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.
The annual arrival of Madden signals the end to the summer sports doldrums. The newest entrant in the long-running franchise doesn't offer a substantially different experience from last year's edition, but a number of small tweaks make this the best game yet in the series. Improved artificial intelligence on both sides of the ball eliminates much of the frustration from previous games, and a streamlined play-calling system keeps everything moving at a steady clip, letting you focus on pulling off spectacular plays rather than futzing around in menus. Commentary has also been improved, largely because the interminably dull Tom Hammond has been replaced by the vibrant Gus Johnson. But there are still a number of issues that keep Madden NFL 11 from cruising through the playoffs. The new Ultimate Madden mode is little more than a novelty and a number of odd quirks during games are real head-scratchers. Even with those problems, though, this is a great replication of the hard-hitting sport.
As good as the offensive linemen are on running downs, they can be lousy on passing plays. There are far too many times when your five linemen will remain immobile after the snap of the ball, letting defenders crash into your quarterback like bloodthirsty barbarians. This is especially noticeable while running play action. By the time you fake the ball and get ready to pass, a linebacker will be breathing down your neck, giving you little choice but to throw the ball away and live another day. There are also strange flubs that ruin the illusion that this is real football. Quarterbacks will sometimes throw a cover-your-eyes, Jamarcus Russell-caliber pass on what should be a simple dump off in the flat, and these unfathomable passes occur even when you're standing still without a defender in sight. The ball also does not conform to real-life physics. If a safety knocks the ball away from a receiver, the ball will sometimes bounce wildly between the players, resting on the backs of their necks or helmets, which looks completely ridiculous. None of these issues are problematic enough to destroy the fun, but they are annoying and can lead to bouts of anger if they crop up during an inopportune moment.
Double Fine's Brutal Legend is an unabashed love letter to an era and genre of music that celebrated fast guitar riffs and hard living. It's also a tribute to an epic lore that spoke of conquerors and death--all of which were often depicted at once on any given metal album cover with the obligatory smattering of lightning. Of course, the fact that Brutal Legend features a phenomenal soundtrack from the likes of Black Sabbath, Motorhead, and Judas Priest with suitable hack-and-slash action would feasibly constitute a reasonable tribute on its own terms. Yet, what raises Brutal Legend above that simple construct--plus what makes it a great ode to metal--is how it cleverly integrates so many different facets of the culture and its music to create an experience that consistently entertains and surprises in both single-player and multiplayer.
But it should come as no surprise to those familiar with Double Fine's previous work with Psychonauts that Brutal Legend's characters and its story are the primary highlights. Eddie Riggs, a roadie who remembers and worships the glory days of metal, serves as a perfect lead character who's magically transported to a world that ostensibly reflects his own image of heaven. This world is a vast place where enormous, crumbling statues and smaller, skull-encrusted shrines pay homage to the gods and titans that brought metal and its music to the land. Naturally, there's a heavy dose of irony involved in this setup, which gives Jack Black (who voices Riggs) plenty of room to do his funny--albeit expected--trademark sarcasm-laden, observational routine. But his act rarely gets old or overwhelming because Riggs, as a character, often humbles himself in an endearing way despite finding himself in a position of leadership. He never loses sight of his roots as a roadie, and as such, he is there to help people who have fallen under the oppressive boot of the demonic Emperor Doviculus and his human warlord General Lionwhyte (voiced by Judas Priest frontman, Rob Halford), who also happens to symbolize a not-so-subtle jab at hair metal.
