East India Company

East India Company is a mercantilist real-time strategy game set at the dawn of the global trade age. As governor of one of the great European East India companies, you must compete against others for dominance of the lucrative markets of Africa, the Middle East, and especially India. As the commander of a private navy that includes both merchant and military vessels, you'll stop at nothing to secure a profit, which includes seizing port cities from the natives, sinking the fleets of rival companies, and forming alliances to wage all-out war. Success in East India Company derives primarily from sound financial planning, measured growth, and innumerable boatloads of exotic luxuries. In addition, you'll find it necessary to personally direct every naval battle using the "tactical" mode for resolving ship-to-ship combat, which is sadly the weakest and most tedious element of EIC's gameplay. And unfortunately, multiplayer action is limited to these lackluster battles. While not without flaws, the trading gameplay is solid and should entertain many fans of the genre; however, those lacking in patience may find the laborious early tactical battles less fun than a watery grave.

EIC includes a time of day and weather cycle; this storm ended long before the battle did.

East India Company comes with four single-player campaigns, which cover the years from 1600 to 1750. During every campaign, you'll play the East India Company of one of eight Western European nations, all of which historically chartered such companies. This excludes the Holy Roman Empire, which was presumably included to represent the short-lived Austrian Ostend company. However, there is no real difference among the factions aside from the geographical locations of their home ports. Those locations may give England and Portugal a slight advantage over the others because they are in good positions to box in their rivals. Every campaign uses the same strategic map that covers Europe, Africa, and Asia, through India. The exclusion of China is somewhat disappointing because it could have been fun to play through the Opium War time frame. However, controversial trade goods, such as opium and slaves, are left out of the game altogether.

The bulk of your single-player experience will be spent at the strategic and port views. Here, you'll build ships and organize them into fleets, buy and sell trade goods for profit, conquer ports with marines, and negotiate with foreign companies. Such missions as sinking a pirate fleet, delivering a special commodity order, or upgrading a port facility provide some variety, but nevertheless, buying and selling goods gets repetitive. Despite the availability of detailed reports about the price of tea throughout your empire, the trading game seems incomplete because you can sell your exotic goods in only one European city--your home port. When you get inevitably tired of manually managing trade, you can set up automatic trade routes, but unfortunately, these take away any satisfaction you might have derived from maximizing profits by buying, hording, and selling at the right times. As it turns out, the real key to a successful company is not micromanaging trade deals, but rather balancing how much you spend on ships, munitions, and upgrades while leaving enough free capital to buy massive quantities of spices, silk, and the like. Be careful: A few careless expenditures could wind up ruining your company. Another necessary consideration is diplomacy. If you offend enough of the other companies, your fortune will end up at the bottom of the ocean.

Despite his lack of an awesome mustache, Captain Brill was proving to be a promising commander.

East India Company's interface functions capably on the strategic level, providing easy access to the location and cargo of your ships, the main trade goods supplied by various ports, detailed price histories for everything you have sold, and more. The strategic map is not very detailed--it mostly comprises empty expanses of land and ocean--but it is clear and easy to use. The port view interface, which you use to buy and sell goods, build and organize ships, and upgrade buildings works effectively as well, but only after you switch to 2D ports in the game options. 3D ports look great and function without a hitch, but the load times are absolutely intolerable. The music in port view is a nice touch because it rotates Indian, African, Arab, and European themes depending on the port's location.

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Overlord II

The impish minions of the Overlord universe haven't been idle in the two years that have passed since the first game and have emerged with a host of new tricks in Overlord II. The evil little scamps have used the time off to learn how to operate machinery, wear disguises, sail the open seas, ride mounts, and get possessed by their evil master, as well as develop an uncanny talent for attacking baby seals. These additions make Overlord II a more varied experience than the first game, and while some of the issues that hampered the original have been addressed, they haven't exactly been fixed. Overlord II retains the gleeful maliciousness of the series; thus, it's still great fun to have a small army of nasty little blighters at your disposal to wreak havoc. But because the game’s auto-targeting is still haphazard, and the minions apt to do some very dumb things, you can expect some frustration to go along with your enjoyment.

Seal clubbing--not cool. But funny.

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Though the minions have evolved and you're playing as a brand new overlord this time around, the title character remains as mute and inscrutable as in the original. The game is set dozens of years after the first game, so you'll have to start your evil dominion from scratch, with the new enemy being the Roman-like Glorious Empire. The tone of the game is satirical, sharp, and more than a little silly--the elves here are portrayed as hippie environmentalists, the Empire nobles are obese snobs, and the fairies are ridiculously overendowed. Meanwhile, the soldiers act like they stepped straight out of an Asterix comic. It's all harmless fun, and while you will get to kill your fair share of cute animals, your silent, mainly charmless overlord won't really get to do anything too nasty.

Because the main character is so impassive, it's once again up to the minions to carry the charm quotient of the game. The minions are a cackling, gleeful lot of destructive slobs who are endearing in their dedication to their master, and it's a joy to watch them attack enemies, harass innocents, and act like general nuisances. You'll be well into the game before you find all four types of minions--the melee-focused browns, the flame-throwing reds, the sneak-attacking greens, and the magic-heavy blues--but when you do, you'll have a formidable miniarmy at your disposal. As overlord, you need this support because--despite your intimidating Sauron-like garb--you're no match solo for more than a few enemies at any one time. All of the heavy lifting will be done by your minions, and while you'll be able to get away with sheer force of numbers in many encounters, the toughest battles in Overlord II will require you to think hard about your minion mix and how you deploy them on the battlefield.

Initially, it can be a little intimidating to deploy your minions, and you'll need to be fairly dexterous when manipulating the keyboard and mouse. The default layout, however, is pretty easy to get used to, and is superior to the game’s console counterparts as it affords you more accuracy when directing your minions. You'll quickly get the grasp of sweeping units across the landscape, separating your minions into their respective color groups to take advantage of their unique strengths (and shield their weaknesses), and making them hold strategic checkpoints. For the most part, your minions are dependable creatures who'll find the best path to take or attack the most present danger. They can, however, still be quite dumb, which means a certain amount of micromanagement from their overlord is in order. Minions will often stop to pick up booty when there are still plenty of dangerous enemies attacking, and some are prone to aquatic suicide by trying to pick up objects close to water.

Despite their occasional brain lapses, this time around, your minions are a much more talented bunch and their most important new trait is the ability to ride different mounts. Three of the four minion types have their own specific beastie they can ride, allowing them to vastly increase their effectiveness and speed. It's satisfying to see your reds do damaging strafing runs atop their fire lizards. And breaking through a heavily shielded phalanx becomes a breeze when your browns are mounted on their wolves. Opportunities to ride don't occur too often in the game, but when they do, it's a welcome change from Overlord II's usual gameplay.

Minions ridinng wolves. Can things get any better?

In fact, variety is one of Overlord II's most redeeming factors. At certain points in the game, the overlord will be able to directly possess an underling, giving you the chance to play from a minion's point of view. These are some of the best sequences in the game, with one highlight being a stealth mission through a heavily guarded Empire fort using your newly found greens (sort of like Metal Gear Overlord). You'll also get to control some hefty weaponry in the form of catapults and arrow turrets, as well as take on enemy ships with your own minion-rowed vessel. In some ridiculous but quite funny missions, you'll be able to disguise your minions to gain entry into heavily guarded areas. Individually, these specific events don't occur that often, but collectively, these welcome additions mean you shouldn't get stuck with doing the same thing over and over again during Overlord II's lengthy single-player campaign.

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Bionic Commando

PC enthusiasts are used to feeble ports of console games, and Bionic Commando is no exception. The usual signs of indifference to the platform are all here, such as onscreen prompts that assume you are using a console controller, and laughably few graphics options. But even if you're just seeking good entertainment and are able to look past the obvious apathy shown to this version of Bionic Commando, you'll still find that consistent fun is in short supply. There are some good ideas here, and when they coalesce, you glimpse the great game struggling to escape from the shackles of averageness. You see it when you fling automobiles at a crowd of troopers; you see it in the exciting, high-flying concluding sequence. More often, however, you get the idea that developer GRIN didn't know what to do with its clever ideas. Early glimpses of a big world to explore tantalize you, but your progress is restricted by annoying clouds of deadly radiation. You'll come across new, more powerful weapons, only to discover that shooting them is just as lame as firing your default pistol. Moving about the world with your bionic arm is fun, but that mechanical wonder isn't strong enough to carry the entire experience.

It looks like an open world at first, but it's just a radiation-soaked illusion.

That bionic arm is the gameplay's backbone, and it's the source of every positive feature found within Bionic Commando. Most importantly, it's your standard form of transportation. Using it as a grapple hook, you can fling it onto posts, tree branches, and girders and swing and climb toward your destination. Stringing swings together can be satisfying, though you don't have Spider-Man-like freedom to glide about as you please. Your arm has only limited reach, so you can latch onto something only when the targeting reticle indicates that the surface is available. Furthermore, swinging has a lot of weight behind it. You must release your grip earlier than you would expect to keep the momentum going, which leads to a bit of clumsiness in the first hour or so as you become acclimated to the mechanics. If you're playing with a mouse and keyboard, you'll also need to work around the onscreen button prompts, which assume you're playing with an Xbox 360 controller. Eventually, you'll be able to figure out these obstacles and swing with ease, though certain levels are more enjoyable to navigate than others because they offer a bit more elbow room.

A glimpse of a futuristic metropolis may at first lead you to believe that there's a lot of room to explore. However, while Bionic Commando does afford you occasional, minimal leeway, you're generally pushed down a linear path. In this case, the modern replacement for traditional invisible walls (though there are some of these as well) is radiation. These blue clouds of instant death choke the city streets and coat the sides of buildings and are to be avoided at all costs. Radiation is one of the game's most common sources of frustration, because it imposes an artificial limitation on movement. You might fling yourself onto a seemingly safe rooftop only to be welcomed by this fatal mist, or reach out toward a wall but find that radiation keeps you from grabbing it. The restrictions have a big impact on the pace, and the scattered enemy encounters are far too tepid to energize the experience.

Pop goes the pistol.

These encounters are lifeless mainly because it isn't any fun to shoot Bionic Commando's lousy weapons. Pistols are often referred to as peashooters, but no other game in recent memory provides a firearm that lives up to this name so aptly. It gets the job done, but the hollow pop of each shot and the minimal visual feedback make it boring to use. Subsequent additions to your arsenal aren't much better. From an unexciting grenade launcher to a boring shotgun, every weapon lacks punch. The only exception may be the rocket launcher, which allows you to fire off multiple rockets at once, a handy feature when facing a heavy-duty aircraft. Most of the time, however, you'll be facing sporadic squads of armored grunts. They don't exhibit the most advanced intelligence, but firefights can still result in your quick death, since you can take only a few shots before needing to duck away and let your health replenish. The low point of this mediocrity is a protracted, unrewarding shooting sequence within a library that will make you long for more energetic weapons and tighter shooting mechanics.

Fortunately, you have other offensive tools that are far more interesting to use. You can latch onto foes with your arm and zip-kick them, which sends you leaping backward through the air, letting you finish off your target with your pistol or perhaps another kick for good measure. You can also grapple certain environmental objects, like cars, boulders, and barrels, and fling them at your enemies--a technique that is especially enjoyable against a towering mechanical worm that stars in Bionic Commando's best boss fight. Additionally, you can launch the same objects in the air and punch them into opponents, which is equally fun to do. There are also a few set-piece levels that put the bionic arm to good use. In one of them, you take down a series of aircraft as you leap from one to the next; in the game's final scenes, you use similar techniques to memorable effect.

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Wolfenstein

Most modern first-person shooters are so very serious. They feature a whole lot of brown environments and gruff characters, but never have enough archways into alternate universes. Well, if you're in the mood for an FPS with a glint in its figurative eye, Wolfenstein is a good way to stave off the forces of evil without the in-game grumpiness that usually accompanies such endeavors. This sequel to 2001's Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a worthy addition to the series and a fun romp in its own right. The game won't set your world on fire; it occasionally stops feeling old-fashioned and starts feeling just plain old, and a number of flaws are woven throughout the gameplay's very fabric. Some awesome boss fights and memorable combat sequences prevent Wolfenstein from falling into a rut, however. Besides, you're not just fighting Nazis--you're fighting magic Nazis that conjure force fields and fly around with jetpacks.

The Veil ensures that you'll never be afraid of the dark.

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The setup for this historical/sci-fi mash-up is typical Wolfenstein whimsy, shouldered by the ever-capable B.J. Blaskowicz. This returning hero has spilled his share of Nazi blood, so who better than B.J. to protect the residents of the city of Isenstadt (not to be confused with the Austrian city of Eisenstadt) from the ongoing onslaught? Isenstadt is the headquarters of several resistance groups that seeks to wrest the secrets of the supernatural from the hands of the Schutzstaffel. It seems the Nazis are up to their old tricks, this time harnessing the powers of a mystical force called the Black Sun for the usual take-over-the-world kind of evil. If you know the series, you know not to expect much substance or surprise, though it's too bad there isn't more to draw you into this kitschy fiction. A lot of this has to do with the technology powering the game. Wolfenstein looks a bit aged; the prerendered cutscenes look overcompressed and facial animations are stiff. These second-rate assets, along with unenthusiastic voice acting, are distracting and make it hard to get invested in your fellow insurgents. Wolfenstein's story is a throwaway that boils down to a simple premise: Throw a bunch of Nazis into the occultist blender and see what cockamamy concoction pours out.

As it turns out, this concoction doesn't offer many surprises. Though you'll get tastes of role-playing elements and paranormal wizardry, Wolfenstein sticks to the trusty run-and-gun formula that has worked so well for shooters over the years. And it does it well, sending you into country farms, sprawling airfields, and secretive corridors to see how well you can fend off the soldiers and various anomalies it flings toward you. Your tools of destruction are solid. Traditional World War II weapons, such as the MP40 SMG and the Flammenwerfer, feel excellent, so even if you run out of ammo for the more powerful firearms, you'll never lament falling back to the simpler choices. But the better half of your arsenal is essentially snatched from an alternate reality. Of these options, you'll quickly grow fond of the Tesla gun, which fires electric streams in various directions at once, and the Leichenfaust 44, which is a heavy weapon that instantly vaporizes standard enemies. As you explore Isenstadt and complete missions, you'll earn money and find bags of coins. You can then spend these spoils on upgrades for your weapons, such as diminished recoil or greater damage. While some weapons are better in certain circumstances than others, there's really no weak banana in this bunch.

You frequently break the laws of gravity. Sir Isaac Newton would not be pleased.

The action itself is rudimentary as far as first-person shooters go. There is no cover system to grapple with; you won't peek around corners, slink in the shadows, or pilot vehicles. You can, however, enter a parallel dimension called The Veil. When you activate The Veil, the world is shrouded in a shimmering cloak. In it, you can run faster, and enemies glisten, making them easier to target. Odd creatures called geists also float about, shocking nearby enemies if you shoot them down and even creating fearsome webs of electricity in tandem with neighboring geists. More importantly, entering The Veil lets you perform three potent powers: slow down time, surround yourself with a bulletproof shield, and empower your own bullets to do more damage and pierce paranormal force fields. You can also purchase upgrades for Veil powers just as you do for weapons. Eventually, you might be turning adjacent enemies into pillars of ash when you suppress the flow of time or deflecting bullets back toward your foes when in the safety of your shield.

Similar powers have appeared elsewhere; if you've played either Ubersoldier game, for example, it's hard to dismiss the similarities as mere coincidence. Yet contrived or not, you'll need to make frequent use of The Veil. Wolfenstein is occasionally challenging when you don't use it; in spite of his regenerating health, B.J. is rather fragile. The game often pits you against a healthy (or unhealthy, in this case) number of Nazi soldiers and ninja-speed sorcerers, so you'll need to stay on your toes and charge up your Veil energy reserves whenever you see an energy deposit's telltale shimmer. That doesn't mean your adversaries are very smart. Soldiers often won't react to a grenade thrown at their feet, don't always care when the Nazi standing right next to them gets shot, and generally seem unconcerned with preserving their own lives. Any challenge comes from sheer numbers--and from time to time, it will come from cheap attacks that can lead to frustration. Cloaked sorcerers and fleet-footed vixens can sneak right up and kill you in a slash or two--an occurrence that can be hard to avoid if you fail to glimpse them by chance or miss the sound effects that signal their presence. Dealing with one-hit-kill surprises like that isn't much fun, and there are a few other sudden arrivals that are almost impossible to prepare for, such as rocket-spewing meanies flying about.

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Memento Mori

Point-and-click adventure games aren't exactly known for their high levels of action, but Memento Mori is so slow paced that you want to bottle it and sell it to insomniacs. This tale of forgery and mysticism in the art world is a plodding affair packed with a mystifying plot and dreary puzzles that are about as exciting as watching paint dry. Grim settings and voice acting reminiscent of European art-house movies almost pull the game out of the doldrums at times, although the sheer ordinariness of everything else quickly drags it back down. Almost any chore you could do in your real life would be more entertaining than the tasks set before you here.

Lara spends a lot of time talking on her cell phone. And you spend a lot of time watching her talk on her cell phone.

The playable leads here are Lara Svetlova, a Russian cop turned Interpol agent now working in the art crimes division in Lyon, France, and Max Durand, a one-time forger who must now do penance for his crimes by pulling odd jobs for the authorities. A nasty Russian named Colonel Ostankovic pulls the strings on both Lara and Max, using threats to force them to look into an apparent break-in at a St. Petersburg museum called The Hermitage. Because Ostankovic is in charge of the place, he wants to keep any inquiries hush-hush to avoid being blamed for problems that may have occurred on his watch. So he calls in the dynamic duo on the sly to check on a problem with the security cameras, which have been experiencing strange outages. Lara and Max begin working separately, but as things usually play out in these sorts of things, the two investigations soon become one after assorted evil machinations are discovered. There is an interesting tale buried somewhere in here, but everything is told in such a ham-fisted way that it's hard to appreciate the spooky saga until you get near the conclusion and the weirdness starts to come into focus. Even then, there are a lot of "Huh?" moments, especially during the ominous voice-overs that often mark the switch between characters.

But the biggest problem with Memento Mori is its dull structure. Although the writers have scripted a story with some tense moments, both Lara and Max get caught up in minutiae all the time. Almost every single little task is accompanied by something petty. This is a particular problem early on in the game. Lara, for instance, kicks things off with a thrilling quest to get a new cell phone battery from the IT department at her Lyon office and figure out how to turn on a machine in the Interpol lab. Max wanders the darkened Hermitage, where the biggest obstacle is a velvet rope he doesn't think he should cross. Unnecessary roadblocks like these pop up again and again throughout the game, disrupting and dragging out the plot. Problems themselves are tedious rehashes of ancient adventure game doggerel, so most challenges feel about as natural as suddenly being forced to complete a crossword puzzle in order to cook breakfast in real life.

If you can pick an item up, you can be assured that you'll need it down the road. So you're faced with scrounging cupboards and trash bins for everything--including clogged spray paint cans, ropes, and rocks--with the assumption that you'll be able to MacGyver something out of this garbage eventually. There isn't much challenge here, either. You never acquire massive piles of junk, so you generally just have to combine a couple of recently acquired doodads or do something as basic as use tweezers to pull a letter out of a mailbox. A logic puzzle is tossed into the mix every so often to keep you on your toes, although these brainteasers are about as challenging as a Junior Jumble. If you keep your eyes open, you'll never lack for numbers to punch into keypads or get stumped trying to rewire a fuse box.

The look and sound of the game is better than everything else, though that isn't really saying much. The game is presented in vivid third-person 3D, with you navigating the detective of the moment through beautifully realized living rooms, offices, rain-swept streets, spooky museums, sunny parks, and more. Locales have a lived-in appearance, right down to the cheesy soft porn that one creep has plastered all over his bathroom walls. That said, there is a serious animation issue. There are far too many delays caused by mandatory sequences, such as opening a cell phone or closing a door. As you repeat a lot of actions and revisit a lot of the same places, having to sit through these tedious animations is very annoying.

Actual investigative work is hard to come by in Memento Mori.

The musical score is nearly as grating. A repetitive piano piece plays over and over again, hitting the same few notes ad nauseam. It's like you're listening to a kid practicing for a recital. At least the voice acting is more than acceptable. Characters have been provided with idiosyncratic lines spoken with credible European accents, giving the game an art-house cinema vibe. This is a significant achievement, too. It's not often that a game with this many Russians manages to avoid turning them into Boris and Natasha-styled stereotypes. Unfortunately, many conversations run on automatic so you only get to watch, and those where you can make choices have been dumbed down to where you pick among positive, negative, and questioning attitudes. You never get to select specific topics to grill suspects with, which greatly limits the feeling that you're interacting with well-developed characters.

Memento Mori's one big achievement is that it makes a jet-setting story of international intrigue as boring as an afternoon at the Laundromat. There are a number of alternate endings that branch off from all sorts of different points in the game, although you would have to be seriously tolerant of tedium to finish it more than once to see them. Even with the moody visuals and distinctive voice acting, this is still more afternoon-nap material than a thriller.

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Posted in: Adventure