Bastion – 2011, Supergiant Games, Xbox Live Arcade

Bastion is a beautiful 2D fantasy game with a unique storytelling method of an ever present voice narrating the story as it happens. The voice’s register hovers somewhere in the vicinity of Sam Elliott and Ron Perlman and serves as a constant companion that elegantly toes the line between pure exposition but also a character in the game itself. In addition to this unique conceit, the game itself is a fun action-RPG with great weapons, upgrade systems and a lot of well thought out gameplay design.

The story follows The Kid who is a white-haired chibi style character and a survivor of a recent catastrophic event known only as The Calamity. During the course of the game’s 8-10 hours you’ll learn more about the world of The Bastion, the different races of people and cities surrounding it. In many ways, the story of Bastion literally unfolds as you play it. The world first appears empty until the ground literally pops up from under your feet and the narrator tells the story like a parent telling a bedtime story.

This is the smallest level in the game... I'm just foolin'

You’ll meet a few characters on your journey, but for the most part the narrator is the only voice that you’ll be hearing during the game. Reportedly they recorded over 3000 lines of dialogue for the entire game. Somewhere out there exists a spreadsheet all the different scenarios they decided should have accompanying narration. Most of it is for story, but an impressive amount is contextual. Sometimes it directly relates to actions you take in the game like destroying environmental objects or even your choice of weapons that you use in each level.

It might sound like a gimmick which it totally is, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. It’s easy to see how this idea could’ve gone horribly wrong, but it’s implemented incredibly well and never feels unnatural. While playing you can tell that special care was taken to prevent the narrator from repeating himself or to have anything interrupt the narration, whether it’s a pause screen or when story and contextual narration have to happen one after another. Also some narration is reserved entirely for the New Game Plus second play through which extends its replayability. As of the writing of this review I’ve beat the game twice, and I’m still convinced that there’s a lot of narration I still haven’t heard.

Just about everything there is destructible. This game takes much longer if you're OCD.

Okay so the narration is really cool, but how does it play? The game is seen from an isometric perspective and The Kid will be shooting and hacking away at enemies large and small. The Bastion itself serves as a hub world from which you’ll fly to each new world discovered. It’s essentially entirely linear, but you have the option of going to training levels or taking other challenges to increase your skill before moving on. Bastion is a tad Diablo/Deathspank style with its damage numbers and critical hits, but not a straight up button masher especially at the higher difficulties. In addition to hitting and shooting, you can roll out of the way and counter using your shield. The control is precise and responsive which makes things like dodging and evading very easy.

What really separates Bastion from Diablo style action RPGs are the variety of weapons and their properties. The Kid has at his disposal a choice of two weapons and one special skill. There are eleven weapons total which you gradually discover and also a large number of special skills to unlock as well. Having played with all the weapons it’s surprisingly tough to pick favorites. Each one has very different properties, uses and scenarios where they work best. They boil down to melee and projectile weapons, but all handle quite differently in terms of range, strength, speed, area of effect and accuracy. I was skeptical of the variety at first because usually there are clear favorites, but the game really lets you customize your arsenal to your play style. I would encourage you to change things up every now and then in order to play the game differently.

Rifle vs Pick Axe.

When you destroy objects and kill enemies you receive experience points and currency which can be used to purchase weapon upgrades. Each weapon has five levels of upgrades with a choice of two on each level. One nice touch is that upgrades can be swapped at any time after purchase which adds even more variety to each weapon. Another passive upgrade come in the form of “tonics” which are different buffs that The Kid can equip that affect things like health, percent chance of critical hits, damage and a number of other properties. The higher your level, the more tonics you can equip at one time making your character even stronger.

Another way to further your weapon skills come in “Proving Grounds” one of which exists for each weapon. These are like training areas where you must accomplish a specific goal using a particular weapon and based on your performance you’ll receive rewards. At the highest reward you’ll receive a new special attack for that weapon, but very few of these can be achieved without an upgraded weapon. There’re also in-game achievements for which you receive money that you can put towards more upgrades.

Your mission should you choose to accept it. Smash everything here. Oh and do it in 25 seconds.

With all these upgrades it sounds like you’ll hit a wall where you’re just too powerful for everything around you which is why they added a special way of increasing the difficulty of the game. There is no Easy, Medium and Hard mode in Bastion. Instead there’s a shrine where you can invoke idols of certain gods in order to increase the challenge and receive more experience points as a reward. There are ten gods in total and even invoking only a few of them can dramatically change your experience. Some modifications include: faster enemies, stronger enemies, regenerating enemies, damage from touching enemies, enemies that randomly deflect attacks and exploding enemies and more. If you’re not quick on your feet you can find yourself dying very quickly the more idols you invoke.

The art in Bastion is gorgeously realized with a broad color palette and beautiful painterly strokes for everything from the characters to the random boxes you’ll smash in a level. The paint style recalls Braid, but there’s much more detail and variety to be found. The saturation of color really makes everything pop out of the screen. It’s a nice and rare treat nowadays to have a 2D game that makes you want to stop to appreciate its artwork. Even more impressive is that it’s all the work of only one person out of the very small team.

Awww who's a beautifully colored little... OH GOD! HEALTH POTION NOW!

Plenty has been said about the narration, but it’s still worth noting just how seamless it works into the game. There are times when the next bit of narration won’t happen until you finish a battle, but somehow the pacing always seems to work. I wish I were more versed in music so that I would have the vocabulary to describe the music from Bastion, but it’s a great soundtrack and complements the game wonderfully. Sometimes it’s the slow leisurely strumming of a guitar and others it’s the urgent stringing of violins. It’s a short enough game that the music never gets repetitive, but even if it were longer I still don’t think I would’ve minded. There were even some musical beats that I wasn’t expecting to find in such an indie developed game, but worked great for the story.

If there were one criticism I would make about Bastion it would be the sound effects. I’m not sure if it could simply be a matter of mixing the weapon and impact sounds up a bit more, but I felt like they could’ve had more punch. Even though I loved using all the weapons in the game, they didn’t feel as satisfying as I wanted them to be when either the shot of a rifle went off or the slash of the machete hit an enemy. The impacts, shots and slashes are pretty understated and I wished felt more tactile than they did. I’m sure it’s tough finding just the right sound especially when it’s something that will be heard thousands of times in quick succession, but I found it a little bit lacking. Another minor quibble is that there are a lot of loading screens, but there are a lot of contextual story bits put there which make them less annoying.

Ewwww, cleanup on aisle 4!

Any complaints I have are only minor nitpicks, because Bastion is still a great game that should be played by anyone with an Xbox (and later PC). The gameplay is really well designed with several small considerations that streamline the experience. For example, when you equip a new weapon, that weapon’s special skill is automatically sorted to the top of the list. Another nice touch is that in the game’s version of wave based challenge rooms they make the experience less monotonous by having story narration in between waves. A lot of thought has been put in to make the game inclusive to all manner of players. From the most casual to the hardcore in search of a bigger challenge.

There’s a lot to do in Bastion and it’s well worth the 1200 MS points (or $15). As of the writing of this review is not yet available on PC but will be later in 2011. It’s a unique and fun experience and well worth your while. Highly recommended!

Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception Multiplayer beta – 2011, Naughty Dog, PS3.

Hey guys, can I grab a lift?

Historically I haven’t been a multiplayer focused sort of person, but Uncharted 2 was the first game that I got really addicted to its multiplayer and played the heck out of it. Understandably I had been looking forward to the Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta ever since I heard the announcement. Thanks to Sony getting hacked I was able to play that first week only for Playstation Plus members (and really, anyone who wanted to play this beta just had to wait before cashing in that membership, so there’s no excuse for not getting in).

Naughty Dog has said that they want this to be the definitive multiplayer experience on the Playstation 3, and that they’re in this to compete with the other major multiplayer games. They’ve made a significant number of improvements that give more variety, incentives to play and excitement to the experience. The thing that separated Uncharted from other games is its third-person perspective and also how much traversal plays a part in the game’s maps. Nathan Drake has more upper body strength than anyone in the world and this means that he can do a heck of a lot of climbing. This translates into maps with a lot of verticality, so you’re constantly having to keep your eyes above and below you for possible targets.

Pretty lighting.

Right now there are two maps: Airstrip and The Chateau. If you’re playing Team Deathmatch, The Airstrip starts on a commercial plane taking off and being chased by trucks. Depending on which team you’re on you’ll be defending or storming the plane. This is pretty amazing and has a unique Uncharted level of excitement to it. How balanced this map is remains to be seen, but it’s still really cool. The Chateau is more of a closer quarters kind of map with a lot of verticality and small rooms with big gun fights. This map and the second phase of The Airstrip both have scripted events like a floor collapsing or a plane flying overhead shooting or blowing stuff up. These sort of things existed in UC2, but they’re still fun to experience.

In the beta there are five modes: team death match, free for all, three team deathmatch, hardcore and co-op. These are actually almost all new additions except for TDM and aspects of co-op. Team Deathmatch are two teams of 5 trying to get 50 kills. This mode has all the bells and whistles of the new gameplay additions in the game. The biggest addition are Power Plays which are intended to balance out the score when one team is dominating by at least 5-6 kills. In those situations the losing team gets a bonus like “Marked Man” where a specific player on the opposing team has an icon visible from anywhere on the map and their death now counts for 3. This causes the defenders to go crazy and the attackers to drop what they’re doing and seek this guy out.

Jumping from one moving vehicle to another? Yep, this is an Uncharted game.

The other Power Plays include abilities like seeing all enemies’ arrows through walls and double damage. If you’re not ahead by the time all three have gone off then you’re on your own. These Power Plays really bring some excitement to the game and sometimes they’ll work so well that you’ll find yourself on the other side of the Power Play. In most of the games I’ve played in this mode the games end up very close in the end. If by the end of the round a team is only winning by 1 then it goes into a one minute sudden death mode. If the score is still tied after sudden death, everyone’s arrows become visible and everyone has only one life.

Power Plays and boosters also work in Free for All and Three Team Deathmatch which consists of three teams of two. For those who don’t want all the boosters, power plays and extra abilities there’s a hardcore mode for those who want everything to be purely skill based.

Co-op mode teams you up with two additional players. This is ten rounds of three game types. There’s survival which is just waves and waves of enemies until the timer goes down. There’s Siege which requires you all to be in one specific region in order for your points to count, and then there’s Gold Rush where you have to take treasure from one part of the map to another. One addition in that mode is that you can now shoot your pistol while holding the treasure. In UC2 you were at the mercy of your teammates if the bullets started flying.

The first stealth kill I got I said "OH SNAP!" The medal for stealth kills is "Oh Snap!" Naughty Dog, you understand me too well.

There are a lot of other small gameplay additions too. There’s a new buddy system where if you’re not playing with friends you’re assigned a buddy, and you can respawn near them after getting killed provided they’re not currently under direct fire. If they’re shooting at someone then you can spawn in and help out. Also, kills which you accomplish together give a D-pad down prompt which can let you high five or fist bump your buddy which is a lot of fun and gives you a medal. I hope Naughty Dog adds some more of these.

Now there’s also a sprint ability you can activate by clicking in the left thumbstick. This is great for people like me who enjoy sneaking up on guys who aren’t sprinting. In UC2 if I wanted to sneak up on someone I had to hope that eventually they paused or took a break if I wanted to overtake them. Also there are Treasures which appear randomly in designated treasure boxes or when you kill an enemy. There are quite a few of them in dozens of sets. These unlock different outfits for your characters and just add another thing to do while playing. Treasure chests either hold new treasures or special one-time paid boosters. Either way you receive a medal for collecting treasure, but you’ll never have to worry about getting the same treasure over and over again which is good for collectors.

No he's not shooting the plane, but dammit that would be amazing.

Some other tweaks are that a quick tap of the triangle button can let you throw grenades back at people if you do it in time. Also you find yourself hanging from a ledge next to someone else also on the same ledge, you can kick them down. There are a few new stealth kill animations, but some look smoother than others, another thing that is hopefully smoothed out for the full release.

Boosters have received a nice overhaul that make them more relevant and also provide more incentives. There are a number of booster abilities like: faster respawn, ability to see power weapons, quieter traversal, ammo for taunting or being able to see the arrow of the last guy who killed you. There are many more in the beta, and sure to be more in the full release. Like in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, these abilities can be leveled up for improved versions of them. To level up the boosters involves winning certain medals like medals for stealth killing, killing with power weapons, running around a lot or collecting treasure. There are also co-op specific boosters which can be even more powerful, but since they’re intended for use vs AI opponents then it’s not game breaking.

No no guys, we want to go IN the plane. IN!

There are also paid boosters which you can purchase before matches. These are powerful one-match boosters like an additional grenade slot, short range radar and stronger bullets. Early on these aren’t really much bang for your buck because it’s in your better interest to buy permanent boosters. Lastly, the big ability addition are kickbacks. These are special skills you can use once you’ve attained the required number of medals. For example 12 medals could get you an instant RPG, or 7 medals lets you move very quickly, or my personal favorite 10 medals gives you a cluster grenade that blows up into several other grenades. In higher level play these will make matches very interesting indeed.

That’s an overview of the biggest game changers, but they’ve also made some very small cosmetic tweaks that I really enjoyed. For one thing the guns all sound differently now. They were almost all different in the original, but the pistols used to sound exactly the same, but now they’re all completely distinct. They also added a sound effect for bullets hitting your target which is nice because then you know you’re hitting your mark. Previously you’d have to look closely for the blood splatter, but sometimes at a distance it was more difficult.

Drake vs three pirates. Poor pirates.

Another cosmetic addition are emblems. You can customize an emblem for yourself, and if you do well enough during the match it’ll appear on certain landmarks which doesn’t affect gameplay but it’s kind of cool to see your emblem on a huge wall or on ammo crates.

So far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself in the UC3 Multiplayer beta, and I can’t wait to see all the other stuff that is in the full version. I think they’ve made smart decisions that make the game more exciting and dozens of medal rewards keep that positive reinforcement pleasure button running while you play. My only complaint is that my co-op teammates keep on acting like total morons during survival mode. I mean come on, why go to an open space when there’s so much cover around you???

Darksiders – 2010, Vigil Games, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC.

If you know anything about the game Darksiders, you know that it’s earned its reputation for being a darker “mature” version of Legend of Zelda. After playing the game I have no problem saying that the comparison is entirely apt, and what parts of the game aren’t from Zelda are from God of War or Devil May Cry. In addition there are a few pepperings of Panzer Dragoon and even some Portal. But you know what? Lack of originality in those regards doesn’t really matter all that much because the combination of these inspirations still make Darksiders a fun game.

The story centers around War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The universe is governed by The Council, a neutral party that keeps Heaven and Hell in check. It’s decided that at the time of the Apocalypse, Heaven, Hell and the Kingdom of Man will battle and the ultimate victor will be decided. Turns out, someone couldn’t wait for the Apocalypse and it starts prematurely, but for some reason only War is summoned with the other three nowhere in sight. Thus it’s assumed that War jumped the gun and caused all this chaos, and The Council seeks to punish him, but allows War to return to Earth in order to find out who was really responsible. When he gets back to Earth a century has passed, and the world has been fallen into ruin with nothing but demons roaming the streets. War is accompanied by The Watcher (voiced by Mark Hamill) who is kind of like a demonic Navi from Ocarina of Time.

Look, I'm not Link. He wears green, I wear red. Totally opposite.

Because of its inspirations (calling it a ripoff or homage is strictly up to you) Darksiders is simultaneously difficult and quite easy to talk about. On one hand it’s easy because if I tell you the things it takes from other games you’ll know right away what playing the game is like. By the same token it’s kind of difficult to talk about because there doesn’t seem much left to talk about after explaining what it plays like.

All right, to simplify let’s go through everything that Darksiders takes from Legend of Zelda. The game centers around going to a number of different dungeons, each of which will give you a new item that you’re going to use to defeat the boss with after hitting him three times. That item then opens up other regions of the world where you couldn’t go to before. When you solve puzzles there’s a music cue, but in the form of an all men’s choir. In combat you hold the left trigger to target specific enemies which also letterboxes the window. You push blocks, ride a horse, throw boomerangs, use a hookshot, use bomb plants, collect four pieces of each new health container and see into a shadow world. When you fall into a pit, you respawn with some life depleted. All of these things from Zelda exist in Darksiders, except they’re, you know… darker.

Would Link do this???

What Darksiders doesn’t take from Zelda is inspired by the God of War and Devil May Cry games. It’s not terribly difficult to button mash your way through the game, and with all combos using only the X button it’s not even as deep as God of War. The combat system comes with a few weapons, upgrades, special abilities and magic. When you kill enemies you receive souls which you use to buy health items, new combos, magic skills and other upgrades. A ”Rage” meter slowly fills up while fighting and can be used to do some high powered cleanup. The game mostly draws the line at quick time events, but enemies can be finished off with a B-button prompt once they’re weak enough.

This isn't your daddy's wussy boomerang. It's a veritable self quadra-bladed shredder of doom!

The game is mostly combat focused, but the dungeons break up the pacing with long sections of puzzle solving. The puzzles are more involved than you’d find in God of War, but I didn’t always have the moments of immense satisfaction usually associated with solving complicated puzzles like in a Zelda game. Usually my moments of confusion during the game were related to where to go to next. The camera would often show me the way when I didn’t want to know what to do next, and when I was confused there was no help at all.

When you're this big, do you really need to resort to throwing cars to hurt people?

The art style is very spikey with a good variety of hideous creatures and environments. War himself is incredibly wide and has numerous attachments added to his very spikey gauntlets. The settings are befitting of a post apocalyptic urban environment, and most of the boss battles are quite huge and epic in scope. Some bosses more than others echo Shadow of the Colossus, but in all fairness, Link has been fighting monsters many times his size for a while.

While the art does a good job of realizing the world, I had trouble any of it too seriously, and the game does take itself very seriously. Just about every voice in the game is a deep baritone if not lower and sometimes, but not always involves some voice processing to make it even more rumbly. Items have very silly names like “Chaoseater”, “Tremor Gauntlet” and “Armageddon Blade.” There are some fleeting moments when the game reveals a sense of humor, but they’re usually unrelated to the main storyline which is always deathly serious. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but it might be that a game with this art style and tone is very difficult to take.

Without a doubt, the most fabulous demon in hell.

The collection system is fun because there are rewards for everything that you collect. Items you collect will increase your health, magic, give you money and also reward you with the special “Abyssal Armor.” Thankfully the game has several items that reveal the location of collectible items, so getting 100% of all the items is mostly painless. The only frustration I had while doing my collecting was the game’s save system didn’t seem to always save my collecting progress. While games like Assassin’s Creed quicksave after every collectible, Darksiders for some reason doesn’t save everything even after a hard save. As a result one artifact I was sure I collected had been lost in a save. I’m not sure what the 100% reliable way of saving was, but just in case I would go past several checkpoints in hopes the multiple save points would work.

Angel statue boobage.

There are a few technical hitches in the game. When there are a lot of enemies and a lot of fire effects the framerate can choke, but they’re not game breaking. There’re very few load screens in the game because the game disguises its loading with transitional stages that you have to walk through in between regions. Every now and then the game will freeze for a moment when going from one area to another, but again nothing that really affects gameplay.

I enjoyed Darksiders despite my misgivings about the tone and problems I had sometimes understanding the story. Like Zelda it’s much more gameplay focused of a game with infrequent cutscenes that usually come at the beginning and end of dungeon areas. Because of this it doesn’t make the most entertaining game to watch someone play, but the mix of combat and puzzle solving still made it a fun game. Right now Darksiders is $20 or less so if you’re looking for a 16-20 hour adventure game then Darksiders should work for you.

L.A. Noire – 2011, Team Bondi, Rockstar, Playstation 3/Xbox 360.

Contrary to the “Grand Theft Noir” vibe that it gives, L.A. Noire is more of a modern take on old school slow and methodical adventure games than a GTA open world action game. Using cutting edge technology the game requires you to read the facial expressions of characters you interrogate in order to determine whether or not they’re telling the truth or not. Fitting somewhere in between a straight linear adventure game narrative and open world game, L.A. Noire is probably not going to completely satisfy fans of either. If you’re a fan of fast paced modern Call of Duty games or GTA then it’s very likely you’re going to be disappointed by this style of gameplay and I’d recommend you rent it. If however you like point and click adventure games, the chase scenes and especially driving portions of the game might frustrate you. That said, L.A. Noire is much friendlier for the less action focused gamer and at times even goes out of its way to accomodate gamers who would rather advance the plot than try a twitch reflex action sequence over and over again.

Story is king in L.A. Noire so it’s fortunate that for the most part everything is excellently plotted. You play as Cole Phelps, a war veteran starting as a beat cop for the LAPD. The game covers his rise through the ranks as he quickly distinguishes himself amongst his peers and proves himself an excellent detective no matter what department. You’ll investigate cases from fraud up through homicide, drugs and arson. The structure of the game starts very episodic, but gradually cases start to interconnect and build up a bigger story. In addition to the main plotline there are a few other story threads including flashbacks to Cole in the war and also collectible newspapers reveal another story arc destined to collide with Cole’s story. There are a few plot holes here and there, but they’re the exception to the rule in what is a very engaging approximately 20 hour game.

I'm sorry, what did you say again?

When you boil down the tasks you have in the game it sounds monotonous and repetitive. It is repetitive, but if you’re absorbed into the story it’s certainly not monotonous. After you receive a case you go to the crime scene to start your investigation by looking for evidence. As you walk around, the controller will vibrate and you’ll hear a piano chime indicating you’re nearby evidence. Some will be relevant and some will be completely incidental. Some pieces of evidence allow for additional interaction like flipping through books, fitting pieces together, reading brand names, serial numbers and other things that will give Cole his next lead. Relevant evidence is then sorted into Cole’s notebook. After finding all the evidence there’s a brass music cue that indicates all evidence has been found.

Aside from the evidence, the most prominent feature by far are the interrogation sequences. New motion capture technology allowed the developers to translate the actors’ facial expressions and put them onto the game characters. The results are the most realistic facial movements ever seen in a video game. Every forehead wrinkle, crease of the mouth, and eyeball movement is perfectly put onto the screen. As you interrogate you’ll be given the option to decide whether they’re telling the truth, lying or lying about something in direct contradiction your evidence. Just like old adventure games there is only one right answer per question, which may frustrate players looking to get all the achievements.

Don't be surprised if you recognize actors.

Depending on how well you do, the interrogation can go a number of different ways. If you do well then you’ll usually be better equipped to make the right decision in the investigation. I played through some cases multiple times and was often surprised how just one wrong answer could reveal a piece of information that would make the difference between convicting the right and wrong person. The first cases have characters who sweat like a pig when they’re lying, but by the end of the game you’ll be dealing with less savory characters who are much more capable liars. If there’s no evidence to work off of, it’s usually best to trust your gut instincts.  This is by far the most interesting thing about L.A. Noire because the subtle shades of gray make the investigative work feel very authentic. Many times a character will be lying about something not because they’re guilty of the crime you’re investigating, but something else they don’t want to reveal for entirely different reasons. It’s these ulterior motivations and agendas that really flesh out even the smallest of characters and makes them feel like real people.

As simple and repetitive as the core gameplay can seem, it’s a fantastic way of giving the player control over how the story is slowly revealed. I’m not one of those people who figure out the killer from the first ten minutes of the movie, so I hung on every piece of evidence and dialogue as the story unfolded. No matter what you do, the story will go on and even though your game will end the same way as everyone else, the process by which you get there is likely to have a lot of different turns from someone else’s game.

Woops no gloves, guess I'm the suspect now.

There’s a light experience system built in. For each correct question you get experience points and as you rank up you’re rewarded with hidden cars, outfits and “intuition points.” These points can be stored for a maximum of 5. If you’re stumped on a question you can use a point to eliminate question options or use the PSN “ask the community” option to see what other people chose (though this isn’t always correct). Intuition points can also reveal the location of all evidence in a crime scene. It’s best to use them only when you’re really stuck since there level 20 is the maximum rank. Experience is also gained from street crimes and landmarks you find around the city.

The other parts of the game are the ones more GTA-like.. Your mileage may vary depending on how much you enjoy those games. The city of Los Angeles has been painstakingly recreated and is quite vast. Reportedly it’s the largest city ever to be in a Rockstar game. There’re dozens of cars to drive, and many different items to collect. There aren’t side missions or factions like in GTA, but instead there are some very quick and short street crimes that you can answer the call of when they come over your police radio. There are 40 of these in total, but most of them can be finished in a few minutes.

It's called "aim assist" beatch!

Usually they boil down to chasing targets down, shootouts and car chases. The gunplay is very simplified in this game with no HUD for your weapons, ammo counters or arsenals. The default gun settings have an aim assist mode that basically guarantees when you come out of cover you’re already aiming at an enemy. This expedites action sequences and is probably something action game fans will find wholly unsatisfying. But for someone more focused on the story, it’s a welcome decision. Cars handle much like in a GTA game and were by far my least favorite part of the game because of the learning curve for driving and the fact that I almost never ever wanted to look behind my car when reversing, but the game is designed to reverse camera angles then. If you so choose you can let your partner drive to all locations which brings you there instantly. If there’s some dialogue, the game will let it play out before transporting you to your designated location.

At the end of each case you’re given a rating from 1-5 stars based on how many questions you judged correctly, how much evidence you gathered and the property damage you caused while on the case. Seeing as you’re a cop it’s not the kind of game where you go around willfully destroying everything (though there is an achievement for doing that). In fact, the pedestrians are very resilient and I’m pretty sure won’t die no matter what, but I never tested the limits of how many times I could hit one guy.

Finished cases can be easily replayed via the main menu if you want to improve your rating or go back and do more street missions.The game helps you out with notifications for street crime you’ve finished and also newspapers you’ve found, but for other items you’re collecting there’s no easily accessible list of what you have which means I won’t be going back in without a map and a FAQ. It would’ve been nice if they had a reward which was a map of collectibles like in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

50 film reels in the biggest video game city ever made? Yep, using a FAQ map.

L.A. Noire is a great looking game, but it’s not without its flaws. The facial motion capture is a victim of its own success because by comparison the body animation can look quite stilted and awkward at times. At worst, the characters look like stuntmen in movies who have had their faces replaced with the actors’ face. When it happens, the visual disconnect really breaks the illusion. But if you focus primarily on the faces it’s very impressive to look at. From what little I know of the time period it appears to have been excellently reproduced from the building exteriors, clothing and cars.

This being a film noir game they’ve also added an option to play the game in black & white. I did a comparison with turning the saturation down on my TV, and the black/white mode makes the contrast higher and looks quite good, but the game is still rather gray. I wish that the game had better lighting contrast typical of film noir films. The main menu is the best looking bit of black/white in the game with the dark shadows and bright light contrast. I wish there could’ve been more of that visual style in the game.

just like games used to be in the 1940s!

Most of my complaints about the game stem from the GTA-like elements like the driving, unforgiving collecting and also very light checkpointing in the game. I’m guessing the developers didn’t want people stopping the game for the sake of 100% completion, because this gives the game replay value. Still, they must’ve known that people were going to quit and retry missions in order to get all the questions correct, but the game isn’t set up to do that with any efficiency. If you mess up and want to try again there are cutscenes you have to rewatch (not all of which are skippable), evidence to recollect and of course the questions to answer. I think it would’ve been a good choice to add more checkpoints. At the very least, a checkpoint after evidence is collected.

Pretty much everything else is top notch. The acting is excellent all around, and real kudos to the director for getting good performances out of actors isolated sitting in a chair surrounded by HD cameras. It can be hard enough to marry motion capture with actors in a sound booth with no other actors to play off of, but this extra step for the facial capture must’ve made it that much more difficult. Sometimes the tone and energy can go up and down without any warning, but all things considered it fits together very well. The sheer scale of scanned in faces for the game is staggering with every minor NPC having facial motion capture. Yes, there is a disconnect between the fidelity of the face and body, but it’s still a very impressive achievement.

Oh yeah forgot to mention. This game is for mature audiences ONLY.

L.A. Noire is a very exciting evolution of the adventure game which has traditionally had very little innovation of its mechanics, but I hope that other companies take some cues and find more ways to make modern takes on point and click adventure. I don’t think that this sort of facial motion capture would be good in all games, because in certain games it feels better to have stylized humans, but it’s interesting technology that if used correctly could really enhance video games and take them in exciting new directions. I could see games like Heavy Rain adopting this technology well for sequels.

So once again, if you like adventure games and want some more action in them, then definitely play L.A. Noire. If you’re looking for another sand boxy GTA game with a world to cause wacky hijinks and destruction then do yourself a favor and look elsewhere. At the very least the game has to be seen just for the technical achievement alone. Your enjoyment will depend on your attention span and your personal requirements for gameplay/story ratio.

Portal 2 – 2011, Valve, PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3

Portal 2 is a spectacular game that’s both easy and difficult to review at the same time because there’s plenty to say about what’s good, but also I want to make sure I do proper justice to it. This review will definitely contain massive spoilers so don’t even think about reading this before you’ve played the game. Play it. At the writing of this review it’s already gone down to $40 so there’s no excuse. If you don’t have $40 you must have $40 worth of stuff you can sell that’s less entertaining than Portal 2.

Outland – 2011, Housemarque, Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation 3 Network.

Outland is a game easy to describe using a combination of other games, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a unique and stylist platformer that is very easy to recommend to anyone with an Xbox 360 or PS3. Okay so let’s get it out of the way, the game takes the art style of Patapon, the exploration of Metroid, the color switching mechanics of Ikaruga and boss battles reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus. Though admittedly side scrolling platforms have had a long history of huge bosses that tower over the game protagonist.

The story doesn’t break any new ground with its themes of ancient gods becoming corrupt, deciding to destroy the world and then a hero destined to save the world. That said, it’s interesting enough to keep things going. If anything, the art design does more for the story with unique levels littered by ancient statues, hieroglyphics and runes that provide more context to the world of the game.

Okamiden – 2011, Capcom, Nintendo DS

Okamiden is a great Nintendo DS adventure game with a positively adorable story and is also one of the best looking games for the system. The sequel to the critically acclaimed Okami released in 2006 for Playstation 2 and later for Wii in 2008, it manages to recreate the feel of the original and give fans more of what they loved. When you go down the list comparing features between the two games it’s very difficult to make Okamiden sound like anything but a disappointment, but focusing on its own merits it’s by its own right a very good game. So for this review I’ll save comparison analysis until the end.

Chibiterasu is adorable.

The Okami series made a big splash with its painterly cel-shaded art style, story heavily inspired by Japanese folklore and unique paint brush game mechanic that allowed players to freeze the action and “paint” on the screen using the “Celestial Brush” to perform actions like cut rocks in half, manipulate weather, create fire and much more. These were previously controlled by analog thumbsticks or motion controls, but the DS touch screen implementation is by far the best and smoothest version. The direct control via stylus makes gestures quick and less prone to error. The game’s action primarily exists on the top screen of the DS with the bottom being used for the map and inventory. When you press either shoulder button, the top screen moves to the bottom and you make your paint strokes.

So how did this year’s PAX East compare to previous PAXes? It’d be unfair to compare my very first PAX to any other because none of them will ever be as new and exciting as the first. The biggest difference this year was the venue at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Last year at the Hynes got quite packed when those lines started wrapping around the hallways.

There were lines... endless lines...

The extra space was very much appreciated, but the BCEC is really spread apart, and getting from one room to the next took quite a long time. There’s not much to be done about that since it’s just the convention building, but the stacked nature of the rooms at the Hynes was much more appreciated this year when we didn’t have it.

An unfortunate consequence of having things so spread apart was that it was more difficult to discover different rooms that you might not have been looking for but still might be intriguing. The handheld lounge in particular was really out of the way, and in previous PAXes it’s nice to be able to be walking from one place to another and just stumble upon the big bean bags.

The third day we didn’t have any specific events to go to except for the final round of the Omegathon/Closing Ceremonies. This was also the day the Tetris tournament was happening. I had signed up the previous day, but I was in the waiting list because I didn’t sign up early enough. There were two preliminary rounds and I signed up for the one at 2:00 pm. So until then we had time to go to the Exhibit Hall and play some games.

The first game we went to was Bastion. I’ve wanted to try this game out for a while after hearing about it at last year’s PAX and also watching coverage of it at Giant Bomb. It’s headed by Greg Kasavin who used to be the senior editor at Gamespot back when I was a subscriber there. There was a short line for one of the four stations so I stood and watched others play it.

The game is an action RPG with a painterly style similar to Braid, but the unique thing about it is its use of narration. At first it might seem just like general narration, but as you move around the world hitting objects, falling off ledges and getting items you realize that everything you do has narration associated with it. Kudos to the voice actor and direction that every bit of narration comes off totally seamless.

Can't freakin' wait for this game.

The action is a combination of melee and ranged weapons, dodging etc. There are also upgrade paths for skills and weapons as you play which is an instant buy for me. Getting higher and higher damage numbers is something I can’t get enough of in games. The demo was fairly lengthy, but still left me wanting more.

Before PAX East I plotted out what panels I wanted to see and Saturday was pretty light for panels, but there was still a lot to do. The thing about PAX is that there are so many things to see that one person’s experience might be entirely different than the other’s.

One thing that will be the same for just about everyone is the waiting in lines. I skip over that part when talking about PAX, but keep in mind that for every panel we usually got in line at least an hour before the panel. This year my line waiting consisted of playing Tetris DS almost nonstop.

Long line to get into PAX East on Day 2

This year was the year the Tetris tournament finally happened during a time I had nothing else to see so I was definitely going to enter this year. Before we left for PAX I was playing some original Tetris because a friend of mine said that one time the tournament was with SNES Tetris. But it turned out it was just Tetris DS. Fortunately I picked up a used copy before PAX just in case.

First thing on the agenda for this day was “Penny Arcade Makes a Strip” with Mike and Jerry. Even though we had already had a full day of PAX, it never quite feels like PAX has really started until I see a panel with Mike and Jerry. It’s because they’re like hosts and them welcoming the crowd really feels like the party has started. Their gracious and humble personalities also just make you feel good to be there.