Tera is a strange game. Despite being released in North American and European territories earlier this month, the game is actually a year old localization of a Korean MMO called The Exiled Realm of Arborea (T.E.R.A., get it??). The game almost didn’t see a release as NCSoft sought to convict its former employees, who make up Bluehole, for theft of trade secrets. Fortunately for Tera, Bluehole escaped prosecution and launched the online roleplaying game without further reproach. A good thing too, because Tera offers something genuinely new to the genre: action combat. World of Warcraft made hotbar-oriented, cooldown-based “just stand there and take it” combat the norm for MMOs and while other games have tried to mask that through various hooks (such as The Old Republic’s strong narrative), there just isn’t getting around the tried, true and tired combat mechanics. Tera offers the player a true action experience, putting combat efficiency and success where it belongs: on the player. The problem with the game, however, is that despite this innovation Tera gets dull rather quickly and it’s not long before you find yourself settling into a long, repetitive grind.

The initial premise of Tera involves the sudden appearance of a mystical island from the bottom of the sea. Filled with a sense of adventure, the peoples of Tera head out to explore and seek adventure from the Island of Dawn, only to find that a malevolent force of mechanical creatures called the Argons want the island’s secrets for itself and are more than willing to destroy anyone in their way. The game’s introduction is unique: initially, you play as a level 20 version of your character who finds themselves part of an advance scouting party only to be defeated by powerful Argon forces. The game proper begins some time after that battle and sees you returning to the island to seek out a missing hero before setting off into the larger world.

Gameplay

Let’s get the familiar stuff out of the way: game progression involves seeking out NPCs (marked by a yellow exclamation points) who present you with quests that either progress the game’s primary storyline, explain certain gameplay elements or have you perform non-critical odds and ends. Completing quests – all of which are presented in text boxes ripped from World of Warcraft – and fighting monsters yields experience, cash and loot that can be used to make your characters strong enough to take on BAMs – “big ass monsters.” When not questing or farming for experience, different types of materials can be harvested in order to craft new and powerful objects for yourself or other players (for a price!). Like minded individuals can form parties or join guilds in order to tackle BAMs, dungeons and quests, There are hints of a player-led political system within Tera, but I have yet to see anything of the sort just yet.

There are a host of different races to play as, from the elegant High Elves to the slightly uncomfortable Elin. You can customize the appearance of your chosen hero by selecting from a number of different faces, hairstyles and clothing options. Tera gains points for beating World of Warcraft to the punch by introducing the Popori, a diminutive, animal race that can take on the appearance of pandas depending on how you customize them. The character classes are divided by familiar archetypes: the Mystic heals, Archers provide ranged attacks, Lancers tank, so on and so forth. Honestly, if you’ve played at least one MMO then you’ll find Tera to be an awfully familiar experience.

However, what sets Tera apart from other massively multiplayer games is the combat. Instead of running up to a creature and trading blows while forced to endure their attacks, Tera plays more like a third person action game, putting the effectiveness of your powers and abilities firmly in your control. Present at all times is a crosshair that must be lined up with a monster in order to land a hit – if you miss, it’s your fault. Likewise, if you fail to dodge an incoming attack (every creature has a visual “tell”), well, that’s probably your fault too. You still have access to a hotbar containing all of your learned abilities, but you won’t spend a whole lot of time hovering over icons while waiting for them to cool down. Should you choose to play the game with a controller, you’ll find combat to be a much more comfortable experience and you can assign skills to the gamepad’s face buttons. To make combat even more engaging, different attacks can be chained together to unleash deadly, critical hits. Initially, your chains will only be made up of two actions, but as your character grows these combos will grow.

Graphics

Tera is one of the most beautiful MMOs you can find. Typically, the genre utilizes graphics that would look good on old and new systems (in order to maximize subscriptions), but Tera thumbs its nose at that trend and delivers a breathtaking feast for the eyes. Textures are detailed and complex and whether you’re battling monsters in a lush, green valley or exploring the nooks and crannies of cities, the game looks great. This deep level of detail extends to the avatars, as the characters show a meticulous level of detail in their faces and outfits (you’d be forgiven if you felt the art style was reminiscent of a Final Fantasy-type game). Many of the outfits are really designed well and tend to show off an alarmingly amount of skin. This isn’t so much of an issue unless you choose to play as the Elins and then things get really awkward. See the Elin are a child-like race…and, well, that race is gender locked, meaning you can only play as a young girl and, uh…I think you know where I’m going with this.

Fun Factor

Despite creating a unique open ended combat scheme, Tera is a slog to play through. This is largely attributed to a boring, grind-centric quest system that ripped off an earlier version of World of Warcraft before Blizzard had a chance to implement new mission types outside of the standard kill and fetch variant. No matter how the game tries to dress up the presentation of each quest (you’ll often sit through pre-rendered cutscenes that explain what needs to be done), the reality is that if you’re not on a kill X of Y quest, you’ll be on a fetch X of Y quests. There’s a story to be told through primary quests and while they do a good job of moving you from one area to the next, you’ll eventually learn to stop caring about the world around you as there is no real sense of adventure or urgency. Say what you want about The Old Republic, but you can’t deny it did a fantastic job with giving weight to quests through well written and directed cutscenes. With Tera, every time I initiate a conversation with NPCs, I immediately click the Accept Quest button.

Even the thrill of open ended combat wears a bit thin after awhile. I appreciate not having to spend all my game time staring at the hotbar waiting for abilities to cool down, but since I’ve found the perfect set of abilities to use against enemies, I’ve fallen back into muscle memory by using the same attack pattern repeatedly. I never really felt like the game was encouraging me to try something new or mix things up. Perhaps this is a problem inherent with the Archer class, but combat eventually gets mundane. Adding new skills to your repertoire and confronting BAMs makes things interesting, but you’ll have to go a little bit out of your way to find the challenging monsters and world bosses.

Overall

Tera will be remembered for two things: art and its implementation of a combat experience unique to the genre. But the use of familiar MMO tropes feels somewhat uninspired. From the beginning, taking down monsters and levelling up is easy and only after the player leaves the Island of Dawn do monsters pose more of a challenge, but the biggest enemy you’ll have to contend with is boredom. While Tera has a strong focus on community and PvP and the combat certainly is an innovation that I’d like to see implemented in more MMOs, I’ve had a difficult time breaking through the monotony of the non-community experience.

PCs have always had a few distinct advantages over consoles, chief among them the ability to find an audience that cherishes game design beyond the bounds of what is convenient, fashionable, and/or efficient for the day. Games like Eye: Divine Cybermancy, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and recent hits like The Legend of Grimrock have all been PC exclusives that thrived on their outmoded designs, and taunted console gamers with their focus on low-risk PC exclusivity. This is, of course, a matter of community rather than hardware, and it’s engendered a fierce desire amongst core console gamers to prove that they can handle the rawest and most unapologetic of PC games- if only they can get publishers and developers who are willing to port them!

Enter The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. A game that, for the belief of every word one hears about it, has been the sharpest arrow in the PC quiver for the brief year it enjoyed exclusive status. Now it has made its way to the Xbox 360, from the original dev team at CD Projekt Red no less, promising the most intricate and grown-up legend of fantasy gaming on the market right now. So how well does it fulfill those promises? As with any legend, there’s always a disheartening measure of fabrication to the tale, and despite its charms, there’s no hiding that the legendary status surrounding The Witcher 2 has quite a bit of fabrication to it.

Gameplay

Unlike other fantasy games which trend towards player customization, Witcher 2 casts everyone as Geralt of Rivia, a magical-monster-hunter-for-hire– with a past! At the outset of the story, Geralt has lost his memory, and the trust of the landed gentry for assassinating a local king. But of course, Geralt isn’t the real killer, and so he sets out to capture the man who framed him and attempt to reclaim his memories in the process. It’s an intriguing set-up, and it works doubly so for new players who are just as nonplussed by everything happening as Geralt is. Unfortunately, this shared sense of unknowing extends farther than the bounds of the script, and into gameplay itself.

Early on, The Witcher 2 breaks apart in an important way. Geralt might have amnesia, but that doesn’t mean that he’s forgotten how to be a Witcher. In conversation, Geralt and many other NPCs are quick to remind the player of his impressive abilities. His inventory and skill tree is replete with equipment and techniques that are specially tailored for monster slaying, but frustratingly, none of it is ever explained, and only a few things are evidently useful. It takes no minor investment of time and experimentation for the player to obtain the same level of familiarity with Geralt’s skills as he supposedly is. This leads to a lot of moments in the early hours of the game where Geralt, would-be badass monster slayer, dies or makes dumb mistakes because the player doesn’t know how to use him as well as they should.

The game has three main elements: combat, conversation, and exploration. Of those, conversation is the strongest, and actually rises above a measure of games with similar mechanics by not judging any decisions the player makes. There’s no such thing as “good” or “bad” choices, there are just choices, and it’s very refreshing. The game isn’t afraid to hide large chunks of content from the player just based on the decisions they make- it just goes where it will, and that fearlessness is to its credit.

The fearlessness to leave its conversations unvarnished also translates to its exploration, which is not to its credit. Witcher 2 has some of the worst quest markers and map design seen in any genre, period. The map itself is overwhelmingly vague, not accounting for building interiors (which is left to the mini-map in the HUD), and seemingly more interested in looking artsy and tattered rather than detailed. The way quest markers are placed is downright irritating, as characters only appear in specific locations at specific times of day.

The gameplay loop this generates runs something like this: look at quest marker → run to that location → find no one → open the meditate menu and wait 6 hours → no one appears → wait another 6 hours → still no one appears → wait through the full day cycle just in case– nope, no one appears. Next step: run around the area to find all other points of elevation that the quest marker could be sitting on, inside buildings, or outside a wall instead of in it, etc. When you get to those plausible locations, go through the waiting cycle again to see if the person you’re looking for shows up. It. Is. Absurd. The quest notes don’t often tell the proper time of day or specific location you need. As a result, it can take upwards of half-an-hour to find the place Geralt needs to be, which wastes time and burns out the momentum of the current goal.

The last element, combat, fares better, but not by much. Battling foes in The Witcher 2 carries all the confusing embarrassment of a ballet dancer in a breakdance fight. Geralt dallies and pirouettes around the battlefield from one enemy to the next, but he is not often accurate or fast enough to preserve his grace and fight seamlessly. The game prioritizes animation over function, which leads to lots of cheap hits and miss-timed control inputs. In the early moments, this player disadvantage is brutal, as enemies are stronger and Geralt’s skill-tree is still blooming. A lot of encounters end like that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when the swordsman confronts Indy with a lot of flashy moves, only to get shot down instantly.

What makes the combat interesting, though, is Geralt’s arsenal of particular weapons, traps, potions, tinctures, spells, totems, oils, and modifications. The man pretty much stores the entirety of Diagon Alley inside his waistcoat, and Witcher 2 is at its best when players are selecting the proper potions and weapon enhancements that Geralt needs to prepare for battle. Stat buffs and weapon effects actually feel quite potent, compared to the stingy percentage bonuses of most RPGs, and the specificity of the different potions and blade oils makes the ecosystem of Temeria very well realized.

Unfortunately, this aspect too is undercut slightly by the fact that players often don’t know which enhancements to select at which points until they’ve already been defeated by the monsters awaiting them. At one point, Geralt knows he’s about to encounter a troll, but the beast turns out to be friendly, which makes for a frustrating waste of resources should players decide to kit up. The guesswork diminishes the empowerment.

It’s a recurring problem in The Witcher 2, none of its most impressive elements can help but disrupt themselves.

Graphics

The prime version of Witcher 2 is regarded as a benchmark game for PCs, and remarkably, CD Projekt Red has managed to improve on those standards and port them over to the Xbox. This is, of course, within reason, as consoles don’t have the freedom to overclock their specs, but The Witcher 2 makes for a very handsome game, at a solid framerate to boot. Be sure to install it to the hard drive, as this shows a marked improvement in aliasing and post-processing effects. At two discs, it’ll take a bit of hard-drive real estate, but the benefits are worth it.

It’s about more than just polygons, though, the entire visual design complements every trick in the bag. This is that rare kind of fantasy game where the art-style and the tech aren’t in competition with one another. Rather, the art looks good because of the tech, and the tech looks good because of the art. It makes wonderful use of color, especially in clothing, which actually has different textures for different materials like velvet, burlap, and leather. It’s a beautiful game to watch, especially its lighting, which makes it very easy to get pulled into the experience. The only downside of the visuals is that all facial animation happens beneath the nose; eyebrows and cheeks are disappointingly stiff.

Fun Factor

It’s not unreasonable to say that The Witcher 2 is one of the most engaging and attractive fantasy games out there. The detail given to things like embroidery, bowstrings, or an embarrassing tattoo that Geralt receives from a drunken night of partying, crops up everywhere and really sells the fiction behind the game. Unfortunately, that sense of immersion turns out to be its own worst enemy, as other factors constantly conspire to take the player out of the moment. Specifically, checkpoints are very infrequent and inconsistent, meaning players are taught to save as often as possible to reduce the amount of replay, but it’s easy to get so drawn into the world after every tough sequence that the idea of saving is forgotten… until it’s jarred back into memory by another combat loss and an hour of content that needs to be replayed. The only way to avoid this is to frequently remove oneself from the moment to save– rendering the first half of the game an exercise in choosing between plot momentum or enjoying the world that’s on display. That’s fair to no one.

When this is paired with the asinine quest seeking, and the game’s refusal to give players the same knowledge-base as its protagonist, it reveals a game whose promise is only fulfilled through the patience of the person behind the controls. That might make this a legendary experience for some, especially for RPG fans with tolerances for this kind of archaic design, but for those who simply want to jump in and enjoy the game’s unique combat elements and story, they’ll be left wondering just what the heck everyone was singing about.

There’s also the matter of the game’s narrative. It’s been lauded for its so-called “adult”-ness, which doesn’t shy away from fully nude sex scenes and fractious political intrigue, but here The Witcher 2 seems to be capitalizing on a vacuum in gaming, or rather, compressing it. The problem is, the overt sexual aspects of the game could be removed and the tale wouldn’t suffer for it. There’s nothing necessary or interesting about the nudity and sexual frankness, it’s just there, and in some moments it even feels unintentionally silly. As for the political tension in the story, it’s handled well, but (not to spoil too much) so many fantasy games have used human vs. non-human plots to parallel real-life race drama that it doesn’t have as much impact as it should. It’s definitely a good story, especially with regard to the way it handles player choice and a seriously cool antagonist, but it’s not the revelation some have made it out to be.

Overall

In the simplest terms, playing The Witcher 2 is a lot like attending an archaeological dig with nothing but your bare hands: you’re sure to come up with something amazing, but you’ll suffer a lot of unnecessary punishment and stress to attain it.

Overview

Telltale Studios — famous for refreshing proven, family friendly intellectual property as an adventure game — takes a darker and more adventurous turn with The Walking Dead.

Before Telltale Game’s latest series even begins, a disclaimer pops up: “This game series adapts to the choices you make. The story is tailored by how you play”

Like the comicbook series upon which it is based, the core of Telltale’s interactive adaptation of The Walking Dead lies not in when, why, or how the zombie apocalypse occurs, but rather in the tough decisions humanity is forced to make after it is brought about.

The first episode starts with the protagonist, Lee, taking a handcuffed ride in a police car. The player doesn’t have much time to learn about who Lee is or what crime he committed before the police car drives headlong into a zombie invasion. After a harrowing escape from a zombie horde in the forest, Lee befriends an eight year old girl named Clementine who has been surviving in her treehouse for a few days. From here, the player is forced to make some tough decisions.

Is an escape at night any safer than roaming the streets during the day? Should Lee break it to Clementine that her parents probably aren’t coming back? Does Lee lie about how he knows Clementine, or tell the truth and risk looking like a predatory creeper?

choose your answer carefully when talking to a police officer!

Gameplay

Decisions are made using an Alpha Protocol-esque dialogue tree. Important decisions usually have to be made in a few seconds, or the situation gets worse. Interestingly enough, Telltale has included silence as a viable option for most of the conversations, but the fact that Lee is still forced to speak at certain points destroys the cool and silent “Gordon Freeman” composure that could have been created.

The bulk of Episode 1′s 3 hour duration is spent talking to survivors and making decisions about what to do next. While the writing isn’t always up to par–Telltale has been making “family-friendly” games for too long to have curse words not feel forced and out of place–Telltale’s knack at making vibrant and emotive character animations, along with fittingly sombre voice acting, gives the first episode of the video game more meaningful drama than the entire second season of the AMC television show.

Care to guess what happens if you don't mash "Q"?

Of course, you’re not going to spend the entire game talking. Though you can count the number of zombie deaths on one hand, each fight has more tension than your average Left 4 Dead zombie rush. Successfully defeating a zombie requires careful aim of a cursor with the mouse, and then feverish taps of a few keys on the keyboard. This provides just enough interactivity to make each zombie kill an accomplishment without resorting to Heavy Rain-esque thumb gymnastics.

I am sorry to disappoint the mouse and keyboard purists, but I would highly recommend plugging in a USB Xbox 360 controller if you’ve got one. Most of the traversal in The Walking Dead is done around a stationary camera, and walking around a circular area or turning past some corners was tougher with the WASD keys than with an analog thumbstick. I also found scrolling through dialogue options with the mouse wheel, and rapidly tapping keys on my keyboard to be awkward compared to the controller alternatives. That said, using a keyboard and mouse will not noticably hamper your experience with The Walking Dead.

Telltale gets more adventurous with camera angles in the walking dead

Graphics

The look of the game as a whole contributes to the grim nature of the narrative while still paying dues to its comic book roots. The color pallette is more vibrant than your average shooter, but doesn’t veer into the territory of other Telltale games, which looked more like Pixar feature films. At times, the bold lines that outline characters and buildings look as if the pen is about to burst right through the paper.

The PC version offers high resolution textures that make some landscapes look like they came straight from the panel of a comic book, without taxing system resources too much. However, while the first half of the episode takes place in large outdoor landscapes, muddy textures and muted colors in the second half of the episode result in a visual experience that’s ultimately uneven.

Colorful with a dash of foreboding

Fun Factor

As I said above, I feel that the first episode of The Walking Dead creates more meaningful drama and nail-biting zombie encounters than the entire second season of the television show. The gradual reveal of each character’s backstory is very well done, and creates an interesting parallel: both the player and the characters in the game are thrown headfirst into something that they don’t fully understand. Combat with zombies and their gory deaths are entertaining, but this is not what is going to keep you coming back to the game.

I have played through the first episode of The Walking Dead three times (good on Telltale for including multiple save slots to make this painless) and there are a lot of decisions that drastically alter the outcome of the episode, but some of the tension is lost in multiple playthroughs when some decisions that seem important turn out to have the same general conclusion.

Optional Narrative Assists Indicate what characters think of your decisions (upper left)

Overall

Ultimately, my only mark against The Walking Dead is that there aren’t a lot of places where players get to use their noggin. With the exception of a scene where you must determine the right sequence in which to dispatch a group of zombies in a parking lot, the game proceeds forward in a linear fashion. Sure, you can mess up and die, but the game isn’t difficult, and doesn’t have any unconventional puzzle solving, like those found in Telltale’s Sam & Max or Monkey Island games.

That said, puzzles shouldn’t be the focus of a game based on The Walking Dead. The first episode of Telltale’s interactive take on this great series takes everything fans love about the comic books and television show, and brings it to an interactive medium in a meaningful way. It is yet to be seen if Telltale will keep the stakes this high for the rest of the game’s episodes, which will be released once a month until October. But I am too invested in the plight of Lee, Clementine, and the rest of their ragtag group to give up on them before then. I can’t think of any higher praise for an episodic game.

The Group Debates What To Do in Episode 2

Double Fine gets all the praise these days as a Johnny-come-lately adventure game developer, but Telltale Games has been carrying the adventure torch since before it was cool (and after it was cool for the first time). In the time since their rise to fame, they’ve been able to work on some of our favorite franchises and canoodle with some industry heavies, also experimenting with weird, smaller games and different play styles. Adventure games are changing, and they’re doing their best to figure out where to take it next.

The Walking Dead feels like another experiment on how to change the play style of their games, bringing in a much more character-driven story in place of crazy puzzles, like using a u-shaped tube to shatter a bottle. It’s nice for them to stretch their idea muscle, but despite their ambitions, it doesn’t always work- it really feels like a first try from a developer trying to adapt, but stumbling a little on their way. Still, they do enough well that they’re able to overcome some of the shortcomings and help make the game a better experience.

Gameplay

It’s hard to talk about gameplay because there barely is any. Yeah, you do a little pointin’, and, you know, some clickin’, but at some point, it just becomes the weird, unnecessary parts between the story beats. It starts playing out more like an interactive movie than anything, since so much of the adventure game tropes have been stripped down or cast aside. Inventory is basic, there are almost no puzzles, and options of “use” and “look at” are much more context-sensitive. In fact, in the default play mode, interactive items have a giant node on them that just announce “hey, you can use me in some way!” Item prompts only show up over the thing you can use it with, too, which really streamlines everything and speeds up the game. Other adventure games I’ve played could have been 2 hours long, but some of this stuff was so abstract it took twice as long to finish, so this is kind of a welcome change for this game. The action parts are a lot more like Jurassic Park, with a lot of quick-time events and moving the cursor to kill whatever zombie is trying to feast upon your succulent flesh. It’s also difficult to die here, too- a lot of spots actually don’t let the zombies get to you, and others, well, you have to really try in order to get eaten.

The real meat of the game comes from the character interactions, though, to the point where the walking around between story beats almost feels like it’s just getting in the way. Conversations and character interactions are very obviously where they put the most work into the game, with characters reacting to what you’ve done and said. Standard UI even has a little readout at the top that pops up when you’ve done something that other characters will notice. The developers are even trying to make conversations flow better, so if you’re talking with someone, everything you say is on a timer. If you don’t put anything in, it’s like you just stayed silent, but this can also lead to you being nervous about your choice when the timer pops up, even if it’s not something particularly important.

Most of these choices come to a head in very specific moments where the zombies attack and you have to choose who to save. These are also timed, and if you don’t do anything, the game either has a preset condition or just hits a game over screen. I was a little surprised to see that these moments are then tallied up and shown again after you beat the game, because it also reveals which parts are the most important. Seeing as two of those parts have to do with Hershel’s farm, a well known area from comic and show, I wouldn’t be surprised to see you returning to it before the series ends.

Graphics

After being a little secretive with screens of the game until a few months ago, the reveal of the cel-shaded comic book look was a great announcement. It carries over well- the characters look really good, and the comic style goes a long way to help the game stand out graphically. The characters aren’t overly exaggerated, but there’s still a little bit of cartoonish design to them, and the wide eyes on some of the characters are certainly expressive, even if it seems like an easy attempt to get you to feel closer to the characters.

The problem comes with how it runs. Now, I’m no game designer, so I’m about to say things that are probably way wrong, but I have a hard time understanding why the cut scenes in this game run so poorly. People clip through each other, faces go from well-animated in one shot to weirdly stiff in the next, and the cuts take too long. It’s like the game can’t handle streaming off the hard drive, which interrupts the flow, especially in the more action-oriented parts. When you’re trying to build a frantic mood, but the game’s constantly stuttering and hitching with everything that’s going on, it makes it seem unpolished and rushed, and goes a long way to take you out of the game. I actually had to go back through and rewatch the ending because I wasn’t sure if what happened was a visual hitch or part of the story.

This is also a problem Telltale’s had with a lot of their games. I’m pretty sure that they’ve been working with their same internal development tool (the Telltale Tool), so shouldn’t they finally be getting to the point where they can make it actually run well? And since they dictate where everyone’s going to be in the cutscenes, can’t they go in and make characters clip less and just move little smoother? It may be just the 360 version, but they’ve put out multiple games on this console, too, and it’s a little weird to see that they haven’t yet come to grips with making things run smoothly on the system.

Fun Factor

Technical issues aside, I also found some weird things with the writing and choices. I played through the game multiple times, just to check how everyone changes with you, and I was a little disappointed at how little it changes. I know that this game isn’t The Witcher 2, with its huge areas that you don’t see based on your choices, but even when you’re a jerk to people and they don’t trust you, the cut scene still stays the same, with just a few small bits changed, if even that. There’s only one part where it does change, and it was pretty cool. Minor characters were swapped out, and someone wound up being dead who was alive otherwise, and characters even reacted to it in the next scene. It was great, and I wish the rest of the game was like that.

Unfortunately, though, it isn’t. The first choice between two characters is the most egregious example of this, because it doesn’t matter who you choose. Everything happens exactly the same. The same person lives, the same person dies, and the end result is always the same. The biggest reaction you get from it seems to come in the next episode, though, which is something that makes these shortcomings a little hard to really judge- do these things come to a head later and actually matter in another episode? They don’t really here.

Beyond just the character choices, I never felt like the game gave me a chance to actually play how I wanted. It forced me into taking sides at times when I wouldn’t have, and even then, I still couldn’t find a choice that fit for me. It became less a choice of “which would I choose?” and more like “well… what’s the least bad option for me?” Even worse, there’s a situation towards the end of the episode where, instead of giving you a choice, they force you into doing something that even your character doesn’t seem too interested in.  I certainly didn’t want to, either, but you don’t have a choice. So much of the game is the illusion of being able to make a difference, but still resulting in the game playing out exactly the same, that it made me wonder why they even bothered. Aside from the aforementioned branch with the switched characters, nothing is ever done like that again. It might not matter too much if you only play through once, but it’s a little disappointing to see that it doesn’t really go very far.

Also, I have to say, zombies. I know they’re working with a license here, but it seems like there’s very little you can do with the undead hordes that can rekindle my interest, and this game didn’t even bother trying. It just played to the old clichés you know. Zombies come out of nowhere, sometimes only appearing when it’s necessary for the story. Someone yells at a person in the distance, who, in the least surprising twist ever, turns out to be a zombie. Lee falls down a lot. I got to hear some of the Telltale people talking about this, and they seemed to think they were cleverly poking fun at the convention- but the game does nothing with it, so it just seems like a return to the usual zombie clichés you’ve come to know and accept.

My list of complaints are saved by the fact that in the midst of clichés and hackneyed choices, there is still some great tension in some spots and a couple of very interesting characters at the core of the story in Lee and Clementine. They have a nice dynamic, and the way he positions himself as her protector is touching, as is the way she chooses to stick by him and defend him. There are some smart bits, showing Clementine inching closer to him or watching him, asking questions about Lee’s past, and her understandable vulnerability at the fact that she currently has no idea where her parents are, and is trusting this stranger with her life. Lee is also smartly realized, and seeing the layers of his character get slowly peeled back is interesting in his own right. Making him a convict is also a great choice, as it adds to the interactions between characters as they realize who he is. While you don’t get enough time to hang out with the other characters to care about them and their fate (making the choices between them difficult just because you don’t care either way), having his emotional core makes a huge difference, and after this first short episode, I already care about the Lee and Clementine, and I really look forward to seeing them develop further.

Despite the fact that you do find yourself in the middle of some pretty overbearing clichés, there’s still a lot that can be milked from what’s going on in story. There’s a particularly great scene when you get to the drug store where you’re arguing over what to do with a potentially bitten person. It’s definitely a scene you’ve seen before, but it’s played well enough that you don’t mind- it’s frantic and seems like it’s about to just blow up at any point, so getting to see that was great. It definitely shows what they were going for with the game, and man, can it be awesome. I know they’re still doing some work for the rest of the season now, and hopefully they can put in more like this, and less of the somewhat  and ham-fisted choices.

Overall

It’s a little amazing how much a strong emotional core can save a game that has so many other issues. A game like The Walking Dead ultimately lives and dies based on its characters and writing, though, which has always been something that Telltale’s been good at. While it’s a little weaker on average than usual, they’ve also never reached higher highs than they have here. The gameplay is much simpler, but they’ve shown the direction that the series is going, and with the promise shown here, I hope they can deliver the emotional heft that this series needs to survive.

The premise is simple enough. You play a surgical mask-wearing survivor of an infection that has reduced the best part of humanity to aggressive mutants. From here on, you set out into the game world with little more than a note telling you the controls and a key to a nearby apartment. Each player’s journey through the game will differ, as there are plenty of different and impactful interactions with the world around them.

Gameplay
As with many survival horror games, the weakest aspect is the actual gameplay itself. It’s deliberately clunky in a way that’s easy to see but also easy to be frustrated by. You get a pistol early in the game, but attempt to take a combat-heavy approach and you’ll find yourself dying an awful lot. It’s all very typical of the genre – there’s one key to go into a combat stance, one key to reload, one key to shoot, and you do all of these actions far slower than the nightmarish enemies get up in your face. Instead, the key to surviving Lone Survivor‘s wasteland is making resourceful use of food, ammo and objects that allow you to sneak around enemies such as flares and rotting meat.

Whilst it definitely doesn’t bring any revolutionary changes to the genre it completely nails the survival aspect, and makes you feel desperate for any form of respite through depleting hunger and sanity. There’s just enough old food and medicine strewn about the place that it doesn’t get too tough, but when your character starts musing aloud that he’s starving, you’ll be wanting to abate that hunger as soon as possible. Most of the game progresses through simple inventory-based puzzles: find key, unlock door, find item, give it to person, and so on. The game’s areas are limited in size through the its simplistic style and the puzzles themselves aren’t hamstrung by too much obtuse point-and-click logic, so it allows the player to focus more on the atmosphere and journey than scouring the world map for that one item you missed.

Graphics
The very first thing you’ll notice about this game is that it is, putting it nicely, retro. The product of it’s indie heritage, the visuals are presented as tiny pixelated sprites, blown up to ridiculous proportions to fit PC screens such old-fashioned designs were never meant to fit. The second thing you’ll notice is that this game takes place entirely on a 2D plane. You might think that’s possibly the worst design decision for a horror title ever made, but instead it just shows that Superflat Games are one of a few developers who actually get how scaring people works. Photo-realistic monsters aren’t as important as imposing a proper fear of danger and vulnerability on the player, and Lone Survivor does the latter so well that you’ll stop noticing how ridiculous your character looks after the first twenty minutes.

That’s not to say it’s all ugly. The game has some great subtle graphic effects that add to the atmosphere, and knows just when to use them for maximum payoff. There’s also something about dying in game, as the screen fills with crimson red, pixel-by-pixel, that’s much more striking than say Resident Evil 4‘s robotic YOU ARE DEAD. Superflat have done a good job with the tools they have, and the way the game looks means an inevitable Android/iOS version down the line if it experiences commercial success.

Fun Factor
Lone Survivor is a game that will be more fun the more the player has the propensity to tolerate typical survival horror gameplay. Quite frankly, there aren’t many better horror experiences to be had this generation, however if you’re the sort of person that can no longer enjoy Silent Hill 2, you’ll probably be better off avoiding this.. It’s atmosphere is flawlessly built, and there are plenty of moments where you’ll get lost in the tension. The only criticism to be drawn here is that the save system and the fast-travel mechanic often breaks the flow of the game, and can often destroy the tension the game works so hard to create. You’re taken back to your apartment regularly, as as the game struggles to establish visual variety between environments it’s easy to forget just what you should be doing after repeated backtracks to save.

Overview
At the end of the day, Superflat Games have triumphed in creating an original title that both plays and looks as you expect. The way the story progresses is interesting, and there’s enough gravity to player choices that it’s worth a second play-through. If you’ve been longing for a survival horror experience that reminds you of the genre’s glory days, you can’t do any better for a budget price of $9.99. That is, if you’re confident survival horror is just as immersive and fun to play as you remember it…

If there is one thing video games have had a long standing fascination with, it’s war. Take a look at any game within the last decade and it won’t be difficult to find those that took inspiration from historical engagements and hypothetical future wars against unpronounceable Eastern European countries. While presenting war in the first person perspective has been the genre du jour, some favor a more strategic approach by taking the role of a commander, ordering faceless units across the battlefield in order to secure victory. Naval War: Arctic Circle hopes to scratch the strategy itch, taking players to an area of the world rarely used in war games to provide the most realistic experience possible, despite being far removed from current events.

Set in the not too distant future, Naval War: Arctic Circle presents a theater of war involving NATO forces and the Russians as they engage in various war games in the Baltic Sea and Atlantic Ocean as a show of force. As an up and coming officer, you will be asked to perform light defense and interdiction missions until tensions boil over and NATO finds itself in a war with Russia. NATO is already at a disadvantage, as deteriorating relations between the organization and remaining major powers forces them to consider the daunting prospect of potentially engaging the enemy alone.

Gameplay

Naval War may have the look and feel of a real time strategy game, but it holds several key differences from games like Starcraft and Command & Conquer. The most noticeable is the strong focus on realistic naval combat (elements of the Royal Norwegian Navy were hired on as consultants), such as casting and monitoring sonar nets to detect underwater threats and the impact of weather changes on air support units. Further setting itself from the pack is the lack of any resource collection to build and support units. You won’t have to stockpile tons of Unobtanium in order to construct hangers and dry docks but instead call from a pool of finite aircraft and ships from airfields and aircraft carriers. The game is played on a topographical map of the Baltic Sea, North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean (the map is massive, over 35 million square kilometers). After sitting through a text-based cutscene that outlines mission parameters, you’ll be taken to the part of the map where the conflict takes place and direct units any way you see fit.

From the outset, you’ll notice just how technical the game can be. The actions of your air support units are ultimately dictated by how much fuel they have. Should the aircraft get low on fuel, they will automatically return to base unless you hold them back (doing so will result in a crash and remove them from play). While mission specific targets are revealed at the start of a level,  enemy support craft will not display until they get into radar range. Hunting submarines requires considerably more work (just like in real life!): launch a helicopter from your base (or carrier), select its load of sonar buoys and deploy them on an area of the map you think they might be hiding and hope for the best. When a unit is detected, most of the time they will already be marked, in red, as an enemy target. If they appear yellow (neutral), will need to manually mark the unit as hostile within the control panel.

The missions you’ll play through run the gamut of familiar escort, interdiction and defensive style sessions. The game is divided into two separate campaigns, so once you finish the NATO storyline, you can play through the war from the Russian perspective. There is also a multiplayer component, where you can test your skills as a commander against human players.

Graphics

The game’s presentation is similar to DEFCON, as units on the map are represented as neon-colored outlines. Those hoping for a more cinematic view can find one tucked within the command console, but it doesn’t offer anything more than a 3D rendering of a selected unit as it flies (or floats) around waiting for orders. While you can watch them take off and move to their target destination, you won’t see epic dogfights or standoff battles against cruisers and battleships. When a target or friendly unit is destroyed, an explosion fills the smaller screen while they blink out of existence on the main display.

Given the realistic take on strategizing naval warfare, it makes sense that there isn’t an emphasis on providing bleeding edge graphics (incidentally, image profiles of various military and government officials seen during mission briefings are drawn using some form of computerized art suite). While you do have the option to display the 3D view on the main screen (and move the map to the command window), doing so exposes the average resolution of the units and I don’t see why you’d want to relagate the game map to such a small screen for any great stretch of time.

Fun Factor

Naval War attempts to simulate the real world experience of ordering units to attack and defend NATO (or Russian) interests. In many ways it succeeds to a fault: this won’t be a game for everyone. If you’re accustomed to real time strategy games that require high APMs and zerg rush-style maneuvering, you’re going to be disappointed. Speeding up time is useful for moving things along, but every time your forces detect enemy units, destroy a target or get blown up, the game slams on the brakes. This can make play somewhat annoying, as having to repeatedly click to increase the speed is enough to put people into fits. Initially, I wanted to treat the game as a fast paced click fest. This quickly bred frustration and “WHY CAN’T YOU MOVE FASTER?!” shouting matches between myself and submarines.

As technical and demanding as the game can be, it is a shame that the tutorial doesn’t do a good job orientating the player to the particulars of ordering units around the map and initiating their various forms of warfare. Tooltips briefly describe what needs to be done and once they’re off the screen In some cases, when I really couldn’t wrap my head around what the game wanted me to do, I ended up restarting the mission just so I can re-read the instructions. If you make the unfortunate decision to step away from the game for a bit before returning, you may have to find some way to re-familiarize yourself with mechanics and procedures, as tutorials cannot be viewed unless you replay through earlier NATO missions. Additional tutorials or an explanation of the command center would certainly be useful, as each targeted unit has serves as the poster child for information overload. Some technical issues exist, but based on my experience they didn’t break the game. In certain situations, units failed to respond or move after given orders and certain helicopters displayed odd AI issues when deploying sonar buoys.

Overall

Naval War: Arctic Circle will certainly be of interest to those hungry for a pure, military simulation experience. It may not be traditional real time strategy, but the intense focus on realism will most likely turn some heads. Its biggest barrier to entry, however, will be your level of patience. Naval War can be fun, but you’re going to have to play it on its terms.

Wheels of Destruction: World Tour is an action-packed, shoot and blow them up, Call of Duty on wheels type of game. Developed by Gelid Games, this shooter puts you in the driver’s seat of a destructo-car/truck/suv/boat. Okay, maybe not a boat, but you do have a few classes to choose from. You are pitted against other reinforced, suped up vehicles in an arena where you have to destroy or be destroyed whether it is online or against AI. Use your vehicle to shoot, blow up, maim the other team. There is no main story but only the chance to win and continue your battle against the world.

Gameplay

You have a choice of playing online or single-player, and of which mode to play, like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. I normally suck at Team Deathmatch, because I don’t understand the meaning of waiting it out and not rushing in. Since I have an issue with my patience level, I stayed with Capture the Flag. There are power-ups available throughout the arena and assist in giving you better weapons and mechanical assistance. You have the ability to jump and flip, and in certain areas, you can jump up to the upper levels. You can also use the jump function to evade other drivers and their weapons systems. But, don’t jump too much or else you would just bounce right off the edge.

The controls were smooth and simple, but the camera angles were a bit tricky and took some time to get used to them. I tend to make every turn awkward and moved the camera way out of my comfort zone, which resulted in getting blown up because I wasn’t looking in front of me. Actually, I wasn’t looking anywhere I should’ve been. After a few bouts and disappointment, I got a handle of the movement and started shooting back. You have to also get used to the drifting and cornering, which is awesome and fun once you get the hang of it. But pre-hang of it, you are going to hate yourself for running to the walls and fellow team members. Post-hang, awesome. Pre-hang, shoot me now.

The classes resemble that of Team Fortress 2 (TF2), such as the Scout, Heavy, Assassin or Soldier minus the Medic. Each vehicle is custom to what class you want to play. The heavy is, of course, a metal-reinforced Humvee with a variety of weaponry on board whereas the Scout is small and quick but can destroy your face if you’re not careful in keeping an eye on them. I decided to play as a soldier which was sort of close to the Demo class. I usually play as a demo so I can run ahead and spam the Sentry Guns.

Speaking of TF2, I would have to say that seeing a Medic vehicle would have been not only interesting, but fun to play as. Maybe modify it as a mechanic class to assist in fixing the vehicles as they’re in battles, possibly? It would sort of get rid of the mechanical fix power-ups, but they could possibly make those temporary fixes. I’d like to see a new mode such as a survival mode where you and a buddy can take one several types of cars in different waves, and maybe a few challenges. One challenge could be the “Ultimate Assassin Challenge” and the other would be let the brutality begin where it’d be a “Battle of the Heavies”.

Graphics

Built with the Unreal Engine, the post-apocalyptic art style is great and surrounds you as the battle rages on in the destroy-or-be-destroyed world. The weaponry and vehicles are built with relation to class and convey exactly which you are playing. The vehicles and their customizations are very unique to each other and vary in their strengths and weaknesses. Some vehicles have the speed and others have the brutal strength. As you travel throughout the world, the different locations and environments you arrived at and played on looked awesome and held true to their particularities. 

Fun Factor

The Capture the Flag mode was the best part for me. Again, I suck at Team Deathmatch, but I didn’t hate it as much as I usually do. I was able to play pretty well in TDM without making me too frustrated. I loved running away with the flag and having a mass attack waiting for me at the exit. It sort of felt like a duel with 6 other people and I was going to lose one way or another. I think I’ve gotten used to dying too much and have finally mastered the perfection of dying with dignity or taking one for the team. I definitely need a Maverick for my Goose.

It is basically Call of Duty on wheels. If you’re awesome at COD, I’m pretty sure you’ll have fun with this. Each of the classes available allows you to have a different experience, where you can decide which one is best suited for you. Playing online is fun as well, even when a person rages quits, the game continues on with a bot. That replacement sort of reminded me of Left 4 Dead unless you’re stuck on a team of bots then it gets kind of lonely.

Overall

The battles you encounter in both the single player and online modes are fun and can keep you entertained for a while. However, the gameplay became pretty repetitive after the first few fights. The camera angles stopped me from playing at first, because I grew pretty frustrated with my lack of ability to move correctly. Once I got a handle of that, it lost the rest of my attention and I went on to another game. Other than the continuous play as you win, there was really not much else keeping me into the game. It’s a nice looking game but without much incentive to get me to invest more of my time.

When I first heard about Men of War:  Condemned Heroes, I was very interested in its concept.  Playing a tactical WWII strategy game from the perspective of a Soviet penal battalion seemed like a really neat idea.  Unfortunately that excitement lasted all of 30 minutes before the brutal difficulty, idiotic AI, and inconsistent gameplay mechanics destroyed any sense of enjoyment I was having.  Combine these problems with an awful presentation, complete lack of story, and a non-existent multiplayer element and there is really no reason to play MoW.

Gameplay

Men of War is an extremely tactical strategy game that strives for realism in its depiction of the brutal fighting of the Eastern Front.  You take control of your men, usually not more than sixteen guys plus some vehicles and equipment, and attempt to lead them to victory against overwhelming odds. You can give orders to individual soldiers or group them into squads to speed up the process.  The game also has a direct control mode that allows you to play as an individual soldier, vehicle, or artillery piece.

You can toggle this mode during battle and use it to fine tune the actions of a key unit.  Unfortunately it does not control well at all.  The moving and aiming can be very awkward as it is all done from the standard camera and it is very rarely an effective option for controlling infantry.  Vehicles handle much better as you do not need to be quite as precise, but it is still a far cry from fun.  To make matters worse the hit detection is inconsistent making aiming tank cannons and artillery more of a chore than it should be.  This means that some explosions that seem like they should be blocked instantly kill enemies and others that seem like they are right on target barely faze them.  The issue is especially bad in trenches where explosions on the parapet can kill but ones five feet down the trench cannot.  Even if you do not use direct control and opt to let the AI do its thing, you will still be frustrated.  Sometimes units with clear lines of fire will not shoot at enemies or even acknowledge their presence, which leads to some very goofy starring contests.  Strangely the game will not tell you if a target is out of range, unless you are in direct control mode, which forces you to keep toggling until your unit can shoot.

The game is brutally difficult.  That in itself wouldn’t destroy MoW, as games like Dark Souls are soul crushing but still excellently made.  However, MoW not only lacks the gameplay of those other games, but also their precision and creativeness in mission design.  Instead it opts to simply throw tanks, machine guns, mortars, artillery, armored cars, and hordes of infantry in your path until all your men are dead.  Again, that would be fine except that don’t seem to be any tactics that are effective at attacking or repelling the overwhelming force of the German assaults.  As a result of this extreme difficulty and lack of strategy you are forced to take a single man and try and exploit the enemy AI into letting you get close enough to throw a grenade or steal a vehicle.  It’s not clever or fun, just numbing as you try over and over to find the weak spot in their defenses.  Missions are further hampered by poor scripting that sometimes fails to advance friendly forces, makes allied tanks get stuck on geometry, and in at least one case failed to trigger an end to the mission.  Any of these bugs could prove ruinous to your experience and might force you to replay a four hour mission.

After smashing my head against the brick wall that was “normal” mode for eight hours I still couldn’t beat the second mission, and I was forced to bump it down to “easy”.  “Easy” slightly buffs the skills of your soldiers and removes some of the enemies special equipment like mortars and tanks.  That being said the game is still difficult, which forces you to take missions slowly.  Each takes about 2 hours on “easy” as you inch your men closer and closer only to have them  massacred, forcing you to load back into a previous save.  To make matters worse this tedious gameplay is emphasized by repetitive mission objectives.  The game seems to always task you with taking the same line of trenches or liberating the same village.  I suppose these were the locations where the majority of battles in WWII were fought, but it doesn’t make for very interesting or varied gameplay.  I played the game for twelve hours, completed the first of four campaigns, did some quick research online, and played part of one of six bonus missions and the first mission in the second campaign. It did not seem as though any major changes in game design or mission objectives would be implemented.  After all that I could no longer deal with the monotony of the experience or the crazy difficulty and decided to call it quits.

The multiplayer component could have possibly made the game more tolerable, and a co-op mode could have alleviated some of the stress and difficulty of the singleplayer.  Unfortunately co-op, a feature in previous Men of War games, has been taken out and as far as I can tell there is no one playing the regular game online.  I have heard there is a mod to put co-op into the game, but you will still need to know someone else who owns the game as you can’t rely on the online community.

Graphics

Maybe Men of War could redeem itself with a solid presentation to match its interesting premise.  Unfortunately the game’s presentation is lacking.  The worst parts are the character and vehicle models which are flat and lack any real detail.  The scenery is also disappointing.  The grass is barely 3D and the shadows cast by the trees are incredibly pixelated   The characters are constantly clipping through their own weapons and cover which makes the game look pretty silly when you zoom in close.  There is really no art to speak of as the game depicts the same old German and Russian uniforms and equipment we have come to expect in a WWII game.  This is too bad as the penal battalion setting could have made for some neat looking characters.  Menus are similarly bland and old fashioned and do absolutely nothing to help the experience.  The musical score is deserving of special scorn as there seem to be only two tracks of in game music, one for night missions and one for day missions.  The music repeats on a short loop and quickly becomes tiresome.

Fun Factor

There really is very little fun to be had in Men of War.  The missions are just too long, boring, and frustrating to be fun.  You can get some satisfaction out of placing a perfect shot that destroys a tank or finally overcoming a mission you’ve been trying to beat for hours, but these moments are few and far between and do little to alleviate the stress of just playing the game.  The most enjoyment I had was actually not from playing the game, but from reading the background information that the game has on Soviet penal battalions, which is admittedly a fascinating subject.  It is really unfortunate that the game designers could not capitalize on one of the few aspects of WWII that has not been overrepresented in video games.

Overall

It’s possible there might be someone who enjoys playing Men of War, but the vast majority of players will not.  There is just really nothing good about it on any level.  The gameplay is bad, the graphics are ugly, and all other features are non-existent or minimal.  If you seek a challenging game in a WWII setting try Company of Heroes, Brothers in Arms, or any of the other MoW games.  Better still try Dark Souls.  This game is worth neither your money nor your time.

Last year’s Mortal Kombat was a revelation for a franchise that once dominated the arcades. Released during a unique moment in time where the desire for more Mortal Kombat was at a fever pitch due to the release of a spectacular fan film reboot and the less than favorable outing of the previous game, the bizarre Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe mashup. Wanting to bring the game back to its hyper violent roots, Ed Boon and Nether Realm studios created one of the most successful reboots in recent history. Although originally released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Mortal Kombat finds itself ported to Sony’s PlayStation Vita. This brings up familiar yet inevitable questions such as what sacrifices have been made in order to accommodate the port? Will there be a significant lack of content? While the game does suffer a compromise in the visual department, you won’t be lacking for things to do as the entire console experience can be found here and then some. As a result, Mortal Kombat offers one of the best experiences and value propositions on the Vita.

Gameplay

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last twenty years, Mortal Kombat is a fighting game that places a strong emphasis on over the top violence. The game is a direct port of last year’s reboot and includes a massive fighter roster that spans the entire franchise. All the familiar faces are here, Scorpion, Liu Kang, Sub Zero, Raiden, Johnny Cage, the list goes on and on. Included in the Vita version are characters that were originally made available as DLC, meaning Kratos, Freddy Krueger, Kenshi, Rain and Skarlet and are immediately available at the start of the game. No codes or unlocks required!

There are a host of different game modes to play through apart from quick, instant matches. The story mode is a lengthy campaign that offers an alternate retelling of Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3 in which Raiden receives a warning from his future self to influence the Mortal Kombat tournament lest the evil Shao Kahn travel to Earthrealm and destroy mankind. If you finish the story, or wish to take a break from it, you can either launch into short individual matches with a character of your choice or complete a Challenge Tower that features 300 individual matches that must be completed by various conditions, such as initiating a stage Fatality or spill a specific amount of your enemy’s blood. The Challenge Tower is also a great way to learn how to play as the first few rounds explain the combat system and give you an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the controls.

If you complete the Challenge Tower and find yourself hungry for more, the Bonus Challenge Tower (a Vita exclusive) offers an additional 150 match fights and mini-games. Test Your Might, Sight and Strike are accompanied by Test Your Balance and Test Your Slice. The Balance game requires tilting the Vita left or right to maintain the character’s balance atop a pole set high above a deadly pit. Test Your Slice is a Mortal Kombat-themed version of Fruit Ninja and much like the source material, you’ll swipe your finger across the screen to slice body parts (instead of delicious fruit) and multipliers while avoiding bombs. The Vita’s gyroscope and touch screen come into play in a few Challenge Rooms as well. In one round, you must shake the machine in order for powerups – that have positive and negative effects – to fall from the sky. In another, blood will splatter onto the Vita’s screen and you’ll have to use your fingers to wipe it away. One challenge in particular requires you to tilt the Vita in such a way to give your fighter the high ground advantage which yields helpful boosts. But be careful, tip the Vita the wrong way and your opponent will get those buffs. No question, some of the fights in the Bonus Challenge Tower are quite bananas.

Other gameplay features include the training arena, where you can practice the move sets and Fatalities for any of the characters, quick matches (both 1 on 1 and Tag) and a multiplayer Versus mode. Multiplayer matches can be played online via a local, ad hoc connection or wireless. I tried to get into a multiplayer match over my wi-fi connection, but was unsuccessful (this could be due to not many folks playing the game ahead of time for review or the Vita’s capability for online play isn’t all that great here).

Whether you choose to play through the story mode, both Challenge Towers or fight against computer controlled opponents in various ladders, you’ll earn Koins for every victory that can be spent in the Krypt, a massive grave site outside of the Outworld’s Nekropolis. Just like in the console version, you can spend these Koins to unlock alternate costumes, additional Fatalities, concept art and other behind the scenes materials. From the Nekropolis, you can browse through the biographies and stats of every character and any of your unlocked assets.

That’s a whole lot of game for $40!

Graphics

As I said in the introduction, Mortal Kombat for the Vita is a near perfect port. In order to make room for the sheer number of content in the game, the graphics for the fighters had to be scaled back a bit. In the original console version, the transition from pre-rendered cutscenes to the fight was seamless, both from a technical and visual standpoint. While the transitions are just as seamless on the Vita, the fighters lack all the minute details of their pre-rendered counterparts which results in some pretty jarring graphical transitions. Once the camera zooms away from the characters after their initial taunts, their visual weaknesses become less of an issue as your attention shifts to the fight. The game runs at a smooth frame rate and with all the little things going on at once, from the background animations to the many, many visual effects, not once did I experience a drop in framerate. It is a shame that the stunning detail of each fighter couldn’t be carried over, but I have a hard time faulting the game for it.

Fun Factor

Mortal Kombat, right now, is the best experience you’ll have on the PlayStation Vita. The sheer amount of content loaded into the game will make it difficult to be bored as there is always something to do, whether it’s practicing Fatalities, discovering what character works best for you, playing the mini games and the Challenge Towers. The Challenge Towers are fantastic, as you’ll never know what crazy direction the game will take. I don’t consider myself an avid player of fighting games, but I have completely fallen in love. It is very friendly for beginners and casual fighting fans as the in-game tutorials are betting than anything come before it in the genre.

Mortal Kombat also proves just how well built the Vita is. Between frantically shaking the device to slamming down on the face and shoulder buttons, I haven’t had to worry whether or not I am going to break the device. It’s solidly well built. This is one of the moments that I’m really thankful that the Vita replaced the PlayStation Portable’s analog nubs with bonafide joysticks because this game would pretty much be unplayable without them.

Overall

I cannot recommend Mortal Kombat highly enough. This is a game that belongs in your Vita’s library and the price is just right. For $40 you get everything the console versions had and then some, as new characters fill out an already massive roster and new challenges will test your combat skills. It may not have the stunning in-game visuals of its counterparts, but that is forgivable considering what Warner Bros. has managed to pack into the product.

A must buy.

Phil Fish lied to you. After five long years of development, he would have you believe that Fez, the indie darling that collected its fair share of awards prior to being released, is all about manipulating perspectives in order to collect objects. However, this part of the game ultimately serves as window dressing because the real meat of the adventure comes from pulling back the two dimensional curtain to reveal a world of mystery. That’s what makes the game such an intriguing and thought provoking experience: whatever you think Fez is, prepared to be surprised.

In Fez, you control a white humanoid creature named Gomez who lives a carefree, two dimensional life in his village. One fateful day, he receives a summons by an old, eye-patch sporting fellow who changes Gomez’s life forever. Happily exclaiming the phrase, “It’s Gomez time!”, our hero is introduced to the Hexahedron, a cube-shaped cosmic being that grants Gomez the ability to see the world for what it truly is: three dimensional. The gift comes at a cost, however, as the Hexahedron explodes and Gomez is tasked with using his new power to put it back together.

Gameplay

Fez is all about using your ability to shift perspective to manipulate the environment, allowing you to traverse pitfalls and access hard to reach places in order to locate the thirty two Cubes needed to repair the Hexahedron. While Cubes are essential to this task, complicating things are the presence of Cubits, the smaller, broken fragments of the Hexahedron and collecting eight of these will reward you with a single Cube. Cubits are easily located, as they can be seen floating around in the open, but hidden Cubits (which emit a soft, sonar-like ping) require a small degree of problem solving in order to flush out. Gomez’s quest to repair the Hexahedron will take him to many unique locations, each connected by a series of doors – some of which require a specific number of Cubes to unlock.

Traveling to distant lands and collecting Cubes makes Fez seem fairly cut and dry. And it is. That is, until you stumble across your first Anti-Cube. These hidden objects (which count towards your goal of locating thirty two Cubes) require solving some sort of puzzle in order to bring it into Gomez’s plane of reality. What makes the Anti-Cubes so fascinating is that they completely change the focus of the game. Instead of being a simple item hunt, Fez becomes a game about uncovering the secrets of the world around him and the role of the Hexahedron. A word of warning: solving the puzzles is not going to be an easy task. Figuring out the meaning behind the many symbols you’ll come across can be quite maddening, but on the other hand there’s a great sense of accomplishment in figuring out what the symbols mean. I had to consult a FAQ for most of the puzzle solutions and while I didn’t get the euphoric release that comes from figuring it out on my own, I was able to take a step back, look at the clues and think, “Holy hell, that’s ingenious. How was I not able to figure that out?”

Graphics

Fez’s most distinctive feature is its use of pixelated, retro-style visuals that have become a staple for most indie games this generation. However, what sets Fez apart from other games is the incredible level of detail in the environments. From bricks to clinging ivy, all of the visual elements in the game look meticulously handcrafted, an effect achieved by Fish processing hand drawn maps into Photoshop before applying pixel effects. Given the fact that 98% of everything you see in Fez carries meaning behind it, this deliberate art style is a necessity. The animation of Gomez, the villagers and various critters deserve mention because they move in such a fluid, expressive way and it is easy to get caught up in watching cats chase butterflies, birds fritter in the breeze and Gomez play with his fez.

Fun Factor

At first blush, Fez isn’t much of a game. There are no enemies to fight, no bosses to prevent you from saving the Hexahedron, but if you simply blitz through the game without taking the time to truly explore the world, you’re going to miss what makes the game so interesting. In many ways, Fez is a return for games like Myst, where the player is dropped into an alien world and expected to learn the rules and decipher alien languages with barely any guidance. Breaking codes and translating symbols is old school fun and those who count themselves fans of puzzles will find opportunities for bliss. Additional challenges await those who pursue the New Game+ mode, as the acquisition of a special item allows for the opportunity to obtain all 64 Cubes (32 Cubes/32 Anti-Cubes) and locate keys to puzzles that couldn’t be found in the first playthrough.

As unique and fun as Fez can be, the game isn’t without its faults. The frame rate started to drop half way through the game, resulting in jerky and stuttering transitions between locations and in some cases, the screen went black before putting me back into control. The in-game map is problematic because it really doesn’t do an adequate job of showing you how to get from one area to another. Instead of displaying the levels in any sort of geographical display, all of the areas are represented as cubes connected by a fine white line. Rather than point out how to get from one area to another, the map is mostly used to determine what objects – Cubes, Cubits, Anti-Cubes and treasure – can be found as well as the number of hidden rooms and chambers. This makes backtracking to and from certain areas a tricky and confusing prospect. However, these are all minor annoyances that do not impact the game in any serious and harmful way.

Overview

Fez is an interesting animal, as Gomez’s quest to seek out the Cubes needed to repair the Hexahedron becomes ancillary once you start collecting Anti-Cubes. Normally, satisfaction from a game like this would involve figuring out how to access hard to reach Cubits by manipulating objects and perspectives in a clever way. Instead, the real thrill comes from code breaking. Who cares if you got a hard to reach Cube. Did you find out what the symbols on the totems mean? Did you figure out the alphabet? Did you see that hidden string of code? Played superficially, Fez can be completed in an afternoon but to get the most value out of the $10 price tag, you’ll want to dig deep and explore a world filled to the brim with secrets just begging to be uncovered.