Kung Fu Panda 2: The Video Game Review

As bipedal mammals, humans have a leg up on their animal counterparts when it comes to performing martial arts moves. It's a small miracle that a rotund panda would be able to punch and kick with the deadly grace of a kung fu master, and putting yourself in the shoes of such a nonathletic creature might be difficult to imagine. For all its failings, Kung Fu Panda 2 does a fine job of making you appreciate how difficult it would be to learn the combative arts if you're excessively clumsy. This tedious movie tie-in uses the power of the Kinect to transform ordinary you into a furry martial arts expert, which means every punch you throw in real life is translated in the game. Or at least that's how things are supposed to work. In practice, there's a noticeable delay from when you swing your fist in your living room to when Po responds onscreen, and that imprecision saps away your connection to this shallow fighter. But even if the controls functioned well, the other pieces are so underdeveloped and boring that they smothering any semblance of fun in Kung Fu Panda 2.

Even real pandas are better fighters.

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Po proved his worth as a warrior in the action-packed conclusion to the first film, but once you climb the mountain, you can't just sit on the peak basking in your success. In the beginning of this adventure, Po's never-quite-peaceful village falls under attack by an evil group of crocodile mercenaries, and he needs to clear out those mouth-breathing reptiles before they cause the populace harm. The story is different from the accompanying movie, though it still captures the lovable charm and clever hijinks of the colorful franchise. It's mildly interesting, and it makes up a huge chunk of your experience. Cutscenes take up roughly half of the total length of the overall adventure, which is a kind way of shielding you from the painful action sequences and allows you to actually enjoy some of your time with this woeful game.

Unfortunately, you do need to play at some point, and that's when things become aggravating. Kung Fu Panda 2 is a one-on-one fighter that pits Po against a crew of motley warriors. Although punches, kicks, and dodges make their way into your duels, the fires of spontaneity have been drenched by buckets of boredom. Fights are broken down into offensive and defensive sequences, and you have to follow onscreen prompts to dole out punishment or avoid your enemy's angry lunges. For instance, when you stun your foe with a punch, you may need to jump kick to continue the combo. But if you try to throw a double punch instead, the game won't register your action. And if you don't perform a jump kick in time, the enemy recovers and you miss your chance to hurt him. It's incredibly boring following directions instead of attacking and dodging with the freedom of a real fighter. Kung Fu Panda 2 is essentially a turn-based fighting game, and it quickly becomes tiring as you dutifully perform the same few moves without any creativity to enliven things.

Po isn't ashamed of attacking someone when their back is turned.

On a conceptual level, Kung Fu Panda 2 is an insipid realization of Po's high-flying fury, and the execution is fraught with just as many problems. The controls are maddeningly inconsistent. In a best-case scenario, it takes a half-second for the game to recognize your actions, which makes you feel disconnected from what's happening onscreen. Even more disheartening, the game often fails to register your physical movements. You may have to leap in the air two or three times for the game to acknowledge that you want to perform a jump kick, and that tiring repetition further cements the tedium of combat. Other times, the game thinks you're doing one thing when in actuality, you're doing something quite different. You have to raise both arms above your head to block an airborne attack, but the game frequently registers only one raised arm and causes you to get hurt anyway. Or it may interpret your duck as a dodge, forcing you to take damage that you shouldn't have to bear. This is especially troubling later in the game when you have to fight many opponents in a row without checkpoints. It's not worth putting up with the grueling punishment to replay these extended sequences just because the game won't mirror your moves.

The fighting action is interspersed with three minigames with enough regularity to give you a temporary reprieve from the monotony. These involve ladling soup for the hungry denizens of your village, cruising down hills on top of a rickshaw, and tossing objects as if in a shooting gallery. Control problems persist in these diversions, and they are just as shallow as every other aspect of this game, but things aren't entirely bad. Zooming while on top of a rickety contraption is a fast departure from your fisticuff forays, and though it's aggravating when the cart doesn't respond to your movements, it's still entertaining for the brief time it lasts. And target practice captures the same enjoyment, letting you show off your power for a few minutes as you are freed from the cumbersome restrictions that dictate your moves in combat. Noodle shop is the weakest of these minigames because the imprecise controls make it tricky to serve up a hot meal in time, but the three minigames are still welcome additions to this disappointing package.

Po helps out in the soup kitchen when he's not punching rhinos.

When you think about what Kung Fu Panda 2 is trying to accomplish, it sounds like a really neat idea. Po's larger-than-life persona and martial arts expertise make him a forceful yet endearing character, and inhabiting his body with the power of the Kinect could have served as an interesting interactive complement to the blockbuster movie. But those exciting ideas quickly disintegrate once you start to play. Unresponsive controls are the beginning of the problems, and the Simon Says-inspired combat strips away any chance of feeling like a potent panda. The minigames are fun, but they function more as a counter to the drab fighting than a engaging experience on their own. Even the most determined Kung Fu Panda 2 fans will be annoyed by this lifeless adaptation.

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Lego Pirates of the Caribbean Review

Charm. It's an elusive virtue, but developer Traveller's Tales loads its Lego games with so much of the stuff that it's as if it mines it from an endless source. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is yet another delightful take on cinematic subject matter, and it's bound to get even the most jaded players to guffaw at its adorable visual storytelling. Nevertheless, it's a rare game that survives on charm alone, and Lego Pirates unfortunately suffers from a fair bit of design sloppiness. Inconsistent visual cues all too often suck out the fun, bringing the swashbuckling to a standstill while you roam about figuring out what do to next. Meanwhile, inexact platforming and respawning enemies turn the easygoing merriment into a frustrating slog. Nevertheless, the joys of these games are still strong. Franchise fans expect lots of Lego bits to collect and extra goodies to unlock, and Lego Pirates doesn't disappoint in this regard. The game is as colorful as a tower of Lego bricks, but unfortunately, it's not much sturdier.

Life's a banquet, and Jack Sparrow refuses to starve to death!

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At least, its heart is in the right place. Like previous games, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is a wordless retelling of (mostly) known entertainment. In this case, the Pirates of the Caribbean films are the inspiration, including the recent fourth installment, subtitled "On Stranger Tides." If you aren't familiar with the movies, you might feel somewhat lost from time to time, but the game does a fine enough job of giving you the gist. Besides, what happens isn't as important as how it happens. Lego Pirates eschews dialogue in favor of adorable details that are sure to put a smile on your face. When two characters walk the plank, they remain suspended in midair for a moment before plunging into the sea. A horse rows a boat across a lake while its human companion relaxes. When engaging enemies as flamboyant pirate Jack Sparrow, you may drop a banana peel for them to slip on or bonk them on the head with a bottle. Almost every cutscene has some silly surprise or another, and the breezy winks and nods are the most compelling reason to push through to the end. It's a good thing, too: the PC version of Lego Pirates doesn't allow you to skip cinematics.

The continuous supply of Lego studs that you accumulate as you break every brick in sight also offers another reason for pushing to the end. The series is at its best when these bits rain down on you as you smash, reassemble, and smash again. Once again, there is no online play: you either adventure alone, or with a friend in local cooperative play. (Either way, you should plug in a controller, given the somewhat fiddly keyboard controls.) However, you don't just have a single AI or human-controlled buddy in tow in many of the levels; rather, you might have a party of a half-dozen or even more, and you can switch among them by holding down a key or button and selecting a character from a wheel. You do this often to solve many of Lego Pirates' puzzles. Only certain characters can repair broken objects, while "ladies" (as the game calls its female characters) are the only ones who can double jump. Having all these characters to control at any given time is an interesting idea that lends some diversity, but it doesn't always work out all that well in practice. For one, the AI is still as dumb as a box of Lego bricks, and having an entire company of buffoons following you around can be aggravating. For instance, you might want to navigate a series of narrow ledges, only to have three companions crowd you off of it--possibly into a toxic swamp.

Looks like Will Turner is having a ball.

For another, you need to remember which party member has which special skill; this isn't always easy when dealing with lesser characters from the films. This issue is made all the more frustrating when the game leaves you to figure out those skills on your own. For instance, only one member of your party might be strong enough to pull a particular handle, but you only discover this through trial and error or possibly after wandering around for a few minutes wondering what to do next. This sort of event happens far too often in Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. Sometimes, key objects are identified, indicating that you can interact with them. Other times, objects you don't need or have already used are highlighted, but important ones are not. Or, perhaps, an important location is revealed only when you take control of a particular character. These maddening inconsistencies cause you to roam around, jumping in beached canoes and picking up rocks, only to discover that you just needed to grab on to a nondescript rope. Busy foregrounds might also obscure interactive objects, which adds to the confusion. By only half-communicating its own rules and then frequently breaking them, Lego Pirates comes across as somewhat careless.

Other little things further drag the game down. You might want to solve the puzzle at hand, but endlessly respawning enemies end up getting in the way. Jumping on a lily pad propels you so far upward that the pad you must land on drops beneath the view of the camera, which makes landing three simple leaps unnecessarily aggravating. Yet, for all the frustrations, there are successes worth celebrating, too. A chapter in which you enter a cylindrical cage and roll over everything in your path is great fun, especially in co-op play. A boss fight on a giant wheel is equally enjoyable, and it is further accentuated by the gorgeous palm trees in the background that rush past your view. That scene is a great example of Lego Pirates' wonderful look, which contrasts its blocky characters and smashable objects with lush, semirealistic environments. This technique is put to particularly good use in the final adventure, in which you glimpse the streets of London from dizzying heights above. Some cutscenes break this visual mold by presenting 2D flashbacks with a touch of paper-craft styling. These look absolutely terrific as well.

Should the whole swashbuckling thing not work out, Mr. Gibbs can always fall back on his tightrope act.

Even Lego: Pirates of the Caribbean's hub world tarnishes its delights with unnecessary annoyances. To wit: you discover there a miraculous contraption that allows you to turn day into night, and vice versa. But such joys are dampened when you want to unlock a new character for free play. You see, you don't do this from a menu, but rather, you must wander around and hope to run into

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Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts Review

In the Fallout universe, nuclear war has ravaged the country, but religious faith abides. In Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts, men of God struggle to find peace in a land where strife is inescapable--a powerful theme for a downloadable add-on. The story in Honest Hearts doesn't take advantage of this fertile premise, but that premise still enriches this formulaic yet enjoyable adventure into Utah's Zion National Park. As its name would suggest, some see this region as a promised land, and it's here that two religious leaders struggle to maintain control in the face of a warring tribe that would drive them out. Zion is a big and atmospheric setting for a new adventure, and there's enough new content here to keep you busy for four or five hours as you shoot up charging geckos and get to know the local tribes. That said, Honest Hearts doesn't make a lasting impression; none of its characters, places, or events stand up to those of the main game or even those of Fallout 3's better content packs. Yet, this enjoyable excursion gives you several welcome chances to exercise the power of choice, and it rewards you with new perks, new weapons, and an increased level cap.

'Go blow them ram horns,' Joshua cried, 'for the battle is in my hand.'

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The two men at the center of Honest Hearts are good, sincere blokes that nonetheless don't see eye to eye on how to deal with the White Legs, a violent tribe of nomads eager to scalp anyone that dares oppose them. One of these men is Daniel, a Mormon missionary with close ties to a tribe called The Sorrows. The other is Joshua Graham, otherwise known as The Burned Man. Joshua favors an aggressive approach toward the White Legs, which is no surprise given his violent past with Caesar's Legion. He is beloved by the Dead Horses tribe and preaches that mankind should shun the greed of the outside world. You stumble upon both men after the trading caravan you join falls victim to the White Legs, though neither makes a very strong impression. Joshua needs supplies like lunch boxes and walkie-talkies; Daniel sends you to find maps and disarm traps. These are nice men that nonetheless make you wonder how they managed to inspire the devotion of the locals. Joshua tells you that he was put on Earth to show people how to fight, yet he speaks in even tones, without an ounce of passion. For someone called The Burned Man, his personality lacks fire, and the tasks he needs performed are hardly extraordinary.

As mundane as the narrative is, you still get welcome opportunities to make decisions, though they would have more weight if you felt more invested in the consequences. Standard quests allow for a bit of flexibility. You might kill the gigantic Yao Guai creatures threatening the camp or collapse the cave in which they live. You could convince a tribesman to follow his heart and explore the "civilized" world or encourage him to stay with his people. The final series of decisions determine the future of several characters and their tribes, and these are outlined in an epilogue that closes the adventure in traditional Fallout fashion. Some of these characters include a few that join you as followers, and they, like Joshua and Daniel, are remarkably even tempered. It's nice to have their company, however--particularly that of Waking Cloud, a pious Sorrow tribeswoman indebted to Daniel for her saving her life. It's too bad that some of the quests these characters join you for are so routine. Find a key, open a cabinet, search for a compass: These are simple fetch quests that needed some dressing up with better context.

The White Legs are no match for a plaid suit and jaunty hat.

A few quests offer some variety, however, including one that pits you against a giant creature in Honest Hearts' best battle. The reward is an excellent melee weapon that nicely complements an intimidating helmet you might also grab before you head back to the Mojave. Other tangible goodies in this content include weapons (such as tomahawks) and new perks (extra damage when limbs are crippled). In addition, the level cap has been increased by five. Zion also serves as its own reward; its prickly cacti and red-orange plateaus provide a great backdrop to your travels. This graphics engine is showing its age, what with the bland textures, inconsistent shadows, and awkward animations. Yet campsites dotted with empty beer bottles and abandoned communal grills are an effective reminder of the civilization from which Joshua wants to shield his followers.

This being a Fallout game, it's no surprise that you could run into a number of bugs. These include some enemies you cannot damage or target in the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System because they are standing in water; enemies hovering in midair or clipping into rocks; and non-player characters running around in circles as if their loincloths are on fire. Don't let such typical bugs dissuade you from considering Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts, however. The story and related quests don't surprise, but this add-on gives you the opportunity to once again influence those you meet and accomplish your goals as you see fit. And, you do those things in a desert environment harboring enough creatures and caves to make it worth exploring.

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The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Review

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a gift, gilded with moments that stay with you even after the curtains close on its dark tale of uncertain pasts and uncertain futures. Like the rare Roses of Remembrance you might find growing in this role-playing game's lush fields, these moments are carefully cultivated. They're meaningful not just because they are packed with excitement, but also because there are stakes--both personal and political. As Geralt of Rivia, your actions don't just bring you closer to the truths of your own murky history, but they also influence the tides of war. And just as you exert your power on this game's events, they work their power on you, drawing you further into a gorgeous world populated by quarrelling trolls and drunken, sex-crazed dwarves. Some bugs, combat quirks, and other foibles prove bothersome, but they don't greatly diminish the impact of exploring a dungeon whose walls ooze the agony you've just witnessed. This superb role-playing sequel offers a bold world woven together by tenuous alliances and closely guarded secrets.

Something doesn't smell right within these sewers.

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The Witcher 2's phenomenal visual design isn't its defining characteristic, but it's an effective lure and makes for an immediate connection with the game's provocative tone. On the outskirts of a dwarven enclave, sunlight glistens upon a misty pond; a tower just beyond it bristles with potent magical properties; the underbrush surrounding you casts deep shadows, yet rays of golden sun coax you onward. In The Witcher 2, sights like these communicate so much. The delicate lace of a sorceress's collar gives her a regal air, yet dark makeup and dark brown eyes speak to mysteries beneath the surface. A red scar above a defiant elf's upper lip is not just a testament to past violence--it suggests a permanent scowl. Walls, cliffs, and meadows aren't just repeated textures. Look closely at the patterns carved into a stone column, and you notice how each one is slightly different. These may seem like unimportant details, but they're indicators of how much care went into every facet of this game's environments and character models.

The superlative art is rendered by equally superlative technology that ensures you can admire the rips on a mercenary's trousers, a harpy's individual feathers, and the buckles and seams on Geralt's clothing. Yet The Witcher 2 is as much about grand gestures as it is textural detail. You cross paths with a giant dragon and other grotesqueries, each of which moves with a sense of weight appropriate to the creature's proportions. Pungent colors, roaring flames, and shafts of glowing light make mainstay environments like sewers and caves a wonder to explore. Impressively, all of this beauty is rendered using DirectX 9 technology rather than the newer DirectX 11. The game is nevertheless demanding of your hardware, though it is attractive even at lower settings. A few imperfections stand out amidst all the graphical wizardry, such as mechanical facial animations, characters that pop in during cutscenes, and the occasional frame rate dip. But such quibbles are easily tolerated in this luxuriant digital world.

All that glitters is not gold.

And what a world it is, alive with activity yet tinged with violence and sorrow. The opening moments ready you for the game's brutal overtones, showing a captive Geralt of Rivia whipped and taunted by his jailers. Geralt's defaced flesh is not an easy sight to take in, but it's thematically relevant: The witcher is scarred by his past. Geralt, once thought dead, is still piecing together his memories of a savage battle and a beauty called Yennefer. The story takes its cue from these lost memories, juxtaposing violence and sex. It also presents both as inevitable and natural results of the human (and nonhuman) condition. You can still bed various women in The Witcher 2, as you could in the original game, though you no longer collect sex cards. Lovemaking (or ploughing, as so many characters call it) is a frequent subject of conversation, and it's one of Geralt's favorite pastimes. You can bed a few different women, and the game hardly shies from nudity, handily earning its mature rating. The lacerations on Geralt's back are a stark reminder, however, that this earthly pleasure is only a temporary respite for him.

But The Witcher 2 is not primarily about sex, nor violence. It's about the search for truth. Geralt seeks clues to his past, as well as the royal assassin that ended the life of King Foltest at the conclusion of The Witcher. This man's identity is not a secret for long, but then, this is not a murder mystery; rather, it's a chronicle of discovery, redemption, and political upheaval. Geralt is blamed for Foltest's murder, but as he gets closer to the true killer, he becomes more and more involved in the region's power struggles. Not including the prologue and epilogue, The Witcher 2 is split into three acts. The first is primarily concerned with following the killer's trail, while the second greatly expands the plot, introducing so many new characters and so much lore that you might be initially confused. Yet, the convoluted plot seems poised to explode in the final episode, only to fizzle at the end. The lack of closure intimates a sequel, and it makes the final act feel abrupt when compared to the robustness of the first two.

Harpies of a feather shriek together.

Characters new and old both assist and hinder Geralt's quest. These include the flamboyant bard Dandelion and the earthy Zoltan, a foul-mouthed dwarf who, like most of The Witcher 2's dwarves, loves women and drink. Dwarves are a rich source of humor in most role-playing games, and The Witcher 2's are no exception. Yet, the tone is different here. These are the raunchiest dwarves you've ever encountered, yet the comedy is undercut by underlying anguish. It's initially funny to learn that teetotaling dwarves are outcasts. But when a dwarf confides that he fears being ostracized because he doesn't drink, you understand his dread. You might admire a bearded character's enthusiasm for heading to battle for the first time, but when pressed, he admits his misgivings. Aside from the occasional expository speech, most of the dialogue sounds natural, including the asides spoken by random citizens. Most of the voice actors do a good job of bringing these characters to life, in spite of the occasional hollow note. (The actress playing Triss Merigold again sounds like a random meter maid rushed into the studio for some last-minute line readings.)

The Witcher 2 is not an open-world game in the way of The Elder Scrolls games; each area is relatively contained though expansive enough to encourage exploration. The rewards for doing so aren't just pretty vistas. You might uncover a chest that can be opened only by interpreting the clues on a nearby scroll or stumble upon a giant arachnid guarding treasure. However, the game's flexibility isn't a result of wide-open journeys; it is the extraordinary ways you can influence the story and fundamentally change the direction of your future travels. For example, choices you make at the end of Act 1 not only determine how immediate story events play out, but also have a dramatic impact on the entire game. The characters at your side, the enemies you face, the dialogue--they all differ based on a series of decisions that the game never forgets. And these aren't "good" or "bad" choices: these are ambiguous circumstances with ambiguous results, which is just as well. Geralt is not interested in heroism or villainy. He navigates turbulent waters seeking neither justice nor injustice, only answers.

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NASCAR 2011: The Game Review

Unless you count 2009's NASCAR Kart Racing (and why would you?), NASCAR 2011 is the first NASCAR game for the Wii. That doesn't mean, however, that it is a worthy one. This is circuit racing stripped to its bare essentials, held up only by a functional driving model that struggles to capture the tension of the real thing. Even on hard difficulty, you'll rarely feel challenged by the other 42 drivers on the track. Beginning a race in pole position is essentially a guarantee that you'll finish in first unless you crank the difficulty up to very hard. Off the track, Wii owners get few of the frills Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners enjoyed. There is no paint booth, no way to save races for sharing or later viewing, and no detailed vehicle customization. Invitational events give this sparse package some much-needed variety, but this halfhearted effort is a mere shadow of the great NASCAR games of years past.

Don't like the look of your vehicle? Oh well--you can't customize it.

Career mode drops you into the shoes of a known NASCAR driver or one of your own making and puts you through the paces, from Daytona to Homestead-Miami. You take to the circuits one at a time and make your way through a 36-race season, including the road course races on Watkins-Glen International and Infineon Raceway. The mode is functional, but it's also dry and straightforward--no substitute for the impressive and extensive Fight to the Top modes in older NASCAR games. Even victory celebrations are subdued. Your driver dances about and breaks out the champagne while surrounded by fist-pumping fans, but this canned display gets old, and the roar of the crowd sounds more like a mild sigh. The blandness of the visuals further emphasizes the lack of excitement. The frame rate holds up nicely on the track, but jagged edges, fuzzy crowds, and drab vehicles suck the life out of crash replays.

Outside of the career mode, you can take any car to any track for a one-off race, or compete in eliminator events in which you set the number of challengers. These modes hold no surprises, so it's up to NASCAR 2011's invitational events to provide some diversity, and they do a decent job of it. You unlock these as you progress through your career, and they come in a few varieties. Perhaps the most interesting are legends challenges, in which you must draft other drivers to unlock collectible coins. A satisfying whoosh makes it enjoyable to draft, so an event focused on this mechanic is a good addition. Time trials, elimination events, and two-part gauntlet races round out the invitationals.

Elimination events provide some of the only occasions in which you see drivers in front of you.

NASCAR 2011 makes it easy for newcomers to jump right in, and there are a number of driving assists to help you smoothly navigate the curves. Unfortunately, you can't tweak vehicle handling any further. While the other versions let you customize minutiae like brake bias and differential ratio, NASCAR 2011 on the Wii offers no such features. In fact, Wii owners don't get any number of features other iterations boasted--and those versions were lacking in content to begin with. There is no paint booth, so you can't modify your car with flags, flames, and fonts of your own choosing. There is no replay feature, so you can't save races for viewing at various camera angles, let alone share your favorite moments online. Nor is their any online racing, though you can join a friend in two-player split-screen races.

Any goodwill NASCAR 2011 earns quickly wears off when you discover that AI drivers are simply incapable of challenging you. You can smash into walls multiple times during qualification and still have no trouble taking pole, even on hard difficulty. And should you start the race in first place, you will almost always finish in first, often by an enormous margin should you play on medium difficulty. Perhaps this pitiful challenge is meant to compensate for the digital controls: if you use a classic controller or stick with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk, accelerating and braking are either/or actions. You either slam on the brake, or you stay off of it; you either accelerate at full speed, or you don't accelerate at all. A GameCube controller's analog triggers allow for more subtlety, though they're still too rigid to feel totally comfortable. As a result, NASCAR 2011 feels clunky, particularly on road courses. That's a real shame, given that steering is smooth and responsive regardless of your preferred control method.

Whoop. De. Doo.

On the hardest difficulty level and with assists at a minimum, races can still provide a modicum of excitement, rewarding you for sticking close to a proper racing line and requiring you to draft and pick up speed so that you might slingshot ahead. The game assigns you a rival in each race, and beating him (or her) gives you a little extra incentive to drive well, though this is a far cry from NASCAR Thunder 2004's involved rivalry/alliance system. In NASCAR 2011, the track is your greatest rival; scraping the wall might throw you out of your rhythm, while a misconceived attempt to slide into an opening might lead to disaster. Assuming you're racing more than a few laps and have turned on tire wear and damage, you also need to pay mind to your fuel gauge and vehicle condition. This affects your efficacy on the course, and in long races, you need to make a pit stop when necessary to replace tires and fuel up.

NASCAR 2011 is a gutted version of a game that was short on value to begin with, yet shockingly it sells at full price. This may be the only authentic NASCAR game in town, but Wii owners needing a Sprint Cup fix should avoid temptation and leave this problematic bare-bones racer on store shelves.

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Posted in: Sports

Faery: Legends of Avalon Review

When you're a PC enthusiast, it can be frustrating to wait expectantly for a game console players have already enjoyed. There is a worse scenario, however: finally receiving a game that's as boring as it was on other platforms. Faery: Legends of Avalon, first released last year on Xbox Live and later on the PlayStation Network, is a dreadfully dull role-playing game that treats you more like an errand boy than a hero. As a fairy recently awakened from stasis, you flit about four different environments doing favors for random inhabitants that you care nothing about, sometimes stopping for a bit of turn-based combat that would have been considered primitive two decades ago. Faery makes a few efforts to rise above the tedium, providing a certain amount of flexibility in how you level up and giving quests an element of choice. There's also some initial pleasure in flying around the game's colorful world. But in spite of its visual vibrancy and sparkling music, Faery is a joyless series of odd jobs and banal battles without any semblance of a good story to give them proper context.

Sadly, the combat is this boring from beginning to end.

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Legends of Avalon at least tries to brighten its tedium with some twinkling production values. It isn't beautiful, exactly, but the world is vivid. Characters and environmental features alike are cel-shaded, which highlights the bold colors of a looming tower and the severe facial features of a huge tree's aging inhabitants. As a winged fairy, you flutter around four different environments, starting with the island that functions as a hub world. The way in which some of these worlds are put together does exude a certain cleverness. A desert world is actually a giant scarab crossing the sand. A ghost ship floats in murky waters inhabited by vain, haughty mermaids. Quaint huts are tucked into the branches of the giant tree Yggdrasil. The accompanying music is boilerplate fantasy, but flute glissandos and celesta chords give it an enchanting air, as if a pageant of pixies may prance through at any moment.

Despite the game's attractive look, its utter lack of originality is soon wholly apparent. This is in part by design: the areas and characters are pulled directly from famous legends and stories. The Flying Dutchman, Arabian Nights, and Norse mythology are all pasted onto this world without so much as an ironic wink or a bit of sly charm. Many characters, such as a poetic troll and the squat residents of a pseudo-Arabian village, have a unique look to them. But for the most part, Legends of Avalon has no clear identity. There is not a word of voice acting that brings the dialogue to life, and while there are attempts to give characters a bit of flair (phonetic spelling meant to indicate a Cockney accent, for example), almost every line falls flat. Your own character, for example, can sometimes respond to characters with a generic "nice" or "mean" comment using a dialogue wheel ripped right out of Mass Effect. Most often, your reply is either totally saccharine or utterly cruel and delivered in a short sentence that grants no insight into your own persona--or anyone else's. Furthermore, grammar errors and misspellings present in the console versions weren't corrected, making it even harder to take this story seriously. In fact, this version of Faery hasn't made any notable fixes and improvements, and the sluggish mouselook makes using an Xbox 360 controller a more comfortable option than a mouse and keyboard.

Quests are so pedestrian, you wouldn't be surprised if a gnome asked you to pick up his dry cleaning.

Without good narrative context, Faery: Legends of Avalon quickly turns into one meaningless fetch quest after another. You make your way through its small worlds doing odd jobs like collecting water jugs, searching for a hairbrush, and locating an eccentric artist. At best, this simply means traveling from one location to the next and pressing a button. At worst, it means aimlessly flapping around until you happen on the proper trigger. This is frustrating in the interior of the dark ghost ship, which is poorly lit and cluttered with objects that make it difficult to find your way around and see the telltale sparkle that indicates an interactive object. Poor signposting and unclear dialogue make finding a key figure nestled in the dense branches of Yggdrasil an absolute chore. At least these quests come with a reward: experience points. Leveling up allows you to choose spells and skills, as well as improve ones you have already chosen. You can focus on certain elemental skills, such as air or fire; choose defensive spells, like heals; and put skill points in passive abilities, such as a boost to your hit point total. The equipment you find in treasure chests and earn as quest rewards further augments the effectiveness of your chosen abilities.

The game occasionally gives you choices on how to proceed, which usually means either finding a peaceful solution or doing battle, though neither option is that enjoyable. Peaceful solutions entail more random gofer work, while violent ones involve participating in Legends of Avalon's ridiculously easy turn-based battles. As you roam the lands, you happen upon potential team members, all of whom have different attacks and spells to choose from in combat. Battles are so easy that it's almost impossible to lose, but should you somehow find yourself struggling, you'll have more health potions than you could ever possibly need. You can position your three party members in the front or back, but you needn't give this option a second thought: just pelt your enemies with different attacks and spells from the front line until they fall over dead. Some enemies are more resistant to certain attacks than others, but there is no mana bar to manage, and there are precious few buffs and debuffs with which to concern yourself. It's all disappointingly threadbare.

This might be the most authentic-sounding bit of dialogue in the entire game.

After five or six hours, Faery: Legends of Avalon presents another all-black or all-white decision that makes no difference one way or another, because the game immediately ends the moment you make it. That sounds frustrating, but it's actually an appropriate conclusion to a game that ushers you from one insignificant decision to the next. Choice is good, but it rings hollow when you have no investment in the potential consequences. Thus, Legends of Avalon amounts to a bunch of bland missions separated by elementary turn-based battles that inspire only a few faint yawns. Pass on this particular fairy tale and you'll exponentially improve your odds of living happily ever after.

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Posted in: Adventure

Star Raiders Review

The original 1979 Star Raiders was a complex and ambitious space combat game that involved navigating across the galaxy via hyperspace, scanning for hostiles, and managing damage to weapons, engines, and other ship components. It also had a sense of humor; at the end of a game, heroic players might earn the rank of Star Commander, while less successful pilots might be designated Galactic Cooks. Now, following in the footsteps of last month's Yar's Revenge, which also took the title of an Atari classic, is a new game called Star Raiders. But it possesses none of the ambition or fun of its namesake. On the contrary, Star Raiders is an awful space combat game, with nothing to offer to newcomers and only anguish in store for those with fond memories of the original.

There's nothing quite as satisfying as destroying the last generator on a Zylon frigate. Wait, yes there is. There totally is!

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As a crackerjack pilot in the Atar Academy, you're called upon to help defend humanity from the mysterious Zylons. (This isn't a reference to the Cylons of the recent Battlestar Galactica series. It's a reference to the original game's Zylons, who were themselves a reference to the Cylons of the original Battlestar Galactica series.) The story initially attempts to drum up a sense of camaraderie between your character, Ruiz, and his friends at the academy, but there's too little time spent on this for it to amount to anything, and the monotonous narrator imbues the tale with all the excitement of a legal document. The illustrations that tell the story look as if they were done quickly, and the attempts to bring a sense of movement to these drawings sometimes have unintentionally hilarious results. On the plus side, abbreviation enthusiasts will appreciate that the game has plenty of lines like, "It is the only ship capable of delivering the Mass Ordinance Plasma Bomb, or MOPB, which can destroy the SMCD."

Once you climb into the cockpit, the real problems begin. Star Raiders has a sorry excuse for a tutorial. Your ship can transform into three configurations: the slow but powerful turret mode, the balanced assault mode, and the speedy but vulnerable attack mode. The tutorial missions give you paragraphs of text to absorb about the best uses for each of these three modes, but this information isn't actively reinforced by the very basic tasks that follow. As a result, once you find yourself in real combat situations, it's tough to get a handle on when to switch from one form to the next, and on the different control schemes for different forms. (By default, the right stick controls pitch and yaw while in assault and turret modes, but in attack mode, the left stick controls pitch and roll.) The tutorials also offer no advice on how to evade locked-on enemy torpedoes or how to most effectively use the EMP and countermeasures your ship is equipped with. As for making sense of the gauges that surround your targeting reticle, you're shown a labeled diagram before tutorial missions, and that's it. Concepts like managing energy consumption would be far easier to grasp if the game took a moment to touch on these as you were playing, rather than expecting you to fully understand them just by reading about them once.

Getting hit with a giant cotton swab is far more fun than Star Raiders.

Sadly, putting in the time to get familiar with the game just isn't worth it. The Zylons may have fighters, frigates, and cruisers, but their most powerful weapon is boredom. Battling Zylon fighters has none of the cat-and-mouse thrills that good dogfighting should have; you can usually get them in your sights from a distance and take them out easily, making their feeble attempts to be elusive a frustrating postponement of the inevitable rather than a source of excitement. Far worse than dealing with these tiny fighters is the incredibly tedious process of taking down Zylon capital ships. Zylon cruisers and frigates have several small generators on their hulls that must be destroyed to take out the ships, and the most effective way to do that is to transform into assault mode and slowly move along the ship's surface from one generator to the next, pumping bullets into them until they explode.

It's an excruciatingly dull process, and after doing it for the umpteenth time, seeing that the next mission requires you to destroy still more frigates and cruisers may be enough to make you throw up your arms in surrender and let the Zylons win. Late in the game, when you finally get to take on one of the massive Zylon basestar vessels, it's almost comically disappointing that destroying one of these monstrosities boils down to flying inside it and taking out still more of those stupid little generators. And there's no sense of danger in any of this; when you die, you simply respawn a few seconds later, good as new.

If you choose to persevere through all of this crushing boredom and repetition, you're rewarded with a climactic mission in which you must fly through ventilation shafts into a Zylon structure deep beneath the surface of a planet. It's at least different from anything that comes before, but it culminates in a sequence in which you must escape from the structure before it gets blown to kingdom come. Infuriatingly, failing to do so sets you back to the start of the entire mission, forcing you to repeat a great deal of tedious gameplay before you can attempt the escape again.

Be thankful that you can't hear this screenshot.

The drab interstellar battlefields of Star Raiders are a fitting accompaniment to the dull gameplay, and the constant blaring of the alarm warning you of an enemy lock-on is a maddening incentive to turn the game off and do something else. It's a shame that there are now so few good games being made in the once-flourishing space combat genre, but no matter how desperate you are for some interstellar action, there's no reason to play Star Raiders. On the original game's rating scale, this game earns the particularly shameful rank of Garbage Scow Captain.

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Posted in: Adventure

The First Templar Review

Two thousand years ago, Jesus drank from a cup. Such a commonplace action may seem trivial, but it transformed an ordinary chalice into the Holy Grail. This sacred object has fueled the desire of countless historians through the years and has wormed its way into just as many fictional tellings of its supposed powers. The First Templar uses the unimaginable delights promised by the Holy Grail to push you through this action-focused role-playing game. The Knights Templar, sworn protectors of this coveted prize, prove they are as susceptible to temptation as every other person, and though the story provides enough twists to stay interesting, it's the varied gameplay and enchanting visuals that make this a journey worth taking. A dearth of items means you're stuck with only a few weapons and outfits for the whole game, and spotty collision detection can hound your progress at times. But The First Templar rises above these problems to create an enjoyable adventure through the turbulent 13th century.

Archers are particularly weak against swords.

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The Holy Grail is a siren song that's difficult to get out of your head. Whether you want to steal this precious artifact for altruistic or selfish ends doesn't matter; it's worth dying for. And it's certainly worth killing for. You assume the role of the valiant knight Celian. The cross emblazoned on his chest is more than just a symbol; it's an outline for his way of life. Peace and well-being are his guiding ideals, though he isn't afraid to bloody his sword when evil presents itself. He is joined in this adventure by two other would-be heroes, though neither is as unrelentingly pure as the protagonist. Roland is a fellow Templar whose abrasive persona makes him a poor diplomat at best. Marie is loyal to her friends, but she rarely offers help for those in need. There's a believable repartee between these characters that makes them easy to grow attached to as you accompany them on their journey. Surprisingly, there are bits of humor sprinkled throughout your exploits. Non sequiturs such as "We will not negotiate with marauders" crop up at unexpected moments, and they provide levity to a mostly serious tale.

Combat is the focus of this roughly 12-hour-long adventure. Basic attacks are handled by clicking the mouse, though there is more complexity than just swinging your sword without a clear plan. Enemies are keen on slaying anyone who clicks without forethought, and it takes only a few solid hits in the early going to arrive at death's door. Because of this, you need to balance your offensive attacks and defensive maneuvers to stay alive. Blocking and dodging are an integral part of your repertoire, and smart use of these along with sure-handed sword strikes gives combat an enticing rhythm. If you time your swings correctly, your blows become more powerful, so it's important to keep your cool instead of clicking away as fast as possible. You unlock more attacks as you earn experience, and these help keep things varied. A shoulder charge or a spinning whirlwind gives you room when you're surrounded, and a two-handed strike can smash a shield in two. There isn't much challenge once you understand how to fight, but The First Templar stays interesting partly because of the flourish kills you perform at random intervals. Crashing your shield down onto someone's trachea or performing a karate kick of death provides enough thrills to keep things moving.

It may ruin the environment, but nothing is quite as beautiful as a burning forest.

There are two people in your party at all times, and you can switch between characters whenever you want. Because you have Celian for the entire game, he's usually stronger than the other two, with a more varied move list, so it's more fun to control him in combat. What isn't fun is the collision detection, which is woefully inconsistent. Running away from enemy attacks isn't always an option because you can get hit even when you're clearly out of range. This can be overcome by rolling or blocking, but it's annoying nonetheless, and this problem surfaces in other aspects of the game as well. A decent chunk of the adventure involves avoiding traps, and you can be burned by fire or stabbed by spikes even if you're a healthy distance away. Finicky collision detection is not a huge issue because you have enough health to avoid a few brushes with death, but it can lead to frustration.

Despite this technical problem, the forays into other activities do a good job of varying the pace. You run through decrepit caverns pulling switches and lighting torches, and the well-worn ground these actions cover conjures deja vu in the early going. But navigating these underground ruins is not always as straightforward as it seems, and figuring out where to go next can be eminently satisfying, especially in the later levels. You often need to split up your characters to get past obstacles, and going alone can be mighty stressful when your health is low and there are spiked columns closing in. Aside from these puzzle sections, there are sequences that emphasize stealth. Once you enter stealth mode, you can see your enemy's line of sight on your radar, and if you sneak up behind him, you can snap his neck. And you don't have to worry about failure if you're caught. The entire camp will most likely be awakened to your presence, but you can always fight your way out. Throwing pots to distract your foolish foes is the biggest twist to the standard formula, but it's not any surprising or innovative elements that make the stealth sections fun. Rather, it's the breezy and welcome change they offer from the hack-and-slash action that ensures your adventure never become stale.

Honestly, his marker-drawn beard is the least of his problems.

It's a shame that variety doesn't extend to your armaments. You unlock a handful of new weapons throughout the course of the game, but they don't have stat modifiers, so you have only slight visual differences to look forward to. The same rules apply to your armor. Each character has a few different outfits to unlock, but the only thing that changes is your outward appearance. It's disheartening that there aren't lots of items to hunt for because the sprawling levels urge you to explore every branching path you come across. There are hidden treasure chests (that usually contain attribute buffs) and bonus objectives in every area, and figuring out how to scour every inch of the level provides its own rewards, even if the tangible offerings aren't up to snuff. Most places can be discovered by straying from the most obvious path, but there's one investigative tool that is as useful as it is silly. In certain places, you can push a survey button that causes footprints to appear on the ground. Following glowing white shoe prints makes it feel like you're hunting down Casper the Friendly Ghost, and it's hard not to laugh when these prints appear even in a murky swamp. Exploration is a strong point in The First Templar that makes even slow moments engaging.

If you break down the individual pieces of this budget-priced RPG, there isn't much that hasn't been done before. The basic structure feels like many other games, and the combat hardly reinvents the wheel. But there's an enticing charm that makes it difficult to pull away once you begin your journey. Strong visual design certainly helps. You travel across Europe and the Middle East, through sun-drenched deserts and besieged towns, and every area has a unique look and is just begging to be explored. And you can even play through with a friend, though the execution is sadly lacking. There's no drop-in/drop-out option, so you need to start a new session if you want to investigate these lands with a buddy. There are small problems swirling around the periphery of this game, but none of these issues can completely derail your enjoyment. The First Templar is a fun and varied chase for one of the most sought-after items in existence.

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Posted in: Detactive

Fable III Review

Last October, Fable III was released for the Xbox 360. Comical characters and enchanting aesthetics overshadowed many of the game's problems, providing another magical trip through the world of Albion. For PC players eager to try their hand at being a hero, the wait is finally over. Fable III has arrived on the PC and brought with it the merriment and whimsy that make it such a pleasure to spend time in this mythical land. There are a few small changes from the console original, but this is essentially the same game that was released seven months ago. The combat has been rebalanced to provide more challenge and most of the graphical bugs have been ironed out, but don't expect any new content for your patience. In fact, previously released downloadable content, such as Traitor's Keep, isn't even included in the package; you need to shell out $7 to play it just like Xbox 360 owners. The lack of new content is disheartening, and problems such as weak moral choices and inconsequential gameplay diversions persist, but Fable III is still a delightful adventure that will make you laugh and smile while you're slicing up hollow men.

Monorails are known death traps.

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The hero who saved Albion in Fable II went on to become a beloved monarch, siring two children who would eventually look over the kingdom when their time came. Not all members of royalty can be blessed with a strong vision of how to lead their people into peace and prosperity, though. The oldest son of the former ruler has a case of the evils, and he is using his power as the new king to oppress the poor peasants who fall under his rule. As the younger sibling (you can choose to be a prince or princess), you flee from the castle under off-putting circumstances and must build up your own army to overthrow your power-hungry brother. There's a stronger emphasis on the story in Fable III than in previous games in the series, and there is a certain charm in meeting the various leaders throughout the city to gain allies. But the quests are structured more for a good hero than one with evil leanings; you are forced to do all sorts of nice things during your rise to power, which limits your chances to be an uncaring meanie.

The lack of choice in how the main quest plays out is disappointing, although it's possible to excuse this story conceit when you consider how it matches reality. To gain power, you must make concessions and convince people you're truly on their side; it's only after you take the throne for yourself that you can turn your back on the nice folks who supported you. That may make sense, but the lack of consequences for the vast majority of your actions makes it difficult to become invested in your choices. For instance, you can slay an entire town, murdering every adult you can find if you feel a bit bloodthirsty. But mere moments after committing such an atrocity, you can continue on with the main quests where people trust you and consider you a good person. It doesn't make any sense. Even choosing the bad option in side quests has few repercussions. In one early mission, you can choose to either kill a brood of chickens or let them live. If you spare their lives, you can bet on chicken races later. But even if you kill them all, the races are still available. The game goes so far out of its way to make sure you don't paint yourself into a corner that you rarely suffer any setback for your choices.

Take a look, it's in a book.

This lack of emotional connection seeps throughout the rest of the story. Character interaction has actually been dumbed down even from the fart-or-dance options that defined Fable II. As in the previous game, you have the choice to perform a nice or nasty greeting to any character you meet. If you're courteous, you can befriend and eventually marry that character. If you're obnoxious, though, you create many enemies. But when conversations with your date just have you whistling a song or playing patty-cake until she gives you a gift, it's hard to care one iota when she accidentally gets torn to shreds by a pack of balverines. Expressing your emotions is one of many places in which simplified mechanics limit your potential for fun. Previously, you could perform any learned gesture at any time. Now? You're limited to a couple options, and you have to wait for the choices to cycle through after every move. This aspect of the game has the same emotional impact as what you would find in Fable II (read: none), but it's hard to even care about your dog this time around. There is never a bonding moment and you can't even heal him after battle (he never gets hurt), so he's more of a furry metal detector than a lovable friend.

It's a shame that Fable III can't conjure any deep feelings for its funny-though-forgettable characters, but that's not to say you won't be emotionally invested at all. This is a gorgeous game. Every place you travel to has its own unique look and feel, and it's an undeniable joy to scour the lands for no other reason than to take in the beautiful sights. It is the breathtaking vistas and enchanting forests that pull you in; the smog-filled sky in Bowerstone or the sandy dunes of Aurora keep you engaged. Though your heart may not twinge for the characters you meet, the stirring score does a great job of making it flutter in your chest. Fable III is happy or somber, scary or uplifting, and it pulls off these emotional changes through careful artistic design and empowering music. Walking through Albion is to walk through the pages of a fairy tale. This meticulously constructed world is so enticing to look at and so pleasing to the ear that it makes up for the lack of depth in the other areas.

It's Lute Hero! Get it?

Unfortunately, the technical aspects aren't as refined as the artistic side of things. The most glaring problem is the pathfinding. Your dog, helpful treasure hunter that he is, is awful at pointing you in the right direction. He gets stuck on rocks and trees, and sometimes he just stands near you barking instead of running off to show you where to dig. This busted pathfinding stretches to humans as well. When you hold a companion's hand, you would expect him to dutifully walk alongside you. But your companions also get stuck on any obstacle in their path, and these quirks can quickly pull you out of the experience. In the Xbox 360 version, these technical issues also extend to the visuals, but those bugs have been mostly ironed out in the PC version. Pop-in and slowdown have been largely eradicated like so many hobbes, which lets the game showcase the blissful aesthetics without distracting you with a bevy of minor issues. Sadly, there are still frame rate drops during certain combat sequences, even on PCs that exceed the recommended settings. The game chugs along like a snail caught in a pile of salt, and the only way to set things rightl is to briefly return to your sanctuary. Despite the odd frame rate quirk, Fable III is a beautiful game that is a pleasure to explore.

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Posted in: Action

MX vs. ATV Alive Review

Motocross racing gets physical in MX vs. ATV Alive; colliding with opponents is now a legitimate tactic rather than a cause of frustration and the action is significantly more exciting as a result. It's not all good news in this scant sequel to MX vs. ATV Reflex, though; there's no structured career mode, there are no vehicle types beyond those mentioned in the title, and there are only two event types: Race and Free Ride. Additional features are promised in the form of downloadable content, but right now, this off-road offering barely does enough to justify even its seemingly attractive $40 price tag.

Are four wheels better than two? You decide.

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Climbing onto either a 125cc motocross bike or a 250cc quad in MX vs. ATV Alive as a level 1 rider can be daunting, particularly if you never played Reflex. Not only do you have to use both analog sticks to control your vehicle and rider independently of each other, but the game also makes no attempt to explain more advanced techniques: using the clutch to get off the start line quickly or to maintain speed through corners, or locking your seat bounce to preload for a jump, for example. Regardless, it shouldn't take you long to get a handle on the basics and start winning races.

There are four different difficulty settings to choose from, so you should have no problem finding appropriately challenging AI opposition. As you recklessly throw yourself into corners launch off of huge mounds of dirt, you have to contend with opponents who, while capable of making mistakes, are always fiercely competitive. Collisions are commonplace, but where in previous games these would often end badly, here they can work to your advantage because it's not uncommon to send an opponent to the dirt without taking a tumble yourself. Major mishaps aside, anytime you're in danger of falling off your ride, you're afforded an opportunity to recover by quickly flicking the right analog stick in the direction indicated onscreen to maintain your balance. It's the same system that was used in Reflex, and it works well; races are far less frustrating when you're not falling off after every mistake and you're not punished for riding aggressively.

At the end of every race, both you and your currently selected vehicle earn experience points and levels. Leveling up unlocks all manner of extra customization options. These include new paint jobs, performance-improving parts for your vehicles, and licensed rider gear. There are also rider abilities that, once equipped in the two available slots, can make it easier to prevent spills, knock opponents out of the way, or recover from falls, for example. There's even an ability that increases the number of experience points you receive after every race as well, which is very useful when you're eager to unlock the tracks that don't become available until you reach levels 10 and 25. (Alternatively, you can spend around $6 to unlock everything instantly.)

Using the right analog stick to control your body is important anytime you hit a jump.

On the disc, MX vs. ATV Alive offers a dozen different full-length tracks, plus four short tracks and a couple of modest free-ride environments. Annoyingly, the vast majority of this mostly good content isn't available from the outset, and unlocking it takes long enough that you inevitably end up having to replay the same handful of tracks over and over again while leveling up. A redeemable code included with new copies of the game can be used to download two additional tracks located in a third free-ride environment, but even taking those into account, the selection that's on offer for the first few hours of racing is woefully inadequate.

One way to lessen the repetition of racing against the same AI riders on the same tracks is to put your skills to the test against human opponents, which still earns you experience points for your persistent rider and vehicles. MX vs. ATV Alive supports two-player split-screen in a full field of 12 racers, as well as online play for up to 12 riders. Split-screen play works well enough, though there's some noticeable texture and object pop-in that's not present when playing solo. The mostly lag-free online play suffers no such distractions and is a lot of fun, especially if get into a racing session with similarly skilled opposition. After selecting which class you want to race in (there are three bike and two quad classes to choose from), you're placed into a lobby with other players, and between races, you get to vote on which track is raced next.

Whereas MX vs. ATV Reflex offered a number of different gameplay modes, Alive offers only races and a Free Ride mode in which you're encouraged to explore sand dunes and quarries while completing challenges. Experience can be earned in Free Ride for performing long jumps, catching a lot of air, locating a secret vehicle in each of the three locales, and performing tricks. Sadly, tricks aren't MX vs. ATV Alive's strong suit. You need to move an analog stick in three different directions while holding down a bumper to get a trick started, and many of the animations take so long to play out that you need a lot of air for them to be successful.

The visuals take a hit in split-screen mode, but multiplayer races are a lot of fun.

Whether performing tricks or waiting at the start gate, riders and vehicles are reasonably detailed, and though track surfaces occasionally appear pixilated, the environments also look good when you're racing through them at speed. The most impressive aspect of the visuals, which also has an impact on gameplay, is that tracks get increasingly deformed and believably torn up by the bikes and ATVs as races progress, sprinkling every lap with a little welcome unpredictability. MX vs. ATV Alive is a better racing game than its predecessor, but sadly, it's not nearly as good a value proposition. Even after you spend several hours unlocking all that it has to offer, this is a game that's sorely in need of more content. It's coming, but rather than adding to an already fully featured game, here, it's hard not to feel like DLC will merely bring it closer to being the game it should've been from day one.

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Posted in: Sports

Brink Review

Greatness is rarely achieved without ambition. Jumping into the battlefields of Brink, you get the immediate sense that you are playing an ambitious first-person shooter. Four interdependent soldier classes and three distinct body types combine to create a diverse array of ways to kill your enemies, support your allies, and move around the battlefield. Brink's team-based skirmishes are rich with opportunities, but they are also hampered by design issues, including frustrating problems with the movement system and the artificial intelligence. Nagging visual shortcomings and online lag also hamper your immersion in this interesting world. There is definitely some fun to be had in these frenetic firefights, but for all its ambition, Brink falls well short of greatness.

If you don't finish your enemies off, they may come back to shoot you in the face.

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Your Brink experience starts with a choice. As a citizen of the Ark, will you fight to impose order on the floating city that may be humanity's last refuge in the wake of global disaster? Or do you view the Ark as a prison, where authoritarian forces oppress your people and keep you isolated from the human societies that must still exist on dry land? It's a dramatic choice, but ultimately it's a meaningless one. You can play both sides of the campaign no matter which faction you choose, and your loadout, abilities, and stats are persistent regardless of which side you are fighting for. Brink's online integration means that with the exception of the four Challenge maps, every match you play takes place on one of the eight maps from the campaign. When you start up a match, you can determine what map you play, who can join your game (if anyone), which player ranks are allowed, and whether or not human players are allowed on the enemy team. Setting up a game in freeplay mode enables more customization options and increases the likelihood of joining a game with a lot of human players.

Before you get into a match, however, you have the option to watch extensive tutorial videos that familiarize you with the busy battlefields of Brink. Though they drag on for a while, they are full of good information that can help you get your bearings, especially if you are new to objective-focused, class-based combat. You must also create a character using Brink's stylish customization suite. After choosing from an all-male gallery of quasi-realistic faces, you don either the trim, tough look of the Security forces, or the grimy, ragtag look of the Resistance. You unlock a bunch of cool clothing, hairstyles, and face paint as you level up, and it's fun to play around with your character's look as you progress. (Just don't expect to switch up your tattoos--they're permanent.)

The lone aspect of character creation that actually affects how you play the game is your body type. Every character begins with a medium body and soon unlocks heavy and light types. Heavy characters have the most health and can carry the biggest guns, but they are also the slowest and least nimble. This makes them well suited to defending key areas or clearing out rooms, but you sometimes have to take the long way around to find a staircase. Light characters have the least health and can carry only small guns, but they are also the fastest and most nimble. They excel at running fluidly around the map and leaping to areas other players cannot reach, while peppering the enemy with gunfire. Medium characters are both nimble and durable, though not to the extent of the other types, and they function as a versatile blend of the other two.

Bad time to reload, hombre.

Creating diverse types of movement is one of Brink's main ambitions, and to a certain degree, it succeeds. Performing a speedy escape or a daring infiltration with a light character is exhilarating, while mowing down a whole enemy squad as a heavy is very satisfying. All characters can sprint, slide, and jump with varying proficiency, and this mobility helps make combat more lively. Slide into an enemy, and you knock him on his back, resulting in a close-quarters firefight that is a neat hybrid of melee combat and gunplay. Simply holding down the left trigger while running sends you automatically vaulting over obstacles and clambering up crates, but unfortunately, this movement system is hampered by imperfections. You may take an odd approach angle to a railing and end up running right into it instead of leaping over it. And because there is no clear system to indicate which ledges are surmountable and which aren't, you have to develop a sense of intuition through trial and error. Brink's attempt to infuse the action with this free-running movement is intriguing but problematic, delivering both invigoration and frustration.

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Posted in: Action

L.A. Noire Review

What awaits Cole Phelps at the next crime scene? Will it be a couple of hopheads who overdosed on morphine and are now on the midnight train to nowhere? Or maybe a young lady whose dreams of Hollywood stardom were chewed up and spit out by the studios and who now lies naked in a park, the victim of a brutal murder? L.A. Noire confronts you with these sad situations and many more. Inspired by film noir classics and hardboiled crime fiction, this tale of a complicated and troubled cop in postwar Los Angeles makes the business of detective work absorbing and rewarding, and it's drenched in so much authentic late-'40s style that you'll practically be able to smell the acrid mix of glamour and corruption in the air.

L.A.P.D.! You have the right to die!

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The City of Angels is one of the stars of L.A. Noire, and it gets the red-carpet treatment here. The game re-creates a vast swath of the city circa 1947; though it's by no means accurate down to the tiniest detail, those who know Los Angeles will appreciate the tremendous amount of research that clearly went into designing this version of it. (You expect to see the historic Egyptian Theatre in its proper place on Hollywood Boulevard, for instance, but seeing the Pig 'N Whistle right next to it, which has been there since 1927, is impressive.) Your journey takes you from filthy flophouses and hobo camps to elegant mansions and the sleek, modern offices of a company that's shaping the development of postwar Los Angeles. The architecture, which includes cookie-cutter housing developments that are springing up in droves to capitalize on the return of soldiers from the war, as well as jazz clubs where cops and gangsters alike relax after night falls, is authentic and makes this Los Angeles an absorbing and immersive place.

And it's not just these big things that the game gets right. As a detective, your work investigating crime scenes is often about the smallest details, and the richness of these details in L.A. Noire makes rummaging around grisly crime scenes and perusing the personal effects of victims a compelling process. The homes of murder victims feel lived in as a result of pictures on the walls, notes pinned on refrigerators, and clothing tossed on the floor and forgotten. Pick up an official document while rummaging through some files and you'll see that it looks genuine right down to the fine print. This attention to detail makes the often unsavory business of being a detective deeply absorbing. On top of this, the period fashions, actual automobiles, and music of the era--along with a score that evokes the style of some of the great composers of film noir--weave an intoxicating spell that's sure to stir the heart of anyone with a fondness for 1940's style. The art direction that pervades every aspect of L.A. Noire is simply outstanding, and it's a huge part of what makes this game such a memorable experience. And if you want the game to look more like Out of the Past than Chinatown, there's an option to play in crystal-clear black and white.

Another poor sap meets a violent end in the City of Angels.

But all that attention to detail wouldn't amount to much if it weren't in the service of a game that was worthy of it. Thankfully, L.A. Noire is worthy. You play as Cole Phelps, a young veteran of World War II who enlists in the L.A.P.D. in 1947. Phelps is played by Aaron Staton, best known for his role on Mad Men, and thanks to L.A. Noire's use of a new technology called motion scanning, his performance goes far beyond voice acting. Phelps' face is Staton's face, and while motion scanning doesn't quite capture all the soul of an actor's performance, it nonetheless allows for a great deal of the subtlety of that performance to come through. It may take a bit of adjustment, seeing almost-but-not-quite-real faces on these characters, and there's sometimes a bit of a blurriness around the lips that can be distracting. But for the most part, it's very effective, allowing for rich and nuanced performances that seem to fully inhabit the world of the game. And this isn't just for show. The story of L.A. Noire hits harder because its characters look and sound so believable. Phelps' commanding officer Captain Donnelly has a passion for swift, merciless justice and a preacher's gift for oratory, while the weathered face of Herschel Biggs, one of many partners you have throughout the game, speaks volumes about his years on the force. The performances have a concrete impact on gameplay, too. When you're interrogating a suspect or questioning a witness, it's the facial expressions of a real person that you're reading when determining what approach to take.

You start out playing Phelps as a newly recruited uniformed officer. When a call comes in over the radio that a few homicide detectives need some assistance, you make your way to the crime scene and get your first crack at investigation. While investigating, you move Phelps around the environment and look for clues. Of course, not everything in any given location is going to be relevant to your investigation, and at first, the process can feel a bit silly. You might pick up empty beer bottles, hairbrushes, rolling pins, and other meaningless stuff, making Phelps move them around in his hand as if they might conceal vast significance while he mutters to himself (and to you) that these particular items have no bearing on the case. But as you progress, you develop a sharper eye for what things in an environment might be relevant. By default, the game indicates that you're near something you can examine with chimes and controller vibration, but with this option turned on, investigations often boil down to just walking Phelps over every inch of an area, waiting for those indicators to go off. Turning these off makes investigation far more involving and encourages you to carefully study the environment looking for anything that might give you insight into the case. You still know when you've found everything important in a given location because the investigation music fades out, though if you like, you can also turn this indicator off.

Phelps goes above and beyond the call of duty to close this first case himself, but it's not out of a selfless wish to protect and serve. He has a cold ambition to rise up the ranks in the department, and it's not long before his drive pays off politically. This determination also isolates him from his fellow cops and makes him a bit hard to root for initially, but this only makes him a better noir protagonist. He's a deeply flawed hero, and as the game progresses, you learn more about the experiences that turned him into the man he is today, and he develops in some fascinating ways as the narrative approaches its powerful conclusion. It takes quite a while for the story to build up steam, but the excitement of the later chapters makes the more deliberate pace of what came before well worth it. And you don't need to be a fan of film noir and hardboiled crime fiction to appreciate this tale, but if you are, you may take particular pleasure in the inspiration L.A. Noire takes from many terrific sources. (James Ellroy's bloody epic L.A. Confidential is a particularly clear influence.)

Some cool cucumbers can be tough to read.

As Phelps makes a name for himself in the department, he's called upon to start heading investigations himself, and that means questioning witnesses and interrogating suspects. During interrogations, you select something to question the witness or suspect about from a list in your notebook. (This is partly why thorough investigation of a crime scene is important; if you miss an important clue, you won't be able to ask people about it, which may prevent you from getting vital information.) Once the person responds to your question, you have three choices. If you believe the person is being honest and forthright with you, you can select Truth, which results in Phelps responding positively to the witness or suspect and coaxing more information out of him or her. If you think a person is being less than entirely honest, you can select Doubt, which often translates into "press the witness or suspect harder," and if your instincts are correct, this generally results in the suspect giving up something useful. But if your instincts are wrong and the person was cooperating, this approach results in him or her reacting negatively, which gives you nothing. Finally, if you think the person is lying to you and you have a piece of evidence that proves it, you can select Lie. In this case, you have to back up what you're saying with evidence. For instance, if you ask a suspect what shoe size he wears and he tells you he wears a size 9, you can use the size 8 work boots you found in his home to prove that he's lying.

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