Game Review - Dark Souls (Xbox 360, 2011)

Dark Souls has the reputation of being soul-crushingly hard and deservedly so.  It is, however, one of the best games I have ever played.

An action RPG that punishes you for every mistake, it's brutal, but it's not impossible, even if it occasionally gets unreasonably frustrating (more on that a bit later).

Combat of Champions
At its core, Dark Souls boasts a surprisingly complex combat system, which is more reminiscent of quality hack and slash games than other RPGs.  It revolves around about a dozen broad weapon categories, each coming with a distinct move set, encompassing everything from the quick jabs of a dagger to the slow, crushing strikes of a greatsword that is as long as you are tall.

The real beauty of this system is that all of these weapon types are equally powerful, assuming you are sufficiently comfortable with their corresponding move sets.  Your choice of weapon is therefore almost always an issue of your preferred playstyle rather than a comparison of different weapons' stats.  Of course, occasionally stats will matter, especially when looking for specific elemental upgrades or the like, but for the most part, the weapon system allows a great deal of customization.

Once you've settled on a move set, you'll have to practice it to perfection.  Enemies hit really hard, so there's very little margin for error.  In a sense, just about every monster you encounter is a mini boss because they will murder you if you underestimate them.  To really stand apart, the bosses are epic.  They're huge fights with big demons and the like, and every one feels like the hardest thing you've ever done.

Fortunately, the game gives you some powerful tools to reward you for skillful mastery of the mechanics.

Here's an example of one aspect of combat: your defensive moves consist of dodging, blocking, and parrying.  Each has various strengths and weaknesses; blocking, for example, blunts a lot of the damage of an attack, but depletes your stamina, forcing you to wait a bit before executing an attack yourself.

While it's certainly possible in theory to make it through the entire game using only one of these defensive techniques, it would be damn hard.  Each is incredibly valuable in at least some situations, so mastery of the three, plus fluidly switching between them as needed, is almost necessary to progress.

There are some other subtle features that make combat a deep and satisfying experience (there are several brands of magic to explore, for example).  While I'd love to discuss my favorite aspects of all those details, it's not appropriate here.  Let's just leave it by saying that Dark Souls may have the most challenging and satisfying combat of any game I've ever played.  Seriously.

Role-Playing at its Finest
So the combat mechanics are great, what about everything else?

Dark Souls also does the role-playing thing incredibly well.  The basics are familiar: a variety of statistics govern your character by determining total HP and strength of attacks and all that jazz.

As you kill enemies, you'll automatically absorb their souls.  These souls can then be spent to increase your attributes, though only at the relative safety of a bonfire.  Seems pretty straightforward.

This system is complicated by two incredible factors:

First, resting at a bonfire revives (nearly) every enemy you've defeated.  All the random mobs you had to dispatch to make it to the bonfire are back, and any progress you made to your next objective is reset.  You can't inch your way to victory in Dark Souls, making the danger of every zone all the more devastating.

Second, any time you die, you drop all the souls you've accumulated.  You can recover those souls if you can reach the point where you bit it, but all the enemies are back, so it's just as perilous as the first time.  If you die again, you drop your souls as before, overwriting the previous recovery point - you just lost those souls for good.

Put all of it together, and you start to experience the sheer terror that your character must feel - with imminent death lurking in every new area, you're in a constant state of heightened awareness.  Every sound makes you jump; every corner makes you paranoid.  It's fantastically immersive.

There's also some complexity in terms of the way that your attributes influence gameplay.  There are obvious things, like your resistance stat increasing your character's resistance to poison, but the effectiveness of weapons and spells scale differently with different attributes.  This effect is amplified when you consider different weapon upgrades and enhancements, some of which alter the weapon's scaling.

None of this is explicitly explained, which is kind of cool.  You're left to your own devices to figure out how things work (much like your character would be, given his or her circumstances).

I hope by this point you're seeing how beautifully complex the gameplay is.  Not only are the enemies punishing, but you also have to learn a lot of details about the mechanics to do well.  It's an exciting game to explore.

That said, the gameplay certainly isn't flawless.  There are a couple sections of the game that are simply terrible because they rely on pseudo-platforming.  While the game is generally frustrating, these areas where you might frequently and accidentally roll off cliffs are miserable.  Thankfully it really only happens twice over the course of the game, but they are pretty bad.  The overall quality of the rest of the game more than makes up for those bits, though.

Honestly, I think I could end the review at this point.  It is an incredibly deep and satisfying RPG and is worth playing on those merits, even without mentioning the story or the world.

But it nails that, too.

An Intricate World to Explore
Dark Souls presents a story unlike any other game I've played.  You have to work for every bit of the lore because very little of it is fed to you.

The game starts with a cryptic cinematic describing old gods and their war against dragons.  When you take control, your character is nearly naked and decaying in a cell.  Someone throws you a key and you make your way into the tutorial area.

(As a side note, Dark Souls does something else I've never seen before - you will almost certainly die in the tutorial area, perhaps repeatedly.  It doesn't pull punches at any point, including at the very beginning when it's telling you how to move the camera. I think that's pretty sweet.)

You'll eventually find yourself in a vast world full of interconnected zones.  Your only hint at what to do is an NPC sitting nearby, and he doesn't give you much to go on.  What's more, it's an open world, but there aren't any obstacles to prevent you from going the "wrong" way (aside from foes that will absolutely crush you if you're not prepared).  You learn what to do and where you can survive through exploration and failure, again adding to the immersion.

If you want to know why all this is happening, you'll have to piece together fragments of story obtained by reading item descriptions and talking to NPCs repeatedly.  Even then, it's all very subtle, but at the same time it's fascinating.  There's detailed lore if you're willing to look for it, but it's never forced on you if you'd rather focus on the gameplay.

Even if you opt to excuse yourself from the lore, you're still in for a treat.  While the graphics aren't the best around, the world is surprisingly detailed.  Each area has a unique vibe, and it's genuinely fun to look at all the scenery and doodads scattered around.  Hell, the different zones are detailed enough that they tell stories themselves.  Dark Souls is a beautiful game, even if the graphics are dated from a technical perspective.

Though to be fair, the sound quality plays a big part.  The music is fantastic - haunting at some times, intense at others; every tune contributes to the overall experience quite nicely.  And the voice acting is similarly superb.  Every character you'll meet sounds just a little unsettling in unique ways, but it fits with the context so well that I feel it has to be intentional.

And overall there's a lot of content to explore.  My first playthrough took about 50 hours.  From there, I was genuinely excited to tackle a the "New Game+" mode, which added another 20-25 hours because unlike most games, it further ratchets up the difficulty.  Many bosses were significant challenges even with my high level and powerful gear.  Of course, you could also approach the game from scratch using a different playstyle, like focusing on magic instead of melee, so the game has oodles of replay value.

To sum up: Dark Souls is a satisfying game set in an amazing world.  It's very hard, but if you stick with it, you'll find one of the most amazing gaming experiences of all time.

My Rating: 10/10 - epic.

Game Review - Defiance (Xbox 360, 2013)

In my mind, there are two major features that give good MMORPGs the addictive qualities that keep players paying monthly subscriptions.  One is the satisfaction of developing a character and upgrading his or her gear.  That occasional ding of a level up gives a sense of progression that you simply can't get in the real world.  The other is challenging content, with areas that require precise skill management and coordinated teamwork.  In a sense, these obstacles allow players to continue that progression despite hitting the game's level cap.

Defiance is a now free-to-play MMORPG that does the first of these very well.  The leveling mechanics and the ways low-level characters can interact with other players are perhaps the best I have ever seen, but the result is an endgame that isn't terribly exciting.

The basic premise is interesting but doesn't get fleshed out in any meaningful way.  You take on the role of an "ark hunter," someone who tracks down extraterrestrial scrap in the war-torn wasteland of the San Francisco Bay area.

In Defiance's universe, you are effectively a gun for hire, employed by a powerful businessman to further his economic interests.  Unsurprisingly, the main story gets you involved in some local politics, and you learn a little bit about the war that scorched the Earth, but none of it is very compelling.  I didn't feel that any of the characters were developed enough for me to care about their fate, and I never learned enough history to get excited about any of the major events.

Of course, you typically don't play an MMORPG for its detailed and intriguing storyline; you play it for the multitude of random fetch quests, right?

If fetch quests are your personal brand of masochism, then you're in for a treat with Defiance.  There are tons of sidequests along the way, but nearly all of them amount to "go to this area and pick stuff up."  There are a few where you might do something cool, like raiding a fortified base, but most are frankly dumb.

That said, the map is surprisingly dynamic.  There are constantly cooperative events occurring that can challenge a dozen or more players.  These random events range from minor skirmishes to claim some salvage to big boss battles to defensive missions fighting waves of enemies.  Interestingly, some of the more complex sidequests are actually repeatable - if you return to that fortified base, you'll be able to complete the objectives again and earn more rewards.

In each of these cases, the rewards are based on your performance.  Dealing more damage and defeating more enemies will yield higher quality loot and more experience points at the end of one of these events.  The result is one of the typical MMORPG cycles - the better your gear, the easier it is to obtain higher quality gear.

With these events occurring all over the map, it's important that the game remain balanced for new and experienced players alike.  Defiance's solution is a great one: the "threat level" in an area is determined by the number of players nearby and their levels.  Increasing the threat level increases the power and resilience of enemies, allowing high-level characters to be challenged by enemies in the introductory area.

To keep low-level characters from getting overwhelmed, they get power buffs to match the current threat level.  Those buffs aren't nearly as strong as using higher level gear, but it's enough that your new character can still meaningfully contribute in battles while adventuring with high-level friends.  This feature ultimately means that all of the game's content is available from the very start.

The most appealing aspect of this system?  You can always play with your friends, even if they have spent 300 hours developing their characters and you're just starting.

Sadly, this system is not without its flaws, and there are two big ones that stick out.  First, having access to all the game's content means that there's not much that you're working towards aside from a bigger, badder character.  Sure, there are queues for some cooperative maps that you can't access until you reach a sufficiently high level, but that's of minor interest compared to everything else in the game.

Second, the threat level mechanics can be used to your detriment in frustrating ways.  Since the game checks nearby players, it's possible for somebody to bump up the threat level just by passing by.  Your enemies will get stronger accordingly, and you may find yourself facing significantly stronger opposition by yourself if that other player doesn't join in.

While the MMORPG elements of Defiance are great, the underlying gameplay is a little mundane.

At its core, Defiance is just a coop third-person shooter.  You'll run around and shoot enemies, all while seeing the battlefield from an over-the-shoulder camera.  There is a good diversity of weapons to use, including genre staples, like shotguns and assault rifles, and a few oddballs, like infectors, which spawn friendly parasites when defeating an enemy.

This shooter base is supplemented with RPG elements, including both a skill grid and gradually more powerful gear in accordance with your character level.  In a lot of ways, the game functions in a Borderlands-esque fashion - you get an active skill and various passive ones to enhance your capabilities, and the loot you'll acquire will generally scale with your character level.

The active skills are easily the most interesting aspect of this system, in part because there are no character classes.  Instead, you start the game by choosing one of the four possible active skills after a brief tutorial allowing you to sample each of them.  Then, as you earn enough skill points later in the game, you're able to unlock the other three skills.  Only one active skill is allowed at a time, but the ability to change them on the fly or for different missions is definitely a huge plus.

The passive skills are a lot less interesting, as most of them confer very minor benefits.  Sure, increasing health by 10% may be fairly significant, but many of those skills only change things by 1-3%.  It seems like there's a lot of customization options in the skill grid, but in reality, most of those skills seem inconsequential.

Weapon levels are also a pretty nice feature, adding incentive to keep finding new loot.  Fortunately, there is a bit of a failsafe in place so that you're never stuck with underpowered guns if you don't find a new one worth using.  By using Arkforge (which comes primarily at the end of big world events or coop missions), you can change a weapon's level rating (and therefore its stats).  This works both ways, letting lower-level characters use gear they bought from their higher-level friends, and allowing players to keep using the same guns throughout the entire game.

All in all, the basic gameplay is effective if unexciting.

With one notable exception: competitive multiplayer is completely broken.  The problem lies in the fact that the level scaling that comes from adventuring with higher-level characters doesn't affect every aspect of your character.  In competitive multiplayer, that means that someone about 1000 levels above you may be able to kill you in one shot while you won't be able to penetrate their shields even by unloading an entire clip.  Similarly, a player 1000 levels above them can do the same.

I tried the competitive multiplayer at various points throughout developing my character to level 4000+, and I was almost always disappointed with the result.  Early on, I got crushed by everyone, earning impressive kill-to-death ratios on the order of 0/15.  Eventually, I got to a point where I was able to one-shot some of my opponents, but then others would one-shot me.

And that is still the case now, even after investing well over 200 hours in the game.

The few competitive matches that have been truly enjoyable are the ones where every player is at roughly the same level.  Those are truly enjoyable matches, but they are a startlingly small fraction of the multiplayer games I played.

With all the pros and cons I've discussed to this point, it would be easy to say that Defiance is a reasonably well-balanced and entertaining player vs. environment game but a terrible player vs. player game and call it a day.  Unfortunately, there is one other huge flaw that knocks a few more points of the game's rating.

Defiance has this frustrating tendency to boot players from the server with a "critical failure" message.  It happens a lot, it happens to everybody, and it happens seemingly at random.  Some days are worse than others, but losing 45 minutes of progress on a big coop mission or PvP match because the game randomly returned you to the login screen gets pretty frustrating.  And again, it happens a lot.

So with that in mind, if you're willing to put up with terrible server issues, you'll find a reasonably fun MMORPG experience, so long as you're not looking for deep and competitive PvP.  If that's not your thing, though, I can only recommend that you stay away.

My rating: 5/10 - ok.

Game Review - Risen 3: Titan Lords (Xbox 360, 2014)

Risen 3 suffers from what I like to call the "Chrono Cross syndrome" - it's technically an acceptable game, but even at its best moments, it's a disappointment when taken in the context of earlier games in the series.  It ultimately fails to reproduce the engrossing elements that captured my attention when playing the original Risen, despite giving a smoother experience.

First, the good news: The mechanics of Risen 3 are easily the best of the series so far.  It's still a third-person action RPG, and the gameplay has the same general feel, but the whole thing is much more natural and fluid.

The biggest improvement is the addition of a dodge ability.  Instead of being stuck blocking attacks while your enemies dance around you, your character can now dive to the side to avoid taking damage.  While the game still gets frustrating in a few places, this simple addition makes combat a hell of a lot less tedious.

Most of the other basics come straight from Risen 2.  You are again playing as a pirate (a new protagonist this time, though still nameless), and early on you'll get a ship that will let you travel between the game's different areas.  The ship travel is little more than a gimmick for transitioning between otherwise similar regions, but it certainly doesn't get in the way.  You'll also assemble a crew, then you can take a single shipmate with you as you go adventuring inland, and you'll earn experience that you can apply directly to improving your major attributes.

Another nice change is that Risen 3 merges the previous games' magic systems.  You can build a character strong in Voodoo (Risen 2's only source of magic) or you can focus on traditional elemental magic from the first Risen game.  Of course, you could forgo magic altogether and instead develop a strong melee or ranged fighter, or you could grab some skills in each category for a more balanced character.  Those choices didn't strike me as hugely important, but they were a little better fleshed out than in the past.

On the gameplay side of things, that's pretty much it - nearly all the quests are trivially straightforward with in-game quest markers, and you don't get many interesting choices along the way.  Despite the lack of depth, it's as entertaining as any other RPG with decent real-time combat.  A couple boss fights break up the pace a bit, but the main appeal will be fighting monsters and following the story.

And that's where the disappointment sets in.

At the end of the introductory area, the player character dies.  A couple weeks later, a mostly-crazy mystic revives you, but your soul has been lost to the spirit world.

From (nearly) the start, your main motivation is retrieving your soul.  Along the way, you'll have to make deals and help members of various factions, all while trying to figure out how to restore yourself.

That got me all excited because it was reminiscent of Risen's plot, where everything stemmed from the protagonist's desire to survive following a shipwreck.  The letdown, made worse by my anticipation from similarities to the first game, is that the major plot points slip away from that initial motivation.

The latter half of the game is filled with sudden problems you'll have to solve (and at least one bait-and-switch) that don't fit smoothly into the narrative of finding your lost soul.  These random plot points destroyed my immersion in the game world, and the last third of the story felt more like a chore than an epic conclusion.

In short, the storyline starts strong but fizzles near the game's midpoint.  After seeing how well a similar sort of story played out in Risen, it's sad to see this one flail around in the final acts.

Add some awkward glitches (like the game hanging every time I tried to save in the final area, resulting in corrupted save files), and you have a game that is solidly in the range of mediocrity - it's decently amusing for a good chunk of it's 20 hour length, but it will likely bore you well before its lackluster conclusion.

My Rating: 4/10 - mediocre.

Game Review - Risen 2: Dark Waters (Xbox 360, 2012)

While a generally enjoyable experience, Risen's gameplay was riddled with flaws.  Its sequel, Risen 2: Dark Waters, inherits nearly all of those flaws, but it also loses many of the features that made its predecessor engrossing and satisfying.

Risen 2 picks up a few years after the events of the first game, opening with the nameless protagonist awaking from a drunken stupor.  Between the two games, he became a member of the Inquisition forces, relocated to the capital city, and donned an eyepatch (though the latter is never discussed).

It turns out that there are still some Titans wreaking havoc on the world in various ways.  The protagonist's commanding officer sends him on a mission to find a magical artifact capable of defeating the most pressing of these mystical threats to humanity -  the one whose krakens keep sinking Inquisition ships.

To make things a bit more convoluted, the Inquisition has no information about this mythical weapon except that some pirates may possess it.  Naturally, the pirates won't deal with the Inquisition directly, so the player character is formally discharged from the Inquisition (but not really, wink wink) and left to work with Patty (the daughter of a pirate from the first game) to find and secure the necessary weapons.

Oh, yeah, and somewhere between the two games, "traditional" magic was outlawed and the mages exiled, leaving Voodoo as the only viable source of magic in the game.  And the protagonist naturally forgot all the non-magic skills he acquired over the course of the first game.

I've described the basic plot in some detail (though all that I mentioned is revealed in the first half hour of play) because I think it's a little ridiculous for the sequel to Risen.  Between the games, the narrative transitions from fantasy to sea shanty, and it feels really weird coming off the heels of the first game.

Your character starts with nothing and must earn NPCs' respect in order to progress the plot.  While a nice idea, it doesn't feel very organic because the whole thing is tinted with the "but I'm really just using you to get what I want vibe."  In Risen, you got to choose your alliances before getting the game's most important tasks, and then those tasks were colored by your choices; here, the task is set in front of you from the start, and your only opportunities to make choices seem insignificant by comparison.

My point is just that this storyline is neither interesting nor engrossing.  And the script and voice acting are pretty bad at times, which doesn't do the game any favors.

It's worth noting, however, that the story probably isn't too bad if taken in isolation.  Seeing that I played Risen 2 shortly after completing the first game, however, the whole thing is laughably inappropriate.  It's clear that the storyline is a slave to certain gameplay mechanics (more on that in a moment) and a desperate attempt to recreate the feeling of exploration and discovery that made the first game so much fun.

It wasn't worth it.

The basic gameplay is the same as in Risen.  You'll control the anonymous hero from a third-person perspective, you'll interact with NPCs and try to solve their problems, and you'll fight off monsters (primarily large birds, monkeys, and humans - this is a pirate's tale, after all).

The questing aspect is fine, though most of the quests don't require any real exploration or insight.  Instead, you just need to talk to the relevant NPCs and follow quest markers on your map.  Standard RPG fare these days.  A handful of quests are a bit more interesting, giving only cryptic descriptions of relevant information, but they make up a small fraction of the available content.

Combat, on the other hand, is hideous.  My biggest complaints from Risen persist here: enemies almost always have the upper hand because your attacks won't cause them to falter, but a single blow against you will interrupt whatever you're doing.  They're also generally blocking masters or more agile than you, making most encounters frustrating and tedious.  Surprisingly, your blocks aren't nearly as effective as they were in the first game; it seemed that creatures are always able to attack through your blocks, so those fights always devolved into button mashing affairs in the hopes of overwhelming my opponents.

Furthermore, Voodoo is your only form of magic (there's that plot sneaking in), but it doesn't have any direct damage spells like fireballs or lightning bolts, as far as I could tell.  As a result, your combat options are limited to melee attacks and guns (guns!), though the latter tends to be dangerous due to relatively low damage output and long reload times.

The result is very little diversity in ways to approach combat successfully.

On the bright side, the developers managed to resolve one potential frustration from the previous game.  You can invest experience points you earn directly into your 5 primary attributes (swords, guns, toughness, cunning, and voodoo), and there's no limit to how much you can earn.  Trainers will teach additional skills, but those skills don't require and XP - you just have to meet the requisite level of the related attribute and pay the fee.  This system makes it easier to change skill paths if you decide you've done something wrong, so it's hard to get stuck fighting powerful monsters with nothing but high charisma.

That said, most of the secondary skills aren't very interesting, as they just boost statistic values in some way as opposed to unlocking new abilities.

Risen 2's big new addition is really just a gimmick based on the pirate theme: The game spans several small islands and coastal regions instead of one contiguous area.  Once you get your very own ship, you can sail back and forth between these areas at will.  While thematically appropriate, it limits exploration (particularly early, before you have a ship) and makes the whole thing feel like there's not a lot going on.

Part of the reason this setup feels restricting is that the individual areas don't have a whole lot to offer.  In Risen, you could wander through (almost) the entire map right at the start.  Sure, you could end up in a temple with demons that could easily defeat you, but that possibility was part of the fun.

In Risen 2, each island has 3 or 4 major areas and a lot of dead space.  They are much bigger than they need to be, with tons of forest paths or beaches that do nothing beyond adding area to the map.  It gets to a point where the exploration is as tedious as the combat, so the game doesn't offer much worth experiencing.

To top it all off, a few glitches may further compound the frustration.  Some are holdovers from the first game, like lag after every kill and lag when loading a save, but some are also new, as my game crashed occasionally at apparently random times.

The presentation is a bit of a mixed bag.  The voice acting and character models (particularly faces) get pretty awkward, but the soundtrack does a fantastic job creating the right kind of pirate-y atmosphere.  The various environments look pretty good, especially distant landscapes, in part due to lots of details like foliage.

When you put it all together, Risen 2 is clearly more technically advanced than its predecessor (most obviously evidenced by the graphical quality), but it doesn't apply those advancements where they are needed the most.  The gameplay is tedious at best, and the story is solidly mediocre.  It's not really worth playing unless you're desperate to continue the Risen saga, and even then, it might be better to pretend this one doesn't exist.

My Rating: 3/10 - bad.

Game Review: Risen (Xbox 360, 2010)

I really want to give Risen a glowing recommendation.  It's one of the only a few games that have made me feel like I was truly playing a role instead of mindlessly following waypoints.  As I explored the world and searched for clues, I was invested in the story.

It's a shame that the mechanics are terrible.

But we'll get to that.  First, the good:

Risen's nameless protagonist begins the game shipwrecked on an unknown island.  Along with the only other survivor, he sets out to find signs of civilization and ends up neck deep in a plot with apocalyptic potential.

While the transition from lowly stowaway to key player in epic events is cliche these days, I think Risen does it in the best possible way.  Your character is looking for help, but everyone wants something in return.  As a result, it never feels like the weight of the world is dropped on you; instead, you slowly work your way towards the game's conclusion by earning favor with increasingly influential NPCs.  The whole thing feels very natural and subtle.

And the island gives a lot to explore.  You can ally yourself with one of two opposing factions, the Don's gang and the Inquisition, but neither is explicitly good or evil; they both fall in a moral grey area, which makes their conflict more compelling.  You can also investigate a number of ruins and caverns, and there are tons of quests to complete and goodies to discover.

The quests are easily the best part of the game.  Unlike most modern games where you're beaten over the head with quest markers, Risen forces you to find everything yourself.  You may have to locate particular NPCs as they go about their day, or you might need to navigate a dungeon to find a particular bit of treasure.  Either way, the most guidance you'll get (outside of the quest description) is a vague dot on an imprecise map.

It makes for a very satisfying experience.  In some cases, I found myself searching for an available path for a long while or trying to figure out how to use my spells and abilities to cross apparently impassable obstacles.  You're left to your own devices at nearly all the key moments, so I usually felt like I was actually contributing to the game rather than just following the developers' intended route.

I'm honestly not sure if I've ever had that kind of engrossing gaming experience before.  It was awesome!

And if the game were limited to exploration and interacting with friendly NPCs, it would be a blast through and through.  Sadly, everything else is terrible.

The combat is by far the worst offender.  You encounter a nice variety of monsters over the course of the game, but no matter the enemy, fights are tedious and frustrating at best.  For one thing, your opponents are always more nimble than you.  In damn near every fight, I'd start to swing my sword, and my enemy would immediately jump back beyond my reach or block all of my blows.  This process repeated until I could pin them against a wall or they initiated a counter attack (which always interrupted my offense, though my attacks never interrupted theirs).

And that's it.  That's every fight in the game (except for the last boss, who plays by completely different rules).  Some enemies block more often, others focus more on the dodging thing; some will attempt to stun lock you with long attack chains, others will seem to block forever.

It just isn't fun.

There are also a few other weird flaws.  The game always lagged a bit after dispatching a monster.  The context never mattered; the game freezes for a second after every single kill.

The lag has other effects, too.  Any time you load a save, the game will begin playing a second or two before the load screen disappears, so if you saved in a perilous situation, you may find yourself dying whenever you try to load.  Sometimes the game won't register your inputs, but at other times, it'll queue them up, executing several commands in succession with no way to interrupt it; which one happens seemed random to me.

Thankfully, it's not all bad.  While the underlying RPG elements aren't anything more than decent, they do a great job of enhancing immersion into the game.  As you kill monsters and complete quests, you'll earn "learning points" that can increase your primary attributes or unlock new skills or abilities.  Whatever your choice, you'll have to find an appropriate skill trainer.  It's a cool system because it fits nicely with the "shipwrecked dude just trying to survive" vibe, as your character needs experts to help him along the way.

On the superficial side, Risen doesn't do anything to stand out, good or bad.  The graphics haven't aged particularly well, but it's really only noticeable during the big cutscenes and closeups on faces; during gameplay, character models and textures look pretty good.  The title theme is great (it evokes memories of Fallout), but most of the soundtrack fades into the background.  While there are a few awkward spots, the voice acting is generally pretty good.  It's overall pretty mediocre with nothing in the extremes.

Risen is flawed in bizarre ways.  It hits the "role-playing" part of an RPG almost perfectly, but all the pieces in between are tedious and frustrating.  RPG enthusiasts may find it hard to put down, but it may be too much of a grind for everybody else.

My Rating: 6/10 - decent.

Game Review - Murdered: Soul Suspect (Xbox 360, 2014)

I love adventure games, but almost every game based on exploring and solving riddles falls victim to a common flaw - when every interaction in the world is carefully programmed, you have to be able to anticipate the designer's intended solution path to solve a puzzle.  At the same time, the designer tries to obscure that path to make more challenging and satisfying puzzles.  It's a delicate balance, and only the best of the best are able to strike it consistently.

Murdered: Soul Suspsect's premise puts it on track to be a member of the highest echelon of adventure games.  It opens with a serial killer murdering Ronan, a detective in Salem, Massachusetts.  His spirit leaves his body, stuck in limbo until he can resolve his unfinished business (solving his own murder), which is when you take control.

What follows is a fascinating story in a brilliantly-crafted universe.  Ronan's disembodiment comes with some interesting advantages, like the ability to walk through most physical objects and possess the living and read their thoughts.

Ronan also encounters a variety of other tormented souls and reflections of particularly strong historical events, which fleshes out a detailed world.  Many characters you meet have little if any impact on the main story, but they still seem to have unique personalities and desires.  There are also a lot collectibles that reveal detailed backstories.  It makes for a fabulously engrossing experience.

That said, there are disappointingly few side quests to complete.  You can help a few of the ghosts that you meet, which provide some cool diversions from the main quest, but the small handful of side quests are all available right at the start.  It's a lot of failed potential in my mind.

Fortunately, the story itself is one of the more intriguing I've seen in quite a while.  The supernatural elements are effectively integrated into a believable modern-day world without becoming the dominant theme - the focus of the game is always the serial killer case.

The visuals, writing, and voice acting are all solid.  There are minor flaws here and there, like an occasional awkward line or odd animation, but the details usually enhance the overall experience of the story.

In summary, it's an awesome, nearly cinematic experience, even if it is a little on the short side (it took me about 10 hours), though that's partly due to lack of side quests.  With such a strong base, the usual problems with adventure games become exceptionally depressing.

The gameplay is basically split into two broad genres, adventure and stealth.

The adventure portions consist of collecting clues, interviewing (or, more often, mind-reading) witnesses, and figuring out how everything connects together.  The game's major areas are self-contained, so you never have to wander too far to find important details.  Most of the challenge of these segments is therefore found in finding collectible items (the clues) and getting around obstacles that block Ronan's path.

When you think you've collected enough clues to solve the next piece of the puzzle, you can bring up a screen that shows all the potentially relevant bits of information.  This is where several of the puzzles become frustratingly opaque - I often felt that it was pretty clear what was going on in any particular scene, whether the focus was determining what happened at a crime scene or deciding what will motivate a particular character to act the way you want.  It wasn't always clear which of the puzzle pieces the game wanted me to choose, though.

Granted, the cost of failure is exceptionally low, as it just reduces your rating for that scene (and rating doesn't seem to be tied to anything else in-game), but it's annoying to feel like you screwed up because the intended solution was excessively vague.

The adventure bits aren't very difficult, but that's ok because the exploration and investigation itself is reasonably fun.

The stealth sections are just bad.  You'll occasionally come across demons roaming certain rooms, and if they catch you, they'll devour Ronan's spirit (but the cost of failure is again minimal - checkpoints are very forgiving).  Your best bet is to dispatch them from behind, but if they see you, they'll hound you until you can hide for a while.

That's all fine; the implementation is the let down.  It's mostly that the hiding mechanics are awkward.  If you're spotted, you have to dive into various spectral hiding places scattered throughout the area.  The demons will attack hiding spots after they lose sight of you, so you have to bounce from spot to spot to avoid detection.  Jumping is disorienting and somewhat imprecise - it can often difficult to get the command to slide into a new hiding spot to pop up.

That's actually a general problem with the game: you have to be standing in the right place with the right orientation to be able to collect many of the important objects.  Most of the time, that's a minor annoyance, but during the stealth sections when quick reflexes matter, it can get really frustrating.

Fortunately, there aren't many stealth segments, and when they do happen, they aren't very long.  It could have been a cool way to add some tension, but it falls well short.

That's it in a nutshell - a beautifully detailed world to explore punctuated by some frustrating gameplay elements and design decisions.  I definitely recommend it, though if you're looking for some smooth action, you'll have to look elsewhere.

My Rating: 7/10 - good.

Game Review: Dead Island: Riptide (Xbox 360, 2013)

In my mind, Dead Island was a fantastic example of a game left in mediocrity when a fabulous premise met repetitive execution.  Exploring a beautifully rendered resort during a zombie apocalypse is a brilliant proposition, but the game wears on for much too long and every battle with undead hordes feels the same, making for a mindless grind after the first few hours of play.

Being a direct sequel, it's unsurprising that Dead Island: Riptide is similar.  Sadly, those similarities make it feel like a disappointing expansion pack to an already borderline disappointing game.  Here's why:

Riptide picks up right where Dead Island left off.  The four survivors of the first zombie outbreak escape only to get thrust right back into it on a new island with a few new zombies and one new playable character  It's basically the same plot: the heroes are just trying to escape, and they'll do whatever they need to earn the help of other survivors.

Where story is concerned, Riptide doesn't do a whole lot.  Yes, you'll meet a bunch of characters along the way, but none of them are very interesting and the major conflicts feel more like tedious tasks than plot points.

To make matters worse, the script and voice acting are bland.  Some of the lines feel forced, the main characters seem pretty dumb at times, and the voice actors don't anything to bring life to the game.

But the worst offender may be in the game's graphics.  During normal gameplay, everything looks great - zombies are diverse and appropriately creepy, environments are reasonably populated with various doodads, and distant terrain reveals a beautiful world.  The problem lies with the human characters; their reasonably expressive faces keep them from falling totally into the uncanny valley, but their eyes are completely lifeless.  It makes cutscenes and conversations feel off, and I found it to be a surprisingly jarring distraction from the narrative.

It's a pretty disappointing attempt at a story.

The gameplay brings similar disappointments.  It is built on the solid premise of 4-player coop zombie stomping and plays a lot like a first-person shooter, although there is heavier emphasis on melee weapons than your typical FPS.  You'll run through zombie hordes, shooting, slicing, and beating your way to your next objective.

For the most part, the control scheme is pretty fluid, though there are a few hiccups.  I felt that the game ate my inputs pretty often while sprinting (and occasionally at other times), so there were times that I was frustrated because I couldn't complete some precise maneuver.  There are also lots of waist-high obstacles that you can't pass despite being able to jump. Even after completing the game (which took me a little over 15 hours), I never had a good intuition for which obstacles I could scale and which ones I couldn't.

On top of that, melee combat can get a little disorienting, with the camera swaying wildly as you swing your weapon; that one's a little more forgivable, though, as it may be an added layer of realism.  The sound effects are a little frustrating, too.  You'll often be able to hear zombies growling, but their volume doesn't change with distance, so you can't tell if they're right behind you or 30 feet away.

Aside from those annoyances, though, the basics are as advertised, and the zombie crushing can be a lot of fun.

Like Dead Island, Riptide also has some RPG elements.  You earn experience by destroying zombies and completing quests, which allows you to upgrade three skill trees.  Most of the skills just buff damage with certain types of weapons or enhance consumable items; the only really unique bit is that each character has a special activated ability, like a brief bloodrush that allows you to rapidly stab enemies.  Those abilities definitely set the different playable characters apart, but they still feel like relatively minor differences in the grand scheme of things.

While the leveling system provides some degree of customization, it mostly just forces you to upgrade your weapons occasionally as the game progresses, as weapons have level requirements.  It ends up being a lot like a loot-based dungeon crawler with very simplistic skill trees.

Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and I think it works with the horror premise pretty well.  I just wish that some of the skills had more impactful effects.

For Dead Island veterans, there's not much new here.  You can import your Dead Island characters, which will only bring over their skill trees.  Riptide introduces a few new skills and pushes the level cap to 70, but there's nothing game changing; it's really just more of the same.

In fact, Riptide is even more repetitive than its predecessor - there are lots of areas to explore, but they aren't nearly as varied or interesting as the areas in Dead Island; there are a couple new breeds of zombies, but they don't require different tactics than all the others; there are numerous quests to complete, but the vast majority have you go through the same motions as quests in Dead Island.

The one notable "innovation" in Riptide is the hub defense.  Several times throughout the story, your band of survivors will need to defend their base of operations from waves of zombies.  Your NPC allies will help dispatch monsters until the helpful "horde strength" indicator on the screen falls to zero.

These defense sequences are a cool idea, but the implementation is awful.  First off, I found the NPCs to be almost totally worthless.  Yeah, they'd fight, and they'd do some damage, but they rarely defeated even the most basic walkers without my help.  As a result, these sequences felt incredibly tedious, as I had to wander around the area to clean up after each wave.  (I admittedly did this with an imported character from Dead Island, so maybe this wouldn't be as much of an issue with a fresh one).

Second, these defenses are incredibly easy.  I never failed one, and I actually never felt like I ever came close to failing one.  That was largely due to the incredibly forgiving death mechanic - anytime you die, you're resurrected nearby within ten seconds; the only cost is a fraction of the cash you have on hand.  There was never any tension during these hub defenses because I knew death wasn't permanent.

The ease combined with the tedium make these parts of the game feel much longer than they needed to be.

A third disappointment comes in the form of optional quests to aid your allies.  Each NPC has three related fetch quests to improve their weapons or the stock in their stores.  While these quests improved merchants quite a bit, it seemed like they only had cosmetic effects for the ones that actually fight.  The improvement quests hint really cool design possibilities (like optional quests that may change base layouts or add different types of obstacles for you to use), but as it stands, they feel pointless.

I could certainly ramble on about the rest of the failed potential, but you probably get the gist: Riptide feels just like the original Dead Island, but its world is more limited, it has mind-numbing defense sections, and the story falls completely flat.  Slaying zombies is often a lot of fun (though it, too, can get tedious), but pretty much everything else disappoints.

If you enjoyed Dead Island and you're looking for more of the same, you'll find it in Riptide; otherwise, you're much better off playing the original.

My Rating: 4/10 - mediocre.

Game Review - Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom (Xbox 360, 2014)

There aren't a whole lot of top-down action-adventure games on the market these days, and many of the good ones are part of the Legend of Zelda franchise.  As a result, I'm always excited to see a new one pop up, and combining it with a popular series like Adventure Time seems like a recipe for success.

And the Secret of the Nameless Kingdom would be a success if it had more depth and wasn't riddled with small flaws.

Let's start with the obvious: being an Adventure Time game, many established characters appear, and the overall style is reminiscent of the series as a whole.  It looks great, with still images during dialogue that could have been taken straight from the show, and a sort of pixelated appearance during gameplay that presents a smooth update to classic gaming aesthetics.  The soundtrack is also fantastic, though there are only a few major songs, so it gets repetitive after a while.  But those features are probably the game's biggest strengths.

The story follows Finn and Jake (the main protagonists of the Adventure Time universe for the uninitiated) on a mission to the "Nameless Kingdom."  The kingdom's three princesses disappeared the day before one would be chosen to rule; Finn and Jake are there to rescue them and set the kingdom straight.

The whole thing is sprinkled with the kind of silliness you'd expect from Adventure Time.  The dialogue is very well written, and the voice actors do a fantastic job with their lines, but there's just not much there.  The storyline is really thin for this kind of game, giving very little beyond a flimsy excuse to visit the major dungeons.  It's really just "go here, then here, then here, then you're done."

It ultimately feels like a squandered opportunity to apply and expand on the Adventure Time universe, and for that it's pretty disappointing.

Sadly, the gameplay doesn't do any better.  You'll guide Finn through an overworld and a few dungeons, dispatching monsters and discovering treasures along the way.  There are a few important items to collect, each unlocking new areas of the world (by enabling you to pass obstacles) and aiding in fights against big bosses.

It evokes a "Link to the Past" vibe, borrowing heavily from classic 2D Zelda games, but the details don't push it beyond a mediocre experience.

The biggest problem is the scale of the game.  The overworld isn't very big, and there are few side areas to explore, stripping a large part of the "adventure" side of the game.

That said, the "adventure" isn't completely gone: Nameless Kingdom suffers from a common problem in adventure games.  For a relatively short game (it took me about 8 hours to complete the story and get all the optional upgrades and collectibles), I found myself in a surprising number of situations where I had no idea what the game what the game wanted me to do.  I couldn't progress because the proper combination of items was far from apparent, and that makes for a horribly frustrating experience.

And the frustrations keep coming.  The general lack of overworld space is somewhat mitigated by increasingly lengthy dungeons, with the final dungeon alone taking well over an hour to complete.  To be fair, some of that length is a product of terrible design (for example, locked doors in many rooms will open after you defeat all the monsters in the room, but backtracking will often reset those rooms, so you'll have to do it again), but it was kind of refreshing to see such intricate dungeons.

If that were all there was to it, I'd say it's a decent game worth checking out.  Unfortunately, I was annoyed by lots of little things over the course of the game:

There aren't very many items to collect, and most of the puzzles are tedious instead of, well, puzzling.  The controls can be a little clunky at times, because you'll get stuck on walls if you push the control stick even slightly towards them, and it takes very little to propel Finn into pits (except, of course, when you want to fall in a pit; then the game makes you work for it).  Hit boxes don't make any sense in some places.  You are surprisingly vulnerable after using items, making it almost universally safer not to use items during combat (making some bosses pretty frustrating), and many items don't work in places where it really seems like they should.  You can occasionally glitch enemies into walls or through spikes, trapping you inside some rooms...

You get the idea.

It's particularly sad because the positives aren't even that good in an absolute sense.  The bright spots only shine through because everything around them is so dark.

And that's the real disappointment with Nameless Kingdom - there aren't any truly egregious flaws (except maybe the overall size of the game), but it drowns in a sea of small mistakes.  Few items, boring puzzles, insensitive controls, and a lazy plot all combine to make this game mediocre from start to finish.  You could do a lot worse, but it's probably not worth your money unless you're a die-hard Adventure Time or top-down action-adventure fan (and it's questionable even then).

My Rating: 3/10 - bad.

Game Review - DmC: Devil May Cry (Xbox 360, 2013)

On the list of franchises I expected to get a gritty, real-world reboot, Devil May Cry was pretty far from the top.  It does make some sense in retrospect: there's always a market for good third-person action games, and if you remove some of the the cheesy lines and smarmy protagonist and tie the plot more closely to the real world, you just might have a quality title all around.

In the end, I think DmC does a great job in both respects.  It's an impressively fun hack and slash game, and the story is a nice re-imagining of the Devil May Cry premise.  Here's why:

DmC follows Dante, handsome rogue and lady-killer, as he is drawn into a demonic plot to destroy the world.  You know, pretty basic stuff.

There are two pretty good reasons that the story is worth experiencing, though:

First, the demonic plane, Limbo, exists parallel to the world we all know and love.  The locations are similar, with Limbo being a generally perverted version of the same landscape, and changes in one world affect the other.  This setup allows for some interesting dynamics and plot points along the way (though nothing that has a significant impact on gameplay).

Second, the overall visual style is breathtaking.  Locations range from mundane warehouses to hopping clubs to molten hellscapes, and each has a distinct and impressive style.  Characters and monsters are similarly detailed, and while things can get a little weird at times, it's always fantastic to see.

Aside from those broad categories, nothing in the game's plot really stands out, good or bad.  It's a different take on the Devil May Cry storyline (with much of the character backstories carried over from the original), which I found cool as a longtime fan of the franchise.  For others, the storyline leaves a bit to be desired in a few places, but it was still interesting enough to keep me from getting bored during brief cutscenes between gameplay segments.

Speaking of gameplay, the real reason you should play DmC is the opportunity to slaughter thousands of demons in the most stylish of ways.

The basic gameplay of other Devil May Cry titles remains intact: fluid combat with a variety of weapons and combos for dispatching enemies.  As you progress, you'll unlock more weapons and related combat abilities, allowing for more complex combinations of moves.  You can even switch between weapons very easily during a fight, which lets you chain cool attacks together in exciting ways.

The combat system is really deep and executed very well.  It's incredibly satisfying.

I really only have two complaints.  First, the camera can be a huge pain in the ass.  There's this lock-on system the focuses your view on one enemy.  It's really nice most of the time, but when you're fighting half a dozen demons and need to change targets on the fly, it can get really awkward.

Second, I found some of the combos to be rather hard to pull off.  I'd love that added difficulty if they were more powerful or beneficial in some other way, but that didn't seem to be the case.  The result is that I ended up using the same set of combos pretty frequently for most enemies.  It was still a pretty diverse set of combos (using only one combos for each of the five melee weapons still yields a nice spectrum of attacks), but there was really no incentive to explore the rest of Dante's combat skills.

Still, it was tons of fun fighting my way through the game, which took me around 7-8 hours to complete.

Like previous Devil May Cry games, however, there are many additional difficulty modes to tackle once completing the story the first time.

Two of the additional modes increase the difficulty, but not just by making monsters stronger.  Instead, they change the composition of enemy groups.  These changes require you to change tactics instead of just becoming more precise, which makes playing these difficulties a different experience than your first playthrough.  It's the best kind of replay value.

The other two additional modes provide a unique twist.  In "Heaven or Hell" mode, Dante and all enemies die in a single hit, changing the dynamic of the game considerably.  It's much easier than the main game, but it's another unique experience.

"Hell and Hell" makes Dante as fragile as in "Heaven or Hell" but leaves his foes at their normal power level - you'll die in one hit, but the demons won't.  It's definitely the biggest challenge the game has to offer and yet another new perspective on DmC's gameplay.

All told, running through the additional game modes can bring the game clock up to 30+ hours, with a fair number of challenges, if you're up to it.

DmC is overall a great game with tons of replay value.  There's nothing groundbreaking, but its smooth execution makes for a very entertaining game with more longevity than most single-player games on the market these days.  It's definitely worth a look.

My Rating: 9/10 - awesome.

Game Review - Darksiders II (Xbox 360, 2012)

My favorite games have always been those that force you to solve puzzles to progress.  I really enjoy defeating challenging enemies and managing limited resources in addition to more traditional puzzles.  If a game can successfully integrate many of those kinds of elements, it's almost a sure thing that I'll like it.

Darksiders II does an excellent job of combining exploration and that sort of problem solving, making for a wonderful gaming experience.  Here's what you can expect:

Being a direct sequel, Darksiders II follows closely behind its predecessor both in terms of gameplay and story.

On the story side, we get to see Death, one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, set out to redeem his brother (War), who is blamed (fairly or not) for the destruction of humanity.  In this quest, he confronts angels, demons, and everything in between as he searches for the relics necessary to resurrect the human race.

The storyline is actually pretty thin.  The vague connection to Christian mythology isn't fleshed out, and the plot is nothing more than a vehicle for "go here, do this thing, and come back."  The good news is that it doesn't force you through long sequences of boring cutscenes or tedious dialogue, so while the story doesn't enhance the experience, it doesn't really detract from it, either.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is solid.  It's a third-person action-adventure game in all the important ways.  You'll guide Death through a rather expansive world and numerous dungeons, all while slaying any monsters that get in your way.  Darksiders II feels like a particularly good take on the genre because each of its components are exceptionally done.

Let's start with the exploration: After passing through an introductory area and becoming acquainted with the story, you'll be sent to the first dungeon.  Along the way to completing your first major mission, you'll pass an optional side area to explore.  It sets the tone right away - there are primary objective you could pursue, but you could also get lost following side paths.

Sadly, the later stages of the game lose some of that sense of exploration, as side paths disappear completely from the last few areas.  It's a disappointment to be sure, but the main story dungeons become increasingly large and complex as the game wears on, making up for some of that lost exploration.

And those dungeons are surprisingly well done.  Each one presents a new goodie to help you progress, but unlike a lot of games of this genre, most of those items are used in later dungeons as well.  Off hand I can only think of one that doesn't make a repeat appearance, making the items feel much less gimmicky than they might otherwise seem.

This scenario often means that the puzzles themselves can get rather challenging.  It was nice to have to stop and think about the right way to progress on several occasions, making successful completion of a puzzle particularly satisfying.

Combat is similarly well done.  It plays a bit like a hack and slash game, with fast, flowing battles against several enemies simultaneously, and the basic controls are fluid enough to allow that style to shine.

Darksiders II has a leg up, though, because it incorporates light RPG elements as well.  There's a leveling and skill system that allows you to enhance Death's fighting capabilities, which allows some customization based on your preferred combat style, even if it's not incredibly deep.

There's also a heavy emphasis on loot in the form of equipment.  Following the tradition of dungeon crawlers, items will drop from chests and defeated foes, so there's always a drive to find better gear.  You can also purchase items from a few merchants throughout the world, giving you guaranteed access to some baseline item quality.

The only real flaw with this system is one that is fairly common with this sort of game: there are few enough things to purchase and they are cheap enough that you'll basically always have enough money starting about halfway through the game.

Despite all that, the battles in Darksiders II are never too easy (at least on higher difficulty settings).  I found myself struggling with some of the random encounters throughout the game.  Many of the game's epic bosses require some strategy and precise timing to overcome.  And, yet again, it can be quite satisfying when you finally do, as none of them really feel cheap.

Honestly, I was a little disappointed with some of the fight sequences near the end of the game, as they seemed to be pushovers compared to what happened during the mid-game, but I still had a lot of fun with it.

Nothing in the game feels groundbreaking or exceedingly clever, so there are limits to how good it gets, but it's a great incarnation of a classic genre.

On the more superficial side, the game gets the job done.  Nothing really stands out graphically, in either a positive or negative way, though there are some cool cutscenes and many of the game's environments are fantastic.

I was impressed by the game's soundtrack, though.  Many of the tunes did a great job of highlighting the tension of certain scenarios and brought a feeling of solemn isolation during others.  In the end, the soundtrack resonated with me a lot more than I would have expected it to.

And all that combined makes Darksiders II an enjoyable game.  It took me somewhere around 25 hours to complete my first playthrough (though I did most of the side quests and side dungeons).  While the last quarter of the game kind of drags a little bit, it smoothly integrates a number of different elements and genres (there's even a portion that plays like a third-person shooter, and it works!).

I had a very good time with it, and I highly recommend it.

My Rating: 8/10 - great.

Game Review - Far Cry 3 (Xbox 360, 2012)

I recently started watching Arrow, the tv show based on Green Arrow from the DC universe.  One of the reasons I enjoy the show is the character's backstory - harrowing experiences on an isolated island transform a trust fund baby into a vigilante hero of the masses.  It makes for some pretty exciting flashbacks.

The basic premise of Far Cry 3 follows a similar narrative.  A band of pirates abducts a group of twentysomethings vacationing near a remote island.  The protagonist abandons his humanity and becomes a cold-hearted killer to save those he loves.

While the story is built on a solid foundation and the gameplay is very well polished, a few annoyances stop the game from being truly top-tier.

Let's start with the story.  Far Cry 3 suffers from an unfortunately common problem in gaming, where the story starts strong but fizzles a bit in the later acts.  The script is generally pretty good, and the voice actors do a great job of bringing life to their characters, but I found I wasn't invested in the story by the end.

I think that mostly has to do with the fact that there are some fantastic characters and a compelling conflict early on, but as the plot progresses, those are replaced by story elements that pale in comparison.  I was excited to see where it was going, but I was let down by where it ended up.

To make matters worse, I think the story should end a couple missions before it actually does.  There's a sequence at the end that really feels tacked on and detracts from overall plot significantly.  It was simply unnecessary and disappointing.

That said, it does feature one of the most memorable characters I've ever encountered in a game, so playing through the story still has a lot of value.

The gameplay has a very similar vibe - a few disappointing design choices sting a little more because it's generally very well executed.

Far Cry 3 is played from the first-person perspective, but it doesn't feel like your stereotypical first person shooter (like the world's Call of Duties).  Instead, the game emphasizes stealth augmented by RPG-style skill trees.

Honestly, I think that's the game's biggest strength.  You're generally better off sneaking around silently eliminating enemies than running in with the biggest guns available, especially on harder difficulty settings.  It makes for a more strategic gameplay experience.

It's a lot of fun stalking guards and waiting for the right time to strike, and the skill system enhances the entertainment.  There are three skill trees, essentially focusing on combat, survival, and stealth, and you collect skill points by earning XP for killing enemies or completing objectives.  I found many of the skills to be borderline worthless, as they only applied in one or two instances, but planning the customization of my character was still enjoyable, and some of the skills had a pretty significant impact on how I approached encounters.

Sadly, this emphasis on stealth was also the cause of one of the game's sore spots: most missions encourage stealthy approaches by having wide areas and observable movement patterns.  Near the end of the game, however, you're forced into a few big firefights in close quarters (as far as I could tell; maybe I just couldn't figure out how to stealth my way through these sequences).

It's like the majority of the game prepared me for one play style but then punished me for focusing on it.

Fortunately, the main quest line is just one piece of the game's content.  Among the other ways to keep yourself occupied are sidequests (ranging from hunting missions to executing specific targets to searching for objects in a given area), timed challenges that allow you to compare your high scores to your friends', and generally exploring the gorgeous open world of these remote islands.

While some of these excursions can get a little tedious - there are, for example, some platforming sections, which is always a bad idea in games where you can't see your character's feet, and traveling from one objective to another can be frustratingly long at times - it's overall a nice diversity of in-game tasks.

The game also has an appropriate level of challenge - higher difficulty settings can get quite hard near the end of the game, but even the easiest setting isn't a cakewalk.  It's pretty generous with checkpoints, though, so you never lose much progress if you make a mistake.  There seemed to be the right balance of difficulty (to make me feel like I'd accomplished something) and forgiveness (to keep me from getting overly frustrated).

All in all, Far Cry 3 is a fun game good for well over 15 hours of entertainment (and much more if you're looking to complete all the side content).  It trails off a bit in the latter half and has a few bouts with general dullness, but it kept me reasonably well entertained.  I'd happily recommend it to anyone looking for a good first-person adventure.

My Rating: 8/10 - great.

Game Review - Asura's Wrath (Xbox 360, 2012)

As much as I rant about the value of a good story, I still want my games to feel like games.  When the cinematic-to-gameplay ratio starts to approach 2-to-1, I start to lose interest.  Those games aren't as entertaining as just watching a movie because the narrative tends to be more drawn out and gets broken up by spurts of gameplay.  They aren't as fun as playing other games, either, because I find I get dumped into a cutscene just as the action picks up.

It sort of feels like the worst of both worlds.

Asura's Wrath is the most recent offender I've played.  With a heavy emphasis on a disappointing story, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Let's get this out of the way: a big reason I'm not much of a fan of Asura's Wrath is the pacing.  While the game features some pretty cool episodic storytelling, where each chapter is presented as an installment of a tv show (complete with opening credits and previews for the next episode), very little happens along the way.

It's definitely in the tradition of classic anime series like Dragon Ball Z, where long periods of slow buildup lead to epic (though often quick) confrontations.  That style always felt awfully niche to me, and it was never really my thing.  If you're like me in that way, Asura's Wrath is unlikely to hook you.

The story itself definitely has potential, but it falls short because it doesn't really go anywhere.  Asura is one of eight demigod generals defending the planet from the corruption of the apparently evil Ghoma.  That conflict is never explained in any detail, cheapening what could have been a very interesting backstory.

Instead, the bulk of the game focuses on the other generals betraying Asura and his ensuing vengeance.  That betrayal is slightly better explained, but it still doesn't flesh out the game's universe enough to draw my interest.

Yes, there are awesome fight scenes (and the game is beautiful, so they're particularly awesome), but I was never invested in it.  There's a lot of failed potential in this one.

And the gameplay doesn't pick up the slack.  Part of that is because it relies pretty heavily on quick time events.  You'll need to be quick on the draw during cinematics to follow on-screen inputs and common button-mashing sequences if you want to get a good ranking in each chapter.  It also means that many of the cutscenes are unskippable, so multiple playthroughs become a huge chore.

The rest of the gameplay lacks focus, as it is split almost evenly between two genres - third-person beat 'em up and rail shooter.

The beat 'em up gameplay isn't anything mindblowing.  You use simple combat abilities to dispatch a decent variety of enemies while filling your "burst gauge," which allows you to unleash a super-cinematic attack (another strong parallel with Dragon Ball Z).  Battles are usually spamming affairs, where your best tactic is to wail on opponents indiscriminately.  Higher difficulties require more strategy and precision, but the hardest fights generally devolve into tedious exercises in pattern recognition rather than flowing combat.

My favorite bits of the game, on the other hand, were definitely the rail shooter stages.  During these sections, Asura will automatically rush towards some objective. You control his lateral movement to dodge incoming attacks and fire projectiles to take out enemies along the way.  There is generally not much riding on these sequences (it is pretty hard to fail in most of them), but they were reasonably entertaining.

To be fair, I think nostalgia is the reason I preferred those stages; they evoked memories of games like Panzer Dragoon, making me wish more games like that were on the market these days.  Whatever the reason, those sections of the game were the ones I was most excited about.

Despite an uninspired story and rather shallow gameplay, Asura's Wrath is one of the most beautiful games I've played in a long time.  The cutscenes are gorgeous, featuring charming art direction overall.  The soundtrack is similarly fabulous; there were definitely times that the background music amped me up more than anything else.  It's a fantastic presentation, even if the content is a little lacking.

In the end, Asura's Wrath was more of a niche title than I had expected.  It's really just an interactive action movie.  The plot is little more than an excuse for big fight scenes (though it drags on in a lot of places), and the gameplay touches on quality genres but never delves into them.  It's decently entertaining at times, but it failed to hold my attention for the full 6-8 hour campaign, and I have virtually no desire to play through it again.

Asura's Wrath will likely appeal to gamers looking for a Dragon Ball Z-style story, but for others, it's unimpressive.

My Rating: 3/10 - bad.

Game Review - Spec Ops: The Line (Xbox 360, 2012)

I'm a sucker for a good story, but games have this annoying tendency to build up a wonderful plot only to collapse in the final act.  Spec Ops: The Line is unfortunately one of those games, with excellent storytelling heading towards a pretentious climax in the last chapter.  Oh, I guess it's also a decent shooter, but that's not why you'd play this game.

Spec Ops takes place in a world where the glamorous city of Dubai has been buried by unrelenting sandstorms.  After a failed attempt to evacuate the city, a trio of Special Forces operatives (that's you) enter the city to figure out what happened and look for survivors.

The setting is fantastic.  Dubai is an unusual location for a game, and it allows for a wonderful mixture of sandy exteriors, apparently war-torn slums, and opulent plazas.  It leans a little on the desert side of things (given the basic plot, that much is to be expected), but it's still pretty sweet to explore an underused real-world city.

The plot itself isn't too compelling, mostly because there's just not enough content to make sense of everything that's going on (perhaps by design), but the details are phenomenal.  I was particularly impressed by the characterization - the banter among the three protagonists is well-written with impressive voice acting, making them each unique and believable characters.

In fact, the best part of the story is the evolution of the characters' responses to events as the game progresses.  When you start the game, they're mostly professional and detached with a nice dose of playfulness; by the end, they are clearly exhausted and frustrated, and that professionalism is replaced by raw anger.

That slow change is fantastic, and it's supported by visuals along the way.  The protagonists' faces become increasingly caked with sand and blood, adding a surprising level of immersion.  It's all wonderfully presented.

On the other hand, the game's conclusion is a huge disappointment.  It goes completely off the rails, capping off that gradual psychological devolution with an over-the-top twist.  The last chapter is definitely the most memorable part of the game, but not in a good way.

The let down at the end is a problem because the story absolutely carries the game.  The gameplay is exactly what you'd expect from a third-person shooter in the post-Gears of War era: a cover system, long battles with waves of enemies, and a small array of available weapons fill out the majority of what you'll be doing throughout the 5-8 hour campaign.

A few features try to mix it up a bit, but at best they feel like underdeveloped gimmicks.  The biggest is the ability to issue orders to your squadmates.  You can have your allies focus on a particular target or, sometimes if you're lucky, you can get one to snipe a distant foe.  More often than not, though, they'll just run into the fray, becoming a liability instead of an asset (you'll hit a game over screen if a teammate is downed and not revived quickly enough).

It makes for a very repetitive gameplay experience.  You're just fighting waves of identical enemies in arenas with different arrangements of walls and debris.

In fact, the most damning part is that the game can get incredibly frustrating on higher difficulties.  There are segments that seem to require more luck than skill or strategy, as your allies get themselves killed constantly. The frustration really hampers the replay value of what is already a fairly short campaign.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the multiplayer mode.  I tried searching for a match every time I booted up the game and never found one.  So it's there, but the community is completely dead.

And that's all there is - fantastic storytelling bundled with acceptable gameplay, at least until the last fifteen minutes.  It's decently fun and excitingly immersive, but the disappointing conclusion and overall lack of replay value knock it down a few notches.

My Rating: 6/10 - decent.

Game Review - Remember Me (Xbox 360, 2013)

I find that I'm less likely to get sucked into a game's story than when I was younger.  Maybe common tropes are more apparent as I get older, maybe gaming's narratives aren't as well developed as they used to be, or maybe I'm just becoming a cynic.  Whatever the reason, Skyrim is the last game to really enthrall me, so I've gone nearly three years without such an experience.

Until I played Remember Me.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Remember Me really compares to an open-world RPG like Skyrim.  I'm simply saying that it's the first game since Skyrim that had a story and world that were interesting enough to keep me absolutely hooked.

And honestly, that's an impressive feat these days.

Remember Me is set in a futuristic world where memories have been commercialized.  You can literally share your memories with loved ones, or you can buy and sell particularly potent memories.  Memory manipulation is so ingrained in that society that prisoners have their memories removed (to be returned upon release) to reduce resistance (if they can't remember life before prison, why would they struggle against their fate?).

It's a fascinating world worthy of classic science fiction, and the game sucks you in by opening with a beautifully rendered advertisement for the prominent memory brokerage.

It's one of the most creative gaming worlds of recent memory.

While you don't get a chance to freely explore this world, as the game is fairly linear, the storyline certainly makes up for it.  You play the role of Nilin, a recent prisoner whose mind had been wiped before the opening scene.  As she's sent towards a final processing of sorts, a mysterious voice aids in her escape and her eventual connection with a rebel group.

You can probably imagine how it progresses from there.

The conflict is made more interesting by the fact that some talented memory extractors are able to alter existing memories instead of simply transplanting them as they are, which is the standard procedure.  As such, certain individuals have the potential to change someone's entire world.  It's a bit like Inception: The Game, and it works beautifully with the world they constructed.

The really compelling part of it all, though, is the detail put into the characters and the world itself.  I was consistently interested in minor characters' stories and the lore of the world - something that I can't honestly say for a lot of games with optional side material.

On top of all that, it looks pretty good.  Pre-rendered cutscenes are generally fantastic, and the voice acting is usually solid.  There are a few sequences that feel a little awkward, but the presentation is generally superb.

There are a few lapses in story quality, with sudden changes in characters' expressed opinions and the like, so it's far from perfect, but it's still more coherent and entertaining than a lot of games out there.

Given the quality of the storyline, as long as the gameplay isn't horrible, I'd still say that Remember Me is a good game.  While there are some disappointments, the gameplay is pretty smooth overall.

It breaks down into three basic categories: stealth, combat, and memory manipulation.  While none of the three are as deep or well-developed as I might like, there's a good balance of them, so I never felt that any of the basic mechanics became tedious or frustrating.

The stealth sections happen when Nilin is dealing with automated sentry drones.  They follow specific paths, and you just have to find the right timing or tricks to be able to get through the area undetected.  The stealth mechanics are particularly simple, but they're also not the main focus, so these sequences do a pretty good job of punctuating the more prominent combat sequences.

Combat uses a neat customizable combo system to enhance what is essentially the style of a third-person beat 'em up.  There are three hand-to-hand combos you can use over the course of the game, but you can alter the effect that each individual hit has.  As an example, you can choose to make each hit in a combo deal extra damage or heal you a bit; the later the hit occurs in the combo, the more pronounced the effect.

While you only get to choose from four different types of attack enhancements, changing the effects of each blow is a surprisingly satisfying degree of customization.  You get the chance to tweak the available combos to fit your playstyle, which is not something that I think I've ever really seen before.

There are some special attacks, which shake up the combat a little bit, too.  It's nothing groundbreaking, but it allows combat to be diverse enough to compensate for the relatively small number of enemy types you'll encounter.

It's also worth noting that the difficulty of the fights increases at a challenging but reasonable rate.  The challenge usually comes from mixing enemy types so that you have to adjust your tactics to deal with different combinations of strengths and weaknesses, so it feels a little more organic than just making individual enemies harder to kill.  Even so, it can get somewhat repetitive because you'll be using the same three combos over and over throughout the whole thing, but it never feels unreasonably easy or brutal.

The memory manipulation sections are really cool, but they're also the biggest reservoir of untapped potential.  The basic idea is that you are able to replay another character's memory with the opportunity to make changes.  Those changes are usually pretty subtle (like turning a machine off or on or moving a table), but they may affect the scene in some significant way.

It's an awesome concept, and the first instance of it is a great introduction to this sort of mechanic.

Unfortunately, it never evolves past what the introductory segment teaches you.  There are only simple interactions between possible changes, with only a couple possible outcomes for each memory, so they're pretty straightforward.  The only difficulty is that it's not always easy to notice the indicator that says something can be changed - in fact, I spent much too long on one of these memory sequences because I never saw one of the vital pieces of the puzzle.

It failed to be something amazing, but it's still a unique concept.

None of the gameplay categories are too exciting, but the mixture of three keeps the gameplay from getting stale.  Still, each of the three categories hinted at something awesome, leaving me wishing that some of the mechanics had been a bit more involved.  In short, it's not the best gameplay out there, but it never gets in the way of the narrative, so it's definitely good enough.

So in the end, I highly recommend Remember Me because of the way it builds around a neat story idea.  If you're only looking for engaging gameplay, you'll probably be disappointed, but the game's world is totally worth it.

My Rating: 7/10 - good.

Game Review - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition (Xbox 360, 2014)

Originally released for Playstation devices last year, Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition is an exceptional action platformer.  It manages to combine entertaining fighting mechanics with challenging platforming and exploration, all with an occasional chuckle. It's a fantastic experience.  Here's what you can expect:

Guacamelee puts you in the role of Juan, a farmer in a world that idolizes luchadores. Juan's effort to prevent the abduction of his romantic interest, El Presidente's daughter, leads to his death in the opening scenes of the game.  A mysterious luchador bestows Juan with a magical luchador's mask in the world of the dead, allowing him to chase down the evil skeleton that kidnapped his love (and, you know, return to the world of the living).

At its core, the premise is pretty standard.  The aesthetics, however, are based on Mexican folklore, with heavy emphasis on art styles from things like Dia de los Muertos and a mariachi-inspired soundtrack.  It's an overall style that's generally absent from the gaming world, and it's done very well.

The game also never takes itself too seriously, which is a lot of fun.  There are scenes with ridiculous dialogue or, even better, interesting camera action and other graphical gags, all while incorporating a number of nice references to gaming icons.  It's very entertaining all around.

That overall style is also backed up with incredible gameplay.  On the surface, Guacamelee is just a challenging platformer.  Some sections of the game require precise jumps and timing, and they're among the hardest platforming segments I've played in a long time (maybe even since old-school Mega Man games).

Successfully navigating these sequences is pretty satisfying, too, because the control scheme is nearly flawless.  Clear objectives and responsive inputs make it obvious that poor design is never the reason for your failure; it's all on you.  As such, the game never feels stacked against you.

The combat really seals the deal, though.  Fighting monsters feels like a standard side-scrolling beat 'em up: you'll punch, you'll dodge, and you'll defeat tons of mobs over the course of the game.

However, as you progress, Juan will obtain new combat skills that add complexity to the many monster encounters you'll face.  In fact, these skills will become necessary as enemies develop resistances as the game wears on.  It's a really cool system because it makes the relatively small number of enemy types feel much more diverse as you're forced to dispatch them in specific ways.

Those combat skills also aid in mobility, allowing the platforming challenges to become more complex, too.  And that's what makes Guacamelee so damn entertaining - you'll never encounter the same obstacles twice, either in platforming or combat sequences.  Every room feels new and presents a new challenge, and the difficulty ramps up consistently throughout.

Simply put, Guacamelee's gameplay is some of the best I've ever seen.  Period.

My only complaint on that front is that some of the boss fights aren't that interesting.  I found the first major boss to be significantly harder than any subsequent boss (until the final boss, who offered substantial resistance), so most of the boss fights were a bit of a letdown.  Getting to them was always tons of fun, though.

Suprisingly, there's also a good amount of content.  I finished my first playthrough in 5-6 hours, but there are tons of optional areas to explore and upgrades to find, including 17 challenge rooms and the hardest platforming challenges available.  Everything seems doable from the outset, though, and with some dedication you'll get there.  Still, it can easily take 10+ hours to reach 100% completion.

And then there's hard mode, which unlike a lot of games is a significant increase in difficulty.  Even after mastering the challenge rooms, I had trouble with several fights on hard mode.  It requires deeper strategy and is much less forgiving, so I had to rethink my approach many times.  It was a nice additional challenge.

I'm genuinely impressed that the game not only kept me interested for 15 hours but also felt fresh and exciting the whole time.  That may be more of a comment on the current state of gaming, but either way, Guacamelee is one of the most all-around enjoyable games I've played in the last few years.

My Rating: 10/10 - epic.

Game Review - Killer is Dead (Xbox 360, 2013)

I fear that Suda 51 may be transitioning from gaming's Stanley Kubrick to its M. Night Shyamalan.

For years, Suda 51 has written and directed some of the most bizarre but satisfying games on the market.  Each game is clearly marked with his characteristic strangeness, but buried beneath their eclectic appearance has usually been an intriguing story worth exploring.

His previous Xbox offering, Black Knight Sword, broke that trend by having (what I found to be) a nearly unintelligible plot.  It was like he was trying too hard to be weird for weird's sake, drifting uncomfortably towards Shyamalan's legacy of focusing more on the gimmick than overall quality.

Killer is Dead has similar flaws.  Set in a futuristic world of cybernetic enhancements and moon colonies, Killer is Dead follows the exploits of Mondo, a government-contracted assassin. While the premise is promising, it turns out to be a series of mostly disjointed episodes and random events.

There is an overarching storyline, but it's also uncomfortably random.  The characters aren't interesting, their conflicts have no depth, and the whole thing seems like a flimsy excuse for an orgy of violence and pointless sexualization.  While the twelve-year-old in me was pretty excited by that prospect, the plot as a whole is awfully disappointing because none of the gratuitous content served any discernible purpose.  Unless you're looking for titillation, there's not much worth seeing in this story.

In fact, Killer is Dead was the first of Suda 51's games that took effort for me to complete.  About halfway through the 9-hour storyline, I was bored with it, wishing the various cutscenes would end so I could get back to gameplay.

But while it's the best part of the game by far, the gameplay is only mildly entertaining at best.  Essentially a third-person action game, Killer is Dead doesn't do much beyond the simplest of mechanics.  You'll run through the 12 main episodes and handful of side missions slaughtering everything in your path.

In general, the combat reduces to a balance between dodging, blocking, and slashing furiously with your sword.  There are a few upgradable skills, though almost all of them just change the flow of that basic three-point strategy without adding new options (by, for example, increasing your attack speed if you maintain a hit streak).

You also have access to four secondary weapons, which adds a little bit of diversity.  Three of the four are guns of various types (the fourth being a giant drill), but aside from very specific circumstances, I only found the default rapid-fire ranged weapon effective - proper use of the others tended just to make me more vulnerable to counterattacks, so they seemed like bad tactical options.

Speaking of counterattacks, your most powerful enemy is often the camera.  As is usually the case with this sort of game, you'll regularly fight off a number of enemies or fast bosses.  Intelligent camera angles and the ability to make quick, precise adjustments are therefore very important, but I found myself frustrated by the camera pretty often.  Enemies would get behind me or the screen would be covered with unnecessary flourishes obscuring my view, making some fights seem difficult for the wrong reasons.  It was definitely a pain.

And that's basically the whole game.  Run through several stages and complete a bunch of fights using the same strategies so you can progress the nonsensical plot.  It's far from compelling...

To be fair, I am oversimplfying a bit.  The initial stages of the game are pretty fun; it's only tiring when the repetitive nature of the gameplay becomes apparent somewhere around halfway through.  There are also a number of unlockable challenges and advanced difficulty modes, each of which can be quite challenging at times, even with the relatively simple combat system.  There are redeeming qualities, but they're really nothing special - it's just a moderately fun 4-6 hours before the tedium sets in.

Oh, it's also worth noting that Killer is Dead is the first game I've ever played that effectively implemented a second-person camera during one of the boss fights, where you see the game from your enemy's perspective while still controlling the protagonist.  It's another gimmick, but it's still kinda cool to see.

In the end, I can't really recommend Killer is Dead to anyone but the most hardcore fans of Suda 51 or third-person hack-and-slash gameplay, and even those people may be disappointed.  It's not worthless by any stretch, but it doesn't come anywhere near the legacy Suda 51 seemed to be building a few years ago.

And that's probably the worst part.

My Rating: 3/10 - bad.

Game Review - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (2014, Xbox 360)

The Castlevania franchise is one of the oldest and most beloved series in gaming, and the newest entry, Lords of Shadow 2, promises to build on its predecessor's success as a solid 3D action-adventure game.  Sadly, the latest excursion into the Belmonts' world falls short due to a series of weird plot and gameplay features.  The most frustrating issue is that there seems to be an awesome game hiding behind this awkward collection of confusing elements.  Here's why:

NOTE: This review will contain spoilers for the original Lords of Shadow game.  I will try to keep those spoilers as vague as possible, but it would be impossible to describe my disappointment with this game's storyline without including some specific details of the ongoing plot.

Lords of Shadow 2 is unique among Castlevania games, as the main player character is Dracula himself.  During the game's opening tutorial, you get a chance to explore Dracula's powers while defending his castle.
While it's cool to see (and control!) Dracula at his most badass right off the bat, the tutorial gives the first hints of something amiss with the overall gamplay.  The combat is fluid and a lot of fun, emphasizing the use of a whip as in the original Lords of Shadow, with a number of different ways to dispatch your foes.

The frustrating part is the surprising emphasis on Prince of Persia-style climbing: you will spend a large chunk of this game jumping from handhold to handhold, and you'll generally do it just to fill time.  The platforming itself is rarely difficult, as only a few spots in the game require any sort of timing or strategy (one of the biggest challenging sequences actually appears in the tutorial), and you can always highlight grippable pieces of scenery using an in-game command.  All that climbing gets incredibly tedious.

Back to the tutorial, though - the game's introductory sequence ends with Dracula's ostensible victory over the Brotherhood of Light, defeating an army in a matter of seconds.  However, a cinematic indicates that the Brotherhood saw that battle as a victory as well, as Dracula disappeared following the fight, martyring the paladin who led the charge.

At this point, the storyline has incredible potential - we get a chance to see the Castlevania universe from Dracula's perspective.  It could portray him as a tragic villain with some depth (you know, as opposed to just being pure evil), or it could embrace the whole evil thing and give the player control over one of Dracula's conquests (asserting his dominance over some race of evil beings, for instance).  I was incredibly excited to see where it would go.

And then Dracula woke up in a modern world, emaciated from centuries of isolation...

Yep.  It's a game with Dracula roaming streets straddled by skyscrapers.  Sure, the world still has a clear Gothic vibe, and the overall aesthetic is generally well-done, but it's quite jarring to think of a Castlevania game in a contemporary setting.

But the weird doesn't stop there: one of Dracula's old acquaintances appears to restore some of his strength, informing the Prince of Darkness that Satan has finally regained enough power to fill the void left by Dracula's disappearance.  In return for removing Satan from the world, Dracula's old friend makes an apparently irresistible promise: permanent death.  Looking for an escape from his existence, Dracula therefore searches the city for Satan's acolytes in an attempt to bring the devil down for good.

Oh, and Dracula's memories try to kill him along the way, so there's that too.

The basic plot isn't necessarily offensive following Lords of Shadow, it's just really unexpected.  The offensive part is that it seems to go too far.  It's nice in that it humanizes the main series antagonist, but I felt that it made him too soft to be compatible with his previous appearances in the franchise.  While I think it wraps everything up pretty nicely in the end, the generally schizophrenic presentation (jumping back and forth between the modern world and Dracula's memories, for example) makes for a confusing narrative that doesn't really seem to have a strong direction.

The gameplay, while built on a strong foundation, just doesn't have the oomph to support the shoddy storyline.  I've already mentioned the mind-numbing breaks from action due to unnecessary platforming sections, but the combat loses its luster as the game wears on, too.  There are some cool features - a nice variety of combos and a nifty weapon experience system which encourages you to diversify your attack patterns - but it falls all too easily into one or two repetitive combos that are the most effective in virtually every situation.

In the few cases where those combos aren't the most powerful, the game overcompensates by making them completely worthless.  Instead, you have to break the enemy's defenses (with a skill that requires magic power, so you may not be able to use it) so you can resume your normal combat strategy.

Even worse, many of your enemies throughout this nightmare-infested city have guns, so they can damage you from arbitrarily large distances.  That makes some battles a serious pain; often I would have an off-screen enemy pummeling me with rapid-fire bullets, and projectile attacks make it very difficult to run from random mob encounters (because you have to do that silly rock climbing to transition between areas, and taking damage will knock you from a wall).

On the other extreme, boss fights are typically easy, as the only real obstacle to your success is learning the animations that signal specific attack patterns.  As a result, the difficulty of the game's combat seems skewed in the opposite direction of what you might expect, and beating down a boss doesn't seem like much of a triumph.

And then there's the biggest disappointment of all the gameplay flaws: Lords of Shadow 2 has stealth sections.  The Prince of Darkness must sneak through some areas of the game (primarily to avoid big dumb dudes with huge guns), and it is abysmal.  The stealth sequences aren't very well designed in the first place, but the control scheme also doesn't give enough sensitivity for it to make much sense.  A couple of these sequences were particularly bad simply because the path the developers expected you to take is far from obvious - in one instance, I struggled towards a clearly-visible ladder, only to find that you can't climb it; the "correct" path required a very different strategy.

To be fair, despite all the frustrations, the game has some impressive moments.  A couple of scenes are downright visceral, which is pretty sweet, and many of the fight sequences are actually pretty fun.  But the good bits make everything else even more depressing; its predecessor's strengths are still there, but they were downplayed in favor of a number of bizarre, poorly executed design choices.

Lords of Shadow 2 is one of the biggest gaming letdowns in recent memory.  It took the brilliant, successful formula in Lords of Shadow and perverted it to the point that it's rarely recognizable.  Fans of the series might get a kick out of seeing more from Dracula's perspective, and it can be genuinely entertaining, but the prevalence of unusual flaws make it a hard one to recommend.

My rating: 4/10 - mediocre.