In similar fashion to Orcs Must Die (I’m only comparing since I played it recently) Dungeon Defenders introduces you to a gang of mischievous students who suddenly find themselves under attack by an endless army of your typical bad dudes who want to smash your crystal. While in Orcs Must Die your teacher was embarrassingly killed off, here your teachers have decided to just fuck off and leave a few kids in charge of a giant castle.

The gameplay is almost exact to OMD to anyone familiar to that title. It plays like a tower defense game with a variety of ‘traps’ you can place around the map and you also control your character who can attack the enemies head-on. The similarities end there since this game has a major RPG emphasis on the gameplay. You can level up your character, spend points on various stats, and collect different types of loot. Let me stress for a moment when I say that Dungeon Defenders is not made for solo play. The numerous doors enemies pour through, each with multiple paths to your crystal, make tackling a level alone a daunting task. Playing with 2 or 3 players is fine, but you really get a better sense of how the game is really meant to be played when you have a full room of 4 people. You can either roll with your buddy in some local co-op or jump online.

Before you start your goblin slaughter you’ll have to create your character first. There are 4 classes you’ll be able to play as: the knight, the huntress, the mage, and the monk. You’re really going to want to practice a bit with each character to figure out which play-style you’re going to want to go with since each class has their own specific set of abilities and traps. For example the mage can build skeletal arms that fire magical bolts at your enemies while the knight can build traps such as spike barricades. You can even tweak the colors of the class you select and even change the tint of your crystal. It’s nothing amazing, but it was nice of them to include it.

As you’d expect in an RPG game there’s tons of loot to, well… loot. You’ll find pieces of armor or weapons in chests scattered around the stages that respawn with new items after each wave. Items can either be instantly equipped or sent to your item chest if you want a better look at it (or to sell). The game offers a very simple pop-up on items with a green thumbs up signifying an improvement over your currently equipped gear and a red thumbs down if you shouldn’t bother with it. Once a wave is cleared (or when you head to your tavern) you can view your item chest to check up on anything you sent there. You can sell it for mana which is used to upgrade your gear and buying items in the shop (it’s also used to construct your traps during matches). One disappointing thing about the gear is that while the weapons you equip all look pretty cool, the armor you equip will never change the look of your character. It’s a bit disheartening when you spend the time to upgrade a set of armor and you end up with no visual pleasure to accompany it.

Each match starts you out in the ‘build’ phase. It’s here where you’ll have the time to study the map to learn where the chests are, the best choke points, where the enemies are going to coming from, and all the paths they can take to your crystal. The game helpfully places a magical line that shows you all the potential paths that an enemy will traverse. Once you finish a wave you’ll be thrown back into the build phase where you can open up any chests you forgot about, build new traps, repair any damaged ones, and the mana from killed enemies won’t disappear so there’s no reason to rush. The next wave will commence when you’re ready and activate it on your crystal. Another thing to mention is that you don’t lose anything you gained if you fail a level. Any gear you picked up or levels gained will stay even if you die which is nice.

One thing I particularly like about the game is that it will show you what enemies will come out of each door and how many of them there will be. A door could only hold 2 trolls while the other could have half a dozen goblins with a handful of dark elf arches. There are just over half a dozen different enemies with a few bosses thrown in the mix every so often. These enemies will vary from flying wyverns, evil wizards, goblins, and a few other typical fantasy monsters. Every so often you’ll see a few elemental enemies in the mix. These guys will have status effects such as fire damage which makes them top priorities to take down.

The Final Word
If you like the thought of a tower defense game thrown into a blender with some RPG elements and hack/slash gameplay then Dungeon Defenders should be exactly what you’re looking for. It also has a pretty damn charming art style.

- MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair

Skyrim is a slow game. It rewards curiosity and exploration with valuable enchanted weapons/armor or with a quest that will have you starting out in a drinking game at the local inn, then waking up halfway across Skyrim and having to retrace your steps in similar fashion to the movie The Hangover. Players who simply speed though the main story and call it a day simply aren’t getting the full enjoyment you’re supposed to out of an Elder Scrolls game. When I noticed I had clocked in 35 hours into the game in just 3 or 4 days I had realized that I hadn’t even finished a quarter of the main story quests (I had done maybe 3 out of the 15+ quests that make up the main story). Each time you tell yourself that you’re going to do a certain quest or finish that dungeon you forgot to clear, there will always be something miniscule to distract you that might range from a dragon fight to simply noticing something in the distance and wanting to see what it is. Hell, there are even things you won’t even find in your playthrough until a friend mentions it to you. My friend has double the playtime I do right now (he’s pushing just over 100 hours) and I consider him a bigger expert on the game than I since having more playtime surely means he has to have seen most of everything that I haven’t. It took me to mention how to reach Blackreach, a Dwemer ruin/city, to him for me to realize that even he (with his double playtime) missed out on a massive quest and one of the most gorgeous dungeons I’ve ever had to pleasure of killing stuff in. Although I suppose nothing gets better than entering a town, witnessing one of the many random dragon encounters and joining the city guard in showing it that it shouldn’t fuck with regular folk.

Skyrim opens up in traditional Elder Scrolls fashion with you as a prisoner solemnly waiting for your turn on the executioners axe. Conveniently, a dragon shows up to ruin the party. After a short ‘tutorial’ on the controls you’re basically thrown out into Skyrim, Fallout 3 style. I didn’t really feel awe when I was thrown into the wasteland like some of my friends were in Fallout 3, but when I took my first steps into Skyrim all I could think about was how gorgeous the landscape looked. After finding your way to the first town you’ll soon find out you’re a Dragonborn, a human with the soul of a dragon. You’re special because not only can you absorb the souls of dragons you kill, but you can also learn their language in the form of shouts. Shouts give you various effects such as weakening enemies, turning you invincible, freezing enemies, breathing fire, summoning thunderstorms, or even calling your own dragon to help you out. Each shout has 3 words that make up the full shout and you use the souls of dragons you kill to unlock each word. Bethesda decided that since Skyrim is a pretty big place they’ll just leave all 20 shouts (60 separate words to actually find) scattered around the world on “Word Walls”. If you happen to come across one of these word walls you’ll be able to instantly acquire that word and keep it if you can either kill the dragon guarding it or run away (note: you just get the word, you still need to unlock it with a soul). Once you gain the second or third word in a shout you can hold down the button on the controller/keyboard to do a more powerful shout. A quick tap simply does the first word, hold that sucker down and you’ll let off a fearsome bellow with the rest of the words. I recommend finishing the main quest up until you need to acquire a horn for the mountain men since that gets you the fully unlocked ‘Fus Ro Dah’ shout from the original Skyrim trailer. The first two words simply stun enemies, but that third word will send them flying. You having troll problems? Fus Ro Dah his ass off a mountain. Got a giant problem? Lead him up a mountain and Fus Ro Dah his ass off. Got a pile of cheese wheels in your house that are too neatly stacked? Fus Ro Dah that cheese all over your room. Even though Skyrim is a bit smaller than Oblivion (map), the game just feels larger. While Oblivion had dull quests with a few spotlights, copy/pasted dungeons, and dull NPC’s Skyrim throws you into a world ravaged by dragons, a civil war is dividing families, you’ll help the Dark Brotherhood rise back up to glory, the thieves guild actually feels like a thieves guild, and you’ll help a guild of werewolves fight against their longtime enemy.

Now of course there’s some combat to be done in this game so let’s get into that. If you played Oblivion you know what to expect with the melee combat in Skyrim and the magic system. Things feel a little more refined though, but it’s ultimately the same hack/slash system as before. The biggest addition is being able to dual wield two different weapons (unfortunately not two shields), which means you can roll with two axes, a shield+mace, two spells, or a spell in one hand and a sword in the other. You can mix up whatever you want (even staffs) besides the 2 handed weapons of course. Spells have a fantastic Bioshock look to your hands by having a unique effect for most spells appear in your hand while you’re just standing around. The spells have also gotten an upgrade in effect when you use them from Oblivion and are much more exciting to use this time around. There’s even a skill you can later gain that allows you to perform a more powerful version of a spell if you dual wield the same one and cast them together. You don’t know how awesome it felt to walk into a room full of enemies with the Mace of Molag Bal in one hand and an upgraded flamethrower spell in the other. It was like a symphony of violence. You can also randomly pull off brutal kill animations similar to the slow-motion kills of Fallout. There are two or three different animations for each weapon type, more if you add in the decapitation skill so you shouldn’t get tired of seeing them anytime soon. Exploring for a while can get you pretty annoyed with wolves after a while, so when you watch your character pick up a wolf by the neck them crush its skull with your mace it leaves a big smile your face. You’ll notice that you do have less armor pieces that you’re able to equip, but that change is pretty hit-or-miss with Elder Scrolls fans (personally, I don’t mind it). You’ll come across your basic hide, iron, or steel gear and then enter manhood when you deck your character out in ebony or dwarven gear. All the weapons and armor pieces are beautifully modeled and it’ll make people such as myself want to view them all (and by view them all I mean leave them in a pile in my cheese pile room).

People might have thrown a little hissy fit when Bethesda revealed the removal of attributes, birth-signs, and major/minor skills but you’ve got to trust me when I say they didn’t really remove them. Birth-signs have been replaced with the guardian stones that are found around Skyrim and each one gives a blessing similar to how the birth-signs behaved. The difference here is that you can change what stone you want whenever you want. Bethesda has taken their perk system from Fallout and implemented into the skills. Instead of selecting your major skills and those half dozen skills being the ones that level you up, all skills equally level you. You’ll notice you level faster this time around than in previous games since every skill you use is contributing to your level. With each level you’ll be able to pick whether you want to increase your magic, health, or stamina and given one perk. These perks are then spent on skills within each skill tree like increased 1-handed damage (in the 1h skill tree) or improved sneaking. The removal of attributes does feel like a kick in the RPG balls, but instead of putting points into strength you’re spending perks on skills in the 1h or 2h weapon tree to improve your damage. Bethesda has removed the attributes screen and blended it into the skills without it feeling weird. The game caps your level at 50, but all that affects is that you won’t gain anymore perks for any levels you gain past that. You’re still free to keep leveling your skills after you hit 50. The other fantastic thing is that you aren’t forced to spend your perk the moment you level. You can just horde a couple points if you can’t decide what you want to spend them on and them cash them into skills whenever you feel like it. It does feel a bit disappointing that I can’t make an overpowered character like I did in Oblivion, but this forces you to make choices about how you want to play this game like most RPG’s do. You’ll also be able to find skill books like in Fallout that raise your skills up a level once read.

Some of the newer minor additions to the game are companions that can follow you around. Don’t expect these characters to be brimming with personality like Fallout’s companions, but it is nice that you don’t have to trek through those dark dungeons alone. Marriage is a new addition and you can have your husband/wife cook you food, give you items, or even set them up with a job so they can bring in some extra gold. There’s more of a feeling of being a part of the world with the addition of jobs as well. You can help cut wood, mine, or mill which can help put a little weight in that gold purse of yours. One small thing added to the quest journal is the separation of small quests with the bigger ones. Smaller quests that can be done in half an hour are grouped into the miscellaneous folder which really helps keep your already large quest list a bit smaller. The UI is also really slick and quick/easy to navigate which is a welcome addition. Houses now have usable weapon racks and mannequins for your armor so you can proudly display your hard earned loot without having to sit there for an hour fighting with the shoddy ‘pick up’ button trying to put your items on display like in previous games. I’d say my favorite house addition are the bookshelves that can be ‘activated’ which opens up your inventory and you can select what books to place on the shelf. The best part is that you can still read the book while they’re on the shelf without putting it into your inventory or messing anything up. I’m sure I’m not alone when I used to spend ages sitting there trying to neatly put books on shelves.

Skyrim of course isn’t late to Bethesda’s bug party, but bugs in a Bethesda game is pretty much expected. I had my game freeze twice on me, once in Helgen during the tutorial when you have to jump on the inn roof and right before the end of the tutorial when you exit the cave into Skyrim. Ever since then in my 50+ hours I haven’t encountered a single problem which I’m going to thank the gaming gods for. I suppose this is a blessing I’ve been given after the punishment I supposedly deserved when I played Fallout 3 and had constant freezes, framerate drops, or losing save files. There is a pretty big bug going around on the Playstation 3 version when your save file gets over 6MB. Players are saying their games have become unplayable with severe framerate drops and not being able to turn in quests. My file is getting close to 8MB and haven’t had any sort of issue yet, but I felt it was necessary to mention this. Hopefully Bethesda fixes this instead of ignoring it like a certain vampire quest glitch in Oblivion.

Everything in Skyrim has gotten an obvious bump in quality from Fallout 3 and Oblivion. Characters actually have some detail to them, proportions are correct, you can actually make a pretty good looking character, and even though most textures are all flat you barely notice it when the game is in motion. I know many people will still criticize the game for looking a bit dated, but considering the massive world Bethesda has created I’m pretty impressed with how it all looks. The biggest improvement is obviously in the armor and weapon detail. They’ve added a zoom option in the menu so you can rotate/zoom into whatever piece of armor or weapon you want. It doesn’t stop there though, since you can now look at the dozens of different food, ingredients, miscellaneous objects, or even read books. I can’t imagine the sleepless nights fun the art team had doing all this.

I’ve always considered The Elder Scrolls series to have a great soundtrack, but Skyrim’s thundering music is probably my favorite of the series. The feeling you get when you walk into a town to pick up something from the blacksmith, hear the roar of a dragon and the panic of the villagers, then pull out your mace (any other weapon is for babies, except maybe warhammers) as the dragon fighting music starts playing is one I’ll never get tired of. Bethesda did bump up the quality of their voice actors by hiring more than triple the amount they had in Oblivion (pretty sure they had less than 20 guys doing voices in Oblivion). Everything feels more natural and stopping by to listen to the NPC chatter actually feels like chatter you’d hear in real life, unlike the forced dialog Oblivion suffered from.

The Final Word
Is Skyrim a perfect game? Far from it, but it is one hell of an excellent entry into a franchise and easily one of the best games put out this generation. This is something that will keep you itching to finish one more quest or clear that last dungeon to score some fat loot that no game out this quarter will be able to satisfy. I’m a huge Batman nerd/fanboy, and since I got my PS3 fixed I haven’t been able to actually sit down and finish Arkham City because I’ve got a case of the Skyrim fever. Just go buy this game. Or go steal it, but if the police ask why you did it tell them Will sent you you didn’t get any ideas from me.

- MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent

There has been a lot of loud trumpeting about the superiority of FPS’ this year and it’s easy to see why with so many hitting shelves this holiday season. Battlefield 3 is Electronic Arts’ golden boy entry into the fray who has had much resting on its shoulders. With the addition of single-player and coop campaigns as well as a brand new engine, Frostbyte 2, DICE and EA look to champion the market this holiday season. Does the latest iteration of the Battlefield franchise have what it takes to beat out the best? Or are there crosshairs already focused on this latest FPS?

Battlefield 3 splits itself into three separate experiences, the single player campaign, the coop campaign and the much-touted multiplayer. The single player seats you behind marine Sgt. Blackburn as he’s interrogated for information regarding a possible terrorist threat in New York. Utilizing a series of flashbacks, you play mainly through the eyes of Blackburn but also out of several other varying perspectives. It’s nothing original these days but it does have a lot of parts that are truly engaging, especially when you play in the heat of battle or drive a tank. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, the campaign ends before you know it, especially when it feels like things are just picking up momentum.

More importantly, the short campaign ends up feeling more like a glorified tech demo which, while impressive, feels like it could have been so much more. I was disappointed that there were some moments that felt set up for awesomeness and then didn’t end up paying off, such as an early level where you enter the cockpit of a fighter jet but rather than pilot it you instead sit backseat and focus on firing off flares and shooting down other enemy fighters. In retrospect, it probably gives you more opportunity to view the world that DICE’s Frostbyte 2 engine created but that only adds to the tech demo feeling. Don’t get me wrong: Battlefield 3’s single player campaign is by no means bad but it feels if there was a bit more effort put into it along with a more unique story, it could have been something truly special.

The coop campaign takes select missions from or inspired by the single player mode and adapts them for two players. Missions can vary from defending a specific area to providing air support via helicopter to ground patrols. Overall, coop doesn’t feel forced and it’s nice if you have a friend you can play with but the experience is little more than just that: campaign with a friend. While the coop mode also boasts multiplayer weapon unlocks, it takes a substantial amount of points to do so – so dedication is a must.

Finally we get to the multiplayer which, as far as anyone else is concerned, is the real meat of the game — as it throws no punches. Even on consoles, while maps and player limits have been down-sized, maps feel spacious and combat feels delightfully strategic while retaining the fast-paced action. Maps support up to 12 on 12 with five game modes available at launch: Conquest, Rush, Squad Rush, Squad Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. Conquest acts as a variant of Capture the Flag, whereby teams each have a number of lives and you capture flags to set spawn points across the map. Squad and regular versions of Battlefield’s signature Rush mode sees one team playing the offensive while the other is on defense. Those on the offensive try to capture strategic locations that open up more of the map eventually leading in the capture of the enemy team’s HQ. Squad and Team Deathmatch remain self-explanatory.

Multiplayer loadouts are grouped into four classes: the Assault, the Support, the Engineer and the Recon. The Assault class is now a hybrid of the Assault and Medic classes from Battlefield: Bad Company 2, given a position of killing power but also the ability to deploy medkits and defibrillate dead players back to life. The Support class starts with machine guns, can give out ammo, and is the most effective at a new mechanic called ‘suppressive fire’, which blurs enemy vision and stops their health regeneration when firing in their general direction, even if you don’t hit them. The Engineer class remains largely unchanged from Bad Company 2, can repair vehicles and also take them out with a variety of explosive weaponry. Finally, the Recon class returns as the sniper of the group but now requires players to hold their breath with a click of the thumbstick in order to achieve optimum accuracy.

Each class gains experience as you use them, catering more to players that stick to their style, however your overall rank accumulates with XP you gain from all the classes cumulatively. Individually, as you can imagine, leveling up a specific class gives you access to their specific gadgets like the defibrillator for the Assault class and also gives you access to more of your factions weapons. This allows you to experiment a bit with your styles of play and the weapons you prefer. This meta-system of ranking has become commonplace in multiplayer games but DICE does it well here, rewarding XP for many of the actions you do, like offering suppressing fire or healing teammates. While the top players will still level up fast, this at least means that newer players to the series will still be able to level up at decent pace.

When it comes to presentation, Battlefield 3 is no pushover as the graphics are spot on, bringing a lush variety of colour and light to the warzone that really helps set the atmosphere. I can tell you that even on the console editions, the game looks gorgeous. While it’s easy to see that our modern consoles are showing their age (can I get a bit of anti-aliasing please?), there is something to be said about the way light shines through windows or the resulting smoke and dust from leveling a building. It’s impressive to see a breath of fresh air coming from these machines. Character animations are realistic and detailed during multiplayer and rarely glitch as much as they did in DICE’s beta. Guns each sound and feel unique and the voice work does a good job of selling you the campaign. It begs mentioning how cool the user interface looks, with its glowing blue HUD wrapped around your screen – nothing new, but definitely sleek. All and all, presentation is great here aside from a few texture pop-in hiccups every so often.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

It feels like it’s been a long time coming but Battlefield 3 is finally here. Months of previews detailing the game’s new shiny visuals and multiplayer have not disappointed those who awaited it. DICE’s offering to the FPS market this season is a solid game with fast-paced yet strategic combat and wide-open 12 on 12 player combat. Multiplayer is fun and rewarding with a deep upgrade system that tries to remain accessible to everyone. It is unfortunate that the game stumbles a bit on it’s single-player but there are truly some good moments to be had, and it’s a great way to get a taste of the online action. Be it on console or PC, this is one fight you won’t wanna miss.

MonsterVine Ranking: 4 out of 5

id Software is well known for the Doom and Quake series, but they have not developed a big budget title since Doom 3. It’s safe to say that id Software came back strong with a new I.P. and hopefully a franchise that will stay with us for a while. RAGE is id’s first appearance in the open world genre, but does RAGE have what it takes to pull gamers into a new franchise?

RAGE is set on Earth 106 years after an asteroid wipes out most of the world, save a few pockets of settlements that have managed to survive. Before the asteroid hit, however, governments around the world built “Arks” to house a few volunteers to reenter the world some time after the asteroid hit, to rebuild humanity. This is where the main protagonist (silent protagonist) begins his quest as he enters to find his fellow Ark volunteers dead. His adventure takes him to various locations in the Wasteland, and pits him up against various factions of Bandits, mutants, and the Authority, an organization with mysterious intentions for the Ark survivors, and with so much power that many are afraid to step up against them. The Resistance is the only group that fights against the Authority, but does so from secret hiding places.

Our hero meets various characters on his adventure in the Wasteland, many of which offer unique and interesting personalities. Each encounter with non-playable characters are enjoyable and made me feel immersed in the Wasteland. I found myself wanting to talk to every NPC that I came across just to hear their thoughts on the various happenings in the Wasteland.

The NPCs, however, are a contributing factor to the one thing that bothered me throughout my review run of RAGE. Yes, I was amazed by the voice over work and the sense of immersion that NPCs left me with, but they supplied the motive for the protagonist. Not once did I feel as if my character had his own motive for why he fights against the Authority, other than the motive that the Resistance and other characters give him. Not that I think this game could benefit from a Karma system, or at least the player be given an option to either fight for the resistance or the Authority. I appreciate that id Software has taken a linear path for its story, but I would have loved to see my main protagionst have his own reasons for supporting the citizens of the Wasteland, and have his own motives for fighting the Authority.

I was very interested in the story, as I think there was an uplifting message buried within the surface of an otherwise brutal and harsh game (which I can’t explain without spoiling the story). Some of the story missions, however, made the pace fall flat; leaving me uninterested in what was coming next. Not to say that game play was the reason why I felt bogged down by ‘errand boy’ type missions, because I loved every minute of the combat (more on that soon). I felt that some of the missions made strides in the story, pushing it forward to make me really enjoy the tale id Software set out to tell, however some missions had the opposite effect, and did little to push the story forward and only felt like filler missions.

I am completely sold on the game play, which I think is excellent and never grew old to me. id Software showed that they can develop solid FPS controls that, I believe, can compete with today’s FPS juggernauts. Each shotgun blast, grenade blast, and decapitation caused by Wingsticks (a boomerang type weapon that is also my favorite weapon in the game) satisfied me as much as the last and never made the combat feel dull. Customizing the weapons with different ammo types helps ensure that the combat never becomes dull, and allows the player to think strategically when facing the many foes in the Wasteland.

The combat is intense thanks to the A.I. adapting to your style. If you rush the enemy, shooting everything in sight, your enemy will find cover and quickly pick you off as you foolishly move forward without taking cover. Should you hide behind cover, however, you will soon be greeted by advancing enemies that look to rush your position. The A.I. is impressive in these intense moments, and requires tactics on the part of the player in order to succeed.

Like many post apocalyptic type games, (and most RPG’s for that matter), players will come across a healthy number of loot and random objects around the Wasteland of RAGE. A few of these objects are pointless and are only meant to be sold for cash, but other objects can be combined to form tools important to the protagonist’s survival.

Gun combat and item building is not the only thing RAGE does well. Vehicle game play is done so well that, I believe, id Software could have went ahead and developed a driving/car combat game. Driving a vehicle does not take long to get used to, if not right away, and quickly feels like a natural part of the game. Vehicles is the only sensible way of traveling between objectives (you can try walking, but good luck fighting on foot against four or five bandit vehicles at once). Enemy vehicles patrol the Wasteland, so car combat plays just as important role as the first person shooter game play. You can drive right by the enemy vehicles in order to avoid combat, but I found myself chasing down the bandits with my dual machine guns or auto lock missiles, only to be met with a satisfying explosion when ever my ordinance met their vehicle.

Players can also participate in races and other vehicle related events in order to upgrade their vehicle with armor, new weapons, and even engine and boost upgrades. I was surprised to find an upgrade system for the vehicles with this much in RAGE, something that I appreciated very much.

Car combat plays a big role in multiplayer; in fact, the competitive multiplayer is only car combat. Four players can compete against each other in four game modes, earning experience points to unlock new vehicles, decals, and weapons. The level design is excellent. They are large enough for each racer to get away in a hurry, and hit top speed in their vehicle, but not too large that players will get lost, or that the combat will get slow and boring. id Software is known for making excellent multiplayer maps, and it’s clear with RAGE that they have not lost their touch.

Players can also participate in Wasteland Legends, a two player co-op mode that gives backstories for the various characters and locations in the Wasteland. You can tackle the missions in two difficulties and even going at them solo (you won’t earn trophies or challenges if you do the co-op missions solo). The co-op missions are defiantly a lot of fun, and a good addition to RAGE’s multiplayer.

I can’t end this review without mentioning how beautiful this game looks, thanks to the id Tech 5 game engine that powers RAGE. Lighting is the first thing I took notice too; with ambient effects bouncing off every surface in the game, it’s hard to not fall in love with the lighting. There are the particle effects too that are fantastic during intense fire fights with bandits or the Authority, allowing each explosion and impacts from bullets to make the experience in the Wasteland a harrowing one. Staring off in the distance is something I find myself doing more often than not, soaking up the world’s depth of field, and really appreciating the work id Software has put into the id Tech 5 engine and RAGE.

The settlements that you come across are wonderfully detailed, fulfilling a sense that this is a world in the early steps of rebuilding itself after an apocalyptic event. Each settlement is inhabited with NPC’s that walk around town exchanging conversations with one another and going about their business as if this is a living, breathing world. It’s just another fine touch to the immersive atmosphere of RAGE.

The Final Word: I definitely have my issues with the structuring of the story missions, as I found myself uninterested in what my objective was, and felt that caused the story to fall flat at different points. With that said, id Software has developed a beautiful game set in a harsh environment. RAGE is packed with side quests, gambling games (even its very own card game that is easy to pick up and learn) and a solid multiplayer that adds to the game’s replay value. id Software has proved once again, with RAGE, that they can develop a great video game.

MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 – Great

Leaving many people captivated by its award-winning trailer earlier this year, Dead Island immediately had a lot to live up to. The sullen piano theme and tragic tale of a family besieged by zombies in slow motion painted the picture of a melancholy survival game like no other. As previews began to emerge, however, the game didn’t seem quite what the trailer promised it to be. Does Dead Island measure up to the experience it conveys or is it destined to walk among the dead? Read on to find out.

Editor’s Note: This review was written before the Xbox 360 patch that was recently released.

Dead Island’s story is simple: as one of four survivors, you wake up in a desolate hotel on the fictional island of Banoi. Eventually, you encounter the undead horde and are rescued by a lifeguard named Sinamoi, and later come in contact with a mysterious voice on the radio who promises escape. Survival and escape become your key goals as you help other inhabitants on the island and try to discover what happened. All in all, the main plot will take you anywhere from 20 to 30 hours to complete, with sidequests adding dozens more.

The four playable survivors include the knife-wielding Xian Mei, the mercenary Purna, R&B artist and blunt weapon specialist Sam B. and the former football star and throwing expert Logan. Something I found particularly disappointing was that there was no sense of plot individuality among the characters. There are intricately woven backstories for each character on the character select screen that are ultimately never pursued. No matter who you choose, you wake up in the same hotel and the same situation. In game, characters don’t have much personality aside from the quips they make during combat and end up being bland. You’ll find it hard to care through many of the game’s dramatic moments.

Fortunately, the redeeming qualities of Dead Island lie in its customization and combat. Each of the four characters have three talent trees designed to improve their special abilities, combat prowess and survivability, giving you a point every time you level up. Each character also gets their own unique “RAGE” ability that is usable once a fillable meter reaches its peak. These abilities can range from beating down zombies with your fists to hailing down knives on the horde. Many of the talent bonuses are passive but occasionally you’ll unlock some new abilities such as a stomp to crush fallen zombies. While the characters feel initially the same, it’s the avenues for customization that add just enough flavour to make each individual to seem their own.

As you explore the world, you’ll find a plethora of weapons and mods that will help you upgrade them. Plans found across the island vary from the tried-and-true ‘nail mod’ that adds nails to a blunt weapon to the touted ‘shock mod’ that will make your machete crackle with electricity. You can add these mods via workbenches scattered around the island, which also allow for upgrades and repairs. Weapons degrade fast after use unless talented, so you’ll find yourself switching weapons regularly or looking for benches. Upgrades increase the base parameters for your weapons which increase their value and overall killing potential. Though there are the traditional color identifiers (green, blue, purple) to show the strength of weaponry it’s the upgrades and mods that will keep them valuable enough not to throw away when they need repairs. Funny enough, everything at the non-shopkeep-operated workbenches costs money. Even in times of a zombie apocalypse, the honor system stands strong.

The coup de grace of Dead Island doesn’t just lie in its extensive customization but also in its fast-paced combat system. Combat is mainly a melee-oriented affair and while there are firearms in the game, they don’t appear until much later and can’t carry much ammo. Melee swings feel like they have real weight behind them and there’s always a satisfying crunch as it makes contact with your enemies. In addition to swinging your weapons, which are governed by a stamina meter that increases as you level, you can also throw them at enemies from a distance. Each character also has a kick which can push and even knock down charging zombies. Used efficiently, your combination of abilities can get you out of many encounters without much of a scrape.

Make no mistake: when you’re on your own in Dead Island you will die. A lot. Zombies come in a variety of flavours from the slow-moving Walkers, to the Left 4 Dead-esque, speedy Infected as well as exploding Suiciders and more. These zombies are resilient, and you’ll find in the beginning that it’s easy to be overwhelmed. To top it all off, enemies level with you as you do, providing a consistent challenge no matter where you wander. Despite the difficulty, the punishment for death only sees you waiting a few seconds and losing some money. Dying becomes bearable this way but the game loses some of its ‘survival’ feel in the process.

Dead Island is clearly a game designed for coop and luckily the coop system holds together reasonably well. If you’re connected to the network and other people are near you in their own games, a quick press on the directional pad will allow you to join their game. It’s a convenient and painless system for jumping into coop and works well when there’s no one on to play with. Items and experience points are saved over from coop games and a fast travel system makes it easy to travel to other players when they’re beginning a quest. Standard stuff but it when it works, it works well.

Dead Island’s presentation is somewhat of a mixed bag; lighting is bright and areas are full of variety and colour. Water is beautiful in this game and is truly one of the best parts of this game’s artwork. I literally stood watching it glisten in the sun for a few minutes before I realized zombies were coming to feast on my flesh. Sadly though, the rest of the world doesn’t cope as well: many of the textures take a long time to pop in and a lot of jagged edges permeate the landscape. It’s a bit jarring as it feels like the extensive use of bloom was in an attempt to try and cover up all the unpolished artwork. Character animations are also quite stiff when you talk to other people, who barely move and show little emotion. It’s worth mentioning that in cutscenes the main characters look bug-eyed. It’s creepy enough to be off-putting.

Sounds are generally well-delivered and the background music sets the mood appropriately without interfering too much. Zombies have appropriately distinctive screams so that you can easily differentiate between them. Don’t expect much of the voice acting though, especially from the main characters—I’ll admit that it’s not terrible but many of the lines sounded forced or awkward.

Presentation issues aside, Dead Island is buggy. While the developers have now committed themselves to ironing out issues, especially on the PC version of the game, you’ll find that sometimes items disappear from your inventory or a quest will stop functioning, preventing you from progressing. I found on a particular quest, the quest giver’s voice was replaced for the entirety of his disposition, only to return to normal afterwards. On several occasions, I also got stuck in a corner in which the only way I could escape was leaving the game and re-entering. While not all of the issues are game-breaking, it certainly does take you out of the immersion and can be quite frustrating.

Too Long; Didn’t Read
When all is said and done, Dead Island is a coop game through and through. The wisp of a story takes too long to pick up and won’t capture your interest for long. While there are a lot of bugs that permeate the experience and at times the presentation struggles with stiff animations and tearing, there is a lot of fun to be had here. If nothing else, the game’s satisfying combat mechanics are the redeeming quality on this island full of corpses. Kicking down a zombie and smashing in its face never gets old. Enemies are relentless and the difficulty going solo means you’re going to die a lot. However, despite all of its flaws, Dead Island is full of fun moments, especially with friends. While it may not recapture the emotion of its dramatic trailer, if you’re looking for a zombie-killing simulator with lots of content, Dead Island’s your game.

Avalanche Studios are the glorious developers who brought us Just Cause 2, which was one of my GOTY choices, so I was a little ticked when I heard they weren’t working on Just Cause 3 yet until I heard they were forced by the government to chill the fuck out because JC2 was just too crazy. Now they toned down the crazy into a crazy car combat game that’s fucking awesome and you should totally buy it.

Renegade Ops opens up with Inferno (that’s his name) destroying a city with one of his many nukes and promises to blow up more cities if the world government doesn’t pay him. General Bryant isn’t exactly the negotiating type so he rounds up his team known as the Renegades to kill Inferno. The story doesn’t get anymore in-depth than that, but this is a game built around gameplay over story (similarly to JC2). You have nine missions to go through and each level has a *somewhat* open world. You’re free to travel all over the fairly large map to kill stuff for XP or to complete the bonus objectives, but eventually a timer will pop up to tell you to hurry up and finish the main objective or else it’s game over for you. I found the timer to be a tad bit annoying sometimes since you never know which main objective could be the last one so you try to finish those bonus objectives as fast as possible for the big points you get for doing them. Each mission ends in a climactic boss battle against Inferno who pilots a new vehicle of death each time. These missions can be straight up fights or end up as multiphase bosses instead with the first mission ending with you hopping in a helicopter and taking out Inferno’s battleship. The thrills are high and the explosions plenty in this campaign.

Once you start up the game you’ll be given the option of choosing between 4 different drivers, each with their own car and abilities (PS3 owners will get 2 new cars by October due to the Play program). Armand drives a tank(ish) vehicle and has a sweet shield that makes you invincible while it’s active and can be upgraded to deflect enemy attacks back at them. Dion has an EMP blast which is fantastic for online play to support your buddies, or just to make a quick escape. Roxy has an amazing airstrike move that just obliterates everything in the area. Finally Gunnar has a heavy gun that will replace your basic attack but the downside is that you can’t move while it’s active. You might be wondering why anyone would pick anything other than the airstrike, but once you get into the later missions you’ll realize sometimes you just want to disable the enemies or drive away, plus those support drivers help out a lot online.

Each character can be leveled up by simply completing objectives, doing stunts, or just blowing shit up. I heard the max level is 45, but don’t take my word on it since I only have Armand at 30 and Roxy at 10 right now. Before you start a mission you’re prompted to spend any accumulated upgrade points you’ve gained to level up your skills in one of 3 skill trees. There’s one that focuses on health, another for secondary weapons (the rocket/flamethrower/rail gun pick-ups), and then the last is focused on your specific character. I figured each character would have the same skills in the first 2 trees, but to my surprise they don’t. As my friend was playing Roxy I noticed he got some pretty nice health upgrades that I didn’t have access to while playing Armand. The beginning skills take 3 points to unlock, but that price soon hikes up the higher you go on the tree with some skills taking 11 points. When you look over the skill tree you start to drool at how overpowered your character is going to be once you max them out, but the thing is that you can only equip 4 skills at a time. Having around a dozen skills per tree means you really have to put some thought on how you want to play that mission. You might not have done so well on a certain mission so you could take more health skills to last longer, or perhaps you know the level perfectly so go for the secondary weapon skills that replenish your ammo and bring the pain to Inferno.

The game has local (2-player only) co-op with both a dynamic and static camera. We tested out the static and that simply slices the screen in half diagonally. This works well enough, but I really would’ve preferred if it was done horizontally instead since I found myself wishing I had a bit more screen. I also felt a bit annoyed since (because it’s split diagonally for some reason) I felt the second player had the better screen since they’re given more space of important information. What I’m trying to say is most of player 1′s screen is the health-bar (top) area) where you won’t be looking most of the time while the second player gets more of the actual middle/lower screen where combat usually is. It still works, but I really would have preferred a horizontal or straight vertical split. Now the dynamic screen is a fucking pain I don’t recommend it at all. What it does is split the screen whenever you and your buddy aren’t in the same screen. Stay together and you get one nice big screen to share. Once you venture away from each other the screen not only splits, it fucking rotates. In a car combat game where you’re driving fast, keeping track of your car while not only is the split screen rotating in 360 degrees, but you also have your friend causing chaos on his screen you might get confused which screen you’re on. Seriously, don’t fucking use it.

You can also jump online for up to 4 player co-op. You could either jump into a quick-match that could toss you into any game as you’d expect, or you can get specific with which mission you want, difficulty, and amount of players. Now if you complete a mission online that you haven’t finished in the singleplayer yet it won’t unlock for you, but the nice touch is that you can bring your leveled characters online and keep any experience gained. Going online also helps grind up your characters since you won’t have all the enemies ganging on you like the singleplayer and completing optional objectives is much easier with the added players.

Overall the graphics are fantastic as you’d expect coming from the guys who just made Just Cause 2. The little effects like dust from your car when you boost, spiraling explosions, bullet damage, and just explosions in general look great. The soundtrack has a nice rock vibe to it and the sound effects from the game sound just as good.

The Final Word
You’ve got 9 missions which will last you a few hours by yourself with 4 different characters to level up which means adamant players will put quite a lot of time into this game to max out their characters or get the highscore on a level. This is definitely going to be one of the best downloadable titles of the year and should definitely be on your buy list.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good

When Deathspank released last year I was in love with its gameplay, environment, and witty humor you don’t see very much in games anymore. Thongs of Virtue came out a month later with some new additions, but was obviously more of an expansion pack than a proper sequel. This time around Hothead Games have knocked Deathspank’s name off the title of The Baconing and are calling this title an actual sequel to the previous games. It’s such a shame that The Baconing ends up feeling like another expansion with less improvements than TOV had.

The game starts out with the ‘evil’ ending from Thongs of Virtue where our ‘hero’ Deathspank killed Sandy and kept the thongs of power for himself. He decides it’s a good idea to wear them all and this brings an evil entity known as the Anti-Spank into existence. It’s now your job to burn the thongs in the fires of bacon. I never had any issue with Deathspank’s story, but the fact that the fires of bacon extinguish each time he tosses a thong in and has to find another fire of bacon to burn the next thong seems like a lame attempt at extending the excuse of a story they put together (yo Deathspank, just toss them all in at once?). The game just really feels like a downgrade from TOV and it’s not hard to look at the game and see how lazily everything was done. There are barely any *real* bosses such as Santa, the Ork Sergent, or the evil cooking show host. Hell even the trophy icons are just ripped from the last games. I think the icon for reflecting 100 projectiles is the image of the Japanese word bubble from TOV (for the learning Japanese sidequest), which makes no sense since she has nothing to do with this game. Most of the humorous parts of the game come from the reuse of past characters, but their skits are pretty predictable considering we’ve heard their jokes in 2 games already. Hell even most of the humor isn’t even that funny anymore. I was always laughing during Deathspank or TOV, but this time around I found myself barely chuckling in The Baconing. The worst thing about this is that TOV was done right after the first game was finished while Hothead have been working on this much longer.

Alright, let me mention the map. I loved the map in the last two games since each area was beautifully drawn, you could see all the paths drawn out, and it really helped show that you’re exploring this fantastic place. In The Baconing the map is taking some tips from the pip-boy (Fallout) and is completely green with nothing to see but the *linear* path. It also felt as if you were being pushed to the next ‘level’ instead of reaching a new area like the last games felt. Now what I liked about the previous games was that some quests took you all around the map and some had to be found off the main path of the map, hell I think I had a few friends who didn’t even find some areas because they simply didn’t explore/do a side-quest that would’ve lead them there. This time around there are no extra paths to explore with the game being as linear as Final Fantasy 13, and all the side-quests can be finished within the first minute you get it. Deathspank wasn’t exactly non-linear, but The Baconing is nowhere near as open as it. I feel comfortable calling Deathspank and Thongs of Virtue an open-world game, I wouldn’t give The Baconing the pleasure of receiving that title.

Hothead Games really kept boasting that The Baconing had a much deeper gameplay experience and that the AI was vastly improved upon, but I suppose they just learned how to bullshit to people. The AI still has the same patterns and I never saw them try to flank me like I was told they would do, you could easily stay out of their range and spam your arrows (hell, I’d go as far as saying they’ve bumped up the crossbow damage significantly making many fights easy mode), and the gameplay had no difference from before. They did tweak the shield mechanics a bit, even adding the ability to knock back projectiles, but this seemed totally useless since you’d have to keep your eye on the dozens of enemies swarming you AND the guys shooting at your from afar so you can block/reflect shots. One thing that hasn’t been fixed from the previous game is that when you try to use the circle-strafe strategy of locking-on to an enemy it sometimes won’t register hits on any other enemies besides the one you locked onto. Perhaps an option for the game to always lock-on to the closest enemy would improve things. Other than these things the gameplay is still basically untouched and is your basic hack/slash Diablo-clone game. Like Diablo, Deathspank is known for its loot gathering, and it does this well. You’ll come across some pretty sweet weapons such as unicorn fists, dragon airstrikes, drills of justice that summon drills from the ground, and many more. The armor is one of the only things that takes the ‘sci-fi’ theme Hothead talked about with sets based off Star Wars, Tron, and more. Also, once again money is completely useless since you’ll be rolling in so much cash that buying everything in a shop won’t even put a dent in your wallet.

Co-op is still in the game but for some reason it’s still just local only. You’d think after a year Hothead would’ve added in some online support. They did include all the characters from the previous game along with Roesha, a funky revolver wielding lady, and Bob from Marketing (he’s a shark who shoots lasers from his eyes). I really don’t recommend playing the game with a partner if you want to breeze through the game since for some reason the co-op character takes little to no damage, deals MASSIVE amounts to enemies, and will just make the entire game pretty easy (although I suppose this is alright in some stupidly hard segments). Just as an example of how easy co-op makes the game I’ll give an example. Here was my strategy in both the first boss fight, the multiple yeti fight, and another I can’t recall right now: I simply turned on my second controller, kept Deathspank just barely on the edge of the enemy ‘awareness’ radar, took the second controller (as Bob) and simply spammed his lasers. It took around 2 minutes (maybe less) to kill each of these bosses like this when it would take Deathspank much longer.

The graphics are the same as usual with a mishmash of 2D environments with 3D characters. The environments this time around aren’t as unique as the previous game since the game mostly has 4 major areas with no extra paths to explore. You’ll find *another* desert/mountain are (The Forbidden Zone), another lake, the Leprechan Mafia casino (but this is a small area), and the only notable area being the Forest of Tomorrow which is full of twisted experiments like cloned gummy bears, evil dinosaurs, and killer Christmas trees.

The Final Word
By the end of the day I really wanted to love The Baconing as much as I loved the first game, but I just couldn’t keep playing through the game ignoring the massive sign that said “LAZY LAZY LAZY!”. At least games like Call of Duty add something new; Baconing rips off previous quests, reuses old characters instead of giving us a bigger cast of new ones, has an incredibly lazy map screen, a weird difficulty curve, and for months the devs boasted a ‘sci-fi theme’ for the game when only one *small* area and the weapons/armor had it. I’d only recommend this to people new to the series or people who absolutely loved the previous two entries enough to want a second helping. You could say I’m being a bit hard on the game, but then I guess that old saying “Too much of a good thing can be bad” just really applied to me this time.

- MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average

It’s been 10 years since Warren Spector and Ion Storm gave us Deus Ex. Many consider it one of the most defining RPG/FPS games to ever be released. It mixed in FPS with RPG elements, gave players multiple hidden paths in large levels, had a captivating narrative rich with conspiracy, encouraged player choice, and reminds us of the days of awkwardly horrible voice-acting. Invisible Wars dropped the ball when it was shown to be dumbed down to fit a more ‘casual’ crowd and is known as one of the first PC titles to do this. It seemed that Edios Montreal were going to tarnish the series when the first few trailers they released of Human Revolution were action packed and didn’t seem to be anywhere near being a Deus Ex game, but for once it seemed piracy actually helped a game with the leaked beta showing everyone that this is indeed a worthy game to walk shoulder to shoulder with the first game. Without getting much into the story, you play as Adam Jensen, an ex-copSWAT who just got the job chief of security at Sarif Industries (and a pretty sweet office too). Your complimentary love interest, Megan, is about to reveal something massive to the world in the field of human augmentations when the laboratory is attacked by an elite squad of augmented soldiers who kill everyone who looks at them funny and that’s when Jensen regrets getting his face augmented into a permanent stink-eye look. Now it’s 6-months later and you’ve got some shiny new robot parts and you’re now trying to track down the guys who shot the lab up to thank them for giving you the chance to get some awesome arm-blades. That’s pretty much how it all starts out.

The first Deus Ex title encouraged player choice so much it even allowed you to let the bosses live if you wanted to. Each level had at least 5 different ways of achieving the goal and even to this day I’m still learning about things I never encountered when I played. Human Revolution stresses this as well, but also tones it down in some cases too. The most obvious point to address is that you have to kill the bosses. I suppose from a story standpoint it makes sense for Adam to want to kill these guys, but when the game is built around you choosing how you play, it’s kind of a slap in the face when you’re suddenly forced to sit down and do what the game wants you to do. I was told ahead of time about this and decided to test it out myself; in the first boss fight I poured my tranq rifle ammo into the face of the boss and he eventually went down. Now here I am thinking “HA! That was just a simple fake rumor. I just tranquilized him perfectly fine” but then to my *slight* annoyance the boss’ face was cover in blood, his armor torn to shreds as if I had used a high-caliber gun, and then Adam stabs him to finish the job. It’s not that big of a deal when you’re given much more freedom everywhere else, but it really would’ve been nice to be able to bypass the bosses instead of being forced to kill them. I suppose it *does* make sense from a story standpoint since from the moment you receive your augs Jensen wants nothing more than to get payback against those guys and it would seem odd for him to suddenly change his mind.

People usually make the mistake of calling the Hells Kitchen, Paris, and Shanghai stages in DX hub worlds. If anything Shanghai is the only one and just barely meets the definition. Human Revolution has two hubs, Detroit & Shanghai, with Montreal being a smaller area. Detroit is definitely bigger than any of the ‘hubs’ in DX, but the new Shanghai stage holds the crown. It probably took me around two hours to fully explore all of Shanghai. I just couldn’t help looking around each corner to find hidden areas, apartments to loot, or simply bask is the detailed environment. People who explore the stages will be rewarded with some interesting side-quests. Some have argued that the game doesn’t offer as many paths to completing a quest as the first game, but I found no issue with seeing different paths I could’ve taken. I hate to use this expression, but if I had a dollar for every hidden vent or path I saw that I missed out on, I wouldn’t be complaining about paying for my college books.

Human Revolution has decided to modernize it’s gameplay by including a cover system that drops you into third-person when you use it. Some people have voiced that they think it’s a little cheap being able to see around/over the cover since it’s in third-person, but I think Eidos Montreal balanced this pretty well. The AI aren’t the idiots they were in DX where you could be shoving a crowbar up their ass and they wouldn’t react to it. This time they WILL see you if you poke your head out of cover and they will most definitely shoot that curious head. Unlike the first game where you’d be lucky for you guns to hit anything further than 5 feet from you the guns here feel really great. You can get killed pretty quick and the health regen takes close to a minute to restore completely, but with some armor augments you’ll be ready to go toe-to-toe with some of the heavier guys. Most guns can be upgraded and the info screen is pretty helpful in telling you exactly which upgrades you can use on which gun. So far the shotgun and the crossbow are my favorite weapons. The shotgun because the sound it makes is glorious, and the crossbow because it’s a fucking crossbow that can pin people to walls. Also, if you’re playing a lethal run do yourself a favor and get the revolver with the explosive upgrade. You’ll thank me later.

If you remembered from the first DX game, you gained experience points for doing various tasks which then went into upgrading your skills while upgrading your augs came in the form of augment upgrade canisters. This time around you’ll gain XP but it’ll fill up a bar and when it becomes full you’ll gain a Praxis point. The skills page has been completely removed and instead has been mixed in with the augs on the same page. For example; the hacking skill can now be found under the hacking augment. Praxis points are used to upgrade your augs with each one costing just one to upgrade, but if you haven’t unlocked a set of augs yet it’ll cost you two points to open up that section. You’ll also be able to purchase or find Praxis kits around the levels for a free point.

Probably one of my biggest complaints with the original Deus Ex is that it was possible for a player to miss out on many of the augments if they didn’t build their lockpicking/hacking skills high enough or just didn’t explore. I had no problem collecting them all, but I didn’t feel that people should miss out on them if they didn’t feel like exploring since the biggest point of the game was choosing how to play using your augments. This time around all your augments are available to you right at the start, a few just need to be unlocked with Praxis points though. It’s mostly just the entire right side of the augment page that has the major augments such as the cloak, increased armor, speed upgrades, etc. Those that are grayed out will need two Praxis points to unlock (as stated above) and will start you out at the first level in that augment tree. You’ll also find other augments such as improving your hacking skills, being able to move large objects, sprint/jump silently, see through walls, and more. While playing this with a friend we found our favorite augment was the increased strength. We became close friends with Smelly the dumpster who accompanied us all over Detroit and helped us fight crime. We were quite upset when we had to leave him to go to Shanghai, but that’s when we met his cousin Expired Foods the vending machine. Crime in Shanhai better be ready to shut up now.

The graphics in Human Revolution aren’t exactly the hottest thing around, but it’s art-style is definitely one of the hottest things of the entire year. The animation on some NPC’s can be a little jarring at times when they begin to jerk their head around frantically while speaking or continuously looking over your shoulder, but other than the animation during the speech segments it’s all fine. Eidos Montreal really captured the atmosphere of a cyberpunk world and it just makes me wish for another game quick so I can explore more of it. The soundtrack is easily one of the best of the year and it even has a few remixes of old favorites from the first game.

The Final Word
Deus Ex: Human Revolution probably isn’t going to be as (pardon the pun) revolutionary to players of the first game, but it’s just as good if not better in many ways. Anyone who couldn’t get into the first because of the graphics or dated gameplay will find one of the best RPG experiences you can find this year, and probably for a while. So far AUGust is starting the final quarter of the year in style.

- MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent

Free Giveaway
This giveaway does not, in any shape or form, augment our review score for Deus Ex: Dumpster Revolution.

Hello readers, I totally have a real giveaway for you. Post in the comments which body part you would like augmented (and why) and I will personally go to your house to perform the surgery myself.