Battle Fantasia

For my 50th review, I'm going to cover...a game nobody's ever heard about!




Battle Fantasia : A Cel-shaded, medieval fighting game from Ark System Works, whom are famous for a very wonderfully obscene franchise.

Story : So there was this massive evil force, some kind of black-armoured embodiment of all things diabolical, and all the races in this mystical kingdom united to trap him in what looks like some giant volcano. However, evil stirs once more and…well this sounds familiar.

Well they’re about 7-50 years too late depending on which adaptation we’re talking about, but it appears that the folks at Ark System Works have discovered the Lord of the Rings trilogy and were so psyched by said epic that they decided to make their own work of fiction that ste…Is heavily influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. Prior to Battle Fantasia, said game developers were staying up late on a Saturday night watching their favorite music station, caught some really cheesy 80s hair metal music videos, and decided to turn that into a franchise.

And their previous brainchild was glorious. Guilty Gear took the devils, dragons and hairspray of 80s music videos and combined them with the absolute most over-the-top campy and sexualized anime style they could find to create a decidedly bizarre and uncomfortable yet eye-catching and memorable concept that gave the fighting game genre a much needed smack in the face (with a talking guitar). Combined with an outrageous fighting engine that made each character fight like they were Superman on meth, high resolution artwork that made the competition at the time look embarrassed to stand by their Neo Geo hardware, and numerous updates to help perfect the system, and you’ve got the unrecognized but undisputed and unsavory savior of 2D fighting.

Enter Battle Fantasia. Imagine that very same demented art style hurled into Middle-Earth, and you’ve got a fair idea of what’s happening here. Actually, the game is all cel-shaded, so there’s a strong resemblance to Dark Cloud 2 or the more recent Valkyria Chronicles here. A lot of the innuendo from Guilty Gear is slightly toned down, as now there are only two blatantly homosexual characters here. Likewise, there’s a lot taken from Harry Potter and any other books you may been forced to read as a child, as characters will include your assortment of way-too-young knights, a boy wizard, a merry dwarf, the embodiment of evil and so forth. As uninspired as some of these concepts are, there’s also a lot of charm to the characters, and a bit of that trademark Guilty Gear machismo; the main character wields what looks like a 70s motorcycle engine that, when revved up, reveals a chainsaw blade made of fire.

As far as gameplay goes, there doesn’t seem to be any original fighting styles or gameplay mechanics here. It’s a Street Fighterian 2D fighter, with basic attacks, special moves, super special moves and even a parry button. The one sort of unique aspect (and I know this has been stolen from other games) is that pressing a button will put your character “in heat”, which powers him and her up, opens up new moves and has the potential to be taken the wrong way for many, many characters. The game feels like a toned-down Guilty Gear or a straight Street Fighter clone, as there’s no double-jumping or instant kill attacks or a lot of the spice of Battle Fantasia’s more demented forefather.

All the characters fight like variations of characters in other games, especially Guilty Gear X. You’ve got your Ryu/Sol Badguy character, your Zangief/Potemkim character, your Jam/waitress character who wears a short skirt and takes every opportunity possible to ambiguously bend over, and so forth. When you consider how the Guilty Gear games are known for coming up with some incredibly abstract fighting styles, it’s a bit disappointing to be given a watered down variation of characters past. The one unique aspect seems to be the varying character sizes, such as the mouse wizard and child knight that are a fraction of the size of dwarfman but also have less health.

By the by, the game has an HP number underneath the health bar, if just to make you associate it more with fantasy RPGs.

And if this game is in fact deeper than I’m giving it credit for, if perhaps there’s some unique hook to the gameplay that I’m missing, then I wouldn’t have any means of discovering it through playing against other opponents, as it seems that absolutely no one else is playing this game online. I’ve waited for a very long time with an open ranked game waiting for an opponent and found nothing. With arcades a shell of their former glory, fighting games need a good online community to develop actual lasting value to anyone that doesn’t have a group of dedicated friends to play against (that’s a not very subtle poke at Super Smash Bros Brawl). It makes it all the more harder for a new fighting game franchise like Battle Fantasia to succeed without an established user base generated from years of sequels stemming back to an era when arcades were popular, but at least Ark System Works could at least TRY to market this game a bit; I’ve had a few too many people asking me what this Battle Fantasia game I’ve been playing instead of Fallout 3 was.

This game has all the traditional fighting game modes, the standard Arcade mode, the standard VS mode, the standard Training mode, the standard OPTIONS mode, the standard-yet-useless VS CPU mode, and so forth. The “Story Mode” will be familiar to Guilty Gear veterans, in which fights are separated by dialogue sequences of static images of the characters speaking Japanese with English subtitles. Some of the dialogue is cute and funny, but most of the time it just feels wordy. The exposition/gameplay ratio in story mode is lopsided, as you’ll spend several minutes at a time reading dialogue that just isn’t going anywhere, and then fight for a single 30 second round, before returning to more dialogue. You’re better off just sticking to the traditional Arcade mode.

The best thing I can say about Battle Fantasia is that it is GOOD, with capital letters. And really, how many original fighting game franchises from the last 5 years can you say the same thing about? It’s a fundamentally sound fighter and if you have a couple of friends that want a medieval fighter that’s more Street Fighter than Soul Calibur, then it’s a good pick. However, there’s nothing here that stands out and screams “Pick me!” over any existing fighting game franchise, and unless Ark System Works decides to push forward and give this game the same support it gives Guilty Gear with its numerous updates and intestinal fortitude, then Battle Fantasia is bound to fade into obscurity.

Pros : I didn’t state this enough in the actual review, but the cel-shaded visual style is rather easy on the eyes.

Cons : A vicious final boss that can only be damaged while your character is in heat. I guess there are some strong sexual undertones after all if the forces of evil can only be triumphed over while you’re aroused.

3 ½ stars.

I promise I’ll review something a little more well-known next time.

Rayman's Raving Rabbids: TV Party

Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party : A mini-game compilation on the Wii. Surprise surpise.

Story : I guess, it consists of a bunch of neurotic rabbits discovering the joy of television and living vicariously through their favorite brain-rotting programs. Most of the parodies are really clever, and everything from the channel logo-flourishes to the Happy Tree Friends-esque cutscenes involving the Rabbids breaking out of jail or whatnot provide plenty of beer-belly laughs. As for Rayman, if the once iconic mascot had any sort of important presence in these games in the past, it’s long since been reduced to making a barely noticeable cameo here. Maybe he can return to making good adventure games.

If I can say one nice thing about Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, it’s that it’s worlds better than Wii Sports or Wii Play. There’s nothing quite as annoying as going to a party and being subjected to yet another remote-throwing Wii Bowling session hosted by someone who’s trying too hard to justify their Wii Purchase. And being that the Wii lineup has been flooded with rushed out, low budget cash-in mini-game collections that makes one wonder what happened to the Nintendo Seal of Approval (and I totally predicted that the floodgates would open with these mini-game sets being that the Wii remote sensors are too inaccurate to support a fully grown game), a halfway decent party game to change up the flow is always welcome.

Which brings us back to TV Party. Up to four players sit in front of their real life television and watch the Rabbids watch their virtual television. Either the winner of the last round of competition or whomever was able to successfully guess the weather (the game has all kinds of unique quirks) chooses the next channel and thus the next game to play. Along the way, Flash cutscenes will depict the Rabbids in their assorted TV spoofs (including the occasional mid-game commercial sequence!) and, ideally, you and your friends will be taking shots as the action progresses.

Here’s a bullet point listing of some of the mini-games one can expect to get inebriated to.
• A rail gun shooter where players must prevent the set of a zombie movie from being flooded by Rabbids in chicken suits.
• A snowboarding game where a Rabbid rides down the hill on the backside of a yak. The spirit of Ren and Stimpy lives on.
• A tractor hillbilly racing game with tighter controls than Mario Kart Wii.
• A fashion challenge where you must dress your Rabbid in clothes based on certain unspecific criteria. For example, the game may ask that your Rabbid be “sexy” and “cheap” without being “hairy”.
• A bizarre game where each Rabbid is in a bouncy ball and must collect as many points as possible within a scrolling stage
• The asteroid field sequence from Star Wars, where you can destroy asteroids by drawing the Tetris shape that appears on them.
• A version of Rock Band with only two notes, one for each remote to waggle, and with much more inappropriate songs like Born to Be Wild to jam too. The syncing between notes and the song being played may actually be better here than in the past two Guitar Hero games.
• A dancing game where you recreate the motions of a dancer with a Wiimote. Don’t be like us and all be sitting on the same sofa while playing this game.

Perhaps you’re starting to see a recurring theme here in that you will be made to look a fool playing this. If you value dignity, you shouldn’t be playing Raving Rabbids TV Party, or the Wii in general. This is definitely the ideal game to throw in once the liquor starts flowing like…errr…wine? At the end of the game, a Wheel of Fortune spoof appears and a random event will be thrown out, like a player will be made to change their name or clean their room. Such an end-game event is risky to throw in, as the odds are that said player will probably pass out if they’re asked to clean their room.

Fortunately for us and unfortunately for the game, by the time we were politely asked to clean our mess, we were starting to get sick of the whole experience. There’s about 10 or 15 actual different mini-games and you’ll see almost everything the game has to offer in two hour-long sessions. By the time we approached our third play attempt, we were getting restless and moved on to dessert and more booze.

It also bears mention that the tractor and snowboarding games aren’t played simultaneously by all players but one at a time, with the other three players occasionally being prompted to throw snowballs or dirt at the current player’s screen. Certainly it’s amusing the first time around, but it’s still quite the flow breaker to have to sit by and not play. And while each race sessions is about one or two minutes long, that can feel like an eternity to those subjected to this game’s pro-attention deficit disorder mentality.

I’ll still stand that Mario Party 8 (provided you’re not sick of the whole board game concept) and Warioware (provided you’re not sick of…that!) make for the ideal Wii party games of choice. TV Party, on the other hand, definitely makes for a better drinking game than most of the Wii’s lineup, but it lacks longevity. Whether or not you think it’s worth your money will depend on whether or not you think a couple hours worth of wild entertainment is worth $50. That said, if for some reason, you’re still not sick of Wii Sports after two years, here you go.

Pros : Because we’re still in that year-long time frame between when Nintendo releases a new adaptor and thus forces as many developers as possible to shoehorn in uses for it before giving up and moving on to the next device they can profit of off, this game supports the Wii Fit Balance Board.

Cons : There’s that whole calibration process that you have to go through before you can use it.

3 stars

Why does this seem to be the most interesting Wii game of the holiday season?

Prince of Persia 2008

Prince of Persia : …you know how it’s become trendy in Hollywood to “reboot” franchises, throw away all the backstory from the previous (and usually bad) sequels and start fresh? Batman did it, James Bond did it, Star Trek is going to do it, The Incredible Hulk did it after only one bad movie, and now we have a video game in Prince of Persia, which ignores the Sands of Time trilogy or all of the quick death traps of the original game and starts anew. Oh, it’s an action platformer by the way.

Story : The ever mystical “Prince” character gets lost in the desert and winds up in a mystical land with a mystical woman who is trying to stop a mystical god from unleashing his mystical corruption set out by the mystical woman’s mystical dad and along the way stop the mystical god’s four mystical henchmen. The actual details about all this…mystery, gradually unfolds in a methodical manner. The Prince is a charming little jerk and mystical woman Elika plays off his arrogance quite nicely. It’s a change of pace to have a subtly-building chemistry that makes the player want to see them get hitched instead of the two characters in question spontaneously making out like in every Hollywood product. There’s a surprising twist in the end and yes, there will be a sequel. We are talking about a next-generation game after all, so of course there will be two more games.

If a fantasy setting spectrum exists out there, this new Prince of Persia would be leaning more towards Chronicles of Narnia than Aladdin, as opposed to all of this game’s predecessors. Just glancing the opening flourishes of magic energy that embrace the title screen, there’s a bit of a jarring disconnection that went through my mind as I found myself having to reluctantly drop any previous expectations set by the Sands of Time. Even entering a code that transforms Elika and the Prince into Farah and Sands of Time-Prince (I guess that’s his name) wasn’t enough, as even these skins seemed too well-nourished to resemble their previous generation.

Actually, the “unlearning” process does take a good deal of time to put up with. This new Prince is an advocate of good fitness and proper nutrition as opposed to his skinny cousin, as he has a much easier time latching on to ledges and platforms. Rather than struggle to make it across a single wooden pole, the new Prince leaps from cliff to cliff with the greatest of ease, with Elika there to offer an almost always successful double-jump maneuver.

And there’s death, or lack thereof. The sense of peril that came with the previous games, let alone Prince of Persia games in general, is lost when you know that Elika will be able to catch you and pull you to safety. The same thing happens in combat when you’re about to meet your (no doubt-mysterious) Maker when Elika flashes a light and helps you recover. Once again, Ubi Soft Montreal displays their disdain at the notion of their main character dying (like with Assassin’s Creed and Sands of Time.) by coming up with a needlessly flashy system of death. But don’t mistake that to mean you’ll just be able to beat the game through attrition over skill. Elika will only take you to the last safe platform, and some areas will have you navigating large cliffs, slides and so forth before you ever find solid ground. Also, enemies recover health when you die, so the game is at least smart in disguising its punishment for failure. Likewise, being able to jump and plummet anywhere knowing full well that a superpowered-supermodel will save you does at least open up some room for taking chances.

Bear with me as I try to describe the format of this adventure. Instead of a linear path from start to finish, the game throws at you a somewhat-open world with a series of fountains that need to be activated to purify the land of its corruption. Along the way, you’ll jump, climb, shimmy, shuffle and fall down a lot throughout the many elaborate platform sequences that the past games were known for, expect the path doesn’t feel as linear and forced as in those games. The other difference is that there’s a bit of a thrill in traversing large stretches of otherwise seemingly-impassible territory as supposed to the slower, more meticulous struggle of past games. In a fairly intuitive twist, the four face buttons are divided based on these basic utilities; sword, jump, claw, woman. So, for example, you’ll press the jump button to swing from poles, or the woman button to tell Elika to save you.

Once you reach a fountain, you fight one of four bosses that guard the region, followed by you purifying the land and moving on to the next fountain.

Now, in order to open up the number of fountains you can access, you’re going to need revisit the newly “purified” lands, which will have these blue orbs (light seeds, if you will) floating around for you to collect in what’s very much a cheap way to lengthen the gameplay. And you’ll subsequently need to use these orbs to unlock new and flashy but lame “powers”. These powers only trigger when you approach certain pads and consist of two “run real fast and avoid obstacle” mini-games and two powers that are pretty much “you teleporting to other parts of the area in an otherwise forced attempt to make the player gradually unlock the game world.

And the combat is more flash than substance. Enemies appear on an infrequent and sometimes avoidable basis, and the fundamentals of each one-on-one encounter is the same. You time your blocks to avoid taking damage, and likewise time your attacks accordingly. The sword/jump/glove/woman format takes form here in the form of attack combinations and it’s admittedly very satisfying when you can juggle your enemy in the air with sword and Elika attacks and just conveniently have the combo end with a quick-time event…speaking of, there sure are a ton of quick-time events within a single fight and these can sometimes get bothersome when you frequently get too close to a cliff and have to mash a button to stay alive. But being that fights are infrequent, you’ll rarely find yourself frustrated, especially once you’ve picked up on the ebb and flow of battle.

Which is a recurring theme for my play time with Prince of Persia, actually. In any other game, a play time-lengthening fetch quest and the same battles over and over again would be a score killer in my books. But somehow, someway, Prince of Persia not only keeps things interesting but kept me enthralled. Once I stopped mashing buttons and adapted to the pace, I allowed myself to get pulled into the excited tug-of-war like struggle to deplete the enemy’s health bar while avoiding many, many close call quick time events. The light seed collecting suddenly became interesting instead of monotonous, as it involved pulling off more of the game’s dynamic platforming. Most of the light seeds are in plain sight and you’ll often find yourself collecting a bunch, only to see more in the distance and talk yourself into gathering some more and exploring this beautiful new landscape that was only recently bleak and desolate.

Prince of Persia has that certain “it” factor to it. In fact it might actually have several “it” factors. There’s an “it” factor where you keep telling yourself “okay, I’ll just play one more level.” There’s an “it” factor where you find yourself pulled in as the Prince and Elika discuss the backstory of each area, villain, proverb or likewise. There’s an “it” factor where the worlds around you, along with the beautiful music, conspire to immerse you into the experience. And there’s an “it” factor where you walk away from the shocking conclusion, completely blown away at what you’ve just experienced.

The game has flaws but they’re cleverly disguised. This is the rare game that you’ll want to savor rather than plow through for the sake of moving on to the next game. There’s about 10-12 hours of solid gameplay to be had here, and I can guarantee you’ll want to revisit this game later on. This Prince of Persia redux is a keeper, folks. I can’t think of the last game that truly hypnotized me, and it’s one of the few games this year where I didn’t find myself disappointed in any aspect of the game from beginning to end. If you want mindless twitch action, there are a hundred other games waiting for you, but if you want a game that’ll leave an impression on you for years to come, well here you go.

Pros : In the absence of anything else to say, I guess I’ll bring up again the fact that there are unlockable skins based on personas from Sands of Time, as well as Beyond Good and Evil and Assassin’s Creed.

Cons: Unlocking them seems to require some kind of promotional code. I guess some of the Xbox achievements are a bit frivolous in a way. You’ll seem to be rewarded with 5 of them within the opening level.

4 1/2 stars

I’m not Persian.

Mirror's Edge

Mirror’s Edge : A first person RUNNING game from Electronic Arts and Battlefield 1942-developer Dice.

Story : So evil corporations are ruling and oppressing the masses with their…well they’re evil alright, and whatever makes then so evil is enough to warrant a group of “runners” who leap across rooftops to give each other information that this evil corporation doesn’t want you to know about. Plot develops into some kind of not-really-well-explained conspiracy involving protagonist Faith’s sister being framed for murder and you getting to the bottom of this. The motivations for all parties involved isn’t exactly explained other than “the bad guys are evil companies” and “the good guys are sticking it to them” and for all I know, the plot was written by a graphic designer who wears a Che Guevara shirt and listens to Rage Against the Machine without being too certain why it who it is that he’s being told to kill in the name of. The cinematics between missions all employ that Flash-like computer animation style that’s common in several cartoons and Esurance commercials. Oh, and the story sucks. Try not to laugh during the final sequence. Your laughter, however, will be more emotion displayed than throughout the entire game.

Oh, and being a new franchise in this console generation, the game attempts to set up a sequel or five.

Mirror’s Edge leaves a killer first impression. After you go through the tutorial where you chase around an ally-turned-plot-device across the city as a means of explaining the unorthodox control scheme, the game throws you into an exciting first level (also the game’s demo), where the player leaps from building to building, pulling deft-defying maneuvers and watching in awe as Faith reacts to the world around her, all the while bullets are whizzing past. All of this hits a crescendo where you grab onto the side of a helicopter, which swings around dramatically before descending in front of a glass building, as Faith stares into her reflection and looks like she’s having deep thoughts, as if the designers think this game is smarter than it really is.

The pitch to Mirror’s Edge, if you will, is that the game is a platformer akin to the recent Prince of Persia games, but with a first person perspective and in a utopian city. Faith runs, jumps, slides, shimmies, wall-runs, rolls out of falls and generally dies a lot as she makes her way across a linear path. There’s a great emphasis on the “first person” aspect as smart vision effects and camera positioning makes you feel like you are indeed in the head of someone that’s in a hurry. You’ll knock down many doors and it always feels like a jarring experience. To compliment this emphasis on speed, the shoulder buttons have been redesigned for all you’re navigational needs. There’s a button for actions involving going UP, a button for actions that involve going DOWN, a button for turning around, and a button for destroying other things or lives.

The name of the game is momentum and the more you run or wall-run, the faster you go and the more of an adrenaline junkie you feel like. You’ll definitely have a world of this loveable momentum for that first level, but later missions are designed less for running and more for fidgeting around the game world. I guess you could call it someone’s idea of a puzzle element, but you’ll often find yourself jumping and trying to cling on to every object in a room trying to find out what it is the game wants you to latch on to and thus use to advance. It also hurts that a large chunk of the game is not played in those high-altitude building-jumping environments but indoors, in confined spaces like boiler rooms and such, where you have less room to soar and more of a need to find the exact pipe that you need to shimmy across.

And then there are the guards. I was led to believe that one would be able to avoid confrontation in Mirror’s Edge with enough skill, but the alternative to not trying to engage the enemy is to get shot at while you climb the necessary ladder. Your best bet is usually to try to wall-run and then drop kick an enemy, but later levels see the enemies realize that this is a runner’s technique of choice and thus avoid the walls altogether. Faith’s boxing skills are below amateur and thus you won’t get far engaging in fisticuffs, so you’re best alternative is to time a button press with you’re enemy’s melee attack to instantly KO him and swipe his gun (and whatever ammo is in the clip). While gun combat is preferred over fist-fighting armed guards for countless obvious reasons, the shooting mechanics in this game are far from spot-on as well; headshots aren’t anymore damaging than leg shots and its all trial-and-error oriented. Mis-time your counterattack by a split-second and you’re as good as gunned down and starting back at the last checkpoint, ready to bolt at the armed guard head on to try it again.

The later levels seem to get worse and worse in all of the above regards. There’s less of the thrilling outdoor sequences and more of the claustrophobic indoor frustration…and plenty more guards to kill your Faith. There are only nine missions, equally about 6 hours of gameplay, and I guess I should just be thankful that there’s no arbitrary fetch quest or back-tracking, but I couldn’t say that I was having fun playing the actual content. It seems that to properly get a thrill out of Mirror’s Edge, you need to memorize levels (and I mean really memorize them), and then replay them in time trial mode so you can brag about your times online…or post gameplay videos of breezing through a level on Youtube. If this game does one thing right, it’s that if you can finish a level without a single flaw in your approach, then you’re Mirror’s Edge bragging-rights video will look more cinematic and breathtaking than someone’s Super Metroid speed-run video. So I guess this game’s best value is not in playing it yourself but watching other people better than you playing.

But Mirror’s Edge does put me in an awkward position. It’s an original gameplay concept and I tend to feel that these should be awarded, and I tend to think that if the game succeeds, then a sequel could improve and polish this concept into something unique and exhilarating. But if you were to ask me whether or not to buy Mirror’s Edge, the answer would be “no, unless you like to post videos on Youtube of you beating Super Mario Bros in 15 minutes.” The art style of the game is strong but the gameplay is an exercise in frustration and you’ll experience most of the greatest possible thrills within the first level or two.

Pros : …amazingly, I’ve neglected to talk about the game’s visual style, which is mostly breathtaking I guess.

Cons : To post your time trials online, you need to surrender your e-mail address and sign up for an EA Account.

3 1/2 stars

I am fully aware I described myself in the story paragraph.

Call of Duty: World at War

Call of Duty : World At War : A World War 2 first person shooter developed by Treyarch, and using the gameplay engine from Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare (as well as their boxart design, I guess.)

Story : The missions generally fall under two separate, largely unrelated storylines, involving the Americans attacking the Japanese and the Russian invasion of Berlin. Between missions, there are these over-stylized cutscenes that attempt to explain the context of each mission, splicing old war footage with fancy flourishes and throwing random big words at you like “60,000 DEAD!” and “FLAME THROWER” in what feels less like a gritty war montage than an MTV commercial. What little story is told during the missions, however, presents an interesting, slow building plot of their own; the Americans show gradually increasing resentment for their involvement while the Russians are led by a borderline-psychotic sergeant who comes off as more genocidal than his Nazi adversaries.

The greatest thing to happen to the Call of Duty series since it began to depict World War 2 was for the series to leave World War 2. Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare took full advantage of the change in time period to produce an incredibly memorable and varied campaign that threw one great moment after another at the player. So from the onset, returning to World War 2 feels like a baffling decision, made less as a tribute to the fighting men of the day and more as easy money for Activision.

The core gameplay in World At War is like past Call of Duty games in that most of the time, it’s you and your fellow countrymen against a troop of enemy soldiers. Going in guns blazing will result in a tragic death (sadly no longer greeted by assorted famous anti-war quotes like in past games, as if to say they’ve acknowledged this game isn’t being made to spread a message), so you’ll have to find cover and pick your shots. And like in past games, the game gives you the sense that you’re a small man in a big army, using old guns from the time, pushing the enemy further back in a giant, chaotic war zone and not playing the proverbial one man army on a rampage.

And like in past games, you’ll have a tank driving sequence, a tank destroying sequence, gun turret sequences, bigger gun turret sequences, gun turret-destroying sequences, sniper rifle sequences, and for forth. The key word here is “like past games” because this game is a whole lot like those past games. Except for a few key events (in a horrifically intriguing moment, your first mission as a Russian troop has you waking up surrounded by the bodies of your comrades after a slaughter), you’ve played all of this before and very little has changed. The ambiance of being in the middle of an epic battle in World War 2 that was once compelling has lost its shock value.

Okay, there are a few new things. The fire technology in video games has advanced enough for historians to conveniently remember that there were flamethrowers and Molotov cocktails in World War 2. They make for a great visual effect, but I can’t help but feel that these features were less inspired by World War 2 than Grand Theft Auto 3. There are also bayonets now…which brings me to a suggestion I’d like to pass on to Treyarch; try to make frequent-occurring animations look as unscripted as possible. The first time a Japanese Banzai tripped me and tried to pierce me with his bayonet, only for my troop to pull away his rifle and stab him in the throat with a knife knocked my socks off. The subsequent twenty times that this happened knocked my patience off.

All things considered, it’s a relatively solid campaign that’ll at least provide a beefy challenge, and it brings us to the game’s third-biggest selling point (behind NAZI ZOMBIES and riding on the coattails of Call of Duty 4), the co-operative options. Up to four players online can band together and play through…whatever mission the game randomly decides you guys to play. Either you can get four buddies together and play at a leisurely pace, or compete for points based on such scoring factors as “kills” and “more kills”. On top of this, you can obtain special “death cards” that either help the team (1 or 2 of them) or hinder you (the other 15) but likewise will help earn additional points towards your rank.

You remember the rank, right? From Call of Duty 4? It’s back in World of War. All of the competitive multiplayer options are once again perk-oriented. You create a character class, complete with your choice of weapons, as well as bonus traits and abilities. Increasing your rank, by way of playing through the game’s assorted multiplayer modes will improve your rank and thus unlock more weapons, perks and modes. I’m a bit ticked that not all of the multiplayer modes are available from the start, and there’s the argument that the hardcore gamers who pull all-nighters to improve their rank are going to have a distinct edge over whoever is just playing the game to kill a few minutes, but alas. The big difference between this and Call of Duty 4 is the change in setting, so which one you prefer will depend on personal taste, but I guess there are people out there that enjoy grinding levels in a shooter and well, here’s another chance to do it all over again.

Finally, there’s NAZI ZOMBIES, the bonus mode that you’ll unlock for beating the campaign. If the game had any intention of treating the war like the more violent conflict in human history, it just went out the window here. (Though I guess the mere presence of online deathmatches set in World War 2 already spat in the fact of dignity.) In a nutshell, you and up to three others are in this one house being attacked by gradually increasing numbers of NAZI ZOMBIES. Killing these NAZI ZOMBIES will earn points that can be used on weapons, ammo, opening up two more sections of the house or repairing whatever boards the NAZI ZOMBIES tore down to get in. It’s a novel distraction at best, but it’s hampered by the fact that there’s only one house. The multiplayer match type of “a group of players against waves of enemies” is starting to become popular. That said, this mode doesn’t quite measure up to, say, Gears of War 2’s “Horde Mode” or Left 4 Dead’s…well the entire game Left 4 Dead is pretty much this mode.

All things considered, Call of Duty: World At War is a solid game. It’s just walking a beaten path, and it’s only attempts to innovate the formula are through following the latest trends from other shooters. If you’re a massive co-operative multiplayer enthusiast then you’ll have some fun with this, and likewise, for people who have nary played a World War 2 shooter before, then you’ll be in for quite the experience. But there’s an overwhelming sense of deja-vu waiting for veterans of this franchise, and most of us will be left thinking this series should stop looking to the past and stick to a more Modern approach.

Pros : No forced tutorial! It’s like the game knew that the majority of players have played Call of Duty 4. The one turret level where you switch between different guns on a single airplane gloriously throws you into the 1940s.

Cons : The last couple of missions sometimes feel like the game is just tossing wave after wave of enemies at you. Sometimes an enemy soldier will just stand there in the open and not do anything. Maybe this is meant to simulate a rookie soldier’s nerves freezing up.

3 ½ stars.

Ugh. That makes 3 Treyarch games in a row. I feel like I passed a stone.

Now I’m sure the people at Treyarch are loving individuals with caring families who donate frequently to charity, but perhaps for reasons outside of their control, it seems all of their games are uninspired, big franchise cash-ins. Now, they’re better than most big franchise cash-ins, but they still have a decided lack of ambition.

Spiderman: Web of Shadows

Spiderman : Web of Shadows : An original Spiderman action-adventure game…essentially what we’re getting in the absence of a Spiderman movie for Activision to try to cash in on. They even managed to shoehorn Wolverine in the game (right on the front box) to squeeze out some extra dollars.

Story : In what could very well be filed under the most typical form of fan-fiction, Venom is unleashing an army of self-produced symbiotes. There’s a really melodramatic sequence at the beginning of the game where Spiderman walks in slow-motion all depressed-like while explosions, chaos and somber piano music play in the background. The story is…far from spectacular, and serves more as a vehicle to justify the numerous weird enemies that litter New York City. At least Spidery has a few clever lines to brighten the mood but boy does this game fail at being serious. And if don’t already have some degree of familiarity with the Spiderman mythos (comics, cartoons…more to go by than just the movie) then you’re going to be lost and confused.

An aside: As a Spiderman fan, it strikes me as perplexing that a game about symbiotes lacks Carnage.

Web of Shadows is some kind of butchering of what is otherwise the most popular aspect of the Spiderman universe, the symbiotes and Venom. Once upon a time, it was considered a unique and exciting event when we thought there was only one symbiote that made people powerful and corrupt, and it was special because we either only saw it on Spiderman or somebody that wanted to kill Spiderman. And here we have an entire army of symbiotes infecting normal people and running roughshod over New York. I guess part of the reason for this symbiomadness, to continue the running theme of fan-fiction gone bad, is to answer to the question of “what would Wolverine (among others) look like with a symbiote?” (The answer is “like crap.”)

Also running with the black living ooze theme of the game, Spiderman has the famous black suit (the straight black one from the comics, not the lame duck black suit from the movie) and the players can switch between traditional red costume and the more emo attire with the press of a button. Each one has their own slightly different moveset (which can be upgraded at your whim using points earned from…doing stuff), and the suit you wear the most may as well be left up to personal preference. Likewise, the different suits are connected to a Fable-like morality system where you can choose to be good or bad…on paper. What actually happens in the game is that after a major battle, the game asks you to choose between “red suit” and “black suit”, often giving you no hint as to what the repercussions of either option will yield. This all supposedly adds “red points” or “black points” to some kind of score that isn’t immediately visible and only affects which of two endings the game gives you, and the moral compass doesn’t quite stretch far enough in the actual game component; more often than not, the only opportunity to do good and earn red points presents itself when a civilian flies out of a car that exploded because you threw it at the bad guys.

So the developers at Treyarch have been making Spiderman games for as long as people have been making Spiderman movies, and it’s finally starting to show here. Unlike superhero games that are usually just generic beat-em-ups where whatever superhero you play as punches and kicks a lot of bad guys regardless of what his or her superpowers actually are, this right here is definitely a Spiderman game; it can only be a Spiderman game, and the main character model could be dressed as a nun and you would still think you were playing a Spiderman game. You’ll fight enemies on the ground, fight enemies while web swinging and even fight enemies while climbing walls. And for the first time, you’ll be left with the impression that every single plane of existence that Spiderman can navigate has been polished and fully realized. You are given more agility and options to beat up on opponents that are also crawling on walls. You can kick enemies while swinging on webs (which is hard for Spidey to nail, but action is his reward), and in an ingenious coup from Devil May Cry 4, Spidey can instantly pull himself towards an enemy and attack, provided the enemy doesn’t counter with an even more awesome attack animation. What otherwise seems like a small new ability becomes a big deal in practice, as you can now leap from enemy to enemy without hitting the ground. When you get down to it, the combat is far from deep (it’s around God of War levels of shallowness) but it’s hard to not find the spectacle of some battles.

Just brace yourself for a lot of battling.

Like most recent web-swinging games, the bulk of the gameplay in Spiderman: Web of Shadows takes place in a virtual New York City. This approach has become popular in that it gives players the freedom to web-swing their little hearts out all over New York. However, the challenge that so-called open world games face is to actually have their open world filled with enough interesting content to keep the player captivated once they grow tired of tinkering with their virtual city. Often, these kinds of games succumb to the pressure and just fill most of the content with missions where you deal with respawning armies of minions, and Web of Shadows not only does this, but it does this without shame.

It feels like an understatement for me to say that the vast majority of missions in the game comprise of you going to an area and clearing out all baddies. I’ll try to give a few examples.

In the opening missions, Spiderman is being taught the web pulling attack that I mentioned above. So the game makes you do this move three times on a still target. The next mission will ask you to use that move on ten criminals on the street. Then the game will ask you to defeat twenty more criminals.

This is not an isolated incident, either, the game will frequently force you repeat the same missions back to back, and they’ll almost always consist of the same idea of defeating lots and lots of enemies. Even more baffling is that the game’s idea of an optional side-quest is the same thing; defeat 20 enemies…50 enemies…200 enemies.

Another example, a later game mission asks me to escort a truck around the city and protect survivors. No one really like escort missions in games but I’ll deal with it, I thought. The truck will make about 3-5 stops in which the civilians who need rescuing will take their sweet, sweet time making their way to the van. After you finally complete this headache of a mission, the game forces you to search the city for 3 more trucks that are looking for survivors.

Every time the game introduces a new enemy type, you’ll probably have to do two or three missions that comprise of killing X number of that enemy. By the time I was nearing the game’s end, I was told I had just unlocked an Achievement stating that I had defeated 1000 enemies. That is not an achievement I wear with pride. This is game-lengthening of the worst kind, a flagrant attempt to stretch out the number of hours it takes to beat a game to avoid being labeled as “short” in game reviews. The reality of the matter is that more people will wind up putting a lot more time into a game a third the length of Web of Shadows, like Call of Duty 4, from said game being more replayable because of the decided lack of filler.

It’s a shame, too, because the game does show the occasional flash of brilliance. Almost every boss battle has a unique hook to it, whether it’s Vulture forcing you to jump from one enemy to another to reach him, or Wolverine stopping mid-fight to…ask you some Spiderman trivia. This game does something monumental in that it presents the first ever instance where I thought Electro wasn’t lame. But these moments of bliss are brief, and lost in the hours and hours of tedium that is the regular story quests.

Web of Shadows is a game that players are going to try really hard to like, but the game will try even harder to make you hate it. The core mechanics are great, and the makings of a potentially great Spiderman game are here, but everything that surrounds Spiderman is dull and repetitive. Perhaps the developers can now focus on creating interesting levels and set-pieces for the next game and provide a more stimulating experience, but for now, you’d best pass.

Pros : Swinging through a war-torn New York is at least a treat on the eyes. Depending on your moral alignment and whether or not the game engine is in the right mood, you can sometimes summon an ally to help battle.

Cons : Camera occasionally buggers out of control. Some missions will start to glitch up should you fail…which at best simply means that the marker indicating where to go will be slightly off-place, and at worst, will prevent you from triggering a necessary quick-time event and force you to restart the console.

3 stars

So far, Treyarch have been responsible for this and the below-reviewed Quantum of Solace game. And they’ve got one more big holiday release in Call of Duty : World at War…which I just may review next!

007: Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace : A first person shooter based on the recent James Bond movie and powered by the Call of Duty 4 engine.

Story : Like most video game tie-ins, the story in the Quantum of Solace video game is a random mishmash of plot points from the movie tied together in a way that’s nothing short of incoherent unless you’ve seen the movie(s) that it’s based on. This game in particular goes an extra mile (or should I say cuts off an extra mile) by not even rendering cutscenes acted out by the character models but rather having the story told with phone conversations between the main characters while a computer screen from M16 provides some kind of visual that may as well been done in Flash. This game even doubles the incoherence of the plot; for the first hour or so of gameplay, you’ll play missions based on the Quantum of Solace movie, and right before you reach the final sequence, Bond begins to reminisce about the events that brought him here, and then you play about 3 hours worth of missions based on Casino Royale. Way to break up the flow of the storytelling, eh?

The James Bond that Daniel Craig portrays disposes the cocky swagger, unrealistic gadgets and over-the-top personalities of previous incarnations in favor of an emotionally scarred, cold-blooded killer who operates on his motives over that of his superiors and lost his ability to love. Displaying that kind of development in a video game is a bit tricky, so the Quantum of Solace video game plays less like a character study on the iconic British spy and more like your typical game of “one man army killing hundreds of henchmen.”

Quantum of Solace’s rather shamelessly uses every gameplay convention popularized from the last five or six years; the cover button, the ability to only store 3 weapons, the self-regenerating health bar, the screen changing colours to reflect your character nearing death, the quick-time event cutscenes (actually, melee-attacking an enemy will trigger a quick-time event cutscene that asks you to think fast and press the desired button…but not too fast, as the game gives you a surprising amount of leeway to press that single button), a contrived “hacking” mini-game that simulates breaking into locked doors by pressing the d-pad in the direction the game tells you to, conveniently placed explosive containers that just happen to be placed next to where the enemy guards are hiding, the obligatory gun-turret sequence, several obligatory sniper rifle sequences…

It’s a shooter alright. You could take away the cover button and you could very well be playing an especially uninspired version of Call of Duty 4. In fact the only time the game surprised me with a clever idea was at the final level, when I had to shoot fire extinguishers on the wall to put out fires that were blocking my path. (And I’m sure that’s been done already too and I don’t remember it.)

The exceptions to the above statement are the stealth sequences, where the game decides to break up the pace by using every gameplay convention from the last five or six years prior to the five to six years that popularized regenerating health bars. Enemies that walk the same predetermined patrol routine repeatedly even if it’s just a circle around a scaffolding, security cameras, the silenced gun, the ability to approach from behind and execute a stealth kill…these are the parts where the game remembers that you can’t make a Bond game without trying to make people feel a bit nostalgic for the days of Goldeneye. For better or for worse, there’s little penalty for not being stealthy, as blowing your cover simply means guards with bigger guns appear and you get thrown in the same firefights you’ve been playing throughout the rest of the game. Speaking of which, you may either like or despise this, but if you stay hiding in one spot long enough, the enemy AI will not only chuck grenades at you but will try to flank you and shoot from behind.

The gameplay itself is…mostly solid, but a few odd quirks pull you out of the experience. The training to become a 00 agent must be nothing short of incredible, as Bond seems to have little trouble killing enemies by blind-firing your gun from cover. The game tries very hard to immerse the player, to “experience playing as James Bond” by concocting all kinds of staged events in each level…most of which comprise of things exploding around you and the camera shaking a lot. These events come off as too…scripted, largely in part because, in contrast, Bond will barely flinch if an unscripted grenade just happens to explode on top of him. I’ve got nothing against these kinds of scripted events, and in fact when used properly can really pull you into a game (see the Call of Duty games, in particular Modern Warfare) but the ones here feel too inorganic; they make you feel less like you’re part of a thrilling combat scenario and more like you’re on a stage as gimmicked debris falls down, fireworks go off to simulate an explosion and a trap door opens to reveal the path onward. I guess what I’m trying to say is, the game tries hard to be immersive but fails.

And I haven’t even gotten to the James Bond aspect of Quantum of Solace…which is to say there isn’t much. I understand the lack of gadget weapons from past Bond games, and even the lack of an Aston-Martin driving sequence, but if not for Daniel Craig’s likeness and how the death sequence predictably comprises of blood slowly falling down the screen like in the intros of 007 movies (and Goldeneye…and shockingly, Goldeneye did it better! The “blood” here looks rather plastic), then you may as well be playing a generic first person shooter. I’ll even go on a limb and say the authenticity of the game is severely hurt by the fact that an MI6 operative is still giving you orders like you’re a soldier, despite how this Bond spends most of the movies working in defiance of MI6. The only actual “Bond gadget” is your phone, which acts as another menu screen, displaying assorted facts such as a level map you’re not going to need because the levels are incredibly linear in nature. Linearity isn’t always a bad thing, but this game is plagued with invisible walls in the worst way possible. If you’re not supposed to be somewhere the developers want you to be, you’ll know it.

The Quantum of Solace video game isn’t completely bad. There aren’t any game-breaking glitches or bugs like in most movie tie-ins and the online multiplayer is decent enough that you can find and play about 3 or 4 matches in the same it takes to even try setting up one match in Gears of War 2. But being functional shouldn’t be the nicest thing I have to say about the game. It’s a run of the mill shooter that you’d miss absolutely nothing for if you elect not to play it, and doesn’t even fare well as a James Bond game. If you haven’t played a shooter within the last 7 years, then Quantum of Solace has potential to blow your mind, but if names like “Halo”, “Gears of War” and especially “Call of Duty” mean anything to you, then there’s nothing about Quantum of Solace that’ll shake or stir you up.

Pros : “The Man With The Golden Gun” multiplayer match type is blatantly ripped out of Goldeneye and appears here.

Cons : Otherwise, there’s nothing in multiplayer that hasn’t been ripped out any other game. Activision couldn’t even be bothered to acquire the rights to the actual Quantum of Solace theme song from Alicia Keys…well I guess they didn’t have a problem licensing it for Guitar Hero as a downloadable song people have to pay for.

3 stars

I’d like to apologize for the painfully predictable line about shaking and stirring.