Red Ring Circus

My mind is flooded with conflicting thoughts on Spec Ops: The Line, so rather than let it coalesce into something editorial-worthy, I'm just going to barf it all out in what will probably be a very ramble-y blog post. I really, really liked Spec Ops for making me think. It told a more interesting story than any Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, or Crysis. It tried things that very few games try to do: it tried to comment on its own genre and on the act of killing digital enemies. From a perspective of storytelling aspirations, world-building, and subtext, Spec Ops has way more in common with Bioshock than any military shooter. That said, it also had a tendency to shoot itself in the foot repeatedly. Lacking polish in the places that matter most, Spec Ops has a really awful tendency to confuse the player, take them out of the moment, or diffuse the impact of its more powerful moments. In a lot of ways, it feels like a rough draft for one of the most incredible video games ever made.

Through much of the opening areas of the game I was very confused about why and who I was shooting. Bandits with guns, renegade factions of a US Battalion, those were enemies I understood. But after a while you run across US soldiers and the ensuing battle is chalked up to a very terrible instance of friendly fire. Then you keep shooting them. Then you start sneaking up on them and sniping their heads off, or knifing them from behind. "Why don't we check to see if they're going to shoot at us first?" I asked. The act of killing people who were mistaking us for bad guys became a bit too casual. It went beyond clever commentary and into dissonance. I didn't want my squad to murder anyone unless they shot first, but I had nothing but the barrel of a gun to speak with. It turns out this is what the developer wanted. By the time I'd given up on diffusing the situation and just started popping heads and going for sick triple kills, the game had lined up its masterstroke. If you've played Spec Ops, I need little more than the words "white phosphorous" to indicate the scene I'm referring to. But to be somewhat vague (you should probably just go play the game), Spec Ops tricks you into doing something pretty damn horrific. I felt tricked though. The game's previous failings were the only reason I'd become so casual about killing everyone. The scene was still pretty damn powerful, but I felt they cheated to get that reaction out of me.

As the game progresses, most of these moments are framed in the context of moral choices. Compared to that first horrible mistake, though, most of the moral choices are pretty tame or have easy ways out. At one point you're forced to choose between shooting two men. One stole water, the other was sent to apprehend him and subsequently murdered an entire family. Who do you choose? Conveniently, you can simply wash your hands of the whole thing and kill the snipers who are forcing your hand. In another instance, an opportunity to gun down a mob of angry civilians is easily diffused by shooting into the air and scaring them off. The game was trying to make me feel like a monster but kept giving me an easy alternative. But then I think of the person who isn't thinking outside of the box. The person who simply follows instructions because the linear shooter told them to is going to have a pretty tragic journey in Spec Ops. Maybe my experience wasn't all that powerful, but when I consider that some people won't even realize there are alternatives, it suddenly seems much more clever. This isn't Mass Effect, where decisions are made through clear cut dialogue trees and extreme red and blue moral choices. Spec Ops conveys almost all your decisions through the same gun you use to murder a bajillion bad dudes. It's more organic, and thus a hell of a lot easier to trick the player into doing stupid stuff. Players following orders to murder tons of innocent people because they don't even realize there's another option? That's fascinating and scary. To put it simply, the way Spec Ops forms its powerful moments is both amazing and flawed, and I can't quite decide which side I land on.

And that's a good thing. Sleeping Dogs is the gaming equivalent of a solid page-turner of a novel read in the summer sun. It's not changing the world and it's not furthering gaming in any substantial ways, but that doesn't mean it's forgettable. Quite the opposite, Sleeping Dogs is, in a nutshell, where we got to with this console generation. Its qualities are the innovations the industry has made and its flaws are the innovations the industry will make in the future. Sleeping Dogs is a product of a generation of games that's been refined for seven years. It takes the lessons learned in games like Grand Theft Auto, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Uncharted, Saints Row, and Assassin's Creed and treats them like its favorite ingredients in a cook book. Sleeping Dogs Fill one Open World-Sized Pan with the following: 1 Cup GTA-style Mission Structure 1/2 Cup Arkham-lite Combat System 1/4 Cup Max Payne Slow-mo Shooting (Old Style, Mix in last) 1/2 Cup Saints Row Fun-Style Driving and General Insanity Sauce 2 Tbsp Uncharted World Navigation 1 tsp Assassin's Creed Collectibles (sprinkle throughout) A dash of Shenmue or Yakuza (to taste)

The resulting dish is like a buffet of quality, current generation gaming. You drive to your missions with zippy, fun-over-function car handling, using the GPS breadcrumb trail from GTA and some nice, big guide arrows a la Saints Row: The Third. Combat takes the Batman Arkham-style counter system and keeps it simple throughout, choosing to just throw a million dudes your way instead of the many layers of mechanics the Batman games incorporate. Then you get a gun, and while the aiming controls aren't spectacular and I'd prefer that I wasn't an undercover cop murdering people in the face, the slow motion mechanic is brilliant fun. Rounding out the gameplay package is some contextual parkour reminiscent of Uncharted or Assassin's Creed, albeit very simplified. Collectibles are scattered around the world and provide tangible benefits to your character. Similar to Assassin's Creed, it was easy to waste entirely too much time getting side-tracked by hidden items.

While I'm posting long-lost articles, here's a game more memorable than Rage: Yep, that's right, I'm recommending one of the signs of the end of humanity. In title, in presentation, and most likely in spirit, Try Not To Fart is everything that's wrong with Xbox Indie Games - a low-brow stab at the weakness of easily-amused stoners with a dollar to burn. I'm recommending it because in the grand scheme of shameless cash-grabs that infest XBLIG, Try Not To Fart is actually pretty decent. First and foremost, it's genuinely hilarious - tears-streaming-down-your-face hilarious in the right circumstances. Whether the humor is intentional or accidental changes from moment-to-moment, but the game is often charmingly self-aware. Then there's the gameplay itself. I expected the typical button-stomping QTE/Simon game. After all, those are a dime a dozen on XBLIG, and they're all terrible. What this game does is actually a bit more inspired, asking you to hold down several buttons at once. It's sort of like Twister for your hands.

Sometimes I'll start writing something and life boils over, washing those words aside. By the time I find them again they've lost their relevance. A write-up on Rage is the perfect example of this, because really, who the fuck cares about that game anymore? Rage has lost so much relevance that when it came time for me to write about horribly distracting graphical glitches, I didn't even cite it as one of the worst offenders. That article, which you can find on GameZone.com, talks about games people actually remember. You should probably read that first...and leave a comment! I'll love you forever. Either way, I liked where I was going with this piece, so here it is. If you're into reading half-finished things:

I've been putting this off to eternity because I had intentions of playing a few games I missed, but with 2012 full-steam ahead it seems that games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dark Souls will have to wait. I'm sure they're great. Top 10 material? That I can't say. Here are the games that I'm sure of, in order of ever-increasing awesomeness:

Batman: Arkham City

I loved Arkham Asylum for it's cast of villains and clever twists. What I didn't love was the overall plot, the half-assed attempt at Metroidvania exploration, and the quirks of the game's unique combat system. The sequel, Arkham City, doesn't have the same level of "wow" moments that the first game had, but otherwise it's better in just about every way. 

The move from maze-like exploration to a more open, Assassin's Creed-style world was inspired; it gave the collect-a-thon of Riddler trophies some much needed freedom, and it made navigating the environment an absolute blast. 

This is the ultimate Batman simulator, or as one clever writer put it: "the ultimate role-playing game." That's never more true than during the Mr. Freeze battle, where the trick to beating him isn't by memorizing a rote pattern or draining a power bar, but by outsmarting him with all of Batman's tools. If there's any one reason this game is on this list it's because of that fight; it's a blueprint for what boss fights should be: a thought-provoking test of everything the game has taught you so far.

Portal 2

Valve may take goddamned forever to put out games sometimes, but when they finally do, you really feel spoiled by their efforts. The writing in Portal 2 is almost too good for games, the puzzles often too fun and clever. I'd rank it higher if not for how completely devoid of replay value it is. 

Unless you're dying to experience the story over again, Portal's puzzles don't lend themselves to repeated viewing. The problem is exacerbated by a single player campaign that seems more concerned with telling a great story than challenging you; it's almost alarmingly easy. That issue is thankfully rectified in co-op, where the puzzles all-but require two players working it all out in tandem. 

A co-op DLC episode brought me back for even more fun, but as much as I adore Portal 2, I'm not going to go back to it unless Valve makes more puzzles.

Saints Row: The Third

For all the efforts to turn games into a more legitimate story-telling medium, they're still pretty damn goofy sometimes. Saints Row: The Third not only embraces that attitude, but promotes it as a strength. No other medium so easily creates lovable characters out of hysterical violence and killing sprees. 

As much as I loved the missions in cyberspace, performing takedowns on the elderly, or flying around in a VTOL, I kept coming back because I enjoyed being in the world, hearing my boss spout ridiculous one-liners, or interrupting another one of Pierce's chess games. 

In real life these guys would be sociopaths, but in a city where you can jump kick through car windows or jump off of buildings and live, I want them to be my best friends. I'm not the first one to say this, but Saints Row: The Third is "Video Games: The Game", a celebration of what's possible in this ridiculous art form.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Ghost Trick does the impossible by tossing a novel's worth of dialogue boxes at the player and being all the better for it. It's half video game, half visual novel, and all completely brilliant. 

When I wish games were more like good TV shows, with lovable casts of characters and storytelling I genuinely care about, I look to Ghost Trick as one of the shining examples. Yeah, the puzzles can be a bit frustrating sometimes, and the plot goes off the deep end on more than one occasion, but I spent too much time laughing and smiling at this game to ever fault it for those issues. 

In the age-old argument of cutscenes vs. organic storytelling in games, Ghost Trick throws a pretty mean curveball on behalf of cutscenes that's hard to deny.

Catherine

Catherine isn't for everyone--it seems vitally important to point that out. Taking the gameplay of a dating sim, applying it to a Twilight Zone-esque tale of adultery, sex, and desire, and then framing it around an intense action-puzzle game is inspired, to say the least. 

It's also extremely polarizing, as it seems like the block-pushing puzzle elements of Catherine came under fire by many people. I can see how one would actively dislike the puzzles in Catherine--they're stressful, complicated, and always involve some kind of time pressure--but I honestly couldn't get enough of them, and that did wonders for my enjoyment of the game overall. The story is so good it's worth suffering through the puzzles for, but I never suffered, so I think Catherine is goddamned brilliant.

Driver: San Francisco

I hope you're noticing a theme with most of this list. Storytelling in games is a big deal to me. There is no video game formula more potent than a mix of good gameplay and a well-told tale. 

Driver: San Francisco, expectations be damned, is exactly that. It seems impossible, but Ubisoft Reflections crafted an open-world racing game with an awesome and crazy story. Think Quantum Leap with cars and you've got the basic gist. It's written like a fun season of television, with a great premise and a pulse-pounding final episode. 

The actual car handling received criticism for being a bit too loose, but that was the point! The heavy, powersliding-style perfectly recreates the feel of the Hollywood car chase. That they worked the body-jumping gameplay into online races makes the whole package even more unique and worthwhile.

Bastion

What could I possibly say about Bastion that hasn't already been said? From the iconic narration, to the painterly graphics, and highly customizable combat options, Bastion is the complete package. Undeniably an instant classic, it's hard to think of a more definitive downloadable game experience. 

Only Braid falls in the same camp in my mind. It's comical to think we once lamented the coming death of 2D games; not only are they alive and kicking, but Bastion proves they've improved and matured just as much as any other genre.

Battlefield 3

It's easy to call Battlefield 3 an incremental update and graphical overhaul of the multiplayer-focused FPS series, but I don't think that paints the whole picture. Every subtle enhancement, from the soundscape, to the feel of vaulting over ledges, and the feedback when firing weapons adds up to a shooter that truly feels like some next-level shit, even on consoles. 

Combine that with the Battlefield formula of vehicles, destruction, and physics (a formula that's not even remotely stale), and you just get one amazing Battlefield moment after another. DICE and the community may still be working out some communication issues, and the game is lousy with patches and balance tweaks, but the changes have never interfered with my experience, and that experience may be the most fun multiplayer shooter of all time. 

That said, what put the game even higher on my list was my legitimate love of the game's single player campaign. Yes, I'm in a serious minority, but Battlefield's more measured take on the Call of Duty explode-a-thon was a breath of fresh air. Was it original? Hell no! But the more realistic pacing clicked for me more than any Call of Duty since the first Modern Warfare. 

Skyrim

I've only had time to play about 30 hours of Skyrim. That's a ton of time by most accounts, but it's just scraping the surface with The Elder Scrolls series. 

With that in mind, it may seem presumptuous to list it as my number two game of 2011. I assure you I'm serious, though. Skyrim is the reason we shouldn't overuse words like "engrossing" and "immersion." They need to be at full strength for occasions like this, because Skyrim really goes out of its way to eat you alive. 

I've played all of Bethesda's previous games since Morrowind, and Skyrim feels like the culmination of everything that's ever been good about their games. In that sense it is an iteration, but it's offering something no other studio comes close to. Movie trailers and book sleeves are always inviting us to another world, but Skyrim is the only thing that actually takes you there.

Dead Space 2

I play a larger variety of games than I ever used to, my backlog is stacked to the ceiling, and I still took the time to play through Dead Space 2 five times. For anyone that knows me and my gaming habits, this number is absurd. That's why Dead Space 2 is my favorite game of 2011, and easily one of my favorite games of all time.

Giving protagonist Isaac Clarke a voice was obvious, but Visceral went above and beyond in crafting a character you can connect to. It seems silly, but his slightly unhinged attitude makes it easy to relate and put yourself in his boots. I know if I were stomping the life out of a Necromorph I'd probably pair it with a string of expletives as well.

Like the first game, Dead Space 2 is polished. It's world feels dense and real. The combat is substantial. There is a real weight to everything and that makes all the coolest moments that much cooler. From rocket boots, to screaming babies in washer machines, Dead Space 2 has more truly memorable moments than any other game of its kind.

Day One DLC, on-disc DLC, and sinister micro-transactions are but a few of the problems facing game development these days. They threaten the very livelihood of the game industry by burying gamers under the weight of endless exploitation. They are important--but they aren't issues I want to talk about right now. We get so bogged down in these money issues that we sometimes ignore the bad habits being developed in actual game design. The boss battles of Deus Ex: Human Revolution were prominently criticized for feeling completely out of place, and that was deserved, but I don't think developers get enough constructive criticism like this. That said, there's something that's been getting under my skin lately. When playing Uncharted: Golden Abyss for the Playstation Vita, I was forced to play out the same set-piece for what felt like almost a half-dozen times. It went something like this: Drake and his friend turn a corner, stumble upon a turret emplacement, and Drake must platform around the environment until he can get a bead on the grunt manning the turret.

I couldn't find a picture of the turret sequence, sooo Fat Drake!

This scenario was interesting the first time. It added a timing element to the platforming, as I had to jump from one spot to another whenever the turret reloaded. It was a novel little twist...the first time. Games cost more than ever, and the resources required to build a simple scenario like this are immense. It's no wonder developer Bend Studio wanted to get some mileage out of their creation. But by repeating it even once, the magic is immediately lost. Every reuse of the moment watered it down exponentially, eventually hurting my opinion of the game as a whole. I'm suddenly asking myself, how much of this game was built to waste my time? The Uncharted series is notorious for this reuse of moments. How many times are environments divided by your buddy dropping you a ladder, or asking for a boost up to a higher platform? These animations play out dozens of times in each title. While they serve a purpose by closing off one area and moving you into another, they break immersion by showing the same animation over and over again. How many times did Gears of War 3 recycle the same barb-wire fence/garage door lifting animations? And don't even get me started on the dreaded turret sequences. God of War, the original Dead Space, and even Mass Effect 3 padded out their lengths by locking you in a room for an indeterminate amount of time and tossing waves of enemies your way. Sometimes the context for why you're trapped is so arbitrary it's insulting.

Reading The Hunger Games book and watching the film got me thinking a lot about pacing in video games. Katniss' journey from her home, through the capitol, and to the Hunger Games themselves is a deliberately paced build-up that could be the perfect blueprint for a video game tutorial. Imagine a scenario where care is put into establishing the world, characters, and rules of the game. The first few hours would be spent in a safe zone, speaking to people, exploring the world, and getting your bearings. You would be able to train in a safe environment, learn the controls, explore the ins and outs of combat, etc. There would be no game over screens, no danger of failure. You can't die until you get to the equivalent of the Hunger Games arena. The safety offered by this concept allows the developers to forgo lame tutorial prompts. There is no threat of death, so fumble with the controls all you want. Move on whenever you're ready. In The Hunger Games, the tributes learn the importance of sponsors. By pleasing the sponsors and making a splash, tributes could earn gifts that would help them in times of need. The concept is not only their means of survival, but an interesting plot point and fun commentary to boot. What if the explanation of inventory management in an RPG could be so fascinating? What if your tutorial could be as much a lesson as it is an important point in the plot? What if what you chose to carry was eventually the difference between success and failure? Imagine you spend hours learning the ins and outs of the gameplay, establishing characters and world, and slowly building up to that moment when the real game starts. Now imagine that the game you are building up to is as brutal and unforgiving as the Hunger Games. Maybe it's Dark Souls on hard mode, and the consequences for failure are suddenly substantial.

This hard.

Podcast

Review

Originally posted at: http://www.criticalgamer.co.uk/2010/08/30/shank-review/ If The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is 2D Ninja Gaiden, Shank is 2D God of War. It’s a pretty game with flashy combat and moments of badassery that come at the expense of precision. The fighting game pedigree that carried over into those aforementioned games (and even the more recent God of War games) is a bit lacking here. As a result, it’s all too often that Shank (the protagonist) seems to slip from your control like a wet bar of soap. That wouldn’t be a problem if the game was all flash with no substance, but the AI enemies don’t mess around. They attack in mobs, exploiting any moment of weakness with a barrage of bullets or a quick stab from behind. The challenge is welcome, but Shank’s easily punished repertoire of combos is not. Sometimes he just tries too hard to be cool, and as a result ends up shooting bullets in the air at enemies that aren’t there or failing to block while he finishes a flashy combo.

It’s those moments in Shank, when things just don’t work, that deflate what should be a relentlessly awesome experience. When it does work (which is most of the time) bouncing between three distinct weapons, leaping across the room at enemies, or executing showy gun combos feels incredibly satisfying. Shank is a story of revenge, one inspired by... well, Robert Rodriguez movies mostly. Turn the upcoming film Machete into a cartoon and stylistically, you wouldn’t be able to tell the two apart. Shank plays its Mexican drug cartel violence a little too seriously though. Especially with the Samurai Jack-esque art style and flat voice acting that makes the story laughably corny.

You basically fight your way from one criminal stereotype to the next. The plot is filled with violent beheadings, strippers, misogyny, torture, and just about any scenario you can imagine a teenager coming up with after a binge of revenge movies. Devoid of any kind of substance, self-aware comedy, or unique style, the story is just sort of annoying. Shank’s co-op mode works as a prequel to the story. With two players, the screen is a bit busy, but it’s a fun time regardless. Boss fights require players to work together in clever ways and finishing a tough fight with a partner is an awesome experience. Still, if you don’t have a like-minded friend around to enjoy the game with, Shank is going to be an alarmingly brief experience. Between single-player and co-op modes, the game rounds out at an all-too brief 5-6 hours. After that, there’s hard mode (which is insanely difficult), and some extra costumes to unlock, but overall there’s little reason to go back. Even over the course of those initial hours, the experience starts to drag. Areas and enemies are repeated far too often to keep the gameplay feeling fresh - by the eighteenth time you leap dramatically through a window it loses its impact.

Commentary

Well, this is embarrassing... A few years ago my kneecap popped out quite suddenly and unexpectedly while drinking with some friends at Barcade in Brooklyn. It wasn't just a little popped out either - when I fell to the floor, collapsed against a nearby Tapper cabinet, I assumed my leg had just mysteriously broken. Whatever was going on, all I could tell was that something was jutting out of my leg by several inches. An ambulance ride and two hours of agony later, a doctor popped my kneecap back in and sent me home limping, swollen, but relatively fine. My hope was that it would never happen again. Fast forward to about a week ago. Kinect came out and Dance Central looked awesome - I had to get one. I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived a couple days later. Kinect Adventures got boring pretty quickly and the dashboard was a disappointment, but Dance Central ended up being everything I hoped for. I loved it so much I started playing it every chance I got, twisting and contorting that knee for hours on end - I probably had this coming. So my friends and I got together to play it and we were having a blast. Everyone was drinking, laughing, and our dance moves ranged from smooth and sexy to hilariously spastic. I landed somewhere in the middle, at least until I landed on the floor after one knee jerk too many dancing to Teach Me How To Jerk. Here's the song in question, it explains a lot: "Not again!" I shouted in agony, hitting the floor and scaring the hell out of everyone in the room. "Joe, are you okay?" "No." "Should I call an ambulance?" "Yes." I tried popping it back in again, but it wouldn't budge. Between the pain and the room full of terrified friends, I could see this would be another long night. The paramedics arrived to a room full of beer bottles, a Kinect, and me collapsed in the middle of it all. A police officer picked up the game and joked that he'd have to take it in for evidence. And yes, once again, hours of agony just so a doctor can finally pop it back in, hours of my knee looking like this:

Indie Game Spotlight

Explosionade is the latest from Mommy's Best Games, the developers of Weapon of Choice and Shoot 1Up. That's a pedigree that demands at least a download of the trial, and I'm happy to report it's worth your buck as well. Quick aside - I just have to say how much I love seeing the developers of great indie games sticking to XBLIG, hopefully gaining a following, and continuing to put out game after game. After sifting through one student project or zombie massage cash-in too many, I can look at the Mommy's Best, Ska Studios, or radianGames logos and know I'm in for a treat.

Explosionade is a 2D shooter/platformer with combat reminiscent of Metal Slug and some clever platforming mechanics. You have a normal jump and some jet packs that'll keep you hovering for a couple seconds. Additionally, you have a recharging shield that's activated with a pull of the left trigger. Activating the shield in mid-air gives you some momentum, allowing you to bounce and float around. Jumping, floating, and bouncing eventually become your main modes of transportation. The finesse and technique required to do this (while also conserving shields to actually block bullets) becomes the major joy of playing Explosionade. That, and you can have a second player join in for the game's 40 stages. The only real issue with Explosionade is how limited its environments are. I don't mind repetitive art in a $1 game (especially when it's this good), but the gameplay left me wanting a bit more room to move around. Every level is limited to a single room and it can get really cramped with two players.

Indie Game Spotlight

Beat Hazard is a fascinating game - if you can get it working. Before I start talking about the game itself, it's important to address the simple-to-nightmarish process of getting it to recognize your music collection. Beat Hazard is a twin-stick shooter that syncs the action to your own music, requiring you to set up some kind of streaming solution between your computer and Xbox. I've known people who have literally never been able to get this working, and that's not really the game's fault, but it's something to keep in mind before you get started. The effort is worth it though, at least it was for me. Once I finally got everything synced up and found songs that didn't lock up the game (a serious issue that is the game's fault), I entered a kind of synaesthetic nirvana. The excitement of Beat Hazard is, as you can imagine, largely dependent on the kinds of songs you play. Dynamic music seems to work best – songs with a build-up of intensity into a climax tend to give the game a nice difficulty ramp, so my prog metal collection tended to play rather nicely with the game.

There'll be some surprises too – I found Beyonce's Single Ladies to be one of the hardest songs. You will too, as the algorithm that builds the action in Beat Hazard isn't random, it's smart. Yeah, the game has a few hiccups – occasionally it takes far too long to send the next wave of enemies your way – but it's a fair trade-off for how well it typically syncs with each song. The actual gameplay is good - solid at the very least - but mostly made thrilling by the music integration. The variety of enemies can get boring a bit too quickly because there isn't a ton of interesting behavior. There's nothing like those weaselly green enemies in Geometry Wars - everything more or less flies in a set pattern and tries to crash into you or shoot you. Thankfully, Beat Hazard includes a couple elements that not only keep things interesting, but also more closely tie the music in with the gameplay. For one, collecting power-ups increases your ship's strength, but more important it increases the volume of the music. If you die you drop your items and the volume drops to a muted, disappointing level. It encourages staying alive not through a high score or progress, but through aesthetic pleasure. The game is more fun when you're doing well so you want to do well at any cost.

Review

Originally posted at: http://www.criticalgamer.co.uk/2010/08/11/castlevania-harmony-of-despair-review/ Before you look at the score at the bottom of this page, consider this simple calculation – for every player less than six that you play Castlevania: Harmony of Despair with, subtract a point. By yourself? Forget it. Even with two or three players it’s not quite there. But get 5 or 6 players together and the trek through Dracula’s castle becomes a riotously good time. That’s because Harmony of Despair actively goes against the grain of modern game design to craft a unique cooperative experience. The game does little to teach you its rules, but they’re never so obtuse that you can’t put your heads together and figure it out. The game reinforces comradery at every turn, something you can’t experience by yourself. Harmony of Despair’s design is a patchwork of concepts from various Castlevanias. The game’s five heroes come from different games in the series, and each has a unique set of quirks. Everyone has a mix of close-range attacks, magic projectiles, and double-jumps, but what they focus on and how they get stronger ranges wildly. Characters like Soma and Alucard use a shop to pay their way to better weapons; meanwhile Jonathan uses special attacks to level up his whip.

The balance between characters isn’t perfect – some characters simply take longer to advance – but the variety makes the game a very different experience for each player. Each of the game’s six chapters features a different set of quirks, cooperative challenges, and enemies. One chapter features a hulking monstrosity so huge it destroys a third of the dungeon. Defeating it requires the coordination of players in three completely different areas of the map. Keeping track of action that spans so many rooms is easy thanks to the game’s zoom function. By clicking in the right stick to zoom out the camera, players can pull out to a view of the entire level. You can even play like this, but it’s not advisable. Zooming and panning the camera allows you to survey your team mates, keep an eye on the boss, or simply find your way around the environment.

Review

Originally posted at: http://www.criticalgamer.co.uk/2010/08/25/sin-punishment-star-successor-review/ At one point in Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, your buddy is suspended over a rising pit of lava by a reptilian guinea pig. In another level, you travel the desert to fight a sand-lion and a sand-bird that morph together into a sand-lion-bird. You’ll even journey through someone’s dreams of ancient Japan and eventually make a trek into space because, honestly, that’s really the only place left to go. Treasure’s latest is nuts, and if not for the fact that they’ve been making psychotic shooter games for nearly two decades, this would almost seem like a last hurrah for the company. After all, they’ve been making incredibly niche games for longer than any studio should logically get away with.

Sin & Punishment drips with creativity – so much so, you rarely know how you’ll be playing it from one moment to the next. At the core is a 3D rail-shooter a la Panzer Dragoon or Rez, but that doesn’t stop the game from turning into a bullet-hell shooter or a side-scrolling beat ‘em up at random moments. And in true Treasure style, the game is bursting at the seams with boss fights – creative encounters that make up for ample checkpoints with concentrated bursts of incredible challenge. There’s so much packed in that it almost collapses under its own weight. The rail-shooting sections alone are so good that the constant divergences can get kind of annoying. If you’ve ever played the Gears of War games, they suffer from a similar design. Just like those games, all-too-often it’s the weird vehicle section or punishing boss fight that stops you in your tracks, and not the core gameplay. At the same time this also means the game is a lot longer than most shoot ‘em up style games. On the normal difficulty it can take around six hours, and even if you breeze through it there’s solid leaderboard support and a harder difficulty level. It’s the kind of game designed to be played over and over for high scores. After you complete levels, you can play them individually for practice and for attempts to top the leaderboard.

Like the best Wii games, it’s hard to imagine playing this one with anything but the Wii remote and nunchuk combo. The feeling of simultaneously dancing around bullets and quickly snapping your aim around the screen is liberating. Sure, you could play with a standard controller, but you wouldn’t want to. Unlike the best Wii games, the two-player mode is a bit lacking. The second player is little more than an extra reticle that can shoot independentally of the first player. It’s almost as superficial as the two-player mode in Super Mario Galaxy, which was intended for younger siblings or inexperienced players. What it lacks in multiplayer options it makes up with lots of playstyle customization. As mentioned, the game supports standard controllers like the Gamecube and Classic pads, and if you insist on using them there’s options for customizing layout and sensitivity. Additionally, each of the two characters handle differently. Isa, the boy, uses shots that require more accuracy, complemented by a large bomb attack. Meanwhile, Kachi, the girl/strange monster, or demon, or something (it’s not really clear) has a lock-on ability and Panzer Dragoon-style lasers. The point is, if you’re into these kinds of arcade-style shoot ‘em ups, Sin & Punishment is surprisingly robust compared to most of its contemporaries, including many of Treasure’s own games.