A Solid Step Sideways

Every once in a while there is a game that comes along that is so close to greatness that all you can think about it is what it could have been. Mass Effect 2 is one of those games.

Mass Effect 2 picks up more or less right where the first game leaves off; you've saved the Citadel from the Reapers (for now) and, if you import your character from the first game, you find that the universe is right where you left it. Within the first few minutes of the game, the Normandy is destroyed and your Shepard is killed (then quickly resurrected by the aptly named Lazarus project) acting as an oh so convenient excuse for why your character loses all his/her skills. As an added bonus, you can use this opportunity to change your appearance or even your class. I chose to change from Infiltrator to Vanguard (although I wish I hadn't) just to try a class with more biotic powers.

Immediately after gaining control of Shepard, I noticed the streamlining that BioWare had done with the UI... and by streamlining I mean going at it with a butcher knife. Instead of fixing the clunky inventory in the first game they removed it. Hot swapping ammo and armor was a bit annoying and slow (I guess), so it was cut. It was also apparently a little too immersion breaking to see the life/shield bars of you and you party so that's now gone too. Essentially, they boiled the core interactions down to those of a 3rd person shooter. You can move, shoot, and interact. That's it. Furthermore, in an absolutely asinine decision, they made it so weapons now use a form of ammo (cooling clips) rather than the very unique cool down mechanic that the first game had. By BioWare's own admission, they were trying to appeal more to the shooter crowd, but they plain and simply went too far.

The other huge change in Mass Effect 2 relates to exploring the galaxy in general. Instead of merely clicking a planet and going directly to it, you are now forced to actually pilot the Normandy around the galaxy. I felt like this was a good change. It made it feel like you were actually exploring the universe. However, instead of going down and driving the Mako or similar vehicle around planets exploring, BioWare put in a "fun the first three times only" mini-game. In this mini-game, you probe a planet for minerals. To get the best ending, you are required to mine dozens of these planets. I was pretty tempted to stop after doing it twice. Additionally, with the exploration of the Mako gone, moving from area to area on foot felt VERY artificial. I would be in one place, talk to a person, tell them I was "ready," then one loading screen later I was in another area. Instead of feeling like I was moving around a huge world, it made everything feel small.

In addition to being "teleported" from place to place, the game introduced the concept of missions. Essentially, a mission is a delineated set of content. The first game had such an idea, but didn't go so far as to make them so obvious. Here, when you finish a mission (which can be by talking to somebody, interacting with an object, killing someone, etc), a mission completed summary screen instantly appears and you are "teleported" back to where you started the mission. I found it VERY immersion breaking. It was as if they didn't think that the first one felt enough like a "game" so they made it feel more that way. All in all, the universe of Mass Effect 2 felt small and limited, rather than expansive like it should have.

Combat is something that BioWare did manage to do a good job with. The shooting felt good and the cover system worked really well. I am sort of getting tired of games that make combat "arenas" so obvious (walking into a room that is full of waist high barriers), but it wasn't quite as annoying here as it was in other games. The abilities also felt more interesting and useful, and even epic in some cases, but I was a little put off by the fact that most of them shared a global cool down. The fact that I couldn't use my Charge skill then immediately use another ability was lame. It also made the game as a whole much less strategic. In the first game, I would carefully manage my companions to make sure that they used the correct abilities at the correct time, one after another. In this game, however, since all abilities are on the same cool down, it was almost impossible to ever tell them to use anything as they would do SOMETHING every time they could and would be on cool down most of the rest of the time. Essentially, the combat was more action oriented and less strategic. Whether that is good or bad is something you will have to decide.

Weapons and armor was another thing I didn't like. Instead of having an inventory system (albeit a clunky one), you would select weapons and ammo pre-mission. However, the number of weapons and armor pieces is quite small and none of the weapons had any sort of stats at all, merely stating that they were upgrades to some other weapon. Basically you just always use your most recently obtained weapon and call it good. It definitely felt like they had taken away most of the choices; I enjoyed deciding if it was worth trading damage for a cool down. There were VERY few choices in regards to weapons and armor in Mass Effect 2.

Finally, the story itself was a bit lacking. You start the game with a huge Reaper threat and you end the game with a huge Reaper threat. In the middle is 80%+ that is nothing more than recruiting your team and making sure they are not "distracted" by completing their loyalty missions. Don't get me wrong, the loyalty missions were nearly always fantastic, but it felt like a game made up completely of side quests. The writing and voice acting maintain the very high level of quality that BioWare puts into all their games, but the overall story left something to be desired.

While it may sound like I didn't like this game at all, that's really only true in comparison to the first game. They tried to "fix" a few too many things from there. Some of them weren't broken and other they "fixed" by removing them wholesale. If I had played this game on it's own, I think I would have felt very different about it. Something that seems to be increasingly common. Mass Effect 2 is NOT a step forward in the series, but it isn't really a step backward... it's a solid step to the side. Hopefully BioWare will be able to to take all the best things from the first two games and put it into the third (Hammerhead hover tank please). In the meantime, I whole heartedly recommend you play this if you've played the first and enjoyed it. It's a fun game and a decent trip back into BioWare's most compelling universe.

Empire Avenue Verification Code: EAVB_EGACGLFMGJ

Brilliant But Unnecessary

When BioShock was released back in 2007, it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. A delicious mix of shooting, horror, and light role-playing elements, it was essentially a treat made from my favorite genre cookie cutter. With System Shock 2 being one of my previous favorites, I was excited to see how Irrational (er, I mean 2K... no, wait, I mean Irrational) would do with this "spiritual" successor. While some would argue that it wasn't as strong as System Shock 2, it is without a doubt a brilliant game and a wonderful piece of narrative.

When BioShock 2 was announced, I must admit that I wasn't all that excited. While normally I would be thrilled that one my favorite games was getting a sequel, BioShock not only didn't need a sequel, I couldn't even think of a way that one would make sense. It told its story; it didn't need anything else. I was further concerned when I heard that the sequel would have multiplayer; since BioShock was all about story and setting, multiplayer not only didn't make sense, it was unnecessary.

Despite all of my concerns, a week or so ago I found myself in Best Buy paying full price for BioShock 2. Despite some quibbles with the game, I feel that I got my money's worth.

While it is probably most fair to review BioShock 2 on its own merits, I find it impossible to not compare it to the first game. For comparison, I reinstalled BioShock and played the first 2-3 hours. BioShock starts in a way that introduces you to Rapture, plasmids, and even Andrew Ryan in a heavy and even spooky way. The game even features some amazing System Shock 2-style flashbacks showing what had befallen some of Rapture's deceased inhabitants. BioShock 2 has... none of that. It starts by informing you that you were a Big Daddy, you died, then you were alive again. There just isn't feeling behind your character or you being where you are. Where Rapture was an integral part of the story in the first game, it's merely the setting of the second.

Perhaps the biggest change between the two games is what I just mentioned: you play as a Big Daddy. This affects your game play in a number of different ways. First and perhaps foremost, your suit allows you to wield a plasmid in your left hand and a weapon in your right instead of being forced to swap back and forth between them. The ability to have both a weapon and a plasmid out was definitely a welcome change, but after going back into the first game, I must admit that it really didn't make all that much difference. In all honesty, a good portion of the time it merely served to make the battles much more frantic. While I've heard that swapping weapons and plasmids would briefly pause the game on the console, it gave no such respite in the PC version. Having to worry about having the correct weapon and plasmid out in the heat of the battle seemed to get really complicated at times.

The second big change that your Big Daddy suit effects is that in addition to merely harvesting or saving Little Sisters, you now have the option to adopt them. After adoption, they ride around on your back guiding you towards "angels." After you place them down gather, all the nearby splicers descend upon your location looking to sate their ADAM appetite. While this mechanic definitely felt like something that was supposed to be the most unique and new in the sequel, it was hands down my least favorite part of the entire game. I was provided with some interesting new pieces of equipment (deployable turrets, etc), but these sections simply weren't fun. Even though they were technically optional, they provided me with some additional ADAM making them full much more compulsory. In all fairness, the first couple of times I did one of these segments I thought they were interesting; they just weren't fun any time after that.

Other than that, being a Big Daddy doesn't really affect you at all. In fact, I didn't FEEL like a Big Daddy. I moved and otherwise did pretty much everything else the same way I did them in the first game. I'm not sure if that is a good or a bad thing, but my Big Daddy-ness just didn't really affect my game at all.

My next major complaint with the game is the default control scheme. It just doesn't make any sense at all. Besides having your mouse buttons mapped to opposite hands on screen, they moved around a lot of the actions from where they were in the first game. I remapped quite a few keys to something that made more sense, but was further annoyed when the on-screen prompts didn't update with my key changes, something that actually caused me to harvest a Little Sister I was trying to save. After firing up the first game, I found that the default mapping was different than what I had changed my keys to in BioShock 2, but in pretty much every case they actually made more sense than what I had changed them to. I have no idea why they decided to change the defaults so heavily from the first game, but it was definitely to the detriment of the game.

As for the overall story telling, it was a mixed bag. BioShock had some brilliant narration and an amazing twist... before trailing off pretty heavily in the latter part of the game. The first game also did an amazing job of using the game itself to tell the story via dynamic lighting, flashbacks, in-game movies, and other similar devices. BioShock 2's story was merely presented via radio communiqué and cutscenes. Even though it didn't tell the story as well as the first game, nor was it even close to as compelling, the story was still quite good in its own right and managed to stay strong (even pick up) in the final stages of the game. If I was evaluating the story of BioShock 2 on its own, I think I would be very pleased with it. In comparison to the first game, it fails in most areas, but succeeds in others.

At this point, you've probably noticed that I haven't talked about the actual gameplay much. Why? It is more or less EXACTLY the same as the first game. The enemies are almost exactly the same, the weapons are almost exactly the same, and the plasmids are almost exactly the same. While they did mix a couple of things up, for the most part the game plays more like an expansion pack than a sequel. I wouldn't necessarily call that a bad thing as the first game was a lot of fun to play, but I would have liked to see more improvements. They did add a couple of new enemy types (and removed at least one), which were pretty solid additions for the most part. They also switched up the weapons a little bit and adding some additional hacking options, such as remote hacking, but again, it was still remarkably similar to the first game. That reminds me of another pretty big change: hacking.

In the first game, hacking was a Pipe Dream-style mini-game that paused the game and required 10-30 or more seconds to complete depending on the difficulty and your skill level. While I didn't really have a big problem with it initially, after playing the second game and then going back to the first, I can see why they changed it. In the second game, entering the hacking mini-game does NOT pause the game. However, hacking itself goes a lot more quickly merely tasking you with stopping a moving needle inside of a correct zone, computer golf style. Depending on the difficulty of the hack, you have to stop it more times and in smaller zones. Even though I don't think this method of hacking is perfect either (failure was much more likely, later in the game it became wildly impossible), I do think it helped the flow of the game as hacking felt much more integrated into the overall world.

I think at this point, about the only thing I haven't mentioned is the ending. I went the "good" route, saving all the Little Sisters and the plot NPCs I came across. I was pretty impressed as this not only had a significant impact on my ending, but also on some things in the final portion of the game. If there is one thing that BioShock 2 does better than its predecessor, its the final portion of the game. While it fails to have anything resembling a significant twist, the story stays strong all the way through the end, reveals some interesting new insights into the minds of Little Sisters, and even provides you with a relatively fulfilling ending.

There IS one more thing I haven't discussed: the multiplayer component. I won't spend too much time on it, but it is so atrociously bad, I could hardly believe it. In nearly every way, it feels like a mode that was meant to go with the first game; the hud, weapons, play style, and even the maps are lifted almost wholesale from the original game. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but it just isn't fun. There is less reason to have multiplayer in a BioShock game than there was to have a sequel. I desperately wish that they had skipped the mode in favor of spending more time with the single player experience. As it is, it is a mode a handful of people will play for a couple of weeks then will go largely forgotten by the gaming community at large.

So what's the final verdict? It's a brilliant, well made, satisfying and entertaining game. The game only fails to be amazing when sitting in the shadow of its brilliant predecessor. It is a must play by anybody who is a fan of the series or the genre. The only real, catastrophic problem with it is that is was an absolutely unnecessary game. While it would be fun to play more games in the universe, the universe just doesn't lend itself to more games (it didn't even really lend itself to a second one!). Pick up the game, play it, enjoy it, then pray that we don't get a third game.

There Is No Truth

Sometime in either late 2008/early 2009, I picked up the first Assassin's Creed on Steam for $5. I then pulled out my trusty Xbox 360 gamepad and proceeded to have 15 hours of delight with the game. When Assassin's Creed II (AC2) was announced to come out this last fall, I was excited, but also a bit disappointed that it wasn't going to come out for the PC right away. In October of last year, however, I picked up my first "next-gen" console: a PS3.

Back when I was playing Prince of Persia, I had a terrible graphics issue that basically made me stop playing. I realized at that time that unless the PC version of a game really adds something new or benefits from the mouse/keyboard controls (or is super cheap), it just isn't worth it to pick up a PC version over a console version. With that knowledge in hand, getting AC2 for my PS3 instead of waiting for the PC was a no brainer.

Due to a brother who is VERY good at taking hints, (It's on sale for $40! Get it for me for Christmas!) I received it as a Christmas present. You don't have to be a calendar wizard to see that it's taken me two full months now to finish it. It my defense, I had a LOT of PC games I had purchases during the Steam sales and only got around to really sitting down to play it recently. I was very glad I did.

AC2 picks up, for better or worse, exactly where the first game left off. You once again take the role of Desmond Miles, a reborn assassin who can revisit the memories of his ancestors. With the help of a friend, you escape from Abstergo, the evil corporation that was taking advantage of you in the first game. Before too long, you are back in the Animus reliving the experiences of another of your assassin ancestors, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. This is the beginning of my first real annoyance with this game: it starts too slowly.

Between escaping from Abstergo and reliving Ezio's early life (including his birth!), you spend multiple hours in the game before you ever even get your assassin weapons. I started and stopped playing this early section twice because it just didn't suck me in at all.

I also didn't enjoy the fact that this game didn't explain the Creed at all. The beginning of the first game did a much better job explaining what assassins are, what they stand for, and why you should care. Even after you obtain your assassin gear here, you are basically just sent off in the world on a crazy mission of revenge. I was quite a ways into the game before I really started to feel like a proper hardcore assassin instead of a cocky, spoiled brat who was good at fighting and climbing buildings. I will admit that while I initially found Ezio to be remarkably unlikable at first, his character grows immensely as the game progresses and ultimately becomes much deeper and interesting than Altair ever was.

While the beginning of the game may start slowly, it picks up shortly afterward and then rushes forward at a ridiculous pace. In fact, while I thought the story in the first was a little more interesting, the story in AC2 was much more substantial. The overall pace was quite good and each memory sequence was well contained. Even the end of the game was more or less satisfying. The second game definitely has a stronger story overall, despite the fact that the Creed plays a much smaller (almost non-existent) role. I did miss the more planned-out assassinations that the first game had, but the second game was much more varied and dynamic throughout.

Perhaps the place where the second game most excels over the first is in the game mechanics themselves. The developers really just took everything that was fun about the first game and made it better. The 1-2 button platforming was brought forward along with some additions such as being able to leap up to higher ledges while climbing. The mechanics felt very familiar, but somehow better. Additionally, the combat in the game was worked on a bit too. First of all, the developers added a pretty big handful of new weapons. In addition to the sword, knife, throwing knives, hidden blade (you get double blades in AC2) and fists, you also get: medicine, a wrist pistol, a poisoned blade, smoke bombs, and the ability to throw money on the ground to distract guards. While they weren't all great additions (the poisoned blade was pretty worthless), it was just really nice to have more variety in combat.

In one particularly fun moment, I was fighting two heavily armored, long sword wielding guards. After performing the dance with them for a bit, I was getting frustrated with my inability to damage them much. I then remembered my pistols, switched weapons, and shot them both in the face. The Indiana Jones scene flashed in my mind and I ran about my business.

Finally, in addition to the weapons you can carry, you can also pickup two handed axes, polearms, spears, and even things like brooms and fishing poles. You can also train additional skills in your special weapons, like sweeping people off their feet with spears and throwing sand in the face of your enemy while unarmed. If you wished, you could fight every battle a little bit differently, and I thought that was great.

Despite the combat improvements, combat was also one of the areas where this game really faltered compared to the first. Mostly in the fact that this game was WAY too easy. Basically, the developers gave us a plethora of new tools to use that make us more effective, but they neglected to make the enemies we face any more challenging. In the first game, to even assassinate an enemy you had to sneak up behind them otherwise they'd merely throw you off and attack. In AC2, you can walk right up to a group of guys and simultaneously stab two of them in the face with your hidden blades. You can then throw a smoke bomb on the ground (which stuns everyone who runs into it except for you) and stab the the rest of them two at a time. Get hit a few times? Not a problem! Merely use one of the 15 medicine vials you are carrying and go about your business. If you ever die in combat while playing this game, it'll be within the first few hours, because you are drunk, or because you are so mind numbingly terrible at games that you should be instantly euthanized. You'll definitely jump off a building a little bit a wrong a few times and die that way, but when it comes to the enemies you face, Ezio is borderline invincible.

In addition deeper story and more involved combat, they also added something pretty significant to this game: money. You collect money by looting people you kill (so little as to not be worth it), from chests strewn about the world (again, not significant enough to be worthwhile), from completing missions, and finally from your villa. Pretty early on, you take control of your family's villa in the country side. Your villa generates money every 20 minutes of in game time. It generates more money the more you put into it, i.e. spend money to improve your blacksmith, bank, and fix your mine (as examples) and it'll generate more for you later. You also get discounts at the vendors in your villa if you upgrade them. I figured out pretty quickly that it was smart to upgrade as much as possible early on, so sunk most of my money into getting everything fixed up. I was glad as I did, as I had plenty of money to buy all the new weapons (22 in all), armor upgrades (4 different, 4 piece armor sets to buy), and was evening able to buy paintings to further my villa's value. You also use money to get healed, refill your ammo (smoke bombs, bullets, and throwing knives), and to top off your medicine and poison pouches. While I thought that money was a great improvement to the series overall, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of endgame money sinks. In my current playthrough, I literally have 10 times as much as the single most expensive item ever cost. It would have been nice to have had something to drop money on even late in the game.

As you probably could tell so far, I basically spent the entire game comparing it to the first. While I felt like this game was stronger of the two, I kept thinking that the first game had done a bunch of things better. To see if I was right or not, I decided to fire up the first game. I didn't even spend 15 minutes there. Despite my complaints, the second game truly is a full improvement over the first. That's not to say the first game is bad or even that the second game is better in every way, but as a complete product AC2 was a very solid upgrade. I'm very anxious to see where they take the series next (throwing my vote in for 1700's England or France).

Finally, I'd like to discuss the downloadable content. I picked up both pieces of DLC, Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities for $4 each. I also bought the additional three tombs that come with Bonfire for an extra $3. All told, I thought that both pieces of DLC were solid additions. Battle of Forli adds some great open combat sections while the Bonfire of the Vanities adds the best assassination missions in the entire game. I thought both of them were easily worth $4, even if neither of them were very long. I was, however, disappointed by the fact that they each felt like they were pieces of missing content from the main game. Instead of feeling like something new, that would add to the game, I felt like I paid $8 to fill in a gap in the story. While that did annoy me, I really thought they were both worthwhile. Even the additional tombs that I paid a $1 each for were fun. If you are considering the DLC and haven't played the game yet, I would recommend buying them before you finish the game, however, as they fill in memory sequences 12 and 13 (14 is the last one), so if you buy them before then, they'll nicely fill in a missing piece of the story.

Let me sum it up for you: Assassin's Creed II is an absolutely brilliant game. It's a worthy addition to an exceptionally solid franchise and a very fascinating universe. If you enjoyed the first game, you absolutely have to play this one. If you haven't played the first game, you absolutely have to play them both. Trust me. You won't be disappointed.

Machinarium

Machinarium is a quaint little indie game that came out last year to relatively high praise. The folks over at Game-Central.org were huge fans, even going so far as to make it a top contender for Game of the Year for 2009. Because of all the good things I had heard about the game, I was pretty excited play it and also had relatively high expectations for it. I picked up as part of a six-game indie bundle for a mere $20. While the game is undoubtedly brilliant, it didn't quite live up to my expectations.

For any of you not familiar, the game is a classic point-and-click style adventure game featuring inventory (with item combinations) and other similar adventure game trappings. The main character is a spunky little robot who has the ability to make himself taller and shorter and store items... by eating them.

Loved

• Music. The music in Machinarium is absolutely amazing. If you are into video game music at all (I'm really not, but still enjoyed it), you will be blown away by the music here. I absolutely can't think of any game that had better music. It's so good, I know of people who paid pretty high fees to buy vinyl soundtracks from overseas. It really is that good.
  
  
• Art. Everything in Machinarium was hand-drawn and then rendered frame by frame in Photoshop. The game is just beautiful to look at and all the animations are beautiful. It's the kind of game where you could take a screen shot at pretty much any time and set it as your wallpaper.
  
  
• Puzzles. I loved the puzzle variety in this game. There were mini-game style puzzles (even a full Space Invaders game!), as well as more traditional adventure game style puzzles like listening to a radio and then playing the same tune back into a miniature piano like device. None of the puzzles in this game felt awkward or contrived to me; I never once had to use a rubber chicken as a pulley (Fate of Atlantis I'm looking at you) or anything like that.
  
  
• Narrative style. I was a little torn by this, but in the end I really liked it. Instead of using either written or spoken dialog, all the robots communicate in the game using pictures. In one area, I saw a sad wrench shaped robot. I "told" him that I wanted to use him to unscrew a large cap and he "told" me about how his record player was stolen and that he was sad. I was able to figure out exactly what he wanted me to do without the use of any words whatsoever. It worked surprisingly well and by the end of the game it had really grown on me.
  
  
• Hint system. The way they implemented their hint and walkthrough system felt so brilliant to me, I want other people to steal it. For every screen, you can press the hint button and your little protagonist robot will "think" of what the overall goal of the area is. His thought bubble gives you a valuable clue in what you are trying to accomplish without really spoiling anything for you. I thought that it worked so well, I found myself using it on pretty much every screen just to see what it would show. In addition, the game features a full walkthrough built into the game. To access the walkthrough, however, you are forced to play through another mini game in which you guide a bullet shooting key to a lock. Once the walkthrough book is open, it uses beautiful images to show you what you should be doing. (Just as a side note: I was able to quite easily finish the game without using the walkthrough, but I did use the hint system quite liberally.)
  

Hated

• It's a Flash game. Machinarium was made in Flash and plays in a wrapped Flash viewer. There is no reason that this game couldn't have been a web game. While some would think this a minor complaint, it bothered me more than I thought it would. One of the big problems with Flash is that the right mouse button doesn't do anything but bring up a right click menu to tell me about Flash. Also, when the game was in full screen mode, it was surrounded by blackness (admittedly not necessarily a Flash issue), however it was very annoying as lots of the areas were very dark and it made it almost impossible to see where the "screen" ended and the blackness began. That wouldn't have been much of an issue, but the only way to access the inventory was to mouse over the hotspot at the top of the "screen," click the item, try to use it, then drag it back to the hotspot and click to put it back. I would have loved to be able to put items back by pressing escape or right mouse clicking (I tried it do it throughout the entire game), but alas, the limitations of their development environment didn't allow it.
  
  
• Length. I absolutely don't feel like all games need to be really long; in fact, I've found myself enjoying shorter games more and more. However, Machinarium felt too short too me. The game doesn't take more than a few hours tops (unless you you fail at puzzles) and left me wanting more, but not in a good way. For how sprawling the city looking to be, it felt downright microscopic. Additionally, the game featured almost no back tracking, which could be good depending on how you look at it, but for the most part just made the game feel smaller and shorter.
  

Machinarium really is a good game. I would easily recommend it to anybody who loves adventure games and even to people who don't normally games. It has a charm that few games have. While I definitely had some complaints with a couple of things, I liked what I played. Hopefully this just means we'll see more similar games from this team.

Should have been Fahrenheit in the US too

Last week, I managed to finish Indigo Prophecy while waiting to get some time on my PS3 to play Assassin's Creed II. In short: it wasn't what I was expecting. Not quite a game and not quite a movie, Indigo Prophecy occupies an area somewhere in between. I think the interactive experience they were shooting for is a very novel and interesting idea, but I'm not sure they quite captured it here.

Warning for anybody who hasn't played the game yet: I'm going to talk HEAVY spoilers in here, especially considering the ending. If you haven't played and don't want it spoiled, stop reading now.

Loved

• Interactive movie. I really liked the idea of "playing" an interactive movie. It was a unique experience that I don't think I have ever had before. Instead of merely taking control of a single protagonist and working to "win" the game, you actually take control of both a murderer and the detectives tasked with catching him. I found myself very torn at times and not quite sure who to root for. The separate story lines did fully converge late in the game and it became clear who the villain was. The narrative was strong and interesting, and it made for a great experience.
  
  
• Game-like sections. Indigo Prophecy has two main gameplay areas: one plays more like a game with you controlling the character directly and one that is more of a cutscene with limited interaction. I very much enjoyed the areas focused on gameplay. For example, the start of the game is amazing. You witness one of the main characters murdering somebody in a public restroom and then are given control of him during which you frantically try to figure out how to clean up, hide the evidence, and get out of the restaurant. Soon after, you take control of the detectives and are tasked with investigating the murder scene your other character just left. Oddly enough, I even found myself enjoying the more mundane actions like taking a shower and getting dressed.
  

Hated

• The ending. The story in Indigo Prophecy is good up until a particular turning point (finding out the truth about Agatha). After that, the story takes a very strong turn directly into Crazytown. Everything after that feels rushed and most of it makes almost no sense at all. Furthermore, all three of the games various endings are wildly unfulfilling and left me filling pretty empty even when I got the "good" ending. It felt to me like they condensed what should have been three or so more hours of game into the last one. It just wasn't good. While reading a FAQ after I finished the game to learn about the endings/choices I didn't get/take, I found these glorious quotes very accurately describing how I felt about the latter part of the game.
  
  Concerning Jade/Agatha:
  
  

  Another major turning point! Give the child to Agatha if you want, it's your choice. Now for a friendly warning...If you enjoyed the plot up to this point, turn the game off after giving the kid to Agatha or keeping it to yourself. Quit the game, deinstall it, forget about it... You're still here? Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you... *spoilers* What. The. FUCK. is an Artificial FUCKING Intelligence doing in a game about the OCCULT and about MAYAN RELIGION?! Seriously, fuck you David Cage. Fuck you.

  Concerning the Carla/Lucas Relationship:
  
  

  Right, you thought that, at this point, you had seen all stupid plot twists, right? Well, guess what buddy, you're wrong. One kiss and...Aaahhhh, my eyes! Let's take two second to mourn the death of a potentially good story-line before we move on. See? Told ya you should have uninstalled the game while you could...

• Quick time events. While the half of the game that was more "game-like" was enjoyable, the other half wasn't. This section was basically nothing but cutscenes in which you much press keys at defined times following a Simon Says sort of pattern. The first 3 times I did these events I found them interesting, but they got very, very old long before the game was done. There were also plenty of them that were relatively unnecessary to the story such as the boxing match and the basketball game. While they were interesting in a way, at the end I think they were a failed game mechanic. There should have been variety and even times where they just didn't exist at all.
  
  

I liked Indigo Prophecy, even with the ridiculousness that was the last hour or so of the game. I think the interactive movie idea is one that is relatively unique in the saturated game market and playing this game made me want to play Quantic Dream's new game, Heavy Rain. I think there is plenty that could be improved upon here, but for the most part Indigo Prophecy accomplished what it was trying to.

Pick it up for cheap if you missed it, otherwise start getting excited for Heavy Rain like I am.

Army of Two

Other than perhaps GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, I've never been a big fan of console shooters. With few exceptions, I find myself wishing that I had a keyboard and mouse in just about every situation. I've recently come to understand that when the game goes third person, I don't hate the gamepad quite as much. Although as I can be attested to in my recent Uncharted review, it can still be enough to ruin a game for me.

Despite all of that, I recently picked up Army of Two for my PS3. While normally I wouldn't even considering purchasing such a game, my wife was out for the evening, my cousin's wife was watching my daughter, and my cousin wanted to play something with me. Since we were craving something we could do from the couch and the game was only $20 new, I decided to give it a try. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

In Army of Two, you and a friend play as two mercenaries working for a privatized military group. Salem and Rios are forced to work together doing things like helping each other up ledges or taking turns holding a shield/shooting. The story is pretty standard fare: the guy who starts out good but is obviously evil turns out to actually be evil. The game plays in third person (as you probably guessed) and is top/bottom split screen.

Loved

• Co-op play. Army of Two is completely saved by its co-op play. Playing with a friend is an absolute blast. The game does a great job of making you work together, such as one person drawing fire so the other person can sneak around and shoot people in the back. The game is also very well balanced for two people. While there is a single player mode (I suppose your partner would be AI controlled?), I can't imagine wasting any time on it. Seems like it just wouldn't be fun at all.
  
  
• Gun upgrades. The game features a money/upgrade system where you get cash for completing primary and secondary objectives that you can use to purchase both new guns and upgrades for those guns. Most upgrades are practical things: clip increases, damage upgrades, accuracy boosts, and so forth. However, each gun also has the absolutely ludicrous "bling" upgrade. It does exactly what you (and Fitty) would expect it to: it covers your weapon with gold and diamonds. While the option is undoubtedly ridiculous, I found it to be very fitting with the overall tone of the game and was a fun thing to do with all of my favorite guns.
  

Hated

• It's a console shooter. At the end of the day, this still annoys me. While I specifically purchased this game to play with my cousin while sitting on the couch, if it had been a PC game with us either playing in the same room or chatting via Skype, it would have been a better game. That's really all there is to it. The mouse/keyboard control scheme is better for shooters than a gamepad and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.
  
  
• Cliche and predictable story. I could see the entire story from the very beginning of the game. In fact, the plot twists were so unbelievably obvious, I thought that they couldn't possibly be true. No writer would be that obvious would he? Well, he was. The game was oozing with "bro-ness" and the story itself wasn't interesting in the slightest. The story did little more than provide a reason for doing what you were doing. (To its credit, it made more sense than the story of Modern Warfare 2. I suppose that's something.)
  
  
• No same machine versus mode. Unless I wasn't understanding the menu system properly, I couldn't play versus mode with my cousin. It appeared I could only play versus against people on line and then only in groups of 4. It seemed quite ridiculous to me that after playing through the campaign with my buddy, I couldn't then play against him.
  
  

This game is what I would call a "popcorn movie" game. It's not deep, it's not special, but at the end you find yourself thoroughly entertained. I would never recommend it to somebody who only intended to play it single player or even in online versus, but for $20, you and a buddy will find an entertaining afternoon/evening here.

I Don't Let People Rent Space In My Head

I like to consider myself a hardcore gamer. As such, I make a sporting attempt to play each and every game that other serious gamers consider to be really good. I have a level 80 character in WoW in part because I felt like I needed that experience on my gaming resume, and I still believe that you aren't a hardcore PC gamer unless you've given WoW a serious chance... but I digress.

One of the games I've heard about for a long time, but haven't ever gotten around to playing was Psychonauts. When Steam had it on sale for $2 a couple weeks ago, I knew that I officially no longer had an excuse.

Whenever I start into such a highly lauded game, I find that I look at the game with an overly critical eye. I seem to take some sort of sadistic delight in disagreeing with the masses; however, as was the case with WoW (it really is the best MMO out there), I turned out to be a huge fan of Psychonauts.

If, like I was, you are unfamiliar with the game, I'll describe it briefly. You play as a ten-year-old boy who has run away from home to attend the Psychonauts summer training camp. The game is a console-style platformer in the vein of a Mario 64 or similar. While I've heard plenty of people say that the game plays just fine with a mouse and keyboard, within one minute of starting the game I was grabbing for my gamepad. I played the rest of the game with it and couldn't imagine doing it any other way.

Loved

• Uniqueness. I have never played anything like Psychonauts before. The game really is in a league all its own. While the actual game mechanics are nothing too original, the story/setting itself is totally unique. The thing about this game that really sets it apart is the excursions you make into the psyches of those you come in contact with. Each person is haunted by some sort of a demon: sorrow over the death of a loved one, anguish due to a failed relationship, and so forth. These demons all manifest themselves in very interesting ways. In one mind you find yourself squaring off with Napoleon Bonaparte in a "strategy" game. It's up to you to recruit the villagers you need for your militia and find the weapons and food they require. In yet another, you find yourself in a sort of neon, Mexican wrestling, bullfighting inspired world. Each mind was completely different from the previous and I found them all very entertaining.
  
  
• Powers. The other thing I was really impressed with is that they managed to come up with as many psychic powers as they did. While some of them had very little usefulness (Pyrokinesis), others (Levitation) were insanely useful. There was an even a power to see through the eyes of another (Clairvoyance), which, despite the fact that it was only really necessary in a single mind/world was constantly entertaining to use on people and see what they thought of you. My only complaint here is that I wish that they had found ways to make all the powers more continually useful, but it's a minor gripe at best.
  
  
• Humor. The spunky protagonist, Raz, was the source of never ending entertainment for me. Despite the fact that a large portion of the main characters were children, the game was definitely written for adults as the humor was quite mature. Some of the conversations in this game literally made me laugh out loud. One of the real highlights for me was when I fought Kochamara. The boss calls out each move right before he does it, and the first times he called out "Overly Intricate Combination" and "Hard to Avoid Area Attack" I ended up getting smacked around as my reflexes plummeted due to my laughter. The writing, story, and setting here are absolutely top notch and are definitely the reason the game is regarded as highly as it is.
  
  

Hated

• Bugginess. This was one of the buggiest games I've played in recent memory. On top of a single Blue Screen I got while playing, sound choppiness issues, and some very serious framerate issues, the game manifested an absolutely crippling graphics bug. It happened 3 or 4 times during the course of my playthrough. While playing, the graphics would suddenly alter. Raz would become completely silver and many of the textures in the world would fail to render, including the 2D graphics of the interface. That meant that I couldn't even save the game and restart. I did discover that if I changed "zones" even though the graphics were still messed up, I could see the menu and save. The challenge of trying to either navigate back to a zone change or find the bacon/salts in my invisible inventory to leave the mind I was in was very frustrating. I did manage to play through all of my annoyances though, but they were definitely there.
  
  
• Last gen. While this game was probably a lot better back when if first came out now, I found the graphics to be notably last gen. Even with all settings maxed, there were plenty of low quality textures and jagged edges. It wasn't enough to detract from enjoying the game, but it was enough to be noticeable. Along the same lines, the game didn't have any support for my Xbox 360 gamepad's trigger buttons which were required to have enough buttons to properly control the game. I ended up using a third party app to map the trigger buttons to keyboard keys. Again, this wasn't a huge issue, but definitely a mark against the game.
  
  

Psychonauts is a fun, thoroughly entertaining game. There really just isn't any game out there that's like it. Despite rather commonplace platforming mechanics, it manages to deliver something amazing. It really is a shame that the game sold so poorly; a proper "next gen" sequel would be excellent. It's also very unfortunate that the game falls into the "it was a great game, but..." category due to the crippling bugs that are still around.

My recommendation here is definitely to play it if you haven't. It's a very unique game and should be something every gamer should experience. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd recommend the PC version here (due to the bugs) unless you can get it for really cheap. If you've still got a PS2 or an Xbox lying around, you'd probably be better served to play it there.

Psychonauts truly is one of a kind.