A magical artifact known as the Trine intertwines the lives of 3 characters: Amadeus the Magnificent, (a barely competent mage), Zoya the thief and Pontius the Brave, our fearless knight. They must use their combined skills to solve and battle their way to the end to free themselves. The mage can move most objects with magic, as well as conjure platforms and boxes for areas which might be difficult to cross. The thief can shoot regular arrows and fire arrows, but more importantly has a grappling hook which enables her to swing across gaps or travel up to areas no one else can reach. I found myself using her the most because she was the best at traveling and also seemed to jump slightly higher than the other two. The knight uses a sword and shield, which enables him to effectively block attacks or falling objects. With upgrades he can also learn to throw heavy objects and smash things with a hammer.

Along the way you collect vials of experience, health and energy. Collect enough experience vials and you can upgrade your characters (multiple arrows, higher damage, multiple platforms etc.). You’ll also come across chests, which contain armor or various accessories for all 3 characters. There are frequent checkpoints, so if all 3 characters die, you won’t have to restart the level.

The fantasy environments are stunning. Beautifully lit, detailed and rendered. Animation is great and so is the occasional voice acting. The 2D artwork at the beginning and end are a little disappointing considering the caliber of artwork in the actual game. My main gripe is the lack of variety in mobs. Skeletons, and lots of them. Sure, some wear armor, some are archers and others breathe fire, but they’re still skeletons. There are occasional troll/orc looking guys, bats and spiders, but I wish there had been bad guys that matched whichever board you happened to be in.

Figuring out how to get from point A to point B isn’t difficult, but depending how you upgrade your characters, there are many ways to approach the same challenge. As I mentioned, I preferred using the thief to travel, but you could just as easily conjure platforms and boxes to get across. It definitely got a little more challenging as the game progressed, but I never hit a point where I was so frustrated I wanted to give up. It was enjoyable enough and short enough that I would gladly play it again and try different tactics. This definitely makes my list of favorite games.

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The first part of the DLC is entitled “Totally Insane” and it is a combat challenge similar to the ones you fight in the non-stealth oriented fights in the regular Challenge Mode with two twists: one, for the first time they’ve included the psychopaths (or lunatics? I think that’s what they’re called, you know which ones I’m talking about it, the ones that scream and scratch and bite you) that mix up the battle a bit, and two, it goes on FOREVER. No rounds, just a nonstop barrage of baddies for you to beat up until you can’t take it anymore. I assume the goal is a high score. I don’t how often I’d play this (though I suppose once you’ve mastered the other battles this is pretty much all there is left), but I DID finally get my 40 combo “combat freeflow” achievement that just a week ago seemed like an impossible task.

The other half of the DLC is, as you might have guessed, a predator challenge called “Nocturnal Hunter,” and it has you taking out 8 armed to the teeth baddies in a map outside of Arkham proper. I can play these maps all day, and I had a fun time experimenting with the very specific medals they ask of you. Nothing more to really add, other than is a very well done little map for a predator challenge – lots of hiding spots, escape paths, wall to explode, and of course, gargoyles.

So that’s about it – is it worth FREE? What do you think?!?! It’s more Batman! And I’ll also say this: its way better than Dem Bones, the useless DLC I got for pre-ordering at GameStop, which made me regret pre-ordering with GameStop (they put STICKERS on my NEW GAME!) Anyways, if you own the game, go and download this right now!

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Top Spin 2 (on Direct2Drive for $9.99)

vs.

Virtua Tennis 2009 (same site for $29.99)

Is the new Virtua Tennis 2009 really $20 better than Top Spin 2?

There’s a recession on, in case you’re lucky enough not to have noticed. Lots of us have had to cut back in some of the more superfluous areas of our budgets. While we would love to be able to go out and get the newest and most expensive games, sometimes picking up an older title can be just as satisfying, if not more. In this first installment of Recession Gamer, I will look at two tennis games for the PC, Top Spin 2 by Aspyr and Virtua Tennis 2009 by Sega.
Both games offers campaign-like Career Mode, but the character progression in Top Spin 2 plays more like a classic RPG than a sports game. Your highly customizable avatar will increase each of their eleven skills through training with your coach of choice, or through placing well in tournaments. It must be said that Virtua Tennis does this, and did this first. But the Virtua Tennis franchise, with its roots in the arcade, does not have the depth of character advancement that Top Spin 2 boasts. The training in both games is done through mini-games (another Virtua Tennis original). Virtua Tennis gets the advantage when it comes to the mini-games, which have always been the strength of the series. Both games feature events on a schedule that pit you against real tennis pros, and all the superstars you would expect.
What sets Top Spin 2 apart is the most important part of any sports game – the actual gameplay. Top Spin 2 just seems to get a greater variety of shots out of the same controller, with shots ranging from a simple return that is guaranteed to fall inbounds, to slightly riskier top spin, lob, and cross-court returns, to high-risk power shots. These high-risk shots require the player not only to get their character in position to hit the ball, but also to max out the PC sports game’s ever-present friend, the power bar. Improve your focus skill to make these shots easier to pull off in a game. Particularly at the beginning of the game, these are best avoided, but if you level your character up with a concentration on focus and accuracy, you will find more places to mix in one of these devastating shots.
Virtua Tennis 2009′s controls still feel like you are playing an arcade game – not as much depth or sense of danger around tricky shots. In the early games I felt like I was only scoring when my opponent would fall down inexplicably. The controls are also much more forgiving, which adds to the casual arcade style. Top Spin 2 allows you to overrun (and even run into) the ball very easily, making you wish that the game would do what you want it to do as oppposed to what you actually told it to do. I made my character similar to how I play tennis in real life. I gained as many points as seemed reasonable in footspeed, ignoring some of the more important skills, say, backhand and power. I figured that having a lot of speed would be a good way to cover up some other parts of my play, but I found myself overrunning or running into my opponents’ returns.
Another important distinction is the length of a match. You can finish a tournament in Virtua Tennis 2009 in about the time it might take you to finish a single game in Top Spin 2. Rallies last longer in Top Spin 2 while you try to read your opponent and time your riskier shots for best effect, while I felt like I could do no wrong in Virtua Tennis, which killed the inherent tension in tennis. The depth comes in a console/arcade system of unlockable trophies that you can add to your collection upon completing various tasks in-game.
When it comes to graphics, Virtua Tennis 2009 wins hands-down. The visuals are beautiful, the courts are very well detailed, and the graphical presentation mirrors a television broadcast. Top Spin, however, features graphics that are more immersive. You start as a fledgeling tennis player and play on courts with animals running across them, or with a Mariachi band serenading you as you play a minor tournament at a Mexican resort.
One of the curious decisions in the graphical development of Top Spin 2 is that instead of replaying the previous point, the camera will instead focus in on one of the characters and gives the player an opportunity to either gloat after a winning point or fume after a missed shot. This is fun for about a game and a half, and replays would have been more welcome. Also, Virtua Tennis 2009 keeps the view behind your character, whereas Top Spin 2 seems to have no problem exiling you to the top of the screen where it can be more difficult to judge shots with the perspective changed. It also offers an over-the-shoulder camera option which is quickly dizzying. An option to always keep the iosmetric camera behind you would be a welcome addition to the next version.
While preparing for this review, I found myself being pulled to play Top Spin 2 much more often than Virtua Tennis 2009. Part of it is the gaming concept I like to call “missing time”. I would play Virtua Tennis 2009 until I felt like I was done with it, but after a session of Top Spin 2, I had no idea where so much time went. It seems like this would be a matter of preferences. Virtua Tennis cannot be beaten when it comes to button-mashing arcade action if you are looking to fill an hour of gameplay, but if you are a fan of strategic tennis where every decision you make impacts the match, save twenty dollars and pick up Top Spin 2.

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In Brief –

The second commercial PC release of the classic Games Workshop board/miniatures game Blood Bowl is a great example of how vivid visuals combined with an anxiety-inducing, tense gameplay system that has been continually improved over its twenty-two year lifetime (it is currently in its 5th edition of the table-top rules) can make for an addicting, satisfying game. Fifty dollars (as a digital download from the publisher’s site) is steep, and will probably scare away newcomers to the game and concept, but if you are already familiar with the table-top game, or think that a sports/Warhammer hybrid is an interesting concept, it is worth the price for the surprising amount of time this game will drain from you.

In Detail –

One genre of games that has suffered due to inattention in recent years is that of turn-based strategy. The Civilization series has remained true to the genre, but other than the sequels that have emulated and improved upon the original eighteen year-old idea, there haven’t been too many new games that have had anywhere near the success that Civilization has had, which has led to an already conservative game industry to take fewer chances. Take a peek at the list of turn-based strategy games on Wikipedia, and you will see that the majority of games that have come out this decade have more Roman numerals than the Friday the 13th franchise.
Games Workshop, the king of British table-top gaming, has released a series of PC games based on its Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k settings, although most of these have been real-time strategy offerings. While this product plan has done much to attract non-table-top gamers to Warhammer, these games did not do a good job of re-creating the original game experience that many would like to see on the PC. Digging deep into their catalog, Games Workshop decided, as part of a lawsuit settlement with Cyanide Studios )due to the software company’s release of a game eerily similar to Blood Bowl called Chaos League) to make a faithful recreation of Blood Bowl, a favorite among Warhammer fans. The manual and strategy guide give an in-depth history of the game for those who are interested in reading more.
One of the most immediately appealing aspects of this game is its premise – a bastardized, violence-happy version of American Football played in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. This is a formula that has been emulated (some might say ripped-off) several times already on various platforms (Grave Yardage, Mutant Football League, Cyanide’s own aforementioned Chaos League et al) which led to the original board game port in 1995, which had some success along with some quirks. The 2009 release obviously boasts better graphics and an interesting and immersive season mode make this version preferable to both the original PC version and the free Java-based version (which does not have an AI opponent).
Much of the flash of the presentation (cut scenes, the play-by-play announcers, and the in-game camera that shows your opponents moves from an on-field camera view as opposed to the ¾ strategic view when it is your own turn) can be turned off after a few games, but remaining in-game graphics add to and enhance the gameplay greatly. You will find yourself getting more attached to the players on your team due to their leaps when they avoid tackles on particularly chancy plays, or when they collapse on their backs and fumble the ball when you try to push their limits to move just one space further before the end of your turn. The violence also gives you a sense of your players’ mortality. On each physical conflict (referred to as blocks and blitzes) the losing player has a chance of being knocked down, knocked out, injured, or killed. Much like in old D&D games, it’s best not to get too attached to low-level characters. If your team can afford to employ an apothecary, they will be able to re-roll one injury roll per game. This may prevent a fatal or long-term injury from occurring, but will leave your other players vulnerable to the odds for the rest of the match.
Initially you are asked to form a team, selecting from one of eight character races (Blood Bowl is yet to be integrated, apparently) and spending your initial funds on up to fourteen players, with each team fielding an eleven-man squad on-field. Players fall into several categories of specialists. For instance, the humans have Throwers, Catchers, Blitzers, Linemen, and then their “big guy”, the Ogre. All of the other races have variations on these specific to their racial characteristics and culture in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. This gives a nice variety in AI opponents, even if the AI is not all that challenging (in fact, due to the game being so much about deciding when to take chances, the Medium difficulty mode is harder to beat than the more conservative Hard mode).
As for the mechanics of the game itself, each team has sixteen turns, split into two halves. All of your players may move to the limit of their allowance, block an opponent out of his spot, possibly knocking him down or injuring them, pass the ball, hand-off the ball, or, and this is sometimes the part of the game that will make you crestfallen, simply try to pick up the ball. I’m not kidding – sometimes both teams will have several players try and fail to pick up the ball for two or more turns. Once you have the ball, the idea is to get into your opponent’s end zone for a touchdown (one point, no PAT). Everything in the game is decided by die rolls, either on normal six-sided dice or on dice specific to the game, which determine the outcome of a block. The tension in the game comes from two things. First off, you take your entire turn while your opponent waits, getting the ball back either when you have no more valid moves, or when you fail a die roll and cause a “turnover” (meaning here that your turn is over, not necessarily that possession of the ball changes hands). The second part is deciding when to take chances and figuring out how to best get the odds om your favor. Do you try to move your receiver one extra space or to have someone throw a chancy block to give him a lane downfield? If you succeed, you feel like a genius. If you fail, your turn is over, and you have to sit and watch helplessly while your opponent capitalizes on your mistake. It makes you learn the odds pretty quickly to avoid embarrassment, particularly while playing online, using the game’s in-game opponent-fining system.
In the campaign mode, your team will face dozens of teams, each with different races, team player advancement, and composition of positions, so just because you find one Dwarven team easy to beat doesn’t mean that you will necessarily be able to beat another Dwarven team the same way. Once your team starts winning, it will earn Prestige points. Once your team gains enough renown, it will be invited to more prestigious tournaments, leading eventually to the grand championship, the Blood Bowl. But to get there, you will need to compete in smaller tournaments, usually set up in soccer fashion, a round-robin first round followed by playoffs between the top teams from each bracket. Later tournaments will have longer schedules and feature better teams, so your team’s depth becomes much more important as injuries and casualties pile up. The traveling tournament structure ties in to the fantasy setting better than a more usual season-long format would, and allows you to be able to face a great deal more teams along the way.
Also well done is the character advancement system. While your players will have a tenuous grip on their lives, it is rewarding to see them gain in level and develop skills that may save them to play another day. Different player positions can develop using different skill categories. For instance, Agillity-based skills are always available to Catchers, but require a certain roll during advancement to add. Blitzers have access to General and Strength skills. Linemen can only choose from the General list, unless doubles are rolled.
What is disappointing about the game is that of the twenty-one races available in the table-top game, only eight are available. The current trend in DLC may mean that on top of the $50 for the game, you may need to shell out more for additional races, but let’s hope that Cyanide Studios doesn’t go that route. As of this article, rumors say that there will be two new races added in a patch. That would help show potential buyers that the game is going to have some worthwhile improvements.
Blood Bowl is definitely worth a look if you area turn-based strategy game fan, not just because of the novelty of the idea, but also as an introduction to a great game system.

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Control fictional or real historical teams in Out of the Park Baseball X

In Detail: Have you ever wanted to see if you could lead your favorite baseball team to a World Series victory? How about doing it in the year 1967? 1912? How about finally realizing your dream of running a professional baseball league in Uganda? Out of the Park Baseball, now in its tenth version, is the best tool out there to satisfy any of those urges, no matter how strange.

Out of the Park Baseball X is the tenth iteration of the premier baseball sim by developer Markus Heinsohn and is a great example of how an independently made and distributed game can attract and retain a rabid fan-base by offering players flexibility and a fully-customizable game experience. Just take a look at the OOTP forums (http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/) and you will see that its players are rabid not just about baseball, but about helping to build the most complete game possible.

Let me start the review for people who haven’t played Out of the Park, or any “text-sim” (an antiquated term meaning only that the play outcomes are displayed as text as opposed to animation) baseball game. With this game, you can choose any team from any year in Major League history and attempt to guide them to a championship. But it doesn’t stop there – what if you think you would have done a better job than George Steinbrenner’s run as owner of the Yankees? Take over the team in 1973 and manage the next 30+ years to see if you can top George’s World Series totals. Along the way, you will scout and draft real players, make trades, sign free agents, all the tools any GM would have at his disposal.

Are you not a big-picture type of guy? Take control of the team at field-level and face decisions such as whether to sacrifice bunt, when to pull your tiring starting pitcher, and where to play your outfielders against a left-handed power hitter. The in-game managerial decisions are made that much tougher because of the massive amount of statistics available. With one click you can see how the batter has fared against the opposing pitcher over the course of his career, his numbers at home, in day games…anything you would expect Major League skippers to have available, is right there for you.

Every decision about your team is yours to make, if you choose to play that way. Alternately, you can apply for a GM/Manager position with the risk of getting fired for not meeting the owner’s expectations. But be careful; you may have to work your way up through all five levels of the minor leagues to get another chance at the Big Show. Or you could play in Commissioner mode and move freely from team to team, or manage every game with every team.

More interested in making your mark on a completely fictional league, with the added challenge of unfamiliar names? That’s possible too. The game boasts a sizable almanac, breaking countries down by the quality of their baseball talent – i.e. the players in your all-Japanese league will be of better quality than those in the Jamaican league. But these skills are relative, so you will find that the Jamaican teams will compete against each other just as well as the Japanese teams. Pit a team from Montego Bay against one from Tokyo, and there should be no contest. Best of all – you can run leagues simultaneously and allow free movement of free agents and trades, so the best player in Japan can be signed by an American MLB team provided that you make the settings allow you to do so.

For OOTP veterans, there are many reasons to update to the tenth version. For one, the pitching system has been overhauled to give ratings not just to pitchers according to their stamina, strikeout ratio, and control (to name just three of dozens of ratings for each player) but also ratings for their individual pitches. This creates great questions for the GM/Manager. Is your young fireballer a suitable starting pitcher? He has great stamina, but only two decent pitches, which means that no matter how talented he is, hitters will do well against him because they will have a good idea of what is coming.

The in-game screen is now customizable, allowing you to move the individual widgets around, and add or delete them to your liking. Also new to the presentation are more and better detailed news stories, as well as more variety in the in-game play-by-play.

One new feature that I wasn’t sold on until I tried the game myself is the claim of “Improved Historical Simulation”. I play almost exclusively historical replays – I’ll take over an expansion team in its first year and try to build it into a contender as quickly as possible (made more difficult by changing the AI’s trade preferences). The first thing I did when I downloaded and installed the game was to let my laptop sit by itself for the better part of the day and simulate the history of baseball from 1901 through the end of 2009. Although I was doubtful, the results were excellent. The game will expand and relocate teams according to when it happened historically, and it will run expansion drafts when necessary, all while you go about your business. Run it before bed, and in the morning you will have the entire history of the modern era recreated. In my sim, the only real anomalies were with the career home run totals. Mark McGwire slugged 932 homers, Barry Bonds 817, with Babe Ruth coming in third with 680. So my one complaint would be that the game over-emphasizes power stats from the steroid era, while de-emphasizing the effects that steroids and growth hormones had on McGwire and Bonds’ longevity. Either that, or it doesn’t emphasize enough the positive effects that overeating and booze had on The Bambino.

All of this, and more features truly make this the best version yet of the vaunted simulation series. Out of the Park Baseball is available for download at http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/ootp10/.

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Games that give you the choice of being good or evil have been around for a while now. From Baldur’s Gate to inFAMOUS, this category seems to be slowly evolving. One thing that is not found very often is the choice to be “evil or more evil”, something the developers at Triumph Studios have brought about in the form of the Overlord series. While Overlord II is the first game in the series I have had the chance to play, I cannot say that the time spent with it is much encouragement to try out the first one.

Overlord II once again places you in the boots of an evil being brought into power by his gremlin-like minions. You are tasked with either enslaving or destroying a couple of towns on the way to dispose of the magic-hating empire that is attempting to take over your domain and capture your minions. Though this storyline sounds pretty generic, the “be evil or more evil” premise of the game makes it a bit more interesting.

The best part of Overlord II just happens to be the maniacal minions that are sent to wreak havoc on those who oppose you. Eventually you will be able to control four different colored types of up to 50 minions at a time. Each play a distinct role in your army, either being a healer of sorts or one of three types of attackers (melee, ranged or stealth). Simple strategy can sometimes be employed; browns can be used to lure enemies toward hiding greens, who pounce on them as they pass by, while reds rain fire down on them on a nearby hill and blues take care of any wounded. Most of the time, however, you can do just fine selecting all of your minions and throwing them all at a target. One of the funnier things is just setting them loose on a town. They’ll break things, drink alcohol, vomit and urinate everywhere, all while grabbing anything they can and either wearing it as a hat or giving it to you as an offering. Not only do they appear similar to the gremlins found in a couple of my favorite childhood movies, but Triumph managed to mimic the sound of them as well.

Speaking of sound, that brings me to the first of many gripes about this game. Normally, sound is not an issue for me. Default settings have almost always managed to suit me just fine. However, the way sound effects overpower voice work in the game is ridiculous. After alleviating the sound imbalance issues, though, I kind of wished that I hadn’t. Just about everything an NPC says in the game is repeated constantly and often times they would talk over each other.

The graphics are not very impressive either. There’s really not too much to say in this department other than I’ve come to expect a little bit more from Playstation 3/Xbox 360 titles than what Triumph has done with Overlord II.

Where the charmingly crazy minions pulled me into Overlord II, the graphics failed to impress and the sound just annoyed me, the controls and camera were probably what pushed me to dislike this game. The camera constantly got on my nerves, needing to be adjusted quite a bit. Having the camera and minion control mapped to the same stick seemed like a bad idea to me. Times when I needed to control both the overlord and a single group of minions made this apparent, since you cannot adjust the camera to see what’s coming up ahead if the right stick is in minion mode. Targeting in the game is handled poorly as well. Sometimes trying to pick whatever is in front of you just does not work, instead seeming to randomly pick something else to target. If the game feels like it, you can sometimes switch objects by using the right stick. However, if one of the targets you are toggling between happens to be a marker your minions are gathered on, it’s time to start the process over again, as any more right stick movement suddenly controls the group associated with the highlighted flag. Everything mentioned here just felt very inconsistent and made things very frustrating. My worst memory of this involves the Arena level midway through the game, where there are opportunities for each one of these gripes to pluck your nerves enough to eject the game and toss it across the room.

After suffering through the single player experience, I went to check out the online multiplayer aspects of the game. Considering that no one is playing this game online at all, the resources that went into making these seemingly useless modes could have went to fixing the issues that plague this game.

I had heard a lot of positive things about the first Overlord game back when it was released.  The only complaint I can really remember is the lack of a mini-map. Since I had also heard quite a bit of praise for Overlord II from other outlets, I was quite surprised at how much I disliked it. The entire game felt like a great idea that was just executed poorly. If it wasn’t for the combination of my love for playing as evil characters in games and fond childhood memories of the Gremlins movies, this game would have definitely scored even lower.

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However, in this overdone world of tanks, dogfights and gattling guns, there are some theaters of war that have been overlooked. The American Civil War, for example, has never gotten much attention in video game media, and for good reason. An exclusively American conflict is not likely to get much attention outside of the States. But, Ubisoft has managed to use that conflict to set a grander scene, that of the wild western frontier. A world of lawlessness and chaos, of heroes and vigilantes and, dare I say it, gunslingers. Cowboys and Indians, Confederates and Yankees. God, I could go on forever. This is exactly what Ubisoft has put forward in their new multi-platform release, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

The original Call of Juarez managed to slip under the radar for most gamers, and that’s okay. It was plagued by design flaws and a very scattered storyline. However, this new prequel has outdone itself to redeem the series and to create a western game that outshines Outlaws and the Red Dead series.

Players take on the role of two brothers, Ray and Thomas McCall, who become Confederate Army deserters very early into the game. Taking their little brother William on the run with them, they flee the war scene, and after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox (remember your history, boys and girls), they find themselves fugitives on the western frontier. Life on the lam quickly becomes a search for gold and riches, which becomes riddled with betrayal and bloodlust.

The story is beautifully woven. You watch the evolution of your two main characters, mostly through William’s eyes as he narrates, making your way through the Wild West. Along the way, you confront Indians, renegade Confederates, and even banditos, all out to either get you for their own personal reasons, or to beat you to the legendary cursed treasure of Juarez. You really get to see the Wild West in a real way that many of us have not experienced since Clint Eastwood retired from the scene. …or at least not since Back to the Future Part 3.

Gameplay is fluid and fun. The game is a first person shooter, adhering to the standards of the genre, but allowing you to alternate between two different characters for different experiences and replay value. Ray, armed with duel revolvers and dynamite and the occasional gattling gun, seems to prefer brute force. Thomas is more about finesse, brandishing a rifle, a lasso and bow. Most chapters allow you to take your pick between the two brothers, catering to your individual style of play, and you can always go back and try each chapter again with the other brother. The two often behave cooperatively which is a nice touch, but it makes me wonder why Ubisoft did not include an option to play the game cooperatively with a second player. It seems almost built for that, and the lack of such an option when the game does include multiplayer just comes off as lazy.

The “concentration modes” are also a nice touch. Concentration modes are either player-executed or event-executed slow motion sequences that allow you to pick off multiple enemies very quickly and easily before you take too much damage. On paper, this sounds like a Max Payne ripoff, but it most certainly is not. This is done differently and when it is finished (and a pile of corpses is on the ground before you), you wish you had a real revolver to spin on your finger. Think of how cool you could look in your living room doing that!

Gameplay is also quite diverse, mixing up the traditional first-person experience with little mini-games as well. You’ll find yourself shooting from horseback and defending a stagecoach from the inside at different points. Most notably, there are occasional gun-duels as well. You’ll have to drop a given opponent quick-draw style before that opponent drops you. I think that this experience is the very essence of the desperado gunslinger, and its inclusion in the game scores major points on its own.

I have to talk about the graphics and sound in this game together because they are so intertwined. First of all, let’s get the bad out of the way. On the PC version, I did encounter some graphic glitches, clashes and flaws. I do not know if this holds on the console versions as well, but while these glitches were irritating, they did not detract to much from what is otherwise a piece of art. That’s really all I have to say on that.

Visually, Bound in Blood is beautiful. The PC version has a good set of graphic settings to cater to a range of machines, and the console versions adhere to current-gen standards. You do feel like you’re in the old west, from the dusty gales to the batwing doors the graphics hold true to the experience. The characters are drawn well and the animation style is very realistic. As far as the action goes, shooting someone has never felt as gratifying as it does in this game. You pull the trigger, the gun goes off with a nice, solid crash, the smoke spits out the back and your opponent crumples while your character thumbs back the hammer for another shot. You can almost smell the gunpowder.

The music also blends nicely with the scenery. Epic getaway tunes play as you’re trying to outrun the law or a gang of bandits, and the rest of the score is very subtle but fitting.

I’m just going to speak briefly about the multiplayer aspect of the game. You are not going to see anything here you have not seem before. Like I mentioned, there is no cooperative aspect of the game. You will find a number of options of team based shoot-em-ups, and several different classes and customizations you may select to play as. It’s all solidly done, more so than you might expect from a game like this, but there is nothing original. The play is very similar to Call of Duty, despite the different setting, and multiplayer is still plagued by several technical and connectivity issues that have left many fans clamoring for a quick patch.

Over all, the game is a good play. There are a lot of things it does well, it adds to a genre that is underpopulated and it is innovative. Despite slight problems with visual and multiplayer modes, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is definitely recommended to first-person shooter fans who are looking for a new angle. Try out a different conflict, and take an escape from today’s norm in war games. Yee haw, cowboy. …sorry, I couldn’t help it.

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In this simple exploration game, all you control is where the character walk/runs and who and what they interact with. Occasionally you will find objects, such as flowers, a hypodermic needle, a knife and they will go into your inventory, but they serve no purpose other than as collectibles. There are certain landmarks in the forest which you will encounter each time you visit, but depending which sister you choose, the results may vary. Even grandma’s house changes, like something out of Alice in Wonderland, with hidden doors and upside down rooms. 

Beware the Wolf. While there is nothing that could be described as outright violent, the entire mood of the game is suggestive and disturbing, including the Wolf. Each sister will encounter her own “wolf” character which will lead to her downfall. Although not mentioned as a goal at the start of the game, it’s considered a failure if you don’t find the wolf. So don’t be the good little girl who does what they’re told.

This game is definitely NOT for everyone, even priced at $10. It’s extremely slow, sometimes excruciatingly so. There aren’t that many interactive elements, and even when there are, the interaction isn’t particularly interesting. If you can appreciate an art film once in a while, then you might enjoy this game. What the game lacked in action, it made up for visually. It set the mood perfectly with its illustrative style, lighting and saturated colors, sometime blurring focus and having all sorts of scribbles constantly appearing on the sides of the screen. The audio is equally eerie, with children’s voices singing, heavy breathing and the repetitive plucking of a string instrument. I think a lot of mainstream horror games lack the emotional quality this game has, such as the heightened sense of loneliness and vulnerability. I recommend trying it only if you can appreciate a game that’s all about mood and not action.

Available for download from Steam, or directly from the game site.

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Between the first two Sims games, the biggest change was the graphical leap made. While The Sims 3′s graphics have been enhanced a bit, the main improvement over The Sims 2 is the ever changing city that your sim now inhabit. Rather than controlling the only dynamic household in town, every other family will complete the circle of life along side yours. Your sims can now seamlessly go anywhere in town just by clicking on your destination, without the need to sit through a five minute loading screen. Previously, neighboring sims would walk by your house and disappear after leaving your property line, now you have the option to stalk them and see where they are going and who they interact with in their day to day lives. The hours spent at your sim’s place of employment have seen a slight improvement as well, allowing you to choose what your sim will do during their shift, from working harder than normal to conversing with your co-workers. Though this does add a little extra layer to the time spent there, if you have a one sim household and you have the camera focused on them, you are just basically spending that time staring at a close-up of the building they’re in. With everything they’ve done this time around, there is the possibility of EA adding to the work experience in a later expansion, which is definitely something to look forward to. That aside, with how the town is handled now, gliding the camera around you can find people having fights, burglars breaking into neighbors houses and sims protesting outside of city hall, all things that really contribute to making it feel as if you are really in a living, breathing city.

Along with the city, the sims themselves have also been improved. Their needs are a bit easier to manage, with their bladders seemingly being able to withstand a full days worth of inventory before requiring purging. Each sim has up to five personality traits (out of over 60), like being charming, neurotic, a kleptomaniac, or having a fear of being nude, that determine how they act on their own and what type of Lifetime and daily wishes they would like fulfilled. One of the sims I created had the insane personality trait, making it so that he would constantly start arguing with himself and wanted to do things like ask random questions to other sims or call their mothers llamas.

Moving these more life-like sims into their homes felt a bit better as well. One of the most time-consuming parts for me in the previous games was furnishing their living space and getting everything to look semi-decent.  Now the player has the option to buy a house fully furnished, which brought a huge wave of relief over me after clicking on my first house. Obviously, I am not someone who delves that much into the building aspect of The Sims games, but from some options that I messed around with while buying new items or moving currently owned ones around, I noticed a few upgrades in this department as well. An annoyance that I’ve both experienced and heard complaints about before was the way that items stuck strictly to the grids laid out around the house, leaving coffee tables unevenly placed in front of three seater couches. That restriction has been lifted a bit, with things being able to sit halfway in a grid now and even turned diagonally. The ability to customize every piece of furniture and clothing has also been added to the game, giving you many more options than just what EA put into the game.

While these are some great improvements, it is a shame to see all the new content from Sims 2′s expansions pretty much gone, bringing this game back to the basics. No longer are you able to add pets, go on vacation, watch the seasons change, or open a business. I guess one cannot really blame EA for doing this, as these expansions are what kept this series in the top 10 PC games sales charts every month for years, but it’s still a bit disappointing nonetheless. Perhaps one of their expansions could help touch on an issue that my sim, Jon, came across quite frequently: children born out of wedlock. I gave Jon the Lifetime Wish of being a heartbreaker, someone who has been the boyfriend/girlfriend of ten different sims. During the quest to achieve this goal, I discovered you could now easily have children out of wedlock and, for experimental reasons, ended up having eight children with six different women. When he was actually allowed to see his children at the various mother’s houses (some were so angry with him they wouldn’t even let him in the house), his offspring had no place to sleep, no toys to play with, or any of the other necessities that would help keep them happy. When the mother would get tired or needed to do something else, she would just leave the infant on the ground and go about her business. Attempts to be a good deadbeat dad and buy things the kid would need brought my screen back to his house. To my knowledge, I don’t think any of the bills that were paid in-game went towards child support either. I am hoping these kinds of things get addressed somehow in a future update or expansion, giving it some manner of realism and a bit of consequence.

Speaking of the possibilities for expansions, it seems as if the new online store found on their website could be used to fill the role played by the Stuff packs before. Where the Stuff expansion packs combined a bunch of similar styled items and threw them on a disc for $20, The Store gives players the option to buy clothing, furniture, and hairstyles via micro-transations. The Exchange makes a return, giving players a place to trade user-made content for free. The Sims site also gives users the ability to create blogs and edit videos captured in-game, stuff that I am not really into, but fairly certain there’s a large audience for.

All in all, The Sims 3 is a great game. The familiarity of the basic gameplay made me comfortable playing it, while the new additions to the series helped keep my interest enough to become addicted again. While I doubt this title would make Sims nay-sayers change their mind about the series, it will definitely appease the crowd that brought the franchise’s sales figures to over 100 million units.

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The answer is an undoubtedly resounding yes.  Using your mouse wheel you can easily scroll from right up next to one of your small frigates or a side view of one of your threatening Capitol Ships to a view of the gravity well of the planet your armada is in orbit above, to a view of the galaxy, to a view of several galaxies.  Under normal situations this could make things very difficult to manage as your empire may sprawl across a universe that could sustain more than a hundred planets.  However, Sins makes excellent use of the familiar scroll to mouse system that allows you to quickly zoom out and zoom right in on top of wherever you need to be.

Arguably my favourite aspect of Sins is that it brings back an aspect of RTS games that have been quite absent in many games recently.  This is the diplomacy menu and the trade and commerce menu.  Any Hardcore RTS boasts the ability for you to not only conquer with military power but to run your enemies out of business with smooth economics skills or to get others to destroy them for you using supreme diplomacy skills.  Sins has both of these in a triumphant fashion, the diplomacy and trade being merged to allow you to manipulate people at will in almost any way you choose.  Mind you that non-hardcore RTS players may just want to play their games with locked teams as it often becomes almost infuriating when your playing a ten player game and you are constantly getting requests from allies and foes turned potential allies for anything from resources to military aid or even the destruction of enemy planets with great resource and alliance bonus’ or a chilling of relations between your two empires if the requests are not granted.  You have a lot of options though if your ally wants you to move against someone whom you don’t want to as your enemies will petition your aid just as often as your friends.  This helps tremendously as you can break your alliances on the fly to pursue relations with an empire more fitting of your interests.

The trade options are an amalgam of upgrades possible from your tech tree and using the diplomacy menu to pursue trade agreements with allies and foes alike.  From there you have to actually build trade posts in orbit around your planets which automatically make and send out trade ships to surrounding systems, when they return to a trading post in orbit around one of your planets you will receive the wealth gained from its travels.  From here the tech tree comes into prominence as its upgrades allow you to increase the holding size of the trading ships or even give you the ability to take a percent income of all the empires you do business with.

The Tech tree is yet another impressive part of Sins as there any number of possibilities to upgrade.  There are 4 different tech trees that you do not have to choose from.  They upgrade the military capabilities, civilian aspects of your empire, use of relics found on planets, and the actual number of ships/capitol ships you can field respectively.  You have to pick your upgrades well too because there are way too many options for there to be any hope of having all of them researched at one point in the match.  That being said the way you gain access to the researchables is to build more and more civic or military research stations.

The building of installations around planets and planetary developments are vital to the game as well.  Since fleet tactics themselves are more or less point and engage the real tactical element comes from resource capture and positioning of colonies.  You can only travel to planets along certain pathways and this allows for some serious strategic planning.  When there is a limit to the number of ships you can have your fleets cannot be everywhere at once.  Thus it is paramount to have planning when setting up your empire, try to colonize choke point planets that are the only way to large parts of your empire quickly.  If you succeed in this then you can proceed to fortify this planet with orbital turrets and hanger defenses so that should a large enemy fleet seek to be known in your empire then the planetary defenses will hold them long enough for you to reroute one of your fleets to effectively rout the enemy.  Resources are also gathered from asteroids that orbit celestial bodies, these are key to your success if you don’t plan on using the black market.

The black market is part of a whole other tab of options in Sins.  It is called the Criminal Underground and it gives you two new options.  One is a black market where you can buy or sell extra resources of metal and crystal.  The coolest part being that if you load your resources onto the market rather than selling them then you can begin to control the price at which they are sold and bought for.  A fully working market exists within Sins!  The other part of the criminal underground in the pirates tab.  Here you can put bounty on your fellow empire which can result in a pirate raid.  This is key because you can use a pirate raid to confuse and divide your ennemies forces so that they cannot bring their full naval might to bear on your invasion force.

On the topic of fleets the most diverse and technically researched fleet often wins.  That being said the largest variables that can upset this is the number of fighter and bomber squadrons or the number of capitol ships.  Capitol Ships are a huge part of Sins as they often put out pound for pound more fire power than any five  large frigates in your fleet.  They also level up as they survive more naval confrontations allowing them to be even deadlier than before.  They’re easily more recognizable than anything else in your fleet with their pure size often having them double even the largest frigates of the fleet they lead.

The graphics of the game are exactly what you expect of a game that has upwards of a hundred things zooming across the screen at once.  The majority of the game will be zoomed out in with the tactical overlay showing you who is friend and foe.  There is no main campaign of the game as every match is often longer than any casual sitting will see completed.  The larger games taking god knows how long as you traverse an conquer huge galaxies with massive fleets.  This can make multiplayer a little difficult as anything other than a one on one match can see you sitting at your computer for a very very long period of time.

So in summary I am going to give Sins of a Solar Empire a 4 out of 5 because the gameplay is just excellent and the scale bragged about on the box is entirely fulfilled.  That being said it would be a 5 out of 5 if the multiplayer didn’t take so long and have so very few people willing to complete the entire match.  Sins of a Solar Empire is an excellent game with an astounding level of depth.  Anyone who claims to be a hardcore RTS player should have already picked up this game and played it to the extent that I have.

-Ichi

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