Though savagely panned by critics and players alike, I feel that Neverdead has been underserved by the gaming public. Though it has it's flaws, it's brevity, decent graphics and darkly hilarious script make it an ideal rental for any player looking for a more classical shoot'em up with a few modern creature comforts. It's the sort of game that rental services are ideal for.
Don't let it's sombre, realistic style mislead you.
Neverdead's core mechanic is the protagonist's indestructibility, as Bryce Boltzmann can be dismembered but can reassemble his body by rolling his head into lost limbs ala Katamari Damachi. It's a refreshing take on the rebounding health systems which we're all used to, and though it might be frustrating at times it underpins Bryce's painful existence as a reluctant immortal. Thankfully the dodging system is fairly solid, so if you are vigilant you can go quite awhile without loss of life and limb.
Just try not to mislay your torso.
The gameplay is evocative of the Midway action series The Suffering, but with an additional emphasis on sword as well as gunplay. There is also an impressive amount of scenery deformation, and the game even encourages you to destroy architecture to bring it down on enemies. It also demonstrates Bryce's personality as a gameplay dynamic, showing his casual disregard for property as his long life has desensitized him.
There is an RPG system in place with a wide gamut of skills to choose from, and gives the player a chance to find their own method of play that suits them. Yet the moment-to-moment gameplay may surprise you with it's intricacies too; my favourite trick is to pull off my arm and throw it at explosive barrels, luring hungry monsters to them before opening fire and destroying the whole horde with ease.
Yes, that demon has cherub statues embedded in it's arm.
The other appeal of Neverdead lies in it's script. While the plot is intentionally cliche and full of elements familiar to any fan of Devil May Cry or God Hand, the wry banter between protagonists and Bryce's hobo-with-superpowers mentality is a real treat. There's even some genuine pathos to be found in Bryce's backstory and the secret to his immortality, though it's all played up for cheese as much as possible. The game's developers at Rebellion are the guys who make 2000AD's games and it shows. If you have a taste for ultraviolence, bawdy humour and farce, I dare say you'll get a kick out of Neverdead.
Naturally the game has it's flaws. The game's mechanics are often more frustrating than challenging, the mutilation system might grate for some people, and I've heard that some people can't get comfortable with the aiming system. Naturally describing gameplay nuances is one the hardest things someone can do with our limited lexicons, but with respect I think that most people won't find it hard to get to grips with.
The biggest problem is a lack of gameplay diversity; it can take hours for new enemies to be introduced, and other than a few stand out set pieces, most scenarios are simply a matter of finding the enemy spawn point and thrashing it with your sword until it goes away. The boss fights tend to be fairly typical affairs, apart from one which makes good use of the arm-ripping mechanic and another which is quite a fun homage to a boss from Metal Gear Solid 2. It even dares to have a few simple puzzles in it, which is stunning for a modern game in a market which has all but abandoned the concept of a good brain-teaser.
Or dunker.
And then of course there's the game length. The game is almost comically short, and can easily be polished off in less than seven hours, and other than some higher difficulty settings and new powers to unlock there's not much incentive to replay. While there is a multiplayer suite, it's entirely abandoned, which seems tragic but to be expected from an obscure title like this.
But this brevity just makes Neverdead a more solid rental. By all means don't buy Neverdead unless it really tickles you, but I think that if you approach the game with the right attitude it'll leave you smiling. I certainly enjoyed it more than the higher profile releases this year, such as Max Payne 3 or Resident Evil 6.
You want to know the really sad thing? This is probably the closest thing to a great Highlander game we'll ever see.
Cheaper, better options: Dead Space, The Suffering (Free on PC!)
As a long standing fan of the Resident Evil franchise I am of course a glutton for punishment. Shinji Mikami's medium-shifting franchise has not been one to except change gracefully, a fact easily seen by the period between the first game in '96 and Resident Evil '04 showing almost no experimentation or improvement with the existing formula. Granted the Outbreak multiplayer spin off was the exception, and pioneered a lot of the concepts that would be later improved upon by Valve's Left 4 Dead games. However, Capcom has a business acumen which thrives on finding anything of worth and cloning it endlessly until it has nothing left to give, so it took the diametric shift in style and gameplay Shinji marshalled in RE4 to give life back to the ailing series.
Sweet candy.
RE4 informed a new paradigm in game design, integrating RPG style mechanics with skill based gameplay which reinvented the Survival Horror genre. Although it did that by turning it into the Third Person Action game genre, forcing fans of gaming horror to take solace in the ailing Silent Hill franchise, and otherwise scuttle off to find sustenance in the Indie scene. Like I did, but I'm not bitter.
By the time that RE5 came out four years later, it was into a market that had already changed in the wake of it's predecessor. Visceral's Dead Space had taken the features RE4 innovated and made it's own action/horror identity, and hell, even lousy imitations and shovel-ware had clogged up the market, like Cold Fear. RE5 desperately needed something to make it stand out and compete with not only it's predecessor but also the upstarts clinging to its coat tails. Instead it shilled in co-operative multiplayer in a misinformed attempt to compete with other Triple-A games and doused the experience with plenty of uncomfortable and not at all intentional (honest) racism.
The Cannibal Holocaust game we never knew we wanted.
So RE6 has to pull off a hat trick:
It needs to re-establish good faith with old fans.
It needs to endear itself to "mainstream gamers" to compete with the likes of Gears of War and Call of Duty.
It needs to infatuate new fans with the franchise to assure it's future.
And now we have a PUBLIC demo to gean whether or not Capcom can pull it off. Really, it's labelled PUBLIC demo. It's like they didn't even look at the file name before sticking it on XBLA.
This demo was actually available to people who bought Dragon's Dogma at retail early this year. Supposedly anyway, because the promotion code I got with the game didn't goddamned work, but as a consolation Dragon's Dogma was a much more entertaining game than RE5, for all it's flaws.
It's like Dark Souls without a broken controller!
Back on track though, the demo is trifurcated into episodes for each of the three plot threads running through the main campaign. Each are co-op based, the first with Leon and Helena, then Chris and Piers, and lastly Jake and Sherry.
6 feels mechanically different from 5. It's new melee system allows fist fighting to be initiated without first shooting an adversary, and has a surprisingly natural feel as one move flows into the next. Unfortunately it does place an emphasis on physically brawling with enemies, which might make sense when fighting mutant mercenaries but is more than a little incongruous when trying to survive an attack by a horse-sized skinless abomination. It's one thing to establish the player character as a badass, it's quite another to have them head lock a wretched monster covered in acidic sputum and knee it repeatedly in it's fanged maw.
Behold the new butch Leon!
The new emphasis on gun wielding enemies is not a comfortable one. The cover mechanics are amateur and uncomfortable, putting your character's head in the line of fire more often than not. Blessedly enemy gunfire tends to do no more than knock you over into the downed state, where you can scoot about on your buttocks or return fire quite comfortably. One bizarre omission is that there is no grenade warning system; in Chris's chapter many of the mercenaries chuck grenades, and no indicator comes up to warn you of their proximity. Thankfully though the problems with gun wielders is mitigated by the presence of J'avo mutations; when struck on certain parts of their bodies, random enemies will undergo a mutation that transforms them in creative and disgusting ways. Quickly battles that in other cover-based shooters would be run of the mill devolve into chaotic affairs, as enemies randomly mutate powers and new forms that force you from a comfortable firing position and drive you to adapt. As long as there are plenty more of these in the full game, and they require new strategies to combat, some of the battles should prove to be quite memorable.
Tremble before Big Man With Arm Thingy!
Other than the mutations though there are very few new mechanics to speak of. The new inventory system feels even more fiddly than the one in 5, perhaps to discourage dicking about with it in combat, but it's still counterintuitive and lacks that OCD-inducing charm of the grid-based one found in RE4. There are no puzzles to be found in the proceedings, which does not bode well for the final product, which has promised at least a few diversionary brain-teasers to keep the gameplay fresh. The soundtrack does seem to have regressed in quality from 5, with several of the themes seeming closer in composition to tracks found in the Playstation 1 games, and not the best ones either. Some of the Quick Time Events can seem excessive and out of place, whereas others which allow for more precise player interaction can be a lot more fun. The new medical system uses a segment system reminiscent of that found in Far Cry 2, where each character has multiple health cubes and if one is only partially drained it can be healed over time. To recover lost ones the player must pop one pill each, which looks just as derpy as it did in Max Payne 3. When downed altogether the player can defend themselves with whatever weapon in hand and get revived by a team mate as long as an enemy doesn't one-shot them while they're vulnerable, but thankfully that's unlikely to happen often.
Leon's stages are sculpted for maximum manipulative nostalgia.
On that subject though the demo is very easy, with health items already abundant in each character's inventory and the characters can shrug off injuries with ease, to say nothing of standing directly in the line of fire without being downed for minutes on end. Furthermore some of the characters, particularly Jake, are grotesquely overarmed for scenarios that can be survived with little more than a pistol and some ingenuity. It robs the demo af any sense of drama or urgency, and makes it feel even less like a tense action/horror and more like a puerile shooting gallery.
There are plent of flaws on display in this demo, and yet a few delicate wisps of decent ideas can be found glimmering in the mire. As long as the difficulty is a little more balanced and the cover system has a few tweaks, we might have a decent third person shooter here. We probably won't have a great Resident Evil game though.
Oh, and what do you want to bet that this never happens in RE6:
RE6 Trailer
...just like this never happened in Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS:
At PAX Prime 02/09/12, Hideo Kojima personally appeared to publicly discuss the Metal Gear series, both past games and the two upcoming titles Metal Gear Revengance and Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.
Kojima surreptitiously stated that Raiden's lack of popularity was due to problems with the MGS2 project rather than the fault of the public.
Kojima described where the title Revengance came from. He stated that it was due to the aborted first attempt to make the game, the "Re-" prefix referring to Platinum retrying to make the game. He went on to state in his usual oddball idiom that it meant the team was taking REvenge on the previous project for failing, and that the game allows the player to take REvenge on the world by hacking it up with a katana.
Kojima's translator committed a bit of a faux-pas by stating that Hideo had made Okami, which was actually a product of Clover Studios and had nothing to do with him.
Kojima stated that he would like to make a main instalment in the Metal Gear franchise where the player can be The Boss (From Metal Gear Solid 3).
Kojima stated that if a Metal Gear film could be made, he favours Hugh Jackman and Tom Hardy for starring roles.
The Demo
Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes is made with the Fox Engine, an in-house developed game software that Kojima claims is adaptable enough to be used in other game genres, such as First Person Shooters, Third Person Shooters, On Rail and Open World games.
The GZ footage shown features 5 minutes of gameplay after a ten minute introduction cinematic, all in engine. The build is functional as there are two versions found online at the moment; one which has Big Boss discovered moments after taking control, and another where he infiltrates closer to the base before leaving by helicopter.
Theplot depicted Big Boss, wearing the Fox Unit insignia, infiltrating an American base in Cuba to rescue the characters Chico (Who was implicitly revealed on camera) and Paz. Both are characters established in Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops 2.
The plot implies that the original Fox Unit has divided, and a splinter group called XOF now operates separately from the original unit.
The officer in authority at the base is a ghoulish man who uses a light emitting device to erase the XOF insignia from a helicopter and has his men remove their own markings with the insignia as they leave the base.
The cinematic makes use of the song Here's To You by Joan Baez, a pro-anarchist anthem. A cover of the song was the ending theme of MGS4.
The game will not have a team based co-operative system such as was found in the Portable Ops games, although Big Boss will be able to call in air support with coloured smoke grenades. The player can even choose what music the transport chopper will play when it arrives, defaulting to Wagner's Ride of The Valkyries.
Big Boss makes use of a holographic device to view the site map of the base he is infiltrating.
The game allows the player to hijack vehicles, a concept Kojima had alluded to in the 2003 E3 MGS3 Trailer.
Check 8.00 onward, but it's a great trailer in and of itself.
My Impressions
Ground Zeroes shouldn't come as a surprise at this point, as Kojima has claimed his last four or so games were his final projects before retirement only to turn around and announce a new one months later.
It's now clear why Portable Ops 2 has been rereleased as part of the HD Collection and XBLA; Kojima wants to expand the user base of fans who are familiar with those titles before Ground Zeroes arrives.
With most players unfamiliar with Portable Ops 2, the idea of a whole game taking place at that point of the canon, with it's wildly anachronistic technology on display in the mid seventies and apparently a whole narrative spun around two characters only native to that series, fans and newcomers alike may feel alienated.
The vehicular hijacking, air support system and apparently more open environments seem reminiscent of games like Mercenaries or Just Cause. Hopefully the spirit of the series as stealth games can be carried on in this manner, seeing as MGS4 essentially devolved into a Third Person Shooter at many points due to the design choices the developers took there.
The rain soaked environment was reminiscent of MGS2 and the cliffside infiltration was akin to Metal Gear 2. Nice nods to old work as always from Kojima.
The Fox Engine looks gorgeous, but of course the real test will be whether or not the impressive quality of animation will improve gameplay rather than simply being ephemeral eye candy.
The tragic disintegrating protagonist pandemic claims another victim.
Red Faction Armageddon Review
Red Faction is a D List scifi action game
franchise with two important facets: Scenery deformation and disappointment. The
original game was a First Person Shooter that was effectively a launch title
for the Playstation 2 and featured the unique gameplay element of deformable
scenery, allowing players to blast natural formations of rock (But no man made
structures) with explosives and see real time damage. However, its story of
Martian miners seeking freedom from an autocratic mega corporation was a
hackneyed and laughably acted pastiche of Total Recall, to say nothing of its
clunky and awkward gameplay. The sequel abandoned the Martian aesthetic and
became an even more trite exercise, dropping even the scenery destruction and
ending up as a totally run of the mill Halo would-be. The third game, Guerilla,
was where things took a strong turn in the right direction. Abandoning much of
the pre-existing concept, the team at Volition made a third-person, Sandbox
based game which shifted the emphasis over to the destruction of buildings as
its unique quality. As a freedom fighter battling the dictatorial rule of the
Earth military on the red planet, players were charged with destroying enemy
real estate with an impressively realised physics engine and some very fun
toys. It still had flaws, but Guerilla definitely remains Volition’s strongest
offering in their fifteen year history, next to the hilariously silly Saints
Row 2.
Armageddon returns to the series roots by
providing a linear path through mostly underground areas and makes use of the
same engine as Guerilla. It focuses on Darius Mason, the grandson of Guerilla’s
protagonist, as he battles the machinations of a moustache-twirlingly evil
doomsday cult and the alien menace they unleash on Mars. As a result the game
abandons all pretences of its anti-authoritarian roots and thus most of what
made its plot unique, leaving it a much poorer experience as a result. It’s
just as well that in exchange for all these lost elements, there’s some fairly
solid gameplay here.
Luckily Darius is also Cole Macgrath, Starkiller and every other third person action protagonist.
Mostly players will pilot Darius through
repetitive tunnels made diverse only by slight shifts in ambient colour
schemes. The main time sinks are murdering bone-stupid aliens and murdering bone-stupid
human enemies, mostly the former. Thankfully the aliens are fairly agile, so
they can be relied upon to surround you consistently, but their lack of real
variety in attack methods makes them largely forgettable. At the very least the
stealthy enemy variant has some nice sound design. Vehicular combat sections
offer a pleasing change of pace as you plow through buildings in some nicely
designed power armour and other futuristic motors, but the tactical diversity
these stages put you up against amount to nothing more than, “See enemy. Shoot.
Circle strafe.” Ad infinitum, while on foot things are at least a little
interesting.
Yes, the game truly glimmers when the
player is making the most of its more creative weapons, primarily the
delightfully fun Magnet Gun, that allows you to creatively maim enemies with
the physics engine. Anything struck with the first shot from this weapon will
be pulled to wherever the second shot is placed, and with a modicum of
creativity this simple concept can be employed to enact pleasingly violent effects
on Darius’s enemies. It actually manages to be significantly more enjoyable to
use than practically any weapon in the game, and given that it is found fairly
early on, has infinite ammo and adapts to almost any combat situation, it does
overshadow the rest of his arsenal. This says alot, seeing as they are mostly
fun and less constraining when compared to Guerilla, which could be downright
abusive with how little ammo you could carry. The brother mechanic to the
Magnet Gun is the Nanoforge Gauntlet, Darius’s main utility weapon. Aside from
most of the game’s RPG-style unlocked abilities revolving around it, it allows
players to reassemble destroyed buildings by simply standing nearby and
pointing it at them. It’s a natural extension to the demolition engine, and can
be very gratifying to use, even if it’s not utilised to it’s full potential in
terms of set pieces or possible puzzles. It’s unique, empowering and fun to
use, and really that’s enough
Tragically the main attraction from
Guerilla’s engine, Demolition, is underplayed by design. While still present,
fun and a large part of the game, the prevalence of underground environments
means that there is a distinct lack of massive buildings to destroy in the
single player campaign, which were easily the most gratifying highlight the
previous game had to offer. Also, while Guerilla had a good plot reason for
destroying buildings, Armageddon has to shoe-horn in the element by implying
that the aliens breed by Corrupting buildings. It’s another silly plot thread
in a greater tapestry of narrative goofiness.
In fact I’m tempted to label the entire
game as a playable SyFy Original movie, because that’s certainly what Volition
wants me to call it. They proudly wear the badge of working with SyFy, and a
prequel movie was produced by the channel to accompany the game. This should
display the average calibre of intelligence to expect in this game, as it is
easily the most stupid iteration of the series with a bar already set low. At
least there is some Joss Whedon-esque snarky dialogue to keep your brain
trickling out of your ears. Just don’t be surprised if the plot resolution
leaves you in a bit of a manic fury. Or that could be just me.
Who wouldn't want to be part of this rich cinematic lineage?
In terms of multiplayer there’s a distinct
absence of Deathmatch, other directly competitive modes or co-operative
campaign modes. Instead Volition has included a fairly basic version of the old
Horde mode concept introduced by Gears of War 2, and a very welcome return by
the competitive demolition multiplayer introduced in Guerilla. The take on
Horde mode, called Infestation, has a group of players fend of waves of
monsters in large maps and occasionally protecting objectives from them, but
offers nothing in the way of unique weapons or set pieces that aren’t found in
the single player campaign, and without the promise of unlockable content
hanging over the mode it’s unlikely players will be interested in it for long.
Guerilla had a functional if uninteresting
competitive death match mode that is absent here, but the real draw was
Wrecking Crew. Wrecking Crew was a competitive hotseat style multiplayer mode
where players took it in turns to use specific equipment to destroy a layout of
buildings in a limited period of time. Both casual and competitive players
could get into the fun, and many a match was ended as players watch the last
precarious remnants of a destroyed building teetering on the edge of collapse,
seeing whose favour the match would end in. It was a simple and ingenius idea
which encouraged play at parties and made the game a group event that anyone
could enjoy. It was a brilliant way of promoting the game among friends, and is
still the most enduring thing about Guerilla.
Except perhaps this video.
The new version of Wrecking Crew in
Armageddon is Demolition, and tragically it is code-locked as Downloadable
Content, although the price for unlocking it is quite reasonable now. The thought occurs that
Infestation mode should have been locked out and Demolition should have been
playable out of the box, to help the game get promoted between groups of
friends. Or it would be, if Demolition wasn't a single player only, stripped down shadow of Wrecking Crew's greatness, where the player can only take on a linear succession of levels and demolish as much as possible within a time limit. The customization options and competitive gameplay is gone, replaced with so much nothing. It’s yet another sign of some of the really poor choices that went
into making Armageddon and kept it from greatness.
Because that is what Armageddon could have
been. It had some well executed ideas hidden away within it, but alas it
stumbles. Even so, it didn’t deserve the brutal lashing it got from the
critics, and now it’s pre-owned price has become quite reasonable it’s not too
hard to recommend. Fun weapons, solid physics and a few good ideas mean that
this is a game you can enjoy. Just leave your brain at the door.
Cheaper, better options: Red Faction: Guerilla, Dead Space.
Sony is severely lacking in terms of character
recognition nowadays. Microsoft has Master Chief and Marcus Fenix, Nintendo has
Mario and Link, and Sony has…Nathan Drake? Maybe? In the nineties this wasn’t
the case, when exclusivity rights to the likes of Crash Bandicoot and Lara
Croft were theirs alone for myriad reasons. To rekindle some of that brand
recognition Sony has been very keen to shill any pseudo recognizable character
at the public and see what sticks. Thankfully 2008’s Infamous has had better
luck than the likes of Killzone when it comes to providing a distinct visual
motif and at least one decent game. It’s sequel is here
and will be the test of whether or not Sucker Punch’s little bald baby can make
it as a big league player in the world of major video game franchises.
Infamous 2 is a sandbox style game where players
assume the role of Cole Macgrath, a bike courier turned electrical super power
recipient, and choose between being a mawkish vigilante and a homicidal prick.
This is just as dichotomous as it appears, for this is no Bioware game; the
game rewards the player for remaining entirely committed to one moral path
throughout the proceedings, and no problem will present a complex quandary to
you until the game’s final act.
Infamous 2 kicks off directly from the previous game’s
ending, with start up bonuses if you happened to have completed its
predecessor. It’s a pity that it essentially forces new players to spoil the
final events of the first game, but those who liked Cole may get a kick out of
the new plot. The prologue does however cheat a fair bit by rebooting Cole’s
existing powers down to zero ala Metroid, when most of the thrill in the original
game was found in Cole’s gradual yet meteoric rise in power. Instead this
sequel is largely a retread of the same abilities from the first game albeit
with very slight permutations. Although a scant few new
abilities are introduced such as the Kinetic Pulse, which allows Cole to pick
up objects around him and hurl them at enemies, they don’t necessarily fulfil
the urge to attain unprecedented levels of superpower that one might hope to
reach. Some of their mechanics aren’t even particularly strong, sometimes
failing to work or obstructing the camera at inconvenient moments.
No one said superpowers had to be useful.
The environment that encompasses most of the game is
the city of New Marais. Whereas the location of the first game, Empire City,
was something of a broad pastiche for every major American city, New Marais is
very deliberate in evoking post-Katrina New Orleans. It goes a little too far
in portraying the entire city as an anarchic den of inequity inhabited by
inbred yokels and religious right-wing extremists, and pushes the boundaries of
good taste a bit hard. The main problem with New Marais is that as a city that
is forty percent flooded and surrounded by bayou, many missions emphasize on
fighting around deep water, which is Cole’s kryptonite. One prat fall due to
the floaty platforming engine or wayward grenade can land the player with a
frustrating instant death. This problem is alleviated by generous checkpoints
which rarely set the player back more than five minutes, but to constantly fall
victim to this problem through no real fault of your own breaks the power
fantasy which the game strives to create.
One of the game’s main problems is the power selection
system. When the permutations on every one of Cole’s abilities start to be
unlocked, a quick menu become available to allow you to change the ability set
you are using on the fly. However, when activated the menu freezes the game and
mutes the soundtrack, making it highly intrusive and counterintuitive,
especially as it relies on a linear sequence of repeated button presses to
switch out powers rather than a radial menu. For example the original game’s
main rival, Prototype, utilised just such a radial menu for changing powers on
the fly, which slowed time down in game to force players to make quick
decisions while under fire. In its currently executed form, the power selection
menu in this game is awkward and inelegant; a big disappointment for such a high
profile title.
The problems with moment-to-moment game play don’t end
there however. One of the original game’s best features lay in its
parkour/urban exploration based game play, second only to Assassins Creed.
Bizarrely, this element seems to have taken a step back in the sequel; Cole’s
movements feel comparatively loose. Dropping from high ledges to lower ones
more often than not see you plummeting past your intended target, and Cole’s
ability to slide his hands against smooth surfaces as he falls past them to
slow his descent has been nerfed for some reason. Even the ability to heal and
recharge while sliding on power cables has been removed. On the plus side fall
damage has been removed entirely, which once could lead Cole to sudden deaths
if knocked off a rooftop by an explosion. Also New Marais has power cables at
the foot of buildings which can be used to propel you up to the building’s apex
a bit faster, making travel slightly more convenient. All these points imply
that the game engine has been tweaked rather than overhauled in these last
three years, so if as a fan you are hoping for more of the same without too
many improvements and a full price tag, you might walk away happy.
Cling to lamp posts for bonus XPs!
The enemies which the game sets Cole up against are
also a mixed bag. The original only had gun-toting street punks and a few minor
permutations for team leaders and kamikaze enemies. These enemies could barely
keep up with Cole and were easily outmanoeuvred rather than outclassed in a
straight fight. Infamous 2 adds a little variance with two new enemy factions
which are capable of not only trouncing Cole in terms of raw power but also
pursuing him across rooftops. However, these enemies are uncannily reminiscent
of the special foes encountered in Prototype, from their visual aesthetic to
their abilities. The similarities are blatant enough to go right beyond homage,
and point directly to a worrying dearth of creativity. That’s not to say you
won’t have fun with them though, they generally provide a decent challenge, and
their AI might sometimes surprise you, but in the end you'll spend most of your time slapping around inept white trash clowns, hardly foes worthy of the electrubermensch.
As with the first game, there is little in the way of
replay value. Even with two distinct moral paths to take through the game, they
drive Cole down incredibly similar plot rail roads, and the powers unique to
each stance don’t alter gameplay significantly. If one were to enjoy the plot
and characters enough a second play through can be justified, but if you are
like me you might find Cole’s inconsistent characterisation and the pseudo-dark
flatness of the world to be disinteresting.
The big promise Sucker Punch has loaded into the game
is that of User Generated Content. Infamous 2 has launched with an impressive
amount of levels created by the development team and early adopters, and mostly
they display a degree of challenge and creativity absent in the game proper.
Unfortunately the UGC system is not quite user friendly, providing only text
based tutorials to explain its fairly deep and complicated system. However with
a little perseverance a player can produce all kinds of missions.
Infamous 2 is a disappointingly average game from a
veteran studio with and interesting IP. Permissive players and committed fans
will find it an experience to be enjoyed briefly and forgotten, while older
hands will see the broad potential it has squandered. The ending is fairly
strong and offers more moral complexity than the rest of the series put
together, but it's arrived at all too soon. A solid rental, little more. With luck Sucker Punch will now spend more time making Sly Racoon games. It's a bright future.
Oh, and the box design looks kind of like Mortal Kombat
2011 at a glance. Just saying.
See?
Cheaper and Better Options: Infamous, Prototype, Hulk:
Ultimate Destruction, Red Faction: Guerilla.
