Serious Sam came out way back in 2001 originally, which is easy to forget given this version’s new coat of a lot more than paint. It’s a thorough – in some ways overwhelmingly so – encapsulation of a 10 year old game, released not only to honor the pure appeal of the original, but to also raise awareness of Serious Sam in advance of the big release of Serious Sam 3 this summer. As a result, it’s a little bit difficult to know how to approach this game in a review. There’s nothing wrong with the sensibilities behind it, which are arcadey and suitably disruptive in today’s overly convoluted shooter landscape, but there are a few things that were kinda busted about Serious Sam in the first place, and they’re here in full effect despite being presented in shaderrific HD.

“the game’s idea of increased difficulty is to pour a bajillion of the game’s most powerful and bulletspongey guys on top of your head”

Enemy spawns are blatantly from the Doom “monster closet” school, sans the closets. You’ll regularly see enemies simply pop out of thin air, especially at the far edges of the area you’re in , edges that you can actually get to, and they’ll still keep spawning right in front of you without so much as an effort to mask the fact with a teleportation effect of some fashion. Even more tangible than that is the game’s proneness to shut you into said rooms and send in waves of enemies until you’re blue in the face. That is hardly a new concept to this particular subset of the FPS genre – or any shooter in fact – but it’s especially grating when the game’s idea of increased difficulty is to pour a bajillion of the game’s most powerful and bulletspongey guys on top of your head. To a degree that’s what it’s always doing, but towards the very end it simply devolves into a test of patience and attention span.

Which isn’t quite as infuriating when you’re playing with a friend. Or 15 of them! The game supports a ludicrous 16 players in its delightful co-operative mode. Suddenly the gigantic spaces and the enemy numbers make sense, and even if you die you can sorta laugh about it, grit your teeth and try again together like a real couple facing a problem of some kind. Even if you’re alone, though, there’s a simple appeal to the gunning down of a billion dudes running at you in assorted patterns. The circle strafing you eventually need to resort to turns proceedings into an almost Geometry Wars like affair, and while it lays it on heavily with the desert setting there’s just enough finding a button to press and change in the scenery and geometry to keep things reasonably varied throughout.

“Serious Sam doesn’t evoke a charming 80s action hero pastiche at all, he just sounds monotonous and stupid”

With the notion of gaming icons becoming increasingly irrelevant and with characters becoming less inherently bold to fit with the times, it’s nice to have some around that just eject oneliners and kick ass. It’s too bad that Serious Sam, aside from his simple and recognizable look, is pretty terrible in this area. Drawing from the same well as Duke Nukem, Caleb and Lu Wang, arguably the most notable first person shooter protagonists of the years prior to the original release of this game, Serious Sam tries to emulate those characters but falls incredibly flat. Perhaps it’s because Croteam are Croatian and simply lack the cultural heritage of thick necked, one liner spouting action heroes like Arnie and Sly, and therefore just don’t quite get how to play on those tropes. Serious Sam doesn’t evoke a charming 80s action hero pastiche at all, he just sounds monotonous and stupid. As much as I’m hoping that Serious Sam 3 can fill the void left by Duke Nukem Forever’s rather muted reception, Serious Sam as an icon and as a distinctive character has absolutely nothing on Duke. Which is a shame! I’d love to love Sam.

“while Sam as a protagonist leaves something to be desired, there is a lot of personality and charm in the Egyptian motif and the batshit bonkers enemies”

But as a game it’s more or less the FPS equivalent of Gauntlet, and while Sam as a protagonist leaves something to be desired, there is a lot of personality and charm in the Egyptian motif and the batshit bonkers enemies you’ll encounter. Especially for the asking price on various digital download platforms – being a regular sale item whenever one’s on – and with some reasonable concessions made to its age under its facelifted exterior, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter is certainly worth your time if you’re up for some simple first person blasting. If you can fill it up with some buddies, too, it’s a complete no-brainer.

“It’s been twelve fucking years!” as Duke gladly alerts you after you beat the first level of the game. It’s actually 14 years now, and a game that has taken that long to come out is never going to be able to live up to any hype it may have built up. While Duke Nukem Forever is not a great game, it does actually manage to remain enjoyable, and somewhat bring back that old 90s shooter feeling that someone like me has missed in this day and age of military, or more strategic based first person shooters.

I say somewhat because there are two very non 90s first person shooter design choices that you wouldn’t expect to see. The first of these is the concept of only being able to carry two weapons. This is something that started becoming popular after Halo mastered the idea, and while that works brilliant in that game, in a game like Duke, you want to be able to carry all of the crazy arsenals that Duke comes into contact with throughout the game.

“It’s a shame about the limited weapon pickup as Duke Nukem should be about playing around with the sillier things open to you.”

There are plenty of weapon drops from enemies, so half of the time you do get to pick up the weapon you want, but it just seems strange to handicap the player’s fun with weaponry mix ups with a very un-Duke like gameplay concept. I ended up not using fancier guns, such as the shrink gun or the freeze ray, because of the weapon limit. Instead I’d normally opt to having the trusty shotgun, ripper or RPG because they work better in most situations. It’s a shame about the limited weapon pickup as Duke Nukem should be about playing around with the sillier things open to you.

Blasting stuff in Duke Nukem Forever is mindless fun though; it’s straight up macho man shoot or be shot at. The nine hour campaign is full of straightforward shooting, huge boss battles, vehicle riding and turret shooting. Modest puzzles and some platforming are featured too, especially the level where you have been shrunk to mini Duke. You have to jump around a kitchen, dodge past jars of Duke Sauce, run across cooking burgers and bounce off spatulas to get to a switch to turn off the electricity as a poor stranded waitress doesn’t want to be electrocuted. It’s a simple idea, but is entertaining to play.

Not all the levels are on par with each other. There are a couple of monotonous levels, such as exploring the desert in Duke’s monster truck. Every so often it runs out of fuel and you have to explore a section to find a canister of gas to fuel the truck for another journey. It feels like it was put in to extend the game as nothing exciting happens as you drive. That section all looks and feels very bleak.

“I would have probably complained about the lack of new enemies and weapons, but because Duke has been away for so long, it doesn’t matter.”

All the enemies are redesigns from Duke 3D, meaning you’ll be turning Pig Cops, Octobrains and other familiar enemies into bloody pieces using all the same weapons as before. If this was any other game I would have probably complained about the lack of new enemies and weapons, but because Duke has been away for so long, it doesn’t matter. Enemies look vastly different in this game that it never enters your head that they are the same as before.

The second feature that represents modern day gaming is regenerating health. Duke no longer has a health counter; instead Duke’s life is dependent on his Ego Metre. This metre depletes when hit, but regenerates after not taking damage for a period of time. It impacts how you play the game, since once you are low on ego you’ll go to run and hide behind an object to build your ego back up. Whenever has Duke Nukem ran away to hide? It should be about fast reactions and your dodging ability. I am assuming these ideas were implemented by the development team to try modernising it.

Ego can be increased over the course of the game through interaction with objects. Playing games like pinball machines, air hockey, pool, plus doing Duke like things such as using a glory hole, benching some weights, looking at your reflection in the mirror or watching a self-made Duke Nukem porn video all add to permanent ego boosting. One of the things that stood out about Duke Nukem 3D was the interaction you had with objects in the environment. The way the ego is implemented in this game and how it tries to force the player to interact with objects to gain health increase is a neat way to promote all the amusing little things you can interact with throughout the game’s levels.

Duke Nukem as a character is still the action movie hero stereotype; thankfully he hasn’t moved on and still loves women, drinking beer, killing aliens and throwing out amusing one-liners. Jon St. John returns as the voice of Duke (would you really want anyone else?) and is spot on with his delivery of vulgar insults and movie/video game quotes. Duke made me laugh a few times as there are some genuine good gags. If you aren’t into a little immature adultery humour then this might not click with you. Also there are a lot of references in Duke Nukem Forever, some examples are Donkey Kong, Halo, Dead Space, and even Christian Bale’s rant on the set of Terminator Salvation gets a spoof in this.

“When the video game market is full of games where you have classes and pre-equipped weapons, it makes a nice change to play a multiplayer like this.”

Multiplayer is a run back to the days of games like Unreal Tournament, Quake and the like. There’s Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Babe and Hail to the King. All of these feature weapon pickups, power ups such as invincibility and double damage. Gameplay wise the multiplayer is very fast paced, it’s good fun and generally a laugh to play. When the video game market is full of games where you have classes and pre-equipped weapons, it makes a nice change to play a multiplayer like this.

But the fun can’t cover the troubled development cycle that Duke Nukem Forever had. It should be noted that I played through the PC version, which is the best version of the game to play as it doesn’t suffer from bad loading times, has solid frame rate and better textures. That said the game is a mix bag with looks. Sometimes it looks decent and other times it’s a bit plain, with models not exactly looking all that good. Also at one point I had to reload a save point because I was on part of a level where enemies were supposed to come attack Duke on drop ships, but never did, so I couldn’t progress.

Duke’s not going to be able to muscle his way through all the big named first-person shooters games on the market, but really this game’s audience is to people who played the original and have fond memories of that, and just want to revisit them without having to play Duke Nukem 3D. As a game, Duke Nukem Forever gets a lot of Duke right, but the crazy development time that became an industry joke, and the increased popularity that followed once it was finally coming overshadows what Duke Nukem Forever ends up being. It’s an old favourite hero coming into new times to give us a taste of what things used to be like, a throwback to the 90s. It’s not a great game, but it is a simpleminded dumb shooter that is enjoyable, was it really going to be anything else?

It’s difficult to write about Portal 2 to any meaningful degree without chipping away at the wonderful twists and turns and surprises that effectively embody it. That goes for both its exemplary narrative and its evolving gameplay that not only contextually riffs on its portal shooting core, but introduces new elements that fundamentally alter the way you need to think about the challenges that come before you.

“It’s a game that happens around you but never in such a way that your presence seems to dictate what parts of the world exist”

What you need to know is that Portal 2 – like Portal before it – manages what is often thought of as impossible. It is irrefutably, relentlessly video gamey to the point where you’d sooner place it next to Tetris than the plethora of genres that have dominated gaming in recent years, and yet it wraps it all in an incredibly compelling narrative with more heart and character than any flailing, heavy handed attempt at a “cinematic experience” has ever managed. It’s contextual yet never arbitrarily so, it’s scripted but never intrusive. It’s a game that happens around you but never in such a way that your presence seems to dictate what parts of the world exist. It’s a subtle difference from your Uncharteds and Call of Duties, a trait that only Valve fully seem to possess, but it does make all the difference.

What it means for Portal is an amazing sense of being at the mercy of the incredible contraptions, the vast spaces and the awe-inspiring machinery. And yet, at the core is a puzzle game free from the shackles of typical gaming tropes; there are no needless expectations to fire a single bullet or punch a single dude in the course of its 6-8ish hour campaign. It is essentially mechanics, rules, problems, solutions and a gleeful, unrestricted exploration thereof. A video game in the purest sense.

“solving problems is more engaging, leading to a more satisfying gaming experience overall”

And as a video game it is a resounding success and a markedly better game than its already decidedly impressive predecessor. Once you wrapped your head around the main mechanics of Portal it rarely strayed from that core principle, thus grasping it and applying it over and over quickly became an easy enough excercise, having the credits roll in notime. Portal 2 isn’t significantly more challenging per se, but without giving anything away you do juggle more variables this time around, so even when you figure out the main principles, solving problems is more engaging, leading to a more satisfying gaming experience overall.

It will put a massive grin on your face as it introduces a new situation that at first looks entirely disjointed, but then just clicks into place, makes sense, and has you traversing the environment in a way you originally didn’t even remotely percieve.

“‘Let’s Play’ youtubers systematically destroy games for themselves all the time”

As a game it’s exceedingly satisfying, surprising and exciting. “Let’s Play” youtubers systematically destroy games for themselves all the time, but Portal 2 is a particularly heartbreaking prospect to think people won’t explore and figure out on their own. As an experience, largely by virtue of the same factors, it’s unforgettable, thrilling, absolutely hilarious, strangely menacing, and genuinely moving. It operates from a place of humour and self-awareness, but its attempts at sincerity are just as successful.

Its joy to be a thing – rarely displayed by sequels in particular – and its big heart are impossible to ward off; loving it is so amazingly easy it’s simply a game we can all agree on.

Of course, if you don’t, that’s fine too.

You monster.

A lingering notion in Killzone 2 remained till the very end; that you were invading someone else’s planet. For those among us who played Guerrilla’s first game, it had the benefit of seeming like a necessary course of action, but it was nonetheless a somewhat odd sensation. Helghan soldiers would yell things like “you have no right to be here!”, and while that’s pushing it a bit, mr you-totally-hit-me-first, it was a vibe quite unique to KZ2 unless you derived more narrative from the surprisingly similarly set up Quake 2 than most of us did.

“its admittedly somewhat tame payoffs were relegated to the final moments of its campaign”

But a related notion was also quite palpable, and that was one of the game’s storyline being oblivious to the fact that you were invaders. It never really reflected on that fact, seemingly content with KZ1 setting up the conflict thoroughly enough that we’d carry that with us into this new scenario. Even so, playing the aggressors and having those be the generic kind of gravely voiced, quipping army dudes without a moment’s contemplation made the entire thing feel a tad soulless and unsympathetic. The main source of drama and friction came from Rico, going from annoying am-I-supposed-to-find-this-guy-awesome? to nah-he’s-totally-an-asshole-and-we-know-it status and giving the game a semblance of memorable arc. Mostly though, all of its admittedly somewhat tame payoffs were relegated to the final moments of its campaign, joined by one in particular that more or less salvaged the entire storyline.

Killzone 3 picks up the moment its predecessor ended, continuing the thread that got started with a gunshot, and it does so remarkably well. This time the most pervasive notion is one of humility and desperation. This game starts with our protagonists in the middle of the bee hive, having just hit it with a gigantic stick, and throughout the campaign you are being hunted. Hunted while slowly realising the sheer gravity of what you did at the end of the last game. It’s a really compelling jumping off point, and the game plays that chord with excellence through to the end. The result is a more relatable story where you really start to root for the characters you play, and Rico – as with most characters that aren’t just focustested to eff quip bags of generic likeability – joins the ranks of Alan Wake and becomes a richer character that you start to warm to in a far more profound way than most protagonists.

The reason I’m going into the story and characters more than usual is because they help colour what is ostensibly a very atmosphere driven franchise. In fact, if you’re in it for the gameplay you’re probably already out of it. After the complete clusterfuck of AI problems, glitches and performance issues of the first game, KZ2 came out an absolute technical powerhouse, raping everything in sight. However, as a game, that too was riddled with downright baffling design decisions in everything from the most fundamental core mechanics and inventory handling to the level design and overall structure of the campaign. Suffice to say, KZ is more about the *other stuff* while the game is simply a shuttle taking you from one setpiece to the next.

“Again, the result is that carrying the best all-round weapon is the obvious choice every time, and therefore the shooting becomes more monotonous than it easily could have been”

That factor has been diminished some with KZ3, but not dramatically so. It still retains some core oddities like the way it handles your arsenal. You’re able to carry one pistol, one main weapon and one special weapon. Although the special weapon means you can sometimes carry a bazooka with you beyond the upcoming overtly bazooka enabling shootout – unlike KZ2 where you could only have two weapons at any given time – it still means you need to choose between carrying a shotgun or a machine gun with you as your “normal” weapon. Again, the result is that carrying the best all-round weapon is the obvious choice every time, and therefore the shooting becomes more monotonous than it easily could have been if you were given the ability to carry a dynamic setup with you. It’s this stubbornness – among other things – that prevents KZ from really taking flight proper as a shooter.

As if to counter that phrasing specifically, you do get a lot of cool stuff to play around with this time, including a funky jetpack. The jetpack in particular almost creates a Jumping Flash like sensation on the parts of levels made to utilise it fully. In fact, between the jetpack, the “exoskeleton” (a mech like thing you stomp around in) and the high speed vehicle chases on the ground and in the air, Killzone 3 is actually filled with enough sensory variety that the simplicity of the shooting becomes much less pronounced. Couple that with a better sense of *when to move the hell on* from one encounter to the next, keeping momentum up nicely with spliced in, well directed cutscenes, and you have a much more enjoyable game based on what are essentially pretty superficial changes to the formula.

But those changes totally work. They echo some of the design decisions in Uncharted 2, but from a first person perspective and with more pressure put on the player to survive, they come off more urgent and engrossing as opposed to mostly being an elaborate scripted show. Variety in surroundings aren’t exclusively just a way to vary visual feedback, but it also serves to create more varied geometry aswell. Even though the shooting on foot feels identical throughout and the enemy variety is down there with the majority of shooters on the market (ie same guy over and over with different hat) the locales have you taking cover and finding very different lines of sight to enemies. This is actually more important than it sounds, and it’s especially noticable coming off of Killzone 2 which is *incredibly* set in its flat horizontal plane ways.

“These things coupled with the more organic level design go to great lengths to leviate the trappings of an otherwise quite one-note core”

You also get some variety from how it sets up different levels – fairly obviously derived from the excellent albeit sometimes frustratingly funneled Modern Warfares 1 and 2 – in that you’re sometimes paired with another dude syncronizing your attacks, and other times you’re mostly in the shadows and hiding in tall grass to counter otherwise impossible odds. These things coupled with the more organic level design go to great lengths to leviate the trappings of an otherwise quite one-note core.

So Killzone 3 is easily the best game in the series to date. While informed enough by the others to the point where you should think about playing those first, the storyline in 3 comes off as the most compelling, too. It’s not terribly elaborate or necessarily an epic space opera taken in isolation, but that’s not what it’s going for. On the contrary it feels more intimate, approaching things on a level you can easily relate to and staying true to characters that surprisingly subtly develop over the course of the 8-10ish hours you’ll spend with them. It’s a scenario that concentrates on its one, main predicament, and overlays that with some pseudo-political drama that gives it an extra dimension. It plays to its limitations as a video game and pulls off an elegant narrative using tried and true storytelling devices. Meanwhile, intelligent ways of mixing up the gameplay with measured bouts of on rails sequences, different machinery to pilot and excellent Move implementation all gloss over what is mechanically a pretty unremarkable game.

The end result is a great sequel that is still somewhat bound by the arbitrary limitations of its core. It never comes off as a missed opportunity – in fact it possesses a very engaging sense of conviction that manages to dazzle throughout – but it definitely has a lot of wiggle room to become the superb video game it quite frankly still is not.

Word poop is fine, it’s one of my most prominent traits, but this place is more of a diary of sorts. It’s this heritance to ourselves and others which will eventually serve as a testament and reminder of where all that damn time went. We spent it! All! In one place! In front of a box radiating light with plastic in some configuration in our sweaty, spastic embrace.

So what’s going on, why this sudden burst of self endulgent nostalgia? Well, I think it’s time to re-establish what M7 is because it’s kinda been spinning its wheels in place for a while now. The first thing you should do if you’re interested in updates here is to follow the Mode-7 twitter feed located to your right. We’re also a newly opened group on Steam, located here. It’s open to all, just come join us if you want to chat us up, play games or whatever.

As some of you are at least somewhat aware, the site got an overhaul before christmas by Simon the pig-like fascist on some sort of dilerious high, stomping around in the belief that it should all be grayscale + yellow. That was a horrible mistake; a vibe a more perceptive person than Simon the pig-like fascist would’ve picked up on, hearing all those people go “YOU’RE MAKING A HORRIBLE MISTAKE!”. Being stuck in a pig-like fascist state, I didn’t hear those people and promptly went on to spend ridiculous amounts of time turning the site grayscale + yellow.

Ssssso. Ahead for me now is to undo that mistake by bringing colour back to this place. We’re talking headers for every single review over in our Opinions section, the heart icon to your left. And then there’ll trickle in some content at a rediculously slow pace, M7 style!

Seeya around!

This text was originally written for Eurogamer’s reader review section and published August 3, 2006

Sonic Riders is the most successful attempt at 3D Sonic in recent years. It’s weird at first, almost headache inducingly confusing in fact, but once you wrap your head around it it offers a consistently good time with short bursts of brilliance woven into it.

It helps if you like Sonic of course, because if you don’t then F-Zero GX is the obvious choice over this for your speed fix. (F-Zero GX prolly should be bought by anyone in their right mind regardless) There’s so much here that depends on you appreciation of the characters and cool Sega extras that makes the game approach fanservice in a lot of areas unlike something like Mario Tennis, Golf, Party or Strikers which are thoroughly good games in their own right. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a real solid game here – albeit somewhat twitchy occasionally – but if Sonic doesn’t appeal to you thematically at all, you prolly needn’t bother with this.

Aaanyway, Riders (with a red R – a nice callback to Sonic R for the Saturn even though this is infinitely better) puts you on a hoverboard and sends you flying down what’s essentially Sonic Adventure style levels with a bit more shameless it’s a track design, and you’ll encounter familiar grind bits, tunnels, speed arrows and such.

“The relationship between speed, tricks and air is what makes the game confusing and potentially frustrating at first, but once you figure it out it’s really fun”

What you wanna do in Riders though is preserve your “Air” which is really the word for fuel in this game. You don’t actually need to accelerate, as the character does that automatically sort of like the default setting in Tony Hawk. By performing tricks – that feel SSX-ily random yet satisfying – you build up you air meter that’ll keep your speed up aswell as allow you to perform drifts and boosts. The boost isn’t as central here as it usually is in your standard Burnout or F-Zero sense as it mostly lets you gain speed fast and then you keep that by not cocking up. The relationship between speed, tricks and air is what makes the game confusing and potentially frustrating at first, but once you figure it out it’s really fun.

Drifting feels a lot like Outrun and Mario Kart, which you don’t expect, with the game looking so much like F-Zero GX, and that means that you press and hold a shoulder button to initiate a drift and then you adjust your board’s angle to determine whether you’re making a narrow or a wide curve. A lot of places in Riders are really narrow, so it takes some practice to get the curves just right, again initially leading to some argh moments. When you release the shoulder button you shoot out of the curve depending on how long the drift was.

Jumping off ramps is done by, er, jumping. However, it’s important to note that the game wants you to press and charge a jump just the right amount before a ramp. If you press the button too early you’ll slow down, and if you press it too late the jump won’t be as high nor as fast. The better timed jump, the more crazy trick combos you can do, the more speed you gain and the more air you gain/preserve aswell.

You can also level up in the game. See how this is a weirdly complex game yet? Anyway, levels, yes. Levels determine how well you can perform certain moves. For instance, there are different classes of characters; Flight, Speed and Power. The flight characters can travel through rings suspended in the air. In order to reach some of them, the character’s level needs to be at least 2 (3 is max) which enables you to tilt the board to hover through the air. The different classes have different powers that let them use shortcuts on the levels, but the extent of this you’ll just have to figure out yourself. I’m not writing a user manual here.

“It’s full of stuff to do and unlock which is great after having completed Sonic Rush with only sound test to show for it”

Um. Right. Yeah and also there’s a story in here of course. It’s largely centered on a mythical people – the Babylonians – of whom the new characters in here are all descendants. It’s not terribly deep or involving, but I’d still say it’s worthwhile for Sonic fans like me. The cutscenes are as usual rendered BEAUTIFULLY, and the proper ending to the game has my fan-muscles flexing. There are also mission modes, grand prix, four player splitscreen races, tag races, battles, etc etc. It’s full of stuff to do and unlock which is great after having completed Sonic Rush with only sound test to show for it. There are a bunch of cool extra characters here too for those that have the conviction to pursue such things.

Sonic Riders has a very steep learning curve, and despite having on-screen pointers for everything you need to do at a certain section on a track, it’s still dizzyingly difficult to get into if you aren’t backed up by relentless Sonic love. It retains some trademark 3D Sonic twitchyness but ditching the pseudo-free roaming nature of SA makes the camera and level design more reliable. Once you get to grips with everything there’s a genuinely enjoyable, gorgeous and smooth game here.

This text was originally written for Gamespot’s reader review section and published September 25, 2006

Yakuza isn’t Shenmue with guns (it’s barely Yakuza with guns) and that misconception is potentially its downfall.

Spikout: Battle Street arrived on Xbox a couple of years ago to very little fanfare. It was the first home conversion of the arcade game Spikeout, and it was arguably the best bare knuckles beat em up game since Die Hard Arcade. Of course critics and media in general ripped it to shreds, but anyone half interested in the genre expects as much anyway.

“Yakuza has been mentioned in the same breath as Shenmue and Grand Theft Auto in the past, both in marketing talk and people hamfistedly describing it in previews, it’s not terribly reminiscent of either”

The reason I bring up Spikeout is because while Yakuza has been mentioned in the same breath as Shenmue and Grand Theft Auto in the past, both in marketing talk and people hamfistedly describing it in previews, it’s not terribly reminicent of either, as a matter of fact. It’s essentially Spikeout with a chunk of tokyo wrapped around it and a proper, well written and reasonably well acted story. Of course it’d be a disservice to leave it at that, because it is certainly an infinitely deeper and more compelling experience than Spikeout was.

A lot of the time you’ll be running around in a district of Tokyo (fictional one at that from what I gather) and this is handled in a pseudo Devil May Cry/standard RPG fashion, camera and interaction wise. You’ll be able to talk to certain civilians and sometimes get sent on small sub-quests for money and/or experience points. The RPG comparison is especially valid because you’ll also encounter semi-random battles, where someone yells something and runs towards you. You can escape these by running away, but more often than not, you’ll run into them, triggering the encounter immediately.

When this happens you’re transported into a combat scenario. This takes place in a confined place surrounded by either people or walls, based on the area you were attacked in. This is where the game is essentially transformed into an advanced Spikeout. In addition to a growing assortment of moves, you can pick things up in the environment – Stuff like lead pipes, traffic cones, restaurant menus, etc – and whack baddies with them.

Once you’ve whacked people a sufficient amount your HEAT meter is built up and enables a bunch of powerful context sensitive moves. These also grow in numbers during the course of the game and consist of, for instance, stomping in the face of a grounded enemy or grabbing him by the neck hair and whacking his head against something unpleasant. It all looks deliciously violent, and it’s a near orgasmic feeling topping off a big brawl with a couple of subsequent heat moves like that. So, needless to say, lead character Kazuma Kiryu isn’t a very sensitive when it comes to street scum. However, as a person, he’s as kind as they come.

“one could probably point fingers and scream cliché, but that’s only an issue if you’ve seen the kind of material this story borrows from”

Yakuza’s story kicks off when Kazuma takes the fall for a friend’s accidental murder of their “Oyabun”, which is basically Yakuza talk for “boss”. Kazuma’s friend – Nishiki – goes free and Kazuma himself is expelled and sent to prison for 10 years. Once released, he faces not only a world that has little place for him, but also a friend that no longer seems so sympathetic. Many of the themes seem extremely familiar, and one could probably point fingers and scream cliché, but that’s only an issue if you’ve seen the kind of material this story borrows from. Even if you are a big fan of japanese crime stories and have seen a complete bunch, though, this story still manages to take a few turns you didn’t see coming, and does so with what’s certainly one of the tougher main characters in gaming.

Cutscenes and fighting are padded well with a free roaming city portion. You can walk anywhere at any time and visit one of many “hostesses”, gambling areas, stores and so on. The omission of playable Sega arcade games in the Club Sega places is probably only noticable to those that played Shenmue 1 and 2, but it’s still fairly disappointing considering all they have in there is a crane lift machine.

“it doesn’t quite make narrative sense to go gambling when somebody’s house is on fire”

Going to a hostess is actually more fun than it sounds (or is that the other way around?) because it triggers what’s essentially a dating sim. It’s actually surprisingly satisfying to answer her questions right and drink her under the table. Of course if you play your cards right you’ll eventually get to sleep with them, possibly in the most anti-climatic fashion since Larry 1. There are a variety of different girls you can approach, and all of them have their own unique preferences. There’s also gambling to be made (or had?), but at the time of writing this I’ve spent too little time with it to write anything in depth about it. The story pretty much always has you running around rescuing people and stuff like that, so it’s difficult to find a good time to do these things. It’s not that any of it has a time limit, but it doesn’t quite make narrative sense to go gambling when somebody’s house is on fire. I can say, however, that there’s a complete bunch of different games you can play, including roulette, dice and cards. Money can be won, experience can be collected.

Experience, yes. For different things in the game you gain experience, and just like any RPG you use them to become stronger. In Yakuza you basically upgrade one of three different gauges. Each one represents different combat aspects, and through here you also gain access to more moves. Later in the game there’s also a guy that teaches you moves that you can’t acquire through mere grinding.

That’s basically all there is to Yakuza, and that’s probably also its biggest problem. In these post-Shenmue times when people are still waiting for Sega to deliver either a true sequel or some equivalent, it’s easy to take a look at Yakuza and assume that’s what’s going on there. It isn’t. Yakuza is a painfully or refreshingly simple game, depending on how you look at it, and if it’s an evolution of something it’s the scrolling beat em up genre, not action adventure/F.R.E.E. or whatever moniker they assigned Shenmue.

“It tackles its themes with almost relentless integrity”

Yakuza succeeds on most of its endeavours, albeit to varying degrees. The story, while well written and mostly well acted by Lex Luthor, Faith The Vampire Slayer, Mr Blonde, Luke Skywalker and friends, never quite connects the way they obviously hoped for. The emotional scenes are hardly ever moving on anything but an aknowledging “okay, this is supposed to be moving” level, and that’s probably the most unfortunate thing about it. It still has awesome characters, a good dose of badassness and perhaps most importantly; both a tone and content that is sophisticated and unmistakably mature. It tackles its themes with almost relentless integrity, and if you don’t know what an “Oyabun” is, for instance, the game isn’t gonna stop to explain that to you.

Fighting is obviously the bestest thing about Yakuza. It’s the base of the game, the thing you’ll spend the most time doing (that or trying to get into hostess panties) and it’s quite frankly worth the price alone. It might start out somewhat awkward, but later on, as you learn to mix things up and get really good at it, it has moments of true bliss.

In the end it’s really a matter of expectations. Do I judge this on the merits of Spikeout gone story driven, or do I see a crime saga that attempts to tell a moving and thrilling tale while borrowing gameplay mechanics from jRPGs and old school beat em ups? Yakuza comes across as a big budget production on account of its star-ridden cast and Takashi Miike directed prequel shorts, but it doesn’t really live up to that status. Ultimately, Yakuza is not enough of the game you want it to be – partly because that was never the intention – but it’s plenty the game you discover when you play it, and that’s certainly good enough.

This text was originally written for Gamespot’s reader review section and published April 11, 2005

Curiously, many of the things that made Burnout 2 such a great experience are missing from this sequel

Burnout 3 is, in many ways, a very accomplished racer that just about anyone will enjoy. It’s easy to pick up, absolutely gorgeous and sounds phenomenal. Cars zipping past you will have you ducking and dodging like your mum playing Super Mario Bros. The only gripe I have with it is that it’s taken some pretty bad turns since its predecessor.

First of all, this game introduces possibly the worst gameplay alteration since.. Well frankly I can’t think of anything. Anyway, if someone tries to use skills to actually drive past you, you can always smash his car into oblivion in a new stupid gameplay twist called Takedowns. This isn’t your normal kind of push-people-into-traffic kind of thing either, it’s a full on whack-your-opponent-off-the-bloody-track kind of thing. And it’s frustrating too, mind. I don’t normally object to stuff that makes for a more aggressive driving experience, in most cases that just makes it more fun. With Burnout however, which is basically all about being able to avoid traffic, working up your boost meter (which is also broken now, more on that later) and beating people because you’re simply better than they are at the game, it does nothing besides diluting an otherwise utterly pure experience.

Onto the new and “improved” Burnout meter (Burnout lingo for boost meter). You gain more boost for driving in oncoming traffic, drifting, performing takedowns, et cetera. However, whereas in past Burnout games you could only use the burnout meter when the gauge was full, offering an incentive to wait for the right moment to use it, this game lets you use whatever burnout you’ve gathered whenever you like. What this means in practice is that once you’ve crashed (and takedowns assure that you will. A lot.), you can just quickly head out in oncoming traffic and almost instantly be boosting with the rest of your opponents, successfully thwarting any kind of strategy the other games in the series had going for them.

“In order to make this new “spectacular” addition to gameplay work, they had to reduce the penalty for actually crashing. Hey, once upon a time this game was about NOT crashing”

I recognize why this kind of thing was needed, why they felt that it was necessary to alter the way the burnout meter worked, once the Takedowns were in there. In order to make this new “spectacular” addition to gameplay work, they had to reduce the penalty for actually crashing. Hey, once upon a time this game was about NOT crashing. Starting to see my point? To add insult to injury, Burnout 2 had a magnificent combo system that let you multiply your score each time you’d successfully filled the burnout meter DURING a burnout. I was hoping they’d flesh that out even more in this game, but along with some other expectations I had, that one was crushed also.

The music was another huge let down for me. Burnout 2′s soundtrack consisted of some pretty generic but decidedly video game’ish rock tunes, a few of which were actually rather catchy and perfect for the game. The thing that was really great about it, though, was how they’d be playing a watered down version of the song while driving normally, and then when you used your burnout, they’d add the final layers of the song and up the volume. It made for a fantastic adrenaline-inducing effect. Enter Burnout 3, with a bunch of licensed tracks, all of which you’ll probably love if you’re half my age. Sadly, I’m a full two halves of my age.

A similar effect to Burnout 2 is attempted by stopping the music when you crash. The only effect this has, at least on me, is sheer unadulterated rage. Few games make me wanna rig my Xbox with explosives and take cover. This does. Sometimes.

“No longer can you skip the crashes and go straight for the racing goodness. Instead you’re forced to play all of the crash modes and boring ‘special races’”

The progression through the single player game is also quite messed up. No longer can you skip the crashes and go straight for the racing goodness. Instead you’re forced to play all of the crash modes and boring “special races” with F1 cars you can barely control. It’s not that they’re particularly difficult to get to grips with, it’s just that they’re extremely fast and extremely dull. Since you’re all alone racing against time you’re likely to just lose interest after crashing for the fiftieth time, and not be bothered. Should you be one of the lucky few who enjoy every single game mode in the game, this won’t detract from the fun at all, but it’s still an obvious step back from how Burnout 2 handled things.

All things considered, this is by no means a bad game, it’s just continually disappointing when compared to its predecessor. The technical wonder at display here can’t be ignored, as the game truly looks amazing while maintaining an insane sense of speed with no noticeable frame loss. The crashes are more extreme than ever, and at least the first twenty times, they’ll make you go “aaah!” way more than “aaargh!”. The online mode is probably the main incentive to buy this game instead of picking up the budget version of 2, even though it’s marred by EA’s lobby system that leaves a lot to be desired and basically kicks you right out in the menu half of the time.

When it works, it’s an absolute blast, and it’s easy to forget all about the flaws and just enjoy the fast paced action. Because in the end, it’s still largely Burnout, and that is always a good thing.

This text was originally written for Eurogamer’s reader review section and published January 21, 2009

Sonic Unleashed is strange. It’s truly bewildering for a number of reasons. It is a game where Sega has obviously listened to the critics and fans and made a host of changes based on those complaints and ended up with a game that no doubt is the best crafted Sonic game on the stationary consoles since the original Sonic Adventure. The strange thing though is that while it is mostly devoid of the unfair bottomless pit insta-deaths and almost entirely rid of the affectionately named “shitty friends” of the blue star, it somehow ends up being the most genuinely un-interesting, downright boring Sonic game of basically all of them.

The gameplay is first and foremost reliable, which is rare to see in a 3D Sonic game outside of the balls crunchingly challenging but still very competent and I dare say rewarding Sonic Riders. Even when you’re out of control there’s a nice margin for error in that you mostly just get slowed down or fall down a level and have to take a longer, slower route than you would otherwise be able to stay on. Even when Sonic turns into the infamous Werehog, the controls work like they should and you never go into a twitch-frenzy the way you would on a regular basis in everything from Sonic Adventure 2 to the much berated “Sonic 2006″. Sonic Unleashed for the most part is safe, reliable, predictable, and feels a lot like having training wheels on your bike, someone holding you firmly around the waist and… the bike is bolted to the floor.

“Many call this game out on its Werehog portions but truth be told they’re not awful”

Ironically this is the crux of the game. For as much verbal (and I imagine some physical) abuse 3D Sonics have taken over the years I have on a fundamental, core level found something about them to like in their freeform homing attack glory, and now that Sonic is being locked down to a safe path what little thrill there was left – even in Sonic ’06 – is all but extinguished. Many call this game out on its Werehog portions but truth be told they’re not awful either. They’re just predictable and safe like the rest of the game but they move at a fourth the speed so I guess you have more time to reflect and realise that you’re bored out of your mind.

The game does occasionally take off and becomes somewhat entertaining, most notably on the Holoska and Eggmanland levels, and that’s largely because they mimic Sonic Riders in so many ways. You drift around corners using a very similar shoulder button and control stick combination, and the levels themselves have many moments where a number of different maneuvers are required in succession so that you can improve your pace by knowing what to do and when to do it. During the other stages you all too often feel like the developers haven’t realised the opportunity in actually having someone sitting there with a controller in hand waiting for something to do. A lot of times large stretches are traversed by just running in a straight line with plenty of space to move from side to side but no reason at all to do it, and other times you’re shot through elaborate twists and turns and loops with no required input at all. In fact, you’ll probably just mess stuff up if you do get creative during those moments.

And yet time and again I find myself thinking “well it works, it’s good because I’m not being shafted by the game during any of this the way I’m used to from Heroes or Shadow The Hedgehog”. Well that’s true enough, but in removing the risk of messing up, they’re also left with a game that pretty much gets by without you for the most part. For some reason the developer has opted for an absolutely archaic lives system that means game overs are a possibility. I imagine that is why every level is a total cakewalk until you arrive at the last level and that’s a bag of bricks in the head. Suddenly you’re tasked with really precise maneuvering that leave you with an insane difficulty spike. You have to wonder why they didn’t just go with the Secret Rings setup of having infinite lives and having a proper learning curve. You know, like games do it.

“Imagine my disappointment when Unleashed feels nothing like any iteration of Sonic, let alone an interesting one”

Okay so I’m a fan, and if you’re reading this you possibly are too, so we should be able to deal with this. We’ve seen worse times! Lord knows Heroes was an insult, and Sonic 06 had us watching load times and Sims asking us to do stuff more than actually playing a Sonic game. The reason I’ve been sticking with Sonic all this time is partly because I kinda enjoy the universe established in Sonic Adventure. I like Big and Shadow and Rouge and this sort of lame, furry soap stuff. I like it when Sonic is depicted well as a simple, free spirit whose answer to everything is to just keep moving, keep running, and don’t let the bad times stick. Imagine my disappointment when Unleashed feels nothing like any iteration of Sonic, let alone an interesting one.

Sure you’ve got Robotnik firing mechs and robots and laser beams and all kinds of crazy stuff at Sonic in the intro, but moments later you’re chatting up disney dudes in Africa, accompanied by a fairy squirrel. I mean what the hell. The levels themselves never feel like they adhere to any of the familiar Sonic locations – and no I’m not asking for Green Hill Zone here. There’s more of the south european holiday resort imagery that made no sense in ’06, making no sense in this one either, and ultimately the only levels that carry a Sonic vibe are the aforementioned Holoska – which is somewhat Ice Cap-esque – and Eggmanland.. which is self explanatory.

There’s no sight of any of the now-familiar characters apart from Sonic, Tails and Amy, but to make matters even worse, Tails doesn’t even get to be Sonic’s sidekick. Instead you’ve got a tiny, annoying, ice cream obsessed jerk flying around (yeah, furry flying thing, remind you of anyone?) while Tails is stuck being a cardboard cutout you converse with briefly to further the story. All this said I haven’t even mentioned the Werehog bits yet. During the night, everything’s obviously all dark and gloomy and the locations are covered in neon beams to indicate where the Werehog can go stretchy arms and chimmy across. This, mixed with the blueish/purple “Dark Gaia” enemies that spawn out of nowhere definitely does not increase the sensation that you’re playing a Sonic game. Again, much like the gameplay itself, it’s not like any of the presentation is bad or tasteless. It is just completely uninspired and devoid of personality. You’re essentially in different parts of the world but their names have the letters switched out a bit so Alaska is Holoska. How very imaginative.

So not only is it mostly just boring to play, there’s really nothing here that warrants an investment even for hard boiled post-Adventure Sonic fans. It’s telling that Sonic and The Secret Rings which is set against an Arabian Nights background has buckets more Sonic feel than this one.

“This is certainly the Sonic game most people will be able to tolerate gameplay wise because it never really treats you unfairly, but it also never really… treats you to anything either”

So Sonic Unleashed is strange. It’s no doubt the most competent 3D Sonic… possibly ever, purely from a technical perspective and in terms of polish and lavish production values. I mean there are no wild glitches or anything like that, and you can tell this hasn’t been rushed out the door. At the same time it’s got its priorities absolutely messed up. This is certainly the Sonic game most people will be able to tolerate gameplay wise because it never really treats you unfairly, but it also never really… treats you to anything either.

I’ve been able to cautiously recommend each of the technically flawed 3D Sonics over the years to fans of the characters and universe, but I just don’t know who would enjoy this one. It is heartbreaking amounts of fun in two of its levels, granted, and if they only capitalise on what makes those two great then they’re truly on to something, but it gets the whole presentation wrong and messes up the vibe of the series to degrees Mario Sunshine could never dream of. Ultimately the majority of the time spent in Unleashed’s mock-up continents will be time spent suffering through functional but unfun levels in hopes of getting to one that takes advantage of the fundamentally sound gameplay mechanics, and at no point will you really feel like you’re playing a Sonic game.

Unleashed is a solid foundation. If you could trust Sega to realise what components actually worked in this one then the next game should be a sure fire success, at least in humble 3D Sonic terms. However, the Werehog and the general lack of familiar themes – both for fans of the Megadrive games and fans of the Dreamcast era ones – stand as testaments to how out of touch with Sonic fans Sega truly are.

The one crux of the Call of Duty games – and this has been the case since the series’ roots in Medal of Honor – is that they are heavily scripted, relentlessly linear experiences. That’s the one silent contract you enter into when you decide to play any of the games in Activision’s ludicrously popular franchise.

Provided that is not a problem, the steps taken to refine the gated, checkpoint driven campaign mode in recent entries really has done wonders to create a much more convincingly engrossing game. Modern Warfare jerked you around a lot, and it was difficult to maintain the illusion that things were happening around you as opposed to waiting for you like a secret birthday party, but Modern Warfare 2 made huge leaps in that regard, wrapping around you in a far less rigid manner, and taking every directed, scripted opportunity to blow the top of your head clean off.

Black Ops is a further refinement of that, but it pulls back on the scripting a bit – the way Treyarch’s entries in the series has usually opted to do – to make for a game that often relies on a more conventional shooter pace and progression. Using the scripted sequences as spice rather than propelling the action with the face melting intensity of Modern Warfare, it is a slower game that has more noticable gating / bucket of men tendencies and one that lingers more in each environment. For better and for worse as it turns out.

“there’s a simple, pure appeal to knowing where enemies pop up and eventually going through a section gunning them down swiftly, as glass, paper, bits of concrete or wood fly all around you.”

Better in that the game never feels like a parenthesis to the scripted insanity. The locales you fight in are hugely varied, usually shifting greatly in both tone and atmosphere, and the more methodical pacing make for more interesting setups for encounters and far more actual gameplay follow through in each scenario. You will get shot to bits and you will need to go through sections more than once, but there’s a simple, pure appeal to knowing where enemies pop up and eventually going through a section gunning them down swiftly, as glass, paper, bits of concrete or wood fly all around you. It’s certainly all very basic shooter stuff, but after having been space marines shooting purple blobs in their assorted special soft spots for hours, just putting a crosshair over someone and giving it a quick burst of fire to have them flail around and drop with animations that surely must make Michael Bay proud.. is refreshing.

What’s worse, however, is that in becoming more of a traditional run and gun shooter with decidedly video gamey tendencies to pour on more guys to make a level last longer, it lacks the decisive balls to the wall tempo and zany highlights of Modern Warfare 1 and 2. There is so much crazy shit going on in those two games that you can make a long list of things that you will *never forget*. Great plays on perspective and sense of role, and some amazing juxta position insanity that really sticks with you. Black Ops meanwhile never really uses its scripted moments to particularly remarkable effect, and while it definitely has some good, atmopheric locales, you’ll be shooting dudes in them until you’re dying to see the next one as opposed to being hurled from one place to the next at speeds that make your eyes water – which was the case in MW1/2. That is partially why Black Ops is a longer game than Infinity Ward’s offerings. It’s larger in scope, too, but mostly it’s more comfortable keeping you around in one level for longer.

“a globe trotting, timeline jumping plot that actually manages to keep you pretty invested”

Story has traditionally been chalked up to AAH WAR in the Call of Duty games and here Black Ops does a far more compelling job than earlier entries. Sam Worthington’s inability to maintain an accent notwithstanding, the storyline weaves a fairly intriguing narrative through the recounting of mostly-main-character Alex Mason’s action packed career, in an attempt to uncover the meaning of a particular string of numbers. The result is a globe trotting, timeline jumping plot that actually manages to keep you pretty invested, and by the end of it you totally know why you should care about stuff.

Which is sadly more than you can say about the supporting cast. Modern Warfare 2 did a great job of creating a subtle bond to your partners by establishing a silent co-dependency. Seamless cutscenes often had your buddy save you from certain death, and in a snowy airbase mission you were even covered by sniper fire and alerted of patrolling guards via radio. Black Ops makes some feeble attempts to build up characters around you, but there is *nobody* here you’ll get even remotely invested in. When they eventually try to cash in on those supposed relationships, there’s no currency there.

But that doesn’t in any way prevent Black Ops from being a great, really well produced game. Simple yet irrefutable in its blockbustery appeal – It has a confident groove to it, some really great looking locales that are fun to dive into, and that conviction and fluidity to its visual and aureal presentation we’ve come to expect from Call of Duty. With more time spent playing and less time spent barely keeping up with mind boggling scripted sequences, it’s not as memorable as Modern Warfare, but it’s probably the better game.