If you can tear your attention away from the election campaign (thousands* of gamers just went “Whuh?!?  Election?” didn’t they…) / Starcraft II campout queue for a while you’ll find the following new releases in Australian stores this week:

• Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (July 27, PC/Mac)
• Hydro Thunder Hurricane (July 28, 360)
• The Guild II Renaissance (July 29, PC)
• Ace Combat: Joint Assault (July 30, PSP)
• Commander: Conquest of the Americas (July 31, PC)

Happy Zerg rushing and we’ll see you all next week.

* D’ya like how I just implied thousands of people actually read these articles?

Are you sure we got all the key points in the box art? Did you remember to add explosions? Very good!

The camera tracks a lone Agent, clad from head to toe in cybernetic armour, as he leaps across the deserted rooftops of Pacific City.  He jumps effortlessly, only seeming to graze the concrete surfaces before he hurls himself forward again.  Suddenly, wings snap open between his arms and he glides down to street level, bathed orange by the light of fire and flickering street lights.  Below, shambling mutants cover the ground like ants, moaning and baying in their lust for blood.

Cut camera to the ground.  The Agent slams into the pavement fist first, scattering mutants left and right with the shockwave.  Those unfortunate enough to break his fall explode into a green mist, the impact leaving no remnants.  The Agent stands, unhooks the machine gun on his back, and begins to fire indiscriminately into the swarm.  The mutants fall before the hail of bullets like wheat before the harvester, green blood spraying everywhere and staining the asphalt.

The scene continues for a few minutes, the only pause in the carnage comes when the Agent needs to reload.  When the last mutant falls to the ground, and the final tinkle of shell casings has echoed away, we hear the Voice of the Agency.

“Good work, Agent,” he says in a confident, authoritative tone, “now how about we see how many rings you can drive a car through?”

I’ve been struggling to write a review of Crackdown 2, because I’ve found it a little difficult to work out just what the game is trying to present to the player.  On the one hand it’s a very simplistic, fairly enjoyable sandbox game with a focus on exploration and experimentation.  On the other hand, it appears to want to imply a very deep, immersive experience that just isn’t there … and charge you accordingly.

Set in the same environment as the first Crackdown, the plot (if you can really call it that) involves a peace-keeper Agent attempting to rid Pacific City of a violent strain of mutants referred to as Freaks.  To do so he has to reclaim Agency technology from an anti-Agency terrorist group called Cell, who’ve managed to take over pretty much the entire city while the Agency struggled to create the new Agent.  Once recovered, the stolen technology can activate powerful UV bombs (the tools of “Project Sunburst”) that need to be detonated in Freak lairs all over the city to eliminate the mutant threat.

As there is no cover system, gun battles are waged "Civil War" style

The game’s major drawcard is the ability to play the game in four player co-op online.  Buddying up instantly makes the game more enjoyable, as there are any number of stupid things you can get up to.  Rooftop races become interesting the moment you throw another player into the mix with a UV shotgun.  Actually, pretty much ANY activity in the game becomes more enjoyable with the amazing griefing power of the UV shotgun, which can launch other players over long distances for minimal damage.

If you can’t buddy up, however, you’re about to find that single player is a much more reserved affair, and relies on the attraction of the sandbox to push the player’s interest.  Crackdown 2 would have to be close to the purest form of a sandbox game.  Although you have multiple objectives, the game treats them all as if they were optional.  As much importance is placed on driving your car in checkpoint races as is placed on rescuing the city from the mutants.  You’re also encouraged to explore, increase your skills and discover new and creative ways of crushing your enemies.  It’s a great game for just fucking around, leaping from roof to roof in search of elusive skill orbs and occasionally descending to the street level to blow something up.

But it’s major problem is that this directionless style of play will probably put off twice as many people as it may attract.  Although there’s a certain joy to roaming the city in an over-powered cyber suit, it can grow old quickly, and once you’ve had enough of exploring the city you’ve basically had enough of Crackdown 2.  The central plot is practically non-existent, and relies on a series of audio logs to fill in the blanks.  But audio logs don’t crop up as often as you might assume, so even if you explore a good deal of the city while forwarding Project Sunburst, by the time you reach the game’s “ending” you’ll still have no idea what’s supposed to be going on … or even why you should care.

Brace yourselves for cybernetic fist-bump impact!

It’s a real issue, because there are parts of the game where Cell contact you to try and convince you to help their cause.  At these points I was intrigued, thinking “OK, here’s where things get interesting”, but nothing ever comes of these messages as you mindlessly continue with the Agency’s agenda.  For a game that’s all about the freedom to do what you want, the story is depressingly linear.

The game is also littered with rather annoying gameplay mechanics and glitches.  Auto-aim, for instance, can be completely useless in some situations as the game seems to feel the need to prioritise irrelevant targets over the one your crosshairs are pointing at.  For example, I’d often find my auto-aim would lock onto a vehicle rather than the multiple enemies shooting at me.  It happened with such alarming regularity that I just started leaving the aim locked on a car and moving until enemies occupied the space between us.

Climbing can also be extremely frustrating at times.  Your agent will sometimes ignore obvious hand-holds and other times bump his head into the tiniest of outcroppings.  For someone who can leap over three storey buildings and lift a truck above his head, the Agent scales a wall with all the grace and style of a drunken beach ball.  It’s not so bad when you’re jumping between low-rise buildings, but when you start to attempt high-rises and skyscrapers in search of agility orbs (or heaven forbid actually chase a renegade agility orb) the inaccuracy can become a real test of patience.

Vehicles have a similar problem.  They’re either under-powered or over-powered and can be incredibly awkward to handle.  There never seems to be any weight when you jump behind the wheel, which means obtaining the moving driving orbs can be as much of a test of luck as skill.  Tell the truth, once your agility stat is high enough you’ll probably dismiss vehicles altogether as an unnecessary hassle.

Despite posing for this face-off poster, Agency vs Freaks hockey matches never became popular

Competitive multiplayer can be good fun, although there’s not actually much on offer.  There are simple deathmatch and team deathmatch modes to play, but you’ll probably find most player in Rocket Tag, the mode that arms every player with a rocket launcher and score is awarded by how long you can hold a yellow orb for.  It’s somewhat exhilarating, snatching the orb and watching as eight or more red arrows on the mini-map all swivel towards your position and the rain of rockets begins.

Visually the game can be fairly impressive, but it’s the city itself can really take most of the credit on that account.  There are sections of the map that look great in their battle-scarred and broken state, where other sections of the city are less impressive with their generic “grey walls and windows” theme.  Viewing the city from the sky puts the game’s commendable draw-distance on show, which is something you’ll be given ample opportunity to check out the moment you get your hands on a helicopter and the wing-suit.

Down on the ground, things are more functional than fancy.  Car models are broken up into Agency, Cell and civilian, and none of them are incredibly interesting.  If you see one Freak you’ve seen them all, and Cell operatives are equally bland.  You could describe the game as quite gory, but the gore is so cartoonish that you can’t take it seriously.  Even brushing against a pedestrian or enemy in certain cars will explode them into a cloud of red mist, something that’s more likely to illicit a laugh than any sense of horror.

In the end I don’t really think Crackdown 2 does enough to warrant it’s full retail price, as this isn’t really a game as much as it is an experimental super-soldier hobby simulator.  Look at it this way: If Crackdown 2 were a roleplaying game, it would be 100% side quest.  Yes they’re fun as a distraction, but you still need that underlying main quest to push the game forward.

Which kind of sums up Crackdown 2 in a nutshell.  It is a pleasant enough time waster, but there are far better and cheaper time sinks on the market.

The Verdict:

Pros: There is a lovely big city to explore, and agility and hidden orbs make sure to reward you for doing so.  Co-op is great fun, and multiplayer is a laugh when you can find enough players.

Cons: Everything about the game feels optional, which is an awful vibe to get after you’ve paid full price at the checkout.  There’s no immediate story, and really no reason outside completion achievements to go looking for the audio logs plot.  Controls are inaccurate and at times rage inducing.

Overall: If you are looking for a return to Pacific City, do yourself a favour and wait.  Wait until it’s about half the price, buy yourself and a friend a copy and play it through together, because entertaining co-op is really the only thing Crackdown 2 does particularly well.  Otherwise, I hope you like orb hunting.  2 out of 5 stars.

New and improved, Colin McRae: Dirt 2

I’ve been thinking for the past few months that I don’t have enough decent racing games and I could really do with something to tide me over until F1 2010 finally rears its head.  I was tossing up a few options when Matt solved all my problems by shipping me half a dozen different racing titles on Steam.  Colin McRae: Dirt 2 is the first cab off the rank, so to speak.

One of the first things you’ll notice is that the game probably could’ve been called Ken Block: Dirt.  Colin McRae died tragically in 2007 so he obviously played no active role in the game.  Respect is paid to him at various points but it’s the current stars of the X-Games circuit that you’ll be racing and interacting with: Tanner Foust, Dave Mirra, Travis Pastrana, a bunch of others and of course everybody’s favourite sideways shoe salesman, Ken Block himself.  That’s right, there’s hardly a Finn in sight and it’s almost like the WRC doesn’t exist which makes you wonder, really, just how serious a rallying game this is?  We’ll get back to that question later.

I’ll get the main gripe out of the way first.  I had a lot of trouble with bugs in this game.  For the first couple of days it’d take half a dozen or more attempts at starting and then restarting the game to convince it to run without crashing in the first race.  This issue eventually sorted itself but ever since there’s been regular visual glitches and random crashes.  I consulted the forums, couldn’t find any reasonable fixes but did note with interest that plenty of other people were complaining about all sorts of different bugs of their own.

The whole thing is a massive pain in the arse, to the point where I almost chucked the game in.  I’m glad I didn’t though because once you’re finally behind the wheel of a car this game is a hell of a lot of fun.

There are several race modes to choose from.  Naturally there’s traditional rallying where you’re timed across a stage and everybody runs with a staggered start.  You get a co-driver who calls the upcoming corners for you and you can even choose between simple and technical pace notes.  Have to admit, I never progressed past simple.

Your driving looks much cooler in replay mode

Traditional rallying isn’t really the focus of this game though – the other race modes will take up most of your time.  Rallycross events have you racing on short, closed circuits against seven other cars.  I didn’t like these all that much because the results were often decided on who came out best in the inevitable first-corner pileup.  The same is largely true for the Landrush events, except instead of rally cars you have to compete in trucks and buggies.  Both these modes also employ the player-always-starts-at-the-back system that I hate so much, but I’ll let it slide since it’s not present for the whole game.

There are a couple of point-to-point race modes which I had a lot more fun with.  Trailblazer is very similar to the traditional rallying mode.  Cars start ten seconds apart and you have to post the best time, except you don’t get a co-driver giving you pace notes.  Raid events put you behind the wheel of a racing SUV, with seven other cars on the course that you’ll need to beat to the finish.

Gatecrasher mode is a twist on the rally events.  It has bunch of “gates” set up on the track.  Hitting one adds two seconds to your time bank, and the winner is the driver who reaches the end with the most time left on the clock.  I had some fun with this mode: knocking over bright yellow one-assumes-polystyrene barriers is strangely fulfilling, apparently.

One of the unlockable cars

There’s a decent variety of tracks to choose from, though the game does employ the old trick of running tracks in reverse or pasting two shorter tracks together to pad itself out.  You’ll get to race in stadiums (London, LA and Japan), forests and mountains (Croatia), jungles (Malaysia), deserts (Morocco and Utah) and far-flung bits of China.  Nowhere with snow and nowhere in Australia or South America however, which is a pity.

There’s also about three dozen cars to choose from across the different modes.  Some are the ones you’ll expect to see like the Impreza WRX (in various forms) and Lancer Evo (again, a few different models).  Others baffled me a bit – I never knew anyone raced BMW Z4s or Pontiacs of any description on rally courses.  Actual rallying makes like Citroen are conspicuous in their absence … must be an American thing.  Still, there’s plenty of cars to choose from and you shouldn’t have any problems finding one that suits your driving style or the needs of any given stage.

Even in the right car though I found I needed to log a fair few races before I was starting to make fast times.  Controlling oversteer is the biggest issue in order to make it around the bends quickly without either spinning out or understeering off.  Too much of either the brake or throttle, or get the angle wrong and you’ll be shooting off the course sideways, spinning out of control or doing a barrel roll.  Because of this you’ll be wanting an analog controller (does anyone play PC driving games without them these days?  I used my trusty Xbox for Windows controller).  It’s frustrating at first but I got a real sense of satisfaction once I started getting corners right.  Plus it can look great on the replay when you really nail a section.

The feel is skewed more to the arcade side of things rather than serious racing sim.  You can go in and fiddle with your car’s settings but I was winning races without bothering and didn’t notice an awful lot of difference when I did.  The upgrade options are pretty limited too – the ones that actually make your car go faster or perform better are sold in bulk lots that you’ll buy and then forget about, and a lot more attention is paid to new paintjobs, fluffy dice and, for some reason, what sound your horn makes.  I’m not sure I even found the button to honk my horn but there’s all sorts of custom tones you can install for it.  Oh – and car damage (if you’ve even got it turned on) is either superficial or terminal with no in between.  So dedicated sim racers probably won’t find a lot here to drag them away from rFactor but the rest of us will have some fun.

Some of the courses really are pretty

One feature the game seems especially proud of is its flashback system – in the middle of the race you can rewind the action and start driving again from an earlier point.  This is obviously great if you manage to screw a corner up really bad, spin, or even write your car off.  You have a limited number of flashbacks per race and the higher the difficulty level you choose, the less you get.

What I don’t quite understand though is why the game wants to reward you for using the system.  There are achievements and XP bonuses linked to the number of times you use the system and in-game magazine covers and headlines brag about how many times players have used it in total this week… which seems a little odd to me.  If you’re driving well surely you’d be using the system less, not more?  It feels kinda like rewarding someone for getting shot the most times in a first-person shooter – sure it’s trackable, but is it really the point?

I’m also not sure why such a big deal is made of it, since there have been racing games with equivalent or (arguably) better systems for years.

My co-driver was a bit pissy about this one...

Actually … achievements and milestones as a whole seem a bit silly in this game.  One of your milestones is to become “friends” with several of the pro drivers on the circuit.  That’d be all well and good, except that the game’s minimalist story suggests that you start out already being friends with most of them since they’re giving you free cars, upgrades and advice from the outset.  Maybe there’s some hippie message about rejecting materialism and only giving you the achievement when you’re really friends with them (as opposed to someone they spend a few hundred grand on for no reason) but whatever.  More achievements, pointless or otherwise, equals more XP equals more fluffy dice for your car.  Not kidding about the fluffy dice, by the way.

Building up your XP does have one practical benefit though: as you level up you unlock more races and locations.  The pinnacle of it all is competing at various championship and X-Games events, which probably tells the rally purists reading this everything they need to know.  If you don’t think fireworks have any place on a race course, then this maybe isn’t the game for you.

Speaking of fireworks, visually the game is stunning.  The cars look great and the tracks and landscapes you race through are fantastic.  I actually had a “holy shit!” moment the first time I raced one of the Utah trailblazer courses and got to hoon through giant canyon passes.  I guess we expect no less these days but it’s still nice to come across something that makes you go “wow”.

The soundtrack is pretty standard for a racing game these days, with a mix of indie rock and metalcore to keep you entertained/irritated between races.  Engine noises and the rest of the in-car audio experience is pretty hard to fault.  But then there’s the talking.  The other drivers will jabber away at you both in and out of races.  Outside they’ll tell you about new races that are available, issue challenges to you or give advice.  And they call you by your name, because there’s a nifty feature when you start a new game that lets you choose from a shitload of names for them to call you by.  And there’s nicknames as well, just in case your actual name isn’t on the list.

If your truck has more headlights than it does wheels...

During a race they’ll talk to you, encourage you, goad you or (most often) bitch at you for running into them.  This is something that irritated me because as someone once said in a terrible movie, “rubbin’s racin’”.  The AI drivers get pissy with you over the radio if you bump them but they make no effort whatsoever to avoid bumping into you.  When they do hit you they’ll either ignore you or get on the radio to tell you how it wasn’t their fault.  This is becoming something of a pet peeve of mine.  Dirt 2 certainly isn’t alone* in doing it, but if you’re going to espouse the virtues of “clean” racing then I think the AI cars should be making some effort to avoid collisions.  Especially when it’s almost always the player and not the AI car that comes off second-best in any given collision.

When you get towards the end of the single player career mode there’s a bit more tribute paid to Colin McRae himself.  You get to unlock a few of the signature cars that he drove and there’s a special rallying series dedicated to him where instead of the X-Games crowd you’ll be competing against some big names in the real motor racing world such as David Coulthard, Ari Vatanen, Valentino Rossi and McRae’s father Jimmy and brother Alister.  It’s a nice touch, given that McRae otherwise doesn’t get a lot of airtime in the game that bears his name.

You should get plenty of play time out of this game because even once you’ve beat all the career objectives there’s the online games to keep you entertained.  Your online ranking is decided independently to your single player one so those interested in enlarging their e-peen could keep racing indefinitely.

First corner on a Rallycross track

I didn’t have any problems getting into a game, though I did find that the Rallycross and Raid modes had the same problems online that they did in single player – being the one least affected by the first-corner crash seems to be a big key to winning.  The problem is actually magnified online since you don’t have the flashback system available.  Traditional Rally and Trailblazer modes were much more enjoyable because while everybody races at the same time all the other cars appear as ghosts so there’s no collisions.  Oh – you’ll want to mute all the other players unless you want to hear people driveling on and, worse, the tinny sound of their speaker output being recycled.

The game also runs regular online tournaments, the objective of which changes every week.  Sometimes it’s something you’d expect, like seeing who can post the fastest time on a given course.  Other times, like the week I finished writing this review, it’s something much sillier like who can roll their car the most times in a week.  Outstanding performers in each week’s tournament are rewarded with e-peen online fame points.

Overall I had a really great time with this game.  It looks and sounds great, the difficulty was mostly spot on and finally stringing together all the right sectors to win a race gave a great sense of accomplishment.  It’s just a great big shame about all those fucking bugs.

The Verdict:

Pros: Once you get yourself behind the wheel of a car and manage to keep the game running for more than five minutes there’s some fantastic fun to be had.  Plenty of cars, courses and challenges.  Online modes mean you can keep racing long after you conquer the career mode.

Cons: That’s a big “once” because of the bugs.  OH GOD, the bugs!  There’s just no excuse for them.  Some of the extra features haven’t really hit their mark either.

Overview: If all the bugs could be killed this would be a really great game.  Unfortunately they haven’t been and it really puts a downer on the whole experience.  Once it decides to run stably, however, it’s a fantastic game and racing fans will find a lot to like about it.  I’m deducting half a star for the bugs and giving it 4 out of 5.

* I had a very similar issue with Need For Speed: Shift, for example.  And that’s right, F1 2010, I’m looking at you with very high hopes.

If you’re Australian and over the age of 18, make sure you’re on the electoral roll by 8:00pm tonight.  If you’re not you won’t get to have your say on important issues like the world’s dumbest internet filter and which is the lesser of two evils: having a ginger or a conservative in budgie smugglers as prime minister.

Right.  That’s gotta meet our serious content quota for the year, so on with the releases!  The following titles are due out this week:

• Alien Swarm (July 20th, PC)
• Razor2: Hidden Skies (July 20th, PC)
• Rhythm Zone (July 20th, PC)
• Limbo (July 21st, XBLA)

And don’t forget, Starcraft II is due out next week.  Until then!

Marine, gun and gimmick? Check.

I’ve always had a little bit of a soft spot for Raven Software ever since they released Heretic, the fantasy inspired Doom clone.  The game established Raven as a company who weren’t afraid to make something original in an unoriginal format.  The Star Trek nerd in me enjoyed Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force too, another of Raven’s creations, which turned out to offer not only a good fan service but also a highly decent Quake-inspired shooter.

So I was fairly optimistic when I picked up a copy of Singularity, Raven Software’s latest first-person shooter, as it seemed to tick all the boxes for an interesting game.  First-person shooter, with temporal puzzles and effects, set in a mutant infested Russian military research facility.  Unfortunately, upon playing the game, I was left with the lasting impression that ticking boxes was all Singularity did in the hopes of creating an imaginative new title.

The story surrounds Captain Nathaniel Renko, your typical US space marine Black Ops soldier, who’s been sent on a recon mission to the supposedly abandoned Russian island of Katorga-12 after reports of a massive electro-magnetic pulse.  After crash landing, Renko finds himself thrown back through time to 1955, where the facility is self-destructing.  While in the past he saves a scientist from a burning building, and after returning to the present day finds that time has altered radically.  The scientist, Nikolai Demichev, has used the power of Katorga-12′s experimental Element 99 (or E99 for short) to overthrow the government and has proceeded to conquer the globe.

In the meantime, Katorga-12 has become anything but abandoned.  Massive E99 exposure has caused the island’s inhabitants to mutate into violent creatures, and an enormous time-space rift called “the singularity” lights up the night sky.  Renko is saved by a (oddly-accented) Russian woman called Kathryn who works for a resistance organisation called MIR-12.  After a quick PowerPoint presentation mid-firefight, Renko discovers what’s happened to his timeline and is told to restore time to normal he needs to find the Time Manipulation Device (TMD), an experimental hand-held time travel device created by another Katorga-12 scientist, Victor Barisov.

Superpowers like a False Grail? Check.

The TMD allows the player to age or restore different elements of the surroundings, age your enemies to dust Last Crusade style and even pick up and move objects.  Think the Gravity Gun from Half-Life, except with time altering device on the end.

Once you’ve acquired the TMD, the puzzle aspects of the game begin.  To move through certain areas Renko has to age or restore different parts of the environment, restoring a crumbled staircase for example, or moving and stacking crates to climb to higher areas.  Certain areas allow you to amplify the TMD’s effects to restore large scale set pieces, but apart from those few times then you’ll mostly be using it as a support weapon and heavy object lifter.

This is what probably holds this game back.  No one part of it is exceptional compared to other shooters.  Undoubtably it’s competent, but these days physics and temporal puzzles have become somewhat par for the course.  What the game had to do was sell me on it’s story, something it didn’t manage to do so well.  The story is entertaining enough, but the entire game lacks the atmosphere to make it compelling, which is where Singularity starts to join the ranks of generic shooter.

To begin with, for an island that’s supposed to be hurtling back and forward through time, it only really has two timelines.  The normal universe disappears after a short introduction, and from there it’s WW2 Katorga-12 and distopian future Katorga-12.  I was looking forward to seeing how the events I’d undertake in the past would subtly effect the future, but the game basically concludes that only one action you perform is actually important to the timeline and so everything else fails to make an impact.

Deformed violent mutants? Check.

Also, for a Russian military research island, there sure are a lot of strangely accented English speaking soldiers about.  If you want to make a game where people speak a foreign language, make up your mind as to how you’re going to treat the translation process.  I’m happy to have a game where everyone speaks English in a Russian accent, as you just assume your character is translating for you, or a game where the foreign language is subtitled, which implies your character can’t understand them but the player gains all the useful information.  But Singularity makes the bizarre choice of only translating plot-central characters and audio, then leaves the enemy soldiers to roam the island yelling in Russian … except for the times where you overhear pertinent conversations.

It really wouldn’t bother me that much, but it just seems like laziness on the developers part not to make a concrete decision on their game design.

You’ll find the properties of E99 tend to be a little flexible too.  When you gain control of the TMD, you’re told that it’s time-altering effects can only be used with E99 infused objects … which for some reason includes a lot of packing crates, select sections in the middle of staircases, research blackboards and other miscellaneous crap.  Fine, fine, it would be impossible to implement a device that changed everything in the game.  But when you progress further, you’ll be introduced to a unit of elite soldiers who wear E99 armour that protects them from your temporal attacks.

Flood-like exploding critter swarms? Check.

Wait … whuh?

I get the fact that the game has to introduce a more difficult enemy for you to fight by removing your TMD’s power against them, but the explanation is so paper thin that it just made me laugh.  Wouldn’t wearing E99 infused armour make these soldiers more susceptible to the TMD’s attacks?  E99 can apparently do anything you want it to, including warping time itself, unless of course it doesn’t want you to.  Riiiight.

I’d love to be able to tell you about the game’s multiplayer, but truth be told after several different failed attempts to join an online match via PlayStation Network, I just gave up.  I couldn’t find any strangers to play the game with, and none of my usual network had bothered to pick it up.  The online lobby is a ghost town … and this in the first week of release, typically your best chance to try a game’s online modes.

These are the things that really bring the game down overall.  The basic gameplay is just fine, but the game as a whole doesn’t create a memorable experience for the player.  So what we’re left with is a servicable yet unremarkable first-person shooter, stuck in a genre with more than enough unremarkable games, which probably means Singularity won’t be flying off store shelves any time soon.

The Verdict:

Pros: There’s nothing intrinsicly wrong with the gameplay, it has a solid shooter pedigree and working gimmick.  Visually the game is quite impressive, and you do have to give it credit for attempting a sci-fi horror storyline.

Cons: Most of the ideas in Singularity feel only half explored, and given the world Raven set out to create it’s a pity they didn’t do more with it.  The storyline is uninteresting at best, downright cliched at worst.  The moment the game asked me to jump on a train to cross a long bridge I knew I was in for a “oversized boss” battle, and sure enough there he was, covered in giant glowing orange weak spots to boot.

Overall: I wouldn’t bother to grab Singularity this close to release.  Wait a few months and I’m sure it will be on the bargain shelves, at which time you can pick it up and enjoy it for what it is: popcorn gaming.  2.5 out of 5.

Previously titled (Gears of) War for Cybertron

It’s a little difficult to describe the feeling you get when you first start playing Transformers: War For Cybertron, but it must be something akin to finding a $100 bill in an old pair of dirty underwear.  It wouldn’t have occurred to you to ever look there for a $100 bill, but when you accidentally find it you’re so happy that you don’t mind the company it’s been keeping.  The entire Transformers property has fallen on hard times recently, with some questionable movies and some truly hideous games based on those movies.  That’s why it’s such a delight to pick up War For Cybertron, a game I’d only been vaguely aware of up until the week of it’s release, and find out that here is a Transformers game that doesn’t suck.

Set before the original animated series, the game chronicles the ongoing battle between the Autobots and Decepticons over their home planet of Cybertron.  Although players can choose to play either the Decepticon or Autobot campaign first, the narrative begins with the Decepticon’s rise to power and concludes with the Autobot’s scramble to defend themselves.  You can play the game solo or online co-op, with each level offering a selection of three Transformers to control.  Transformers are split into different classes, each of which have their own vehicle form and selection of special skills.

The game plays out as an over-the-shoulder shooter, and to say that this game shamelessly plunders elements from Gears of War would be putting it nicely.  Many elements of the control scheme are identical, as is the feel of both movement and shooting, and both games share a penchant for oversized bosses.  During the section of the Autobot campaign where you take on a corrupted cyber-slug, all I could think was: “Hey! Sure is Robo-Corpser in here”.  But the brilliant thing about War For Cybertron is that you won’t care.  The Unreal Engine works so perfectly in the Cybertron setting that it’s almost impossible to feel any ill will towards recycled mechanics.  Personally I felt like they could have borrowed a little more, in fact, like at least a basic cover system.

Optimus and Bumblebee pose as Jules and Vince from Pulp Fiction

The engine’s tendency to make the player movement feel heavy actually feels appropriate here, and makes for a great contrast when you switch between vehicle and robot form.  It also does a fantastic job of presenting the world of Cybertron itself: an ever-shifting, semi-sentient lump of heavy metal.  Watching bridges and doors unfold presents such a complex, intricate yet seamless animation that it’s no wonder the Transformers will have to abandon their planet once it powers down.  To remain would have meant hours of high-power welding to open the simplest bar fridge.

The physical act of transforming is also fantastic, and ends up being a very organic part of the gameplay.  Although you’ll be specifically instructed to transform for different sections of the game (indeed, some levels play out primarily in vehicle form), it’s the act of transforming in combat that will probably impress you the most.  It only takes seconds to switch form, so you’ll switch as the elements of a battle change.  I’d often find myself changing into a vehicle to quickly cover a distance then leaping into cover just as I’d trigger the transformation back to robot.  It’s one of those rare moments in gaming where you feel like a kid again, an enormous smile on your face as something so simple works so well.

You get the feeling War For Cybertron is marketed straight to the inner-child in all of us.  In fact, it’s probably the only Transformers game I’ve ever played to get the balance of new and nostalgia just right.  All the game’s characters have been given a fresh look, and while it does seem to incorporate a hint of the Michael Bay films, the main inspiration has obviously come from the more ”classic” 1st generation cast.  For example, Bumblebee retains his diminutive size but transforms into something more closely resembling a Volkswagon than a Dodge Chevy Camaro.  The same principle is applied to all the major players, which means this is really a game for those people who still think of Transformers: The Movie as an animated feature guest starring Orson Welles.

Omega Supreme in one of the large-scale boss battles

Unfortunately the campaign is short lived, and will only take you an afternoon to bash through on normal difficulty.  Personally I found there was nothing too foreboding about the hard difficulty, so I’d suggest any new players familiar with shooters should start out on this difficulty.  It increases the play length a certain degree, and definitely adds the extra fun of a challenge to your initial playthrough.

Campaign finished, however, you’ll be ready to enjoy the real meat and bones of War For Cybertron, which is it’s superb selection of multiplayer features.  Online multiplayer adopts the XP acquired upgrades and perks system we’ve all become so fond of lately, split separately between the four available classes.  Competitively you can play both regular and team deathmatch, conquest, king-of-the-hill and a couple of interesting objective-based modes called “Countdown to Extinction” and “Code of Power”.  I couldn’t find many opponents in the more exotic modes, but there were no end of players ready to throw down in team deathmatch.  Although you can’t actually play as any named Transformer in the competitive modes, the game does offer you customisation over the loadouts and appearance for each class.

If you enjoyed the transforming mechanic in the campaign mode, then you’ll laugh yourself stupid online.  Battles rage back and forth as players flip between vehicle and robot on whim.  The matches almost never remain static.  Each form has it’s own advantages and disadvantages depending on your class, and discovering good strategies is a reward in itself.  It also pays to work as a team, as cross-class skills can combine in many deadly ways.

*insert usual "ax you a question" joke here*

Then there’s Escalation, the co-op wave combat mode which sees up to four players face off against increasingly difficult AI opponents.  Wave combat has also become something of a flavour of the month in shooter games lately, but Escalation is once again an example of taking something now common-place and adding a fresh twist to it.  As players destroy their opponents they gain power, which can be spent at vending machines around the arena to upgrade weaponry and replenish health or ammo.  But not everything is on offer when you begin, and reaching higher-end weaponry requires the players to unlock higher and higher cost doors.

There is a real sense of strategy in Escalation, and it requires a great deal of coordination to pull off.  Voice chat is a must, as you won’t get much of a chance once you’re downed to be revived.  For this reason, you really want to be playing this mode with friends.  Public matches are rife with lone-wolves, which doesn’t really work as each player has to chip-in to expedite the locked door progress.  The game also lacks the ability to shunt an Escalation round onto a new player, which means if the host loses their connection (or just gets bored) it’s an immediate game over for everyone.  There’s nothing worse than getting a good game going then having it cut short by a patchy connection or sulky host.

In the end, perhaps it’s just easiest to say that War For Cybertron is a Transformers game made without an agenda or a movie pushing it’s release date.  Which means they had the time to do things right.  Hats off to you, High Moon Studios!

The Verdict:

Pros: Transforming.  Seriously, the smooth switch between forms adds a fresh new angle on every single mode this game presents and it’s a joy to use.  Terrific fan service, including Peter Cullen voicing Optimus.  Plenty of variety when it comes to it’s online modes.

Cons: Campaign is disappointingly short.  The multiplayer has a few issues related to player-hosted matches. There are also a few niggles and movement glitches that can crop up, but for the most part you’ll be having too much fun to let it bother you.

Overall: For regular gamers this is an above average shooter, but for even casual Transformers fans War For Cybertron is a must-play.  A true diamond in the rough. 4.5 out of 5.

The game to pilot the pilot system

Before I spilled booze all over the perma-link management system we mysteriously encountered technical difficulties last week, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent was to round out the tureen (possibly even bain-marie by now) of puzzle games I had to review.  Although it might not be the most replayable of the bunch, or even the best by score, I think it’s my favourite of the three.

Developed by Telltale Games and designed by artist/animator Graham Annable, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent is the first game to be released under Telltale’s new TV-style pilot approach.  Obviously wanting to safely diversify their catalogue, Telltale have begun producing single episode “pilot” games to gauge their reception before commiting to a complete season of episodic games … presumably to avoid making themselves another Bone.

But it’s hard to see how Puzzle Agent could avoid being green lighted after seeing what’s on offer.

Coming into this game I was only familiar with Annable’s art via the comic Dank/Dunk that he creates for the Telltale Games website, but once I’d sat down and browsed the Grickle Channel for a good half hour, seeing his angular, charcoal edged work come to life in a video game is actually quite impressive.  The game is presented almost completely in 2D, with three dimensional objects textured to look like cartoons at their edges.  The animation is also somewhat minimal, which gives the game a hand-made feel that works quite well.

All it needs is a pregnant sheriff to complete the picture

The titular Nelson Tethers is a federal agent with the FBI’s Puzzle Department.  When the factory in charge of producing the White House’s erasers mysteriously shuts down, Tethers is sent into the field to investigate the small town of Scoggins, Minnesota.  Upon arrival he discovers that the entire town is obsessed with their own personal puzzles, and only by solving them is he going to get anywhere with his case.

It’s a Professor Layton clone, I don’t think anyone should be scared to call the developers out on it, but delivered with Annable’s signature dark mindset.  While the basic game is quite comic, there is an element of black comedy at work that you’ll only catch glimpses of.  The whole game actually reminded me a lot of the film Fargo, with it’s cold Minnesotan (Minnesotite? Minnesotesque?) snowscapes and peculiar cast of characters.  A lot of the laughs can be found in the short, sharp dialogue, and many a laugh turned nervous after some long, uncomfortable stares exchanged between characters.

The skin-crawlingly creepy Hidden Ones

What is truly wonderful about the game is how Annable’s art manages to be both funny and frightening depending on its context.  It’s hard to relate how creepy the Hidden People (the puzzle-obsessed race of red gnomes that inhabit Scoggins) become as the game progresses, but something about the art style gives them the most un-nerving death stares I think I’ve ever seen in a game.  When you see them in the game’s trailer you’re expecting them to be funny, a odd-ball antagonist to progress the story, but in reality they are deeply disturbing little creatures that at one point had me cry out in terrified surprise.  Also assisting the horror aspect along is a suspense score provided by Telltale’s main music man Jared Emerson-Johnson, who delivers a fantastic repertoire of atomspheric music and startling strings.

What’s not completely fleshed out is the puzzles, which as you may gather can be something of a drawback for a game with the word “puzzle” in the title.  While obviously the developers wanted to include a full range of difficulty to their puzzles, far too many seem to have vague explanations or (even worse) vague solutions.  There are a few jigsaw puzzles that require almost no skill, and even one case of a “follow the line” puzzle, which certainly didn’t impress me considering how far into the game it was.  The pieces of gum hint system can take the edge off any of the real recondite problems, but for logic buffs (who this game is obviously aimed at) having to resort to hints is like waving a white flag.  Something that’s even more annoying when you discover that a puzzle’s set-up was simply too open to give you the correct answer to begin with.  Using hints or multiple guesses does effect your overall rating as a puzzle agent (including the millions of taxpayer dollars you waste in postage fees), but won’t change the key story if you do end up having to brute-force a few of the more abstract challenges.

Sometimes the "How?" tab simply deems you correct. How insightful.

I’m hoping Puzzle Agent gets scheduled for a full season based on this pilot, or even just a full length stand-alone game, because what’s been created here is an absolute gem that just needs a little polish.  The art direction and animation is beautiful, and there’s certainly no need for work there.  Initially I thought the rather basic animation would annoy me, but it’s really more of a stylistic choice than any real laziness.  Where Telltale needs to focus if they do decide to run a season of Puzzle Agent is on the puzzles themselves.  The game’s tone clearly indicates it’s meant for adults (plus I’d hate to think what nightmares the furnace puzzle could give to children), so the puzzles should be matched to that level of intellect too.  I mean sure, throw a few jigsaws into the mix if you like, but tricky, properly defined logic puzzles should be ruling the roost here, and it’s the only thing holding this game back from a full points review.

If it is picked up, I’m also hoping the episodes will be slightly longer than the pilot.  All up (including the optional puzzles) there are thirty-seven puzzles to complete, which took me around four hours to work my way through.  Although four hours is a pretty average length for a Telltale adventure, there is almost no replay value to Puzzle Agent.  Puzzles remain identical over multiple playthroughs, so once you have a puzzle solved it’s solved for good.  This is why I’m hoping for a more substantial offering next time around, just to give a bit of a boost to the purchase value.

The Verdict:

Pros: This game probably has the strongest art direction out of any Telltale game. Period.  Annable’s wonderful style and sinister sense of humour makes for a memorable experience.

Cons: Puzzles really needed to be a little more challenging and better refined.  Hopefully the pilot episode’s length isn’t indicative of a full season’s treatment either.

Overall: It might sound bizarre, but even with some level of frustration attributed to the core gameplay mechanic, there was no way I could bring myself to hate this game.  Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent should definitely get its own season, I just hope Telltale decides to really deliver on the potential this game presents.  It’s an expectant thumbs up from me, 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Daawwww

Howdy y’all.  This week’s new releases are brought to you by the Campaign for a Cure for Broken Plugins.  Support them so they can support us to get our site running properly again and we can banish the fail whale from the front page.

We’re still working on the problems in their absence, by the way, and hope to be back to normal soon so that you can all click “read more” and … well, actually read more than just the index page.  Here’s this week’s Australian releases in the meantime to tide you over:

• DeathSpank (July 13, PSN – July 14, XBLA)
• Deadliest Warrior (July 14, 360)

There’s also a bunch of new stuff on Steam for PC gamers that, unless I’m blind, bypassed coming soon and went straight to new releases including Transformers: War for Cybertron, Theatre of War, Rig n Roll and King Arthur – The Saxons.

Ready for some four dimensional puzzle gaming?

Second on my platter (perhaps even tureen?) of puzzle games to review this week is Puzzle Dimension, the debut game from Swedish team Doctor Entertainment.

The object of the game is simple.  Scattered around each level are a number of sunflowers.  You roll an ornate orb over any flat surface to reach these flowers, and once collecting them all make your way through the exit portal.  It sounds simple, but the reality is far different.  There are a host of different obstacles the game will place in front of you, and gravity is multi-directional.  This means that is just a few movements you can find yourself rolling underneath the surface of any puzzle, much like the old figure eight optical illusion … or David Bowie in Labyrinth.

In fact maybe the Labyrinth analogy is more apt, considering you treat each level like it’s own maze.  Each level requires a great deal of forward planning, logic and experimentation to complete.  Some levels have multiple ways in which to complete them, some levels have a very specific path you’ll have to discover for yourself.  The difficulty ranges from the easy to the fiendish, and could easily inspire the occasional rage-quit.

This is the real challenge of Puzzle Dimension.  Flat layout obstacles only take certain amount of logic to work around, but when you put the whole thing into a multi-dimensional plane it can become a whole new problem.  You’ll have to make good use of the game’s camera controls to understand where you are and where you’re going, otherwise a restart is usually only one wrong move away.  This is what will both test your skill and your patience as a player.  There are plenty of times where the game asks you to roll your orb over curved ledges (sometimes invisible ones, no less) and you’ll basically be rolling out into the unknown.  Similarly, the game relies on a series of blind ledge drops to invert the surface of many levels, which means solving many puzzles can require 50/50 guess runs just to discover which way you should be dropping.

Wrap your gray matter around this one

The game does display the entirety of a puzzle three dimensionally before the level begins, and you are given the option to unhinge the camera from the orb and return to this view at any time (something which you’ll find yourself doing almost constantly).  But as the levels become more and more complex you’ll have absolutely no chance of memorising all the information you’ll need before you start, because quite often there will only be one correct route through a given level (with the use of one-step bricks or directional jumps).  This means sometime you’ll end up stranded half-way through a particularly long level because you accidentally destroyed the wrong brick in the first minute of play.  Quite often I’d sit staring at a motionless screen, planning my moves out in my head before daring to touch another tile.

You’ll forgive the creators, however, because you can tell a lot of time and care has gone into the construction of the puzzles themselves.  The game consistently introduces new elements over the course of your playthrough, and then begins to mix and match them with existing obstacles already in play.  One-step bricks like cracks or heat-grills start out quite easy to plan around, but once you throw in one directional ice surfaces, toggled spikes, assisted leaps, invisible blocks and teleporters things gets mind-bendingly complex.  All together there are a hundred levels to complete, so it’s almost assured you’ll be getting a decent amount of play for your dollar too.

So this is a puzzle game for those of you who love a challenge.  The game steadily unlocks more and more puzzles ahead of your progress, but it is possible to reach a point where you have to complete a specific puzzle to move on.  This won’t be your cup of tea if you like to sit down and knock out a complete puzzle game in one sitting.

Well I appreciate your honesty

Visually the game is quite … interesting.  Every block in the level begins pixellated and snaps into high-definition the moment you roll close by to it.  It’s an odd choice in regards to art direction, because the high-def visuals look fantastic while the pixel blocks are really quite dull.  I found myself wondering why the team had bothered.  Players do receive bonus points if they can depixellate the entire level (kind of like a 100% completion bonus) but apart from that it seemed to me like it was just a “because we can” decision.

At least they decided to create a similar mix for the music, so the mechanic doesn’t seem completely out of place.  As you depixellate each level, the background music cleverly transitions from 8-bit chip tunes to a synth orchestral score.  The music track itself isn’t anything that memorable, but it’s good to see that some thought went into the process.

There are four different themes to unlock as your flower tally goes up, each with their own unique background and puzzle tileset.  Initially you’ll begin with just one theme, but newly unlocked themes can be applied to any puzzle in the game, so once you’ve unlocked them all you can use them on any level.  The starter theme is probably the easiest for identifying the variety of different blocks, so I tended to use it the most during my playthrough.  The later themes are certainly more ornate, and it was when I tried these out that I started wanting a completely depixellated version.

The Verdict:

Pros: Puzzle Dimension presents a great variety with it’s challenges, and certainly has more than enough on offer to keep you playing for a decent amount of time.  Depixellated graphics are impressive.

Cons: Even with detached camera control, many levels can leave you completely disorientated at times.  I found the use of invisible blocks quite complex during some levels too, as if you didn’t notice their faint glow you’d be left thinking a certain route that you had to take was impossible.

Overall: In the end this is a game for the thinkers in the audience, so if you prefer to leap before you look then this game won’t appeal.  It requires patience, concentration and sometimes even a little luck to crack.  If you love a good straight-up (and down and side-to-side) puzzle game, however, then it’s definitely worth your time and money.  4 out of 5.

Puzzle Dimension is currently available via Steam

Ah, the ubiquitous Final Fantasy artwork

Games like Final Fantasy XIII come from a pedigree not unlike a royal family. It has elements of all the JRPGs that have come before it, including the bastard children that are never really mentioned and improvements made through breeding out negative elements. You get duds and revolutionaries, bigger wars, bigger guns and prettier women in less clothing. But after a little while, you realise that you’re looking at breeding cousins and that the faces are starting to all look a bit samey. You start to notice grandiose loopholes in the history and it all gets a bit convoluted in parts, trying to figure out which country in what timeline affected which scantily clad lovestory.

FFXIII is trying to be an elegant game, with high concepts. It’s nonlinear story is rife with terrorists and freedom, enemies and victims, death and fear. We start off on a train of rounded up ‘tainted’ people (called l’Cie), who are undergoing a Purge. But that’s really all the information we get before being thrown into a fight, which crashes the train and sets in motion the events which lead to the main characters being infected with the brand of the mysterious and supposedly evil fal’Cie. They must now complete their focus or mission, or risk becoming Cie’th – twisted agonised creatures who were once human l’Cie. If they complete their focus, they have an eternity of being a giant naked crystal to look forward to.

While the plot is as convoluted as your regular JRPG, and it does mysteriously assume that you’re intimately engaged in whatever a l’Cie is and what a Pulse l’Cie is, there’s a lot of fairly high concept plot going on. All characters are moving to bring back something they’d lost due to either the l’Cie or through political upheaval. Nearly all of them are bystanders until something pulls them in, everyone has a woe story. Lightning is the main protagonist and is suffering from a kind of survivor’s guilt. Snow is engaged to Lightning’s sister, who has become a crystal. Sahz lost his son to crystalness. Vanille and Fang are responsible for all kinds of things that will piss off their new friends. Hope thinks Snow is responsible for his mum’s death. No one really communicates any of this to each other, except in tense emotional standoffs that coincide with boss battles. This goes on and on over 3 discs (if you’re Xboxing like I was) full of bored angst. There’s plenty of guilt and angst going around, even though only one of the characters is actually a child. That I found surprising for a Final Fantasy game: pretty much everyone is an adult, only Hope – a wheyfaced boy who sees his mother die – is actually referred to as young. Everyone else ranges from early 20s to mid-30s and all seem to have valid fighting experience or training – guard, ex-cop, freedom fighter/terrorist, guerrilla warrior. Hope still managed to find a boomerang and begin fighting without much in-game hesitation, but there is a whole level of the game where he is ‘instructed’ by Lightning on how to be brave and fight. It’s still a bit 80’s montage, but at least they tried. Fat lot of good it did him however, as I only used him as a medic.

Vanille, normally a 'glass half full' kind of girl, freaks out at the thought of yet another tutorial

SquareEnix has rejiggered their fighting/levelling up system again, something they seem unable to let alone. All minor enemies are completely visible, but surprisingly unavoidable 90% of the time. If you weren’t desperately trying to level up your characters, this would be seriously annoying. As it is, you will find yourself deliberately going back to certain areas just to get more ‘Crystarium Points’ to give your team more skills. I forgot, initially, that this was the point of RPGs, so imagine my pain as I got the second ‘big boss’ and spent a total of 5 hours trying to beat him, going back into the previous room to try and level up. DEAR GODS, it was punishment. There doesn’t seem to be any ‘trick’ to defeating the Big Bosses this time around. The Battle System is basically pushing ‘A’ to Attack over and over, regardless of what you’re fighting. You try to either kill the enemy outright or wear it down so that it ‘staggers’. Sometimes it takes a combo of both, but it’s still just pressing ‘A’ continually. There is the occasional changing of ‘Paradigms’ or group skill sets in order to prolong your health or do maximum damage, but even then; once you have a decent medic in the group, there isn’t any point in doing much more than wearing your enemy down. It’s almost completely automated unless you want to use a potion or call on your Eidolons, which doesn’t happen very often because they’re next to useless. When you finally get them (and apart from those with Commando skills later on, they’re all pretty much obtained in the final chapters), they’re plot point signifiers. If you use them, they don’t do much damage themselves and once they disappear, the enemy usually regains any ‘stagger’ percentage it had lost and you’re back to square one.

Sahz makes use of his guns in flamboyant style, in the hopes that someone will actually use him in their battle team (I did not)

With the new Crystarium system, up-skilling is far more linear. I admit I haven’t played a FF since the one where they were all girls and wore costumes (FFX-2?), but this seems a lot more simplified than the style used 3 or 4 game ago. You fight enemies, you get Crystarium Points, which you use to level up by spending them on skills and classes. There are six classes – Commando (weapons), Ravager (magic), Medic, Saboteur (debuffing), Synergist (buffing) and Sentinel (shields/plays cannon fodder). These are used to make Paradigms or battle groups. I quite liked this as it took a bit of thinking to get the right combo for each, which was taken away from the actual fighting.   My only problem with this was the first 10 chapters having each character restricted to 3 categories (eg: Lightning can only be Commando, Ravager, Medic; Vanille can only be Ravager, Saboteur, Medic, etc etc) and you have to really think about your Paradigms, but then you fight a big boss and get dumped in a l’Cie training ground and suddenly, after grinding your way to level four over 20 hours, every possible category is now open to all characters. I didn’t really see the point in this.

But despite all of these changes and Grand Plot, it’s still a ‘run, run, cut scene, fight, run, run, cut scene…cut scene’ kind of caper and sadly, so intensely boring I had to force myself to play it. At the writing of this article, I’m going against site policy by not having finished the game. I don’t even know if I CAN finish it. Not through lack of skill (because you don’t need any), not because I have no time, but because it is a fucking chore. With all the cut scenes I feel like they wanted to make a movie, then realised they had to make a game and got you to play the boring parts. The running, the beating up of small animals, the getting from A to B. I’m surprised there wasn’t a toilet break in there somewhere (“Press A to flush! Repeatedly!”).

No matter how pretty that city is, all I can think is "LACE UP PANTS?!? HOW IMPRACTICAL!"

Alright, I’ll be positive here: the game itself is beautiful to look at. The world of Cocoon and Pulse are gorgeously made, rich in colour and detail. The environments were stunning, the characters that populate them are individual, realistic and well animated. The beasties are imaginative – I especially liked the machine-hybrids and being able to see them before biomanipulation. But it’s almost as if the world was developed to trick you into thinking you were playing a game that was interesting. Instead, you constantly grind through level after level, running along with that fucking CLIPPITY CLOPPITY sound. The foley work done (is it called foley in games?) was bizarre. No matter what surface the characters ran on, it sounded like they were traipsing across hollow metal while wearing tapshoes. Or they were horses. There were also a few glitches where I’d be playing the game with only a secondary musical track and no dialogue, fight music or sound effects. And what was with the way you’d be running along and suddenly a very quiet narrative monologue would start from one of your team mates? If you moved even a second too fast, it would stop and never be repeated. I’m assuming it was never anything important, but it was highly irritating to have Vanille start whispering about what was happening, only to have to stop as soon as the party moved even one step. UGH.

For a game series which has become a watchword for ‘epic fantasy RPG’ to have become mindnumbingly boring is a real disappointment. Sure, this is just my opinion, but I find it really disheartening that all that plot I wrote about earlier just doesn’t amount to much. On paper, the idea of all of the l’Cie as terrorists or freedom fighters, the whole moral ambiguity of the game, sounds like compelling plot … but it really isn’t. It’s like labouring through a badly written history text book.

We have a game that is based on sound game mechanics, a system of linear progression that works and HAS worked for all it’s predecessors, and yet it feels like SquareEnix have gone back to square one with plot and character development. I do realise that JRPGs are, by their very nature, dense games that can lose a little bit in the translation, but I think they lost the heart and possibly the lungs on this one, whilst keeping the pretty wrapping intact. I enjoyed playing the previous Final Fantasies, but I didn’t enjoy this. It was like one super long tutorial game, followed by a promise of an engaging game that didn’t come true.

The Verdict:

Pros: Beautifully created worlds and as usual, interesting to look at characters. The cutscenes are better than the game, which is convenient as they happen all the damn time.

Cons: Boring to play. A promising set up let down by a plot that doesn’t deliver. Would have been better off as a movie.

Overall: It’s the beautiful and dumb inbred child of a once pure and good dynasty of games. Unless you’re a diehard JRPGer, give it a miss and relive one of the older Final Fantasies instead. It’ll be infinitely more engaging. 1.5 out of 5.