——-

Starts off promising. Little psychic, developmentally disabled. Explosion. Zombies.

unclear signposts. weapon just disappears from her hand? What?

Why does a decontamination syringe heal my electrical wounds?

I encounter a locked door, continue on my way, stumbling through the dark and murdering a few zombies, until I come upon … some guy. The guy tells me he has a friend who may be able to help, but we need to find a land line to call him since the cell network is down. And so we head the control room, which had the aforementioned locked door.

Turns out it’s a DNA lock, but that’s okay because my underworld cab driver is only too happy to give Lana his DNA Cracker.

This guy proceeds to give me information about the zombie outbreak, which happened maybe an hour ago? Was Lana knocked out for weeks? He knows all about how the contamination works and about these magic syringes that help contain it.

I turn off the power but it’s very clearly still sparking? So I turned off the power to keep a fence from being electrified, and yet I still push a button to open it. What?

“This place is where the infection is particularly strong.” How do you know that? How long ago did this happen? Like an hour ago?

A magical contamination detecting belt.What?

Lana could obviously fit through the holes Amy has to crawl through

no back story. amy’s just a (psychic?) savant

Story dialogue instantly cuts off once I pass an invisible line that triggers other dialogue. Was I supposed to stand still and listen to this guy once we opened the door?

Watching Lana get scared by an ineffective jump scare is … insulting? The same jump scare again? Definitely. [Okay, a few of these got me, I'll admit. Mostly because I was startled out of boredom.]

Narrative inconsistencies. Like the cabbie knowing all about the infection, even though he has no idea what’s going on.

Sidling along ledges that are obviously wide enough to walk across

Amy will often get stuck behind doors as you close them (or as they automatically shut behind you). I suppose you could argue that’s part of the gameplay, in that you’re supposed to protect her, but it feels more like the hand holding was done to get around some bad pathfinding [This might be a little harsh, especially as the hand-holding mechanic becomes clearer. Still, Amy will occasionally get lost / stuck for no apparent reason.]

Lana hardly ever speaks, why? [She talks a lot more toward the end, but she hardly utters a word in the beginning, while the cabbie prattles endlessly.]

There’s a newspaper, with an article about the object crashing from the sky. In the same subway where Lana’s train crashed … because of the object that fell from the sky. It makes no sense. [To clarify, if this disaster happened hours ago (if that long), how is there already a newspaper article about it, and why is it in a subway affected by the disaster that happened hours ago?]

How are there syringes to control this contamination hours after it happens.

The game gives me a prompt to pick up an aluminum can. Upon pressing the A button, Lana responds, “nothing but trash.” WHY DID YOU SAY I COULD PICK IT UP

amy never makes any noise at all, except when she screams…

hacking sequence mask loading? They have to. Surely a developer wouldn’t keep me standing in one spot for thirty seconds on purpose.

Not a single elevator in the world of Amy has a button within arm’s reach.

Every moment is achingly ponderous.

Lame allusions to “the professor,” a character we’ve never met. Phoenix soldiers, we’re just supposed to know who they are, etc.

It’s not impossible to drop players into the middle of a story and expect them to fill in the pieces — Left 4 Dead is a good example — but so many of Amy’s pieces just aren’t there.

Note to developers, if your ladder climbing animation takes so long that you decide to give players the option to skip it, maybe you’re doing something wrong.

No mid-level saves? [Expletive deleted] you. These are long levels. [Side note: Level length is inconsistent. Some chapters will take over an hour. Others are 20 to 30 minutes.]

When I load a checkpoint, all the syringes I had before the checkpoint disappear. WTF. [This is infuriating and it makes no sense!]

Vague plot points about some nefarious scheme. Lana says dude destroyed the city without having gathered any evidence that points to that. Characters introduced without any context at all, as though we should already know who they are.

Combat is easy. If you don’t have a weapon, you can’t win the fight, so no suspense there. [Fights are generally easy to win, but weapons break eventually. This usually isn't an issue. That said, if you don't have a weapon, it's impossible to fight. So, it's either an easy fight, or no fight at all. Either way, there is no suspense.]

[I didn't jot this down in my notes or mention it in the review, but the ending is ridiculous. After defeating a monster in the hospital, an ending cutscene starts playing, during which Lana is glad to be safe, although soldiers are surrounding the hospital. This cutscene ends with a man standing on a rooftop opposite the hospital. He calls Lana on the phone / walkie-talkie and says (in a southern drawl), "Hello ladies. It looks like you could use some divine intervention."

I had no idea who he was. This morning I did some digging and realized he was "Father John," a character that appears once in the game, and on a television screen at that. The developers obviously made a model for him (seen here), but it's nowhere in the game at all. Why does he have a gun? Are these soldiers his? Is he there to save them from the soldiers? Who knows? He just spouts his line and ... credits. Done.]

——

There you go. Hopefully you found this useful.

It’s dangerously simple to refer to a new product as an amalgam of other known quantities, but in the case of Monday Night Combat, it’s the most effective sell. Here’s the pitch: Imagine the class-based, team-oriented play of Team Fortress and then mix it with the escalating play of tower defense. Toss in a bright, campy sports entertainment aesthetic and you’ve got Monday Night Combat. And it’s a blast.
Monday Night Combat (8/7/10)

Without belaboring every gameplay detail, suffice it to say that Monday Night Combat shakes up the usual capture-the-flag formula by introducing AI-controlled robots and turrets. In order to win a Crossfire match — one of two gameplay modes — you must destroy the opposing team’s “Money Ball” while simultaneously protecting your own. The twist is that in order to actually damage the Money Ball, you must first escort your horde of bots into the enemy base, where they can attack the ball and bring down its shields. Once the shields are down, the ball is susceptible to conventional weapons.

Thus, proceedings really boil down to a game of strategy, making victory dependent on more than simply scoring the most headshots. Summoning and escorting bots, and building and upgrading defensive turrets, are just as important as picking a class and upgrading its skills as a match progresses.

That’s not to say that finding a favorite class and racking up kills isn’t gratifying. There are six classes, and each has four skills, three active and one passive, that can be upgraded during a match. I prefer the Assassin, whose dash and cloaking abilities felt a bit more proactive than the defensive powers of the Tank. I also enjoyed the Support, a combination medic / engineer who can improve turrets, heal teammates, call in air strikes and deploy a mini-turret of his own. Each class has a unique style of play, from the offense-heavy Gunner to the jack-of-all-trades Assault to the … well, the Sniper.

You will need to do your fair share of killing, though, as each successful kill earns money needed to upgrade skills, build turrets and summon specialized bots. Each map — there are four in Crossfire mode — also has unique actions you can pay to activate including jump pads, ejectors and the deadly Annihilator. These are placed at strategic points on the map and can really save your bacon in a tight spot. Let me tell you personally that it’s pretty damned satisfying to set off an ejector and watch half of the opposing team fall to its death.

Matches can be over quickly or they can go into overtime, which gives everyone a skill boost and drops the shield on both Money Balls — but I found the urge to play “just one more” nearly irresistible either way. Even if you don’t feel like another round of Crossfire, there’s always Blitz, which tasks up to four players (two via splitscreen) with defending their Money Ball against ever-increasing waves of bots. It’s also worth mentioning that Uber Entertainment plans to continue supporting Monday Night Combat after launch. Uber’s John Comes told me that basic balance adjustments can be made “on the fly without needing to do a patch” and, while he wouldn’t confirm any specific DLC, he did say that “some announcements” are scheduled for PAX Prime 2010 in September.

As I said, it can be too easy to write something off merely as a combination of popular ideas, but Monday Night Combat handily outstrips the sum of its parts, presenting a fresh, fun take on class-based shooters. There are so many variables — twelve players, numerous bots, turrets, unique map features — that it’s hard to imagine a match playing out the same way twice. For anyone with a stable crew of online friends, Monday Night Combat deserves a spot in the usual rotation.

Might I suggest Mondays?

When trying to work out the best way to describe Limbo, I keep coming back to Edvard Munch. I’ve always been fascinated with Munch, an artist most famous for painting The Scream. It’s his other works, however, that tend to stick with me, particularly his Madonna. As a work of art, Munch’s Madonna presents the viewer with seemingly disparate imagery, at once both alluring and disquieting. It’s dark, a little disturbing, and yet it’s also engaging and beautiful.

That’s Limbo.

Limbo has a rare quality to it: regardless of who actually holds the controller, anyone close enough to watch is automatically transfixed. Rather than bombarding you with graphical effects or thumping music, Limbo’s distinct lack of visual and aural stimuli makes it most striking. Its true impact is achieved through emptiness, silence and simplicity.

At its core, Limbo is a puzzle platformer, though classifying it as such feels like a disservice to the game. The real outstanding feature, and the thing that will stay with me, is the world. It’s bleak, desolate, rendered entirely in shades of black and gray. There is no color in limbo. None. There is no real music to speak of, apart from the occasional sting or drone.

The protagonist, a small boy, wakes up in a dark forest and then the game just … begins. No tutorials, no little signs explaining the buttons. Not that it needs any; there are only three functions in the entire game: Move, jump and action (used for grabbing objects, flipping switches, etc.). Using these functions, you traverse perilous terrain, solve puzzles and, in general, try to find a way forward and out.

Death — your own and that of others — is a pervasive theme. Nearly every mistake results in death, often leaving you dismembered or gored. For me, watching the little boy’s eyes wink out was actually more disturbing than seeing him ripped apart. It gives the death a sense of weight (and perhaps meaning, if you care to ascribe any to it). Other characters, human and otherwise, seem to be characterized by death, suffering or savagery, making one thing clear: Something is wrong with this place. It’s as good a motivator as I could imagine, begging the player to move forward, to get out. Whether you do it to see more of the nightmarish landscape, or to escape from it — well, that’s up to you.

I didn’t come across many real stumpers, though a handful of the puzzles took more than a few attempts (and eventually resulted in rewarding “aha!” moments). There are a few more challenging (and optional) puzzles hidden throughout the game as well, which net various Achievements. These hidden puzzles are a nice diversion, and at least one of them offered a hefty challenge that took the better part of an hour to solve.

Rewarding as they may be, though, the puzzles really serve as a means to an end. The actual meaning of Limbo, I think, lies in the journey itself. In that sense, it reminds me most of Out of This World or the original Prince of Persia, in that it truly takes you to another place, puts you in another person’s shoes. Dark, disturbing, yet eerily beautiful, Limbo is a world that deserves to be explored.

Alan Wake begins with a quote by Stephen King: "Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear." The line is spoken by the protagonist, novelist Alan Wake, and it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate opening. It’s a game spent in search of explanations, answers to the puzzling questions put forth by its narrative. It’s a very simple, effective hook — an author’s horror thriller is coming to life. The twist? He doesn’t remember writing it.

It’s a great setup, but, as any writer well knows, it’s the follow-through that’s important. Without something to keep the reader engaged (or player, in this case), a story is doomed. As someone who has eagerly anticipated Alan Wake since its announcement nearly five years ago, I can say — with some relief, if I’m being honest — that Alan Wake will hook you to the end.

It begins simply enough. Alan and his wife Alice are on a much-needed vacation. Bestselling author Wake has contracted a severe case of writer’s block, thus inspiring the vacation away from the hustle and bustle of New York with his wife. What better place, then, than Bright Falls, Washington, an idyllic little town on the northern Pacific coast? Of course, things aren’t quite what they seem and, before long, Alice goes missing and Alan blacks out, subsequently waking up in a wrecked car and missing an entire week of memories. What’s more, Alan discovers pages from a new manuscript, one he doesn’t recall writing. Even stranger, the words on the pages are coming true, effectively making Alan a character in his own story, a story of the emerging darkness in Bright Falls.

I don’t dare reveal any more here, but suffice it to say that the story — which would be strong enough to easily carry a movie or television series — is the strongest feature of Alan Wake. The developers at Remedy obviously knew this, as the game is structured into six self-contained episodes, complete with a quick "Previously on Alan Wake" montage at the beginning of each one. The episodic structure is integral to the experience, ending every episode (sometimes literally) with a bang and effectively punctuating each arc of the story. Thankfully, you don’t have to wait a week to see the next episode, you just have to hit the B button.

The characters — even the minor ones — are well-written, memorable and, most importantly, backed by excellent voice actors. My favorite character is probably Alan’s agent, Barry, a New Yorker who shows up in Bright Falls wearing hiking boots, a Hawaiian shirt and a ridiculous, puffy orange jacket — an outfit I assume he deems appropriate for the Northwestern US. Each character feels very real, so it’s unfortunate that the models themselves look dated. They also suffer from occasionally horrendous lip syncing, at times making them look more like marionettes than people.

Barry Wheeler, a lovable oaf if ever there was one

Sticking with the writing motif, Alan actually narrates the game as it’s happening, offering insights to the story and clues as to what the player should do next. You’ll also collect manuscript pages scattered throughout each episode, each of which can be read on the spot. The page collecting mechanic is particularly addictive, as each page provides information on what the other characters are up to. They also subtly foreshadow events to come, providing even more reason to push forward. When, for example, a page described another character being attacked, I know I was always motivated to get a move on.

Of course, no story is complete without some obstacles, and Alan encounters plenty. First and foremost are the Taken, townspeople who have been possessed by the darkness pervading Bright Falls. In order to take them down, Alan must first bathe them in light, usually from a flashlight (though occasionally from other sources). Once the darkness is burned away, most of the Taken can be downed by a few bullets. It’s a tense, well-constructed system that has you focusing the flashlight with the left trigger and firing with the right, occasionally cramming batteries into the flashlight when it runs out of juice.

Batteries are as important as ammunition in Alan Wake

The light mechanic also has the added benefit of turning fairly harmless implements like a flare gun or flashbang into weapons of mass destruction. The game relishes it, slipping into slow motion as a flare streams toward a horde of Taken, promising imminent and illuminating doom. Meanwhile, cars and trucks become light-powered battering rams.

Apart from the Taken, Bright Falls is also littered with several less deadly distractions. Exploration is almost always rewarded with manuscript pages, a television or a radio. The radio programs offer extra background on the story, while the televisions sport episodes of a fictional, live-action TV show. It’s called Night Springs, an Outer Limits / Twilight Zone amalgam about — if you can believe it — a creepy town packed with paranormal activity. Even with the world falling down around Alan’s ears, I couldn’t help but stop to watch every episode I encountered.

Ultimately, Alan Wake is driven — as is any good story — by the impulse to see what happens next. It offers up a believable world, characters worth caring about, enjoyable combat and a narrative I wanted to follow. Just remember what Stephen King said about explanations, because you won’t see all of your questions answered by the time Alan Wake comes to a close. That said, know you will be left wanting more.

I enjoyed the original Lost Planet, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. The third-person shooting was vanilla at best and frustrating at worst. The story and characters were forgettable — really, do you remember any of it? But man, those bugs.

The giant bugs and beasties, known as Akrid, were the reason to play Lost Planet. I’m no scientist, so I can only postulate that somewhere, deep within the gamer’s brain, there’s a pleasure center dedicated solely to the destruction of glowing, orange weak points.

After playing through the first three “episodes” of Lost Planet 2 — each split into several chapters — the game seems to strike most of the same chords as the original. The formula hasn’t changed much; the combat is exactly the same; and there’s no real story to speak of — the characters don’t even have names!

The only notable changes in the sequel are the additions of four-player co-op and a few, much larger Akrid. Unfortunately, I can’t say whether co-op makes for an engaging gameplay experience or not, as I was unable to test it out. What I can tell you is that co-op is bound to be better than playing alone, because that isn’t very fun at all. As for the bigger baddies? I’m not sure bigger is necessarily better.
Gallery: Lost Planet 2

As Lost Planet 2 is so similar to the original, it comes with all the ups and downs of the first game. The negatives include some of the more annoying aspects of the combat, especially what I call “the death loop.” Basically, there are quite a few enemy weapons and attacks that can knock down your character. Typically, these knock-down attacks require a few seconds of “recharge” time before they can be used again by your enemies, which is about how long it takes you to get back up. You do the math.

The frustrations aren’t just limited to combat. The grappling hook is back, and again there’s often no way to predict if it will safely carry you over a chasm or simply drop you to your death.

The most obvious addition to the game is the co-op option. My recommendation: Play Lost Planet 2 with friends. When playing alone, your AI teammates are about as useful as a sackful of wet bread. They occasionally take down an enemy soldier or activate a checkpoint — which still requires you to mash the B-button like an idiot — but usually they just roam around aimlessly. Once, an enemy soldier dropped down right in front of my entire squad, which proceeded to do nothing but stare at him.

“But what about the giant monsters,” you ask? I’ll admit that the Akrid are much more interesting to fight than the human enemies. Rather than simply absorbing a few bullets and keeling over, the Akrid have specific patterns and weaknesses that must be exploited, making them more enjoyable to take down. The only issue I have with the Akrid so far is the boss battles. Specifically, the bosses take a long time to defeat, leading to bouts of boredom (though I suppose more human players might speed things up).

In particular, the boss of the third episode — a humongous sand worm — was a nightmare. The battle is fought on a train with a big cannon mounted on top. In order to defeat the sand worm, you have to pick up gigantic shells, load them into the cannon, and then shoot one of several weak points on the monster. It might sound like a great idea for a boss fight, but it’s just poorly designed for one player.

Frustration, thy name is sand worm!

First of all, the cannon itself rotates about as fast as a northbound snail on a southbound turtles back, and both the snail and turtle are covered in molasses. Complicating matters, there are various tasks to keep up with, from dumping coolant into the cannon to charging the bullet-shells — most accomplished by, uh-huh, mashing the B-button. I can imagine the process is easier with co-op players, and maybe even fun, but it was nothing but an exercise in frustration in single-player mode.

Oh, and when you do kill the worm, it primes itself for one last attack that will destroy the train and instantly fail the mission, forcing you to restart the entire chapter. If you don’t already know that attack is coming, it will kill you. In other words, actually killing the thing is guaranteed to take one more try than it should.

Beyond the frustration, the most conspicuous aspect of playing Lost Planet 2 thus far is my pervasive sense of boredom. Like the first Lost Planet, this is not a bad game, but it’s not great either. I can only hope co-op will make the experience more palatable. The Akrid are still the selling point, and hopefully they feature more prominently in the rest of the campaign than they do in the first three episodes. With so many AAA games already available this year — and more on the horizon — Lost Planet 2 needs all the glowing, orange weak points it can get. Decent multiplayer couldn’t hurt either.

I’m only familiar with the original anime film and haven’t seen the TV series at all, but the live-action version was very, very competent. The actors were skilled, the action was excellently choreographed and the special effects were … passable. The movie overuses computer generated effects, specifically a lot of blood spatter. I’m not really sure why the filmmakers chose to use CG blood when practical effects would have done just as well, but it’s a small gripe. In fact, the computer effects overall were just okay. Plenty of scenes definitely looked fake, but the staging and execution pretty much makes up for it.

Suffice it to say, if you like sword fights, martial arts and wire work, definitely check out Blood: The Last Vampire. If you haven’t seen the anime on which its based, I’d say pick that up too.

I’ve played every game in the series and a few years ago you might even have caught me defending the Silent Hill movie. When I first heard that Climax was re-imagining the first game in the Silent Hill series, and putting it on the Wii, I was a bit nervous. When the company revealed the logo and announced that the rust laden, nightmarish Otherworld was being brushed aside for an ice world, I was downright scared. After gathering some more info and trying the game at E3, all fears were assuaged. This was to be the great white (black?) hope of the Silent Hill series.

Having spent two evenings with the game and completing the story for the first time, I’m conflicted. Was it good? Yes. I’m just not sure it’s Silent Hill.

Setting aside the trappings of the Silent Hill series for the moment, Shattered Memories is mechanically very impressive. Moving Harry Mason, the main character, with the Nunchuk and pointing his flashlight with the remote feels great. Sure, it could be accomplished with an analog stick (and likely will be in the PS2 version), but it’s really a perfect fit for the Wii. Manipulating objects to solve puzzles is also very pleasing. It’s hard not to smile the first time you pop the pin out of a door lock and then slide the bolt back. The puzzles are simple for the most part, but very satisfying. One puzzle in particular made a rather brilliant use of object manipulation combined with light and shadow. I won’t spoil it, but it was one of the real "aha" moments in the game.

Another well implemented mechanic is Harry’s mobile phone. It’s a multifunctional device, used for navigation, occasional spirit photography, solving puzzles and, appropriately enough, making calls. Phone numbers are littered throughout the town, written on signs or scrawled on walls, and almost all of them can be dialed (I encountered three that didn’t work). Most numbers result in useless answering machine messages, while others provide necessary assistance. All of them, however, add to the reality of the situation.

You’ll notice I haven’t really mentioned how Shattered Memories stacks up against the rest of the series yet. Honestly, I’m conflicted. The icy nightmare world actually doesn’t bother me the way I thought it might. It trades the psychologically oppressive, oxidized hell of the previous games for icy, claustrophobic isolation (an effect that became much more potent when I first saw another character freeze solid in the middle of a conversation). It’s pretty damned lonely … until you get tackled by a horde of monsters.

Shattered Memories eschews combat entirely, opting instead to have Harry run from monsters. It works well most of the time and makes for a few tense moments. My only gripe is that the motion control doesn’t always work, causing Harry to die as I desperately flail both arms in the direction of an attacking monster.

What really bothers me, though, is the Silent Hill name attached to the project. Climax has said from the beginning that Shattered Memories isn’t a remake of the original Silent Hill, but a "re-imagining." I think a more accurate description might be "almost entirely different." Apart from characters with the same names, the game has next to nothing to do with the first Silent Hill.

Some of the settings and plot points are shared, but the relationships, characters and story are as different as can be. In fact, the characters are so different that I’m actually a bit baffled that Climax chose to give them the same names. I kept expecting certain characters to somehow tie into their original counterparts, but it never happened. Beyond that, the town of Silent Hill doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the story. Sure, lots of creepy things occur, but I was never given the impression that the town itself was responsible for any of it. There are no hints of Silent Hill’s dark history (at least none that I found). It’s just a dude with some weird stuff happening to him.

Don’t mistake that for a condemnation. Shattered Memories simply has its own story to tell, many elements of which will change depending on the choices you make. As a psychological horror game, it really shines. One moment in particular absolutely chilled me to the bone (you’ll know it when you get there). It’s just different, and maybe that’s the point. Climax set out to re-imagine Silent Hill and it succeeded, though it may not be what fans were expecting.

In a world where even the bizarre, psycho-sexual traditions of Silent Hill could (and arguably have) become stale, change is welcome. Personally, I hope Climax is given the chance to iterate its new formula again.

Look at my fancy new theme!

• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Shadow Complex
• Halo Wars
• Street Fighter IV
• Halo 3: ODST (For Firefight, if nothing else)
• ‘Splosion Man

It’s worth noting that I haven’t played a fair amount of the games I need to play. Assassin’s Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Uncharted 2 spring immediately to mind. It’s also possible that Torchlight just might make it on there once I sink more hours into it.

Anyhway, the point I really want to get to is this: I think ‘Splosion Man has to be my pick for overall game of the year. I don’t know if that’s radical/crazy/pretentious, but it’s my choice. The reason I say it has to be my pick is simple: I had more fun playing that game than any other this year. Throw out production values. Throw out the “games as art” debate. Throw out writing. It’s not that ‘Splosion Man didn’t excel in any of those areas — it did — but the simple fact is I enjoyed it more than anything else this year.

I’ll save more commentary for later, when I get my thoughts in order, but I had to share. Please, give me your thoughts on the best games this year. I could use the help.