An atmosphere is what delivers emotion and overall feelings in the game. The atmosphere can make a game scary, colorful, cartoony, or make you feel alone and sad. Atmosphere much matches and represent the idea of the game. Sometimes the atmosphere isn’t delivered right and can make a game feel boring, or just look bad.
The Best Atmosphere category was even harder than last year’s because so many great AAA titles came out with strong atmospheres. There were also some games I didn’t get a chance to squeeze into the runner-up’s area so that tells you how well this category did this year. While some of the others may have better art to back up their atmosphere L.A. Noire does something that most can’t: Make an atmosphere without fancy art or licenses. L.A. Noire is a new IP and pulls off a 1940’s era in realistic detail and really pulls you in and brings you into a time period that most games don’t explore outside World War II. L.A. Noire had amazing visuals to back it, but to make the game feel so true to an era is very hard to do. You don’t need fancy art for that.
The locusts have finally come above ground. Every last effort made by the COG and Delta Squad has failed, and now this is their last stand. The lambent has mutated into vicious alien-type creatures. Marcus Fenix must find his dad, and two female COGs join the fight. What has all happened since our last visit three years ago? A lot, and more than just the story, has evolved.
Like I explained above, the lambent is a major threat, but it’s not them or the locust, not even Queen Myrrah, who is the main threat. I can’t say what, but it will totally shock you about halfway through the game when you find out. The story is just really solid and has a strong conclusion, but overall, the story makes you know and feel that the Gears are really desperate now. Their numbers are paper-thin, and they are doing everything they can to stay alive. You also feel the desperation of the Locust this time around, so it’s a huge tug-of-war between the two for the battle of Sera.
Overall, the gameplay is the same, but a lot of tweaks have been made to finally perfect and fine-tune the entire series. For example, the roadie run that everyone loves has now been changed to allow you to run forever, plus the camera shakes a lot more, adding some cinematic quality. A lot of past weapons have been balanced and tweaked, such as the Lancer, which now has more ammunition, less recoil, and takes a bit longer to rev up. Another example is that the active reload sweet spots have been moved around on some weapons like the Hammerburst, and the Gorgon pistol no longer has three-round bursts but continuous fire. Little changes like these really make the game feel fresh and new, but there is a lot of new stuff as well.
First and foremost, the new Lambent enemies have evolved, and the new stalks are your enemies as well. They will spawn lambents until you destroy the spawn sacs, but the lambents also vary in size, and some now don’t just die; they evolve into more hideous creatures. You fight them through about 1/4 of the game when you finally get to fight regular Locusts and Theron Guards. The environment has also changed because it has added some colors and new locales. Instead of just abandoned towns, buildings, and battlefields, you get to fight in lush jungles, beaches, and a huge ship at the beginning. This adds some color to the greatly bashed color scheme of the series. There are also new multiplayer features, but more on that later.
Some new weapons that you will run into are the OneShot, Incendiary Grenade, Digger, Retro Lancer, Sawed-Off Shotgun, and Cleaver. That may not sound like a huge number, but these weapons are great. The OneShot is a huge version of the Longshot and is a one-hit kill for every enemy. The Incendiary Grenade sets enemies on fire; the Digger acts like a Boomshot Grenade, in which it burrows underground and pops up near an enemy. The Retro Lancer doesn’t have a chainsaw but instead has a bayonet that you can charge into grubs, but the gun is highly inaccurate and has really bad recoil. The Sawed-Off is exactly what it is: a one-shot shotgun that can do one-shot kills at super close range. The gun has a long reload time, so use it very wisely. Lastly, the cleaver is a giant blade that you can use to swing around and chop off heads.
While the new weapons sound impressive, each one has an awesome new execution kill, so there are 24 in total. There are also some new campaign-exclusive weapons you can use as the new Beast Sieges, but your favorite Troikas are still here. Epic packed a lot of new content into Gears 3, so it makes it feel really fresh. Even the new character Sam is a great addition, but Anya Stroud is now the main Gears character and fights alongside you. I do have to mention one major change to the campaign: Revive. Yes, when you die, you don’t die; you can be revived, like in multiplayer now, so this also makes the campaign a little easier and doesn’t require much tactical and careful planning like in past games. Some may love it, and some may hate it.
When it comes to multiplayer, we finally get Team Deathmatch! All your other favorite modes are here, but we get a new onslaught of maps that are well designed, but you can now rank up and earn unlocks such as weapon skins, characters, and even crazier achievements. The new Beast mode is like a reversed Horde mode and is a huge blast, but Gears heroes like Dom and Marcus must be executed to die. One of my favorite things in Gears 3 is that it reads and recognizes your achievements for every Gears game (even Gears 1 on PC!) and gives you special unlocks. The Epic team really makes you feel like this is the final gear and awards you for being loyal and sticking around since E-Day 5 years ago.
Overall, Gears of War 3 is a finely tuned, well-balanced, and epic package, as well as a great finale to the long-running series. When it comes to visuals, Gears 3 looks like one of the best games of this generation (again) with updated lighting effects, higher resolution textures, and further draw distance. However, it does show its age a little in spots, but it does look jaw-dropping still. While this may be the last in the Delta Squad series, the Gears series will sit in our hearts as one of the best franchises of the generation and will never be forgotten.
Epic Edition: If you are a huge fan and really want to spend the extra whopping $90, you can buy the gigantic Epic Edition, which includes a massive statue of Marcus Fenix, replica documents from Adam Fenix, a huge award box replica with a cog that is Adam Fenix’s science award and has the Adam Fenix character unlock code on it, a COG flag, a weapons skin pack, and an art book that is the entire making of the whole series. The book is very well put together and gives you insight into the series that you will never see anywhere else. This is a beautiful package and probably one of the best collector’s editions ever made. Everything is super high quality and just amazing to look at.
The controversy surrounding Bulletstorm’s violence isn’t actually all that bad. What everyone should pay attention to is the kick-ass new breed of gameplay it brings to the table by making it more exciting and fun again. Surprisingly, this game isn’t just brawn, thanks to a pretty snazzy storyline. You play as Grayson, who is a pirate and, with his buddies, takes on jobs as a mercenary. You take the wrong job and find out the truth about what you’ve been doing all these years, and you go on a manhunt to kill the guy responsible. You get taken to a planet that’s ravaged into ruin, and you come across some pretty strange enemies.
The characters themselves are great, and the dialog is hilarious, witty, and full of sharp one-liners and banter. Bulletstorm’s main campaign may have a solid storyline, but it’s the action that really counts here. The whole idea of the game is to rack up skill points, which are then spent to upgrade weapons and buy ammo. These skill points are earned by how you kill your enemies. Instead of just shooting them until they are dead, you must get creative with your weapon, the environment, and everything around you. You can shoot an enemy in the neck, groin, or head and get some skill points that way (the names of these skills are what led to all the controversy), but why stop there? How about you set your enemy on fire with a weapon’s secondary fire (called charge shots) and then kick them into a cactus plant? How about you impale an enemy into another enemy or launch an enemy into the air via your leash and kick them into danger in the environment? Still not good enough? Get intoxicated, slide down an area with your penetrator drill charged, and shred everything in your path. See a boss? Weaken him until his armor glows blue, then kick him in the butt and shoot his hole! The Fire in the Hole skill shot is hilarious and satisfying.
These are just some ways you can mix up your gameplay, and there are a ton of skill shots. Some are assigned to each weapon, some are secret, and some are story-driven. These skill shots are super fun to figure out, and they make you approach a hoard of guys in a different way instead of just tossing a grenade. Speaking of story-driven, there are some kick-ass moments in this game. My favorite part is when you get to use a remote-controlled dinosaur that shoots lasers out of its eyes. Yup, you heard right. Riding a train with a 500-foot-tall wheel rolling towards you is jaw-dropping. Bulletstorm is just full of huge, gigantic, in-your-face stuff, and it feels great to be in the middle of it.
Now there are some flaws here. While skill shots are fun to figure out and find after you unlock most of them, the repetition sets in. There will be some parts of the game where it’s just horde after horde of enemies, and then when some new environmental kill comes along, it makes it exciting again, but just for a few seconds. You constantly rely on new things to get into your hands to keep things exciting. Sure, the first few acts are super fun, but after you master the mechanics, you will start to wish for this.
That’s not to say the game’s bad or anything, but it just needs a lot more than these skill shots assigned to each weapon. The excitement also wears off quickly after a while, and that shock value only happens when new exciting things are going on. The weapons are very interesting, though I found them all fun to shoot, and I constantly swapped them out throughout the game. Each weapon has a unique charge shot, so you can constantly switch up your strategy.
This is pretty much the whole game of Bulletstorm, and it’s wrapped around this core design. Yeah, there are QTEs, and if you press the button quick enough, you get skill points for them, but it’s nothing too exciting. The campaign does start to wear itself out towards the last third of it, and the only thing keeping you hooked is the story at this point.
The game, despite using the already-aging Unreal Engine 3, looks amazing with gorgeous landscapes and vistas and some epic lighting effects. You will need a pretty hard-core PC setup to get this game to run, so otherwise stick to the consoles. The multiplayer is pretty fun and gets addictive, but it’s nothing like what you might expect mode-wise. Earning skill points in the multiplayer part of the game makes things feel fresh and actually turns out to be more exciting than for a single player because it’s less predictive.
Bulletstorm is probably there for every FPS fan, but some may not like it. There are a lot of foul languages, and the game is very gory, but I honestly doubt most gamers who play shooters will care. I just wish the game wasn’t so repetitive and added a little something else because it feels like there’s something missing. Other than that, it’s worth your dollars in skill points.
Video game novels are something of a hobby of mine because they let you delve deeper into characters’ minds and are more detailed, story-wise, than any game could be. This goes for a lot of game franchises as well as movie-based books. You just can’t get any more detailed than written words. This is also true for the gritty war that has torn Gears of War. The books capture the personalities of the characters perfectly, so they feel like they’re straight from the game.
The first book, Aspho Fields, has two plot points: The Pendulum Wars before E-Day and just after the first game. The main focus is on Marcus and Dom growing up together as kids and going to school together, as well as following Dom’s family. The Pendulum Wars describes the Delta squad and the COG before the Locust were even a threat. The Pendulum Wars were an indie group of scientists who were creating the Hammer of Dawn, and the COG wanted it. Aspho Fields is a particular battle where Marcus and Dom must choose life or death for friends. There are a few new characters introduced, and one main character is known as Bernie Mataki. I have a feeling she was meant to be in the game but never made it.
Jacinto’s Remnant has two plot points as well, but the secondary is fairly weak and just filler. Remnant also has less action than the first book but has a more interesting plot. The book follows right after the sinking of Jacinto and the COG trying to gather up the last of humanity on a remote island away from the mainland. They have to deal with Stranded, as well as a group of rebels who just don’t want to cooperate with COG laws. The secondary plot is a bit of filler during the Hammer of Dawn strike that wiped out 90% of Sera in a desperate attempt to destroy the Locust even before the Light Mass Bombing.
The first book has more background on the Delta Squad, and the second book has more foresight on what happened after Jacinto. Each book serves its purpose, but Remnant doesn’t really have much action in it at all. It’s not boring, but if you want nonstop action, then Aspho Fields is your deal. In fact, you hardly hear about locusts after about 25% through Jacinto’s Remnant. The book gives fans of the game some insight into the characters as well as some background on all the little things in Gears that the game never explained or talked about.
Overall, the Gears of War duo-logy is great for fans only. For everyone waiting for Gears of War 3, these books should tide you over for over 600 pages of greatness. The books could have been better, but you can’t really complain about a series that doesn’t have much back story besides nonstop, in-your-face interactive action.
Finally, a really good XBLA game is finally out after waiting for what seemed like forever. Most people have dubbed Shadow Complex a cross between Metroid, Contra, and Castlevania, but that isn’t true at all. Shadow Complex has its own unique take on the Metroid formula but perfects it. Yeah, I said it. Metroid gets very tiresome with the same upgrades in every game, the same labyrinthine levels, and a not-so-interesting story. Sure, Samus is hot, but that doesn’t make Metroid feel the same with every iteration. Shadow Complex has a not-so-complex story where you, Jason Flemming (yeah, some name for a hero), go out hiking with your new girlfriend when suddenly strange soldiers attack. They are a group called the Progressive Restoration and hope to change the world with the mind of some freaking weird. While the story isn’t anything special, it’s the gameplay that is.
The game, first off, uses a flashlight system that is very interesting. Different blockades can only be destroyed with different weapons, i.e., orange is bullets, red is missiles, purple is the foam gun, green is grenades, etc. Some parts of the levels will really stump you unless you whip out your trusty torch and shit it around the room. Forget what color is for what weapon? No problem since you can pause the game and look it up in the weapon description screen. Speaking of weapons, Shadow Complex has some great ones. My personal favorite is the foam gun, which allows you to stun enemies and get behind them or over them. Slowly throughout the game, you will also upgrade your machine gun to an eventual killer shotgun during the last part of the game. The game also shows some pretty cool enemies with giant mechs you have to fight, but the regular soldiers tend to be pretty generic.
When it comes to level design, the game does kind of copy Metroid with the squared-off map system, but it’s better. When you pause the game, you get a blue line that shows you where to go, and all you have to do is follow the squares and figure out how to get through each room. Not only are there weapons to get, but upgrades for your armor are also needed to get through levels. You get a jetpack, super boots (as I like to call them), and a dampener that allows you to run at super speed. These upgrades are fun to use and essential to getting through the game.
The puzzles in the game are really not that hard to figure out since most of the game relies on destroying parts of the environment with your weapons and finding them with your flashlight. Sure, you have levels to pull, crawling through ducts, and riding elevators, but it’s nothing that’ll make you scratch your head. I do need to mention the shooting mechanics, however, since you rotate your stick in a 360-degree manner and just point in the direction of an enemy (foreground or background), which is kind of weird at first, but you will get used to it.
When it comes to a show-stopping graphical showcase, Shadow Complex has it using Unreal Engine 3. Should I say more? It’s better to run around in a 2/3D world than to hop on a turret and shoot in full 3D. Shadow Complex is also the biggest XBLA game, coming in at almost 900 MB. The audio is great, with good voice acting and great sound and music. I highly recommend this game to platform fans, shooter fans, and anyone looking for a well-spent $15. If you get bored with the single-player game, go into the Challenge Grounds and test your skills against many challenges.
I have been hyped about GoW2 ever since I finished the first game, and with information slowly leaking out of Epic’s mouth, I just couldn’t help myself from getting all giddy and mushy inside. Ok enough, seriously, Gears 2 is just amazing on so many levels with tons of new multiplayer modes, weapons, enemies, environments, etc. The game is just a whole new beast, and old Gears fans will not be disappointed. First, let’s start off with the campaign. Do you remember Gears One being huge and sprawling with wide vistas and beautiful architecture? Ok, well, that was nothing compared to Gears 2. You really do have wide open vistas that stretch as far as the eye can see, and they are absolutely breathtaking, especially on an HDTV. The graphics are still what we’ve grown to love, but with better lighting, higher resolutions, and more objects on-screen, everything is just crunchier and more big, beautiful, and hectic than ever before.
Speaking of crunching, the game’s audio has been tuned up, and everything sounds more gruesome and brutal than ever before. Headshots pop and sound and feel more satisfying than before; curb-stomping an enemy looks more painful (and sounds it!); sawing Locust in half with the Lancer feels more powerful and just looks, feels, and sounds nastier. The whole game is like this, and it feels like a true sequel instead of just Gear of War 1.5. All of your core elements are here, like the great cover system, the Roadie Run (TM!!), the voice actors, characters, Locust, and story, which are all set in place, but you are a bigger part of the whole thing, and you feel more like a participant than a spectator. The story is more involved, in which the Light Mass bombing failed, the Locust are coming back with their full force, and the Delta Squad is sent in to rip out the heart—three of them! Anyways, Dom is trying to find his wife along the way, and a few new characters are introduced but aren’t fully developed since they don’t make many appearances, like Dizzy, Tai, Chairman Prescott, and a certain dad who will go unnamed. The story goes even further with 41 collectibles you can find that you can read and help evolve the back story some more. Gone are the COG tags people; now you gotta find papers and more of them too.
Getting back to the campaign’s weapons, there are about double the amount with a whole new weapon class: heavy weapons. You still have the Lancer, Boltok pistol, Shotgun, Longshot, Boomshot, Snub—you know all those—but now you have better, crunchier, and kick-buutt weapons like the Hammerburst (gone is that dinky little Locust assault rifle), Gorgon Pistol (a semi-auto three-round burst Locust pistol), the Mulcher (a heavy weapons KICK @$$ mini-gun that you CRANK!), a Mortar (yes, like a WWII mortar, only better without all those Krauts), the Scorcher (a flamethrower that you can blind fire!), Ink Grenades (go figure), and a whole bunch others. These weapons feel powerful and sound powerful, and they are all useful—in fact, it’ll be hard to choose which gun you want to use half the time! Now this time around, you also get to use more “vehicles” like the Centaur, which is a monster truck tank…a Reaver, a Brumak, you know, just cool “vehicles” like that. Yes, they all feel powerful and are just amazing to “drive.”.
The campaign together is just more riveting and more cinematic thanks to the HUGE open vistas and massive hordes of enemies, and the campaign is just perfectly built. The only problem is that it’s about the same length as the original, and there’s room for a sequel. I just really can’t express how great it is to feel upfront in Gears and really drive things home with all of the awesome weapons, graphics, and audio. Of course, I have to mention the new awesome Locust like the Tickers (little ticking and crawling “bombs”), the Kantus (these guys summon Tickers and can resurrect downed Locust), Brumaks (only seen in GoW1 for the PC and at the end of the fight at Fenix’s mansion), cooler-looking Reavers, a whole “Boomer Class” like Butcher Boomers, Maulers (which have spiked shields you can carry!), Grinders (which carry Mulchers and yell “GRIND!”), Flamer Boomers, etc. The whole old crew of enemies is here with great new ones, and they are all fun to kill, and the game is perfectly balanced.
Speaking of balanced, let’s move on to multiplayer. Ah yes, good ‘ol Gears multiplayer is back with a ton of new modes along with the old ones. First off, you all remember Annex, Execution, Warzone, etc. Now here are the really fun modes that make me really get into Gears multiplayer. Horde. Just one word: horde. You and four other people are pitted against 50 waves of increasingly difficult enemy AI. Yes, this is addictive and super fun, and you need a couple of hours on your hands if you and your teammates are really good. Getting through all 50 waves can take a good couple of hours, but boy, isn’t it fun? Just imagine one guy sawing a drone in half while the guy next to him is popping off headshots at Wretches and Boomers. You are at the enemy spawn point, sticking grenades on walls, and that last quiet guy is just hiding in the middle somewhere, scorching Locust. Ah, it is joyous and wonderful at best, and you are sure to come back until you clear all 50 waves (I could only get to 36).
Now there is Wingman, which is 5 teams of 2 against each other, and you can only kill with executions (more on those later) or one-shot kills like a grenade or something. This is extremely adrenaline-inducing since all you can rely on is your buddy, and if he dies, it’s just you. Meatflag is very interesting since it utilizes GoW2’s new “meat shield” system, where you can press A near a downed enemy (even in single-player!) and use them as a “human shield,” as most of you would know. Other executions include the classic curb stomp, but if you press Y, you can do “long executions” with other weapons, like a golf club swing with the Longshot, or just use your fists and beat the guy up, but back to the multiplayer mode. In Meatflag, it’s like capturing the flag, but you have to bring the locust back to your base, so he’s a moving, shooting, ugly flag. This is super fun and an original twist on Capture the Flag. There are a few other modes, but these three are the “blue light” modes that really stand out and are super addictive. If you haven’t noticed, the player count has gone up by 2, so now there are 10 people playing instead of 8. This makes things more hectic and fun, as you can tell. Thankfully, the online mode plays perfectly with no server issues, and there are a ton of new maps to play that are very well laid out, which you’ll grow to love.
Before I close this out, I have to mention the new achievement system. For once, a game updates you on your achievements in-game while you’re playing without you having to pause and go into the guide. Let’s say you’re aiming for the new Seriously 2.0 achievement. cough It’s, oh, nothing, only 100,000 kills, so every 100 kills you get a widget that will pop out at the side and update you on this. Try the new Said the Spider to the Fly (killing 10 enemies will grenade wall tags), and every 5 kills you’ll get updated. This is very helpful and is just a reminder of why you should keep playing this wonderful game. I love this new achievement system, and more developers (multi-platform or otherwise!) need to take note of it. This takes full advantage of the system, so please learn! Now, this game isn’t perfect.
There are a few flaws, as we’ve seen in the core of all of this before (GoW1 I gave a perfect 10), but there are still a few bugs, and they were tweaked like the cover system. Turn the left stick a certain way, and a little sketch will show up on-screen telling you what Marcus will do. While this is fine and all, it’s just not perfect. There are times when you’ll want Marcus to roll a certain way, but he’ll snap against a wall. Yes, they let you change the buttons for this, but it’s still annoying. Multiplayer can be a bit challenging for people who aren’t very good at it. Gears veterans will smear you on the floor within seconds and will make a lot of newcomers hate multiplayer. There are mainly glitches that are only noticeable on insane difficulties, like collision issues that let enemies shoot through walls that will kill you in one hit, etc. These are super minor, but we STILL have seen all of this before two years ago, and I just can’t wait for Gears of War 3.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.