Xbox 360 - Portal 2

Portal 2 by Valve

Portal 2 is the follow up to Portal. Portal is available through the Orange Box game set or via download on Xbox Live. Obviously, it's also available on other platforms (both Portal 1 and Portal 2).

Portal

Mini-review. Portal starts as a unique and fresh take on a shooter. Instead of being a straight first person shooter, it turns the gun into a portal creation device. So, you run around in 'test' chambers creating portals and then running through them to get to other places in the room without walking. So, you can create an orange and blue portal. This creates two doors linked together.

Portals are like mini-rifts in the time fabric that let you walk through the portal and enter one place and exit wherever the other doorway is. Portals can be created on floors, ceilings, walls or wherever a portal surface is. Portals can only be created on special surfaces. Some surfaces cannot create portals (like metal).

In the first Portal, you were a test subject thrown into a series of test rooms to test out the portals and whether you could solve the puzzles using the portal guns. In among all of the tests there are motion sensing shooting robots, a quirky and somewhat insane robotic female computer along with other traps that could kill or maim you. At the end of Portal, your character ends up shutting down the main insane female computer to prevent it from becoming more insane (and, of course, to escape).

To solve many of the puzzles, you are tasked with dropping down long drops into created portals to fling yourself across the room using momentum.

Score for Portal: 8.5/10.

Portal 2 -- story

Portal started this whole new genre of puzzle shooters. This is a unique game with an odd twist on a shooter. It's fresh and unique and sits in its own unique place in the gaming world. Hello other developers, you might want to take notice.

Portal 2 continues with where Portal ended. It's not exactly clear how you get there, but you are now many years in the future. So, you start off with a somewhat odd flying eye bot with a male British or Aussie accent. This bot leads you back into the test chambers again where, eventually, you awaken the insane female robot computer from the first Portal. Now that she's awake, she begins testing you again with various rooms and new trials. Except, now this eye bot is helping you along and the female computer is now seeking revenge (even though she says she isn't). So, you meet up with the insane female robot computer again and things take a turn when you disconnect her and connect up the eye bot to the mainframe. So, now the eye bot is in charge and the insane female robot computer gets shoved into a potato.

As you carry the potato around, she talks to you trying to devise a way to get herself back into the mainframe and get the eye bot out. Worse, the eye bot doesn't seem to understand the system at all and is now leading the entire test facility towards destruction.

So, you are now tasked to work your way back up from the very earliest levels of the facility to the most recent and to the chamber with the eye bot. And, there are some new things you need to do along the way.

Liquid blobs and flinging

As you progress, you will run into holes dropping various colored paint blobs. These liquids do various things. The orange liquid is very slick and makes you slide. The blue liquid makes you bounce. The white liquid lets you 'paint' surfaces to create portals. The clear liquid washes any of it off. The liquids can also be dropped onto things to disturb them (like robots).

Now instead of just trying to figure out how to get out of the room with portals and momentum, you have to use the liquids creatively to coat surfaces. This allows you to create speed and momentum to jump through portals to fling yourself across the room onto a ledge or some other surface. You are tasked with figuring out which surfaces to coat.

Story

The story is mostly reasonable. It takes place many years after the first incident. But, the robot says she doesn't hold a grudge, although it's quite clear she does. Note that the insane female robot computer has some of the best lines in this game (including Portal) and they all happen during the first few test chambers. After she becomes a potato, the one-line zingers basically stop.

Humor

This game relies almost entirely on humor to carry it. While the puzzles can be challenging, it's really the female robotic computer voice that makes this game. Unfortunately, the eye bot is not so much that way. His British or Australian accent is annoying and his lines aren't funny at all. It's a good thing that he disappears for a good bit of this game, otherwise this game wouldn't be nearly as much fun to play.

Overall

This is a good follow-up to Portal. The game is nearly as fun as the first. Portal 2 is a unique game much in the same way as Portal. The only one downside is that I was expecting the campaign to be a lot longer. Instead, the game requires co-op play to get more fun out of it. When you play co-op, though, you play as two robots rather than as the female in the first Portal.

I would also have preferred a completely different character and a different approach to the Portal gun. I was hoping to see more than the test facility, but that's where we're still stuck.

Score

• Sound: 9/10
• Graphics: 8/10
• Gameplay: 7/10
• Story: 9/10
• Bugginess: N/A
• Controls: 9/10
• Bang-to-buck: 5/10
• Play Value: $30 (if you like puzzle games, worth buying)
• Overall: 8.5/10 (a good follow up to Portal)

Wii - Dead Space Extraction

Dead Space Extraction by EA games

Parental Advisory: This game contains graphic violence and mature

themes. Parental guidance is suggested.

Style: First Person Rail Shooter

This one will be short and sweet. EA has converted the Dead Space Shooter on the Xbox 360 from a first person shooter to a rail shooter. That conversion doesn't help this game at all. Frankly, I don't like rail shooters to begin with (other than certain arcade style games). When it comes to a first person (or even third person) Doom style game, I prefer free roaming to constrained gaming... hands down. For this game to become constrained to a rail shooter fails this game miserably. It would have worked far better as a straight TPS or FPS game.

Story

The game is basically the same game as Dead Space on the 360. However, now that it's a rail shooter, they have added more people who tag along with you. Unfortunately, the tag-alongs don't help you at all. Once the shooting begins, your 'helpers' disappear and do nothing to help you. Thankfully, EA didn't require you to protect them while shooting the enemy. Thank goodness for small favors. But, even as small a favor as that is, this game fails on so many other levels.

Graphics

This is the first failure. This game harkens back to 320x240 shooter days. Most of this is because of the Wii's limited 3D abilities. But, it doesn't do this game any favors. The levels look ok, but the people look horrible. This is only made up for in the motion capture which works reasonably well.

Audio

Fair, but nothing to write home about. Average for today's games.

Originality

This game lacks in being original because it steals so much from Dead Space. If they had made this a follow-up or a new story with new sets, I'd have been more impressed. Unfortunately, they've stolen most of the level environments directly from Dead Space and inserted them into this game and that doesn't make this game original at all.

Worse, they even steal much of Dead Space's story and pacing and put it in Extraction making this game even more unoriginal.

Checkpoint saves

The game uses the end of each level as a checkpoint. So, you have to work through the entire level before it actually saves your play position if you want to turn off the game and start up later. However, whenever the player character dies, the game starts back up at the current play position. Thanks again for small favors.

Overall

This game is, as I've said, unoriginal. Because it's a rail shooter, you have no control over where the character looks or goes (except at random limited points in the game). When you do have the ability to look around, you only have a few seconds (frustrating). Most times when they give you the ability to look around, there's nothing to look around to find (wasted opportunity). You can also occasionally choose a direction to go, but that's also wasted.

This game isn't the worst game I've played, but it is definitely mediocre at best. If you are desperate to play something, then this might suffice. However, I'd suggest renting the game first. Say no to rail shooters and don't buy this. If you must play it, rent it.

Score

• Sound: 8/10 (better than average)
• Graphics: 5/10 (low res)
• Gameplay: 5/10 (it's hard to like a rail shooter)
• Story: 5/10 (unoriginal)
• Bugginess: N/A
• Controls: 7/10 (average for the Wii)
• Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (expensive for what it is)
• Play Value: $10 (rent it)
• Overall: 5/10 (say no to rail shooters)

Xbox 360 - Chronicles of Riddick - Butcher Bay

Chronicles of Riddick:
Escape From Butcher Bay from Atari

Game Type: First Person Shooter
Rated for Violence, Language

This game is a re-release of a 2004 original Xbox game that appears on Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. However, Atari decided to redo this game to fully utilize the Xbox 360. So, if you haven't played this game, you are in for a treat. If you have played it before, the graphics, sound and achievements are all updated for the Xbox 360. So, it may be worth a play through again.

I didn't play this game in 2004 even though I owned an Xbox. So, this game is new to me. Because it's included on this game disk and because it's been facelifted for the 360, I am including a review of it here now as I consider it to be a 'new' game.

Story

The game starts with Johns, a merc who's interested in placing Riddick into a high security prison in exchange for money. He drops Riddick off at Butcher Bay (apparently one of the toughest penal colonies out there). Riddick must attempt to escape. The story follows Riddick as he works his way around through this prison talking with all of the inmates and working on a plan to get out.

As the story unfolds, you'll learn of how Riddick gets his 'shined' eyes (the way he sees in the dark). Unfortunately, this story line doesn't really follow with the movies. Pitch Black and even Chronicles of Riddick allude to solitary confinement in the dark for extended period of time that led to this. But, that's not how this game's story tells it.

Gameplay

The gameplay style is, as would be expected, like Dark Athena (on the same disk). I should really say that Dark Athena is like Butcher Bay, because this game came first. This is your basic first person shooter. You are in a prison colony, so you can't really do a whole lot other than wander and ask lots of questions.

In return for helping people, you get rewards including weapons and cigarette packs (extra content).

Controls

The controls are reasonably straight forward. There is a weapon wheel that you pull up with the right bumper button (RB). So, you can change your weapons using this wheel. You don't actually get Riddick's 'shined' eyes until later during this game. But, you will get the ability to see in the dark after that happens. Before then, you are limited to needing lights or flares. In one case, getting out of the level is difficult. Of course, this is the level right before you get the 'shined eyes'.

Music

The music score and sound effects are done well. The game relies on swelling sound tracks and ambient noises to set the tone of this game. It does this well. This is a very cinematic sounding experience even when the graphics of the game doesn't lend itself to the musical themes and events.

Overall

I liked the story and the idea behind this game a little more than Dark Athena. Butcher Bay gives a lot more back story to the Riddick character than Dark Athena. The revelation of the shined eyes is good, but I was expecting more from the female voice in Dark Athena. The voice that seems to guide Riddick throughout Butcher Bay (and is in the films). I like the idea of a guiding force behind Riddick, but that force never manifested itself in Dark Athena.

Score:

• Sound: 9/10 (cinematic, ambient)
• Graphics: 9/10 (textures are well done, Riddick could be better)
• Gameplay: 8/10 (straight forward gameplay)
• Story: 6/10 (not revealing enough)
• Bugginess: 5/10 (crashed once)
  
• Controls: 8/10 (works well in most places, doesn't work in tight spots)
• Bang-to-buck: 8/10 (2 games on one disc)
• Play Value: $25 (worth it, but the game is a bit short)
• Overall: 8/10 (not an RPG, but definitely an 8 for a shooter)

Xbox 360 - Chronicles of Riddick - Dark Athena

Chronicles of Riddick:
Assault on Dark Athena from Atari

Game Style: First Person Shooter

Rated for Violence, Language

Dark Athena appears to pick up right after Chronicles of Riddick - Escape from Butcher Bay. There are references in Dark Athena to Riddick's time in Butcher Bay. However, if you haven't played Escape from Butcher Bay, you're in luck. Atari has included both games on this Xbox 360 disc. Even though Butcher Bay was released in 2004 for the older Xbox, Butcher Bay has updated graphics and sound for the 360 (including achievements).

The controls are inherited from the Butcher Bay engine, so both games play identically (with the the exception of a few additions to Dark Athena).

Story

Dark Athena opens with you laying on a beach. You wake to find that you're on a planet and you must wander around trying to find a way out. But wait.... this is a tutorial. Riddick wakes up in a completely different place (on a ship). It's about to be towed in by Revas on the Dark Athena (a big mercenary ship). Once on the ship, you are tasked with finding a way off of the ship, Dark Athena. In that process, you run into a number of people who will give you assignments to help you. Some of the assignments are side quests, some are part of the main story. After you complete all of the required on-ship assignments, Riddick uses an escape capsule to get off the ship and ends up on a planet (much like the tutorial dream sequence), where you have to find your way back to the ship to get off the planet. For whatever reason, Revas has decided to land on the planet. So, this gives Riddick the opportunity to get back onto the ship and finish what was started.

I was disappointed, though, that the 'voice' that guides Riddick and who appears in Butcher Bay (and the films) wasn't present at all in Dark Athena.  I felt that this presence is what guides Riddick in some ultimate outcome.  But, for whatever reason, the game developers felt no need to add her into this game.  To me, this left the story overall feeling a little hollow.

Tutorial

The tutorial on this one is smartly designed. It gets you into the game fast and, at the same time, gets you used to the controls, the guns, running, jumping, etc. You do it without any consequences because it's a dream sequence. It's long enough to get you into the game fast and lets you understand the controls. So, in this way, that's smart. The games that take you through a tutorial on an actual first level don't always work well to achieve the intended goal. In many cases, the pausing of the screen to give you information is enough to get in the way of a gun sequence and actually gets your character killed. In Dark Athena (and Butcher Bay) this didn't happen.

Gameplay

There is not much to say about this game that's overly outstanding for the way the game play system works. It's a fairly standard first person shooter. There are a few exceptions, though, like Riddick's shined eyes (see in the dark) and the mech suits you get to occasionally use. So, you pick up weapons and you can switch between them with a wheel selector. However, I found that the best weapon for this game is the tranqualizer gun. The tranqualizer gun never runs out of ammo and is effectively silent. So, you can shoot it without anyone hearing it or seeing you. It's great for putting out lights and helping you create cover in the areas. It stuns any non-armored people. So, it can help you get close and finish the job... especially when there are three or more people ganged up together.

There were also times where you end up on a level with large mechs. Because the game gives no direction, you don't know if you need to try to kill the mechs or do something else. So, you first run in guns-a-blazin' trying to kill the mechs and waste a lot of time. Instead, you find that you need to do something entirely different. If the game would at least give you some form of direction on what it wants you to do, the gamer can avoid these time wasters.

Controls

As with any game, controls can be difficult and tedious at times. But, for the most part, the controls work well. And really, most of the problems stem from the enemy AI than the controls. The main issue with the controls is that you can't change your weapons fast enough. So, when you want to get to a weapon and use it against a specific enemy, the AI for that enemy is so fast and accurate that Riddick ends up dead. So, the controls could be better to help you get to your weapons faster (or at least pause while you do). For most of the game, they are fine. When you're in a tight spot, they fail badly.

As far as the AI goes, the enemies are like most enemies in first person shooters... accurate and fast at any distance.  So, they can see you no matter where you are (including through walls). They can even shoot you through walls at times (bad collision detection).  At one point there are some spider robots that crawl on walls.  These things are 100% accurate no matter the distance and their bullets can kill you with only a few shots (even with a full health bar).  I find this totally ludicrous for these stupid little robots.  Even the heavy armored mechs aren't this accurate or powerful.  To set these annoying little robots up with this level of firepower and accuracy is just stupid.

Music

Dark Athena's music is, for the most part, cineamatic. So, whenever you're encountering an enemy, the music swells to let you know you're close and they are aware of you. The music swells louder and more intense the more the enemy becomes aware of you. So, you can gauge just how aware they are based on the soundtrack. This is actually a very nice feature. In most games, the soundtrack is just a soundtrack. It makes it quite easy to remain hidden (of course, darkness helps... so shoot the lights out often).

Graphics

The graphics of the environments are very well done (texture maps). The graphics could have been better in places (up close), Riddick's Hands, but even still the game's graphics definitely help the atmosphere. The one thing I would say, though, is that every light should be shootable. Unfortunately, you can only shoot specific lights out. I would have prefer much more realism in this area.

Riddick's character is reasonably well done, but there have been better characters done for older games (Mass Effect and Star Wars: Force Unleashed).

Environments

For most of the game, you are stuck inside Dark Athena. So, you're limited to the ship's environment. For the last third of the game, you are on a planet. The planet's environment (ocean and grounds) are done well.

Overall

I liked Dark Athena as a whole game. The puzzles were better on the planet than on Dark Athena. I did like that the game does make you think to finish the level. But, in some cases, I felt that it left you hanging on exactly what to do. Every once in a while it would pop up a hint, but I really didn't need that hint. I needed a hint on where to go... not what to do. I can figure out how to manage the physical environment. What I can't always figure out is where the game wants me to go (the actual location). So, I end up wandering around the entire level. In some cases, the game makes you backtrack all the way back. In some cases, you're going forward.

Because of the backtracking (which isn't really a good idea), it can make it difficult to determine where you need to be. So, you're not sure if you need to go forward or backward. If the game had a real map of the level with places you've been that's been uncovered, you'd at least know where you haven't been. That would have helped with moving the game forward.

Score:

• Sound: 8/10 (average)
• Graphics: 8.5/10 (textures are well done, Riddick could be better)
• Gameplay: 8/10 (straight forward gameplay)
• Story: 7/10 (good, but not outstanding)
• Bugginess: 2/10 (crashed once, couldn't get out of game loop)
  
• Controls: 8/10 (works well in most places, doesn't work in tight spots)
• Bang-to-buck: 8/10 (2 games on one disc)
• Play Value: $25 (worth it, but the game is a bit short)
• Overall: 7.5/10 (not an RPG, but definitely an 8 for a shooter)

Xbox 360 - Quake Wars: Enemy Territory

Quake Wars: Enemy Territory by id

What's to say about this game? It's a straightforward level based shooter. It doesn't do anything special. Really!

Gameplay

There are two teams. The aliens and the soldiers. You are tasked to choose a class (type of soldier) to complete the campaign. You either win or lose.

Think of Quake Wars as a Capture The Flag style objective multiplayer gaming style. So, that means that you need to be the right class, then get to the objective spot to do whatever. So, you might be tasked to drive a vehicle to a specific location, place charges or hack something. In order to do this, you have to switch between classes.

On the other hand, the enemy doesn't seem to do that. All they do is run around trying to prevent you from that task. So, there's lots of dying.

The Good

If you like multi-player objective and team based play, you'll like Quake Wars. Other than that, there's not much else.

The Bad

Far too simplistic and too expensive for what it is. Each level has objectives, but your soldier character is constantly killed by the enemy. It takes too long waiting around for medics to fix you and even longer to respawn with a new wave of troops. The game's battling and running around is just like Wolfenstein (old school). The graphics aren't particularly spectacular and the movement is, again, old school.

When you win, all it does is say, GDF Wins. Not particularly thrilling. There's actually more hurrah when you lose than when you win.

Commentary

I was expecting more from this game. It's very simplistic in its design. It does what it does well, but still very simplistic. For me, this style of gaming has limited appeal and limited play value. This means that after a short while, I'll get bored and want to play something else. Note that I am not a big fan of multiplayer level based combat play. I'm just not up for running around on a play field hunted and killing. It's mindless gaming at its best... not my thing.

Score

• Sound: 8/10
  
• Graphics: 6/10 (way too old school and simplistic)
• Bugginess: ??/10 (N/A)
• Controls: 9/10 (control works well enough)
• Bang-To-Buck: 4/10 (limited replay value)
• Play Value: $15
• Overall: 5.5/10 (simplistic, not enough to it, limited play value)

Xbox 360 - Turok

Turok by Touchstone

A long time ago, well not really that long, but for technology it's a long time... I played Turok on N64. That game was superb (at the time). Note, I'd write a review on it here, but it's kind of not relevent. I digress. Anyway, I was anxious to see a new Turok for the Xbox 360 and preordered it. I picked it up the day it was released, but I hadn't had time to sit down and actually review it until now. Better late...

Style: First person shooter
Online Capabilities: Untested

Story

Turok (and company) are stranded on a planet with Dinosaurs (and bad guys). So, it's pretty obvious what you need to do. The subtext is that you get stranded there because the ship crashes. So, you must look for survivors and things from the crash while avoiding the dinosaurs and bad guys. There's plenty of in-game cinematics to explain what's going on. The gaming problem, though, is that it just seems to take forever to get from point A to point B (lots of subchapters to get there). The story, overall, was contrived, trite and already been done before. You really didn't care about the characters and the bosses were just thrown in, not as a story element that actually makes any sense, but because they could. The game was overly hard, but without any real reason to be.

Graphics

The one thing I will say about this game is that the graphics are amazing. They are equally as amazing as Halo 3 or Uncharted (PS3). But, as with many games, sometimes the fluid and excellent high res graphics are about the extent of it. Not so much in Turok.

The environments are lush, the jungles are teaming with plants (probably too many actually). The interiors are as equally well done. Turok's animated movements are quite well done as well. The only real problem is the skin tone, skin surface maps and skin colorings. They seem a bit too video gamey. I would have prefered a more realistic approach to the skin textures. However, I can overlook this if the gameplay works well.

Gameplay

The Gameplay in Turok is reasonably well done, but... (and there's always a but), the controls sometimes lack. Switching between weapons has a lag time that's entirely unbearable. So, if you're in a crunch and you need your knife now, you end up fumbling trying to get to it. So, Turok ends up dying and you restart the level. Picking up weapons is equally annoying. When you walk over a weapon that you want, it pops up a graphic asking which slot you want the weapon in (using the X or Y button). This means you need to remember which weapon is in which slot or you have to review your weapon slots first. I guess they were trying to be flexible, but again, in a crunch you really can't worry about what's what.

Checkpoints

Unfortunately, the game creators chose to use checkpoints as saving places. The problem, however, isn't that it has checkpoints, it that the game doesn't have nearly enough of them. So, you end up restarting levels over and over and over. This is extremely frustrating. I've been trying to get through this game as a result, but I just have to keep putting it down because it's so frustrating I want to throw the controller (not a good thing).

Weapon Fumbling

The other issue I have with the weapons is that you'll see an icon that tells you to press the right trigger. You press it and nothing happens. This is what I mean by sluggish. Like, for example, when you get close enough to a dinosaur, this icon will appear and, if the game accepts your input, you'll do a fatality move on the dinosaur. Unfortunately, when this icon appears, it's hit or miss (mostly miss). So, you press the right trigger and you don't do the move and the dinosaur hammers you and Turok falls down or, worse, dies.

No HUD

The lack of a scanner or some kind of enemy heads up display is extremely frustrating. So, you have no idea what direction a dinosaur or bad guy might come. There are times later into the game that I know the game generates one or more dinosaurs immediately behind you for the purpose of making the game hard. Assuming, however, they were living in a time where they had a craft capable of space travel, then they would damn well have life sign scanners.

Life display

The game designers chose not to give a life meter. Instead, you get this red halo around the screen which turns blurry. Well, unfortunately, while it might be a cool little effect, it's rather unrealistic. If you were simply knocked down, your eyes wouldn't turn blurry with a red halo. You might pass out or get the wind knocked out, but your eyes wouldn't be blurry in that way. The blur only serves to make the game even harder. Worse, when the blur appears, the game won't allow you to focus on or aim at the creatures around you. So, it just ends up a field day for them. Basically, Turok is going to die unless you can manage to get far enough away to get Turok's health back. Turok regenerates health over time, but it takes a few seconds to start. As with most other FPS games, I'd much rather have to go search for health packs than deal with this Turok system. Unfortunately, there are no health pickups or anything you can carry with you. You just have to wait it out for Turok's health to regenerate.

Weapons

As Turok progresses, he can get more and more types of weapons to use. I have personally found that the most effective weapon against the dinosaurs (when it works) is the knife. It can kill them with one move versus the guns that eat up much ammo. For the bad guys, the guns are really the only way unless you can sneak up on them. The sniper rifle is especially handy for long distance shots. It works well on dinosaurs too, but they move around too much and it's hard to take aim.

Audio

The audio and music of this game are well done. The musical themes are very cinematic and were very much in keeping with the mood being presented. I just found that the music was a bit repetitive in places. They could have varied the scores a bit more to keep it from repeating too much.

Game Design

The designers were not thinking of the gamer when they designed this game. Because of the checkpoint system and the lack of save points, you are forever starting over levels. Basically, this is the style of game where you progress a little at a time, but the main character dies over and over until you finally figure out the trick to the level.

Note to game designers, you should use Turok as the prime example of what not to do when creating a game. The when Turok dies, it takes up to 15-30 seconds for the level to reload. This is absolutely ridiculous. The level is already in memory, so they should just need rewind and restart it. This should take about 3 seconds at most. Taking 30 seconds or so is just a time waster. It interrupts the playing and it interrupts your train of strategy.

Also note that as the game progresses, the absurdity of the level difficulty increases. For example, in order to blow the generator (trite story element, BTW), you have avoid being spit acid on by flying bugs. I mean, come on. Why would there be flying bugs right at this moment in time? Also, these bugs have absolutely perfect aim. There is just no way that these stupid flying dinosaurish bugs have this perfect of acid spray aim. This is the absurdity that makes this game not anything like Turok on the N64. The N64 had room puzzles combined with dinosaur hunting. There was more to it than just being hunted continuously.

Overall

I enjoyed playing this game for the story (to a point), but it was nowhere near as fun as the N64 version. I wish they had attempted to recapture the fun of the N64 version with an updated play style, but with more puzzles. This game didn't capture that element and the lack of checkpoints made the game far too frustrating. If you like games containing few checkpoints (you find that challenging), then you might want to check out Turok. Otherwise, skip it. There are far better first person shooters available.

Score

• Graphics: 9/10 (only because nothing is perfect)
  
• Sound: 9/10
  
• Controls: 5/10 (sluggish, difficult to change weapons)
• Bang-2-Buck: 7/10 (it'll keep you playing for a while, but frustrating because of lack of checkpoints)
• Replay value: 1/10 (Definitely won't play it again)
• Overall: 6/10 (good, but could be better, loading times unbearable, not enough checkpoints)
  

Xbox 360 & PS3 - The Darkness

The Darkness by 2K games

The Darkness is one of those games that seems like it should be a taboo subject. In reality, if you can ignore the semi-demonic aspects of the main character and what you have to do, the story is really pretty decent. However, this is a first person shooter through-and-through.

Graphics

The graphics in this game were always fluid and functional (unlike Mass Effect). The Darkness gives you everything you want to see in a first person shooter. You have a first person view, you have special powers, you can pick up weapons from just about everywhere. So, there's no lack of weapons in this game.

Sound

The sound quality of this game, while not a masterpiece, certainly fits the mood properly. The key story moments offer more compelling soundtrack themes while the background music is kept to a minimum. This leads to a good balance of music to gameplay. The music also works quite well to enhance the gameplay.

Story Line

The Darkness is effectively about an orphaned kid who was taken in by a fictitious mafioso-type family. Then, this family turns on him later and effectively wants him (your character) dead. In that light, we come to find out that this character also has the power of 'The Darkness' (when he turned 18) which is a demonic creature that gives certain powers to the inhabitant. These powers give you the ability to kill much more efficiently than with a gun alone. As you progress through the game, these Darkness powers grow and expand giving much more powerful Darkness powers.

The way the game unravels is well done. The romantic encounter is a bit stilted because there was little setup. But, it kind of worked in an awkward kind of way.

Gameplay

Overall, the character is easy to control and the darkness powers are easy to switch between. The hardest part of this game was knowing when you can and can't use the darkness powers. For example, if you're standing directly under a bright street lamp, you can't use them for long. By the same token, you can either shoot out the lamp or use a darkness power to break it. Once it's dark enough, your darkness powers regenerate and can be used. Also, so long as it remains dark, you can regenerate the powers continually.

The guns in the game are reasonably decent. Mostly small handgun varieties and a few semi-automatic and automatic weapons. They're reasonably efficient to use. But, the real benefit is in the darkness powers. This is really what the game wants you to use.

Quests

The Darkness is kind of like Grand Theft Auto (review coming soon) in that you get assigned quests by specific individuals you meet. So, you have to roam the game in order to find these people in order to complete their quests. Some of the quests are intrinsic to moving the story forward and others are side quests that you do just to get extras. The game doesn't force you to move in a linear progression specifically. If you choose to wander around and do all side quests, you can leave your main quest activity hanging until you're done. So, in this way, it is kind of like an RPG style questing system.

Multiplayer

This game does offer an Xbox Live multiplayer component. So, if you're looking to get all Challenge Points, you will have to play the multiplayer portions. Note, though, that you are required to basically set up your own server in order to host games. Most times, people aren't hosting games on Xbox Live, so you're likely the one who will have to host them.

Overall

The game was lengthy enough to be well worth the money. The Darkness powers work well to get you through the game. The 3D performance is stellar when compared to some other recent games. The 3D detail is reasonably decent, but not nearly as detailed as some more recent games.

Overall, I'd recommend this game if you like this type of genre. If you're not into the demonic aspects and the killing of the game, then you might want to skip it. Note, the replay value of this game is low because if you've done nearly everything, then going through it a second time less than thrilling as there's not much else to do (other than look for more bonus things).

Score:

• Graphics: 8/10
• Sound: 9/10
• Gameplay: 8/10
• Story: 9.5/10
• Overall: 8.5/10
• Replay Value: 4/10