Review: Red Dead Redemption (XBOX 360 version)

Gopal Sathe

John Marston is a man on a mission. He was an outlaw, but he’s given up that life. All he wanted was to settle down with his wife, and raise his son. But the world is filled with change in 1911, and the government in the East can’t let people in the Old West remain lawless and wild anymore. The railways have changed everything, and tamed the lawless land.

Marston is taken in by the government and told that if he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in jail away from his family, he will go into New Austin (a fictional state entirely like Old Texas) and kill his one-time friend Bill Williamson. This might sound like an old Eastwood movie, but it is the world of Red Dead Redemption, the latest game from Rockstar Games, the same banner that made Grand Theft Auto a household name.

It’s a sandbox game – an open world for you to explore and do what you want, when you want. You’re given a vibrant world to explore, and John Marston is a real living person whom you will care about.

It’s so real, I now fear cougars. An early optional mission had me look for a missing person. I followed the trail to the Hanging Rock, a few miles north of the town of Armadillo. I got of my horse to investigate some blood on the ground and there was a heart stopping sound behind me! Suddenly this monstrous creature was charging at me!

I ran as quickly as I could but it took a swipe at me and I fell down. Luckily my horse panicked at that point and ran between me and the cougar, giving me a few seconds to pull my gun and kill it. I knew then that I was never getting off my horse outside the cities again.

The modelling of all the animals, and the various pistols and rifles you use through the game, has been done with tremendous care and is extremely realistic, though people and faces are a little less so. The game stands as a wonderful technical achievement, with almost no load screens to speak of, and an enormously detailed game-world.

Red Dead Redemption is definitely fun. Games don’t _have_ to make sense, they have to be enjoyable. The mechanics themselves are not as important as the enjoyment they provide, and Redemption definitely delivers.

But at the same time, it also gives you a cohesive world to explore. You could do the side quests given by people around the world, or roam the countryside hunting animals for fun and profit, or pick up bounties and arrest gang members. Just riding your horse, with no objective in mind, is enjoyable.

Despite these distractions, you keep coming back to the main storyline because of the great writing. John Marston is no cardboard cut-out, and before long you will actually care about this man, and want things to work out for him.

Like most open world games, RDR also dabbles in creating moral choices for the player. For instance, in an early optional mission, you have to convince an old man to sell you his property. You can put up your own money, or point a gun at him and make him give it to you.

There’s no real consequence to either choice – ‘good’ choices raise your honor and ‘evil’ lowers it, and all this does is change the discounts you get in stores – but while I normally play as the bad guy in any game that lets me, here, I found myself ponying up the cash myself because I knew that Marston would have.

He’s a good guy and while he’s done a lot of bad stuff, he’s clearly trying to atone for it. He might be here as a government assassin, but he’s not happy about that, and he’s not going to rebel by becoming a gun toting outlaw either.

At least that’s how I felt about the character, although perhaps the developers see things differently – the game hardly penalises evil characters and there’s a few things you can do as a bad guy which actually sound like a lot of fun, and would probably warrant a second playthrough of the game for me.

There were some gameplay issues in the game, a number of glitches as often happens in such huge games, but nothing gamebreaking. Some people are complaining about the control scheme and the shooting mechanics to which I must say – the shooting is fun! It’s a game, not a simulator! The control scheme is a little complicated but the game takes you through a thorough tutorial, and the end result is great control over the horse, which is half the fun of this game.

It’s possible to finish the game within around 10 hours, with no side quests, fast travel everywhere, and skipping all the cutscenes. If you’re like me and don’t go for 100 per cent completion, picking up only interesting challenges and missions, focussing largely on the main storyline, the game should take around 4 – 5 days to complete. To compare, I finished all of Modern Warfare 2 in one day. Also, even when you’re done with the story, riding around saving strangers and hunting bears is so much fun that the game represents tremendous value for money.

Before the game hits the shelves and you part with your Rs 2400 (okay, I lie, it’s 2399) to get a copy, I’ll be giving you an in-depth review of the game, but time spent at the offices of Microsoft last week was enough to convince me that I need to see more of the game.

The game is a 3rd person horror/adventure title, which places you in control of the titular protagonist and super-successful horror story writer Alan Wake. You’ve been facing a problem with writers block, and so you go to a rural lakeside getaway to spend some time with your wife and get your writing groove back on. Unfortunately, and somewhat predictably, you’re having strange nightmares about shadowy creatures, and pretty soon it turns out that that’s exactly what’s happening in the world as well. Oh and they’ve kidnapped your wife. Oh and you’ve apparently written a manuscript about everything that will happen through the course of the game, and then helpfully scattered the pages in carefully selected locations. Shocking, right?

I spent almost three hours in game, which is a fair third of the game and while the game might not be an overwhelming experience, it is an enjoyable game, which merits at least a second look.

The game has been in development hell for more than half a decade now, and that shows – the look of the game is thoroughly dated – with a shockingly jarring moment early on in the game, where you come across a cardboard cutout of a life size Alan Wake, presumably to make you (the player) realise how successful you (the character) are. Unfortunately, a simple 2D image is laid on the poster, and it looks a lot more realistic than the 3D Alan standing right next to it.

The game’s other big draw is supposed to be its writing, but if you’re looking for Stephen King or Peter Straub, you’re going to be disappointed. It’s B-movie writing at its worst, but it serves the purpose. It’s grating and annoying at times, and some of the voice acting does not help the cause, but it creates an ambiance which you can accept.

Which brings us to the game’s big schtick. The thing which holds everything together. Lighting. That’s the heart and soul of the game, and when going through the tutorial (presented as a nightmare Wake has at the start of the game) you will probably feel a little skeptical about the whole thing. There’s too much ammo, and it’s a little too easy to kill off enemies, since they freeze when you shine your slashlight on them (using the left trigger) making it easy to blast them to bits with your guns. The weaponry itself plays a minor role in all this, although the rocket flares the game provides you with are pretty cool – not only do they create their own light to demolish enemies with, but the red lit areas they leave behind really look good.

At the same time, the heavy dependance forced by the mechanic might seem to be tedious and forced, particularly in the first level, or episode in the game’s terminology, but the game changes things up and does not seem to get tedious, at least up until the three hour mark.

We’ll provide a more detailed review about it soon, but at this point at least, Alan Wake seems worth checking out, even if it is not a game changing experience.

If you’ve been keeping track of the rapidly developing news, you’ll know that Activision has systematically forced their way into Infinity Ward offices, dismissed two of it’s bosses (Jason West and Vince Zampella) and locked down the offices altogether. Oh, and they apparently haven’t paid IW any money from the nearly $1 Billion USD in revenue they received from Modern Warfare 2 sales. It’s like a bad mash-up of REC meets Capitalism: A Love Story, with very real dangers that Activision is becoming like the draconic Electronic Arts of old.

Activision claimed their outing of IW’s founders was completely justified since they were apparently in “breach of contract”, having talked to a “rival publisher”. Some assume it’s EA, though sources within Activision assure otherwise, but this seems like a calculated attack on IW either way. After all, the company was formed from the remnants of EA’s Medal of Honour team. They left when they wanted to do more with the franchise. Now, why they would want to go back to EA, even if Activision has been doing the same for the Modern Warfare?Call of Duty franchise, is any one’s guess. Would you go back to the same person who set you on fire for water when some one else just did the same recently?

The fact that Activision has begun this level of harassment is a grim reminder of all the events leading up to it. The attacks on Sony for PS3 prices and threatening to withdraw support, their problems with Tim Schafer on Brutal Legend, the price-rise for Modern Warfare 2…it may be only my opinion but the news from Activision that World of Warcraft, a much loved and successful franchise amongst PC gamers, could become “obsolete”…it’s like it’s written right there, in between the lines, “Infinity Ward was only the beginning; WoW is next”, no matter what technical mumbo-jumbo they use about “increased consumer acceptance” and competition from games on social networking sites. In fact, taken in that sense, it sounds as though they’re saying, “WoW is the past; Farmville is the future”. That seems in perfect tune with their money grubbing nature.

Our support goes out to IW’s former founders West and Zampella, and we hope they find employment in a more dignified company than the one that so heinously hired thugs to get rid of them.

This year has already been hugely beneficial for both Sony and Microsoft, though it currently tilts more towards the Playstation 3. Nonetheless, by the second week of May, each console will have three AAA exclusives to each call it’s own. Which is all well and good, but what next after that?

After Alan Wake releases for the 360/PC in May, there won’t be a single AAA exclusive for the 360 for about four months. The Playstation 3 has it worse, because after God of War 3′s release, it’ll be bereft of any exclusives for six months. This is not to say the appeals of either console’s exclusives will wear off very quickly – God of War 3, Alan Wake, Splinter Cell Conviction, Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2 and MAG should all support their respective platforms for a good 2-3 months after their release. However, the number of people buying a 360 or PS3 to experience them will steadily drop as compared to pre-existing owners giving them a whirl. This is not to say the drop in sales will be sharp; just that a noticeable decline will follow for a while.

The Xbox 360 will quickly emerge from this slump in September with the release of Halo: Reach (with Fable III to follow by the end of this year), while the PS3 has Arc releasing in Autumn (there should be hopefully be word on LittleBigPlanet 2′s release as well, at E3). But both consoles will have to rely on third party titles like Lost Planet 2, Dragon Age: Awakening, I Am Alive, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, No More Heroes 2 and Dead Rising 2 to sustain interest over the next few months. The problem is more pronounced with the PS3 since there are currently no exclusives slated for release these coming months (The Agent doesn’t have firm release date; neither does most of Sony’s rumoured titles like Killzone 3 and Resistance 3, and no one in their right mind would consider ModNation Racers a big deal). This is not counting the proposed shortage of PS3 units during the same period.

This gives an advantage to Nintendo, the current leader in the console wars, which has five strong exclusives from March till July with Red Steel 2, WarioWare: D.I.Y., Monster Hunter Tri, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M. There’s also news that the new Zelda could appear some time at the end of 2010, so Nintendo has it’s Autumn-Christmas base covered too. And this is not even counting the casual audience that is currently the Wii’s strongest market – they have plenty of family titles planned to sustain them as well. Not only can Nintendo compete with Sony and Microsoft during their stronger months, but will ably pick up the slack while they’re out of the picture. Though The Forgotten Sands and No More Heroes 2 will also come to Wii, they most likely won’t make much difference to sales.

E3 2010 will be a big opportunity for both Microsoft and Sony to expand on previous rumours, announce new titles and generally get the hype ball rolling for Autumn and Christmas. While it’s easy to say Nintendo has been dominating it’s competitors since the Wii’s release, it’s my prediction that it’ll have an even easier time in the Summer till pre-Autumn, while it’s competitors planning their prospective futures.

Assassin’s Creed 2 offered a far superior experience than the original game, and Ubisoft Montreal improved the fundamental aspects in lots of subtle ways. However, one of the biggest changes, and in my opinion, one of the biggest improvements, was in the change of protagonist and setting.

Ezio was far more relatable than Altair – for one thing, we didn’t need a pronunciation guide just to say his name! He was driven by a number of understandable needs and impulses. Even more than that, the setting is instantly recognizable and breathtaking. The story of the Borgias is one of the most famous from history, and the locations shown in the game are still visibly recognizable today. It’s history porn, with great gameplay on top – you get long lingering views of the cities as you synchronize the viewpoints, those carefully peppered historical references, the intersection with just about EVERYONE mentioned in Machiavelli, including well, Machiavelli. Everyone of any significance in history turned out to be either a Templar or Assassin, sometimes even if it was completely ridiculous, but that was part of the whole fun, right?

In this Dan Browned history, skipping out on some of the most famous parts of this period of history was a little disappointing. The game gave us a short movie which tells of the battle of Forli, and the imprisonment of Caterina Sforza, and then an even shorter clip about Savonarola. But both of these had been pretty important characters and Caterina in particular had some pretty kick ass moments in history. The game was originally supposed to incorporate their story as well, in chapters 12 and 13. While dropping them didn’t really remove too much from the game, a lot of people were outraged that they were being asked to pay for DLC which was originally meant to be a part of the game.

Having played through both pieces of DLC now, I sort of have to disagree. These DLC chapters, in the form that we see them now, would not have served the game too well. They still need a lot of fine tuning and were very justifiably dropped from the game itself.

Does that mean that you shouldn’t drop money for them? That’s more complicated. Let’s talk about them a little before getting into it.

The Battle of Forli, which was released first, is the weaker of the two. The length of the DLC is quite short, and you’re going to be done with it in about an hour or so. There’s a major battle going on (hence the title) and a lot of combat. Combat in the game is really too easy and mindless, and your first mission itself is an escort mission, making the entry to the DLC a little annoying. Honestly, can we get a petition started to outlaw escort missions? Soon enough though, you get to take to the rooftops where the game shines. There’s a little more to explore, and plenty more faces to plant knives in.

[Beware of spoilers from here onwards]

At the end of the DLC, you come close to saving the city from the assault, and the whole thing turns out to be a trap! Lying wounded and bloody, you lose the piece of Eden you had secured at the end of Chapter 11 to a strange hooded figure. This is Savonarola, the mad priest who decides that we are all doomed due to corruption and Godlessness, who then decides to hold a Bonfire of the Vanities, burning books, paintings, and destroying sculptures. The artist Botticelli was one of his adherents, and according to some history, destroyed his own paintings from Greek and Roman mythology.

In the game, you make your way back to Machiavelli. A little strategizing later and you’re back on a merry quest to assassinate nine people, create civil unrest, draw Savonarola out of hiding, and get the missing piece of Eden back. These are nicely varied missions which will feel much more like the rest of the game than the previous DLC, and aside from that you can pay a little extra money and get three more Assassin’s Catacombs to explore, which was my favourite part from the original.

Both pieces of DLC offer a fresh look at the story and give you a little more time inside Ezio’s world, which is a powerful motivator to make the purchase. However, they lack the polish the game as a whole gives us. The second piece of DLC also gives you access to a new move for Ezio, the spring jump, which he magically forgot between chapter 13 and 14 in the game as it was released, but that’s a minor narrative quibble and one easily forgotten.

What is a little harder to swallow is that the narrative flow doesn’t explain all that’s happening in these episodes in the way that the game itself managed to. There are a few moments which still carry the same feeling of history dramatized but for the most part, the narrative doesn’t have the same zing as the rest of the game.

Gameplay is largely a repeat of the game itself, which is for the most part a great thing, though Battle of Forli has some issues as noted earlier, with a little too much combat early on. Another worry is the few audio issues in the second piece of DLC, breaking sync and dropping a few lines entirely.

So we get back to the original question. Did Ubisoft rip us off? Yes and no. The chapters weren’t deleted from the game so that they could be sold as DLC. They really aren’t polished enough to warrant a part in the game as a whole, and I’m glad they were removed. It’s like a DVD with the director’s cut (or something like that anyway). On the other hand, releasing them without more polish now because more focus is probably on the next sequel? That feels like a little cheap cashing in.

As to whether the content is worth a purchase, it’s worth mine (and yours too, if you’re a huge fan of Assassin’s Creed 2). I’ll take any excuse to return to the game, stab and perforate a few guards, and lord it over the rooftops. And I’m pretty sure that many of you feel the same way, and will be more than willing to overlook the various flaws and have a fun run through the DLC. But yeah, this one is definitely for the fans. Other folks can easily give it a miss.

Highs: More Assassin’s Creed gameplay. Stealthy kills, stabbing, exploration, you name it.

Lows: Weak narrative compared to AC2. Short episodes. Too much combat in first episode, some audio issues in second episode.

Tri-Ace and Square-Enix have always been tight, with the latter publishing many of the former’s RPGs like Star Ocean like Radiate Stories and the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile games. Apparently, when Tri-Ace director Takayushi Suguro was clarifying their relationship with SE, he let slip of a possibly new Star Ocean game.

French gaming magazine Amusement had apparently asked him about Sega publishing Resonance of Fate and not Square-Enix, to which Suguro replied:

“Mais ce n’est pas comme si Square Enix avait perdu Tri-Ace pour toujours : le nouveau Star Ocean sortira chez eux après Resonance of Fate…”

Which roughly translated means:

“But it’s not like if Square Enix had lost Tri-Ace for ever : they’ll have the new Star Ocean after Resonance of Fate is out…”

Star Ocean 5? This is a rumour at best, and we’ll keep an eye on it till some official clarification is provided.

Sony Computer Entertainment recently revealed that God of War 3 will occupy 35 GB of Blu-ray bliss. They then stated that it features no CG cut-scenes so obviously that’s not the question here. No, it’s every bit as possible that the cut-scenes are pre-rendered.

Now before any of you get all flamey and say, “But it doesn’t CG!”, understand this: All scenes in the game can are indeed created using the game engine – hence there lack of extra CG – but it’s entirely possible that SCE Santa Monica pre-rendered these cutscenes and then played them back as Full Motion Videos or FMVs.

Why is this even a possibility? Two main reasons.

Firstly, the disc space. Metal Gear Solid 4 occupied all 50 GB of the disc space and featured lots of cutscenes. Most of the space was eaten up by the uncompressed audio, as MGS4 features thousands of lines of dialogue with the play time running into about 25-30 hours. If God of War 3 is a 10-15 hour game, then with uncompressed audio and pre-rendered FMVs, the 35 GB space makes sense. Especially so when you consider the European version is 40 GB, because it features 9+ languages. Not necessarily all unique dialogue, since they all translate to the same lines in English, but they take up space nonetheless.

Secondly, this would allow for no HDD installs, as the team can mask loading times using the cutscenes that play. So the cutscenes are not real-time in the sense that they’re not part of the game’ they’re separate FMVs that play while the actual gameplay loads. Some gamers have even reported that there was a slight difference in graphical quality in the transition between cutscene and gameplay sequences.

No other reason could possibly explain why the game takes up the amount of space that it does. What take do you have on the issue?

Update: Bruno Velazquez of Sony Santa Monica mentioned on his blog (thanks to PSU for finding it) that,

“I will make this clear, the E3 demo does not have any cutscenes that play as videos, those are all 100 percent real-time cinematics, including the opening (Kratos, Helios, grunts running towards the screen) to the end (Kratos diving towards the Titan).

“When I mentioned that GOW3 has no CG, I was referring to the fact that we do not have pre-renderd scenes that were created outside of the game engine, like GOW 1 and 2. In GOW3 all the cutscenes are created using our in-game engine, however some scenes were just to epic to run real time and thus are recorded videos. This is not the case for the majority of the cutscenes in the game which are mostly running real time. This way you can enjoy the bonus costumes for most of the cutscenes in the game, including those found in the E3 demo!”

So the majority of the game’s cutscenes are not pre-rendered while the overtly heavy ones are. Thanks to Velazquez for clearing this up.

Having completed Mass Effect 2 for the PC, passing the suicide mission with only one casualty (that too of some one who mistakenly threw away their loyalty for me), I sat through the game’s admittedly short ending and let it all sink in. Every thing I had worked for – the upgrades, the battles, the conversations – had all been for this moment. Needless to say, I was disappointed. Not with the game itself, easily one of Bioware’s best, but in the payoff to the amount of emotion invested in.

(Slight spoilers for those who haven’t played Mass Effect 2)

Much has been said about ME2′s depth and freedom of choice, attributed to two main avenues: “Renegade” or the bad-ass Shepard and “Paragon” or goodie-two-shoes Shepard. The QTEs within many cutscenes to further those avenues are well done, and alter the play experience admirably. On the whole, however, I found the consequences existed only within the paradigm of the trilogy. I shot some guy in the leg and pushed another several stories to his death. I went against the Illusive Man in the finale. Continuously, I told myself I’d experience the consequences of my actions in Mass Effect 3 (currently still in development and bound to stay that way for another couple of years). But in the here and now, I’m still getting funded by Cerberus after telling them to get bent. Yeoman Chambers is still standing around, repeating the same mundane lines (actually, that’s pretty much her only roles in the game). You can even plot your dialogue playthroughs very linearly, especially in the Loyalty missions where supposedly doing what’s right may not always be what’s smart and vice versa.

Long story short: The game’s emotional content is malleable but only to a small degree. There are 3-4 endings, but when they’re basically “Everyone lives”, “You Die”, “Everyone Dies” and “You Live” – and that’s not including the ridiculous cliff-hanger – there’s not much subsequent payoff. The game is still bound by a very strict gaming code.

I then came across this on IGN: The blog Quantum Dream’s Heavy Rain director, David Cage. It was during play test sessions for the game taking place in London. Cage was confused as to why people found the game easy, “even those who failed in all the action scenes”. From the post,

“It took me a few days to understand what had happened. There are no game overs or lives in HR. The player never starts a scene all over again because he failed, failing in a chase scene results in the fact that he doesn’t catch the suspect, but you don’t start the sequence all over again. And the story continues. As a result, some players didn’t even realize that they’d failed in a chase because the game didn’t stop and so they thought the suspect couldn’t be caught.”

And just like Mass Effect 2, there may be “the feeling some players had that their actions had no impact on the story, in other words that, whatever they did, the same thing was going to happen.” “It was only when they started talking about it that they realized they had seen very different things in the scenes, much to their surprise. Because a player makes choices without realizing it. They don’t realize their actions have logical consequences and therefore impact on the story.” I could probably find some one who chose Morinth in Mass Effect 2 while I stuck with Samara. But finding 22 people who experienced the 22 different endings I didn’t when finishing Heavy Rain? Factor in the amount of decisions they took to get there – their “failures” or botched actions and all – and you have an experience that’s truly not the same twice or even thrice.

The two games also have conflicting treatments of sex and nudity, and again, I would give the nod to Heavy Rain. Not because it’s more explicit (which is an obvious bonus for an hormone-fueled male gamer) but does so without being gratuitous. It gives us the raw form of nudity but doesn’t divorce it from the deep emotions experienced during sex. Mass Effect 2 doesn’t necessarily go the other way, but in limiting what is shows physically, it automatically limits it’s emotionality too. It serves it’s purpose but makes for some pretty awkward viewing.

This is purely my opinion, and is in no way meant to downgrade Mass Effect 2′s awesome missions and brilliant character conversations. There are many games which have almost but not quite hit that proper maturity level – Quantic Dream’s own Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, for one – and channeled it into a proper payoff. With the rise of Heavy Rain, it appears the first real new genre in this era of gaming has arrived.

With great power comes great responsibility, goes the old Spiderman axiom. But Peter Parker was permitted his douche-bag excesses every and now then, sans movie lore. So while Ubisoft Montreal, developer of Assassin’s Creed 2 with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Splinter Cell Conviction to follow, delivers something a little bit less – okay, a hell of a lot less – than extraordinary, you’re inclined to forgive them. Even if it is a video game aiming to transform the big budget Avatar into a less linear, more involving experience. By some twist of fate that only a Freaky Friday sequel could achieve, Avatar The Game actually ends up being far less interesting, far less involving and certainly much more linear than 10 straight shows of the film ever could be.

You start as an RDA merc named Able Ryder, landing on the planet Pandora and enrolling in the Avatar program. We wish the name were not abused by the locales, but alas, the developers couldn’t resist. So look forward to the Na’vi war chief saying you “fly like a rock” despite “having the name Ryder”. Yup, we can totally see rocks forming bonds with Ikran and going where the Banshees are, hoo-rah. And yes, you’re quickly accosted to choose between the RDA and Na’vi, the catch being the difference in missions, equipment and skills. Every one hates you wherever you go though, so don’t count on making friends if you betray either side.

As it is, this a third person action adventure game whose camera ostensibly covering two-thirds of a single side on your screen. Super Mario 64′s Lakitu feels like a happy ending compared to this clunky, unintuitive nightmare of a camera system. The camera never subtly pulls back when you commence attacking, like any GRAW or Mass Effect – no, it stays latched in place as all of Pandora’s collective flora and fauna unite to massacre you. I can appreciate if my enemies are fast-moving and/or tough enough to evade and/or not die immediately from attacks, but if they attain victory simply because turning to face them is equivalent to getting a Star Destroyer to barrel-roll? Bullshit, plain and simple. Whatever responsive controls are available are sadly buried under the catastrophe of flying. Despite my intentions to best warn you, I don’t think there’s a harsh enough metaphor to properly encapsulate the mediocre flying controls. Except that it makes walking on foot and wrestling with the camera look like a walk in the park.

Ubisoft Montreal put a good amount of effort to make Avatar The Game visually pleasing, as the world is vibrant with life and James Horner, despite having to compete with the movie composer Chance Thomas, does an able job in the music department. Like the movie, the game at first presents a rich world brimming with unique wild-life and vistas but it’s destroyed by the linearity of the missions. Most times you’ll be on fetch quests or missions to destroy some post or the other, and offered little incentive to explore. And more so than the movie, this is where the game fails. The predictable yet moralistic conflicts in the movie are never explored; you’re more often than not on a fixed path; there are no interesting characters. Beautiful CG and 3D gimmicks may be enough for passive viewers but not so for gamers. Avatar The Game makes no such effort to cater to curious and experimental mind of the gamer. Participating in Conquest mode is testament to the fact that this – a simple 3D globe where you move animation-less icons around on hexes for conquering territory – is the developer’s way of showcasing even the illusion of planet-wide war.

This is not something you expect from an experienced dev given carte blanche to not follow a movie’s story, and certainly not what any one should expect from Ubisoft Montreal.

Avatar The Game is best approached with zero expectations. If you get it cheap or as a gift and want to waste a few hours, it’s a toss-up. Its mindless action, good graphics and hype versus nigh-untameable control/camera systems, ho-hum plot and limited depth. Almost like the movie, in fact.

Assassin’s Creed II has been described by many now as the perfect sequel, and while that’s clearly hyperbole, the game tries very hard. It stays true to its predecessor but improves upon it in a number of ways, making the entire experience far more enjoyable. There’s a wider variety of missions, smarter guards who even search the haystacks and rooftop gardens, and a streamlined control system that allows for more free-running options. The free-running is the best part of the game naturally, and after some time you’ll find yourself refusing to use the streets, wasting time climbing the walls just because it’s so much fun. (Some story spoilers ahead, so be warned)

Another delight is the viewpoints. Ezio needs to be synchronised to see more of the map. This means climbing to the top of 66 tall towers and church steeples over the course of the game, which is probably the second best thing in the entire game – the best perhaps being the newly added “catacombs”, the tombs of the six most famous Assassins, whose seals are needed to unlock Altair’s armour for the player. These platforming sequences require a little skill, a little luck, and a little persistence, but pays off excellently by providing a fantastic change for sneaking and subsequent face-stabbing.

To me though the most meaningful improvement was actually not connected to gameplay mechanics, or graphics, or control schemes or anything like that.

Assassin’s Creed II jumps us forward a few hundred years to Renaissance Italy, while in the real world, the game picks up right where the first left off: Desmond and Lucy escape Abstergo’s facility at the beginning of the game and flee to an Assassin safe house, where two other Assassins put him in a new and improved Animus, so that he can get some more of Altair’s skills, through the “bleeding effect”.

The game is just so much better because of the change in setting, and character. Ezio is just a lot more fun than Altair could ever be, and the Italy presented fits the romanticised notions created from readings of The Prince. With the first game, the developers took some pains for historical accuracy (well, right up to the point where Altair stabs people in the face. But close enough right?) whereas in this game they’ve dropped that to a degree with the main story, which also allows for greater fluidity in storytelling. Of course, this leads to some hilariously funny moments as you realise that just about everyone who made it to the history books, was either an Assassin or a Templar!

Ezio becomes chummy with a number of important Renaissance figures, like Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Caterina Sforza, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, and his enemies include the Pazzi family and Rodrigo Borgia, who becomes Pope Alexander VI later in life. Sorta like with Pokemon, I guess the developers decided that they gotta catch ‘em all. But that’s part of the whole appeal of the game. It’s history porn. Travelling through Renaissance Italy, wandering in Florence, climbing the steeples in Tuscany, rowing gondolas in the canals of Venice, you feel like a time travelling tourist who gets to bump into name after name from the history books, and it’s not a surprise when you finally bump into Machiavelli, considering you’ve already gotten up close and personal with everyone he ever talks about!

As Ezio (and Desmond) traipses around Italy discovering hidden truths through gory assassinations, free running over the rooftops, climbing towers and exploring ruined catacombs, ancient conspiracies come to the light. Things are not as they seem, and Subject 16, a previous occupant of the Animus, has left you coded messages to unravel. So while Ezio is getting closer to hunting down his family’s killers, Desmond is weaving together Subject 16′s message through a series of fun glyph hunts and some basic cryptography. The codebreaking isn’t very difficult at all, and makes an enjoyable break from the flow of the game, while telling a fabulous story in itself.

If we’re to trust Subject 16, then Edison, Tesla, Ford, Oppenheimer, Rasputin, Tsar Nicolas, George Washington, Joan of Arc, Ghandi, Jesus, King Arthur, and, you know it, Hitler are all Templars. Hitler was a Templar who used a loaned Piece of Eden to orchestrate Germany starting World War II, planning from the beginning to fake his death in the bunker at the end and slip away with the artifact. Unfortunately for him, an assassin was willing to wait from a high vantage point for as long as it took to kill him and recover the Piece of Eden, leaving the other Templars, who thought they’d just “let him have some fun” a little annoyed! My head spins.

The final sequence incidentally, is likely to have a similar effect on the player, though I won’t talk about that here, because that would really be spoiling too much. Just, well, clearly Kojima was likely a strong influence.

To sum up then: Most of the problems that people had with the first game have been dealt with. There are a lot of different missions now, which are given to you in a better fashion. The missions themselves are not repititive either (up to a point). Making the game longer than the original takes away from that somewhat, but the huge amount of climbing and exploring you get to do justifies it. Ezio is much more interesting than Altair, and even manages to look cool – when he grows a beard anyway. There’s a proper inventory and resource management system now, and you can keep upgrading your equipment, making money from your country estate and spending it on all manner of goodies. And the setting is fantastic, completely pop-history. Real historians might not approve of it, but for the rest of us, it’s got a lot of character. Best of all, it’s got Leonardo Da Vinci, who might be Ezio’s boyfriend (it’s a little ambiguous and not in a sappy Japanimation way) who makes you a flying machine. Which works. And you fly around Venice into the Doge’s palace! How is that not cool? So buy the game. Really. Like, right now.

If you haven’t seen the world premiere of Halo: Reach at the Spike TV Video Game Awards 2009, then, well, it doesn’t make much difference. It wasn’t the lackluster “That’s it?” of the E3 2K9 reveal but it wasn’t the awesome testosterone fest of Halo 2′s (ultimately watered down) New Mombasa gameplay reveal at E3 2003. That said, Halo: Reach looks far better than any Halo to date. Queries have been arising as to whether the game is running on a new engine or not, but we can confirm one thing: Yes, Reach is running in real time.

Well, at least after the 0:34 mark in the premiere trailer. Sorry fans but those parts, featuring a Warthog drive through a morose atmosphere with Pelicans overhead, are decidedly not real time. Kudos to Bungie for preparing a good transition to the actual graphics but it’s still noticeable. Many factors, as noticed in the high definition trailer, can be observed.

The character models all have a level of shading, almost shadow-like, which could be argued to offset the lack of proper shadows. It’s hard to believe, but Reach actually uses a lighting system seen in Guerrilla Games’ Killzone 2 for the Playstation 3.

Though ably melding hard light and soft light together, KZ 2′s lighting system had a flaw. Realistic lighting dictates that even if the light in front of you cannot be seen, the light itself is still somewhat visible when you’re looking away from it. Imagine a dark room with a single lit computer screen. If you turn away from the screen, you would still see the light from the screen on other objects. Killzone 2 and now Halo: Reach do not have that.

This could be a major reason why the models in Reach are more detailed than previous games in the franchise. Shadows take up a considerable amount of graphical processing, and by using this little “cheat” to a greater degree (since the 360 hardware is more limited), it’s possible to showcase greater detailed texture models and a good looking, though by no means perfectly realistic, lighting system.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 both have a common limiting factor in their texture quality, but being less powerful, it’s more noticeable on the 360 in one particular area: Environment, particularly ground, textures. The ground textures have a slightly blurred characteristic to them, not looking totally sharp, but still of acceptable quality and a huge-step up from previous Halo’s mundaneness.

Stay tuned for some more analysis on the latest premiere trailer. Who knew one piece of footage could showcase so much? Keep in mind however that the game is still a year off from release, and we’re yet to see any battles on the scale of franchise predecessors.

(Images courtesy of Burn360)

Bayonetta is not for me. It’s just too… much. I’m overwhelmed by it every time I play the game, and the music, and imagery all confuse me even now. Looking at the review scores from Famitsu and Edge, I think the game is supposed to be the second coming (which is quite appropriate considering the artistic themes in the game) but while it might score all the right tick marks on the checklists, I don’t think it was a better, more enjoyable experience than say Assassin’s Creed 2, or even Modern Warfare 2. It might not be a fair comparison, of course, since not only are all three games very different and therefore difficult to compare, but aside from that, both Assassin’s Creed and Modern Warfare are sequels which have had a fair amount of time to refine the original game, and build upon their strengths.

Bayonetta certainly comes from a good pedigree, but it doesn’t have a direct predecessor to build on, and taking that into consideration, there is a lot to be said for it. At the same time, the most important question to ask is – is the game fun? Do I want to play it?

The answer is definitely yes. It’s crazy. It’s strange and aesthetically bizzare, from the moment that the game first starts and takes you through the tutorial all the way till the very end. And I’ll admit, freely, that the highly Japanese aesthetics of the game don’t appeal to me unlike, say, the Greek mythology that forms the basis of God of War. And yes, I’m much more excited about God of War 3 than I was about Bayonetta, so maybe that bias comes into play when I’m thinking about this game, but honestly, some of it goes beyond my ability to explain away.

Lets get over the fact that her clothes are made of her hair. Okay, that’s really only sorta weird. Lets talk about the music for a minute. The only stranger gaming experience I ever had was once, long ago, when I ran Mika’s Lollipop in the background while playing Dead Space. That, right there, was weird. So is Bayonetta, with the guns in her heels. Then there’s the targetting reticule, when you’re facing a crowd of enemies. Floating, flaming, giant lips. On strangely seraphic enemies with haloes and wings. While the music is fluting and chirping cheerfully in the background and strange and honestly endlessly confusing things are happening on screen.

Now, my ranting might have given you the idea that I don’t like this game, right? Actually, I find myself oddly, drawn to the game, and I think that that’s largely because of the controls themselves. The action is admittedly slightly limited, and if you’re like me, then you’re probably going to settle into a favourite combo for all situations and then spam the hell out of it, but it’s all really smooth.

Racking up high style points from split-second combos is not difficult, without being so easy as to provide no challenge either. You can just brawl your way through the game but to be properly rewarded with the smooth and wonderfully written action, you need to spend a little time learning the controls. It’s all fairly intuitive, flowing from one step to the next, and so after just a little time, you are controlling one of the most enjoyable death dealing characters out there today.

People who loved the more “Japanese” variants of such games are going to love Bayonetta as well. There’s little doubt in my mind on that score – if you like Ninja Gaiden and DMC, then please, buy Bayonetta. You won’t regret it. On the other hand, if you think that God of War is the greatest expression of the genre (and I won’t disagree with you there) then wait for GoW 3 instead.

The first Halo Legends episode, titled “The Babysitter“, is a pretty decently animated set piece for the entire series. Interestingly, while it features a cameo by Dutch from Halo 3: ODST, it also contains a very clever homage to Samus Aran’s ultimate reveal in the first Metroid game for the NES.

As most of you are aware of, Samus Aran was revealed in the first Metroid game as an intergalactic bounty hunter who tasked herself with retrieving alien Metroid samples from evil Space Pirates who sought to use them as biological weapons against her (since bounty hunters and pirates haven’t had a decent relationship since One Piece). Samus finally defeats the Mother Brain and as the credits roll, our protagonist – long thought of as a male, and also finding mention in the manual as such – takes off “his” helmet to reveal a beautiful woman with long golden hair.

In “The Babysitter“, Cal-141 is a SPARTAN-II assigned to take over as sniper for the ODSTs as they seek to assassinate a Prophet of the Covenant. One thing leads to another (no spoilers, sorry), and this is the result:

Let’s do a checklist here:

- Thought of as a man initially (Cal-141 doesn’t speak until her helmet is off)? Check.
- Equipped in heavy duty cybernetic armour? Check.
- Fighting against aliens? Check.
- Soft delicate blond fibers that flow like golden waterfalls from their heads? (Er…Check. – Ravi) As a side note, the red streaks in Cal’s hair are blood stains.

Of course, the main difference lies in the fate of the two, but I won’t spoil that for you. You can’t deny that it indeed is a clever piece of homage, and though more muted and sombre as Cal-141′s reveal is, there’s no denying the qualities it shares with Metroid’s Samus Aran.

If you’re a role-player looking for in-depth strategizing to go with your bulbous plot development, with side-quests that take hours to complete apiece, you’ll find Borderlands a diversion. Which doesn’t diminish its standing one bit – it’s a most entertaining diversion that just about anyone can get into. Shooter fans (as long as they’re not looking for Call of Duty-like realism), multiplayer fans, gimpers – Gearbox Software’s latest oddity cares to almost any one who’s been the least bit taken in by Diablo.

A deep story and a progressive cast of protagonists are the trade-off, however. You’re filled in on the diamond-in-the-rough that is the Vault upon the badlands of Pandora and choose from one of four main character classes (Soldier, Sniper, Hunter and Berserker). The Guardian Angel, an enigmatic beauty who looks high on blue filters, then guides you forth on your quest. The ultimate payoff is obvious at all times, but to get there you’ll be fulfilling a smattering of missions and side-quests.

The back-story behind each, at the very least, offers some freshness but you’re still killing ‘X’ number of enemies or collecting ‘Y’ number of items. The side-characters and their quirky, Wild West-meets-Redneck mannerisms paint the atmosphere a humorous black – “Who needs a real doctor when you got my machines and their scary needles?” says Dr. Zed. Let’s not forget scientist Patricia Tanning and her tumultuous relationship with the tape recorder which documents her findings.

A “procedural content generator” juggles dozens of variables to randomly generate weapons, grenades, class mods and enemies, thus ensuring you’ll rarely fight the same foes or gain the same loot again and again. This generator extends not through a single playthrough but many. You’ll have the same stats and weapons but your enemies will be stronger, and missions will worth more experience. Adding more players also makes enemies tougher (watch Skags fly. Fly, Skags, fly), so there’s plenty of incentive, even after friends have finished the game in solidarity, to play again.

The numerous challenges to be completed when the missions are finished is also a nice diversion. It’s also a great reward mechanism for when you go out of your way to commit additional man-/Skag-slaughter. An odd glitch exists in co-op; if you start the game with two characters but one decides later that he wants a different character, then go ahead, by all means. However, that new character can’t complete story quests. This means being excluded from a lot of upgrades within the storyline, and even impossibility in buying a shield unless another character drops you one. It’s a small gripe, but make sure you wipe out any second thoughts before starting a co-op game.

Each character is made unique with their proficiency in specific weapons, but their skill trees are heavily dependent on their Action Skills. For example, Roland, the Soldier, gets a Scorpio Turret that provides covering besides a small shield of its own to take cover behind. Subsequent upgrades allow this turret to fire more rounds with each burst, revive and regenerate ammo for team mates next to it, and fire rockets. Otherwise, everyone has their standard “Increase Health”, “Regenerate Shields Faster” skills that can be upgraded to make them tougher. Gearbox kept the focus on the loot and questing, so in a way, not having to micro-manage your character too much is a plus. As it is, tactics diversify as players get added to combat the tougher enemies, so it’s a fine balance to follow.

The music doesn’t present much variety, catering to a Mad Max tone at almost all times. The graphics, on the other hand, are beautifully rendered. The decision to go fully cel-shaded fits the game’s cartoonish dark humour perfectly. The cartoony never over-shadows the freakish or overwhelming, with the exception of the end-boss whose looks and abilities cater to any number of clichés. For a game not too heavy on plot, the ending felt very underwhelming, taken together with the tense end-game that played up to that point. I mean, you’re fighting across landscapes, into subterranean alien depths and finally confront the centre of all mystery – only to discover that the devs went with the “Gotcha!” route on the Vault’s true purpose.

Life on Pandora doesn’t deviate much from life in Sanctuary – and Borderlands sadly makes very little effort to do the same. Unlike Torchlight’s many small yet significant changes, you’ll still lug loot from vending machine to vending machine, selling off what you don’t need. Though achievements and weapons equipped carry over into the next playthrough, this only applies if you choose the same character. This decreases the incentive of replaying the game with a different class, a problem Torchlight solved with its shared stash system. Though the class mods grant you interesting proficiencies and bonuses, you’ll be carrying the same Action Skill throughout the entire game – and you only have one. It gets stronger, but that’s it. The AI faces some severe hiccups too: Enemies are oblivious to their friends dying at times, and entering within a specific range has entire crowds, peppered across different positions (some not able to see you) alert to your presence. There’s quite a few collision detection issues, which doesn’t happen a lot (more in car then on foot, in fact) but is still annoying, especially when enemies are shooting you from closed doors.

Borderlands makes no bones about what it wants to be, and how it wants to play. This simplicity is the basis for much its charm and is certainly entertaining for either an hour’s play or three. It can truly be called this generation’s Diablo, and for all the revolutionary changes it could have incorporated but didn’t, it gets by just fine.

Rating: 8/10

Despite spending an entire early morning whiling away on Firefight at the official worldwide launch of Halo 3: ODST, I was in equal lengths appalled, distraught and just plain high on what to review it for. On one hand, the quick, vanilla action portions of the franchise were intact, albeit with a few tactical features – the dominant one was sadly “Run for your life when low on health” from the absence of regenerating health. On the other hand, it was the same Halo. Granted it had it’s plot holes and technicalities, but the real kicker was it’s core gameplay that was still the same repetitive action and ugly graphics from the previous titles. All the new additions – the new pistol and SMG, the VISR, the world hub – meant, for lack of a kinder euphemism, jack.

Not that it mattered. No one walked into a store to buy Halo expecting an in-depth action-RPG hybrid with a complex story and 100 hours of unique missions. The specific audience was there. It was large. Bugger me silly if I could define it, but I knew, despite my humongous “meh” to the final product, I wasn’t in it.

Is Halo: Reach just more of the same Halo? Upon viewing the leaked screenshots, that’s the impression I got. The Rocket Launcher is there, yes. Not to mention some snazzy new weaponry. Does that Battle Rifle have one mean ass scope or what? And has the Chief returned? Very nice. However, despite these new environments and the so-called improved graphics, the sneaking suspicion still haunts me: This will be more of the same Halo. Aside from the hype that bears all too much in common with the ODST ad blitzkieg, why is that? Because that’s what’s sold the series.

I know that once the game is released, a discussion will arise on the subtle differences between Halo Reach and other Halo games. When Halo 3: ODST came out, some of us were hung up on false views that the game was nothing but the same Halo. Mind you, this came from early fake reviews who’s facts were all over the place but it was jarring nonetheless. Equally jarring was that, in an essence, they were right. I hope in some ways Halo: Reach is indeed not the same Halo – that it sends off the franchise with not so much a bang, but a title I’ll actually be able to play without looking at the controller in my hand, and asking ashamedly, “Why?” And maybe, just maybe, good enough to make people forget this was Bungie’s last Halo title. Until then, there is much, much work to do.

To view more leaked shots of Halo: Reach, head here.