Review: Bioshock 2

This review is written for the installed Xbox 360 version of Bioshock 2.

           

            Did you like the original Bioshock? Of course you did. Everyone did. Now imagine they took Bioshock and made the gameplay better. Not in a dramatic, game-changing fashion, but enough to make a noticeable impact on how you play the game. Also imagine that they took Bioshock and made the story worse. Not in a horrible, mind-numbing way, but enough to make you remember how great the original was. If you can read that and say “that doesn’t sound too bad”, then you should stop reading this review and go buy Bioshock 2, because the fact is that it is still a pretty excellent game. However, if you’re looking for a sequel that lives up to the promise of the original, you may be a bit disappointed.

The dual-wielding can make a big difference

            I’m going to go ahead and assume that you played Bioshock 1, seeing as how it is one of the biggest and most well-liked games of this generation. Everything from the first game is in here; there’s a wide assortment of upgradeable guns; you get plasmids that can have elemental effects of enemies and the environment; there’s a hacking minigame that unlocks doors or turns hostile machines to your side; you’ll research enemies to gain damage bonuses and other rewards; and you’ve got a light RPG element where you can upgrade your plasmids and other secondary characteristics using ADAM, a resource gathered by saving or harvesting little sisters. While this may sound extremely derivative (and let’s be honest, it is), every aspect of the game has been tweaked to make it just a tiny bit better than in the original. Guns and plasmids can now be wielded simultaneously, a seemingly small addition that actually makes combat more about chaining multiple kinds of attacks together than just spamming a couple extra-effective ones. Also, both types of attacks have an extra upgrade level, that can do things like add an electrical effect to your shotgun shells, or fire a solid beam of electricity from your Electro Bolt plasmid. The hacking is significantly different in that the minigame is now a short, timing based task compared to the pipe-orientation that was in the first game. It’s hard to say whether it’s an improvement, per-se, but it does serve to making hacking a more action oriented task that can be incorporated into regular combat. The photographic research camera from the first game is replaced with a video camera here, a change that is extremely irritating at first but is actually nice once you get the hang of hitting your research target with every type of attack possible before it stops filming. The gene tonic system of the first game is streamlined in that, instead of having four separate skills to place your perk-style tonics into, it’s all funneled into a single row of tonics, a simplification that works out surprisingly well. The final and most significant change in the game is your interaction with Little Sisters, the ADAM gathering girls from the original. You are still given the option of harvesting them immediately, but because of your position as a Big Daddy (oh yeah, by the way, you’re a Big Daddy again in this game), you can adopt the little girls. This means that you get to take them to a pair of corpses and defend them from waves of splicers for a minute or two while they harvest ADAM for you to take later. Hey, you know what makes a game fun? Multiple escort missions! It mixes up the primary combat a bit and makes sense within the context of the universe, but really, it just feels game-y and detracts from the game as a whole.

The hacking is much, much quicker

            The reason I point out all of these minor points about the gameplay is because it’s really all that Bioshock 2 has to differentiate it from the original. When it comes to everything surrounding that gunplay, all you get is Rapture. Remember Rapture? Remember the moody, post-WWII atmosphere, the art-deco stylings and the audio logs that capture the periods both before and after the fall of the underwater city? It’s all here, largely copy-pasted from the assets of Bioshock 1. There are a few interesting new environments, such as a cool historical museum/theme park that briefly details how Rapture came to be, as well as a prison embedded in the sea floor that has some great views through its long, glass hallways, but all in all, there’s nothing really unique about the feel of this Rapture compared to the one you journeyed through in 2007.

The short submerged sequences are relatively cool

The way that Bioshock 2 tries to divert itself away from the original is by changing the tone of the story. The game takes place eight years after the first game, and the effects of Jack (the player character of the original), are still felt. With Ryan and Fontaine dead and Jack himself gone to the surface, psychologist Sophia Lamb now rules Rapture using a socialist framework instead of the objectivism that had been the foundation of Rapture from the beginning. You play as the first successful Big Daddy, Subject Delta, who is revived ten years after his death by his particular Little Sister, who also happens to be the daughter of Sophia. Remember how in the first game there was a portion where your heart slowly began to stop beating? Well your goal of this game is to get to Eleanor Lamb before this happens to you. Of course, Sophia Lamb has other plans for both Delta and her daughter, so you get to fight against hordes of splicers in your quest to save Eleanor and retreat to the surface. Other characters are in play as well, such as Tennenbaum, who returns for a bizarrely short amount of time, and Augustus Sinclair who fills the position that Atlas did as your sidekick/mentor of this game. The thing that bothers me about Bioshock 2’s story is how it tries to take every idea from the first game and stretch in its own unique way. Things like Sophia’s presence, which was never mentioned in 1, make sense even if they need to somewhat retcon the world of Rapture to make her seem to have been around the whole time. Other things, however, stand out as just bizarre when placed in the world devised by the first game. The premier example of this is the fact that apparently ADAM absorbs the memories and personalities of its host, which can then be harvested from their corpse and seen for yourself. It’s a weird “twist” that just doesn’t jive with the core atmosphere of the original, and ends up coming across more as a piece of fan fiction than a coherent, self-contained story.

It’s worth noting that I tried and failed once to complete the game, having only passed the first few levels before giving it up. It wasn’t until all the E3 buzz about Infinite that I decided to go back and play both Bioshock games back-to-back to get myself psyched up. That may be the reason that I have a somewhat negative opinion of Bioshock 2; it just doesn’t achieve what the first game did, let alone surpass it. Let me again emphasize that it is by no means bad or even mediocre, and for ten bucks new there’s a lot of game here to enjoy. However, if you’re a big fan of the original, I really can’t blame you for giving this one a pass and waiting for the actual sequel (/prequel?) that is Bioshock Infinite.

 Images courtesy of Giantbomb.com

Review: Trenched

This review is written for the Xbox 360 version of Trenched.

            You know what are awesome? Mechs. You know what else can be pretty cool? Tower defense. Anything else? Add in a loot-based upgrade path. What this should add up to is an exciting and addicting game with an extremely long lifespan. Double Fine’s Trenched, however, doesn’t quite hit as hard as its component parts indicate it should.

The story is told only through voiceover and static images

            The story of Trenched is a relatively minor part of the game, but is bizarre enough to semi-rationally set up the universe that it exists within. In a post-WWI time, a veteran and scientist intercept an alien message referred to only as “the Broadcast”, which gave them both super-human intellects. The veteran, crippled during the war, used his knowledge to create the mobile Trench, which is literally just a bunch of sandbags strapped to heavy weaponry and legs. The scientist of course used his power to create the evil Monovisions, TV monsters intent on spreading their message to the world in the most violent way possible. As a result, you are tasked with travelling around the globe to destroy the different Monovision headquarters and prevent Evil Scientist Man from messing up everyone’s day. As far as Double Fine games go, this one is much more subdued in the comedy, but there are still enough clever jokes hidden in there to give it some good personality.

Certain waves can go real sour if you aren't careful

            The gameplay is, as far as arcade-style mech games go, fairly standard. You have two weapon banks, mapped to the triggers, each of which can contain up to three different weapons depending on the chassis of your Trench and the weapon’s size. These weapons range from machine guns and shotguns to huge artillery and flamethrower-like “broadcasters” that can take out dozens of enemies at short range. Additionally, you can customize your Trench’s legs which confers abilities such as sprinting or a lockdown mode that sacrifices movement for increased durability and lessened reload time. The final piece of the puzzle is the idea of emplacements, a fancy term for the defense towers. As you play through a mission you earn scrap from downed enemies that can be used to launch in a capsule that will automatically deploy into a tower, which range from more powerful versions of your mech weapons to emplacements that slow down enemies or repair your vehicle. These can be essential to survive wave after wave of different Monovision enemies that continually storm you assigned objective.

Your weapon choice can drastically alter the gameplay

            The structure of the game puts you on a walking aircraft carrier between missions (because everything should have legs, right?) where you can pick your destination, interact with other players, or customize your Trench. The customization really is the core purpose of the game and can make it play completely differently depending on how you spec yourself out. The main factor is the type of chassis you have, with the Assault being a typical run and gun variant with lots of weapon slots, down to the Engineering Trench, which sacrifices weapons from a larger selection of discounted emplacements. The way you unlock new chassis, weapons, emplacements and more is both through in-game challenges such as “earn 100 kills with weapon ‘X’” or “complete 50 missions”, as well as through loot boxes dropped by boss enemies and particularly difficult waves. While the loot is technically randomized, I found that in multiplayer I tended to get the same or similar loot at the same time as other players, which ruins a bit of the fun of having a completely unique and beastly Trench. Even with that concession, the customization is still fun and the ability to completely swap out your parts makes the game fun to keep playing for a little after finishing it just to compare the effectiveness of different loadouts.

            On the topic of multiplayer, if you intend to only play games by yourself, don’t get Trenched. I’m typically the guy that will play through games like this alone, then move into multi after I’m already spec’ed out. However, Trenched gets both real boring and real hard early on if playing alone, and having more people both makes it more fun socially and by giving you a bit more wiggle room to try out different weapons and strategies. The neat part of the multiplayer is that it is fully integrated into the game; all you need to do is walk over to a room on the top of the carrier and hit ‘A’ to search for and match up with other players. This puts them straight onto your ship with their Trench, allowing you to inspect exactly what they are going into battle with. On top of that, there is a ridiculous character customization aspect as well, where your in-game avatar can get new clothes and hats that alter his salute, an ability that is always active on the right trigger. It’s stupid and a diversion from the actual game, but it’s hilarious that it made it in at all.

            My issue with Trenched is that once you have an awesome mech and have completed the 15 missions that make up the campaign, there isn’t much to do. Sure, you can go back to the later missions to try out new layouts and hope for better loot, but all-in-all it’s sort of a one-trick pony. I played through it in about six hours, and that’s including multiple replays of certain missions and a healthy bit of on-carrier action between. It just feels like a missed opportunity, because the game’s ideas are cool in a way that I haven’t seen in a while. On top of that I had a few issues with low framerates and serious lag, but these were spread thin enough that I’ll just chalk it up to chance encounters with someone running on a 56k modem or the like. Overall, if you like this sort of game, it’s worth the $15 on XBLA to check out, but it’s certainly not something you need to be falling head-over-heels for to get it right now.

Images courtesy of Giantbomb.com

Review: Dead Space 2

This review is written for the installed Xbox 360 version of Dead Space 2.

Dead Space 2 is my favorite game of all time. No, that’s not hyberbole, and no, contrary to the name of this blog it is not just some quick, gut reaction. I’ve played dozens of games since, including some of my previous favorites, and DS2 still holds its position in my mind as the best of the best. I know that the immediate response to saying any new game is the best ever is immediately met with a million and one screams of anger, but let me clarify. I’m not saying the gameplay is necessarily the best (although it’s great), nor am I saying it is the best looking (but it looks incredible). I’m not saying that it is the most revolutionary game of all time, or that the face of media will be forever changed by its existence. Despite all that, one thing sticks out in my mind: Dead Space 2 is without a doubt the most fun, atmospheric and mind-blowingly awesome thing that I have ever played.

The shooting is not only intact, but improved

I don’t want to spend too much time on the gameplay, just because if you played Dead Space 1 you know what to expect here. The third-person shooting still retains that Resident Evil 4 core that has been omnipresent in the genre since 2004, but it is so refined that it’s impossible to level any complaints of it feeling derivative. Raising and lowering your weapon, melee attacking, stomping, running and any other essential activity are all mapped intuitively and they all occur quickly, to the point where I never once felt like I was fumbling against the controls or waiting for an animation to play out. The “strategic dismemberment” of DS1 is at play here as well, with the primary way of slaying Necromorphs still being to sever two or three of their limbs and take them out of the action. The weapons all facilitate this, with the originals Plasma Cutter, Line Gun and others showing up alongside newbies like a sniper-type weapon and the immensely satisfying Javelin Gun. On top of this the Stasis and Kinesis modules return but are much improved, with the Kinesis being used to impale Necros with environmental objects (or their own amputated claws) and the Stasis automatically regenerating, making it actually viable in regular combat. Finally, the shop and workbench system from the first game returns, where you collect credits to buy new guns and armor along with power nodes that are used to upgrade them. Even this is improved over the original due to the special bonuses that certain armor permutations grant and unique upgrades for certain weapons, such as incendiary bullets or the ability to electrify fired javelins to eliminate groups of enemies.

This looks ten times better in motion

Vacuum and zero-G sequences also return in Dead Space 2, the latter of which is drastically improved. Your suit(s) now have small thrusters on board, which make a huge difference for how these portions of the game play out. You are given full 360-degree movement around the weightless segments, and the controls are simple enough to let you navigate the huge outdoor environments with ease. The thrusters come into play in a few of the jaw-dropping scripted sequences as well. The game throws these chunks of gameplay out at a pretty regular pace, such as when you need to take out a monster’s weak point while being violently dragged across the floor, or when you are flung into space while grappling with another enemy and need to detonate some nearby barrels before you are ripped in half. The most memorable of these are portions where you need to move very, very rapidly from place to another, and need to pilot your suit to avoid flying rubble and the like. Most games would relegate this to a series of button presses, and while DS2 has its share of button mashing, the fact that most of these sequences are directly controlled by the player is awesome. One in particular involves Isaac being literally catapulted from one district of Titan Station to another, and the combination of the fantastic large-scale graphics and story-motivation to get there fast make this sequence incredible to play.

This is literally the first event of the game

Wait a minute. What are all these proper nouns doing here? Well, as it turns out, Dead Space 2’s stories holds up the crazy bombast and polish that the gameplay supplies. You play as Isaac Clarke, clinically insane zombie-killing machine that barely survived the events of the first game. You show up on a mining colony embedded into one of Saturn’s moons with little to no idea of how you got here from three years before. However, whereas most games would give a nice, long period of learning exactly what the circumstances are, the game instead has one of the strongest openings I’ve ever seen, with Isaac immediately thrust into a second Necromorph outbreak. Is the Marker involved? Probably. Is Isaac’s evil, hallucinated girlfriend back? You betcha. But the willingness of Dead Space 2 to let you pick up these facts across the game and make the connections yourself without explicitly spelling everything out from the word “Go” is refreshing and makes you actually care about the struggle Isaac is going through on his quest to literally stomp as many deformed creatures into little tiny pieces as possible. I also want to call out the ending that is, without spoilers, one of the greatest emotional rollercoasters of all time. The game wears you down with a good hour of insanely difficult combat where running is often the best option, then throws you into one a completely mind-bending boss battle, and then manages to hit both the depressing and triumphant notes. It is masterfully done, and it left me sitting there after the fact, completely brain dead in the best possible way.

I feel like I should point out that I beat the game in one sitting, but that is in no way a slight against the length of the game. It took me roughly eight hours to finish, and that’s coming from the perspective of someone who was extremely familiar with the first game going into it. It’s more a testament to just how compelling the gameplay, atmosphere and narrative all are that I neglected food, sleep and schoolwork to pound out chapter after chapter of the DS2’s campaign. I don’t want to disparage the shooting, which is great, but the real drive comes from the things in between, be it one of the high-action scripted sequences or a particular chapter that is completely combat-free. This one portion, while technically a back-tracking sequence, is so dark, eerie and fascinating that I recall it as one of the best things in the game. On top of the incredible focus that Dead Space 2 granted me (a focus that led to the consumption of more than two liters of water despite being completely sedentary), there is an immense amount of replay value here, between carrying over upgrades to higher difficulties, to completing the insane save-limiting hardcore mode to getting every achievement, a task that is actually reasonable due to the lack of multiplayer-centric ones. My grand total as of today is a good eight and a half playthroughs, and while I am indeed a crazy person, there is more than enough game here to keep you busy for a long, long time.

So there you have it. Dead Space 2 is an amazing game, regardless of whether or not you agree with my assessment as the best game. Yes, the gameplay is derivative, and the story may have a few inconsistencies. But the caveats are so miniscule and the praise I can lay on it so great that you really need to own this game.

Images courtesy of Google.com

Review: Singularity

This review is written for Singularity running on a high-powered Windows 7 PC.

 

Singularity is a fantastic game. I also despise it.

Bad things are afoot on Katorga-12

Let’s get the basics out of the way so I can explain. Singularity is a first-person shooter that takes place on a deserted island that was once home to a Russian facility that experimented on “Element 99”, a volatile but seemingly limitless substance that allows all sorts of crazy science to happen. You play as Nathan Renko, a US soldier sent to investigate the derelict island. Of course, everything goes completely sideways the second you show up. Your helicopter is suddenly downed, and before you can do any real exploring, a massive shockwave sends you back in time to the 1950s to a building that is currently on fire. Mind you, this is in the first ten minutes of the game. Soon you are transported back to the present day and, as with every instance of time travelling ever, your actions have apparently altered history. Now, there are both Russian commandos and time monsters crawling all over the island that you need to fight through to get to the giant swirling vortex that presumably is causing all the badness. On the way you encounter a few friendly NPCs and a number of audio and video logs that help explain what the hell is going on, plus there are a number of instances where you go back to the 50s to obtain information or weapons while slaughtering a bunch of poorly equipped mid-century Russian soldiers.

The TMD can be a lot of fun

The fact that E-99 is such McGuffin allows it to alter the gameplay along with the story in some significant ways. The game features the typical rifle-shotgun-sniper-rocket weapon sets, and these all feel nice and Call of Duty-esque in terms of how they operate, but there’s more to the shooting than just that. Many weapons have secondary fires, such as the sniper’s slow-motion zoom (which sounds minor but makes sniping fun for those of us who can’t aim) and a remote controlled grenade launcher that is rarely used but is interesting for a few puzzle sequences. On top of this is the Time Manipulation Device that is a sort of Gravity Gun/Plasmid/Insta-kill weapon. It’s used most prominently as a puzzle solving tool that can move items, age and de-age things like stairs and crates to make them passable, and fired at specific story points to alter massive structures or open rifts in time. It also can be used on enemies to either age them to death or turn them into “Reverts”, the aforementioned time monsters that will attack your enemies as well as you. Finally, E-99 itself can be collected throughout the game and used at upgrade stations to improve both the TMD and weapons. These upgrades are minor and amount to increases in damage, clips size, or basic perks, but it’s still nice to see some sort of character progression throughout the game.

Now, let’s talk about the ending. I’m not going to spoil anything, but it is complete and utter bullshit. The story up to the ending sequence is really intriguing and unique in a way that I was busting my way through the ending levels just to see how it was going to wrap up. I finally make it to the top of this giant vortex of doom, and the final gigantic twist is revealed. It’s something all of the characters, and the player realize within the first few minutes of the game, but the NPCs feel the need to slowly recap what happened, including a straight-up series of flashbacks to show you exactly what they mean. It’s not only pointless, but insulting that the game automatically assumes that you never put the pieces together. The game then offers you three choices for how to end the game. In the bad ending, you turn evil and the world is taken over. In the good ending, you save the world, and then it is taken over. In the third, ambiguous ending, there is a massive world war, and then you turn evil and it is taken over. It’s one thing to have a grey moral ending, but there way the game ends makes no sense. In the evil ending, you obviously do the “wrong” thing, but the fact that the good ending makes a certain character go against everything they stood for over the entire game makes no sense, and on top of that it defies the entire premise of the game. Finally, the middle-ground ending should alleviate these issues, but it just turns your character evil again, which defies logic since I, the player, am the one making the choice.

This had so much promise...

Singularity is a great game. If you are looking for a lengthy, atmospheric and fun shooter, it’s under $20 on Amazon which is a steal for the amount of content this title has. That said, the game disappointed me in a way that I don’t know anything else has. It would be one this if it was a mediocre game with a crappy ending, but the story shows so much promise and lays out such a solid foundation that it both shocked and disgusted me when it essentially called me an idiot and then disregarded my moral choices. People should probably play this game, if only to support Raven Software to make more great games instead of the Call of Duty maps that they’re currently tasked with. That said, if you want a game that you feel good about after the fact, or want a story that concludes in any sort of satisfying say, you should not buy Singularity.

Images courtesy of Giantbomb.com

Review: L.A. Noire

 This review is written for the installed Xbox 360 version of L.A. Noire.

I’m usually not the go-to guy for details on historical fiction of any kind. I typically eschew the past in my entertainment in favor of either modern or futuristic settings. That’s what I thought when Red Dead Redemption came around, and that game shocked me with how engrossed in the story I became as it continued on. By the time I had finished, it had already ranked among my top game stories of all time. So when Rockstar and Team Bondi started talking up L.A. Noire, I was similarly skeptical but was willing to give it a shot despite the seemingly less interesting post-WWII time period and my complete lack of knowledge for the film genre off which it is based.

You'll follow even the smallest clues throughout the game

            The game itself basically amounts to an incredibly high-budget adventure game, which is in no way a slight against it. As war veteran-turned-detective Cole Phelps, you’ll get involved in foot chases, car chases and large scale shootouts, but all this is ancillary to the actual meat of the game: You travel to crime scenes, collect evidence and interview suspects to narrow down your search until you have what you need to convict the criminal. Collecting the evidence is a simple yet satisfying process; musical cues and controller vibration lead you to clues around the environment, and the game informs you when you have located all there is to find in an area. If this sounds a bit like the game is holding your hand, you’d be right, but it’s still fun and rewarding to locate and examine an item to extract whatever information it has to offer. This evidence all comes into play in the interrogation sequences, in which you need to decide whether an individual is telling the truth, withholding information or flat out lying about a subject. If the subject is accused of lying, direct evidence is needed to be shown to contradict the statement. The “Doubt” vs. “Lie” options are pretty finicky early on in the game, where I was using evidence in a way the game didn’t understand, but once you get the hang of what the game is expecting of you it becomes a much more satisfying ride through to the end.

            But how can you tell if someone is lying or not without proper evidence? You read their face, of course. That’s right, L.A. Noire’s much flaunted facial capture system is in full effect on just about every character in the game world, and it, quite frankly, looks incredible. It’s easy to write it off as a gimmick or a tech demo, but it adds so much life to the characters that you really need to see to believe it. As a matter of a fact, go take a look for yourself. There is, however, a noticeable disconnect between the facial movements and the rest of the body; if you’ve seen Tron Legacy, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Like Jeff Bridge’s Clu character, the heads in L.A. Noire occasionally appear jittery or out of sync with the body, but this is honestly a small price to pay for such otherwise incredible fidelity.

When Cole gets angry, people listen

            What this face tech provides is characterization quite unlike anything that I’ve seen in other games. All of the faces and voices are those of usually recognizable real-life actors, but that is easily looked past due to their stellar performances. The main character, Cole, is played pretty straight, but at times you’ll see him angry, upset, depressed and elated, and all these emotions play perfectly on screen. The NPCs all bring it as well; the criminals tend to look and act like the maniacs, ice-cold killers or rich and aloof assholes that they are, and the fellow cops (particularly Cole’s various partners) all make you actually like working for the police. All of the partners start out relatively unhappy with their assignment to Cole, but as the cases roll by I came to really enjoy and eventually miss the company of each, with one significant but deliberate exception.

            Of course, the game isn’t just a series of disconnected case files. Early on when Cole is learning the ropes, the game doles them out slightly a la carte, where the only constant between them is the player’s increasing popularity as a star detective, but as you advance to different police divisions the cases themselves start to become linked in some pretty significant ways. The game also has between-case flashbacks to the war, as well as scattered yet easy to find newspapers that both show well-acted scenes designed to flesh out the characters and backstory. In the back half of the game all of these disparate threads start to all become relevant in the cases themselves, which kept building up my interest to see where the crazy story would end up. In the last few hours a number of memorable twists and set pieces kept me white knuckling my way through until the wee hours of the morning, and make up for the slightly lackluster ending scenes.

The chases range from good to thrilling

            So what’s not to like about L.A. Noire? For one, the game seems to be split in two. The first half culminates in the homicide division, which has an excellent conclusion in and of itself, but it is followed up by a completely unrelated series of cases that all works towards to another larger story arc. Furthermore, this second arc starts to drag a bit in the middle. In terms of the story, it makes sense, but there’s about an hour and a half’s worth of investigation that isn’t nearly as compelling as what comes before or after. Finally, there’s a large conflict between the individual cases and the overarching stories between them. Without divulging too much, the ends of each arc partially void the smaller decisions you make earlier. It doesn’t make the cases themselves any less engaging to complete, but the end result is that I felt slightly gipped on some of my detective work.

            Despite my gripes, L.A. Noire managed to keep me interested in a setting and characters that are completely outside of my usual comfort zone, and it only took a few hours of game time before I was digging through Wikipedia to learn more about the real-life characters and events that much of the story revolves around. The main issue I have with recommending the game is whether or not a roughly 15 hour experience with a limited amount of replay value is worth full price. That said, L.A. Noire is completely unlike any other game I have ever played, and the story presentation and incredible tech on display give it a huge leg up on that value proposition. It’s not a recommendation without caveats, but I think you should buy this game.

Images courtesy of GiantBomb.com