Gamer

Portal 2

Andrew Lam
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Portal 2

Valve Corporation

(Xbox360, PS3, Mac/PC)

GAMER Portal 2 reminds us that “first-person” is a point of view first and a game type second. With combat-themed shooters incestuously fumbling over one another to produce the most similar experience, it takes a certain amount of marbles to deliver a shooter about strategy and narrative instead of death. But for developer Valve, Portal’s sequel was never a risky gamble.

Portal (2007) was a surprise success, a last-minute addition to Valve’s Orange Box bundle that boasted heavy-hitters like Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2. It was Portal, the little game that traces its history to a college senior project in Washington state, that brought the most buzz. A puzzle game where you play a test subject in a future lab, Portal tasks you with escaping elaborate exam rooms by using a gun that shoots portals — one orange, one blue — go in one and come out the other. But it wasn’t just Portal‘s mechanics that attracted players; the humor, pacing, and whimsical approach made it memorable.

In the same way that I can define what made Portal a sensation, Valve too was armed with the secret to its success. A joke is never as funny the second time, but Portal 2 knows its audience and does its best to satisfy old fans while telling an altogether new story.

Sometime after the conclusion of Portal, human test subject Chell is awakened in a deteriorating laboratory by a robot named Wheatly. As Chell, you must negotiate the cavernous lab and a vengeful computer AI named GLaDOS and familiarize yourself with new, futuristic technologies like force fields, light bridges, and gels that make you bounce. Early levels reiterate the first game’s slow and easy increase in difficulty, but soon you are gleefully translating your puzzle-solving skills into a means of escape.

Most of the game is set in test rooms, and it’s unsurprising to learn that Valve’s vision for Portal 2 wasn’t entirely clear: it continues its tradition of creating puzzles first and contextualizing them later. A great benefit in telling the tale comes from stellar voice-acting by Stephen Merchant and character actor J.K. Simmons. Fewer conventional puzzle rooms would be nice, but the brain teasers themselves are consistently satisfying.

Valve could easily have damaged its cult credibility by amplifying a perfectly concise experience, but Portal 2 works. With an equally satisfying (and wholly unique) cooperative mode that highlights teamwork — and a developer commentary mode that places commentary nodes within the game world — Portal 2 packs enough content to justify its standalone release. The joke might be less funny when you anticipate the punch line, but in this case it all comes down to delivery.

Gamer: does the dismal “Homefront” have a silver lining?

Sue Vaughan
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Gamer: does the dismal “Homefront” have a silver lining?

Can Homefront’s failures inspire change in the game industry?

I’m almost reluctant to add to the media blitz that first-person shooter Homefront (now available) was and is getting. Even with low scores and plummeting stocks, the game managed to sell 300,000 copies on its first day, so to a degree it would seem the publicity has paid off. But, after being personally subjected to an overwhelming number of posters and billboards, hundreds of balloons, an anti-Korean rally, and a long schoolbus ride to a barbed-wire-laden warehouse, I was disappointed to find that behind this velvet curtain was a pretty flimsy product. Maybe Homefront will be the game that gets the ball rolling on an important issue that has been brewing for a while: game pricing.

Kaos Studios was smart to attach itself to a wholly original idea, implausible or not, and putting the power of Academy Award-nominated screenwriter John Milius (1979’s Apocalypse Now) behind it doesn’t hurt. But the premise is wasted on such an impossibly underdeveloped campaign; it’s almost like Milius wrote “North Korea invades U.S.” on a napkin and called it a day.

Kaos’ shooter isn’t the first game to re-neg on its promises (see the ever-fresh wound of the Molyneux/Fable debacle for proof of that) but this burn was unique in that it was a title that appealed to a game audience that is largely overlooked. Alternate history, as a genre, has ardent supporters but aside from Fallout and Singularity its ranks haven’t been stocked particularly well. In that light, Homefront’s undelivered promise only intensifies the sting that results from its brevity.

Sixty bucks and all I get is a three-hour campaign?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9hWdAN6guw&feature=related
You don’t hype a three hour tour.

Homefront’s single-player is surely not worthy of its price tag, so what else is in the box? The game includes a multiplayer mode and it’s light years more focused than the campaign, but multiplayer-only experiences like Battlefield 1943 run around $15. If the studio had released a multiplayer-only title, they would have been welcomed to the table differently. Instead, we’re left wondering how much developer weight was actually put behind the single-player campaign, and why the quality seems so inconsistent with the seemingly-great weight the publicity team put into hyping the mode over the past year.

Now that a sharp divide has evolved in the value of game content, making every game the same price not only hurts the consumer, it also directs the development process towards creating a viable product rather than a singular experience. As more and more players purchase titles purely for their multiplayer components, I might go so far as to suggest completely separating single player and multiplayer experiences through independent purchases.

No matter how it is sold, it seems clear that the value of each mode is rarely analogous to the amount of time developers invest in them. Call of Duty campaigns are five to six hours long, and no one bats an eye because they know the multiplayer will afford them hundreds of hours in entertainment. At the same time, enormous resources are spent on creating multiplayer for games like Bioshock while all anyone wants is to be told a cohesive story. Instead of feeling obligated to deliver both, why don’t developers make a greater effort to give players what they came for?

Perhaps there’s something to be learned from the casual games market. While many console gurus malign the low pricing of iOS games, at least games are variably priced based on their worth. What’s the answer? Publishers would be smart to figure it out before all games go digital, because I expect that flat rate of $60 is going to feel a whole lot heavier without a physical product in hand.

Fantastic fantasy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Fantastic fantasy

GAMER When they first announced a new game called Dragon Age: Origins, the prizewinning developers at BioWare were enjoying the success of Mass Effect, their wildly popular space opera, which had just introduced the public to the intergalactic potential of the studio’s imagination by creating an entire sci-fi universe from scratch. If Mass Effect was all about the future of role-playing games, Origins was all about their past. Almost defiantly traditional, even down to its title, the game embraced shopworn role-playing game tropes like dwarfs, elves, rogues, and locked chests with the tender respect of a closet-cleaning teenager encountering a childhood toy.

Set in a world of high fantasy that simultaneously revered and reinvented the genre’s many archetypes, the series also resurrected the company’s most popular play style: players control one hero and three companions, switching between them at will. The fighting can be paused at any time to better coordinate your party’s actions.

Despite having many virtues, Origins was marred by its imperfections. Its art directors woefully misinterpreted their retro mandate (the loading screen featured what was effectively a giant, rotating tribal tattoo). The scope of the game world, along with the geographic and interspecies conflicts that underpinned it, was unevenly developed. An overabundance of meaningless dialogue meant that the urgency of the plot was often lost amid the ramblings of boring NPCs. Most damningly, the combat felt strangely weightless — allies and adversaries seemed to stand there swinging mightily at each other until someone fell down.

Dragon Age II is as elaborately polished and stage-managed as its predecessor was rough-hewn and idiosyncratic. The game’s opening sequence drops you right onto the battlefield, showing off a redesigned game engine that makes combat at once visceral, gory, and kinetic. Even while playing as a mage, zapping enemies at range with your staff, you feel as if your avatar is breaking a sweat. The characters’ special abilities look legitimately powerful, sending foes flying or julienning them into a shower of immaculately rendered giblets.

The story follows a family of refugees called the Hawkes, whose flight from their homeland of Ferelden parallels the events of the first game. Arriving in the city of Kirkwall, they are quickly confronted with the game’s major theme: dystopia. Founded centuries ago by an unpleasant-sounding empire of slave-owning magicians, Kirkwall is marked by strife, xenophobia, and violence.

Much of the conflict centers around BioWare’s carefully crafted axes of enmity. The city’s human residents resent the influx of Fereldean refugees. The local elves are considered second-class citizens, and summarily abused. The series’ treatment of magic is particularly fascinating, pitting a self-righteous order of Templars (who think that the magic-adept are dangerous and should be controlled by force) against the mages themselves (who bridle at the Templar’s pious enthrallment).

Players will experience Kirkwall’s vicissitudes both through their own story and through their relationships with a fascinating cast of characters. Rich or poor, straight or gay, insouciant she-pirate or revenge-hungry ex-slave, the city’s inhabitants spring to vibrant life from the pen of BioWare’s inimitable writing team. The entire narrative is even structured around an ingenious frame story.

Try too hard to scratch beneath the game’s admittedly pretty surface, however, and you’ll be dealt a stinging rebuke. Though its appearance is universally stunning, Dragon Age II compensates for Origins’ excessive ambition by limiting itself to a narrow range of environments, enemy types, and mission structures. In 12 hours with the game, a player will clear out the same identical cave five or six times. Though the cut scene and conversation dialogue is excellent, game play is too often comprised of “travel here, travel there,” with the occasional ambush thrown in just to whet your appetite, your sword, and, thanks to the series’ distinctive blood-spatter graphical effect, pretty much everything else you have on.

If you can ignore some repetition (you want me to save another wayward, magic-addled youth?) and concentrate on the game’s positive qualities (there are many), Dragon Age II will provide some 40 hours of enjoyment. BioWare has taken an old role-playing dog and taught it a number of impressive number of new tricks. Unfortunately, “roll over” and “shake” are often overshadowed by “fetch,” and sometimes, “play dead.”

Dragon Age II

Bioware/Electronic Arts

(PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3)

…And gaming for all

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
…And gaming for all

GAMER For a second there, the mighty PR machine seemed poised to devour the Game Developers Conference. The communal, feel-good GDC was built on sharing ideas, and in recent years the modest think tank had grown exponentially, as established game developers and publicity houses descended on downtown San Francisco with glossy preview events and headline-stealing announcements that previewed things to come at the summer E3 expo. However, this year the most talked-about events weren’t the off-site previews, but the conference-organized developer sessions, a phenomenon that marked a return to the sentiments that inspired the conference in the first place.

Big-name developers like Peter Molyneux, head of Lionhead games and lead developer of Fable; Cliff Bleszinski, design director of Epic games and spokesman for the Gears of War franchise; The Sims creator Will Wright; Doom honcho John Romero; and outspoken French impresario David Cage were just a few of the draws in the “classroom” area of Moscone Center. While these industry giants lectured about their experiences in the industry and gave postmortems on their classic games, the notion was that they were speaking directly to a generation of developers who might one day become successors — or even competitors.

Inspirational stories were the highlight of the conference, but a handful of games were happy to share the spotlight. And one game set out to draw maximum attention to its upcoming release by staging a controversial rally in Yerba Buena Gardens and releasing hundreds of red balloons over the downtown area. With its near-future shooter Homefront releasing in just a week, publisher THQ embarked on the biggest media push so far this year. In addition to the balloons and the rally (themed like an anti-North Korea rally, complete with posters of Kim Jong Il, a diagonal line through his face and the words “Game Over North Korea”), THQ shuffled press into a themed event with barbed wire, smoke machines, and stony-faced Korean soldiers. With publicity like that, it’s almost beside the point how the game plays, but let’s say it’s largely familiar.

Other attempts to stay relevant came in the form of Uncharted 3, whose developers showed the previously-seen “burning chateau level,” this time showcasing the game’s 3-D feature and an additional story-driven animatic that promises the game will be as blockbuster an experience as its predecessors. Battlefield 3 held an impressive “reveal event,” though the game had been partially revealed weeks earlier in Game Informer magazine. The game has wonderfully realistic animations, but the event itself was designed to draw attention to its Battlefield Play4free online shooter, which offers free FPS gameplay if you don’t mind a microtransaction or two.

With most of the game previews having been seen before, it was nice to see a few publishers making their debuts at the conference, such as The Darkness II, which proved that interactive storytelling has a place, even in a post-Heavy Rain marketplace. With musician Mike Patton returning for vocal duties, the sequel mixes gunplay with gruesome “quad-wielding” tentacle murder and an original, hand painted graphics style. Also making a gameplay debut was Batman: Arkham City, which looks to improve on Arkham Asylum‘s successes in nearly every category and with an attention to detail sure to please gamers and comic aficionados alike.

The conference buzzed with goodwill for the industry shift toward indie and mobile gaming, a revolution that meant a much larger contingent of attendees were likely to already identify as genuine developers. In the conference keynote, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata explicitly noted the shift, in the midst of a surprisingly defensive presentation that attempted to downplay the success of casual game developers and situate Nintendo’s place in the past and present of social gaming. If there’s one thing to take away from the keynote, and the 2011 conference as a whole, it’s the industry shift from conglomerate to individual. Nintendo’s threatened stance, and Microsoft’s noticeable absence, indicates a move toward dividing the industry just as gaming stands to enjoy unprecedented appeal in the form of casual gaming. In a world where anyone with a good idea can make a successful game, we might be looking at a return to the exciting, anything-goes Wild West atmosphere that marked gaming’s birth in the 1970s and ’80s. For an industry that could use a few paradigms shifted, it’s the best news yet.

Game over(load)

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Game over(load)

GAMER 2010, TAKE TWO For the first time in my life, in 2010, I feel the weight of games yet unplayed. Soon, 2011 will begin, and the ghosts of my gaming fecklessness will lurk, dormant, on my hard drive, pregnant with the possibility of fun.

Maybe it’s just that I finally got a life; I am now too busy to head out to GameStop on a Tuesday morning, come home with a new game, and only take a break — for lunch — around 7:30. Maybe games have gotten harder, or I’ve gotten worse — are all those mistimed jumps and bungled headshots adding up? Maybe there’s a simpler answer: games have gotten better, and there are many, many more of them.

With each passing month, it grows harder to prioritize, to write off vast swathes of the medium in the hopes of maintaining a schedule that actually allows for gainful employment. Indie games are becoming more ambitious, jabbing the mega-budgeted mainstream in the ribs with the elbow of unfettered creativity. Minecraft, coded by Swedish programmer Markus Persson in his spare time, has attained nearly 2 million registered users, despite debuting in mid-May alongside the putative game of the year, Rockstar’s cowboy epic Red Dead Redemption.

You also start with a backlog of old games: last year’s modern classics and overlooked gems (one day, I will finish Psychonauts), not to mention the really old games that are increasingly available for a Monopoly-money pittance on networks like Xbox LIVE, Playstation Network, Wii Network, and Valve’s potent PC-gaming service Steam — an insidious piece of software that is the gaming equivalent of having a drug dealer literally living in your house.

As if the congestion wasn’t already bad enough, you can never really finish a game anymore. Downloadable content (DLC) has extended the shelf-life of marquee titles almost indefinitely, allowing developers to graft on missions, characters, and crucial plot developments long after the game has been boxed and shipped, thanks to the aforementioned download services. In general, these add-ons don’t provide much in the way of bang-for-buck, though that may change with time. Nevertheless, in some cases, pertaining particularly to popular multiplayer first-person shooters, purchasing DLC is a prerequisite for participation.

Even if you manage to scale your towering “to play” list, the release schedule simply refuses to cooperate. Sid Meier’s Civilization is the game that made me the addict I am today, and when Civilization V was slated for a Sept. 21 release, I was ecstatic. But a round of Civilization takes about 10 hours, and Dead Rising 2 lurked, hungry for brains, on the horizon, ready to hit store shelves the following week. Next to it, juggling a ball with a confident smirk, was FIFA 11, sharing the same release date. I didn’t stand a chance. In the end, the strategy classic got shamefully short shrift.

Whatever guilt I felt at betraying my childhood obsession was assuaged by countless six-minute soccer showdowns and the corpses of exactly 2,129 zombies. Then, just at the time I was ready to consider diving back into Civ, (or at least to compose Mr. Meier an apologetic letter), Fallout: New Vegas ushered in Armageddon.

To date, I have invested nearly 50 hours of gleeful postnuclear role-playing. Despite this effort, there is much of the game I will probably never see. At a certain point, I had to move on, lest I get hopelessly behind. Thanks to the month of December — the annual industry doldrums — some catch up has been played, but not nearly enough. Two weeks from now, we’ll have a new year. Five weeks from now, we’ll have Dead Space 2, and the backlog will begin again.

Falling for Fallout — again

Andrew Lam
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Falling for Fallout — again

Fallout: New Vegas

(PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks

GAMER Despite the reverence it commands, the Fallout series has a tortured history. The first two games (both classics) were developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay. Out of nowhere, Micro Forte and 14 Degrees East stepped in to produce a licensed spin-off in 2001. Interplay’s 2003 financial difficulties led to the demise of Black Isle, and the publisher produced a fourth game in-house before selling the Fallout name to Bethesda Softworks, which released the mega-hit Fallout 3 in 2008.

The creative core of Black Isle, meanwhile, went on to form Obsidian Entertainment, which cut its teeth on ambitious-but-flawed follow-ups to popular franchises like Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights. After the success of Fallout 3, the company got permission from Bethesda to return to its roots, producing a new game in the post-apocalyptic Fallout universe, superintended by series vets Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone.

The result was Fallout: New Vegas. Though its outward appearance is defined by the wooden character models and awkward animations of the Gamebryo engine (a holdover from Fallout 3 and Bethesda’s swords-and-sorcery smash Oblivion) New Vegas feels and plays more like one of Black Isle’s isometric 1990s classics.

This distinctive sensibility is most notable in the writing, which oozes dark comedy and pulpy, hard-boiled dialogue in a way that Fallout 3 never did. Questing and character creation have also been redesigned in accordance with the Black Isle games’ core principles, necessitating difficult choices whose outcomes are not always immediately clear. The score, by delightfully named Israeli composer Inon Zur, deftly echoes the series’ bizarre, dystopian musical tradition.

There is one element of the original Fallout titles that nobody missed: the bugs. Unfortunately, Black Isle’s questionable quality assurance survived the name change, and New Vegas is not without its many hiccups. Given the sheer scope of the game, however, it’s hard to complain too stridently.

When Interplay shuttered Black Isle in 2003, many of the company’s leading lights felt that the Fallout franchise, every bit their brainchild, had been unfairly taken from them by the vicissitudes of corporate law. Seven years later, they’ve gotten the opportunity to welcome the gaming public back to wasteland. And nothing, after all, says “we’ve missed you” like a dual-mohawked psychopath with a belly full of mutated cockroach steak and a rusty machete.

 

War — what is it good for? Video games!

Andrew Lam
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War — what is it good for? Video games!

Medal Of Honor

Danger Close, Electronic Arts

(Xbox360, PS3, PC)

GAMER Though it arrives a few years behind its contemporaries in updating the mechanics of the original World War II series, Medal of Honor follows Call of Duty and Battlefield into the modern age of warfare. The most memorable aspect of this reboot’s PR muttering was that it was going to be authentic. Game developers working closely with members of the military is nothing new, but developer Danger Close wanted its take to be relevant to today’s war by setting the fight in Afghanistan and making the villains the Taliban. The game’s professed intent is to honor the soldiers who die every day in the conflict but, while the locations lend the game a sort of theoretical accuracy, Medal of Honor mostly just feels like War Games 101.

You won’t have any problems jumping into the action. From the first moments, Medal of Honor‘s game play, pacing, and button layout recall Modern Warfare‘s winning formula. The story is a tad more down to earth, but not without thrills and chills, and a good chunk of the game is devoted to sniper missions that do more than pay homage to the iconic Modern Warfare level “Ghillies in the Mist.” There are a few new twists (I will say, it’s been a while since a war game has made suppressive fire a mandatory game play element) but for the most part Medal of Honor emulates Modern Warfare‘s “shooting gallery” experience, which makes it fine, if not terribly inspired.

First-person shooters now ship with split personalities: single-player and multiplayer. The experiences are so divided (literally, with completely separate title screens) at this point that they might as well be two different games. Many developers have begun to send multiplayer development out-of-house, with the intention of focusing all their strength on the single-player experience. It’s probably a good idea — if one team is spread too thin, both experiences suffer.

Medal of Honor seems to have taken the stance “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” enlisting Battlefield developers DICE in creating its multiplayer experience. As such, Medal of Honor‘s multiplayer emulates the tight feel and style of Battlefield 2 fairly well, but lacks the balance of the different classes. Limiting the choice to assault, spec-ops, or sniper doesn’t encourage teamwork in the same way that including a medic or engineer does.

I suppose Danger Close deserves some kudos for even attempting to engage with a real, contemporary war, but it’s also the sort of thing that needs to be done right. If you’re going to talk the big talk, you better walk the long walk, and Medal of Honor doesn’t really offer much that you can’t find in either of its competitors’ more refined products. Nonetheless, it remains an engaging, well-made war game that delights adequately enough and could indicate a better game to come. 

No brains required

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
No brains required

Dead Rising 2

Blue Castle (Capcom)

Xbox 360/PS3/PC

GAMER If Dead Rising was a videogame homage to Dawn of the Dead (1978), then Dead Rising 2 has taken a big leap forward in the George Romero zombie timeline, landing somewhere near the patchy neighborhood of 2005’s Land of the Dead.

Set a few years after the events of the original, the sequel depicts a society well past the shock and dismay of the zombie outbreak: it’s begun to make money off it. At the game’s outset, motocross driver Chuck Greene is a contestant on a competition TV show called Terror is Reality, where the goal is to slice up zombies on a motorcycle outfitted with chainsaws. This is not a game that takes itself terribly seriously. The original Dead Rising had plenty of goofy material, from Mega Man costumes to psychopathic clowns, but it was also grounded so strongly in its homage to the Romero film that the goofiness felt like icing on a cake. Here, goofiness takes center stage. This isn’t quite a criticism, mind you, and the silly fun you have in Dead Rising 2 beats the pants off watching 2007’s Diary of the Dead any day.

After his appearance on Terror is Reality, and an apparent terrorist attack that caused zombies to break into the show’s studios, Chuck finds himself quarantined on a patch of the Vegas strip with three days to solve mysteries and make sure that his daughter receives her daily shot that prevents her from turning into a member of the undead. As in the original, you’re largely free to go where you like for the three days, but dilly-dallying comes at the expense of saving other survivors. That clock is always ticking down, and it quickly becomes clear that it’s impossible to do everything the game offers in the time given, forcing you to make choices about whom to save and which mysteries to investigate.

This isn’t some complex moral exercise: the real reason to play Dead Rising 2 is to kill lots of zombies. We’re talking thousands upon thousands, filling every screen. Luckily, Las Vegas is packed with the tools of zombie disposal, from lawnmowers to novelty foam fingers, and the game introduces a new system of combining items to make them doubly efficient and doubly hilarious. Grab that rake and attach a car battery and you have an electric rake — perfect for zapping zombies at a safe distance.

Other than the new location and the combo items, developer Capcom didn’t mess much with the formula; in fact, a number of the game’s sections are indistinguishable from the first title. The option to play cooperatively with a friend is welcome, but the multiplayer portion is more afterthought than anything. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but there aren’t a lot of games in the “zombie sandbox” genre and the overwhelming wealth of stuff to do in Dead Rising 2 suggests you’ll be slicing up zombies and making yourself laugh for a long time to come.

Deja vu all over again

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Deja vu all over again

Crackdown 2

(Ruffian)

Xbox 360

GAMER In a case of super-stealthy marketing, Microsoft placed access to the eagerly-anticipated 2007 Halo 3 beta on the disc to Crackdown, a then-unknown IP. Gamers bought the unproven game for a sneak peek at the biggest game of the year, and found themselves ensnared by Crackdown‘s hyper-realistic superhero universe and carrot-on-a-stick gameplay, which rewarded gamers for exploration. Three years later we get Crackdown 2, developed by an offshoot from the original team, and not much has changed in the game’s fictional Pacific City. Set 10 years after the first title, once again you play an agent for a shady company called simply the Agency and are tasked with saving the city from destruction.

While Crackdown was a stylized take on the Grand Theft Auto series, the sequel is influenced by recent zombie successes like Left 4 Dead, trading gangsters for undead “Freaks” who now litter the city and its numerous underground caves. Other than the new enemies, Crackdown 2 is pretty much the same game we saw three years ago, with a slew of brand new problems. Setting aside the numerous bugs and frame rate issues I experienced in Pacific City, it’s disappointing to see that there remains little story beyond the above one-sentence synopsis. With no incentive for their actions, players are forced to make their own fun in an open-word environment that they probably visited just a short time ago. Repetition has always been the name of the game — dispatching foes is secondary to hunting down hidden orbs scattered throughout the city, increasing your stats and making your agent leap higher and live longer — but playing Crackdown 2 is itself an exercise in repetition, because it’s the same city and the same stats as the first game.

Crackdown 2‘s development cycle was reportedly somewhere in the range of eight months, and in that time developer Ruffian has given the game an unattractive facelift and added the ability to play against 16 other players. Granted, eight months is not long enough to build a full-blow sequel, but Crackdown 2 is a full-priced, glorified add-on to the first title and that’s likely to upset gamers expecting bigger and better. Since 2007 a number of companies have taken a stab at the idea of an open-world superhero, most notably Prototype and Infamous, but the spirit of competition has not done Crackdown any favors. If you liked the original, you might be able to look past the problems its sequel tosses at you for the pure joy of collecting stuff, which remains the series’ best feature. But if Ruffian doesn’t make a big change in the franchise’s next iteration, it’s going to find itself left in the dust. 

Welcome to Elm Street: Part Six

Sue Vaughan
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0
Welcome to Elm Street: Part Six

In honor(?) of the new A Nightmare on Elm Street, we’re recapping all of the Elms so far. Find more on the Pixel Vision blog.

By 1991, when the optimistically-titled Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare rolled around, the Elm Street series was still making money, but delivering few scares. Not like the series’ beloved hero cared, really — Freddy Krueger was as popular as ever. Just look at the opening credits of Freddy’s Dead, which equate Krueger and Nietzsche as quotable icons (“Welcome to prime time, bitch!” remains a phrase of note among philosophers, I’m sure.)

The only Nightmare film directed by a woman (Rachel Talalay, who made her directing debut; she later made 1995’s Tank Girl and has since helmed a shit-ton of TV shows), and the only to utilize 3-D (more on that later), Freddy’s Dead is set ten years in the future (so, 2001?) Freddy has slaughtered every kid in Springwood; the adults who remain are bonkers. The sole survivor is a height-phobic teen (Shon Greenblatt) we only ever know as John Doe; the film’s opening sequence pays homage to both The Twilight Zone and The Wizard of Oz (1939) as John ejects from a freaky airplane ride into a house spinning through a wind storm. Do I really have to tell you Freddy sails by on a broom stick? “I’ll get you, my pretty — and your little soul, too!”

John lives, but barely — battered and with no memory, he’s picked up by cops in Depressed Americatown, USA, and taken to a run-down shelter for troubled teens staffed by Maggie (Lisa Zane — yes, Billy’s sister!) and Doc (the Yaphet Kotto). In short order, we’re introduced to a ragtag crew of Dream Warriors 2.0: dope-smoking video game addict Spencer (future movie and TV semi-star Breckin Meyer); tough bitch Tracy (Lezlie Deane); and hearing aid-wearing Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan). In keeping with a series theme that’s especially pronounced here, all three have abusive parents.

The fact that John Doe has violent, vivid nightmares is intriguing to both Doc — who specializes in “dream therapy” — and Maggie, who suffers her own disturbing dreams. When it becomes apparent that Maggie and John are having variations on the same dream (though Maggie’s play out more like flashbacks, or sinister home movies), she hustles him into the youth center’s comically beat-up van for a visit to Springwood. Hey, maybe it’ll jog his memory — or hers.

OF COURSE, the three reckless youths with obviously identifiable weaknesses happen to stow along for the ride. Bad move. Springwood proves to be empty, save for a few insane adults (including Roseanne and Tom Arnold, at the height of their tabloid fame). While Maggie and John search for clues to their dark pasts, Spencer, Tracy, and Carlos explore an abandoned house — on Elm Street. Freddy appears and immediately begins fucking with all involved: for example, the deaf kid gets a Freddy-style hearing aid that makes everything painfully loud, and is then subjected to the sound of Freddy gleefully scratching his claws along a chalkboard. Needless to say, Carlos’ head explodes; needless to add, Freddy’s kiss-off is “Nice hearin’ from ya!”

Spencer’s death is far more humorous, and is probably the best example of how un-terrifying Freddy has become by now. As the stoner dozes, a busted TV comes to life. Johnny Depp does a rememberin’-my-roots cameo in a fake TV commercial, which is interrupted by Freddy. “Hey Spence — let’s trip out!” Droopy-eyed Spence grins as Iron Butterfly plays and psychedelic waves suck him into the set. Suddenly, he’s a character in a video game, being pounded first by his domineering father (“Be like me!”) and then Freddy himself, who’s also manning the joystick in some alternate reality to this alternate reality. As Maggie and Tracy watch in horror (and, presumably, the audience howls in delight), Spence sleepwalks all over the house, punching walls and bouncing into the ceiling. “Great graphics,” gamer Freddy murmurs in approval.

Anyway. Spence dies, and a sleeping John Doe can’t be roused to prevent his own untimely end (it involves a parachute and a bed of nails). Earlier, he and Maggie had learned from Springwood’s orphanage that Freddy Krueger’d had a kid, current whereabouts unknown. John had thought he was Krueger Jr., safe from Freddy’s wrath. But no! His last words, to Maggie: “It’s not a boy!”

So, Maggie the nightmare-having doctor realizes what we’ve known all along: Freddy Krueger is her father! ZOMG! Freddy’s Dead takes the opportunity to sketch in a backstory for our favorite child killer: he’s seen pulverizing a hamster as his eight-year-old classmates chant “Son of a hundred maniacs!”; he’s seen enjoying a beating from his stepfather (the Alice Cooper); he’s seen, through Maggie’s eyes, murdering his wife after she discovers a secret room in their Springwood house (contents: gloves, weird things in jars, cookies). Young Maggie, or Katherine, or whatever her birth name was, was sent to the orphanage soon after, giving Freddy further motivation to kill every kid in town. Or something. Apparently he was a devoted father.

Meanwhile, back at the shelter, Doc immediately understands the situation, unlike every other authority figure in the series EVER: “He’s fucking with the line between dreams and reality!” Seems Freddy is also trying to get Maggie to bring him more victims, allowing for this crowd-pleasing exchange:  “But this isn’t Springwood!” “Every town [dramatic pause] has an Elm Street!”

It is soon decided that Maggie, being Freddy’s spawn, is the only one who can enter his thoughts, get ahold of him in dreamville, and bring him into the real world, where he can be killed the fuck dead. “You’ll use these,” Doc says, pulling out a pair of 3-D glasses. While it might’ve been easier for the filmmakers to just insert a title card reading “PUT ON THE GLASSES NOW Y’ALL,” I suppose this was a somewhat more subtle way to issue the same orders.

Anyway, there’s an extended tussle in shoddy 3-D. Freddy finally dies (Maggie spears him with his own glove, for maximum irony). The end credits, which offer a memorializing highlight reel of Freddy’s greatest kills, unspool over what has to be Iggy Pop’s least-popular song of all time, “Why Was I Born? (Freddy’s Dead).” And horror fans finally know the answer to the question that’d gripped their dreams for nearly a decade: how do you kill Freddy Krueger? You could believe the movie’s harebrained plot. Or you could believe the evidence presented by the movie itself: kill the monster by transforming him into a campy, cackling, comedian.

Don’t worry — there are two more Freddy movies, plus the new flick, to go on our series. Grab a cup of coffee, kids!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmdityGT-R8&feature=related

Gamer: “Heavy Rain” review

Sue Vaughan
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Gamer: “Heavy Rain” review

By Peter Galvin

Heavy Rain
(Quantic Dream)
PS3

A new game where you wiggle and waggle your controller in time with on-screen prompts? No, it’s not a new Wii game. Heavy Rain for the PS3 is a dark thriller from the people who brought you the sleeper hit Indigo Prophecy. With the technology developers have at their disposal these days, it’s become feasible in many ways for games to truly resemble the cinematic experience of a feature film. Heavy Rain takes that idea one step further by playing out much like an interactive movie.

Players switch among four main characters as they unravel the identity of the “Origami Killer,” a psychopath who has been kidnapping children and drowning them in rainwater. Playing as multiple characters is essential not only in covering the amount of ground the game wants you to experience, but in making the game as choice-based as possible. Developer Quantic Dream boasts that the decisions you make as you play have heavy consequences affecting the game’s outcome. At particular moments, main characters can even die and the game will continue on without them. The killer is almost a MacGuffin for these choices, giving characters a reason to go from place to place and perform tasks.

All that sounds well and good, but whether or not it works is another matter. Despite trumpeting a new-found level of choice and consequence in the gaming world, Heavy Rain is actually not as singular an experience as you are led to believe. Time-based button prompts are the backbone of the gameplay, yet often a missed button prompt will have no real consequence. When I’m speeding down the wrong side of the freeway, dodging cars, and the game tells me to press right to not hit a road worker, I fully expect that messing that up will result in that person’s loss of life. Instead nothing happens. The game continues, as I expect it does for anyone, to the pre-determined conclusion.

How much this loss of choice affects your playing depends on how you approach the title. If you ignore the widely-publicized levels of choice and personalization that the game touts and choose instead to play the game as an interactive movie with Simon Says-style prompts to ramp up the intensity of the action, the game succeeds admirably. The story is intriguing and the many action-oriented scenes are tense and exciting. The on-screen prompts, no matter how simple or arbitrary, do personalize the player’s actions, increasing the unfolding drama — especially when those movements are 1:1. But as a groundbreaking experience about choice and consequence, Heavy Rain is all smoke and mirrors.

Brütal odyssey

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Brütal odyssey

>>Read Ben Richardson’s full interview with Tim Schafer here

arts@sfbg.com

GAMER "The first time we pitched it, they wanted us to change the genre, to make it about country or hip-hop or something."

Game designer Tim Schafer is sitting in his SoMa office, in his favorite chair — appropriately, a rocking chair — and talking about his masterpiece. "They were saying, ‘Why don’t you open it to all music?’ We said, ‘Look — this is a game about epic battles, good vs. evil, Braveheart-type moments. And heavy metal is the musical genre that focuses heavily on folklore. It sings about medieval combat. It’s really the only genre that makes sense for it.’"

The game is Brütal Legend (Double Fine/EA), and in the end, Schafer got his way. Taking control of Eddie Riggs, a grizzled roadie voiced by Jack Black, the player journeys through a metal landscape inspired by the album covers the designer studied in his youth. Wielding a massive battle-ax and a magical guitar, Riggs encounters righteous friends and fiendish foes, including characters voiced by luminaries like Lemmy Kilmister, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, and Lita Ford. The soundtrack is a carefully compiled list of headbang-inducing classics.

Schafer agrees that the game is his most personal creation to date. "All games are wish fulfillments. All games are about fantasy. This is a game where I’ve been able to make my own wish fulfillment. I would like to go back in time with a cool car and a battle-axe while listening to heavy metal."

THE TROOPER

Growing up in Sonoma, the designer escaped his suburban life by rocking out to Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden. He would drive down to San Francisco for shows, catching sets at Mabuhay Gardens or the Stone. The music introduced him to a mythic world of horned hell-monsters, glistening chrome, and mortal combat, a world he never quite left behind.

He attended both UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, dividing his attention between computer programming and creative writing, two talents he would later fuse. At Berkeley, he took a class on folklore from Alan Dundes, a provocative professor whose belief in the power of folklore influenced Schafer’s work tremendously. In 1989, he got a job in San Rafael at Lucasfilm Games, now LucasArts. He was assigned to The Secret of Monkey Island, a comedic adventure game by designer Ron Gilbert. Monkey Island was the perfect vehicle for Schafer’s talents, taking full advantage of his boundless imagination, storytelling sense, and biting wit. It is best remembered for its "insult sword fighting" section, in which dueling buccaneers trade verbal jabs in lieu of physical ones.

Mitch Krpata, game critic for the Boston Phoenix and author of the blog Insult Swordfighting, identified the defining quality of Schafer’s LucasArts output via e-mail: "Character. There are a few archetypes that most games go to again and again: silent man of action, easygoing everyman, tormented soul out for revenge. Schafer’s protagonists aren’t like that. They’re individuals. They’re good guys, but they have flaws, and their flaws aren’t things like they just care too much, dammit."

BE QUICK OR BE DEAD

After finishing the biker-themed Full Throttle in 1995, Schafer hunted inspiration. It came to him as an unlikely combination of themes, both closely tied to his San Francisco home. Initially, he was devouring classic noir films at the Lark and Castro theatres. A trip to the Day of the Dead parade in the city’s Mission District delivered the epiphany. The higher-ups at LucasArts had been agitating for a game with 3-D graphics, a prospect he did not relish. "I really hated the look of 3-D art back then, because it looked like a nylon stretched over a cardboard box," he remembers.

Picking through a table of Day of the Dead ephemera, the idea came: "I saw those calavera statues. Instead of modeling all of the bones in papier-mâché, they’ll just make a tube and paint the bones on the outside. I was like, ‘This is just like bad 3-D art. This is great!’"

Additional fodder was provided by doctor visits to 450 Sutter — a building that combines Art Deco architecture with Mayan motifs — and Schafer began work on his most ambitious project to date. Drawing on his collegiate folklore training, he and his team wove together elements of Day of the Dead tradition, Aztec folk tales, and noir cinema to create 1998’s Grim Fandango (LucasArts), a sprawling epic of crime and love in which all the characters were stylized, calavera-style skeletons "living" in the Land of the Dead. Featuring a labyrinthine, affecting story, delectable hard-boiled dialogue, and stunning art direction, it is still ranked among the best games of all time.

RUNNING FREE

Schafer left LucasArts in 1999, concerned that the company would exercise its ownership of his beloved characters without his participation. He wanted to found his own studio in San Francisco. As he told me over the phone, "Working at a company where you can look out the window and see the city outside is just so inspiring. It’s not just about having great restaurants at lunch, though that’s part of it." Starting in his living room "in a bathrobe and flip-flops," the nascent Double Fine Productions — named after a "double fine zone" sign on the Golden Gate bridge — jumped from location to location, including an unheated warehouse with a rodent problem and a toilet that often unleashed an "ocean of human waste" into the office.

The first Double Fine game was 2005’s Psychonauts, an ambitious project about a summer camp for psychic kids that failed to reach the wide audience it deserved. Even in this rarefied setting, Schafer included bits of the city’s lore. A character named Boyd was based on a homeless man who hung out near the team’s offices, doing odd jobs and enlightening the Double Fine crew with his extensive conspiracy theories.

"Sometimes he would just be on a rant about [how] the government would be trying to read his mind using satellites, or using the broken glass in the streets to bend their optics around," Schafer recalls. "He just produced great quotes: ‘I don’t want to be liquid, I want to be a turtle with rockets strapped to my back!’" Deciding to include him in the game, the designer painstakingly created a flow-chart that would procedurally generate conspiracy theories for Boyd to spout onscreen. "He constructs it by coming up with a conspirator, what their plan is, what the victim of it is, and strings it all together with a bunch of coughing and stuff."

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

Brütal Legend, Double Fine’s latest game, was released Oct. 13, and gamers across the country will have the opportunity to play through the piece of San Francisco folklore most familiar to Schafer: the one based on himself. By making a game about a character transported from our familiar world into an ax-happy metal battleground, the designer has turned his story, the story of a misfit headbanger from a city steeped in metal history, into a new kind of 21st century myth.

Gooooaaaallll!

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FIFA ’10

Electronic Arts (XBOX360, PS3, PC)

GAMER Soccer is the world’s most popular sport, so it follows that soccer video games are among the world’s most popular games. With such a mammoth amount of cash on offer, the battle to be the planet’s premier publisher of simulated footy boasts extremely high stakes. For more than a decade, two of gaming’s biggest names, Electronic Arts (U.S.) and Konami (Japan) have fought tooth and claw for the affections of the vast soccer-gaming constituency, releasing yearly versions of their dueling mega-franchises, FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer.

For years, the Americans came in second best, using their financial clout to secure licensing agreements with leagues and players, but delivering poor gameplay. The reasons at the time seemed obvious — Americans don’t like soccer. Americans don’t understand soccer. EA’s glossy licenses played into a narrative of U.S. imperialism, in which a rapacious corporation strip-mined the world’s game and its gamer devotees, backed by its Madden millions. Embattled "Pro Evo" was the preferred product everywhere, attracting tournament players, couch-bound amateurs, and quarter-hoarding arcade addicts alike. Even the pros themselves played it.

This lasted until 2007. A new class had matriculated at EA’s Montreal substation, led by producer David Rutter and programmer Gary Paterson, a Scot and a lifelong football fan. A talented group of designers, they were sick of living in Pro Evo‘s long shadow, almost as sick as the higher-ups at EA, who were perennially No. 2 at the gaming box office. Recognizing that only serious change would get FIFA back into the profitable sun, the team rebuilt their game from the pitch up. Instead of constantly chasing Konami’s innovations with ineffective imitations, they would produce something completely unlike Pro Evo — new, different, and worthy of being judged on its own merits.

When FIFA ’07 was released, the differences were obvious. Paterson, realizing that the excitement of soccer lay in its unpredictable outcomes, spearheaded the redesign by throwing out all the canned animations. Instead of player and ball interacting in a scripted, predetermined fashion, player and ball became realistic objects, coming together in a simulated physical world that obeyed Newtonian rules like gravity, momentum, and acceleration. Shots on goal, which previously resembled shots you’d see coming from a gun in an action game, now hinged on a complex combination of variables, like ball speed, shooting angle, and player skill.

Seemingly overnight, the FIFA team had a game that felt more like real soccer than Pro Evo ever had. Fans and critics were stunned — the world’s soccer-gaming hierarchy had been abruptly turned on its head. FIFA ’08 and ‘09 continued in a similar vein. The team in Montreal, not content to rest on their laurels, incorporated the massive strides made in realistic physics modeling to make the games better, more realistic, and much more exciting. Taking advantage of EA’s huge marketing budget, they recruited marquee players and tapped consumers neglected by Konami, particularly Spanish-speaking game buyers in the U.S. FIFA ’09 smashed sales records, and powered more than 275 million individual online matches. The franchise, often the bridesmaid, was finally the bride, and it was marrying rich.

On Sept. 17, EA released the demo version of FIFA ’10, which hits stores Oct. 22. The game boasts a number of improvements, including a new dribbling system, which finally frees players from the strictures of eight-way movement — one of the most transparently "game-y" elements of simulated soccer, but also the most intractable. Sales are expected to calcify EA’s dominance. Ensconced on its newfound throne, the massive publisher would do well to heed the lesson that got it there: when the gamers are opening their wallets, you’re only as good as your last game engine.

Autumn with Xbox

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GAMER The fall release schedule lacks the marquee names and rabid hype that defined the previous year in gaming, but thumb-callused consumers everywhere should have much to look forward to following a summer of ho-hum titles.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward/Activision), PS3, Xbox360, PC After farming out a by-the-numbers semi-sequel, Call of Duty: World at War, to developers Treyarch, Infinity Ward has redeployed. Bridging the treacherous divide between immaculately choreographed single-player campaigns and frenetic, repayable multiplayer, Modern Warfare the first was a smash hit and remains an XBox Live staple. Activision will count on its tent pole FPS to hit another one out of the park, with the help of snowmobile chase firefights and all manner of shit that goes "boom!" (Nov. 10)

The Beatles: Rock Band (Harmonix/MTV Games/EA), PS3, Xbox360, Wii Not just another rhythm game; more like a labor of love. Unlike, say, "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" (Activision), the Fab Four’s name comes first for this title. Early reviewers have heaped praise on Harmonix, honing in on the attention paid to visual detail. Beyond recreating the band’s distinctive instruments and best-known gigs, the developers worked closely with Apple Corps. to animate "dreamscape" sequences that will set the scene for the group’s late-period, psychedelic tunes. Three-part harmonies and the ability to download the Liverpudlian quartet’s entire catalog (which is still not possible on iTunes) are just gravy. (Sept. 9)

Borderlands (Gearbox/2K Games), PS3, Xbox360, PC Gearbox’s twitch-based postapocalpytic RPG made early headlines by effecting a complete change in art direction, resulting in its idiosyncratic, cel-shaded look. More important is the promise of a huge open world, four-player co-op, and the Diablo (Blizzard)–baiting siren call of procedurally generated loot. (Oct. 20)

Brütal Legend (Double Fine/Electronic Arts), PS3, Xbox360 The long-awaited masterpiece from San Francisco’s resident game royalty, Tim Schafer. The Grim Fandango (Lucasarts) creator and his team at Double Fine have ridden a rollercoaster to get this game in stores, but a bevy of celebrity voice talent, a head-banging soundtrack, and Schafer’s boundless imagination are sure to make it worth the wait. Also enticing are Ocarina of Time (Nintendo)-style spellcasting via electric guitar, a so-crazy-it-just-might-work RTS option for multiplayer, and enough heavy metal-themed mayhem to fill a few hundred macabre record sleeves. If you can only slay $60 worth of bloodthirsty demon between now and the holiday game glut, this is your surefire pick. (Oct. 13)

Hittin’ the tube

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THE DRUG ISSUE After watching hours of Intervention — A&E’s reality show that profiles addicts, their families, and their painful first steps toward recovery — I concluded that junkies don’t watch Intervention. But if the average non-junkie watches too much Intervention, he or she will without a doubt become addicted to Intervention. So proceed cautiously.

With the exception of special "follow-up" entries, the structure of every episode (seven seasons’ worth) is similar. First you meet the addict (alcoholic, crack smoker, heroin injector, bulimic, huffer, pill-popper, meth-taker, overshopper, excessive video gamer, etc.) and take stock of his or her increasingly fucked-up life (job and/or marriage lost, homeless, secret stripping gig, custody of children taken away, threat of jail, etc.) Then you meet the loved ones (weepy grandma, terminally ill father, adorably articulate pre-teen, resentful husband, etc.) who’ve been enabling the addict for years, but are now pushed to the edge. The more compelling stories hog an entire show, but most of the time Intervention‘s intrepid editors split the hour between two unrelated yet carefully calibrated cases (for example, the plight of an anorexic single mom is cross-cut with that of a hulking rageaholic).

Rock bottom looms. But what’s that knock at the door? Why, it’s one of three Intervention-ists — mustachioed Jeff VanVonderen, redhead Candy Finnigan, or raspy-voiced Ken Seeley — here to oversee what’s inevitably an extremely emotional sit-down with the addict, who is thereafter spirited away to a recovery center. A quick post-rehab update, in the form of a sober and smiling subject (or on-screen text, in case things don’t go so well), ends each ep.

The reason I say junkies don’t watch Intervention is that they never suspect what’s in store. They all "agree to be in a documentary about addiction," which explains why they allow a camera crew to peep in as they steal medication, forge checks, fall down drunk, and so forth. But the intervention itself is always a complete surprise, suggesting that crack addicts have better things to do than watch A&E all day, or scour A&E’s Web site for newly posted tidbits. Intervention‘s popularity can be pinpointed thusly: it’s got the dramatic lure of a sensational trainwreck, but with the immense appeal of seeing a person who’s hit rock bottom turn his or her life around. Does this show inspire people to get help? Maybe. Is it exploitative? Perhaps. But one thing’s for sure: after your first Intervention viewing, you’ll be jonesin’ for more.

www.aetv.com/intervention

Happy trails

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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

(Techland, Ubisoft; PC, XBOX360, PS3)

GAMER Though the cowboy is a quintessentially American hero, the Western genre has flourished in the hands of foreigners. Famous for his "Dollars" trilogy, Italian director Sergio Leone was one of the many European filmmakers who reinvented and preserved the form, even as it became unfashionable in the U.S. With this in mind, the efforts of Polish developers Techland in creating Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood are impressive, but less surprising. Replicating the distinctive look and tone of many gun-slinging classics, the team tiptoes the split-rail fence separating homage from imitation, crafting a first-person shooter with enough escapist, six-gun fun to counterbalance its many faults.

The game is a prequel to 2006’s uneven Call of Juarez, providing back-story for the original’s two protagonists — Billy Candle, a kid with a knack for getting trapped in nigh-unplayable Thief (1998) — style stealth levels, and Ray McCall, a Bible-toting psychopath who could harangue his enemies with scripture at the press of a button.

Ray is back, swapping his good book for a brace of Colts, and he’s joined by his brother Thomas, who favors a long rifle, a lasso, and a waistcoat full of throwing knives. Each sibling has a distinct playstyle, and you choose to control one or the other at the beginning of most levels. This is a welcome elaboration on the first game’s alternating setup, in which players would clear each level twice, first as Billy, then as Ray, hot in pursuit. Having the choice in Bound in Blood adds some needed variety, and invests the player in the brothers’ increasingly fierce rivalry.

Their enmity revolves around Marisa, the femme fatale astride a convoluted plot that draws on a number of Western tropes. Buried gold, rogue Confederates, angry Apaches, wisecracking banditos — it’s all there. Ray and Thomas blast their way through reverent, set-piece shootouts, trading gruff jibes as competition for Marisa’s affections heats up. With two playable characters, the lack of split-screen or online co-op is a glaring oversight, as irksome as the aggressive auto-aim or the brain-dead, shooting-gallery AI. Pistol-duel boss fights comprise the game’s best moments, switching the camera to holster-eye third-person and requiring the player to slowly circle their opponent before quick-drawing and firing at the toll of a bell.

Class-based multiplayer will keep some cowpokes coming back, but this seven-hour game is probably better as a rental. Though it’s not bad, and certainly not ugly, "good" would be too kind.

Who ya gonna call?

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Ghostbusters: The Video Game

(Atari/Sony Computer Entertainment/Terminal Reality)

XBOX360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, Nintendo DS

GAMER Before survival horror, pwnage, and musclebound men cursing at each other in 1080p, video games were pretty funny. The mid-’90s saw a slew of comedic adventure classics, released when low computing power made witty writing more valuable than dynamically plasma-rifled gobbets of viscera. Now, it seems, the jokes are slinking back. Aging titles like LucasArts’ Monkey Island series and Sam and Max Hit the Road have been resurrected by Telltale Games. Tim Schafer, creator of the tragicomic noir masterpiece Grim Fandango, has Brütal Legend, starring Jack Black, slated for release this fall.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a worthy example of this humorous trend. With a script by original Ghostbusters (1984) writers Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, the game demonstrates the immense value of providing characters with amusing, engaging, human dialogue. While most developers will probably stick to the monkeys-with-typewriters approach (yes, you, Gears of War 2), Aykroyd and Ramis flesh out an enjoyable new Ghostbusters tale, nailing the atmosphere, repartee, and goofy sarcasm that made the movies such big hits.

All four lead actors are back in the fold for voice work (plus Annie Potts as the secretary), and familiar ghosts and locations will give fans of the films much to revel in. Though the plot is not spectacular, casting the player as the anonymous, mute "rookie" member of the team, the action ramps up quickly. And having Bill Murray’s laconic Peter Venkman on your six is probably more than enough for some people anyway.

Terminal Reality did yeoman work on the level design, replicating recognizable movie environments and surrounding the team with destructible, physics-based junk just dying to be zapped with a proton pack. Cutscenes bring the four actors (and their ’80s hairlines) to life, although the lip syncing and motion-capture animation is decidedly substandard.

When the gameplay sticks to a classic "bust-’em, trap-’em" formula, playing is a breeze, and a variety of "experimental" weapons add some spice. Ill-considered design decisions abound, however, and the game can quickly become frustrating. The AI Ghostbusters are good for an impressive number of hilarious quips, but can’t bust ghosts or stay alive worth a damn. The difficulty spikes and ebbs, skewed by the fact that most enemies can take you out in one or two hits, and the environmental puzzles are lame when they aren’t sort of obtuse. Boss battles tend towards the tedious. I’m glad people still remember how to build a game around great writing, but someone should hook them up with creators of fun, invigorating gameplay. It could get ugly, though. I hear the monkeys have a union.

Arm race

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Bionic Commando

(GRIN/Capcom; PC, XBOX 360, PS3)

GAMER Reading faithfully from Hollywood’s remake-happy script, the game industry has learned to cannibalize its history. Bionic Commando is the first in an ever-expanding series of big-budget 8-bit retreads; Splatterhouse (Namco Bandai) is due out later this year, and more are sure to follow.

Bionic Commando slots you into the futuristic combat boots of Nathan Spencer, voiced ably if bombastically by Faith No More’s Mike Patton. Spencer is equipped with a bionic arm, a telescoping grappling hook of a limb that enables him to cling to his surroundings and swing, Tarzan-style, through the game’s various levels. The arm is the game’s defining feature, imbuing an otherwise unremarkable third-person action title with a giddy, kinetic thrill.

Physics-based acrobatics are a passable reason to resurrect a moldering NES franchise, and it’s too bad Swedish developers GRIN couldn’t revamp the production values as well. The game is rated "M," for mature, which means the characters curse like it’s going out of style, but the story is insulting to anyone with intelligence even approaching maturity, when it makes sense at all. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a scientifically-augmented super-soldier is released from prison in exigent circumstances, made hostage by withheld knowledge of his missing wife-slash-daughter-slash-favorite toy, and charged with saving the world by sinister higher-ups who are totally not going to stab him in the back at a crucial moment.

Despite its free-swinging promise, the game’s lushly designed levels are disappointingly linear. Wide-open areas are liberally slathered with "radiation," an ugly blue texture that acts as a wagging finger of disapproval every time you try to go somewhere the level designers didn’t want you to. Swing too high? Death by radiation. Too low? Radiation. Too far to the left? You get the idea.

Also frustrating is a profusion of tepid, gun-based combat, and when you’re not using your arm to throw cars at things, you’re frantically trying to put bullet-shaped holes in the helmeted henchmen of Gottfried Groeder, a cartoon fascist with a German accent that would make Major Toht blush all the way down to the Headpiece of Ra-shaped scar on his palm.

Given these drawbacks, multiplayer proved to be a refreshing pleasure. Radiation-free and adrenaline-heavy, the game’s death matches make you feel like Master Chief crossed with Spider-Man, and the bionic arm provides all sorts of invigorating possibilities. There are possibilities of a sequel too, judging from the post-credits teaser. If someone makes the rounds at GRIN headquarters installing bionic brains, I might be interested.

Metal militia

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Guitar Hero: Metallica

(Neversoft, Xbox 360, PS3; Budcat Creations, Wii, PS2)

GAMER Metallica were recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which they surely had in mind while writing their 1983 debut album Kill ‘Em All (Megaforce). Back in the spotlight and riding high on the release of 2008’s Death Magnetic (Warner Bros), which many have optimistically heralded as a return to form, the Bay Area’s most famous thrash band returned to store shelves this spring with Guitar Hero: Metallica. The latest in a burgeoning string of rock ‘n’ roll rhythm titles, the game is the second to focus on an individual artist, following on the heels of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith but predating the upcoming Beatles collaboration with Guitar Hero competitors Rock Band.

The game’s catalog spans 49 songs, incorporating 28 Metallica master recordings from all phases of their career, in addition to 21 hand-picked songs by band-approved rockers like King Diamond and Kyuss. Its now-familiar format enables four people to get together on drums, bass, guitar, and vocals, following candy-colored prompts onscreen to crank out high-voltage facsimiles of classics like "Hit the Lights" and "Master of Puppets."

The band appears in the game as motion-captured metal titans, and Neversoft’s animators render them right down to the mole on Kirk Hammett’s face. Songs are performed in the venues of Metallica lore, including their legendary 1991 concert at Moscow’s Tushino Airfield, where a free show drew a million-odd frenzied Muscovite headbangers. A profusion of pyro onscreen does make you worry a little bit for the health of pixelated James Hetfield.

The intricate, speedy compositions are not for the faint of heart. And while beginners are afforded introductory difficulties to hone their skills, Guitar Hero vets will be surprised by the challenges they face, including double kick pedal support for the drumset. Stumbling blocks aside, Metallica’s music is rife with satisfying riffs, and recreating Lars Ulrich’s heavy-handed drum fills or the bands rapid-fire thrash is laden with lots of ineffable plastic-instrument delight.

If you like metal, and Guitar Hero, the game is a must buy. If you’re into the former, but not the latter, you might be surprised at the way the deceptively simple transcription enables a deeper enjoyment of the music. Conversely, if your fingers are already toughened by those five magical buttons but you don’t care for Metallica, you might just change your tune once you’ve nailed the guitar solo in "Orion." If you don’t like either, why didn’t you just skip to the next page?

Undead again

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Resident Evil 5

(Capcom; Xbox 360, PS3)

GAMER With sales hovering around the 35 million mark, Capcom’s Resident Evil series has become less of a cash cow and more of a cash elephant. If I explained to you that Resident Evil 5 is in fact the seventh game in the main series, you might care, but suffice to say that between a bookshelf’s worth of games, novelizations, comic books, and feature films, expectations for the most recent installment are running high.

The new title takes place in Africa, where franchise stalwart Chris Redfield has arrived to be gruff and kill things in the name of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. The world is beset on all sides by misanthropes with syringes full of tentacle-rich zombifying megavirus, and only the BSAA can keep us from being turned into creatures that look like a walking combination of ground beef and motor oil.

Redfield is joined by his hard-bodied counterpart, Sheva Alomar, a local operative who accompanies the player throughout. Cooperation is the name of the game this time around, and you’ll have to pool resources and abilities to survive. Sidekick A.I. is one of gaming’s greatest deficiencies, and though Sheva’s is certainly passable (read: not a constant frustration), simple online and same-room co-op features make two-person play the optimal approach.

The game retains Resident Evil’s infuriating "stop-and-pop" controls, rooting you to the spot every time you aim your weapon. This is ostensibly to preserve the series’ survival-horror roots, although you would be hard-pressed to find anything scary during the game’s paltry 12 hours of gameplay. RE5 plays like an action title, with streamlined item-management and save utilities and a lot of relentless gunplay.

Visually, the game is stunning, creating an atmospheric and detailed world for the player to riddle with bullets. If only the other aspects of the game’s presentation had received even half as much attention — the writing is horrifically stilted, and the story is incomprehensible. Sometimes it seems like the designers are purposefully insulting the players’ intelligence — "The power is off. Maybe there’s some way to turn it back on" — and every single point is made with a sledgehammer. Early trailers for the game brought accusations of racism (white cop mows down herds of bug-eyed Africans), and while this charge loses potency in context, the appearance of grass-skirted "tribal" zombies who literally throw spears at you is extremely problematic. Thankfully, when your back’s to the wall and you’re running out of ammo, it doesn’t really matter if the zombies are black, blue, or green.

Meaner streets

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Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned

(Rockstar North; Xbox 360)

GAMER Ever since the "next-gen" consoles shipped with capacious hard-drives and easy access to the broadband interwebs, gamers have been paying the price. Picking up where the boxed expansion pack model left off, publishers realized they could nickel-and-dime their fans with "downloadable content packs," recalling the "Batmobile sold separately" chicanery of action figure advertising and failing to deliver even the most rudimentary bang for your buck.

It comes as something of a relief, then, when a developer eschews horse armor and warmed-over levels too crappy for the retail version and provides some downloadable content actually worth the bandwidth, let alone the greenbacks. Grand Theft Auto IV makers Rockstar North restore some hope with The Lost and Damned, a worthwhile 10-hour nugget of episodic expansion that once again turns gamers loose in the open-world cesspool of Liberty City.

You play Johnny Klebitz, a surly biker with bad tribal tattoos and a cadre of "brothers" in the Lost, one of the metropolis’ warring biker gangs. Engaged in a power struggle with the gang’s atavistic head honcho and mired in the world of crime that defines Rockstar’s dystopic settings, Klebitz is soon fighting for his life.

In keeping with the expansion’s hog-wild characters, Rockstar has retuned the motorcycle physics, making two wheels the optimum number for peeling around the vast gameplay environment. Your character has access to a handful of powerful new weapons, and your easy-riding cohort is a phone call away if you’re in need of manpower, horsepower, or firepower. New multiplayer modes cater to the bike-centric gameplay, including a new race mode in which competitors with baseball bats reenact Electronic Arts’ classic Road Rash series.

The writing and motion capture is consistent with the GTA series’ surpassing quality, and Rockstar again proves that careful characterization and plotting makes for a more engrossing gaming experience than a coterie of anonymous sidekicks yelling "boo-yah!" The events of The Lost and Damned intersect intriguingly with the original game, but this is both a blessing and a curse. Despite the developers’ best efforts, Johnny Klebitz isn’t half the protagonist GTA IV’s Niko Bellic is, and the moments when Bellic shows up are an unfortunate reminder of this fact. As with Bellic, the writers make an ill-conceived stab at humanizing their star criminal in Klebitz, presenting him as a voice of reason and moderation. But this all flies out the window once he’s mowing down cops in the dozens. Then again, when you’ve got a fully automatic shotgun to play with, who cares about psychological realism?

Let it reign

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Fallout 3

(Bethesda Softworks/Zenimax Media; XBOX360, PS3, PC)

GAMER "War. War never changes." These words have introduced three Fallout games, intoned by narrator Ron Perlman as the camera pulls back to reveal a landscape devastated by nuclear bombardment. The world of Fallout is one steeped in retro-futurism, imagining a history in which the end of World War II was succeeded by rapid technological progress but complete cultural stagnation. In the 21st century, competition for resources leads to the Chinese invasion of Alaska, quickly countered by the American annexation of Canada. The question of who fires first is deliberately elided, but the human race soon witnesses the dawn of the apocalypse.

A small fraction of humanity weathers the mushroom cloud, eking out a living among the rubble. Still others are preserved within vast underground vaults. You begin life in Vault 101, literally emerging from the womb and triggering an inspired character creation sequence in which your father’s delivery room commentary on your sex, name, and future appearance is interrupted by menu screens that allow you to customize these qualities.

Emerging into the outside world, you are thrust into the vast and dangerous Capital Wasteland, which encompasses Washington, DC, and its environs. Bethesda Game Studios, having acquired the Fallout license from Interplay, has designed an enormous, incredibly detailed, and realistic landscape, filled with places to explore and characters to interact with. Danger and fun lurk in every bombed-out building.

The realism has its drawbacks. The first two Fallout games had graphics so simple that they allowed the player to fill in the gaps with his or her own imagination, and the fully realized world of Fallout 3 takes some getting used to if you’ve played the first two games. The series’ trademark dark humor is also somewhat diminished. Bethesda doesn’t have the knack for the pulpy, dystopian treatment of slavery, cannibalism, prostitution, and drug use that the previous installments did.

Gameplay is conducted in either the first or third person. The "V.A.T.S." targeting system is back in fine form, enabling you to aim at limbs and heads RPG-style and generally wreak havoc. It also can be played as a more traditional FPS, although this mode feels rubbery and inferior.

As much as it would have accorded with critical ethics, I have not played the game to completion. There is too much left to explore, to experiment with, before I set the events in motion that will conclude the main narrative. Despite my backwards-looking gripes, Fallout 3 is a masterwork of world creation, an apocalypse too good to leave, and a game almost too good to win.

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