Bionic Commando Review


PC enthusiasts are used to feeble ports of console games, and Bionic Commando is no exception. The usual signs of indifference to the platform are all here, such as onscreen prompts that assume you are using a console controller, and laughably few graphics options. But even if you're just seeking good entertainment and are able to look past the obvious apathy shown to this version of Bionic Commando, you'll still find that consistent fun is in short supply. There are some good ideas here, and when they coalesce, you glimpse the great game struggling to escape from the shackles of averageness. You see it when you fling automobiles at a crowd of troopers; you see it in the exciting, high-flying concluding sequence. More often, however, you get the idea that developer GRIN didn't know what to do with its clever ideas. Early glimpses of a big world to explore tantalize you, but your progress is restricted by annoying clouds of deadly radiation. You'll come across new, more powerful weapons, only to discover that shooting them is just as lame as firing your default pistol. Moving about the world with your bionic arm is fun, but that mechanical wonder isn't strong enough to carry the entire experience.

That bionic arm is the gameplay's backbone, and it's the source of every positive feature found within Bionic Commando. Most importantly, it's your standard form of transportation. Using it as a grapple hook, you can fling it onto posts, tree branches, and girders and swing and climb toward your destination. Stringing swings together can be satisfying, though you don't have Spider-Man-like freedom to glide about as you please. Your arm has only limited reach, so you can latch onto something only when the targeting reticle indicates that the surface is available. Furthermore, swinging has a lot of weight behind it. You must release your grip earlier than you would expect to keep the momentum going, which leads to a bit of clumsiness in the first hour or so as you become acclimated to the mechanics. If you're playing with a mouse and keyboard, you'll also need to work around the onscreen button prompts, which assume you're playing with an Xbox 360 controller. Eventually, you'll be able to figure out these obstacles and swing with ease, though certain levels are more enjoyable to navigate than others because they offer a bit more elbow room.

A glimpse of a futuristic metropolis may at first lead you to believe that there's a lot of room to explore. However, while Bionic Commando does afford you occasional, minimal leeway, you're generally pushed down a linear path. In this case, the modern replacement for traditional invisible walls (though there are some of these as well) is radiation. These blue clouds of instant death choke the city streets and coat the sides of buildings and are to be avoided at all costs. Radiation is one of the game's most common sources of frustration, because it imposes an artificial limitation on movement. You might fling yourself onto a seemingly safe rooftop only to be welcomed by this fatal mist, or reach out toward a wall but find that radiation keeps you from grabbing it. The restrictions have a big impact on the pace, and the scattered enemy encounters are far too tepid to energize the experience.
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Wolfenstein Review


Most modern first-person shooters are so very serious. They feature a whole lot of brown environments and gruff characters, but never have enough archways into alternate universes. Well, if you're in the mood for an FPS with a glint in its figurative eye, Wolfenstein is a good way to stave off the forces of evil without the in-game grumpiness that usually accompanies such endeavors. This sequel to 2001's Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a worthy addition to the series and a fun romp in its own right. The game won't set your world on fire; it occasionally stops feeling old-fashioned and starts feeling just plain old, and a number of flaws are woven throughout the gameplay's very fabric. Some awesome boss fights and memorable combat sequences prevent Wolfenstein from falling into a rut, however. Besides, you're not just fighting Nazis--you're fighting magic Nazis that conjure force fields and fly around with jetpacks.

The setup for this historical/sci-fi mash-up is typical Wolfenstein whimsy, shouldered by the ever-capable B.J. Blaskowicz. This returning hero has spilled his share of Nazi blood, so who better than B.J. to protect the residents of the city of Isenstadt (not to be confused with the Austrian city of Eisenstadt) from the ongoing onslaught? Isenstadt is the headquarters of several resistance groups that seeks to wrest the secrets of the supernatural from the hands of the Schutzstaffel. It seems the Nazis are up to their old tricks, this time harnessing the powers of a mystical force called the Black Sun for the usual take-over-the-world kind of evil. If you know the series, you know not to expect much substance or surprise, though it's too bad there isn't more to draw you into this kitschy fiction. A lot of this has to do with the technology powering the game. Wolfenstein looks a bit aged; the prerendered cutscenes look overcompressed and facial animations are stiff. These second-rate assets, along with unenthusiastic voice acting, are distracting and make it hard to get invested in your fellow insurgents. Wolfenstein's story is a throwaway that boils down to a simple premise: Throw a bunch of Nazis into the occultist blender and see what cockamamy concoction pours out.

As it turns out, this concoction doesn't offer many surprises. Though you'll get tastes of role-playing elements and paranormal wizardry, Wolfenstein sticks to the trusty run-and-gun formula that has worked so well for shooters over the years. And it does it well, sending you into country farms, sprawling airfields, and secretive corridors to see how well you can fend off the soldiers and various anomalies it flings toward you. Your tools of destruction are solid. Traditional World War II weapons, such as the MP40 SMG and the Flammenwerfer, feel excellent, so even if you run out of ammo for the more powerful firearms, you'll never lament falling back to the simpler choices. But the better half of your arsenal is essentially snatched from an alternate reality. Of these options, you'll quickly grow fond of the Tesla gun, which fires electric streams in various directions at once, and the Leichenfaust 44, which is a heavy weapon that instantly vaporizes standard enemies. As you explore Isenstadt and complete missions, you'll earn money and find bags of coins. You can then spend these spoils on upgrades for your weapons, such as diminished recoil or greater damage. While some weapons are better in certain circumstances than others, there's really no weak banana in this bunch.

The action itself is rudimentary as far as first-person shooters go. There is no cover system to grapple with; you won't peek around corners, slink in the shadows, or pilot vehicles. You can, however, enter a parallel dimension called The Veil. When you activate The Veil, the world is shrouded in a shimmering cloak. In it, you can run faster, and enemies glisten, making them easier to target. Odd creatures called geists also float about, shocking nearby enemies if you shoot them down and even creating fearsome webs of electricity in tandem with neighboring geists. More importantly, entering The Veil lets you perform three potent powers: slow down time, surround yourself with a bulletproof shield, and empower your own bullets to do more damage and pierce paranormal force fields. You can also purchase upgrades for Veil powers just as you do for weapons. Eventually, you might be turning adjacent enemies into pillars of ash when you suppress the flow of time or deflecting bullets back toward your foes when in the safety of your shield.
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Mega Man Star Force 3: Black Ace Review


When you release a game that is effectively the ninth entry in what is already a stagnant franchise, keeping things fresh should be a primary concern. Capcom, however, seems content to drive whatever potential the Mega Man role-playing games had into the ground with Mega Man Star Force 3. Based on the Battle Network series from the Game Boy Advance, Star Force 3 retains essentially the same gameplay mechanics and presentation as its predecessors. If you've never played any of the previous Mega Man RPGs, you'll probably enjoy the solid battle mechanics in Star Force 3. Still, the inane plot, annoying characters, and aged visuals are reason enough to avoid this tired retread.


As Geo Stelar, you become Mega Man and explore the wave world by merging with an alien named Omega-Xis. This time, the obligatory evil organization bent on world domination is called Dealer. Its members, each with a corny playing-card-themed persona like Queen Virgo or Jack Corvus, are attempting to gain control of a meteor heading for Earth, and your goal is to stop them. Despite its mature themes, the plot is primarily told through insurmountable walls of inane dialogue from characters who rigidly conform to stereotypes you've likely encountered countless times before. Geo's group of friends includes a computer whiz kid; a fat, bullish classmate whose main concern is food; and a prissy girl whose only motivation throughout most of the story is to win her student-body election. Plot twists are predictable and, too often, character dialogue is used to spell out and remind you of events that have already occured, just in case you missed them the first (or second or third) time.

Star Force 3's saving grace is its intricate battle system. Encounters take place on a 3-by-5 grid, which you view over Mega Man's shoulder. Each turn, you can choose from a random set of six offensive or defensive battle cards. Emphasis is placed on the timing of your attacks and on evading enemy fire by sidestepping left or right. When you succeed in battle, you gain more-powerful cards instead of leveling up as you would in a traditional RPG. Discovering items in the environment or forming friendship bonds with other characters increases your maximum health and allows Mega Man to learn new abilities. Intense boss battles, a hallmark of all Mega Man games, are just as engaging and challenging here. Each enemy requires you to use a different strategy and to fine-tune your 30-card deck, so returning to the same bosses throughout the game always yields a new encounter.

Sticking with the playing cards motif, Mega Man Star Force 3 is available in two versions: Black Ace and Red Joker. These refer to the different ultimate transformations Mega Man can make in each game. Defeating certain enemies releases "noise," which is a kind of electromagnetic pollution that you absorb during battle. Depending on which battle cards you use and how quickly you dispatch enemies, Mega Man "noise changes" and gains abilities specific to his new form. For example, the wolf form makes him vulnerable to fire-based attacks but increases the damage he causes from wood- and sword-based battle cards. Different noise changes are available in the two versions of the game, but there's really no reason to buy both. The characters and story are identical in each. If you happen to know someone with the other version, you can link up locally or over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to trade battle cards and unlock a more-powerful ultimate transformation for Mega Man. You also have the option of battling up to seven friends as long as each person has a copy of either Black Ace or Red Joker.
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Dawn of Discovery


Set in a bright, idealized version of the 1400s, Dawn of Discovery is a charming game of exploration and city building, with mechanics that are straightforward enough for anyone to grasp yet complex enough to stay satisfying in the long term. Dawn of Discovery for the Wii and DS share their title with a PC game, but aside from the era in which they take place and the most fundamental gameplay concepts, the games are quite different. This actually benefits the Wii and DS versions, streamlining the number of resources and the overall scale into something more comfortably manageable for these platforms. It's not without its flaws, but it gets most things right, and the various elements come together to create a captivating experience.

There are two modes of play. The Story mode is a lengthy campaign that takes you from building tiny fishing villages to founding massive cities of stone. The tale it tells is populated with overly broad characters--generous sultans, arrogant nobles, treacherous women--but it breaks up your path to progress into a series of bite-size objectives that make putting the game down very difficult. It also serves as an effective tutorial for the Continuous Play mode in which you customize a variety of aspects to your liking, including the overall size of the world, the size of the islands in that world, and whether you must compete for islands and resources with any AI opponents. Then, it sets you free to play in that world for as long as you like. In either case, the controls and interface work very well, laying out all the buildings you can construct in easily managed menus that let you simply point at where you want the structure to go and plop it down on the ground. Of course, the act of creating cities is nothing new to games, but Dawn of Discovery's lighthearted visuals and effective interface make it feel playful and pleasurable.

Regardless of the mode you're playing, you'll need to settle islands and create pleasant living conditions for your residents, helping them advance up the social ladder from simple pioneers to lofty aristocrats. It's not out of sheer altruism that you do this; the higher your citizens' quality of life becomes, the more taxes you can extract from them. Pioneers require only food, milk, and a nearby chapel to become settlers, but with each successive rank, the needs become more numerous and complex, and your people more demanding. For instance, in addition to carrying over all the needs of pioneers, settlers also require herbs, clothes, nearby convent schools, and guest houses to become citizens. Production flows become a bit more elaborate, as well. Producing clothes, for instance, is a two-step process, requiring hemp farms to grow the material and huts for weavers to process it. The complexity develops enough to stay interesting as your society advances but not so much that it significantly slows down the pace of development.

You also need to be mindful of your overall economic balance. Each production facility drains a set amount of gold coins over time, and you'll need to avoid creating redundant facilities and manage the tax rate for your residents to ensure that those operating expenses are outweighed by a steady influx of gold. You can also sell surpluses of your own goods or buy goods you're lacking on the open market. Once you get the basics down, you'll be able to see your settlements advance from level to level in no time, and watching your towns flourish into ever-expanding cities is a joy. As your settlements grow, they'll become prone to such problems as fires, rat infestations, and even the plague, which require firehouses, rat catchers, and hospitals to deal with these threats.
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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Review


The 1980's animated series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero famously featured a series of good-natured public service announcements. These PSAs taught youngsters safety lessons, like not to play with electrical wires and to be careful with campfires. They did not, however, tell you not to play G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, so if you need an official warning, let this be it: Don't do it! Even in the realm of licensed tie-ins, this monotonous third-person action game is particularly poor, managing not only to screw up the mechanics it rips off from other games, but also failing to get even the basics right. An awful camera, atrocious vehicle sequences, and dreadful storytelling are just a few of the inhumanities you'll face on this mission to spoil the latest scheme from the terrorist group Cobra. Local co-op play eases the tedium and frustrations, but even the closest of friends can't rescue you from this snake's venomous fangs. So now you know--and knowing is half the battle.


G.I. Joe borrows liberally from Contra and Gears of War. You and another Joe (controlled either by another player or the AI) run through a series of 3D environments, blasting everything in sight to earn points and occasionally taking cover and popping out to fire at the more resilient nasties. Bringing enemies down consists mostly of holding down a button to shoot and hitting another one to tumble or hide behind conspicuously placed barriers. There should have been fun here. With more than a dozen different characters to unlock and play, G.I. Joe could have delivered action enthusiasts some fast-paced gunplay, or amused franchise fans with a fun and entertaining story. Instead, you get ugly cutscenes, bad dialogue, and deadpan voice acting that expresses all the excitement of a long yawn. And the gameplay itself is not only sloppy and boring, but it fails to get a number of essentials right.

G.I. Joe's fixed camera is the first example of a simple ingredient gone sour. You get absolutely no camera control. As you traverse the environments, approach downward slopes, and turn corners, the camera will swoop around to give you what is apparently intended to be a proper view of the proceedings. But it leads to disaster. You'll be shot at from offscreen enemies, or have to run toward the camera, unable to see where you are going. When the camera view suddenly flips while you are moving, the controls often won't adjust properly, so your Joe may go running off in some direction other than the one you intended. Plenty of games with fixed or semifixed cameras have managed these camera shifts properly; there's no excuse for the issues here. Things become even more disastrous when you jump into any of the game's slippery vehicles. You always push an analog stick forward to move the vehicle forward, but your view of the action may be from the side, from slightly above, or even from in front. And the camera will move about as you drive, forcing you to constantly rethink which direction you need to push the stick in to make the tank move in the direction you want it to go.

Another standard component done poorly: the targeting system. The Rise of Cobra selects a target for you automatically. If you are using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk (the Classic Controller is also supported; motion controls are not), you can switch targets using the d-pad, but this is clumsy and uncomfortable. To make matters worse, if you take cover and select any enemy other than the default target, the game will automatically switch your target back to the default if you don't fire for a few seconds. Why? Who knows. The fact that you can fire at certain power-ups to reap their benefits only complicates matters. The game doesn't distinguish among foes that can hurt you, buildings that cannot, and these score-enhancing cubes. Thus, you'll be surrounded by Cobra grunts but firing at some offscreen power-up because the game can't prioritize a dude with a gun over a harmless cube hovering in the air. When an enemy does fall, the targeting may not lock on to nearby foes because they are behind you--which happens often, given the rotten camera. If you play on the middle or upper difficulty level, you may die once or twice, almost always because of the awful camera or the awful targeting.
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Preview Aliens vs. Predator Alien Gameplay Impressions





Aliens vs. Predator made its debut at E3 in June, with both the marine and predator sections being shown in Los Angeles. However, developer Rebellion left out the alien gameplay until today, when it demoed some of the levels behind closed doors at GamesCom. We entered the darkness of publisher Sega's booth to find out more.

The main thing to note about the alien is how vulnerable it is when it's out in the open. As anyone who's seen the movies will know, aliens may have acid for blood, but marine gunfire will cut through them like butter. That said, aliens are deadly up close, as they're able to rip through flesh with similar ease. As a result of all this, you'll have to choose your battles carefully when playing as the alien, using the environment to your advantage and picking off enemies one by one.

As Rebellion points out, while the predator and marine characters are battle-hardened killers, the alien has far more primitive, animalistic instincts. Its main goal is to serve the hive, using humans to incubate new aliens and assimilating them as part of the nest. The game reflects this with regular goals to find humans to impregnate using facehuggers. However, you can't just attack the armoured marines--you have to hunt down civilians, such as scientists and workers, who have no such protection.

Ripping through the marine forces as an alien is a satisfyingly gory experience, as the alien has plenty of finishing moves at its disposal. If you approach enemies from behind, you can rip out their throat or puncture their chest with your tail, with blood spraying all over the walls as a result. If you approach them from the front, they'll wrestle with you, sometimes actually winning out and kicking you off before you can finish them off. However, if you're successful, you'll get a first-person view of you biting through their head. The potential harvest victims also put up a bit of a fight. In one section, they ran through a security area, and as we ripped through the door to try to catch them, they shot themselves in the head to resist being captured.

Of course, the one thing the alien really has going for it is its incredible agility. It can climb walls and run across ceilings at a breakneck pace, allowing it to get close enough to unleash its deadly melee attacks. Speaking to Rebellion reps, they commented on the challenges of wall running, especially as the level geometry has become so much more complex since the original Aliens vs. Predator. One feature they've implemented is the ability to quick jump to certain vents, which are highlighted in your vision with a kind of swirly vortex. If you look at something in the world with this vortex and press the jump button, you'll automatically leap to it, allowing you to get away from enemy fire.

While we didn't get to see the multiplayer in action, we couldn't pass up the chance to at least ask Rebellion about it. There'll be two main game modes--three-way and two-way, referring to the number of species involved. In both modes, there'll be support for up to 18 players online. There'll also be a four-player mode where you'll team up as marines and take on wave after wave of enemy--the team already compares it to Gears of War 2's Horde mode and Left 4 Dead.

The complete Aliens vs. Predator single-player game will offer 12 hours of gameplay, so expect a four-hour alien campaign. The game is set to launch in February 2010 on the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, and we've been promised a hands-on in the next couple of months. Watch this space for more details soon.
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Dragon Age: Origins Updated Hands-On - The Dwarf Commoner's Humble Beginnings


We've already covered much of the basics of starting a new game in BioWare's upcoming role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins...because we've played through them. If you haven't already, take a look at our previous story covering the origins of the human mage, which also covers the basics of character creation and interface elements--we won't be repeating those here. Instead, we'll jump into the origin story for dwarves who begin their careers as lowly commoners in the streets of Orzammar, the subterranean metropolis. As a dwarf commoner, you can choose to play either as a rogue or as a warrior--there's virtually no difference whatsoever in the experience or gameplay, except that each class has its own skills, and that certain fights seem tougher if you play a rogue who didn't specialize in combat skills. On that note, please be advised that this story contains minor spoilers.

Even though the tall, stony architecture of Orzammar looks impressive in some places, the life of a dwarf commoner isn't pretty. According to the introductory cinematic sequence for this origin, the dwarves have a rigid caste system that forbids dwarves of lower classes to mingle with highfalutin nobles--and your character is at the very bottom of the barrel, a "casteless" character marked with a brand on his or her face that tells the world that you're the most common of commoners.

You begin your adventure being harangued by the local dwarf slumlord Beraht, who has recruited you to do his dirty work while he "encourages" your kindhearted sister Rica to catch the eye of a dwarf noble. Beraht's potentially not-family-friendly scheme is to marry her off into a noble family to give birth to an heir, elevating her, you, and "Uncle" Beraht to noble status. (Interestingly, while mages speak with the prim and proper BioWare British Accent made famous in Knights of the Old Republic, dwarves all speak American/Canadian English--no evidence of a British accent or Scottish brogue in sight.)

Beraht then storms off, reminding you that you have more dirty work to do before the day is done. Before you go, you can chat with your sister to get more insight about your situation and the world of the dwarves--how most of your people remain below ground rather than deal with repugnant, smelly surface dwellers like humans and elves, and how the darkspawn, the game's villainous monsters, have risen from the depths of the earth to claim the lives of most members of the noble and warrior castes, which leaves the nobles desperate for heirs. It also seems that Rica has caught the eye of a potential suitor, but with no promises made on either side, you're better off heading out to Orzammar for some more shady dealings, at least for the time being.

You leave your sister, and immediately meet Leske, a dwarf thief and cohort who also works for Beraht, and who also has the hots for your sister. (In fact, if you create a female dwarf character, he'll actually make a pass at you as well.) After reminding him that his attentions are unwanted, you get the details of your next mission--locating, shaking down, and ultimately killing a smuggler who works for Beraht, but has been skimming lyrium ore (the enchanted metal used to power magic spells and forge enchanted weapons) to sell to illicit parties on the surface.

The common areas in the dwarf city, much like the halls of the mage tower, are full of ambient characters that go on about their business and occasionally have independent conversations that touch on bits of the world's lore, such as the political tension between the current dwarven king and an ambitious dwarven prince. And if you happen to be a rogue, you can also use the profession's free skill point in the stealing skill to relieve some commoners and guards of their coins and healing poultices--the latter of which will prove to be a godsend later on.
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Overlord II Review


The impish minions of the Overlord universe haven't been idle in the two years that have passed since the first game and have emerged with a host of new tricks in Overlord II. The evil little scamps have used the time off to learn how to operate machinery, wear disguises, sail the open seas, ride mounts, and get possessed by their evil master, as well as develop an uncanny talent for attacking baby seals. These additions make Overlord II a more varied experience than the first game, and while some of the issues that hampered the original have been addressed, they haven't exactly been fixed. Overlord II retains the gleeful maliciousness of the series; thus, it's still great fun to have a small army of nasty little blighters at your disposal to wreak havoc. But because the game’s auto-targeting is still haphazard, and the minions apt to do some very dumb things, you can expect some frustration to go along with your enjoyment.


Though the minions have evolved and you're playing as a brand new overlord this time around, the title character remains as mute and inscrutable as in the original. The game is set dozens of years after the first game, so you'll have to start your evil dominion from scratch, with the new enemy being the Roman-like Glorious Empire. The tone of the game is satirical, sharp, and more than a little silly--the elves here are portrayed as hippie environmentalists, the Empire nobles are obese snobs, and the fairies are ridiculously overendowed. Meanwhile, the soldiers act like they stepped straight out of an Asterix comic. It's all harmless fun, and while you will get to kill your fair share of cute animals, your silent, mainly charmless overlord won't really get to do anything too nasty.

Because the main character is so impassive, it's once again up to the minions to carry the charm quotient of the game. The minions are a cackling, gleeful lot of destructive slobs who are endearing in their dedication to their master, and it's a joy to watch them attack enemies, harass innocents, and act like general nuisances. You'll be well into the game before you find all four types of minions--the melee-focused browns, the flame-throwing reds, the sneak-attacking greens, and the magic-heavy blues--but when you do, you'll have a formidable miniarmy at your disposal. As overlord, you need this support because--despite your intimidating Sauron-like garb--you're no match solo for more than a few enemies at any one time. All of the heavy lifting will be done by your minions, and while you'll be able to get away with sheer force of numbers in many encounters, the toughest battles in Overlord II will require you to think hard about your minion mix and how you deploy them on the battlefield.

Initially, it can be a little intimidating to deploy your minions, and you'll need to be fairly dexterous when manipulating the keyboard and mouse. The default layout, however, is pretty easy to get used to, and is superior to the game’s console counterparts as it affords you more accuracy when directing your minions. You'll quickly get the grasp of sweeping units across the landscape, separating your minions into their respective color groups to take advantage of their unique strengths (and shield their weaknesses), and making them hold strategic checkpoints. For the most part, your minions are dependable creatures who'll find the best path to take or attack the most present danger. They can, however, still be quite dumb, which means a certain amount of micromanagement from their overlord is in order. Minions will often stop to pick up booty when there are still plenty of dangerous enemies attacking, and some are prone to aquatic suicide by trying to pick up objects close to water.

Despite their occasional brain lapses, this time around, your minions are a much more talented bunch and their most important new trait is the ability to ride different mounts. Three of the four minion types have their own specific beastie they can ride, allowing them to vastly increase their effectiveness and speed. It's satisfying to see your reds do damaging strafing runs atop their fire lizards. And breaking through a heavily shielded phalanx becomes a breeze when your browns are mounted on their wolves. Opportunities to ride don't occur too often in the game, but when they do, it's a welcome change from Overlord II's usual gameplay.
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Battlefield 1943 Review


The Battlefield series has been delivering great team-based multiplayer combat for many years, and Battlefield 1943 is the latest scion of this venerable franchise. Set in the Pacific theater of WWII, Battlefield 1943 pits the forces of Imperial Japan and the United States against each other in online matches that support up to 24 players. While this downloadable game features a small number of maps and only three soldier classes, it still captures the thrill of the best multiplayer shooters through well-balanced, varied, and exciting gameplay. Though hindered by some technical issues and other sundry oddities, Battlefield 1943 is a great game that provides a lot of bang for your $14.99.


The victory conditions will be familiar to veterans of the Battlefield series. Each team has a reinforcements bar that functions like a team health meter. The more team members die and respawn, the more this bar is depleted. When one team's bar is fully depleted, the game ends; but it's not quite that simple. Each map has five capture points. Holding these capture points will make each kill worth more and help you deplete your enemy's reinforcements bar faster. The action flows between and jumps around these points as teams struggle to take points from the enemy while defending their own. Players can respawn near any friendly capture point, meaning forces shift dynamically and the battlefield is constantly in flux. You'll regularly have to reassess and attack or defend as the situation warrants. It's rewarding to devise a tactical maneuver and execute it well (flank the enemy's defenses and clear your enemy out with grenades), and though things often don't go according to plan (your jeep is flung into the air by an explosive antitank round).

Unfortunately, coordinating such maneuvers with your teammates is a tough proposition. Voice chat is not fully functional. Sometimes you will be able to hear your teammates talking on an open channel no matter how far they are from you; other times, you will get only silence. If you join a squad (assigned randomly), you share a squad-only chat channel, but this channel is equally unreliable. The only people you can actually invite into your squad are players on your friends list. Xbox 360 players can join an Xbox Live party and chat without issues, but PlayStation 3 players have no such luck. These issues make advanced strategies difficult to coordinate, but after a few rounds, every player will have an idea of how to help the team out. And despite the chat issues, being in a squad is still tactically relevant, because you can spawn wherever your squadmates are (even in a moving vehicle, if there's a free seat). You can also tag a capture point to indicate where your teammates should rally, so even without open communication lines, you can still coordinate your efforts.


It's important to be mindful of the battlefield situation when you respawn because there are three different classes of soldier from which to choose. Each class has a unique weapons loadout that gives it certain strengths and weaknesses. The Infantry class carries a machine gun that is deadly in close quarters and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher that is great against enemy vehicles or structures. The Infantry soldier's repair ability makes him a good vehicle escort, but he is vulnerable if caught out in the open. The Rifleman class is the best antipersonnel unit and is deadly at all midrange distances. This soldier's grenades are good for clearing out trenches, but they aren't very effective against tanks. The Scout, armed with a scoped rifle, is the long-range specialist. His remote-detonated explosives can protect his back or booby-trap a road, but if either of the other classes gets close, the Scout is in trouble. Of course, there's always a trusty one-hit-kill melee weapon on hand, be it the wrench, the bayonet, or the sword. Each class can be equally satisfying and frustrating to play, depending on the situation, and players must spawn carefully and play to strengths of their class in order to be effective.
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ARMA II Review


Arma II is a first- and third-person tactical shooter that simulates a military operation in the midst of a growing civil war in the fictitious European country of Chernarus. The sequel to Armed Assault and the spiritual heir to Operation Flashpoint, Arma II sets a new standard for realistic military simulation games. While Bohemia Interactive's games have always been detailed and ambitious, its latest has surpassed its predecessors by adding meaningful interaction with non-player characters (other than shooting them), increasing the number of moral and strategic choices you will face throughout the campaign, and achieving unprecedented levels of detail, openness, beauty, and believability in the setting. Despite an infuriatingly buggy single-player campaign and some artificial intelligence driving issues, Arma II is a triumph. From its fascinating, sophisticated, and unscripted battles to the immersive detail of the gameworld, Arma II delivers a wholly unique and uncommonly replayable gaming experience.


Arma II’s setting is visually striking, amazingly detailed, and brimming with life. Modeled after regions of the Czech Republic, the landscape is so authentic that you could orienteer by watching the stars move across the sky. The terrain includes picturesque forests, mountains, beaches, and pastures, plus one large urban area and several smaller towns, and in many missions, you'll have free rein to traverse vast tracts of the 86-square-mile gameworld. Alongside the Chernarussian people, wild animals and livestock go about their respective lives. However, the animal AI is disappointingly indifferent to the war. Another element of the environment that can interrupt the immersion is the scarce number of civilians you'll encounter per town, along with how few buildings you can enter. On the whole, however, finding a well-worn trail in the forest or commandeering a farmer's tractor for the occasional joyride makes the world feel lived in and real.

Like the geography, the story is refreshingly complex and believable. In the former Soviet Republic of Chernarus, five factions vie for power, including the US Marines, your faction for the single-player campaign; the Chernarussian military, which is allied with the US; the Red Star Movement, a group of Communist separatists from the ethnically Russian areas of Chernarus; NAPA, an independent group of nationalist partisans fighting the Communists; and the armed forces of the Russian Federation. Although your mission is to help the legitimate government in its campaign to crush the Communist insurgency, it's not always clear which factions are in the right; they're all guilty of corruption and atrocities.

In contrast to many first-person shooter games, the war doesn't stop and start at your convenience. You'll find corpses, stumble upon unscripted battles, and encounter friendly troops on patrol, creating the impression that the fighting will continue with or without you. At the same time, your actions can have a profound influence on the story as the campaign unfolds. For example, at one point, you can become instrumental in forming an alliance between NAPA and the Chernarussian government, and at another, you can follow up on evidence of Communist war crimes to win the hearts and minds of the natives. Civilians can often provide intelligence about nearby enemy forces, rebel leaders, and their hideouts, but don't get too attached to your new friends, because enemy partisans don't take kindly to collaborators. In the campaign, each path you take develops fluidly into new missions, which typically begin with a simple objective, like scouting an area, and lead to additional optional objectives, based on your choices. Will you risk your squad and engage your target on foot, or will you endanger nearby civilians by calling in a missile strike? The ramifications of your actions will bear both on your immediate situation and on how the game unfolds several missions down the line. Other missions will send you deep into enemy territory to scout for insurgent bases, capture rebel leaders, rendezvous with partisans, and take part in a wide variety of other realistic military operations.
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