Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Review

Hot Pursuit is a Need for Speed game in name only. This blisteringly fast racer has more in common with developer Criterion Games' own Burnout series than it does with any previous Need for Speed offering, despite lacking a number of features that are commonly associated with Burnout games. This isn't a game in which you're rewarded for crashing spectacularly or for jumping through billboards, but it is a game that encourages you to drive dangerously and to take down your opponents by any means necessary. The option to play both as illegal racers and as the cops that are chasing them brings some much-needed variety to the action, while spike strips, road blocks, and other satisfying countermeasures ensure that Hot Pursuit doesn't feel quite like any racer that you've played before. Regardless of whether your interest in Hot Pursuit stems from a love of Need for Speed, Burnout, or neither, you won't be disappointed.

The SCPD, stopping illegal races one supercar at a time since 2010.

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If you're familiar with the Burnout series, you'll immediately feel at home with the handling in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Licensed cars from the likes of Lamborghini, Aston Martin, and Porsche can be made to slide around corners with only the briefest of touches on the brake, and you earn nitrous by driving dangerously close to other vehicles and into oncoming traffic. Furthermore, there are plenty of shortcuts available if you stray from the Seacrest County roads, and should you wreck your ride while attempting to take one, you're treated to a glorious slow-motion shot as panels buckle and debris starts to fly. A similar slow-motion treatment is used to alert you when additional cops show up to chase you down and when you successfully take out an opponent, which adds a welcome touch of Hollywood to these high-speed chases. Not that they need it.

Even in the Career mode's time trial and rapid response events where you have no cops or racers to worry about, the potential for disaster is ever present. Oncoming and slow-moving traffic, risky shortcuts, and sharp corners all conspire to keep you on the edge of your seat, and other event types add so many additional hazards for you to concern yourself with that your heart will likely still be racing long after you cross the finish line. As a racer, you find yourself being pursued by cops who can organize roadblocks, hit you with EMP blasts, drop spike strips in your path, and even call upon helicopters armed with spike strips to slow you down if you get too far ahead of them. And as a cop, you're expected to chase racers who have their own EMPs and spike strips, as well as powerful turbo systems and jammers that render all of your equipment useless for a short time. The good news is that as your opponents slowly gain access to more and better equipment in Career mode, so do you.

Hot Pursuit's cars are resilient enough to shunts that they get their own health bars.

Equipment is mapped to the D pad and is available only in limited quantities. This keeps events of the same type from feeling too similar because, for example, taking down racers by overtaking them and then dropping spike strips is very different from hitting them with EMP shots that take a few seconds to lock on after you position yourself directly behind the target. You always have the option to just bash into other vehicles in order to take them out, but these cars are much more resilient than their Burnout counterparts, and it generally takes several hard shunts to put them out of commission. Incidentally, as a racer you're free to run your opponents off the road or even to use countermeasures against them, but when there are cops in pursuit, it's best to save your aggression for your common enemy.

Cops and racers in Hot Pursuit benefit from impressive AI that makes them both formidable and occasionally unpredictable opponents. Both are smart about using their countermeasures effectively and are appropriately aggressive. But they're also fallible, which can make for some exciting moments when racers collide into each other directly in front of you, for example. Racers won't always take shortcuts, but it's not uncommon to see them doing so; impressively, when you're tailing them as a cop, they often wait until the last second to turn off the road, which makes attempting to follow them much more challenging. Cops will take shortcuts as well, but only when they're pursuing racers down them. Interestingly, not all of the alternate routes actually save you time, and how effective they are as shortcuts is in part determined by how well your car handles off-road. If you're in a four-wheel drive Subaru Impreza or Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, loose surfaces don't slow you down much, but if you're in a low-slung exotic like the Koenigsegg Agera or Pagani Zonda, you're probably better off staying on the tarmac.

If cops all got to drive cars like this, who wouldn't want a job in law enforcement?

Predictably, though AI opponents do a great job of keeping things interesting, they're still no substitute for other players. Hot Pursuit doesn't support local multiplayer, but its three online modes are so much fun that it can be hard to tear yourself away once you start playing. Online races support up to eight players, and since they don't feature any weapons or cops, they are a test of your driving skill and nothing more. Hot pursuit events, on the other hand, are four-against-four races in which a team of cops with full arsenals must try to prevent equally well-equipped racers from reaching the finish line. These events never play out the same way twice, and therefore you're unlikely to tire of them anytime soon. Similarly, you never know what's going to happen next in online interceptor events, which pit just one cop against one racer. The difference here, other than numbers, is that you're free to drive anywhere on the map. As the cop, you obviously need to stick close to your target, but as the racer, it's extremely satisfying to outwit your pursuer by taking a shortcut, using countermeasures to gain an advantage, or just doing something as simple as performing a quick U-turn. The chase ends either when one of the cars gets wrecked or when the racer manages to outrun the cop, at which point you have the option to switch roles and start over.

Regardless of whether you're playing online or in Career mode, your performances earn you bounty points that increase your overall cop and racer ranks. These ranks aren't just about bragging rights; as your bounty increases you unlock additional cars and, just occasionally, upgrades for your countermeasures. Cars are sorted into five classes according to their performance, so you never gain an unreasonable advantage by having access to cars that other players don't, because everyone uses cars from the same class. Equipment upgrades do afford you a noticeable advantage, but it's not so significant that you're going to dominate as a high-level player in a room full of newcomers. Longer spike strips still need to be dropped at the right time to be effective, and even being able to drop two simultaneously doesn't change things much. EMPs that lock on more quickly are definitely easier to use, and high-level road blocks are tougher for targets to avoid, but nothing feels unbalanced or unfair. In fact, equipment upgrades are more likely to impact your results in Career mode than online, and unlocking them can be a good incentive to replay events that you've yet to achieve a gold medal time in.

With spike strips equipped you get to give the cops a taste of their own medicine.

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Bronze, silver, and gold medals are up for grabs in all 70-plus Career mode events, and even after you've earned yourself gold in an event, there's a good chance that you're going to be replaying it at some point in the future. That's because Hot Pursuit's autolog system does a great job of constantly comparing you to your friends and compelling you to compete with them. Events in which you're losing to friends who have played recently are highlighted on the career map, and postings on your "speed wall" alert you when your best times are beaten. Furthermore, you can easily jump straight into events that autolog recommends to you via an option on the main menu, so if you hear that your time in an event has been beaten, you don't have to go looking for it on the map before attempting to reclaim your crown. It's a good system, and the option to post taunts on friends' walls after you beat their times is a nice touch. It's unfortunate that the autolog completely replaces rather than complements traditional leaderboards though, because there's no way to know how your times compare with the best in the world, and ultimately the autolog is only as good as your friends are competitive.

One of the few frustrating features of Hot Pursuit, especially when you're trying to shave seconds off a time to beat one of your friends, is that just occasionally the slow-motion shots used to show off crashes and such can mess with your driving. Most of the time, when the camera switches away from you to show an opponent hitting your spike strip or perhaps another cop entering your pursuit, control of your car is handed over to the AI, and it does a good job of keeping you moving. That's not always the case, though; you might regain control of your car just as it's about to slam into the back of another vehicle or a split-second too late for you to take a high-speed corner without straying from the tarmac. It doesn't happen often, but it's annoying when it does. On the flip side, you might also miraculously avoid spike strips or road blocks when the AI is in control, so it all evens out.

Road blocks will slow down your targets, but they rarely stop them.

Awkward camera switches aside, Hot Pursuit does very little wrong with its presentation. All of the licensed cars look superb, and the varied environments that they race through are far more detailed than you can appreciate at over 200 miles per hour. The frame rate is silky smooth even when your driving isn't, and the heads-up display, while busy, is never distracting. The audio is also impressive; the roar of engines, the wailing of police sirens, the whoosh of nitrous, and even the chatter on the police radio sound great. It's odd that the default audio levels place more importance on the loud and lively soundtrack than on the sound effects, but that's easily rectified in the options menu.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is one of the most thrilling racing games around. It doesn't matter which side of the law you prefer to play on; the unpredictable nature of these events and the sheer speed at which they're played make this a tough game to put down. If you're in the market for a ride with superb handling, great looks, an impressive top speed, and more than enough room for all of your friends, this is the one you want.

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Posted in: Racing

Monopoly Streets Review

For the greater part of a century, Monopoly has done just fine for itself as a game of abstractions, skillfully avoiding any questions of how a thimble and a howitzer can lead to rubbing shoulders with John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Even its Atlantic City locales have long eluded easy recognition in its native country, and key names like Pacific Avenue and Ventnor Avenue regularly conjure images of yellow-and-green cards instead of key streets on New Jersey's Absecon Island. Monopoly Streets boldly backs away from this abstract tradition, allowing up to four contemporary players to see their properties develop in real time on a real city block. It's a logical and welcome step for today's consoles and a somewhat successful one, minus a few unfortunate flaws that spring from pacing, characterization, and a lack of choices among city-based boards.

Cruise the city in a giant boot and there's no telling where you'll end up.

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For the few uninitiated, Monopoly challenges players to build monopolies by acquiring up to three properties of the same color, whether by lucky dice rolls or trades with fellow players. Once you've acquired every property of a certain color, you're free to improve the sites with houses and eventually hotels, forcing players who land on the spots to pay you rent. Eventually, your rent payments climb too high for other players to pay, which forces them into bankruptcy and hopefully leaves you the sole owner of the entire board.

Monopoly Streets takes this winning concept and places the familiar board spots on a gigantic block in Monopoly City, which features three-dimensional structures replacing the simple virtual boards of previous outings. None of the models are particularly memorable and all three consoles are harried by rough graphical edges in a few minor spots, but there are small surprises. For example, you encounter Monopoly's familiar austere railroads brought to life as elevated train stations, Free Parking as a multilevel parking garage (bearing an amusing resemblance to New York's Guggenheim Museum), and the dreary and decaying lots that signify mortgaged properties. Elsewhere, however, the concept fails to follow its own lead. Random non-player characters shamble through the streets, but they never acknowledge you or gawk at your property. New buildings lack any kind of staff, such as doormen at Park Place who could have taken your rent and turned up their noses. Thus, the charm is sporadic at best, and key structures, such as the prosaic income tax building, scream with untapped comedic potential.

Nothing visually defines Monopoly so well as Mr. Moneybags and his merry band of pewter game pieces, and happily, nine pieces make an appearance here. Mr. Moneybags serves as the host, offering wordy and mildly humorous commentary on every move that quickly grows tiring. When starting a game, Moneybags also leads players through the selection of their favorite tokens along with an unalterable accompanying character that complements each piece. (As a console-specific bonus, Xbox 360 players can play as their system avatars and fill cities with their friends. The same option is available on the Wii using Miis, but only after you unlock it, which requires very little effort.) The top hat, for instance, belongs to a kid magician who follows it as it tumbles down the sidewalk on each turn. The battleship belongs to an admiral who may as well have just stepped out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production. Sadly, this potentially strong idea is hit or miss at best, thanks to cloying voice emotes and time-consuming animations, and two characters in particular can quickly ruin your enjoyment. For one, there's the farmer, a ditzy female bumpkin in cutoff shorts who pushes the wheelbarrow token around the block to a stream of nonstop yuk-yuks and yee-haws. Elsewhere, the little girl associated with the thimble gratingly screeches and spins with glee during her entire turn. It's enough to make you turn off the voice-overs before your first match is complete. The music is only slightly better and ends up sounding like the soundtrack to a floor-wax commercial jammed on infinite loop.

Mr. Moneybags doesn't care if the racer has places to go.

The turns themselves can drag on for ages if you leave the game to its own devices. A typical turn runs like so: You roll the dice (which takes two clicks) to the sound of your character's whoops or hollers. Once your character has exhausted his or her excitement and stopped dancing around, he or she then mounts or follows the giant pewter token one step at a time to the appropriate spot on the board. They look at the plot being considered in awe. If it's for sale, Mr. Moneybags slowly waddles up and eggs the character on to buy or auction the plot. By now, you've had your turn for more than a minute, to the likely impatience of your fellow players, and you haven't even bought the land yet. And your fellow players' turns can be equally as long--or longer--given the tendency of online players to abuse the build button. This is unforgivably damaging in a game that's infamous for its epic hours-long play sessions. So sure is the game that your attention will wander during all of this that all three consoles' controllers vibrate when it's finally your turn again. Thankfully, you can skip most animations and speed up gameplay considerably by turning off most animations on the options menu at the expense of losing the game's unique flavor.

Of course, the concept's main attraction is the opportunity to see your properties develop. Upon purchase, each property features a quaintly decorated garden until you can afford to buy houses and hotels, and these, in turn, are built according to the worth of the property. For instance, the ultracheap Baltic and Mediterranean Avenue plots end up with tacky motels dominated by gargantuan flamingos, whereas the breathtakingly expensive Park Place and Boardwalk hotels become towering skyscrapers with gold trim. If this approach has a flaw, it's that there's no variation for each set of plots. Connecticut, Vermont, and Oriental Avenue, for example, all feature the same kitschy crown-topped brownstones when three humorously different eyesores would have been much more appealing. For added visual entertainment, you can watch your towering "corporate headquarters" rise or fall in the middle of town according to your net worth at the end of each round.

At first glance, you could very easily get lost in Monopoly's streets because each move is viewed plot by plot. If you're not already familiar with the game board, in other words, it's easy to lose immediate awareness of where you stand in relation to other players with all of the graphical jumble around you. Fortunately, several nonintrusive identifying markers point the way, such as appropriately colored strips on the edges of sidewalks and banners outside of each property listing how many houses or hotels are on it. Other button options also allow you to see what lies ahead of you or to see the game's current state from above using a classic board.

Monopoly giveth and Monopoly taketh away.

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You can also opt for a change of scenery once you amass enough Monopoly money from completing games in Landmark City, the game's only other virtual metropolis. True to its name, Landmark City features some of the world's most legendary tourist traps (such as London's Big Ben), but it's rather Disneyland-ish and lacks the visual coherence of Monopoly City. Although more cities are scheduled for release as downloadable content, it's a shame that more weren't included in the initial retail package. And if you still can't get used to the alleys and buildings of Monopoly City, you can always play on seven different versions of the trusty classic Monopoly board. These come complete with very basic jungle and winter themes but no building in sight.

Monopoly Streets is designed for four players, with most boards regrettably requiring that all four slots be filled. Fortunately, the game features a decidedly fair AI system that can be set to easy, medium, or hard, and you can add two AI players if you only have two or three human players in your game. At its heart, this is pure Monopoly, and there's virtually nothing wrong with the actual process of playing the game aside from the game's unrelenting insistence on four players. You start the game by tossing dice to see who goes first, you trade property and build houses in intuitive menus, and you buy with the click of a button. The auction process, in fact, is positively entertaining. Here, your opponents' bids are listed on a bar graph from left to right, and by tapping one of two buttons, you can raise or lower the bid dramatically during the course of 20 seconds. If you bid low at the very last second, it's possible to trap your opponents into paying an unnecessarily high price for a plot. Unfortunately, there's no option to turn auctions off if you want to avoid the minigame.

Otherwise, the gameplay is decently customizable, and if you're used to certain nonstandard rules (such as using Free Parking to grab all the money from income tax and the like), you can usually re-create them here. You can also play by standard Monopoly rules or take up some of the game's faster options. These include games like Speed Die, in which you play with an extra die and begin with an extra $1,000; and Short Game, in which all four players start with four random properties. Alternatively, you can play Bull Market, which limits play time to 20 rounds; or Fast Deal, which awards the first player who collects the most color groups; or Jackpot, which radically alters the rules and allows you to sell properties containing houses or hotels. Online multiplayer options for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 offer many of the same options as the offline mode while sticking to standard rules and the faster setups. This includes Bull Market and Short Game, in addition to ranked matches and the option to create custom rules. The ranked matches can be fun, but when your losing rival storms out at the sight of you adding yet another pile of deeds to your stash, the game shuts down and you receive no credit despite however many minutes you put in.

It's not Grand Theft Auto, but these streets can still destroy you.

Monopoly Streets's animations may drag at times and the character voices invite the tossing of heavy objects at your screen, but basic Monopoly hasn't felt so fresh in decades, and it's worth wondering what Monopoly Streets may have been like with a little more attention to detail. Sadly, it doesn't feel like a full package. With only two virtual cities in the new style in spite of a whopping seven versions of the classic board, Monopoly Streets seems to place an excessive focus on future downloadable content when it could have stunned its audiences with a packed release containing even one more city. Still, it's saved by its decent customization options, and diverse multiplayer options on the PS3 and Xbox 360. If you're looking for an engaging Monopoly game that doesn't require clearing the table and spending 15 minutes dealing the pieces, then Monopoly Streets may be the game for you. Just make sure you turn off those confounded character voices.

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Posted in: Adventure

Dance Paradise Review

UK REVIEW--There are already a number of takes on motion-controlled dance games, with the likes of Dance Central, DanceMasters, and Just Dance each putting their own unique stamp on the genre. Dance Paradise offers up yet another new way of presenting routines that is more complex, but still works well. A large tracklist includes a variety of pop, dance, and rock songs, while a full career mode and a two-player versus mode make it fun on your own or with friends. Though the dance routines are sometimes a little too advanced for those with two left feet, and the lack of advanced instruction can be confusing, the well implemented scoring system means you'll be able to have a good time regardless of your ability.

Fallout Boy’s aptly named Dance Dance is one of the trickiest songs to master.

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The gameplay of Dance Paradise is more complicated than the likes of Dance Central and Just Dance, though a short tutorial teaches you the basics effectively. There are four colored lanes that stretch from the top to the bottom of the screen, on which animated dancers appear and move down the track. When a dancer reaches the bottom, you have to mimic his or her movements. This setup gives you time to see upcoming moves and start dancing before the game scores you on them, which makes mirroring the actions much easier. However, because the dancers are styled as flat blocks of color, it can sometimes be difficult to tell exactly what move they're performing, particularly when that move involves complex hand actions. Moves alternate between each of the lanes, which you must skip between with a quick sidestep. A vitality bar on the bottom left of the screen keeps track of your performance, with missed moves depleting the bar and good, great, or perfect moves filling it. If the bar is filled completely, you can jump to activate dance power, which gives you a score bonus. However, if the vitality bar is depleted completely, the game ends.

As long as you've got some good dance skills, you'll rarely see the "game over" screen, thanks to the well-implemented motion controls that accurately track your movements. You'll need to bring your A-game though. Some of the routines are very complex, requiring nimble limbs and good coordination. Though the tutorial runs you through the basics, it doesn't teach you any of the moves or offer a slower practice mode, so you initially spend much of your time stumbling through songs. Novices can still have a good time, but if you want to rack up some high scores, then you need to spend some time learning the harder moves. On the flip side, if you're finding it too easy, you can switch the difficulty over to hard, which increases the frequency of moves in a track, though the routines remain the same.

Your avatar appears everywhere, even in the menus.

In addition to the standard Free Play mode, where you can create a playlist of songs to groove to, Dance Paradise has a career mode. There are six levels to play through, each of which contains a number of challenges to complete before you can progress. These range from having to get seven perfects in a song to completing a song with at least 60 percent of your vitality bar remaining. The challenges are not only good fun, but completing some of them also unlocks new outfits and accessories for your avatar, as well as golden steps, 27 of which you need to unlock the final level, the VIP Club. Though some challenges are tricky, none are so hard that you'll find it impossible to reach the final level, and because there's a mix of them spread over different songs, they never outstay their welcome.

There are also three multiplayer modes that allow two players to battle head-to-head: Versus, Attack, and Synchro. Versus is the simplest of the three; each player must man two of the move tracks and attempt to get a better score than his or her opponent. Whoever has the most points at the end of the song wins. Attack introduces power-ups to the match, letting you hinder your opponent's dancing. By jumping with a full vitality bar, you unleash a random attack. These include track jump, which makes your opponent's dance instructions randomly skip across tracks and disappear, which gets rid of them altogether. This is easily the most fun of all the multiplayer modes, with matches getting heated as you launch streams of power-ups at each other. Sadly, the final mode, Synchro, isn't as exciting. You and your partner must perform the same moves, with the lowest of your scores counting toward the total. This mode can be particularly frustrating if you're dancing with someone less skilled, though less-competitive players may find it enjoyable.

It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A!

Backing up the routines is a good tracklist, made up of 40 songs from the Universal Music label. These range from pop songs such as "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga and "We Are Golden" by Mika to "Celebration" by funk legends Kool and the Gang and "Dance Dance" by rockers Fallout Boy. Most genres are catered to, though you may find the tracklist errs too much on the side of pop. The visuals are also good and incorporate your avatar into the gameplay. While you attempt the moves, your avatar dances along at the side of the screen and not only looks cute but also gives you an opportunity to check out any outfits and accessories you may have unlocked. The cartoonlike style of the environments fit perfectly with the feel of the game, ranging from bright sunny beaches to light-filled nightclubs. One other nice touch is the music videos that play behind the action, giving any onlookers something to watch while you're playing.

Though the complex dances may sometimes be confusing--particularly for newcomers--Dance Paradise is still fun. The large tracklist, great use of avatars, and competitive multiplayer modes mean you'll have a good time playing with friends. And the challenging career mode, complete with unlockables, means you won't get bored on your own either. The unique lane system for presenting routines also works well, making it easy to line up moves and bust a groove. It might not offer the same levels of sophistication and graphical prowess as Dance Central, but if you fancy a different take on the genre, then it is well worth it to put on your dancing shoes for Dance Paradise.

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Posted in: Funny

MotionSports Review

Kinect owners looking for a sports-themed assortment of minigames will find that there's more than one game in town. MotionSports' more realistic visuals may suggest that it offers a more realistic and rewarding sports experience than Kinect Sports, but this isn't the case at all. On the contrary, infuriating controls, unreasonable difficulty, and a lack of clear instruction and feedback make going for the gold in most of these events only slightly more enjoyable than taking a jab to the face from a heavyweight champ.

Hang gliding lets you escape from your frustrations. Which is good, because the other events contribute to them.

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Your goal in MotionSports is to take the world by storm by rising from local athlete to international superstar as you compete in minigames based on six sports. Throughout your career, the same commentator stalks you everywhere, covering your every event. His comments range from wildly enthusiastic ("That is just some freakin' fabulous stuff right there!") to just plain strange ("The kind of girl you can take out with your friends and she'll actually enjoy it"), but he does liven up the audio presentation a bit. Between your competitions, you see a city scene with photos of you plastered on billboards, but any sense you may get of being a superstar is sapped by the often hilarious placement of your image. One billboard might show just your torso; another may show part of your head but get cut off just above your chin. Clearly, your MotionSports athlete needs to hire a new agent.

The best sport among MotionSports' six offerings is hang gliding. It's set apart from the other five events by very simple, responsive controls that leave no room for ambiguity--you know exactly what you're supposed to do and how to do it. You hold out your arms as if grasping the glider bar, lowering your left arm to turn left and your right arm to turn right. Soaring through either a natural landscape with majestic rock formations or the concrete canyons of a quiet city, you must pass through rings on your way to the target landing zone, descending to maintain speed and using columns of rising air to lift you up. Finding the right balance between speed and altitude feels good, and it's rewarding to hit that sweet spot where you're gliding quickly and you approach the landing zone at an ideal trajectory to score a bull's-eye. The way the glider reacts to the subtle movements of your arms makes it feel like an extension of yourself, and the beautiful and peaceful locations make gliding a serene little escape.

But that's where the good news ends. Football is represented, but don't expect to play full games on the gridiron. Instead, you participate in a series of isolated training exercises. You start with vertical and lateral runs, where you're responsible for ducking, jumping, and sidestepping obstacles as the onscreen athlete runs up the field at a steady pace. Then, in a running back challenge, you use these same skills to evade attackers as you charge for the end zone. Succeed as a running back, and you may get a shot at being a quarterback. In these simple challenges, you look for a receiver--there's just one, and he's designated with an icon--and you make a throwing motion in his direction. That's all there is to being a star quarterback in MotionSports.

Dancing like a butterfly and stinging like a bee is not an option.

The movements you need to make in boxing are clear enough, but they often don't work like they should. You fight in first person, with your punches represented as colorful whooshes in the air. You can throw jabs, hooks, and uppercuts, but these don't happen in real-time response to your movements (there's no point in throwing a rapid flurry of jabs, for instance, because your fighter just isn't capable of doing so), and often they don't happen at all, either because your movements aren't recognized or because your opponent's canned animations don't allow him to be interrupted by a punch at such an inconvenient moment. In addition, boxing is unreasonably difficult. Even your second opponent is extremely tough to defeat, and with no suggestions on how to improve your performance in the squared circle, you'll quickly want to throw in the towel. You can box head-to-head with a friend, but the split-screen presentation makes what's happening during the bout unclear. It's difficult to tell who's hitting whom, and when punched, your boxer's head often flies back so that you can't see anything.

In soccer challenges, you play as either a penalty taker or a goalie. As a goalie, you move your arms in the direction you think the ball is going to go. The goalie's movement is delayed until the final instant, making these shots look dramatic but creating a sense of detachment between you and the action. Making matters worse, your movements are often misinterpreted. For instance, anticipating a low kick, you might move your arms down and to the left, only to see your goalie leap clean over the ball. This imprecision and the lack of anything resembling one-to-one responsiveness really take the fun out of goalkeeping. Kicking from close range works reasonably well when the only thing between you and victory is a goalie, but some challenges introduce special conditions. For example, a challenge in which you need to kick the ball into small moving targets demands remarkable accuracy if you're going to earn high marks, but the lack of clear communication from the game about how to kick high or low makes being that accurate more difficult than it should be.

According to MotionSports, being a running back is all about jumping over and ducking under chargers who telegraph their movements.

Horseback riding and skiing round out this collection. Horseback riding is somewhat broken. You shake the reins to make your horse gallop, but sometimes when the starting gate opens, your jockey is rapidly shaking the reins as you make the indicated movement, yet your horse just stands there, ignoring your commands. Even when your horse is responsive, moving your arms up and down quickly in a rein-shaking motion is tiresome. Skiing works better. You push with your ski poles to gain momentum, lean your weight from side to side to turn, and crouch to gain speed, but staying on course and maintaining a competitive speed is too difficult to make hitting the slopes enjoyable for all but the most dedicated players.

Most events can be played by up to four players, each taking turns, but this does nothing to improve the experience. In addition to all its other problems, MotionSports is hampered by frequent, sometimes staggeringly long load times, so you need to be patient as you wait for your next opportunity to get frustrated by control woes and difficulty issues. The subtle precision and soothing quiet of hang gliding offer some serene pleasure, but the other events are plagued with far too many flaws to make MotionSports tolerable. This isn't the sports-themed collection for the Kinect that you should be playing.

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Posted in: Action

Mafia II: Jimmy's Vendetta Review

Mafia II featured great shooting and fun fisticuffs, but it was the story and set piece levels that gave it that extra punch. The game's first premium downloadable add-on, Jimmy's Vendetta, is a sizeable one, but it's a dim shadow of its big brother. An action-packed and chaotic opening gets your blood pumping, and some missions provide ample opportunity to blow up volatile vehicles. But overall, this mission-based romp through Empire City is a disappointment. Mission quality is all over the place, ranging from deadly boring, to fun and satisfying, to frustratingly cheap. There isn't much story to give your actions context, beyond a mission description and a couple of short but snazzy cinematics. Mafia II's core action remains solid, but it's stuffed into an uneven package without character or soul.

Hearing Nickelback over these convertibles' radios was more than Jimmy could take.

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Your initial reaction to this downloadable content may very well be: "Who's Jimmy?" PlayStation 3 owners were given an introduction to this bald brigand in a free add-on called The Betrayal of Jimmy; everyone else will be hard pressed to wonder why they should care about this character beyond his frequent and amusing use of the f-word. Raspy voice acting and dark shades give Jimmy a barely veiled air of acrimony, but aside from the great-looking cutscenes that open and close this adventure, mission descriptions are the only source of context for his crimes. You may think that the exciting prison escape that thrusts you back into the atmospheric Empire City sets the stage for another thrilling and tightly scripted mob romp. Instead, Jimmy's Vendetta is more of an arcade take on Mafia II's mobster mayhem. You drive from one timed mission location to the next until you reach the inevitable final showdown, getting scored on your performance and a chance to see how well you did compared to other players on the online leaderboards.

Unfortunately, the lack of narrative really hurts Jimmy's escapades. A number of missions involve stealing a vehicle and driving it to a garage, often located a good distance from your starting location. Several of these vehicles, like a police transport and a giant tanker, are slow, cumbersome, and boring to drive. In Mafia II, longer driving sequences had context in the larger story, and the chatty and funny Joe Barbaro was usually there to provide a few laughs and groans. After all, a road trip is always more fun when you have someone along for the ride. Here, not only do you drive more sluggish vehicles, but you also have no company, and there's no attempt to elevate these missions beyond "drive truck from point A to point B." Action-based missions are thankfully more stimulating because they rely on Mafia II's strong combat mechanics. Several of them are quite good, and the manner in which you earn more points for stringing kills in quick succession has you pushing forward to get headshot after headshot. The best of these missions feature opportunities to blow up cars and trucks, which is always fun due to Mafia II's impressive explosions, which look and sound terrific and leave behind husks of flaming metal. A couple of missions in which you protect a vulnerable civilian are also enjoyable because they give you a chance to pick off incoming enemies from behind cover and rack up the points.

Jimmy's likes his beer cold, his TV loud, and his fuel stations flaming.

Other shooting missions are incredibly frustrating because they lack the clever cover and enemy placement of the main game. In many scenarios, you face legions of angry adversaries but are given few, if any, places for a respite. This is an unusual design choice, given that Mafia II's shooting mechanics are derived directly from modern-day cover shooters like Gears of War and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. All too often, you are stuck out in the open with only your wits and luck to save you, and Jimmy is remarkably fragile. And because you are usually in a hurry due to the ever-ticking timer, you will frequently deal with cops in addition to your main foes. As Mafia II fans know, Empire City is crawling with fuzz craving to chase a speeding vehicle, and because the timer encourages you to move at top speed, they're on your tail constantly here. These two elements--oversensitive police and a clock pushing you to rush--don't fit well together; some missions are already exasperating enough without throwing cops into the fray. The final operation is the most maddening; on top of these other annoyances, you engage enemies in the tight confines of a mansion. Remember how the camera pulled in extremely close to Vito whenever you entered apartments and hallways in Mafia II? Now, imagine trying to handle a shotgun or tommy gun at the same time. You can't see, you can't maneuver, and you can't wring any fun out of it.

The slapdash nature of this DLC is disappointing, considering Mafia II's outstanding sense of place and time. Empire City is a wonderful place, and the day/night cycle and weather effects make the world come alive. The game also comes alive when you get a chance to light the skies with flames and fury, taking down nearby enemies and racking up the points in the process. But these sparks are too often snuffed out by frustrating mission design and deadly boring driving sequences. It could take you five hours or so to gun your way through Jimmy's Vendetta, which at $9.99 sounds like a great value. But there's only so much value in an add-on this inconsistent, and even the most fanatical Mafia II players should give pause before devoting time and money to Jimmy's revenge tale.

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R.U.S.E. Review

R.U.S.E. is a fun and fascinating real-time strategy game, as long as you know which parts of it to invest in and which to skip entirely. In spite of some difficulties finding an online opponent, it prospers in the competitive arena, putting an intriguing use of bluffs and reconnaissance to good use on expansive maps that will test your ability to control the battlefield. Offline, you get some mileage out of its single-player skirmishes, but where R.U.S.E. falters is in its plodding, poorly paced campaign. Bizarre character models and bad writing prove distracting, while too-frequent story intrusions interrupt the flow of missions just as they start to get interesting. But the clumsy campaign aside, R.U.S.E.'s unique mechanics lead to tense and enjoyable standoffs in which, literally, things are not always what they seem.

Never underestimate the value of antiair units.

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One of R.U.S.E.'s finer aspects is its ease of use, which makes it approachable for both newcomers and experts alike. When you zoom all the way out, you see the entire battlefield as if it's mapped on a general's strategy table, where units are depicted as stacks of chips. If you zoom in, you can watch and give orders to a single infantry squad or individual tank; if you zoom out, nearby units are grouped together into single stacks, which isn't just a neat effect because it enables you to command large groups of units with a single click. It's a smart and friendly way of keeping track of the entire map at once, while giving you precise control when you need it. There's a certain simplicity to it all that may at first turn veterans off; there are limitations to where certain structures can be built, tech upgrades are very elementary, and you can't set up patrols or assign units to guard others. But once you get wrapped up in the game's more unique attributes, you discover that R.U.S.E. isn't as simple as it first appears; rather, it plays by a different set of rules than you might be used to seeing in strategy games.

The most obvious way R.U.S.E. mixes up the standard real-time strategy model is by employing ruses, which are special skills that allow you to fool your opponent or reveal his or her secrets in a variety of interesting ways. Maps are divided into segments in which you can activate these ruses, and there are limitations to how often you can use them and how many can be active in a particular sector at a given time. Games are won and lost with these ruses. Perhaps you will send in a squad of decoy ground units so that you can distract your opponent's front lines while you attack from the rear. Or maybe you would rather send bombers to attack an oncoming prototype tank from the skies after activating the terror ruse, which causes enemy units to rout much more quickly than normal. There's a tremendous amount of satisfaction in seeing your plans come together or in foiling your adversary. Hide your buildings from view and spoil the opposition's attempt to destroy your airfield. Use radio silence to sneak antitank defenses and artillery into firing position and then use your spies to unveil their units. Ruses open up possibilities you've never seen in a strategy game before, and it's a blast to create new ways of playing on the fly just to see where they lead.

Faking a tank assault is a good way to distract your enemy while you levy an attack on a different front.

R.U.S.E. is at its best online, where you choose one of six nations and battle it out on maps that support up to eight players. Each nation is similar enough to make it comfortable to switch from one to the next but different enough to open up fun new ways of playing. Perhaps light tanks may be available to you even if you've just built a barracks, or perhaps you will have access to a flexible defensive emplacement that fires both antitank and antiair salvos. Regardless of which country you choose, reconnaissance is key to success: Your units will only automatically fire if the enemy's units are actively spotted by recon vehicles (or perhaps, revealed with the spy ruse). Environmental cover is another important factor. Certain units, such as elite infantry, can be placed in woods or in cities, where they are usually hidden from the enemy's view and will ambush units that happen upon them unexpectedly. Things often get intense because there are so many ways of playing but only so many resources flowing in at any given time. If you play smartly, you can capture enemy resource nodes with your infantry. But if you get careless, you might lose an entire battalion of tanks to a few infantry units hidden in a forest near a strategic road juncture.

hat said, there are some problems with online play. R.U.S.E. uses Steam to connect you with others, which is in some ways a convenience because it allows you to easily hook up with friends without using Ubisoft's own oft-problematic online service. However, there are apparently some restrictions that limit how many other players you might find via matchmaking, both for ranked and unranked games. You may spend countless minutes waiting for the game to match you with a similarly ranked player only to come up empty-handed or perhaps be matched with a player of a much higher level. Or you may have no success being assigned to an unranked game and find no games at all to join in the server browser. The community isn't barren, so patience will pay off, but a better online arrangement could have made for a more painless experience.

Story interruptions like these aren't exciting--just annoying.

You can play offline if you have trouble finding an opponent, of course, and one-off skirmishes and challenges do a fine job of keeping you entertained. It's too bad that R.U.S.E.'s mediocre campaign fails to employ the strengths of its core gameplay. Certainly, you shouldn't play it for its story: second-rate voice acting and weird-looking character models with crude facial creases make the poorly lit cutscenes almost uncomfortable to watch. Some of the dialogue is truly awful; a truth you come to hysterical grips with in a serious scene gone inadvertently campy that prominently features the word "nuts." The plot follows the rise of Major Joe Sheridan as he rises up the ranks of the US Army in World War II while struggling with the onslaught of German troops that always seem to be one step ahead of him. This isn't a gripping tale, yet it has a tendency to frequently and annoyingly intrude on your missions. Every few minutes, the game will yank control from you just as you are getting into the swing of things, swoop the camera around the battlefield while you hear another mission update, and reset the camera in a position other than the one in which it started. Other times, new units and story updates will be introduced in slide-in panels as you play, which also limits your view of the battlefield and slides the interface out of position. Not only do these constant amateur narrative invasions mess with the tempo, but they also temporarily mess with your view of the battlefield. Most every aspect of the storytelling is poorly conceived and inexpertly delivered.

The missions hold your hand well into the lengthy campaign, and at that point, you'll be longing for the game to trust in your ability to play it and let you take command of a full-fledged battle. A new ruse is introduced every few chapters and new units are fed to you at a slow pace. The upside is that you have time to come to grips with each new ruse and unit and can fully understand their best uses for deployment. The downside is that if you've played a strategy game before, you'll be itching for something more interesting than battles featuring a limited army and limited resource management. R.U.S.E.'s campaign is fairly easy and strategically simple until you reach the end, at least on standard difficulty. The final missions will test your strategic prowess, though a few of them don't test your flexibility and know-how as much as they test your ability to understand exactly what the game expects of you. In some cases, you are placed in tightly scripted scenarios with very specific counters. These missions play out more like puzzles than strategic tests of skill and aren't a whole lot of fun. All the flaws with the campaign undermine a clever and fun foundation that deserved a chance to excel, but it suffers from too many limits for too long a stretch.

Unarmed recon aircraft are incredibly vulnerable. Take care with their deployment.

The game performs well, letting you zoom in and out with ease without any noticeable slowdown, though it would seem that some compromises have been made to accommodate the overall scope. Neither the terrain nor the units are all that detailed when viewed at relatively close distances. The art design also doesn't make any statement beyond "generic World War II." Yet, it's still a fine-looking game that displays a lot of units doing a lot of things at once without a struggle, though you will notice some geometric pop-in. In the same way, the boilerplate wartime soundtrack sets the right tone, if not exactly excelling. But it isn't the presentation's strengths and weaknesses that will strike you as much as R.U.S.E.'s fascinating twist on a standard genre. It's unfortunate that the spiritless campaign and online peculiarities fail to elevate R.U.S.E. to the head of its class. And yet, when it's allowed to breathe--both online and in one-off skirmishes--it's a flexible strategy game that requires you to think differently. Every game follows a unique path, requiring lots of smart recon and using ruses to fool your enemy. If you can look past the foibles, you'll find R.U.S.E. to be a fun and occasionally intense real-time strategy game that's just unusual enough to catch your imagination.

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Blur Review

Blur answers the long-contemplated question: What would happen if a speeding Renault dropped a land mine in front of a gaining Nissan at 130mph? The answer is, of course, a massive wreck, but it’s only now that Blur has merged the real-life cars from Project Gotham Racing with the over-the-top weapons more commonly found in the cartoony Mario Kart series that such questions can finally be laid to rest forever. This odd combination paves the way for an exhilarating racing experience with an absolutely relentless pace, but there is another element borrowed from a popular franchise that makes it even harder to put this racer down. An experience system similar to the one that worked so well in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has been integrated into the missile-shooting, corner-taking action, giving you a healthy stream of prizes for successfully pulling off specific maneuvers. The thrilling racing does hit a couple of rough patches, though. The drifting is a little too stiff, and the level cap in single-player can be hit long before you finish up your career. But once you get a handle on the driving, nothing can slow down your fun in this exciting racer.

The only thing missing is John Connor and the California governor.

Despite all the fancy rewards and destructive weapons in Blur, the most important aspect is still the driving, and thankfully, it's a blast to take to the road. This is a fast-moving game where quick reflexes are paramount to success, and the controls rarely get in the way of your chance to grab the checkered flag. You can smoothly glide between competitors, dodge land mines and missiles without any worry, and take tight turns at top speeds--at least after a bit of practice. The drifting is a bit stiff, and it can take a little finesse to steer yourself around corners without slamming into the wall. This stiffness can be mitigated by selecting a vehicle with more grip, allowing you to stay fully in control when cornering at the expense of speed. But once you get a handle on the timing needed to perform a perfect drift, it's a rush to scream around corners with style.

The early portions of the single-player campaign make it easy to learn how to drive on the fly, but the challenges become stiffer once you get deeper into the game. There are 63 events to compete in, topped off by nine bosses that are none too pleased that you're trying to wrest their racing crowns from them. There are three unique event types: racing, checkpoint, and destruction. In racing, you test your mettle against up to 19 other drivers, squealing around corners and unleashing weapons to claw your way to the top. Checkpoint removes the weapons and competitors, and the game is just as fun when you're focused on the smooth driving without anything to distract you from the road. Destruction flips that idea around, forcing you to dispatch as many nameless drivers as possible before your time is up. With only three different event types, there isn't a ton of variety, but the action is so engaging and fun that it hardly matters that your overall objective doesn't change much.

A lot of the enjoyment comes from the secondary objectives you need to complete. Every action you take in Blur is tracked and tallied, and rewards are doled out when you reach certain milestones. Rewards include new cars and passive modifications, giving you plenty of control over your on-track strategy. The mods give you all sorts of additional powers to play around with, such as earning turbo boost at the beginning of every lap or equipping your car with a laser sight to make shooting weapons easier. There are also mini challenges in every event that let you earn more fans which unlocks more cars after you gain enough. Every track has a checkpoint challenge where you must drive through a series of markers within a time limit, but there are more specific challenges as well that keep the racing fresh. These include hitting opponents with a missile while you're drifting or achieving a certain high speed, and it's a blast to strive for these goals while trying to overtake the car in first place. The only strange thing is how quickly you reach the maximum fan-level limit. In single-player, 25 is the highest level available, and you can reach this long before you finish all the events. There are still other rewards to strive for, but it's disheartening to reach your fan limit and be left without levels to strive for before you reach the end of the game.

Hovering clock power-ups are a valuable commodity.

The weapons have mostly been inspired by Mario Kart, but they're well balanced and provide a satisfying way to overcome your foes. The assortment of missiles, land mines, and homing bombs are expected inclusions, but most items have multiple uses that make you strategize a bit more. For instance, your force push attack can slam a nearby enemy into a wall or straight off the course, but you can also use it as a defensive mechanism. Time your button push right, and you can destroy a missile homing in on your tailgate. Also, unlike in Mario Kart, none of the weapons are overpowered. The lightning bolt does send three electrical clouds after the pack leader, but these are easy enough to avoid that they won't drastically upset the balance. Because defense is just as important as offense, the rearview mirror is incredibly useful. You need to have eyes in the back of your head to counter offensive barrages or accurately shoot missiles backward, so you have to learn how to protect your backside while still concentrating on where you're going

All of these different elements culminate in a thrilling experience. Between the weapons and objectives, there is plenty of variety to be found in each race, with a new experience waiting for you every time you take to the track. And earning the right to challenge a boss takes more than just coming in first in enough races. Instead, every one of these battles comes with its own set of requirements, and it can be difficult to pass some of these tougher objectives. Some of these requirements come in the normal course of your racing. Passing drivers using a nitro burst or drifting for a set number of meters comes with the territory, but there are others that require you to change your tactics. Knocking an opponent into the water with a push attack or maintaining at least 120mph for an entire lap are not easy goals, but it's still a lot of fun to reach these lofty levels. The rewards system ensures that you have a chance to earn something even when you come in last place, always giving you an incentive to take on one more race.

Cars can get a little touchy feely

The tracks are just as varied as the objective types, making each race feel unique. Although they are based on real locations, they are not necessarily realistic. One ridiculous track takes place directly behind the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, where one lousy turn could see you tumbling off a cliff. Another track takes place on the hilly streets of San Francisco, and as long as you don't mind slamming your undercarriage repeatedly against the ground, it's tons of fun swerving through this iconic city. There's also a one-lap course that takes place on a mountain. You have to navigate narrow, winding roads at top speeds, desperately trying to make it to the finish line in one piece. Because of the diversity in the track types, you need to plan a strategy ahead of time. Certain courses have so many tight corners that you need a car that's good at drifting, while others have dirt shortcuts that beg for an off-road vehicle. The assortment of tracks makes it interesting to play these courses again and again as you attempt to unlock all the rewards.

Once you finish the single-player experience, there is a multiplayer mode with its own rewards to strive for. Like in the campaign, you earn fans for pulling off fancy maneuvers during races, and these points go toward your overall level. Instead of being limited to the single-player level cap of 25, the independent level cap goes up to 50 in online play, giving you much more reason to keep getting out on the track to prove your worth. You unlock cars and modifications as you get deeper into the game, and it's a blast mixing and matching to form the perfect strategy for coming out in first place. When you first go online, you're limited to just a few different race types, but after leveling up for a few hours, the rest opens up to you. These include races with or without power-ups and even battle arenas on circular tracks. Adding to the online experience are challenges you can send to people on your friends list, giving them specific goals to try to beat. If you get an impressive time and high score during a race, you can see if your buddies are good enough to top your best. It's a lot of fun to send out and complete challenges, and the diversity in objectives ensures there's always something to strive for.

There's a split-screen mode as well, but this is far less entertaining than single-player and online multiplayer. First of all, there are no persistent rewards. Even though point markers appear whenever you strike your friend with a weapon or pull off a smooth turn, they don't accumulate, and there aren't any prizes to earn. This removes much of the appeal of the other modes in which striving for new toys to play with is almost as much fun as the racing. Furthermore, the rearview mirror has been taken out, which makes it difficult to play defensively during races. It's almost impossible to dodge attacks when you can't see them coming, so you find yourself immobilized far more often. Finally, you can't go online with a friend in tow. Split-screen is fun if you just want to play a quick race with a buddy, but it lacks any sort of long-term appeal and doesn't stack up to the other elements in the game.

The first-person view puts your chin right on the asphalt.

The visuals also have a few rough patches. When your health gets too low, the screen throbs read, which is fine except that it makes it difficult to see the road in front of you while you’re desperately trying to stay alive. Crashes also leave a lot to be desired. When you tumble off a cliff or fly into the water, you passively watch your car fly off in the distance without a satisfying explosion. Everything else is technically proficient but lacks any sort of flair to keep your eyes entertained. The cars are nicely detailed and move at a breakneck speed, but everything has a generic look that makes it difficult for this game to stand out from the crowd. The one bit of personality Blur's visual exhibit is in the outlandish power-ups. The neon purple missiles and shocking blue lightning bolts add a dose of energy to the sterile view. The bland visuals don't take away the thrill of the high-speed action, but it lacks the artistic brilliance that could have made this a treat for your eyes.

Thankfully, the lame split-screen mode and unremarkable visuals won't keep you from enjoying this exciting racing game. The odd combination of Mario Kart and PGR is surprisingly fun, and the added rewards system makes it extremely difficult to put this racer down. Blur is so fast and fun to control that you can lose hours slamming into enemies and racking up fans, always coming back for one more race before you turn the system off and walk away. This unlikely marriage has created an offspring that does a fine job of honoring its well-respected parents

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Posted in: Racing

Split/Second Review

Speeding down an airport runway in a shiny red sports car is cool; speeding down an airport runway with an out-of-control aircraft thundering toward you is insane. That's the idea behind Split/Second, an arcade racer in which you wreck your opponents by triggering destructive hot spots scattered all about the track. The frequent explosions, tumbling debris, and resulting tug-of-war among racers are undeniably stimulating, at least for a while. You'll whoop for joy when you demolish four opponents at once as they pass under a fuel station and moan aloud when a falling concrete beam crushes your vehicle like a beer can. These jolts are electrifying, but they aren't lasting ones. Once you learn the tracks and the tricks, the excitement dies away. Then, you realize that underneath the booms and bangs is a solid but one-dimensional racer that relies almost completely on a single mechanic. That mechanic isn't enough to boost Split/Second to the head of the pack, but it is still a fun racer with a lot of speed and a lot of spark.

Power plays let you quickly narrow the gap between last place and first.

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Split/Second is all about power plays. As you zip about the 11 tracks (a 12th empty slot hints at the possibility of future downloadable content), you earn power by drifting, drafting, and getting air. Once you gain enough power, icons appear, indicating an opportunity to take down opponents by triggering a destructive event. If you press a button, a helicopter might drop metal pipes onto the course, a crane may go sliding across the roadway, or rocks and boulders may erupt from a canyon wall. Alternatively, you might trigger a bridge to be lowered or a door to be raised, opening up a temporary shortcut. If you trigger a level-two power play after completely filling your power bar, the devastation is even more dramatic. A chunk of roadway could collapse, changing that entire section of the course, or you might cause that enormous airplane to barrel menacingly down the runway. Just be mindful: You could fall victim to your own power play.

The first few times you unleash your newfound power on an opponent are breathtaking. Explosions and screeches are loud and obnoxious, and if you're driving a lighter vehicle, the powerful shocks might send you careening out of control for a moment. You won't always steer clear of trouble, however. Depending on your position and the timing of your opponent's power play, there may be no evading that enormous obstacle that comes crashing down in front of you. If you've ever cursed the unavoidable blue shell in the Mario Kart series, the inescapable events in Split/Second might annoy you. But getting wrecked is rarely frustrating, for several reasons. Firstly, power play triggers are intelligently laid out, so you aren't likely to get caught up in an inexorable string of accidents. (It's possible to respawn in the middle of more devastation and wreck immediately, but such aggravations are uncommon.) Secondly, the game gets you back into the race quickly after you crash. And thirdly, being behind the pack isn't really a bad thing because it gives you the opportunity to bust up the competition.

Even when an explosion doesn't wreck you, it might still send you veering off course.

The single-player campaign is structured as a reality television show on which you are contestant. Split/Second doesn't do a whole lot with the premise (you won't meet any slimy TV producers or peek in on any bloodthirsty viewers), but each episode's introduction and credit sequence is produced so well that you look forward to seeing what courses you unlock next. Episodes and one-off events include the usual races and elimination matches, all limited to eight participants. There are a few additional modes worth noting, however. In Survivor mode, you earn points by passing a series of semitrucks as you circle around the course. There's some fine print, however: These trucks are dropping explosive barrels onto the track. The more trucks you pass without wrecking, the faster you accumulate points. In Air Revenge mode, you must avoid a helicopter's missile strikes long enough to trigger a power play that deflects the missiles back toward the badly behaving chopper. Neither mode features the environmental devastation that makes Split/Second stand out, but they make for fun and anarchic diversions nonetheless.

Yet even with the variety these and a couple of other extra modes add, Split/Second comes off as a bit basic. It doesn't take long to memorize each track, including power play locations. So while entire sections of the track may change if someone activates a level-two power play, the game doesn't offer as much flexibility and variety as Burnout: Paradise or even MotorStorm: Pacific Rift. If you strip away the power plays completely, you have a solid but unspectacular racer with few trimmings. You unlock new vehicles as you play with various stats relating to power, drifting, and so on, but there is no way to customize their appearance, aside from changing their color. You also unlock decals as you play, but they appear automatically on your vehicle. Fortunately, the racing itself is smooth; a low camera angle gives sports cars a terrific sense of speed, and drifting feels great, even in the slipperiest of vehicles. Collision sensitivity, however, can go a bit awry. Sometimes you can bang into a wall and emerge perfectly intact, while at other times, barely scraping a girder can result in an immediate crash. But these are rare moments in an otherwise dependable racing model.

Rubbing is racing!

Once you've cut your teeth on the single-player season, you can show off your racing and crashing expertise online. There's a rather bare-bones experience here. You can jump quickly into a race using the Public Game option, but the game cycles through tracks on its own. Conversely, you can host a match for friends and fill empty slots with AI racers, but you can't limit the vehicles allowed in the race or even set the number of laps. Nevertheless, while it lacks the peripheral online features you'd expect from a modern racer, multiplayer Split/Second is often a riot. The AI is aggressive, but computer opponents don't offer the cutthroat competition human players do. In full races, expect an intriguing tug-of-war as pack leaders fall victim to well-timed power plays from racers lagging behind. Besides, it's always a pleasure to destroy a competitor who previously caused an enormous wrecking ball to smash into the side of your racecar.

You can play Elimination and Survival matches with other players, though standard races offer the most pound-for-pound thrills. (Multiplayer Survival can get too chaotic for its own good.) There are some Xbox 360-specific online quirks that need sorting out, however. In that version, the game may report erroneous times and point totals should a competitor drop out midrace. This issue doesn't appear to affect the points you receive toward your overall ranking. However, it's still annoying for the game to indicate you are in first place as you cross the finish line, only for the results screen to erroneously report that an AI racer crossed the finish line two minutes beforehand. We didn't experience this issue in other versions of the game, though the PC version possesses a few foibles of its own. Most noticeably, the game's button prompts don't change if you've plugged in a controller, and in some cases, contextual prompts are completely missing. For example, you will get a prompt inviting you to view an instant replay, but for some reason, the game doesn't tell you how to view it.

Just because you're in first place doesn't mean you can get complacent.

Split/Second is unlikely to become your go-to racer, but while it lasts, it's one hell of a thrill ride. Tailing an opponent and taking advantage of his shortcut, watching a tall tower fall onto your speeding nemesis, drifting around a corner while miraculously avoiding destruction raining from the sky--these are great moments that will make you cry out in glee. This is a one-trick pony, and once you see through the trick, it's hard not to wish there was something more substantial to support it. But if you're in the mood for some rip-roaring fun with no strings attached, Split/Second makes for a boisterous weekend romp.

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Posted in: Racing

The Whispered World Review

Traditional point-and-click adventure is alive and well in The Whispered World. But that's both good and bad for Daedalic Entertainment's surreal fantasy about a sad clown and the end of the world. While the German game certainly features the captivating story and memorable characters that made classic adventures so engaging, it also boasts dozens of those old-fashioned illogical puzzles that made you want to tear out your hair and a lot of wordy dialogue that slows the action to a crawl. This is one of those experiences that does enough right in terms of storytelling to make you embrace it, but enough wrong to make you wonder why you're wasting your time.

Cartoon characters and lush painted backdrops give The Whispered World a lot of atmosphere.

The protagonist of this odd tale is Sadwick the Sorrowful Clown, a sad-sack kid in a jester's costume. He looks a lot like Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh's depressive donkey sidekick, with the tails of his jester's hat taking the place of long floppy ears. Sadwick is also just as down in the dumps as Eeyore but with good reason--he's the human cannonball and resident whipping boy for a small family circus. Grandpa can never remember his name. Bother Ben treats him like some kind of indentured servant and insults his artistic ambitions to write poetry or perform legitimate theater. And he's having constant nightmares about the end of the world, which in this case is a medieval fantasy land of sorts filled with magic and far-off kingdoms. The only creature that loves this clown is his pet "caterpillar" Spot, a green globular character that looks like the Shmoo from '80s Saturday morning cartoons that can similarly morph into different shapes like balls on demand. Spot lets his cuteness do the talking, remaining silent through the entire game with the exception of the odd squeak. He really serves as more of a tool that allows Sadwick to explore places he can't get into than as any sort of adventuring companion.

Most of the story centers on Sadwick's search for adventure. After spending the first few minutes of the game getting told off by his jerk of a brother and senile grandfather, he wanders into the woods and runs into a goblinlike messenger from the far-off kingdom of Corona. The king is sick and the realm may fall to a race of beings called the Asgil, so the only hope is to get a magic item called the Whispering Stone back to the castle quickly. A seer of sorts named Shana is apparently the only one who can help get the stone, but when Sadwick finds her, she goes into a trance and tells him that he is fated to destroy the world…just the kind of thing that every clinically depressed clown wants to hear. Sadwick can't bring himself to tell her this when she awakens, however, so he lies and says she actually prophesied that he would save the world. At this point, she gives him a few vague tips on how to do so and the quest begins in earnest.

Unfortunately, you feel like you've done it all before. The Whispered World may be loaded with story and atmosphere, featuring striking painted backgrounds, character animations straight out of a great cartoon, and a haunting piano/flute musical theme, but everything is overdone. Some of the charm of this dreamy fairytale is lost because there is too much dialogue. Every rock and bush comes with commentary from Sadwick, and most of the conversations go on endlessly, through what seems to be a dozen or more options in branching dialogue trees. At first, this florid script immerses you in the story. An hour or so later, listening to all of this meandering jibber-jabber builds the tedium up so much that you'll just scan the lines and click through them as quickly as possible. Voice acting quality is hit and miss, too. Some characters are very bland, while others are overwrought, and at regular intervals, a bug causes voices to go silent until you restart the game. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, however, because Sadwick speaks with a nasally whine (again, like Eeyore) that makes you want to smack him. Atmosphere as conveyed by the outstanding art is also a bit much because it is so detailed that items blend into backgrounds. Every locale is just crammed with great little touches, from all of the junk strewn around Sadwick's trailer to the throne room in the castle at Corona. So while it's great to just gawk at all of this art, it's not so great to have to highlight the many clickable objects on every screen with the spacebar in order to keep the game from turning into an annoying pixel hunt.

Locales are just crammed with little details tucked into the artwork everywhere you look.

The puzzles are very derivative. This is an old-fashioned adventure, like Sierra and LucasArts used to make, where you have to pick up everything that isn't nailed down no matter how stupid it might seem. Common sense is trampled on much of the time. Sadwick just has no reason to grab some things, like his grandfather's crusty old handkerchief, yet you make him do it anyway because you know that you'll eventually be able to MacGyver some essential gadget out of even the smallest piece of refuse. Actually solving many puzzles is also virtually impossible because of the incredible leaps in logic necessary to figure things out. At one point, for instance, you need to grab some pantaloons stuck high up on a wall. You have a ladder. Simple, right? Not really. Instead of simply climbing the ladder, you have to close a door to see a mouse hole in the wall behind it, lure the mouse out with a sock, grab the mouse, and then dangle it by its tail on top of the wall above the pantaloons, where the little rodent grabs said puffy pants with his teeth. The human cannonball puzzle is even more insane, forcing you to do absurd things like make a sculpture out of tree resin, stone turtles, grandpa's dentures, and bear claws to scare your brother into dropping his objections to your stealing (another) pair of pantaloons and a red juggling ball. Your head hurts just thinking about this stuff. At least the handful or so of set piece brainteasers are involving and challenging, even if they mostly rely on old genre standards. These include sliding tiles, moving chess pieces, and mixing chemicals to make various meals and potions.

In short, The Whispered World is beautiful, yet treacherous. Although the game has many strong points in the dreamlike storyline, gorgeous painted art, and detailed script loaded with dialogue, it is too slavish an imitation of the old adventure game formula to be completely enjoyable two decades after the heyday of Sierra and LucasArts. Going retro is one thing; forcing adventurers to wrangle with pixel hunts and riddles that you have no chance of figuring out without a walk-through is something else entirely.

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Posted in: Children