Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Review

Splinter Cell: Blacklist makes it fun to fly solo, but it's when you join others that the stealth action really heats up.

The Good

• Tense and exciting cooperative missions  
• Excellent competitive play gets the adrenaline flowing  
• The best missions invite you to experiment with guns and gadgets  
• Great high-stakes atmosphere pulls you into the core conflict.

The Bad

• Various campaign idiosyncrasies disrupt the flow  
• Sam has lost some of his edge.

Sam Fisher is different nowadays. His gruff voice has smoothed, and he's not always keen to stick to the shadows. Sam isn't worse for the wear, but he isn't always the man you remember. Nor, for that matter, is Splinter Cell.

Your methods won't always be pretty; what's important is that you get the job done.

Just as Splinter Cell: Conviction represented a metamorphosis for the stealth series, so too does Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Blacklist nudges Sam further into action-hero territory; where Conviction's story was personal, Blacklist's narrative is about what Sam does, not who he is. As in its predecessor, your mission goals appear as text projected into the environment, but that text no longer reflects Sam's state of mind. Blacklist is all business, and the Tom Clancy-inspired, jargon-heavy dialogue of its early hours reflects as much.
The boilerplate story focuses on a group of terrorists seeking to annihilate a series of targets in the United States, though the overfamiliarity of the setup is frequently trumped by tense story beats that rival those of any good political thriller. A confrontation between Sam and a colleague signals an overall increase in narrative tension, and the real-world locales you sneak through communicate the high stakes by the very nature of their political importance. Returning operations manager Anna Grimsdottir rattles off technospeak at a faster clip, resident hacker Charlie Cole gets even more annoyingly precocious and hyper, and the secretive Fourth Echelon team grows more and more desperate as the finale draws near. This isn't a story about Sam, but rather, a story about surreptitious warfare. Information is power.
Perhaps it's appropriate, then, that Sam Fisher's presence isn't as commanding as it's been in the past, in part due to the replacement of longtime Fisher actor Michael Ironside. New actor Eric Johnson does a creditable job as Sam, though he doesn't possess Ironside's gravel-throated urgency. Nevertheless, the entire cast effectively communicates Fourth Echelon's calm-under-fire efficiency, as does Blacklist in general. Snazzy digital displays and computer terminals fill out the group's airborne headquarters, the Paladin, and each mission begins with the camera rotating into position above the base's main map before zooming into it. It's a fitting transition into a gadget-filled escapade across a dreary rain-drenched rooftop, or through a heavily guarded trainyard.

The best missions are those cloaked in darkness.

You need to get used to Sam's new digs; everything you do in Blacklist is performed there, from upgrading your gear to initiating multiplayer. Rather than accessing menus, you explore the aircraft and speak to your comrades, making the Paladin as much your interface as it is Sam's. The entire scheme feels unnecessarily convoluted and disjointed at first, and the game doesn't do a very good job of introducing you to its structure, though curiosity (and a bit of trial and error) should get you up to speed. But the player-as-Sam logic soon clicks into place, giving even the stand-alone cooperative missions context within Blacklist's fiction, rather than treating them as distinct and unrelated tasks.
If you played Conviction, you'll know at least some of the drill: as Sam, you slide in and out of cover, sticking to darkness and skillfully taking down opponents in various satisfying ways, or just avoiding them entirely as you make your way toward your high-priority target. The cover system is as rewardingly smooth as it was before, making you feel like a slippery agent of death as you dash into position, often with the press of a single button. In fact, Sam is more acrobatic in this go-around, getting a few chances to climb up cliffs as if he's taken lessons from Assassin's Creed's Altair. Blacklist is as eager to reintroduce older Splinter Cell mechanics as it is to showcase new ones, however. Sam is back to his nonlethal pre-Conviction methods--that is, if you want him to be. You can knock out targets with your fists or a stun gun if you're so inclined, or put them to sleep by tossing a sleep-inducing grenade, though you can't complete Blacklist's campaign without getting your hands a little dirty. You can pick up bodies and dump them elsewhere, too, which might also make you think that Blacklist is a return to the series' roots.
However, Blacklist doesn't feel much like Chaos Theory and its ilk, even when it's giving you the tools to be the silent type. Actually, it often urges you to be silent, instantly failing the mission if you're caught, or pitting you against heavily armored guards that are best dispatched from the shadows or circumvented entirely. But if you aspire to action-hero heights, look no further than the invigorating mark-and-execute feature, which lets you tag enemies and then execute them in a slow-motion flourish with a tap of a button. Now you can pull off such maneuvers on the run, taking down enemies with close-quarters kills (or perhaps dealing a headshot) and firing a bullet into a few other nearby skulls, or even snapping a neck or two if your targets are a hair's width from you.

When Sam gets angry, he calls you by your full name. Also, he executes you.

Pulling off a succession of kills in this manner is a blast, but it isn't required, and the nature of Blacklist's ever-varying level design and mission requirements makes it an infrequent pleasure. Blacklist's best levels are highly structured, intricate melanges of ventilation shafts, rooftops, cover-adorned streets, and interior cubicles that allow you to shimmy and slink around, paying careful attention to each guard's behavior and putting your array of devices to the test.
One such device is a drone that you remotely pilot, marking terrorists and taking them down with a dart. Other gadgets are familiar ones: sticky cameras, remote noisemakers, and so forth. The most interesting situations encourage experimentation, giving you a reason to try out your gadgets and guns, testing the limits of the AI, which often (but not always) displays real smarts. A patrolling guard might remark on how a previously closed door is now open and come to investigate, or quickly pirouette as he passes a darkened cubbyhole that could serve as a predator's prime hiding spot. Keeping a vulnerable Sam out of harm's way in these scenarios is enjoyably tense, though some missions are easy to accomplish on medium difficulty. On harder difficulty levels, most missions are arduous and gripping, and two episodes--one in which you must work under a time limit, and one in which you tail an unlikely ally--crank up the drama even further.
   
Not every scenario produces such intensity, however, and missions progress erratically whenever they're bent to fit riveting narrative events. Top-down sniping sequences dull the sheen, as does one mission that has you taking down a series of gunners while their attention is fully diverted. In one sequence, a group of intruders may fail to enter a room when they are meant to, the thrill of crashing through a window turning into a bizarre ambush resulting from a breaking script. The final showdown fizzles as well, falling back on an action-game cliche instead of giving Sam (and the player) the triumph he deserves. When Blacklist imposes restrictions or new rules, it loses momentum and focus; it's when you are given full use of your toolbox, and a carefully constructed playground, that it soars.

These guards may not patrol the same routes the next time you play this mission.

In spite of its similarities to Conviction, Blacklist pulls away from its predecessor in notable ways. The screen no longer washes out when Sam is hidden; instead, the lights on his suit indicate when you are safely cloaked in darkness. There are no more interactive interrogations, either, nor are there any noteworthy environmental kills in the way of Conviction's chandelier assassination. Thankfully, Blacklist retains the previous game's excellent cooperative play, bringing two players together and allowing them to take down waves of enemies, collect information without raising an alarm, and act as each other's guardian angel when the mission feels all but hopeless.
It's with other players that Blacklist comes into its own, centered as its cooperative maps are on careful and intelligent progression rather than scripted action-movie events. Some co-op tasks have you collecting data without grabbing the attention of the sentries that walk the hallways, the snipers that aim their laser sights in your direction, and the dogs that sniff out your hiding spot. There are opportunities to revel in your own cleverness, such as when your buddy peeks under a door and clicks his tongue, grabbing the hound's attention so that you can sneak in a different doorway and make your way to the rooftop helipad above. Your heart pounds when you hear the warble that indicates a guard is onto you, and then exults when you avoid alerting him--or breaks when the mission is aborted.
Your foes don't follow the same patterns each time you play a mission, so it's rewarding to return to cooperative maps time and time again; you can even play many of them on your own if you'd rather. Communication is key when playing with others, whether you seek to avoid raising an alert, or are out to take down progressively more challenging waves of inquisitive gunners. Your earnings are also key, seeing as how you purchase upgrades (a minimap, quieter boots) and gizmos (proximity mines, suppressed submachine guns) with funds you earn by playing the game. Your progress is persistent across all modes, so no matter how you play, you're earning moola.

For a member of a top-secret team, Sam sure can make an explosive entrance.

That moola is also spent on enhancements and weapons for Splinter Cell: Blacklist's excellent competitive modes. Pandora Tomorrow introduced the beloved Spies vs. Mercs mode, which pitted a team of two slinking spies against a team of two gunners that play in a first-person perspective. As Pandora Tomorrow/Chaos Theory fans might tell you, there's nothing quite like this asymmetric competition, and Blacklist gives you a classic version of the mode in which persistent upgrades are ignored and you rely only on your wits--and your knowledge of the map.
You'd think that playing Blacklist as if it were a first-person shooter might be less intense than staying undercover, but the looming threat of a silent killer is always weighing on you. The way your flashlight partially illuminates the darkness while you walk and lowers when you sprint enhances the fear of assassination, as do ominous sound effects, such as the bleep that rings out when your Aliens-esque motion tracker detects a nearby intruder. The spies are out to hack designated terminals; the mercs must gun down the perpetrator responsible for the hack. The setup gives rise to knuckle-biting standoffs in which mercs light up the shadows, looking for a secretive spy unwilling to be gunned down while the hack progresses. When one round is over, the roles switch, and the players soon discover who's got the skills to call themselves master operatives.
Blacklist offers more than classic Spies vs. Mercs, however, and several other modes allow you to equip your hard-earned upgrades and exercise your cunning with more than three other players. Two of them even let you mix spies and mercs into the same team: four-versus-four Team Deathmatch and a conquest-type three-versus-three variant called Uplink Control. Mixed teams can give rise to thrilling moments, with a merc chasing an enemy spy into an ambush, or a mine turning a careful plan into a messy explosion. Spies vs. Mercs still stands above the rest, however; watching the countdown as the hack progresses is a stressful endeavor, whether you're seeking the pesky hacker causing the trouble, or trying to get the drop on a merc packing an AK-47.

Charlie is at his least annoying when his back is turned.

There's no doubting Splinter Cell: Blacklist's excellent production values. It's a great-looking, great-sounding game that sizzles with the high-tech ambience and language that characterize a typical Tom Clancy product. Sam's solo trek is a very good expression of Blacklist's various gameplay systems. But it's with--and against--others that the game hacks into your pleasure centers, so while Sam Fisher may not be the man you remember, Splinter Cell: Blacklist has too many sweet adventures in store for you to miss them.

The Last of Us

One unforgettable character proves humanity is worth saving in the bleak and brutal The Last of Us.

The Good

• Ellie is immediately likable and exhibits poignant growth  
• Tense combat encounters with plenty of flexibility  
• Crafting system demands environmental investigation  
• Slow-paced, rewarding competitive multiplayer  
• Excellent sound design and moving score.

The Bad

• Supporting characters are rarely sympathetic  
• Combat contains too many immersion-breaking exploits.

The downfall of civilization redefines moral boundaries. No longer do labels like thief and murderer mark you as a criminal; everyone must steal, must kill, must do whatever it takes to survive. Humans roam in packs like feral dogs, claiming their territory and killing anyone who encroaches on their turf. Paper-thin alliances link individuals together for mere flashes, their connections severed once their mutual needs are met. Life is bleak, brutal, and exhausting. Tomorrow doesn't exist when the stench of death lingers like a fog and hope was extinguished years ago. There is only today; there is only right now. Morals? Morals won't put food in your mouth or a roof over your head. Morals are for the weak. And you're not weak.

Fight for your life or wind up dead.

One night the heart of society beat loud and strong; the next it was silent. The outbreak happened so quickly that there was no quarantine plan in effect. Infected monsters crashed through their neighbors' windows, smashed the doors to splinters. Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, dead before they could react, or worse. Maybe they became one of the infected. The virus spread through major cities and suburbs, and the military, with all of its training and weapons, was powerless to stop the epidemic. Joel is just one man amid a sea of people whose lives have been destroyed by the infection, but who still cling to life. Though he never asked for such power, he now holds the key to saving the world.
Joel is introduced the night society falls. He stays out late and works questionable jobs, all while his daughter waits patiently for his return home. He's distant, physically and emotionally, which makes it difficult to empathize with him. His actions are often repulsive, as inhuman as the zombies he must fight. The door to his heart is sealed shut. The Last of Us shines a light on the nastiness that only surfaces in humans who have nothing to lose. Rather than overcoming these limitations, Joel is crushed by them. He's unlikeable to his very core, a man who spits out angry words and appears to harbor even more sinister thoughts that remain unsaid. He kills because everyone must kill. But he kills with such fury that it disgusts even those who are used to this violence.
Joel, already accustomed to a life of brutality and focusing on his own needs, has partnered with a woman of a similar disposition. Tess is a badger let loose from a cage. To cross her path is to sign your own death warrant. She, like so many of the characters in The Last of Us, has a one-note personality that allows little room for a more nuanced interpretation. Her independence and ruthlessness are thrust to the forefront; empathy and humanity are nowhere to be found. Such flimsy characterizations erect an emotional barrier for the first few hours of this adventure. The postapocalyptic world is not interesting enough on its own to draw you in. Without any sympathetic characters to latch on to, you are left with little attachment to this pack of selfish animals.

Trees are as prevalent as zombies after the apocalypse.

That changes once Ellie joins your party. Unlike Tess and Joel, Ellie is easy to relate to. In this world of constant danger, she is scared. Scared to be ambushed by a zombie without a guide to protect her. Scared to meet a person who would rather kill her than talk to her. And her fear is not just for her own life. All of her loved ones have died or departed, so she's scared of losing someone else. Yet unlike so many others in this world, Ellie is not ruled by her fear. She talks like a girl in search of normalcy, whistling or humming during quiet moments, fantasizing about swimming lessons, and laughing about the problems that used to haunt girls before the outbreak. Boys? School? Problems that seem pitiful when your stomach has been growling for days and you have watched a zombie kill your best friend, yet Ellie remembers them. In her remembrance of the past, she exhibits a strength of will that most adults have lost. Ellie is both strong and vulnerable, smart and naive, and her humanity provides the impetus to push you through to the bitter end.
Ellie's maturity and resiliency make her an invaluable companion, but her worth lies much deeper than her endearing personality. She could be the savior humanity has been waiting for, and Joel has the privilege of escorting her away from the hostile city she now resides in to a faraway settlement desperate for her arrival. You travel through infested forests, dilapidated houses, and unnerving sewers, with Joel providing the brawn and Ellie the heart to brave the many dangers that stand before them. Confrontation is a last resort. Infected swarm with terrifying ferocity, clawing and snarling as they seek their next meal. The uninfected are just as deadly. With diplomacy not an option, they pursue and flank, firing high-powered rifles or swinging deadly axes, undeterred that they are trying to slaughter a middle-aged man and a young girl. Death is fast and bloody, so you slink through the shadows, staying out of sight to live another day.

Alcohol is more valuable as a flaming weapon in this world.

However, combat in such a violent land is inevitable. The Last of Us turns the crumbling ruins of a formerly healthy world into the landmarks of unceasing war. Filter the world through the lens of dystopia, and ordinary objects take on a new meaning. Overturned tables and file cabinets provide a modicum of cover; broken windows allow for a quick escape. The zombies' movements are a confluence of contrasting images. Their staggered gait lulls you into believing they are slow, weak. But once they smell fresh meat, their movement is blindingly fast and exact. Their heads snap to attention with unsettling, insectile speed, and the unholy guttural noises that issue from their throats sound like the song of humanity's death.
So you kill them, bashing them with a two-by-four with all your strength and pummeling them into a lifeless mess on the ground. When grabbed from behind, you shove a shiv into your attacker's neck, the force of your blow causing the makeshift weapon to snap in half. A close-range shotgun blast tears zombies to shreds, but there's no time for celebration. They keep coming, eager to quell the threat that stupidly revealed itself. Such confrontations are nerve-rattling, and yet there's a hollowness to these encounters. No one wants to die--even a virtual death is unwelcome--but The Last of Us refuses to punish failure in a manner befitting the harshness of its world. Become overwhelmed and you quickly perish, but with checkpoints only a few seconds apart, the danger of expiring never dissuades you from recklessness.
   

LIMBO Review

Limbo contains the wonderful aesthetics and crafty puzzles from the previous versions, but the atmosphere isn't quite as striking on a smaller screen.

The Good

• Moody, black-and-white visuals  
• Excellent sound design  
• Thoughtful puzzles with lots of variety  
• Hidden secrets reward a second playthrough.

The Bad

• Audio and visuals aren't as impactful on the Vita.

Almost three years after Limbo landed on the Xbox 360, it finally arrives on the Vita. Limbo is nearly unchanged from its previous incarnations, and in it, you roam through ink-black locales, overcoming traps while braving the suffocating atmosphere. Intuitive puzzles prove just as satisfying on the go; however, the aesthetics are not quite as arresting on the small screen. It's a tiny problem that results in a mere blemish on this translation. Whether you've been enthralled by this poor boy's trek through a strange world before or have yet to experience this somber journey, Limbo is an artistic adventure that takes hold of your imagination and refuses to let go.

Just like a young George Washington.

The opening scene thrusts you into this world without any explanation for your predicament. You play as a young child who finds himself lying on his back in a foreign land that is far from welcoming. He is nondescript, appearing as a black silhouette that blends in with his dark surroundings. His lone distinctive characteristic is his shining, white eyes. These flashes of light are always visible, making it the one part of his body you can recognize even when the rest of the screen is completely black. There is no story pushing you through this quest, no signs to give you hints nor characters to clue you in on an overarching plot. Rather, this is a game about survival, where merely making it from one area to the next, surviving one obstacle after another, is what pushes you on.
You have a small repertoire of moves to help you stay alive in this 2D puzzle/platformer hybrid. A modest jump allows you to clear small gaps; certain objects can be pushed or pulled; and you can climb up or swing from ropes. Submerging yourself too deep in water, falling from a high ledge, or making contact with any of the numerous traps kills you instantly. Your lack of heroic moves does not mean that the puzzles you must overcome are equally limited, though. There's plenty of variety in Limbo's puzzles, and even those that appear similar initially are invariably quite different. The early puzzles are single-step affairs that require you to move a bear trap out of the way or cross a river. But later puzzles are much more complex, forcing you to use objects, flip switches, and perform perfect jumps in order to come out on top.
Trial and error is a major component of Limbo's environmental hazards. A boulder may roll unexpectedly toward you, crushing you before you have a chance to react. Or you may stumble upon a bear trap hidden in foliage. Death is quick and brutal. Checkpoints quickly return you to the scene of your demise, so there's no need to walk over the same ground more than once. Once you understand the viciousness present in Limbo, and realize that your precious life can be taken away at a moment's notice, you notice these traps before they can kill you. It's an amazing feeling when you recognize an obstacle way off in the distance, pulling you ever further into this adventure.

Who would put a bear trap up there?

Limbo is an expertly paced adventure where progress is made much faster than in a typical game that emphasizes puzzles. Most obstacles can be completed in just two or three attempts, so even though you may have to analyze your surroundings to progress, you rarely dwell on any one section for long. This is one of Limbo's greatest strengths. The stifling aesthetics swirl in your mind, trapping you fully in this world. Dread follows your every step. But once digested, the feeling of hopelessness in each inhospitable section dissipates. That's why it's so important that you keep marching forward. Limbo wants you to progress, to see each unnerving location, and understand the plight this poor child faces.
The subdued aesthetics are the main draw of Limbo. Subtle audio hooks and restrained visuals guide you further along your destined path, never offering a moment of respite. You walk through dense forests, decrepit towns, and abandoned factories, all of which feel confined and desolate. Everything is tarnished beyond repair. The audio beautifully complements the darkness. Ambient noises send shivers down your spine. The snap of a branch or chirping of crickets sounds so real, so normal, that it makes this shadowy land even more surreal. And when the music plays, it crashes down in full force, awakening you with a start. However, as great as the artistic design is, it doesn't work as well on the Vita. The small screen doesn't do justice to the utter bleakness, making you feel less immersed in this grim world. For many games, this wouldn't be a problem. But for Limbo, which is so reliant on making sure you're always completely invested, it does slightly lessen the experience.
Even though there aren't developed characters or a story to care about, Limbo elicits a strong emotional connection. The striking visuals and low-key audio are instrumental in pulling you in, but it's the harsh manner in which death is depicted that evokes the most powerful reaction. This is a violent game. The boy can die in a wide variety of ways, and every death is incredibly painful to behold. Bear traps cut him into pieces, spikes impale him, and electrical currents shoot through his body. The elaborate death sequences do not feature excessive amounts of blood, but they are affecting nonetheless because of their shocking depictions. Death is handled in such a cold manner that it continually shocks, even after you've seen it dozens of times. This creates an emotional immediacy that is difficult to forget.

Sometimes you must look your enemies in the eye.>

Limbo poses the questions of death versus life and reality versus dream, but it doesn't answer them. It's the questions that are important here, and you're left to contemplate the meaning of this world for yourself. Although this is a game without clear-cut answers, the lack of concrete explanations doesn't detract one bit from the overall experience. This is a delicately crafted adventure whose elements tie seamlessly together. The fact that you can finish the entire game in just a few hours is disappointing only because it's so difficult to pull yourself away once you've been sucked in. Limbo is a wonderful adventure from beginning to end.

Dust 514 Review

Dust 514 is a better idea than it is a shooter, but its progression system has just enough depth to keep you engaged.

The Good

• Extended skill progression gives you a sense of accomplishment  
• A staggering number of ways to customize your character  
• A lot of fun when played with a squad  
• Innovative metagame combines two disparate experiences.

The Bad

• EVE-related metagame impacts only a small number of players  
• Lacks the heart-pounding thrills of similar games  
• A number of technical hitches  
• Slow progression leads to some sense of grind.

Dust 514 is an innovative concept and a merely decent game, two disparate halves that are never combined into a consistently rewarding whole. The idea behind this online-only free-to-play shooter is great, at least. In the EVE Online universe, player corporations vie for dominance over planetary regions, and those planetside battles are fought by brave Dust warriors with the assistance of the friendly ships that orbit above. This merging of massively multiplayer space intrigue and ground-based action prompts the imagination to create all kinds of incredible scenarios, with dropships transporting squads of soldiers to hot spots while spaceships bombard the ground from above, each participant doing his or her part for a larger political cause.

There's shooting and explosions, but Dust 514 lacks oomph on the battlefield.

The problem is that these kinds of thrilling scenarios play out mostly in your imagination, rather than in the largely dry and clinical ground battles. The greater impact of battles is largely felt in EVE, and only if you are a member of a significant cross-game corporation that can take advantage of the galactic struggle. As a lowly grunt on the ground, the effects aren't as noticeable. While the overarching character progression and space-based planetary conquest are persistent, the actual battlefields are not. Dust 514 is often referred to as a massively multiplayer online game, but you don't participate in PlanetSide 2-type skirmishes, with dozens upon dozens of players converging on various explosive hot spots. Instead, this is a standard team-based multiplayer shooter in which teams of limited numbers take aim at each other with various rifles and rocket launchers, or perhaps from behind a rumbling tank's mounted railgun.
The shooting is functional, neither remarkable enough to call out Dust 514 as a genre leader, nor so poor as to render it unenjoyable. It's just serviceable, working well enough once you get used to a few idiosyncrasies. The controls are one such idiosyncrasy: there's a bit of mushiness to the movement, so the game never feels as snappy as you'd hope, though it takes only a bit of time to become accustomed to the general feel. You might think that using a mouse and keyboard would alleviate the sluggishness, but the mouselook is slow and goopy even when sensitivity is set to maximum, and the game doesn't change its onscreen prompts to accommodate the new controls, leaving you to fumble around until you figure things out for yourself.

Railgun installations are helpful defensive tools when captured.

Stationary turrets and vehicular guns also prove rather cumbersome, in contrast to the bounciness of the light attack vehicles. Other issues affect the shooting range, from the minor (you may not hear any audio cue when sniped, leaving you to momentarily wonder why you're taking damage) to the major (frame rate hitches at the worst possible times). Still, Dust 514 is fun when you squad up with buddies and wade into the fray, presuming your team uses a diversity of tactics. When playing with randoms, it's rare that anyone takes on a support role; in such cases, only occasionally do you see a dropship--Dust 514's only aerial vehicle--in play, nor do many randoms seem keen on reviving you on the battlefield should you fall. That's possibly due to the finicky collision detection, which can make it difficult to use a nanite injector in the heat of battle. Luckily, strangers aren't so stingy with temporary spawn points, dropping them in helpful areas, such as on sniper-guarded roofs, which makes it easy to defend key choke points.
But with friends and other communicative allies, you can bring out the best in Dust 514. A well-placed sniper, a healer at the ready, a heavy weapons specialist, and a couple of large tanks make a formidable attack force. There are moments of excitement during close matches, particularly in Domination (one of four by-the-numbers game modes), in which teams wrestle for control of multiple capture nodes. There's joy in joining a small infiltration squad and capturing peripheral nodes as the larger skirmish rages around another node. And because you still must wait for a virus to finish uploading even after you've interacted with the terminal, it's best to stick around for a while, lest the enemy swoop in and undo your hard work. Some of the tensest moments occur in such scenarios, with one team desperately defending a node still in the process of uploading its virus, knowing that the entire match could hinge on the outcome of the battle.

Get ready for some tank-on-tank action.

And so the fun is there, and even common. Yet Dust 514 rarely inspires the kind of controlled chaos that characterizes the best online shooters. Teams move from hot spot to hot spot, shooting each other with tactical assault rifles and autocannons. But with limited vehicle types and many long straightaways on the large maps, there are too few chances for the kinds of heart-stopping conflicts you tell stories about later. Your superior tactics may allow you to triumph, but victory never feels all that victorious. You're rewarded with a win, but not with explosive warfare that could have you shouting triumphant chants with your teammates.
If only the worlds you were fighting for were more intriguing. EVE's humorless space-corporation atmosphere doesn't translate as well on the ground. Brown cliffs and gray military instillations don't instill the sense that you're in a region worth capturing, the low-contrast, monochrome nature of the maps providing you with a place to shoot guns but not much more. Texture resolutions are low enough that you can't always tell whether the full texture has popped in yet, or whether you are looking at a plain placeholder texture. The audio works harder to get the blood flowing, injecting Dust 514 with some much-needed personality. The voice-over that cautions you not to commit suicide in public areas is one such example, though even subtle cues, such as the rubbery buzz that signifies recharging shields, are suitably evocative.

With battlefields this standard and art design this bland, it's amazing that Dust 514 can keep you coming back. And yet it might get its hooks into you, problems aside, almost entirely because of its character persistency. Dust 514 has one of the most extensive and involved skill systems in online shooters, and because it takes significant time to earn skill points, you can become attached to the grind, fighting battle after battle so you may finally earn the right to purchase that fancy laser rifle you've had your eye on.

Eventually, it's possible to make sense of these menus.

Great rewards lurk within this skill system, but to uncover them, you must first make sense of Dust 514's interface, which is convoluted and suffers from various redundancies. Certain menus and features are accessible in numerous ways, indicating that there is plenty of room to streamline in the future. The opening tutorials only make matters worse, burying you under an aggressively unhelpful information dump.
You learn how to sort through the infodump, however, leaving you to develop your character in countless ways. It all starts with your dropsuit, which offers a blank slate to create your own class of soldier. You begin with a few generic dropsuits outfitted in specific ways, but you can exercise your creativity almost from the beginning. The character-building metagame is a tactical delight, ultimately leading you to make careful plans about where skill points are best spent. Sure, you might want to upgrade your dropsuit so you can fit more equipment in it--but what about enhancing your vehicular fittings so that you can steamroll the competition within the safe confines of a hulking tank? It takes time to accumulate the skill points you need, so impulsive spending is a big mistake.
The slow progression can be frustrating, too, leading you to spend real-world money on boosters that increase the rate at which you earn skill points. You can also spend money on weapons and such, presuming you find time more valuable than money. Dust 514 sticks to a pay-to-win model, allowing you to purchase some effective weaponry regardless of its skill requirements. Given the protracted nature of progression, you might think spending real money would therefore be irresistible, but most weapons and items are not permanent (unless you nab a blueprint, which is an item's permanent edition), and must be repurchased each time you perish. That's not usually a big deal when using in-game currency, which flows quickly into your coffers. However, should you purchase equipment--say, a predesigned dropsuit fitting--with real-world money, each death means spending a nominal amount of cash. And that cash can add up.

When in doubt, shoot the orange people.

Such an involved skill metagame and economy can lead to battlefield imbalances, pitting you against formidable foes that you feel too underpowered to face, though you get enough credit for kill assists and other support actions to offset resulting frustrations, at least to a degree. Thankfully, the early hours match you with other novices so that you don't feel immediately crushed by the opposition. Even so, crushed you will often be until you learn the ins and outs of Dust 514, and the occasional spark on the battlefield--along with the extended character progression--might be enough to keep you coming back.
Developer CCP's impressive track record of supporting and enlivening EVE Online inspires confidence in Dust 514's future. For now, however, this online shooter relies too much on its connections to EVE to ignite interest, rather than letting the gameplay speak for itself. It's too bad that the gameplay doesn't have anything more exciting to say--and that Dust 514's most compelling feature matters to a relatively small contingent of players. For everyone else, this is a decent game that gives you a lot to look forward to, but the thrills aren't yet common enough to give Dust 514 a competitive edge in a galaxy saturated with good free-to-play shooters.
   

State of Decay Review

State of Decay is an immersive and suspenseful open-world zombie adventure that shouldn't be missed.

The Good

• Breakable weapons keep the focus on stealth  
• Permadeath for characters ensures that you're careful about taking risks  
• Heavy doses of suspense in a large, immersive open world  
• Convincing stat-driven survival system  
• Welcome focus on interpersonal relationships.

The Bad

• Many glitches mar the overall experience  
• Some key concepts are poorly explained.

State of Decay certainly doesn't waste any time. Mere seconds past the Start screen, it throws you headlong into a zombie apocalypse in full bloom. Tree branch in hand, you clobber the shambling corpses attempting to munch on your screaming camping buddy, and then seek out the few remaining survivors while scrounging for supplies, weapons, and ever-safer home bases. That's just the first 20 minutes, but the core of State of Decay's gameplay never changes as you make your way through its open world and battle an endless cast of zombies. State of Decay finds its soul in the dreary repetition of apocalyptic survival.

You'll probably do more running than fighting. Make sure your cardio's up.

State of Decay's open world manages a substantial degree of immersion, complete with an expansive and occasionally intimidating map and the ability to drive cars freely across the landscape. The cars handle poorly, but the ability to use them to mow down roving zombie swarms offers a malicious satisfaction. Yet this isn't some zombie free-for-all; far from it. In developer Undead Labs' impressive first effort, melee weapons break with frightening ease, ammo runs out quickly, silencers break in the midst of careful attempts at stealth sniping, and even vehicles run out of gas unless refueled. There's a heavy dose of "the real" here, and the game is better for it.
You thus quickly learn to fight zombies only if you absolutely have to in State of Decay, and therein lies much of its appeal. This is not a game about Bruce Campbell badassing about in Evil Dead; it's a celebration of the normal person and all of his or her associated weaknesses. Some of the characters you come across (and can befriend and thus control, if you perform enough tasks for them) have no combat experience at all; they're cooks and gaming buffs, and only through taking them out in the world against the undead hordes can you max out their stats in areas like cardio and shooting to their full seven levels.

This might look cool, but this guy probably got a good zombie chomping two seconds later.

Some befriend you easily; others are outright hostile in their worry that bringing in another mouth to feed only weakens your group's strength. Still, there's enough variety among them to warrant answering almost every cry for help you encounter either through your home base's radio or while roving the land. Ignore a plea, and you'll never know if you missed out on finding a world-class zombie killer or even someone who's just witty enough to keep the morale of your home base up.
Just don't get too attached. Death is permanent in State of Decay, which means that even characters with fully voiced storylines and unique dialogue die forever if you let them get overrun. From there, you can only continue through the eyes of another character you've befriended. Because death is permanent, you spend much of the game not in combat but in the more suspenseful act of slinking through bushes on foot. Indeed, every action carries with it the threat of fatal zombie attraction, such as choosing to ram your way through a locked door or even speeding up your usually slow searches through cabinets and bags with a click of the left bumper.

     

Few things add more tension to State of Decay than the terrifying noise guns make, because a single foolish shot can bring an unmanageable horde upon you. And if your character doesn't have the cardio to outrun them? You'll watch helplessly as the zombies rip his legs from his torso. Unfortunately, considering that there are a host of bugs in State of Decay that make zombies pop up out of nowhere or even send them straight through walls, it's possible that will happen anyway despite your most careful efforts.

Hasn't anyone ever told these people that riding in the bed of a pickup truck is extremely dangerous?

Permanent death is a smart addition, though, since losing characters with high skills across the board carries with it a real sense of loss, particularly if their voice quests and customized responses in some quests led you to believe they were an essential (and thus effectively immortal) character. Sometimes they don't even have to die in the field; if a character you've been controlling sustains enough injuries--a few undead chomps don't result in instant zombification in State of Decay--he'll lie bedridden and useless at your home base. The good news is that the need to rest and switch out characters results in you amassing a balanced group of playable characters anyway; the bad news is that the process isn't explained very well, as with so many of State of Decay's essential systems.
You're never told, for instance, that the supplies you place in your home base's storage to earn reputation (essentially State of Decay's currency) may vanish forever, especially if you log out and return to play several hours later. That's right--the world of State of Decay keeps going even if you're not in it. You're never told about the importance of items like coffee, and you're never warned that prolonged absence from the game can leave the morale of your home base so low that key non-player characters start committing suicide out of despair. For the most part, State of Decay maintains the harrowing lack of direction of its first few minutes throughout the entire game, and that lack of hand-holding means that you'll likely lose more characters than you anticipated as you play.
It's also strange that a game that places such a heavy emphasis on interpersonal relationships should have no cooperative mode. You spend your time with State of Decay alone, joining up with other NPCs only for specialized quests and escort missions that bring other survivors back to your current base camp. It's especially odd since State of Decay starts out with a party of two, suggesting that you'll always have a buddy at your side if need be. While the decision undeniably adds tension to the act of exploration, such solo forays seem foolish considering the circumstances, and the experience may have been better if Undead Labs had let you choose whether or not you wanted a friendly NPC with you as you explored rather than forcing you to go without.

Daytime is scary enough in State of Decay. Night is downright terrifying.

State of Decay serves up a near constant barrage of suspense and immersion that leaves even the briefest jaunts away from your home base tinged with the threat of death. Fair warning: it ends too abruptly with an all-too-obvious nod toward downloadable content or a sequel (perhaps, rumors say, in massively multiplayer online role-playing game form), but an option to return to your latest save file ensures that you can continue foraging for as long as you like. And you should. Its flaws are numerous and impossible to ignore, but in spite of them, State of Decay is a captivating survival adventure set in a bleak and harrowing world.

Kentucky Route Zero - Act II Review

Kentucky Route Zero's refreshingly unconventional tale of a road trip through strange and beautiful parts of America continues in this second act.

The Good

• Challenges typical adventure game conventions  
• Lyrical writing that's laden with meaning  
• Some hauntingly beautiful moments  
• Makes America feel like a magical place worth exploring.

The Bad

• Lack of forward narrative momentum can be frustrating.

Conway delivers antiques. That's his job, and there's something noble, something sacred, about doing the job you're given to do, even in a world that often offers little reward for good, honest work. But this particular delivery is proving to be quite difficult. The first act of Kentucky Route Zero detailed the strange process of locating the titular road, the only way to the address on Dogwood Drive that is Conway's destination. Here in act two, Conway and his companions, an old dog and a woman named Shannon Marquez, find that their travels in an America tinged with magic and sadness are only just beginning. It's a beautiful second chapter in what is shaping up to be a lovely and haunting interactive story.

It's not your typical roadside museum.

That's what Kentucky Route Zero is. It's a point-and-click adventure insofar as you click on things to interact with them or to move Conway around, and the characters are unquestionably on a kind of adventure, but there are no puzzles here, nor do conversations have the circular structure they do in so many adventure games. Conversations flow forward, as they tend to do in real life; you're not going in a loop, asking a series of questions to get important information from other characters, but rather influencing how the conversation moves along. In these lyrical conversations, there's a lot of talk of recessions and loans and unscrupulous corporations and people falling on hard times. This is not the prosperous land of the American dream. It's the America in which many seek, few find, and most always feel a little lost.
The maps you travel along when moving between locations are wonderfully disorienting, making the America of Kentucky Route Zero feel as unfamiliar as any video game fantasy realm that cries out to be explored. As you move along roads, buildings and landmarks emerge suddenly from the impenetrable darkness. On your way from one spot to another, you might stop to have a strange encounter in a roadside diner, or to investigate an abandoned old office. All the while, the musical accompaniment hums with the suggestion of transcendent possibilities around every bend in the road.

The Zero takes you to parts unknown, but you still need to know where you're going.

For much of act two, there's a lack of forward momentum that can be frustrating, though it's supposed to be somewhat frustrating. No sooner do Conway and Shannon find the Zero and hop on it than they are stymied by the overwhelming bureaucracy of the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces, an agency with its offices in a reclaimed cathedral that may have the information Conway needs stashed away somewhere according to its indecipherable filing system. The bureau's office is indicative of Kentucky Route Zero's tendency to mix the mundane and the unusual to create an America that is simultaneously recognizable and foreign. In many ways the office resembles a typical workplace, but for reasons that are forever beyond explanation, the building's third floor is inhabited by bears.
Conway's travels also take him to a self-storage center where he meets a janitor for whom playing old sermon tapes for an absent congregation is not so much a hobby as a calling, and to a museum of dwellings--cabins and houseboats, stables and chicken coops--many of which are inhabited. Continuing a trend from the first act, act two toys with typical notions of playable characters. During the museum sequence, you still guide Conway around the environment as you usually do, but in conversations, you take the role of museum staff, inquiring with (or perhaps interrogating) museum residents about the behavior of Conway and his fellow interlopers. Sections like this foster the feeling that you are not so much playing as Conway as you are observing his story and participating in shaping it.

The America of Kentucky Route Zero is surreal, but the problems people there experience are anything but.

When Conway and Shannon's investigations finally lead them to a way to move forward on their journey, that step forward is unexpected and wondrous, and the final scene plays with time and space in a way that feels dreamlike and magical. The act draws to a close with an image that leaves you eager to learn what other wonders await Conway and company along the Zero. If your travels take you to that mysterious road, you may not find quite what you thought you were looking for, but you'll probably find something you didn't know you needed.

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara Review

Two of Capcom's best arcade beat-'em-ups get HD ports worthy of their heritage, providing a good, if easy, co-op experience.

The Good

• Two sought after arcade games in one package  
• The classic gameplay holds up better than that of their contemporaries  
• RPG elements add necessary depth to the beat-'em-up formula.

The Bad

• Unlimited continues sully the joy of victory  
• Too few enemy types.

The pair of games in Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara collection may very well be the best of its beat-'em-up games from the '90s arcade era, and these ports from Iron Galaxy are the most robust versions of the duo of Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara to date. The 1999 Sega Saturn ports were exclusive to Japan and were unfortunately downgraded from four-player to two-player co-op, but these new HD ports are upscaled versions of the four-player arcade originals with a few modern additions, such as visual filters, unlockable rules, and concept art. Of course, the real draw is the co-op beat-'em-up experience, which has stood the test of time surprisingly well. It's a return to form for these nearly 20-year-old games; for players who remember them, and even those who don't, Chronicles is worth the time it takes to wrangle a party of warriors and suit up for battle.

Destroy the foul displacer beast!

Coming toward the end of Capcom's stint in side-scrolling brawlers, these games are far more advanced than was typical of the genre at the time, when their contemporaries included only temporarily equippable secondary weapons and a small selection of combo attacks and special moves. Capcom took a more role-playing-game-like approach by including elements of level progression, optional equipment, and supply shops. There are branching paths and conditional events, and even the name you give your character determines certain factors of your character's skill and equipment loadout. These nuances, especially in Shadow Over Mystara, with its advanced Street Fighter-like inputs, provide plenty of depth. There are moments when fighting common enemies becomes repetitive, but it's not difficult to find new ways to play to keep the experience fresh; it's often as easy as choosing a different character and exploring their distinct moveset.
You and your co-op cohorts have four character classes to choose from in Tower of Doom: fighter, elf, cleric, and dwarf. Shadow Over Mystara contains those four and adds the thief and magic-user classes to the roster. The classes differ quite noticeably in speed, power, and abilities, and though you can charge your way through the game with any selection thanks to unlimited continues, it's a far more rewarding experience to plan and build a team of complementary characters. The availability of unlimited continues is good in the sense that it lets you see everything the game has to offer, but it ultimately cheapens the thrill of victory.

Typical thief. Picking up loot while everyone else does the dirty work.

Both Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara were designed for co-op play, and though playing solo can be enjoyable, it pales in comparison to the fun that can be had when joining up with a team. Without expert knowledge of the nuanced controls, such as the proper timing of a riposte with the cleric, it's not uncommon to die quite frequently when fighting monsters on your own. Each class's default abilities are detailed in the main menu, but it will take considerable practice to memorize, and consistently perform, some advanced but crucial maneuvers, a task that's more easily done when someone has got your back.
Health pickups are few and far between, but again, the unlimited-continues system negates their worth. Don't bother spending money on health in shops between levels (unless you're chasing a high score); you're fully revitalized the next time you continue after death. It's the nature of a direct arcade port that doesn't include a coin limit. The unlockable Elimination mode does away with the default continue system--entirely. Once it's enabled, you die the first time your HP runs out. This is good for those trying to prove their mastery, but it doesn't really resolve the hand-holding nature of the default system in a desirable fashion.

And people wonder why dragons get such a bad rap.

Of course, judging classic games by modern standards is tricky. Ultimately, it comes down to expectations. Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara were revered upon release, but their classic traits can be off-putting without a nostalgic perspective to give them context. Players who have graduated from the past and are looking for a more advanced experience may view this collection as a lighthearted diversion. However, for anyone who has waited the better part of two decades to play these games, their arrival on modern platforms is nothing short of awesome. Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is a great port of two delightful games, and unsurprisingly, they're the very best versions that you can get your hands on.

Magrunner: Dark Pulse Review

Magrunner: Dark Pulse may owe heavy debts to Portal, but its combination of magnetism and Cthulhu make it an enjoyable game in its own right.

The Good

• Focus on magnetism in puzzles delivers some fun challenges  
• Excellent horror ambience  
• Sharp, intuitive controls.

The Bad

• Flimsy story a little too serious for its own good  
• Many load screens.

The echoes of Portal reverberate so loudly throughout every moment of Magrunner: Dark Pulse that it's easy to find yourself listening for references to cake that never come. Whether it's in the haunting messages scrawled on walls, in the sci-fi nonlethal weapon with a mere two functions, or even in the elevators that shuttle you between almost every level, Magrunner doesn't concern itself with concealing its inspiration. It even has the slightly annoying overabundance of loading screens. But, oh, what an inspiration. At the risk of oversimplification, Magrunner is Portal with Cthulhu, and its tale of magnetism and descents into madness make it a trip worth taking.

The nine-stage tutorial does an excellent job of communicating the ropes.

Alas, it tends to take itself too seriously. You play as Dax Ward, a cocky youth who resembles Infamous' Cole MacGrath in both attitude and appearance (although you rarely get a glimpse of him), and progression hinges on guiding him through a series of tests designed to qualify him for space exploration. There's banter and occasionally snarky lines from his observers who pop up as holograms on his device (one of whom sports a name that's an obvious anagram of "Zuckerberg"), but in ultimately, weightier themes take over, and serve as a sobering reminder that the joys of playing Portal sprang as much from the witty narration of GLaDOS as from the gameplay.
In time, the influence of H.P. Lovecraft's favorite tentacle-bearded overlord begins to corrupt the shiny, garish surfaces of Dax's futuristic world, a move that in itself recalls the ruined Aperture facility of Portal 2. The move naturally allows Magrunner to gain a personality of its own, even though it ultimately amounts to few real differences since the puzzles Dax solves inexplicably continue to function despite the sudden appearance of oily ooze and forbidding iron portals. It's striking stuff, although it's clearly aimed at eliciting cries of "Awesome!" rather than Dead Space-style shivers of fear. Indeed, if anything, there's not quite enough of Cthulhu and his minions in Magrunner.

The story largely progresses through holographic interactions on your Magtech glove.

But when he does encounter them, you can't help but feel that poor old Dax would have been better off than Portal's Chell with a good old-fashioned projectile gun, but he's stuck with the device he brought along with him for his tests. This device is a power glove of sorts that shoots out opposite magnetic charges with clicks of the left and right mouse button. In direct opposition to actual magnetics, likely for the sake of immediate visual comprehension, Magrunner operates on the principle that opposites repel and likes attract. Accurate or not, the concept takes mere seconds to understand, and a brilliantly intuitive tutorial makes the transition even simpler.
Much of Magrunner's fun springs from discovering the possibilities inherent in this setup. To take a simple example, if you stack two of the many cubes scattered about (another Portal reference!), and then use your magtech gun to activate a red charge on the bottom one and a green charge on the top one, the top cube goes flying into the air. The resulting force propels you upward if you're standing on it or shatters glass obstacles if the cube is flying solo. Greater subtleties abound in the decision to give individual cubes their own magnetic fields of varying strengths (made visible by pressing the "F" button), adding far greater challenges than simply stacking two cubes on top of one another and hoping for the best.

While the narrative sags in parts, Magrunner gets the tone of the Cthulhu mythos right.

But Magrunner isn't just about blocks; puzzle completion often depends on using yourself or (later) a lovable robotic dog named Newton as a trigger. There's no falling damage or crouching, and secondary elements such as catapults and moving platforms allow greater challenges as the game progresses. The puzzles themselves present their share of "Aha!" moments so familiar to Valve's own puzzler, although they're balanced with an equal number of snoozers. They're also fairly accessible, and in general, the challenges don't become worthy of the word "challenge" until the final third or so of the game. A pity, then, that that's when some of the limitations of the presentation start to reveal themselves, such as turrets that kill you with gunshots so silent that you may not even realize what hit you.
If you're hungry for an extra helping of Portal with a different topping, Magrunner should satisfy your appetite for a single 11-hour playthrough--certainly enough to justify its asking price of 20 bucks on Steam. Indeed, its magnetic themes work so well that you might walk away hoping that any third adventure of Chell's will feature some combination of Magrunner's magnetics and her own familiar portals. An ominous final scene isn't impressive enough to make up for the absence of a GLaDOS figure, but as a first-person puzzler, Magrunner: Dark Pulse manages to combine its myriad borrowed and original pieces into a satisfying whole.

Deadpool Review

Deadpool tries to hide its many faults behind the protagonist's buoyant personality, but it doesn't take long for the bigger problems to surface.

The Good

• Unexpected references to classic franchises  
• Some funny jokes.

The Bad

• Camera and control issues in combat  
• Challenge comes from flooding the screen with enemies.

Deadpool's defining characteristic seems to be his uncensored personality. But if you spend time with this nearly immortal superhero, you discover that his most important traits are the scars he's burdened with. He dons a skintight suit that covers every inch of his disfigured body, complete with a mask that lacks even a basic mouth hole. However, Deadpool's scars aren't limited to physical imperfections. His mind is as damaged as his monstrous skin. Psychotic bouts affect his every mood, creating a character whose incredible powers are compromised by the hardships he carries. This dichotomy is realized all too well in this action-heavy beat-'em-up. Playful fight sequences are hampered by underlying flaws in the core mechanics, dragging this off-kilter adventure down from its promising perch.

Wolverine and other Marvel mainstays make brief cameos.

Deadpool is a character whose upfront nature makes him impossible to ignore. Always ready with a lecherous quip, he keeps a running diary of his darkest thoughts as you slice through a ragtag assortment of the Marvel universe's B-tier baddies. His unabashed misogyny and incessant sexual jokes are puerile at best, but as disgusting as he can be, you can't accuse him of being insincere. The jokes feel natural coming from his hidden lips. He's the embodiment of extreme baditude, but instead of sounding like the cynical mind of someone in the marketing department, he instead mirrors the inane ramblings of a teenage boy. And even if your tastes clash with Deadpool's, the sheer wealth of attempted humor means something should tickle your funny bone. Disliking cows because they're only an "l" and an "n" away from being clowns might just be ridiculous enough to put a smile on your red-nose-hating face.
Just because Deadpool enjoys talking nonstop does not mean that he confronts enemies with pacifism on the mind. The way out of any situation involves copious amounts of slicing and dicing, with the occasional shooting thrown in for good measure. Deadpool bounces around tightly constructed environments like he's battling attention deficit disorder, knocking one enemy into the air and then delivering a whirling dervish to a group of would-be attackers before firing his plasma gun at a far-off sniper. It's a screaming-fast confluence of steel and spandex, so fast that the camera often lags behind your actions. Throw in a magical teleportation move, and you spend as much time trying to get your bearings as you do unleashing hell on your dim-witted foes.

Cartoon animals provide a sharp change for the merc with a mouth.

Thankfully, fights are usually easy enough that you can dispatch the horde of attackers by just gleefully mashing the buttons. Your only defensive maneuver is the aforementioned teleport, so you whale away with your swords or guns and then vanish in a flash before you get your comeuppance. It's a smart technique that sadly doesn't always work because of finicky controls. Deadpool may not do what you want, when you want him to, so you wind up with a face full of fist instead of disappearing in a cloud to safety. Such unresponsiveness can lead to frustrating situations, but you can usually stay alive if you get even a little breathing room. Regenerating health is Deadpool's most handy superpower, so you can get back up to full strength pretty easily if you keep one eye glued to your life bar.
Fights are fast and bloody affairs that urge you to mix up your attacks to earn the highest rewards from your downed attackers. Dropped currency can be used to purchase upgrades in the pause menu, giving you access to new weapons, handheld explosives, and a variety of character enhancements. It's a system that urges you to experiment so you find the best weapons for your style (the slow and powerful hammers suit a different style than the fast but weak sais, for instance), and you unlock new techniques deep into the adventure. Because of the well-paced skill unlocks and the immediacy of the action, Deadpool is usually a pleasant enough, turn-off-your-brain kill-a-thon.

A conversation on a social networking site provides some silly laughs.

It's when the game tries to ramp up the challenge that things take a turn for the worse. When the game wants your back against the wall, it floods the screen with attackers. Deadpool may carry guns, but they're clearly secondary to his melee attacks, so a few far-away gunners can sap away your life in a hurry. Couple the difficulty of aiming while in a jam with the limited ammunition, and you may find yourself out of long-range killing instruments in the middle of a fight. Dozens of enemies, of both the gun-toting and sword-swinging variety, may try to stop your beating heart, and it's in the most hectic moments that the game becomes frustrating. Unkind checkpoints don't do the game any favors, either. If you fall to the last enemy, you may have to carry out the prolonged encounter all over again, changing the simple fun into pure tedium.
Despite the combat flaws, Deadpool makes a valiant attempt at being entertaining. A few brief diversions from the core action add some much-needed variety to the unceasing killing. Nintendo's most timeless franchises receive unexpected homages, and there's even a brief turret sequence that delivers a silly take on this tired trope. Who would have thought a Sentinel's detached shoe could be so fun? However, there are just too many flaws in the overarching mechanics to make this a consistently satisfying endeavor. Deadpool tries to hide its problems behind an exuberant personality, but all the talking in the world can't smooth over some fundamental flaws.

Company of Heroes 2 Review

Company of Heroes 2 is an entertaining strategy game that excels when it pulls out all the stops.

The Good

• Many matches are a test of skill and resolve  
• Theater of War missions offer a variety of great challenges  
• Winter maps demand different tactics  
• The best missions emphasize the despair of war  
• Fantastic production values get the adrenaline pumping.

The Bad

• It's too easy to exploit the campaign's endless conscripts  
• Balance issues and grind to contend with  
• Some tedious missions showcase inconsistent enemy behavior.

It is said that war never changes; war's intensity, its perils, its world-shifting consequences remain unflinchingly true. Company of Heroes 2 demonstrates this weary axiom by overwhelming your senses with the heat and light of battle--battle that closely recalls the kind of skirmishes you once triumphed over in the original Company of Heroes. This is not a real-time strategy revolution, but a fun revival of enduring mechanics that pulls you into the trenches of the eastern front.

There is no shame in retreating so that you may live to fight another day. Unless you are Russian.

Given the series' penchant for explosive multiplayer confrontations, you might be inclined to overlook Company of Heroes 2's campaign, though you would be missing out on some of the game's better moments in doing so. The narrative is not, however, a return to form for developer Relic Entertainment, whose Homeworld games brought RTS storytelling to great heights. Given the excellence of many of the campaign missions, it's disappointing that the surrounding cutscenes can't meet their levels of excitement, try as they might. It's best to ignore the decidedly old-looking cinematics, the cast's uncomfortable accents, and the cliched attempts at dramatizing a strained soldier-commander relationship. Instead, let the missions themselves do the talking; the best ones communicate the hopelessness and despair the cinematics fail to capture.
Even early missions impress upon you the disposability of your troops, frequently commanding you to retreat when you are overrun, all while you order in one nameless conscript squad after another. Interesting new mechanics, too, effectively communicate the helplessness of an individual combatant, and not only during the campaign, but in AI skirmishes, online multiplayer, and elsewhere. On snowy maps, the fearsome rush of cold and wind don't just make for a chilly sight, but also make for chilly soldiers. Soldiers feeling the frosty sting need a warm fire (provided by a resourceful engineer or pioneer) or the confines of an available structure to avoid succumbing to a frigid death. Infantry trudge slowly through drifts of snow, and crossing an icy pond could prove fatal if the weight of a tank--or the eruption of a grenade--proves too much for the flimsy ice to handle.

A flaming tank is not the kind of warmth a soldier needs to stay alive.

And so you don't confront just the forces of the enemy, but the forces of nature too, and make important tactical considerations in the process. Do you risk sending unprotected soldiers to a desolate capture point, hoping they can make the trek without freezing to death? If it's later in a skirmish or multiplayer match, you might have half-tracks for transport purposes, but the possibility of an early lead might make it worth taking a gamble with a few squads. The weather is not an issue on every map, but when it's a concern, your usual tactical approach (say, leading a few squads around the map to capture victory points while advancing far enough to build heavy tanks) may not work well, if at all.
The campaign excels when making you feel the heartlessness of your commander's orders. Voice-overs frequently remind you that you are sending troops out to die for the motherland, and the endless stream of free conscripts most missions gift you on medium difficulty reinforce the idea that no one individual is indispensable. Unfortunately, this huge supply of free infantry makes it too easy to win by steamrolling across the map using sheer numbers. It's far more satisfying to win a mission by sending out multiple, carefully constructed control groups across the map and micromanaging their abilities. (Some infantry can toss Molotovs, and snipers can fire debilitating rounds, for instance.) Most campaign missions don't require that kind of high-end strategizing, however.
Even with the use of free soldiers, campaign missions still manage to be varied and intense. Some of the intensity comes from the chaos of tanks lighting up the map and artillery demolishing entire buildings that then collapse before your very eyes. These are spectacular moments from a visual perspective in a sharp-looking game, but rarely are such sights just for show. When a squad hits the ground, pinned by oppressive fire, it looks authentic, of course, but it also hinders your progress. A Katyusha's rockets might hit a structure and make a grand fireworks show, but that structure may be in the way of your actual target, forcing you to fully destroy it so your rockets can reach their mark--or to find a better position. Company of Heroes 2 is a one-two punch of powerful production values and nail-biting confrontations. Just bear in mind that you can't experience the fireworks if you are still using Windows XP, because the game doesn't support that operating system. Nor, for that matter, does it support dual video cards in Crossfire or SLI configuration.

Armor is vital, but you need infantry to capture victory points.

Company of Heroes 2 excels when it sticks to its standard strategic formula. In a typical match, you start with a squad of engineers or pioneers and construct the necessary structures to pump out new units. You don't send out resource gatherers to collect wood and iron as you might in a traditional RTS game, but rather move infantry quickly across the map to capture victory points. At such points, you might build add-ons that increase your flow of fuel and munitions, which are the resources, along with manpower, required to create units. It takes a lot of time for the campaign to introduce its resource-gathering mechanics, however, so if you're new to the series, don't expect the campaign to do an entirely great job of getting you prepared to take on human opposition.
The campaign, however, isn't the only way to get in some offline practice. As is usual for an RTS game, you can play skirmishes against the AI, but there's another suite of options called the Theater of War. The Theater includes a number of cooperative and solo challenges, which are typically much more challenging than the campaign. While the campaign is focused on the Russians, the Theater includes both USSR and German missions, some of which are wildly intense and entertaining.

    
A Crimean mission, for instance, lulls you into a sense of security as you lead your German infantry from one victory point to another, only for legions of Russian tanks to invade your main base, less concerned with map control than with attacking the heart of your operation. Managing various infantry squads while using antitank weaponry and heavy armor to fend off the aggressive Russian army requires you to keep every scuffle under tight control. This is the kind of entertaining test of wits that shows Company of Heroes 2 at its strongest, and this intensity is replicated in other solo and co-op missions that have you holding off tank invasions and holding your own in the unforgiving winter.

Running into campaign trouble? Order in more conscripts.

Company of Heroes 2 occasionally deviates from formula, likely for the sake of variety, but reveals some fundamental drawbacks in doing so. Sniper-focused missions in both the campaign and the Theater are a bit of a slog in and of themselves, but also showcase odd enemy AI behavior, with squads moving out of the line of fire only to return to their starting positions, or simply not responding at all. Luckily, another puzzle-type mission is more successful, and has you hunting down a tank with a small selection of units that must scour the map for appropriate antitank weaponry. This game of cat and mouse is then contrasted by the following mission that concludes with an all-out assault on the citadel at the heart of Poznan. Having big tanks to play with is an appropriate reward for dancing around a similar armored hulk in the previous mission.
You might see all of this offline and cooperative play as the lead-up to Company of Heroes 2's multiplayer suite, and it's online that you see some of strategy gaming's finer moments, along with a few nods to modern gamification that don't improve the online game in any meaningful way. Balance is key to successful multiplayer matches, and the game mostly hits the right marks in this regard, with some exceptions. A miniature swarm of Panzer 4s or a couple of half-tracks stuffed with snipers can ruin your day in a hurry, for instance, and it takes a good bit of high-level online play before you can start managing your resources and find ways to counter units that seem too powerful.

Pinned troops are useless troops.

Once you've reached that point, you've probably earned a relatively high rank--meaning you have also earned persistent unit bonuses, such as increased accuracy for your antitank guns, or increased damage for your T-34s. It's easy to bristle at the thought of units unbalanced by design, and at the need to grind levels for such small perks. Luckily, the bonuses are too small to affect you as you learn the ropes. By the time you level up high enough for the small enhancements to matter, you'll be playing opponents who are on equal footing, more or less.
What fun it is to face evenly matched competition. You see human competitors exploiting mechanics the AI never can, such as the authentic line-of-sight mechanic, which unveils the fog of war based on what the unit should be expected to see, rather than a set radius. A mortar team in the right nook can wreak havoc on your progress, forcing you to fire position-revealing flares or order expensive recon aircraft lest you continue to get blown to bits. The recon comes courtesy of your chosen commander, who affords you certain abilities you can perform once you earn enough commander points during the match. You might find air recon useful--but ordering in an artillery barrage or a flamethrower tank could also change the tide of battle.

Put a tiger in your Tiger tank.

Online battles can be wonderful. Your decisions from the very beginning of a match can have far-reaching consequences, from the way you handle your engineer or pioneers, to your ability to get infantrymen into cover, to the effectiveness of your flanking maneuvers. Careful planning can culminate in a tense standoff at a single victory point, with your tank rolling in at the last minute to pick off the remaining enemy shock trooper vying for point control. But heartbreak also comes, often in the form of a flame-spewing half-track capable of burning multiple squads to a crisp.
Of course, such multiplayer mayhem recalls the original Company of Heroes' best moments, and you couldn't accuse this sequel of reaching the heights of the classic that spawned it. This familiarity is unlikely to breed much contempt, however, given Company of Heroes 2's consistent level of enjoyment. Its barrage of online and offline skirmishes doesn't always hit its mark. But when it finds its target, Company of Heroes 2 delivers a loud and mighty payload.