Trine 2 Review

The Good

• Gorgeous visuals  
• Fun, open-ended physics puzzles  
• Smooth, accessible platforming  
• Fun co-op, online and off.

The Bad

• Unremarkable story.

With the wholesome appeal of a fairy tale, Trine 2 is unapologetically packed with comfortable tropes. Like the first game, it stars a trio of classic fantasy heroes: a merry knight, a sly thief, and a nervy wizard. Their adventure bustles them through ye olde tale of rescue the princess--via enchanted forest and murky cavern, wherein they thrash goblins and giant spiders. But out of that conventional premise, the game conjures a gorgeous and gratifying platform puzzler.

Some single-player forest adventuring.

Trine 2's environments could have been lifted off the screen of a latter-day Fantasia or from the pages of a particularly lovely storybook. Deep, richly detailed levels pop with lively, luminous color. The forest is home to luscious glowing foliage and glistening colossal snails. Gloomier levels house oversized spiders, animated with skin-crawling authenticity. One level, taking in sunset on a tropical beach, is stop-and-stare beautiful.
Each hero has a simple, distinct set of powers. The knight has a sword and shield for fighting, as well as a warhammer for smashing obstacles; the thief has a grappling hook, along with a bow and arrow; and the wizard can levitate items and summon boxes or planks from thin air. In single-player mode, only one hero appears onscreen, but you can instantly flip between them to access the powers demanded by the task at hand.
The wizard's conjuring powers make him the best suited for solving a puzzle on your own. Though the basic platforming is smooth and accessible, with combat that is brisk and straightforward, the heart of the action is physics-based puzzling. At its simplest, this means constructing a ramp from crates, while more complex challenges have you reroute steam jets by hovering segments of pipe into place. In others, you channel water onto the roots of plants that shoot up, magic beanstalk-like, to create leafy new platforms on which to hop. New elements such as movable portals, waterwheels, and lava streams come thick and fast, in addition to memorable one-offs, such as a house-sized frog that lassoes giant fruit with its tongue.

Toasty!

Though many of the puzzles suggest single, efficient solutions right off the bat, some of the best fun is to be had experimenting with the physics and looking for less-obvious solutions. Trine 2's physics engine is robust and fine tuned, and noodling about with it is engrossing in its own right. The game is generously rigged to allow for the guilty pleasure of fudging a solution when the elegant answer is out of reach; teetering structures of magic planks can be used to bypass clever gate mechanisms altogether or the same planks can be jammed gracelessly into the gears.
Trine 2 prefers to keep you moving briskly along to holding you up with a real brainteaser. There's even an optional hint system that kicks in after a few minutes of head scratching. It amounts to a friendly game but not an overly easy one; there are much trickier secrets to be found and collectable experience orbs in hard-to-reach spots, with the latter feeding into a simple set of talent trees. For instance, as you level up, the thief can upgrade to fire or ice arrows, the knight can upgrade to a charging shield bash, and the wizard can learn to materialize more boxes at once.
In local multiplayer, or in the online multiplayer that's new to this sequel, your two co-op companions play the other two characters. This lets you combine powers rather than flit between them, although hero swapping on the fly is also permitted. Combining powers opens up new avenues of sandbox tinkering; the wizard can float other party members on a conjured plank platform or hang a goblin harmlessly in midair for the thief to skewer with arrows. For maximum sandbox tomfoolery, there's also an unlimited mode, in which any combination of hero characters is allowed.

Seaside questing.

The storybook-style narration is genteel, and the heroes are amiably voiced. The music is rousing, too. Here, as with story and setting, Trine 2 cleaves comfortably to the genre, with all of the cheery piping of a high-class Renaissance fair. If you bypass secrets and ignore experience orbs, you can breeze through a single-player campaign in six hours or so. Although Trine 2 wouldn't outstay its welcome at twice that length, it's no raw deal, given the modest pricing ($15 or £12). This Trine follow-up is a more complete, refined work than its predecessor, and those who didn't catch the original are in for a real treat.

Read More

Zack Zero Review

The Good

• Outdoor areas can be visually appealing.

The Bad

• Rough movement mechanics  
• Flawed environmental design  
• Unbalanced combat  
• Banal story and awful voice acting  
• Constant, intrusive pop-ups.

You may not have heard of Zack Zero, but you know the type: a hard-working space ranger who defends his planet against hostile aliens using his powerful supersuit and likes to take his lady on vacation. After an unusually bad voice actor describes the abduction of said lady by said aliens, our typical hero embarks on a bland adventure packed with clunky platforming action. Zack's herky-jerky jumps make it a chore to navigate the perilous levels where legitimate hazards and design flaws are equally threatening. His suite of elemental abilities fuel some flashy combat and light puzzles, but both are burdened by problems that keep either from being entertaining. While the environmental design makes some levels pleasant to explore, Zack Zero is too fraught with shortcomings to make it worth the trip.

Aliens have the worst security systems

After thwarting an alien conquest attempt and causing the untimely death of the alien leader's brother, Zack Zero and his beloved Marlene have made themselves a target. Zulrog wants to time travel and regain his lost sibling, which involves kidnapping Marlene for some reason. So Zack sets off to rescue her and, as a secondary objective, save the universe. Zack's progress is depicted in minimally animated cartoon cutscenes that are narrated in storybook fashion. Unfortunately, the drawings are simplistic and the voice actor is awful, so what might have been a nice treat between missions comes off as a hackneyed mess.
With the aesthetic bar set low, you embark on your travels through alien landscapes. Colorful flora and some good environmental detail make the outdoor areas appealing, though the same can't be said for the stock sci-fi interiors, which are full of shiny metal and neon lights. Some areas benefit from a nice sense of depth, and the two-dimensional path you walk occasionally winds into the foreground or background, further enriching the environment.
Unfortunately, Zack Zero takes this effect one step too far. In some areas, you can jump into the background to traverse platforms, as you can in Little Big Planet 2. Yet that game had a distinct sense of switching between two planes, whereas Zack Zero's maneuvering is much more muddled. You might fail to shift position sufficiently despite inclining the analog stick properly, turning your jump to a recessed platform into a fall to your doom. The visual cues that signal such jumps are inconsistent and the separation between planes is not clean, so you may think a hazard has moved safely into the foreground when in fact it can still damage you. Though it sometimes looks pretty, visual depth fails to translate into a coherent gameplay mechanic, and the action suffers for it.

Don't let those flying drones stop you from your crucial mission of collecting green gems.

Not that the action does well on its own. Zack can jump and double-jump, but he is a graceless fellow. He shoots into the air abruptly, but his trajectory plunges sharply about three-quarters of the way through, which can cause some frustrating deaths until you get the hang of it. Furthermore, the double-jump timing is inconsistent; sometimes you can initiate his second jump at or after the apex of his leap, sometimes not. This makes negotiating hazards more difficult than it should be, a problem that is exacerbated by intermittent visual bugs (strong updrafts that shoot you into the air may not appear but can still fling you sky-high).
In addition to environmental hazards, Zack must fight his way through various enemies using the powers of his suit. The four states of his suit (normal, fire, ice, stone) each offer different abilities that can be used to destroy enemies and better navigate environments. Fireballs and heavy stone punches are good for destroying enemies, while the freezing tornado and blinding explosion can help you manage crowds. Fire-surfing through the air and slowing down time with your ice power are essential navigational tools, but almost every elemental action drains power from your suit. You have to watch your automatically regenerating bar to make sure you don't run out of juice at an inopportune moment, though the normal attack ensures you are never without a weapon.
Though you can always attack, you are likely to wish for more defensive options. Zack is not a very durable hero, and a few hits from your enemies are enough to send you back to a previous checkpoint. There is no way to block or deflect enemy attacks, so evasion and attack are your only tools. You have to be extra diligent about dodging, though, because the hit detection is such that even if there is a visible distance between you and your enemy's weapon, you can still take damage. The visual-depth confusion also becomes an issue in combat because enemies coming in from the foreground or background can target you. Zack will sometimes automatically target them, sometimes not. Additionally, attacks that deal area damage may kill enemies on one plane but not the others that are adjacent on another plane. Inconsistent mechanics put an extra strain on Zack's fragility, making combat doubly frustrating.

It's just you, the monster, and lady eira's high score.

Assiduous use of your varying abilities is the best way to survive in a fight, and you can combine certain effects, like blowing up a frozen soldier with a fireball. These attacks still have the same basic effect, and it's a shame that they aren't used more cleverly, but combo attacks will net you a neat little point bonus. Online leaderboards offer an outlet for competition, but Zack Zero implements them in a glaringly intrusive way. While playing, pop-up messages frequently notify you of the score leader on your current level, as well as the overall score leader. These messages pop up roughly once every 60 seconds. When you add in separate notifications for your friends list, not a minute goes by without some kind of score popping up onscreen. The only way to disable these constant intrusions is to sign out of the PlayStation Network.
There are other problems that plague Zack Zero, such as invisible walls and a level-up screen that interrupts whatever is going on onscreen, regardless of the danger you might encounter. There are precious few elements in the game that are not hindered by flaws, which make it more difficult to play and enjoy. Yet even without these problems, Zack Zero lacks the appeal and ingenuity found in many other downloadable platformers. At $12.99, Zack Zero is overpriced, underdeveloped, and outclassed.

Read More

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes Review

The Good

• Accurately recreates the characters, settings, and visual style of the TV series.

The Bad

• Awkward, unresponsive controls  
• Confusing level design and art  
• Terrible camera angles  
• Repetitive mission combat and puzzles.

You wouldn't think that mimicking the Lego platformers would be all that difficult. Few gaming franchises have been so high profile over the past four years, with developer Traveller's Tales using the colorful blocks to playfully recreate all six Star Wars movies, the original Indiana Jones trilogy, and nearly 75 years of Batman comics. So there really is no excuse for such a lame rip-off as Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes. Krome Studios messes up nearly every single aspect of the familiar Lego formula, turning what should have been a quick-paced romp with cartoon Jedi into a dreary mess of clunky controls and confusing level design.

Republic Heroes pretty much nails the look of the TV show.

Just about the only thing that Republic Heroes gets right is its tie-in with the Clone Wars cartoon TV series. The three-act campaign feels a lot like lost TV episodes, taking place in such familiar locales as massive Republic battleships and the Twi'lek homeworld of Ryloth. So if you're a fan, you'll love the story and setting. The look of the game copies the quasi-anime character art of the show, with all of the big eyes and odd proportions perfectly preserved. There are lots of inside references to various plot points from the show's first season and the theatrical movie that launched this franchise in the summer of 2008. The Movietone News-style war montages that open each episode are drafted into service here to introduce the acts, with the outstanding martial take on the Star Wars theme of the series front and center.
Virtually all of the show's characters make appearances throughout the course of the campaign, which can be played either solo or drop-in cooperatively with a friend on the same system (there is no online multiplayer support). You play as everyone, from series stars like Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and padawan Ahsoka Tano to lesser lights, such as clone trooper Cody or Jedi third-stringers Plo Koon and Luminara Unduli. Villains are drawn from the show's entire rogues gallery. Count Dooku makes an appearance, as do dark Jedi Asajj Ventress and bounty hunter Cad Bane. All of the actors from the TV show reprise their roles, too. So you hear the same Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen mimics here, along with the same guy who voices Jango Fett. You'll also hear all of his clone offspring and whoever says "Roger-roger!" in that annoying droid voice we all learned to loathe in The Phantom Menace.
So, Republic Heroes sure looks the part, and the basics of play nicely copy the Lego games. You spend levels fighting, jumping from one platform to another, and collecting glowing stars to earn points. These points can be spent in a store on such things as combat upgrades and goofy frills, like C3P0 heads or droid dances. There are bosses to battle, the odd vehicle to pilot, and many simple puzzles to solve, but there is a complete lack of refinement to all of the action. Controls are a major problem on all platforms. All characters, even the supposed-to-be-acrobatic Jedi Knights, are tough to handle due to a general lack of fine-tuning. Combat is very awkward. Jedi can fight with combos, crank up multipliers to juice scores, and use the Force push to toss droids around, but attack animations have brief hitches in them so you can't fluidly cut a swath through your enemies like a powerful Jedi would.

You can assume control of enemy droids by skewering them with your lightsaber. Who knew?

Playing grunts, such as the clone troopers, is also clunky because of inaccurate shooting controls. Pinpoint blasting is almost impossible, especially when using the twin-stick blasting on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, forcing you to run back and forth strafing enemies. Even worse, it's hard to simply move around without falling off the scenery. There is a fair bit of looseness in character movements, which results in lots of sliding around and extra steps. You can never seem to stop exactly where you want to stop or jump exactly where you want to jump, which results in much frustrating skidding over cliff edges to your doom.
Buttons are often unresponsive as well. On the PC, this is so problematic that playing with the keyboard is just about impossible. If you don't have an Xbox 360 controller here, you might as well not bother with the game at all. On the Xbox 360 and PS3 gamepads, the D pads and buttons just don't seem to respond like they should. Actions are either delayed or simply don't register, which is a real problem in a game where you constantly need to make precision jumps between floating platforms not much bigger than Lego's take on the Millennium Falcon. Oddly, these issues occur much more regularly in what should be routine parts of the game. Leaping along a succession of tiny platforms and floating in midair above a frozen planet is generally no problem, at least when it comes to the controller properly acknowledging every touch of the jump button. But if you attempt a simple lightsaber-enhanced multiple jump by bouncing between walls, it will be so insanely hard to complete that you'll soon pull out your hair. It seems impossible to nail the proper timing in situations like this because either the game is strangely touchy at certain moments or the controller ignores your commands half of the time.
Confusing level design and a horrible camera exacerbate the above so much that parts of Republic Heroes are almost unplayable. Level art blends foreground and background together so perfectly that you often can't tell where you need to go without experimental jumping. There are some attractive settings here, including desert canyons, starship corridors, and foundrylike factories, but everything is too busy. Once combat starts, with lightsabers flashing and blasters blasting, everything blurs together. Is that a pipe you need to swing on or just a piece of the scenery? There's never any way to tell for sure without taking a leap of faith. The messed-up camera makes this problem worse. Too often, the immoveable camera is so far away from the action and situated at such an odd angle that you can't tell where you're supposed to jump. This is a particular problem in jump-heavy levels because the camera is almost always positioned down and to your rear, making it damn near impossible to see where platforms are located. You wind up jumping to your death dozens of times in these levels, often missing what should be routine jumps so completely that the platform you were aiming for wasn't even touched. The only positive aspect of these suicidal leaps is that the camera shifts slightly as you plummet to your doom, giving you a better angle on the situation for your next attempt.

If only the whole game was played from a camera angle like this one.

Repetition is another major annoyance. Level design philosophy here seems to be based on the idea that if it's fun to do something once, it should be even more fun to do it a half-dozen times in succession. You're continually repeating yourself. You blast wave after wave of the same old mindless droids. You watch the same weird laser light show in the spaceship factory three times in succession for no apparent reason other than padding the campaign length. You solve the same puzzles over and over again, almost always by hijacking a droid and using its special abilities like powerhouse laser cannons or mine laying to blow open a wall. Whenever you see a yellow reticle around a bunch of wreckage or a jammed door, you know that you'll soon need to hop onto a spider droid, or crab droid, or whatever to smash open the way forward. Levels at least fly by fairly quickly. But even though you never feel bogged down, you do feel like you're stuck on an assembly line. The utter lack of surprises here makes the eight or so hours it takes to get through the campaign seem more like 80 hours.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes is the Jar-Jar Binks of 3D platformers. Even the most diehard Star Wars fan will have a hard time stomaching this disappointing effort. All of the control problems, confusing level design, and weird camera positions create a perfect storm of stupid that makes for one spectacularly frustrating platformer.

Read More

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Review

The Good

• Hogwarts is re-created in all its glory for you to explore  
• Minigames are a pleasant diversion  
• Voice acting and music are good.

The Bad

• The game is little more than a virtual reality chore simulator  
• Endless backtracking makes the game even more dull  
• Cutscenes are glitchy and feel unfinished  
• Nearly everything about the game is tedious  
• Story is impossible to follow if you haven't read the book.

The Harry Potter series of books has captured both the minds of children and adults alike. The movies haven't disappointed either and are amongst the highest grossing films of all time. For some reason, the video games that have been released haven't been able to reach the same level of quality that the movies and books have achieved. The latest game, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, continues that trend. There's a faithful re-creation of the Hogwarts campus to explore, but once you've seen the sights, there's not much else to do. Even the most diehard Potter fans will grow tired of seeing the grand staircase as they return from their umpteenth fetch quest.
Order of the Phoenix follows the story of the book and the movie of the same name. After narrowly avoiding expulsion for using magic in front of a muggle, Harry finds that Hogwarts' new defense against the dark arts teacher seems to have it out for him. To make matters worse, Voldemort is threatening to rear his ugly mug again, and Harry fears that the school will be unable to defend itself. With the help of Ron and Hermione, Harry rallies the students together to form Dumbledore's Army in an effort to ready them for a fight against the dark lord. This all makes perfect sense if you've read the book, but the story's exceedingly difficult to follow if you haven't read it because vast segments are told via brief rendered video cutscenes and newspaper clippings. It's easy to understand how a three-hour movie might have to leave bits and pieces out, but it's puzzling that an eight-hour game can't tell even the most basic aspect of the story.

Who knew that Harry's life was so boring?

Though the game's box says you'll get to play as Sirius Black and Dumbledore, you do so for less than five minutes, so you'll spend nearly the entire game controlling Harry. Ron and Hermione will be by your side the whole time offering hints on where to go or what to do next. You'll also encounter every recognizable character from the Harry Potter universe along your journey. The game starts off with a tutorial where you'll learn basic spells like wingardium leviosa (levitation), reparo (repair an object), accio (pull an object toward you), and depulso (push an object away) by helping people fix broken dishes, pack their suitcases, and move furniture--not exactly riveting stuff. On the PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation, 3, and Xbox 360, you cast spells by pressing a button to point your wand and moving the right analog stick in a specific pattern. Rotating the stick clockwise will cast reparo, pressing down twice will cast accio, and pushing forward twice will cast depulso. You can also use the keyboard and mouse on the PC and this works fine. On the Wii, you'll hold the remote vertically then tilt it forward to cast depulso. To perform wingardium leviosa, you'll raise both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk to lift the object then move the controllers around to maneuver the object. This works surprisingly well, and it makes it feel as if you are actually casting spells, which goes a long way toward making the game more enjoyable. The PS3 does use the Sixaxis' motion controls, but tilting and twisting the controller as you hold it in your lap doesn't add much to the experience.
Later in the game, you'll learn combat spells. These are cast in the same way as noncombat spells and mostly use the same patterns. But there will only be a few instances where you'll need to perform these combat spells because there's hardly any dueling in the game. This is probably a good thing because the combat isn't very good, and it's tough to tell if you're actually hitting someone. Even during the last fight, you just stand there casting the same spell over and over, waiting for a cutscene to signify the end of the battle.
Once you've learned some basic spells, it's off to Hogwarts, which is faithfully re-created in a game for the first time. The Hogwarts campus is absolutely huge, which is both a blessing and a curse. Fans should really get a kick out of seeing the grand staircase in motion and candles floating above the tables in the great hall, as well as sneaking into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But traversing back and forth across such a large area quickly becomes tiresome. Once you find the proper passwords, you can use the passages behind paintings as shortcuts, but they don't cut that much time off the journey. Another problem is the in-game navigation system. You're given a map that lists all of the different areas on campus, as well as the location of each person you need to find. Once you've highlighted the person or place you're looking for, footprints will appear on the ground to lead the way. Unfortunately, the footprints are black, so they're difficult to see; they don't appear far enough in front of you, so you're constantly forced to stop to wait for them to appear; and the camera will often switch angles midstride, so you don't know which way you're facing.

Exploring Hogwarts is interesting…for a while.

You've got a huge campus and healthy number of spells at your disposal, so you'll no doubt be doing all sorts of awesome things in incredible, mystical places, right? No. You spend most of the game running around trying to inform everyone as to the whereabouts of the room of requirement. You'll pick a character on the map, follow the footprints, and then tell people about the meeting place. In almost every single case, they'll have a reason for why they can't go. Of course, you've got to help them. This means you'll run all over Hogwarts collecting items, moving benches, fixing things, and helping people with their homework. This is how you spend the entire game. It's literally one fetch quest after another. Being able to pick the quest you want gives the illusion that you've got the freedom to do what you want, but the game is extremely linear in that there's only one way to accomplish any given objective. And sometimes you'll be performing the same exact task over again, such as when you're helping to disable the school's intercom by moving benches then pouring a potion into the speakers. You do this, not once, not twice, but five or six times; each time in a different room.
Performing one menial task after another would be bad enough on its own, but other issues conspire to make it worse. The game does a decent job of showing you where people and places are, but once you've met with someone, you're quite often on your own when it comes to figuring out how to help him or her. For example, at one point in the game, you must help a kid find five talking gargoyles. Now, you've encountered several talking gargoyles to this point, but for some reason, you can't tell the kid this and you must find the gargoyles again. Not only are you doing something you've already done, but the map doesn't show you where these gargoyles are, so you're forced to scour the entire campus in an effort to locate them.
When you're not playing the role of messenger boy, you'll spend much of your time cleaning up Hogwarts by putting statues, paintings, and urns back together. You can also search behind curtains for giant chess pieces, move blocks to find hidden plaques, light torches, and even sweep floors. These tasks are actually pleasant diversions for a short while, and you can unlock extras by performing them. But the tasks speak poorly for the game as a whole when sweeping the floor is a highlight. Another way to pass the time is to play chess, exploding snap, and gobstones. Gobstones (think marbles) and exploding snap (pick out matching pairs of cards) are simple but fun. Chess plays similar to Battle Chess and is actually quite engaging--if you've played chess before. The game will show you the moves that each piece can make, but there's no tutorial mode, which may leave many younger players clueless.

Even though EA scanned the actors' noggins, the characters still look a bit off.

Visually, Order of the Phoenix is all over the place. Many areas of Hogwarts, such as the grand staircase or great hall, look spectacular and are very detailed. However, many of the hallways look the same and are largely empty. Combat spells look really cool when you cast them, but there are so few duels that you'll rarely get to enjoy seeing the spells in action. At first glance, character models look just like their movie counterparts and are quite nice. But once you see them in motion, you'll notice that they all look kind of like zombies. Things are even worse in the cutscenes that utilize the in-game engine. Characters stare blankly off into the distance, they face the wrong way, their mouths often don't move when they talk, and they'll appear then disappear from view for no apparent reason. The PS3, 360, and PC versions look the best. Other than lower quality in-game cutscenes and some nasty aliasing, the PS2 and Wii versions hold their own, though the PS2's frame rate is pretty iffy at times. Having the actors from the films voice their characters in the game goes a long way toward immersing you in the experience, even with the shoddy cutscenes and script. The familiar musical score is here and suits the game perfectly, which kind of makes you wonder why it was used so little.
It's hard to imagine that the video game version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will appeal to anyone. Older fans of Harry Potter will enjoy exploring Hogwarts for a while, but they'll soon be bored to tears by the low level of difficulty and the tedious objectives. The younger set will also get a kick out of seeing the sights and will appreciate the forgiving difficulty, as well as the simplicity of the tasks at hand. But they'll quickly grow tired of using their favorite character to perform a seemingly endless parade of chores. If being the most famous wizard in the world were this boring, there wouldn't have been more than one book.

Read More

Alone in the Dark: Inferno Review

The Good

• Controls significantly improved over Xbox 360 version  
• Abundant opportunities for clever item use  
• Dramatic moments pack a punch  
• Bucks many action adventure conventions  
• May encourage pyromania.

The Bad

• Some lingering control issues whether you're on foot or behind the wheel  
• Riddled with visual inconsistencies  
• May encourage pyromania.

When Alone in the Dark came out for the Xbox 360 about five months ago, its dramatic story and unique gameplay mechanics were hobbled by its pervasive technical shortcomings. For the PlayStation 3 release, the developer has made a number of improvements that make the game much less frustrating, and chief among them are the vastly improved character movement and camera controls. Though many of the graphical oddities and some control clumsiness remain, Alone in the Dark: Inferno is a much better way to experience this unique and rewarding action adventure game.

The dramatic action sequences do a great job of conveying large-scale chaos.

As the gruff, amnesiac protagonist, you make your way through a disaster-struck New York City into Central Park, where you begin to unravel the many mysteries before you. Maneuvering through the various environments is much easier now that the main character moves with a light jog instead of a lumbering plod. Though he is significantly nimbler, he is still a bit clumsy; you'll still have to do some funky maneuvering to interact with oddly positioned objects, and you'll have to tread carefully during the precision platforming sequences. Fortunately, even this is much easier thanks to the easily controlled 360-degree camera that replaces the restrained over-the-shoulder camera of the Xbox 360 version. Driving controls are the same, and you can still do some neat stuff such as check behind the visor for car keys or slide into the passenger seat to ransack the glove compartment. The big improvement here is the car handling. Gone are the goofy motorboat physics of the Xbox 360 version, replaced with weightier, more down-to-earth mechanics. This makes driving much easier, though the still-finicky collision detection occasionally treats small cracks like major impediments. Despite the lingering limitations, the controls in Alone in the Dark: Inferno make locomotion much easier and let you more fully enjoy your adventure.
One of the most intriguing and well-executed elements of Alone in the Dark: Inferno is the inventory and item system. The game allows you only as many items as you can fit in your belt and jacket pockets, and, in a move that visually subverts the convention of the vast yet unseen inventory, you literally open up your jacket and look down to see what you've got. Although it's never quite groundbreaking, this subversion does appear in myriad ways throughout the game, and it creates the feeling that there is something novel about Alone in the Dark. You experience this feeling of novelty the first time you look down at your limbs to heal your bloody wounds with medical spray, an action that's a good deal more satisfying than just using a medkit and seeing your life bar grow.
The limited array of items that you can pick up as you move through the world belies the complexity with which they can be combined to serve your purposes. The explosive power of a plastic bottle filled with flammable liquid is obvious, but what if you wrap it in double-sided tape, stuff a bandage in it, light it, and stick it to an enemy? Then you've got a slow-burning Molotov cocktail perfect for blowing up the hive that your spidery foe is returning to. Tape a box of bullets to the bottle, chuck it at a cluster of enemies, and shoot it in midair to unleash a decidedly nasty explosion. Poured out all of your liquid while immolating downed demons? Grab your knife and puncture the gas tank on a car for a quick refill. There are multifarious possible item combinations, and though you'll generally stick to a select few for killing enemies (flaming bullets, midair explodables, spray-can flamethrower), the game makes you flesh out your repertoire by demanding specific actions to solve certain puzzles.

Smacking enemies with a burning chair is a fun and effective way to vanquish them.

Most of the puzzles in the game involve vanquishing the evil beings that are now the main inhabitants of Central Park. Since your enemies can only be permanently offed with fire (unless there is a crevasse nearby), you'll have to find a way to make them burn, baby, burn. The most straightforward method is to grab a flammable object, such as a chair or a broom, and then walk over to any open flame and set fire to the object by inclining the analog stick toward the flame. Wielding the blazing object, you target your foe, set up your attack by tilting the stick in one direction, and then strike by flicking the stick in the opposite direction. It's a lot of fun to smack monsters with chairs, shovels, baseball bats, tree limbs, and so forth, and the analog-stick actions you must perform to do so are a fun approximation of your in-game actions. Alas, this fun is hindered by finicky controls and inconsistent hit detection, so you'll often find yourself merely repositioning your weapon instead of striking, or clanging it off of a wall that you could have sworn wasn't so close.
For practical reasons, you'll end up taking on most of the evil legion with your trusty handgun. Throwing an explosive bottle and shooting it midair is a cinch, thanks to the aim assistance in the form of a glowing trajectory arc and the slow motion that kicks in whenever you throw something. Alternately, you can pour flammable liquid on your bullets and fire flaming rounds at your foes. Sure, this combo is a bit improbable, and the gun should probably explode in your face, but flaming bullets will be the keystone in your monster-battling strategy so it's best to suspend your disbelief. However, firing these babies into monsters won't kill them unless you hit their fissures. These are the livid scars left on monsters by the evil that corrupted them, and hitting them can be a real pain. The combat certainly isn't anything to write home about, but there's definitely some satisfaction to be had in scourging your enemies with flame or smacking them off of a cliff with a heavy pipe.
The few non-combat-related puzzles are clustered early and late in the game. Some of these creative platforming sequences are part of larger, dramatic set pieces, such as your escape from a burning, collapsing building. It's generally pretty clear which path you need to take, but figuring out the necessary actions and carrying them out is still entertaining. Puzzles in which you set fire to things are particularly fun; the fire looks gorgeous and spreads realistically while the textures on the burning wood change accordingly. Indoor and outdoor environments are well-detailed, especially the vast and varied Central Park. The scenery is at its best when integrated with the aforementioned dramatic set pieces. During these events, the camera will often pull out to a wider angle, giving you a greater sense of scope and harking back to the fixed-camera roots of previous Alone in the Dark games. There are some missteps here as well, and the dynamic lighting can occasionally turn an immersive environment into a something's-not-quite-right environment.

Improved car handling leaves you free to worry about the toothy monsters who are trying to rip you apart.

These visual inconsistencies carry over to the numerous cutscenes, yet despite the occasional pop-in and imperfect facial animations, the cutscenes do a great job of adding weight to the already dramatic storyline. Playing as an amnesiac man who wakes up in the company of men who mean him harm, you manage to escape and make your way to Central Park, where the dark, far-reaching story begins to unfold in earnest. The story is well scripted and provides a few intensely dramatic moments, which are enhanced by mostly on-point aftereffects that imbue them with a filmic quality. The whole game is segmented into chapters and sections, so you can skip around to them as if it were a DVD, though feature will probably appeal only to folks who get stuck on a tough patch or want to go back to play a favorite sequence. Skippers need not fear too much missed content: Every play session and every skip treats you to a "previously on Alone in the Dark" segment that rehashes the pertinent story elements.
Alone in the Dark: Inferno is an ambitious game that features a lot of cool gameplay and bucks a lot of gaming conventions. Many small improvements eliminate points of frustration (enhanced AI assistance, an explosive new sequence, and a few other pacing tweaks), but it's the character movement and camera updates that really help the game hit its stride. Although it's definitely not without its stumbles, Alone in the Dark: Inferno is no longer hamstrung by the issues that plagued its predecessor, which means that PS3 owners can experience this adventure the way it was meant to be played.

Read More

The Cursed Crusade Review

The Good

• Lots of weapon combinations to play around with.

The Bad

• Sluggish, awkward controls  
• Fighting is a chore  
• Far too repetitive in all aspects  
• A multitude of technical failings  
• Entirely forgettable story.

UK REVIEW--One thing should already be clear about The Crusades: They were extremely unpleasant. A Christian military campaign quickly turned sour, with knights becoming little more than mercenaries as they rampaged around and sacked cities across the Holy Land. In short, it was a time of strife and bloodshed. And, if The Cursed Crusade is to be believed, it was a time when ludicrous supernatural curses occurred, weapons broke after a few hits, and soldiers repeatedly got stuck on walls. Almost everything about the game is broken in some way, and between the ill-conceived mechanics and glitches, one could almost believe that the game itself is cursed.

Denz de Bayle and Esteban Noviembre, heroes of The Cursed Crusade.

The Cursed Crusade tells the tale of a pair of crusaders: Denz de Bayle and Esteban Noviembre. They're on a quest to break the curse that haunts them. Pursued by Death and in the employ of the evil Boniface, they must reunite a bunch of holy relics and save their souls from eternal damnation. At least, that seems to be what the plot is trying to convey. The game is full of exposition, with cutscene after cutscene breaking up the action, but the plot never really goes anywhere. There are no twists and no major developments until the very end; thus there is little to warrant the two hours of cutscenes within the game.
Denz and Esteban might have made for a likeable duo, if the script were any good or if the cutscenes were well directed. Scenes cut out in the middle of dialogue while screen tearing plagues the cinematics. Denz and Esteban are well acted, but the writing itself makes the chemistry feel forced. There are attempts at humor in the second half of the game, but the jokes also fall flat. During one scene, which tries to ape the "This is SPARTA!" line from the movie 300, Denz's character model simply failed to load, making it farcical for all the wrong reasons.
Weapons are collected as you go, and there are a large number of combinations. Denz and Esteban can use swords, axes, maces, spears, and shields, which can be mixed and matched. Two-handed weapons provide heavy attack power, a weapon used with a shield provides good defense, and dual-wielding provides some nippy attacks that are low on damage but high on speed. Enemies have different armor levels, and you can guard break, dodge, parry, and riposte. There are also a series of finishing moves that can be unlocked for each weapon combination by spending victory points. Victory points are earned for completing levels, as well as completing optional objectives in each level, such as purifying a number of souls, cleansing a crucifix, or finding hidden coffers.
Initially, the combat seems quite deep, but it quickly falls apart. For starters, weapons break and have to be maintained. This isn't inherently bad, but a number of issues make this highly problematic. Swords break far too frequently, often after just a couple kills, which leads to a frantic sprint as you look for the prompt that tells you you're standing on another weapon. They're often difficult to see, and if enemies are following, then you have no hope of actually spotting a weapon on the ground. To make matters worse, there's no indication that you've actually picked up a weapon, and sometimes, the blade simply disappears. Even more awkwardly, the characters slip and slide around due to input lag, and accurately standing on the weapon you're trying to recover is tricky in the heat of battle.

While it tries to be dramatic, The Cursed Crusade's story is bland and forgettable.

This is a shame because each weapon has a different weight, and they all appear to be historically accurate. Occasionally, you may find yourself in a fight where there are no weapons to replace your broken one, so you have to fight with a hilt or a stick until you can find another. This means that you can do almost no damage to your opponent, which causes a severe and unwelcome difficulty spike in the later stages of the game. What's more, every fight is very similar, save for the number of enemies present. Even boss fights recycle ideas, with one particular boss fight repeated three times through the game with only minor variants to the formula. Combos are largely useless because of the unresponsive controls, so mashing the light attack button and countering occasionally is by far the best way to get through everything. Toward the end of the game, a different type of enemy is introduced, but you still never do anything more than hack away at an armored foe. The regular fights are made worse by the awful enemy AI. Combatants frequently get stuck in scenery, causing you to run around and look for a soldier stuck behind a tree before you can proceed.

It's not all about fighting soldiers with swords, though. You sometimes find a crossbow or a longbow. These are useful for taking out archers, who mostly send misfired arrows your way while you lock on to them and kill them in one shot. Sometimes, you can use the bow to take out non-ranged enemies, but it's usually too cumbersome and time consuming to actually pull off. Then there's the ballista, which has a visual aiming arc with no correlation to where the projectile actually goes, save for the direction it's pointing. It's also unclear what you're meant to be shooting at because the targets are almost out of camera shot.

Combat is clunky and awkward.

The camera pans around your character, but sometimes, it switches to a fixed perspective. This often causes Denz to run in the wrong direction before the game catches up, and it sometimes means you are obscured by a castle wall as you try to fight. There's an option to turn the fixed camera off, but it certainly doesn't turn the fixed camera angles off. Likewise, there's a manual lock-on option that seemingly does nothing, with the characters automatically locking on to enemies regardless of whether you set it to "yes" or "no." There's also a bizarre menu glitch that occasionally causes the sound levels to default to zero upon booting the game. Then there are the glitches that cause your characters to get stuck in the scenery, forcing an entire mission restart, which is especially infuriating when you have to repeat boring sections of gameplay.
Being cursed, Denz and Esteban also have the ability to shift into Hell. This makes enemies slightly weaker and also allows you to use certain powers of the curse: healing, throwing fireballs, shooting fireballs, and stamping on the ground to produce fireballs. Much like everything else in The Cursed Crusade, the fireballs are a bit useless and mostly exist to let you break parts of the environment to proceed. In Hell, you can also see hidden exits, which is the game's excuse to make you run around a large area for a while until you happen upon a slightly glowing bit of wall. None of this is fun; neither is trying to use the healing power in single-player. Most of the time, it simply doesn't work, with Denz swinging his sword impotently. What you really want him to do is engage in the weird dance/fist bump combo that he and Esteban do to recover their health. It's a little easier in co-op because the other player can remove their character from the action to a safe distance, but only a cruel friend would ask someone to endure this with him or her.
The co-op mode is playable online or in split-screen, but it adds nothing to the game other than having someone to sympathize with you as you scramble for weapons; get stuck in scenery; or stare at a church pew that is floating, in pieces, in midair. There are occasional switches or levers that require two people, and some finishing moves can be performed cooperatively, but it's not the kind of game that is vastly improved with another player. The only benefit is that you can guarantee your partner will actually attack enemies, which isn't always true when he's controlled by the AI.
The Cursed Crusade isn't a good-looking game, with some dreadful clipping issues, muddy textures, and a noticeable lack of anti-aliasing. There's even an area where the heroes navigate a lengthy maze of empty rooms because they refuse to step off of a foot-high ledge. To add further insult, just as Denz and Esteban are heading to what seems like the final confrontation, the game simply ends in the middle of a cutscene in an awful attempt at a cliffhanger.

Because of the curse, Denz and Esteban can go to Hell.

The Cursed Crusade struggles in all areas. The combat is sluggish and awkward, the exploration is unrewarding because of the invisible walls that block off areas or refuse to let you return to previous sections, and the story is nonsense. Given that a far better cooperative hack-and-slash Templar game, The First Templar, was released earlier this year, The Cursed Crusade hasn't got much to offer. In the US, this is a budget game, but in the UK, it's a full-priced release. Even at a lower price point, though, this is one curse that is not worth breaking.

Read More