Player 1 Start

Review: ICO [HD Remaster; PlayStation 3]

Developer: SCE Japan (Original) / Bluepoint Games (Remaster)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 27 September 2011 (Remaster)
Completed: 30 November 2016

In the never-ending "are games art?" debate, I'd wager few games come up as often as Fumito Ueda's PlayStation 2 classics ICO and Shadow of the Colossus.  Both games take a minimalist approach to storytelling, but still overflow with complex themes of love and companionship, isolation and loneliness, sacrifice and self-sacrifice.  Few games are truly unforgettable, but both truly earn the distinction. 

After months of rumors, leaks, and clamoring, Sony unveiled the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD collection for the PlayStation 3 in 2011.  Even the most jaded gamers who saw the trend of HD re-releases of last-gen games as quick cash-grabs were excited.  If ever two games deserved a second chance to reach a wider audience, it was these two.

I'll confess: I've owned the PS2 version of ICO for many years, but have never played more than 20 minutes of it.  It's not that I didn't want to, or that I wasn't impressed; it was just another victim of my expansive backlog.  With Ueda's newest game, the long-awaited Last Guardian, on the cusp of release, I figured there was no time like the present to visit his previous efforts.

That means I'm coming into my first full playthrough of ICO with no nostalgia.  I'm experiencing it for the first time, which also means I have the seemingly difficult task of trying to remind myself that games were different in 2001 when ICO was first released.  It may look a whole hell of a lot better, but was still a 10-year-old game under the hood.  It turns out there wasn't much to forgive.

ICO has some flaws.  Control feels a little slippery at times, almost like the titular character is running too fast.  Your AI companion sometimes reacts, or doesn't react, in the exact opposite manner you hoped, forcing you to stand around and wait.  Combat is boiled down to mashing a single button, which isn't very engaging.  But I will gladly overlook each and every one of these issues when a game as remarkable as this comes along. 

Maybe it's not fair to give ICO a pass for things I'd ding another game for, but it's really a case of a game being more than the sum of its parts.  Besides the gorgeous art direction, it's actually a very good puzzle-platformer.  The story, visuals, and sound just elevate it to something so completely special it can't be missed.

You play as a young boy named Ico, imprisoned in a mammoth castle for being born different.  Ico looks like other boys, save the two horns growing on his head.  Shortly after his imprisonment, a tremor knocks his stone casket loose and Ico attempts to escape.  He soon meets and frees Yorda, a female prisoner trapped in a cage high in the castle, and the two form a bond, though they speak two different languages.

There is very little dialogue in ICO.  What little there is is mostly in a foreign language, and in the case of Yorda, a completely alien one where even the subtitles are garbled symbols.  To form such a bond with the glowing princess is accomplished by Ico's ability to hold her hand.  Unlike Ico, Yorda is frail and timid, and he quickly adopts the role of her protector.  As the player, a sort of transference takes place where you'll learn to care for Yorda as though you were Ico himself.  It's a mesmerizing experience, and it's made all the more impressive when you consider the fact that the game is basically one long escort mission.

The world of ICO is, without question, one of the most well-designed game worlds ever created.  Taking place in and around the gargantuan castle, the sense of scale is practically unrivaled.  I've never, in all my years, seen a game that captures scale so well.  Every jump over a yawning chasm left me gasping in anxiety.  Every tenuous shimmy along a narrow ledge saw me holding my breath.  The heights seem dizzying at times thanks to the brilliantly-placed camera that's pulled back just far enough to keep the action fully visible and maintain the feeling that you are but a small boy in a very large world. 

The original PS2 game looked good, from what little I remember playing, but I distinctly recall the graphics looking quite blurry - a common problem for many early PS2 titles.  This HD re-release corrects that problem with sharp visuals, fantastic textures, and stunning lighting.  The world is brought the life so vividly that even veterans will stop and stare wide-eyed at the beauty of the game.  Frequently while playing, I'd stop just to pan the camera around and take in more of my surroundings and found myself forgetting this was originally a PS2 game at all.  There are a few telling signs of its age - occasionally pointy geometry on characters, for instance - but by and large, ICO looks like it could have been an early PS3 game from the ground up.

The sound is also given the full 5.1 treatment.  While music is sparse, though admittedly very effective when used, the sounds envelop you and further immerse you in the world.  The sound of the sea just outside the castle, for example, gives the sense that there is a living world beyond what you can see.  It made me feel like, "If I could just get to the water...," and then wonder how I'd cross it even if I escaped the castle's confines.  No attention to detail was spared in every aspect of the game.

The controls may take some getting used to simply because their default settings aren't typical.  Most gamers are probably used to pressing X to jump in platformers, but here Triangle is jump by default.  You can remap the controls if you find you're struggling with them, but I eventually got used to the idea that the top-most face button meant "up" and the lowest face button meant "down."  There's one button to attack, and one button to interact with objects, and most importantly, one button to interact with Yorda.

Holding R1 (or pressing, if you change the setting in the options) will call Yorda to you when she's far away.  This is how you'll coax her to follow you after you jump, and Ico will reach his hand out to reassure her that he'll catch her.  No matter how many times I saw it, it never stopped being touching.  When nearby, R1 causes Ico to take Yorda's hand and walk or run together.  It's a simple thing, but it creates such an unspeakable connection between the two characters, and thus the player controlling them. 

The bulk of the game is navigating the castle, solving environmental puzzles that require plenty of lateral thinking.  The world design is utterly superb, forcing you to think in order to progress, but never becoming obtuse or illogical.  There are even plenty of red herrings that exist solely to add realism instead of laying out a linear path to follow.  There may be corridors and climbable objects that you'll never need to traverse, but they're there because they want you to feel like this is a lived-in world that isn't specifically designed for Ico to get from Point A to Point B.  As one might expect, solving each area yields a sense of great satisfaction.

It took fifteen years too long, but ICO has joined my own personal list of the best games of all-time.  The pros outweigh the cons by such a massive ratio that there's hardly any sense in even mentioning them.  I suppose they might matter to some people, but they didn't to me in the grand scheme of things.  ICO is still a must-play, must-own piece of art.

ICO was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

Review: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception [PS3]

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2011
Completed: 17 May 2016




You'd think that after playing three games in the same franchise back-to-back-to-back I'd be sick of them by now, but you'd be wrong.  The third entry into Naughty Dog's cinematic action-adventure franchise had an impossible standard to live up to coming off of the second game, but it still manages to impress with more of what you've come to expect from the series.

You know the drill: Nathan Drake uncovers some ancient clues and goes off seeking fortune with his old pal Sully.  Other familiar faces like Chloe and Elena also appear, as well as a few new characters - Charlie Cutter, a Londoner, and Salim, a Sheikh late in the game. 

This time around, however, the story is less about the treasure and more about the people hunting for it.  Though it was glazed over in Uncharted 2, Nate's obsessive-compulsive need to "beat" the competition and accomplish his goals is called into question.  Is it worth risking the lives of his friends?  It's a nice touch that adds some emotional weight.  Nate's relationships with Sully and Elena are more complicated, which makes them all feel like more than one dimensional characters.

Story has never been Uncharted's strongest suit.  It's serviceable, even somewhat memorable, but it's usually little more than a setup for the grand adventure that follows.  The first third of Uncharted 3 seems relatively calm by comparison to the immediacy of the second game.  Yet it's this change of pace that makes it feel so fresh.  The opening levels in London are slower, more methodical than previous games, but they were just as fun to me.  It gave me a chance to get acquainted with the new characters, including antagonists Marlowe (who looks strikingly like Helen Mirren) and Talbot.

Eventually the action ramps up.  Though it never quite hits the highs of Uncharted 2, there are still some incredible set pieces here.  Escaping a sinking cruise ship (though the shootouts that preceded that thrilling moment were a little over-long), chasing a caravan of trucks on horseback, and freefalling out of an airplane are just some of the crazy things Nate does in pursuit of his goals.  By and large, it's all thrilling fun.

One of the downsides is that there isn't much new here.  Whereas Uncharted 2 improved in every way on its predecessor, 3 feels like an extension of the same game.  The only new addition is the ability to throw grenades back when they land near you, which is admittedly incredibly welcome and long overdue, but the overall combat and platforming feels the same. 

It goes without saying at this point that Uncharted 3 looks and sounds great.  There's no need to repeat my previous two reviews, praising the voice talent or the tech that drives the game.  The environments are still stunning, the sound and music are still fantastic, blah, blah, blah. 

There's little else to say.  By now you should know that the Uncharted series is one of the best franchises in gaming.  If you haven't played it, do yourself a favor and rectify that as I have.  It's OK if you're late to the party.  In many ways, that makes the experience even more fulfilling when you realize that all the hype that has surrounded them is true. 

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception was completed on a PlayStation 4 via Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection with no cheats.

Review: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves [PS3]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2009
Completed: 12 May 2016

I’ll just get this out of the way right now: Uncharted 2 is the best game on the PS3 console.  It’s arguably the best game of the PS3/Xbox 360/Wii console cycle.  In my opinion, it’s the best game Naughty Dog have ever made, up to and including The Last of Us.  If you want to stop reading right now, I’ll understand, because the rest of this review is going to be me gushing about how much I love this game.  Any semblance of objectivity will be tossed out the window and I will devolve into a drooling fanboy. 

What makes Uncharted 2 so great?  Everything.  Every little facet.  It does what any good sequel should do and improves upon the solid foundation of the original.  It’s better in every conceivable way.  The graphics are considerably more detailed, the score is more sweeping and epic, the control is more precise with new abilities added, the story is more intriguing, the pacing is better, the combat is more refined, the platforming is more diverse as are the environments you’ll be exploring, it’s funnier, it’s more exciting, and the setpiece moments are absolutely, positively some of the most breathtaking things ever seen in a video game to date.

Right from the opening, Naughty Dog sets the stage for a grand adventure as Nathan Drake awakes to find himself badly wounded and dangling over a cliff in the car of a crashed train.  How he got there is revealed later but in that moment all you can think about is surviving.  A series of flashbacks cover the first half of the game, explaining how Nathan ended up in such a predicament and filled with equally unforgettable moments.  You’ll run for cover from a gunship as it tears the building you’re in to pieces, then later you’ll get your revenge after hopping from car to car on a moving train.  You’ll leap between enemy trucks as they speed along a precarious cliff, and climb massive ancient structures to uncover the hidden secrets of Shambhala, the fabled civilization that inspired the myths of Shangri-La.

If the original Uncharted was an establishing shot, Among Thieves is the money shot.  Everything you loved about the first game is intact and improved.  The game is still very linear, and the platforming doesn’t require the skill of Prince of Persia, but it’s still exciting and Nathan has been given a few new moves like the ability to swing on horizontal poles.  It still has the desired effect of making you suck in your breath, even though the jumps are designed to be made by the skin of your teeth.  The combat feels much less clunky, however.  The long gunfights could sometimes bog down the first game.  They’re not much shorter here, but they feel bigger, better, and most importantly, more responsive.  The pace of everything has quickened, and shooting down helicopter missiles from a mounted turret is a nice change of pace from the hundreds of faceless enemies Drake will kill before it’s all over.

The characters are better too.  Drake is still a lovable smartass, but the addition of a new love interest (Chloe) and two new villains you just love to hate make the stakes higher.  Naughty Dog wisely chose to keep things lighthearted, though, and the dialogue is heads and shoulders above the original.  There were so many silly moments that made me laugh out loud, such as Nate taking a dip in a pool and trying to convince Chloe to play Marco Polo with him.  Instead of falling into the trap so many other developers have of making a “darker, grittier” sequel, Naughty Dog went in the opposite direction.  It helps the overall tone of the game, making it feel even more like a popcorn adventure film.

The tech that drives the game has also taken big steps.  Environments are much larger in scale and contain far more little details at the same time.  There are some truly scenic vistas, worthy of screen-captures (which is, thankfully, a feature in the PS4 remaster).  Characters look much more natural.  Nathan’s hair may not move, but it no longer looks like a Lego hairpiece.  His signature ring and rope necklace aren’t glued to his shirt any longer.  He even changes clothes several times throughout his journey, and each outfit has its own cool details.

What more can I really say about the voice acting that I didn’t say for the first game?  Nolan North and Richard McGonagle are impeccable as Nate and Sully, but newcomers Steve Valentine, as Nate’s British partner Harry Flynn, and Claudia Black as the seductive and exotic Chloe Frazier fit right in and give sterling performances of their own.

There just aren’t enough good things I can say about Uncharted 2.  If only all sequels were this good.  As far as I’m concerned, this is Naughty Dog’s masterpiece and its only real flaw is that there’s nowhere to go but downhill. 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

Review: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [PS3]

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2007
Completed: 07 May 2016

 

I remember renting Uncharted from GameFly shortly after its release, and being impressed by how well it captured the scale of a grand adventure akin to the Indiana Jones films.  In the absence of a decent Tomb Raider game, Naughty Dog's Uncharted series filled the void of treasure hunting action, combat, and acrobatic platforming.  The series has always been critically acclaimed; it's one I've always intended to revisit.  With Uncharted 4 mere days away, there's no time like the present.  What I discovered is that Uncharted may show signs of age - it's not as pretty as I remembered it being in 2007 - but like a good wine, you can still appreciate it. 

If you don't know the premise of the franchise yet, you play as explorer Nathan Drake, a brash but dashing, cocksure descendant of Sir Francis Drake with a perpetually untucked shirt.  Voiced by Nolan North, Drake is essentially a stand-in for Tomb Raider's Lara Croft, so much so that the series has colloquially been called Dude Raider by fans.  Throughout his adventures in search of untold riches, Drake cracks wise and smirks as he mows down hundreds of enemies from behind waist-high cover.  Seriously, the dude would be a psychopath if he weren't so funny and likeable.  I've played war shooters with lower bodycounts.  Nathan Drake is a world-class adventurer, but he's also the world's most prolific serial killer.

In his first adventure, Drake and his partners Victory "Sully" Sullivan, and documentarian Elena Fisher, set off in search of the fabled city of El Dorado, but as one might expect from a yarn of this type, they get more than they bargained for.  Nate will have to jump, dangle, climb, roll, and shoot his way through ancient ruins, jungles, and crypts (or tombs, if you prefer) if he wants to escape with the treasure, the truth, and his life. 

If it sounds exciting, it is.  Uncharted borrows heavily from the Indiana Jones franchise for its story, and Tomb Raider for its gameplay, but updates both for the modern age.  In fact, one can see how this has come around full circle now that Tomb Raider has made a resurgence thanks to Square's excellent reboot, which plays very much like Uncharted.  The action is pulse-pounding, filled with death-defying leaps, chase sequences, light puzzle solving, and copious shootouts.  Unlike the Tomb Raiders of old, Uncharted moves with a natural fluidity instead of the clunky tank controls of video game relics.  Hardly a moment goes by where you're not having fun, and even in those brief moments the superb writing will pull you through, leaving you dying to see what happens next.

Drake may be a bit arrogant, but he's witty and charming.  Like any good action hero, he even has his own catchphrases, repeated often.  Sully is equally likeable - a venerable, seasoned explorer, friend, and mentor.  Heck, even Elena is a solid character.  Occasionally she'll tell a little white lie or manipulate Drake, but she's far from the damsel in distress or the one-dimensional eye candy most female video game characters are portrayed as.  She's self-sufficient, brave, and (mostly) capable as she joins you throughout most of her adventure.  She does have a tendency to stand directly in your line of fire, but since she can't be killed it's more of an annoyance than anything.

The fabulous writing is brought to life by the excellent voice acting.  North brings Nate to life and infuses him with personality.  Such is to be expected from a veteran of video game V.A., but equal praise goes out to Emily Rose, Richard McGonagle, and the incomparable Simon Templeman as Elena, Sully, and Gabriel Roman, the game's version of Indy antagonist Rene Belloq - the douchebag rival who shows up to steal all your hard work.  The banter between all the characters is top notch, lending to the game's cinematic feel, as does the musical score.

Since it was a fairly early release for the PS3, Uncharted's character models definitely don't look as good as those of its sequels.  Characters look waxy, their hands are noticeably rigid, and details like hair and clothing look flat.  Drake's rope necklace, for example, never seems to move or swing (a minor detail corrected in the sequels).  That said, the animation still looks fantastic, and much of the scenery is breathtaking.  The lush jungles pop with bold colors - bright blue skies, vibrant greenery, crystal waters.  This is still an attractive game, even if it has a few spots.

There are some gameplay blemishes too.  The camera occasionally fixes position to give you a view of where you need to go, but it also skews your depth perception, making it hard to judge certain jumps.  A few times I fell to my death because I couldn't tell whether a platform was the same height as the one I was on or not.  Nate will sometimes grab a ledge if you miss a jump and fall, but other times he just seems to give up and lets gravity win.  These moments are few and far between, but they can be annoying when they come at the tail end of a series of platforms and you find yourself back at the beginning.

If there's anything that will turn some people off, it's the constant gunfights.  The best parts of the game are usually navigating the environments, figuring out how to get from Point A to Point B.  The heavy combat focus definitely bogs it down a bit when wave after wave of enemies keep coming at you and all you want to do is get to the next platforming segment.  Neither the combat or the exploration elements are that hard, but again it's frustrating to fight your way through a protracted shootout only to be killed by the last remaining enemy and have to start all over again.

Luckily, the game is generally pretty liberal with its checkpoints so replaying long stretches is rare.  At around eight hours, you can cruise through the whole thing fairly quickly even with the occasional mistake or death. 

Naughty Dog has always been a talented developer, and few games showcase that better than the Uncharted franchise.  The first game may have a few flaws, however, it's a great first step for a franchise many consider to be one of the best of the last console generation.  It's like being the center of a great action-adventure movie, even if the main character is a homicidal killing machine.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

Review: Vanquish [PlayStation 3]

Vanquish
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Platinum Games
Publisher: SEGA
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2010
Completed: 20 December 2015

Vanquish is one of those games that never got the recognition it deserved.  Despite a very warm critical reception, gamers the world over completely ignored the title and it has since been relegated to a hidden gem of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 library.

Developed by Platinum Games, the studio behind such games as Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Vanquish is another example of the exciting, fast-paced, over the top action games the company is known for.  With mastermind Shinji Mikami (creator of Resident Evil) at the helm, Vanquish is a game that screams quality from start to finish. 

In the not too distant future, overpopulation has made resources scarce.  After a group of Russian nationalists successfully overthrow their government, led by a man named Zaitsev, they demolish San Francisco in a nuclear blast in order to force the United States to surrender or else New York will be next.  As Sam Gideon, a DARPA operative with a special suit that augments his physical abilities far beyond those of a normal human, it's up to you and the US Marine Corps to stop Zaitsev.

The story lacks subtlety, but I have to admit I was entertained throughout as plot twists developed.  I also couldn't help but notice the U.S. President's strong resemblance to Hilary Clinton.  Characters are all pretty flat and one-dimensional, but this isn't a game about political ideals.  It's an action game, and a damn good one.

The main feature of Sam's suit is the ability to slow down time.  This isn't anything new for video games, but the way its implemented here is fresh.  When Sam takes enough damage, the suit kicks in automatically, giving him precious time to take out hostiles and get to cover.  You can also activate the slow motion by combining several evasive maneuvers, but the caveat is that in either case the suit will eventually overheat and leave you even more vulnerable. 

The game plays primarily like a cover-based shooter.  The battles are extremely large scale, with tons of enemies, gunfire, and massive battlefields littered with plenty of convenient walls you can duck behind.  Enemy AI is aggressive and accurate, but you have one more advantage - boosting. 

Instead of opting to slow things down, you can use your suit's rockets to slide around the battlefield.  Whether you're escaping a hail of gunfire, moving from cover point to cover point, or trying to get better position on an enemy, speeding around the environments in an ultra-cool pose never gets old.  You can even shoot during boosts, which will simultaneously trigger slow-mo to help you aim, but your suit still runs the risk of overheating when you boost.  Using all your tactics wisely is the key to your survival, and Vanquish is a surprisingly tactical action game. 

At your disposal are several weapons, but truthfully I found most of them unnecessary.  You can carry three guns at a time, as well as both EMP and explosive grenades, but I rarely found myself swapping out either the assault rifle or the heavy machine gun.  True, they're very similar, but they got the job done with plenty of ammo to spare, unlike most other weapons in the game which have rather small capacities.  Guns can be upgraded by either finding special upgrades in the field, or by collecting another of the same weapon you're carrying provided you have full ammunition on hand.  Upgrades result in increased damage, accuracy, or larger magazine sizes or overall ammunition capacity.  After upgrading my sniper rifle fully, I occasionally swapped it out for the rocket launcher for battles against large enemies, but I almost never found myself using the disc launcher, LFE gun, or the lock-on laser. 

Vanquish is a fairly short game with only five acts that will last between 6-8 hours, even on your first playthrough, but stages are very memorable.  Defending a monorail car by sniping search lights, fighting multiple gigantic robot enemies, dodging huge chunks of debris in an uphill battle, and boosting along a crumbling freeway are just some of the awesome setpieces the game has to offer.  The game is practically non-stop combat, but I never found it boring or repetitive thanks to the chaotic nature of the battles.  There's hardly a moment to blink.

Even with all of the on-screen action, the game rarely stutters.  I can only recall one mission where the framerate chugged a bit.  Overall, Vanquish is an attractive game with great designs, animation, and loads of impressive particle effects. 

Thumping electronic music accompanies and compliments the action very well.  The voice acting is a little hammy, but it also works in tandem with the somewhat clumsy story.  I also couldn't help but notice a striking resemblance between Sam Gideon and Metal Gear's famous Solid Snake, both in looks and his gravelly voice. 

If I had one complaint, it's the sudden difficulty spike in the game's fourth act.  It's not unbearable, but after the game's first three relatively breezy acts you may suddenly find yourself dying multiple times in a single mission.  There's not much of a penalty, except for a point reduction (which means nothing in the grand scheme of things), but it's still frustrating to suddenly receive one-hit kills. 

Even though the ending clearly leaves things open for a sequel, it's unlikely we'll ever see such a thing.  That's really unfortunate, because Vanquish is a terrific action game.  You could easily plow through it in an afternoon, and there's not a lot of incentive to come back unless you're one of those types who aims for the highest possible score or enjoys masochistic difficulty levels like the unlockable God Hard mode.  Given the incredibly cheap cost of the game on the secondhand market, however, I can't recommend Vanquish enough.  It's a short ride, but man is it fun while it lasts!

Vanquish was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

Review: DOOM 3: BFG Edition [PlayStation 3]

DOOM 3: BFG Edition
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: id Software
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2012
Completed: 11 October 2015

There's no denying that the original DOOM was a groundbreaking title.  It built upon the foundations of id Software's earlier Wolfenstein 3D and turned everything up to 11.  It featured more complex levels, weapons, monsters, lighting - everything.  For its time, it was a frightening and intense experience.  DOOM was a milestone in gaming.  It was even the reason I stopped trick or treating.  I figured it was easier to stay home with a bag of fun-sized Butterfingers and play DOOM than to walk around outside and beg.

The sequel, appropriately title DOOM II, was more of the same.  The levels were larger and there were a few new enemies added, as well as the iconic super shotgun, but ultimately I always thought it was kind of a lazy sequel.  Most of the challenge was derived from throwing as many monsters at the player as the game's engine could handle, and there weren't enough appreciable upgrades to make it feel like a true sequel. 

It would be ten years before fans got another sequel.  I still remember watching the DOOM 3 promo footage in awe, which gave most of us our first look at the game's stunning lighting and the newly redesigned Pinky demon.  When DOOM 3 finally came out it was so high tech that my old PC couldn't even run it.  I was forced to wait until the original Xbox port, which was mostly faithful apart from eliminating some of the outdoor environments at the beginning.

DOOM 3 was polarizing upon release.  Fans complained that it too different from the originals.  It was slower paced and filled with jump scares instead of copious amounts of demons to blow apart.  Critics mostly enjoyed it, but just about everyone complained that your marine could only hold his weapon or his flashlight - not both at the same time.  It's obvious this was a design choice designed to intensify the horror - you can either see where you're going, or you can stumble around in the dark prepared to shoot whatever jumps out at you - but you didn't even need the benefit of hindsight to see it was kind of silly.

Which brings us to DOOM 3: BFG Edition, so named for the series' famous weapon (colloquially called the "Big Fucking Gun").  BFG Edition fixes the flashlight conundrum by finally offering an armor-mounted light that you can turn on and off without having to holster your weapon.  It also improves upon the original version's graphics, and most importantly, packs a tremendous amount of content onto a single disc.

The BFG Edition features the upgraded DOOM 3 and its original expansion, Resurrection of Evil.  It also includes a new eight level expansion called the Lost Mission, as well as ports of the classic Ultimate DOOM and DOOM II, the latter even including the Xbox Live exclusive new episode.  That is a lot of bang for your buck.

DOOM 3 starts out on Mars where your nameless, mute marine has been relocated to a UAC research facility to investigate strange happenings.  Employees have been hearing voices and seeing creepy things in the shadows (which begs the question: why didn't they properly light this facility?), but the on-site head of research, Dr. Malcolm Betruger, seems to think there's nothing wrong.  As you arrive, so does Elliott Swann, whose job is to audit Betruger's work and shut it down if necessary.

As you can probably guess, it's well past time to put a stop to Betruger's research.  Shortly after you arrive, things go to pot and only you can fix them.  It seems Betruger's teleportation experiments have opened a portal to Hell itself and demons begin invading the facility.  The employees are slowly turned into mindless zombies, and your only recourse is to shoot everything that moves.

This is where DOOM 3 lost some people.  While it holds true to the series roots in many ways, it lacks the frenetic pace of the originals.  You'll still be dodging Imp fireballs, but instead of large open areas with dozens of monsters, you're in tight corridors with one or two at a time.  It's a trade-off, and frankly, I think it works well.  I still found strafing and shooting to be exciting, even without the hordes of monsters.  DOOM 3 is not without its problems, but the least of them is that it's too dissimilar from its older brothers.

Besides the flashlight, the other most memorable thing about DOOM 3 were the monster closets.  If there are any children reading, you can rest assured that there are no monsters in your closet because they have all taken up residence in this game.  Every time you complete an objective you can expect a false wall to drop and zombies to shamble out or demons to spawn.  It's scary at first when you're trapped in a small area and suddenly surrounded by a handful of enemies who weren't there before, but by the 1,000th time it happens you've grown accustomed to it.  So much of the game's horror relies on jump scares that it stops being scary pretty early on when you're able to predict with 100% certainty when and where enemies will spawn.

That said, blasting them to bits is still a lot of fun.  Some of the designs are questionable, however.  Imps look great, but both Pinky and the Cacodemons bear only a passing resemblance to their classic, iconic designs.  Where are the cacos giant cyclopean eyes?  Where are Pinky's horns?  Now he looks more like a hippopotamus with cyborg legs.  Come on, guys! 

You have a variety of weapons with which to make monster soup, including the old standards like the (useless) pistol, a shotgun (but curiously, no super shotgun in vanilla DOOM 3), machine gun, chaingun, the so-good-it's-almost-game-breaking plasma rifle, rocket launcher, and of course, the BFG-9000.  Even the beloved chainsaw returns, and it's as deadly as ever if you can get close enough to use it.  Certain enemies seem to have weaknesses to certain weapons, but I found that the plasma rifle was easily the best weapon for the stock enemies, while the chaingun was devastating to the gigantic, impressive bosses.  Switching between weapons is accomplished by taps of the shoulder buttons, and this can be problematic in a hectic fight.  DOOM 3 was released before the days of radial menus, so you have to learn how many taps it takes to get from the weapon you're using to the one you want.  It's also worth mentioning that you cannot switch in the middle of reloading like in most games, but you have to wait for the reload animation to finish.  This can leave you helpless if you're not careful.

For all the grievances fans had, DOOM 3 still plays very much like the originals - just in tighter quarters.  There are still suits of armor and health kits lying around, and you don't do much other than shoot monsters.  Occasionally you'll have to go on a short fetch quest, and id smartly designed the levels to keep backtracking to a minimum.  Most times, you'll take a different path back to the starting point, though in the instances where you must traverse familiar territory you can always expect a sudden influx of demons to keep things interesting.  The story is still barely there, but it's surprisingly interesting enough to make the various audio logs and e-mails you'll find on PDAs worth checking out.  I did wonder why the PDAs are the size of an iPad and required two hands to use.  More than 100 years into the future, you'd think they could have made them smaller by then - but then again, they apparently didn't have duct tape technology either because you couldn't tape your flashlight to your gun in the original version.

DOOM 3 works best when it adheres to the original point and shoot concepts of the classics.  To illustrate this point, I refer you to the expansion, Resurrection of Evil.  Taking place a scant two years after the last invasion, the geniuses at UAC have decided to return to researching portals to Hell - because what could possibly go wrong a second time?  This time you play as another nameless, mute marine and you still shoot monsters in the face.  So what's so different about it?

Very little, honestly.  It's mostly more of the same, with one exception - the Grabber, which is totally not Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun.  You can tell because it has a different name, even though it is fundamentally identical.  Yes, with the Grabber you can lift heavy objects and even catch enemy projectiles and throw them back at high velocity.  It sounds fun, until you realize that the first half of the game is over-reliant on it.  In an all too common abhorrent game design philosophy, the developers figured that if they're introducing a new mechanic, they might as well shove it down your throat.  For half of the expansion, you're limited to the pistol, shotgun, machine gun, and the Grabber - yet you're faced with tougher enemies like Hell Knights and Revenants.  Instead of mowing them down with your chaingun or plasma rifle, the expectation is that you'll use the Grabber to reflect their projectiles back at them.  It's annoying, quite frankly.

Also new in the expansion is the Artifact, a pseudo-weapon that looks like a heart and grants the user brief buffs such as Hell Time (e.g. - slow motion), and later increased speed and damage, then finally invulnerability.  This is far less intrusive, though there are a few times where it's nigh impossible to succeed without taking advantage of its powers. 

Finally, the Lost Mission is content that was supposedly cut from the original DOOM 3 campaign.  You play as the last surviving member of Bravo Team, the ineffectual squad of marines who are almost immediately wiped out by demons as soon as they arrive (yet your marine is a one-man wrecking crew).  This eight level mission is fun, but lasts only about two hours, and the final boss is an absolute pushover to the point where I thought there must be something else after that.

All three of the DOOM 3 campaigns suffer from the same issues.  The framerate is mostly solid, but when it dips, it dips hard.  I also encountered frequent, albeit brief, freezes - notably whenever a certain enemy type appeared.  Cheap damage is also a major problem in all three campaigns.  Enemies will frequently spawn behind you and get in a free hit or two before you realize it.  The sound design does a good job of pinpointing enemy locations, but in the middle of a fierce firefight you're often so focused on what's in front of you that you forget what may be behind you.  Getting cornered by enemies is your worst nightmare as they chip away at your health while you frantically try to aim, and smaller enemies like Trites (spiders) and Cherubs (evil demon-babies with wings like flies) are often out of your field of view when they're that close.

The absolute worst thing, however, is the loading time.  I understand DOOM 3 was already eight years old by the time the BFG Edition rolled around, but how in the world could they not optimize the loading time in a 2012 rerelease?  I've played open-world sandbox games with shorter loading screens.  Every time you die, you're faced with an atrociously long reload as you stew in your defeat.  To attempt to make up for it, id added a new checkpoint save system that is woefully inadequate.  You can still save anywhere, but there is no quicksave button, despite the fact that there are several unused buttons on the controller.  The checkpoints are generally far between, so you need to get into the habit of going to the menu and manually saving unless you want to play large chunks of the game over should you bite it.

Speaking of the controls, they generally work well and there are three configurations, but the lack of completely customizable button layouts is absurd for a game released in 2012.  Ducking, for example, is accomplished by clicking and holding the right analog stick. Why they didn't at least at an option for toggling between upright and crouching is beyond me.  Nothing is game-breaking, but it's one of several nitpicky annoyances that crop up.

DOOM 3 and the Resurrection of Evil expansion also do that annoying thing where you suddenly have your entire arsenal taken away from you in the later stages.  You get it back, of course, but it's a cheap, artificial way to make the game more difficult.

On the bright side, DOOM 3 still looks great.  The game did receive some upgrades - mostly a bump in resolution - but the lighting is still stunning and lends to the overall terrifying atmosphere.  The contrast has been slightly fiddled with so the game looks brighter overall, but it's nothing that can't be remedied by tweaking the in-game gamma settings or, if that fails, your television's.  Levels rarely branch out beyond the metallic corridors of the UAC installation, but there are several short excursions to the Mars surface where you need to carefully manage your oxygen levels.  Each of the three campaigns also features several levels in Hell, which were easily the highlights from a graphical standpoint. 

The sound design is also superb.  DOOM 3 is one of those games that makes a great case for having surround sound.  The positional effects make it much easier to determine where your enemies are.  Voice acting is remarkably capable, and there's a bevy of unique voices for each audio log or NPC.  Weapon sound effects are all satisfying, and even the ambient sound effects such as steam leaking from ruptured pipes, distant clangs and thuds, or monsters growling somewhere in the darkness are universally fantastic.

There will always be those who view DOOM 3 through the lens of a diehard DOOM fan.  It wasn't the game they were expecting, but it is still a solid, exciting, and occasionally scary twitch shooter.  There are no moral choices, no complex mechanics - just aim, shoot, and strafe in dingy, dark, creepy environments.  To me, it still feels very much like a DOOM game, even if the hordes of Hell have been laid off and their numbers are fewer.  It still captures the breathless pace of the classics, and retains the elements that scared teenagers out of their wits in 1993.  The inclusion of all the existing DOOM 3 content, the additional Lost Missions, upgraded graphics, and especially the original classics make the BFG Edition an easy recommendation for fans of fast-paced shooters.

DOOM 3: BFG Edition was completed on a Sony PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

 

Review: Portal 2 [PlayStation 3]

Portal 2
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Valve Corporation
Publisher: Valve Corporation
Rated: E for Everyone
Released: 2011
Completed: 05 September 2015

The issue I'm faced with when writing a review for Portal 2 is where to even begin.  Do I start by talking about the inventive puzzles, the innovative gameplay, or its absolutely uproarious sense of humor?  Each aspect is as worthy of praise as the next.  Portal 2 is a work of absolute genius that even non-gamers could easily fall in love with.  It tests your wits more than your reflexes, and it will tickle your funny bone until your sides hurt.

It helps that comedian Stephen Merchant and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons provide voices for two characters, along with Ellen McLain reprising her role as the antagonistic AI GlaDOS.  Words on a page can certainly be funny, but with such a talented voice cast it becomes a laugh out loud gaming experience unlike any I've ever had.  I've played some funny games before, but none quite like Portal 2 that had me in fits.

I suppose I should tell you a little bit about the game itself though.  As you may have deduced (because you're so clever), Portal 2 is the long-awaited sequel to the Orange Box's standout first-person puzzler.  Half-Life 2 may have been the centerpiece of that amazing collection, but Portal was (and still is) a game-changer.  The Portal games force you to think in ways players are unaccustomed to.  Portal 2 takes the brilliant mechanic of the original game - the portals themselves - and adds a slew of new features to make more complex and satisfying puzzles.

The basic portal mechanic hasn't changed.  Your portal gun can shoot two portals on compatible surfaces - a blue and an orange.  Going into the blue portal means you'll come out of the orange, and vice versa.  Of course, it's not as simple as that once puzzles start incorporating objects to be manipulated, the new light bridges, tractor beam tunnels, and three different types of gels with different effects.  These elements are introduced gradually over the course of your adventure.  The pacing is perfect, so just as you've gotten familiar with one mechanic, you'll have to learn another.

Each new element interacts with the portals in unique ways.  Light bridges can be used to block targeting lasers on the lovable Aperture Science turrets (with their adorable voices that politely ask "are you still there?" when they lose sight of you), or can be used as a wall so you don't overshoot a tricky jumping maneuver.  Tractor beams can either push or pull you, and careful planning is required in some stages to keep yourself afloat by creating new trajectories mid-stream or risk falling to your death.  Lastly, gels come in three flavors- blue repulsion gel, orange propulsion gel, and gray conversion gel.  The first makes you bounce.  Landing on it from higher to get even more air, and you can even use it to bounce upwards between narrow walls.  Propulsion gel speeds your movement up exponentially, and since momentum has always been a key part of Portal's puzzles, it is often used to clear seemingly impossible gaps.  Occasionally you'll even find yourself running headlong into a wall so you'll enter a portal at full speed and pop out of the ground to reach an item or switch.  Conversion gel allows any surface to become portal-friendly.  Most times you'll need to combine all three types of gels in order to solve a room, and that's where things get really tricky and fun.  You'll often have to figure out how to coat out-of-reach surfaces with gel to proceed.

There's a sense of satisfaction in solving Portal 2's test chambers that shouldn't be missed.  I pity anyone who completes this game by consulting a walkthrough or strategy guide, because they're missing half the experience.  Some rooms may seem daunting, and some may stump you, but when that lightbulb over your head goes off you'll feel like a genius - even if the solutions are surprisingly simple.

It works so well because both games rely heavily on basic puzzle solving concepts, such as order of operations.  If there's two buttons in a room that both activate different things, but only one cube you can use to keep them depressed, it's up to you to figure out which order to do it in.  Sometimes you may then have to figure out how to move the cube from place to place to trigger the next sequence of events.  Other puzzles require you to use some light physics.  Let's say there's a platform you need to get to, but it's way too high to jump to.  Well, you can use your portal gun to shoot a hole in the floor, and another one an angled wall, then take a swan dive from on high, which sends you rocketing out of the wall. 

The puzzles alone put Portal 2 in a class all its own, but to integrate such an entertaining and downright hilarious story gives you added motivation to play it.  Valve has said that the Portal games take place in the Half-Life universe, and that silent protagonist Chell will become a key figure in the future (if we ever see Half-Life 3, that is).  But where Half-Life is a more subdued science fiction story, Portal is an all-out comedy.

I can't say enough great things about Merchant, who provides the voice of your robotic companion (early on), Wheatley.  His frantic speech lends so much personality to the bumbling spherical AI.  Likewise, J.K. Simmons, who plays Aperture Science founder and CEO Cave Johnson, is just as hilarious once he's introduced later in the game.  He nonchalantly describes ways in which test subjects have perished, or been mutated, or other horrible things, and at one point goes on a rant about lemons that is so hysterical I had to stop playing for a moment until I stopped laughing. 

Lastly, what more can be said about Ellen McLain?  As the voice of GlaDOS, she has become one of gaming's most iconic characters of the last decade.  Despite the fact that she has been trying to kill you for the better part of two games, players can't help but love her.  After all, she was only doing it for science.  As much as I'd love to spoil her comical fate, I'll leave it to you to discover so you can get the full effect.

I suppose I should talk about the technical aspects of the game.  The graphics are pretty enough, though some of the textures definitely look a bit blurry - no doubt a side effect of the aging Source engine.  Like most other Source-based games, you'll also suffer through a lot of loading screens that break the immersion.  Like the original Portal, a lot of the game takes place in Aperture Science test chambers, which have a very clean, sterile feel, but eventually you'll go behind the scenes and traverse catwalks, elevator shafts, and all sorts of industrial areas you might expect to find in a giant underground science laboratory.

Obviously the voice acting is top-notch, and the sound effects and music are equally excellent.  Most of the music is ambient electronic stuff, but it works in perfect harmony with the sci-fi theme. 

Control couldn't possibly be more effective.  For a game with so many facets to its puzzles, only four buttons are used, which makes it perfect for experienced players or anyone who may not be very good at traditional action games but it still interested in puzzle-solving.

That's the true beauty of Portal 2.  It's a game for absolutely everyone.  Diehard gamers will love it because it's a mind-bending, astonishing puzzle game with great writing.  Casual gamers, and even people who haven't played a video game before, can also appreciate the way it forces you to think differently and use your brains.  It's the antithesis of all the hyper-violent, dark and gritty shooters that flood the market each year.  It's a hilarious adventure that's challenging without ever being too difficult and it's extremely rewarding.  The single player campaign may be a bit on the short side, but there's also a completely separate cooperative campaign where players play a set of robots forced to work together to solve more tests - perfect for both longtime gaming buddies or someone just being introduced to gaming. 

Simply put, Portal 2 is one of the best video games of all-time. 

Portal 2 was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

 

Review: Dragon's Crown [PlayStation 3]

Dragon's Crown
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Vanillaware
Publisher: Atlus
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2013
Completed: 23 August 2015

Arcades may be all but extinct, but the arcade spirit lives on.  All things retro are hot right now, and that includes genres which seemed to die with coin-operated cabinets.  In the last few years we've seen a resurgence of 2D fighting games, shoot 'em ups, and brawlers.  They may look much prettier with their flashy HD graphics, but many of them still retain that old school feel that kept kids like me feeding quarters into arcade machines.

Melding elements of beat 'em ups and RPGs into one gigantic package, Dragon's Crown feels like a spiritual successor to Capcom's classic Dungeons & Dragons arcade games, and with good reason.  Many of Vanillaware's team worked on Capcom's games, which saw a bundled release of their own in 2013.  The constant threat of repetition is always on the horizon when it comes to arcade games, but Dragon's Crown does a great job of staving off feelings of boredom by slowly adding new elements to the experience as you progress.  By the time you've completed your first playthrough, you may find yourself so addicted you could theoretically pump hundreds of hours into its unlockable randomized dungeon mode.

You begin by choosing from one of six different classes including a human or dwarven fighter for beginners, the elven archer of the amazon warrior for intermediate players, or the wizard or sorceress for advanced players.  Each subset of classes plays strikingly different, with magic-wielding players having to carefully manage their spell points during battles.  Shortly into the game you will open up the ability to bring up to three computer-controlled characters on your adventures via bones you find in dungeons that can be resurrected at the local temple.  Don't get too attached to any particular set of NPCs because you'll constantly be swapping them out for higher level ones as you progress through the game. 

Finding the right balance of characters is often critical to success, especially since you can't swap out NPC equipment.  That level 15 dwarf may have more HP than the level 16 sorceress, but the latter's ability to create food, which restores health in dungeons, may just save your life. 

Juggling your own equipment is just as much a gamble.  During my playthrough as a wizard, I was partial to lightning-based attacks, particularly his jumping area of effect attack.  However, when I found a fire rod late in the game that offered not only considerable more damage, but also granted a resistance to physical attacks and lessened the damage I received, I opted to swap out my weapon.  Loot is randomized with various statistics and additional effects which can often make a big difference, and like any RPG game it's always a thrill to sort through your spoils at the end of your adventure.

Unlocking new features as you go really helps keep the game interesting.  About midway through the story you'll unlock the ability to go online so you can join with friends or other random players.  This is definitely preferable to your AI teammates who often act foolishly.  There appears to be no way to program their behavior, so expect fellow magic-users to burn through their spells in the first few enemy encounters in any given level, leaving them with little to use against the end of level bosses.  This is why your party's formation is so important.  A team of wizards and sorceresses are potentially devastating to groups of enemies, but what good will it do you if they waste their spells on a trio of goblins instead of waiting to fight the giant, humongous dragon at the end of the level?

The game's lone town acts as a hub where you can choose which allies to take with you, resurrect bones or pray for helpful status effects at the temple, buy, sell, and repair items, accept and turn in quests at the adventurer's guild, and advance the story.  While it may not win any awards, Dragon's Crown story is at least somewhat interesting even if it's presented in mostly static (albeit very pretty) portraits with voiceover narration.  You can choose one of several narrator's voices, so if you want the story told via the amazon's gruff and raspy voice you can have it your way. 

Early on the game's plot incorporates some political elements about the nation of Hydeland, where you're adventuring, and their enemies in Bolga.  This is almost completely tossed aside and ultimately the story boils down to kill the big bad monsters and reclaim the titular Dragon's Crown because that'll show Bolga who's boss!  It's simplistic fantasy tripe, but it's serviceable and the narration is actually quite excellent.

As I said before, the gameplay is pure arcade-style beat 'em up action.  The RPG elements are light and mainly in the form of equipping new gear and spending skill points to customize your class to your liking.  Both class-specific and generic skills are available to you, but it's impossible to unlock them all, so choose wisely and tailor your character to fit your play style. 

In the dungeons, swarms of enemies will rush in and it's your job to beat them down.  There are a hefty amount of moves and attacks at your disposal no matter what class you're playing as.  While traversing the levels, you'll uncover secret areas (many of which are key to completing side quests later on), avoid traps, and pick up loot hidden all over.  The right analog stick controls a mouse-like cursor that will reveal hidden treasures, and if you find enough in a given level, your party will earn an extra life for that particular romp. 

Also found in dungeons are runes, which are also unlocked for use around the midway point of the game.  Using combinations of runes found on walls and ones you can buy in town, you can cast powerful rune magics that often grant helpful status effects or unlock even more secrets.  The runes are vaguely in the shape of letters, and you'll soon learn to keep an eye out for all-important score boosts like THF - Treasure Hunter's Friend - which reveals a hidden, often very valuable treasure chest, or DSB - Double Score Bonus - which makes it easier to earn those much-needed lives by doubling the value of everything you pick up for a short time.  Some rune magics are offensive in nature and can petrify enemies or even completely wipe out any undead foes on screen.  The only problem is navigating the cursor around a crowded battlefield can sometimes be difficult, and sometimes it's very finicky and doesn't want to click the rune when it appears to be hovering right over it.

The overcrowding is the game's major fault.  It's often difficult to keep track of where your character is in the midst of all the chaos.  Enemies, spell effects, and your other party members all crowd together and you'll resort to mashing buttons, hoping to hit something.  It's not a game-breaker, but it can be annoying to die simply because you couldn't even see where you were on screen.

Apart from that, the first thing you'll notice about Dragon's Crown's visuals are how incredibly gorgeous they are.  The hand-drawn, high definition sprites and backgrounds are marvelous, but I did feel the animation was a little stiff.  The dwarf's walking animation especially looks stilted and weird.  Many media outlets made a big deal out of the game's exaggerated character proportions and sexist portrayal of female characters, with their giant bouncing breasts and bare bottoms, but honestly I couldn't care one way or another about it.  It doesn't affect the experience positively or negatively for me because I'm not a whiny, politically correct gamer crying for attention. 

Generally the game's dungeons are superb, which is good because you'll be running through them a lot.  Dragon's Crown only offers around a dozen unique stages, and while you later unlock alternate paths through them, it can be a little disappointing having to run through the same stages over and over to complete the side quests.  It's notably problematic when those quests involve killing a certain amount of a specific type of enemy.  One such example is killing ten owlbears, which shouldn't be a big deal, but since the enemies are also somewhat random you may not get the exact enemies you need and have to restart the level a half-dozen times before you reach your goal.  None of the stock enemies offer much challenge, but the bosses are generally extremely fun and actually worth fighting multiple times if you're looking to farm some experience points.  Their designs are, without exception, highly detailed and massive and I looked forward to discovering what sort of monstrosity awaited me at the end of each dungeon.

The visuals may be superb, but the audio falls a little short.  Sound effects and voices are good, even if hearing Rannie the Rogue (your NPC helper who accompanies you on every run no matter what) repeat the same three lines becomes tiresome, but the music is largely forgettable.  Honestly, I couldn't even really tell you if there was any music in the dungeons.  In a puzzling move, the audio is only two channel stereo as well.  There is no way to get 5.1 surround sound at all.  It's by no means the worst thing to ever happen in the history of video games, but it's strange for a game released in 2013 and it's the weakest part of the whole package overall.

Control is slick and responsive with the minor exception of occasionally wonky hit detection.  It will sometimes look like you're even with a background element or an enemy, but you'll whiff your attack because the game decided you weren't squared up properly.  Again, it's not game-breaking - more of a minor annoyance - but it's worth mentioning.  The only other gripe is that I often found myself inadvertently performing the slide attack, accomplished by hitting down+square, when trying to avoid and counter enemy attacks.  Other than that, control is well laid out and it's easy to manage with key combos for using special attacks, magic spells, or consumables.

The best thing about Dragon's Crown is how insanely addictive it is, and how much content there is to feed your addiction.  My playthrough took 20 hours and 16 minutes, which included completing every available side quest, and a few chained dungeon runs - another aspect of the game you'll unlock as you play.  Instead of one-and-done quests, you can choose to continue adventuring at the end of a level.  Each time you continue, your rewards will be greater, but the catch is that your equipment degrades and will break over time.  The only way to fix it is to head back to town, but you can also buy multiple bags from the shop and keep backup equipment sets that you can switch to between stages during a run.  Again, these are the same stages you've been through a bunch of times, but it's amazingly fun to tackle dungeon after dungeon without stopping and earn new, better loot.  Between stages you will occasionally be able to play small cooking minigame as well where you mix ingredients to restore health for you and your companions' next venture. 

Finally, once you've beaten the game once, you unlock a secondary story (basically New Game+ mode).  You can also enter a randomized set of dungeons called the Labyrinth of Chaos, or the Colosseum to battle other players and earn gold.  There's just so much to do you could honestly play the game for years, or at least until you hit the level cap of 99. 

One final feature worth mentioning is cross-platform saving and play with PlayStation Vita owners (or "owner," since I know literally one person with a Vita).  I didn't have a chance to try it out, because like most of the gaming populace I don't own a Vita, but it's a nifty feature in principle to be able to pick up right where you left off at home when you're on the go.  For a game like this, where you can complete a dungeon run in 10-15 minutes, it seems perfect for a portable gaming device and for those who want to max out their characters.

With so much on offer, Dragon's Crown is a fantastic package.  It took me way longer to finish than I'd hoped, but that was because I simply fell into a funk and didn't play any games for several weeks.  It's not an indictment of the game, and it's a testament to its quality that the 20 hours I put into were over the course of only four sit-downs.  If you've played Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, or its sequel Shadow Over Mystara, or any of Vanillaware's previous games such as Odin Sphere or Muramasa, you really owe it to yourself to see what they created with Dragon's Crown.  It's got a few shortcomings, but it's so much fun and jam-packed with things to do it more than makes up for it.

Dragon's Crown was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

Retro-Review: American McGee's Alice [PlayStation 3]

American McGee's Alice
PC/Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Rogue Entertainment
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2000/2011
Completed: 18 June 2015

You know those games that you remember loving until you go back and play them years later?  American McGee's Alice is the posterchild for those games.

Taking characters and settings from Lewis Carroll's beloved tales, McGee put a twisted, macabre spin on it - not unlike Tim Burton's gothic versions of other people's work - and made a psychological horror action-platformer sequel of sorts.  Artistically, the game is brilliant.  Ironically, it's far better than Burton's take on the material more than a decade later.  As a game, it's more frustrating than fun.

In my recent review for Deadly Premonition, I noted that games should not be reviewed solely on their technical merits, but on their artistic vision as well.  In that regard, Alice excels.  Using id Software's Quake III engine, Alice looked haunting and surrealistically beautiful in 2000.  The HD re-release, which was bundled with copies of the long-awaited sequel Alice: Madness Returns, still looks very good.  The higher resolution has given the otherworldly look of Wonderland and its vastly different areas a facelift, and the lighting is as spectacular as ever.  One minor flaw in the HD presentation is the letterboxing cuts off the screen - and not in that way that old people think it does on movies.  It legitimately obscures portions that were visible in the original PC release, which results in Alice and other characters being shown from the neck down.

The character models look blocky, of course, but that's to be expected with a game whose source material is 15 years old.  Its the creepy interpretations of Carroll's classic characters that still shine through the hardware limitations of the era.  The Mad Hatter, for instance, has a sickly green hue to his skin, a bulbous nose, and long, lanky legs just right for squashing things.  Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, on the other hand, are reimagined as grotesque, overweight thugs.  It's all very dark and gloomy, but it fits the tale.

Several years after her original trip down the rabbit hole, Alice lies catatonic in a mental institution - the result of a traumatic event that claimed the lives of both of her parents.  Wracked with survivor's guilt, Alice must once again enter Wonderland, overthrow the evil Red Queen, and restore peace in order to heal her own damaged psyche.  Along the way, she'll encounter most of the most popular characters from the novels, including a more menacing-looking Cheshire Cat who helps guide her, the Caterpillar, and even Bill McGill, albeit briefly. 

The game's soundtrack is suitably moody and wonderful.  Composed by Nine Inch Nails member Chris Vrenna, the music is loaded with eerie elements - ticking clocks and chimes, harpsichords that sound like deranged music boxes, and ethereal voices.  It's spine-tingling, the way it works in tandem with the game's equally outstanding visuals.

Where Alice falls flat on its face is in its gameplay.

Simply put, the controls are among the most finicky, imprecise, twitchy, and frankly god-awful I've ever experienced.  In a game that is 90% jumping, you can see how that might be a problem.  Overshooting jumps and falling to your death is common.  Not only is it easy to miss a platform entirely, even if you land on it there's no guarantee you won't immediately fall right over the edge as the game attempts to incorporate momentum into your movement.  Other times, you'd swear you jumped straight ahead, but the controls decided that you were just a hair off-center and you'll go flying on an angle, like an airball in a basketball game.

The jumping mechanics are fundamentally flawed, if not broken.  For short jumps, you can aim using the camera controls and you'll see a silhouette of your feet.  Pressing the jump button will make Alice jump to that precise spot.  The trouble is that the feet icons don't always appear.  It seems to be arbitrary, even when you're standing right next to the rock or ledge you want to jump to.  The other problem is that this method certainly does you no good when you need to make a break for it, so you're forced to rely on constant saving and reloading for when you inevitably miss a jump and fall into lava/down a pit/onto spikes.

You cannot build a game so dependent on platform jumping and have such terrible controls.  At the default setting, the camera spins wildly with the slightest flick of the analog stick or mouse.  Movement is just as over-sensitive.  The HD remaster seems to add some semblance of analog control, but it's still near impossible to move forward slowly and carefully, which the game often demands.

The controls are only half of the problem.  Cheap enemies are constant.  The novelty of fighting Card Guards quickly wears off in the later stages when they gain the ability to shoot explosive projectiles capable of hitting you across the whole screen, where none of you weapons can touch them.  Then there are the Boojums, flying banshee-like ghouls whose scream not only damages Alice, but knocks her back.  They frequently appear in sections where precise platforming is required, so expect to be knocked into a lot of pits.  The final stages of the game are such a brutal assault of enemies, I found myself saving after taking out just one in a group.

Between the bad controls and the barrage of bad guys, Alice becomes a labor of sadistic love or possibly spite.  Challenge is all well and good, but it should always be derived from intelligent AI enemies or brilliantly-designed levels that test a player's reflexes, not deaths caused by bad controls or being knocked off a cliff because an enemy swooped in out of nowhere. 

At least the boss battles are cool.  Most of them are, surprisingly, the easiest parts of the game.  Alice has many cool weapons at her disposal, from her simple knife (called the Vorpal Blade), a deck of razor-sharp playing cards, explosive jack-in-the-boxes, dice that summon demons to fight for you, and jacks that home in on your enemies and chip away at their health.  Even though most of the battles are little more that circle-strafing around enemies, picking up respawning health power-ups, and spamming the jacks, they're still exciting, tense sequences and, without exception, look great.

McGee's artistic ambition clearly reached further than his team could deliver from a gameplay perspective.  As cool as the levels look, few of them are fun to play, even from the game's early stages.  I estimate I spent just as much time staring at the Save/Load screen as I did actually playing the game.

And another thing: why does McGee feel the need to attach his name to every game he makes?  Nintendo games don't carry a "Shigeru Miyamoto presents..." tagline, and that man made Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, and StarFox (among others).  American McGee made a bunch of Doom levels.

It's a shame that Alice has aged so poorly.  For more than a decade, I looked back fondly on American McGee's darker take on some of my favorite pieces of literature ever, but now I'm not sure if it just hasn't aged well or if it was always this bad and I was just blinded by the pretty visuals.

American McGee's Alice was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.

Review: Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut [PlayStation 3]

Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut
Sony PlayStation 3

Developer: Access Games
Publisher: Rising Star Games
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2013
Completed: 12 June 2015

Before we get started, watch this:

Is that sufficiently stuck in your head?  Good.  You should whistle it while reading this entire review, because it will give you a good sense of how weird Deadly Premonition is.

Right from the title screen whose music stutters, Deadly Premonition seems like it will be a disaster.  As soon as the opening cinematic begins, you'll get a glimpse of its PS2-quality graphics and you'll have premonitions of your own of hideous visuals, terrible audio, sloppy controls, and a lame story.  But you'd only be partially correct.

Deadly Premonition currently holds the world record for being the most polarizing video game ever critiqued, which proves two things: 1. Anything can get into the Guinness Book of World Records if the category is obscure enough; and 2. A game should not be judged solely on its technical merits, but on its artistic intent as well.

Originally released on the Xbox 360 in 2010, this enhanced Director's Cut adds slightly improved graphics, a much better camera, and some minor but non-playable plot elements.  It's also significantly easier than its frustrating predecessor, allowing the player to focus on the story and not its many broken elements.

Yes, Deadly Premonition is, in many ways, a fundamentally bad game.  The graphics are absolutely awful for a game released in 2013, or even 2010 for that matter.  Textures are indistinguishable blobs, the scenery flickers so bad with each camera pan that it could trigger seizures, character models are blocky, animate stiffly, and often clip through solid objects in the world, and absolutely nothing is round.  Even the lane markers on the road are made of jagged angles instead of natural curves.

The music (see video above) often doesn't suit the tone of the game.  That cheerful, catchy whistling tune accompanies discussions about grisly murders in a small town and a tale of a man who raped 800 people.  Eight hundred people, just in case you thought that was a typo.  Sound effects are almost as brutal as the graphics.  Every door in town creaks the same, regardless of what it's made out of.  Your footsteps on the rain-soaked streets make an obnoxious noise that resembles neither footsteps nor splashing water.  Items appear with an ear-piercing shriek of violins.  Only the guns sound halfway decent.

The control isn't entirely awful.  One of the additions of the Director's Cut is a fully user-controlled camera, which is also more pulled back from the action than in the original release.  You'll occasionally get hung up on minor objects.  The cars in this world apparently weren't built to be capable of driving over even the slightest of inclines, however, and come to a dead stop the same as if you'd rammed into a concrete wall.  This is especially problematic when the cars are as difficult to keep on the road as these in the first place, thanks to floaty physics.  Several control decisions are puzzling as well, such as the addition of useless turn signals and windshield wipers, especially when it requires several button presses just to get to the map while driving.  A one-button solution would have been far more intuitive and convenient.

So if Deadly Premonition has so much going against it, why would you be wrong for thinking it's a terrible game?  It sure sounds like one, doesn't it?  For all its flaws, and there are many I haven't even gotten into yet, the game is elevated by a spectacularly entertaining and engrossing story.  It carried me through even the most tedious gameplay segments, dying to know what happens next.  There are some pacing issues, especially near the climax, but this is one fantastic story brought to life by some surprisingly capable voice acting.

You play as Special Agent Francis York Morgan, but just call him York.  That's what everyone calls him, and you'll know that because he repeats that phrase to everyone he encounters, coupled with shoving his FBI identification in their faces.  York has been brought to the town of Greenvale by the news of a murder, and more importantly, evidence that seems to connect it with a series of killings he has been tracking in other locales. 

York is one of the FBI's best criminal profilers, thanks to his intuition.  Throughout the game, York will openly converse with Zach, his imaginary friend, about everything from the investigation to movies and music they love.  Obviously the FBI's screening process has slackened when it comes to the mentally unstable - that is, if you consider a grown man talking to a voice in his head in full view of others unstable.  Oh, he's also a serious foodie, and thinks his coffee gives him clues, so just a regular guy, really.

York is just one of the cast of eccentric, unforgettable characters that inhabit Greenvale.  There's George, the gruff Sheriff, and his beautiful young deputy Emily.  They're about as normal as things get.  There's also a middle-aged father who runs a local grocery that is stuck in the "rockin' 80s."  There's Thomas, a flamboyant, effeminate deputy, "Roaming" Sigourney, who carries a crockpot with her everywhere she goes and constantly worries about its temperature, and Harry, a mysterious rich old man who wears a gas mask made out of a human skull, and his servant Michael, who speaks in rhymes.

As crazy as all that sounds - and it is, believe me - it all works.  The characters are all interesting in their own way, and I wanted to get to know each one as best I could.  As York gets deeper into the investigation, and more victims start appearing, he begins to single suspects out.  The story does a wonderful job of keeping you engaged, trying to work out who the killer could be.  There's the obvious suspects, but they seem too obvious - unless the game is pulling a double-bluff because you'll write them off for that exact reason.  Like any good murder mystery, it keeps you guessing right until the end with some clever plot twists.  Some of them are fairly obvious, but others I didn't see coming, and I was never disappointed by any of them.

For all the technical foibles and downright outdated graphics and sound, the voice acting is much better than you'd expect.  Some of the performances are in line with the mediocrity of the rest of the game's presentation, but York himself is actually superbly acted, and he's a supremely likable character as a result.  It truly serves the story to have capable, or at worst passable, voice acting.

The game has a very supernatural vibe to it.  Many have likened it to David Lynch's Twin Peaks.  From what little I know of the show, it seems an apt comparison, right down to Agent York's penchant for delicious coffee - a clear nod to the show's famously good beverage.  It also borrows much from other video games, namely genre classics like Silent Hill and Resident Evil 4, with a decayed, twisted Other World similar to the former, and combat similar to the latter.

As stated earlier, the music is often out of place, making for some unintentional comedy, but there are also some genuinely frightening moments as well.  Each murder scene is just gruesome enough, even with the lackluster graphics, that they'll raise the hairs on your neck.  The way the ghostly enemies walk bent over backwards is bone-chilling, as are their eerie voices early on.  Unfortunately, they repeat the same three or four lines over and over, so by the 200th time you hear them wail, "I see you!" it loses its impact. 

I can't say enough good things about the game's plot, even though the final few chapters drag on far longer than was necessary.  What holds the game back is just about everything in between.

Deadly Premonition attempts to be an open-world horror game - sort of Grand Theft Auto meets Silent Hill - but comes up short of either game.  Many of the game's events occur at scripted times, requiring you to reach a marker within a window that can be anywhere from an hour to half a day.  In your free time, you're allowed to explore, but the problem is there just isn't that much to see.  For some reason, most of the businesses are closed, even in the middle of the day, unless you have a story-related reason to go there.  Early on, it's explained that businesses and even the schools close when it rains - a superstition brought on by the legend of the Raincoat Killer from the 1950s - but even on sunny afternoons the bars were closed.  How does a town survive economically if nothing is ever open?

Most of the buildings are just facades anyway.  You're only able to enter a small handful of shops.  In the meantime, you can drive around and look for human remains scattered on back roads, or collect trading cards floating around town.  Or, more likely, you'll drive to where you need to be and stand around for a while until the game lets you proceed.

You see, Deadly Premonition has no wait feature.  Though the clock is accelerated, it's not quite three times the speed of real-time, so one minute in the real world equals about two and a half in-game.  York can nap if he can find a place to bed down, but the shortest length of time you can do so is three hours, so if you need to be somewhere in two hours you have no choice but to kill time.  Several times during the game I simply set my controller on the floor and did other things.  Once I even made and ate dinner, which I'm sure York would have appreciated given his enthusiasm for food, until the town's clock chimed to let me know another hour had passed.

Another issue is there seems to be no fast-travel system by default.  You can unlock one, but without it you'll need to drive or walk all over.  With distances over 4,000 yards, this can sometimes require five to ten real world minutes of excruciatingly tedious driving.  You can occasionally chat with Zach about movies, and those chats are usually fun to listen to, but it doesn't make up for the fact that it's a huge time sink. 

In another attempt to make the game feel more realistic, York must also eat and sleep at regular intervals.  A meter in the pause menu will show his current hunger and exhaustion level, and both can be improved by eating random foods you'll find lying about.  See that cherry pie in the rotting Other World version of the art gallery?  No worries, go ahead and eat it.  Coffee, cigarettes, and other stimulants will improve your alertness as well, and luckily York can carry all of these things around in his jacket - which must be changed periodically, or else it will start to stink and attract flies.  You can also choose to shave when you find a sink.  Failing to do so will cause visible facial hair to grow, but why are there sinks everywhere and why does York just happen to have his shaving kit with him at all times? 

An even weirder question is why does York get a bonus for shaving, drinking coffee, changing clothes, and saving his game?  As an FBI agent, you're paid handsomely for your work as well as seemingly most minor tasks, but money is largely irrelevant in the game.  Later on you can buy some cool weapons for the local gunshop, but many of these can be found in the world with a little effort, while recovery items are so plentiful I just began ignoring them all after a certain point.  It's like the developers had a list of ideas, but didn't have the time to fully implement them, and the result is a nuisance instead of an immersive feature. 

The game is also rife with glitches.  Clipping is one thing, but it's another thing entirely to see a town resident driving his Firebird around town while he sits on thin air outside of the car.  Once, I opened a door in the police station and the room beyond had disappeared.  I promptly fell through the negative space and had to reload my last save - of which you only get one, by the way.  One save slot that you just have to keep overwriting.  That's not a glitch, it's by design, and it's a poor design choice.

Even more rampant than the glitches is the slowdown.  In a game that looks this ugly, with such low polygon counts and low-res textures, you'd think at least the framerate would be stable in lieu of graphical fidelity.  Nope.  The game chugs frequently and severely.

Yet, in spite of all its flaws, Deadly Premonition's phenomenal story kept me hooked.  I couldn't put it down until the mystery had been solved, and I don't regret a single second of the time I spent with it.  I can't ignore the multitude of problems, but I can overlook them when I'm as entertained as I was while playing this utterly weird, unique game.  I wholeheartedly recommend you judge for yourself because, while the verdict is still out on the owls, that's some damn fine coffee in Greenvale.

Deadly Premonition was completed on a PlayStation 3 with no cheats.