After a steady rise in quality over the last few years, FIFA 10 added yet more welcome new features and game modes while refining the core gameplay. It's a tough act to follow for FIFA 11, but thanks to more realistic gameplay, new game modes, and more features, this is the best and most comprehensive FIFA game yet. The main improvements are refinements to the gameplay, rather than revolutionary new game modes as we've seen in previous years, but they're significant enough to make EA Sports' latest offering well worth the upgrade.
The changes to this year's game aren't all immediately apparent, but they are welcome and make the game deeper and more realistic. The biggest change is the physicality between players--whether it's a winger holding off a defender, or two players tussling in the box, FIFA 11's players are constantly fighting each other for the ball. This increased tactility has an impact on the gameplay, adding an emphasis on player strength and speed, making player interaction more brutal, and producing some nice touches that add to the realism. For example, if you perform a crunching tackle, the tackler will sportingly tap the downed player on the back as he runs by to collect the ball. There's also much more variation to the passes and shots; you won't see the same shots being taken repeatedly, while positioning, footedness, and environmental factors such as rain all have a real and notable impact. Scoring is also more difficult than before; improved goalies are harder to beat than in FIFA 10, and shots, particularly those lobbed over the keeper, are harder to get in the net.
Hot Pursuit is a Need for Speed game in name only. This blisteringly fast racer has more in common with developer Criterion Games' own Burnout series than it does with any previous Need for Speed offering, despite lacking a number of features that are commonly associated with Burnout games. This isn't a game in which you're rewarded for crashing spectacularly or for jumping through billboards, but it is a game that encourages you to drive dangerously and to take down your opponents by any means necessary. The option to play both as illegal racers and as the cops that are chasing them brings some much-needed variety to the action, while spike strips, road blocks, and other satisfying countermeasures ensure that Hot Pursuit doesn't feel quite like any racer that you've played before. Regardless of whether your interest in Hot Pursuit stems from a love of Need for Speed, Burnout, or neither, you won't be disappointed.
If you're familiar with the Burnout series, you'll immediately feel at home with the handling in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Licensed cars from the likes of Lamborghini, Aston Martin, and Porsche can be made to slide around corners with only the briefest of touches on the brake, and you earn nitrous by driving dangerously close to other vehicles and into oncoming traffic. Furthermore, there are plenty of shortcuts available if you stray from the Seacrest County roads, and should you wreck your ride while attempting to take one, you're treated to a glorious slow-motion shot as panels buckle and debris starts to fly. A similar slow-motion treatment is used to alert you when additional cops show up to chase you down and when you successfully take out an opponent, which adds a welcome touch of Hollywood to these high-speed chases. Not that they need it.
F1 2010 is a fun and faithful re-creation of the most challenging series in motorsports, and while it has some minor issues, it's a good start for Codemasters' new franchise. The racing is appropriately challenging, the sense of speed is impressive, and both the cars and the circuits that they race around are re-created realistically. If you're a fan of Formula One you're sure to get a lot of enjoyment out of the game, and with challenges that include time trials, individual races, and a time-consuming seven-year career mode, you're unlikely to tire of it anytime soon.
All of the cars, teams and tracks of the current Formula One season are represented in F1 2010, and it's hard to find fault with the re-creation of any of them. The way that cloud cover, grandstands, and over-hanging track markers are accurately reflected on the car chassis when playing in the cockpit view serves to heighten the sense of immersion, even if you're too focused on the track to fully appreciate them. The tracks are just as impressively rendered, though ironically it's when things become slightly obscured by rain that the game's graphics start to shine. The visibility changes as cars spray standing water into the air, the racing line starts to dry realistically as a result, and the spatters of rain on the camera mimic what you might see from inside a racing helmet. Details like these really show off F1 2010's visuals at their best, and they have a noticeable impact on gameplay as well. What audio there is also works well; you only have the impressive roar of your engine and a little dialog on the radio to keep you company during races, but given the amount of concentration required to make it around the tracks, this is no bad thing.
In Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, the fate of the world is in the hands of a giant beast with the mind of a 4-year-old child. That beast is Teotl, and he's your constant companion in this charming and somewhat tedious action adventure. Teotl has shrubs growing on his back, cries out "Ouch!" when he falls over, and has difficulty forming full sentences. He's not a likely candidate for the position of "kingdom savior," but his kind ways will put a smile on your face, as will the attractive world he inhabits. The game constructed around this simpleminded guardian isn't as inviting as his broad smile or his sparkling surroundings. Monotonous backtracking and uninspired combat can bring the momentum to a halt, and Teotl's one-note dumb-galoot persona makes it difficult to invest in your relationship with him. But many of the game's environmental puzzles shine, as do the enchanting visuals and twinkling soundtrack. Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom isn't likely to capture your imagination, but its bearable lightness of being makes for a refreshing fairy tale.
Teotl is the legendary guardian, a being who is rumored to possess the skill necessary to rid the kingdom of the darkness--a black ooze gradually engulfing the land, as well as spawning goopy guards and demonic dogs. After a short search, you discover the beast, but he has lost all his power and memories. Your goal: to help him restore both; by doing so, you enable him to destroy the source of the darkness. From here, the lumbering lug tails you for the entirety of the adventure, helping you fend off your foes and using his elemental powers to assist you in solving various puzzles. Your relationship with Teotl is central to the story; the two of you spend a dozen hours with each other, so you'd expect to form somewhat of an attachment. Unfortunately, this is only partially the case. On the one hand, Teotl is a good-hearted buddy, and there is some delight in piecing together his memories, which are told in gorgeous two-dimensional cutscenes. On the other hand, Teotl is not intelligent. He speaks in broad, childish language and spouts such exclamations as "It take away my power!" In time, the oafish language stops being charming and just seems forced. The lack of delicacy and wit makes this a shallow friendship.
The final journey facing Harry Potter is not an easy one. Darkness, loss, and death now fill the space once inhabited by classes, Quidditch, and dorm-room chitchat. There are no more schoolyard adventures, traipses through the forest, or twilight romances by the lake. Instead, Harry, Ron, and Hermione must venture past Hogwarts into the cold, wet English countryside, tracking down and destroying the remaining parts of Voldemort's soul. This is the picture painted so clearly and heartbreakingly by J.K. Rowling's final Harry Potter book and so unceremoniously represented here. Not only does the game's story take liberties with the canon (when did Harry, Ron, and Hermione ever venture inside an abandoned factory?), but those elements of the story that are reflected accurately are portrayed through short, fragmented cutscenes that look dire and are completely unconvincing, making the story confusing and unclear for those unfamiliar with the books.
For the greater part of a century, Monopoly has done just fine for itself as a game of abstractions, skillfully avoiding any questions of how a thimble and a howitzer can lead to rubbing shoulders with John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Even its Atlantic City locales have long eluded easy recognition in its native country, and key names like Pacific Avenue and Ventnor Avenue regularly conjure images of yellow-and-green cards instead of key streets on New Jersey's Absecon Island. Monopoly Streets boldly backs away from this abstract tradition, allowing up to four contemporary players to see their properties develop in real time on a real city block. It's a logical and welcome step for today's consoles and a somewhat successful one, minus a few unfortunate flaws that spring from pacing, characterization, and a lack of choices among city-based boards.
For the few uninitiated, Monopoly challenges players to build monopolies by acquiring up to three properties of the same color, whether by lucky dice rolls or trades with fellow players. Once you've acquired every property of a certain color, you're free to improve the sites with houses and eventually hotels, forcing players who land on the spots to pay you rent. Eventually, your rent payments climb too high for other players to pay, which forces them into bankruptcy and hopefully leaves you the sole owner of the entire board.
When a franchise consistently delivers massively popular, high-quality games, each new entry in the series comes laden with expectation. Call of Duty: Black Ops has some big shoes to fill, but it does so admirably. The engrossing campaign is chock-full of exciting, varied gameplay and drips with intrigue and intensity. The excellent multiplayer boasts some invigorating new features, and the new combat training mode finally gives novices a way to enjoy the competitive action without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageously skilled veterans. Cooperative zombie killing and video editing tools help make Black Ops the most robustly featured game in the franchise, and though you may have expected it to be the case, this is undoubtedly one of the best shooters of the year.
The single-player campaign is set largely during the 1960s and takes you to Cold War hot spots like Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam. You are an elite covert operative, and your globe-trotting adventures form pieces of a puzzle--a puzzle that your mysterious captors are trying to put together by interrogating you. Each excursion into the field is a memory, and these missions slowly come together to build momentum as each interrogation cutscene puts another piece of the puzzle in place. It's not a very original mechanic, but it gives a coherent context to the action, and a few strong characters and dramatic moments give the story some genuine intrigue. The blurry edges of your consciousness conceal information that must come to light, and the erratic visual effects and eerie audio echoes that accompany your interrogations sometimes bleed into your mission memories, which creates a great tone of uncertainty that plays out in surprising and satisfying ways.
Your interrogation-fueled flashbacks are not beholden to the linear flow of time, allowing your missions cover a wide variety of geography and gameplay. A dramatic breakout from a brutal Soviet prison is one early highlight, and later missions feature frontline conflicts, urban firefights, and mountainous incursions. The environments are richly detailed, and though the campaign is not without a few technical hiccups (like occasionally problematic checkpoint markers and the odd teleporting ally), these moments aren't likely to hinder your enjoyment. In addition to the on-foot action, you use a number of vehicles to achieve your objectives. Some put you in the gunner's seat while others put you behind the wheel, and though the vehicle handling is unremarkable, the thrill of blowing stuff up and speeding through hostile terrain is undeniable. The core running-and-gunning mechanics remain as exciting as ever, and the gameplay variety throughout the campaign keeps the action moving at a great clip.
There are two new modes that help make Black Ops the most fully featured Call of Duty game yet. Combat Training simulates a competitive multiplayer environment with AI opponents and allows you to set the enemy difficulty to match your skill level. You gain experience and unlock gear in the same way, and though this progress only applies within Combat Training, it's a great way to get the excitement and challenge of competitive multiplayer without submitting to the vicious predations of actual humans. The other new mode is the Theater, which lets you view replays of your games, take screenshots, and edit clips to share with the community. You can string together a number of different segements from a given game, and even render a video lasting up to 30 seconds for upload to the web, though the rendering feature is not fully functional at launch. Reliving moments--both glorious and shameful--is a lot of fun, and the community has already started cranking out content for your viewing pleasure. And though it may only apply to a small percentage of the population at this point, you can also play Call of Duty: Black Ops in stereoscopic 3D, providing you have the proper cables, required glasses, and a compatible television. The effect is novel and fairly intriguing, though it takes a significant mental adjustment and may not be comfortable for many players CKNWDYH9FYMF
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While it may not take the signature Call of Duty action to dizzying new heights, Black Ops is a thoroughly excellent game. New modes and mechanics give a jolt of energy to the lively competitive multiplayer, and the engrossing new campaign develops into one of the best in the series. Combat training allows anyone to enjoy the thrills of arena combat and the satisfaction of leveling up, and the opportunities for cooperative play, local competition, and community video creation provide even more outlets for entertainment. Call of Duty: Black Ops lives up to the top-notch pedigree that the series has earned, giving players an awesome new shooter to enjoy just in time for the holidays.
The ladies of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood have both bark and bite. If you played Assassin's Creed II, then you already know Caterina Sforza, the comely Italian countess with a soft spot for sly, rugged assassins. She's not the only female character with an important role to play in Brotherhood, however. Claudia Auditore is no longer just a submissive bookkeeper, but rather a strong young woman who eventually learns to handle a blade. And then there's Cesare Borgia's cunning sister Lucrezia, whose sharp tongue is matched by her severe, almost vampiric appearance. These willful women are ensemble players in the continuing drama of Ezio Auditore, the self-assured star of Assassin's Creed II. His story continues in Brotherhood, which begins directly after the events that closed its predecessor. This follow-up tale doesn't have the same impact of the story that spawned it, but Ezio's world is a wonder to inhabit, filled with amazing architectural detail and bursting with tons of enjoyable content.
Many towers you climb don't allow you to simply ascend with little care; they require more conscientious navigation. In fact, numerous towers not only require climbing, but must be burned to the ground as well. The Borgias have spread their influence around Rome, and to undermine their rule, you destroy their edifices. Before you can do that, you must assassinate a commander in the vicinity. Often, your target will flee if you directly engage the guards that surround him, so you will want to approach carefully. In many cases, this gives you a chance to put a new weapon, the crossbow, to good use. Not only is it handy for picking off one of these key figures, but it's also useful should a number of enemies charge you on horseback. In any case, once you have offed the key officer, you may climb to the top of the nearby tower and torch it. Afterward, you automatically take a leap of faith into a hay bale or wagon of leaves conveniently placed beneath, while melodramatic organ chords signal the importance of your endeavor.
The Smackdown vs. Raw series has been around for more than a few years now, and like a time-worn WWE superstar, it is starting to get creaky in its old age. The core mechanics that fuel the entertaining action still set the stage for some great fights, but the perennially problematic collision detection and finicky positioning mechanics are taking their toll. The new modes and refinements in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 are more focused on setting up matches than landing gut punches, which makes the game feel more like a meddling manager than a reigning champion. Yet though the series may be getting long in the tooth, there's still enough action to satiate those with a penchant for powerbombs.
You can also craft stories of your own in the enhanced story designer. Improved menus, a new tutorial, expanded options, and the ability to create branching paths make the second iteration of this feature even better. The rest of the creation tools are still very impressive, and you can easily lose hours making your own superstars, finishers, entrance videos, highlight reels, and move sets. You can also enjoy the fruits of other players' labors by browsing and downloading content from the online community creations hub. Competitive multiplayer has more options than before, but even the new stuff is plagued by old issues.
TV Superstars is an exploration of the world of the manufactured star, where catchphrases, affectations, and empty theatrics serve that sticky philosophy--even you can be a star! Yes, you!--found in so many reality TV shows. This game could almost be a telling satire of the modern predicament, but sadly there is no irony behind the controller as you learn to correctly apply makeup, mix paint, stir ingredients, and shoot paintball guns in a series of reality TV-style showdowns. When it works properly, the gameplay is fun and engaging, but this enjoyment is often interrupted by the game's one-dimensional context and features that don't work as they should.
Though the context of TV reality shows makes good fodder for some entertaining minigames, the overall premise is a little too friendly with the perils and pitfalls of fame. The feeble attempt at a linear story is nothing more than a series of slow-loading vignettes that show your progression from fame-seeking desperado to catty socialite. Situations where you must record a commercial by performing a series of consecutive moves with the controller (move left and right, look up and down, swing around!) to match your avatar's onscreen movement and endorse a particular product offer an interesting change of scene, but the wanton abandonment with which you associate your face with toilet bowl cleaner feels mildly cynical. This underscores the will-do-anything-for-fame attitude that pervades the game. The fashion reality show also revels in the same shallow endeavors of that field: putting on make-up, walking down the catwalk and swinging the Move controller in time with your hips, and stripping off to your underwear for numerous clothing changes. Again, the minigames can provide some lighthearted entertainment, but the celebration of vanity here is slightly offputting, particularly during the make-up minigames, which suffer from the aforementioned accuracy issues when required to paint colours within small areas on the screen, and often result in your avatar looking more like The Joker in The Dark Knight than a model.
In The Shoot, your targets may look like cowboys, robots, or zombies, but they're actually just thin wooden cutouts populating a film set. The gameplay in this arcade shooter is similarly two-dimensional, offering up some interesting Move-controlled shooting without much depth. But just because it's shallow doesn't mean it's not fun. The Shoot is an entertaining but short-lived romp that makes good use of the PlayStation 3's motion-sensitive add-on, and its simple mechanics and violence-lite approach to blasting bad guys makes it accessible for gamers of any age.
The real challenge in The Shoot lies in racking up combos where you continually hit targets without missing. It's good fun to try to maintain accuracy whilst shooting at the many enemies that clog up the screen at once, and there's a good variety of foes on show with specific weak points that add to the challenge. Vampires, for example, are only vulnerable around their heart, while bats are fast-moving, small targets that are difficult to hit. Robots and zombies normally take two shots to bring down, but if you score a headshot, they crumple in one. Building up combos also opens up special abilities that can be used in battle; showtime slows everything down onscreen and is triggered by spinning your body around on the spot (or swinging the Move in a wide circle above your head); shockwave destroys everything onscreen and can be performed by pointing the Move down and shooting; and rampage turns your weapon into a fast-firing machine gun and is deployed by pointing the Move controller up. Using these power-ups makes an already easy game even easier, and having to spin around to deploy showtime is much more annoying than it is fun.
It's a sad fact that among the constant flood of games based on popular anime series, many succeed at delivering lots of characters, music, and other content that appeal to devoted fans, but can't manage to support all these goodies with a compelling gameplay experience. It's refreshing, then, that the Ultimate Ninja Storm series continues to deliver moments that capture the bristling energy and excitement of Naruto. Unfortunately, these terrific bits are separated by a great deal of dull filler, but the intensity Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 delivers at its best makes enduring these tedious stretches worth it in the end.
The tale you experience in the Ultimate Adventure mode is told with a great deal of dramatic flair, and it's clear that a lot of care went into doing these characters and events justice. As the hotheaded young ninja Naruto and his friends struggle against evil forces to protect Hidden Leaf Village, moody music, effective camera movement, and great voice acting all enhance the impact of their brave struggles and the poignancy of their noble sacrifices. Unfortunately, the story also casually throws around so many characters, organizations, and obscure terms without explanation that much will be lost on those who come to Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 without knowing their Akatsuke from their Kazekage. This game is unapologetically one for the fans, and it makes no effort to embrace anyone else.
Like a great Bond movie, James Bond 007: Blood Stone jumps headfirst into a spectacular action scene before the opening credits even roll. Going from silently dropping enemies on a ritzy yacht right into a pair of harrowing chase scenes--first by boat on the Mediterranean and then by car on the streets of Athens--this third-person action game from Bizarre Creations makes a thoroughly memorable first impression. What follows is a game that takes its sweet time stepping outside the shadow of this explosive prologue, as a number of early levels fall prey to flat pacing and drab, predictable level design. Such woes don't last forever, though, because the invigorating energy of that opening scene returns full force in the latter half of the adventure. The result is an uneven yet worthwhile James Bond experience, aided in no small part by stellar production values that make it easy to forget that this Bond story isn't tied to a new movie.
For the most part, the variety established by the globe-trotting plot is echoed in the game's action. Blood Stone is very much a hybrid of genres, a game that tries its hand at a lot of things and succeeds at most of them.
Just like the big-name pay-per-view events that regularly punctuate the WWE's show schedule, Smackdown vs. RAW is back for another year. The latest entry in the long-running series picks up where last year's game left off, continuing to focus on user creation and true-to-TV action. The biggest new additions this year are on the user creation side, but the action itself also benefits from some refinements. There are a lot of little touches that make matches feel more like those you see on TV, injecting some dynamic excitement into the proceedings. Yet what spices a match up can also make it last far too long and feel like a grind. The game also suffers from many perennial problems, such as weak sound effects, imperfect online play, and nagging animation issues. While this year's Smackdown vs. RAW is definitely better than last year's entry, it's more of an incremental improvement than a substantial upgrade.
The action feels more fluid this year and characters generally respond better to each other's positions, so your high-flying attack off the turnbuckle is less likely to go wrong. There are fewer animation hang-ups and things tend to flow more realistically.
Tony Hawk Ride is the ultimate triumph of gimmick over game. The concept: Build a skateboard peripheral that lets players simulate skateboarding in their living rooms. The result: half-functioning hardware that fails to function with consistency and a shallow game devoid of excitement. Vert skating and free skating are the only sources of mild enjoyment here, but the fun is too short lived to justify the whopping $120 price tag. The Birdman was once associated with video game greatness, but this is the worst game yet in a declining franchise, and the result is a massive train wreck
Skate 3 doesn't reinvent the wheels. Nor does it reinvent the decks, the trucks, or any other aspect of the Skate series. This sequel is as noteworthy for the features that it cuts from Skate 2 as it is for those that it introduces, yet this is still a better game than its predecessor. Challenges are varied and cater to players of different abilities, you have more tricks in your repertoire, and longevity comes courtesy of robust park creation tools and impressive online features. There are some problems--mostly caused by the unpredictable AI of pedestrians and other skaters, as well as the inconsistent frame rate--but goofy or regular, there's plenty of fun to be found in the new, skater-friendly city of Port Carverton.
Having made a name for yourself as a pro skater in the previous game, the setup in Skate 3 now has you looking to establish your own team and skateboard business. The only noticeable effect that this has on gameplay is that your overall career score is measured in board sales and you now compete alongside teammates in both solo and online events. Those events are much the same as those in previous games and include races, street and vert competitions, film and photo shoots, games of 1-up (take it in turns to beat scores set by another skater), and "hall of meat" challenges in which you deliberately break bones. Though you can still choose to play them online, the frustrating S.K.A.T.E. challenges that require you to perfectly copy tricks performed by opponents are, thankfully, no longer included in single-player. That's definitely a good thing because even now that you're clearly shown what you need to do with the right analog stick to repeat a trick, the controls--which also incorporate numerous button presses--lack the necessary precision.
The idea of a personal, rocket-powered flight device has captured man's imagination for decades, yet the reality of such a device remains depressingly distant. This disparity between dream and reality mirrors the experience of playing Dark Void. There are moments when jetpack flight is joyous, freewheeling fun, such as when you're pulling daring acrobatic maneuvers, dogfighting with UFOs, and boldly zooming around enclosed areas. It gives you a thrilling taste of the speedy promise of a jetpack-powered world, yet this fantasy is too often brought down to earth by the rest of Dark Void's gameplay. The third-person shooter sections are competent but mundane, and there are long sections when fully powered flight isn't possible. Furthermore, the campaign is only about eight hours long, and there are no multiplayer modes to bolster replayability. While there is certainly high-flying fun to be had, the lackluster action hinders Dark Void's lofty ambitions.
Unfortunately, the first few hours of the game don't do much to get your hopes up. After a perfunctory and pointless prologue, you begin the game proper on your own two feet. Dark Void has a sticky cover system, and much of the on-foot shooter action relies on moving from cover to cover. Some of these sections have vertical areas where taking cover means leaning over the edge of a platform or hanging below one and aiming upward. It's a novel twist, and it shakes up your spatial awareness in a way you'll appreciate once you take to the skies. Shooting mechanics are competent, and you can upgrade your run-of-the-mill weapons to make them fairly fun to shoot. Enemies are very resilient to your weapon fire, though a few shots to the head will yield a satisfying explosion, and taking cover is often prudent. However, you can kill most of your enemies with one punch, and this makes sitting behind cover and firing feel slow and ineffective. Dark Void counters this by throwing more enemies at you, and at the end of skirmishes you generally feel a mild sense of satisfaction. Yet the freedom and speed of jetpack flight is an ever-present prospect, casting its shadow over the third-person shooter sections and making them feel a bit like extra padding.
Your first flight entails little more than hovering, but it gives you a taste for exploring and using vertical space. Dark Void takes circle-strafing to a whole new level, and shooting down on enemies can increase your chance of scoring headshots. Hovering does leave you more exposed to enemy fire, but it also allows you to zip over to an enemy and deliver a deadly melee attack. There are a number of ways to dispose of your enemies during combat, including some high-impact quick-time events for bigger enemies, and taking advantage of this variety can make the ho-hum combat slightly more engaging. But even though your enemies change, their appearance does not vary significantly. It can start to feel repetitive, despite Dark Void's solid level design.
Despite the reasonable amount of versatility in both ground- and air-based combat, the action doesn't mesh into something truly entertaining until you take the initiative. Sure, you could land on that hangar deck, shoot your way into the control room, smash the panel, and then shoot your way back out. You could also fly in there at top speed, bludgeon the guard to death, and then take off, racing back through the narrow opening. It's risky, and you might smack into a wall and die, but if you aren't trying reckless and daring stunts, what's the point of even having a jetpack? Likewise, you could stop to hover every few feet as you make your way down a vertical shaft, or you could just skydive the whole way down and ignite your thrusters when you are seconds from splattering on the ground. Dark Void's best moments are those you create yourself, and the game's chief success is allowing you the freedom to be creative with flight.
It's a shame that Dark Void doesn't capitalize on it's high-flying potential as well as it could. And it's even more unfortunate that there's no way to face off with your friends in aerial combat or stunt competitions. Dark Void offers only a single-player campaign, and the story has enough intrigue to keep you mildly interested throughout. The adventure is reasonably long, and once it's over you can replay sections you enjoyed and continue to upgrade your arsenal. Even so, there isn't enough content to justify paying full price for the game. If you are hungry for some jetpack-fueled excitement and willing to spend a few hours to earn it, then Dark Void will reward your determination with some great opportunities. The thrills are in there, but you'll have to handle a lot of baggage if you want to find them.
While Dante slices through the belly of an undead beast with his razor-sharp scythe, traverses a crumbling bridge with a quick-time event, and overthrows the ruler of a damned land with vicious determination, a burst of familiarity might flash through your mind. From the gothic art style and the vengeance-fueled story to the stationary camera clearly displaying the blood-splattering combat, Dante's Inferno is a wholesale imitation of the superb God of War series. Or, at the very least, it's desperately trying to be. Unfortunately, the impression lasts for only the first few hours. What starts as a fast-paced and epic quest to destroy Lucifer in an underworld populated by grotesque and disfigured beings, devolves into a monotonous and downright predictable hack-and-slash. Dante's Inferno gets close enough to its source material to make for a gory and satisfying few hours in hell, but its many flaws prevent it from rising to paradise.
The lesson delivered by Dante's Inferno is one every person should keep in mind: Do not, under any circumstance, make a deal with the devil. You will lose, and you may not be handy enough with a scythe to hack your way out of the mess you create. In this case, Beatrice thought too highly of her husband Dante's moral character. Worried that he would lose his life while liberating heathens during his holy crusade, she comes to an agreement with Lucifer. If he stays faithful, the devil will ensure that he makes it home alive. If he loses control with a seductive slave girl, though, Beatrice will forfeit her own soul forever. The story is told using three distinct styles to chronicle Dante's descent into darkness to rescue the eternal spirit of his betrayed wife. The CGI and in-game cutscenes are expected, but it is the series of sparsely animated cartoons that stand out. These fill in the backstory of Dante's actions during the crusades and go a long way toward developing his character. The story has few surprises, but the manner in which it slowly puts Dante's entire life into perspective makes for an interesting setup for his adventure.
When three mediocre games are jammed into a single package, the result is still mediocre. That's unfortunate, because Aliens vs. Predator is a game you want to love. It comes from the developer of the beloved first game in the AVP series, and like that game, it features three distinct campaigns with three somewhat differing styles of play. And of course there is the undeniable fact that predators and aliens are awesome, and the idea of controlling them in a game is just as awesome. But concept and nostalgia aren't enough to make Aliens vs. Predator worth playing, though certain moments will make you squirm in delight in spite of the game's noteworthy flaws. Sadly, the sight of the predator as he rips the spine out of his human victims is a short-lived joy because of the general clumsiness that invades almost every aspect of developer Rebellion's newest addition to the franchise. The recycled levels are poorly designed, control issues make playing as the alien a chore rather than a pleasure, and numerous minor defects weigh the whole experience down. Most importantly, Aliens vs. Predator's campaigns just aren't much fun, and while the multiplayer is somewhat better, it's unlikely to be your go-to online shooter.
Aside from its storied history, Aliens vs. Predator's main appeal is its three disparate campaigns, in which you respectively take control of a marine, an alien, and a predator. Each campaign has its strengths and starts well enough. The first two levels of the marine story, which plays as a fairly typical first-person shooter, are dark and creepy, making good use of atmospheric lighting to enhance the tension. Your first encounter with a creepy-crawly xenomorph is properly nerve-racking and will have you searching about in the dark, using your handy motion tracker to try to figure out exactly where it is (while trying to bear with the tracker's incessant beeping).
Need for Speed: Shift is a racing game that tries to do a lot of things, and the good news is that it does most of them well. The bad news is that Shift does very little that other racers haven't done before it, and it excels at nothing. The racing, the car and track selections, the vehicle customization and damage modeling, the career mode, the online play, the opponent AI--all of these things are good, but none of them are great.
Depending on what kind of racing game you usually play, being thrust into the driver's seat for a flying lap at the start of Shift's Career mode might go well, or very badly. Your performance on this lap determines your default difficulty level and handling model, and it's appropriately named the "Trial of Fire." There are no opponents to worry about, but getting a handle on Shift's controls can be a challenge on their own. Like a simulation game, Shift encourages you to brake early for corners, punishes you for straying too far from the racing line, and, at least by default, presents you with a steering setup that's extremely sensitive. But, like an arcade racer, Shift rewards you for sliding around corners, for "trading paint" with opponents, and even for forcing those same opponents into a spin or off the track. It's an awkward middle ground that you might never feel comfortable with.
