Modern Warfare 3 picks up where the blockbuster Modern Warfare 2 leaves off. The series villain, Vladimir Makarov, has succeeded in instigating a war between the United States and Russia that acts as subterfuge for his own agenda. Soap and Captain Price return to stop him and to seek revenge for other events that unfolded in the series’ previous games. If you’re a fan of the previous games, then MW3 will not disappoint. Infinity Ward (with the help of Sledgehammer) have polished the series formula to a shine that culminates in a tremendous final showdown with Makarov that is both an excellent finish for the series as well as one of the highlights of the genre.

For those who are only now jumping into the series: the player is dropped from location to location around the world as one of several different soldiers in order to witness and participate in spectacular battles. The experience is often compared to a roller coaster ride based on the linear structure of the stages and the dramatic events that unfold as the player moves along them. The player’s job is to utilize the weapons and artillery to make their way with allies through enemy targets to the end of the stage. Each stage stands independent of others and the player’s performance and decisions on one will not have any impact on the others. The variety and weapons and vehicles, in combination with unexpected twists and turns will keep each stage entertaining and novel throughout the game.

The Modern Warfare series continues to break entertainment records. I’m sure that’s in large part due to it’s multiplayer component which refines and builds upon the combat mechanics of the single player campaign while introducing competitive goals rather than simply getting from point A to point B. It also introduces a survival mode that tests the player’s skill against waves of increasingly difficult enemies. Both of these modes introduce options for the player to make decisions about how to arm themselves and prepare their defenses which almost becomes a separate game in its own right. But whether you are playing Modern Warfare 3 for it’s single or multiplayer modes the game as a whole represents one of the best game packages of the year that takes the simple foundation of the FPS and builds a layered and multi-faceted experience that is pushing gaming into the mainstream’s consciousness.

Rating: 3/3

See also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

Buy it at Amazon, Rent it at Gamefly

I can’t help but get excited about a game that blends Contra, Castlevania, and Aliens (which is undoubtedly one of my favorite movie experiences of all time.) Unfortunately though, while Infestation does an excellent job of bringing the atmosphere of the Alien series to the DS, the gameplay is very underwhelming. The game can offer tense exploration of several different locations utilizing weapons pulled straight from Aliens. Your “lives” are essentially individual marines which are given short back stories and unique dialogue. One appears on the screen at a time, and several others wait in reserve in the event that the player is killed. Losing a marine can be disappointing, but it’s unfortunately the only way that the player can acquire new characters if their team is already full. And oddly, many characters are given personalities that feel entirely out of place for the game (for instance, a Korean girl that sits around texting — in space (where no one can hear you scream.)) Combat is initially an engaging part of the game but becomes either routine after upgrading your weapons, or entirely irrelevant during boss battles that have no discernible strategies for winning. These battles are reduced to simply unloading magazines of bullets and sacrificing marines until the boss is dispatched. If you are a fan of the Alien series, Infestation is fun but shallow. Otherwise you’ll be better served by watching the movies or playing a Castlevania game instead.

Rating: 1/3

See also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

Buy it at Amazon, Rent it at Gamefly

Tis’ the season for sequels. The nice thing about them is that they continue to keep a series out in public view long enough for people like me to finally take notice and play them. Such was the case with Gears 3. On an impulse, I decided to rent it and play through the campaign cooperatively. Gears of War 3 (and I safely assume the previous games) have some great verbs that players can execute. Using the chainsaw bayonet doesn’t get old, and it’s easy to just run around like you’re leatherface tearing into meaty bad dudes. Everything on the surface of the game is a lot of fun.

Here comes the but: Gears 3 sacrifices fun for drama and makes for a bummer of an experience. Where I felt like I was having a fun blasting through everything that was unfortunate enough to be in my path the game was telling me “everything sucks and Marcus is sad/mad.” Every so often there is a funny line of dialogue but the entire atmosphere is saturated with a manufactured sense of dread and contrived drama. Using “Mad World” worked as an idea for a trailer but it isn’t representative of the experience of playing the game and, furthermore, works against the game’s strengths. How much Marcus hurts inside has no bearing on the fun I’m having stomping monsters and it is really irritating to follow along in a story I’m not interested in. By the end of the game, I was made to feel like I really was leatherface, and for no good reason. My avatar was an asshole, and it deflated my enjoyment of the underlying game play.

I suppose that all of this indicates that the multiplayer game modes would be more satisfying, but the single-player campaign sends mixed signals and delivers a story that tries too hard to be dramatic.

Rating: 1/3

See also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

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Trials HD is a toy; a digital toy for the player to master.  It’s a virtual RC dirt bike toy that comes with a series of obstacle courses and assorted game modes to challenge the player to explore different aspects of the simulation.  And even if it is just a game about jumping dirt bikes, there is enough depth to negotiating the courses to occupy you for a good deal of time.  Trials HD caters to all skill levels and makes it addictively easy to push yourself to try a course just one more time in the hopes of finishing it just a little more quickly.  And if that’s not enough then maybe seeing how your times stack up against your friends will motivate you.  Unless the basic idea of Trials doesn’t do anything for you, this is a game that you can’t go wrong in playing.

Rating: 3/3

See also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

Buy it at Amazon, Buy it at XBLA, Rent it at Gamefly

I’ve never seriously considered playing a Deus Ex game until the day before Human Revolution was released. At the height of the game’s marketing push I finally decided to watch the game’s trailers and was impressed that they were confident enough in their world as to create trailers with zero in game content:

The game itself revolves around Sarif Industry’s chief of security, Adam Jensen, who is trying to uncover who is responsible for a devastating attack on the company’s headquarters.  It is equal parts action/shooting and planning/strategizing.  Jensen is outfitted with augmentations that greatly enhance his ability to fight, hack, and infiltrate.  The player determines what types of augmentations suit their play style and will offer the greatest advantages.  Human Revolution steadily ups the ante of each of the levels that Jensen must negotiate, but they are punctuated by boss battles that are equivalent to arm wrestling matches: the individual with the strongest offensive capability wins.  If you aren’t investing in your offensive abilities, then these could possibly derail your experience and interrupt what is otherwise a great player-drive system.

On the other end of the spectrum are portions of the game where Jensen must persuade or outwit others in conversation.  What makes these interesting is the ambiguity of response types that the player has to choose from.  The player doesn’t simply choose from options that can be categorized by how they appear at face value (e.g. nice, mean, cool, etc.)  They require that the player leverage theory of mind to anticipate how other characters will respond and guide the conversation to a desired outcome.  This may be at odds with what you as a player may feel, and the game sees fit to throw in significant bits of information in the middle of the process.  Some of the most memorable parts of the game for me unfolded during these sequences.  Human Revolution’s dramatic moments can occur as both emergent or scripted events which lend themselves to a consistently entertaining experience.

I’m further impressed not just by how the game itself is constructed but how the experience extends itself beyond the confines of the game.  Like Metal Gear Solid before it, Human Revolution builds a fictional world with enough of reality blended in to engage the player in ways that can color their views of the world.  If you think that’s a stretch then watch this Sarif Industries “advertisement” and then read this news story.  Each section of the game gives the player insight into how augmentations affect people, for better or worse, directly or indirectly.  You can see how real-world themes of scientific advances, corporate ethics, contractors, civil unrest, and technology, come into play.  The player will be challenged to weigh the consequences of arguments from all sides in these matters. As the scale of the overarching conflict broadens, the game puts more pressure on the player to figure out which side they come down on, at the cost of (virtual) human lives.  Even if fictional, players that find themselves engaged in the plot will pause to consider how their in game decisions might reflect on their own real world thought processes.

What separates Human Revolution from the likes of Bioshock or other games that challenge the player to face ethical quandaries is that Human Revolution does a remarkable job of restraining itself from judging the player on their decisions or painting scenarios as being black and white in nature.  There are no good endings or bad endings.  The only thing making them good or bad is how they square with the player’s ethical priorities.  This isn’t to say that the game blindly supports your every decision; on the contrary, it many times will actively challenge you no matter what you decide.  Human Revolution offers the player a world in which they can explore gameplay mechanics that are plainly seen as well as an ethical obstacle course that is quietly laid out through the game and then brought into full view in the game’s final moments.

It’s hard to see Deus Ex: Human Revolution being the game of the year competing with the likes of Modern Warfare, Skyrim, and The Legend of Zelda, but it’s definitely one of the most notable games of 2011 in as far as what it accomplishes as part of the medium of interactive entertainment.

Rating: 3/3 +

See also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

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I’m not sure which play-through this was for me, I just remember being reminded that Half Life 2 was a great game, and it still is.  The novelty of the physics puzzles have worn off but that hasn’t done much to damage the pacing of the experience.  HL2 manages to construct an overwhelming atmosphere that always leaves the player wondering “what is going on? I need to know more.”  It all ends rather abruptly and you all but expect a voice to tell you to “tune in next time!”  It was a high point in gaming history, and it’s still quite an enjoyable ride, but I don’t know if I would go as far as to say that, on its own, it’s still a shining example of the what the medium has to offer.

Rating: 3/3

See also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

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   Stupid, fleeting, fun.

Shadows of the Damned is fun while it lasts (which is about one play through.)  After that, there isn’t a whole lot left.  It’s not that it’s a bad game, SotD is competent in most regards, it just isn’t very compelling.  The the game play and characters all have potential that Grasshopper fails to follow through on.  It’s as though they got warmed up and decided to call it a day.  The game’s presence is punctuated by events and dialogue that if they had not been delivered in an extremely over exaggerated fashion would have just been boring.  There are high points though they mostly serve to make you wonder what more the game could have been.  One can only hope that there will be a sequel that delivers a more substantive, consistent, experience.

Rating: 2/3

See also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

Buy it at Amazon, Rent it at Gamefly

There’s probably not a lot more to be said at this point about Angry Birds. There’s nothing to stop you from playing it at this point as the game is available on multiple platforms, and for free no less. I have played the game myself on PSP and via the Chrome browser. What Angry Birds offers is all the key components of a good game. Nothing more and nothing less. There’s a compelling and well realized game mechanic (knocking crap over), a varied set of skills to master, and a wide array of levels to master them in.

Angry Birds has been known to upset some core gamers. A great deal of time and energy has been spent trying to demonstrate how games can be a superior medium for creative expression and storytelling, and this game inadvertently sticks its thumb in the eyes of those aspirations. Having a game as “simple” as this performing far better than many games perceived by the core community to be creative heavy weights (e.g. Heavy Rain.) As much hand-wringing as there is, Angry Birds is never the less a solid game that others would do well to evaluate carefully. The fundamentals still go a long way.

Much of the experience of playing the game can be determined by which platform you’re playing the game on. Since I did not have an iOS device, I originally played it on the PSP. This was a frustrating experience as the PSP joystick “nub” is poorly suited for consistent aiming. I enjoyed the game far more using Google’s Chrome browser which uses the mouse instead. But even with better controls it can still become frustrating to aim precisely. Understanding the solution to a level is simple enough. But managing to execute the shots to perform the solution would have led me to throw my computer out the window if not for the fact that it’s so easy to start over again. And the sheer number of levels make poor one’s easy to forget and move on from while still allowing the player to come back and master levels later.

If you’ve already played it then there’s nothing else to be said. If you haven’t then you don’t have an excuse not to. You’re just missing out on free entertainment. And for those upset by Angry Birds’ success, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate video games more realistically. They’ve come a long way, but there’s plenty more that can be done.

Rating: 3/3

See Also: Trailer, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000

   A deep, yet flawed, game.

Following my play-through of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions a couple of years back, I was interested in seeing what Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (a remake of an SNES game preceding FF: Tactics original release) would be like. Tactics Ogre has kept me occupied for months on end since its release, which has proven to be a dual-edged sword. There’s a great deal to do in the game’s world and also a great deal that restrains the player from enjoying it.

Let Us Cling Together follows the story of a young man named Denam who, along with his sister Catiua and his friend Vyce, are plotting on how exactly they will participate in the flagging Walister resistance. The Walister are a Valerian minority are being subjected to ethnic cleansing by the Galgistani who have backed the resistance into a corner. Denam, together with his party and a group of knights exiled from their home kingdom, attack Almorica castle in order to free the leader of the resistance.

This sets the stage for the player’s role in the game: to assemble a fighting force that’s capable of establishing independence for the Walister, and defending the greater nation of Valeria from outside foes. This challenge manifests itself in several forms, the most obvious of which is the process of character building and skirmishes. Much like Final Fantasy Tactics, characters are assigned a class that is enhanced as that character participates in battles. Their vital statistics become stronger and they gain access to more powerful abilities.

Crafting a well balanced team is essential to succeed, though the player can expect to be challenged at a more abstract level as well. Denam will continue to assume greater responsibilities as the game progresses and will be faced with morally difficult situations. It is not a scenario where there is no clearly drawn line between “good” and “evil”. Rather, the player must evaluate the pros and cons to each decision and contemplate their own principles.

The game’s plot can take a number of different paths as a result of the player’s decisions. On top of all of this, the player must also be considerate of their team’s loyalty. Every character in the game has a racial affiliation as well as a clan affiliation. Denam’s actions with each of those groups can affect his team’s loyalty to the point that they will abandon him if he severely neglects or offends them. Tactics Ogre provides a layered and nuanced approach to issues surrounding war: logistics, strategy, tactics, and morality.

Though, for all of its thoughtfulness, Tactics Ogre has a tendency to over-engineer its game play. It’s easy for the complexity of the battle system to become overwhelming. Players will more than likely try to tackle one aspect of the system at a time and digest it piece by piece throughout the entire game. I found myself learning something new about it fairly frequently even after completing the main campaign. This lends itself to taking advantage of the game’s “World Tarot” system which allows players to revisit earlier portions of the game.  It also gives me the impression that I missed out on an important aspect of the game play.

Tactics Ogre can discourage the player from experimenting with new character classes if for no other reason than meaning to have to start a character over at level one again. Each character’s level is tied to their assigned class. The class itself gains levels rather than the character. Undoubtedly this is designed to minimize the pain of permanently losing a character. As a result, the penalty of losing a character is transferred to developing new classes, which proves to be far more of a detriment to the experience.  Integrating a swordsman class into my team would mean having to spend a considerable amount of time training that class before they would cease being a liability.  Its also worth noting that the game’s graphics are prisoner to it’s original era.  This doesn’t detract from the game play, but it makes it difficult to appreciate the gravity of it’s themes.

Tactics Ogre offers a unique experience with a message about war that would be difficult to express in any other medium. It requires a great deal of investment from the player, which is welcome in some ways, but entirely frustrating in others. For those willing to learn the ins and outs of the system its a great game that will continue to challenge and reward you well after you finish the campaign.

Rating: 2/3

See Also: Trailer, Official Site, More thoughts at Ruminatron5000 
Buy it at Amazon, Rent it at Gamefly

Further Reading: Let Us Remember Together: A Tactics Ogre Retrospective

  
Meritless: A game without any redeeming or otherwise positive qualities.

  
Negative: A game whose good ideas shine through in spite of its negative qualities.  It is a game that’s enjoyable to those who are willing to work at it.

  
Mixed: The positive and negative qualities of the game are roughly in equal measure.  These games can be enjoyed by the forgiving.

  
Positive: The game offers a largely positive experience whose good qualities are strong and the bad qualities are relatively negligible.

  
Exceptional: A game in this category is not only good, but great and it can exemplify the strengths of games as an interactive medium.

I’ve made change to the scale because I felt the difference between a 3/4 and a 4/4 was not the same as between a 2/4 and a 3/4. The difference between the former scores is important, but in a less punitive way. A game that’s scored at 3/4 appears to be missing something or has a caveat when none may exist. It’s simply a good game but not a remarkable one. Having the 3/3 score and the “Exceptional” score changes the nature of the scale to reflect that difference.

I’ll be using this scale to score games going forward, but will not be retroactively applying them to previous reviews.