Review Shoot Many Robots: Konsep Sederhana dengan Eksekusi Dangkal!

Setelah sempat menikmati bulan-bulan awal tahun dengan game-game dari franchise raksasa yang fenomenal, sebagian besar gamer PC dan konsol saat ini akhirnya harus memasuki masa “rehat” kembali. Sembari menunggu judul besar yang akan muncul di pertengahan tahun seperti Diablo III dan beberapa game action lainnya, masa ini menjadi kesempatan yang paling tepat untuk melirik kembali game-game yang lahir di luar spotlight. Game-game sederhana yang lahir dari para developer yang sedang tumbuh dan berusaha untuk membuktikan jati dirinya. Seperti layaknya game-game yang dirilis ulang di Capcom Digital Collection, sebagian besar game ini juga hanya didistribusikan lewat layanan portal distribusi masing-masing konsol, termasuk juga PC. Salah satunya adalah Shoot Many Robots.
Mengusung sebuah konsep lawas yang sudah lama tidak lagi dilirik oleh sebagian besar developer dan publisher saat ini, Shoot Many Robots mengusung mekanisme gameplay yang benar-benar tercerminkan jelas lewat judul yang ia usung. Seperti game-game shooter dua dimensi ala Metal Slug, Anda akan dihadapkan pada ribuan robot yang seolah antri untuk mendapatkan desingan timah panas yang keluar dari moncong senjata Anda. Namun jangan menganggap game ini remeh hanya karena tampilannya, sang developer – Demiurge Studios dan publisher – Ubisoft tidak akan serta merta membuat petualangan Anda menghadapi robot apocalypse ini berjalan dengan santai dan menyenangkan. Sebuah kesederhanaan yang juga dibalut dengan tantangan yang tidak mudah untuk diselesaikan.
Walaupun secara konsep, Shoot Many Robots seolah menawarkan semua elemen yang sudah pasti membuat banyak gamer jatuh hati, namun eksekusi dalam bentuk karya nyatanya sendiri ternyata tidak “semewah” yang dibayangkan. Kesederhanaan gameplay yang ada justru berujung pada berbagai masalah klasik yang membuatnya menjadi sebuah seri dengan kualitas rata-rata. Ia jatuh pada jebakan dan masalah yang sama dengan banyak judul lain yang juga mengusung tema yang sama. Lantas seperti apa keseluruhan pengalaman yang ditawarkan oleh game ini? Mengapa Shoot Many Robots ini justru jatuh pada kualitas yang rata-rata? Simak review ini.

Plot

Shoot Many Robots, apa yang Anda pikirkan ketika pertama kali mendengar judul yang satu ini? Pertama, tentu saja robot, kedua – senapan, dan ketiga – tembakan, dan ketiga hal ini cukup untuk menggambarkan keseluruhan plot yang akan Anda temukan di game ini. Anda akan berperan sebagai P. Walter Tugnut, seorang pria tangguh yang sempat selamat dari serangan masif para robot yang lahir tanpa latar belakang yang jelas dan merebut satu-satunya truk yang ia cintai. Tugnut tak punya pilihan lain selain “membalas dendam” dan menempuh segala marabahaya untuk merebut kembali satu-satunya harta yang ia miliki ini. Sebuah pertempuran “epik” pun dimulai.

Tugnut - sang pria pemberani yang "cinta mati" dengan truk kesayangannya..

Tangan Anda akan begitu sibuk hingga otak Anda tak lagi punya kesempatan untuk mengkritisi lemahnya plot yang ada

Plot yang diusung di dalam Shoot Many Robots ini memang tidak sekuat yang dibayangkan, ia memang berfokus menawarkan mekanisme gameplay yang ada dan bukannya berjuang untuk menonjolkan sisi cerita yang ada, sebuah langkah yang seringkali ditempuh oleh banyak game dengan tema yang serupa – Metal Slug misalnya. Anda akan begitu disibukkan dengan kebutuhan tangan Anda untuk menghindari dan menghajar setiap musuh yang ada sampai Anda tak akan lagi peduli dengan plot yang seharusnya ada. Yang Anda tahu, akan ada banyak robot yang harus Anda hadapi!

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Preview The Witcher 2 – Enhanced Edition: Seri Pertama untuk Konsol!

Sudah bukan rahasia lagi jika kiblat dunia RPG kini memang sedang mengarah ke developer Barat dengan identitasnya yang “unik”. Sebagian besar darinya menggabungkan elemen action dengan mekanisme RPG yang kental, memastikan flow permainan yang cepat tetapi juga epik, berbeda dengan cita rasa game RPG Jepang yang selama ini kita kenal. Jika kita membicarakan genre yang satu ini, maka sebagian besar dari kita akan langsung tertuju pada nama-nama besar seperti Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, atau Mass Effect. Namun nyatanya, ada sebuah franchise kelahiran developer Polandia dengan kualitas yang tak kalah jempolan. Benar sekali, kita sedang membicarakan The Witcher.

Kesan Pertama

The Witcher 2 sendiri sebenarnya sudah dirilis eksklusif PC pada May 2011, hampir setahun yang lalu. Walaupun hadir dalam kualitas gameplay yang luar biasa dan visualisasi yang memesona, game ini dikritik karena mengandung bug dan tingkat kesulitan yang mungkin tidak dapat ditoleransi oleh banyak gamer. Satu tahun setelahnya, CD Projekt akhirnya merilis sebuah versi baru “Enhanced Edition”, yang untuk pertama kalinya hadir untuk konsol. Bagaimana dengan kesan pertama versi konsol ini?
Seperti yang sudah diduga sebelumnya, hampir tidak mungkin untuk menuntut sebuah kualitas grafis Witcher 2 versi konsol yang setara dengan versi PC nya. Walaupun demikian, ia datang dengan detail yang patut diacungi jempol, setidaknya bagi sebuah game konsol. Adaptasi kontrolnya sendiri juga terhitung memadai, Anda bisa merasakan kesan gameplay action RPG yang mengalir dengan tepat dan responsif. Hampir semua menu dapat Anda akses seketika menggunakan tombol kontroler yang tentu saja lebih minum daripada sebuah keyboard.
Satu kesan yang sulit untuk dilewatkan dari sebuah seri Witcher adalah tingkat kesulitan yang ia hadirkan. Ia bukanlah tipikal sebuah game action RPG yang memungkinkan Anda untuk sekedar maju ke depan, membunuh semua lawan yang ada secara membabi buta, dan mengklaim kemenangan begitu saja. Butuh kesabaran, strategi, dan kemampuan khusus untuk mengalahkan setiap musuh yang ada, terutama yang datang dalam jumlah rombongan. Mudah? Anda akan melewati banyak proses trial dan error sebelum akhirnya berhasil menundukkan sebuah tantangan. Side mission yang terhitung banyak dan plot yang epik akan membuat game kompleks yang satu ini menjadi “surga” bagi para gamer RPG, terutama mereka yang hardcore.
Sembari menunggu waktu yang lebih proporsional untuk melakukan review, kami menghadirkan screenshot-screenshot di bawah ini untuk membantu memberikan sedikit gambaran tentang The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition versi XBOX 360l Selamat menikmati!

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Inilah Daftar Achievement Max Payne 3!

Max Payne 3 memang belum diluncurkan oleh Rockstar Games. Namun, Rockstar Games sudah mengumumkan sebagian besar daftar trophy atau achievement apa saja yang akan hadir di game tersebut. Daftar achivement yang ada terdiri dari beberapa badge rahasia. Berhati-hatilah karena di daftar ini terdapat beberapa spoiler kecil.
Max Payne 3 sendiri akan mengambil Brazil sebagai setting utamanya. Daerah tepi kota dengan gangster-gangster bersenjata berat tampaknya akan jadi ancaman terberat untuk misi Payne. Lewat beberapa screenshotnya, Rockstar memperlihatkan “dunia” Max Payne 3 yang terkesan lebih gelap dibandingkan seri-seri sebelumnya. Seolah pertarungan akan berjalan lebih cepat dan kejam.
Inilah daftar achiement yang bisa Anda raih di game Max Payne 3:

• Feel the Payne – Story Complete [MEDIUM]
• Serious Payne – Story Complete [HARD]
• Maximum Payne – Story Complete [OLD SCHOOL]
• Payne In The Ass – Story Complete [HARDCORE]
• It’s Fear That Gives Men Wings – 10 Bullet Time Kills In A Row
• You Could Hurt Somebody With That – Shoot 10 Airborne Grenades
• You Sure Know How To Pick A Place – Discover All Tourist Locations
• The Fear Of Losing It – Survive A Level Without Painkillers
• One Bullet At A Time – 300 Headshots
• You Play, You Pay, You Bastard – 100 Kills With Melee
• With Practiced Bravado – 100 Kills During Shootdodge
• Past The Point Of No Return – Take 100 Painkillers
• A Few Hundred Bullets Back – Use Every Weapon In The Game
• Colder Than The Devil’s Heart – Kill 30 Enemies In 2 Minutes
• Part I Complete – Complete Part I Of The Story
• Part II Complete – Complete Part II Of The Story
• Part III Complete – Complete Part III Of The Story
• Out The Window – Get 6 Kills While Diving Through The VIP Window [FREE AIM]
• The One Eyed Man Is King – Cover Passos With Perfect Aim
• That Old Familiar Feeling – Clear The Hallway Of Lasers
• Something Wicked This Way Comes – Get 7 Kills While Jumping From The Rickety Boat [FREE AIM]
• Amidst The Wreckage – Destroy All The Models In The Boardroom
• So Much For Being Subtle – Get 9 Kills While Being Pulled By A Chain [FREE AIM]
• The Shadows Rushed Me – Unlock And Complete New York Minute Hardcore
• The Only Choice Given – Get 8 Kills While Dangling From A Chain [FREE AIM]
• Along For The Ride – Trigger A Bullet Cam On The Zipline [FREE AIM]
• Sometimes You Get Lucky – Get A Headshot During The Rooftop Tremors
• It Was Chaos And Luck – Get 6 Kills While Riding The Push Cart [FREE AIM]
• The Road-Kill Behind Me – Total Everything On The Runway
• Trouble Had Come To Me – Clear Everyone On The Bus Ride
• All Of The Above – Finish All Grinds
• An Echo Of The Past – Find All Clues
• A License To Kill – Collect All Golden Guns
• A New York Minute – Finish In A New York Minute
• Full Monty – Complete One Of Each Game Mode Including All Gang Wars
• Payne Bringer – Kill 100 Other Players
• Max Payne Invitational – You Invited Someone To Play
• Man Of Many Weapons – Unlock All Weapons
• Man Of Many Faces – Unlock All Faction Characters
• Deathmatch Challenge – Winner In Any Deathmatch
• Grave Robber – Looted A Body
• The Gambler – Won A Wager
• Training Complete – Achieve Level Rank 50
• Dearest Of All My Friends – Kill Someone On Your Friends List

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Relakah Anda Mengeluarkan 15 Juta Rupiah untuk Modern Warfare 3?

Apa yang membuat seorang gamer pantas mendapatkan predikat sebagai seorang gamer? Keahlian dan pengetahuan tentu menjadi standar penilaian yang paling kredibel untuk menentukan hal tersebut. Namun, apa jadinya jika gamer mulai mengembangkan perilaku yang tidak masuk akal, bahkan untuk kalangan gamer sendiri. Contoh paling nyata? Menghabiskan uang 15 juta rupiah atau USD untuk sebuah game yang bahkan tidak eksklusif.
Activision memang sempat kecolongan. Game FPS andalan mereka, Modern Warfare 3, tiba-tiba tersedia di toko retail sebelum tanggal rilis resmi. Banyak spekulan yang kemudian membeli game ini dan menjualnya kembali lewat situs lelang internet. Dengan basis fans yang cukup kuat di seluruh dunia, penawaran harga tinggi dengan iming-iming menjadi yang pertama memainkannya sudah dipastikan terjadi. Namun, siapa yang menyangka jika untuk sebuah edisi retail biasa, seorang gamer berani menawar harga hingga USD1.700/15 juta rupiah. Wow! Yang lebih mengenaskan? Ia menawarnya empat hari sebelum tanggal rilis resmi, sedangkan barang yang ia pesan membutuhkan waktu empat hari sebelum sampai di tangannya. Apa gunanya membeli sebuah game supermahal di saat orang lain bisa mendapatkannya dengan harga jauh lebih murah?

Tidak diketahui siapa identitas gamer yang berani menawar harga setinggi ini dan apakah ia benar-benar serius untuk membelinya. Jika Anda merasa USD1.700 sudah cukup terlampau tinggi untuk sebuah game yang bisa Anda dapatkan dengan harga ¼ nya, Anda sudah pasti belum pernah mengenal gamer yang satu ini. Tampaknya, ada banyak gamer di dunia yang melebihi ekstra uang untuk tidak hanya sekadar bermain game, tetapi juga hidup di dalamnya. Kisaran uang yang menurut kita besar menjadi tidak bernilai.
Bagaimana dengan Anda sendiri? Berapa jumlah uang maksimal yang Anda rela keluarkan untuk sebuah game?

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Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Review

The Good

• Remastered graphics shine on the Vita's bright, high-density display  
• Impressive amount of content  
• Every game in the collection is high caliber  
• Transfarring option extends the value of the product.

The Bad

• Vita-specific controls lack refinement  
• No Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

Konami has gone to great lengths to ensure that no man or woman misses the 25th anniversary of the Metal Gear series, reviving classic entries on every current platform with the exception of PCs. Its latest nostalgic stroke is Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for the PlayStation Vita, formulated to the handheld's unique qualities. There are small issues with the new control schemes, but they are minor in the grand scheme of things. The PlayStation 2 games translate beautifully to the Vita's crisp display, and the amount of content within will warm any Metal Gear fan's heart. All told, this collection is worth every penny, and these iconic games will satiate the cravings of game-starved Vita owners in need of quality software.

Overcast and wet; perfect conditions for infiltration.

Barring the unique rendition of Snake Eater on the 3DS, these are the premier handheld appearances for all four included games: Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, and ports of the first two Metal Gear games, based on the enhanced mobile phone versions of the classic MSX2 games. The Vita version of the collection carries the unfortunate stigma of omitting Peace Walker, the PSP Metal Gear game included in the equally priced console collections. Truthfully, there's a plethora of Metal Gear content in the Vita version, and any perception of a lesser product quickly diminishes.
The Metal Gear series chronicles the careers of Solid Snake and Big Boss, two soldiers with ties to military operations within and without the US government. The often complex storyline spans all four games, beginning with Metal Gear Solid 3, followed by Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, and Metal Gear Solid 2. Metal Gear games have always emphasized stealth over action, but the military setting ensures you'll reload your clip from time to time, though you can make do with minimal use of firearms. Part of the beauty of the series is the variety of ways you can complete objectives and the accompanying rewards that entice you to do so.

You could tranquilize that guard, but nothing satisfies like a frosty choke-out.

The other half of the Metal Gear love potion is the charming dialogue and the uniquely self-aware approach to storytelling. There are a number of self-references that will fly over the heads of non-fans, but the occasional moments of quirkiness are unavoidable and do a fine job of breaking up the weight of the heavy narratives at hand. There is a distinct personality and style to Metal Gear and once you see it, you can't un-see it. The mix of serious tones and silly easter-eggs might not be everyone's cup of tea, but there's nothing like it among Metal Gear's contemporaries.
As you'd expect, there are new inputs to take advantage of the Vita hardware as well as to compensate for the missing second pair of shoulder buttons. The Vita-specific controls are generally competent and intuitive, with the occasional exception. The main touch-screen functions are mirrored between Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, allowing you to peek around corners with a swipe and camera-zoom during cutscenes by maintaining a single point of contact. You can also zoom when looking through weapon scopes or binoculars by swiping up or down. Most importantly, the touch screen acts as the input for switching and toggling equipment, a feature that works flawlessly in lieu of additional shoulder buttons.

Why do I get the feeling there's something sinister waiting for me on the other side?

The rear touch pad has specific functions for each of the MGS games, only some of which are documented in the manual. Within first-person perspective in MGS2, swiping to the left or the right temporarily moves your character one step in the respective direction. If you pinch outward, also in first-person view, Snake or Raiden stands on tiptoe. When hanging, you can swipe down with two fingers to initiate a pull-up (used to level up your character's grip strength) and swipe left or right to shimmy in either direction.

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Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion Review

The Good

• Tremendous scope  
• Combines all of the content from the original game and the expansions  
• Includes new races, new victory conditions, and tweaks to tech trees  
• Added ships like the massive Titans and corvettes that wreak havoc on foes  
• Enhanced visual engine makes everything look better and move more smoothly.

The Bad

• Expensive for a stand-alone expansion  
• Still no campaign mode.

Sins of a Solar Empire reaches new heights with the stand-alone expansion Rebellion, which is the best way yet to play this 4X space real-time strategy game. Developer Ironclad Games hasn't reinvented the wheel, choosing to tweak the four-year-old franchise's fundamentals instead of tearing things up. This results in an ingeniously refined new experience that leans on a number of adjustments and additions to features like victory conditions, ship classes, and even the graphical engine. All of this fine-tuning of the feature set doesn't quite warrant the $40 price tag (although owners of the previous games in the series can qualify for a $10 break), but for that cash outlay you get a greatly modified version of a classic RTS game that will keep you forging galactic empires for many hours.

Titans are big and incredibly powerful. But they also draw a lot of fire, so they aren't invincible.

Virtually all of the material in the original Sins of a Solar Empire and its previous Diplomacy and Entrenchment expansions is front and center in Rebellion. Gameplay remains focused on building a space empire in the far future through constructing massive battle fleets, colonizing planets and asteroids, gathering metal and crystal resources, stuffing the bank account full of credits, engaging other species diplomatically, and even spreading your culture across the spaceways like some kind of interstellar Roman Empire. The user interface is still terrific, allowing you to keep balls in the air without everything crashing down due to an excess of information.
The heads-up display looks a little cluttered, especially the left side of the screen that tracks vessels, but it lets you avoid micromanagement hell. The main drawback in the core feature set is the continuing absence of a campaign, so you're stuck playing one-off skirmish matches against AI opposition or human players in the online and LAN multiplayer. These skirmish scenarios can take many hours to play, however, depending on the size of the map you select.

Zooming in on battles reveals some incredibly cinematic moments.

While the core of Rebellion remains familiar, the gameplay has been stretched in significant ways. The three races of the earlier Sins games--the Advent, the Trader Emergency Coalition, and the Vasari--have been expanded to six with the creation of Loyalist and Rebel factions for each group. All are tricked out with new capital ships and unique tech. This isn't the typical expansion where each side gets a handful of new ships and guns. There are radical changes here. Vasari Loyalists, for instance, have a hate on for pretty much all other races, and can eat planets. The Vasari Rebels, on the other hand, are more easygoing when it comes to buddying up with other species, and they specialize in nanotechnology.
TEC Loyalists are all about defense, with cheaper starbases and the ability to deploy two of these behemoths around planets, while the TEC Rebels are all about conquest and can ally with pirates and neutrals to go on the offensive. Advent Loyalists are aggressive mind-controllers out to assimilate enemies, whereas Advent Rebels are a little more on the spiritual side and can revive destroyed ships. So you get a lot of replay value courtesy of the many differences in how each faction takes to the stars.

It can get crowded in the vacuum of space.

Extra ship types are some of the best new feature in the game. Massive Titan-class battleships unique to each faction can now be constructed as counters to enemies who might be turtling with starbases, minefields, and gun platforms. Titans are supremely useful when you want to assault a barricaded enemy system. This greatly aids in eliminating the drawn-out endgame that was sometimes a problem in past Sins games, with fleets endlessly smashing into one another in an effort to break defensive logjams. Titans also play into the distinctiveness of each faction. The Vasari Rebels' Kultorask Titan uses the group's nanotech to bleed power from enemy ships, for example, while the TEC Rebels' Ragnarov Titan is a huge rail gun that can shred enemy fleets with targeted and splash assaults.

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The Walking Dead: Episode 2 - Starved for Help Review

The Good

• Fantastic script, with first-rate dialogue and characterizations  
• More tough choices with dialogue and action  
• Some really disturbing sequences that delve into the fragile nature of society.

The Bad

• Somewhat predictable plot  
• Performance issues on the Xbox 360.

Gross-outs combine with a number of disturbing moral choices to create one unsettling game in The Walking Dead: Episode 2: Starved for Help. Telltale Games builds on the intensity of the first episode in this ongoing series, throwing around buckets of blood and adding in some disquieting glimpses of life after the zombie apocalypse. Although fans of Robert Kirkman's comics might recognize plot points lifted directly from the black-and-white series, this is still a gut shot of an adventure sure to keep you creeped out for the three or four hours that it lasts.

Deciding what to do with crackers and cheese can be surprisingly difficult.

Three months have passed since the ragtag group of survivors who came together in Episode 1 first set up shop in a barricaded motel courtyard. Protagonist Lee Everett, a convicted killer freed by a walker on the interstate in the opening moments of the first episode, is in something of an uneasy truce with other members of the gang. Everyone is on edge now, the result of nearly running out of food and having to deal with the argumentative Larry and his headstrong daughter Lily, who has taken it upon herself to lead the group. The story now branches farther away from the comics, taking on more of a life of its own, with nothing like the somewhat cheesy appearance of comics fave Glenn as one of the main characters in the first episode.
Most of the tale focuses on the moral decisions that need to be made due to the harsh realities of life in a world where dead people want to nosh on your brains. The game kicks off with Lee being faced with trying to save a man from a bear trap by hacking off his leg with an axe, and continues through wrenching choices about which members of your party to feed when the rations dwindle to almost nothing and whether or not to kill a bad guy even with a child watching.

Walkers are lucky. There are plenty of tasty humans for them to sink their teeth into.

Character conflicts are carried over from the first episode, and glimpses of personality traits and potential sore points are brought forward. So it's not a big surprise that Lee runs into big trouble with Larry, or that Kenny remains a coward when called upon to help out a buddy in dire need. The script is excellent. It moves the plot along quickly while also lingering long enough in spots to bring out personalities, such as a telling moment where Kenny assumes that Lee, a black man, would know how to pick a lock because he's "urban." With that said, the main plot leaves a little to be desired. The big secret about sinister dairy farmers holed up behind an electric fence is telegraphed from the moment that Lee and crew set foot on their property, yet the game chugs along as if the source of the family's food supply is an unfathomable mystery. Anyone who has read the Kirkman comics will also recognize elements of this tale from the early issues of the series. Though the plot is predictable, it is told very well with a supreme ick factor that will leave you shocked and nauseous. The tough choices that you're faced with through action and conversation, along with regular bouts of scrambly quick-time arcade sequences of the same sort as those featured in the first game, thicken an atmosphere of apprehension. There is more depth here than in Episode 1. You take an active role in more situations now and have to think when conversing with characters or committing yourself to courses of action. Where in the last chapter Lee was something of a lone wolf keeping himself apart from his companions due to worries about his criminal past being revealed, here he is a member of a group dealing with stresses like the daily threat from walkers and the ever-present risk of starvation. The sense of a broken moral order hangs over everything and forces you to make choices between actions that can be justified for survival and actions that cross the line into barbarity.

Carley looks on in awe at the impressive glare techniques Kenny and Lilly are demonstrating.

Performance issues are something of an annoyance, however. While the graphic-novel visuals look fantastic, and some of the in-close camera problems have been cleared up to afford you a better view of most scenes, the Xbox 360 game remains murky. Dark visuals are accompanied by lots of stuttering now, too. Frame-rate hitches occur almost every time the scene switches to a new character or a new camera angle. They don't greatly affect the gameplay, but the constant problem is irritating, and at times the pauses are so lengthy that you briefly fear that the game has locked up. Problems are also apparent with syncing lip movement to dialogue and with some atmospheric sound effects. At the start of the game, for instance, Clementine is kicking a soccer ball against a metal barrel, and the clang of the ball is a good second or more off from what you see onscreen.
Starved for Help is a great second episode in Telltale's Walking Dead franchise. The story borrows much from the graphic novels and is predictable even if you haven't read them, and the performance issues cause some grief, but this is an excellent adventure that needs to be played by every horror fan. It grosses you out at the same time that it makes you think about the fragile nature of society--and what would happen if everything suddenly broke down and left us scrounging to keep our stomachs full.

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Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Review

The Good

• Pleasing sync shot mechanic  
• Lengthy campaign is great in both solo play and co-op  
• Enjoyable competitive multiplayer modes.

The Bad

• Online play is fraught with technical problems  
• Numerous AI oddities  
• Unremarkable firefights.

Today's battlefields, it seems, are teeming with the kind of wizardry that video games have enabled players to use for years. Invisibility, X-ray vision, and miniature floating cameras are modern marvels that have long since become familiar, but Future Soldier's appeal doesn't rely on novelty. Stealthy action and streamlined teamwork blend to create an enjoyable and lengthy campaign, and lively competitive multiplayer modes provide extra enticement. Unfortunately, the online elements of Future Soldier are riddled with network problems that make connecting to and staying in a game difficult. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a robust package with plenty of satisfying ways to exercise your itchy trigger finger, but it requires a lot of patience if you want to do anything other than play by yourself.

Magnetic vision makes it almost seem unfair.

In the campaign, you play as the ghosts, a four-man team of elite soldiers. Cutscenes and mid-mission dialogue combine to create a nice sense of camaraderie among the crew, and hackneyed archetypes are downplayed in favor of more understated characterization. Personalities are colored in during small moments, like a song streaming out of earbuds, a fleeting facial expression, and a conversation about used trucks. Interactions with other military personnel reveal how isolated the ghosts are from the soldiers they break bread with and how oblivious those soldiers are to this fact. This segregation creates a connection among the ghosts that is a refreshing change from the familiar "bonds forged on the crucible of combat" trope.
On the field of battle, the ghosts try to emulate their namesakes, moving silently with the aid of slick optical camouflage that dissolves if you jog, sprint, or fire your weapon. Staying stealthy is often a mission requirement, and even when it isn't, avoiding detection gives you a distinct advantage. It's easy to maneuver unseen, and you spend a lot of time silently eliminating foes. Stealth melee kills and suppressed weapons are your basic tools, but the key mechanic is the sync shot. Spotting enemies through your scope or tagging them from aloft with your aerial drone, you can designate up to four targets for you and your squad to eliminate in one fell swoop. To execute, simply open fire on your own target, or issue the command with a press of the Q key (or right bumper if you are using a compatible gamepad).

The enemies in the top floor apartment are about to get an unwelcome visitor.

It's a neat trick, and the seconds of slo-mo that follow are a welcome flourish that allow you to silently mop up more than the few targeted foes. Using sync shots to eliminate enemies is pleasing and relatively easy, thanks to the array of detection methods at your disposal. Drones, sensor grenades, and a few flavors of optical gadgetry give you plenty of ways to detect nearby foes. As long as no one sees the dead bodies, no one gets suspicious, and many situations lay out foes in discrete, easily sync-shot-able groups.
Only in later levels do you encounter larger groups that put your coordination skills to the test. You must now take into account multiple lines of sight and interlocking movement patterns, as well as calibrate the exact speed at which you can tag and take down a new set of targets. Methodically carving your way through these scenarios is very satisfying, and you might even find yourself choosing to reload checkpoints when you are discovered, even if you aren't forced to. Though an alert doesn't always bring your mission to a close, challenging yourself to maintain stealth is usually more engaging and fun than blasting your way through.
Aside from sync shot orders, your AI allies are mostly autonomous. They follow your lead but move, take cover, and engage alerted targets on their own. They are very reliable, but they are prone to a number of unrealistic behaviors that can hamper your immersion. Shooting effectively through multiple thick walls, sprinting past enemies while maintaining camouflage, or failing to acquire a marked target in line of sight are all intermittent AI oddities.

Set 'em up and knock 'em down.

Fortunately, these AI issues rarely have an adverse effect on your progress. Yet regardless of how careful you are, things are going to get loud. Open firefights provide good opportunities to use non-suppressed weapons like light machine guns and shotguns, as well as deadly ordnance like frag and incendiary grenades. The AI is aggressive, but not reckless (to borrow a phrase from the ghost leader), and they throw grenades, flank, and suppress your position with vigor. The latter action can trigger a disorienting camera movement that temporarily prevents you from returning fire, a nice change from the clouded field of view seen in other shooters.

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Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock Review

The Good

• Great voice acting from Matt Smith  
• Co-op mode is fun.

The Bad

• Sadistic checkpoints  
• Buggy  
• Forgettable take on a Doctor Who story.

Doctor Who is a license built on narrative, mystery, and humor, but 2D puzzle platformer The Eternity Clock's combination of spiteful puzzles, fun-sapping bugs, and a phoned-in plot fail to do the revered BBC series justice. Despite some excellent voice work from actor Matt Smith, The Eternity Clock is a clumsy but sometimes-funny platformer wrapped up in a crude Doctor Who skin.
The Eternity Clock starts in the traditional Doctor Who fashion, with the Doctor--who's modeled on and voiced by actor Matt Smith--crashing the TARDIS on Earth and puzzling over the cause. It's your job to find out what went wrong and ultimately save the universe. Initial sections of the game are promising as you guide the Doctor around the Bank of England's underground vaults and as Smith delivers the Doctor's eccentric quips with a suitably tongue-in-cheek quality: "Who designed this place? Escher?" There are opportunities to play as River Song too (Alex Kingston). In a particularly noteworthy sequence, River sneaks past unwary guards by kissing them with hallucinogenic lipstick--a rare mix of stealth and feminine wiles.
But it's not long before the cracks begin to show. One of the game's biggest problems lies in the ham-fisted design of the various puzzles. First, there are those that mix nominal explanation with sadistic checkpoints. They involve a lot of running around not knowing what to do, but with none of the fun that accompanies such hijinks on the show. The worst offender involves a four-story building, the Cybermen army, and a security room. You have to escape the building, but first you must unlock the exit. This requires breaking into a seemingly impenetrable security room on the top floor. The only way to get in is to wait for the Cybermen to climb all four floors of stairs.
Infuriatingly, the tin men slog upstairs like geriatric Daleks, leaving you to twiddle your thumbs for three whole minutes. This isn't even the worst part, because it's anything but obvious how you're supposed to get rid of the Cybermen hordes you were forced to let reach the room. Since you have little health and lots of enemies to contend with, you'd think the game might help you out with a hint, but no dice. As a result, this puzzle will likely take several retries, and here's the kicker: every retry sends you right back to the start, meaning you have to endure those three minutes of nothingness each time you die. Every single time.

I'll have this fixed in a jiffy.

Beyond absurd checkpoints and a lack of help, that puzzle and others like it expose some basic design flaws. If a game includes full-screen minigames while insta-death enemies are around, it's only fair for it to let you know when those enemies are getting close. If a game forces you to run away, it should indicate where the insta-death enemies are. These aren't exactly subtle mistakes. Other puzzles, such as crate pushing and weight balancing, are lifted straight from Puzzle Platformer Design 101, and the Doctor's sluggish dragging animations completely destroy the pacing of the game. There are stealth puzzles too, which involve pressing L2 to duck and knowing how to time a run, but these are just as dull.
If you can get past the puzzles, there are still a plethora of bugs to endure. Even when the game is at its best, the screen tears. When the game is at its worst, it skips minutes of dialogue, gives you an AI partner who frequently gets stuck, drops out audio during dramatic moments, and randomly kills you for no discernible reason. Even when the bugs aren't game-breaking, there are so many tacky errors that you always feel like you're peeking behind the curtain. This would all be defendable if the game could nail the Who factor. After all, the platforming physics are graceful enough, the minigames (which spin familiar but cute twists on everything from Pipe Mania to dominoes) are as fine as they are simple when there are no enemies around, and there are a lot of collectible hats to find. In some ways, The Eternity Clock gets close.
Smith, for one, is consistently brilliant. Highlights include his invigorated blurting of "Ooh look! Rocks!" and a bizarre conversation the Doctor has with River that revolves around his uncle. Also, when the Doctor and River work together across time in split-screen co-op mode, it neatly taps into the Doctor Who spirit. River, for example, leaves the Doctor's sonic screwdriver somewhere in Victorian London for him to then find in Future London. This sequence pans out in single-player too but with you playing both parts one after another. Working with a friend in tandem better captures the time-traveling show's character.

They're not T-1000s, but these robot fiends are still menacing.

Sadly, beyond those things there's little in The Eternity Clock that feels deeper than a Doctor Who glaze. The only things that distinguish each time period you visit are how it looks and which monsters are in it. There's none of the cultural exploration that's in the show's DNA, just as there's no resonance or tension within the storyline. Doctor Who is so popular because it mixes family fun with elegant sci-fi and emotional plots. Meanwhile, The Eternity Clock tosses in some funny Doctor lines, the occasional "Hey sweetie" from River, and a bunch of baddies, and gives it all a stir and hopes you enjoy the vaguely Doctor Who-flavored cocktail.
Maybe that will be enough for some to get over The Eternity Clock's numerous problems, but it could have been so much better. The few times banter clicks between the Doctor and River it clicks so well that you don't care that they're side-scrolling sprites. When the game actually incorporates the show's identity into the play, like River snogging guards or the level that literally makes you keep your eyes on the Silence at all times, it's as imaginative as it is true to its roots. That's what's so frustrating about The Eternity Clock. It could have been the great Doctor Who game. Sadly, beyond the promising opening minutes, it has been executed so poorly that not even the Doctor can rescue it.

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Alan Wake's American Nightmare Review

The Good

• Fresh settings are fun to explore  
• Awesome exchanges between Wake and Mr Scratch  
• Arena survival mode is a nice addition.

The Bad

• Repetitive sections drag on  
• Abundance of ammo makes it too easy.

The constant tension of waiting for the next shadowy axe-wielding horror to leap at you from the darkness made Alan Wake's debut a pleasantly nerve-fraying jaunt to the Twin Peaks-esque town of Bright Falls. Marvelous narrative pacing and a brains-over-blood-spray approach gave Wake's memorable thriller journey through demonic woodlands and twisted townscapes loads of impact. It's a shame those same thrills and chills are mostly absent in American Nightmare, replaced instead by morbid humor and a lighter-hearted narrative. The dusty Southwest setting and a bigger emphasis on gunplay are among several new elements that keep the formula from getting stale, but this diversionary side trek is a very different animal from the proper story-continuing sequel players are hungry for.

The settings are cool, but less spooky.

Though it ties in loosely to the series' nebulous overarching plot, American Nightmare plays out as a stand-alone episode of Night Springs, the franchise's well-done spoof on the classic sci-fi TV Show The Twilight Zone. The game further plays on the yin-yang themes of light and darkness that permeate the original Alan Wake and its downloadable content add-ons. Wake is cast in the role of the Champion of Light as he struggles to thwart his doppelganger-turned-nemesis Mr. Scratch.
Their frequent interactions set a pleasantly demented and comical tone, thanks to Scratch's maniacal ramblings and murderous vignettes that pop up on TVs scattered around the three main settings you trek through. Wake himself even takes an amusing "yeah, yeah, been here before" stance at times, which fits well with the way the latter half of the tale spins out. This overt goofiness is balanced out by the urgency of Wake's situation. Scratch can hop between the real world and the dark realm Wake is trapped in. He's set on getting his hooks into Wake's wife Alice and takes every opportunity to taunt the frustrated protagonist as he gets closer to achieving his malicious goal.
The clever story is penned with many of the reality-warping twists that made previous installments so enthralling, but there's a lot less exposition here compared to Wake's past jaunts into the darkness. That's disappointing, because moody storytelling helped set the tone that made Alan Wake so captivating. It's not that what's here isn't good--it's just on the skimpy side. Despite fitting neatly into the story itself, the cyclical, repetitive nature of the latter half of the campaign's trajectory grinds away at the fun in the home stretch, and a puzzling reliance on fetch quests doesn't help matters much. Hunting down manuscripts to unveil portions of the story returns once again, yet the task has a cool secondary purpose this time around. Collecting enough manuscripts lets you open special strategically placed lockers that hold more powerful guns to boost your firepower, which works hand-in-hand with this episode's determined push into more action-focused territory.

New monstrous foes are waiting for Wake.

American Nightmare's different flavor of intensity comes less from the brooding atmosphere than from the fact that there's a lot more stuff out there trying to kill you. The Taken are back in full force, and there's a far better mix of foes to blast apart. Some new adversaries, like nasty giant spiders and big hulking brutes carrying heavy buzz saws, are thrown in for more visual variety, while a few special Taken force you to change your combat strategy. One variety splits itself into two separate creatures when it's first hit, which can quickly turn a more manageable group of foes into a small army. Another takes the shape of a flock of crows, zipping down from the skies and taking humanoid form to surprise attack from behind. They're a big improvement that round out the familiar enemies returning from previous installments.
As before, most foes must be weakened with your flashlight, a road flare, or some other light source before they're vulnerable to attack. While it's a bummer that you have fewer opportunities for creatively using light to take down enemies, there's more raw firepower kicking around, which readily scratches a different itch than what you'd expect from the series. Picking up a hardware-store nail gun and piercing a nearby enemy's face full of sharp projectiles does indeed make you feel like a real badass. Other cool killing kits, such as a crossbow, a sawed-off shotgun, a Magnum, a mini-Uzi, and an assault rifle, offer plentiful and satisfying new ways to dispatch the nocturnal horrors that come crawling at you.
Struggling to scavenge every piece of crucial gear to stay alive injected a genuine sense of fear into the original game that grew addictive. Not so much here. Bullets and batteries are in such plentiful supply that you never run out, and it makes American Nightmare a much weaker experience. It's hard to capture that same feeling of terror when you can jog on over to the nearest ammo dump to resupply in a heartbeat. This neuters both the tension and much of the difficulty. What's left is a decent shooter with a great story that doesn't live up to the glory of the first game.

I want a second opinion.

The one area where this overemphasis on combat is absolutely welcome is in the new Fight 'Till Dawn arena mode. You're dropped into large enclosed stages flooded with waves of Taken sneaking in from all directions, and your goal is to survive until the sun comes up and kill as many beasties as you can to rack up a high score. The simple, straightforward arcade survival action is a lot of fun. It's worth hitting the campaign first, since collecting pages and unlocking weapons open them up for use in these challenging arena battles.
American Nightmare is a more streamlined affair that lacks the weight and impact of its predecessors, and is the least creepy entry in the multifaceted saga. While that's by design, the gritty action focus and scaled-back story don't jibe as well with the series' overall atmosphere. The adventure boils down to a flawed but entertaining pit stop with some cool moments to tide you over until the next proper full-length installment

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Velocity Review

The Good

• Intricate level design creates some challenging moments  
• Unique gameplay mechanics  
• Catchy electro music.

The Bad

• Initial parts of the game are repetitive  
• Each level looks the same.

At first glance, the PSN mini Velocity appears to be a simplistic affair. Its 16-bit graphics and top-down shoot-'em-up action hark back to the golden age of parallax scrolling, square controllers, and getting told off by your mum for spending too much time in front of "that goggle box." And yet, underneath that retro exterior lies a game with a surprising amount of depth. Velocity's intricately designed, mazelike levels and clever gameplay mechanics add a modern twist to a classic formula that not only entertains, but does so with a gusto and intelligence that belies the game's modest price.

It's not immediately obvious where that intelligence comes from. Early levels have you flying your ship from the bottom to the top of the screen in wide-open levels, blowing up a few glass pods and rescuing the scientists trapped within. There's some nonsense or other about why you're rescuing them, which is presented to you before certain missions, but it's largely irrelevant, particularly as your only source of narrative is a single comic-book-style frame.
Things pick up a little when enemies are introduced. The incessant swirling of alien ships means you've got to keep on your toes and dodge frequently, even if they're not firing back yet. It would be easy to give up Velocity after just a few levels of repeated pod smashing and alien dodging, but stick with it, and you're in for a real treat. Mechanics that seemed otherwise superfluous given the simplicity of the levels suddenly spring to life thanks to some clever changes in design.
The once wide-open bulkheads of space stations become constrained, mazelike tunnels woven throughout the metal structures, where levels with a strict time limit force you to navigate them quickly. Your ship's boost ability lets you zip around them swiftly, but do so with caution--if your ship is scrolled off the bottom of the screen, it's game over. Indestructible barriers that block your path make things trickier still, so your ship's teleporting ability is especially handy. Holding down square brings up a reticle that lets you select exactly where to teleport to, and when it's combined with boosting, you can blast through levels in minutes in a satisfying display of navigational skill.

It's not bullet hell, but there's still a challenge to be had.

Eventually, enemies fire back, creating streams of bullets that--while not reaching the same levels of bullet hell as Cave's games--force you to weave and dodge maniacally, creating a fantastic tension as your ship scrolls ever closer to the bottom of the screen. Enemies that appear to the sides of your ship force you to use bombs, which you aim using the D-pad or analogue stick. While you have an unlimited supply of bombs, they don't fire rapidly; each one you launch must be expertly timed and aimed to cause maximum damage.
In the latter half of the game you're given multiple paths to navigate, which makes your ability to drop waypoints and teleport back to them especially useful. Often you have to destroy numbered security switches scattered throughout those paths to open up areas protected by force fields, but only in their numbered order. It's all too easy to see a coloured switch and immediately blow it up, only to reset all the other switches and have to start over. It can be frustrating, particularly when you're juggling waypoints, boosting, teleporting, navigating, and dodging enemy bullets, but it's a satisfying challenge, one that comes at you in bite-sized chunks that are perfect for the morning commute.
If there's one downside to Velocity it's that levels don't differ much visually. The same dull gray textures are repeated ad infinitum to build up each level, and there are only a few types of enemy ships to blow up--any further differentiation comes from their size. Thankfully, the music fares much better. Electro beats with an 8-bit chiptune edge are blasted out thick and fast, while catchy melodies mean the tunes are stuck in your head long after you've finished playing the game.

Teleporting is the only way to escape some levels.

Fifty levels give you plenty to get through, plus hidden bonus levels provide a nice incentive to go back and play through them again. You can earn gold, silver, or bronze medals for each level too, depending on the time it takes you to complete it or how many survivors you rescue. But without any online leaderboards to speak of, you're merely competing against yourself, which is far less fun than scoring an epic time and rubbing it in your friends' faces. Still, Velocity is for the most part a fun and inventive little shooter that offers lots of content for very little outla

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Spelunky Review

The Good

• Excellent risk-reward dynamic  
• Great variety of enemies, traps, and items  
• Unlocking shortcuts forces you to play differently  
• Lots of flexibility in how to progress.

The Bad

• Control quirks  
• Forgettable cooperative and competitive modes.

The lure of an idol is irresistible. The golden gleam from the invaluable object beckons greedy explorers, whispering promises of untold riches in exchange for a bit of daring. More often than not, the desire for treasure is crushed by a rampaging boulder or descending spiked ceiling designed to protect the idol from would-be thieves. But there are rare instances when your risk-taking pays off--you avoid the obstacles and come away unscathed with the prize. That adventurous scene mirrors the rhythm of Spelunky. Again and again you come away defeated--eaten by piranhas, punctured by spikes, mauled by vampires--but those rare moments when you survive make you appreciate the difficult path you traveled as you bask in the glow of hard-earned success.

People wouldn't be so sore at monkeys if they flung gold instead of poop.

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As you enter an underground mine to begin your adventure, you're greeted by a series of randomly generated levels populated by all manner of traps, enemies, and treasure. Initially, Spelunky is indistinguishable from a typical 2D platformer. Whip snakes, leap ravines, rescue damsels, and exit through the door to the next stage. Accidentally trigger that arrow trap or get overwhelmed by the slow-moving bats, however, and you find that punishment is severe. When you die, you restart from the beginning of the game. The cash you earned? The items you collected? All gone.
Progress comes not from tangible rewards but rather from the knowledge you gain. The first time you encounter an arrow trap, you fall blissfully past it, only to find a feathered shaft lodged in your abdomen. The next time, you aren't quite so ignorant. Drop a rock or dead caveman in front to trigger the barrage, and then walk peacefully past it once its ammunition is spent. You learn that spiders often hide in pots, that blue snakes can spit venom an impressive distance, and that you should never take the fluttering of bats lightly. With dangers all around, you keep your head on a swivel, aware of the spiders overhead, the caveman down below, and a wild-eyed mammoth just offscreen.
Knowledge isn't the only tool to help you survive. Items empower your explorer, giving you a larger margin of error to hide any mistakes you might make. Gold and gems litter the playing area, and with a little cunning, you can amass a sizable fortune. Take your wallet to a shopkeeper (located randomly in a stage, or sometimes not at all), and select what would help you most in your quest. Spectacles offer the passive ability to see previously hidden treasure, whereas a shotgun needs to be actively held but offers a surefire method to dispose of foes. Most items imbue you with their powers as long as you hold on to them, which aids immeasurably in your quest to survive.

The hunky man needs help, but is he worth the risk?

All of this seems tightly structured, but Spelunky gives you plenty of flexibility to venture forth as you see fit. Arrive at the shopkeeper without a nickel to your name, and you could walk away empty-handed, like a model citizen would. Or you could rob the entrepreneur. Be careful, because he's as quick with a shotgun as he is to anger, but best him in a killing match, and you reap massive benefits. Or maybe the path to the door is populated by too many baddies to make it worth your while. Bomb the ground to forge your own way through the level; just make sure you don't wind up in an even worse position. Spelunky encompasses the trial-and-error aspects that can often hinder lesser games. But you�re not forced to experiment; instead, the desire to test the waters comes naturally, so you never feel as if you're backed into a corner.
No matter which path you take, the most troubling obstacles you have to overcome are your own tendencies. A tribal assassin may be standing at the far end of the screen, readying his boomerang for anyone who has the gall to cross him. Getting into a safe position requires time and effort, but the exit is so close. Why not take a risk? So you ignore the caution that took you so far, cast away your patience, and sprint pell-mell toward freedom. Wham! A boomerang slams into your head, and you curse yourself for being impatient. Another time, you safely reach the door only to see mountains of treasure a little to your right. You could move safely onward, but a little bit of gold never hurt anyone. So you walk past the door, climb the nearby rock face, and get an arrow in your gut for your effort. Hubris struck you down, and you realize greed can spell your demise rather quickly.

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Krater ReviewKrater Review

The Good

• Presents an unusually inviting postapocalyptic world.

The Bad

• Characters start with just two abilities and never acquire more  
• Frustrating restrictions on leveling process  
• Rote combat  
• Lacks fast travel option.

From the ashes, a new society has risen. In the wake of a nuclear catastrophe that wiped out billions, the survivors who dwell in the land once known as Sweden have formed new settlements from the wreckage. Krater is more vibrant than the typically bleak take on postapocalyptic life, and there's a humorous sense of whimsy in the way it envisions Sweden after the catastrophe; for instance, you'll recognize the signs for a company called IDEA as the slightly modified signs of a certain furniture mega-chain. This imagining of Sweden as a land largely reclaimed by nature initially seems enticing to explore with your band of adventurers. But mediocre combat and poor pacing soon take the spring out of your step and make hacking and slashing your way through Krater a slog.

Sweden is a much less attractive tourist destination after the apocalypse, but on the plus side, there's more loot to collect.

You control a trio of characters who can be assembled from four different classes: the stalwart bruiser; the healing medikus; the long-range, crowd-controlling regulator; and the close-range, damage-dealing slasher. All characters have two abilities--they start with these and never gain any more, so there's little sense of character progression as you level them up.
Leveling up does open up slots for implants and boosters, though, and outfitting your characters with these can boost their stats and add buffs and bonuses to their existing abilities. You can also equip each character with a gadget, which provides a supplementary ability. The freedom to focus on upgrading the stats you want to and to customize abilities with the buffs that you want is welcome. But the pleasure of customization is weighed down by the busywork of frequently needing to return to towns, find crafting tables, and click through the process of creating your desired boosters and implants.
There's an overall level cap of 15, but your characters might start with level caps of 5 or 10, and only by visiting a boot camp and forking over money can you open up higher levels. As a result, you can spend significant amounts of time not earning experience points, if, for instance, you've reached level 10 with your current characters and can't yet afford to unlock the next five levels. This time spent fighting without earning XP feels like time wasted. You can also visit recruitment officers and purchase new squad members who have access to level 15 from the get-go. But this means going through the whole process of leveling them up and outfitting them with boosters and implants from scratch, which is a chore if you've already done this with other characters.

You'll get tired of regularly having to fuss with your characters' implants.

Once they've reached level 15--which doesn't take that long while they're actually earning XP--continuing to improve your characters is a matter of gaining access to better and better blueprints and crafting materials so that you can periodically replace your existing boosters and implants with superior ones. The knowledge that a character is no longer earning experience may encourage you to rotate another character into your squad who can still reap the benefits of XP, but it won't be that long before you have a team of adventurers you're happy with who have all reached the level cap, and again, the knowledge that you're not earning experience in combat makes it feel less worthwhile.
Unfortunately, the combat isn't exciting enough to be its own reward. Despite the fact that you have three characters with differing abilities in your party, there's rarely much tactical depth to battle. Fast reflexes sometimes come into play, as you may need to respond to one of your characters suffering damage by quickly unleashing a heal. But for the most part, what works against one pack of enemies works against another. Since each character has only two abilities, there are only so many approaches you can take to killing enemies, and once you decide upon an effective one, there's little reason to change things up. So you trudge through battles, clicking on enemies and tapping keys to employ your limited range of abilities and gadgets; it's all thoroughly routine.
When you do find yourself coming up against enemies you can't defeat, it's typically a matter of needing to improve your stats with better implants rather than needing to alter your strategy. So it's back to the crafting table again. Should you meet defeat multiple times in combat, your characters suffer injuries, and if they suffer four injuries, they die permanently. But the threat of death seldom generates much tension on the normal difficulty level. Most of the time, you can easily make your way to a town and have a doctor heal your characters before they suffer any injuries.

It's a big world. Too bad exploring it is a slow and tedious process.

As you might expect, enemies drop money and loot. Occasionally you come across a weapon or gadget that's better than your current equipment. But much of what you find is only good for selling, and your inventory can quickly fill up with junk. Many recent action role-playing games have made getting to and from town to unload unwanted gear a quick and easy process; Krater is not one of these games. You can extract your team to the surface from any level of any dungeon, but from there, you must make your way across the world map back to the nearest town, and your journey may be interrupted by random encounters. The world map is beautiful, but you traverse it slowly, and since you usually just want to get where you're going, the random encounters that spring up from time to time only serve to further break up the sense of momentum in a game that never gets much momentum going in the first place.
Sadly, Krater never finds a way to distinguish itself from other, better action RPGs out there. At first, the distinctive Swedish setting is alluring, and the ethereal music that plays on the world map lends this land an enchanted feel. But soon each area you visit looks a lot like an area you've already visited, and the tendency of your squad members to utter the same silly statements over and over again begins to grate. And so, bogged down by rote combat and a frustrating leveling system, the act of exploring Krater's large world loses its luster. Currently there are nonfunctioning buttons in menus for online multiplayer options, and you never know what the future will bring. But as it stands, there are far more rewarding adventures for would-be fortune hunters to embark on.

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