Fable III

The Short


Pros
- Follows the same addicting formula as Fable 2
- Has a more integrated plot than the previous games where you were just an unnamed hero; now you are a prince/princess
- Same simple controls as Fable 2, for better or worse (depending on what you liked in Fable 2)
- Reasonably large, breathing world
- The D&D Quest (where you come to life in a bunch of wizard's D&D game) might be the best quest in any game ever made
- Still looks good and has its notable art style
- Finally adds actual co-op
- Weapons have a "progression" system that evolve when you use them
- Same goofy humor and art style that set the Fable series apart

Cons
- Last 1/3 of the game seems tacked on and horrible
- Even more so than the other Fables, the morality choices are pointless and obvious
- House ownership is worse, options from the previous Fable games have been trimmed down
- Equips and level ups are handled in the "Sanctuary," where you have to run through loading screens in order to literally pick up a weapon to equip it. What?
- Awful, awful load times
- Buggy
- Weapon evolution relies on using one gun to kill like 500+ zombies for a tiny upgrade. Extremely limited number of weapons.
- Even less enemy variety than previous games
- Has lost the character evolution and "build your own hero/destiny/etc." that was the biggest draw of the previous Fable games.
- Feels like a stripped down Fable 2 with worse design choices
- Still can't plant an acorn and watch it grow into a mighty oak, like Peter Molyneux promised me in Fable 1 what the crap man Minecraft did it what is wrong with you. 

Fable III: Three massive steps backwards

The Long

Sometimes I think Peter Molyneux has no idea what he's doing. Yeah, he's made some really great games, talks a lot of big talk, and actually has genuinely influenced the industry for good. But I swear we should just let him make one game, leave it as it is, and not make a sequel. Black and White was a great game. Black and White 2...not so much. Fable (while failing to live up to Molyneux's promises) was still a very good game, probably my favorite game on the original Xbox. Fable 2 was good but had lost a good deal of the magic.

Well now they've taken Fable 2, made what is essentially a crappy expansion pack for it, sold it at full price, and crushed my hopes that this series will ever be good again. Fable 3 is, straight up, a disaster. 

The Fable 2 engine holds up decently, if it does have some weird bugs. 

First off, the story. The Fable games have always been straightforward: heroes are some sort of genetic, predestined thing (which I'm fine with) and YOU ARE A HERO! In the first game you were one hero among many, even going to Hero Hogwarts before embarking on your magical journey that involved killing a lot of bandits with a mediocre story. Fable 2 jumps ahead a few hundred years because Peter Molyneux likes guns now, putting you in a sort of colonial setting as an orphan who is the last hero on earth and has to kill the big bad king boss guy in order to...do something. I never figured out why this guy was so bad. I mean, he was kind of a jerk, but eh.

Fable 3 decided a more in-depth story, so instead of just some random, unnamed dude you now can be a guy or a lady (yay!) which essentially means "prince or princess." Your character is voiced, actually has a backstory, and...that's actually about it. Your brother is a royal jerkwad who taxes people and takes advantage of the industrial revolution with child labor and whatnot, so you go out to start a revolution. On the way (minor spoiler, but don't worry about it) you find out there's actually this big baddie that's going to come blow up everything (which is why your brother was a jerk; he was preparing to fight this thing off) but since you are shortsighted and have this revolution thing going already you overthrow him and then have to fix the problem yourself.

It's a crappy story, but it's made worse because it undermines the main reason I play Fable: to make my own stories. I didn't care that the main plot was garbage, I had more fun dressing my character up, doing evil or good things, seeing his body actually change during the game (more so in Fable than Fable 2). Because the framework for the main story was so loose, I was able to just do whatever the heck I wanted. Adding a "story" (and a bad one at that) actually makes this worse, getting rid of the main draw of the Fable games in the first place (again, writing your own stories and making your own legends). So way to take a good thing and ruin it. 

It's obvious he's evil based on his facial hair. 

This "take what was good and completely ruin it" is evident in nearly every other aspect of this game. By some completely asinine design choice (which they proudly held up when previewing the game) they axed menus from the game completely. Good, I guess; the Fable 2 menus were plague by actual menu lag and loading screens (Yes. Loading screens. To go through a menu. Installing the game helped, at least), but their way of fixing it is so stupid I hardly can't believe it.

When you hit a menu button you are warped to "Sanctuary," basically some magical place out of time and space. In the middle is your map (which you can't access normally, and there is no minimap) which is like a real time picture (kind of like Skyrim, only horrible). What's worse is in order to change clothes, equipment, see your money, or pretty much anything you have to walk your character to the right room, wait for another load, and then walk around and see the weapons (See first screenshot) before selecting them. Then when you back out of sanctuary (to another load screen) you'll return back to the fight or whatever with your changes. 

First off, from a story concept this makes no sense. So I was in the middle of battle about to die and I suddenly flew away to a magical sanctuary land? Why wouldn't I just stay there forever if I was about to get murdered? How did I pull that off in the heat of battle? Second, while I like the idea of showing off all my stuff, this is so cumbersome it's insane. I have to literally run somewhere after entering the "menu" to get equipped? I have to suffer through loads of loading screens to do this? How is this better? What the crap is wrong with you, Peter Molyneux?

It finally adds co-op, but if your partner is in a sanctuary the game pauses and you just wait. Brilliant.  Also, it deleted my character data due to a co-op bug. Also awesome. 

So the other big thing they were talking about is the "evolving weapons." Essentially, they promised that your weapons would change based on how you used them. So if you spent a bunch of money your sword would turn gold, or if you killed a bunch of zombies it would look more like a bone, etc. Well, you'll be pleased to know this was all a bunch of half-baked truths, as is usual from these guys. You have one weapon that "evolves," and as it does it doesn't change by much at all. It only picks three traits of how you played (randomly, it seems; I always got the "money" one because I'm not a financial idiot) and then your sword changes a very little. Oh, and it's only the starting sword that "evolves," and its stats never increase. So you'll never use it.

To "make up" for their fake evolving weapons, they cut the weapon types down by an insane number. In Fable 2 you had tons of guns: flintlock, fast-shooting ones that required a long reload, shotguns, rifles, etc. as well as axes, swords, cleavers, hammers, and more. This game strips it down to just two types: a heavy and light melee and a heavy and light gun. You could also slot your guns/swords in Fable 2, which means it actually has better customization than Fable 3. At least I could choose types that changed my playstyle, unlike this. 

So what about all the other weapons? They don't really "evolve," instead of having requirements to power up. A sword will often require you "kill 100 bad enemies" or "spend 100,000 gold" in order to get a very, very tiny upgrade. You also have to have the weapon equipped and actually have it do the killing for the kill requirements, so you either have to commit or you'll never see an upgrade. It's completely horrid, but luckily the game is so incredibly easy that you don't ever have to upgrade your weapons.

You can still dress your guy up as you wish, though it has less clothing options than Fable 2 as well. 

There's an RPG system buried in here, but holy cow it's bad too. This review is going to be stupid long. One of my favorite parts about Fable and Fable 2 is designated experience. By this I mean you got two types of experience from enemies: general, all-purpose experience and then experience based on how you killed them. For example, if you favored a bow, when you killed someone with your bow you'd get a ton of "bow" experience and some general experience. Same goes for magic and melee. It's a clever idea that makes it so that you can tech up a certain tree quickly, but if you want to switch just being dedicated to a style will push it up fast.

Fable 3 saw this, thought "remember all those other great ideas we ruined? Let's ruin this one too."

Back to the concept of "no menus," in Fable 3 the upgrade path is the "Road to Rule" or some crap, I don't remember exactly. Basically you get on this long, gated path (gates open based on story elements, locking upgrades) with treasure chests. As you fight, do quests, do anything, you get general experience that eventually gives you treasure chest unlocks. So you can spend it all on anything. Which takes one of the best ideas from the previous games, puts it on a road you have to run up and down for minutes before reaching where you want to be, and dumbs it down to "suckfest" status. Fable 3, what the hell is wrong with you?

The industrial revolution is an interesting setting, though I was really hoping they'd go Steampunk with it. A Steampunk Fable game? Freaking sign me up. 

At least the game has a fast travel system that sort of works, even if it means you have to navigate the awful map in order to do it. Come to think of it, that might be the only part of this game that's an improvement over the second game, and even that isn't very substantial.

Managing property was the way you got fat bank in Fable 2, and you could also do cool things like manipulate the economy of cities with it. That's gone. Instead you can buy property and it "degrades," meaning you have to go into your map, go to every house you own (or walk there if you hate yourself) and "renovate" it or people will stop paying rent. I think it was because people were abusing the Fable 2 system (buy a bunch of houses, set your system clock to year 2999, reload and suck in the cash), but all it did was make it a nuisance; I still was filthy rich by the end of the game. Good job, Fable 3. You didn't fix it, you just made it unrealistically annoying.

And I haven't even gotten to the abomination that is the last 1/3 of this game.

If the choices couldn't get more black and white. Pay to save an orphanage, or turn it into a brothel for fat cash? 

So you become king and the big bad is coming, and then the game turns into "oh no! You have year left! The only way to save the people is with money!" So you pour all your money in the treasury and hope it's enough (it isn't, usually) and have to make some important decisions. Basically all the people you helped you made promises to, so you have to decide between two extremely polarized options: pay money to fulfill your promise, or tell them to suck it and get filthy rich. If you tell them to suck it that's the "bad" choice (obviously) and then they hate you, but if you help them you pay your money.

THIS MAKES NO F***ING SENSE. 


Think about it: THE BIG RAPE BEAST IS COMING TO BLOW UP THE WORLD. If you don't have enough money, EVERYBODY WILL DIE. Why the crap would they come harass you about TAKING YOUR MONEY when if they do get what they want they are essentially DOOMING THE ENTIRE WORLD? Can't they wait until after you defeat the beast to come asking for money? Or maybe, I dunno, unite like you did during the "revolution" for now, and then get paid later?

And why on earth is the "Good" decision to pay them? We should be turning all the orphanages into brothels if it means getting enough money to save the entire world! We could just turn them back later, but for now I'm pretty sure starving, parentless little Timmy would rather be on the cold streets alive rather than being in the stomach of a big monster beastie.

Bonus one is where they get mad because you want to drain a lake to mine minerals for weapons to fight the impending invasion, and the bad decision is to drain it (pissing off the environmentalists) and the good decision is to leave it sitting there. Cause that lake's going to be great when it's red with blood of the entire Albion population. Brilliant.

I got my angel wings, at the expense of the entire population. But at least we didn't make any brothels!

As a bonus, this is like the entire last 1/3 of the game: making pointless/stupid decisions with no quests or adventures, waiting for the monster to come. The "days left" isn't even accurate; what's the point of having a game with a day/night cycle if you don't apply it to a day countdown? It just seems to drop days randomly, meaning lots of people were caught off guard. Luckily I knew this would happen, so I bought literally every building in the entire world, cranked up the rent to a billion (it's for your own good, idiots. Think of it funding the stupid lake and orphanages) and before entering the endgame I had enough money to save everybody. But there was no satisfaction.

Also the final boss is garbage. At least the final boss in Fable 2 (while pissing people off) was sort of comedic in how easy it was. This one made no sense, wasn't funny, and was just awful. Gah.

What your kingdom will look like if you drain that lake. Heaven forbid we save everybody. 

So what is good about this game, now that I've ripped it to shreds? Well, it looks ok, running on the Fable 2 engine, but it's starting to show its age. The voice acting is top notch, as usual. You still can't talk to anybody and have to resort to farting to make them love you...wait, this is a positive list, sorry. Um...the core Fable element is still sort of here, with a pseudo-open world what evolves as you do, so...good on that? I think? You have a lot of options like the other Fable games, like getting married and having a family and stuff, but even that seems stripped down and less interesting.

Oh, it does have what might be the best quest in any game ever (accented by the fact Fable 3's sidequests are all horrible). A bunch of crazy wizards want you to test out their new minifigs d&d esque game, so they shrink you down into their miniatures and have you fight through enemies and a horribly written story. It even has a dig at Fable 2's final boss being so easy, which made me laugh. Really funny.

And again, at least it still looks good, if it is pretty buggy. 

But even that can't overtake the massive amount of disappointment in Fable 3. I've honestly given up completely on this series now. As I said, I think Fable is - hands down - the best game in the series, with Fable 2 still being a very good game but taking several steps back with its few forward. Fable 3 is it slamming the car into reverse and driving it off the grand canyon. Into hell. There are so many bad design choices here I can't believe somebody actually brainstormed them who had ever played video games before, and it completely undermines all the goodwill the previous Fable games held for me.

I can't recommend playing it, unless you really, really liked Fable 2, beat all the DLC, and must have more Fable. As I said, the most basic core is still...ok. I guess. But to be honest, you should probably just play Fable and Fable 2 again. Just...pretend this doesn't exist.

It was on sale on PC for $5 the other day, with more achievements for my gamertag, and I didn't buy it. I bought Duke Nukem Forever for $5, people. This game isn't worse than that one if you break it down, but the sting brought upon it by having such a decent pedigree makes it seem worse to me. I can't recommend it to a newcomer to the Fable series (play any of the other ones) and I can't recommend it really to Fable fans, because it'll put a bad taste in your mouth and spoil the rest of the games.

Just...don't play it. I know it looks pretty, and I know you like Fable but...don't do it. Don't be stupid like me. Just don't.

I actually went into this review thinking I'd give it two out of five, but after writing this all the bad memories came back up, so screw you Fable 3, and take your one out of five stars and stand next to Alone in the Dark. 


Thanks for ruining one of my favorite series. You bastard. 

Week in Review for 2/12/2012 - Terrible Games Week

It's been a slow week, and for that I apologize to my reader. I finished off the Kinect review-a-thon with Dance Central 2, and then changed it to "Dark" week, where I'd only review games with "Dark" somewhere in their title. I didn't get to the Dark Forces games, but maybe soon.

This week, to celebrate me playing Duke Nukem Forever for an (upcoming) review, I bring you "Terrible Games Week!" I'm going to dig through all the crap I've played over the years (of which there is a decent amount, but I also am smart and tend to avoid garbage games) and review as much trash as I can pull up. We started it off with Matt Hazard, which is pretty awful but not particularly horrendous. I guess. But I don't want to play it again. Ever.

Anyway, I reviewed 9 games, bumping the total to 57. I'll have you know, I attended a writers conference Thursday through Saturday and it would take up my entire day, but despite this I still both wrote for my novel (at least 600 words a day) and put up a review. So I'm dedicated or something. I'm certain all four of my readers appreciate that. :P

There will be more reviews next week. For now, here is this week's batch.

Dance Central 2 - 5 / 5 Stars
Darksiders - 4 / 5 Stars
The Darkness - 4 / 5 Stars
Dark Sector - 3 / 5 Stars
Alone in the Dark - 1 / 5 Stars
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (Bnet Edition) - 4 / 5 Stars
Dawn of War: Dark Crusade - 5 / 5 Stars
Perfect Dark - 3 / 5 Stars
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard - 2 / 5 Stars

Thank you for reading, and I'll see you all this upcoming week for more review madness.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

The Short


Pros
- Entertaining parody game that lampoons almost every major franchise
- The "JRPG" boss is probably one of the funniest things I've seen in a while
- Graphics are on the Unreal 3 Engine and thus look pretty good
- Matt Hazard is voiced by Will Arnett of Arrested Development fame, and the big bad is voiced by Neil Patrick Harris of Dr. Horrible fame.
- Many of the gags are genuinely entertaining and the game has a large handful really, really funny moments
- It parodies Halo where they are all people in power armor shooting super-soakers, which Matt "pumps" to reload. Seriously, that's pretty funny.

Cons
- Is about as bland as a third-person shooter can get, both in terms of shooting, enemy types, and guns
- Wears out its welcome pretty quickly
- It's too bad it basically goes "funny bit, really long horrible shooting part, short funny bit, etc."
- The squid boss is absolutely awful
- No diving, running, or anything to speed him up. And he moves so slow.
- Some of the jokes fall flat, and in a game that seems to be relying completely on its humor, this is a bad thing
- Texture popin, the bane of Unreal 3 games, is here in full force.

I hope you like shooting cowboys, 'cause you're gonna do it a lot.

The Long

Matt Hazard is a washed up video game hero. A very not-subtle parody of Duke Nukem, Matt Hazard lives in a world where video game characters can interact with their creators, jump from game to game, and have actual personalities and opinions. So Matt started off in a 2d platforming shooter, one of the first action heroes of gaming (well, fake gaming, since none of his past games really exist), evolved into his pinnacle: Matt Hazard 3D (Duke Nukem 3D?) before fading into complete obscurity. He attempted to rebrand his image by making a Kart racer and other things, but in the end poor Matt was just a washed up bald space marine with no job.

You gotta admit, that's pretty funny. 

Luckily his boss, owner of Marathon Megasoft, pulls Matt out of his early retirement for a new game, one that will for sure launch him back into the limelight. Well, it turns out it's actually just a big trick for all the bosses from the older games he's in to try and kill him, resulting in a wild miss-mash of game types all coming for a piece of Hazard.

Even the 2D enemies from his "3D" first person shooter days are back. 

If this sounds like a fun premise, you'd be thinking correctly. Eat Lead sort of doesn't make any sense, but the plot is just there to throw as many references to other games as possible. Right off the bat you get a holographic girl (Cortana?) who bosses you around the whole game, and from then on it's just reference after reference. Seriously, they just keep on coming.

No shame here. 

For the most part, the humor works well. Will Arnett does the voice of Matt and he does it very well. Neil Patrick Harris is the big bad boss of Marathon Megasoft that devised this whole thing, and he also goes into his lines with just the right amount of cheese. The parodies are thick and are (for the most part) cleverly done, tying both music in with the visuals. When you fight a bunch of clunky, heavily armored gray-brown space marines, the song that plays is so close to the Gears of War theme I'm surprised they didn't get sued. The Halo jokes are equally good, with guys wearing brightly colored armor blasting each other with...super soakers. There are a handful of other parodies and jokes (Hazard sits in an elevator for a really long time and complains about it, right after the whole Mass Effect elevator thing was a big deal), but the best by far is the JRPG boss. It's already bad enough that you fight a spikey haired guy with a huge sword and one wing that floats, but when you actually see him selecting his attacks from a floating menu (in japanese) before he does them that you know that Eat Lead at least sort of knew what he was doing. And the damage numbers popping off him (when it doesn't happen with any other enemies) when you shoot him is a nice touch too. Here, this is the whole thing, just watch it. I'll wait.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Eat Lead - Hazard vs. JRPG Hero Gameplay, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

While the parody humor is great (I forgot to mention that whenever you get an achievement he points to it on the screen and says something along the lines of "That's an achievement!" or "I bet all your internet friends will love you now!") it is spread a little thin, and that's where Eat Lead falls apart. See, Eat Lead is a cover-based third person shooter. Fair enough, right? We had a lot of these this generation, and most were decent, some were mediocre, and some were excellent. Well I hate to say it but unlike Dark Sector, which came out of nowhere as a surprisingly good third-person shooter, Eat Lead is pretty freaking awful when you actually have to play it.

The cover based controls are crap and only seem to work half the time. The shooting is poor and never feels right, with enemies being cheap and annoying. The melee attack is horrid and more often than not trying to melee somebody will end up with you dead. Enemies suck up an insane amount of bullets unless you use their own guns against them, and even then it's way too long unless you score a headshot. Hazard can't run like in Gears of War and while he can sort of slide to different cover, it doesn't ever seem to freaking work.

But hey, supersoakers!

It unfortunately gets worse. Remember when I talked about all the silly enemies you fight, that are obvious parodies of other games? Well, the game doesn't use them as much as it should. Often you are in the same bland warehouses fighting the same bland enemies: workers, secret agents, chefs, etc. Just run-of-the-mill fodder (which also bonuses as taking a billion shots to kill). Not only was the shooting bad and the guns underpowered, but the enemies were boring too? And I always constantly run out of ammo and cheap deaths happen all the time? I really wanted to like you Eat Lead, but you make it so hard.

All this pales in comparison to the squid boss, who I think deserves special mention. I'm pretty sure this is a God of War parody, but regardless this boss fight is miserable. You die constantly, there is little to no cover, and the game keeps spawning Space Marines on this boat for no freaking reason whatsoever. I died constantly, on normal, and I consider myself pretty decent at third-person shooters. I've certainly played enough of them. 

Which is another thing: by the end the game just ignores theme and throws a billion enemies at you. Granted, a particular scene where you fight every employee of Megasoft as they are "playing" the game like a multiplayer shooter (complete with kill/death counter and their gamertags floating over their heads) is pretty funny, but it gets weird when the 2D enemies are fighting with the space marines are fighting with the other type of space marines...in a generic warehouse. Alright?

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY COWBOYS?!

This is where Eat Lead failed for me. Which made me sad, because the funny parts are really good, and I knew there was a good idea in this. The shooting was just so bland and repetitive, and even the little bits of great, off the wall humor couldn't save it for me. It's a bit better on easy, where you can breeze through it and get to the good parts a little faster, but at it's core Matt Hazard's new game is just a dull, monotonous, unfunny mess 80% of the time.

Despite this, I will still recommend you play through it at least once. The current $15 asking price is too high, but it's a solid rent. I really think that, underneath all the garbage gameplay, there is stuff here worth seeing, and it's funnier in game (though I guess you could just youtube it). But don't pay more than $5 for it, and only after you buy Dark Sector first, because that game is better. 

Sorry Matt. You were a fun rent when my wife was away a few years back, but as it stands a two out of five is all you've earned. Too bad your XBLA sequel sucked too; I really could see this parody of Duke Nukem (who needs it, especially given his most recent release) that riffs on other games actually working if it was done correctly. Here's hoping that if there's ever a new Matt Hazard game (which I would love to see happen) they figure out the gameplay first before deciding how to cram as many references as possible into their game. 

Or they could just make a kart racer.

This fake box art is pretty funny, though. 

Perfect Dark

The Short


Pros
- Looks pretty dang good on the N64, even old and blocky
- Reasonably solid controls
- Guns are great, especially the FarSight (see through walls!)
- Decent length single player
- Four player co-op has a hearty amount of fun options

Cons
- Requires the expansion pack to not suck
- Controls, while exceptional at the time, haven't aged particularly well
- Time has not been kind to this game in general

Guns: CONFIRMED

[Note: This is a review of the N64 version of Perfect Dark, not the Xbox 360 rerelease)

The Long

Perfect Dark is a game a lot of people really liked. Essentially a spiritual successor to Goldeneye 64 in many ways, it ditched the modern day aesthetic (but kept the "secret agent" bit) and threw itself into the cyberpunky future, with corporations (always a problem in the future, if video games and movies are to be believed) messing stuff up, the president looking uncannily like Obama, and...aliens? Yeah, the story kind of gets...zany, but as a whole Perfect Dark was a revelation of sorts, and certainly helped push the N64 at least a little away from its "kiddie" image. 

It's just unfortunate that the game hasn't particularly aged well since it's N64 glory days. But we'll get to that.

Perfect Dark follows the adventures of Joanna Dark, a secret agent...sort of, in a world where aliens are battling and the president is in trouble. Honestly, I don't remember much about the story except I didn't get most of it, and it was basically just an excuse to keep shooting dudes. 

Despite the blocky polygons, Perfect Dark had a lot of style

The game offered a lot of improvements over its predecessor, Goldeneye 64. It added reload sequences for each weapon, a lot more multiplayer modes and maps, the controls felt tightened, you could beat up enemies and take their guns, the ability to shoot guns out of their hands, and greatly improved AI (though it still looks pretty stupid compared to some modern games). It was a fast game (though not even comparable to the PC FPS games at the time like Quake) and supported the four-player split-screen mayhem we'd come to expect from Goldeneye. And while you might consider it the same game with a new coat of paint (which it...kind of is, to be completely honest), the improvements make it better in nearly every way. 

I'm not saying Perfect Dark was the revolution Goldeneye 64 was (when essentially we figured out we COULD pull off FPS games on a controller), but it certainly feels like a more refined and expanded game.

Seriously, it looked pretty good (though this screenshot is emulator cleaned-up)

Now I'm not one to rain on the party of those who love the game. I have a full boxed copy and everything, so you know I have fond memories. But after loading it up a ton of years later, this game just...I'm not feeling it. I'm sorry guys, I really am. I can appreciate the art style and everything it did for the genre, but it just doesn't play that great anymore (this includes the Xbox 360 version, which I tried out after to see if the duel-sticks work better. They do a little, but not a lot).

Here's the thing about Perfect Dark: It was a stepping-stone game. Goldeneye 64 was a revelation, no doubt, which made lots of its shortcomings forgivable. Perfect Dark was a step in the right direction in many, many ways, while still maintaining the solide framework of Goldeneye. It's just that lots of FPS games have come out on consoles since Perfect Dark, and a lot of them are just better games, especially with the advent of duel analog sticks. 

I'm not saying this game isn't fun anymore, because it is if you can find three other fans and go blasting away. I'm just saying that, when compared to modern FPS games, it's clunky as hell and isn't appealing. I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to go through that single player again, even though I know I really liked it back in the day. The genre has evolved since then, and taken lots of things and made them loads better (you can thank Halo for a lot of that, though that's a review for a different time).

I still love you, Perfect Dark, but you got old and kind of ugly. 

If you don't believe me, go grab the demo on XBLA and tell me it has aged well. Seriously, do it. If you play it and are totally contented, then by all means buy it or rev up your N64 and go back into it. For me, while I'll still enjoy playing it with friends from time to time, and I'll still remember it fondly, I'm going to keep it like that: remembering it fondly, instead of playing it a lot and getting frustrated.

Still, if you collect retro games your collection has a pretty large hole without this title, and seeing that you can nab it for pretty cheap (~$5 if you are savvy) you might as well go get it. Just keep in mind you'll need that N64 expansion pack if you are going to actually, you know, play it.

Nintendo: Making you buy more crap for your systems since...well, the NES, actually

As it stands, age hasn't been kind to Ms. Joanna Dark, but I think that's ok. If you have nostalgia for it, you'll be willing to (mostly) forgive. If you don't, though, you might want to pass it up. It isn't a bad game by any means (in fact it's a pretty damned good one), but it is certainly a product of an era that has passed us by.

If I were to give it a (modern) star rating, it would be three out of five. This would also apply to the XBLA version, though I didn't go into specifics, since the score deductions weren't based on graphics at all (which is essentially what the XBLA version changed). 

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, intense RTS action that is both familiar and wholly unique
- Adds two more races to the already impressive roster of five, making seven total playable
- Each race plays unique, with the Necrons being especially different
- Single player is probably the best in the series, with a Risk-esque map combined with RTS elements
- Single player also has a hefty amount of unlocks for your "hero," turning them from a simple warrior to a total badass with entourage
- Graphics still look quite good, with executions and kills being well detailed
- Well trenched in its deep and interesting Warhammer 40k mythology
- Easy to pick up and learn, extremely difficult to totally master

Cons
- The Tau Empire, the other new race, is sort of total garbage
- Can't play any of the original five races online if you don't own the previous two games
- Maps all look "samey," mostly dull mixes of gray and brown
- Easy is way too easy, medium is fine, and hard is still not particularly challenging
- Like the sucky Tau, balancing seven races is an impossible task, making a few builds "broken"

The Long

That's right, you stupid Tau. Your "Greater Good" can suck it. 

I love, love, love the Dawn of War games. They were one of the first games I bought when I got a new, high power laptop back in 2007 (my first new computer since 2000) and I just loved the crap out of 'em. It is worth noting that this title is technically a standalone expansion pack; the first two games are Dawn of War and Dawn of War: Winter Assault. However, since this is "Dark" week and only this one has "Dark" in the title, you are getting a review of this one. Which is probably for the best, since the first two games had a pretty awful single player, while Dark Crusade's is absolutely outstanding. 

For those uninitiated: the Dawn of War games are a collection a very fast-paced strategy game set in the Warhammer 40k universe. Unlike most strategy games, where "turtling" (making a base and defending it heartily) can be a viable strategy, Dawn of War made its entire game formula around forcing you to push forward. You still have a base and build unit producing structures like every RTS ever, and you can build power plants to get more of the "power" resource, but in order to get Requisition - the most important resource in the game - you have to capture and hold points scattered around the map. Of course, these points are limited in number, meaning your opponent will also be trying to snag these for himself. What happens is a bloody war of attrition, where just holding one more point over your enemy can be the difference between victory and defeat. It's wild and really fun, with this slight tweak making sure games are quick, bloody, and intense. 

Plus you have seven freaking races to pick from. Crazy!

When it comes to variety, Dark Crusade has it in spades. You have your basic Warhammer 40k groups: the Space Marines, Eldar, Orks, Chaos Marines, and Imperial Guard (though Tyranids, which I figured would be a shoe-in, are weirdly missing). This one adds the all-robotic Necrons (one of my favorites to play) and the gun-toting Tau Empire, who are also heavy on robotics but also have weird feral animals. While each race (except the Necrons) rely on getting points for requisition, they methods they build units and structures can often differ drastically, meaning each is a wholly unique experience. They are also fairly balanced, for the most part, though I can't for the life of me play Tau worth beans. Maybe I suck, maybe they suck; whatever. I won't play them.

It's especially crazy considering the following (and final) expansion, Soulstorm, added two more races, bringing the final tally to nine (though still no Tyranids. WTF.), but this isn't a review of that game.

The single player for Dark Crusade is where I spent my most time (60+ hours, not counting the 40+ I burned in Soulstorm). You pick your race to start, and then basically you are playing an RTS version of Risk. You can move your leader and invade other races' countries, taking them over and earning an increased income. You can then use this to fortify owned places with buildings, units, etc. that will appear on the map when you are defending against an enemy attack (all invasions are done in the traditional RTS format as outlined above). As you capture more locations, the game has a sort of "achievement" system (such as killing a set number of enemies) which earns unlocks for your captain. Your captain starts out kind of a crappy weakling, but by the end of the game he's totally off the freaking chain (if you are Chaos he literally turns into a massive demon as his final upgrade). Owning certain lands also allows you to build an "Honor Guard" for your captain, meaning you can start a battle with a small army to escort you. 

If you are gonna capture Tarsonus, you'd better be good at keeping what you capture. 

This sounds simple, but it's mad addicting, especially with unlocking gear and a more powerful guard. Each race also has a capitol country, which results in a sort of "boss" mission that is more scripted than the others. These also offer mild insights into the story, with prefaces and epilogues based on what race you are when you crush them, though it's safe to say the story here is "light." I dont' care, though, because the game is so fun it could be about sending plastic toys ramming into each other and I'd still be all over it.

Which is what it is based off of. Whaddya know. 

That, in a nutshell, is Dark Crusade. It stays true to the damned near perfect formula established by the first Dawn of War, but improves the single player so substantially it's hard to recommend playing the previous games at all. The sequel, Soulstorm, was also pretty good, taking the country-based combat and bumping it up to planet warfare, but having nine races trying to share one map gets a bit crowded, and some of the capitol missions got a little...unbalanced. 

It's also worth saying that the multiplayer aspect of this game is also fun, though I personally preferred lanning with people I know rather than playing against people online. Also, in order to play as any of the other races, you have to have the previous Dawn of War games installed and your serial code put into Dark Crusade, or else you'll be locked to the Necrons and (awful) Tau in the multiplayer. Seeing as the Orks are my favorite race, and you can get all the games together for the cheap, if you plan on playing multiplayer (either with friends or just against the AI), it can't hurt to drop a few extra bucks for the first two games. 

Chaos ain't takin' any of your backtalk. 

Graphically, the game still looks pretty good. Sure, if you boot it up after playing Starcraft II or Dawn of War II, you'll notice the models are pretty polygonal, but it certainly hasn't aged to the extent of, say, Warcraft III, which looks straight up hideous in this day and age. This is especially aided by the awesome animations. Characters have finishing moves that will randomly happen when they kill another enemy, which is pretty dang cool to watch. Other touches, like ranged units actually looking up to shoot at enemies taller than them, and cool in-battle moves (like the Tau Commander will leap into the air and spray the ground as just part of his normal animation) are really, really cool. They did a great job adding tons of detail in this game, from all the unique buildings to the way they are built (Space Marines airdrop them in with precision, Orks just sort of throw them out of the back of a plane and let them roll into place, Chaos summons them from the Void, etc.) to the actual changes on your commander as you buy upgrades. It's a pity the landscapes and maps don't match the detail of the units: they look downright bland when placed against them. Most are usually just flat, empty space with greens, browns, and sometimes white, and it just doesn't look very good.

Still, that's a minor complaint when the whole packages looks fantastic, even years later.

There are tons of unlocks waiting for you, with each race's items completely different

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade is my favorite Dawn of War game. While Soulstorm technically has everything this game has and more, something about Dark Crusade's single player seems more refined when compared to its successor. As it stands, if you are an RTS buff and haven't picked up this series, shame on you. In a world basically ruled completely by Starcraft II, it holds its own by being both unique and accessible, and having both the Warhammer 40k license and seven freaking races certainly doesn't hurt.

You can grab the game for $20 on Steam, and if you aren't going to play the multiplayer you can just forget about the previous two games. If you are going to get the other ones, I'd suggest looking around more for a sale (THQ usually sells 'em for cheap on their site) seeing as all three at $40 is a bit steep. But again, this game is worth every penny, and if you want a game you can burn hours of awesome, Xenos-blasting fun with, look no further.

If I were to give a star rating, it would be five out of five. 

Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition

The Short


Pros
- One of the first Real Time Strategy games, and paved the way for an entire genre
- Host of missions, maps, and units
- Two playable races with (some) unique abilities
- 3D movies to play between scenarios
- Full voice acting, including all the units
- Fight on water, air, and land
- Cartoonish, pixelated graphics still look good to this day
- Fantastic music, both the DOS version and the revamped Battle.net edition
- Solidified what would later become one of the most popular game universes ever

Cons
- Race differences are mostly cosmetic, with a few slight changes in spells and abilities but not much else
- Could only select a limited number of units at a time. On the DOS version you couldn't assign hotkey groups
- Siege units friendly fired more often than not
- Some later levels had balance issues
- Expansion opened up a lot of mythology but its overarching story was dull
- That aforementioned voice acting is so bad it's actually sort of good

Before Starcraft, there was Warcraft.

The Long

[Note: this is a review of Warcraft II: Battle.net edition, the re-vamped rerelease that has the expansion Beyond the Dark Portal and enhanced music and online play. I have played both this and the old DOS versions, though, but consider the differences so negligible it doesn't merit twin reviews]

Warcraft II has another (vaguely) interesting story behind it. I was actually given this game as a birthday gift from a friend when I was eleven, and my parents wouldn't even let me open the box. They deemed it "too violent" and made me give it back, and I ended up getting Age of Empires and I think Heroes of Might and Magic II instead. Anyway, in order to play this game as a child I had to sneak over to my friend's house and play it on his computer, which I did quite a bit. So even now, as an adult, I get a sort of weird, guilty feeling when I play it on my own computer, like I'm doing something wrong.

So I booted it up again for this review, the last time I had played it around 2007, and you know what? This game holds up pretty good. It still has a lot of flaws, but unlike some other games of this era, Warcraft II has withstood the test of time and can still provide a fun, if at time frustrating, RTS experience.

On with the review! And keep in mind that, like with all my retro reviews, I'm reviewing the game as I experience it now, not as I experienced it then, but still with a hearty amount of rose-tinted glasses going on.

Building a mighty orc/troll/ogre army

Warcraft II set a framework that will be very familiar to anyone who has played RTS games in recent years. You start with a main hall and a batch of peons or peasants, which you send off to harvest wood or mine gold. You then uses these resources to build more buildings, which in turn build military units and unlock further structures. You have to manage your workers, your military, and your buildings in order to murder everybody else off the face of the earth.

Something worth noting about the single player is the mission variety: there is a lot of different types of missions. Whether it's rescuing captured units and taking them back safe, racing to harvest a set number of resources, raiding a camp and claiming it as your own, or delivering a captain to a certain location; Warcraft II kept the variety up. Which is worth noting, as some games that are released now don't do as good a job with mission variety as Warcraft II did. But it also did well at keeping these different objections tied into the core gameplay: You'll still be building a base and micromanaging units. Good stuff.

The story is presented by read-text between missions (for the orcs, that voice that reads it is the best voice ever and can make anything you read hilarious if you use it) and a few cutscenes. There is no story stuff presented in missions, at least not dialogue or text. You can play as either humans or orcs, and whichever you choose changes both the missions you play as well as the ending outcome dramatically. I suppose the "canon" ending is the humans winning, but the orc ending was way better anyway.

To battle!

The graphics and voice acting are top notch, and you can see from the screenshots that even though this is obviously an old game, the vivid art design sticks out. I still think this game looks really good, with the pixelated units and animations awesome, and the buildings still having a great deal of detail. The environments also look pretty good, too. The voice acting, while goofy for the story bits, is also charming for the units. Each unit has their own voice (standard now, not so much then) and it started the whole Blizzard "click on a unit a lot of times and they say funny things" fad.

The music is amazing. I think most games around the early era of RTS (Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, Starcraft, C&C: Red Alert, C&C: Tiberian Sun) had some really killer soundtracks. That's sort of gone away since then, with it just being generic background noise, which is too bad. One of my biggest disappointments with booting up Warcraft III was the fact that the totally kicking Human theme wasn't there anymore. It was so good. 

Seriously, this song was a big part of my childhood. So good. Also, it's the re-vamped version; the original was the same but more "midi" sounding

The game did have its flaws though, ones that are only more noticeable now that the genre has evolved (though not by much, which shows you a lot about how much Warcraft II pioneered). You could only select nine units at a time, and since you'd often use more than that it could be a major pain. In the original DOS version you couldn't even assign them a number hotkey, which was extremely obnoxious, but they fixed that in the Battle.net edition. Pathfinding for units (how they determined to go where you ordered) was pretty dang awful, with them frequently getting stuck on stuff. There was no unit building queue (that was invented in Starcraft) so you could only have one unit being built at a time, or one tech researched at a time. Any units that did splash damage also did friendly fire, meaning if you built a squad of dragons they'd love to blow each other up. 

The two races weren't particularly unique, either, especially on a basic level. Up until you get to Paladins/Ogre Magi, you are essentially fighting with the exact same units. Sure, the trolls and elves have a different "unique" upgrade, but it isn't nearly enough to make a difference. Aside from Paladins and Ogre Magi having healing vs bloodlust (protip: bloodlust is WAY better) and the Magi and Death Knights having maybe two different spells from each other (blizzard and death and decay are the exact same spell), there wasn't any real differentiation between the two groups besides aesthetics. I understand this maybe helped with balancing, but it still is a bit lame. Again, this was the norm at the time (and was also completely changed when Command and Conquer and Starcraft rolled around) but is still annoying.

Things could get bloody. Which is why my mom didn't let me keep the game. 

Despite a few issues (the nine unit control limit being the biggest issue in this day and age), this game still holds up really well. Taking the battle to both land, air, and sea (and introducing the third resource oil, only to have the whole third resource thing totally axed from all future Blizzard RTS titles) provided different, unique fronts to wage war (they took water out of Warcraft III! What the heck?). The game is still both a lot of fun and quite difficult, with creating the ideal army and then micromanaging the hell out of them both strenuous and exciting. To this day, I'd say it's worth playing.

The Battle.net edition of the game is exactly the same except it has slightly up-rezed graphics, an improved musical score (less DOS sounding, more Windows sounding), works on Windows 95 and future machines, and had online matchmaking through Battle.net. That being said, nobody is playing this game competitively anymore, but if you have some friends on a LAN you could get them all together for some awesome, ogre vs knight stomping fun. 

One of the best openings of any game. That VO is so...bad. But the music kicks butt!

I was actually worried going into this, because I was afraid Warcraft II would suck after all these years (and the dramatic shift the universe has taken with World of Warcraft) and I'd have to give it a bad score. But I was pleasantly surprised: Warcraft II is still an extremely solid and very fun RTS. Even without online competitive multiplayer (which is the biggest draw for this genre these days), the massive single player with its fun missions more than makes up for it. Whether you've played this game years ago or never delved into the world of Azeroth, Warcraft II is worth picking up and giving a spin.

You'll probably have to shell out $15-$20 for the Battle.net Edition, which is certainly worth it. I don't think you can buy it off Blizzard's store anymore, which sucks. But it's certainly worth the purchase (and it makes me glad my disc copy still works). 

Overall? Four out of five stars. Even after all these years, Warcraft II is still a fantastic game. 

Alone in the Dark

The Short


Pros
- Has the best, most realistic fire effects I have ever seen in a game
- Soundtrack is pretty good
- Graphics look decent
- Filled with gobs of great original ideas

Cons
- Most of those original ideas are executed on a range from "poor" to "abominable"
- Controls are clunky, muddled, and a mess
- Tries to combine genres (open world, driving, horror, third-person combat) with horrid results
- Has almost no ties whatsoever with the previous Alone in the Dark games
- Speaking of which, since you spend most of this game a. In a lighted area and b. With some girl, you are neither "Alone" nor "in the Dark" for 90% of this game
- Gratuitous swearing doesn't make your game "edgy" or "mature," it makes it just gratuitous
- Final "fetch quest" that then becomes a longer final "fetch quest" might be the worst ending sequence in the history of modern games

The fire in this game is literally the best part about it

The Long

This may sound like I'm a horrible judge of character, but I was really looking forward to Alone in the Dark. The developmental stuff they showed portrayed it as a better Resident Evil 4 with an insane number of gameplay innovations. It had some great music, the graphics looked nice, and all their innovations were ones I thought would be cool. It actually reminded me a lot of how I felt about Dead Space, where they touted a bunch of new, crazy features (like the integrated hud in Dead Space) and I got super pumped and actually watched developer diaries which I never do because that crap's boring.

Well, Dead Space ended up awesome, and Alone in the Dark ended up garbage. I guess it's the universal law of balance: one had to suck for the other to be good. 

The first sign that this game was going to be crap was it's obvious attempt to make it "hardcore" and "edgy" by adding a bunch of pointless f-bombs. Again, I'm fine with swearing in my media if it serves a point, or at least fits a character (aka Kaine from Nier). Alone in the Dark is clearly just doing it to prove that "This ain't your grandma's Alone in the Dark, with its Lovecraftian horrors and actual scares." Combined with a butt-stupid plot about demons and a prophecy and the end of the world (yawn), a horrid script and bad voice acting, and hey...recipe to suck. 

The inventory was one of those cool things I was looking forward too. Sigh...

The second big tipoff was the fact that it controls horribly. Now, Resident Evil 4's Leon isn't exactly super nimble (at least not in cutscenes), but you could tell his design was deliberate and the game was created around the limitations the game presented. Alone in the Dark just controls bad. The camera is especially awful, with a weird shift between first and third person that I swear makes no sense, bad aiming, and just...it's bad, ok?

And then you have the inventory system, which really makes me sad this failed. Basically they wanted to pull a Dead Space and have most of the game actually integrated without need of a ton of hud. So when you go to your items, Edward (your PC) pops open his coat like a flasher and you get to look down at what you are carrying. You can then mix these items (in a sort of makeshift crafting system) and experiment to improve your bullets, make molotovs, and more. In theory, this is a really sweet idea. It's often an unexplained mystery as to how video game characters hold all that garbage they pick up, and this was a cool feature. Unfortunately, there are two problems. 1. The game doesn't pause when you do this, meaning you are looking down your shirt and then all the zombies can bite your face off and 2. "Realistic" inventory system means you can't hold enough to sufficiently fight back. I could see this working if they ramped up the "survival" in the "survival horror" aspect of the game, cutting back the enemies (and making the fights more dangerous) and forcing you to rely on using very little to go a long way, but they don't. It just sucks, which really makes me sad.

Alan Wake also had DVD menus. Except that game was a lot better than this one. 

Another cool idea they had was with injuries. Similar to the "coat inventory," they wanted the way the game showed you that you were hurt to be as realistic as possible, so you actually see cuts forming on your character's body and then have to manually apply bandages, sprays, etc. to them. Far Cry 2 sort of did something like this, and I wish more games did, but in this game the fact that 1. You don't have enough inventory space and 2. The game doesn't pause when you heal rears its ugly head again. As a bonus, the wounds look more like textures pasted on, like temporary tattoos or iron-on stickers, so it isn't believable.

Something that does work as advertised is fire. For a game about being in the dark, there is a lot of fire in this game, and the only way to kill zombies is to blast them in their "fissures" (aka "weak spots") with a fire-based weapon. You can also just burn crap down, which is more fun than the actual game. The fire crawls and licks up walls, spreading and leaving scorched, burned wood behind in a realistic manner. It's really good looking and reacts like real fire does (instead of just sort of sitting there until triggered by a planned event, like most fire in games). It's just too bad they don't really do anything with this fire other than make it look pretty. Again, a real "survival" horror game where you had to escape from a real-time burning building would be awesome, but even the one time this happens in the game seems overscripted and overplanned. Boo.

The graphics aren't bad, but forcing you to switch from third person to first to shoot is a horrible design choice.

These little shines of good ideas (which are squashed by bad execution) are then completely destroyed by the game it's put in. Mandatory driving sections look cool, but after doing the first one something like 8-9 times on hard, dying over and over because the controls are awful and one mess up kills you, I was ready to throw my controller out the window. Requiring you to go from third person to first person for aim is also an awful, cumbersome system. The fact you have to use fire to kill your enemies is neat, until you have to go through the stupid inventory system in order to make "fire bullets" to finish them off.

Tacked on the worst ending sequence in any game ever and a horrid ending to the story, and you have an overal abysmal experience. The ending sequence is especially awful: the game forces you to go back all over the park you've been journeying to burn a bunch of evil tree things, then after you finish it's like "Good job! Here's like fifteen more!" You know what? Screw you game. 

Yep, your game sucks. Don't look so surprised. 

Alone in the Dark had potential, but it falters on every step. Even its good ideas are ruined by total design incompetence, putting this game squarely in the "garbage" category. I can't suggest a purchase at any price, even the "enhanced" Alone in the Dark Inferno edition on the PS3. 

Still, the fire is nice. Have a pity one out of five stars, Alone in the Dark. Maybe somebody will take your ideas and make a better game out of it.