Just Cause 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

coming soon

Mafia II

Mafia II Preview

June 4, 2009 - Sad news: Mafia II isn't coming until early 2010. Good news: It's looking like it will be worth the wait.

2K Czech's mobster epic covers ten years in the life of would be Goodfella Vito. The E3 demo is set a few hours into the game, when Vito is earning his way into the organization. It's February 1945 in Empire City. The world is at war and the city is blanketed in snow. War propaganda is plastered on the side of every building and Empire's citizens have had to make sacrifices for the good fight. Empire City is a large open world full of life.

The mission is to kill the Fat Man. No, not Santa Claus. The Fat Man owns a distillery on mob turf, but has refused to give kick backs. And you know what happens to folks who don't pay protection money to the mob. Your job is to send the Fat Man a message (with a bullet to his brain). Assisting you are Henry and Joe. Henry's the made man and leader of this small troupe, with Joe as the upper-and-comer with dreams of money and fame.

The gang has set up an ambush for the Fat Man in a window overlooking the distillery. Vito mans the mounted gun and Henry and Joe have their own Tommy guns for additional firepower. When the Fat Man's entourage pulls up, Vito fires. The machinegun is incredibly powerful, laying down the Fat Man's hired guns in seconds. It tears through the Fat Man's car, blowing it to hell. The Fat Man escapes, though, running into the distillery.

What ensues is a lengthy chase sequence through the distillery. There's nothing here that we haven't seen before. Mafia II utilizes a very familiar cover system and battles are mostly stop-and-pop affairs. The combat looks cool, but it's not particularly original. What stands out are the numerous cut-scenes, which pop up throughout the mission. The story elements are strong and the presentation is certainly Mafia II's big selling point.

Visually, Mafia II has taken a step up from the previous build we saw. The frame rate still dips at times, but is more consistent than before and there are some nice visual effects (like when the Fat Man sets the distillery ablaze).

Eventually Vito and crew track down the Fat Man. Henry steps to him and shoves his gun in the Fat Man's mouth. A shot is fired, but the Fat Man is still alive. He holds a small pistol in his hand. Henry crumples to the ground as Vito and Joe step up to the Fat Man and take him down.

Henry needs a medic quickly. He'll die if he doesn't get to a doctor soon. You help Henry out of the distillery, fighting more enemies along the way and avoiding the rubble of the burning building. Once outside, you need to drive quickly to the "family" doctor. Since the E3 demo lacks a HUD, it's unclear if there will be a timer on screen. But regardless, you can't waste too much time getting Henry to a doctor. This is made more difficult by the icy roads and cops giving chase.

Just as the trio appear to be escaping, they run into a roadblock. Trapped on a bridge by the cops, it appears Vito has nowhere to go but jail or the grave. And where he goes must remain a mystery for now, because that's where the demo ends.

Mafia II looks like a worthwhile sequel. Hopefully the extra development time allows 2K Czech to lock down the framerate and add some fun things to do in the sandbox world.

Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin's Creed 2
June 2, 2009 - A few years back, Ubisoft wowed many with the debut of Assassin's Creed. A large, fully scalable world with the promise of dynamic assassination missions was too good to be true. And as it turned out, the first Assassin's Creed didn't live up to expectations. Two years later, Ubisoft Montreal has learned from its mistakes and is ready to provide a better and more complete experience.





Assassin's Creed 2 has you once again playing as Desmond, a modern-age descendant of some of history's greatest killers. But Altair, the ancestor Desmond inhabited, is not a part of the sequel. Instead, Desmond has a new ancestor's history to play through. Ezio is not an assassin at the start of AC2. And he might never have done anything notable in his life, but when his family becomes entangled in a conspiracy, Ezio is called to action.

The E3 demo takes place in Venice, in 1486. It's nighttime and there's a festival. People are dancing in the town square, laughing, enjoying the bright evening. Even though Ezio is among the crowd for a few seconds, it's clear that the people are more interactive with one another and that they have more to do than just walk around mindlessly. There are no monks just chilling out waiting for you to slip into their group. But don't worry, it's going to be a little easier to hide amongst the crowd. So long as there are at least eight people in a group, you can blend in and hide in plain sight.

While old Jerusalem was a fascinating place to explore in the original Assassin's Creed, it had a drab color palette. Obviously, this is due to the setting. In Venice, there's color everywhere. The skies are alight with fireworks and the people are dressed in festive garb.

Ezio's mission is to assassinate Carlo Grimalde, one of the most powerful men in Venice. In the original AC, you'd need to gather three sets of intel in order to unlock the ability to take out Grimalde. These tasks were somewhat menial and were a common complaint among critics. Ubisoft Montreal obviously agreed with the criticisms, because they threw that entire system out the window. That's right, you won't go to a handler to get a mission, then perform repetitive tasks to gain information that doesn't really assist you, kill the target and then have to return to that same handler. The mission's are a little more structured this time and any intel you need is going to be gathered as you progress towards the assassination.

Leonardo Da Vinci is Ezio's best bud and has a new invention waiting for him atop one of the roofs. Something that will help Ezio gain access to Grimalde. The ascension up the Venice rooftops is quick and easy. The climbing controls are unchanged from AC1, but you'll be able to perform longer acrobatic sequences, some upwards of half-a-minute. There's also a ton of new animations being added, though the demo didn't showcase many of these. Regardless, it still looks incredible.

As before, you have both high and low profile kills. So you can climb up a chimney, leap off and slam your blade down into a guard's back or take a stealthier, less flashy approach. Still, some of the stealth kills are pretty flashy in their own right. That's because Ezio has two hidden blades. You can sneak up behind two enemies and stab both in the back. Or casually walk between two guards and you can knife them both in the throat. Ubisoft is putting a lot of focus on the enemy AI this time around, but the short demo didn't really get to showcase much of this. What was shown fully was the device Ezio uncovered on the rooftops.
Leonardo created a flying machine, a winged glider for Ezio. You get to test it out. Ezio flies over the rooftops and canals of Venice, swooping down low over some areas on fire in order to catch a draft and continue his flight. All the while, archers are firing flaming arrows at you. There doesn't seem to be a way to dodge these. Or at least in the demo it didn't seem pressing. After a quick and thrilling flight over Venice, Ezio crashes atop the roof.

Getting to Grimalde won't be easy. Ezio didn't come in quietly and the guards are aware of his presence. Even leaping into a bail of hay won't help, because now there are seekers who are smart enough to check these types of hiding spots -- sometimes with a jab of the sword. Fortunately, you can kill from your hiding spots.

The basics of combat are the same, but there are different enemy types. You have seekers, the regular guard and even some brutes. Each requires a slightly different tactic to take down, which should make combat a little more challenging since you'll be fighting a mixture of different types of enemies throughout Assassin's Creed 2.

The big change to combat, though, is the ability to take weapons from enemies. See a halberd you want? Snatch it from your foe, then use it again him.

Eventually, the guards all fall and Grimalde is all that's left. Kill him and you get a similar death bed conversation as in AC 1.

With the assassination complete, it's time to escape. Ezio can't survive a battle with a dozen guards. Fortunately, he has smoke bombs, which act as a distraction. The demo ends with Ezio running towards the docks and then leaping into the water. Yup, you can swim and use boats in Assassin's Creed 2. Epic gondola chases have not been confirmed.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

It's derivative and occasionally buggy, but solid action and over-the-top gore make X-Men Origins: Wolverine a cut above other movie tie-ins.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine will give you new insight into how much damage indestructible, razor-sharp claws can do to a human body. This is a game that revels in gore, with decapitations, eviscerations, and mutilations drenching the screen in blood. It may be derivative, a cakewalk, and at times buggy, but the sheer visceral impact of the over-the-top violence in X-Men Origins is enough to make it a fun action game, as well as one of the better movie tie-ins released recently.

It helps that the violence in X-Men Origins: Wolverine is backed up by decent gameplay, and though it doesn't bring anything new to the third-person action genre, it's still solid and satisfying at most times. You play as the titular Marvel mutant, with the game's muddled storyline mimicking and expanding on events in the movie of the same name. Along the way, you take Wolverine through the jungles of Africa, the hidden Weapon X base at Alkali Lake, the interior (and exterior) of a massive casino, and more. You have to take on groups of increasingly aggressive and dangerous enemies, solve not-too-taxing environmental puzzles, as well as go up against several guest boss villains from the Marvel universe. Unfortunately, the game doesn't do a great job of introducing these nefarious individuals--such as the Blob and Gambit--and often throws them in with little explanation of why Wolverine needs to beat on them in the first place.

Your weapons of choice for dispatching these villains are Wolverine's claws, and even though the game's jumping timeline means that you'll be playing as both pre- and post-adamantium Logan, the claws retain their indestructible ability to slice through practically anything throughout the game. You have light and heavy attacks that you can string together to perform various combos, and also an extremely useful lunge that lets you launch Wolverine at enemies from a distance. These combos are easy to pull off if you've got a gamepad, but as you'd expect, they're a bit trickier when playing with a keyboard and mouse. Nevertheless, the keyboard control scheme is quite intuitive and is definitely manageable with a little practice. As Wolverine gains levels, new combos open up, as well as four different fury attacks, which are supermoves that require you to build up your rage meter before unleashing. These four attacks can be upgraded as Wolverine gains experience, giving the game a very basic character-customization element.

Although spamming the same combos can prove useful early in the game, you won't be able to get away with mindless mashing for too long. The game does a good job of forcing you to change your tactics, sending at you a wide variety of enemy types that require different attacks and combos to dispatch. For example, though the lunge may work on low-level enemies, tougher foes and midlevel bosses will simply swat you out of the air. With a bit of practice, all of Wolverine's moves can be chained seamlessly, making you feel extremely powerful as the mutant unleashes his rage on groups of enemies.

Among the game's highlights are a number of particularly gruesome ways that you can dispatch your foes. Some are situational; throw enemies near any conveniently located floor or wall spike and you'll automatically impale them. Some are part of normal attacks, which can result in arms, legs, and heads flying in any direction. The best ones are Wolverine's various flashy finishing moves. The angry mutant can stab an opponent in the side of the head with one set of claws before decapitating them with the other; rip off someone's arm and beat him to death with it; literally tear someone in half; use the spinning blades of a helicopter to transform an enemy's head into bloody chunks; and much more. It's certainly the most blood-soaked superhero game in years, and one that younger Wolverine fans should avoid. However, adult fans of the character will probably find this a guilty pleasure, in turns laughing and wincing at the blood-soaked display in front of them.

Your enemies will try to give as good as they get, and Wolverine will have to face off against a good variety of human, mutant, and robotic foes. Most pack heavy firepower or super abilities, but Wolverine has his rapid healing to fall back on. His health bar will automatically refill after a few seconds of not taking damage. In fact, Wolverine's health recovers quite quickly, which makes the game fairly easy to breeze through on normal difficulty. It's rare to feel too threatened by the odds stacked up against you, and chances are that the only time you'll die in the game is when you fall off of a high ledge or into water. That's right: Wolverine can survive bullets, swords, flames, explosions, and lasers, but fall into one of the game's few predetermined no-go zones and it's instant death.

This is particularly jarring during the game's final boss fight, in which falling off means having to restart the battle from the last checkpoint. Wolverine's other boss fights are mostly anticlimactic, with some of the bosses even freezing up on occasion. In one instance, a boss character simply stopped moving, whereas in another it failed to reappear after being thrown offscreen. These occurrences were rare but quite annoying when they happened, and to its credit, the game does have two standout showdowns, the first with the Blob, and the second a fight with a gigantic Sentinel. But though the latter is a fun multistage battle that culminates in a spectacular finishing blow from the near-invincible mutant, it's probably not quite the epic face-off that fans of the X-Men series have been hoping for.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is easy; you'll likely finish its five chapters in fewer than 10 hours. There's no multiplayer here, and most of the replay value is in finding hidden alternate costumes throughout the levels, as well as an unlockable hard difficulty. There are only a few extra costumes (such as Wolverine's classic brown spandex), but once unlocked, they can be used while you play through levels to replace the boring "faded jeans and white shirt" look that serves as Wolverine's default.

The game's environments--particularly its indoor ones--are plain-looking; the various corridors and laboratories lacking real distinctiveness. Characters fare a little better, sporting good animations if lacking a little in the detail and sharpness departments. The model of Wolverine himself is the standout and features an interesting structure that shows off real-time damage. Get hit, and the damaged areas will show the exposed muscle underneath. Keep on getting pummeled and you'll even see the character's skeletal structure exposed, to be gradually replaced by muscle and skin as Wolverine heals. This sounds better than it looks--most of the time, this real-time damage lacks clear definition, looking more like random red splotches on Wolverine's clothes than serious injuries. Performance was rock steady, with a mostly solid 60 FPS even at high resolutions (and the game supports resolutions up to 1920x1200). As for sound, the highlight again is Wolverine, with movie star Hugh Jackman lending his voice to the character. However, other environmental effects are inconsistent. Most of the time, the various slashing, gunshots, and explosions in the game sound appropriately meaty, but there are some occasions when onscreen actions seem to lack the accompanying sound altogether.

Although X-Men Origins: Wolverine does sport some clear technical deficiencies, it's never enough to fully distract you from what it is at its core: a solid if unspectacular game that, for once, takes those metal claws of Wolverine seriously. This is a game that's at its best when it's brutal, and though it lacks any real depth, it's fun while it lasts.

By: Randolph Ramsay

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation

This bare-bones movie tie-in is like a machine with synthetic rubber skin: it's not fooling anyone and you should stay away from it.



If you've ever wondered why movie tie-in games have such a bad reputation, Terminator Salvation can provide an instructive example. Though this third-person shooter is technically sound, it seems to rely entirely on the presumption that you'll be so jazzed to be playing as characters from the movie that you won't notice how boring and shallow the action is. Most of the game has you jogging from skirmish to skirmish, fighting the same three enemies and using the same cover-and-flank maneuver. This quickly becomes repetitive despite the fact that the environments are diverse and detailed, and the few on-rails sequences fail to inject any substantial excitement into the proceedings. The campaign is only about five hours long, there is no online component, and the only multiplayer option is playing the campaign in split-screen mode. It's a sparse effort, yet it is brazenly offered at full retail price. Suffice it to say, it isn't worth it, and even Terminator fans looking for a futuristic fix should prepare for disappointment.

The game is set two years before the events of the movie, and though it features some of the actors from the film, Christian Bale is notably absent. The story chronicles a particularly foolhardy mission, and it does a reasonably good job of depicting John Connor on his journey from foot soldier to leader of humankind. There are a lot of cutscenes (sometimes too many) that help lend the game a cinematic feel, but the not-so-great character models and general blurriness keep them from feeling dramatic. The thoughtful and detailed environments do a better job of setting the postapocalyptic stage, the PC sports higher resolutions than its console counterparts. Unfortunately, the system requirements are relatively high, and the video options are laughably limited. You can tweak your resolution, aspect ratio, and brightness, leaving players hoping for scalability out in the cold.
Regrettably, the action isn't as diverse as the environments. You spend the majority of your time in Terminator Salvation on foot, moving from location to location and dispatching mechanical menaces along the way. You move at a light jog unless you are sliding between cover positions using the clever radial movement menu. A semicircle pops up when you are in cover and point yourself toward another cover position, allowing you to select a new spot to move to. This mechanic makes maneuvering around the battlefield slick and easy, though it is plagued by inconsistency that can leave you exposed to enemy fire or trapped in a corner. Your AI teammate(s) can get you out of a jam by distracting the enemy or firing at its weak point, but they too are prone to inconsistency and aren't fond of using more-powerful weapons or explosives.
So it's up to you to grab the rocket and grenade launchers when you come across them and use them to take down tough enemies, such as the flying Hunter-Killers. With the exception of these HKs and a few other special guests, you fight only three types of enemies throughout the entire game. Each of these is weak to a specific munition, of which there are three loose categories: bullets, shells, and explosives. The three enemies match up to the three munition types, and this simple correlation makes combat very formulaic: destroy the flying drones with shells, shoot the crablike robots with bullets in their weak backsides, and blast the humanoid T-600s with explosives. You can obliterate weaker enemies with explosives, of course, but then you'll have to expend a huge number of bullets on the tougher ones to bring them down. This combat design essentially forces you to use the same simple tactics throughout the entire game. You get into cover, blast the enemy with the appropriate weapon, and flank when necessary. The only real threat is getting caught out in the open and riddled with bullets, or getting meleed by a T-600 (which can kill you with a swing of its arm even if it's five feet away and there is a barrier between you). With some light maneuvering, these threats are easily avoided, and enemies are more than happy to vigorously shoot at your cover position, waiting for you to destroy them.

This repetitious combat is broken up by a bunch of on-rails sequences that put you on the back of a vehicle manning a weapon with unlimited ammunition. These sections are a good change of pace, but they are too lackluster and awkward to be fun. You never get to drive the vehicle, which could have been a thrill on the perilous ruined freeways of postapocalyptic Los Angeles, and it seems that the coolest stuff that happens is conveyed by a cutscene that disconnects you from the action. Shooting your enemies in these sequences is a bit tricky, and not just because you are both moving at high speeds. Your targeting reticle will often drift inappropriately, as if you were standing on a Roomba in the back of your vehicle instead of hunkered down in a fixed position. The struggle to compensate for your vehicle's motion, your enemy's motion, and your mysterious drift makes these sections more challenging and less fun.
Terminator Salvation is a completely linear adventure without any collectibles or hidden goodies to search for. Every weapon is highlighted with a green outline that is visible through walls, so you won't spend any time dillydallying. You can complete the story in under five hours, at which point your only options for replay are to play it in split-screen with a friend or to try it on a harder difficulty setting. This no-frills attitude runs throughout the whole game and reveals Terminator Salvation for what it is: a stripped cash-in attempt packed with dull, uninspired, and repetitive action.