It’s been nearly 10 years since we’ve seen Max Payne sulk through the New York alleys; he’s decided that he’s had his fill of the big apple and is moving to São Paulo, Brazil for the sun, babes, and gangs. With Remedy being too busy working on whatever it is they’re doing (please be Alan Wake 2) Rockstar decided to pick up the third entry in the series. With the trade of gloomy New York for sunny São Paulo don’t go thinking that things are any more cheerful; Max starts out in the shitter and slowly gets in deeper as the game continues that culminates in possibly Rockstar’s darkest game yet.

The game is quick to remind you that Max is still leaning on the booze and pills to keep him running, but things start to look up a bit for him when he moves to Brazil and gets a bodyguard position to protect a wealthy family. That lasts a good five minutes before things start to hit the fan and Max is thrown between protecting the family and controlling his own substance abuse issues. Besides the new cover mechanic not much has changed in how you play compared to the previous titles. You can take cover if you want, but be prepared for enemies to start flanking your position to deliver a healthy dose of ass whooping. It’s the Matrix styled shootdodge mechanic that’s going to be your main source of dealing out death. You’ll see a meter to the right that shows how much time you can spend in this mode and can be refilled quickly be simply scoring kills outside of shootdodge. With the added euphoria engine that powered Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption, you’ll be greeted to some amazing moments from shooting enemies and seeing them stumble around to diving in the air over a desk, spinning around, and quickly sending a few thugs to meet their maker. Did I mention the physics? Almost everything can be smashed apart and it will with clean rooms looking like a wrecking crew drove through after gunfights. For fans worried about Rockstar dumbing down the game fret not because painkillers are still your only source of health in this game; only multiplayer has slowly regenerating health, not on hardcore though. I found Max to be stupidly brittle even on normal difficulty. I’m always up for a good challenge but later missions really punished you for using the shootdodge mechanic and I found myself starting to use cover more and more. Painkillers can be somewhat difficult to locate if they’re not in plain view, but the game thankfully refills your health each time you die so at least you can’t screw yourself by walking into a situation with little to no health. You’ll find ‘grinds’ to do through both the singleplayer and online. You’ll find a variety of menial tasks such as finding golden guns, and tougher ones such as shooting grenades in the air or scoring kills while on your back.

Besides the 10+ hour campaign and grinds to, excuse the pun, grind through you’ll also have New York Minute and Score Attack to keep you playing. Score Attack rewards you with points for kills, more points the more impressive the kill, with a focus on keeping your multiplier up. New York Minute on the other hand is meant more for speed-running players with each level starting you out with a timer that continually trickles down; the only way to get more time is to score kills.

So when you start up the playlist you’ll think Max Payne 3 has quite a lot of game modes to play, but in reality out of the either modes you see, there are only really 3 different ones. There’s Rookie Deathmatch/TDM, regular Deathmatch/TDM, large Deathmatch/TDM, Payne Killer, and Gang Wars; there are also hardcore variants you can unlock once you get 5000 kills. The idea behind Payne Killer is that two players will play as either Max or Passos while the other team has to work together to bring them down. The player who deals the most damage to either character is re-spawned as that character loaded to the teeth with painkillers, guns, and adrenaline. It’s a neat mode that has you bouncing between trying to deal the most damage to Max or Passos, or trying to let your teammates whittle down their health so you can score a final kill. You’ll get points for dealing damage/killing Max or Passos, but the real numbers start flowing in when you play as either character; winner at the end is the guy with the most points. The marquee mode here is Gang Wars though; in it you’ll take the role of one of the various factions and complete various staged objectives. Each map has its own little story that snugly fits with the main game and you’ll go through various objectives such as defending checkpoints, assassinating targets, straight up elimination, and more. The neat thing is that you’ll never get the same sequence of objectives twice with each game having a completely random set of objectives that change depending on whether you won or lost the previous one. It’s something I’ve loved since Killzone 2 and really hope more games start to implement it.

So you know I love me some customization in my multiplayer games; it’s not so much that I want other people to see how my character looks, it’s just that I’m so narcissistic that I enjoy seeing how I look. There are half a dozen factions, each with their own look/style, that you can change from head-to-toe with gear you’ll acquire by simply leveling up. You’ll also be able to select how you want to look for straight deathmatch modes and you can unlock story characters by achieving either a platinum in each level in score attack or prestiging. So as you kill other players or loot their bodies you’ll gain adrenaline which fuels both your bullet time and your bursts. Bursts are a sort of perk that grants you a special skill divided into three tiers as you fill your meter up. For example, equipping the heavy firepower burst will give you more damage for 20 seconds, the second tier will replace your guns with a powerful LMG, and the final tier gives you a grenade launcher. Players have to be quick to think if they want to spend what adrenaline they have on an extra kill in bullet time or with a burst. Just as in most shooters, you’ll be able to set up various loadouts that will allow you to change your tactics throughout a match. You’ll be able to equip up to three weapons, a head item that gives effects such as not being affected by flash grenades, body armor, your burst, your projectile/grenade, and three pieces of gear. Gear is a sort of passive skill that doesn’t run on adrenaline; with over a dozen pieces of gear you’ll see ones like a lucky coin that grants more cash from looting or a walkie-talkie that puts any enemy player your teammates see on your radar. The game can get quite unfair though, since it seems to not care who it matches you with and will throw you into games with people at level 50 (max rank). These guys will be rolling around with grenade/rocket launchers and bursts that let them appear as allies which makes fighting them some serious bullshit.

The graphics are damn impressive and the attention to detail in all the environments is just mind boggling. Rockstar also had the noise rock band Health to score the game which ended up being another smart move by Rockstar who have a smart taste for music. Rockstar really has a knack for bringing out the best of their voice-actors with James McCaffrey (the voice of Max) pulling in probably his best work here. The sound team should really get acknowledged for their work on the game because the way everything sounds, from the guns to the environment getting shredded during gunfights, is phenomenal.

The Final Word
Max Payne 3 is a great grab for newcomers to the series, but even more enjoyable to players of the previous two games. With a hefty amount of singleplayer modes and a pretty solid multiplayer component, besides the bit of unbalance, MP3 is definitely something that you won’t be trading in anytime soon.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good

If you’ve been living in some sort of ignorance all your life then I suppose I should tell you that Telltale Games focus on point/click adventure games, and they’re pretty damn good at their craft. After tackling two other previous licenses, Back to the Future & Jurassic Park, Telltale has decided to get their hands dirty (literally) with The Walking Dead.

The game opens up with Lee Everett who’s being given a friendly (or not so friendly depending on your conversation choices) trip in the back of a police cruiser. It’s heavily implied that Lee may have killed somebody, but he never confirms nor denies it, but your choices in the first episode clearly indicate that this information will become a major player in future episodes. You quickly meet up with the 8-year old Clementine and your fun adventures through a zombie infested Atlanta kicks off from there. The story plays simultaneously with the comics so while you play as new characters, you’ll meet and see some familiar locations whether you’re a reader of the comics or the show. You’ll be presented with choices to make throughout the story that will not only branch you into different directions in the story, but the characters you interact with will change depending on how you speak to them and what choices to make. Very rarely do I care about characters in a game (even in games I like) but I couldn’t help but like Lee and Clementine. Both characters provide an interesting dynamic that you rarely see in games and the game even gives you the option of either molding your Lee into a caring father figure for Clementine, or be a total dick to her. As a person who prides himself on trying to be the biggest dick possible in games, I just couldn’t take those options; for once I actually cared about what happened to these characters and didn’t want to fracture their relationship. Not you though Ducky, just know your time will come. The game will take you around two to three hours to finish which feels about right with the full game taking a good fifteen hours if this first episode is a good indication on the length of the following ones.

So you’ll control Lee with the left analog stick and move the cursor with the right; once you hover the cursor over an interactive object you’ll be given a prompt to either use it or have Lee talk about it. At certain times you’ll be given a QTE to perform, but these are done pretty well and come rarely so it’s not a troublesome inclusion. Conversations are handled in a Mass Effect style with some moments giving you a timer to quickly respond before it decides for you and you can’t go back to re-select previous options; I’ve noticed it tends to prefer the “…” option, I guess the game is shy. People who like to see all the options in a conversation might end up hating this, but this is what multiple runs are for. Things you pick decide how characters will react to you at that moment and later on in the game which is going to be interesting to see how they balance that through 5 episodes. The moments with zombies are done well enough with the cursor used to hover over any approaching walker and requiring a quick button hit for Lee to perform whatever action needed. The zombie kills aren’t as brutal as Telltale hyped up (besides one in the beginning with a hammer) which is a shame since they wouldn’t stop talking about how over the line they went with the kills, but hopefully they were talking about the other episodes.

One downside many adventure game veterans might frown at would be at the extreme lack of puzzles in the game. So far we’ve only seen Episode One, but I’d be surprised to see if anything changed. On one hand it does make some sense to not include puzzles in a *slightly* realistic setting where having a character try to find the pieces to a puzzle box wouldn’t really fit, while on the other hand the puzzles they actually have aren’t really puzzles and are more “Click on everything until you find the right item”. There’s one moment later in the game where Lee needs to reach through a gate to pick up a brick to use as a distraction but for some reason he simply couldn’t reach for it when it was right there. I figured I need something to break the lock on the door (still confused considering the remote was within arms length) and the objects you interacted earlier were all viable candidates to use in both breaking the lock and reaching out to get the brick. It probably took me around 20 minutes of walking around for Lee to finally say “Maybe I should go help [person] with her problem” and after finishing that objective I finally had an ax I could use to break the lock. Sure, I felt kinda stupid wasting my time when I could have gone to do this mission to get what I needed, but the game really set things up to imply I needed the objects I interacted with earlier; plus that remote was right fucking there. I just hope the next episodes don’t follow this trend of unclear ‘puzzles’.

So the game takes a more stylized look based off the comic book and it really was the best choice. Everything just has a very slick look to it and the way the characters animate has a bit more charm to it that I don’t think would’ve worked if the game was done in a more realistic graphic style. The sound itself takes many cues from the TV show which works well enough too. One thing that kept throwing me out of the game (figuratively, not literally) were the sudden drops in frame-rate. These would happen during hectic moments such as zombie attacks or even during areas such as walking around the farm. It’s noticeable enough to remind you that you’re playing a game and it surprises me considering it’s not a very intensive game to excuse having it.

The Final Word
If you’re a fan of previous Telltale Games’ works then there’s no reason why you should skip out of this game, but I still recommend new players to come join in on the fun. The first episode is a measly $5 so if you don’t end up liking it then it’s not like you invested a lot in it.

- MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair

As you all know from my previous article you can check over here, I loved Minecraft. As the good man I am though, I went through the Xbox version fresh, and it’s actually a pretty good port. If you’ve been living under a rock the last few years then Minecraft is basically a world building game. You dig for materials to build any sort of dream house you’ve wanted such as recreating the League of Doom or building your dream evil scientist lair in a volcano. It’s advertised as an adventure /survival game, but it’s really not; the focus is on gathering materials to build stuff and repeating the formula.

I’m going to kick this off with saying that as much as I felt the game was incredibly over-hyped, I see its appeal. I dropped 10+ hours on this playing split-screen with my younger brother and it’s good fun, but they’re basically selling you the alpha beta. It’s actually funny that this isn’t complete on release considering the PC version wasn’t either. Nonetheless, go download the trial for this and if you really like it go spend the extra $7 on the PC version; it really is the best version. If you’ve got some sort of reject PC that can’t handle it, then you have my blessings to buy the 360 version. There’s also a weird requirement that to play split-screen you NEED an HD television set. If you’re buying it to play co-op like I know many of you are then you need to realize this before you waste $20. The game is also missing tons of content from the PC; to compare, the 360 version is basically everything up to the Halloween update (Nether) with a few random newer additions such as dogs. There’s no Endermen, no Enderdragon/”story”, nothing from the Adventure Update, the world is limited (basically the size to fill the map up) and most importantly there are no mods. Mojang and Microsoft have commented that the 360 version is going to be updated with everything in due time and that it’s all going to be free, but we’ll see how that turns out. As of now they technically released the alpha beta version of the game and you’re just going to have to deal.

So as you’d expect this version comes with some changes. First of all there’s an extensive tutorial that I highly recommend new players go through. You’ll spend a good half hour going through the process of crafting, mining, learning the controls, using furnaces, and understanding how the new menus work. The developers were even nice enough to build you a nice town with a castle you can use if you don’t feel like starting up a random world. The inventory also has a cursor you can move around with the analog stick (or you can roll with the d-pad if that’s your thing) that works well enough, but it just feels a bit sticky to me. I would’ve liked to see two separate sensitivity options, one for the inventory cursor and another for your character.

Now the thing I absolutely love is the new crafting interface. The menu is split between tabs that have the recipes for each item you can build even if you don’t have the ingredients. It’s a helpful design that helps you show what you can build, what you need to build it, and what function it serves. Everything is also neatly kept separate with all tools such as swords, axes, or shovels in the ‘tools’ tab, armor in its own tab, a food tab, and more. It’s as easy as just going to the tool tab when you want to craft a sword, going over to the sword icon, scrolling down the various types of swords (wood, stone, iron), and hitting craft. You won’t need to clumsily drag around items, split them apart, repack them, split them again, and so forth that made crafting on the PC a bit of a drag; now if you have the ingredients in your inventory it simply crafts it with a helpful notification showing you when you’re missing something. Sure, it takes away the “exploration” of discovering what can be crafted together, but fuck that. We all know that everyone spent most of their time playing with the Minecraft wiki open on the crafting page because nobody will memorize all the insane recipes. It also gets rid of the pain of having to drag around everything because I’m incredibly lazy. I welcome this change and hope Jeb adds an option to enable it on the PC.

Ok, so when you start up your world you’ll be able to set your world to online or offline. This basically means that if you set it to online, anyone can just up and join your world. For some reason though I haven’t been able to see any games to join at all since release and I know I’m not the only one with that issue since I’ve asked around. The 360 Edition doesn’t have the full blank worlds that the PC version has so you won’t be able to sit around building Deathstars with people. It’s just you and other guys in your world. The 360 actually implements this quite well with a simple invite/join game system. This is all fine and dandy, but those people can mess with your stuff so I highly recommend playing privately and only inviting people you know. Some people out there are dicks and just want to grief players, even your friends are. Hey Robby, you’re a dick. That glass took ages to forge and now my underwater house is flooded. The game also sports 4 player split-screen [ON HD TELEVISIONS ONLY] and it work surprisingly well. On a big enough TV (I’m rolling on a 46″) everything is still easy to see, when split apart for multiple local players, considering all the text and icons are small and pixilated.

Oh another thing to mention, there are either different skins you can use, the catch is that they’re multiplayer only. When you play with another person your character will be dressed in one of the either different skins depending on what player number you are, this is to help differentiate everyone in the room. Mojang has mentioned that they’re working to bring actual skins to the game in future updates.

The graphics are the same as ever, if anything they look worse if you play on an HD TV so you can see just how lazy the work is, but whatever I guess. The music is the same soothing instrumental which actually feels a lot better to listen to with my speakers than on my computer for some reason.

The Final Word
Basically if your computer is such garbage that it can’t run Minecraft buy this, but please try out the demo and think hard if you want to drop $20 on a game that’s all about building stuff; I mean think REALLY hard. Another reminder, for some reason if you don’t have an HD television set you CAN’T play split-screen. Personally, I’m not fond of the fact that they’re charging people $20 for what basically cost PC players $13 and it still has less content, but anyone who missed out on the Minecraft phenomenon is probably going to pick it up anyway since it is the best block building game on XBLA around. What, are you seriously going to go buy FortressCraft?

- MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average

Incognito Entertainment released the addictively fun game Warhawk in 2007, five years later and that studio has split apart with most members going into either Eat Sleep Play or LightBox Interactive. It’s LightBox who have decided to give us a sort of spiritual successor by flinging Warhawk into the future with Starhawk. LightBox basically took the Warhawk formula, threw in some RTS elements, a little bit of tower defense, and came out with their golden egg. It’s hard to explain in words why this addition to the game changes so much in each game you’re in, but you really have to play it to see.

So the game opens up introducing you to Emmett Graves who has the lovely job of hunting down Outcasts, people who have been tainted by a new resource called Rift energy and turned into crazed creatures. Early on you find out your long dead brother isn’t really dead but is leading an army of Outcasts against regular humans and it’s your brotherly duty to put him down. The setting and story hits all the marks of catching interest, but playing through the actual campaign doesn’t really give any sort of satisfaction if you’re playing it for a story. Each mission is basically designed to ease you into how to use the many items you’ll encounter in multiplayer matches. It all ends up being a 5 or so hour tutorial which is nice of them to do a campaign instead of a half-assed tutorial, but it begs the question of if you’d rather have a 30 minute tutorial that quickly explained everything in return for more effort going into the multiplayer. The kind of stuff you can expect to drop down from space include bunkers, bikes, shield generators, jetpacks, tanks, buggies, and more. I’ve got to say, I think the Sideswipe bike has got to my both one of my top designed bikes and most fun to drive. That power-slide man, that fucking power-slide.

Now that we’re done with that nonsense, let’s get on to the meat of the game, the online. You’ll be able to partake in 32 player battles across half a dozen maps that each contain totally different variations, so in truth it’s really a dozen maps. Fantastic news is that Lightbox revealed that all future map packs will be released for free so as to not fracture the community which is fantastic news considering Warhawk was split into 4 different ways because of the 3 DLC packs which was infuriating. The returning game modes for multiplayer include capture the flag, deathmatch, team deathmatch, and zones. The TDM and CTF modes are pretty standard, but with the added build & battle system the chances of you playing the same game twice are pretty slim. Each game I played had people building their defenses completely differently, they’d even adjust to how the other team played in the next round. Zones is sort of the marquee mode of Warhawk and it’s back in this game. The goal is to capture each zone and stay in the area long enough for it to grow into a level 3 zone; the more zones you have the more points are fed into your ticker, winner is the team with the most. These games are the most hectic with teams shifting control of the field constantly throughout matches with smart players able to pull ahead from a possible loss easily.

Just as in Warhawk there is a sort of crushing feeling you get when you play against the clearly better players. You’ll find them roaming servers in groups and utterly smash your disorganized squad with their building placements and beautiful hawk control. It’s a real annoyance when entire games can shift in favor of a team with just a small group of these guys, but thankfully Lightbox has made it so that even the players who aren’t doing much can still be rewarded. On both sides, if you simply build emplacements for your team, keep everything repaired, and kill the occasional enemy who wanders into your camp you’ll be earning support medals; this way players on teams with better players are still rewarded for helping out a little and the players going against these guys will still earn points for delaying their victory. Warhawk did have a massive difficulty curve, but I feel it’s been toned considerably down this time around. A friend of mine who was complete rubbish at Warhawk was able to pick this up quick and contribute more in one match than he did in days of playing Warhawk. There’s also a co-op mode called Prospector; this mode feels more like a defense game than the multiplayer because you’ll be alerted to the type of enemies incoming, their direction, and it’s up to you to decide which structures would work best to handle the next wave.

Warhawk veterans should be happy to know that the ridiculous requirements to rank up are completely gone and replaced with a simple XP system. You might not have that prestige of showing off you hit General, but you’ll be able to show off your weapon mastery instead in your player profile with ranks going from bronze to gold. As you level up you’ll unlock skill points and customization options for your character and vehicles. Skill points are used to purchase ‘perks’ you can equip (only one) to help you out; each perk is fully unlocked by completing a certain challenge like scoring 10 melee kills in a single match as well, once the challenge in met you can then purchase it. To those groaning about Call of Duty infecting your game don’t fret, these are very minor and are all support related perks. You’ll see things like viewing all enemies on your radar, slowly regenerate vehicles you’re in, reduced respawn time, bonus XP, and more. They can be switched whenever you want, but you can only have one active at a time. It is slightly annoying that you can’t access the skills page when you’re not playing in a game; sure it’s not a big deal once you’ve unlocked most of them, but it’s just a weird thing for Lightbox to have done. In the customization menu you’ll be able to pimp out your character, select the paint job you want other players to view on each vehicle you enter (you can equip separate paint jobs per vehicle which is a nice touch), and customize a decal that will appear on your character and vehicles. You’ll be able to change the pieces of clothing for each body part with quite a lot of options.

The graphics aren’t ground breaking, but everything has a very nice look to it. I’m not a fan of how the desert areas look, but the actual alien planets and space stages look brilliant and are well designed. One thing I do love is the way the buildings you drop begin to construct themselves; there’s just something incredibly satisfying about dropping a bunker down and watching as it quickly pulls itself together. If you didn’t bother preordering it because of Gamestop I’d highly recommend buying the soundtrack off PSN because it’s simply fantastic. It’s a damn shame they didn’t bother including a physical CD since that cover for the album is too good to waste.

The Final Word
The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to drop $60 on a multiplayer game. Sure, there’s a story to play, but it’s not really that interesting and mainly serves as a guide to elements you’ll experience online. Warhawk veterans should fall in love with this just as they did before and newcomers will be able to jump right in as well.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good

In 2007 CD Project RED came out of nowhere and decided to drop The Witcher on us which told the tale of the monster slayer Geralt of Rivia who not only suffers from amnesia, but a pain in his ass called Drowners. Besides a few rough spots The Witcher showed us a brilliant world based off the book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, and is one of the few games where I actually want to read all the little notes scattered around. Four years later and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings graced out computers with one of the most polished RPG games in a while. In similar fashion to The Witcher receiving an ‘Enhanced Edition’, TW2 is also getting the same treatment, but this time 360 owners get to join in on the party. All copies of the 360 will be physical versions of the new Enhanced Edition and PC versions are being updated with the new content for free.

The game opens up with a quick reminder that our buddy Geralt still hasn’t recovered from his amnesia but isn’t letting that get in the way of his Witcher full time job. This time he’s helping out his new ‘buddy’ king Foltest who’s going to be out of the picture faster than Sean Bean in Ronin. Geralt is awkwardly caught at the scene of the crime only to quickly escape from prison. You’ll venture to various locals and meet a host of colorful characters that will lead you towards the true kingslayer. The thing I love about TW2 is that all of the quests have some sort of variety that keeps you wanting to stay up late just to finish up the next quest phase. Even the side-quests are given better treatment with some even influencing choices you’ll see in the story. The thing I love most about the game is the setting, everything is just incredibly grimy and it handles one of its main themes (racial tension between humans and non-humans) in a serious and realistic way. Just like in the first game you’ll have to make some tough choices in this game, and by tough I don’t mean you’ll be picking what color you want your ending to be. You’ll feel like the developers took out the color from your moral compass because most of the choices in this game are as grey as grey can get.

One downside to the campaign is that the 360 version lacks the save import feature to carry over any choices made in The Witcher. While I’m sure it’s not a big deal to anyone who didn’t play the first game, it still would’ve been nice if they could have included a sort of interactive comic showcasing the major choices like Bioware did with the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2.

If you go into The Witcher 2 thinking hack/slashing your way through the game will cut it, you’ll be thrown on your ass harder than Jazzy Jeff. This is a game where you have to be aware of enemies trying to get around you, your position, and what type of enemy you’re facing; you just won’t fight a guy with a halberd the same way as a guy with a sword and shield. Besides your light and heavy attack you’ve also got a block that you can’t crutch on due to the fact that it takes out a bit of vigor each time you block a hit, a riposte used for parrying enemy attacks, and a dodge that will become your best friend. The combat in this game is tight and incredibly focused with Geralt pulling off some brutal attacks on his enemies. You’re equipped with a steel sword that’s made to do more damage against human opponents and a silver sword that’s going to be your monster slaying tool. There’s a collection of other minor weapons such as daggers and warhammers you can equip, but I never saw any point in using those. I sort of wish they didn’t replace your primary because I loved at the very least equipping any minor weapon in the first game just to see my witcher decked out in gear. You’ll also be able to equip throwing daggers, bombs, and traps to help you out during fights. Besides the physical abuse you’ll put enemies through, you’ll also be able to unleash your inner wizard on them. Your vigor bar, besides depleting whenever you block, is used for your magical skills. You’ll be able to unleash a torrent of pain on your enemies with an incineration spell, a sort of force push, a magical trap that snares enemies, hypnotize foes for a time, and a shield that will become best buddies with you and the dodge button. All of these skills start out mildly useful, but once upgraded in the magic skill tree, they turn you into a formidable foe that will send your enemies running. The controls have thankfully adapted perfectly to a controller which is no surprise considering the PC version had controller support.

As you level up in the game you’ll acquire talent points that you can then use in the skill tree. It’s separated into a small training tree with some basic skills and then 3 massive trees that focus in swordplay, magic, and alchemy. Don’t even bother thinking that you’ll be able to max everything out since you’ll most likely only be able to either max out a single tree and dabble a little in others or become a jack of all trades sort of witcher. Each tree definitely has some skills that make them all worthwhile to invest in with various skills able to be upgraded a second time. Some skills will also have an empty circle in their image, this means that you can equip a mutagen to enhance that skill. Mutagens all have various effects such as increased regeneration or elemental resistances.

Without some proper planning you’re most likely going to meet a quick end in The Witcher 2, so it’s smart to always head into a battle with some potions. Unlike other games where you can just pop a potion during a fight, you’ll have to do it before. Your health and vigor regenerate on their own during and after battles, albeit incredibly slowly. Taking a Tawny Owl for example greatly increases the rate that your vigor regenerates, there are other alternative potions such as Lapwing that give greater results at the cost of some side-effects like reducing your vitality. These potions can be made anywhere you’re not in direct combat and will last a certain amount of time depending on the potion and on any skills you may have invested in. You’ll also have oils and armor fragments that can be used to upgrade your gear; for example you can throw an insectoid oil on your sword if you know you’re about to go into a fight against a bug-like enemy.

So to make those potions you need to prepare for combat you’ll need to play around with the alchemy system. Whenever you’re in a safe area (any place where you’re not being slammed by enemies) and you can open up the radial menu to go into the meditation menu. In here you’ll be able to create various enhancements such as potions or oils, bombs, traps, drink said potions, view your character development, and wait time which is great for me because I don’t trust the dark. When you enter the alchemy section you’ll be greeted with a slightly confusing menu but after playing around in it for a few minutes you should have no issue. It’s here where you’ll be able to see any diagram you have for crafting and the ingredients needed for making them. Each item requires a certain group of ingredients, but the neat thing about the Witcher is that you don’t specifically need a cheese wheel to make a health potion. For example, the potion Swallow requires 1 vitriol, 2 rebis, and 1 aether ingredient. You can mix up any ingredients you have as long as they have one of those substances. For the vitriol requirement you could supply either some nekker eyes, teeth, necrophage eyes, balisse, or white myrtle petals. All of these items include the substance vitriol and are all acceptable to use to craft the item, although it’s smart to always use the item you have more of since the game might put a rarer ingredient in a slot instead of a more common one.

Besides the main campaign, there’s also an arena mode you can tackle that’ll pit you against increasingly difficult groups of enemies as you soldier on. In it you start at level 1 with just the most basic weaponry, and as you get through each wave you’ll be granted gold and a choice of reward such as a shiny new sword or some boots. There’s a shop to drop some well earned gold at and three companions you can hire to join you until they die. There’s a leader board feature that tracks your highest score with other players, but that’s as close as you’re going to get to an online function.

So people already know that The Witcher 2 is one of the most gorgeous games on the PC, but many people were curious how well it holds up on the 360; here’s a hint, fantastically. If I were to compare them to the PC version, I’d say it’s around the low/medium area, but the art style still keeps things looking aesthetically pleasing. It does suffer from some odd pop-ins at times, but it’s a minor gripe in a game this gorgeous. It’s one of the few fantasy games released this gen to really convince me that I’m really in this hard fantasy realm with gorgeous locals such a bustling forest, an elven city, and a devastating battlefield littered with the reborn specters of fallen soldiers. The Enhanced Edition also features some reworked graphics and lighting that will also be updated into the PC version. As with any game, the soundtrack is a key component to nailing the atmosphere and TW2 is buried in atmosphere with various tracks that help set the mood perfectly. The sound team also deserves a nod with fantastic work on the sounds in general for things, but it’s the ambient music that really sold me. There aren’t many games I play in surround sound, but it puts a huge grin on my face when I finally find one I can abuse my speakers with. On another note, for best results I highly recommend installing both discs onto the hard drive.

The Final Word
It’s always a treat to see a port as well put together as this is with almost no compromises. With 30+ hours to sink into the game with newly added side-missions and the arena mode, your friends won’t be borrowing this game from you anytime soon. 360 owners owe it to themselves to try out one of the best RPG’s to release this gen and I honestly can’t wait to see what CD Project RED pumps out next.

- MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent

Now I’m sure you’re all quite familiar with the Spike TV show ‘Deadliest Warrior’ where they bring in a group of experts who explain the basic tactics of the combatants they represent then toss all the info into this program called the ‘Bullshitter’ then call it a day. Besides the constant pain inducing feelings the show causes to anyone who’s read a history book, they decided to make a game because putting a Spartan in a 1v1 fight against a ninja makes more sense that way. Ancient Combat is a retail bundle of the two previous downloadable titles Deadliest Warrior and DW: Legends. Besides getting the joy of playing through both of those titles again, you’ll also be ‘treated’ to new weapons, all the DLC, a new map, and 6 episodes from the TV show.

When you start up the game you’ll notice that you’ll have to download both Deadliest Warrior and DW: Legends before you play. I checked and they’re both the same size as the downloadable version which makes me wonder why they didn’t just redesign the game to include everything on a single disc without the need for a download. You still need the disc to play the games even though you basically downloaded them which is odd. Players hoping to pit a pirate against Alexander the Great are going to be severely disappointed when they find out that’s it’s an actual true to words bundle and not a combined bundle like I’m sure many people will think.

You’ll find just over a dozen fighters in both titles ranging from the biggest hits from each season. While DW contains the more basic characters such as samurai or knight, Legends contains the more notable ones like Hannibal and Khan. In both games you’ll be able to unlock various weapons and outfits for each character that adds a nice degree of customization. The key feature developers need to nail in a fighting game is balance, without it players are basically forced to play as the stronger character or suffer constant defeat against players who do use them. Just like in the show, if you throw a ninja in against a knight you can pretty much expect that ninja to come out in a body bag. Unarmored characters will go down in as little as 5 hits at times with the tougher characters able to take quite a beating, especially if they have a shield. Anyone with a throwing weapon does have the potential to score a 1-hit kill if they nail a headshot, but those are few and far between that when they actually happen you don’t mind; expect you and your friends to have vocal “OH SHIT” moments when one of you manages to pull one off. It really doesn’t help matters when the controls are easily some of the worst in a fighting game. You’ll stumble around the fully 3D arenas while trying to clumsily try to refocus your character on your opponent. There’s a list of moves you can perform, but honestly they’re all a complete joke. There’s nothing complex to it and you’ll basically mash your way to victory. I suppose you could say “BUT DIEGO, THIS WASN’T MADE FOR FIGHTING FANS! IT’S MADE FOR FUN!” and I would reply with “Well then if you enjoy playing with shit, have fun”. I like my fighting games to have some actual effort put in their development and not run on a gimmick of limb removal.

Both games share the same arcade mode where you’ll go through a dozen or so fights unlocking new weapons for your chosen character along the way. You’ll get the occasional diversion like slicing pigs like in the show to break things up. Legends adds a Generals mode (similar to Risk) where you work your way along a map capturing areas to eventually have the map under your control. It’s incredibly slow and boring, I honestly don’t see why they thought it was a good idea to put this in a fighting game. I suppose it’s nice for them to try to spice things up, but they could have done it in better ways. For multiplayer you’ve got your basic 1 on 1 fight and you can even do skirmish fights where both players pick up to 4 fighters instead of one. Legends does have a few tweaks you can do like slice and zombie, but that’s it and they’re not even that interesting. Besides the local multiplayer there’s also an online lobby you can join, but good luck finding any players in that ghost town.

I’d like to think the graphics look ugly on purpose to make up for the amount of gore spraying everywhere, but there’s hardly any gore when you want it. I think after a dozen matches against a friend, maybe 4 of those lead to a decapitation or removed limb. The zombie/slice mode in Legends does help this issue by making almost each attack slice something off. You might say I’m nitpicking because I want to see arms flying off all the time, well to that I say why the hell are you watching Deadliest Warrior for if not for the decapitations? What, are people really watching it for the historical accuracy? On the other hand, the gore is stupidly funny to look at. There’s no better feeling than slicing an arm off your opponent and watching as he fumbles around trying to take a swing at you only to be met with a decapitation.

The Final Word
I highly recommend that you stay away from this if you’re a fighting game fan and only purchase it if you’re a huge fan of the show. Hell, even then I’d only excuse you purchasing it if you were drunk, and by drunk I mean so drunk that the town drunk is telling you to put the drink down.

- MonsterVine Rating: 2 out of 5 – Poor

So Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a reverse tower defense game that released on the PC a year ago with an iOS quickly done. 11 Bit Studio turned the tower defense genre on its head with their unique title that put you in control of the creep going up against the towers and it’s finally made its way to the 360. Given its difference from traditional tower defense games, it’s pleases me to say that this isn’t some cheap port and the controls are actually quite smooth.

Anomaly throws you in control of the commander who leads a squad of six potential units and your goal is simple: kill the aliens. There isn’t much else to the story in the game besides the short mission briefing you can choose to read and the minor quips Random Army Guy #393 says during the mission. The game will take you from Baghdad to Tokyo in 14 missions that will all last you a few hours depending on your skill. I blew through the campaign in around 3 hours while a friend of mine took a bit longer. The game does have an odd pacing to it with it introducing new alien units and human units at a nice pace, but all of these missions are complete pushovers. It’s not until mission 12 that the difficulty suddenly ramps up and the stages are brimming with enemies when compared to the previous 11 stages where you’d have a clear path between many enemies down a street and little to none; the last 3 missions are so littered with enemies you have no good choices.

The game itself controls fantastically with your commander tied to the left stick, sprinting is on the L trigger, speeding up time for everyone is on the R trigger, and all your commands are tied to the face buttons that open up some slick looking menus. Everything is just as easy and fast to do as it was on the PC, if not a little better since I found controlling the commander with the analog stick a lot smoother. The main idea of Anomaly is that it’s a reverse tower-defense game, the way that this works is that you press the Y button to bring up a tactical view of the map highlighting your route, alien artifacts, and the aliens themselves. In here you’ll be able to change the route your squad will take through the various ravaged cities. Don’t bother sticking to your first route because you’ll soon learn that you’ll need to switch up your route many times through missions. As you play the game you’ll unlock power-ups that you can use to help keep your squad from becoming scrap metal. The commander himself is technically invulnerable; he can take hits and die, but he’ll get back up in 5 seconds. Of course, you don’t necessarily want him to die because those are 5 seconds of vulnerability for your squad which can mean the difference between success and failure. The power-ups you use all deploy in a circled area that run on a short timer so you’ll need to figure out the best places to drop them so you can get the maximum efficiency from their limited use. You’ll come across your typical healing aura, a smokescreen that makes enemies less likely to hit anything in the circle, a decoy to divert enemy attention, and an air bombing run. These are in limited supply with certain checkpoints granting you a few extra and a supply jet dropping some after certain enemies are killed, so you’ll have to be smart about what you use and if you really need it.

There is some variety with the units available to you, but not by much. There’s the APC which does pathetic damage but can take some hits, a crawler that does quite a bit of damage but is made of glass, a unit that shields 2 others, a tank, a twin flamethrower dragon tank, and a truck that feeds off your abilities to deploy power-ups for you. Most players will realize how useless the APC is once they acquire the shielding vehicle and by the end of the game you’ll learn how amazing the Tank followed by crawlers, shields, and a supply truck is. I did find the enemies having a bit more variety with your typical cannon fodder turrets, shield draining beam snipers, massive behemoths, and two of the most dick enemy support units I’ve ever seen. The first is the hacker that drops homing force fields onto your commander. If he’s in the force field then any of your units who are also in it will open fire on him instead of the enemy. Not a big deal if you stay out, but later missions have such tighter areas with little movement that it gets a little annoying. The one I have a problem with, who I forgot the name, drains the energy from your power-ups (that are within range) and can also resurrect any of its fallen allies. Since the game blew through the introduction of the enemy I had no understanding on its resurrection ability. My only plan was to run my commander straight to those fuckers and bomb the hell out of them. The game really would’ve benefited from a sort of codex or fact sheet detailing the various things in the game. It could not only give you a better understanding of the strengths/weaknesses between units, but it could possibly get into a bit of some backstory for the game which would also be nice.

Just as you’d expect you can upgrade your vehicles with any cash you earn by destroying enemies or picking up alien artifacts. I did feel that there was a slight unbalance to the upgrade system that tied slightly with the difficulty pacing of the game. As I said before, the first 11 missions are complete pushovers yet you won’t ever get much money to upgrade more than maybe 3-5 units to the first upgrade tier; on the other hand, the final 3 missions toss so much money at you it’ll be impossible to not have all your guys rolling around at least at the second tier (there are 3 tiers). It’s not a big deal since I didn’t really need the upgrades previously to finish the missions, but it really felt odd that they would include it and barely let me use it to its full potential until the end. There is the option of selling a unit, but I never really saw the point in doing it unless you have loads of extra cash and accidentally picked an APC over something useful.

So as the entitled gamers you are, you’re probably thinking “Hey, I should get something extra for months of wait” and you’d be happy to know that you do get something extra. You’ll be treated to a new mode called Tactical Trials that includes 6 new missions that take place in a virtual setting. The virtual reality setting is a nice break from the destroyed cities from the campaign and the missions actually pack some punch. It took me around 30 minutes to knock out the first mission so I’d say you can expect a good few hours to keep you rolling.

The game has a nice overall look with the graphics and a sort of dirty look to everything (although that might be because of the ruined cities from the aliens). Everything stands out nicely with enemies draped in bright reds and your vehicles/commander in a light blue. All of this helps more than you think when later missions require quick thinking and awareness of all the surrounding towers and your line of six units.

The Final Word
So while the game itself is fantastic and a fresh way to look at an old genre, I’m not sure how many people are really going to dig this twist on tower-defense and go through the brutal side-missions and tactical trials. If you are a tower-defense fan, then go and buy this. It’s got a decent length for $10 and I’m sure you’ll have a blast with it.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good

Silent Hill is known for its focus on delivering psychological horror rather than visceral horror. The series wields disturbing imagery and unpredictable scare tactics in order to take players on a horrific journey through the eerie, ill-fated town. The second title in the series delievered the most mature and possibly the best story in the series. However, the franchise was not consistent in terms of quality, and lost relevancy amongst the horror genre. We now find the series with a new developer and the result is Silent Hill: Downpour, a true return to the psychological horror introduced with the first Silent Hill.

Silent Hill: Downpour, developed by Vatra Games, is the latest entry in the series, and an ambitious attempt to bring the series back to a relevant spot in the horror genre. The team behind Downpour has done a wonderful job of creating a consistently creepy and dreary atmosphere throughout the game, accompanied by a dark and enticing story. However, the game suffers from a subpar combat system, and marred with technical issues that pulled me right out of the experience.

The story follows Murphy Pendleton; a convict with a past shrouded from the player a majority of the game. Pendleton’s psychological terror is unique to his own story much like the protagonist in Silent Hill 2; he encounters multiple metaphors in the form of monsters and environments unique to his plight.

I was enticed by the story the more it progressed. Its dark and mature tone complimented Vatra’s focus on psychological horror in Downpour. I became increasingly attached to Pendleton, only hoping for a happy end to a story of self-torture and guilt over a heartless act of cruelty on the part of Pendleton in the intro moments of the game.

The level design for a majority of the interior environments adds a uniqueness that is hard to come by in the horror genre these days, and that criticism stretches to other entertainment mediums, not just video games. I’m not necessarily saying Downpour’s environments are the best the horror genre has ever seen; it’s hard to say something that bold when games like Resident Evil 2, Dead Space, and even the original Silent Hill have established settings that define the horror genre. What I am saying is that Vatra gives the interior environments a sense of importance but also a greater sense of danger, something I find appealing and important in the horror genre. I found myself walking through rooms and hallways with an unwavering sense of tension that often times concluded with no threat. Downpour’s greatest scare tactic is leading players into a false sense of security.

The gameplay is where Downpour begins to show its flaws. Not all of the gameplay is rough, however; I really enjoyed exploring all of the environments thanks to a forensic light the character can carry to reveal clues and hints. The combat is where I found myself frustrated the most with Downpour.

In Silent Hill fashion, combat is focused mainly on melee weapons, with only two types of firearms, a pistol and shotgun, which are sparsely spread out in the game. Pendleton can store one firearm in his inventory at a time, but can’t store melee weapons. Players can find weapons just about anywhere in Downpour. The weapons come in various types ranging from bricks and knives for close range; shovels or pitchforks for longer range; and middle range weapons like axes. Each weapon has a durability factor to consider, however there was no way to tell when a weapon was about to break, which left me unarmed in a few encounters. However, my main issue with combat in Downpour is its unreliable and frantic controls.

There was really no tactic associated with combat, other than turning around and running away from a fight, which the game does encourage. The blocking mechanic allows some defense against the barrage of attacks from the enemies in Downpour, but it does little to keep the combat from falling apart.

I’m happy to see Vatra not create a character that is unstoppable and a complete badass when it comes to fighting. However, I wish there was a tighter focus on combat when more than one enemy entered the picture, and trust me, you’ll often run into more than one enemy at a time.

Downpour also suffered from some technical issues that marred much of my experience with the game. Frame-rate issues were most of the problems I ran into. I found myself bouncing around in rooms, especially in the alleyways while outside. I thought the game froze in a few instances, and these issues would only get worse as the game went on. Whatever the problem was for the constant frame-rate drops, it’s a shame that some of those moments that were meant to scare me, caused frustration instead.

Downpour features side missions that are uncovered by exploring Silent Hill. There are a variety of side missions players can check out to break up the story, and many of them serve to flesh out Silent Hill’s lore. Some of the side quests that I completed were as unsettling as the main story, and were great distractions that kept me interested in exploring the entire town.

The Final Word: Vatra Games attention to detail in the level design and mature story telling makes Silent Hill: Downpour a psychological and emotional roller coaster. Unfortunately, the sub-par combat and technical issues pulled me out of the experience far too often. I hope, however, Konami leaves Vatra at the reigns of Silent Hill for at least one more game, because I strongly believe, thanks to Vatra, that Silent Hill is a relevant force in the horror genre once again.

- MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 – Fair

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is loooong. Purported to be a game of an extraordinary 200 hours in length and a blend of action and RPG, Amalur certainly seems to rival the likes of The Elder Scrolls at first glance; this shouldn’t be surprising, given support on the project from lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion fame, Ken Rolston. Indeed, Amalur’s inspiration draws from many great games and ideas that we’ve seen over the years – but is that enough?

Story

In Amalur, you take the role of the “The Fateless One”, a recently resurrected being who, because of his/her death, is no longer tied to the threads of Fate, and is thus able to change the world around them. Shortly after being revived, you are soon attacked by the Tuatha, a group of rebel Fae (read: elves) who seek to conquer the world through the worship of their new God. It’s then up to you to venture out into the world and gather together an army to rebel against the Tuatha and restore peace to the land. However, this is but only one of the many narrative threads that come together to form a fully-realized world.

It’s a shame that despite how well developed this world is, most of the questlines are hit or miss. The main storyline in particular doesn’t seem to pick up until near the last third or so of the game. In fact, as hard as the game tries to build you up as this all-powerful first-of-his/her-kind being that can change, you do relatively little in the ways of meaningful choice. For being “The Fateless One”, all you seem to do is run errands for all the important NPCs that you deal with, rather than be a real leader. Events will play out the same way, and any major choices you might make don’t have consequences beyond what stat bonus you will gain as a reward.

This is not to say that all plotlines are bad – in fact, many of the faction-specific questlines have a greater emotional punch, and you’ll meet characters that have more depth, which really helps the world feel more alive. It’s too bad they’re short, and there aren’t many of them in relation to the other quests of the game.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Amalur follows many of the open-world RPG tropes you’ve come to love from franchises such as Fable and The Elder Scrolls. After a short introduction sequence where you are taught the ropes, you are released in the world to explore as you please, completing the main story at your leisure. Of course, along the way, you’ll stumble upon many a side quest, and the sheer amount of them is staggering. You’ll see golden exclamation marks popping up on your minimap just about everywhere, letting you know there’s yet another adventure to partake.

Apart from the narrative provided, many quests consist of “fetch this”, “kill that” or “walk there” variety. There are also hidden item caches, shrines that grant you temporary stat bonuses and “lorestones” that impart a bit of world wisdom on you and can even grant you permanent bonuses for finding them all. Thankfully, the game’s extensive customizability and combat keep things from ever becoming a grind.

Charater progression in Amalur is separated into combat-based abilities and profession-related skills. Each time you level up, you gain 3 points to place in your abilities, and 1 point for your skills. Abilities are divided into the regular three themes: Might, Sorcery and Finesse. Rather than force you into a role for the rest of the game, Amalur allows you to choose abilities and skills based on your playstyle. By placing points in one of the three styles, you’ll unlock “Destiny” cards that give your character bonuses based on how invested you are in a given tree. Place all your points in Might (the Warrior tree) and you’ll gain bonuses that help you stun enemies more often and make you more resilient to damage. Or you could split points down the Finesse (Thief) and Sorcery and become a Shadowcaster. There are literally cards for every given build and you’re allowed to “respec” at almost anytime so you can experiment to your hearts content.

On top of all the combat abilities you get access to, there are also a wide variety of specialty skills that you can train in, varying from lockpicking and hidden item detection to blacksmithing and crafting gems that can augment your gear. There are quite of few of them, each requiring 10 skill points to master, giving you a lot of choice here. Some skills however, feel like necessities – for instance, Find Hidden, when maxed, will show you the location of ALL treasure chests, hidden doors and caches and lorestones on your minimap in addition to giving you extra gold when looting enemies. While some may choose to forgo this ability, it’s pretty damn powerful and hard to give up in relation to the other skills on offer here.

Where the open-world exploration feels akin to The Elder Scrolls, combat in Amalur feels more like God of War: fast, vicious and action-packed. You can equip two weapons at any one time, varying from an arsenal of 9: longswords, bows, greatswords and hammers—they’re all here. There’s even a new one, Chakrams, a mage-specific weapon that act like dual spinning boomerangs of death. Each weapon has it’s own style and you can unlock new types of moves and combos pending how you build your character. Combat is quick and weapons (especially the larger ones) give a satisfying crunch as they bowl over your enemies. For the magically-inclined, there is also an ability bar than can be accessed by holding the right trigger (this is a hotbar for those of you on the PC) that allows you to quickly equip and sling spells in an easy motion. Finally, as “The Fateless One”, dealing damage to enemies will fill up your fate meter, that, when full, can be released into a “Fate Shift”. Enemies slow down and you’re given a huge boost to damage and a limited amount of time to defeat as many foes as you can and then execute them with a quick-time event for extra experience. It’s nothing new, but the animations are appropriately badass and make you feel powerful.

If there are a few caveats about the combat system the first is that, on consoles, the abilities tab can only hold four spells at any given time and swapping them is painfully slow, as you need to pause the game, scroll down to the ability trees, find your ability and then map it. This can be a real drag on the fast-paced combat, especially for sorcerers, who get access to a good 6 or 7 spells by game’s end. The implementation of this is puzzling, as there is a separate radial menu that hotkeys your items; you can access this by tapping the bumper. It would have made more sense if you could have also mapped spells to these slots to avoid losing the heat of battle.

The second caveat is that sometimes, combat can feel cheap. Amalur makes you feel quite powerful with the array of abilities that it gives you access to, however it seems the game’s only answer to difficulty is to throw more enemies at you that can interrupt your attacks. Some attack animations can take several seconds to play out, in which you can be chain-attacked by a group of monsters before you get a chance to retaliate. In fact, there were several times that I died due to a string of unlucky hits that I couldn’t avoid because I was stuck in recovery animations. I would be more forgiving of the system if it weren’t for every enemy being able to disrupt your attacks, but in it’s current state, it was definitely frustrating at times.

Being an action RPG, Amalur also provides much in the way of loot – so much so, in fact, that you’ll find your backpack stuffed to the brim with all the colourful and epic items that you can’t bid yourself to part with. Thankfully, the inventory interface is easy to manage, if a bit tedious at times when you have too many items. Items that you have no need for can be placed in a junk list at the tap of a button and easily sold at shops whenever you’re stopping by towns. For those specializing in Blacksmithing, items can also be salvaged for parts and the materials used to build new items. Furthering the theme of customization, some items come with sockets as well, allowing you to socket gems for additional status effects.

It’s a little weird that the best gear in the game is crafted, since there are many epic sets of gear with their own unique design that look much better than anything you could craft. I feel like it was a bit of a missed opportunity, however none of the armor pieces in this game don’t actually look bad, it’s just the difference between great and greater.

Presentation

When it comes to presentation, you can really tell that this game has had a touch from Todd McFarlane. The world is full of vivid colour and unique landscapes that emanate a graphic-novel style and look simply astounding at times. It’s a constant delight to explore, as there is so much to see. Item design looks great as well, particularly the armor sets, where even the most basic piece looks more like what many MMO’s would offer in their end-game pieces, and it only gets better from there. Weapons also appropriately make you feel badass and the artistic design is truly one of the most enjoyable aspects of Amalur. Music is whimsical and really helps propel the exploration aspect of the complete, supplementing combat with dramatic horns and aggressive fanfare to help get your blood pumping.

Presentation falters on NPC conversations however, as facial animations are extremely stiff, and many times it doesn’t even look as if characters are making eye contact with you or are cross-eyed. It’s a bit off-putting, and the hit-or-miss voice acting doesn’t help things. While there certainly some characters that pass muster for having a personality, there are others whose vocal tones feel flat and extremely boring. If the situation is so dire, why do you not make it sound like it’s so important? Some energy, please!

Facial movement issues aside, it feels so wonderful to get lost in a world with so much artistic variety – not only in the settings, but the enemies, the weapons, the armor, the people, all of it. Art style obviously isn’t everything when it comes to a game, but the team at Big Huge Games did a damn good job of creating Amalur’s world.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning offers a wealth of variety and intense customizability set is a huge, wonderfully styled open world. The world thrives on rich colour and unique design that looks simply gorgeous and is an absolute joy for those who love to explore. It also helps that every weapon or piece of armour, no matter how low in quality, makes you look amazing. The breadth of character customization allows you to play how you like to play, from being a spell-slinger to a cutthroat to a massive tank, or even everything all at once. Combat is fast-paced and makes you feel powerful, even though it can be a bit cheap at times. Really, Kingdoms of Amalur tries to be a Jack-of-All-Trades, with an exceptional amount of breadth in the things that you can do but unfortunately ends up with not as much depth.

MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 / 5

Wheels of Destruction
Developer: Gelid Games
Price: $10/7.99 £
Platform: PS3 (PSN)

Remember my Smash N Survive review a couple weeks back? Remember how it sucked and it is a car combat game that shouldn’t be played? Well I’m glad to say that Wheels of Destruction is nothing like that. WoD is actually worth checking out.

After my run in with SNS I was a bit worried about reviewing another downloadable car combat game. However after starting it up and playing a few sessions, I quickly realized that Wheels of Destruction wasn’t a lazily designed mess, but actually a pretty fun little game.

To give a basic rundown, WoD is a car-combat game that focuses on firearms, meaning that you’ll be using long-range weapons to take your opponents down. It plays very much like an arcade game, the goal of the game modes is to get the highest score and win, nothing more, nothing less. It’s designed for competitive play, which is evidenced by the leaderboards and one other, very important thing: there’s no story mode.

Yes, if there was one thing that bothered me, it’s the fact that there’s only multiplayer in this game. Well, to be more accurate, you can play against bots alone offline, but there’s not a whole lot of point to that. This is essentially WoD’s biggest flaw, it’s strictly for players who like to play competitively online and doesn’t offer anything more. Whether this is a problem or not depends on the player: if you’re looking for a fun car combat game to play online with other people, you’ll like WoD. However, if you want some sort of campaign mode to play with actual storyline and objectives, you won’t find any of that here.

The game offers three different game modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag, with five different maps to play on. As far as modes go, this is pretty standard stuff and it left me wondering if there couldn’t have been more. There’s also other settings, such as firefight, which will leave you with only the starting weapon and random, which will start you off with a different car each time you spawn. Speaking of weapons and cars, there are four weapons (each with a secondary fire mode) and five cars to choose from. The cars themselves have different stats and ability and are built with different preferences in mind. The Heavy can take a lot of hits, the Engineer can jump higher, you get the idea. Also, all of them are destructible which is a very important asthetic for a car combat game. As for the weapons, I found myself using the rocket launcher as much as I could and ignoring the rest, as there isn’t a whole lot of point in using the weak gatling gun or the flamethrower, when you can use the heavy hitting rail gun or the homing rockets. I suppose the gatling gun is the starting weapon and has infinite ammo, but there are plenty of weapon pickups you can find to get your hands on better weapons.

The controls can take some time to get used to. Particularly the aiming. Oddly enough, the right analog stick doesn’t control the camera or lets you aim. Both steering and aiming has to be done with the left stick, which can take some time getting used to and can be very jarring at first. However it’s really not that big of a problem, thanks to the semi auto-aim.

As you have probably already figured out, Wheels of Destruction lacks variety and replay value. No campaign, three game modes, five maps, five cars, it’s small numbers all around. While some of it is understandable, (for example the cars are all unique and different) it still leaves you wanting a bit more. The gameplay is fun, you drive around, destroy other players cars, pick up weapons, shields and health wherever you find them, and just generally enjoy the fast-paced action the game brings. But how long can that last? If you like the genre and you’re looking for fast-paced, simple online play, this game is for you. However, if you’re not into that, you really shouldn’t bother, WoD’s simplicity is both its strength and its weakness: if you don’t enjoy the gameplay all that much after playing a session or two, you’ll have no reason to continue playing.

The Final Word
Wheels of Destruction is not a bad game, it can be quite fun for what it is, and one can see the effort that was put into the game. However its lack of variety and overall simplicity ends up becoming its biggest flaw, which keeps it from being anything more than a nice distraction to play when you’re bored and have nothing better to do. If you want a simple and cheap car combat game that is worth the price, Wheels of Destruction might just be for you. Just don’t expect it to hold your interest for more than a couple days.

MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average