors will like this a lot. Most people should just pass, but what is provided is worth it.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Super, thank you