The Trine is a magical object which binds three people together and grants them special powers. These powers will be required in order to get through the puzzles the game world presents - with goblins, trolls, living forests, giant creatures.... and a witch with a dark secret to uncover. The 3 characters brought together in this fantasy tale are:
A Wizard - he has the ability to conjure objects and levitate them from afar
A Soldier - he has a sword, shield and hammer to fight and throw at destructible objects
An Archer - she has a bow and arrow, plus a grappling hook that can be used to swing to higher areas.
The action plays out as a side scrolling 2D-frame but 3D-graphics set-up - with extra powers earned by collecting hard-to-reach gems and beating baddies - and the story unravelled through small, sparse segments of text and a normally a small cutscene at the end of each level.
So Is It Any Good Then?
+++Spectacularly Colourful+++ The visuals are the big winner here - fantastic use of colour all around means that even the backdrops are worth a few minutes to stop and take a look at. Each scenario has its own colour scheme - with lighter and greener levels at the beginning, moving through to purple and blue mystical and aquatic levels through the middle, right through to black and red as we approach the climactic finale. It's great to see a game use such a variety of colours and settings in such a short game - it means that the environments never get boring and hold your attention for the duration of the story. The characters are funny and enjoyable enough to keep you interested as well.
+++ Co-op Physics Puzzler +++Well I can't get enough of these - the use of clever tricks such as weighted platforms and levers that build in difficulty as the game progresses is great. You can get through the game on your own quite easily, and even using just the one character - but the fun lies in switching things up and getting a friend to join in and play along. There are some issues with the physics - momentum doesn't work properly and there's a glitch with the wizard's conjuring skill that I call the "magic carpet trick" that means you can fly through most of the puzzles in the game - but these flaws don't actually make the game any less playable. It isn't perfect but it works well enough to still be enjoyable.
--- Short and Unambitious ---The big problems with the game - other than it's a physics puzzle platformer with a buggered physics engine - are that the game is over too quickly and doesn't really take off. The story is well paced - revealing itself slowly until all is revealed at the end - but you reach that level so quickly that a lot of the suspense is lost. Added to that the lack of any real improvements over the original Trine and it means that while the game is very good - its graphical shine isn't matched in the rest of the game.
Conclusion
Trine 2 has charm, humour, great puzzles, spectacular visuals and a novel concept that makes for a brilliant all-round experience.
The game is great - and worth a play through for anyone - but the game isn't ground-breaking nor polished enough to grant it too revered a place in the Gaming Halls of Fame.
If they could double the size and number of levels, add in a few new gameplay mechanics and really go wild with the story - then the game would do the visuals justice.
As this week sees the release of the latest shiny sci-fi offering from Bioware - Mass Effect 3 - I thought I'd do a quick recap review on it's predecessor Mass Effect 2. Released on PS3 in January 2011 - nearly a whole year after the PC/Xbox 360 release! - Mass Effect 2 is the second part of the Commander Shepard trilogy. This game begins with our hero, Commander Shepard, being killed in a space battle - you watch him or her float off into space without oxygen and die within the first 15 minutes of play. A shadowy organisation, Cerberus, then re-builds you and it is during this rebuilding that you are able to customise Shepard however you want - man, woman, alien-looking or more humanoid, and so on. From then on, your actions and decisions define your experience right through to its spectacular finale.
Major Points
Great Story - The plot of Mass Effect 2 is nothing short of EPIC. After the intro featuring your death you awake to find that humankind is under attack once again from the Reapers - an alien race that poses the biggest threat the Galaxy has ever faced - but no-one will listen to the warnings. Shepard is therefore tasked with recruiting a crew and taking a high-tech spaceship around the Galaxy (and beyond) to try their hardest to stop the Reapers from wiping out all life. It's played out over around 30 hours of game time, and as your decisions have a direct impact upon what's going on you really feel engaged and involved. To keep a player going to the end of the story is one thing - to hold them on the edge of their seat desperate to find out what happens to the crew at the end of their near-suicidal adventure is another thing altogether. To top it off, there is the possibility of sleeping with crew members if you are seductive enough - and this can be a great motivator to get through conversations:
Shepard: So... you have lovely.... gills.
Alien Crew Member: Ah yes, and my species loves....
er.... human-type things....
Shepard: Good..... wanna shag?
Active Play - So not only is the story driven by your actions, but there is a great deal of flexibility in battle as well. The game allows you to choose from several character classes, weapon types and tactical options in order to vary play - meaning that you can be a firearms specialist and blast baddies to bits from afar or play as a tech specialist and use vaguely Jedi-like powers to defeat foes. Not only that but you have the option of taking complete control over your crew as well - who you take on missions, how you upgrade their skills, when to use certain abilities in battle - and this means you have a wealth of ways to play available to you in every part of the game.
Easy Tactic - There were times when the game felt like it was being a little easy though. Learning how to use your special abilities takes a little time - then if you find which combinations of powers work you are pretty much unstoppable. There is also a very clear "hidden upgrades" design that the developers went for - basically look in the corner of empty rooms, or walk down the corridor away from your quest marker, and you'll find tons of money and a weapon upgrade (so I guess there must be no poor people in this galaxy). Getting some of your skills and weapons upgraded to the max adds to the difficulty problem - but the game manages never to be boring. It still has a nice variety of enemies and settings so that if you get complacent then they'll swarm you and kick your arse. I can't complain too much as it is the inevitable issue present in most free-choice games - in order to have the game at a playable difficulty for all character classes/story options then some choices may lead to an easier game. It's only if the game is at an unplayable difficulty then it ruins an otherwise great game - which is not the case in Mass Effect 2.
Conclusions
If you've ever fancied yourself at the helm of the Enterprise then this is for you - truly a great game which allows you to engage in sci-fi gun battles, build up a crew of well-characterised aliens and try and sleep with them.
The game has plenty of depth and variety - in spite of having some corny dialogue and odd plotlines it still manages to be gripping right through to the end (and is worth a second play through too).
So Mass Effect 3 is coming out tomorrow - with a review to follow in the next week or two - and looking back on ME2 has only served to exaggerate my excitement.
This is one of my favourite game series at the moment and if I ever need to demonstrate why I only have to point in the direction of ME2 - it pretty much had it all. The only question is - can Mass Effect 3 improve on such a great title?
Trailer below to get everyone in the mood.
All videos in this review are from Youtube and are kindly provided by
Welcome To The Future, Mr. Jensen This week's big review is of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a futuristic RPG/stealth/shooter that claims to offer a fully-realised world full of dodgy characters, shadowy organisations and morally-ambiguous tasks to complete.
Human Revolution is the spiritual successor and chronological predecessor to 2000's Deus Ex, a game that has been recognised as one of the best games ever made. The original Deus Ex gained widespread praise, not for fancy graphics or technological advances, but instead for its intricate conspiracy thriller storyline that panned out through the course of the game, and the massive variety of ways in which you could achieve your goals.
The story in Human Revolution is that in the near-future the technology to "augment" human beings is becoming widespread, meaning that people can upgrade themselves with implants that allow them to jump higher, run faster, manipulate people with speech, see through walls and so on.
The corporations offering these augmentations are in a fierce competitive battle, hoping to take control of a growing and lucrative market. The governments of the world are struggling to keep up with the change, and legislation moderating the actions of these mega-companies is slow to be enacted.
You play the role of Adam Jensen, head of security at Sarif Industries, Sarif being one of the market leaders in this type of technology. At the beginning of the game, the scene is introduced when Sarif Industries comes under assault from an unknown enemy. During the carefully co-ordinated attack, several of Sarif's leading scientists appear to have been killed and Adam himself is injured beyond healing by standard medical treatments. While he is still unconscious, so against his will, he is brought back from death through the use of some pretty major augmentations.
Now this is an alright start to a game to get you in the mood - it's been done a million times before but we'll overlook that - and it serves to bring the player up to speed while introducing the key themes running throughout Human Revolution.
The only slight issue that I found was that I obviously wasn't paying enough attention during the intro video because from this point on they refer to "Dr. Megan Reed" and other characters as if you're meant to know who they are. As it turns out, Dr. Reed is an old friend of Adam's who is caught up in the assault on Sarif - but I only pieced that information together retrospectively. Maybe I should have been taking notes during the title sequence.
The guy on the right is our cyber hunk hero Neo... er... I mean Adam Jensen.
It's Good Old Reliable Dingy - Damp and Dirty Dingy Detroit! The first major section of the game is set in Detroit - full of skyscrapers, back alleys and sewer systems to explore. O.K. that doesn't sound too appealing and in many ways it really isn't. If you want to get people engaged in your game then I wouldn't recommend making them try to figure out how the bloody hell you get around the city by wading through sewage!
Detroit is awkward to navigate - until you have earned the upgrades which make getting around easier then there's a lot of running down alleys only to find a dead end, then running through a sewer.... only to find a dead end. Once you gain the ability to lift large objects out of your way or the ability to jump super high then this gets slightly easier, however you're still running backwards and forth around a very bleak and dark city in search of your objectives.
So what is it you're actually up to here? Well for the Detroit section, you're learning the ropes of getting around and the main entities are work in this world - the police, the augmentation clinics, the gangs, the private detectives etc.
You meet up with your boss, David Sarif, who sets you a few basic tasks to complete - obviously you need to start slow after being revived from the dead - so he tells you to break into the city police station morgue. Starting slow, eh David? What in God's name was I up to before you turned me into Robocop?
The dark and dingy streets of Detroit, where you will be spending around a third of your game time in Human Revolution.
You Can Go Your Own Way
With this being a Deus Ex title, the emphasis is on finding your own way of solving objectives and there are quite a few on offer. For example, for the morgue job you can:
Go in all gun's blazing and kill hundreds of innocent cops to get down to the morgue
Sneak into the building and then kill a few key targets in order to gain access
Use stealthy skills like cloaking (temporary invisibility) to simply walk into the morgue unnoticed
Talk to a police officer who, with the right persuasion, sneakily let you down there
I'm sure there are a few other ways of completing this task - these were just the main ones that I tried during my playthrough. All of the different options are there and waiting to be found, it just takes moving the right vending machine to find a secret ventilation shaft which takes you further into the building.
The major play styles can be summarised as follows:
Talker/Hacker - these are pretty much the same idea - finding the right person or computer terminal to manipulate in order to gain a shortcut through environments.
Stealth/Pacifist - slowly and silently moving through levels, making use of augmentations such as cloaking and X-ray vision in order to avoid killing bystanders.
Soldier/Fighter - which pretty much involves shooting shit and using your kill-o-death augmentations such as blades coming out of your elbows!
I know that really you could break these down in further and combine different elements to achieve your goal but these are the main gameplay routes you can take.
Now am I alone in seeing one of these option which stands out as preferable?
One option which just sounds frikkin awesome?
Well I thought that the elbow blade kill-o-death option sounded like it would a laugh and so started out my first playthrough aiming down that path - to use guns and other such weaponry to blast my way through the game.
The error I may have made was to choose the Normal difficulty setting.
While playing the game through as a pure shooter is technically possible, it's not advisable.
Hollywood Blockbuster Shot Down
In the very first level - the morgue break-in - I tried by bloody hardest to shoot my way in. I used cover every step of the way, mixed it up with my low-level augs, varied weapons to suit enemy type - and still I was shot to bloody death within seconds each and every time. I needed to rethink my strategy.
I didn't really want to play through on Easy because I intended to play through a second time a different way on the harder difficulty setting - Deus Ex Mode - in order to earn all the trophies (achievements to you non-Sony players).
I therefore went back out into Detroit for a bit of a wander around. I found that there is actually a lot of places you can get to around the city, and when the right augments are used you can get even further.
It became clear that a lot of the best equipment and cash drops were hidden down ventilations shafts, the entrance to which was generally blocked by a vending machine, or otherwise an electronic terminal. So I bought the weight lifting perk and upgraded my hacking skill. This playthrough isn't going how I planned.
Although this looks cool now, in about 2 seconds he'll be a bloody lump on the floor.
Attention To Detail
When I started to take this approach, as an unexpected consequence I found that I really liked the little details present throughout the game. Looking at emails, finding secretly written notes, talking to the right people and trying to "play it human" to get them to talk back - there's recurring sub-plots and plenty of back story to be found here.
One fine example is when you look around Adam's apartment building. In Adam's bathroom, there is a broken mirror on the wall - clearly smashed in the centre. Then if you look on your personal computer, there is an email to the building manager, asking yet again in very hostile tones for a replacement mirror which has never arrived. In this email, the manager responds to say that "the matter is out of their hands, the mirror is simply out of stock and as soon as they have one in the warehouse, they will send it to us - please don't take that tone with me". If you then go downstairs and hack the manager's personal computer, I was greatly amused to find an email from the mirror suppliers stating "the mirror has been at our warehouse for over four weeks - if you don't collect it or arrange for it to be sent soon then we will cancel the order". Landlord 1 - Adam Jensen 0.
Tee hee hee.
See - it's the little details.
The "Tough" Parts Of The Game
The later security systems that you have to get past are complex and technical - until you find the ventilation shaft that allows you to avoid them completely.
I was then surprised to find that in spite of having to rapidly shift to a more stealthy and non-violent playing style, there were several sections which should have been tough and complex affairs - full of lasers, robots and turrets - that were an absolute piece of piss because they could be navigated with ease through stealth augments and a strange frequency of terrible architects:
I know, I'll have a top-secret secured room that has a ventilation shaft leading right into the guard room. Then to make sure no-one gets through this, I'll station two guards who always keep their back to this shaft entrance. Pefect! Genius!
The upshot is that these sections were clearly well designed to suit multiple approaches, and once you know how to find the sneaky paths through, you are virtually untraceable.
Guards often don't help this - when spotted you can sometimes get away by going into the nearest room and shutting the door:
Hmmm... Shall I search in this room right here? Nah, that elite assassin couldn't have opened that door... I'd better turn and look in the opposite direction for a half a minute.... Crunch.
Then on the level shown below, where two giant rocket robot machines stalk the hanger bay, I simply sneaked around the level looking at what was available - and found a rocket launcher, several rockets and some fragmentation mines.
HAH! SOD STEALTH! Time to go boom robot baddies!
And what happened? I blew them to pieces and the human guards in the area lost interest virtually instantly. What? After handing my arse back to me in the police station level, I finally give in and go kill crazy and it's suddenly really easy? Oh bum.
The giant creepy robot crab things crop up from time to time - but always near a rocket launcher.... hmmmm.....
Bossing You Around
Then there's the "boss" levels, and by that I mean the key story characters whose missions you cannot get out of playing through. In the boss fight below, there is no way of stealthing as the fighting arena is so confined that you are likely to be caught out pretty quickly (in spite of the big guy's painfully slow movement). You have no choice but to blast him to get rid of him.
In another boss fight, you have to be immune to a certain type of damage, and the game actually gives you a free aug upgrade if you haven't bought the right one yet.
In a later boss "fight", you are forced to talk a guy down in front of a crowd in order to get him to reveal important information. This is greatly eased by the use of speech augs, but I understand that without them this could have been very difficult.
Even the final boss requires you to have at least some serious firepower to defend yourself with. Maybe you can sneak your way around and somehow do it another way - I found that the amount of turrets and robot guards meant that it was difficult to get past without reducing their numbers somewhat.
My problem is that for a game that that offers a great deal of choice, it is hard not to be annoyed that there is one particular way that works for each of the boss fights, and even though your choices and augmentation upgrades can help with certain scenarios, basically you need at least some skill in each of the three main disciplines - speech, stealth and soldier - in order to keep the difficulty level balanced throughout the game.
The bloke who looks about ready to pelvic thrust is one of the game's bosses.
Moral Compass
And finally the "moral" side of the game - this was pretty well worked in actually. Although the moral choice system is still present, and it is clear that your choices are leading to a conclusion based on the moral leaning of these decisions, you aren't ever punished for whatever you decide. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to play through, and there are no notable bonuses for either, except that your trophies/achievements will be better if you focus yourself (e.g. by knocking out 100 guards in a single playthrough).
The ending is also suitably open - when you get to the final level there are several key characters who you find are present within the complex. You can therefore go and speak to each of them for one last time (although I didn't quite realise it was the last time so never got to say goodbye to my boss, David... oh how sad). In speaking to them, they offer you a way to conclude the story - be it to contain the goings on throughout Human Revolution, to release the whole story to the media, or to release a modified version of the story... or one other option.
And there isn't any punishment for your choices up to that point, or after you decide which course of action to take, it just determines which ending video you see which ties all of your decisions together. The only problem comes when you forget to talk to one of them right at the end - so make sure you do! I'll have to see if I kept an older save file and go back and chat with old Davey. Then watch his video and then bang - trophy for seeing the 4 endings.
All in all I thought it was well done - and I think it was this crucial point which turned Human Revolution back into my favour. Yeah.... it was pretty good actually. Go give it a try and see what you think.
Conclusions
I didn't really like the way that I was channelled into being sneaky/stealthy rather than going all-out action techno killer. In the end though, it made me appreciate the actual variety on offer - levels are full of nooks and crannies that hold secret items and routes that are just waiting to be found.
Although the "moral compass" system is present in plenty of games nowadays, I did appreciate not being obviously told which options count as "good", "bad" or "neutral" so you are left to find out for yourself.
When you get to the end and look back on what you have done throughout the game, you can see the success of Human Revolution - the world is there for you to experiment with, but how exactly you choose to engage will change the world that is left behind at the end.
Images in this review are copyright of Square Enix and can be found at:
This week my "mini" review is going to be slightly different.
This week I am going to tell you a story.
It's a wonderful adventure, with early excitement, community spirit, communication with game developers and deep, painful heartache.
I will begin at the beginning, for where better to begin a story which starts at the beginning?
How It All Began
About 2 months ago, as part of the Playstation Plus membership, Monolith and WB Games released their beta version of Gotham City Impostors. For non-gaming-geeks out there, this means a near-complete test version that is released for players to try out and then the developers can identify any problems in order to get them fixed before the full release.
The game itself was incredible - the idea here being that Batman and the Joker have fled Gotham and in their place thousands of wannabe superheroes and villains have leapt into action and are now battling it out for supremacy on Gotham's streets. They aren't the real deal however, so the well-fitting Batman costume and the tailor-made Joker outfit aren't present - instead there's bat symbols on cardboard cut-outs and purple tank tops serving as Joker gear.
As a game, this works like a multiplayer first person shooter - you have other players on your team and you go round shooting the opposing team to win points which will help you win the match. You are randomly put in the Bats or Jokers team, and this doesn't make a difference as you don't have any loyalty to either - you're just a wannabe who wants to fight injustice/cause mayhem (whatever's on offer that day). Before battle, you select the set of weapons, skills, equipment, character types and outfits which suit your play style - and there are plenty of play styles to choose from:
You can be a thin, stealthy sniper who uses ninja gas to turn invisible.
You can be a nimble rollerskater, leaping around the place at top speed and greeting enemies with a sudden shotgun handshake.
You can be an enormous brute stalking the town with body armour and a rocket launcher.
Or if you like you can be a healer, shouting into a megaphone to revive team players and turn the tables of battle.
And the best part of it all? You can do it wearing nothing but underpants.
By completing battles you earn experience points, costume points and loadout unlocks. Experience gains you levels and earns you more loadout unlocks, which means more customisable weapons, gadgets and skills. Costume points are spent to gain new items of clothing to kit your Bats and Jokers out with.
There are also a whole bunch of challenges, like killing 50 enemies with the shotgun, or rollerskating for 10 kilometres. These have massive experience boosts associated with them, so it really is worth spending hours razzing around the map like a squirrel.
Email Number 1
So after spending around 10 hours playing the beta version, I go to the main menu to be greeted with a message:
"Profile Corrupt - Save Data may be Invalid"
Huh. Okay.... so what does that mean? It meant that all of my progress was wiped out. All the experience, all the costumes, all the hours put in were lost for no good reason.
So I decided to do the right thing and emailed the support team to let them know of the issue - this is a beta after all so they need to be informed in order to get it sorted. I didn't hear back from them so carried on playing for a while - the game was still great fun, so once they got the profile reset issue sorted then it'd be plain sailing.
Email Number 2
While playing the beta version some more, a few more serious issues started to present themselves:
Matches would be vastly unbalanced - like 2 low-level Bats against 6 elite Jokers. These matches would be over within minutes and were fairly boring - if you were a Bat you'd be pwned within seconds of respawning, and as a Joker it was likely that someone else had killed off all the Bats before you got there.
Matchmaking (finding other players to play matches with) was taking longer and longer too. When I first started playing you could be in a match within 2 minutes - now it takes 5 minutes just to find a match to join.
Every few matches, there would be some sort of connection problem where it would kick you out of a match you were playing. Again, this happened more as time went on until virtually every other match ended suddenly (and without any experience earned).
So basically, things weren't looking good. As it had been over a week since my first email, and I still had heard nothing, I decided to send another one to let them know that there were some pretty serious issues in Impostors that really needed addressing. But hey, this is the beta - they'll get this sorted out....right?
Out of Beta
After the beta trials ended, a "trial" version went up onto the Playstation Network (PSN). This was a full demonstration version of the game that was free to play for 30 minutes. I downloaded this and starting playing my free 30 minutes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found that I had to start a new profile (again). "OK", I thought, "It was a beta version and now it's a trial version so I can't expect to keep the same profile". So I played through those 30 minutes and once again loved it. See, this is the crucial point - the game itself is absolutely brilliant. It's fun, frantic, accessible, enjoyable, customisable - everything you want from an online FPS.
So.... I bought the full game. Yes, I know it was a risk but I gave Impostors the benefit of the doubt. £11.99 from my already dwindling bank account for a game that really should offer me weeks of fun.
Email Number 3
As the more astute of you may have gathered from the heading, buying the game only caused more trouble.
On purchasing the full game unlock, I opened the game to find an error message reading:
"Do you want to cancel your full game progress and go back to trial mode?"
Why on Earth would I (or anyone else for that matter) want to cancel a £12 purchase and go back to a time-limited trial? So I selected "NO!", at which point it took me to the Playstation Store to ask me to purchase the game again. I cancelled this and restarted the game. The game then loaded up fine and allowed me to play a few matches. "Phew!", I thought, "Thank goodness that's all over now!". Oh how wrong I was.
The next time I turned the game on, I was greeted by my old friend:
"Profile Corrupt - Save Data may be Invalid"
Bugger. That's not good news. I'm getting tired of getting through the first few levels just so that I can unlock the basic customisation settings. This will be the third time!
You must be able to work out that this must be a pretty good game for me to put up with this sort of crap, and when you get to play it, Gotham City Impostors really is a bloody good game. The maps are diverse and unique, each with little hiding places and open areas that are fun to explore. Due to the large range of characters and gadgets available, there is always someone to flush out the snipers, someone else who takes down big brutish demolition units well, and others who zoom around the map so fast that no-one can take them down (me - speedy body type, speed bonuses and rollerskates.... boo yah).
So I sent the third email, to say that the issues I was facing in the beta are present in the full game. And that I was not impressed.
Other Lovely Error Messages
Other than just having corrupt data, the game has thrown back some great reasons for not letting me play the game I have paid for. Here are a few of my faves:
Simply searching endlessly for players - the spinning "loading" icon just swirls hypnotically forever, and even refuses to let you exit sometimes.
Better than that, the match countdown gets to "Match starts in 1 seconds" and then sits there for what feels like an eternity before it kicks you back out to the main menu.
"No Gamespy Connection Detected - You Will Not Be Able To Play Online Games".So what part of this exclusively online multiplayer game am I meant to be playing? The offline challenge section? OK. Well that lasted all of 5 minutes. What now?
"Connection with the server has timed out". The classic. Its use here borders on over overkill.
Now you might ask if there is some problem with my connection or hardware here - well I can say that I've had no problem with any other online multiplayer game on the PS3 and next heading bit will explain more - so read on.
In fact, I think I have installed the patch. Yes, it's only that I think it's installed the patch - my game version still shows up as v1.01 (whereas the messiah patch is due to be v1.05) however it found and installed a new update this week so I can only assume it was this newest one. I have still not received any of my coins and experience back, instead the game seems to recognise a "shadow" of my former profile - for example when displaying my progress in challenges the game will now display:
"Matches Completed Challenge #3: 63 matches out of 100"
right before displaying
"Matches Completed Challenge #3: 78 matches out of 100"
So..... it's still screwed. There might be a proper fix on the way, but it feels a loooong way off.
What's even more insulting is that there is hundreds of messages declaring the upcoming downloadable content with extra maps, weapons and unlocks.... even though we can't even use the current content at the moment! For goodness' sake - sort the game out before chucking more crap into this faulty mess of a game!
As should be obvious, I've put a lot of time and effort into Impostors and it is for that very reason that I feel so let down. There is an awesome game in here - I just don't get to play it much.
Conclusions All in all, this is a really terrific game that has been let down by some pretty major design flaws - I mean, just take a look at the gameplay video above!
This has the potential to be online FPS of the year -
but at present it is virtually unplayable.
However, if you get a kick out of loading screens and error messages
then this may be the game for you!
If WB Games would just respond to my emails
(or offer a bloody refund) then I might consider recalling the deadly ninja monkeys. Oh well... here goes email number 4....
UPDATE! : On signing into Impostors this morning (3rd March) a message appeared telling me that I have gained 2500 costume coins and jumped 14 experience levels.
It appears they have finally restored my profile to the level it should be - over 3 weeks after first informing them of the issue.
That said, I've been waiting to get into a match for ten minutes now - so the matchmaking problems are still ongoing. A minor victory?
Videos in this review are from Youtube and are kindly provided by:
Urgh.With so many elements going in it's favour, it's sad this game got it SOOOO wrong.
The destructo-scenery adventure moves from surface to underground and goes all shadowy.
Oh, and now there's tons of splatty aliens that need splatting.
Lots of big guns to take down lots of big monsters - the system works.
Total Recreation
The plot to Armageddon is that the human colonies on Mars are being overrun by aliens. Well, actually they're being overrun by locals - and the aliens are all getting killed and eaten (that being us humans). This has something to do with what one particular alien - Darius Mason - accidentally did while on a mission. He was duped into it by some evil-doer who needs to be brought to justice and the human military are powerless to help. Basically all of this is relayed in cutscenes that are acted out by wooden CGI characters, while the rest of the time you run from dark cave to darker cave blowing things up and shooting aliens.... er, locals..... er..... monsters (damn you political correctness).
Darling Darius - this is pretty much how he delivers all of his lines in the game's cutscenes.
In the end, you are aiming to restore an atmosphere to Mars which will kill off all the ali....monsters and let the lovely humans live happily ever after on the monsters' homeworld. Hang on a minute..... Is this really a game where humans invade somewhere, kill off all the locals and the big Hollywood finale is the hero smiling as they all die? Yes. Yes, it really is.
To summarise, the plot is pretty boring - exactly like Total Recall only with all the mystery, Schwarzenegger and triple-boobed prostitutes removed. Oh, and you don't get the girl at the end. She dies. [Spoiler Alert] It wasn't a surprise to me and I doubt it'll come as a surprise to you.
This is Kara - Darius's honey. She dies. Surprise surprise.
Good Looking, So Refined Actually the enemy colouring and visual style isn't too bad - each monster has a pattern and markings that make them easier to distinguish against the dark backgrounds and from each other. There is a hell of a lot of dark backgrounds though, so they really needed some colour in the mix just to prevent serious eye strain. The monsters do stand out from each other well enough and it makes for a better spectacle when they come flying towards you - which they will do roughly every ten seconds.
There's yellow ones and red ones. I'd deal with the big one first though.
The mix of colours in the aliens starkly contrasts with the bland and depressingly bleak set of environments that you have to fight your way through. All the caves are black and brown, all the buildings are grey and black, everything is just dark and colourless. This can make things a bit of a chore to get through:
Head down the corridor to the base, it's dark and grey.
Next run to the power generator, it's dark and grey.
Then run to the dark, grey escape tunnel.
Bleeeeuuuuuuugggggghhhhh.
Somebody please turn the lights on!
Or at least give me a paintball gun!
I can build a rainbow...build a rainbow... smash your face in too...
Lava Lamp Then in later levels they throw some lava into the palette. Now this would be fine in theory - and certainly brightens the place up - except that the main grunt enemies are coloured in yellow and red. The lava therefore renders them impossible to see as it splashes around and the heat distorts your vision, so you're back to straining your eyes trying to make out where the hell the baddies are before they leap out at you. Aha! There they are!
While spicing things up slightly, the lava is certainly not an improvement.
Level and Game Design As mentioned above, this is bland bland bland. I honestly couldn't pick out any of the environments that I played through, other than making educated guesses that there was a military base, a power generator and bridge at some point.
The only tasks you will be expected to complete are as follows:
Kill the monsters
Blow up that target
Go to point X
Repair that target
That really is about it. Sometimes you're escorting some military guys, sometimes you're in a tank, sometimes there will be lava - but you'll still just be heading to a big flashing arrow, pressing the trigger button and running off down yet another dark corridor. Yippee.
This screenshot doesn't do it justice - usually it's a lot darker than this.
Use of Destructo-Scenery Distinctly average. You can blow a very limited number of things up - not walls or floors or anything like that - and once you've blown a building up you'll normally have to repair it so that you can continue in the game. It's like when you get annoyed with your building blocks and smash them apart - it feels like you're a powerful giant - until a parent comes along and tells you to pick them all up.
The addition of the "magnet gun" is about the best thing I can say about the destruction - this works by latching firing two separate tethers, which then are drawn to one another. There is plenty of scope for fun there - fire one at a monster and one at the ceiling to watch it go flying - fire one at big tower and one at a building and they'll collide in spectacular fashion.
The only issue with this is that all of the places where you get to try this out are so dark and the buildings so drab and grey that it doesn't carry much impact - it just looks like a grey blob hitting a grey blob and forming a new grey pile on the floor. The destruction on show in the game's predecessor Guerilla was brighter, more varied and on a much larger scale.
Buildings still fall to pieces when the correct force is applied.
In order to get some proper destruction time, you'll either have to play the vehicle sections - which I'll get to later - or the separate destruction mode (known as Ruin mode). This is unlocked using a game code - so not sure if pre-owned gamers will actually be able to enjoy this.
Ruin mode gives you a small map and a limited time, and you go nuts trying to smash as much as possible. In order to get the best scores you need to cause maximum destruction, but there is a fairly arbitrary points system associated with each building - massive structures fall and give mere hundreds of points, whereas one wall at the end of the map can be worth millions. Getting the best scores is therefore a case of "find the valuable structure and fire everything at that".
Ruin mode feels like a tacked-on gimmick than a fully-playable game mode - nothing like the free destructive fun that you were able to enjoy in Guerilla.
Nano Forge Rebuild
The nano forge in action. It's blue.
The new piece of equipment in the scenery-destruction series? A device that puts it together again. Lame. If that really is the best that the guys at Syfy games could come up with to move the series forward then they really ought to give up now.
Not only is it a poorly-conceived idea, it was badly executed as well! There were several sections in the game where I thought "Yeah, this could be alright actually. Monsters are blowing this walkway up and I have to navigate my way across, repairing it as I go". Could have been exciting, yes? Well it wasn't because it took 30 seconds to get across to the end of the walkway and that was the only section of it's kind in the game.What a missed opportunity - the one time the new mechanic works and they hurry past it as if they're ashamed of it. Well, yes, you should be ashamed. Poor show, Armageddon.
At least it looks a bit flashy when you are made to repair stuff.
Vehicular Fun? Armageddon gets to the point where the vehicle sections are actually welcome - sort of a "Yes please, for goodness' sake just let me blow some shit up!".
Doesn't he look menacing in his giant metal suit?
Around 10 percent of the game is spent either in a walker suit or a tank... and your objectives are? Blow shit up.
Yay! At least they got that right. Not that you'll be able to appreciate it much as all brainpower has been drained out of you in the corridor shooter sections.
In case you hadn't noticed by this point - Armageddon really drained all the life out of me. In fact, I'm having difficulty even writing about it because I found it that thoroughly boring. Bugger it. Here's some screenshots of shit being blown up:
This is actually from a spin-off vehicular game - Battlegrounds - but the idea is the same. Broom broom. Boom boom.
Armageddon is one long slog through dark corridors - there's just a real void in terms of diversity and personality.
Although this sounds on paper like a classic action-horror, or perhaps a bit like one of Arnie's finest works - it's thoroughly dull and ruins any appeal it may have had with it's repetitive tasks and bland environments.
Even the multi-player destructive fun and vehicle sections can't redeem what is a shameful addition to an already floundering series. They really need to go back to the drawing board and get their priorities right.
Here's a hint - number one is massive destruction.
It is not caves and aliens... er... local monster thingys.
Between this image and the one below - doesn't this look like a soap romance between Daruis his grumpy alien wife?
YOU LEFT ME TO DIE... AND I SAW YOU SNOGGING SANDRA! YOU BITCH!
Images in this review are copyright of THQ and can be found at:
