games

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:16:01 +0100

The TimeSplitters series has, up to this point, been a bit of a missed opportunity. The games are first-person shooters that place an extreme emphasis on sheer variety and fast action. But until now, the series has been limited to four players, unless you've been lucky enough to live on a TimeSplitters 2-loving LAN. But with the third iteration, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, the series is finally making good on the great ideas that developer Free Radical had back in 2000. While it might not pull you away from some of the more engrossing action games out on the market, TimeSplitters' charm and "something for everybody" mentality means that you're almost certain to find something to like in Future Perfect.

While the game's bread is buttered by its multiplayer focus, it still has a very cool story mode. Though it's not going to test your skills or patience to the fullest--expect to blow through the medium difficulty in six hours or so--the story is compelling and funny. You're cast as a character named Cortez, and you start out by returning from a quest where you had to secure a collection of crystals that power a time machine. Once you return with the crystals, you're sent hopping through time in an attempt to prevent mankind's current conflict--a losing battle against creatures of unknown origin--from ever happening. As you leap around throughout the past, you're put into a lot of different wacky scenarios. What starts as a futuristic battle sends you back to the early 1900s a lot, as well as to the 2200s (which, in this game's timeline, is still the past), and yes, to 1994. Each time period has you doing something different, too. In 1969, you'll team up with the swinging superspy, Harry Tipper, as he attempts to stop a Bond villain-type from launching a missile from a moving train. In 1994, you'll team up with a short-skirted girl (complete with a T-shirt that reads "slut") to infiltrate a zombie-filled mansion.

The coolest part about the story mode is that Cortez, who initially seems like a very Riddick-like action hero, is really a very likable character. And you'll be seeing a lot of him, too, because thanks to the constant mishaps involved in time travel, you'll always be running into yourself. Each time period has you working together--with yourself--in some way. Sometimes it's a simple cutscene where your future self will pass you a key and then run off. Other times, you'll be providing cover fire for your past self to make sure that your past self eventually gets to become your...future self. The interactions between different versions of Cortez are inventive and often very funny, too. You'll always be looking forward to the next wormhole. It's a shame that the game's conclusion doesn't play off this absurd level of paradoxes a little better, but the stuff you encounter along the way is cool enough to make up for that. You can also play the story mode with a second player, which makes for some solid co-op.

The game also has a lot of other single-player features. The arcade mode has a league option, where you'll go up against bots in a variety of matches in an effort to earn trophies. The challenge mode also has some unique things you can do alone, like engage in robot cat racing, throw bricks through windows, and more. Some of these activities are fun, but most of them are a little shallow. Regardless, all of this single-player trophy-gathering ties back into the multiplayer, as you'll constantly be unlocking new characters and options for the game's thick list of multifriend fun. There are 150 characters in all, each ranked in four different categories, like speed and stamina, but you can turn those stats off if you're looking for a perfectly level playing field.

When it comes to the multiplayer first-person shooting, TimeSplitters offers up a pretty hefty list of gameplay modes to choose from. Great deals of them are simple deathmatch variants, like vampire, where you must kill other players on a regular basis to prevent a meter from draining, which in turn kills you. There's also thief, which moves the scoring to coin collecting, rather than killing. Team games are represented with capture the bag and assault (an objective-based team game that splits you up into offensive and defensive units), among others, though the game only comes with four different assault-ready maps and two of them are a little simplistic.

You can play all of these games with bots of varying skill levels, though the bots are better gunmen than they are tacticians. In assault, for example, the bots on your team often seem to completely ignore the objectives and just shoot it out with the other team, leaving players to do all the dirty work. You can build your own set of bots, which allows you to adjust their skill level from one to five stars. The default three-star rating is easy to beat if you're at all handy with the headshots. Bumping up to five stars gives the game more of a challenge, but really, you're better off playing against people.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:01:59 +0100

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 continues to look like a big improvement over last year's mobile game, which was developed by Digital Bridges (now reformed as I-Play). The 3D title performed remarkably well on the midrange LG VX7000, obviously having benefited from its association with EA's PSP version of the game. Boasting unique swing control and downloadable content, Tiger Woods 06 will likely represent a leap forward for the series.

The console Tiger Woods games are known for their unique swing mechanic. You use your controller's analog sticks to determine a shot's accuracy and power. The mobile version's control approximates the fluidity of this system by letting you guide the swing motion with the forward and back keys on your navigation pad. You can also change the shot direction and length, of course. An overhead view can be selected for this purpose.

We played Tiger on the LG VX7000, but encountered downloadable content usually reserved for V Cast devices. Five PGA courses and five PGA golfers, including retired legends Arnold Palmer and Jack Niclaus, were playable after 30-second downloads. Each item uses around 100k of phone space, though, so those with older phone models might have to budget a bit. Whether the final version of the game dynamically manages content remains to be seen.

It must be said that Tiger Woods 06 is presented extremely well. It's in this department that the title has made the greatest developmental strides since last we saw it. The courses are rendered beautifully, and each shot is shown from several camera angles--all without visible signs of slowdown. Some of the commentator vocal clips from the PSP version have made their way into the mobile game and add a lot of ambience.

It's safe to say that Tiger Woods 06 is shaping up extremely well. Featuring both Tiger and Vijay, this game's got some big names to live up to. Look for our review of the game later this quarter.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Superman Returns

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:49:44 +0100

Superman's great at saving the world, but he sure hasn't had much success when it comes to video games. The disastrous Superman 64 was no doubt the low point in the Man of Steel's video game history, but even his highs haven't been all that high. Superman Returns: The Videogame was originally slated to release alongside the movie in June (which had its own tumultuous production saga), but it wasn't ready in time and the release date was pushed back to coincide with the DVD of the movie going on sale. Despite the delay, the game still doesn't seem to be ready, but that hasn't stopped it from being released. It's certainly not as bad as Superman 64, but it's still plenty bad. Superman Returns does do a few things well, and it does manage to be entertaining for the first hour or so, but it's all downhill from there.

For a game that's supposed to be a movie tie-in, Superman Returns sure doesn't have a whole lot in common with the film. After fighting off a rogue meteor shower and learning how to use his super abilities, Superman zooms off to outer space to find that his home planet has indeed been destroyed. On the way home he runs across Mongrul, does a bit of fighting, and then it's back to Earth. Here he'll battle Metallo, Bizarro, and, eventually, someone who was actually in the film, Lex Luthor. People who saw the movie and those who didn't will be equally frustrated with the storytelling. If you saw the movie, you'll be puzzled as to what the heck any of this has to do with the film, and if you didn't see Superman Returns, there's little chance that any of the short cutscenes will explain exactly what the heck Lex is doing with the crystals, much less why Mister Mxyzptlk wants Superman to race around the city.

Superman Returns takes place in Superman's adopted home city, Metropolis. The city consists of several large islands that lie in the middle of a lake surrounded by mountains. The city is largest on the Xbox 360, as the PlayStation 2 and Xbox are missing one of the smaller islands. You're free to go almost anywhere, from street level to thousands of feet above even the tallest building. The view from high up in the sky is breathtaking at first, and it's fun to zoom down through the clouds and wind through city streets and in between the skyscrapers at breakneck speeds. However, the fun quickly wears off when you realize that short of endlessly touring the city, there's little else to do. You can fly around and rescue kittens that are hidden around Metropolis, and that's about it. You can't fly underwater, and you can't walk in buildings.

So, other than rescuing kittens, what is there to do? Not a whole heck of a lot. The game is divided into chapters comprised of a series of objectives that only appear by flying around aimlessly until you get close enough to one to trigger it. As is evident by the way the game drags on and on, there are certainly plenty of objectives--there's just not much variety to them. Early in the game most of your time will be spent fighting robots--robots that walk, robots that roll around, and robots that fly. Later you'll be fighting evil monsters and even dragons. (If you're wondering why on Earth there are dragons in the game, you're not alone.) This monotony is occasionally broken up when you are charged with putting out building fires. And if you play long enough, you'll get to fight bad guys and put out fires. The segments where you race Mister Mxyzptlk or play as Bizarro help break up the monotony a tiny bit, but they don't count as progress toward completing the game, so there's little point in wasting time on them.

Being that Superman is mostly invincible, he doesn't have a health bar; however, the city of Metropolis does. The bad guys will torch trees, throw cars, and pummel civilians. Any damage to the city diminishes the health bar, and when it's empty, it's game over. This is a novel approach to indirectly making Superman vulnerable, but it also restricts the game's "sandbox" feel. Anytime you decide to smash something or set a car ablaze, you're just hurting yourself. Imagine a first-person shooter where you could shoot yourself in the head or a racing game where you could pour sugar in your own gas tank--that's kind of what it's like here. It sure might sound like fun to take the giant globe off of the Daily Planet and toss it into a group of cars, but the pesky thought of "What would Superman do?" and the negative effect your action will have on the city is always in the back of your mind. You can play as Bizarro and wreak some havoc, but causing trouble's just not that much fun when you're being forced to do it.

The combo-based fighting system lets you string together a fairly impressive number of moves, and after you complete a series of objectives, you'll earn new combos. Unfortunately, you don't really need many of these new moves, and you'll quickly find yourself either using the same combos over and over or just resorting to mashing buttons and hoping for the best. Superman also has his trusty heat vision, super breath, and of course his freeze breath, all of which can be powered up by finishing objectives. Some enemies are weak against a particular power, though a few are impervious to them, and there's even a creature that grows stronger should you try to use one of your powers on it. Freezing and burning enemies is actually pretty fun, but unless you like blowing enemies a half mile away and then chasing them down to pummel them, Superman's super breath is almost totally worthless--you only need use it a couple of times.

The combat sounds entertaining, and at first it is, but a number of problems quickly render it frustrating and uninteresting. Because you're fighting the same handful of enemies hundreds of times, the real challenge comes not from the enemies themselves, but from trying to stay interested in what's going on. The controls aren't overly complex, but it's still tough to get them to respond. Using the D pad to toggle between powers on the fly is frustrating, and it's tough to aim your attacks, too. You can lock on to enemies, but short of removing the target lock adjusting your position and hoping to lock on to another enemy, there's no way to change your focus during a battle. This is particularly problematic when you're in the air and getting attacked by a dragon that's just offscreen, or when you're fighting in a crowd, trying to punch a robot but wailing on an innocent civilian instead. Collision detection is dreadful, so sometimes you'll be hitting a bad guy (or getting hit by one) even though no punches are actually landing. For some unknown reason Superman can't jump. It's a pain to land, and Superman's inability to jump makes it tough to easily get to any enemy that's on top of a car or standing on the other side of a bush. When Superman can't get around a bit of shrubbery, you know things aren't going too well. An awful camera doesn't help matters much, either.

Despite the game's declaration that the camera is smart (it says so in the game options), it does a terrible job of following the action. You're frequently obscured by enemies, cars, and buildings. If you can see yourself, then chances are pretty good that you won't be able to find whatever you're fighting. Enemy icons will appear on one side of a building when the actual enemy is on the other side, and sometimes the camera gets so low to the ground that you can't see your target through all the traffic and pedestrians on the screen. A handy radar system helps alleviate this problem somewhat, but it's still a problem. Racing against Mister Mxyzptlk wasn't all that fun to start with, but it's also hindered by the camera, which works just fine for cruising the skies looking for trouble, but is considerably less friendly when moving at high speeds.

And then there are the boss battles, which are so bad they deserve special mention. If you were excited by the game's trailer, in which Superman took on a giant version of Metallo, you're in for a disappointment. Sure, you still get to fight him, but it's considerably less interesting than in the trailer. But that's not the real problem. The lengthy fight ends with Superman having to divert a missile--but the game never tells you how. After chasing it and getting close, you can shoot your heat vision at it, but that doesn't work, so it explodes, and then you get to do the entire fight again. Let's say on the next attempt you try to fly past the missile and hope that it locks on. Nope, you're dead. Try again. It turns out that all you have to do is get right next to it, which triggers a cutscene. Who knew that all you had to do to stop a missile was trigger a cutscene? Another boss fight sees you trying to save three blimps, that apparently are filled with hydrogen and highly explosive, from a group of flying dragons. After trying and failing to save each blimp, it turns out that you just need to save one, and the sequence suddenly ends for no discernable reason. Last but not least, you get to take on tornados. Yes, you'll be fighting tornados. You've got to blow them out over the water, freeze them, and put out fires caused by lighting. That's not so bad, but the game also implores you to save three injured citizens during all this madness. After wasting your time rescuing the injured, your reward is...nothing. You'll find that you can skip that part entirely. If you're not insane yet, the next sequence should do it for you. You're suddenly inside the tornado and you've got to "stabilize the atmosphere" by alternately shooting your heat and freeze breath while being sure to dodge all the garbage flying around inside. Once again, if you fail you have to do the entire tornado sequence over again. Only something like this could have you longing for the realistic scenarios from the movie Twister.

There's little reason to see the game through to its conclusion, much less ever play it again if you manage to finish it once. At least you can get some points out of the whole dreadful experience if you're playing the 360 version. Points are awarded for beating noteworthy bosses, and you can earn a couple of hundred points during the normal course of play. A few achievements, such as flying 10,000 miles or playing for 12 hours, will only be earned by those with a high tolerance for pain. To add insult to injury, the game tells you that you're 25 percent complete in less than an hour, but it ends up going on for a solid 10 mind-numbing hours.

Superman Returns isn't a particularly good-looking game, especially on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Sure, it's impressive to see such a large city on the older systems, but so much detail had to be sacrificed to make it happen that you've got to wonder if it was worth it. The city's slightly smaller, there's very little variety to the buildings, and each structure looks hideous up close. The Xbox 360 version looks quite a bit nicer, but along with the larger city and the more varied and detailed buildings come technical problems. Everything looks cool from high above the city, but as you zoom downward the texture pop-in and the drawn-in are very noticeable and distracting. The frame rate also regularly stutters and stammers. Even the FMV cutscenes are choppy.

All versions of the game have plain, ugly citizens, boring-looking cars, and a lack of destructible objects. You can randomly break up the bricks and glass on a few buildings (with damage effects that look too similar), and you can smash up cars and grab light poles, but not much else. The fire effects look pretty good, but when things like cars explode, you'll actually see them disappear for a second while the damaged model loads. One thing that won't disappear, at least some of the time, is the onscreen text that shows you what you're supposed to be doing. You'll be racing against the clock, and the whole time, "GO!" is emblazoned across the screen.

The best thing the game has going for it is the excellent orchestrated soundtrack that plays in the background. It doesn't sound like the movie's score, but it's still quite good, and given the quality of the rest of the game's audio, it should have been more prominently featured. Kevin Spacey, Brandon Routh, and Kate Bosworth all reprise their roles from the film, but their participation in the game is so minimal that you hardly even notice. Routh's performance is hampered by a horrendous script that has him admonishing his enemies with cheesy one-liners as he fights them--his dialogue during the Bizarro encounters is downright embarrassing. The rest of the sound effects sound OK, but they're repeated ad nauseam.

It's hard to shake the feeling that EA viewed the movie's DVD release as the last chance to capitalize on the movie license and was going to ship this game finished or unfinished, good or bad. It looks as though they finally settled on unfinished and bad. Superman Returns doesn't have much to do with the movie of the same name; the plot is a bunch of nonsense; and the game just doesn't capture the essence of what has made Superman such an enduring icon. If you're an Xbox 360 owner who has played the Superman Returns demo, you've already played the best part of this game. It's fun to fly above the city and then zoom down at the speed of sound to zigzag among the buildings, and it's even fun to pound on robots for a short time. But the fun quickly ends courtesy of the bland graphics, lousy controls, boring combat, and repetitive objectives.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Superman Returns: Fortress of Solitude

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:17:40 +0100

Games based on movies tend to come in the form of generic action romps, especially on the Game Boy Advance, so any departure from the norm is generally looked upon as a good thing. When fans of the man of steel go looking for a video game with their hero in it, they expect to find a game that lets them fly over Metropolis, pummel bad guys, and put the hero's superpowers to use in ways that are visually pleasing. They don't expect a puzzle game where Superman's powers are used as cheats to help solve logic problems. For that reason alone, most people are going to take a pass on this game. The few that don't will discover a passable puzzler that offers a decent selection of Sudoku-style puzzles, which also just so happens to bear the Superman Returns logo and feature a few still images taken from the recent movie.

In all, there are about 90 different puzzles to solve, spread out over 20 chapters. The rules sometimes vary, but they're all very similar to sudoku. In a nutshell, you have to place symbols in such a way that you complete rows or entire boards without placing two of the same symbol into the same row or column. Solving each puzzle is basically a process of elimination, but that process becomes more time consuming as later puzzles become larger and larger. Ultimately, time is the main villain that you have to worry about. You only have a limited amount of time to complete all of the puzzles in each chapter. If you run out of time, you have to start the chapter from the beginning. The time limits are pretty tight, so you'll probably have to attempt each chapter multiple times before you're able to see patterns and make moves at the quick pace that's necessary to solve the puzzles in the allocated time. Superman's powers are available to help somewhat, in that you can use them on a limited basis to ask for hints, generate new pieces, or stop the timer for a few seconds.

While solving puzzles is generally what the game is about, each chapter also includes a brief shoot-'em-up stage along the lines of Gradius or R-Type. In these simple side-scrolling stages, you have to shoot villains with Superman's heat vision and freeze breath and then collect the crystals they leave behind. They're definitely not as intricate, challenging, or visually intense as what you'd find in a full-fledged shooter, but these stages do serve to give your brain a break every few puzzles or so. Of course, they also serve as a needling reminder that this isn't an action game.

As bizarre as it is to play a Superman-themed puzzle game, the concept otherwise seems to work. The puzzles are clever, and working through them is definitely a good way to keep your mind sharp. The graphics and audio are bare bones, but they get the job done. Pieces are colorful and sharp, while the music and sound effects consist of some symphonic snippets taken from the movie score and an assortment of generic beeps and tones. Your reward for completing a chapter is the ability to look at a still image featuring a scene from the movie. That's not much of a bonus, but it's more than some puzzle games offer.

If you're looking for an action game based on Superman Returns, you're probably not going to want to pick this one up--though, to be fair, you're definitely not going to want to pick up any other version of Superman Returns either. Nevertheless, if you enjoy puzzles or are trying to get a youngster to play something that's mentally challenging, you might want to check out Superman Returns: Fortress of Solitude.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Spore Mac

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:08:04 +0100

The E3 2008 Business & Media Summit is under way at the LA Convention Center, and one of the games we headed for first was Spore, the upcoming hybrid strategy game from the mind of designer Will Wright and his hardworking team at Maxis. The game is extremely far along in development, and we took the opportunity to try out some of the space-based gameplay, as well as some of the editing tools. Interestingly, the demo version of the game we saw was the Mac version, which is scheduled to ship day-and-date simultaneously with the PC version.

You can jump into just about any of Spore's evolutionary phases if you prefer to skip ahead and not play the game from the primordial ooze. We skipped ahead to space-based gameplay by quickly choosing a race of critters and then choosing a predesigned spacecraft. When your race of critters enters the space race, your designed ship will be launched with much ballyhoo in a brief cinematic sequence, and you'll be given the chance to play through a brief tutorial that requires you to fly your ship through glowing orbs hovering over a handful of cities on your home planet. The idea is to get you used to the control scheme, which lets you right-click your mouse to move to where your cursor is pointing and use your scrollwheel to simultaneously zoom in and out of your world view, as well as to change your ship's altitude.

Once you've completed this brief tutorial mission, you'll be awarded your captain's badge and be fully cleared to travel to deep space, which you can do simply by zooming out so far that your home planet becomes a tiny orb--this will jump you and your ship to an outer space view. You can then start clicking to fly to different planets, which may contain various objectives. When we first made our jump into space, we noticed that our home planet had a small moon orbiting it. By heading straight to this moon, we were given a brief mission to follow our onboard radar (a toggle-able power in one of our ship's ability menus, which also includes weapons and miscellaneous tools, such as tractor beams that can be used to abduct other life-forms) to a crash-landed spaceship, which we then scanned for data. As you explore the galaxy, you'll receive other missions in the form of distress calls and, eventually, diplomacy with other races. Apparently, the primary goal of the space-based game is to discover the center of the universe. (As it turns out, your home planet is located on the outer fringe.) This voyage of discovery can be completed in a few hours and will eventually let you discover certain "truths" about your race's development and place in the universe. It will end with the acquisition of a fantastic new power that EA's developers declined to discuss. If you care to, you'll be able to continue to explore the universe after completing the space game--but that will take a while, since the space game will offer, according to EA, half a million planets to explore.

We also took some time to try out the game's editing tools to create various vehicles, such as spaceships and land vehicles. The tools seem just as easy to use as the creature creator (which has been available to the public for some time now). They let you stretch and morph your vehicle's chassis however you please, then add wheels, cockpits, wings, and weapons by spending a limited number of points that are represented in a status bar on the right of the screen. For instance, more wheels on a land vehicle make it move faster but leave you fewer points overall to equip heavier weapons. In addition, the vehicle customization tools let you paint any and all parts of your vehicles with various colors, gradients, and patterns, and you'll even have the option to pull up any existing creature in your database and match your vehicles to that creature's skin tone with a single click.

We're told that the game's social networking tools are constantly being worked on. The "Sporecast" functionality, which lets you group various created content (creatures, vehicles, buildings, and so on) and name the group (or, alternately, label it with YouTube-esque tags), is already in the game. You'll also apparently be able to share other types of information, including a stat-heavy timeline of your critters' evolution from the bacterial stage to the space age. This timeline will show how your creatures developed as more carnivorous, omnivorous, or herbivorous critters and also developed various abilities relating to those tendencies (carnivore races will have predatory powers available at different stages of civilization, such as threatening roars at the creature level and hunting traps at the civilization level).

Spore is clearly coming along well and may very well deliver on its tremendous potential. The game is scheduled for release in September.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Skate 2

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:46:57 +0100

When Skate was released in 2007, it took a fresh new approach with a control scheme that made tricks feel more realistic and satisfying than in any previous game. Skate 2 refines this system somewhat and, impressively, adds a wealth of new features and tricks to its predecessor's already sizable repertoire. Some needlessly frustrating challenges and annoying AI, as well as a couple of strange design choices (physics-enabled litter, anyone?) prevent this from being the great sequel that it should have been, but Skate 2 is still a lot of fun and bodes well for the future of series.

Like the first game, Skate 2 has something resembling a story in Career mode, though that story takes a backseat after the first hour or two. Returning to New San Vanelona after a stint in prison, you discover that the fictional city, which was largely destroyed by some kind of natural disaster while you were inside, is barely recognizable from the first game. The facelift comes courtesy of the Mongocorp company, an organization with a penchant for structures that incorporate quarter pipes, ramps, and rails, and with a seemingly endless supply of anti-skater caps and clips (you learn how to remove these early on) with which to adorn them. Mongocorp's security guards are quick to deal with any skaters who stray too close to the company's private property, but the city isn't anything like the police state that Skate 2's intro movie would have you believe it is.

Where the narrative is concerned, your goal in Skate 2 is to rebuild your career and to reclaim New San Vanelona for skaters in the process. Making a name for yourself as a skater involves entering races and trick competitions, going head-to-head with pros who have devised challenges for you, and doing photo shoots for magazines. Skate 2 is at its best when it affords you the freedom to perform whichever tricks you want to in pursuit of a high score or, as is the case in photo shoots, to adhere to fairly loose guidelines. Unfortunately, there are still a number of challenges in which you're told exactly which tricks you must perform to succeed, the most common of which are games of S.K.A.T.E. against the numerous pro skaters who appear in the game. Given that none of the tricks in Skate 2 require complex controls to perform, the problem isn't that performing specific tricks is difficult; it's just that so many tricks are executed in very similar ways. The analog-stick controls aren't precise enough for you to nail specific tricks every time, so you end up having to retry these challenges not because you bailed, but because you landed the wrong trick.

The retry button also gets some use during photo shoots when, on rare occasions, you might be told that you've failed a challenge when clearly you've fulfilled all of its criteria. The opposite is also true, and being told that you've passed a photo shoot when all you did was fall off of the end of a ramp or skate idly past the photographer can make for some particularly mundane magazine shots. It's conceivable that you'll make it through the entire game without encountering this particular bug, but it happened to us on more than one occasion.

Challenges are scattered around the city, and you can reach them either by warping to them instantly via a menu screen or by skating around the city with an annotated map to help you. The former is a useful option if you're in a hurry to unlock pro skaters and licensed merchandise for use online, but the latter is definitely the better way to play because you inevitably find cool spots to skate as you explore, many with their own optional challenges. Being able to get off of your board means that you can reach areas such as the roofs of buildings that would otherwise be inaccessible, and although the on-foot controls feel clumsy, the ability to walk is nevertheless a welcome addition given the prevalence of flights of steps, curbs, and the like.

Stepping off of your board isn't good only for exploring and for negotiating steps; it's also the only way to take advantage of one of Skate 2's other new features: the ability to move objects around to create your own skate spots. This feature is used only rarely in challenges, which is just as well because though it's a great idea in theory, it doesn't add a lot to the game in practice. Moving large objects around is surprisingly easy; you stand next to the item that you want to move, hold down a shoulder button, and use the analogs to reposition and rotate it. The problem is that dumpsters, ramps, and grind rails that are light enough to be pulled and pushed around by a single skater are also light enough to be moved when skaters accidentally bump into them. After you take the time to perfectly align ramps and other items, it's irritating that they get moved around so easily. There's an option to reset them to their intended positions if you remembered to mark them, but an option to simply glue them in place so they don't move at all would have been welcome.

Skate 2 is grounded in realism, but isn't afraid to ditch it in favor of good gameplay. This is great when it comes to activities such as repositioning large objects or performing insane tricks while leaping from the tops of buildings. Sometimes, though, the game's realism can get in the way of you having a good time. For example, having pedestrians and traffic cross a line that you have to take to complete a challenge can get frustrating after repeated attempts. Furthermore, when the pedestrians start dropping physics-enabled litter, things can get so bad that you have to resort to picking up a quarter pipe and using it to sweep apples, bottles, and handbags out of the way.

Other skaters can also be a problem, especially when you're taking part in a challenge that requires a number of you to skate simultaneously in a relatively small space. For instance, at the start of a three-on-three contest in the Career mode, there's a good chance that your two teammates will crash into one another at the start of every run. AI skaters are seemingly unaware of each other's existence, and they certainly don't pay any attention to what you're doing. Collisions are avoidable if you keep an eye out for other skaters, but the camera is occasionally too busy showing you how good you look to show you where you're headed.

Collisions aren't always enabled when you play online, but they're also not a huge problem anyway because other players are a lot smarter than the AI guys. Online options in Skate 2 include a number of different competitive modes such as races, trick events, and contests to see who can hurt themselves the most when bailing. More interesting than any of those, though, are the Burnout Paradise-style co-op challenges that require everyone to work together toward a common goal. Some of these challenges, such as accumulating a high score within a time limit by adding all six players' scores together, are quite easy because skilled players can carry anyone who's struggling. Other challenges, such as having six players grind a rail simultaneously or accumulating a high score in a situation in which any one of them bailing or skating too slowly resets the counter to zero, can be tough even in talented company. There's plenty of fun stuff to do while playing online, and the only drawback is that you're confined to relatively small areas of the city rather than given the freedom to explore the whole map with your friends.

Skate 2's offline multiplayer offering is limited to a Party Play mode that supports up to four players on a single console. The Spot Battle (trick scores), Hall of Meat (nasty wipeout scores), and S.K.A.T.E. (copy each other's tricks) games here are all turn-based, so four of you can even compete using the same controller. The lack of split-screen support might be disappointing for some, but simultaneous play would undoubtedly detract from rather than enhance the included Party Play games in any case. If you feel like taking a break from skating to flex your creative muscles, Skate 2 has got you covered. Not only can you create custom logos and graphics for your clothing and deck on the game's official Web site and instantly export them to your game, but there's also a decent video-editing tool that you can use to customize replays. It's a shame that said replays are limited to around 30 seconds in length, but that's plenty long enough to make some great-looking shorts to share online using the included gameplay, tripod, and "follow" camera options. Additional camera options and storage space for replays will purportedly be made available for download at a later date, which probably explains why there are no cool filters to play around with out of the box this time around.

Skate 2 is a great-looking game. There are some low-res textures here and there, but the attention to detail throughout New San Vanelona is impressive, and the skaters animate incredibly well--at least until they step off of their boards. The audio is similarly impressive, with believable sound effects that seemingly take into account every conceivable wheel movement and different skating surface. An eclectic soundtrack of more than 50 songs occasionally offers a welcome distraction from the noises of cars honking and pedestrians yelling at you, with contributions from such bands as Black Sabbath, ELO, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Public Enemy, The Clash, and Wu-Tang Clan.

Even if you've played a lot of Skate, there are definitely enough new features and improvements in Skate 2 to make it worth a look. The presentation is slick, the controls are great, and at times you really do feel like you're skateboarding. It’s unfortunate that things get dragged down by the occasionally frustrating and buggy challenges; that walking on foot isn’t handled better; and that the game’s physics and artificial intelligence aren’t consistent and sometimes get in the way of the gameplay; because Skate 2 has so much to offer. Oh, and the bone-breaking bails that would kill you in real life are just another way to earn money here, so Skate 2 is not only a fun alternative to taking to the streets, it's a safe one.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Skate

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:41:10 +0100

Plenty of skateboarding games have come and gone in the years since the long-running Tony Hawk franchise reinvented the skateboarding game. Most failed because they simply attempted to duplicate the arcadelike fast-moving gameplay of Activision's series. After running unopposed for years, Activision's got some new competition in the form of Skate from Electronic Arts. At times, this simulation-styled skating game feels like it was built from the ground up to be the anti-Tony Hawk, and aside from both games taking place on skateboards, the two don't have a whole lot in common. This is largely thanks to Skate's very cool control system, which puts all of the meaningful controls on the controller's two analog sticks and triggers. It's an awesome system that makes tricks feel more involved and entertaining. Unfortunately, you'll be applying this control scheme to a series of challenges and goals that aren't quite as good.

Skate puts your skater movement onto the left analog stick. The right analog stick controls how you move and flip your skateboard to do tricks. For a simple ollie, you hold down on the stick to crouch then snap it up to jump into the air. Kickflips and heelflips are accomplished if you come up slightly left or right of center. Shuvits happen when you hit down to crouch, then roll the stick around to the side and up to the top. These are the basic tricks, but they get significantly more complicated. The triggers are used for your left and right hands, so when you're in the air, you can use these buttons to perform grabs. Once you've grabbed onto the board, you can tweak it around with the right stick for different types of grabs. It's an instantly intuitive system with the depth to keep you going for some time, but it isn't perfect. A lot of the tricks are done in extremely similar ways. So when some goals call for specific tricks, like a Nollie 360 Flip, you might find yourself attempting the trick again and again, only to have some other trick come out. This gets totally frustrating in spots, especially in S.K.A.T.E. competitions, where you have to duplicate someone else's trick exactly to stay in the game.

Grinding in Skate is as simple as lining yourself up with a rail or curb, getting airborne, and landing on the grindable edge. Well, it sounds simple on paper, anyway. In practice, you'll have to really work to line yourself up because the default camera is a low, off-to-the-side angle meant to duplicate the look of a dude following you on his own board, holding a video camera the whole time. Your skater is large on the screen, meaning he'll block a lot of your view; he doesn't seem to become transparent often enough to let you get a clear view of the action at all times. Also, Skate is very big on timing. The height of your ollies or other tricks is dependent on how long you crouch and how fast you snap the stick up. It'll take some time before you're hitting every rail, flipping in and out, or landing in manuals all over the place. The whole system is also purely skill-based. You don't receive skater statistic boosts, unlock new tricks, or the like. Everything is available right off the bat. The only stat that increases is your own personal skill with the sticks.

There's a loose story to Skate's career mode. It opens with you getting slammed by a bus and going in for surgery. This justifies the way you can reconfigure your skater's face and body type in the typical EA style of analog sliders. Once you're back on your feet, you're out to get noticed, so it's time to start recording footage and winning events. The different goals in the game give you some variety, but you'll have to get good at all of them if you want to get to the top. Because you're trying to get covered by two different skateboarding magazines, you'll have to complete a lot of photo goals, which ask you to perform specific tasks on specific objects. Some of the tasks are simple, like reaching certain point scores, while others will demand that you pull off longer grinds, flip specific tricks into grinds, or land in manuals. You'll also encounter multiskater competitions, such as timed battles for the most points, best trick contests, or slalomlike downhill races. There are also free-form footage goals, where you're given a set of tasks that must be performed within 30 seconds. The catch is that you can do these anywhere, so half of the process is figuring out which part of the city is conducive to your task. Some of them require you to skate in no-skate zones, which are patrolled by security guards who will push you over if they catch you. Some require you to do huge grinds, do a lot of spins, remain in the air for 10 seconds, and so on. The film goals are probably the trickiest ones in the entire game.

As you make your way through the game, you'll open up additional skate spots within the city, including such indoor locations as the Plan B Warehouse and the X Games Stadium. Aside from entering these indoor locations, you can skate around the city without seeing a loading screen. But if you decide to warp right to a location, you'll see some somewhat lengthy load screens. The distance that you can warp without loading also seems a little random. Some goals have you skate long rails or cover what doesn't seem like that much ground, but if you try to warp back to the other side of the goal, it'll stop and load. When you're stuck on a goal and trying it again and again, the loading becomes really grating, as do the unskippable menu animations that pop up when you fail a film goal. This all sounds like small stuff, but it really gets magnified when you're stuck trying the same thing over and over.

In addition to the career mode, you can play several multiplayer events, such as jam, which is a timed session that is won by the highest scorer. For these events, the city gets broken down into smaller areas. A couple of jam locations are in fairly small areas, like residential-sized pools. When the game sticks you into these spots and there are six players in the game, it just becomes chaos. This is because there isn't enough room to skate and you're left constantly bumping into other skaters, which isn't much fun at all. You can also play S.K.A.T.E., get into best trick contests, races, and so on. The online performance can be a little spotty and seems to really depend on the connection speeds of the other players, as well as your own. This means that one player with a slow connection speed can bring the whole game down. In a game that's so focused on accurate timing, it's pretty lame to randomly drop into slow motion. But when it's all working, it's decent.

There is also a community aspect to Skate. You can use a replay editor to capture video footage of your performances or snap screenshots at any point and share them publicly. These can then be viewed through a menu in the game or through the game's Web site, which is nice because the person you want to show your skating exploits to doesn't need a copy of the game to see them. These items can be rated and commented on, which is a sharp idea that expands on the sorts of things that EA has done in the past with Burnout or some of its sports games. The only catch is that, as of this writing, the Web site is sluggish and pretty buggy, making it hard to navigate, as well as see the best footage.

Visually, Skate has a realistic look to it that fits with the overall atmosphere of the game. The skaters look good and the animation is great, though a few of the up-close talking segments that show polygonal versions of real-life skaters look a little weird. It all runs at a solid speed that really makes you feel like you're booking when you're in some of the downhill races.

Like other sports games, Skate is filled with plenty of sponsored equipment and other product placement. For the most part, it feels fine; getting sponsored by board and shoe companies is an integral part of the game's career mode and that part never feels too salesy. But it crosses the line in a few spots, like whenever you meet a pro skater. It shows that skater skating a line, doing some nice tricks, but then it also zooms up to give you a very deliberate view of his skateboard, trucks, wheels, and shoes, flashing the sponsor logos on the screen all the while. Also, there's a weird bit of reverse product placement in the game because EA and Adidas teamed up to produce some limited-edition shoes. These are introduced and advertised in the game, complete with promotion codes that get you $50 off on them when you beat the skaters that endorse them. It's awfully blatant, but it's actually pretty unique. It helps that the shoes are sort of rad. The game also downloads new ads for billboards and other surfaces as you play, though there aren't enough different ads, resulting in some cases where you'll see the same stupid billboard 10 times as you skate up a single street.

The soundtrack is a really weird mix of music that doesn't actually play through most of the game. On the default settings, music is ambient. This means that whenever you get close to a skate-friendly spot, where skaters might gather and actually have a radio, you'll start to faintly hear music coming from the direction of the spot. If you like, you can set it to directly play the music, but most of the soundtrack is a little sketchy, and the way the game opens with Booker T & The MG's "Green Onions" every single time you load up the game makes you feel like you're turning on some awful Jim Belushi movie rather than getting ready to play a realistic skateboarding game.

Aside from the weird soundtrack, the in-game audio is really great. There are lots of great skateboarding noises, especially the way the wheels skid when you do powerslides or land hard and turn. The game also has something like color commentary, which comes from the invisible kid that's "holding" the in-game camera. He'll call out to other pros as you pass by, congratulate you on good trick lines, comment when you stack and break some bones, or impatiently whine when you set the controller down then walk away. His presence is pretty good and gives the game some personality.

While Skate has a handful of issues that hold it back, it has an absolute ton of potential. It's a great first start for what hopefully will become a regular franchise. With some more refinement and a few more things to do, this could probably be the best skateboarding game around. It's definitely worth playing, if only to get your hands on the trick system, but if you're stingy with your money, you could probably get enough out of it with a rental.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

SimsVille

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:36:43 +0100

We've got brand new details and shots of SimsVille directly from Maxis.
t was only a matter of time before someone came up with the idea of taking the concepts behind Maxis' two most successful franchises--SimCity and The Sims--and mating them to form a city-building game with a personal touch. Unfortunately for developers everywhere, that someone was Maxis. "The idea for SimsVille actually came from fan feedback," explains the game's associate producer, Virginia McArthur. "It essentially answers their wishes to explore, buy, and customize areas beyond the [Sims'] house." SimsVille is basically a grander version of The Sims (or a more personal version of SimCity?) in which you control the lives of an entire town of families--not just a single family as in The Sims, but not quite a faceless metropolis as in SimCity either. Your ultimate goal is to create a prosperous town from scratch. That town's success, however, is directly related to the happiness of its citizens. Likewise, the well-being of the townsfolk is dependent on the welfare of your town. It's a precarious balancing act, to be sure, but it's one that Maxis has found great success with in its SimCity and The Sims series. We were able to take a close look at SimsVille during a recent trip to Maxis' offices, and we walked away with new gameplay details, screenshots, and impressions in tow.

Like the other Sims games, SimsVille is split up into several different modes: live mode, buy mode, and build mode. This latter option is similar to SimCity--you'll start out with a fairly inconspicuous plot of land that you have to mold into a living town. In the build mode, you'll be able to lay down roads and construct shops, houses, and industries to entice Sims into moving into the town you've created. It's this combination of residents and businesses that will keep your town afloat because of the flat tax that they'll pay you. This tax goes into the town coffer, which is where the money used in the build mode comes from. There are a huge number of structures, buildings, and objects that you can select from in the build mode; specifically, there are 80 types of buildings, 15 houses, and five types of roads, and each of these objects affects your populous in a distinct manner, especially when you take into account that SimsVille has day and night cycles. For example, the simple act of placing street lamps on corners will increase visibility in the evening and reduce crime. Building a police station will reduce the crime rate in your town even further. Naturally, crime reduces happiness, which in turn can reduce job efficiency, which can cause businesses to shut down, thus reducing the total tax entering the town coffer. As you can tell, interdependence plays an important role in SimsVille.

To illustrate just how bad a town can get, McArthur showed us a custom town that she calls "Smudgedale," which was lined with liquor stores, businesses with boarded-up windows, and an adult movie theater. While this town was actually purposely created to look slummy, it's a perfect example of what can happen to a typical town if your citizens' needs and happiness aren't addressed. A town like Smudgedale doesn't produce much income tax, and the only way to recover from its downward spiral is to sell off homes and businesses. The downside to doing that, however, is that selling off homes and stores will displace your residents, further reducing your taxable population. And since you won't be able to get nearly as much money for a run-down liquor store as you would from a respectable business, you'll have to sell off your only means of income to rebuild your town. What's worse is that it costs money to sell these properties (bulldozers don't come cheap), so if you're not careful, your perfect town can turn into a disaster from which recovery is an arduous task.

Of course, if your Sims are successful enough, they'll want to move out of their house altogether. Whenever a family starts outgrowing its britches, its housing need will start to rise. By using the game's methods of forceful suggestion, you can place this family in front of a larger house, and if that house suits that family's needs (and if they can afford it), they'll decide to move in.

Another interesting aspect of SimsVille is the reward buildings. These are structures that are awarded to you for meeting specific town coffer or town happiness criteria, and they add a distinct facet to your current game. For instance, one of the reward buildings is the town hall, which, incidentally, is the only form of government in SimsVille. The town hall is used as a gathering place for your Sims to voice their collective feedback. Without a town hall, the only way to judge the overall mood of your citizens is by checking them one by one, which can get tedious pretty quickly. With it, however, you'll often find your Sims lined up outside to protest squalid living conditions, or if the town is generally doing well, they'll have a street party right in front of the town hall. Other reward buildings include the stadium, the amphitheater, and the symphony hall. All of these are venues where more than 50 Sims can get together. With these buildings in place, it's very easy to maintain the overall happiness of your townsfolk, since places like a stadium make it possible for people to meet and perpetuate friendships, especially if that place is centrally located. Some of the later rewards will include a farmers' market and a miniature-golf course.

While SimsVille certainly has elements of item collection and urban planning, it doesn't feel like a cut-and-dried amalgamation of SimCity and The Sims. SimsVille looks and plays like a game that was developed to stand on its own two legs, as it were, and while similarities between it and previous games do exist, they're subtle, not overwhelming. The most noticeable distinguishing feature between SimsVille and Maxis' previous games is its 3D engine. All the vehicles, objects, and inhabitants are 3D models that are rendered in real time. SimsVille will let you zoom in and out of any given scene, but it won't let you rotate the camera in real time. The game, like SimCity and The Sims, will let you view your town from four distinct 90-degree angles, but these perspectives will have to be rendered one at a time. This is because the game doesn't draw all the polygons of the world at any given time. In fact, for a typical four-sided house, only two sides are drawn at any given time. The other two sides aren't rendered until you switch to a different perspective, thus saving the processing power needed to draw additional objects onscreen, like more Sims. It was possible for Maxis to make the entire world of SimsVille rendered in real time, but like all of the company's products, this game is also aimed at the mainstream market--a market not typically known for owning high-end PCs. However, the game does employ a "lazy" camera, whose momentum causes it to shift back and forth as you pan it left and right, in an effect that's great at mimicking a full 3D environment.

Like most of Maxis' game, SimsVille will be supported through an official Web site when it launches early next year. Naturally, Maxis expects that a community of SimsVille players will form online, and the company is planning on helping the growth of such a community by adding a number of customization tools to its site. The Sims players won't be left behind when this game releases, either, as your Sims family will automatically default to SimsVille when you install the game. Ultimately, because of its ability to blend the impersonal city-building aspect of SimCity with the micromanagement of The Sims, SimsVille will undoubtedly appeal to fans of all Maxis' games.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Ultima X: Odyssey

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:44:56 +0100

Ultima X: Odyssey represents the latest chapter in one of the oldest and most beloved role-playing franchises in all of computer gaming. It's a highly ambitious game, because UXO will feature the massively multiplayer role-playing experience of Ultima Online, and it will also include the epic sense of adventure found in the single-player Ultima games. So while you will be just one of many players running around the vast fantasy world of Alucinor, the designers are working hard to ensure that every adventure you pursue will have a special and, more importantly, personal feel. Origin's Jon Hanna explains how they're designing a game that's up to the task.

Putting the Role-Playing Back in Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing

Jon "Calandryll" Hanna
Lead Designer, Origin Systems

In our previous designer diary, we discussed how UXO's combat creates a profoundly unique experience requiring well-thought-out strategy and quick thinking. Combat is a lot of fun, but it's even more enjoyable when there is a purpose behind the fight. That's where the Odyssey Adventure System comes in. Questing in online RPGs has long suffered from the same repetitive gameplay problems as combat, but with UXO we're ready to change that.

Questing in most online RPGs unfortunately involves sending you on countless errands, requiring you to run for 10 to 15 minutes (sometimes more!) at time. Nothing ever happens during these quests. There are no surprises, no decisions, and no opportunities for role-playing. Aside from the need to steer your character through the world and click on non-player characters, you barely even need to be at your keyboard. Travel is part of any adventure, but it shouldn't be the entire quest. That's not gameplay. As in the previous diary, I'll use The Lord of the Rings to illustrate my point. Imagine if instead of the harrowing journey, filled with subplots, important decisions, and heroic deeds, Frodo just ran to Mount Doom, threw the ring in the fire, and the quest was over. There would be no drama, no story, and no opportunities for heroism. Unfortunately, that's what passes for quests in many online RPGs.

In UXO, instead of having to wander around looking for NPCs to give you something to do or having to read Web sites looking for lists of quest NPCs, the quests come to you. Going back to the The Lord of the Rings example, imagine if Frodo walked around the shire asking if anyone needed an evil ring destroyed. That would be silly. Instead, the ring quest finds Frodo, and he is thrust into a grand adventure. That's what being a hero is all about, and that's what happens in UXO.

The adventures are all hand-built and take advantage of our private-area technology. For example, you may receive a quest to travel to Red Fang Keep to investigate some strange activities. When you enter the keep, a private version of that map is created, and the quest elements (monsters, ambush points, cinematics, special events, and so on) are loaded on the map. Since you and your party-mates are the only characters on this private map, you can venture through the quest without having to wait in line to fight the boss monster and without having to worry about griefers or kill-stealers. Even though you may have been inside Red Fang Keep before, you'll find that the spawn locations of the monsters, or even the monsters themselves, may be different. Private areas allow us to create very deep quests, filled with surprises and unique challenges.

On top of that, you get to make meaningful choices as you progress through the quests based on how you want to develop your character with respect to the Ultima virtues. Your choices are based on eight virtue abilities (such as valor, spirituality, sacrifice, honesty, and compassion), which earn players special virtue abilities that further define and customize the character's skill set. You'll experience different aspects of the quest and get different rewards based on your choices. I'll walk you through a typical Ultima X: Odyssey adventure to give you an idea of what it's like.

We left off in the previous diary having just finished off a group of rhinorks. You're resting up when suddenly a bright light flashes before you and a man appears. He is an imposing figure dressed in white and gold, and you immediately feel a sense of great power within him. He is the Avatar, hero of Britannia and creator of the world of Alucinor in which you now live. He speaks to you and says that he needs your help. You must travel to Felgoll Forest to help a ranger track down a druid wanted for murder. You gather your courage and agree to help.

After a short trip to a nearby moongate, you and your party teleport to Bane Thicket and find the entrance to Felgoll. You find the ranger who tells you of the druid's misdeeds. You agree to find this druid and learn more about the situation. After a short run, you come upon the druid and learn that he killed the humans because they have been poaching griffins in the forest, driving the beasts to near extinction. He tells you there is only one left and that he will kill again to protect it if necessary. In most online RPGs, you would simply follow a linear storyline, following whatever path the quest forced upon you. But in UXO, you have a choice. You can either demand the druid's surrender for his crimes, or you can seek out the poachers and attempt to save the last living griffin.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:39:34 +0100

War, appropriately, is the focus in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Few persistent world, online role-playing game have focused so much on player-versus-player combat or done it this well. Fireballs fly, swords clash, and pet lions pounce as the opposing forces of Order and Destruction pound on each other for server dominance. From open warfare to stand-alone scenarios, there are a number of ways to establish battle superiority, and Warhammer Online consistently offers in-game rewards for your combat prowess, making this game the one-stop shop for all your elf-bashing needs. There are other innovations too, though they take a supporting role: public quests that allow passersby to jump in and join the fray, for example, as well as the excellent Tome of Knowledge, an in-game encyclopedia overflowing with all theinformation you would ever want.

These original features make Warhammer Online a great game, though this direct focus on PVP combat noticeably detracts from its other facets. Most notably, questing and solo play are unfulfilling compared to other MMOGs; the writing is decent, but in general, the by-the-numbers quests lack flavor and sophistication. The most noticeable issue at play, however, directly relates to player population: During peak hours, you may wait an hour in a server queue, only to discover that the world still feels really empty, even with all these areas for players to congregate and battle. It's the ultimate contradiction: By giving players so many ways and places to hammer each others' skulls, the population has been spread thin. Warhammer Online feels like it was designed for a population much larger than the game actually holds. A good guild, as well as some preparation and organization, will combat this issue to a degree. Perhaps this drawback will change as the population at large gains levels, but for now, the splintering of players makes exploration and questing both feel even more lackluster than they already are.

But you came for war, and whether you want to get in the thick of the action or support your groupmates, you'll find that the Warhammer universe is a natural host for your bloodthirst. First, you choose a faction: Order or Destruction (guess which is good and which is evil). From there, choose an army (Dark Elves, Empire, and so on) and a career. Both sides offer the usual suspects, such as healers and tanks, but there are some nice additions for each class. Engineers can summon a turret to aid them from a distance; Disciples of Khaine siphon health from enemies to heal allies; and sorcerers are capable of dealing heavy damage--at the risk of killing themselves. Physical customization isn't particularly deep, but various tattoos and other options help distinguish you from the hordes, even if the simple options and visual similarities of various armor sets can sometimes make all players of a particular profession look eerily alike.

Warhammer Online makes a superb first impression. From the moment you begin, a starting quest encourages you to participate in one of the game's keystone PVP scenarios. You can join a queue for a level-appropriate scenario from almost anywhere, and once enough players have signed up, you're whisked away to the battlefield. Most of these matches are variants on Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, King of the Hill, and so on--but with enough twists to make them feel clever. For example, in the Stonetroll Crossing scenario, teams attempt to capture an item called a troll pacifier from the tall plateau at the center of the map and deliver it to three locations to appease the cranky trolls. In others, you may capture control points or take and hold a central platform--usual stuff to be sure, but with small twists that make each one feel unique. Regardless of which maps you play, most scenarios are chaotic in a good way. You'll always be on the go, from chasing a flag on the move to charging for the opposing healer, and the flurry of colorful spell effects and the din of clanging metal enhance the excitement.

Stand-alone scenarios are just one PVP option. The more impactful alternative is to take battlefield objectives and fight through enemy keeps, which in turn earns victory points for your faction; once you have enough points, the opposing faction's main city is vulnerable to attack. Open objectives make for a chaotic good time, whether you and your warband are chasing down a roaming group of marauders or getting behind a turret to bombard foes as they creep closer to the warcamp. You and your buddies can also participate in keep captures, which are essentially multitiered minidungeons in which you fight enemy players and defending mobs on your way to the keep boss. Keep battles are a ton of fun; teams can build siege weapons at specified points outside of the keep, and the resulting encounters are frenzied and intense, especially if a battering ram is involved.

Public quests are possibly Warhammer Online's most original offering, and it's one that lets you join impromptu teams as they complete various objectives. Should you encounter one of these open, multipart quests, your heads-up display automatically informs you what stage the ongoing quest is currently at and what needs to be done. Then, you can simply jump into the fray, killing monsters and other non-player enemies. At the end of the quest, a golden treasure chest appears and a dice roll of sorts determines who wins the available loot. The more you contribute, the greater your chance of rolling a higher number. You won't want to join public quests just for the possibility of interesting loot, though: Battles are fun and hectic with enough participants, and many of them end with challenging end-bosses. No matter where you choose to kill enemy players and monsters, there is a constant stream of rewards heaped on you. Killing other players earns you renown points, which you use to purchase certain gear and gain renown skills. PVP earns you basic experience as well, but you'll keep securing renown even after you reach the level cap of 40. Completing public quests earns you influence in a particular geographical region, which you can cash in for various items. Even guilds get perks, earning levels that then unlock various enhancements for its members. Warhammer Online's most skillful and subtle reward system, however, comes by way of its all-encompassing encyclopedia, the Tome of Knowledge. The Tome consolidates every piece of in-game information you could possibly hope to access: bestiary, quest details, lore overviews, and a lot more. As you enter new areas, encounter new NPCs or monsters, and accumulate kills, new Tome entries are unlocked and announcements flash on the screen. The most satisfying unlockables are the myriad of titles you can earn and apply to yourself, from elite declarations ("The Fearless") to the humorous ("Ow, My Eye").Using the Tome is a great way to learn the lore and explore the ins and outs of the universe. If you'd rather learn by exploring and participating in the player-versus-environment aspect of Warhammer Online, you'll find it solid but far less enthralling than its fantastic PVP play. The world proper, from Black Crag to Barak Varr, is easy on the eyes but doesn't harbor any surprises. There are some beautiful vistas, from the creepy, sinister Inevitable City to the docked steamer at Mount Bloodhorn. The best regions feel violently off-kilter and very much in the Warhammer mold (or at least, as close as they can get given the game's T rating). Other areas, such as Avelorn, look fairly sterile and undeveloped, which in turn make certain places feel like a utilitarian vehicle for the delivery of PVP content.

And, of course, you can perform quests for NPCs, though you won't find many standouts among the standards. Some are funny to read (a goblin saves his own hide by asking you to find alternate food for an orc), and they're detailed with surprising length in the Tome of Knowledge. But for the most part, questing feels generic, an apparent casualty of the enormous focus on player warfare. The way quests tie into other aspects of the game is pretty nifty, though: A good many of them send you into the middle of open battlefields and public quests, which in turn draws you into the anarchy at hand. You might be focused on finding a quest item, but the only way to get it is to stop and fight with your fellows. This relationship between quests and PVP encourages you to put aside your petty fetch quest for a moment to join the larger skirmish--which is just as well, considering the battle in progress will be more enjoyable than whatever deed you were performing.

Unfortunately, the quest part of the equation ultimately suffers in this intriguing web, particularly when small but perceptible issues are entangled in it. Many of the regions are densely populated with monsters that respawn quickly after defeat--a great feature if there is a bunch of people participating in the accompanying public quest but an irritation for certain classes when soloing or even in a small group. And excessive exploration can result in reaching your 20-quest limit too quickly, while choosing quests in favor of player combat might cause you to deplete the local supply of quests and still not reach a level appropriate for the next area. At least, the death penalty lessens the annoyance a bit: You'll respawn at a local camp and a healer will remove any lingering effect for a little bit of coin. You can also group up and make your way through various instanced dungeons, which are immune by nature from some of these inconsistencies.

If you want to mix things up, you can check out the crafting system: Just don't expect much. While you can choose both a standard craft and a gathering profession, the game does a terrible job of introducing the options and how your choices impact each other. For example, talisman makers are better off if they choose salvaging as their gathering skill, but the lack of a real tutorial means it's easy to make a misguided decision. And at the time of this review, loot drops are full of seeds and short on salvageable items, heavily skewing the game in favor of cultivators. The actual act of crafting an item is painless, however, though the overall system doesn't seem fully fleshed out.

Warhammer Online's visuals have a stylized, exaggerated vibe that resonates well, even if it invites inevitable comparisons to other MMOGs. But it's a good look, and the game is obviously intended to run on a large range of computers. The relatively low-polygon count is offset by a broad color palette and subtle textures. The architecture and character models are also exaggerated in just the right ways. And the graphic engine delivers when it counts: The game ran well without meaningful frame rate drops or crashes on a variety of systems. From a technical perspective, you can see where corners were cut: Animations are really choppy when viewed from anywhere but up close, and in the main faction cities, model textures flicker in and out. These and other minor glitches aren't apt to stand in the way of your enjoyment though, and Warhammer Online's visuals are generally delightful. The sound design is good, but none of its aspects rise to the head of the class. The soundtrack suits the fantasy setting, but it doesn't really enhance the experience in any way. In fact, all of Warhammer Online's audio, from spell effects to quest confirmations, sounds fine but unremarkable.

This isn't the most well-rounded massively multiplayer online game, but Warhammer Online grabs the tuskgor by the horns, delivering the finest PVP content seen in a traditional persistent world RPG. Questers and explorers may not find what they're looking for, and certain gameplay systems don't mesh as well as they should. Nevertheless, there's more than enough exciting PVP content here to keep newcomers and veterans alike immersed in the perpetually violent tug of war between the forces of Order and Destruction. Or as the Orcs say: Waaagh!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD