The only thing Sabotaged was my free time: The Saboteur review

Gamers kill a lot of Nazis. But, The Saboteur is the first time killing the endless goose-stepping horde of the Third Reich has ever looked this cool or copied the Grand-Theft-Auto play style so much.

The Saboteur is a stylistic third-person sandbox game where players take the control of Sean Devlin, an ex-racecar driver who’s taken on the duty of being the backbone of the French resistance and the pleasure of hunting down the occupying Nazis of Paris.

The story, for the most part, does an OK job of giving you the back story of our hero’s anger towards the Nazis, but after the first couple of missions it’s just like any other B-rate action story: predictable and nothing special with some pretty terrible voice work.

Devlin’s actions will seem awfully familiar to if you’ve played any other sandbox game that’s come out in the last 10 years. There will be a mix of carjacking, gun play, running around an open city and, of course, keeping the ladies at the local burlesque house dancing.

Saboteur’s carjacking differs from its GTA roots because the cars you steal can be taken back to a resistance garages where they can be stored and then upgraded. The problem is the all cars handle relatively the same. There are some faster models later in the game but by then it’s too late and you’ll be past the point of caring.

The same thing goes for the guns. There are a wide variety to choose from with a bunch of different upgrades that can be bought with contraband material that you’ll pick up from across the city. But, there isn’t a lot of difference in the weapon styles and the later guns carried by the elite S.S. troops are so over powered there really isn’t a point in spending your hard earned cash on an upgrade for the earlier models. Just save it for more dynamite, the game will be more fun that way.

The other side of the controls are the stealth mechanics and the Assassin’s-Creed inspired parkour movement. The game’s loading screen tells you that the easiest way to move about the city is by rooftop like an Irish ninja. What it doesn’t tell you is the controls for the climbing are clunky and slow.

The stealth game play is just as bad. As you infiltrate Nazi installations, like POW camps and zeppelin stations, Devlin can disguise himself as various guards and Nazi officials. But the guards can and will spot you if you get too close or do suspicious activities, like wiring the general’s car to explode shortly after he leaves for Berlin.

This so broken that the game is less of a headache to simply run through the game with guns blazing. The only downfall with this approach is you’ll need to run from the Nazis once the mission is over.

The majority of the game, from fighting Nazis Indiana-Jones style, to running odd jobs for the resistance and the occasional train bombing, will leave you vastly underwhelmed and there is only one true redeeming factor for this game.

That one gem is the black and white, Sin-City inspired art style.

When the game starts, before Devlin starts cracking skulls and when the Nazi occupation is at its highest, the game is almost entirely in black and white with the exception of certain accents like red swastika armbands, the gold glow of windows at night and the spilled blood of assassinated Third Reich leadership.

As you finish story objectives and wrestle control from the Nazis, Paris will explode into color from its black and white oppression. The problem is the game looks better in black and white than it does in color. Once it’s in color the city and the surrounding countryside look pretty boring by comparison.

Other than the early art style, the game falls flat because it hasn’t done anything new in a substantial way. The majority of this game has a been there-done-that feel. And if it wasn’t for the art and color scheme this game wouldn’t be note worthy at all.

Good, Evil and Moral Choices in Video Games

article was originally featured on Sleeperhit.net

Save the princess and be the hero. Since video games have been able to tell stories players have been tasked with being a kingdom’s hero. Now the industry has shifted in ideology to letting the player choose to be the hero and villain by the choices they make and the morals they keep. Morality as a game play mechanic is, more often than not, seen as something that’s polar. Either a player chooses the path of virtue and basks in the praise of the video game world, or players choose morally ambiguous path, where the virtual world scowls and shuns them for their selfish choices.

There are problems with this formula. For the majority of video games featuring moral choices, the first problem with morality games is the major morality deciding moment is placed in front of the players while the rest of the game stops and waits for players to decide. Second players are forced to pick between the two polar opposites: good and evil.

The most recent presentation of stop-and-decide game play is in Sony’s inFAMOUS for the Playstation 3. As players trot through the story they’ll run into moments where they must decide to be Empire City’s nine-volt hero or the electrical menace. InFAMOUS is a great game but these moments don’t help the story. The reason being is the choices aren’t the most life or death threatening decisions you’ll have to make. One morality moment had Cole deciding if he should save someone from being beaten to death by an angry mob or simply walking away because it would take too long. This decision isn’t a good or evil moment as it is good or lazy.

Another example of these clear-cut good and evil choices comes from Lionhead Studios’ 2008 flagship game, Fable 2. Like inFAMOUS, Fable 2 presented its moral choices in stop-action moments where players are given a moment to decide if they were going to be good or evil. A particular choice in Fable 2 is the choice about the young maiden who’s kidnapped by evil spirits and the hero must decide to sacrifice his dashingly good looks for the maiden or vise versa. The fallout of the choice was, well, there wasn’t any. If Players choose to stay a stud they would just need to grind positive morality points to gain back the repercussions of the choice. Otherwise there was no incentive to be, or not to be, virtuous.

This trend has become so ridiculous it’s now popping up in games that you wouldn’t expect. Don’t believe me? See Army of Two: the 40th day. The new Army of Two will feature a decision system that will have players make choices about certain characters and if they should be spared of executed. Regardless of choice players are shown the aftermath. Kill a crime lord’s wife you are shown the life of what will happen to her to young kids as they try to make it as orphans on the streets of Shanghai. Make the choice to spare her and you see the monster her son becomes when raised by his father.

The problem with this tried and tested formula is its structure. When the game stops all momentum to force a player into choosing an alignment then their actions are no longer candid. Meaning that players are actively choosing the alignment they want, which isn’t necessarily bad thing. But there are other options to make players decide on a moral alignment.

The second issue with morality games is the cut-and-dry decisions that are presented. Taking a look at our real world and the pop culture world it’s rare to have a true good and bad. This is because the notion of good and bad is subjective to the decider’s position on the matter and how they relate to it. And more often than not the choice is setup in the outlook of “is this in the need for the common good of the world?” instead of a deeper overlying theme.

A medium that has done this type of moral choice well is the comic book world and most notably the book you may know by the name “Watchmen.” As the USSR invades Afghanistan and the world hurdles ever closer to nuclear war the characters in the book are faced with a means-to-an-end choice: Fake a catastrophe and kill millions of innocent people to stop the nuclear powers in their tracks to save ten fold the amount you’ve killed or as Rorschach puts it, “Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.”. This finale is awe inspiring because good is debatable. Is it right for one man to make a sacrifice of millions of lives for the common good or is it right to hold your principles and let humanity run towards its destruction?

Many games have tried for a momentous decision like the one in Watchmen but they are often presented too late in the game. Thinking back to games likes Fallout 3 and the Fable series, both series present a moral choice that their world. But both series offer the choice at the very tale end of the game when the repercussions of the choice are barely felt. This may work for other mediums where the consumer isn’t directly involved in the story, like movies and comic books, but video game choices should be presented earlier so the outcome of the decision can be played through.

Another problem with presenting the finale choice at the end of the game is that most games offer a cope-out deal to the player. Regardless of earlier decisions—good, evil or some where in between–players are presented a choice for all three alignments. Allowing players to drastically switch their affiliation to simply cash in on the ending they want—or all three if players save right before the choice is made.

There are ways to fix the flaws in this great game play style. First, have game developers present a world where players act independently from two warring factions. This would have a player’s actions indirectly influence the world and their moral stance. The next big step in fixing this genre would be to hold players accountable for their decisions and no longer offer a forked-road exit out of the game that ultimately compromises the character and story development.

Two games come to mind when I look at this improved formula. Both Deus Ex and Mass Effect did morality game play well because it made a player’s choice matter in the long run of the game. And in a series like Mass Effect where the choices of part one affect parts two and three, it should make for a compelling experience that is rarely seen in any medium, if it holds true to its ideals.

Going to Get Edumacated: Encleverment Experiment review

Encleverment Experiment is a mix between the thinking games made popular by games like Brain Age and Big Brain Academy and party game-show games like Buzz!. But this game isn’t as clever as its name may lead you to believe.

The game is broken up into two parts. The first being the once-day tests that will track your progress in memory, math, reaction time and patterns. The variation in the tests are pretty basic and act more like glorified flash card exercises than a mental workout. One test will have you memorizing objects as they fall onto the screen, while others will have you lead a dog on the trail to find his misplaced bone and another will have you complete basic arithmetic problems before time runs out .

The problem with the tests is the goals aren’t as intuitive like with other games like Brain Age. So, if you want to just skim over the instructions, which there are a lot of, and get right to the game you’ll end up scratching your head wondering what’s going on pretty regularly.

Another issue is the difficulty of the quizzes can vary between the ridiculously kindergarten simple to the downright pulling-your-hair-like-you-did-for-your-SATs-because-you-were-too-busy-to-go-to-the-prep-classes hard.

The best worst example is the face recognition quiz. You are shown a face for a few seconds and asked to memorize the features after which you’ll be given four faces to choose from. In back-to-back questions, the faces I was asked to choose from had no similarities what so ever–I was asked to memorize a woman’s face and I was given one that looked like a man–and then the next question had nothing but small variations in the nose and upper lip between all four choices.

The next part is the game show. Here you’ll compete in the quizzes with computer opponents, or if you can find someone else that’s willing to improve their mental abilities through the Xbox, a friend. The game show basics are all here. You and your opponent will go through the tests and compete for points so you can unlock more in-game mascots that will keep you company as you play. This section of the game some more playability because of the computer opponents you’ll face, but it’s not a big enough difference from the daily tests.

Aside from the inconsistent difficulty, Encleverment Experiment is an average thinking game with a funny and engaging presentation and with an art style and narration that seems like it’s pulled off of a Saturday morning cartoon. But the real problem with this game it missed the bus for the mental-exercise craze that was all the rage a few years ago. With other games, like Big Brain Academy, that got the degree of difficulty and playability just right then Encleverment Experiment can’t compare. But if you need a quiz game for the Xbox, this would be an OK choice.

More Mutants than You can Shake a Stick At: Marvel: Ultimate Allaince 2 DLC Review

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 updated its roster with five more characters from across the ever-expanding Marvel Universe and added more challenge-room missions to use them in. The characters added for this DLC are: red symbiote and long-time Spider-man foe, Carnage; the leader of Wakanda, the Black Panther; and the mutants Psylocke, Cable and Magneto.

The selection of heroes offered in this content bundle is a good mix of well-known characters, like Magneto and the Black Panther, as well as some lesser-known characters like Psylocke. A plus for this DLC is each of the five characters plays drastically different from each other, which is refreshing since the majority of the original cast’s play style was very similar.

Like the original 24-character cast, the new heroes are great adaptations, and they look like they’ve been ripped from the pages of a weekly comic. On the powers side of the game, each character continues to control differently. The two standouts are Carnage, who plays like the animalistic nature of Wolverine mixed with the brutality of Venom, and Psylocke, who is agile and deadly like Daredevil and Iron Fist.

The underperformers of the group are Cable and the Black Panther. Cable is strongest when he stands back and shoots at bad guys with the hefty cannons he brings to the party. This is understandable because of his comic book back story, but it makes for some awfully boring button mashing. The Black Panther, on the other hand, gets up close and personal like the majority of the characters already present in MUA2 and is just more of the same.

Fusion powers stick to the same routine like the original content of the game, with one exception. When Magneto and Wolverine team up to perform a targeted attack, Magento lifts Wolverine’s metal body into the air and hurls him at the soon-to-skewered enemy. This attack is technically just like the other targeted combinations in the game, but this attack in particular has a warm place in my comic-book-nerd heart because it’s something you’d expect from the panels in a weekly book.

Beyond the characters, the DLC offers more missions to run through. The high point of these missions is the Overlord stage where you can fight Magneto in all his metal-manipulating glory. These missions add some replay value to the game, but only for another couple of hours. The characters and extra missions in this DLC pack add some nice touches to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, but it still isn’t enough to warrant throwing ten more dollars at it. If you absolutely need more characters, then by all means go for it. But otherwise, you might as well save your money for the comicbook shop.

Fairytale Fights Review

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

Gamers kill dinosaurs, roll random things into balls, and control a plumber as he kicks and stomps mushroom monsters into the ground. There are some weird games out there, but Fairytale Fights is the first time gamers take control of well-known bedtime story characters in their blood-covered escapades in fantasy land, and for good reason.

Fairytale Fights is an M-rated brawler set in “once upon a time” where players pick from Beanstalk Jack, the Naked Emperor, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood, and relive classic fairytale stories. But these aren’t the stories you grew up with.

Players are tasked with quests like finding the three little bears’ porridge pot and saving the princess all while hacking their way through an endless amount of enemies, all of which squirt blood like there is no tomorrow. The game looks like it’s a kid’s cartoon on an LSD trip. The colors are overly vibrant and pop off the screen, and the character models look like they’re something taken from the warped minds that came up with the Happy Tree Friends.

Fairytale Fights is an interesting idea and a fun game to look at, but, like the head cheerleader back in high school, that’s all it has going for it. This game is boring, overly simplistic, and lacks any real reason to play more than five minutes.

The game’s combat, which should have been the highlight of this god-awful experience, is overly simplistic. All the combat is controlled through flicking the right analogue stick. It is intuitive by design, but it’s held back by the complete lack of depth. For hours on end, or as long as you can stomach playing, all you will be doing is flicking the stick without any skills or abilities to upgrade.

The game is spiced up with special moves called “Glory attacks,” but it still isn’t fun. After you slaughter enough make-believe character, you’ll be able to pause time and jump between enemies to smack them around. Too bad the Glory attacks aren’t functional. When you try to jump between multiple enemies the game is particular about how close the enemy has to be, even though there isn’t a visual cue to judge distance. This makes the Glory attacks more of a pain to use than they’re actually worth.

As players prance through the forest, a plethora of weapons–like swords, candy canes, and wooden spoons–are available in bladed, blunt, ranged, or thrown varieties. All of these have different levels of attack power. Bladed and blunt weapons will be what you’re working with most the time, and the only real difference between the two is if you want to chop your adversaries into more manageable pieces.

This is the other highlight of the game, albeit a small one: the amount of blood splattered with bladed weapons is hysterical. After short skirmishes the colored background will be covered in the blood of wolfs, would-be prince charmings, lumber jacks, and the crumbs of gingerbread men. The violence is entertaining for the first 20 minutes of the game but, like the rest of Fairytale Fights, its appeal is outlived by its monotonous game play.

This game is wait-in-line-at-the-DMV boring. The levels lack any sort of pacing and stretch on longer than what should be allowed under cruel-and-unusual-punishment laws. To make matters worse, there are sections in the levels where you’ll be blocked from progressing and forced to satisfy an undisclosed kill count before you can continue. This is mind-numbingly bad, because for the majority of the level you can avoid all enemies until you hit these invisible walls where you’re forced to actually play the game. Some life is pumped back into the game with small puzzle sections and light platforming elements spread throughout the levels, but the puzzles are simple process-of-elimination problems and only last for a couple of minutes.

The platforming elements are worse than the puzzles because of the terrible camera and awkward control scheme. The camera is too far out and is often blocked by stage pieces in the foreground. Once you figure out where you’re supposed to jump, the controls will be so unresponsive that you’ll die over and over on a simple jump. Not to worry though, there is no life system in Fairytale Fights so you can respawn again and again to relive all the fun you’re having.

If it isn’t clear by now, here it is: avoid Fairytale Fights. This game could’ve been fun if it came out 10 years ago and was in an arcade where you paid a quarter instead of full retail price. Adding insult to injury, this game has a grab-bag of aggravating problems that’ll make you curse the time you spent playing.

The not-so-spectacular-or-amazing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

The idea behind the Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchise is great on paper: Take your favorite Marvel superheroes and make your own team to fight the forces of evil. To a comic book nerd this idea is a dream come true. But the franchise has let us down before, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, by Vicarious Visions, is only so much of an improvement.

The premise of MUA2 is based around Marvel’s 2006-2007 series, Civil War. The Civil War is sparked by the reckless behavior of a naïve super team that plunges the entire Marvel Universe into chaos and pitts friend against friend and Avenger against Avenger.

In this war of ideologies the super hero community was split in two, each side lead by a strong leader, and backed by certainty of righteousness. Iron Man backed the pro-registration act, a bill that would have all superheroes become government workers and essentially a super police force, while Captain America stood for the individual rights of all heroes and lead the anti-registration movement.

The anti-registration movement eventually lost after Captain America’s surrender and his realization that heroes were no longer fighting for the common good of the people they swore to protect. In the comics, the events of the Marvel Civil War eventually lead to the assassination of Captain America, the downfall of Iron Man, and the rise of Norman Osborn, Spider-man’s long time foe the Green Goblin.

The problem with MUA2 is it’s only loosely based on the comics. The first half of the game follows the story set in the seven-book series, down to every panel and dialogue box. The second half goes off on an odd tangent that isn’t anywhere near as compelling as the comics it’s supposed to be based on.

If you’ve read the comics this is a huge disappointment, because the events of the civil war had a profound impact on the Marvel Universe. If you’re oblivious to the original storyline then it’s just another mediocre story with superheroes that happens to look pretty.

The graphics are a huge improvement over the first game. The 24 playable characters look great and are fantastic interpretations of the print superheroes. The powers are impressive to look at, while the levels are colorful and highly detailed. Later in the game when you’ll explore the Black Panther’s techno-jungle home of Wakanda, which is a delight to behold.

The camera is another improvement and easily the most notable change from the first Marvel Ultimate. The camera is now closer to the action and gives a better perspective of the gameplay, making it more fun overall. But it does occasionally revert to being too far away.

Control wise, the game hasn’t evolved much from the original. The one addition to the control scheme is the fusion powers that mix-and-match two heroes’ powers for devastating effects. If you add Thor’s control over lightning to Captain America’s star-spangled shield you get arcs of electricity bouncing off the shield and frying the enemies who are unlucky enough to stand in the way.

The problem is there are only three fusion match-ups: clearing, guided and targeted. This drastically limits the effectiveness of certain teams if they lack specific powers like energy or elemental. This can force players to select heroes they don’t care about for the sake of one fusion power. And when you can’t have the team you want, be as effective as one that fits the mold it defeats the purpose of the Ultimate Alliance games

The targeted fusion power – which has two characters perform some variation of the fastball special made famous by Wolverine and Colossus–is the only real efficient way of taking down bosses and ultimately makes the boss’ fights less of a challenge and more of an inconvenience, since gamers will have to mash buttons to charge up for another fusion attack.

Another simplified aspect is the character customization. Vicarious Vision gutted the majority of the features from the two X-Men Legends games and the first MUA, leaving gamers with very few options and a lack-luster customization tool set.

Gamers won’t be able to equip items with the wide variety of attributes seen before, like poisoning strike or increased critical hit percentage. Players now have to pick three attributes which the entire team will share. It doesn’t seem like much but it greatly limits the combinations available.

Like other action games, as the heroes level up gamers will be able to spend points on both passive and active skills. The problem here is that the game doesn’t broadcast when characters level up. This left me checking my character stats to see if there were more points to spend. And if you go too long without checking the character sheet the game will automatically spend the points. The changes can be undone but it’s insulting to have a game auto spend experience points for you.

The last details that seals MUA2’s fate are the things taken away from the first game that made it a memorable comic book experience. This time around, there are no specific missions for heroes and fewer alternate costumes. This disappoints because of the amount of history characters like Captain America, Iron Man and the fantastic Four have. After all Marvel did just celebrate their 75th anniversary. This is ultimately a disservice to comic book fans and gamers.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is a game of give and take. Every time something new is given or fixed, something that wasn’t broken is taken away. The game is fun to play but when compared to a great comic book game that holds true to its roots—say, Batman: Arkham Asylum—MUA2 can’t compare and ends up feeling quite mediocre.

DJ Hero Preview

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

When the flood of music games hit, from Guitar Hero to Rock Revolution to everything in between, we all knew a DJ game had to be coming our way at some point. On Oct, 27 Activision will release DJ Hero for the home consoles, and it’s something gamers should be looking forward to if they’re not already.

Compared to DJ Max, the Konami predecessor commonly found in arcades, DJ Hero has an easier learning curve–like Guitar Hero compared to Guitar Freaks. But DJ Hero isn’t a rehash of the Guitar Hero formula that gamers will be able to jump into right away.

The first thing that’ll jump out is the amount of multitasking needed to play. Like other music games, DJ Hero has notes that scroll down on different colored paths asking gamers to press the corresponding button. What breaks the norm is the addition of the cross fade, which mixes the left and right tracks, and the scratching elements that create an interplay between the turntable and the three colored buttons.

This is where the multitasking element comes in. As players tap to the beat, they’ll have to flick the slider to the correct track while scratching in the correct direction on the turntable. Then players will have to adjust an effects knob that affects their multiplier on certain notes (the equivalent of the guitar’s whammy bar), all while maintaining accuracy to build up “euphoria” and a score multiplier.

It sounds simple in concept, but it’s hard to execute at first–especially on the higher difficulties.

Another feature that’s specific to DJ Hero is the rewind ability that’s gained after holding an x4 multiplier. The rewind is activated by spinning the turntable backwards 360 degrees and it causes the track to rewind so players can perfect a prior section for more points. When this seemingly small feature is combined with euphoria, DJ Hero’s version of star power, it adds a unique, new level of engagement.

The demo offers three mixes on one setlist: (I Heard It Through the) Grapevine/Da Funk, Hollaback Girl/Give It To Me Baby, and Boom Pow/Satisfaction. There’s a short break between mixes, which keeps players involved until the end of the three songs–much like how a real DJ wouldn’t stop the music between songs. Each mix has a different gameplay style: tap-, mixing- or scratch-heavy. The three tracks are a lot of fun, and if the full game lives up to these songs then wannabe DJs should have plenty to look forward to.

A fourth song is available, a Beastie Boys/Foo Fighters mix, but was on the demo’s guitar-and-turntable option. This mode wasn’t playable with a guitar, but it showed how the two instruments are compatible by converting the other half of the song into a standard Guitar Hero track. This feature will be worth its weight in proverbial gold if there’s one turntable and plenty of guitars lying around.

The accompanying visuals are what you’d expect from the Hero line of games, with lots of colored backdrops and trendy camera angles. The demo only offers one generic club setting, but Activision boasts that the full game will have iconic nightclubs along with house parties set in the Hollywood Hills to spin tracks in.

On the hardware side is the turntable. The worst possible scenario that could happen would be if the turntable were like the first generation of Guitar Hero controllers: small, cheap, and not much to look at. Fortunately, that’s not the case with the DJ Hero turntable. Its buttons, knobs, and sliders are laid out intuitively, and it isn’t nearly as cheap as it looks in the photos.

One problem with the controller is the cross fade slider. In the middle of a game, it’s hard to tell whether or not the slider is centered or slightly off to one side. This can cause a missed transition to the other track when you unexpectedly have to push harder to overcompensate for the center notch. It’s something that won’t ruin the game, but it will take time to adjust to.

Playing the other side

Artcile first appeared on sleeperhit.net

No one can deny that the video game industry loves making games about World War II. And what’s not to love? Our boys heading off to distant shores to rid the world of tyranny and murder, and bring liberty back to the Europe and the South Pacific. Yet here is a problem with the World War II games that we’ve seen thus far. Players have never had the opportunity to experience an era of history that’s shaped pop culture and human consciousness through the eyes of the people we were fighting: German and Japanese citizens and soldiers.

World War II games have put gamers in the seats of Flying Fortresses, in the jungles of the occupied Philippine islands, and on the crumbling streets Berlin. All while players continue to fight the good fight against the Axis powers even though the war has been over for more than fifty years. It’s time that American game developers and publishers show the whole story of World War II and give gamers the perspective of our foes of old.

One argument against such games is that they would force American gamers to kill their digital ancestors. Though this may seem insensitive and something that no developer in their right mind would dare produce, it’s been done before.

If you turn back the clock a bit, Electronic Arts’ Medal Of Honor: Rising Sun was the first World War II game to feature a campaign and story based in the Pacific Theatre. Rising Sun pushed the envelope further by having its first level open with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The game debuted here in the States where the events of Pearl Harbor and the Pacific Theater are still sensitive topics, but it was also released in Japan.

Rightfully so, Rising Sun’s release was met with friction from Japan’s gaming community. A 2004 GameSpot article interviewed two Japanese gamers, both left anonymous, about the game’s premise and release. Both gamers described their feelings as being at odds with and disliking the idea of playing an invading soldier who’s killing their virtual ancestors.

Tarrinie Williams, the senior producer of Rising Sun, defended the game in an interview with IGN in 2003. Williams said the premise and story of Rising Sun was a natural progression of the Medal of Honor series. Williams also said that the story of the game needed to be told because the Pacific campaign and its battles are frequently overlooked in the grand scheme of the Second World War.

To Williams’ point, The Pacific Campaign was a natural direction for World War II games to go. The stories and experiences of soldiers fighting in jungle paradises turned to living hells needed to be told—along with the fact that Europe is seen as a bland game setting these days. What better way to bring those stories to life than through a medium where the consumer can look through the sights of the Thompson sub-machine gun?

The next step, though a risky one, for World War II games is to tell a story through the eyes and voices of Japanese and German soldiers. These soldiers are human beings with families and reasons for fighting, and above all else, stories that should and need to be told. And there is no better way to tell these stories than through an interactive medium like video games.

Another argument that could arise from these potentially controversial video games is how to deal with acts like the Bataan Death March and the Holocaust. Many would argue that the atrocities committed by the Japanese and Nazis don’t warrant a game being made. This argument is understandable and these topics need to be approached with the utmost empathy. But a point needs to be made. The United States is still the only country to deploy nuclear weapons in a time of war, an act that killed over 200,000 people, and yet this event has never made it into a video game—probably due to tactfulness. So by applying the same logic to all World War II games, none of them should be made.

It’s doubtful that a game featuring the perspective of one of the Axis powers will ever be made because of the backlash that it’d create. Everyone from veterans’ groups, senators, and news-group pundits would jump down the throat of a developer attempting to make a decent game worthy of all the negative attention that it would receive. After all, if a game like Six Days in Fallujah gets pulled off the production line because its relationship to one of the deadliest battles of the Iraq War, then there is no telling what would happen to a game where you aim the iron sights of a MP-40 sub-machine gun at ‘40s era US soldiers during Market Garden.

There is one game that ventured down this path; it’s called Battlestations: Pacific. The Battlestations games put players in control of warships throughout the Pacific theater, along with aerial dog fights and ship-to-ship warfare. Unlike the first Battlestations game, Midway, Pacific offers a Japanese campaign that acts as a what-if timeline where the Japanese win the pacific side of the war. Though this game does have the Japanese as protagonists, it lacks a specific main character that you follow through the course of the game and the naval combat feels distant and unemotional.

What the game I’m proposing would ultimately be about is the story of a young man who is fighting for his country while the world is plunged into total war. The reasons for him fighting are vaguely known because the major decisions regarding the war are made way over a lowly grunt’s head. All that our protagonist knows is that to get home he will have to fight his way through the forests of Europe or through the jungles of the South Pacific against one of the strongest armies the world has to offer. When put into this description it sounds like any other story or game about World War II. It’s only when you add labels like Japanese Empire, Nazi-controlled Germany, or the invading Americans that turn the perspective of the game sour.

If movies like “Letters from Iwo Jima” and “Valkyrie” can tell stories about soldiers fighting for the Axis powers and portray them as human beings, instead of pop-up targets asking for bullets to be thrown at them, then it’s time video games followed suite and told a story worth hearing from the perspective of our long-time virtual enemies.

Defense Grid: The Awakening Review

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

Tower defense games are all the rage now, just like those furry UGG boots and the TapOut clothing line. With the flood of TD titles on the market, a lot of them are going to look similar to the one sitting next to them. Unfortunately Defense Grid: The Awakening doesn’t do anything to stand out from the rest.

The premise of Defense Grid is simple: build defensive towers to hold back endless waves of aliens who are hell bent on taking all your shiny energy blocks. The game makes a meager attempt to spice up its story by adding a cliché British-voiced computer AI that serves as the narrator for what’s happening on screen. As the game continues players are told about the computer’s past life as a human a millennia ago. Players will soon bear witness to the computer’s emotional train wreck as he recounts how the aliens destroyed his world. I’m guessing this is the awakening part of Defense Grid: The Awakening.

Admittedly, it is nice to see a developer try and pump a story into a game that doesn’t necessarily need one. But any goodwill the story generates is erased by the game’s plot holes, like the nameless aliens you’re slaughtering, and the dry attempts at humor.

It may make a terrible attempt at a story, but Defense Grid is a solid Live Arcade game and a solid example of the tower defense subgenre. The game is takes place over 24 levels and two campaigns, which is a lot for a Live Arcade game. Each level comes with different modes, like endless waves with basic towers that add to the replay value of the game. Levels vary from one-track paths that the aliens follow and the bread-and-butter style maze levels where players will build paths the aliens follow as they’re slowly slaughtered. The different modes and levels also come with online leader boards so gamers can see how the rest of the Xbox Live community compares.

Visually the game is mediocre. The game is presented using a traditional god’s-eye-view that gives players a good perspective of the attacking horde. The downside of this is that the level of detail in the aliens, even when zoomed in on the action, is lackluster. To be honest though, this is more a failing of the tower-defense genre of games than Defense Grid’s specifically. More times than not, the aliens resemble bugs scurrying along a colorful background, as opposed to anything remotely sci-fi.

Luckily, the art design for each level is easy on the eyes. The environments are quite varied, ranging from tundra to decaying urban settings. Things get really interesting when aliens cross multiple horizontal areas, making for challenging vertical puzzles. The multiple layers don’t add much to the gameplay but it’s nice to not stare at a flat surface for the whole game.

The towers are the most interesting part of the game. Players can choose from ten different types of towers, like the standard machine gun tower, or the flamethrower and Tesla coil, all with different attributes and properties. Each tower can be upgraded twice, granting improved abilities and range.

The controls for the game are simplistic and easy to master. The left analogue stick controls the cursor, the “A” button selects which tiles to build on and the right stick controls the zoom of camera. Interestingly, the triggers control a satellite AOE attack.
Defense Grid: The Awakening isn’t a bad game by any means. But it is boring. Everything presented in it has a been-there-done-that feel. This is probably due to the fact that tower defense games have been around as long as people have been able to play custom games, thanks to Blizzard’s Battle.net.

If the game had some sort of personality other than its emotionally unstable computer narrator it would be worth playing. That being said, playing Defense Grid is like eating saltine crackers. It’s completely doable but there are other things that are more interesting and more satisfying to do.

NHL 2k10 Preview

article was originally featured on sleeperhit.net

If there’s one thing sports fans love more than paying for an overpriced beer at the game it’s wearing their team’s jersey. NHL 2K10 by 2K Sports will debut on September 15 and aims to bring a true-as-possible hockey experience to gamers across all three home consoles. The development team for 2K10 sat down with a group of journalists on a conference call to discuss the direction of this installment in the NHL 2K franchise.

Looking back at 2008’s NHL 2K9 development, Ben Bishop, producer for both NHL 2K9 and 2K10, described the experience as challenging. It’s the first time the development team has worked with the game’s new code base and their first venture, and hockey’s first venture, on the Wii.

When it was time to start on NHL 2K10 Bishop said “We [the development team] were really excited right from the beginning to see what we could do. I think we’re all really happy with the final product.” Since the majority of sports game releases are annual it’s a constant struggle to improve upon the last game. The development team made it apparent the focus for NHL 2K10 were the graphics, fine tuning the control scheme and updating the online multiplayer.

Bishop says gamers can expect a big improvement in the graphics over last year’s NHL 2K9. “We have a brand new player model. The player’s proportions, uniforms and smaller details look a lot better” Bishop says, “We redid all of our player likenesses. I think there are so many players in the game that look spot on.”

These graphical improvements aren’t solely limited to the player models. 2K also redid the introductions for the teams that take place before each game. These introductions show off the detail that has been put into the venues and give gamers a genuine “ live game” experience, as if they’re at the hockey ring, ready to watch the away team get slammed.

Then of course there’s the tweaked gameplay. NHL 2K10’s gameplay will slower, compared to previous years. Abe Navarro, lead gameplay producer, explains that “when we say we’re slowing down the pace, we’re not slowing down the game by any means. Hockey is a really fast sport. What we’re doing is slowly taking back the up and down gameplay.” This adjustment will have players and their opponents, both physical and artificial, cycle the puck and play the appropriate positions more, making for a better overall game of hockey.

Another issue of 2K9’s that’s been addressed is the advantage given to AI defenders, which let them move faster than a gamer-controlled skater. The development team changed this flaw by making the AI smarter. AI controlled skaters will now, reportedly, have more options like stick lifts, checks and positioning.

Gamers will see an improvement in the way the controls handle, most notably on the Wii. NHL 2K10 is compatible with the Motion Plus attachment, so gamers can expect to see a 1-1 ratio in the puck handling for both shooting and passing. When gamers shoot for a goal the choice of shot they make will depend on the amount of movement used. A flick of the wrist gives players wrist shots while larger movements will have the virtual athlete correspond with a harder-hitting slap shot; even corresponding transitional movements will relate appropriately. Passing has been changed to work similarly, players will now need to press the “A” button as they flick and pass. Still, this year’s motion controls are a step back from 2K9’s motion-heavy configuration, which the development team thought to be overpowering. Retro controls are also available for gamers who’d rather not flail around when passing the puck.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, which the development team says are almost identical across all fronts, will use the right analogue stick for improved passing and defense mechanics. When playing defense, gamers can push the right stick in any direction making blocks more accurate. The development team simplified the passing mechanics that many considered clumsy in 2K9. Instead of the timing-sensitive button presses, gamers hold the pass button down until their player has possession of the puck, only to release it, passing the puck in the process.

Like the sports they represent, sports video games are competitive and it’s essential to have a good, if not great, online component. 2K10 will deliver its multiplayer options along with an interface that allows gamers to invite friends to a game with a few simple button presses. NHL 2K10 will bring the franchise mode online, where players can play a season with friends. Along with franchise mode, the development team has added a create-team mode allowing players to take their fantasy team online.

Personalized teams allow gamers to invite up to 15 friends to participate in matches. Out of these 15, whoever is online will then play the match against other user-created teams. At the end of the match the results are tracked so players can see how their team ranks against the rest of the NHL 2K10 community. Bishop says “this is a real cool way to have a persistent identity with a unique team, logo and uniform setup that you created and then see how you and your friends stack up.”

When gamers are making a team, they won’t be able to import logos of their own, but the development team assured us that there will be plenty of logos and uniforms, ranging from classic NHL logos to contemporary ones that have yet to be seen in the league. Bishop says that they’re able to add these new logos and uniforms before they’ve been made public because of the good relationship 2K sports keeps with the NHL. In keeping with the realism of the NHL, Bishop and the development team will work to keep the game up to date with roster updates.