The game centers primarily around space-pirate Grayson Hunt and his brother-in-arms Ishi, as they attempt to escape from the ruined paradise resort world of Stygia. After warping out of deep space and coming upon the flagship of the General that betrayed them, The Ulysses, Grayson makes a drunken kamikaze attack on the ship, essentially punching the most advanced Warbird in the galaxy in the face. While his ship is nearly destroyed and goes plummeting onto the surface of a strange alien world, the Ulysses is also wrecked, and both ships crash a few miles apart. Grayson then attempts to not only exact his revenge on the general, but get himself and Ishi off the world as well.

The gameplay consists of lots of standard shooter fare with a ton of added kicks in the form of “skillshots”. These skillshots range from something as simple as a headshot (25 points) to something zanier, like kicking someone into electric cables (50 points) or shooting them in the groin, then blowing their head off as they writhe in pain (gleefully named “Mercy” and rewarding 100 points). There are a litany of over 100 skillshots, and every new weapon added into your arsenal further increases the number of creative ways you can destroy and maim those around you. A “leash”, which you discover fairly quickly in the game, is a module that attaches to your hand and displays both skillshot information and your ammo. It ties in with the various dead-drops you discover in the game. These dead-drops are where you cash in the points you make with your kills to unlock new weapons and ammo. In the context of the story, these were left here by a previous military campaign, and (in a delightfully Darwinian twist) were designed specifically so only the good soldiers would receive more ammo or better weapons.

There are a large number of set encounters: Big, crazy scripted battles where you are up against an unusual enemy or have a super powered weapon for a short amount of time. The game plays out nicely, moving at a breakneck pace from caves to trains to cliffs to villages to cities, propelling you through an amazing number of creative, vibrant, and stunning levels. This is one of the things I enjoyed the most as this is a departure from other shooters. Each level looks beautifully detailed, from the massive vistas near a gigantic dam, to the beautiful sci-fi skyscrapers, and crazy, The Fifth Element-headbutts-Bioshock design, to many of the more civilized parts of the city. The natural flora and fauna of Stygia are just as wide ranging and vivid, from electro-flies to huge man-eating Venus fly traps, and hilarious pods called Noms that, when kicked at an enemy, latch onto their heads and start chewing headcrab-style. That’s only a taste of the enemies you encounter on this murder paradise.

The game controls are tight and easy to pick up, and they at least use the matching buttons when giving you quick time events, such as shoot when you need to shoot in the sequence. One button activates the leash, and holding it down fires a “thumper” that launches all enemies caught in the area into the air, making them easy pickings. The artificial intelligence (AI) of your allies is competent enough, and invincible to the point where you usually don’t have to worry about them. The enemy AI is akin to Left 4 Dead, in which melee enemies swarm you, and regular shooter fare by using cover to advance into a confetti of bullets raining down on them.

The game is accompanied by a suitable soundtrack of loud, action movie fanfare, and squishy, gooey, gorey sounds whenever you land a good kill. The weapons have a great, loud kick to them and the charge shots that come with each weapon sound devastating and brutal. The dialogue is ridiculous and offensive, and delightfully colourful. The visuals mix perfectly with the audio, providing graphically sound and satisfying character models, level design, and effects. Explosions in particular look bright and powerful, streaming off like fireworks from their origin.

The multiplayer and “echo” segments, both of which involves replaying single player levels or edited maps, have some enjoyable times to be had, and it’ll keep your interest for a while as you attempt to get three stars on various challenges. But aside from that, it’s a straightforward multiplayer component, with the cooperative “Horde” mode (like swarm or wave cooperative modes in other shooters) adding a more diverse element.

Bulletstorm is raw and distilled fun for a mature audience. If you love cheesy sci-fi pulp and over-the-top machismo, mixed in with a vibrant, straightforward shooter, this is a game to add to your collection.

You do not have to play the first game to understand the story. The game starts off following four American misfit solders in a fictional war between the United States and Russia. We play as Private Preston Marlowe in our mission to find a weapon codenamed “Aurora” and to prevent it from falling into Russian hands. The characters are memorable, stimulating, and engaging. The voice acting throughout the game was great. It was funny at times and immerses at others. The single player story is about 5 to 8 hours in length.

The fighting and gameplay is similar to Modern Warfare 2, but it has a different style of play. Instead of being more than just another “Run and Gun” shooter, Bad Company 2 involves a lot more strategy. I found myself employing new strategies throughout the game. The controls were fantastic and I got used to them quickly.

Bad Company’s campaign has two forms of collectibles, the first one being M-COM Stations hidden throughout the game. The second are different kinds of weapons found in certain missions, which can be added to your arsenal. An example of this would be automatic shotguns or a bolt-action sniper rifle, which suspiciously looks like a .50 Caliber sniper.

The audio quality in the game was terrific, and at some points the game almost had me ducking from being shot at from a sniper. With the guns shooting combined with explosions and excellent voice acting, the audio quality was superb.

DICE’s Frostbite engine has visually stunning missions all throughout the game. Some of the levels are actually breathtaking, especially when playing at 1080p.  The special part about this engine though is that the entire world is destructible, meaning we can go throw a grenade into a wall and watch a beautiful explosion, making a new door for us.

The difficulty in this game was almost as challenging as I expected. Although there were times when I found myself struggling to get through certain areas, I remembered the new strategies, such as taking advantage of the Frostbite engine, to help me.

The online component of this game is truly a stroke of genius. With a total of 13 maps and 4 different game modes, it’s hard to be bored and it will provide you with hours of enjoyment. The game modes are called Rush, Conquest, Squad Rush and Squad Deathmatch. In Rush, the objective of the game is for the attackers to destroy the enemy’s crates called M-COM Stations. Each defender’s base has a pair of crates, and when both objectives have been destroyed, the map is expanded, making room for a new base with a new set of crates and the defenders have to fall back. This process is repeated until the defenders’ last base is lost. In Conquest, the goal is to capture all of the neutral flags. Teams then hold flags and kill the opposition to reduce the enemy tickets. Once a team’s tickets are reduced to zero, they lose. Squad Rush is a downsized version of the Rush game type and instead of having 24 to 32 players in a game, it’s reduced to 8 players in a game (4 players per team). The same goes for Squad Deathmatch, but instead of a free for all action, there are 4 squads of 4 players. First team to 50 kills wins the game.

That is but a taste of what you can play online, and the experience is quite amazing once you really get into it. We have 4 different classes with the muliplayer scheme: Assault, Medic, Recon and Engineer, with each having their own pros and cons.

The online play is very balanced. For anything that one might think is overpowered, there is always a counter for it. For example we have a tank which has big firepower and armour, but with the Engineer’s mortar ability – boom! –  no more tanks. Leveling up in this game is done by using a specific class to get better weapons and abilities for that class. Lag is not an issue in this game and camping is difficult to do. The modes online are such that you will achieve more by doing the objective and not sitting waiting for someone to run by. I can seriously play this game for hours and hours on end.

I would recommend picking up this game, even at the full retail value. This game was well crafted, well designed, and stunning.

Borderlands looks to have a significant amount of gameplay and replayability, so Canadians looking to hibernate indoors during the upcoming winter may want to consider this deal. Furthermore, based on what I have seen of the game, the $39.96 price point will likely be lower than GameNorth’s recommended dollar value!

Borderlands hits Canadian shelves on October 20, 2009.

Activision was demoing Spec Ops, a new cooperative mode in Modern Warfare 2 that is completely independent from the single-player campaign and online multiplayer modes. Spec Ops places you and a partner in a series of short and medium-length missions with varying objectives and settings. The missions are meant to be standalone affairs, similar to the airplane rescue mission at the end of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and each mission will see players controlling different operatives with a pre-determined arsenal of weaponry and equipment. Activision was mum on how many missions will ship on the retail disc, but did state that the architecture of the game would allow for additional missions to be added via downloadable content. Start saving your money now!

The Spec Ops mission that we were shown involved the two operatives attempting to eliminate a terrorist cell of unknown allegiance after breaching through a wall with an explosive charge. The players began by priming and placing the charge on the wall, then waiting patiently for the charge to announce their arrival. When the charge exploded and the players spun into action, the game entered slow-motion, illustrating the confusion amongst the terrorist ranks while the room filled with dust and debris. The operatives wasted little time and used this confusion to their advantage, eliminating several enemies before the speed returned to normal and the terrorists regrouped. Moments later, as the dust cleared, the operatives found themselves in what appeared to be the shower room of an abandoned prison. If you seen The Rock with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage, the inspiration for this scene is immediately obvious. Targeting lasers swept across the room from the balconies above, enemy soldiers took cover and engaged in suppressing fire, and the room erupted into utter chaos.

The action seemed very similar to that of the original Modern Warfare, with knife kills and penetrating cover, but with a few new gameplay additions, like the ability to pick up and use a riot shield. With experienced players at the helm, it wasn’t long before the mission was over, but Activision encouraged us to try it again, stating that each experience will be different. We were more than happy to oblige.

Similar to the Terrorist Hunt mode found in Rainbow Six: Vegas, the missions in Spec Ops will involve a variety of random components. The enemies will spawn in random places, and each one will be outfitted with a random assortment of equipment. Activision also stated that there are some rare enemies that will be tougher to beat that will make an appearance from time to time to keep players on their toes. The mission objectives and player characters will remain specific to each individual mission, but beyond that, nothing is set in stone.

As players complete missions, new ones will unlock and may be played in any order. Once again, we were not told how many missions will appear in the final version of the game, but we were told that Spec Ops mode actually rivals the single-player campaign in length, so we expect there to be plenty. Spec Ops mode can be played with a maximum of two players via online or local split-screen, so find a friend and start training now.

With an exciting single-player campaign, an extremely robust multiplayer mode, and the addition of Spec Ops, Modern Warfare 2 will have plenty to offer. It’s easy to see why many have predicted that this game will surpass sales records worldwide, as it has already surpassed our expectations.

Set for release in September, Crash Course is meant to fill the void between the No Mercy and Death Toll campaigns, depicting what befell our beloved survivors after boarding that fateful helicopter atop Mercy Hospital. While Crash Course will offer both a Survival Mode map and a co-operative campaign, its primary focus is to deliver a complete Versus Mode experience in just thirty minutes. A recharge timer for infected teammates is said to have been added, and the item spawn behaviour has been changed to provide more balanced gameplay.

“Since the release of Left 4 Dead last November, the design team has been excited about creating new experiences for this world and allowing players to do the same, by releasing much of our internal toolset, like the Survival Pack and Authoring Tools,” said Gabe Newell. “We’re working with the fans toward the ongoing entertainment value of the product.”

Left 4 Dead: Crash Course is targeted for release in September and will be available free of charge on the PC and for 550 Microsoft Points on the Xbox 360.

Borderlands is the latest from the developers at Gearbox Software, creators of the Brothers in Arms franchise and developers of Half-Life: Opposing Force. A combination of first-person shooter and role-playing game, Borderlands will allow players to develop their characters online with their friends or explore the world alone in single-player mode. Featuring a dynamic content generation system similar to the Diablo series, the game is said to feature a near-endless variety of weapon and item drops.

The key features of the game include:

• FPS Action Meets RPG Character Progression: Players can choose from one of four distinct characters and earn experience and gain proficiency in a number of specialties as they do battle with enemies. Upgrades can be invested in a wide variety of special abilities, allowing players to create a fully customized character that is tailored to their playing style.
• Co-op Engineered Game Design: Borderlands is built from the ground-up to be an exciting and intuitive co-operative multiplayer experience that rewards players for investing in specific co-op skills.
• Radical New Art Style: Fresh and exciting new visual style combines traditional rendering techniques with hand-drawn textures to paint a unique and eye-catching spin on the First Person Shooter genre.
• Gun Lust: Choose from an arsenal of hundreds of thousands of weapons, each with their unique manufacturers, specifications and advantages. A revolutionary new content generation system produces almost infinite tools of destruction.
• Intense Vehicular Combat: Get behind the wheel of and engage in intense vehicle-to-vehicle combat, complete with extensive damage modeling and spectacular explosions.
• Next Big Original IP From Gearbox Software: Experience the action and creativity derived from the pedigree of one of gaming’s most consistent and respected developers.

I don’t know about you guys, but this game sounds like digital crack. Co-operative play? Check. Player progression? Check. Random item and weapon drops? Check. First-person shooter gameplay? Check. Gorgeous graphics? Check. It’s like someone at Gearbox Software made this game just for me. I feel so special.

Borderlands is scheduled for release this fall for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms. In the meantime, check out these dynamically-generated screenshots:

The post-nuclear Capitol Wasteland of Fallout 3, where the currency is Nuka-Cola bottle caps, is full of flavour. The neutral colour schemes can get tiresome for some, but the man versus nature theme is intriguing and influenced my play style. I found myself scrounging for every piece of ammo and health pack. I snuck around very carefully in order to get the most optimal shots and to prevent taking more damage than necessary in order to conserve my resources. Unfortunately, this desperate scavenger mentality does not last through the whole game and eventually there were enough money and suppliers that there were no longer any resource concerns.

The combat in Fallout is unique and fun. The game is mostly played in a first-person perspective. While Fallout does provide a third-person view, I found this mode to be very inaccurate and clunky. It was occasionally useful in order to look around a corner when sneaking, but overall the game could’ve just dropped this perspective. Aiming, shooting, swinging, and throwing all take place in real time. The combat innovation is introduced through the V.A.T.S. mode, a paused targeting system that allows you to target specific body parts of your enemies. While in V.A.T.S., you have a number of action points to spend, a concept that will be familiar to fans of previous Fallout games. Your chance of hitting in V.A.T.S. is determined by your character’s proficiency with the weapon you’re using, and the number of actions you can take depend on your weapon. Once you make your choices in V.A.T.S. you’re treated to an action camera view of the exaggerated and gorey consequences. In a lengthy battle, this mechanic mixes paused and run and gun gameplay with satisfying results. The location targeting isn’t restricted to V.A.T.S., either. If you shoot an enemy in the head in FPS mode, they will suffer the same consequences as in V.A.T.S. For example, doing enough damage to an opponent’s leg will make them limp and slow down, or shooting them in the arm will make them drop a two-handed weapon.

While combat is fun, the other interaction with the world is really limited. Aside from lockpicking, where you essentially have to guess the angle at which to place your lockpick, and the hacking, where you solve a puzzle to guess the password, everything else just involves pressing the “use” button. This limitation helps the pace of the game, but it breaks the sandbox feel that Bethseda is trying to sell.

Besides, the pace of the game is completely ruined by an atrocious inventory management and menu system. There is a certain miserly joy to be had from mentally calculating the cost per weight values of all the items you pick up, but having to slog through a straight list of most of your items is tedious. There are not enough categories of items, there are no shortcuts to get to your inventory, and the buy and sell interface is a list of all the items in your inventory. The map and quest menus are all mixed in with the inventory menus, so it ends up being several clicks or button presses to get among all the different tabs that you may want to look at. In addition, the tooltips on certain items are insufficient, and special items are not demarcated or separated in any way. For example, I sold my food sanitizer initially because I didn’t realize that it actually had a special effect if I carried it around until afterwards. It’s a mystery as to why checking your health, your radiation, and your drug addictions require three separate screens, with no hotkeys to access any of them. To make matters worse, there is a slight delay before it brings the menus up as you wait for the animation to finish. Even though it’s just a couple of seconds, over the course of the game it becomes a huge menace.

The dialogue system is typical role-playing fare, with a small variety of paths to take. Fallout incorporates the trendy morality system, allowing you to choose if you’re a hero, a villain, or somewhere in between. Civilians might randomly give you gifts if you’re a paragon of virtue, but that will also mean you’ve drawn the ire of the mercenary companies. The game does an adequate job of making it feel like the morality choices matter, and there are even special abilities that tie into the three moral paths. The voice acting in the game is well done, but the social interactions suffer from entirely forgettable characters.

Moreover, the main plot can be painful at times. There are ineffable parts in the plot that leaves you scratching your head. The optional quests are slightly more interesting, but I did not encounter many that were truly memorable.

What it lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity. The Capitol Wasteland is a vast area with a plethora of points of interest. Discovering and trying to complete every side quest will take a long while, although for me the game got to be a little repetitive by the end and I had no interest in the remaining side quests.

The graphics and sound are where they are expected to be for a title of this caliber. The environment is beautiful and the shotgun blasts are fulfilling. The character models are detailed and decorated, and the audio cues are plentiful and fitting. In addition, the view distance was superb and I could see enemies before they were indicated on my compass (although this might not be the case if my perception attribute was maxed). The ragdoll animation and detailed head explosions when something dies in V.A.T.S. is really rewarding as well, although it can lend itself to some ridiculousness as a creature’s head will explode when you landed the fatal blow in its leg.

One note about the Games For Windows Live version of the game, and a huge pet peeve of mine, is that the game’s Windows integration is very poor. Not only does the installation not install start menu shortcuts, but in fullscreen mode alt-tabbing back to the desktop is dysfunctional. Nine of ten times I tried to do this, I could not get back to the game and had to forcefully abort the game and restart from the last save point. This poor production quality is something I would not expect even from really small publishers, so Bethseda really dropped the ball in this area.

With better writing, a decent inventory system, and a more convenient menu system, Fallout 3 could have been a masterpiece, but has to settle for an entertaining experience instead.

Unreal Tournament 3 became Unreal Tournament 3 Black with the introduction of the free downloadable Titan Pack add-on. The Titan Pack added loads of new content and enhancements to the game, including new levels, weapons, vehicles, characters, and the titular Titan Mutator.

With the upcoming release of patch 2.1, Unreal Tournament 3 Black will see further enhancements, such as gameplay tweaks, mod support enhancements, bug fixes, user interface improvements, and achievement progress for custom maps.

Pre-loading for the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3 Black free Steam weekend begins now.

• Conductor Map: Push your way out of a train yard into the vast and open-ended junction station built around a turntable. EPAs will battle their way through the ground floor, as infantry can choose to either support from below or scale the heights of the station and engage in long-range combat.

• Decoy Map: Put your skill to the test in this full-scale training ground for Replica soldiers! Once a controlled arena for combat exercises, now it is under a full-blown assault for control between Replica and ATC. Watch out for ambushes, and don’t let the pop-up target dummies fool you!

• Character Heads: Four unique heads to customize your character!

The Armored Front map pack will be available on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 540 Microsoft Points and the Playstation Network Store for $6.99.

Originally hyped during E3 2005 when developer Guerrilla Games revealed their ambitious target render for the title, Killzone 2 has since become a flagship game in Sony’s Playstation 3 library. Following the events that transpired in the original Killzone for the Playstation 2, Killzone 2 takes place on the planet Helghan, home-world to the Helghast people. In retaliation for the assault on the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA) colony of Vekta, the ISA have set their sights on capturing Scolar Visari, leader of the Helghast army. Assuming the role of Sergeant Tomas “Sev” Sevchenko, a battle-hardened veteran and member of an elite special forces squad known as Alpha Team, you will embark on a mission to dismantle the Helghast war machine.

But none of that really matters. The storyline in Killzone 2 is weak and entirely forgettable. It has its moments, but it’s clear that it wasn’t a priority during development. In fact, most of the chapters in the game could be played in random order with little detriment to the plot. But when engaged in one of the games many overwhelming fire-fights, the plot is going to be the furthest thing from your mind.

The gun battles in Killzone 2 are unlike anything I have seen before in a video game. The level of immersion is unparalleled, and the raw intensity gets your heart pounding. Using the slogan “war perfected” in their advertising campaigns, Killzone 2 has achieved just that. With a staggering amount of activity occurring on-screen at once, each encounter feels like it’s part of a much bigger war. Wounded soldiers litter the battlefield, crying for help. Missiles and tracers from anti-aircraft artillery soar overhead, attempting to stave off the oncoming invasion. Buildings crumble, mobile armour explodes, and aircraft fall from the sky in a ball of fire. The atmosphere is almost dizzying, and the Helghast use it to their advantage. Fighting on their turf, their planet, the Helghast will almost always have the upper hand in battle. Pinning you down with mounted gun batteries, flanking you from unexpected angles, the Helghast army will do their best to keep you on your toes. The odds may seem impossible at times, but keeping a level head will keep you alive. It’s moments like these that define a soldier!

Unfortunately, as immersive as the battles can be, the controls can be quick to snap you back to reality. Character movement and aiming can feel really sluggish, and the button-mapping can be awkward and impractical. The sensitivity of the analog sticks can be increased, reducing the sluggish response time to a degree, but it will still take some time to get used to. However, the button configuration remained a point of frustration for me throughout the entire experience. Killzone 2 offers a handful of available button layouts to choose from, but would have greatly benefited from allowing custom configurations. While some of the available layouts were better than others, none of them were perfect. The one I eventually settled on required me to press and hold a button to enter and remain in cover, then press and hold a direction to peek out of cover, then press and hold another button to look down my iron sights, then press another button to fire. That’s three buttons held and one direction pressed every time I wanted to return fire while in cover. I understand that war is hell, but the controls shouldn’t be.

War shouldn’t be beautiful either, but this one is. Coming remarkably close to their famous E3 target render, Guerrilla Games have created a shining example of the Playstation 3’s graphical prowess. The environments are highly detailed, providing a very believable war-torn setting. Buildings are peppered with bullet holes, burning wreckage spews thick billows of black smoke into the sky, and bullet casings lay scattered about the floor. The turbulent winds of Helghan blow smoke and sand throughout the battlefield and send untied tarp and cloth fluttering through the air. The environmental lighting casts stark shadows, and can create an almost surreal atmosphere as beams of light pour through airborne dust and sand. It is truly a sight to behold, and makes the planet of Helghan as much of a character, if not more so, than those that inhabit it. The character models hold up their end of the bargain as well. Each buckle, belt and strap carefully rendered, the models are loaded with realistic details. The weapons have been designed with great care, each looking like the evolution of a real-world counterpart. Every time I reloaded, I found myself staring at the weapon models, marvelling at how realistic they looked. But of all the graphical touches found in Killzone 2, the crimson eyes of the Helghast steal the show. Eerily illuminating dark hallways and penetrating through thick smoke, those eyes make the approach of incoming enemies all the more intimidating.

Not to be outdone by the visuals, the sound design in Killzone 2 definitely has its moments. Featuring a full orchestral score, the music delivered during the epic battles and cutscenes is reminiscent of big budget, science fiction films. Cueing up when the action gets hot, the music is the icing on an already beautiful, intense cake. Unfortunately, the voice acting isn’t quite up to par. With the exception of an outstanding performance by Brian Cox, who provides the voice of the Helghan leader, Scolar Visari, most of the dialogue in the game will make you cringe. The Helghan voices are fine, if not a little repetitive, but the voices and dialogue of your allied soldiers can be painful to listen to. Littered with an unnecessary amount of obscenities, your allies and AI partners insist on shouting horribly clichéd lines at every opportunity. They’re not too difficult to ignore, but they’ll make you appreciate the few scenarios in which you travel alone. That aside, the general sound design is great. Fire-fights assault you with a cacophony of explosions, distant screams and gunfire, and it can all be enjoyed in 7.1 digital surround sound.

After you have fought your way through the relatively short single-player campaign – a task that will take between six to eight hours – there is a rather extensive multiplayer component waiting for you. Called Warzone, the online multiplayer in Killzone 2 supports up to 32 players competing in a variety of game modes. The modes are typical fare for the first-person shooter genre, with Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and control-based modes being given names like Body Count, Search and Retrieve, and Capture and Hold. Players start as a common soldier when they begin their career in Warzone, but earn experience points throughout matches for getting kills and completing objectives. If your team wins a match, you’ll receive a multiplier of 1.5 on all experience points earned during that match. As you earn more points you will be promoted in rank, beginning as a lowly private and peaking as a general.

As you achieve these higher ranks, you will also unlock special character classes. There are six classes in all, each of which come with two unique ability badges. A medic, for instance, has a badge that allows him to revive fallen players, and another that allows him to deploy medkits. However, the Saboteur class can disguise themselves as a member of the other team and is capable of planting proximity mines. The more time you spend playing as a specific class, the more badges you’ll unlock for that class. And when you finally master one of the classes, you’ll be granted the ability to use badges from other classes. Want to play as a medic that deploys proximity mines instead of medkits? It’s only a matter of time.

While Killzone 2 fails to deliver on all its promises, it remains worthy of the flagship status that Sony has bestowed upon it. The intensity of the action is unparalleled, and the visuals are amongst the best to date on a console. And when the single-player campaign is completed, the multiplayer component will offer limitless hours of gameplay for online enthusiasts. Unfortunately, the awkward controls are hard to ignore, and the voice-acting places an unsightly blemish on the otherwise polished presentation. Regardless, Killzone 2 is a triumph for the Playstation 3, and a game that will be enjoyed for years to come.

The graphics are the ones you’ve seen a few times before already in Half Life 2 and its spawn. The animations are rewarding when you disintegrate the head of a zombie with a shotgun or vomit on someone as a Boomer, a special zombie that blinds and attracts a horde of zombies with its green bile. Even at max settings, the graphics are not overly impressive by today’s standard. However, everything looks appropriately atmospheric but not too creepy.

The creepiness factor is delivered mostly by the sound. Every zombie has an audio cue to indicate its presence nearby, and in a surround sound environment this can get truly unnerving. This applies especially to the Witch, a zombie with a frail frame that just sobs its baiting cries until someone startles it with a flashlight or a gunshot. Then the pitiful cries turn to angry screams, and then all that can be heard are the screams of the player who startled it.

In addition to the high quality of the zombie noises, each of the four protagonists have an impressive reservoir of sound bytes. The PC version of the game has a great option to turn on subtitles so that you catch all of the quotes. These phrases range from functional to whimsical, but most of the characters aren’t terribly interesting.

Another interesting feature of the sound engineering is the dynamically generated music that is unique to the character being viewed. For example, you get your own music score while playing as a human, but you will also get to hear the music of the person you’re watching after you’re dead.

The game is really simple and has hardly any learning curve. Anyone who has played any kind of first-person shooter in their lifetime can pick this game up and play. The focus of the game is banding with three other teammates to try to complete the objective. If you’re the humans, this means getting to a safe point on the other side of the map. If you’re the zombies, it means killing the humans. The individual humans aren’t different, so there’s no complexity there to worry about. There are only six different weapons in the game and two of the weapons are just upgraded versions of other weapons, so there’s nothing to learn there either. The mechanics of the four zombie types can be explained in less than five minutes, making it easy for new players to jump right in and start mangling.

This lack of variety and depth is compensated by randomly generated and spawned zombies and items so that you have a different experience every time you play. The core mode of the game is a Versus mode, in which a team of up to four players control the zombies and up to four other players control the humans. This creates fun and memorable experiences as your team executes (or falls victim to) the perfect ambush or running frantically through a fire to get to the safe room.

The ingenious part of the gameplay revolves around the design of survival. The chances of a group of three humans surviving a scenario as opposed to a group of four are fantastically lower. As a group of two there is pretty much no hope, as two special zombies attacking at once can end the game. It makes leaving any member of the group behind to gain some ground a losing strategy, and it forms a fast bond amoung the team as they realize that their success depends upon the contribution of every member. This also leads to some deflating moments if a teammate disconnects, as it is impossible to co-ordinate with the computer controlled bot. Other barriers to the humans’ success include spots on the map where they are forced to wake up the neighbourhood, and as we all know noise attracts zombies. A cornucopia of ravenous zombies, which makes for some frantic and exciting moments.

In addition, the game introduces an intelligent pacing mechanism known as The Director. The Director will throw more zombies into the mix if it thinks the players’ stress levels are too low, or spawn items as needed. This AI is why I always have one random zombie chewing on me when I’m just leaving a “safe” area.

Even though it is mainly a multiplayer game, the game disappoints with its poor matchmaking system. To start a game, pick the map and mode and then wait for players to join. To join a game, pick the map and mode you want to play and it throws you into a server matching your criteria. It doesn’t let you see how far into the match the players have progressed, nor does it give you the option to pick multiple maps. Joining as a group is also missing from the list of features on the PC version. Sitting and waiting for players is a frequent cause of frustration because of the limited matchmaking choices on both platforms.

The single player campaign seems insignificant as the artificial intelligence is unspectacular (even in the PC version, where you can issue commands to them), but I haven’t tried it. The co-op campaign is fun the first few times, but most of the enjoyment comes from the Versus mode. Even the Survival mode, which pits a group of humans against an unending swarm of zombies, falls short of the lasting appeal of Versus.

Your enjoyment of this game will come from who you play with. Despite a shallow combat system, Left 4 Dead is still a fun game focused on the fresh experiences generated by randomly located opponents and items. It is not netting Valve any lifetime achievement awards, but it’s a fast-paced, zombie-or-human-exploding good time.

“Dad! You killed zombie Flanders!!” – Bart
“He was a zombie?” – Homer

Eschewing the lush, tropical island setting in favour of arid plains and savannah, Far Cry 2 places you in the middle of a fictional, war-torn African state. The government has recent collapsed and left two military factions, the United Front for Liberation (UFLL) and the Alliance of Popular Resistance (APR), vying for control. Both factions claim to have the best interest of the people at heart, yet partake in ruthless acts of warmongering and greed with little regard to their well-being. Each have been armed by a mysterious weapons dealer known only as The Jackal, and it’s your job to kill him. The task won’t be an easy one, however, as his whereabouts is unknown. And to make matters worse, your character is diagnosed with malaria.

When starting a new game of Far Cry 2, you’re required to choose from a list of twelve characters to play. However, while each of the characters have a unique appearance and background information, they are all functionally identical. Each character begins the game with the same weaponry, skills and physical attributes, with only their arms and hands – visible on screen at all times – to differentiate them. Once your character has been selected, the eleven remaining characters are delegated to in-game buddy roles. The buddies in Far Cry 2 act as friendly, non-player characters that will often assist you in your quest to find The Jackal. They can be invaluable sources of information, often providing alternate methods for completing a mission or locating hidden weapons. When you’re in a bind, or on the verge of death, a buddy can be summoned to the rescue. This means that you’ll be seeing a lot more of the characters that you don’t choose to play than the one that you do. If you find the personality and background of a particular character to be intriguing, you may be better off relegating them to the buddy role rather than forcing them to become a mute protagonist.

After completing a few obligatory tutorial missions, you’ll be set free in the wilds of Africa. The gameplay in Far Cry 2 is very open-ended, allowing you to progress at your own pace, explore the far reaches of the game world, and ultimately choose your own path. But in order for the story to progress, you must accept freelance mercenary missions from one of the two rival factions. These missions run the gamut between assassinations and deliveries, each of which will have you charting a course across the savannah. However, the game world in Far Cry 2 is so massive that without the proper use of vehicles, it can take almost an hour to reach some of your destinations. Thankfully, regional bus shelters are scattered about the African plains, capable of instantly transporting you to another area of the map.

If you choose not to use the buses, your travels will likely be fraught with encounters. With the exception of the characters that you meet in cities and cease-fire zones, everyone in Far Cry 2 will attack you on sight. Whether you encounter them at a military outpost or drive past them on a dusty road, they will go out of their way in an attempt to kill you – some even willing to chase you across the entire length of the game world. In a game meant to feel so open-ended and realistic, this realization can be rather stifling. And the illusion of freedom is further diminished when one realizes that the enemies respawn after a short period of time. Encountering these maniacs over and over again can be a frustrating experience, and it’s hard not to feel a little agoraphobic when playing Far Cry 2 as a result.

Thankfully, there’s more to discover in the African wilderness than people that want to kill you. Throughout the game world, players can discover and inhabit safe houses. These safe houses act as a home away from home for your character, where you can sleep to restore health and advance the in-game clock. You can also store weapons, items and vehicles at your safe houses for later use. Unfortunately, each safe house location is guarded by a handful of soldiers who, like everyone else in Far Cry 2, will attack you on sight. However, once these soldiers have been dealt with, the safe house will be considered unlocked and they will never return.

All of these encounters will require you to be well-stocked with guns and ammo, both of which can be purchased from a weapons dealer. These dealers run shops that can be found throughout the game world, and can be easily located on your in-game map. However, with the government and economy in shambles, the only relevant currency in Far Cry 2 is diamonds. Trading these diamonds to a weapons dealer will not only earn you new weapons, but a host of upgrades as well. The reliability and accuracy of each weapon can be upgraded, and the carrying capacity for ammo, grenades and healing syrettes can be increased. In addition to trading weapons, these dealers can also upgrade your safe houses. Each upgrade – such as adding a healing or ammo station – is global, adding the requested feature to all unlocked safe houses.

The combat in Far Cry 2 can be both fun and frustrating. The physics engine is very realistic, and the environments are fully destructible. Start tossing grenades into an enemy outpost and the resulting chaos is extremely satisfying. Or throw a molotov cocktail into a dry field full of enemy soldiers and watch it burn, baby, burn. Interacting with the soldiers themselves, however, is not quite as fun. The amount of damage that an enemy unit can soak up before dying is surprising, and can sometimes result in unexpected and fatal retaliation. The amount of damage your character can withstand, on the other hand, is much smaller by comparison. In a game trying so hard to seem realistic, this contrast can really detract from your level of immersion.

Whenever your character becomes severely wounded, injecting yourself with a healing syrette will no longer suffice. Instead, you are required to retreat from combat and find a place to tend to your wounds. This involves a short animation in which your character will remove bullets and bandage limbs. Once the process is complete, your character will have stabilized and will be ready for combat again. If you are unable to withdraw from combat, your character will slowly bleed to death until you can find the time stabilize yourself.

In addition to tending wounds, your character must also treat themselves for malaria. Every few days of travel, your malaria symptoms will resurface, causing your character to become disoriented. These symptoms can easily be overcome by taking malaria medication. Unfortunately, malaria medication is not readily available, and those that have it are rarely willing to part with it for free. In order to obtain some, you’ll often be required to perform a mission first. Upon completion, you’ll typically be rewarded with a few doses of medication – enough to last a week or two of in-game time. When your supply runs out, you’ll be required to initiate the process all over again. With so much time already spent travelling in Far Cry 2, treating your malaria often feels like a chore.

If you grow tired of the single player campaign, Far Cry 2 offers a surprisingly robust multiplayer component. The available modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag (or in this case, diamonds), and Uprising. Uprising involves the capturing of specific objectives located around the map, with each team’s captain being the only player eligible to capture. Objective driven multiplayer modes aren’t new to first-person shooters, but the captain-only limitation on capturing adds some interesting gameplay. When starting a new round, you’ll be required to choose a character class. Character classes include Commando, Sharpshooter, Guerilla, Rebel, Gunner or Saboteur – each featuring their own selection of weapons. As you continue to play, your multiplayer profile will accumulate experience points, obtain ranks, and unlock new weapons for you to use. In addition, a fully-featured map editor is available to keep online gameplay feeling fresh and new.

The graphics in Far Cry 2 are simply gorgeous. When travelling during the day, beams of light can be seen trickling through the trees, and realistic-looking animals can be seeing frolicking in the grass. The vegetation blows believably in the wind, and the intense heat will distort your view of the horizon. As time progresses, the sun will travel from East to West, with its realistically-cast shadows moving accordingly. Day and night will transition with a beautiful sunset worthy of finding a large hill just to watch it, and the next morning will see an equally vibrant sunrise. Environmental effects, like the early-morning fog, are amongst the best I have ever seen. The fire, one of Far Cry 2’s greatest visual achievements, will travel from one combustible surface to another, and can actually be guided by the wind. The first time a fire broke out during my experience with the game, I almost died due to my inability to stop watching it.

Character and vehicle models are also well rendered, but fail to match the beauty of the environments. Their textures are sharp and varied, and the character animations are detailed and realistic. Enemies will react believably when shot and fly through the air when in close proximity to an explosion. Vehicles and destructible structures explode into dozens of pieces, littering the area with debris. In Far Cry 2, combat is a beautiful thing to watch.

If only the audio design were as polished. The basic sound effects, such as the weapons, vehicles and explosions, sound good, if not a little generic. The dynamic music, which changes tempo based on your current situation, is pleasant to listen to. However, the voice acting is atrocious. All spoken lines in the game sound as though they were rushed, with the actors delivering their lines in a very speedy manner. Each line sounds disjointed from the rest, and almost entirely devoid of any intonation. It’s hard to believe that this may have been an intentional design decision, but the quality of the voice acting – or lack thereof – is consistent throughout the entire game.

Far Cry 2 can’t seem to decide what it wants to be. It tries to be an open-ended sandbox title, yet discourages you from travelling. It tries to be a traditional first-person shooter, then sidetracks you with semi-realistic obligations. The game engine is impressive and the visuals are beautiful, but the gameplay has missed the mark made by the original. With a little more time and focus, Ubisoft could have moulded Far Cry 2 into the game it deserved to be. Instead, fans of the franchise are left for their true sequel to come.