Matt Neuteboom @TheBoomMan

Resident Evil 4 (GameCube)

By Matt Neuteboom on September 11, 2011

Far Cry (Windows)

Fun is Inversely Proportional to Difficulty

The Good
Well its finals week for college kids living it up in pollution-bathed North Jersey, and like all good college kids I find myself wanting to procrastinate from studying. FarCry gave me good enough reason to do this, as I assumed it would be a quick play and it would be something fun and mindless to do with all of my free time now that classes were over. I turned out being wrong on both parts, and having had enough of a drawn out experience with FarCry, I feel that it warrants some kind of review as a follow-through ordeal.

I really had no idea what to expect going into FarCry except that it was an FPS in the jungle and there was something special about the open environments. About 10 minutes into the game I knew just about the same amount. The opening intro is a collage of explosions and a dude swimming somewhere. What I got is that you and your wife/girlfriend/next rape victim were sailing in the Pacific Ocean for no reason at all, the girl drives off on a jet ski for no reason at all, people come and destroy your boat for no reason at all, you find your way onto an island, and ultimately having nothing else available to have sex with, grab a gun and go looking for the girl for no reason at all. About five minutes in a random black scientist appears on a PDA type thing and decides to help you, and despite the fact that you have no idea who he is or why he wants to help, you decide to follow all of his advice to the letter, most of which is "Go here, kill people, and blow this thing up."

Even then it became apparent that FarCry's plot was going to be as ridiculous as a James Bond movie. Add on top of this an evil corporation trying to take over the world, a mad scientist genetically mutating an army, and a completely obvious plot twist about a third of the way through and you've got one hell of a thin plot line.

Despite this, I was pretty giddy over FarCry at first because it was fun and challenging. The general appeal of the game is the open environments the game provides. Now, don’t be stupid, the game is not GTA. There is obviously a linear progression from village to village and point to point. But each village is always assailable from every angle, and there are always multiple ways through the jungle. This makes it kind of fun planning out your route and your attack method. I remember sitting in a little rubber boat off shore for the first time and using my binoculars to spy out each guard on shore, planning out which guards I kill first before alerting the others.

Thanks to the abrupt introduction and the generally unpolished impression the game gave me, I was actually surprised but the stunning graphics the game has to offer, or rather, the stunning settings in the game. The jungle levels are lush with vegetation; and you can see every faraway building as it stretches onto the horizon. Even as you zoom in on faraway locations through the scope, you can still see (and shoot) guards, people having conversations, etc. over a kilometer away. Indoor levels are equally as nice, with fairly detailed environments and crisp graphics. What's truly nice about playing an old game later is that I was able to turn the graphics up to very high without a single hit to my FPS rate. Not even a single stutter.

Even more so, this game has some amazing AI. Enemies genuinely react to how you act, forming up in teams and moving depending on how you move. You can hear them shouting things like "You take care of him while I go get help," and unless you kill the guy running for help he will call out to his buddies to join him. Another thing I was shocked about is that they also shoot up flares to signal helicopters and boat patrols. Helicopters also interact with ground troops as they pick them up and drop the down behind your position to flank you.

Because of this, FarCry is different every time you play it. There's so many ways to go and new places to explore that you, and the game adapts to how you play so that it always feel like a new experience. For some this is where the strength of FarCry lies. You can always go back and do something different, and even dying sometimes gives you a new chance to try a situation from a different angle.

FarCry cashes in on its fun factor. It's got a stupid plotline, so here's a gun and shoot some people. It's always a blast trying to decide whether to assail a camp and steal their jeep, or to trek to the top of a mountain and use a hang-glider to float overtop of the level. Had they stuck with this, FarCry would have been a fun game for me all the way through

The Bad
Unfortunately, FarCry suffers from something I call "Half-Life Syndrome," which is when a genuinely good FPS becomes long, frustrating, repetitive and tedious about half-way through due to stupid, arbitrary tasks popping up along the way. You see, it's natural in any FPS to continually up the difficulty as the game goes on until it plateaus somewhere between "Impossible" and "Anal rape." Despite its razor thin and ridiculous plot, I was having an absolute blast frolicking in the jungle until the appearance of these skinless ape things that looked eerily similar to those monsters from Doom 3.

Whoever thought up these things clearly thought the game was not hard enough because these "trigen" as they call them will seriously FUCK YOU UP. On the second easiest mode they will kill you in one hit. That's right, ONE HIT. The only time that mechanic has worked in a video game is when the monster is a one-time-boss, and you're actually meant to run away than actually fight it. But no, once these guys appear they never go away. And what's more is that they're never alone. It's always two or three at a time. The most I've ever fought is seven at a time, after which I needed a fresh application of deodorant. But the true kick in the balls is their twenty foot rape reach of death. So even when you've got your gun trained on them, they can still bridge the distance in under a half a second. I quickly figured out that if they'd already locked eyes with yours then it was already too late and you should just wait for death.

In order to survive the rest of the game I realized needed to bind my left mouse button to quick save and my right mouse button to quick load. That is, of course, if there was saving. It's shocking to see no save feature in a modern computer game. Rather, the game has a checkpoint system which will save for you after it's arbitrarily decided you've done enough tedious shit. This honestly isn't too bad after a while because it gives you a chance to rethink certain situations and how you tackled them and you honestly don’t die enough for it to become an annoyance. Unfortunately, after previously said arrival of trigens, just killing a room full of them becomes a heroic accomplishment in itself, yet you won’t be able to save the game until you blast through the next three rooms full of them. This turns the game into a mad rush to the next checkpoint and makes the game an utter chore. Imagine doing ten minutes worth of frustrating tedious work only to be sent back by a pissant little ape thing with a bad attitude.

After about half way through the game you start to have problems with the crap Doyle gives you. As soon as you're done the three hour monstrous task of getting from point A to point B to take care of arbitrary task C, Val and Doyle arrive to whisk you away for your next ten mile trek of death. I originally assumed Jack must have had balls the size of oranges due the sheer audacity of wearing a bright red Hawaiian shirt during jungle combat. However, after ten hours of taking orders from two people sitting in a quiet bunker shoveling snacks from the nearby vending machine into their mouths, one does begin to wonder who the man in Jack and Val's relationship is.

After the trigen, the game lost its charm. It became more about surviving until the next checkpoint rather than finding fun ways to sneak up on people and lobotomizing them with a rifle. It became less about freedom and more about getting from point A to point B. All in all the game became a total chore. I found myself wanting to have the game be over with so I could uninstall it to free up some space on my hard drive for a new game.

The Bottom Line
However, for a game that came out in 2004, FarCry is rather spectacular for its adaptive AI and open environments. If you can get past the frustration of dying a lot (and there are tons of people out there that can do this much better than I can), then FarCry is game you shouldn't miss. All around, it’s an FPS gem, one which I'm glad I decided to finally try out. FarCry will certainly keep you entertained and is worth shelling out $20 for.

By Matt Neuteboom on December 20, 2008

BioShock (Windows)

It's not System Shock 3, but damn is this game still amazing

The Good
“System Shock 3” is all we heard a couple of months ago while all the critics were still wanking off to their favorite videos of Bioshock’s Big Daddies beating the snot out of every living thing. Reviewers seemed to be handing out more 10’s to this game than a desperately lonely man at a strip joint. Five-dollar words like innovation, unique, and unpredictable were repeatedly burned into our corneas to the point where we now can’t control our urge to shout them out every time another “immersive FPS” hits the market.

Upon starting up the game, I instinctively sided with the cynics, having been put through my fair share of let downs and disappointments with the FPS genre. Upon first starting the game I felt no reason to start drooling over it. It appeared to be another FPS game attempting to mask a thin plotline with a deep and thought-provoking setting. Yet as I went on, I realized how truly epic both the plot and gameplay were, until I was literally struggling to pick out something to find wrong with the game. Eventually I was faced with the reality of the situation: this game, shockingly, was exceeding my expectations.

Bioshock’s trump card, I believe, is its storyline. At the beginning of the game, you somehow manage to survive a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Upon rising to the surface of the water, you see an eery lighthouse just sitting there, beckoning you to go in. Ignoring the screams of your fellow passengers, you go inside and take a jolly little ride on the bathysphere there to the train-wreck of a city that is Rapture. Rapture was a city built at the bottom of the ocean by Andrew Ryan for the purpose of avoiding government, socialist, and religious regulations, which he felt were hindering mankind’s greatness. However, the city is in ruins, torn apart from the inside by rioting. Someone or something has turned the citizens of Rapture against themselves.

Bioshock has an absolutely incredible sense of immersion. If you enjoy having your sense of belief suspended, prepare to have Bioshock steal it and launch it into orbit, never to return. Everything about the Bioshock universe is brilliant, from the atmosphere to the story, to the sheer depth and intuitiveness of the new scenario it presents to players.

You can tell Bioshock was built around the story because everything the designers to is intended to make it feel like a story. First of all, the very presentation of Rapture is breath-taking. From the first seconds of the game as you look up at the mysterious lighthouse, you can already sense something is amiss. The developers build on this, and throughout the game it only gets more atmospheric. The leaking walls serve to display both the atrophying architecture as well as the decaying splendor of this supposed utopia. The developers also use almost theatrical techniques to shock and surprise you, to the point that at some points in the game you can only stand in awe.

This only develops as you slowly learn the story of Rapture. In this case, Bioshock takes from both the Half-Life series with its “no cut-scenes” approach and Doom 3with its “audio log” approach, relying more heavily on the latter for exposition while the former for more present-action plot development. The audio log system works terrifically to develop the story of Rapture because most of the audio logs aren’t in order, allowing you to piece together to story as you progress through the game.

As well, most of the audio logs are done by a key set of 6 or 7 characters. This gives you the impression that even though they are not by your side, these characters are still part of the action and still affecting everything you do. By listening to these audio logs you get an amazing idea of the personalities of these people and how they reacted as Rapture descended into chaos. The fact that they mention other characters from other audio logs only serves to reinforce this notion.

I originally expected Bioshock to take on a sci-fi suspense angle, but I was shocked to see that in reality in leans far into horror. And when I say horror, I do not just mean the “monsters jump out of closets” type like we saw in Doom 3. I mean deeply fucked-up psychological horror. The game takes on a twilight-zone kind of feel, showing how the effects of isolation and removal from society drove the citizens of Rapture power-hungry and mad. This is accented by the mounting feeling of being trapped forever in the watery coffin that is Rapture.

The combat system is largely the same as any other FPS game out there. The game, in addition to giving you various weapons, gives you plasmids. These stem-cell like formulas alter your genetic material granting you access to God-like powers such as shooting lightning out of your hand, or shooting fire out of your hand, or shooting ice out of your hand, and, well, you get my point now. It really doesn’t get past these few and a couple of others. These are more useful for interacting with the environment than anything, as electric can temporarily short circuit turrets and cameras, fire will melt blocking ice and set oil on fire, etc.

However, you will largely be killing your foes with a rather generic set of guns ranging from a 30’s era machine gun to a pump shotgun. The plasmids help to vary things up a bit, but I found myself using them when I simply had run out of bullets for the rest of my guns. Occasionally large gunfights will get pretty exciting, but this is usually when Big Daddy’s or gun turrets get involved as well and also because gun shots are VERY LOUD for this very purpose.

Where combat truly shines is, yes, the Big Daddy fights. This is truly where you get to exercise your creative freedom in taking down this gargantuan beast largely because there are so many ways to do it. You can take him down with enough machine gun bullets and persistence, but it is much easier to use the environment against him. Lure him into some oil, electrocute him, lead him into a nest of enemies, hack a turret and use it against him, have him run over some trap wire, get him to ram into some barrels, lead him over your trip mines. Any combination of these provides for a brilliant fight, and what makes it better is that it is completely improvised, giving you a warm feeling of satisfaction knowing that the game wasn’t holding your hand through it. It’s this feeling that makes fighting the Big Daddies worth it, as well as the Adam which allows you to buy plasmids, health, and other upgrades.

The game is obviously pretty, though this is mostly due to the atmosphere and style rather than the graphics. If you sat there and stared at Bioshock and appreciated like a fine painting, you would in fact see the tremendous amount of detail in almost every part of Bioshock’s environment. However, let’s face it; we aren’t going to be looking at some pretty cabinets when we’ve got turrets shoving bullets in our back and balls of fire raining down upon us. Even so, most games these days are just as pretty so I really don’t known what to set as the standard anymore. Like I said, it’s pretty because of the atmosphere. When you stand in a quiet desolate dentist’s office in Rapture and you can’t hear anything but the streams of water leaking from the ceiling, that’s when you truly see the beauty in Bioshock. However, the game, like every other FPS out there, is still played mostly with the lights off, offering you less chances than you may think to sample the beauty of the game.

The Bad
The biggest let down was easily the false sense of choice and freedom the game gave me as I was starting it. I remember all of the trailers spouting out that you had all this freedom and how unpredictable the game would be depending upon your own choices. Well, being the cold, cynical man I am I immediately realized what a load of horse crap this all was. What took me by surprise, however, was to how far they actually embellished the truth. The game gives you actually no choice whatsoever, which might upset a few people, who, I don’t know, maybe were hoping for something actually promised a billion times by every Bioshock trailer out there.

The big thing is that when you kill a Big Daddy, you get to do naughty things with little girls, and by naughty things I mean harvest their Adam. While the whole thing sounds like something you’d hear on To Catch a Predator, its supposedly a huge focal point of the game because you can either save her for a little Adam or kill her for a whole bloody truckload of it. The entire “morality” choices of the game narrow down to this. It’s not that there are other choices and that they don’t make any impact, but this is IT. Either kill or save, and that determines whether you get the holy good guy ending or the piss bad ending. Either you’re a saint or your Hitler based on whether you decide to either save or kill these little girls, and there is no middle ground. They tout all this freedom and choice, but like Fable there is no “uh, maybe both” choice. Either your voice cures cancer or God kills kittens at the very sound of it.

That’s really all there is. There is really no customization of your character because he can use any plasmid a million times without consequence, and can use any gun at any time. There are these things called tonics which give you cool bonuses like getting more health from snacks, but there are a limited number of these which are actually useful and by the end of the game you have enough slots open to use all of the good ones anyway. There are no side quests or optional objectives to do. Hell, every objective is mandatory anyway. I thought that somewhere along the line I would be given a choice to help out the citizens or Rapture or kill them, but instead I ended up taking orders from a man on a radio for hours on end.

And while we’re still bitching let’s talk about game difficulty. More specifically, let’s talk about where the Hell it went. Last time I checked in FPS games, when you died you lost the game. Instead they’ve introduced this “vita-chamber” non-sense which brings you back to life every time you die. This takes away a lot of the danger of the game, and honestly I fell like it was the worst part. With these chambers you’re more willing to take stupid risks because all of the consequence has been taken away. This also made it a lot less satisfying finding creative ways to kill Big Daddies since if you were stupid and simply starting plugging away at him you could go back five minutes later to do it again.

This part also made the game somewhat frustrating because in order to kill some bad guys all you had to do was whittle away their health while taking numerous trips to the vita-chamber. This process of attack, die, walk back, repeat is incredibly frustrating and holds up the game a lot, especially when there are infinite enemies in the game. Yes, supposedly the citizens of Rapture are “living, breathing” people who walk from place to place, but instead of making the game believable, it made it annoying as fuck.


The Bottom Line
I suppose, however, I am being a bit unfair. I’m not one of those untalented hacks who tries to pass of unwonted criticism as a proper review, and truly I found Bioshock to be one of the best games I’ve played in recent months. I’m actually really excited over how this turned out because it’s been a long time since a game has made me forget about both lunch and dinner without me even realizing it. Like Rapture, Bioshock has a lot of cracks in it, and they are somewhat obvious. However, don’t listen to the tiny voice in the back of your head pointing to these flaws. Smother it out with a large dosage of Bioshock. This game is amazing and certainly worth whatever children you may need to sell to get your hands on it.

By Matt Neuteboom on June 26, 2008

Asteroids (Atari 2600)

If you are seriously reading reviews to consider buying this game or not, truly humanity has lost all hope.

The Good
Somewhere deep inside my brain there is an impulse that constantly tells me that if I want to play a classic “arcade” game that I need to go back to the very first manifestation of a game on a home console in order to get the most "authentic" experience. That is to say, in order to get the closest to the original game, I think that I need to find the earliest known version of that game and play it.

The Bad
Unfortunately, this impulse is seldom intuitive, and as such I am beginning to believe that, like my appendix, that part of my brain has lost most of it medical value and should be removed. For one thing must be understood about early console games that will give you a good understanding of why our parents were so respectful of arcades way back when. Porting “good” arcade games during the dawn of the console era was more often than not counter-productive and anti-progressive. One look at the arcade version and Atari version of Pac-man will give you a good idea of how almost all early “ports” back in the day unfolded. Old video game systems were simply not powerful enough to carry over the sleek graphics and tight controls of the arcade cabinets which make them so addicting.

Now if someone at the very start of the era of home-consoles started an anti-porting campaign to keep classic arcades open, Asteroids would probably be one of the poster-boys of this front. Asteroids suffers the typical maladies that came with early porting, from loss of controls to bad graphics.

As I turned on the game, I was unimpressed with the eye candy they gave me. The sleek, green, well-defined asteroids of the arcade had been replaced with pixilated, multi-colored diarrhea chunks floating around the screen. However, I soon realized that “floating” was somewhat of a misnomer, and I decided that “drifting vertically” was more precise, as that was what they all the asteroids did. At the start of each level, the asteroids only moved vertically, never horizontally or diagonally.

But wait, there’s more! I soon noticed the glaring lack of asteroids that reappeared in the center at the beginning of each level. I soon realized that the programmers were too lazy to come up with an asteroid generating system that did not spawn asteroids on top of you, and instead only chose to spawn them at the side of the levels to cover up their laziness. So at the start of each level I was faced with two vertically shifting strips of asteroids to the left and right of me, while I sat with my cute little space ship in the cold, empty center.

But lo, the geniuses forgot to take into account what might happen if you beat and level and you’re of to the side of the level instead of in the center. Your ship position does not reset to the center at the beginning of each round, and there’s no system stopping asteroids from spawning on top of you, meaning guaranteed death should you finish a level with your ship on in the center of the level.

What finally broke my patience was the fact that for some reason on my last life, my game froze and turned a dull shade of crap brown, which I finally accepted as appropriate considering that’s what I thought of the game after my experience.


The Bottom Line
There is truly a lesson to be learned from all of this, and that is the fact that if you really want to revisit your childhood and play some classic arcade games then just look for a free flash version on the GOD DAMN INTERNET. Seriously, if you can’t sleep at night knowing that you could be playing hours of your favorite classic video game, Asteroids, then don’t pull an all out effort trying to get the possibly unholiest of all its ports. In fact, what is truly sad is the fact that you possibly needed to read this review to tell you not to buy it, as if you were somehow debating whether this would be a worthy investment up until you read my enlightening opinion of it. Seriously, close this window right now. You’re wasting precious minutes of your life reading this quite pointless review.

By Matt Neuteboom on June 17, 2008

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

Breathes new life into platformers, but still doesn't go beyond it's true potential

The Good
All in all, fans tend to let Nintendo get away with a lot of shit. For any proof all you need to do is look at the empty Super Mario Sunshine box sitting at the bottom of any gamer’s collection. The prodigal think tank over in Japan thought they could pass of cleaning up rainbow colored slime the consistency of diarrhea as having some sort of entertainment value. Granted, while the game did have its highs and lows, our exploration into the wonders of irritable bowel syndrome wasn’t exactly my cup o’ tea. However, fanboy logic is a much more alien form of logic than other humans’, and while any other company would have been punished vehemently for such an atrocity, Nintendo knows that they’re holding the whip in this situation. As such, Nintendo has once again tried to resurrect their main franchise, with our lovably stereotypical Italian friend Mario digging deep into our pockets once more while he orders us to bend over.

Super Mario Galaxy has it good only because it has to compete with Sunshine, and that’s roughly equivalent to having the jocks pick on the special kid in your gym class. Still, Galaxy gets little more concession because, as Nintendo claims, this game is supposed to be the “true sequel” to Super Mario 64. Well, Nintendo, if you’re claiming to beat a game that was terrific 10 years ago, then you better live up to your promise.

Galaxy does do many things well, however, starting off with the revival of the classic platform game play. Some say the platform genre is dead, but as we all know Nintendo is a pretty stubborn company, and in the end it’s probably for the better because mass marketing only seems to result in Mario trying to break-dance for us. Nintendo has a lot of experience in the platforming area so it’s no wonder that they create one of the best platformer games out there.

The introduction of the whole galaxy theme has been criticized by some as a gimmick but I honestly think it’s one of the better parts of the game. It allows Nintendo to come up with more original puzzles and game mechanics than if they were limited to a more Earthly setting. One of the best aspects is that a galaxy is obviously large and open, meaning that you can actually fall off platforms and die in one hit now instead of falling onto some jagged rocks. As well, each level essentially takes place in a gigantic open void, meaning Nintendo could fill it with whatever crap they wanted to put there for any level design they had in mind. Thankfully, Nintendo doesn’t hold back on the puzzles, and they deliver a ton of new and challenging obstacles to overcome.

This, I think, is combined quite cleverly with the new gravity system. Mario sticks to any large object he lands on, making jumping around quite a bit of fun. Essentially, this liberates Mario from the traditional up down, side to side, left and right style and allows him to go upside down, sideways, back-ways, no-ways, Wonka-ways, and any other way you might think of. This, once again, is cleverly shown off by the developers, as they utilize the function well in creating unique puzzles and scenarios.

However, for all those used to the “falling off the bottom of the screen” method of dying, don’t fret. Falling off of platforms still has its negative consequences. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a platformer, right? In areas where the developers wanted you to be punished for your bad timing, they add these black holes below where you’re standing to act a interfering source of gravity in case you fall off the platform. The effect is that if you fall off the platform you were supposed to be occupying, this new source of gravity hopelessly sucks you into its grasp while simultaneously crushing Mario into a tiny singularity. Judging between free falling sections and these traditional “platforming” sections is not hard, as it will usually make these black holes obvious or will simply make sections occur on flat surfaces. Obviously this new Mario game requires a bit of different thinking than what we’re used to, and I thankfully welcome a change of scenario and a change of puzzles.

The new galaxy setting also serves the game pretty well because it pretty much gives Nintendo an excuse to come up with weird wacky world without any one giving them mouth. After all, it’s a big galaxy so anything could happen, right? The space station you’re flying on serves as your “Peach’s Castle” in this game, acting as a hub to reach outlying levels. Get more stars, get more levels of course. You’ll find your basic staples of world themes here. There’s a fire world, an ice world, and not so ironically, a fire and ice world, and so on and so forth.

While seemingly generic, Nintendo gives you lots to work with, so a lot of the puzzles in each world are pretty much all different. As well, the amount of secret content is pretty gob-smacking incredible. It’s quite amazing to find that the secret levels (which there are tons of, by the way) actually having more secret hidden stars within them. There are so many levels that a 100% completion rating is a challenge reserved only for the mentally insane.

For what it’s worth, Sunshine did have one good strength which was its terrific, sparkly graphics. It might have been shit, but at least it was colorful, sparkly shit. This strength pulls through to Galaxy, because good God does it look marvelous. Nintendo brings back their palette of bizarre and exotic colors, which is good because it makes Mario more entertaining. Each level is a smorgasbord for the eyes, entertaining you with a seizure-inducing handful of LSD-inspired level designs.

The Bad
However, there is a good reason Mario games leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths, and that is probably due to the fact that while we’re usually handed a game on a golden platter, we usually get shafted in some area such as difficulty, linearity, or length. In this case, it’s all three.

I don’t know what the hell has happened to Nintendo’s definition of a game, but as far as I know, games usually offer some form of a challenge which needs to be overcome. Unfortunately, Nintendo is one of those companies which try to remove every single frustration in the game, thereby removing the challenge in the first place. I mean seriously, I know these games were designed for children, but the point is to challenge us to think and work to overcome obstacles. For the first half of the game I felt like all I had to do was follow the friendly signs guiding me to the star. I explicitly remember one level required me to dive into a pool of water and swim a bit to retrieve a shell so I could throw it at a chest to unlock the star. What a rush.

As well, all of the bosses are terribly predictable. Half the time all you have to do is bat their projectiles back at them like in Ocarina of Time way back when. Nintendo has still stubbornly chosen to stick with the "three hit" system that's so frustratingly irritating due to the fact that the battles are over before they've even begun. Don't expect to see anything terribly new when it comes to enemy AI either. Goombas still act like goombas and giant freaky honey bees will continue to ask you to crawl all over their bodies...yeah.

As well, for being a galaxy it sure is terribly linear. In my mind I envisioned an open space to explore and hop around between planets. Instead, what I got what was a game which for most of the time held my hand through the entire experience. I mean, we’re not even talking multiple pathways or even shortcuts. There was only one entrance and exit to each planet. Making each planet you jumped on more of an independent “challenge” which you had to overcome in order to move on to the next “challenge” until you eventually reach the star.

The star you choose to try to “find” on the opening screen of each level makes a big difference, as each star has a different “level configuration”, bringing you to different challenges though you may revisit older planets in a different order. This is a pretty disappointing portion of the game, because you no longer really even have to search for a star, nor can you even choose to go after a different star than you chose which is what made Super Mario 64 so fun. As the game progresses, these obstacles do become a lot harder and the levels do become a lot longer, but please don’t deprive me of free roam exploration and then claim to be better than Super Mario 64.

And then, of course, we come to Nintendo’s most infamous f*** up, the game length. I can’t help but feel that due to both the easy difficulty and startling linearity that each level was a bit too short. The final boss can easily be taken on eons before you even need to start “trying” to get stars. However, getting 100% is so difficult and takes so long, it’s hard to understand even trying to go any further than the boss, making the game a trifle bit short. If you do choose to continue to 100% for more game time, then be my guest, but I would have preferred if the game would have forced me to go farther rather than going easy on me and simply getting me to the end of the game quickly.

And while we’re still bitching, I have to complain about Mario’s voice. Him screaming the title of the game every time you turn to it on the Wii screen is so loud and high-pitched its makes you embarrassed to even be playing the game. It seems like Mario’s voice gets higher pitched every new game that comes out. I’m sorry Mario, but you were a lot cooler when you were mute.

And if you're looking for story, well, don't be too surprised but it involved the princess getting captured and you going after her dumb as too rescue her. You can fill in the details from there on, I think.

The Bottom Line
Super Mario Galaxy is good, but not terribly great. It’s fun to play, pretty to look at, and all around is a great refresher for the Mario series. If it does anything terribly well, it breathes new life into the extinct platforming genre, and its fun to play these games because they pretty much don’t exist except in the form of crappy kids TV show or movie games.

However, the game’s flaws are what keeps from being truly great. If only Nintendo could learn to let go of the leash a little and let us gamers do the thinking for ourselves. I promise we won’t cry if we can’t figure out the puzzles Nintendo. Just make the games longer and harder, please.

However, the game accomplishes what it sets out to do, and if you need a game to give to kids, I can’t recommend a game more highly. If it’s kept me entertained, Super Mario Galaxy will undoubtedly keep young ones perplexed and staring bug eyed at the screen for hours on end.

Buyworthy: By now it should have gone down in price, so why not.
Rentworthy: Definitely.

By Matt Neuteboom on April 9, 2008

World of WarCraft (Windows)

Amazingly simple yet amazingly addictive

The Good
In my opinion, World or Warcraft (more simply abbreviated WoW for the rest of this review) does not do anything so amazingly revolutionary or new from the rest of its counterparts in the MMORPG genre. It doesn’t do anything totally or completely unexpected from many other MMO’s out there. Most elements can be seen borrowed from other RPG franchises, and as a whole one could possibly label it “generic”. But what WoW so brilliantly does is that it takes what its other brethren have created and made it easier and more fun to play. It has taken its content and made it a perfect form as to create a perfect gaming environment that is both easy and fun to play in, is not vague or confusing, and is addictive as Hell. And that, my friends, makes all the difference.

WoW has a lot of elements borrowed from every other genre. It has a talent system, and two professions from which you can choose. You’ve got a wide variety of classes from rogues to warriors to mages to warlocks. All around, WoW is just plain fun. You can do instances (dungeons and such) with your friends, or enjoy some relaxing fishing alone. You can explore the land or do quests. You can join a group for some amazing PvP, or go to a role-playing server to immerse yourself within the World of Warcraft (I have tried an RP server and the role-players for the game are very enthusiastic). WoW even has one of the biggest maps I have ever seen. To explore the entire map easily takes weeks just walking from place to place. I am still debating which game’s map is bigger, WoW or Guild Wars, and I have yet to come to a conclusion. To tell you what WoW holds in store would take pages upon pages more of a review. However, this is not how WoW differentiates itself among other RPG’s. You can get all of this stuff on other MMO’s, so what’s so special about this one?

What WoW does is it takes the simplicity of console RPG’s and mixes it with expansive environment, controls, character customization, and social abilities of the MMO world. In simpler terms: WoW is easy, it eliminates the frustrations of other MMO’s, and simply makes the game just plain fun. I was once a player of another MMORPG. That was the game Dark Age of Camelot. While I was playing it, I thought it was an okay experience. However, I now realize what a terrible experience it truly was. While games like those are far too hard and required hours of work, WoW is simple, clean, and so easy to use that casual gamers can easily be on the same level as hardcore addicts.

WoW appeals to casual and hardcore gamers alike. New players can begin enjoying the full experience as soon as they start, and it’s a huge and welcoming change for the RPG franchise. It makes it feel like you aren’t too low of a level to get the games full potential. Quests and monsters are just the right level of difficulty, making it easy for a person to just jump right into combat. Epic quests do not require hours of time devoted to playing the game. Even as early players, noobs can enjoy the same features as many players who are 50 levels above them. The fun begins as soon as you log in.

Casual players are rewarded heavily in this game, because soloing is possible, easy, and rewarding. Players who don’t play as often, will become “well-rested” while they are logged out, allowing them to gain double the experience as players who play all the time. It is this welcoming incentive that continues to draw me into WoW, and finally I am no longer penalized for enjoying doing the quests alone and sporadically.

Even early in the game players can enjoy a slew of highly entertaining skills and abilities, and each level you gain significantly adds a number of new abilities at your disposal. This makes combat throughput the game fun and different, as you have tons of skills at your disposal to toy around with. Both items that new players can use and higher experienced ones are distributed pretty much perfectly throughout the game, making finding a weapon perfectly suited for you as easy as walking down to a shop or slaying a beast. Early players have the ability to choose the same professions as later players, which makes getting to the higher levels easier for new players. The game makes noobs feel welcome. As I said before, new and casual players can begin enjoying the full experience as soon as they start, and it’s a huge and welcoming change for me.

I think one of the reasons WoW is so welcoming to casual and new players its how it practically eliminates all of the frustrations of other MMO’s. One of these things that comes to mind for me is grinding. WoW utilizes the simple system that has been a requisite for console RPG’s for years: it allows the player to gain levels while they are adventuring. Simply put: no grinding. Read that again. Eventually it hits you in this game that you never have to stop what you’re doing to bolster your stats. It is easy to gain a level once or even twice per day, even between on and off adventuring and exploring. You may even be able to achieve more levels that, if you really play it that much every day, only trying to level. Most of the time, the leveling is done while your adventuring and on quests, making repetitive monster-slaying trials and experience quests almost non-existent in WoW. Doing simple tasks such as gathering ingredients for a recipe do not require hours of work. Developing skills can be easily done by the most casual or newest of players. These reasons and many more are good reasons to get WoW. It has so many elements that are nice and user-friendly that makes it fun to play without making it a complete chore.

Another one of these features that comes to mind is that death brings no toll to those unfortunate to have to go through it. Your only punishment is that you must bring your dead spirit from a nearby graveyard (there is usually one or two in every region) to your corpse, which is a trivial walk. It does not require you to lose points or skills, or require you to pray at some alter to get your stats to full potential. I cannot being to explain how great this makes the game, being able to actually “play” without having to worry about taking risk. I could sit here for hours iterating stories of how I’ve lost days of experience (from grinding no less) simply by accidentally aggroing some monster that is a couple levels higher than me. This feature is a god-send, and you will praise Blizzard for making such an amazing decision in the game design.

One of the fundamental reasons of the underlying simplified gameplay I mentioned before is the clean character and item management. WoW is not as ambiguous as many other MMO’s. The system of professions, talents, pets, classes and other sorts are semi-self contained. Its easy to use interface contains just a few menus and an action bar, and each menu serves major purposes. All your professions, stats, pets, and other things are all tabbed in one menu for your character, while everything pertaining to social (guilds, friends) are all tabbed under another. It keeps the screen clean of anything that gets in the way and makes it easy to find what you are looking for. Looting is simple, even in massive groups. You can easily discern which professions go with which, and character class limitations are well-defined. Items aren’t vague as to what they are used for or what they add to your stats. Many games I have played include strange numbers and stats that I have no idea what they do. In WoW, almost every item is useful, so if you find something on an item, its usually used for something pertaining to a quest and will tell you so. If its armor, a quest item, and weapon, or just food, it will tell you, which makes item handling much easier, as you feel like your not throwing away something very important when you clean out your inventory. In WoW, what things do are so clearly defined it will make you wonder how the Hell other MMO’s didn’t think of doing this sooner.

And as mentioned before, WoW is incredibly user friendly. All around, WoW makes it easy for new users to gain ranks and earn experience, and still keeps everyone challenged. Socially, the people you meet in game are some of the kindest people on the internet. The role-playing servers can be lots of fun for those looking for a Dungeons and Dragons type of game, while the regular servers have people who are always willing to help out new players or go on raids or quests. The Blizzard Support must also be duly noted. If you seem to have an annoyance within the game, it’s as if Blizzard reads your mind and fixes it the next day. It almost seems as if the Blizzard staff plays the game themselves, and sees what annoys them that must be fixed. Blizzard constantly releases automatic updates that fix small bugs and glitches to make for a better gaming experience. Server crashes are fixed within minutes, and problems with servers are usually fixed within hours to get the servers back up and running. It’s simply amazing how well they treat their players. Blizzard definitely goes to great lengths to make sure you are completely satisfied with your gaming, and you can surely tell.

Aside, the game’s great atmosphere also perks you up. The graphics of the game are astounding and pleasing to the eye. The graphics almost remind me of a fairy-tale: colorful and beautiful landscapes with exaggerated features and rounded textures. The trees in the game can be a host of colors like blue or purple, and the cities are magnificent. The gates of cities are stories tall, and the streets are curvy, twisted, and almost cartoon-like. The cheery yet atmospheric music adds greatly to this. Above all, the atmosphere does something for your brain. When you look out upon a bouncy forest of bright trees that are the size of skyscrapers, it makes you feel warm inside. Even some of the more “evil” environments have vivid palettes and continue to have bouncy textures and exaggerated landscapes that make them feel more alive. Other MMO’s, for some reason, like to include some desolate wasteland with destroyed cities, hopeless people, and an atmosphere that makes everyone seem dead. WoW, however, does just the opposite. The bright, cheery characters and environments do more to bring up your spirits. Instead of drawing on dark, desolate feelings, they inspire feelings of warmth, happiness, and liveliness, almost as if the very air itself is alive. Because of this, WoW is a game that will drawn you in and keep your there for hours on end.

They call this game the “World” of Warcraft for a reason. All around, this game feels like a living, breathing thing. If you let it, WoW can become your second home. The colorful characters and world, the uncountable number of things to do, and the infinite character and profession combos will ensure that WoW has near endless replay value. Hell, all I do is questing and instances, and that still manages to take up all of my day. I’ve barely touched PvP, raids, and end-game quests, and yet I still fill my day with fun-filled questing in the world of Azeroth. Let WoW charm you to death as you discover all of the games little quirks, interesting characters, fun story arcs. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, there are always other people on, doing other things, and there is always something going on. And as you play, you will become part of that rich tapestry which has practically evolved into its own society. Invite yourself into the World of Warcraft, and you may never want to leave.


The Bad
A-D-D-I-C-T
A-D-D-I-C-T
A-D-D-I-C-T
And ADDICT was his name-O!

More and more these days video game addiction is a major problem. People have reported to leave work, school, relationships, and even families over video games. Some have even reportedly committed suicide. The idea of a video game worse than drugs is scary, but it today’s world I find that it is honestly a very real entity. This game does not seem to erode this idea. World or Warcraft is addicting, with a capital ‘A’. For some, it’s because you feel that you have to keep playing hours to get “just one more level”, or you feel that you may miss something. But also, it’s because World of Warcraft is utterly and uncontrollably fun to play. Between quests, raids, dungeon runs and profession training, time slips away at a mind-boggling pace. The first two days after I got this seem nothing but a blur. Yes, the sad truth is that I spent a two full days, over 10 hours each day, playing the game from the time I got up until about midnight. What’s weirder is that I did not actually realize that this time was slipping away. When I emerged from my basement, I wondered where the time had all gotten to. At that point I realized that time consumption was a factor I needed to seriously consider while playing WoW. That’s something very new for me, a person who generally plays video games and socializes in moderation. WoW, however, affects ALL gamers. It has been called names like “World or Warcrack.” It’s something to deeply consider when buying or playing this game. Don’t put a video game in front of family. Consider how much time you have before buying this. Hell, make sure you consider how much time you have when you’re in the middle of playing it! As my friend Pete (a dedicated WoW player and someone I actually played the game with) says, “WoW destroys lives”. And it’s true. Consider what you are going to give up for this game. Many gamers may find it easy to play in moderation, but even those who don’t normally have addictive personalities can exhibit WoW addictions and late-night sessions. People with addictive personalities should avoid the game altogether.

As the game drifts on you may notice that the quests are very much uninspired. Unlike traditional one-player console RPG’s, the quests are pretty mindless. Quests are almost always a “kill-quest”, where you either have to kill a certain number of monsters or a specific one. Occasionally you will get an item collecting quest, which invariably leads to having to kill a number of monsters just to get those items. Traveling quests are a nice and easy change but hardly offer anything fun or interesting. If the game did not make up for itself with good combat, quests would be a nightmare. Perhaps that’s why the game gets so much better when playing with a friend. Related to this is the fact that the game can be very repetitive when played alone or “solo”. Quests are almost always alike, and seem to be big repetitions of each other. As a result, restarting characters is a nightmare since you will invariable be replaying dull missions that you had to do with other characters. Quests are easily the least entertaining part of the game, and while they offer plenty of experience, are only bearable up to about level 30, where they become a terrible pain. An unfortunate factor that must also be taken into account is that all of the game’s story is driven by quests, and that the game really lacks direction without them. Bummer.

The patches are also one of the most major problems. Blizzard frequently releases patches for this game. All around it does much more good than it does bad, however the downloads are incredibly annoying. Of course, for your convenience you do not have to keep track of versions or go to download sites. It’s all done automatically by the in-game updater. However, patches can be released almost once every two weeks. And while the small ones are pretty much an annoyance rather than a pain (15 minutes isn’t all too bad), the larger ones are a nightmare, with up to an hour (or more!) or download times. This only makes it worse for players installing and playing the game for the first time. All of the patches created before that point must be downloaded, meaning 4 or 5 patch downloads (sometimes to avoid lengthy downloads they take older patches and incorporate them into the new ones so they don’t have to be downloaded). Usually one or two of these is the nightmare patch mentioned above. And while load times are swift and painless, prepare for a monstrous install time, and even more waiting just to get the game patched up running…

The Bottom Line
World of Warcraft is a landmark in MMO design. In my honest opinion, MMO’s have too long been bogged down by boring grinding, terrible adventuring, and annoying features and controls. WoW eliminates all of these things, keeping what makes the game fun, and this is what appeals to me and 7 million other gamers so much. It’s the fun a video game should give you, without all the tiresome work that come along with other MMO’s. It’s incredibly friendly, incredibly fun, incredibly imaginative, and incredibly addicting.

And even to mention all of the great content that WoW offers would take a lifetime. Things like professions, talents, all of the classes, a HUGE world to explore and tons of social interactivity make WoW my choice MMORPG. But I could never tell you about everything, so let’s just leave it at that. It’s up to you to discover all the amazing possibilities and the rich gameplay that the World of Warcraft is just waiting to offer.

By Matt Neuteboom on October 4, 2007

RuneScape (Windows)

Back in the day...

The Good
Runescape was one of those games that “was my childhood” if you are familiar with the expression. Back in middle school I played this game almost religiously, and my brother played it too. And his friend’s played it too. Whenever the computer was open we were bound to be on it, fighting over who got off when. We looked up websites and read tables of enemy stats, and researched quests and all that good stuff. Okay, so I didn’t have much of a life back in middle school.

I will use my experience as a focal point for this review. That is, no matter how long you play, grind, and achieve, you will never be anywhere close to beating this game. There’s simply too much to do, too many places to explore, and too many classes to learn. And this was back in middle school, when I had 10 hours of free time to dedicate to the game. And back then there was a quarter of the quests and skills there are now.

Runescape simply does not end. There are millions upon millions of items that can be used in junction with dozens of skills and hundreds of quests. I mean, come on, just look at the freakin’ map!. That was what it was like when I was a kid! Any it took me years to try and explore all of that. Even with all of my work I was still nowhere near done exploring all of the secret caves and passageways underneath the ground. But if you really wanna shit bricks, check what it’s like now. A walk from one edge of the map to the other would easily take 3 hours. To explore and do everything in between would take years.

But best of all is that it was free. I mean, you really have to understand what I was looking at when I was a kid. This was one of the biggest worlds I had ever seen in a video game (I had yet to be introduced to MMORPG’s) and it was all free. It was like giving out World of Warcraft accounts for free. In my premature years, my habit was nothing short of sheer addiction.

It was terrific. It had everything I needed. It gives you a good sense of achievement. The quests were fun, and the characters were very vibrant. A lot of them somehow acknowledged that they were part of an online video game, which made them extremely funny. Some of the quests are just downright silly. One of my favorites was when you have to dress up as a woman to rescue a guy from jail. Even better, the designers slip in funny message when you try to observe really simplistic things like posts or trees. Your own character is pretty witty even in the most dire, dangerous situations, and this was really a high point of the game.

And of course, like I said, its all free

The Bad
There are a lot of gamers out there who simply foam at the mouth just thinking about the potential this game has. It is such a living, breathing patchwork of questing and skills, and players and NPC’s that the appeal could just kill you. Even looking at the map gives one the feeling of an epic adventure. But honest to God, it simply isn’t as fun as it looks.

The feeling of having so many things around you is just too overwhelming. There are simply too many things to do. At first you want to build your skills, but you also need to do quests. At the same time you want to get better armor. All of this takes way too long. Getting past level 60 even in one skill ranking could take months and months of grinding. Again, I say, look at my example. I played this game for years on one single character, and I could not even get to level 60 in any ranking. Yet that unquenchable thirst that drives you to grow more levels is still there. In the end however, it is truly not worth it. The rewards for level growth is often minimal compared to the hours and hours of work required to get there.

As a result, no matter how hard I tried, I felt like I could never fit in, and in reality I really never was good enough for the big leagues. Everywhere I went, I felt like I was lowest level character in the entire bunch. It felt like I wasn’t supposed to be where I was, no matter where I was. I was the only person wearing gray steel in a bunch of Runite-clad knights. No matter what level I got to, there were still areas that were too high for me to go into, and there were spells and equipment I still had no access to.

Not to mention that Runescape was notorious for assholes who refused to help you on quests. It was really every man for himself back then. Quests with combat in them were difficult to finish because most combat quests were done solo. Mines were always packed and it was first come, first serve. If you weren’t fast enough to get to a rock in time, it was your loss. If you died, you lost ALL of the items on your possession, and you could count on it that your items would be scooped up off of your dead body within seconds.

Runescape, visually, is pretty unappealing. I can tolerate bad graphics, but even in the years that have passed, nothing has really changed. And I assure you, back then the graphics were shitty. And they still are shitty. When the backgrounds become detailed, they are usually meant fore nothing more than decoration. There’s really no interaction, and as a result, there really is no immersion that comes with the game.

But not only this, but the game was rife with horrible game glitches. Your character is slow as all Hell. Also, but the game window is seriously small. You move by clicking the mouse button on the ground around you, but because your view was so limited to only a few yards around you, you had to continually click in order to keep moving. Doing this over long distances is tiresome and tedious. Also, the game tended to lag a lot, then spike, so that everyone ran around furiously from all the clicks they made. Worse yet, accidentally clicking in the wrong spot could cause you to mistakenly attack a guard or do some irreversible damage.

Most of the skills are fairly useless too. The most you would need are the combat skills (melee, hand to hand, archery, magic, and maybe prayer) and mining, smelting, fishing, and cooking. The rest of the skills are quite useless. Skills like fletching and alchemy are rarely used in practical situations, so it’s an annoyance when you feel like you’ve wasted time grinding only to find out that the skill is of no practical use in the game. But the greatest problem I encountered in this game is that the only way to advance in levels was to grind up to the next level. Now, Runescape isn’t the most interactive of all RPG’s. The most you need is a mouse, since all of the commands are done through that. The result is, though, that training levels often incorporated merely clicking thousands of times in repetition for dozens of hours on end for a number of months until you get good at a skill, at which time you would move onto the next skill. And like I said before, the rewards for these tasks are minimal, and never compensate for the hours of work needed to be done to get to that point.


The Bottom Line
Most of RuneScape is eye candy. It looks like there’s a lot to do and explore on the surface, but the game’s appeal is superficial. Even after months and months of mind-numbing grinding, you are still nowhere close to playing in the big league and go on the “even more difficult dungeon” that you haven’t explored yet. There are just too many skills to level, and places to explore, and quests to do, and not enough time to do it.

There’s nothing really “fun” about Runescape at all. It was more frustrating to play than fun. The quests are nice and funny sometimes, but the interface is clunky and frustrating, and the skills are about as useless as being on the high score list at the local arcade; it looks good and it gets you bragging rights, but that’s about it. There’s no real skill involved. It just depends on how much time you’re willing to dedicate to this MMORPG, and how long you can repeatedly click your mouse. So if there’s no achievement and there’s no fun, then what ‘s the point of starting at all?

By Matt Neuteboom on June 11, 2007

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (GameCube)

Hilarious and entertaining until the very end

The Good
About a year ago, my friends and I were enjoying the amazing experience that was the first LEGO Star Wars. We had played the demo of the first level in a GameStop at the mall, and my friend Matt J. got it for his birthday. The actual game was even better. LEGO Star Wars was an example of a game that takes a franchise and injects it with its own charm and uniqueness. The addicting adventure/platformer game play combined with LEGO characters and light-hearted humor made it one of the best games that year.

It’s not surprising then that they returned this year with a sequel, which is not that much different from the first. Not that that’s a bad thing. I can’t stand it when game companies take a winning formula and change it to appeal to a different audience or to “make it better”. LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy has all the charm the previous installment brought, plus fine-tuned it downfalls for an even greater experience.

One cannot deny the charm and wittiness of the LEGO Star Wars universe. Even for adults, LEGO Star Wars is guaranteed a chuckle for those big fans of Star Wars. Every story part and even the characters themselves have a warming and charming part about them. The humorous storyline entices you until the very end, and leaves you with a satisfied feeling inside you. And what is better is that these guys can do it all without dialogue. They can convey an entire movie through its light-hearted and somewhat exaggerated humor. Its parody-like yet innocent humor is probably the highlight of this game. Plus, you have to combine this with the element of making everything out of Legos. Everything is made out of Legos. The characters, the sets, the props, and all of the spaceships are made entirely out of Legos. Just the eye candy of staring at the Death Star from space or the inside is amazing. Every single piece from the lights, buttons, computers, walls, and switches is amazing. Every item and object is build from actually existing Legos in real life, so you could even recreate your favorite scene from the game. Just the work they put into the sets and props is a signature of how much effort these guys put into this game. The atmosphere of the game will definitely envelope you, leaving you with a heartwarming and satisfying adventure until the very end.

LEGO SW II sticks to pretty much the same formula as the first. You are reenacting the Star Wars movies in an entirely LEGO universe. The previous installment had you cracking heads with Anakin and the gang, now you’re going to play through with the more favorable set of characters: Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, those damn droids, and anyone else you encounter along the way. In this one you have got the same addicting platforming/action game with the quirky puzzles of the first. You control your characters on-screen from a third person point of view. You can do things like attack (different depending upon which weapon), build objects from the Legos around you, use the force, rappel on a hook, etc. Every level you (and possibly a friend) get a set of characters (based on the movie canon) to control, and you can switch between them with a simple press of a button.

Each character has a different ability. Shooters can rappel, Jedi’s can use the force, storm troopers can access restricted areas, etc. This is where the game gets a bulk of its puzzles, trying to work around the character limitations of each class. C3PO can’t jump, so often you will have to find an alternate route or build him a ramp. Jedi’s can’t rappel, so shooters must do so in order to hit a switch. As well, there are sometimes Legos scattered about that can be used to build objects that progress your quest or find a secret item. These are the main things that comprise of LEGO SW II, and the puzzles are nearly everywhere. Single player is very refined and fun to play, even alone. LEGO Star Wars II starts off a bit slow, but once you get into it you just can’t stop. Like the first, LEGO Star Wars II is fast-paced and action packed. Lasers, enemies, and allies are almost constantly moving around the screen. The controls continue to be simple so that the learning curve is quick and easy.

In a number of ways, however, LEGO Star Wars II is a bit of an improvement over the first. The most obvious point would be that most people have greater sentiments for the original trilogy over the prequels. This is good, because you will love this game ever the more so. But of course, TT’s also improved upon the gameplay to make it feel a lot more fine-tuned. The game seems a bit harder, with the so-called “adaptive difficulty”. This actually makes dying a lot more common, and the game much faster. The levels are also MUCH longer than the first, making levels nearly 20 minutes long if you stop to find secrets. There are more moves and actions to use, such as melee combat moves, which makes kicking C3PO’s ass all the more hilarious. As well, flying has been greatly improved. Vehicle levels are now free-flying, allowing for a lot more freedom. I thought they might screw up the controls, but they seem perfectly fine, and your ship pretty much goes where you want it to go. It probably won’t seem like it to an observer. Your ship can do flips, reverses, and spins, making it look as though it is a bitch to control. In reality it is actually very easy, and vehicle levels are extremely action-packed and over the top, with TIE Fighters and lasers bolting all across the screen.

Also, this time through, the amount of items you can collect is INSANE. There is so much to do. Some of it requires you to come back at the end of the game to collect stuff at the beginning. So, even when you have “beaten” the game, you’re barely half way through it. At the end of the game, there are still secret areas and items to find. It raises the replay value astonishingly, and keeps you more entertained for quite a long time. One would think that you would have a hard time trying to keep track of everything. However, the game keeps a good track of everything you’ve done so far, providing plenty of in-game menus for you to keep track of, and even provides a nifty percentage bar at the main bar in the Cantina. The variation in moves and characters is refreshing and helps to renew a formula that we played almost less than a year ago. Traveler’s Tales also brings some newer puzzles to the table to accommodate for some cool new characters, which also makes the game play feel fresh for the veterans of the first.

One of the good things is that also, in most levels of the game, there are way more people in your party than the first. Every level can have up to 5 people in it, sometimes even more, given the scene in the movie. This makes the game a lot more fun in terms of how much is going on while you are playing, while enemies and allies dueling it out around you. In the past game, this was only a treat for a few levels of the game. Now its almost commonplace, and very much welcomed.

The best part of this game is the amazing co-operative. Co-operative play is a game mode that many game developers fail to realize the full potential for. LEGO Star Wars II does not do that. LEGO SW II is an example to the rest of the gaming world what co-op should be about: plenty of space, easy controls, and best of all, teamwork. Unless you work together in LEGO SW II, you will only get in a screaming fight. Every puzzle requires a different type of person to help out. One person can never do it all. This makes the game feel a lot nicer, and actually keeps you reminded that you are playing with your buddy, and not just on single-player with a bot running the other guy while you do your own thing. If you plan on buying this, bring a friend, or better yet, friends. You and your friends won’t stop laughing at the fast-paced, over the top gameplay. For those who absolutely loved playing the co-op of the first, prepare to be “wowed” again by LEGO SW II’s fantastic co-op mode.

Oh, and yes, Han does shoot first.

The Bad
I think the main thing is that those who didn’t like the first won’t like this one. Those who did love it are in for a great treat. But for those who didn’t, the new features probably won’t be enough for you to consider this game a purchase. I know many people complained about the fact that you couldn’t die in the first. In this one its much better, as the action is much faster, and the game is a bit harder, the not dying thing is actually pretty nice this time around. But those who found it too kiddy might not like the fact that this wasn’t taken out of the game.

I also never found player editing that much fun. It was there, but I never used it. It seemed like another thing I had to do, and the Lego pieces it gives you really don’t go together that well. You can never seem to create a character that is really cool, and even if you did it really does not have much of an effect on the game at all.

While in co-op, there can be problems with collisions at the edge of the screen. It is lenient, but if the screen stretches too far, you can be pulled back by the edge. This can cause some shouting matches with your partner in co-op. It’s frustrating to be staring at your TV, sucked into a daze by the lure of the LEGO universe and have yourself jerked from that daze by the screen pulling you.

Probably the biggest gripe I found with this game, however, was there was lot and lots of collecting. In this game, you have to go back and collect all of the studs twice, once for story and another time for free-play. On levels where stud-collecting is hard, doing it twice is a damn chore, especially on levels where you die often (like a few of the vehicle levels or Dagobah). A lot of the secrets also require you to wait and unlock characters and come back later in the game, something I wouldn’t mind if it gave you enough secrets to find while you are playing the first time through. A majority of the secrets need to be found towards the end of the game, when you have a lot more characters

The Bottom Line
The charm of LEGO Star Wars is irresistible. Combing light-hearted, parody-like humor with the cute and colorful world of Legos was a stroke of pure brilliance. LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy continues its tradition of awesome humor that both adults and kids can enjoy. This time through, it’s a bit harder, a lot longer, and its downfalls have been greatly improved. If you’re a fan of the first and are hoping this game has all the charms of the first, or a parent looking for a good game for your kids, then do not worry. LEGO Star Wars II is the game you want to get.

By Matt Neuteboom on September 26, 2006

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

The Best

The Good
How the Hell do you review Super Mario Bros.? How the Hell do you review the game that started it all? The game that single-handedly brought the gaming market out of a slump to deliver one of the single greatest gaming experiences of all time. Which without we would have never seen the glorious video games that we marvel upon today. Super Mario Bros. is a game deserving every word of praise that I give it here. This game has single-handedly changed so many things in the gaming industry that I don't even know where to begin,

This game has been reviewed so many times over, that writing a review just for the mere sake of recommendation would be pointless by adding my own review. Of course, mine will definitely not be the best, but I write this review out of sheer respect. This game holds a special place in my heart as the first video game I ever played, so I can only hope my words give you readers an idea of how this games transcends almost every other video game made.

Mario has it all. It has the addictive, smooth side-scrolling game play of the arcades and translates it directly to console. No matter how much you play, you can just never put it down. It has the simple yet utterly fun and hypnotic game play that games such as Doom and Tetris brought us. The unique challenge the game provides is so refreshing it makes the game replayable 20 years after its initial release. It's simple enough to learn, but has so much to do and play.

At it heart it is only run and jump, but comes out to be so much more than that. Running through the mushroom kingdom as the mustached plumber just feels natural and utterly satisfying. The controls are tight and refined to make it feel like you're really controlling Mario in the 2D mushroom kingdom. The possibilities of the game are endless, and with its open ended platformer gameplay, there are countless ways you can beat the game with secret passages and shortcuts. You can use items and enemies to defeat the colorful and unique and varied array of foes that stand against you, You have the quick and fast-paced game play that is enticing yet difficult to the very end. The beauty of this is that almost anybody can play the game, whether it's 7 year old boy or the 40-something year old soccer mom looking for something to pass the time.

Players had the abiltiy to traverse the 30 something levels of run and jump fun, that kept getting faster and more challenging as you go. Of course, this was utterly unheard of back then. The open yet random level design allows you to play the level any way you want to, and there are tons of secret passages everywhere, from the simple vine to the clouds above, to the secret warp pipes past the end of every underground level. Every level seems unique because it seems completely random, and this is also where the game gets some of its charm, just the feeling of having to work around the terrain that seems to have no purpose. In modern Mario games it seems like every level is designed so that every thing has a purpose, but the randomness of the level design of this game adds a charm of its own. Plus, you can't ask for more varied levels. It has everything to keep the game changing. Courses such as the underwater levels, the mushroom-top levels, the flying fish levels, and the bullet bill worlds. And of course Bowser's ever addicting castle puzzles.

The game wasn't the first to use the plot which today can be referred to as a bit hackneyed, but this game has the greatest charm with its "damsel-in-distress: scenario, not only by creating levels like castles, but it had the weird, exotic enemies like spikey turtles, flying fish, fire balls, and giant lizards. The crisp graphics were new back in the day when games could only create the thick, blocky graphics that were trademark of the era before this game. The delightful tunes of course continue to enchant us even today, even becoming icons of the video gaming genre itself.

We cannot ignore the sheer magnitude of this game. It takes the smooth, simple, and addictive game play of the arcades and translates it into a game that is essentially considered the best game of all time. Refined and polished to the very end, Super Mario Bros. is not only one of the funnest games of all time but also ceremoniously ushered in a new era of gaming.

The Bad
Hey, there's a reason the title of this review is "the best". I cannot find anything wrong with this game, its just that good. Play the game and you will understand.

The Bottom Line
Super Mario Bros. marks a turn in the history of video games. Setting a new standard for video games, Super Mario Bros. ushered in an era of games with smooth game play, fast and quick challenges, and simple controls, that combines to create an amazingly rich and detailed experience. What is essentially the greatest game of all time, Super Mario Bros. remains playable even to this very date. You are not a gamer until you have played the phenomenon that is Super Mario Bros..

By Matt Neuteboom on September 12, 2006

Geist (GameCube)

Fun, but not without its flaws

The Good
Let’s face it. Geist got really mediocre reviews from almost everyone. Some of them were pretty brutal. I remember particularly one review in Game Informer Magazine being particularly strict on it.

Given the mediocre reviews of it, I would have never gotten my hands on Geist if it weren’t for my good friend, Randy. Randy had been waiting for this for months, and it just kept getting delayed. It finally came out…and damn he wouldn’t put it down. Well…if it weren’t for him, I would’ve read the magazine, and would have never laid hands on the game. And it just so happens that I found an excellent deal for the game at, of all places, Toys R’ Us. I nabbed the game for a mere $10.

Geist has something that really appeals to me: innovation. It tried pushing new borders with a concept that I am surprised hasn’t been exploited yet. In Geist, you are the ghost. Remember all of the games where you had to walk down that dark corridor, water dripping from the ceiling, scared for your life of the ghost that inhabited the facility? Well now YOU get to finally reverse the sides and you’re that poltergeist that’s making the inhabitants of the compound cower in fear.

Geist is a mixture of puzzle and FPS. The puzzle side of the game is a clever mixture of possessing objects, scaring people, and manipulating the environment to do what you want. The puzzles in the game are absolutely ingenious. They may take you a lot of time, but are all around, lots of fun to do. In order to possess a living thing, you must first scare it, which is a puzzle in itself. You need to pay close attention to your environment to see what you can and cannot use to scare the creature. This makes puzzles interesting, since it requires you to think about what you have the ability to do in your different forms to get to your goal. For example, you will need to use a box of food scare a group of rats. You then need to possess the rats, and carefully avoid a maze of mouse traps set up for you. With the mouse you can enter a small hole next to a locked door. The moue will make the dog bark, which will make the dog keeper come over…and well, you get the idea. Puzzles like this can go on for a long time. The best part is that they’re a lot of fun to do, just seeing what you can do. It is most likely the highlight of this game.

On the action side, the use of dispossession and possession can be a lot of fun during battle. When you dispossess, the world around you slows down, allowing you to view the battlefield, spy on enemies waiting in ambush, or even possess a turret. Hell, you can even possess the rockets the enemies shoot out of their guns! You can dispossess your body for a bit of fun too. Try and watch two guards fly from an explosion in slow motion. The experience is priceless.

The story is incredibly intriguing and will keep you quite interested. Volks Corp., a weapons making company in Southern France, has recently begun bizarre experiments. After your investigation mission goes wrong, you become one of those experiments. The story and motivations behind Volks’ experiments are clever and fascinating. I will say this, that Geist has one of the most original plots for an FPS that I have seen. Like a solid game, the plot unfold as it goes, and pushes the game along nicely, so that the story is refreshed often to keep you wanting to see what happens next. The characters are also well-developed. Almost all of the characters feel well-rounded, with both strengths and flaws. Even the antagonist shows plenty of emotion and sadness. The characters also have a nice feel of vividness about them, which distracts from the sometimes bland and depressing environments. The antagonist easily has to be my favorite character from the game because of his excellent display of emotion, strength, and good dialogue. The overall dark and moody feel mixes well with the sometimes goofy game play and dialogue that is in between the major plot points. However the dark plot and creepy atmosphere do well to make this story suspenseful and intriguing.

The multiplayer succeeds in holding your attention for a while. With capabilities of up to four players, possessing and killing each other is a ball. You can play with 1-4 players, or with up to 7 bots. You can even have 4 players vs. 4 bots in multiplayer! There’s your basic mode where you start as a ghost and can possess humans to attack others, or you can possess items like exploding crates, guns, missiles, and even other players if you have the ability. This mode is good for basic shootouts, but is still a lot of fun. Multiplayer matches often get hectic and frantic, for some great shootouts and lots of laughs. Another mode (I forget the name) is where one team must play as humans, and another as ghosts. The ghosts must possess the humans, and move their bodies to death traps around the area like spike pits, fans, electrical wires, or furnaces. The humans must avoid the ghosts, and when they get trapped must struggle against the ghosts to survive. This mode mixes the game play up a lot and is great because it’s a challenge. Playing as both teams is hard, because the bots are quite hard to beat. The last mode is not all that fun, so I will not mention it anyway. All around it is a blast to play, and by Gamecube’s standards the multiplayer for Geist is if not well-polished, just a lot of fun.

The Bad
By far the worst part of this game is its terrible use of old technology and all around outdated feeling. The graphics look and feel extinct. The lack of polish this game has practically comes through to you out of the TV screen.

For one, the action parts of the game lack any bit of grandeur. To put it simply, the shooting sections come as close to generic as generic can get. At its core, this game is just a big repetition of run-shoot-run-shoot. For one, the lack of enemy AI is apparent throughout most of the game. There is very little strategy involved at all within shootouts. Enemies use the same straight line rush that failed them back in the days of Doom. While a portion of these battles are fun, the majority of them aren’t. Some of them are actually just downright terrible. The novelty of being able to view a battle when you dispossess your body gets old after a while. The typical situation in Geist would be run and shoot, with some bit of possessions in the middle. Boss battles are often repetitive and tiring, and end up exhausting their interest before the battle is half over.

The graphics suffer from the same ailment. The lack of good graphics adds on to the fact that the environments for the game are simply bland and boring. The environments for the game are most often a dull palette of gray for indoors and yellow for outdoors. Almost all of the levels feel dark and uninspiring. In multiplayer the graphics even hamper the gameplay, with fuzzy resolutions making seeing the tiny four player screens quite hard to play with. The combat environments are almost entirely too linear and don’t allow for any room to find alternate paths or even some differentiation.

That brings me to my next point of how terribly low the replay value for the game is. For one, the puzzles for possession are entirely scripted. The problem with the concept of possession and ghosts is that it’s hard to maintain belief that you’re ghost when you can only possess a select amount of objects that the programmers selected for you. After going through the game, you begin to wonder. Why can I possess this can of paint but not this other one that looks exactly like it? If I am a ghost why can’t I just pass through the walls altogether? Besides that, puzzles only have one solution, which takes the fun out of replaying the game. The first time its fun to figure out what objects you need to find to get to the next area. The second time its so boring because you already know how to do it. The low replay value of the game is a definite deciding point when it comes to buying the game.

The Bottom Line
Geist is sort of like subliminal messaging. You really like the finished product, but really aren’t sure why. Geist certainly looks and feels outdated, but it still allows you to have a lot of fun. It has a fun, but not to overly complicated storyline, some good characters, and great atmosphere. The puzzles are fun and will definitely keep you interested. Unfortunately, the linear one player game and the lackluster FPS sections really bring down the replay value. The outdated feel is outrageously apparent in this game.

I think Geist gets extra points for doing something that no other games do. It tried to bring a new concept to the table. I’m not sure if the game did that well, but it opened up the idea to other companies, and I think that’s more worth it. After all, who knows if we see more games coming out like this? The FPS genre is cramped with WWII shooters and there really isn’t enough creativity flowing through it. It’s quite refreshing seeing a game trying to break the mold.

The linearity of the puzzles and the generic shooting sections really limit this game’s replay value. As a single-player game, this is a one-time play through. The multiplayer is a hell of a lot of fun, but it has limited options so it does not justify a high price. I would recommend renting the game. It allows you one play through of the game, and if you’ve got friends to play with then it gives you a great chance to enjoy a bit of the multiplayer. Its no Half Life 2, but is still fun nonetheless and deserves to be played by the gamer who is looking for a bit more than shooting Nazis in his FPS games.

Buyworthy: Anything more than $20 is too much for this game.
Rentworthy Recommended first.

By Matt Neuteboom on August 26, 2006

Half-Life 2 (Windows)

Not just a game, an experience

The Good
I will be sincere and frank. Half-life 2 is one of the greatest, most inspiring games I have ever played. HL2 simply has a way of making you feel inside the game, working your way through the desolate and ruined streets of City 17. It has the power to make it seem like Half-Life 2 is so much more than a video game, that it really is you who is dodging the bullets of the combine as you escape through the city canals. Half-life 2 doesn’t make you feel like your sitting at your computer desk with the TV droning a rerun of the Simpsons. It brings you the atmosphere and the storytelling of a Hollywood masterpiece.

Half-life 2 gets its strength from how well it makes players feel part of the game, how it makes players feel immersed into the game play. Half-life 2’s ingenious storytelling is clearly visible through the game’s heavy sci-fi atmosphere and its life-like feeling. HL2 has the feeling of a good Hollywood masterpiece: it is able to make you feel as though you are sitting right there in the game, just as a good movie does. The sights and sounds of City 17 literally make the city come alive. All around HL2 has that utter feeling of deep drama, even without using much dialogue or even traditional cut-scenes. It has the ability to make you feel that something is going on and the game has a huge back-story even though it doesn’t tell you in cut scenes or through dialogue. All real dialogues are completely played in-game, and the camera never leaves your body, to give the narrative a more personal feeling and “silent” feeling. You can feel the post-apocalyptic, Orwellian air as you step into City 17. The narrative chosen by Valve makes the game feel much deeper and allow the player to be drawn in more than a game with a traditional narrative.

HL2 also owes much of its immersion to the masterful Source engine, which in my honest opinion is the most realistic engine ever created. The atmospheric feel to HL2 would not have been possible if it did not have such a realistic environment to work in. And of course, I would have never chosen a better engine. Source delivers such a realistic environment, filled with life-like graphics and physics.

The physics are one of the highest points in this game. Everything in the game bounces and rolls in the way you would expect it too in real life. Barrels roll smoothly downhill, and boxes tip precariously as you begin to stack them. You can pick up almost everything you would be able to in real life, from boards and boxes, to the tiniest insignificant items like paper cups, bricks, paint cans, and milk cartons. The effect of this is that Gordon Freeman’s hands feel like your magical hands into the digital world.

The best part about this though is that the game incorporates it into the game play. For example you can pick up boards and use them to cross dangerous gaps, or you must use the physics to solve puzzles to advance. Of course, the environments feel much more interactive with these grandiose physics, and during firefights you will be shooting down objects which will react to your movements and your bullets. Telephone lines will sway in the breeze as an enemy helicopter flies overhead. But of course nothing would be complete without the game’s ingenious Gravity Gun! The GG allows you to manipulate the area around by allowing to pick up items of almost any size and to move them around or punt them at people. Not only can it be used to manipulate the environment to reach unexplored areas, but it can be used to attack people. This is a gun where the ammo is literally the area around you. With how much detail the developers pore into the game, there is almost a constant supply of ammo for you to play with. Anything from tires to sinks to TV’s can be used, and it ends up being one of the most fun parts of the game. What you do with it is up to you! These are just a few of the things HL2 can bring to you through its ingenious physics. It is so much so, that physics are literally part of the game.

But of course, the physics would be nothing without beautiful and realistic graphics to complement the physics. The Source engine delivers just like it delivers its physics: superbly. The graphics of HL2 could not be more well-defined and realistic. Both landscapes and indoor levels have an unprecedented amount of detail in them.
Textures and lighting are absolutely top-notch, all of which look gorgeous on a computer screen. On a higher end computer, the graphics look photorealistic. The character models are highly developed, with Valve paying special attention to the ability to render detailed facial expressions, which allows for better storytelling through actions rather than words. All of the environments in HL2 are littered with detail and small items to make the areas seem more realistic. All of the areas in HL2 are ingeniously varied yet all contain a mind-boggling amount of detail. Every item is littered with items like couches, cans, boxes, frying pans and everything else you can think of. Any game can make an abandoned seaside village, but litter it with cartons, boards, paint cans, food, clocks, and pictures and it makes the ghost town feel as though someone has actually once dwelled there before you. The environments are wide and open, and make you really feel like there really are parts of the city that you simply haven’t seen yet. The lighting effects of the game are brilliant, with a realistic “iris” effect for outdoors. When you go from a dark indoor place to a bright outdoor area, the game temporarily blinds you to act as though your iris needs to get used to the new light. And if you’re sitting here thinking “yeah, its will have great graphics if I had a mega computer likes yours.” Well I must say you have it a bit wrong. HL2 will even play on some of the worst systems. You see the screenshots we have here at MobyGames? Well you can get that to run at a smooth frame rate with a 64 MB graphics card at 512 MB RAM. No kidding! Trust me, I should know, because those were my settings when I had my first run through this game!

And of course, after all of this you simply must have the ambient sounds to complete the package. As with many cases, ambient sounds can often make or break a scene. Sounds tell the player if the scene is peaceful and isolated from combat, or the player is in the middle of a war zone. A chase seems slow and boring when it feels like there is nothing that makes the scene feel urgent or that anything is chasing you. But add the droning Combine Tower alarm and helicopter blades overhead and it seems like the entire city is after you. The Striders seem much more big and powerful when you hear their howling war cries from over the rooftops. Danger seems close to your back when you hear the ticking of bullets flying to the brick wall behind you. A peaceful breeze combined with the graphically beautiful sunsets subconsciously tells a player that the area is safe and isolated from combat. Each sound tells a different story, and HL2’s sounds must be heard to be believed.

All of these things combine and the result is the world of HL2 feels all too real. From physics to graphics and sound, HL2 provides an eerie, life-like atmosphere and drama. And of course, Valve grants us the privilege of being able to play in this fantastic environment. The FPS sections of the game are utterly top-notch. The game allows a right amount of balance between weapons and enemies, and varies the environments enough to not make the game feel repetitive, but gives you enough time there to make it feel realistic. You will often find yourself shooting from rooftops, cliff sides, and more. Action-packed sections of the game are adrenaline pumping and extremely fast-paced, and this applies to the driving sections of the game, which are speedy and filled with high-speed chases. The enemy AI is highly advanced in my opinion, with enemies shouting commands on the battlefield, and actually DOING them. Enemies naturally shape their tactics around the battle, and you will often find yourself being outflanked by enemy troops. The gut-wrenching action of Half-life 2 will not stop until the very end.


The Bad
Like a Hollywood movie again, Half-Life 2’s biggest flaw is that it is the same thing through every time, usually with very little variation. Often there’s only one way to get through sections of the game, and while it is extremely fun it is in the most sense, it is the same way through every time. To do it any other way, I think, would be to destroy the gamer’s sense of immersion. But some players will find this point annoying, especially with big sand box games out there such as the Grand Theft Auto series.

LOAD TIMES. I hate load times. In the beginning of the game, there is also a number of load times that severely hinders the immersion. If you don’t know this game, then I must warn you that the load times can be outrageously long. All of the Half-life 2 files are on Steam’s servers, so that you don’t have to keep the huge amount of files n your computer. But uploading these files to your computer can take quite long. The only time this will hinder game play is the beginning, where because you are being chased it makes you feel as though you should rush through the areas. You may encounter a new load screen every few minutes, a bad flaw for this portion of the game.

And while the enemy AI is fine tuned and polished, the same cannot be said for your allies AI. Squad mates may often crowd around you, or run straight into the path of a strider. Can no game make good AI for friendly units? Is it an attempt to put the burden of work on to you? I can mention a number of games which suffer from this same problem, however a good potion of them have good to decent enemy AI.

But of course, these flaws are quite easy to overlook in the face of what it does well, so much to the point where the flaws become almost negligible.

The Bottom Line
There’s simply no other way to put it. Half-Life 2 is easily one of the most (if not THE most) atmospheric and immersive games out there. Through its sheer perfection of physics, graphics, sound, and AI, it has the uncanny ability to make you feel like you are standing there in the middle of each of your battles. The game has a few outstanding flaws but it is massively overshadowed by the feeling this game has to offer. This game will definitely be one of the most memorable ones of the current era, and sets a new standard for FPS games. Game Informer was right; nothing will ever be the same. Half-Life 2 is not just a game, it’s an experience that must be felt to be believed.

Buyworthy: You bet it is! Worth double of what they sell it for now!
Rentworthy N/A

By Matt Neuteboom on August 26, 2006

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (PlayStation 2)

A playground of destruction!

The Good
Imagine this. You are traveling through the smoldering remains of the North Korean countryside. You’ve just been given an assignment by the Russians to take out a Chinese missile commander. You really don’t want to do this job, but you have no choice. You need to improve your relations with the Russians in order to get back your supply of weapons. You disguise yourself as a Chinese civilian, and make a quick entrance into their base. But a Chinese officer spots you, and all Hell breaks loose. Quickly you hop out of the vehicle as a tank pulls up to blows your car to smithereens. You grab your machine gun and begin plugging away at the troops. As a helicopter comes flying by, you pull out your RPG and fire a rocket at it, but miss. Instead, you dodge bullets and come to a helipad. Just as its about to take off, you hijack the vehicle. The troops become mere target practice for the deadly helicopter-mounted M134 gatling guns. You spy your prey, but he is protected by bunkers and sand-bag mounted machine guns. No problem. You call in an air strike, and a few moments later nothing is left of the area but rubble. Mission complete…

Mercenaries doesn’t lie when it comes to its title. This entire game is literally a playground of destruction. From its vehicles and its air strikes, to its side missions and factions, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is a game that any hardcore or casual gamer can fall in love with.

The story is this: you are a freelance mercenary who has just been hired to go into the North Korean war zone and hunt the “Deck of 52”. Each card in a deck of cards represents a man on the most-wanted list. Your primary objective is to get the Ace of Spades, the most wanted man in the world. Get him and your going home packing 100 million dollars. Along the way you must also capture the rest of the deck for some cash. The game works much like the Grand Theft Auto series, where you must speak to different people for different missions. There’s five factions, four of which you can work for. Doing missions for one will increase your standing with them, but sometimes it will decrease your standing with another. It’s up to you to find out which you want to remain allies with.

Mercenaries perfectly describes what it is: a giant playground. The game sets you off in a giant slab of North Korea, and from there on the game play never stops being fast-paced and blood pumping. This is a game where you can pretty much play by your own rules. The missions are completely open ended to what you want to do, and there’s so many resources available for you to have a lot of fun with. For one, every vehicle in the game is able to be hijacked, and I mean everything. We are talking from civilian cars to supply trucks and from jeeps to helicopters. Anything you set your eyes on, all you have to do is steal it and its yours. So in the middle of battle, you can pick out a vehicle and grab it. A tank just blew up your jeep? Steal one of theirs and return the favor. Better yet, the one that just shot at you. You can even get supply and vehicle drops if you need a ride or need some more weapons.

The environment even changes around your whims. This means that every building in the game is completely destructible. This includes bridges and even the buildings where you are required to get your missions (you can use a bunker buster to destroy the US HQ, but don’t expect them to be too friendly to you after that). This alone allows for extreme destruction from all over the battlefield. Don’t feel like taking down all of the soldiers? Just plant some C4 on the barracks and that takes care of that. However, what’s even better than C4 is the massive amount of air strikes available to you in the game. There are about 16 types if I’m not mistaken, with things like carpet bombings, surgical strikes, bunker busters, and just flat out power-houses that will decimate an area in seconds. You can level entire cities until there is nothing left on the map. Let your pyromaniac side free and burn the countryside down! Just remember, that these things cost money, so make sure you don’t waste it all on one city…

And speaking of money, how exactly do you go about making money in this game? Well there are many, many ways. For one, you can do missions for the four various factions. It works like the GTA system, where you get to free roam but also go to people for missions. Each of them has their own agenda, so watch out. In the beginning of the game you aren’t required to meddle with other countries, but later it comes to the point where you must choose sides wisely. You have the ability to recruit friendly nations to fight with you, and they will climb in the backs of trucks with you and shoot out of the back. However unfriendly nations will shoot at you if they recognize you. As you proceed and help these people, you will also receive emails from various sources telling you the whereabouts of the “Deck of 52”. When it says a deck of 52, it means all 52 people. Minus the four aces, that’s 48 people you must hunt down. Not all of them need to be captured, but a great incentive is that each of them gives you lots of money for…you guessed it- more weapons and explosives! Once you have enough of a particular suit captured, you will enough intel to go after the ace himself. Besides the main missions, there are tons of side-quests to do. For one, you can go hunting for caches of items that will allow you to access more types of supply drops, vehicle drops, and air strikes, or do a number of races.

On a last side note, both the music and the graphics are absolutely beautiful. The PS2 is not a very graphic heavy machine, but Mercenaries makes the best of it. The fire effects for the game are absolutely stunning, and the landscapes are smooth and don’t look polygonal. Objects are highly detailed, and yet the game can stand scenes with tons of action with no slow down at all. The orchestrated music gets your blood pumping and is professionally made.

By combining free roam areas with all of the resources at your disposal, it allows for you to really get your creative juices flowing and do anything the way you want to. You can just go all out with guns, but that’s pretty boring. Need to access a top-secret Chinese base? Get a Chinese hummer airdropped to you and sneak in. Then let the bullets fly! Don’t want to let the South Korean’s get to their tanks? Carpet bomb the whole row of them! The concept is that no battle is ever the same. Every battle will evolve around your actions, which makes you feel free to do whatever you want to do. The game is quite long, and the fact that almost every battle is never the same will guarantee that this game is going to keep you occupied for months to come.

The Bad
The thing that will definitely piss you off the most is that it sometimes it feels like you are on God mode. Bullets rarely do enough damage that they kill you, so that takes away from the major strategic values of the game. On the other hand, explosions take away tons of your health to the point where you need to retreat from the battle. I suppose they balance themselves out in a fight, but fights without enemy armor are almost too easy for you.

And dear God, where the Hell is the multiplayer in this game! If ANY game deserves a multiplayer, this game is it. The game has so much co-operative potential, it is almost a shame to see none in there. Almost all vehicles in some way come have the ability to hold two people, especially the jeep that has space for a driver and a gunner. Playing with a friend also bumps up the entertainment value, because you can share these once-in-a-lifetime battles with your friend, and the game can get especially strategic having to work together as a team to pull off the perfect assault.

The last bit I complain about is that Mercenaries tries to have a dark atmosphere but does not succeed. The somber music in between battles only makes the game seem boring and empty, and the dark, destroyed landscapes only sharpen the effect. Truthfully, I could have done without some of the more melancholy tunes and gone with some more fast-paced themes, which in my honest opinion would have been much more effective for the game.


The Bottom Line
Combining free roaming with unlimited resources for killing and destruction creates one of the best games anyone can lay their hands on. This is the type of game where you can really use your imagination to get the job done. The over-the-top battles are fun, and with all of the ways you can battle its guaranteed that you will never fight the same battle same way as the last. It is a shame that Mercenaries has no multiplayer because this game is just chock full of those “Holy crap, did you see that!” moments, but it is a forgivable mistake. Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is a game that should not be overlooked by any gamer. If you’ve seen any trailers or screenshots, and thought that it looked pretty damn cool, then you should definitely give this game a try. I did, and I was not disappointed.

Buyworthy: Definitely worth every penny.
Rentworthy: You can, but you won’t get anywhere close to experiencing how much this game has to offer.

By Matt Neuteboom on August 25, 2006

Doom³ (Windows)

Tiring, repetitive, and mindless, this game pushes the definition of 'generic'

The Good
I already realize that I have gotten to Doom 3 a lot later than most others. Doom 3 is not a game that you just simply “miss” on the store shelves like a fresh remake of Defender. No, I decided to forgo purchasing a copy of the game for the same reasons I forgo all games: I’m simply not interested in a game OR I do not have the green pieces of colored paper to fork over for such said game. In this case, both the former and latter reason amply persuaded me to invest my money in a different game. The time arose, however, when a good friend of mine got the game and decided not to open it. I supposed this was my time to strike, and that night I got home with a borrowed copy of Doom 3 in my hands, and soon after, on my hard drive.

In all honesty, Doom 3 originally surprised me because…well…it didn’t suck. All honest expectations for this game braced me for a game rife with terrible dialogue and an experience on par with Turok: Evolution. However as far as games go, Doom 3 descended me into a world that was, by all means, creepy, atmospheric, and impeccably well done.

As I got off the transport to my unfortunate post on Mars I noticed tons of things right from the get go. First of all, this game is well-done and has amazing production values. It’s polished, and it’s got all the workings for a great atmosphere. Doom 3 has a way of making you feel like you’re in an abandoned Mars compound. Not just looking at it through a monitor, really being there. The sterilized architecture of the buildings, the empty silence of the halls, and the destruction of the facility make it feel all too real. The lighting also plays a major part in this. The swaying of a single ceiling light as you traverse down a ransacked and blood-soaked hallway does so much more to add to the gruesome scene. Wall shadows and dynamic lighting aren’t just thrown away as a simple mechanics; they’re actually part of the game’s design. With every step you take in the game it feels like a real step you take in real life. The tension and fear is in the air, and at many times, it feels like you are too.

The characters also mimic the attention paid to the atmosphere. The NPC’s, while they’re there, have a certain…vividness…about them. This vividness is not so much a lively feeling but a real feeling. The looks on their faces mimic the tension of the air. The NPC’s have an emotional tension about them. All around everyone is worried about all the strange things going on at the facility. People look and feel on the edge, just more evidence of a carefully constructed universe set up by developers. It also adds to the atmosphere. Not only does the design of the place feel creepy, but everyone is so paranoid and worried. Besides this, NPC’s have a lot to say: they don’t actually repeat themselves over and over again like a typical game. Many have tons of lines of dialogue regarding everything.

And as I traveled on to my assignment, it seemed like not only the atmosphere and characters were there, but an entire universe as well. Besides the odd events around the compound, I found the denizens of Mars not only talking about the strange events, but about others as well. A TV in the lounge with the news station on revealed more about the Doom 3 universe and things going on outside of Mars. I could use computers and terminals to find out cargo deliveries and meeting schedules. I found out that I could pick up others PDA’s, which I admit is one of the cleverest things the game does. While it also revealed many secrets like door and locker combos, one my favorite things to do were to read their emails. Like everything else, it revealed a well-constructed universe. I discovered the innocent civilians of Mars chit-chatting over new members, parties, quiz nights, bad workers and bosses, and just work related stuff like power blow-outs or deliveries. It’s something that convinced me I was not the only major part of universe, and there are other things going on around me, and that this station was fully functional before I arrived.

The level design also must be noted here. Shockingly, the Mars facility had real-life architecture. Unlike most games which have one-way facilities that seem like they are made solely for the player to traverse, Doom 3 has carefully laid-out levels that make it seem realistic and man-made. It has hallways laid-out that make it look that if it weren’t in complete ruins, it would be a real building. Many times you will return to places through a different route, more evidence to this point. It has functional and practical architecture and infrastructure that, again makes it seem like a universe is present with me in the game.

Doom 3, as it promised, is a dazzling display of technology and lighting. The graphics on the game are absolutely amazing. Simply put, this game is beautiful. Every level has tons of detail poured into it. Just one room has so many tiny details that it’s mind-boggling. Every room has pipes and gadgets jutting in and out of the walls. Every monitor has something displayed on it. It’s a splash of detail that games these days really fail to put in. Just one room has a lot, and yet they do this throughout the entire game which is great. The graphics are also nice and crisp, and go with the lighting well. The lighting is one of the greatest parts of the game. It is so much better to feel the tension of the scene by watching a slithering spider shadow crawl up the wall. Even on my poor computer I was able to enjoy high-quality graphics, which in my opinion, enhanced the game greatly. Darkness never looked this beautiful.

And so I descend into the depths of Mars city to go on my first assignment. People are even more on edge here, with people telling of horror stories and voices in the dark. All around you can tell the paranoia in people’s voices. And as I venture on, the more twisted the game becomes. I myself even become pretty nervous as I stray farther from people and go deeper into the underground. By this point, I am shocked by the game. It had exceeded all of my expectations and made me feel so immersed into the game. I felt like I was part of this game and its universe, and was feeling just as terrified and paranoid of the areas around me as the civilians who occupied it. And of course, the moment comes where all Hell breaks loose. I scramble myself to fend off the ravenous demons from beyond as I rush to get back to Mars City. Armed with just a pistol, I can hear my friends screaming over the radio. Everything is in utter chaos, and I am totally freaked about this game. The game had so far lived up to its glorifying hype. As I dodge demons and fend off the undead, I finally make it to the elevator. I take it back up to Mars City, anxious for more and prepared for what this game had to show me….

The Bad
…However what Doom 3 has to offer is easily finished within the first half hour of the game.

The farther you play, the farther Doom 3 descends into a repetitive, mindless shooter with absolutely nothing to offer. The farther you go, the father this game reveals that it is rife with stagnant gameplay and boring mechanics. When I entered the sixth level and discovered it looked exactly like the past 3 levels I’ve played, it become obvious that Doom 3 is filled with more problems than a guest on the Jerry Springer Show. But dear God where to start?

I think its important to lay down some of the basics before we go on, which is why I will first bring up the game play. Doom 3 is an FPS, and nothing more. It is one of the most mind-numbing games I have ever played, starting with its repetitive, tedious, and unforgiving game play. It is the stereotypical FPS recipe: lots and lots of shooting people, combined with key finding, and mixed with few boring and easy puzzles. That’s it. Doom 3 stays the same all throughout the game, and in my opinion, never once throws you a fresh or interesting challenge, save for one large platforming level in the middle of the game, which is nice to see a new challenge but is also very frustrating.

Doom 3 is a game that relies solely on run n’ gun shooting, but what’s even worse is that it fails to even do this. The enemies appear so often and are so overused that it comes to the point where they appear every 5 seconds. It seems that the game can’t let you go down a single hallway without expecting you to encounter another enemy. Enemies are used almost entirely too much that you pray that you are allowed to go just a bit more before having to stop to exterminate another. In the end, the only thing these enemies serve to do is impede progress and slow you down from finishing this dreadful game.

Another major part of this is how terribly linear and similar the levels are. A staggering fraction of the 27 levels within the game look exactly the same, save for a few like the Hell levels. Doom 3 requires you to pass through four levels of Alpha Labs (a total of four hours), all which look completely the same, to try and meet up with Bravo Sqaud, only to have them die in a cutscene. Then they change the objectives around, and require you to go through even more divisions of the compound just to achieve some minute objective. Nothing about any of the environments makes them unique. The horrid monster AI makes it worse, as enemies use the same Robert E. Lee suicide cavalry rush that failed them so many years ago! Doom 3 is so remarkably boring to play that it is painful to go on after about an hour. I could go on with this, but to do so any more would be redundant. To put it simply, Doom 3 is the epitome of generic, bad FPS’s, and utterly fails to be anywhere near as appealing as other games.

Doom 3 also manages to fail to scare me after the point where every enemy jumps out of the walls surprisingly. Remember in the original, when you were supposedly walking through an abandoned room and then all of a sudden…ZOOP…a bunch of enemies pop out of the walls and blow you to bits? Yea, they brought it back. And while it brings a nice bit of nostalgia to the game, it is absolutely annoying because they don’t stop using it- EVER. About 25 levels into the game they still use the mechanic to try and surprise you. You walk into an empty room. You go over to a switch to open the door. A bunch of demons pop out of a secret compartment and attack you for the 400th time that’s happened. Scary! As well, when you’re in the middle of the game, a problem arises in that more times than not the game makes you more bored than scared. After 4 hours of overused mechanics and a shoddy plot, you are too bored to even be remotely paranoid.

And even so, the idea of being scared in a Doom game is utterly impossible. The reason for this is that they give you a fine assortment of weapons to defend yourself. Picture this, you are running down a hallway being chased by demons and your afraid for your life. Then all of a sudden, you realize you have a shotgun, mini-gun, rocket launcher, and laser cannon. You turn around and blast the demon down to a fleshy pulp. Don’t be surprised that this occurs A LOT in Doom 3. May of the times when I became genuinely worried was when my weapons could not handle it, like in the Hell levels when I had no weapons, or when there were too many enemies on the screen. Id, if you want me to be afraid, then please dear God don’t give me weapons to defend myself with! That defeats the whole feeling of being helpless! It starts off scary because all you have is a pistol, but a few levels in I’m packing more heat than a Republican at an NRA meeting.

Doom 3 even manages to destroy what it had set up in the beginning of the game. The character development set up by it disappears because after the infestation of demons, there really aren’t anymore characters to develop anyway. Sergeant Kelly, the person who gives you commands in the game, is utterly devoid of a personality or emotion. Other individuals in the game are few and far between, and are usually there only to lend a temporary helping hand like unlocking a door, furthering the story, or giving you a useful item like a key or weapon. Even the main character seems empty or devoid of life. No other NPC in the game is capable or surviving as long as you are. To put it simply, the excellent characters I saw at the beginning of the game, pretty much ceased to exist. Besides that, the superb atmosphere and universe it sets up is still there, but it eventually wears off. Like most things in video games, the game will remain tense and suspenseful for a day or two. After that, boredom overshadows your curiosity to find out events from the game, and the level design ends up becoming a trifling factor in the game. Exploration is practically impossible because of all the enemies impeding your way, but is also discouraged by the game’s mechanics. Exploring an area and finding a new weapons or health or secret is almost always coupled by a trap being set off and a million monsters coming to get you.

I did not try multiplayer, over fear that it would be another crappy counter-strike type of game, but I have heard that it is useless since really no one plays. Good choice guys, I wouldn’t play it either! As it turns out Id wanted to focus on single-player, which is ironic, since it turns out to be another crappy shooter anyway. The game becomes a horrible experience, one you will never want to play ever again. And even if you wanted to replay the main one player game, it would be pretty much the same. In other words, Doom 3 lacks any bit of replay value. The levels remain completely linear, having very few detours thrown into the mix. Puzzles are easily solved, and the game play is repetitive. No new experience can be gotten from even attempting to replay this sorry shell of a game.

The Bottom Line
Doom 3 really brought me up and then really let me down. At first, Doom 3 showcased me with amazing production values (probably best I’ve ever seen), amazing graphics, and a dark atmosphere. But it just goes to show you, that at its core a game must have good gameplay or at least a decent story to keep you entertained, because without it the rest of those contributing factors just don’t make a difference.

Doom 3 claimed that it wanted to be a modern remake of the original game. Well, I guess it succeeded perfectly. Doom 3 is filled with the same mindless, repetitive gameplay that was the trademark of the first. It is further evidence that games are not justified to be fun with just production values alone. Doom 3 even scores extra for setting up a great atmosphere and universe in the beginning, then completely destroying it with horrible mechanics and shoddy gameplay. By the end of the game, I wanted to get the game done so much I pretty much put the game on God mode with no clipping and went through. Even then was not even much fun.

Look up “generic FPS” in the dictionary and you will see Doom 3’s picture. In all honesty, I have found Doom 3 to be one of the worst, most repetitive, boring games of all time. Please do yourself a favor and do not play this game. I hope this review serves as a warning to those planning on getting it. I had to go through the torture of playing this game, but hopefully this review will save many more. Heed my warning and don’t buy Doom 3. This primitive game deserves to be locked up in a warehouse, piled below boxes and boxes, sitting right next to the Arc of the Covenant. Do not invite this hellish game into your house. It will only end in tears.

By Matt Neuteboom on July 27, 2006

Freedom Fighters (GameCube)

Should have been a modern classic

The Good
Freedom Fighters drops you off in a very similar alternate universe that has all the makings of a good movie. What is weird that it has never been fully exploited by the gaming industry. Soviet Russia quickly invades the US as people are caught completely unaware by this. In the middle of this is Chris and his brother Troy, two plumbers in the middle of their work day. After Troy gets kidnapped by the Soviets, you take the role of Chris, and it quickly becomes a fight for your freedom and the country of America.

Freedom Fighters uses a great combination of team-based action with good AI that makes it an A+ squad based game. It may seem that the consoles are a poor choice for squad based games, because they lack enough buttons for both you own actions and squad commands. Freedom Fighters single-handedly eliminates this premeditated notion. While it lacks in depth commands like commands for opening doors or taking cover, it gives you the basic one. You can order your team to follow and retreat, go to a location (or attack a specific enemy, if you aim at a guy), or to stand their ground. You can also hold the buttons down to just tell all of your people to defend an entire area. The number of people you can hold in your squad is based off of your charisma level. You can raise your charisma by completing objectives but also by doing good deeds like healing he injured. All in all it keeps the difficulty steady by allowing by giving you only a few people in the beginning and a massive raiding party at the very end. This pretty much outlines the way things go and while it seems very basic it works very well in the game.

The rest of the things you can't do (like telling someone to go to cover) is easily covered by the outstanding squad AI. If you tell someone to go to a location, they will go to that location, but if they detect enemies they will automatically seek out cover. If you tell a person to defend an area, he will do the same and seek cover. They will also automatically mount a machine gun if they find one in the area and start plugging away at enemies. Not only this, but the same applies to enemies. Enemies naturally morph around the situation, and seek out cover when you are in the area. Enemies will eventually start to advance on your position in order to overwhelm you. This makes for a great squad-based shooter. Imagine you are standing on top of a rampart, looking down on 8 of your US soldiers battling it out a dozen soviet soldiers. All the while you are issuing commands to tell your soldiers to go here, and defend there. The enemies in the meantime grab hold of machine gun emplacements and find cover themselves. The difficulty also makes it very necessary to use squad tactics. On easy its a walk in the park, but on the hardest you will have to plan your moves carefully to avoid getting shot up. Seriously, this game will give you ulcers in a week, even if you are slowly managing to get your troops in there and complete your objectives. The objectives, are, thankfully very open about which way you can go. The levels are almost always open city levels with open streets that offer tons of ways to get to an objective. Your objectives will also help you in others levels, so if you destroy a helicopter pad in one level, the gunship will no longer be able to gun down you and your men in another level.

The music created for this game is spectacularly mind-blowing. IO Interactive brought in Jesper Kyd, the composer who did music for the Hitman series. The music created for this game is superbly high-quality, but also manages to accent the atmosphere nicely. The main title echoes in with war drums beating loudly to the Gothic chorus of the Hungarian Radio Choir. It adds to the militaristic and dark sci-fi feel of this game. All throughout the game melodies will chime in and it is perfect for the situation. Whether it is the hopeful and rising while you are at the rebel base, or quick and heavy while raiding the enemy base, it is one of the key contributing factors of the game. After this, I even went out and bought the soundtrack to the game. I simply loved it.

Freedom Fighters still manages to create a fun and entertaining plot. It has some good twists and turns, and has good supporting characters. The plot stays fresh with good dialog and characters. Even the troops have nice tidbits of sayings (my favorite one is when the American troop is one the machine gun and shouts "say hello to my little friend!") that make them seem more alive than typical enemies and a typical squad based shooter (unlike Conflict: Desert Storm, which lacks a good unified story and colorful characters). This also allows you to really get into the whole team-based actions.

Lastly, Freedom Fighters pulls through with some surprisingly good multiplayer action. Granted, it is definitely not the buying point for this game. It has a lot of bad flaws that really make it a major one player game. But what it does have it does good. At its best, Freedom Fighters creates humongous battle scenes between players and their squads. It does this by retaining all of the squad-based actions and squad AI that it has in single-player. Your objective in this is to secure outlying bases for extra troops, while also capturing a central flag for a set amount of time. Playing and commanding a squad against other human players is not only challenging but fun. Battle can get very heated, with 16 soldiers standing and shooting on the battlefield trying to find cover and take the battlefield. In the meantime more soldiers spawn at the home bases and shoot from mounted mini-guns, and 4 players can help or command their troops during the battle. You can go 2 v 2, which is great fun, or just 1 v 1, or 1 v 3! Multiplayer is a mode that me and my friends have revisited time and time again.

The Bad
What is really missing that would make this game a masterpiece is an outstanding and emotional plot. What the plot in this game is meant to do is entertain you. It is very interesting and will draw you into it so much that at then end you will wish they had a good sequel (the end leaves you hanging somewhat), but is not meant to blow you away and leave you feeling like you had just witnessed a masterpiece. Occasionally, especially at the end, the game dips into some emotional stuff. But during the game the characters can lack some emotions like sadness or tension. And even though their entire world has been turned upside down and they are forced to live in the sewers, they still manage to make logical decisions with a clear head and act as though the transition has been quite easy to make. Also, while the supporting characters are very colorful (especially your brother Troy), the main character Chris himself shows little or no personality or attitude. He occasionally has a few lines of dialog, but thats it. So while in a few cutscenes he appears as a good strong leader, during game play he is pretty much mute except for the commands you shout.

The weapons also need to be worked on. There's a very limited selection of weapons in the game. You can basically choose between two main weapons, and two side arms during the game, with a few different ones sprinkled in the levels for short time use. They serve their purpose well, and it rarely becomes an issue during the single player game, what with all the fighting and tension. It is more of a way that they can fill in the potential of the game.

Where it truly becomes bad is multiplayer. Multiplayer has plenty of potentially great functions that this game just doesn't fill. Weapons diversity has a glaring absence here. The Soviets get the AK rifle, and the Americans get the shotguns (yes only two teams, another flaw). That is pretty much it. There are a few weapons scattered around the maps, but they are so far away from the playing area, that it is not worth it to leave your men and bases unattended to go grab a gun that the map has little or no extra ammo for (besides, you will most likely die 5 seconds into battle with it anyway). There is also a glaring lack of good maps. The game supplies three maps, just three, but only one of them is spectacular, while the others are pretty much mediocre.

Others seemed to have said that it was very short, but I cannot see how that it. On the easiest setting this is definitely possible, as the difficulty is really what determines if its a strategic squad-based shooter, and a run n' gun shoot-em-up (keep that in mind when deciding the difficulty level). But on the hardest you will be trying over and over, and will definitely be playing this game for hours trying to get pasts the levels. So I suppose its really subjective, but this game may or may not be a very short one.

The Bottom Line
Freedom fighters is a game that while it isn't a masterpiece, hides its imperfections nicely with what it does real, really well. The action in this game is fast-paced and exhilarating, while still keeping it squad-based and strategic by adding in some amazing squad and enemy AI and a good difficulty. The plot is entertaining and captures the imagination, and the characters are very colorful. Accompanied by a master score by Jesper Kyd and the Hungarian Radio Choir, it is a game that I love to go back to.

Freedom Fighters really hasn't gotten much press or hype, even after its launch, height, and its decline into the bargain bin. But Freedom Fighters is a diamond in the rough of gaming, and if you see it sitting on a store shelf, I dare you to give it a try. It hasn't happened yet, but Freedom Fighters is one of those games you go back years later and try to look for on eBay. Who knows, it may even become a modern classic. We may even see a sequel for it, because I can assuredly say it deserves one. At the price of a $5 bargain bin game, the game is well worth that price.

By Matt Neuteboom on June 30, 2006

Siege of Avalon (Windows)

Play any good books lately?

The Good
This is an amazing game that never really got noticed. It has one of the most amazing storylines coupled with beautiful NPC interaction, amazing graphics, a fun class system, and still manages to be quite a long game. I believe that it is up there with Fallout and Diablo as a great RPG, not because it did anything new or revolutionary but because it did what it did really well.

Personally I think this game has one of the BEST and most immersive storylines I have ever played in a game. Like Digital Tomes logo, it is a digital book. You are thrust into a rich world filled with life and teeming with characters and people. The story is so deep that the developers even included over 5 pages of history to read on the land. It turns out that the seven lands are warring against the Sha'Ahoul, a race of orcs and shamans that defile the lands. Swift victory seems at hand, but as the war wages on the humans become more deprived of resources. Men and supplies are quickly dwindling, the reinforcement army needed to conquer the orcs and humans has been delayed by a new kind and bad weather, and the humans are forced to build on last defense against the Ahoul, the fortress of Avalon. You arrive there as a simple recruit. However as you stay there you slowly start to build up influence. This is one of the most beautiful parts of the game. As the game progress, more people know you. They greet you, and you become a beacon of hope among the hopeless and defeated people of the castle. Soon you become sort of a celebrity. People talk about you everywhere and the castle rallies about your name. It’s an inspirational story that will delight you until the very end. The story is very twisty, and there always seems to be something going on. Quests that you do are always related to the story and are very rarely stand alone. Unlike World of Warcraft or Diablo, the quests always pertain to your ongoing story, and instead of going on quests, then having short outbursts of plot changers in the middle, the story unfolds as you do the quests. And unlike other games where you and the character have different minds, the developers always jump ahead of themselves. Whenever you discover something insidious or amazing, you'll be surprised to find out that your character has as well. Without warning your character may open up new dialogue options because he has also discovered the same thing as you have without the need to "examine this" or pick up an object that would trigger the new dialogue option.

Except in a book, you must read about what actions the character does and what he says. This is a game though. You transform the story the way you like it. You can go around talking and introducing yourself to everyone. Or you can talk rough. You don't have to know anyone at all. You can even turn on the guards and attack them, and kill everyone living in the castle! The more people you meet, though, the better. All NPCs have their own personality based on what they do, where they are from, and how much they know/like you. If they know you, they can give you side quests as well. Besides the excellent storyline, the things you do affect the way people react to you. One chapter you may meet a person and say hello. They may mention a food shortage. After you solve this, some of the people you meet will mention this about you. If you don't solve the problem, then they may mention something else about you. Depending on your actions, your responses from people are changed as well. Most people tend to have tons of dialogue if they are crucial to the story. Others may have a a dozen if they are non-crucial to the story. And as a result, the characters are very memorable. They all seem to have personalities and feelings. There are hilarious ones, serious ones, and ones that capture your imagination.

The result of this is that the games feels like its in a living breathing world that changes as you enter it. You are not just in the world, you shape the world. As you perform deeds, the people start to talk about them. People become familiar with you depending on your actions. As things happen around your castle, not only do the people involved talk about it, but bystanders talk too. People's responses change every single time you talk to someone else. As you talk to one person, other dialogue options become available for others. The NPC's remember you and respond differently to you when you return to them. NPC's are constantly moving around the castle you inhabit and are constantly talking about current events. About how they need to do something like this, or how the food shortage is coming, which always seems to come back to your actions. The atmosphere changes as you progress. As you enter the castle on the first day, the atmosphere is dark and defeated, but as you begin to help the poor people, they start to feel better. Instead of greeting you in a defeated a somber manner, they start to talk optimistically. As the game progresses their mood lightens up as the tide slowly turns in their favor as you win more and more victories. The people just seem real, they're dialogues are constantly changing at such a rapid rate, and over time their attitudes towards you and everything around them changes. This creates an imaginative world that seems very real and filled with real people.

This, combined with memorable characters, and a great plot add up to an amazing, twisting, and hilarious story. Although the game is scripted, the plot (or to put it more clearly, the way it is presented) tends to change depending upon you.

The game play is quite easy to follow. The game controls similar to Diablo. Simple point and click is all it is. The game follows experience points rules. The more you kill, the more experience points you get to spend on increasing stats. The higher the skill becomes, the more and more experience points it costs. Instead of being very vague about something, it allows you to see how everything changes right on the screen and tells you what the skill would do. As you add something to a certain skill, you can see certain damage modifiers like skill with weapons and damage absorption go up and down before your eyes. With this you can also experiment with weapons and armor to see how different things would affect your stats. Also, there are no class restrictions. Fighters can use magic, and rogues can wear armor. A little bit into the game you get teammates who will follow you and fight with you. These can be anyone willing to be recruited, allowing for better team construction. There's also plenty to do. A million side missions, and over 200 unique items to find. The item, weapon, and armor customization in the game is quite astonishing. You can find anything from armor at the shop to wearing the dirty shirt you found on an orc, the loin cloth of a troll (you can do it, really) while brandishing a Lich's club. Anything that suits your tastes is available.

The areas of this game are literally huge. The areas of the castle you can explore are quite amazing. There are secret passages and other rooms that the game doesn't require you to go into. But if you do you will find tons and tons of side quests, and no matter what, the castle always seems to be filled corner to corner with people who want to talk to you and know your stories. The outdoor areas are quite filled as well. You will find that even on the edge of the forest or the town, there are secret buildings and areas that the game doesn’t require you to go to but are filled with interesting items and enemies. It does not get to the point where it seems endless though, like Diablo. They are reasonably made to a good length, and are designed by the creators themselves, so everything seems natural and adds a great touch to the universal feeling of the game,. Even still, there are so many different places that are created for you to explore. And they are personally made that tons of adventuring and exploring can be done by you, to explore every nook and cranny of the magnificent world.

Graphics are something to be liked. The graphics are 2D, but very charming. They are isometric like Diablo, but unlike that game, Siege of Avalon has much more detail put into them. All of them are pre-made unlike Diablo, and have minor details added to every nook and cranny of them. Highly detailed and large maps backgrounds, as well as great character models. There is also some amazing detail put into the looting system. You can loot the clothes off of the enemy and the very articles of clothing will disappear off of their body. Quite a nice touch if you ask me.

This game also has a good layout. You don't need 3 windows open just to cast a spell, look at your stats, and keep track of experience. Simple tabs allow you to close in and out of windows easily. There's not much to it. The item system is exactly like Resident Evil 4, where different items have different sizes of squares. A spell can even be assigned to right click, like say, heal, so you can heal right in the middle of battle and fight all the while.

The music is nicely done. It sounds like its done by an orchestra, but I definitely could be wrong. It’s perfect at the right times. During your times in the castle it is soft and gives off a warm feeling for you. While you are in the dead of night prowling the Ahoul infested villages, it becomes tense and scary. It fits the situation well, and is one of the things that loan to the nice atmosphere and immersion that the game creates.

One of the finer points of the sound part is that there are no voice overs. Voice overs get in the way of letting you perceive the way characters are. Remember, it's like a book. You decide how you want to perceive the way he would sound, not how the game developers want him to sound. If I thought of how a character would sound, it would stick throughout the entire game. But voice overs get in the way of how I perceive that character. If I were to imagine a person as a gentle, wise character, and he ends up having one of the gruffest voices that I have ever heard, the disrupts my mental image of the character and forces me to believe that he is not how I imagined.

And through all of this, Siege of Avalon becomes a heart-warming tale. Once you are done the game you felt like you have read a book. You are attached to the characters, and it feels like you have not only read about them but you've existed with them. You fell like you have visited their world and came back, and it leaves a delightful in your mind once you have completed this game.

The Bad
Where Diablo picks up on, Siege of Avalon falls on. Compared to other isometric RPG’s, Siege of Avalon is a bit repetitive when it comes to combat. This is not to be confused with its game play. While it is fun and easy to play, It just seems like more could have been put into the combat as it is mainly only one move you can perform with melee attacks. There is also a very limited selection of attack and melee spells that can be used at the height of a battle. It doesn’t get to the point where you are so bored that you need to quit the game. It is far from that. It just seems that it could have been...well...better than it was. Throughout the game, it is important to try and mix it up and bit with spells and having a well rounded team. Unfortunately...there's a lot of combat.

The AI, while sufficient, is nothing too polished or amazing. Your allies and enemies also seem to be suffering from some head trauma because they can never get your orders or even their own judgment right. Allies tend to get in the way when you’re trying to retreat. Either that or they always ignore your order and run back to fight and eventually die. I can't tell you how many times I have had to reload my file because after I retreated, my teammates felt compelled to stay in the battle and die. It's the same with enemies. Enemies seem to have no care for their own health or well-being, the exception being wizards and bosses who know when to retreat and heal themselves. I suppose this could be explained by the fact that the underlings would be suicidal machines and the upper ranked men know when to run, but somehow I doubt this.

The character creation screen in the beginning is quite useless. The only thing that matter is perhaps your name and your physical appearance. The stats that are offered to you at the beginning of the game don't matter as much since the enemies you kill will allow you to expand upon those skills later in the game anyway. The classes are by far the stupidest. Despite the fact that you can choose rogue, wizard, or warrior (a very small selection I admit), it doesn’t even matter. In the game the classes overlap as I mentioned before. Even though I picked to be a wizard it learned many weapon class skills and trained to become a skilled magician at the same time. Not to mention that the rogue skills are quite useless during the course of the game. Your shirt and pants color are easily the silliest options to choose from. You can easily change your shirt and pants by going to a clothes vendor in the game. In the end, only my name, my facial hair, and my hair color were the permanent things to stick with. The rest were either temporary or didn't affect the game at all.

Overall, Siege of Avalon has plenty of problems working on an XP or Mac. I originally played mine on Windows 98, and it ran flawlessly and smooth, even with little RAM and only 11 Gb of space. I needed to tweak some setting on my XP to get it to run smoothly. Even then, I did encounter a few random crashes during my game.

The Bottom Line
This game is one of those games where story, immersion, and the feel of being inside a moving universe is the entire game. You enter the world feeling like sort of a noob, and you leave as a demigod, and beacon of light. This game will take you through hours of adventuring, and allows you to interact and make friends with the hundreds of NPC's along the way.

All in all this is a great game which I'm surprised did not get enough attention from RPG fans. This game is the story counterpart many RPG's are missing. Unlike many other typical RPG's, which is mainly "go there, kill that monster, this game has a great, twisting, surprising, and hilarious plot. Unfortunately, it is missing the combat counterpart. Combat doesn't allow you as many options as Diablo or other RPG's do when it comes to spells and melee moves. Also, AI is somewhat stupid.

But the story and atmosphere easily make up for a lack of amazing combat. Play this if you are tired of just run in there and do it type of story, and you have the patience to truly read all of the dialogue and appreciate the plot, because that is the game - the story. You wouldn't read a book for the action parts. No, you read it for the story. I can guarantee that if you play this game you will get sucked in to its world, and you will leave with a satisfied feeling in your heart. Like you feel when you just finished a good book...

By Matt Neuteboom on June 22, 2006

New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo DS)

Mario finally returns to his roots

The Good
Mario has always held up a high place in my heart as a noble video game character. I have, however, lost faith in some of his game as of recently. Surely, the sequels to some of his games have been less than inspiring. It seems like whenever Nintendo can’t think of a good name for a video game, they stick a Mario license on it and make it a Mario game. And the sad part is that it sells.

That, however, is hopefully gone, as Nintendo returns the icon of platform gaming to his roots. With New Super Mario Brothers, the name pretty much is the antithesis of what the game is all about. Hardly anything is new at all. You really can’t play this game without looking through a level and seeing a theme, mechanism, puzzle, enemy, or environment that isn’t from a previous Mario game. Various things like the flagpole from Super Mario Bros.make the game feel like Mario is finally getting back to where he started, back to what made him popular. On the levels, this game borrows heavily from Super Mario World. Major influences can be seen in the level designs of this game from that one. All throughout the game you will see ghost houses, the volcano levels, moles, moving levels, and much more. Many enemies can be seen from and Super Mario Sunshine. Throughout the game I experienced enemies from as far back as Super Mario Bros. to as far ahead as Super Mario Sunshine. Enemies like the Eel, the Manta, the Sharks, and that loch ness monster thingy from Hazy Maze Cave have returned from Super Mario 64, as well as the ability to wall jump, triple jump, and ground pound, which come in very handy. A hardcore fan will not be able to play the game without drooling in delight over the huge smorgasbord of Mario games that have influenced this one.

That is not to say, though, that New Super Mario Bros. can’t deliver any original content. The game goes to a good length to introduce new enemies and content that was not taken from other Mario games. I recognized several enemies that were not from previous games like Crows (that looked eerily like the ones from Zelda) and a few other strange ones that I do not even know where they came up with the ideas from. As well, there are new power-ups like the ultra-mushroom, which makes you super huge and able to destroy the environment. On a side note, everything in the environment is destructible if you have the right power. I am speaking, of course, of many of the bloacks in the game. When things grow to gargantuan sizes, like say, a Thwump or even Mario himself, they’re able to destroy blocks, entirely. Mario can level pipes and even the flagpole at the end. Its nothing that adds to the entire experience, but when it happens, it’s a damn lot of fun to do as well. Destroying Mario environments and literally completely flattening out the level is a lot of fun, something I hope they will do in future games.

The game play, of course, is the core of this game, and will be instantly recognizable to those of the series, with platforming and puzzle elements mixed into the series at a great level. For those of you who have missed their platforming roots, welcome home. This game is the reincarnation of a long lost genre. One that I am very disappointed has been lost. But that genre has come home, and who better to deliver it to fans than the grandfather of platforming. Besides the fast and addictive game play, there are over eighty levels to play across eight worlds that fans of Super Mario Bros 3 will easily recognize. The game goes back to Mario’s roots, and brings us that fast, addictive, and satisfying platforming experience that I love to enjoy, the simple pleasure of a 2D sidescroller, nothing to do but challenge your skill and reflexes. And this gives me such a warm feeling of pride within myself. With a platform game comes another thing: simplified gaming. No need to train stats or gain weapons. Just click and play. At the core of the game, you can feel a satisfied feeling of great fun gaming without any complications of inventory systems, health, or energy meters. It’s just plain fun, simple as that. New Super Mario Bros. is a plethora of platforming goodness that will keep any fan occupied by its addictive game play, and is a great play for both casual gamers and hardcore platforming fans alike.

Like Super Mario World, there are plenty of secret routes to keep you occupied by going back and finding them, which adds a nice bonus to the replay value. As well, there is a major thing in this, as nobody will play the game and get to the boss the same way as someone else. Besides there being secret levels, there are hidden worlds, and inside the hidden worlds are hidden levels, hidden pathways, and alternate routes to take. No one, I mean no one, will play this game the exact same way as everyone else. Every person who has the game will have a different route mapped out to the boss than someone else. I feel all nostalgic as I think of how Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3 had a great mechanism and utilized it so well.

The backgrounds and graphics of the game have really shaped up to be something else as well. The graphics are crisp and clear on the DS screen, and make for a great display of graphics that are great but not too over the top. Like the good 16 bit graphics of the SNES, only slightly more improved. The backgrounds are where it really gets you. Many of the backgrounds are beautiful eye candy for you to enjoy. Many have multiple layers to give you a 3D feel, and also add to the atmosphere of the world depending on where you are.

The multiplayer is absolutely genius, and is where the game takes full advantage of the touch screen. There are two modes of multiplayer gameplay. One is a mode where I can play the mini-games from Super Mario 64 DS, except with up to four players. Its absolutely an amazing experience, being able to sit around on a lazy day and be able to play blackjack over your DS with your friends, or play a cool game of 4-player Othello. Its pretty much like Mario Party DS, without the board. You get to have a fun time playing around with your friends in a bunch of great mini-games. The other mode is the 2 player versus, where one player takes on Mario and another takes on Luigi. The game plays similar to the multiplayer in Super Mario 64 DS, except in 2D side-scrolling platforming goodness. The game uses the main game engine to power two-player battle, where you and a friend fight over stars. The first to a set amount of stars wins the round. This is one of the most addictive wireless games to have. The game is often fun, over-the-top, and all around hectic, that it’s very fun to get caught up in. You can shoot each other with fireballs, hit each other will turtle shells, and even use the Super Mushroom to flatten out the entire level to a mere smooth surface. And the best part is, both games can be played by someone who does not have the game! In fact, all three people can download the game off of one person. So one person in an entire group has to own the game and still be able to play the game over the DS download. It is quite a bargain, that is great for anyone looking for a good multiplayer game that they can play without everyone having to buy the same game.

And while the game benefits those who’ve played and loved the Mario franchise, this does not stop the game from being enjoyable to other gamers as well. Unlike the Super Mario RPG series, it relies more heavily on game play rather than universe elements, which allows fans of old school gaming to pick up this game easily and enjoy it. Even though Mario fans will get the most enjoyment out of the game, I can safely say others will simply love the addictive platforming style gameplay that this game delivers.

The Bad
While I enjoyed this game a lot, there are way too many obvious things that really take away from that nostalgia value that I wanted so badly in this game. The developers focused way too much on that platform nirvana that they forgot many other basic interface necessities such as a good universe and good characters.

One of the elements missing is the lack of good, solid, music from the originals. I mean, the music is pretty high-quality for the game, but I wanted recordings out of the originals. Where’s my Super Mario World theme, or the underground music from the original? Instead in its place we have an incredibly synthesized remixes of some old themes and ones that I don’t recognize at all. It really undermines some of that atmosphere that surrounds this game and it really gets me down that they did not even attempt to reuse the music from the classics.

As well, the game has a glaring lack of any story or supporting characters. I know the originals never had any storyline, so maybe that’s why they refused to incorporate one in this, but I am so used to the Super Mario RPG series, where even the most insignificant supporting character has a bright and colorful personality, that I suppose I forgot the original characters really don’t have any personality at all. But from a narrative standpoint, we are looking at some bits and scraps of a storyline. Two short 10-15 second cutscenes in the opening and closing of the game. I am also disappointed at the absence of Yoshi, or any good supporting characters, even toad or someone else. But no, none are here. If you’re really expecting something, like say, the charm and wit that Paper Mario brought us, then please, look elsewhere.

The over-world map is also incredibly uninspired. The worlds line up to a perfect line, with two branches in it that lead to secret worlds. But it’s nothing that amazing. In fact, it’s appalling, far from the magnificent universe of Super Mario World. It is even terrible how they designed the interface. In Super Mario World, the levels were worked into the terrain and it looked natural. The worlds were connected to each other in multiple ways, and the levels were scattered across the board. In this game, it is no such thing. Both the levels and worlds are arranged in a straight line, with some skewing for the hidden alternate levels. Hell, the worlds aren’t even connected to each other in a giant “world” like they were in Super Mario World. They are just separate screens, and by the press of a button they just appear there, with a terribly boring laid out design in front of you. It is a shame that they had to do this, perhaps because of time constraints, but it really takes away from the Mario universe. It hurts me to think of the potential that this game could have had if it had a good over-world that I could run around and explore in.

As far as game time goes, I made it easily to the final boss in one day. This is probably due to the incredible easiness of the game. Especially compared to the brutal Super Mario Bros. 3, this game in comparison is child's play. By all means, Miyamoto has definitely lowered his standards for the difficulties. As a result, one can make it to the final boss in one day. For those who don’t stop to enjoy the game, speed-beating the game is trivial. This is also attributed to the fact that there are so many secret ways to go, that you can easily skip a huge portion of the game and get to the end having only played 25 levels. There are many easy routes to take like the cannons that skip you over two worlds. Because of this, the game relies on the ability to go back and play levels to find secret routes for its replay value. This is the factor that will keep many veteran gamers away. Its just way too short, especially for those hardened platform gurus who can speed-beat Super Mario Bros. without breaking a sweat. While the lack of other elements keeps many Mario fans disappointed, this last factor will make casual gamers or those unfamiliar with the Mario series not only disappointed, but angry at the purchase of such a short game.

The Bottom Line
Mario has finally returned to his roots with a solid set of platforming levels and great puzzles. Platform fans will finally be back to gaming nirvana, and fans of the Mario series will drool over this game for its tribute to the classics. Even the casual platform game fan can enjoy a good round of jumping and puzzles and feel a deep-down satisfaction.

It lacks a fine polish that would have made it the perfect tribute to Mario games, like a cast of colorful characters, a good over-world, or a fine chorus of classical themes. However, it’s good that this is the first in a hopefully long series of sequels, and this game hold a lot of potential to improve its downfalls. Its satisfying, addictive one-player platform mode and its exciting, fast-paced multiplayer is worth it to DS owner. If you’re willing to spend $35 on a short but absolutely fun game, I would recommend you pick this up, especially if you’ve got that old school itch that you need to scratch.

By Matt Neuteboom on June 3, 2006

Garry Kitchen's Battletank (NES)

An amazingly advanced tank simulator for the NES generation

The Good
While I was searching through my old NES collection, I came upon this particular game. I always remember ignoring it as a kid, mainly because it was harder than Hell, and it never ran well. So, as I always do when I come across an old game that I couldn't beat as a child, I popped it in and tried it out.

Right from the start I was amazed at how advanced this game was for its day. Right away I noticed it was in first-person view. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was literally sitting in the driver's seat of the tank. Out in front of me stretched a vast field. The learning curve was easy, of course, with just two buttons. But I was playing in a 3D realm, with 2D graphics. I moved the tank, and before I knew it I was moving, and the ground under me started moving as well. I turned left, and my left tank tread moved backwards and my right tread moved forward to show I was going left. And not only, but the land began to shift around me. I was in awe. How could I have missed this as a child? This was a 3D simulator game in a 2D realm, just like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, but this of course came out 2 years before those games.

But this was just the beginning. I soon discovered many other things. Not only could I drive in the 4 cardinal directions, but in a full 360 degree circle! By having good timing on the directional pad, I could turn in a full 360 sweep. I could do the same for speed. I pressed it harder to get faster and eased off of it to go slower. Reverse was possible too. In fact, I could reverse and turn at the same time. All the while the land was shifting and moving around me. It gave me the complete illusion that I was in a 3D realm the entire time. Not once did I remember this was a 2D game.

As I moved a bunch of instruments on my panel changed. On my left my tank fuel went down. The faster I traveled, the fasteer it went down. On the top of my screen I had more instruments for measuring my target distance, and there was my health. I had ammo to worry about. On a nice convenient panel I had radar. Different statistics to worry about. All this in one tank simulator from 1990.

So as I gently move up to an enemy, he begins to shoot at me (no doubt). So I take out my cannon and plug a few into him. However, this proves more difficult than it sounds. The tank moves past me and swerves as I attack him. After I get him once or twice, he wizens up and he begins to retreat. But as he slips out of sight, I watch my radar and trail him until I see him just on the horizon. I shoot, but no hit. So ingeniously, I raise my turret to aim at him. I take a shot. I hit him, but he still not down. I take a few more shots, but alas, he is out of range. Annoyed, but not defeated, I take up to my .50 cal machine gun and plug away at him. I notice that I am able to move the machine gun and down fluidly on the screen rather than the set in positions of the turret, and wit the ability to turn my tank I could aim the turret in a pinpoint precision all over the battlefield. I miss the tank a few times, but just as I am about to get him the gun overheats. This surprised me beyond all belief. Not only do I have to worry about everything else including ammo, fuel, speed, angle, aim, health, and distance, but not I have to worry about overheating my guns. Annoyed now, I switch back to my cannon. I fire as he comes in closer, but since my cannon was raised from before, I miss and shoot over him. As he starts shooting, I plug him with one last cannon shot. He dies in a fireball and I move on. I had now moved a quarter of the way across the map. Now only 2 more tanks to go.

After this I was hooked. I could not believe games like this were possible back then. Heck, most of the time modern games don't even offer this type of stuff. But I was soon going to be shocked even farther beyond belief.

Soon I beat the level. The only music in the game starts playing, but that one song is catchy. Even for the limited music making capabilities of the day, it is tense and carries a nice tune. It is a perfect war song, especially for this game. Just to spite my enemies, I hum it along during the next battle.

As I entered my third stage (me now being much better than the previous attempts), I could then down tanks like Rambo on steroids. I head over to what I looks like a tank trap on my in game map (by pressing select you can get a complete map of the battlefield). A helicopter entered in my site on screen. So aim at him with my cannon, but the thing is too slow, so I grab my .50 cal machine gun. I get an amazing amount of shots in before he flies over my tanks and slips off screen. I try to turn around, but he is too fast for me again. I try to shoot him, but the gun overheats in the process. Knowing that the cannon won't do me good, I switch to something on my panel called "WIRE". I only had 2 of them, so I assume it must've been important. I fire, and of course I miss. I switch back to the .50 cal machine gun, determined not to waste another one on an airborne target. But soon the bullet comes rushing back on screen right from the direction I shot it in. The bullet rams into the helicopter and it blows up. Wait a sec.... a HOMING MISSILE??? A tank simulator game in 1990 comes with homing missile capabilities? But I was soon to be amazed some more. Different buildings to attack. Besides the added threat of minefields, I was tasked to destroy power plants and fuel dumps. Also, there was a friendly re-supply depot for me to refill on fuel and ammo at. All of this added up to be one amazing simulation game.

But the last shock came to me as I was beating the third mission. As I killed the last tank, a message appeared to me to go to an area to destroy the final target. So I head there, and lo and behold I am faced with a boss. After everything else the game had offered me, it gave me bosses. I stood still as I aimed my turret all around the screen. I had to attack certain areas on the tank in order to defeat him. It was reminiscent of older games where bosses had to be shot in certain positions in order to be killed. As I fired the last shot on him, I got a good mission complete. This boss was one of the most interesting enemies in the game, to say the least. He provided a real challenge while actually being fun. I got farther ahead and apparently there are more bosses. A tank hangar, a refinery, a train depot and even a nuclear power plant stood in my way of victory.

Now imagine all of this fun stuff on a 3D battlefield. It gives you a great simulation with a first-person view from the driver's seat of the tank. No top-down or isometric view here. Just a wide view of the battlefield. It has ever-changing statistics and strategic things to worry about, like ammo, overheating, range, angle, and fuel. It has a 3D environment that moves with you, and enemies that respond to your moves. It was a great experience that I will definitely look forward to time after time again.

The Bad
The one major problem that bugged me is that the only two enemies were tanks and helicopters. Troops would have the made the game VERY interesting, and things like artillery and bunkers would have made things even more strategic. Also, destroying the buildings served no major strategic purpose.

I also could not find any real good use for smoke screen. Because I was moving around, it became a distraction for me rather than the enemies. Also, AI wasn’t particularly that advanced during that day to detect smoke screen. So I usually left it alone.

The Bottom Line
For most of my life I've been convinced that anything this advanced wasn't possible before Goldeneye. But I've been proven wrong. Battletank offers amazing strategic elements like overheating, ammo, and fuel, all the while still keeping my attention with plenty over-the-top battles and boss battles. This never was a big attention getter to me like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda, but now that I've played it I keep going back for more. It gets me down that a diamond in the rough such as this isn't up there with Mario or Zelda, because its definitely one of the best games I've played on the NES. If you can get yours hands on a copy, I recommend grabbing it.

By Matt Neuteboom on April 24, 2006

Black & White 2 (Windows)

From God game to city builder, with a very unpleasant transition

The Good
When I think of Black & White (BW), I think of it with mixed emotions. On one hand it had a great storyline coupled with great atmosphere. Everything felt like a God-game, and the system for training your creature was beautiful. On the other hand, it was VERY frustrating trying to take over other villages, and taking care of the villagers was not just a hassle, it was a nightmare. So I was glad to finally see a sequel to it.

The first thing I was looking for was the villager AI. It was something that dragged the first game down a lot. So that’s why the biggest point I bring up in this section is the fact that the villagers are actually smarter in this game. For one they are independent. They are no longer those slowpoke villagers from the first game. Before, the villagers really lagged behind. You as the God practically had to take care of them for every village. Now, they are finally self-sufficient. In fact, they go do a task even though you don’t assign them something to do. Villagers have become independent. I was quite surprised to see my villagers taking grain to and fro and their improved efficiency when compared to the last game. I would have to say the villager AI is probably the best out of any game I have seen.

And finally the city-building part of the game comes to life. In BW, you had to do the demeaning task of gathering wood from surrounding areas to build “scaffolds.” Besides the fact that these scaffold to ungodly amounts of wood to create, then you had to wait for those scaffolds to build. Then you had to place them down and wait for the villagers to build the building. We are talking those ungrateful, slow-as-hell villagers had to build it. One building could take ages to get built. An entire village was slow to get started. Building this for every village on the map (you could have 5 or more villages on the map under your control) to a lifetime.

So I was entirely glad to see that city-building was simplified and glorified as well. Now instead of having to build scaffolds, I could pick out buildings from a menu like an RTS. Even better I could help build the buildings with my new powers, but that was sort of useless since the villagers (as I mentioned above) were now independent enough to build it. Even better I could build more stuff than before. There were new houses available, new public buildings, and other random things that made my city-building dreams come true. I could build meadows, statues, fountains, universities, taverns, and pillars. Every structure you can think of is under your control. But not only this, but you can customize and beautify your city any way you see fit. I created a magnificent Utopia of fountains and trees. In my public square, people bustled about in the warm sunlight, as they passed statues and fountains. With the new city-building aspects set in place, you can create a literally beautifully customized city that was never possible in other games. You can put tons of stuff everywhere that really make the city feel alive.

But the simulation. Good God the simulation. That is what truly amazed me. BW2 can bring a city to life like no other city-builder has before. The SimCity series had great customization, but it made the people seem like robots. BW2 brings city-simulation to a whole new level. Instead of feeling like cold villagers, with predictable AI and programmed responses, the villagers are dynamic and seem like real people. For one, like the original, BW2 gives every villager a respectable name. As these people go about their daily lives, you notice small little things that they do that shock you. People are assigned jobs by themselves, as if it were an actual society running their lives. They get up at the crack of dawn and retire home at night. During the evening the adults like to have fun and mix it up at the local tavern, and retire at night. People go into the graveyard to mourn the dead, or relax in a meadow after they are done work. Others go to the university to study, or go to the temple to pray. In other games, villagers never actually “use” a building, they’re just there. But in BW2, people actually “use” the buildings on their own. People go about their lives without you having to tell them to. Its little thing like these that make the villagers seem like real people rather than robots like many other city-builders.

And still, the game gets into high detail. If a group of villagers migrate to your town, they set up their own little part of town as well. For example, a group of Japanese settlers came to my town, and after a while I noticed a little Japanese section of town start to spring up. People have very detailed faces, and villagers can even buy things at the local plant or statue store and place them in front of houses. So if you place a statue store in particular neighborhood, soon statues will be appearing all over the neighborhood. If you place houses too close, the villager AI kicks back and senses it as “slums”, and land-value decreases. Dogs can be seen roaming the streets of your village.

And even the buildings become parts of the simulation themselves. In game like Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, and SimCity, villagers and citizens never interacted with buildings. They served some purpose, like increasing the population limit or building some troops, but people never went in or around them. In BW2, people interact with buildings all the time. As you look through the streets, people will be leaning up against buildings. People will be walking across balconies or climbing up and down stairs. In the tavern, people take a break and sit on the edge of the tavern, while others lean against the bar while the barmaid serves them drinks. Buildings become part of the environment as people go in and out of them and use them as they need. It creates a great and welcomed changed that makes buildings seem useful rather than scenery like in the SimCity series.

Because of all this, it creates a wonderful atmosphere of the city. It feels like the city really comes alive. During the day you can see people hustling and bustling about the day, and you can practically feel the warm breeze coming out of your computer. During the night, the town looks beautiful as the sound of dogs barking and the music at the local tavern drifts off into the night wind. All around you your city becomes alive, and it feels great just to sit back in your chair and watch as your disciples go about their daily lives.

The music is still pretty good for the Black & White series. It’s often very serious and somber for the game, to add to that divine god-game feeling of it. It sounds like it was made by an orchestra, though I could definitely be wrong. All in all, it’s definitely pretty good and worth mentioning. The ambient sounds are pretty amazing, especially when speaking of the atmosphere around the town. Children playing, tavern music in the background, and other things, again, make the city feel alive.

The last thing I was happy to see was that the characters were still kept for your conscience. Good old Blackie and Whitie. They may have changed in looks but they haven’t really changed in their wonderful personality, which is good since I liked them in the first game. They even picked a few better jokes, so it’s nice to see Lionhead keeping some friendly familiar faces.

So finally they fixed many issues. No more stupid villagers. They’re finally independent, and you can concentrate on being God now instead of baby-sitting. But then it goes a little further…..

The Bad
Good God what have I done. If you haven’t read my review on the original Black & White, I would recommend you do that now. In his review, Inderanta of the Clan Depari states that it really isn’t the developers fault, the public demanded the reforms and got them, and they sucked. Out of all due modesty, I am one of those people that contributed to the downfall of this game. I demanded a lot of changes in my original review. Better villager AI and better city-building, and some good army-building, and seriously it does make this game much more tolerable.

But I slowly realized I had traded one fault for another, because for every annoyance they fixed they took out another key concept to the very game of Black & White. Black & White 2 sucks out everything that made BW1 a god-game. Now it has devolved into a city-builder game that pales in comparison to the original/ The creature has become a robot, villagers have become obsolete, and miracles are never ever used.

Let’s take each issue one at a time.

The biggest, stupidest, and most perplexing issue I found was the creature. In my original review I praised the system of AI for the creature. If you don’t know, it was sort of like trial and error. Not only did the creature notice what you did, but HOW you did, WHERE you did it, and WHAT you did to. So if you cast a water miracle around him, he would learn it too. But he would notice small details. Like whom you did it to, or what you did it to, like trees or farms. Then he would only cast the spell on that object. Or if he saw you casting fireballs on the enemy, he would follow our lead and do so as well. But if he sees you casting fireballs to impress people, he would only do that. But the trick was, he wouldn't tell you how he learned it. So you were sort of left in the dark to what he had picked up until he actually cast a miracle or something. If you didn't like it, you had to beat it out of him and reateach him. He would learn only from your experience.

It was brilliant system. It made parenting a fun challenge, and made the creature seem very lifelike. He was like a real creature. Well now that’s been thrown out for a horrible system of attributes. Now you change the creature’s reactions just by going to a panel and clicking each “personality trait”. It completely ruins the very concept of Black and White. Now instead of a neat system of learning and punishment, I can go to a screen, and simply click a trait, then slap or pet him a couple of times. And not only is theis a horrible system, but its stupid things like “should I go poop on this tree”, or “should I eat the lamb”, simple things that the creature is supposed to learn through example. It makes the creature seem like a robot. It takes the fun out of parenting the creature. One of the best things in BW1 was the ability to teach the creature, but now that is completely gone. They ruined one of the things that made BW1 original.

The miracles, the 2nd best part of BW1, has been tossed aside like it was a minor detail of BW1. There are no more than 5 or 6 spells, and worse yet they play very LITTLE, if not any part at all, in the role of BW2. Miracles must be purchased off of a screen. Worse yet ,in order for the creature to learn these, instead of teaching him through casting the spell in front of it, all you have to do is buy the spell from a list. Even so, the idea of casting spells to impress everyone is gone. In fact there is no more impressing. That’s right, it’s gone.

They pretty much killed the very idea of Black & White with this next move. They took out impressing the people. In fact, there’s no more need to. Do you know why? Because other towns and cities are taken over by making your town bigger.

If that last statement didn’t hit you like a ton of bricks then you should be ashamed of yourself. If you didn’t flinch, I’ll give you second chance to let it hit you. Let me explain. Now, instead of impressing other towns to come to your religion (like converting people when they think your religion looks cooler than theirs), everything is done by the size of your town. Every town on the map is taken over by building bigger buildings. Sooner or later the inhabitants of other towns become impressed by your shinier buildings and come to join you. How is that in any way a god-game? In BW1 you had to impress them with your powers. Like most gods. Now people are impressed by buildings. Instead of you going out to get them, they pretty much come to you. In fact, now your ring of influence is affected by buildings. Instead of how many people you have worshipping you, your rings expands as you build more buildings. How is that in any way godly at all?

If that entire paragraph didn’t hit you like a ton of bricks, NOW you should be ashamed. Now do you see what I mean by it has become a city-builder? What I a m basically saying is that they totally took something that was practically the definition of God –games and turned into the biggest city-builder on the planet.

And an army would have been a miracle itself in BW1, but instead it’s useless here. Why? Well, in BW1 you had to go out and get other towns, and the army would have been much more useful. Building was an essential part, but you had to go out and take the cities in order for them to become yours. Now as long as you keep building they’ll pretty much come to you. No need to go out if they’ll come to you instead.

So it pretty much devolves into a basic repetitive cycle. Build up some cities and get people to migrate and once your city is big enough, you pretty much win and do it over again. There’ really not much need of an army. In BW1 it would’ve been great because you actually had to go to THEM, but now you’re pretty much all you have to do is build and just wait for people to come to your city.

As a result, the entire concept is just dead. Black & White has no meaning since being nice is way too easy. In the first one it might have pissed you off, but it was the challenge. Now all you pretty much have to do is build cities and it raises itself to good. By the third level I was about 77% good. Teaching is no longer an option. It’s done through a menu. The creature has become a robot, and the villagers are pretty much the focus of attention. Spells or impression plays no role in the game whatsoever.

From all of this, BW2 feels very cold and dead. The first one gave me a great sense of warmness and godliness as well. The creature was cute, he played around a lot and he seemed like a creature. He was like a pet. Now he’s pretty much a robot. He feels very programmed and not very animated. There were plenty of good in-jokes in BW1, but now it just seems so empty. Like they took another game, and just slapped the Black & White 2 title on it.

Off of the concept, the graphics seem pretty overblown. If you take a look at the screenshots, they’re all nice and pretty, but for people like us, the buyers of these games, we just don’t have the graphics card or processor to support those types of graphics. I though the minimum requirements were pushing it, but the minimum of the game is actually pretty bad. I mean, if you have a 3 GHz processor supported by dual ATI X800 graphics cards you’re going to be set. But I have a budget computer. For your reference, my computer is a 1.5 GHz processor with an ATI 9500 graphics card, and the graphics were decent, and this is coming off a computer that will run Battlefield 2 on medium graphics without an lagging problems. The game constantly teased me about how much it could do. In the tutorial videos, there was much more it could do and I could tell this is a game that you should have a top of the line computer to get. If you’re expecting the graphics you see in the screenshots here at MobyGames, have a high-end computer ready.

The lack of anything to do outside the main game is very disappointing. In the last game when I was tired of the main game I could quit out and go do a random skirmish. In fact, I could even go online. But now there’s none of that. At first I didn’t notice, but then I went looking for it. It’s just not there. It’s not only disappointing, though, it’s annoying. This option was available to me before, why isn’t it available now? How much memory did they seriously need for just graphics? Or was it that advanced villager AI. Or maybe it was the city-building. It just make you wonder where the Hell did the effort go. I mean, the city-building is good but it doesn’t strike me as something that would cause the rest of the game to sink like an elephant in the Atlantic Ocean. So why remove these things. Did Lionhead really see these features as unnecessary?

And lastly, the game just seemed so rushed. There’s really not much of an opener to the game. It’s just opening scene, choose a creature (you choose your creature first thing in the game), and do some stuff on a tutorial island. Then right into the storyline (which was only okay in my opinion). There aren’t as many challenges in the game, like silver and bronze scrolls. The main menu is just a picture of two islands. The main menu in-game demo movie is probably the most lackluster movie I’ve ever seen. It’s just a few shots from above of a city, then cuts to a few scenes of the creature and troops fighting, then a volcano, then it ends. The whole thing lasts about 15 seconds. It’s pretty pathetic. Well you can definitely tell they wanted to get this one out for the holiday season…

The Bottom Line
Well I’m going to point out the obvious here, but the city-building part of the game is actually pretty amazing. It has good tools for building an amazing city and the simulation is just great. I’m, sorry for those who hated this game, but I can’t help but appreciate that they put a good effort into improving villager AI and the city-building capabilities.

But for a Black & White game, it will have no appeal to fans at all. Lionhead pretty much just reversed the problems with this game. It gave us the great AI and city-building we needed, and then took away everything that we actually liked about the first one. I might have been harsh on BW1, but this isn’t exactly what I was thinking. I think I’ve found new respect for the original game; I might just play it now if it’s installed.

Like I said before, everything just goes back to city-building. Spells and creatures have been traded for buildings and enhanced villager AI. Now impression lies in buildings instead of spells and people. The ring of influence is based on buildings as well. The Black vs. White system has been reduced to a menu system.

Oh well, plenty of sequels fail to deliver like the original, and this is no different. The fans really screwed up on this one, and the game flopped. My only true regret about this game is that it won’t discourage other companies from listening to the fans. I guess we should just be happy that we have a solid original to fall back on when this one fails. Maybe if we ignore this game long enough, people will forget about it and we can pick up and (hopefully) move on to Black & White 3. If there is one after this

By Matt Neuteboom on April 22, 2006

Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (PlayStation 2)

The original trilogy is finally complete...

The Good
Just a mention of the Metal Gear Solid series in a conversation will send any veteran gamer into a frenzy of praises and glorification. By now, if Hideo Kojima isn’t the closest thing to video game demigod, then I don’t know who is. Just as you think Metal Gear Solid couldn’t get any better, it does. And this time, Metal Gear Solid 3 goes full out. In my honest opinion, this version of Metal Gear Solid is probably the best. I love Twin Snakes to death, and the original Metal Gear Solid 3 pushed it. But now, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence has pushed the limits. It has become a deep-heartfelt story, intense action, great cinematic, now combined with old-school gaming, and online action.

The most important aspect of this game is the fact that it completes the package. Solid Snake’s origins have now been perfectly told. The final cherry has been placed on top of the cake, and damn does it do it well. With a combination MGS3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear, and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, plus online mode and enough extra features to qualify as a game themselves, Snake’s original story is now complete. Hideo Kojima also decided to put in the regional face paints, like British flag and America flag face paints, just so we wouldn’t have to download them ourselves. Like I said, it is all about the completeness. It is like what Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith completed the prequel Star Wars series. The Metal Gear Solid prequels have been wrapped up in a perfect package, and nothing has been left untouched. Online mode, theater modes, plus Metal Gear 1 and 2. Nothing is left out. The circle is complete.

That now aside, let us look at some of the great features that every MGS fan not only should have, but needs. If it weren’t enough that they included an online MGS, something any MGS diehard fan would probably kill over, they were graceful enough to let us have the original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Now before I delve into how much MGS3 immerses the player into a heartfelt world, and how it is absolute proof that video games are art, I’m going to tell everyone to keep holding their breath, because that is not what I’m doing. No matter how much I want to express how I feel about the game, I can’t do it. If you know me, you know I like to write long comprehensive reviews that do the game complete justice. So let’s face it. A complete review of the original Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence would take pages upon pages. That combined with this review would set a new MobyGames record. But think about that. Take all of the stuff from Metal Gear Solid 3. MGS3 is about 20+ solid hours of game play for anybody that plays it. It offers so many features that you can play it through multiple times just trying to get new rankings and doing new stuff (try capturing every animal or every Kerotan idol, or try not to kill anybody, including bosses. Or do the ultimate MGS challenge and shoot for Big Boss ranking). Now add it on top of all the stuff Subsistence gives us. That is the magnitude of this game.

The original game comes with an all new camera angle option. Think that’s a crappy excuse for an entire game to be included with the release? WRONG! In the original, seeing enemies in front of you was a nightmare, especially with the enemies being extremely intelligent. With the new camera angle, the game is practically reborn. Before, camera angles became a huge problem when it came to aiming and attempting to see enemies in the distance. With the new camera, the game fixes a myriad of camera problems that the other games had. In fact, with the new smooth camera, you’ll look back and wonder why the Hell this didn’t occur back when MGS2 was out! After getting used to the camera system, other games will seem a trifle primitive. Oh well, better late than never I suppose. Trust me when I say this. The new camera is here to stay.

The guys at Kojima Productions could have ended it there. That’s right, they could have just re-released the game with the new camera angle and fans would have gobbled it up. However, as always, the guys at Kojima Productions go above and beyond the call of duty and add even more. In fact, the inclusion of the main game is not even half of the game play.

One of the most anticipated features of this game was the online mode. Online mode uses an ingenious yet simple in-game system to load up servers. And even though it seems like the game has just come out, there are always servers up and running 24 hours a day. The player is allowed to play the basic stuff, with death match and team death match. This is the basic death match that any Socom fan will fall in love with. While it seems like some crappy generic online play, the battles on small maps can get intense. Players can duke it out with everyone around, with either teams or an all out brawl. Players looking for an adrenaline rush will certainly like this mode more. It offers quick kills, easy respawns, and online chaos.

However, for those of you seeking strategic multiplayer, there is plenty to offer for you. Game types that are offered are Capture, where teams are tasked with capturing the Kerotan (the Kermit-looking frog thing found throughout the main game). While it may seem pretty lame, on small maps game play gets extremely intense. Players are forced to work together in order to gain the upper hand and win. Rescue mission are the same way, with each time having to steal the other teams rubber ducky. Allowing one team for defense means players can take up strategic positions rather than running into the fray. On the reverse side, the team needs to be offensive at the same time, and be wary of hidden dangers.

However the most strategic mission is Sneak missions. In this game it’s Naked Snake, who is an actual player, against actual real player guards. Snake is tasked to find the microfilm and bring it back to a capture point, while guards are attempting to find and kill him. If Snake dies once, the game is over. This mode uses teamwork to the max. Think that the guards will always win with numbers on their side? Wrong again. Many times, it is Snake who will win. Besides having many advantages like camouflage and the tranquilizer gun (yes, you will get put to sleep many times; now you know what it feels like to be on the other side of the dart), Snake can use the terrain to his advantage. Sneak mission have many, usually over a dozen ways to traverse the area and get the microfilm. The mission forces guards to work together to find lookout points to find Snake, because despite their advantage of numbers Snake is very slippery and gets away if he is not covered and taken down fast. And I stress fast. Unless the team works together to take him down, he will get away. However the game also forces Snake to use cunning and wit to hide. Unless Snakes uses his resources to slip past the guards, he will be gunned down by their overwhelming numbers.

All around, multiplayer is balanced and favorable. Unlike Counter-Strike, the sniper is not an easy one hit kill. While it does sometimes kill in one hit, the user requires patience and skill. In Counter-Strike, players could easily manipulate keys to pull out a sniper and no-scope their opponents in the face in a matter of a microsecond. Not with this game. Snipers have their best strategic value in high places, meaning players need to find a good vintage point and wait. If they are caught, they are dead. It takes time to get up and switch to a different weapon, so players must be sure that they are in a secure area before pulling out a sniper. Just as well, snipers NEED to stay in one spot. They cannot move with the sniper, and the only other weapon available to them is a pistol (only one main weapon offered to players at the start, though they can find others later). Pulling out the sniper in the middle of combat is not advisable, as anyone who has used it knows that you cannot move with it, and it is frustrating to aim it up close. You might think that 8 people per server is pretty low, but trust me when I say that it is enough to keep you occupied and finding enemies no matter what part of the map you are on. The combat remains just as intense and entertaining. The number of available mission types allows for players to choose what they want. Those looking for something like Counter-Strike or Socom will immediately feel at home with death match, while those looking for strategic fun will go to the other missions. This way, Subsistence adds hours of game play for casual gamers, power gamers, and stealth junkies alike.

But to add on top of that, we still have a myriad of add-ons in the game to boost our replay value. To add-on to the inclusion of MGS3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Online, Hideo decided to add in Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Both never released in America (the NES version of Metal Gear was fairly dumbed down), gamers in America finally get their first chance to play Metal Gear 1 + 2. Both the games have been added without having to beat the game or get cheats. Both are there to add another dozen hours of game play to the already increasing hours of game play gamers get out of this game. Once you’re done MGS3 and are still feeling that MGS itch, just pop in the other disc and continue the story without ever having to buy a new game or system or download an emulator. That is an honor any Metal Gear Solid fan will love to enjoy. Graphics are the same. Controls and mechanics are the same as well. This is the real deal. This is the first chance to experience Metal Gear 1 + 2 in their entirety. This is something an MGS fan should never miss. Ever.

And yet the list keeps on going. Besides ALL of this, players can view all of the cut scenes in the entire game just by going to an option in the menu. Instead of having to replay a situation a million times just to see what happens next is annoying. So those mainly interested in the story (which is quite a lot of people, even I agree that the story is half the game) will find this a welcoming and entertaining experience. We all know how long the games cut scenes are, and this new option gives us an hour or two of more content. The scene where the boss dies, as well as the final cut scene with the president and at Arlington National Cemetery always makes me cry. So I was finally happy to be able to watch the ending cut scene with Snake and The Boss and was able to relive the moments I had when I was first watching it without having to load up the game to see it again over and over.

Players can revisit the popular Snake vs. Monkey, which has become somewhat of a cult phenomenon among MGS3 players. Not only this, but we have more missions as well as the first ones (how many I am not sure. I actually haven’t gotten to it with all of the other stuff I’m doing in the game ;-) ). With the added camera angle option, players will find breaking records to be much easier and Snake vs. Monkey, as much as it sounds strange, is still one of the most addicting things on the planet.

And yet there’s still more! (I’m beginning to feel like one of those infomercial guys advertising their crappy products :-D) Players can enjoy playing their bosses over and over and over again, on both a normal mode, where you are givien the items and equipment you would have if you were in the real game, and special mode, where you are given just a few pretty useless equipment, a pistol, and a tranquilizer gun and are expected to make due. I was able to replay The End and The Boss, two of my favorite bosses. Among these, players can also play the rest of the Cobras (The Pain, The Fear, The End, The Fury, The Boss), but also special bosses like the Ocelot Unit after you are discovered in the burnt down house, and that cool-ass bike pursuit after the Shagohod is activated. You can also play against Volgin both times, when you’re in the hangar and when he’s on the Shagohod. Sorry, you can’t play The Sorrow. He’s so cool and mysterious, one of my favorite characters in the game, but since you don’t actually fight him its not considered a boss battle.

A last feature is a mode where you can view teaser videos made by the staff. All of the videos are made with the in-game graphics and all of the voice-actors supplied their own voices. Some of the videos can be downright hilarious. One of the most popular ones involves the teams sadistic torture of Raiden, the much-hated protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2. Now the team is getting back at him in a video called Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser. Raiden tries to go back in time to kill Naked Snake in order to prevent Solid Snake from taking his place in MGS4, but screws up and causes random time lapses. Raiden randomly gets teleported throughout the game to painful situations, including an outright insult at Raiden when Volgin mistakes him for the other commander in the game and attempts to have butt sex with him. Sometimes you will nearly piss your pants off at what the creators can come up with in their twisted minds, any many will find it amusing that the team has a wonderful sense of sexual humor. An essential video is when a perverted The End spies on EVA throughout the game from behind the scenes with his sniper scope, and makes sexual comments all the while. To include completeness, the videos even include the MGS3 trailer shown at E3 just to make this game truly complete. This video section is a great and light-hearted change of pace that you can use to simmer down from the intense, sometimes frustrating game of MGS3.

Now just look at all that stuff available. Just thinking of all the content in this game makes one’s mind just boggle. If a person plays through everything with all the content, Subsistence offers at least 40+ hours of game play. I can’t stress enough that this is the complete package. For all you people out there with little money, this is the game to get. Not only does it come with ALL of this game play, but it’s just a mere $30! That’s right! Just $30! You would have to be stupid not to get this game! Even the new extra features and content justify the $30 price tag. This game is something no MGS fan should miss.

The Bad
There is one particular thing that annoyed me about this game. That is the fact that the movie version of the game is not in the regular version. Limited Edition version carry a movie-version- a movie with game play turned into viewable cut scenes, in order to see the entire story without ever having to play one bit. It annoys me to the greatest ends that when Kojima was stressing completeness, he left out one major part that I’ve been dreaming about for a Limited Edition. Not only this, but it also comes with a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4. It’s not that I’m annoyed that I couldn’t see these. The game itself is practically a movie, and I already know the plotline, and I could just as easily see the trailer online. It’s just that it ruins the completeness of the game, and that many gamers aren’t getting everything. It just seems to stick in the back of my mind.

In a sense, the online mode has some problems with concept and design. Since the game doesn’t offer the ability to move while in first person, most players will favor to just aim and shoot blindly in third-person mode. This and the fact that the game has no penalties for deaths (quick respawn time and no point penalties) make the death match and team death match a run and gun fest. Fans of Counter-Strike or Socom may find this suitable, but fans of MGS are usually looking for something strategic, and this will definitely kill the experience.

Kojima Productions also made some silly mistakes when it came to online. For example, why include a magazine? No person in the world will actually stop and read it when Snake is getting away with the microfilm. In Snake Eater the AI was programmed to be realistic and read it. But humans will not care to read dirty magazines during an intense battle. As well, the ability to knock over an enemy is extremely annoying. Most people will tend to knock you over and unload while you are down. The shotgun also has too much power, and combined with the ability to knock you down makes to much too powerful. Among these are also some other things that need to be improved in online mode. Let’s hope Hideo Kojima learns from these mistakes and does a slightly better job next time.

Lastly, some people will also find it annoying that they have to go out and buy the network adaptor in order to play the online mode. It is annoying to have to buy extra hardware just to get a major part of the game. I know what it feels like. There is a positive side however. Since the game is just $30 and the network adaptor is $20, the price tag comes to $50, the cost of a normal game. Perhaps this is why the price is $30, but maybe not. But if you don’t have it, do yourself a favor and buy it before you get this game. It will be worth it once you have the game. Trust me.

The Bottom Line
MGS3: Subsistence is like a DVD box set of the origins of Solid Snake. It contains all three games right there for you, with a myriad of other features like online mode and Theater mode. Hideo Kojima has left nothing out. There’s nothing left to go back and remake or redo. One can definitely tell that Hideo Kojima wanted to finish this thing up so he would never have to come back and redo everything. With his planned retirement after MGS4, Hideo plans on giving everything finality. Everything we ever wanted or even needed is included with MGS3: Subsistence. There’s online mode, Snake vs. Monkey, and everything right down to the trailer for the game. Kojima wants to finally finish and close up this series for good, and that’s just what he’s doing. He’s given us everything we need so he won’t need to come back and keep giving us more. With MGS3, Metal Gear 1 and Metal Gear 2 done for good, now he only needs to worry about MGS4 to go off with a bang, and everything will be over with.

We thank you for this Mr. Kojima. You have given us a stellar ending to the first three games of your series. With over 40+ hours of game play and every feature we could ever need at the cheap price of $30, you cold not have answered our wishes better.

This game is a collector’s item for anyone, from newbs of the series to veterans of every Metal Gear Solid game. Even if you have Snake Eater, the $30 price tag is undoubtedly worth the extra features. It is a perfect time for newbs to jump into the series, with a perfected Snake Eater and Metal Gear 1 and 2, which many MGS veterans have not even played yet! Anyone who liked Snake Eater will fall in love with this game, and it is like the Holy Grail for MGS diehards. Go out and buy this game and I can assure you it will be the best $30 you have ever spent in your life.

By Matt Neuteboom on April 7, 2006

X-COM: UFO Defense (DOS)

By Matt Neuteboom on April 3, 2006

The Sims: Livin' Large (Windows)

Easily the most important of all the expansion packs

The Good
Well, first of all before I write this review, I would like to say a disclaimer. I have already wrote a review for the original Sims and I recommend you read it first before you even consider reading this. In this review I am only going to discuss the importance of the expansion and if it is worth it if you already have the original. For a full review on The Sims please read my other review.

I would like to say that out of all The Sims expansions out there I thought that this was probably the most necessary. As I had mentioned in my review of The Sims, a lot of the game’s content comes from expansions and this is probably the most important of them. It nearly triples the amount of items you can get and does nearly the same for the heads and bodies that you can use. What I do find bad is that because this game was the first expansion ever to come out for this game, people have nearly forgotten about it. What is even worse is that it is the most important of all the expansions to get, and without it you are missing out on probably some of the most important items in the entire series.

This expansion nearly triples the amount of items that you can buy, some of these the most important in the entire series. It also adds new bodies and heads to use for you Sim characters. Along with the items, it expands your number of neighborhoods to 8 (I believe that is the number) and adds new career paths that you can throw at your Sims that varies game play. It also adds new methods of communication, more actions, and more hilarity. It’s all in here.

Not only this, but most of the items that have become pop culture symbols of the entire Sim series originated in this game. The Serv-o-bot, the grim reaper, the chemistry set, and thelawn gnomes all came from the expansions. Also, the Frankenstein, the guinea pig cage and painting, and the sad clown that comes to your house all come from this game. And who could even forget the telescope that gets you abducted by aliens? And of course, the clueless mythical genie, who sometimes does more harm than good. All of these things have become synonymous with the game The Sims.

The Bad
The only bad part I can think of is that it still did not give the option of going over other people’s houses. It also does not include optional locations like downtown or vacation areas, so you are still stuck at your own dull boring house. This still bothers me that only new items and other things like that were added, a no new modes of play were available like going over a friend’s house.

The Bottom Line
This expansion, though probably long forgotten, is easily the most important. No Sims fan should ever, EVER go without this expansion because many of the items are very important in the game and some even define the series itself. The game is at its cheapest price: I saw it a few days ago on a bargain bin rack for 5 dollars. At the price, there is no reason to go without this game at all. If you love playing the original The Sims and don’t have this game then I highly recommend you get this game because you don’t know what you are missing out on.

By Matt Neuteboom on February 2, 2006

The Sims (Windows)

Welcome to The Sims universe. You're never going to leave.

The Good
What I am about to do here is give this game justice. I am going to give this game the respect it deserves.

What I am going to do is tell how this game single-handedly created tons of expansions, single-handedly got girls interested in gaming, and single-handedly changed the meaning of get a life. This game forces you to utilize your imagination to crate deep stories and cool-ass families. This game single-handedly changed the simulation genre forever.

For some reason I feel this game has been forgotten. It has been lost in a quagmire of expansions, until the “Sims-mania” has been lost in some pyromaniac teens mind after torching a family of eight Sims in this game. This game deserves more.

With a liter of soda by my side and a good day set off for me to come up with the right words, I will begin with the game play. On the surface it is a typical simulation. Starting out with your family you have nothing but $20,000. Gradually you get a job, go to work, build up some of your skills, and start a family. Then you start to get some expansions. Throw a few parties, make some “interesting” friends (and I literally mean “make”). Eventually you climb up the social ladder and become rich.

To one, this may seem like a boring game. But throw in some imagination and the possibilities become unlimited. To talk about this, however, is redundant as I believe Vaelor has already summoned up the games potential quite nicely.

Quote (borrowed with permission from Vaelor’s review):

Traditionally, the way the game was "meant" to be played, you create a Sim and you strive to help him/her excel in every aspect of his (I will use the male adjective from here on for convenience) life. In the beginning, your Sim is unemployed, homeless, and lonely. With $20,000 in his pocket and no possessions but the clothes on his back, it's up to you to buy him a block of land and build a house on it, get him a job and help him earn a living, find him a partner, maybe start a family. The many expansion packs released expand the scope even further - buy him a pet or three, take him on a holiday, make him a superstar!! It's your job to take this little virtual guy from zero to hero and everywhere in between.

But that's just the beginning...

So, your Sim is married with children and living in a mansion with his pockets bulging with cash, he's been to the pinnacle of every career path you've thrown at him, so now what? This is getting boring, right?

Wrong.

Use a little imagination. Switch to a blank neighborhood (with expansion packs installed, there are 8 neighborhoods to use) and play creatively. Make a little story. Write bio's for your Sims, and make them act and interact as your story befits. Is your military general Sim disgusted with those bisexual binge-drinking party animals that have moved in next door and keep him awake all night? Has your crazy old Sim slipped slowly into dementia after years of neglect and now lives in a house of filth and disarray which is avidly avoided by the neighborhood children? Is Robert, the successful college professor, having an affair with Jim's wife Candace, the famous journalist? Will Jim, the pro athlete, smash Robert's head in when he comes home early one day and finds them in bed together? Design, script, and enact your own little soap opera with your neighborhood full of unique personalities, and get ten times the gameplay out of The Sims.

I believe that Vaelor is correct in stating that if you use your imagination, anything is possible. Tons of options are available to you if you improvise and use your imagination. You know. That thing that you had before video games ruined it. Real life is boring, so mix it up a little in your own Sims game. Create your little own version of you. Then make your friends in your neighborhood. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it and take the story into your own hands. Want to create a military prison where you invite your neighbors over only to trap them in glass tanks? Go right ahead. Want to live in a purple house? Want everyone to live in a purple house. Do you like corrupt government? Or do you want to see what would happen to people if society had alternate standards? Please try it out! Not only this, but you can go into the game files and put your own mp3s in there, so your Sims can listen to your favorite songs on the radio. You are only limited by your imagination!!!

The Sims is a toy. You don’t turn on a toy and expect it to control you. You control it. Like Legos or building blocks, you come up with your own open-ended game play. When a game is your toy anything at all is completely possible. And this is what the Sims does.

But that is still not it. Create these deep delicate stories and share them on the internet. People everywhere share their stories with others over the internet to create a huge database of stories and people. Share your albums. Print out your stories and store them away until one day you will find them and (possibly) share them with children and grandchildren. Every day there are more items being released by the creators of the game. There are more fan items available for download than there are items available from expansion packs. And then you can indulge yourself in other Sims’ lives as well. I once read a great story of a lawn gnome who gets revenge on his new master after he gets drunk one night and kills his other lawn gnome friend. Tons of people love to read about your experiences in The Sims.

And then there is the added bonus of construction. You get the bonus of being able to construct your very own house like you want it. It doesn’t have to match or be themed. It’s your house; you make it the way you want to. Every house you make is different and unique to yourself. In fact, most of the time the house you make is one-of-a-kind (that is if you make it yourself) in the entire Sims universe. Even if you don’t like running someone’s life you can construct houses the way you want. Then when you are done, you can enter people into the house with different personalities to see how they react. If you make a play house, make some Sims with high ‘playful’ personalities into it and see how they react. I even remember once going to a party and a mom saying that her child played The Sims, but she played it as well because she liked interior decorating.

The AI needs to be noted here as well. Or technically, the simulation aspect needs to be noted. It is sometimes hard to notice when you are caught up and addicted, but the AI system has a nice affect upon your Sims decisions. It actually took me a few years to realize this as well. However all of the personality traits affect your Sims actions, reactions, moods, and likes and dislikes. For example, if you put low ‘playful’ stats on your Sim, he (I will be using males pronouns from now on to make it easier) will be interested in books more, and play computer games and pinball machines less. He will also dislike dancing and like to talk more. However if you put more ‘playful’ stats on your Sim, he will like video games more, and will be bored (or at least less entertained) by long conversations. This is just from one character trait. There are 5 character traits in total which take into account your Sim’s personality and likes/dislikes.

Also, each and every Sim develops likes/dislikes and develops certain instincts and associations. Using the example before, if you put high ‘playful’ stats on your Sim, he will like computers more. If he plays it more and more, he will develop and interest in it, and when left on free will, he be more likely to go play the computer and opposed to watch TV or play pinball. You will notice your Sims talk about their interests more in conversation as well. And they even have their own language, which you cannot understand but you can definitely sense their tone and mood. Your Sims will even remember whose bed is who’s in your house, and if you leave the free will option on, the Sims will only sleep in their own bed (unless you tell them otherwise). The Sims can love or hate different things in your house depending on their character traits. This is just a sample of what the game can really do.

Even the graphics of this game are a thing all their own. The isometric view complements the game well. Everyone thinks that even though it is isometric the graphics can’t be good. This is wrong. Even though 3D graphics have come out in more recent titles, the isometric view is the classical view. It adds to the Sims feel that will never leave you. I won’t say that every graphic is amazing, but every texture and object is done fairly well to make this game’s graphics seem original. And truly they are. These graphics weren’t ripped from another game, like every first person shooter tends to do these days. They are good and they add to the originality of game play.

And I suppose no review is complete with a section about music and sound effects. Well I will say one thing. The musical score is completely original, and GOD does it make this game good. It is perfect for the mood. When you’re shopping, it plays cheery shopping mall and infomercial songs that really perk you up. While building a house, the music is somber and moving, to simulate that you are changing your home and thusly changing your life, and creates a nice peaceful mood while you contemplate and work. I can guarantee you that the tunes will stay with you for years to come. Even now I feel nostalgic thinking of the shopping themes that I have always enjoyed.

The sound effects, I will say, are nothing truly out of the ordinary. Lucky for you, they aren’t too annoying (except for the sound effects of the cartoons. I hate those sound effects). The big deal here is that they are satisfactory in delivering a great game with some great music and good sound.

And last but certainly not least, the Sims is one of the funniest games to play. Watching the Sims interact with each other is extremely funny. Like if you try to kiss someone, they may lean away and slap you. Or when one of the Sims tries to clean the toilet, they say “yuck!” and how two women can get in a cat fight and one of the women moves away. Okay, maybe reading this review doesn’t make it seem funny when you see it actually happen you can’t help but smile and sometimes laugh out loud.


The Bad
There are a few things wrong with the original one which I must point out. Some of these things have been made better by expansions, others have not. First of all, this game has very little items you can choose from. I was actually surprised by how few items were actually in the original game than I remembered. Also, the same thing goes with the bodies and heads for people. I was looking for a long time trying to choose from the limited selection which one went best with what my friend looks liked. However, you are in luck. The expansion ‘The Sims: Livin’ Large’ expansion triples the amount of items, heads and bodies, and each expansion effectively adds more and more as you go on. So do not fret.

This is one thing that every person on the planet hated: you can’t go over other people’s houses. Yep, that’s right. The only house you can go to is your own. The only way to go over another person’s house is to take control of that family and invite yourself over, and even then you cannot control your character’s actions. Also, in the original Sims, the only neighborhood is your own, with nowhere else to go (meaning downtown and vacation, which come out in later expansions). These things become available in later expansions, but for now there is only your house. Also, the only Sims that will visit your house are the ones in your own neighborhood, which make it somewhat boring to not be able to see randomly created visitors. This is probably the worst fault of the game, as you house will become quite boring after playing in it for 5 straight hours.

Also, once your family is created, you can NEVER go back and change them. This is most of the time not a problem at all. However, when you want to make a story, everything must be premeditated, because you cannot go back and add a new character to the family. The only way to deal with this is to add the new character into a new family, and move them into a different house in the neighborhood. Then you must get your relationship up to 100% and ask them to move in with you, and hope that they say yes. That is the only way. I also have similar problems with pictures. You cannot change the order of pictures in your album, meaning if you want to go back and add a new frame in between two other pictures, you have to delete all the pictures after them. Luckily, you can always change the caption under the pictures, which is VERY good when you need to change your story.

Sometimes the Sims can get a little dull if you continually play the same pattern over and over again. Also, sometimes when you don’t take into consideration their moves, they seem more like robots than people. The more you play the more may feel that this game is becoming a huge repetition of the same day. This, however, can be remedied by mixing it up a little and using your imagination. Like I said, this games potential lies in what can be achieved when you use your imagination. If you don’t do this, it can lead you to think that the game lacks any real potential or any content.

Also, I can safely say that the Sims isn’t the most realistic game out there. Even though it’s supposed to be a simulator, it doesn’t mimic ALL aspects of real life. The time goes a lot faster, so doing one task like getting up to grab a plate then sit down again can take a half an hour in the game (30 seconds in real life). And you also get paid everyday, there are no seasons, you never wash your clothes, you never go outside of your neighborhood, and days seem to have no meaning as every day is the same. But Hell, who says that needs to happen. The Sims is meant for extravagant living, so who cares about those things! Still though, some people will find some problems with these things.

Also, despite the fact that you can put them on free will mode, the Sims you have cannot survive on their own. The only thing they tend to do is eat, which is especially frustrating because it ruins the idea of a simulator. Technically, it still is a simulator, but you have to do a lot of babysitting to make sure they don’t die (they seriously can die). This really makes it annoying. The Sims are just not self-sufficient at all.

This leads me to my next subject. Sometimes the Sims are just idiots. Even though the simulation aspect is built in very nicely, Sims can be very dumb. I find that in large families with one bathroom, the doorway gets clogged. Both Sims will not move to let the other through, and as a result the Sims may stand there for hours waiting for the other to move. Even under your watchful eye, the Sims just do some stupid things that make you wonder what the IQ of your Sims even are. It also makes you wonder if the game has more to offer, which it does, however you may feel otherwise after watching some stupid moves on account of the Sims.

If you haven’t noticed before, in order to get this game’s full potential, you need to have a lot of the expansions. I have said a few times in this review “this is added in later expansions”. This is true. Most of the problems that come with this game are usually corrected in the expansions. But as said by Vaelor, “Is your Sims life more important than your own?” How many expansions are you really going to buy? The original game is amazing, but it pales in comparison in how much you can do with all of the expansions. Sure, there is still A LOT to do, however you are missing out of a lot of different things that the expansions offer. You barely have 1/10 of the total items you can get (1/1000 if you include the fan created items and people). You can’t throw parties, you can’t go on dates or go downtown and open your own shop, you can’t go on vacation, and you can’t get any pets either (save for fish). This is really a shame to have to get the expansions just to get the games full potential. I really need to tell you that the original Sims does not offer enough to satisfy your urge. With some expansions, you will love it. But this is not to say that The Sims is not worth it, but getting the expansions will enhance the experience greatly.

But don’t get depressed yet. You are saved. Recently, the entire collection, including the original and all of the 6 or 7 expansion, came out on a collaboration disk. Even better, they come in original graphics and form. Nothing has been altered at all. The minimum system requirements are 800 MHz (.80 GHz!!!) and only 3 gigs of hard drive space, which is amazing for 7 games in one. Lucky for you!!!

And lastly, this game is ADDICTING. I do not know if that is a good or bad thing to you at all. However, sometimes it can be bad. Otherwise productive hours can be spent on this game. I have sometimes spent entire days living out the life of one of my Sims, only to have five hours pass and to ripped away from my beloved game. To add on to that, there are some days where you literally waste an entire day. Most of the time, I can get plenty done in the time frame of five hours, but sometimes all I end up doing is getting some paychecks and nothing else. But even so, there must be something to be said about addicting games. You may be able to know when to quit, but do your children know? Does you husband or wife know when its time to quit? If you plan on buying this game for a relative or friend, take into account these things. People have been reported to lose sleep, works, and schoolwork to get time to play these games. WARNING: If you or some you know has an addictive personality or usually have less than an hour of free time a day, then stay away.

The Bottom Line
This game is one of the most amazing games to have ever come out. It changed the industry in ways never imagined before. Never had a game created such a cult phenomenon that has lasted to this day. Even today it ranks in game magazines’ and websites’ Top 100 Games of All Time lists and it is usually under #30.

This game literally becomes your second life. After years and years of playing this game you will create memories for years to come. One day you will see this game and say “Wow, I remember this one time I created this family and….” Even five years after its release I still find it horribly addicting. Its combination of open-ended game play, subtle Easter eggs they hide into the game (who could forget Shiny Things Inc and their president Malcolm Landgraab), its laugh out loud moments, and he ever-lovable Sims themselves.

I cannot stress enough that it is never too late to join The Sims universe. The Sims universe is always welcoming new members that we can share experiences with. With the new collaboration that came out with ever expansion on it, there is no better time to join the Sims then now! Don’t pass up the chance to play The Sims. If you have never done so then you need to feel what millions of others around the globe have felt from this game. Don’t pass it up. The Sims is a game no gamer should ever miss. Ever.

Special Thanks to Vaelor for permission to use his quote. You are kind and generous for allowing me to use it. This review would not be complete without it. For those reading this review please take time to read his full review here. Both he and I would appreciate it. Thanks.

By Matt Neuteboom on February 2, 2006

Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2)

Incredible, emotional, artistic, and brilliant. Just a few words that describe Shadow of the Colossus

The Good
I tried to make this review as short as possible, but the truth is that I simply can not. The truth is that this game cannot be summarized with words alone. Despite the fact that I try not to over hype this game, it is not easy to give this game an honorable review without writing multiple pages of paragraphs and paragraphs filled with why this game is so amazing. This game can simply suck you in for hours on end without so much as letting up.

And despite the fact that this game is one of the best I have ever played, I have continually put off writing this review for a while until I think I have contemplated it enough to give it a decent review. I mean that when you think you have covered everything this game offers you, it throws some more stuff at you for you to cover. For this reason, I will be writing one of the longest reviews I have ever written for this game.

But God, where do I start!? I suppose I should start off with the games basic drive. Well to start off, you are a man (the instruction manual says his name is Wander) who is traveling to the far end of the Earth. You are carrying your dead lover Mono, who has been sacrificed because of her cursed fate. You finally reach the end of the Earth, and you meet Dormin, a god-like being who hears your cry for help. Wander pleas to the being for help in bringing back the woman’s soul. Dormin says it is the law of mortals that no soul should be brought back, however, with the sword he possesses it might not be impossible. Despite the warnings of heavy consequences, Wander accepts the challenge of defeating 16 colossi that are scattered across the land. And so the adventure of a lifetime begins.

As soon as you leave the main temple, you are thrust into a rich, detailed world sprawling with secrets and things to uncover, filled with colossi the size of mountains to defeat, and adventures to be had. The world lies before you as you can see literally miles around you. And I do not exaggerate. The world consists of miles and miles of land to explore. Some parts of it are teeming with life, while other parts have become a barren wasteland. You set off with just a horse, an ancient sword, a bow, and the clothes on your back as you fulfill your quest. And it soon becomes obvious that these are the only weapons that you will be getting for the rest of the game.

One thing I would like to point out is what these guys were aiming for: immersion. They made the world as realistic as possible. The made it seem like nothing seemed artificial, that this world they create could possibly exist. There is no RPG system to bog it down, no magic spell casting or stupid upgrade systems where you can buy armor off of a screen. They aimed for realism, and they did it nicely. Nothing seems out of place in this world. The characters are probably some of the most believable characters ever created, and the world flows naturally through sections. There is no loading time to make it seem even more realistic. Okay, maybe giant rock monsters isn’t the most realistic, but my point is that there’s nothing out of place to remind you that this is a video game and some cheap manufactured plastic disc game. And it’s for this reason that it can capture your emotions and your mind so effectively.

The game play is simply unflawed. I don’t think there is any other game like it. You are first thrust into your first colossus battle and it does not skimp on the content. The purpose of the colossus battles is to find its weakness and exploit it. Your adrenaline will rush through you as you scale and slay a hundred foot beast. As you play this battle you need to use all of your resources and your intelligence to overcome such beasts.

The colossus battles are often huge and over the top. Fighting a giant 100-foot colossus is not only fun, but it is dramatic and beautiful in its own way. Not only are these battles epic, but they are packed with action. In order to slay a colossus, you need to climb up it using hair, ledges, and sometimes quick jumping to get to the spot where you can actually slay your foe. Not only this, but the colossi aren’t going to give up that easily. They will resist, sometimes shaking you very violently. Others will turn completely upside down! You know you got a good game when a giant flings you around 100 feet above the ground, as you desperately try to cling on and make it to its head. It’s these types of things that make the game so simply amazing. The game consists of 16 of these epic battles as you continue through on your quest.

As these battles rage on, you can’t just use Rambo moves to take down the colossi. In order to bring them down, you must attack it at a certain weak point, where a symbol is displayed. But first you must figure out how you are going to execute this entire battle. And that’s where some of the beauty of the game is: simply trying to get on these beasts and getting to the weak point. Doing this requires quick thinking. Every colossus has a different way for you to bring it down. For example, you may need hit the colossus in its weak spot, and then get it to fall over and climb up it before it gets up. Or you may need to reach a higher spot and drop down on it as it constantly attacks you. Most of the time, it is a constant combination of both. Between a combination of action and puzzle solving, the colossus battles turn out to be like something no other game has ever been able to do. They are heart-pumping and tough, and it is always necessary to be a quick thinker or else you’re not going to make it through the battle.

But colossus battles are only half of the game. The other part of the game is simply exploring the massive landscape the designers have set up for you. The developers did an amazing job to make this world seem like a living breathing world. Everywhere you go there are always birds flying above you and in every lake there are little fish swimming around. There are no loading times throughout the entire map, even during boss battles and in giant, mile long fields. The landscape is so literally beautiful that when you stand up on top of a mountain and look down, you can see miles around you in all direction. And not only this, almost everything you see is able to be explored.

As well, they have created a diverse landscape filled with forests, lakes, rivers, beaches, plains, canyons, and fields. They do such a great job at creating this, that most of the time you will pass through to a different landscape without even noticing. They blend the world together, that it seems like one giant level rather than being divided up into sections. Unlike the Zelda series, where all the parts of the map are divided up into sections, SotC does a great job of mixing all the areas up to seem like one big realistic world. They made sure that all of the fun wasn’t just fighting colossi over and over again. That would be boring and repetitive. 1/3 of the game is actually getting there and enjoying the landscape. Not to say that getting there isn’t a challenge. Sometimes it is very hard just to find the colossi, let alone kill it.

On top of that, there is no combat to keep you from the next colossus. That’s right. There are no enemies in the game besides the colossi. Even though this may seem like a bad thing, it is in fact one of the best things they chose to do. Menial in-between combat would seem trivial compared to the colossal battles waiting for you. Not only would enemies distract from colossus battles, but it would distract from the landscape and atmosphere. It would take away time for you to just ride in bliss and take in the landscape. Imagine taking a car ride through a picturesque landscape of rolling hills and castles. You could take in the tranquility and sereneness of the area. It feels like there isn’t a person for miles around. You are heading to your favorite sporting event, [insert favorite sporting event here]. It is the biggest game of the year. Then all of a sudden you arrive at a 10 minute traffic jam. Not only this, but these traffic jams happen almost every 5 minutes, and all look exactly the same. This is what putting enemies in the game would do. It would mar down the fun factor, as well as this, they would seem trivial to put in compared to the boss battles that await you. Plus it would take away from the atmosphere of this land that seems so devoid of life. Enemies would just destroy the illusion of immersion.

The storyline of the game is like that of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It does not need words or dialogue to stop you from truly appreciating the story. It uses mood and atmosphere to tell most of the story. Instead of having to talk and go on long monologues to develop the story, the developers used the character’s actions and facial expressions and the atmosphere to paint a story. Through action alone we can come to conclusions and the nature of the scene. An example of this is how they paint the scene of the over world. It is populated by some trees; however there are barely any animals save for some small land mammals and birds. And then there are areas of the map which are literally paradises while other parts are cold and desolate and devoid of life. The game doesn’t tell you how the land has come to this but we can draw our own conclusions.

Furthermore, it does the same for characters. Characters aren’t the plain 2D cardboard people we are used to seeing in series like The Legend of Zelda and Mario and Resident Evil. The hero is all that “heroic”, the damsel in distress is far from being in “distress”, the evil guy isn’t all that “evil”. In fact, they aren’t clichés at all. They all have depth and persona behind them which we can observe through their actions rather through their words. In fact, sometimes the sides of good and evil are skewed. Rather than there being a defined good and evil, there are just people and a conflict, with no definite side of good and evil. Through this beautiful narration we see that all of the characters have depth. They all have things which motivate them, and they all have personalities through their actions, not words.

Even the colossi aren’t the cliché dungeon bosses that we are used to. All of the colossi carry with them a majestic feel. As if they really were filled with life. It feels like they really are intelligent and thinking creatures. As if they really had emotions like anger and passiveness. All of the colossi have a unique character to them. Some are slow, some are incredibly fast, some are big, and some are small. Some are aggressive, while others are passive, some are angry, while others at peace. Some will attack you head on, while others will flat out ignore you. It is far from the cardboard cutout enemies like other games. When you defeat them, it feels like a god is falling from its power. These enemies have personality. Every one is unique, and as a result, are a vital contribution to the game.

Shadow of the Colossus can do all of this without using dialogue. Shadow of the Colossus can paint these images of characters and story without having to use long monologues or having characters talk to themselves. And when they use feelings and atmosphere to convey a story that is when the player will put his or her feelings and emotions into this game. That is the beauty of this game. It pulls peoples feelings from deep inside them and puts them into the story. It is in fact one of the most immersive stories I have ever played because of this.

The graphics are some of the best I have seen on the PS2. And let’s face it. The PS2 has never been the console of choice for graphics. If anything, the PC sports better graphics than any system. But this game is a true exception. Every hair on the backs of the colossi is animated and flows with the wind. Every tiny crack on every surface is a polygon all its own. Not only that, but the game has no loading times between anything, making a truly magnificent display of landscape and textures. The game has a beautiful way of making textures. Everything seems real when you look at it. The water actually looks real with everything that touches create a magnificent ripple on the surface. The animations, especially on characters, are some of the most realistic I’ve seen on the PS2. The animations on the horse are especially realistic.

The lighting effects of this game are simply astounding. Because light is a key factor in the game play, the designers needed to make the lighting effects high quality. It is pure bliss when you see the sunlight pouring through the pillars in the temple, or the shadows the landscape creates. When every leaf on a tree is a polygon, when every hair on the colossus is animated, when the lighting effects rival that of the movies, and when you can see miles around you without any graphical slipups or cutting anything out, you know the graphics are good. I am not kidding when I say that the graphics must be seen to be believed.

The amount of detail the developers also put into the game needs to definitely be noted here as well. For example, at the beginning of the game, you are clean and perfect. By the end of the game, you are beat up and dirty simply from the physical and mental anguish of battling the colossi over and over again. And also, the opening sequences are all done with the games game play engine, so cut scenes are not intrusive and flow seamlessly in and out of the game. A lot of detail was put into this game just to make it seem realistic and immersive.

While I do admit the graphics are great, it is probably out shined in the sound department. The sound is both epic and dramatic. It is perfect during any scene. While you are battling a colossus it is tense and fierce. When you finally get on top of the colossus, it becomes like Lord of the Rings or Indiana Jones, with epic and heroic music chiming in. And when the colossus finally topples over, it becomes dramatic and somber. When you see one of these colossi falling over, it is almost as if a god was falling from its power, and the musical score that accompanies it is flawless.

Ambiance really adds some atmosphere to the game. On your long trips to the colossi, it really adds something to the atmosphere of the game to hear what you’re expecting from the scene. Like in a rich lake filled with wildlife you will hear some soft splashing of waves and birds chirping, while on the cold cracked plains you will hear nothing but the cold wind and some hawks overhead. Truly it only serves to add to the atmosphere of the scene, whatever that scene may be.

The voice acting is good, despite the fact that it isn’t in our language. I believe they truly could have screwed up here, but accents are done fairly nicely. Voices match the lips of characters well, and are well matched for their character. Echoing seems to be done pretty well with voices. But like I said before, this game isn’t built upon dialogue so voice-acting needn’t be a huge deal here. But like I said, it was good but not a real contributor.

The controls are nice and tight for Wanda. You use R1 to hold onto everything and use square to stab anything and everything. This really adds a good feeling of “being there”, because as you press down on the R1 button, it really feels like your grabbing onto something. The square button is used for the sword, which also makes you feel there because you get that satisfying feeling when you jam down on the button; it feels like you really are doing the stabbing. Other than that do have to admit the controls are pretty much unremarkable.

And lastly, this game will keep you coming back for more. Even the 2nd time around, I still had found tons of things to do. An example of this is the time trial mode, where you can play any colossus over any amount of times you want. As well as this, it allows you to unlock cool stuff like a cloak that makes you invisible. There also some cool collectibles to find in the over world, but I strongly recommend that you beat the game before you attempt to collect these, lest you take away from the fun the first time around. I also noticed that I had yet to explore a good 1/3 of the map, or more or less failed to take a good look around and enjoy the scenery. So undoubtedly this game has plenty of replay value, as well as content, innovative game play, and a great storyline and atmosphere.

The Bad
Well I did notice some minor errors in Shadow of the Colossus which seemed like some minor annoyances rather than huge disasters.

First and foremost, I did not like the horse controls. You have to continually keep tapping X just for the horse to maintain a top-speed, which in my honest opinion isn’t all that fast. As soon as you stop tapping X the horse begins to slow down which is a true annoyance. Most of the time you won’t actually even notice you tapping X, but occasionally it becomes way too obvious. An example of this is when you run into a wall. Your horse completely comes to a complete halt, and you have to tap X a million and one times just to get it back up and running. Also, the horse has no stop. Pulling back on the reins makes it slow down, but it takes a good 10-15 seconds for it to come to a complete stop. Sometimes it is just better to run into a wall or jump completely off. In fact, most time you will just jump off the horse and let it run off.

And despite the fact that the horse was well-animated, its AI seemed stupid at times. Sometimes it will completely veer off course and stagger into a rock. As well, sometimes I will jump off of a 10 foot cliff and then all off a sudden it won’t slide down a 30 degree slope. Also, shooting your bow off the horse is similar to Zelda, in that you have to get your horse on a straight away, aim the bow, fire, and when you’re done change weapons and speed up again. Also, the horse will not go fast at all in a narrow space. For example on a thin land bridge he will walk slower than a turtle with its legs chopped off. The horse also has some trouble in forested areas due to his problems with veering off course.

The game also has a few minor graphical hiccups. The opening cut scene can sometimes have some choppy graphics. Also, sometimes some textures don’t fill in (the area will remain completely black). However you will be pleased to know that I have never experienced a slowdown, and never once has it frozen on me. So it is nice to know that even though these do occur, they are few and far between.

The last point I would like to show you is not a fault of the designers at all. It’s just sometimes these types of games are not for all gamers. As I stated before, 1/3 of this game is just taking in the landscape. It is a beautiful thing and needs to be enjoyed and savored. But that is just not for some gamers. The times in between exploring the landscape will seem like down-time in between colossal battles. Also, the lack of enemies, though it was a good move, will simply bore the Hell out of some people.

Truthfully I could see how it could bore someone. When you look at it from a technical standpoint, its pretty much just get to colossi, kill it, and repeat the process over again until all 16 are defeated. But when you look at it in a bigger perspective, it is much more complicated than that. The world is filled with more things to do than kill colossi, but some gamers will not see this and that is why it probably won’t entertain them much. This is why I recommend you rent it before paying full price for this game.

The Bottom Line
Here is my complete recommendation for this game:

Clear out an entire day. Do whatever it takes just to get a good solid day free for just you. No one else needs you that day. If necessary, disconnect the phones or set it in a place where it won’t bother you and turn on the answering machine. Bring your PS2 to the biggest TV in your house, especially on in high def to bring out the colors and contrast. Surround sound is brilliant, but optional. Block out all natural light sources with blankets or shades or whatever. Grab some good snacks and drinks, snuggle under your favorite blanket on a great, comfy chair and turn out the lights. I can assure you this game will suck you into it for hours.

This game is something that needs to be played to be felt. Words alone cannot describe how immersive it is. How everything feels real and nothing is out of place. How the world is so majestic and the storyline compelling. How everything clicks and nothing seems artificial or intrusive just to make the game seem better. How it will suck you in from start to finish without letting go. This is the world of Shadow of the Colossus.

By Matt Neuteboom on December 13, 2005

Indigo Prophecy (PlayStation 2)

An immersive, deep, emotional game that will keep you at the edge of your seat

The Good
When I first heard about Indigo Prophecy, I was stoked. Finally a game that wasn’t linear, that allowed you to do things and find out things yourself. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this title and I finally got to rent it this week.

The games main focus is the story, rather than action. It takes the form of being a movie, with the director addressing you in the beginning of the game, telling you that you now have complete control over the action of the movie AND the dialogue. The basic drive of the game is not like a sand box game, but the actions you feel most natural taking affects the plot in every way, right down to the order you do things. And God they did it perfectly.

The story starts off pretty simple: you were possessed by some unknown being and forced to commit a murder. Now you, Lucas Kane, are on the run from the police. The story is brilliantly made though. Even though you control the game, the game makes sure that sooner or later you get all of the essentials in before the game is over. As it develops a deep, dark, twisting plot emerges that will blow you away.

The best part easily about this game is the fact that YOU control the story. Where it goes is completely up to you. You reveal the story through directing what the characters say. You choose the best way to reveal a story. Suppose you want to make the story completely baffling until the end of the story. Okay. All you have to do is make sure that the dialogue that takes place doesn’t reveal too much. Or maybe you want to reveal bits and pieces and then towards the end, all of the pieces fall into place. Or even if you want a good, slowly developing story that reveals it as you go, it doesn’t matter. You control all of the characters (or at least all of the main characters), and as a result, you have the welcoming feeling that you control the storyline, and it doesn’t control you.

Now, not only do you control the way the story is revealed, but also what is in it. My making certain decisions, you can completely alter the content of the story. For example, if you make the right decisions, you are able to save your brother from death. However, if you make the wrong decisions, your brother will die a tragic death. This combined with the fact that you control how the story is revealed makes for one of the greatest video games experiences ever.

As a result, the game has tons of endings to it. Not only will game play be different every time, but the story will be as well. And every time you do it the dialogue will be different, resulting in a new story every time you play it. Some games claim to have open-ended game play with branching storyline. But Indigo Prophecy is far from a branching game. It is never set up before you play, but instead it alters itself depending on what you choose during the game, to ensure a good changing storyline as you go, and that the story isn’t predictable.

Game play consists of a combination between story parts and action sequences. Story sequences are usually in the form conversations, which you have direct control over. You can choose to talk to someone or not, which reveals certain parts of the story. You can ignore premonitions that the character gets and go with your gut instinct. Directing the story is easy, as the direction you want the story to go in is directly reflected in character’s dialogue options. You have to choose a conversation option quickly, as you have a time limit to choose an option. Also, you don’t get to go back and make all of the choices because most of the time the game will only allow you to ask a few questions, not all of them, or the option to make one choice will disappear once you ask another. This keeps the game from getting stale and letting you ask all the questions you want.

Because the game’s main focus is the story, this does not mean it has no action scenes. In fact, action scenes make up a good part of the game. Instead of moving around with the character as most games would, you hit buttons on the screen to ensure that your character gets out of the scene alive. There are two types of button mashing to do. The first is pressing L1 and R1 repeatedly to make sure that the character can withstand something for a prolonged period of time. An example of this is hanging from a rail or pushing against strong winds. The other, and more common, test is moving the analog sticks when told to do so. Two circles with four colored sides appear at the bottom of the screen. When one side lights up, you push that side with the right or left analog stick as indicated. Sometimes this can get very intense. Sometimes two directions appear at once, and a lot of times it gets VERY fast, especially when you’re dodging something. As a result, quick reflexes and good hand-to-eye coordination is needed to stay alive. Failing a test means losing a “life”. Lose all your lives and you must restart from the last save point.

Interaction with objects and people is innovative. You use the right analog stick to choose options in interaction, as well as choosing options in a conversation. Even doing other actions you use the analog. Like if your are climbing over a fence, you first have to push your analog right to move your leg out, and then swing it up to swing up your leg, which gives a great immersive feel to it. The use of the analog sticks gives a great smooth feel to interaction in the game, as it uses your thumbs and avoids the use of having to pull your fingers up to the buttons to play.

During the game, the screen splits up to reveal two sides of what is happening. It sometimes warns you of incoming cops, while other times it is just for a flashy show. It adds to the illusion of a living, breathing world around you, because it shows you that other thing go on while you aren’t there. This definitely adds to the immersion of the game.

The characters are some of the best you will encounter in a story based game. In the beginning you will be presented with characters that aren’t cardboard cut-outs at all. They seem real, and the game designers went to great lengths to make them seem like they have emotions. When they hear bad news, their facial expressions become solemn and sad, but when they become aggravated, they become tough and anxious. By the end of the game, you will become attached to even the game’s main enemy, who is mysterious and powerful in every way. The voice acting is superb on all of them, which makes the game seem more realistic. There is almost no cheesy lines in the game, which make the characters more believable

The graphics, while I will not say are revolutionary, are satisfactory for a game like this. Graphics had to be toned down just slightly to make room for more memory for storyline. But I will assure you it was worth every byte of memory. The graphics are far from crappy, and you will find that they are perfect for a game such as this. The character models are done well, and facial expressions are clear and crisp.

A great part of the graphics is that all pre-rendered cut scenes are done completely with the game’s game play engine, so you will fell that when a cut scene comes, it does not break away from the immersion of it. Instead, the cut scenes flow with the game play perfectly, as there is no lag before or after the cut scene, and graphics are the same as the game play graphics. As a result, cut scenes do not cut into the game, but flow seamlessly in and out of game play, which is good, because cut scenes can occur unexpectedly and surprisingly anytime during the game.

Sound is surprisingly good. Directed by Angelo Badalamenti, the music is well fit for each situation. It becomes tense at the right moment and sad at the perfect moment, to add a great deal of immersion to the game. You will be gripped by the main theme, a sad combination of violins and other instruments, which lends to the games dark atmosphere. Sound effects are done quite well, so that they don’t seem fake, which again contributes to the immersion.

Finally, a great feature is the use of “chapters” throughout the game. The game automatically creates chapters, so that when you are done the game you can go back and make new decisions at key points in the plot. It also has an amazing system in choosing. You can choose to play the chapter in a new save file, and by doing so you can create multiple stories without ruining your old one. Also, if you are done with the story you are on, you can choose to go back and overwrite your old story with a new one. This way, creates multiple storylines is easy, and you don’t have to mess with multiple save files for multiple stories.

Finally, the game obviously has some great replay value. You can choose to keep replaying the game for a while before the overall story gets boring, and even that will take a while. This game has one of the greatest stories, and some of the most lovable characters to boot.

The Bad
While a game such as this seems flawless, it is not perfect.

Even though you can change the story around a lot, you can throw something new in every time. The story is flexible, but it still has a basic backbone of the same story. Even when you replay the game, you will still know the story already, and you can’t throw something new in like killing a character or refusing to progress the story. As a result, the game will only be tolerable a few times through until you get bored of the story, even if you can change the way its told every time.

I would like to point out that while the interaction controls are fun and good, moving around can be a nightmare. The problem is that the game gets its movement controls from the position of the camera. However, the controls do not adjust accordingly when the camera changes. As a result, the directions feel mixed up. You could be moving down when in fact you are pushing left on the controller. This can make some of the parts frustrating. LUCKILY, the game has no major parts where you have to dodge bullets manually, or where you have to run manually, so we have a good break there.

The game is pretty short. Even on my first time through I was able to beat it within 6-8 hours. As a result, the game completely relies on the replay factor. Fortunately, the game changes every time you play, and as a result every time you start a new story, the game doesn’t get any shorter. It relies on your ability to make good decisions, not your skill at the game, so game will never be shorter the more you play them.

Action sequences are fast and action-packed, but unless you can look in two directions at once, you will be staring at the bottom of the screen for the most part. They are perfect for any matrix fan to enjoy, but in order to get past these scenes you will be continuously watching the bottom two circles for your next move. The lucky part is that you can go back to watch all of the action sequences again in bonuses to have a nice look at what you might have missed.

On top of this, sometimes when you miss your chance to hit a direction, you miss every other one as well. Imagine something like DDR. Once you miss one, sometimes it is going so fast that you miss every one after it until you get your rhythm back again. However, this happens very rarely during the game, and most times you won’t notice.

Also, they could have done way more in an action sequence than just use the bottom two circles. You feel that pressing directions on the analog sticks will get repeating, and even the occasional pressing of the L and R buttons won’t mix things up much, and you just can’t help but wonder why they didn’t add some more stuff to it than that. I mean, the way they used the controller during the game was fairly impressive, so why couldn’t they just add a little more to mix things up a bit?

Another problem is the lack of something to do BESIDES the story. Out of the main game, the title really has nothing else to offer. It includes some extra unlockable content like “making of” films or concept art, which you can unlock through collecting “bonus cards” throughout the game. However, this only gives you about a half an hour or so extra content before you get through it all.

The Bottom Line
This title is definitely something to look at if you are tired of bland FPS and shooters where the entire game is how many bullets you can pump into. If you are a fan of a deep, intriguing plot and likable characters then this is definitely a game for you. Whether you want to buy it or not, this is a game for you to definitely try out once. I would recommend that you rent this game first, to make sure that you can handle replaying it, as that is where this game gets its most of its content. I would also recommend renting it due to the fact that not all gamers can go a long time in a game without shooting something. If you love the game then, and want to be able to go back to it time after time, then this is a game for you to get!

By Matt Neuteboom on November 14, 2005

Grand Theft Auto III (PlayStation 2)

A realistic, revolutionary title that gets passed off a mindless violence

The Good
As a teenager, this was one of my favorite games. The idea that there was an entire 3D city open to me to do anything I wanted to was a completely new thing to me at the time. No game ever offered me a chance to do this, and as a result, I spent a huge amount of time playing it.

I am, however, disappointed at the fan base the GTA series has created. Most casual gamers see this as the game to shoot a bunch of people while stealing cars and having sex with hookers. As a result, most serious gamers see the game as mindless, repetitive, and boring with nothing to offer but mindless violence and thrills. I am tired of the title this game carries as nothing but a violent, overrated game from 2001. It is way more than that and it deserves more.

The game has one of the best storylines I have seen from a sandbox game. The player is presented with a typical situation of rising up into the crime ladder to get revenge on your girlfriend who shot you during a bank heist and left you for dead. As the story progresses, you will notice things like how gang members will respect you and help you throughout the game. You will be backstabbed by multiple groups of people, and as a result, the groups you have betrayed or have been betrayed by will take it upon themselves to shoot you on sight. The game has some of the most memorable characters and lines of dialogue in any game.

The main character, named Claude Speed (revealed to us in GTA: San Andreas) is the “silent protagonist”. The game developers felt that a personality and voice for the character would get in the way of your own personality. As a result, you can picture that main character any way you want, whether he’s a ruthless killer, or a loyal servant, or just a guy looking out for himself. It doesn’t matter which way you look at him because there is nothing in the way of telling you what to think of him.

The openness of the game is perfect for anything. If you want to do missions, then you are fine to do so. But you can also do a number of sub-missions like firefighter missions, ambulance missions, collecting hidden packages, driving people around in the taxi, and finding cars to deliver to the garage. You can entertain yourself with all of these things (and plenty more ways!). Or just do the simple thing and go on a rampage. The possibilities are endless when it comes to game play and the replay value is through the rough!

The controls are smooth and easy to learn after a few seconds of playing. Driving feels natural and is easy to get a hang of even after a few minutes of driving.

The missions in the game are NEVER the same. One mission you may be partaking in a gang war, another time you are shooting cops off of high-rises, and another time you’re just collecting the protection money that you need. To list every type of mission would take forever because nearly every mission is new, which makes sure the game play never gets stale.

The gangster atmosphere is very realistic in the game. The good parts are that enemy gangsters will recognize you either as an enemy or a friend in the game. When you are a friend, they will sometimes help you out by shooting a pursuing cop, or maybe an enemy gang member. As enemies, though, they shoot at you or your car on sight. This gives you diplomacy towards other gangs, and gives a nice gangster atmosphere with themes of loyalty and betrayal.

The greatest attention is pad to the tiniest of details to make the world seem as real and immersive as possible. Attention is paid to small details like billboards, cars, road signs, and traffic cones to make the city seem like a living, breathing world that you could destroy. Graphics on cars are relatively good for their time. People say things like “watch it!” or “Are you blind!?” when you hit them or are driving poorly. They yell and scream when you begin to shoot in the streets. The fact that the radio not played in certain vehicles like the police car or plane because they don’t have them in real life adds more immersion to the game and the illusion that this is all a real place with real people. Randomly it will rain or be foggy to make it seem like the city has weather. Day and night cycle around (with a real 24 hour clock to aid you) combined with the weather makes the city seem alive and moving and not just a city put on repeat mode every time you turn on the game. It is a great detail that, unlike the previous titles, every car is different in their own way. Sports cars, while fast and sleek, break easily and blow up quickly, while trucks and vans, which are slow and have poor turning, can take quite a beating from cars. All of this adds up to one cool experience in a realistic sandbox world.

Music, though taken directly from real life, is played cleverly through the system of the radio. Instead of making the game seem shoddy by taking songs from real life artists, it makes it seem MORE realistic by putting them on the radio and only played when you’re in a car or vehicle. The songs on the radio are taken directly from the time period, with the exception of the 80’s and classical music stations, both of which have songs taken directly from that era. This, again, adds to the immersion of the game.

Finally, the fact that these types of games were nearly unheard of at the time of this game’s release makes this game a great must-have for any fan of the series. Not only did it make sandbox games a standard industry practice, but it set in motion a new genre of gaming which no one had ever heard of before.

The Bad
A lot of this game’s problems come with AI and graphics. The AI, while it is smart at some parts, is very stupid at other parts. If you stand atop a high rise and fire at the crowd below, police will ram into the wall where you are standing and fire at it. They make no attempt to even aim upwards, which really makes things like rise sniping a very boring and easy task. Also, the people in the city, while seeming extremely life-like an animated, go nowhere in the city. They mindlessly wander streets, and if you follow one person, you will notice that they circle the city for hours with nowhere to go. This really takes away from some of the realism that the game has to offer.

The graphics aren’t perfect for the time. In a time where games like Final Fantasy X were coming out, this game has some lack-luster graphics. It is understandable though that the graphics were stripped down a bit to make sure the game runs without any lag at all. However, the graphics when compared to other games are satisfactory enough to deliver a realistic sandbox game while not completely concentrating on the eye candy. However a lot of good can come out of this. From the lowered graphics I have never ever experienced slowdown or lag, even when the screen is flooded with bodies, FBI cars, and people running and shooting everywhere.

A huge gaping detail they left out is the fact that you can’t interact at all with people or buildings in the city. The only building you can go into is the ammunition and guns store. People won’t talk to you if you go up to them, and nothing can be picked up except guns and other icons lying around that give you missions or hidden packages. Had this been included in the game, it would have made this game even more revolutionary for its time.

The game unfortunately has a limited amount of guns. The two sequels to this game came with three sets of guns, all of them equally interesting and fun to play with. This game had a relatively small amount of guns in its arsenal compared to some other shooters on the console which limits some of the replay value of going around just shooting anything that moves.

Another tiny annoyance that the game has is the fact that it has no easy way of returning to a contact point when you die or get busted. Unlike Vice City, where the game made a taxi show up to bring you to your last mission spot, you have to travel all the way back to the mission spot to get to try the mission again. Sometimes this an get so annoying that you will end up dying on the way there trying to find shortcuts through all of the traffic.

Another problem does not lie with the developers, but with the parents and people who play them. This game, because it displays such a realistic portrayal of violence and crime in the big city, is unsuitable for children. As a result this game carries a bad name with Christian and parenting groups. The truth is that this game is completely acceptable to play if you are not able to handle the type of violence depicted in this game. I do not think violent video games belong in the hands of children, and in order to enjoy this game you need to be mature enough to know the difference between real and fantasy. It is strongly recommended that children do not play this game.

Finally, a huge problem with the game is again not the developer’s fault, but the gamers’. The fact is that this game NEVER gets taken seriously enough to be considered a deep game where in fact that it is one of the most realistic and deep sandbox games of its time. The fact that this game allows players to do nothing but shoot up pedestrians and ride of curbs does not mean that that is the entire game. In fact, it is very far from it.

The Bottom Line
Not only did GTA 3 have a profound effect on the gaming industry, it had an effect on the gamers as well. GTA 3 is just as entertaining as it was 4 years ago. Its influences on modern games are hard to ignore in today’s video games. Too many times this game has not been taken seriously as a revolutionary title because it is known for its mindless violence and its controversy. GTA 3 is undoubtedly a revolutionary title that is worth a try, as long as you can truly appreciate it.

By Matt Neuteboom on November 9, 2005