Assassin’s Creed II.1 Brotherhood

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood picks up literally right where Assassin’s Creed II ended: in the basement of St. Peter’s in Rome where a ghostly image of Minerva explains to Ezio Auditore of an impending doom facing the planet. Gone is the body of Pope Alexander VI, having survived the fight with Ezio. From there we follow Ezio’s uncle to his fortress town of Montenegro and the past story begins. The present story has Desmond and the fugitive Assassin organization still looking for the pieces of Eden to thwart the Abstergo corporation only this time they’ve also made it to modern day Montenegro where they are using Rebecca’s Animus to hunt for clues in Desmond’s ancestor’s past.

This is the setup for our story. I should warn here that spoilers follow, not just for the game but also for fans of the Showtime series “The Borgias” as historical personages and some events that take place are actual. While the previous game took place in the cities of Florence, Venice, Tuscany, and the Romagna this game takes place entirely in the Eternal City of Rome and the surrounding country side. This makes the game somewhat smaller in area but it is no less diminished by this as Rome has the enough hidden nooks and crannies to make the smaller location seem more varied. I remarked in my review of the previous game that it seemed odd that it would introduce Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI) and then omit his infamous children Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, this game amends that omission. As well as the omission of having introduced people such as Niccolo Machaivelli and Caterina Sforza and then dropping them almost immediately is also amended. No longer are we dealing with the plots of banking families, now Ezio is fighting to free Rome from the grip of a tyrannical Pope and his son who is seeking to become the king of all Italy.

Ezio, is also older in this game. Typically a video game starts with a young gun happy and naive hero. Here, Ezio is wisened by his previous struggle and whose character acts as a seasoned veteran. This is a nice change from the cliche. The game also handles the character ability growth as well. Let me explain that: as a character moves through a game they typically gain health and more abilities, so that by the end of the story they are a much more advanced person than they were in the beginning. This game having begun at the end of the previous game faced a difficult problem in that reducing Ezio’s abilities would have to be done with care or else seem capricious thus breaking immersion. The problem is solved as the previous game placed all of Ezio’s abilities into the equipment he was carrying viz. his health was specifically tied to what kind of armor he was wearing. After a sexual encounter with Caterina Sforza a Borgia cannonball destroys Ezio’s equipment, thus reducing his health and power to almost nothing. It’s a clever device that solves the dilemma that I call the “Doom II problem*.”

The missions themselves in this game closely follow the types introduced in the very first Assassin’s Creed and then refined in the second. Retrieve something, follow someone, kill another, infiltrate this building, etc. The variety is a bit lacking but the different methods in which you go about it rescue them from tedium. What is more concentrated on here is stealth. Many of the missions require you to remain undetected or else the mission is failed.

There some new additions to the game that improve it upon the previous installment. The first are the Leonardo missions. Leonardo has been drafted into constructing weapons for the Borgia family’s wars in Italy (this actually happened), and this was against Leonardo’s will, he conscripts Ezio into destroying these weapons so that Cesare Borgia will be left without them. These are examples of the stealth missions alluded to before, if you get caught locating one (they take place in isolated towns outside Rome) the mission is failed. However once the blueprints are burned you get to take them for a spin. These missions were delightful then, because the inventions aren’t new cannons or Leonardo’s modified siege towers they are the tanks, glider (we saw in the previous game although this time it’s armed), and machine gun that appear in his notebooks based on his actual sketches and engineered by the developers to how they could have worked. The tank is the most fun.

The hidden messages have also returned. Although they have become much more complicated, giving two puzzles per message as well as a chess game that you have to pick one move per message for. Hint to actual chess players, don’t pick the move you would do, just pick the move hinted at by the clue otherwise it’s infuriating.

The most welcome addition for Brotherhood is the brotherhood itself. Ezio seeking to rebuild the Assassin’s Order begins recruiting followers from among the oppressed of Rome. When I initially read a preview of the game highlighting this feature I was less than thrilled. I figured that these would be worthless teammates ala Tie Fighter (and every other game you get wingmen in) that you would spend more time protecting than they would do helping. I was delighted to be wrong. The method for using them is this, you highlight an enemy or a group of enemies and then hit a button causing Ezio to whistle. Out of the nearest hiding spot (or if you are in an open field horses come riding in) your followers come and attack your targets using every ability that Ezio possesses. These are formidable allies and just watching them fight gives you the impression of what exactly it must be to be one of the Borgia soldiers facing you. Although I should say that you have to level them up at least to level 3 before you send them against more than one foe alone since they will only have their hidden blade at first. The other feature regarding them which was surprising is that if the enemy sees them they attack them rather than you. A couple of missions were remaining undetected was necessary were solved by having a group of my followers attack and kill guards out in the open while I snuck in around them. I’ve played plenty of games were if the guards catch your allies they’ve caught you. This not only adds to the gameplay but also to the immersion as these new assassin’s have their own existence.

All in all, fans of the previous game will eat up this version. It takes everything that was great about the Florentine adventure and expands upon it. The money system is re-worked so that you improve Rome itself rebuilding the aqueducts and various monuments, there are some sidequests. And you even get a bit into Machiavelli’s personality (a personal treat). This won’t make people who disliked the series thus far like it. But it will push those on the fence over. 
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*Doom II Problem: so our hero after beating back the hordes of Hell in Doom is now going to invade Hell. What does he arm himself with? A cestus and a pistol.

Halo: Reach (campaign review)

The final installment of the Bungie produced Halo series asks you, “to remember yesterday, when there was a tomorrow.” It’s a question with surprisingly philosophical implications especially for fans of David Hume for whom only yesterday was there ever a tomorrow.*

Planet Reach is the event that touched off humanity’s war with the Covenant, that strange mix of alien races united under a single religious banner bent on chewing their way through the galaxy in search of their salvation. The fall of planet Reach touched off the opening sequence of the very first game oh so many years ago, as the last Spartan-John 117 aka Master Chief-fled the Covenant and arrived at the Halo ring world. The fall of Reach has never been told, like the great Time War in the Dr. Who universe, it was always something that had happened in the past,** something that was definitely important but something that we would just have to imagine as happening. Reach, like Troy, will fall and it needs to fall because the rest of the story has already been written.

Which leads us into the greatest difficulty that the story will have to overcome: we already know what is going to happen. Any time a story takes place where the ending is already known we are going to encounter this. Think of the expectation and then the disappointment surrounding the Star Wars prequels. A good story and good acting (in this case game-play) can overcome the utter lack of surprise at the finale. Lucas couldn’t do it, will Bungie be able to?

Plot wise the game needs to give you the feeling that you are fighting a war you can win, even though you know you are going to lose. It has to put you into the shoes of Leonidas’s Spartans marching toward Thermopylae to do battle against the Persians. Knowing that your character is going to die has to inspire you to fight more not less. If you knew you were going to die would you despair or embrace what little life you have left? More importantly can it successfully put you into the shoes of someone who is going to die, and at the same time make you sympathetic to the character while getting you to forget that hope is only the shadow that despair casts?

We can barely squeak out a yes to that question. The player assumes control of Noble 6, the last member of a six person detachment of Spartan soldiers. 6, is replacing a fallen comrade and is viewed with skepticism by the other members of the team. They are deployed to investigate the disruption of a communications facility on the far side of the planet which was performed by suspected terrorists against the Galactic Government. Which plays out like a mystery at first but quickly it is discovered that this is the work of the alien race known as the Covenant. Once first contact is made the first domino falls.

Most of the early game play missions involve attempts to stave off the invasion, however at a certain point it becomes clear that Reach is finished and your missions are about buying time for the mass exodus from the planet or making the Covenant’s victory as Pyrrhic as possible. This gives the game an overall grim atmosphere that suits it well. There is a sense of desperation and resignation in each of the characters as they attempt to do a job that only delays the inevitable. As one character asks, “I know we are losing, but have we lost?”

Atmosphere and mission variety are definite high points of the game. Gone is the portrayal of the alien grunts as clowns who goof it up and run for their lives. The entire Covenant is thrust back to a primal level, they have become vicious monsters bent on fulfilling their religious obligation. The high points are where it matters the most. Especially when so much care was put into writing a story that would be as immersive as this. Yet their are several direction cues that hamper this:

The first is making the main character “Noble 6″ an outcast. Why not make him/her (that aspect is customizable) a long term member of the team thus creating a stronger bond with the five other members? I get that all video games must exploit the lone warrior trope, but usually those people are by themselves. This person works within a team while at the same time seeming to not want to be on that team.

The second is some mysterious floating camera choices. Sometimes its clever to show the action through a detached security camera, but several times in the game you are watching a blurry video of the action through someone else’s eyes. All this does is serve to remind the player that they are playing a game. Who is watching the action that we are watching? Cortanna?

It’s called breaking the fourth wall, or maybe in this case it is the fifth. If I am supposed to be Noble 6, then if the wide shots with all six members of the team are questionable then certainly the shots of “me” picking up my helmet are.

In all the campaign experience is satisfying. Gone is the typical Halo franchise gimmick of making the player walk over the same board several times: the entire planet of Reach is the game. From the winter poles to the super cities you do get the experience of what it must be like to live through a planetary invasion. Some of the storytelling methods are questionable. Your team could have had more developed personalities in order to develop a relationship with them.

Control wise it is standard fare remaining largely true to Halo’s roots back on the original XBOX. The biggest problem here is that the game forces you to recruit NPC soldiers to fight with you but doesn’t give you any way to give them orders. This isn’t a new feature in the game either, the original Halo gave you people that you fought with. However in that game and this they were all doomed, at least in the previous games I didn’t have to know their names.

A recommended game, but it clearly doesn’t deserve the 5/5 ratings that its been getting from the video game reviewership. The campaign is too short, too easy, but is mitigated by a wide variety in missions and some new vehicles that were awfully fun to pilot. More on this later when I tackle the multiplayer and the new credit scheme.

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*In order to sum this up concisely: Hume’s skepticism forced him to only believe in such things that were logical necessities, all other things were out of habit and this included the idea of causation.

** I know how weird it is to describe the “Time-War” as happening in the past.

Mario Kart Wii

Sometimes game ideas get a little stale, I mean how many different John Madden games are they going to produce before the public realizes that it is the exact same game with updated rosters (which could be done nowadays through downloads)? Unless they make a complete overhaul of control schemes are sports/racing games really that different year after year?

Which brings us to a perennial console favorite since the days of the SNES: Mario Kart. With the exception of the thankfully short lived Virtual Boy, there has been at least one mario kart game for every Nintendo console. N64, Game Cube, Game Boy Advanced, the DS, and now the Nintendo Wii. The series has proven to be an anomaly in video games, each version is remarkably similar to the previous with only some minor changes but enjoy not only commercial success but also critical success. The Wii version, the latest until the inevitable release on the handheld 3d gameboy system when it comes out, uses a steering wheel peripheral for the motion controlled system. Would it work as well as the previous versions?

I have a long history with this series. I played the original SNES version with my friends growing up waaaaaaay too much. For all of those 13 year old psychos on XBOX Live who are too good at Halo or COD I can sort of sympathize because we were those people without a system that connected to the internet. College was no different, my neighbor down the hall had an N64 with the mario kart for that as well. My wife, the Game Cube version. I guess I could admit that this game series is the only one that I am a rabid fan of.

Thankfully, the game works quite well, while preserving the fun of the previous games and also the frustrations that make it a challenge. Mario Kart’s strength was never in the single player grand prix mode. Sure that was there and it is difficult once you master the turning and the various nuances of the new system, but the real addiction of the series has always been multiplayer. The SNES only had two player and now as we enter into the 3rd major generation of consoles we can add 12 player online matches.

I was prepared to hate the online matches. I feared the experiences of COD and Halo to replicate themselves in Mario Kart, with people exposing glitches, winning races before it would normally be possible, however I was delightfully entertained with my ability to maintain some decent rankings despite the fact that I have comparatively no practice. In a couple of matches I lost by landslides (Rainbow Road, I curse thee!) but that was more due to lack of experience than any ignorance of technical loopholes.

The biggest adjustment is definitely the control scheme. For years of playing the previous editions I fought the urge to steer with my arms. I never pitched the controller (or tried not to anyway) while making a sharp turn or leaned forward when making long/high jumps. I knew that it never made a difference in the race, one had to focus on the race still as a stone to win. So now when presented with an edition that compelled you to make those gestures it took a bit of adjustment. Which then became second nature as it hit you that the wheel needs to be turned. In a furiously tight race though a problem begins to hit you, if you turn the wheel so far it loses contact and then resets you to the opposite direction. Not actually owning the Wii, I was unaware of this possibility but it only took a few times before I learned.

The game isn’t perfect, but it’s as close to it as we are going to get in a fun casual racing game. Your AI opponents, in single player, seem to generate the odd speed boost in order to keep the matches close. It’s total BS, but in order to keep the game difficult I suppose it must be done (like how Guile could walk forward and launch his Sonic Book in Street Fighter II). The other problem that I had was in the supposedly randomness of the power up items. I don’t know why but the game seemed to favor the golden mushroom more than random chance would allow. It’s an unlimited nitro boost, which is good but seems redundant with the triple mushroom power up already in the game. Plus on borderless tracks like Rainbow Road it hurts more than anything else.

Fans of the series would do well to pick it up. It completely rocks and is a faithful heir to an already golden franchise.

Red Faction: Guerrilla

I picked up the original Red Faction game back in ’01, it looked promising as it featured a program engine called “GeoMod” which allowed for a destructible environment. The promise behind “GeoMod” was that you could go through the wall blocking your path instead of having to go around it or spend hours and hours looking for an obscure key card. My previous experiences with First-Person-Shooters having been with Id Software’s Doom/Quake series and Duke Nukem, I thought the game would lend more to action than object hunting.

The game did deliver on the promise. Most of the structures in the game could be blown apart. Walls could be demolished, and more importantly enemy cover could be erased leaving the juicy inside ripe for the plucking. The game was too linear for the GeoMod to really make a difference though. The character, Parker, pretty much walked in a straight line and sometimes walls couldn’t be blown up because you aren’t meant to go there. The game did show promise.

And the third game in the series, Red Faction: Guerrilla, delivers on that promise. Taking place fifty years after the rescue of Mars by the Earth Defense Force (EDF), supporting the original hero, Parker from the evil Ultor Corporation, Red Faction: Guerrilla puts you into the shoes of Alex Mason. Mason, arrives on Mars to work with his brother as a miner who is subsequently killed on suspicion of terrorism by the EDF.

The saviors of the last game have become the villains of the new one, as they have adopted the very same oppressive tactics that Ultor had done in the past. As Alex Mason you are tasked with the oldest of motives: vengeance to subvert the rule of the EDF by blowing up barracks, ambushing convoys, rescuing prisoners, and destroying buildings. With the exception of the landscape of Mars, everything can be blown up in this game.

The best comparison I can give is to think of it as Grand Theft Auto: Mars. It’s open world, you can just drive around and explore the area collecting salvage instead of performing your missions until you think you are ready enough to advance forward. As you get better and better at being a freedom fighter, the population will begin to support you. This means that civilians will start fighting along side you when you inevitably run afoul of the EDF troops. Like all revolutions it cannot succeed without support of the population, and neither can you.

The game features many different types of vehicles as well, most of them are utility trucks for use in the mines (which we never actually visit), some are modified with weapons, others are cars/vans in the residential sectors, but you will clamor for the military vehicles as they feature better weapons and armor. The technology the game features seems advanced enough the player knows they are in the future but not so far as to destroy immersion. The Red Faction’s weapons all have the look of being cobbled together from other things while the EDF weaponry is clearly military issue.

Aside from the basic rundown the game play consists of large story missions and several different side missions designed to liberate each sector in the colonized area of Mars. These side missions get repetitive after awhile, consisting of stealing a vehicle, rescuing POWs, raiding EDF installations, defending civilians, or causing general mayhem with Jenkins (an environmental terrorist). The repetition arise mainly from the straighforwardness of your attacks. Sneaking around is beneficial to get the layout of barracks, but you can’t just plant demolition explosives and then run out to detonate them as any guard spotting either you or an explosive will begin shooting.

What the game needs is the ability to recruit fellow Red Faction members, and plan an assault. There were numerous times that I felt a hit and run on a satellite installation would be helpful in drawing away guards from the vehicle storage that I wanted to level. Even if you start the first attack the population that will sometimes help you out in a gun fight won’t stick around, they just blindly follow you even if it means they are walking while you are driving an APC.

Entertainment is offered as well in some side puzzle missions where you are given a couple of explosives and a time limit to bring down a building. These are fun giving you such mission objectives as, “Any idiot with enough explosives can bring down a building, the question is, ‘do you want to be that idiot?”

The story about freeing Mars gets pretty thin at times. One mission involved stealing a high value piece of equipment and then delivering it to a truck then escorting the truck, but you are never given the reasons why. Clearly the main character would be considered a terrorist, and I think the plot of the game would have been much better served if there was some ambiguity as to who the bad guys really were. Perhaps future sequels will put in choices, or make the game more of a mystery.

Finally, for fans of the original there are several nods to it in this game. Two of zones are named after characters from the first, “Parker” and “Eos.” The best is playing through the rusted remnants of Dr. Capek’s lab that looks the same as it did on the PS2 which even brought back the memory of playing it for the first time.

I highly recommend the game, it’s great fun and lends toward expressing that destructive impulse that I’m sure I can’t be alone in feeling from time to time.

Episodes from Liberty City: The Ballad of Gay Tony

It begins with a bank robbery, a bank robbery that you committed in the GTA IV as Niko Bellic. On the floor of the bank trying to talk a man out of being hero before he is gunned down by a sociopathic Irish gangster was a man named Luis Lopez, only you as Bellic couldn’t have known who he was.

In fact you couldn’t have known many things about the hispanic man laying on the floor waiting out the bank robbery so he could call his boss to tell him that the deposit wasn’t going to get made that day. You couldn’t know that his boss, Anthony “Gay Tony” Prince was the biggest nightclub owner in Liberty during the 80s. If you had, he would have made a good hostage as Bellic and the McRearys could have gotten in on what every other criminal enterprise in Liberty was doing. It seems that Gay Tony’s ballad is going to be one of tragedy.

Luis Lopez, is the main character in one of the more unique experiences that I have played in my many years of game playing. The plot centers around you as Lopez, a former corner boy drug dealer, as he attends to the chores of his boss “Gay Tony.” Tony has fallen on hard times in the recent economic troubles, that coupled with addictions to drugs, rent boys, and a certain level of lifestyle means that he has gotten his enterprise in some serious trouble. All of which Lopez has to clean up. The story intertwines several times with the characters of Nico Bellic and Johnny Klebitz, especially concerning the diamond heist from GTA IV, in that now the fate of the Russian diamonds is finally revealed (as the money was taken by The Lost). 

Two features of the plot stand out: the first is that in every previous Grand Theft Auto game the main character is always starting out with nothing. Whether it be a former gangsta from the inner city returning home, a Slavic immigrant, or a mafiosa trying to infiltrate the drug fueled 80s Vice City; each character had to work to get both money, weapons, and good vehicles. Being the protege of Tony, Lopez has access to the best of everything almost immediately. This changes the game in that like the main character Lopez, the player can get a little cocksure knowing the the FP-90 submachine gun (the P-90 for you COD 4 fans) seriously outweighs the 9mm and shotguns of the other criminals. No longer are the initial chases done in badly damaged cars as Lopez starts off driving the very best that Liberty has to offer.

This also changes the missions. No more busting the heads of petty corner dealers, one of the first things you must attend to is the extortion of a rich boy who is tied to a golfcart. Tony and Lopez deal at the top, because Tony owes the crime bosses money that he used to fuel his habits and keep his clubs open. The characters that Lopez meets and works for are more colorful and odd than any GTA players is used to at the beginning of a game.

The other aspect is that unlike “The Lost and the Damned” this game treats you to actual sympathetic characters who haven’t made the best choices in life but are doing their best to scratch their way out of the large holes that they have dug themselves into. Tony Prince is a fallen king, it’s implied that he once ruled the nightlife of Liberty in the 80s and is now reduced to watching the corporations move in as his empire is whittled down to two nightclubs: Maisonette 9 and Hercules. I’m reminded of Sam Rothstein’s narration at the end of Casino, it might be cleaner and less corrupt but Liberty needs Tony.

While Tony’s addictions are an endless plight, Lopez is a genuinely concerned partner with him who knows that his role is to keep the both of them alive and afloat. Lopez is loyal to his friend, because Tony saved him from the life of drug dealing that has swallowed most of the Dominicans-Americans in Aldernay. Lopez is out of place in his old neighborhood as he is viewed as a downtown yuppie by most and Tony’s lover by others. The funny thing is, that the jobs he used to do as a kid aren’t that much different from those that he must do now for the very elite of Liberty society. The only difference is how much firepower one can bring to the party.

Along the way you work for Russian antagonist Ray Bulgarin, the owner of the diamonds from all three games, the Ancelotti crime family (you kidnapped their daughter as Nico Bellic), and my personal favorite Yusuf Amir, whom you tried to “help” under the orders of Playboy X previously. Amir is one of my favorite characters because he is drunk on the money that his Dubai father provides him with. He’s supposed to spend it on real estate development but instead burns through it on hookers, drugs, and solid gold…everything. It’s no coincidence that the soundtrack possesses “Arab Money” by Busta Rhymes and that it is always playing when Amir is around. He makes you steal an attack helicopter, a tank, and a subway car (he subsequently has the chopper gold plated).

While this is a GTA game the side activities get more interesting as well. The game reintroduces the parachute from GTA: San Andreas and gives you several locations to jump from and land on specific targets which is fun but frustrating, it also introduces iron man races which take place in the air, water, and by land. These are more fun than the street races were previously but if you can gain the lead by the time you hit land the race is pretty much over. There’s a dance mini game that I haven’t finished yet, my coordination isn’t that good but it is pretty addictive. And for the character related missions, there is cage fighting which is plagued by the control issues present in all GTA games, drug deals where Lopez helps some of his pals from the neighborhood, and the club management.

Working at the club is easy, it’s basically standing around and then approaching a situation which a cut scene resolves. Doing a couple of these results in trysts with the office manager that while they aren’t graphic go beyond the lame “hot coffee” controversy from San Andreas. The drug missions are easy as well, too easy but the reward system grants much needed weapons at Lopez’s house something that the two previous installments were lacking.

All in all The Ballad of Gay Tony is much better than the biker saga of The Lost and the Damned. The characters are just as flawed but have more likable traits that make the player want to see them succeed. It’s too bad that this is the last foray into Liberty City until Rockstar publishes the next game which will take place in an entirely new location. If only all DLC could be this good.

Episodes from Liberty City: The Lost and the Damned

[The whole idea of looking back at movies I considered classics isn't really working for me. It's a nice idea but I can't get the traction out of it I thought I had the first couple of posts. So I'm switching Sundays to be reserved for posts that are reviews of various media]

One of the average complaints against Grand Theft Auto IV was that the city was just too big. In the previous visit to Liberty City it felt too small but that was only after spending way too much time driving around, causing bedlam and then trying to see how long it would take a six star wanted level to kill/arrest you. We know that Liberty City is a thinly veiled New York City, and NYC I am told is huge. So having a game take place in a world that is too large just makes sense. But it still seemed too large for the story of Serbian immigrant Niko Bellic.

It made sense that Rockstar Games would introduce some new stories ato take place in the immense Liberty City. Released as two separate games “The Lost and the Damned” and “The Ballad of Gay Tony” they are collected on a disc called “Episodes from Liberty City.” Since the two stories are completely different it only makes sense to cover them in two posts, today we deal with the first of these stories “The Lost and the Damned.”

Having played through GTA IV, I was a bit familiar with “The Lost.” A biker gang operating out of Alderney that Niko has some brief encounters with. This story puts you in the shoes of Johnny Klebitz, the acting head of The Lost, as he goes to pick up Billy Grey (the actual president) from rehab. Klebitz has spend some time arranging a general truce between the The Lost and “The Angels of Death,” their largest rival to allow drug and gun running in Liberty City. Billy, is a relic from the past, a hedonistic anarchist with a “fuck the system” philosophy guiding his actions.

The conflict is familiar. One side you have the actual hero, Klebitz who wants an end to the perpetual violence trying to turn the illegal income into at least safe illegal income. Grey, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to understand why his club has made a truce with their oldest enemy. Grey is mentally unstable, prone to irrational violent outbursts and puts the entire club at risk, but loyalty keeps them together. That is until a drug deal with a gang of Triads goes wrong and Grey is arrested.

Klebitz, in addition to waging war on the rival gang, traitors within his own gang, does numerous missions for the various personalities established in GTA IV. He works with drug dealing latina Elizabeth Torres, and senator Tom Stubbs whom we know from the various political ads on the radio.

The series has never shied away from controversy, and for anyone that actually thought the “Hot Coffee Glitch” from GTA: San Andreas was offensive ought to stay away from this game as it features one scene of full frontal male nudity, which caused me to double over in laughter. The real problem is that while Niko Bellic was at the core a reasonable person, no one in the biker gang is redeemable. Grey is the worst of them, and that is obvious, but Klebitz’ reason for hating Grey is that his violent personality is holding down their ability to make money from illegal guns and meth sales. Bellic, didn’t choose this life but your main character here, does and repeatedly reminds everyone that it’s the best way. The moral issues will always trump everything else for me, but you put one instance of male nudity in something and someone will get all uppity.

The game play is largely unchanged which leads to the same frustrations as in GTA IV. The foot mechanics, aiming, and camera issues are untouched. I should emphasize that this is literally a new story in the same engine so not much should be expected to be improved. Although they did make two changes that were well received.

The first are the in mission checkpoints. The previous games were annoying for the extremely long missions that if failed, had to be started over from the very beginning. Meaning that not only did the little tediums of the opening fights have to be replayed but the driving to the mission locations did as well. This game eliminates that by allowing the character to start in the middle of a mission, making deaths less frustrating. The drawback is that it also made some missions very easy, because you could start from the middle with a completely restocked inventory of weapons and armor. Allowing the story to progress was nice but the challenge went completely downhill.

The second is the revamp of the motorcycle physics. Hoping on a motorcycle was usually a decision of last resort because the turning was unforgiving on the bike seemed set to kill the rider. Obviously if the game is going to put you into the skin of the leader of a Biker Gang it better make driving the bikes fun. This it succeeds by making the turning possible at high speeds and making it much more difficult to get thrown from the bike. The converse of this is that Klebitz isn’t great at driving cars, it feels unnatural which is completely consistent with the character.

One of the better experiences in the game is the change in station of the main character. As Bellic, CJ Johnson, Tommy Vercetti, or the nameless character in GTA III are all peons for higher criminals. Klebitz is the boss, and as boss he gets to call for help whether it be in the form of guns, bikes, or trigger-men in missions. Riding in formation through the streets of Liberty was an annoying task until Grey goes to prison, Klebitz rides with the rest of the Lost at the head of the pack. It’s quite the switch. While The Lost is a low key criminal enterprise you are in charge and it gives the missions a sense of urgency as it becomes apparent that the world of The Lost and Klebitz is dying.

The plot of the game intertwines with that of the story of Niko Bellic culminating in two events: the first is a botched diamond heist that takes place in the museum of Liberty and a botched drug deal. In both cases you encounter Bellic and fight alonside him. This is a strange experience that really made me reflect on how much I identified with Bellic. The plot also reveals some more behind the scenes information about Bellic. As Klebitz you kidnap Niko’s brother Roman during one of his gambling losses, setting up a huge confrontation in GTA IV.

These points are obviously for the fans of the original game, I can’t exactly recommend the game unless you are a fan of the series or at the very least GTA IV. Klebitz is a despicable character who only looks good because the alternative of Grey is so much worse, making it harder to want him to succeed. His junkie girlfriend that he is hopelessly fond of, is an annoying side track that not much is done with. She seems to only exist so that Grey can tease Klebitz of needing her to come around for “some hole” but other than that she is pretty useless. The addition of new bikes, radio stations, and television shows is welcome but nothing unexpected in content.

Overall I can say that if this is the future of DLC for this console generation then I am quite pleased. It’s not without flaws but it is definitely a well crafted expansion for the world of Liberty City.

Getting Ready to Jump The Shark: Modern Warfare 2 review part III

Here we are at the last part of my Modern Warfare 2 review. This time we will be focusing on the non-campaign modes of the game, the multi-player and the “Spec Ops.” First, I would like to explain why I did it this way to begin with.

When I am beginning an entry of a particular category (or tag) I sometimes reread the past entries in the same. This is motivated by my desire for self-improvement, I noticed a particularly troubling issue with almost all of my video game reviews, and then I began to notice it in the gaming media itself. The issue was that new games of popular franchises seemed to get better reviews just by virtue of being the next installment. This seemed especially true when games contained multi-player components that were going to be popular. Halo 3 is a good example of this. By any objective value system, the game was average. It had a good story, but everything else was the same old stuff for a first person shooter, but because the multi player was so popular, it gained better reviews despite the fact that every issue people had with the multi player from the previous game remained. The only thing they added was a useless forge feature that no one ever used. So I switched it up, breaking the games down into parts that would allow me a more objective analysis of the game separating the story from the online.

Spec Ops: The Spec Ops feature is an interesting idea for the game. It’s a series of single, stand alone missions that one person (or two) plays through, it is independent of the main story but ties in with the invasion of the US by the Russian Army, or various other small skirmishes around the world. I like the theory behind this, but then again the theory behind transporters seems to work as well. A couple of the Spec Ops missions are well done and original. For instance one mission takes place on the Golden Gate Bridge,  it’s a simple point A to point B while shooting the Russians but the novelty of the landscape makes up for it. Most of the missions are rehashes of the campaign, to the point where they just dump you in the same neighborhood with the same bad guys, and the same support vehicle but instead of rescuing a VIP you have to download something from a computer. It just feels like padding the game out because the campaign was so short. Although there is something to be said for this being a prototype for future games (and probably more DLC).

Online: Most people have bought this game for the online this is a testament to how good the multiplayer was in the first Modern Warfare. What made that so great was the levelling system, the more points you racked up the more weapons, abilities, and equipment you gained access to. Unlike most games that reduce matches to races where the first team to the missile launcher, sniper rifle, or tank had a significant advantage; this game gave you weapon classes that each person chose, these were completely customizable and added to personalization leading to greater immersion.

The sequel expands on this, with greater customization. More, here is simply better. However, there are drawbacks. While the greater quantity does allow with more experimentation with different combinations  a good deal of the weapons don’t possess attributes that varied from their peers. The sniper rifles are a good example of this. There are only four, three of which are semi-automatic and one is bolt action. There is no point in taking the bolt action gun as it has the same attributes as the .50 calibre Barret except that the reload time is longer. It should be more accurate as bolt actions guns are typically more accurate than semi-autos (which is why actual Sniper detachments in both the US Army, Marines, and British SAS favor them). This problem is systemic in all of the weapon classes, a lack of serious differences means that picking a primary weapon for a class comes down to slight differences which can be described as capricious.

The constant stream of rewards will keep the player playing much like the Zynga games that I railed against earlier this week. Anything can get you extra points from making a “long shot”* to killing an opponent that previously killed you. The best feature though, is the “Death Streak.” If you are having a rough game and die four times in a row the game gives you a boost to help even the playing field. This is nice for those days were you are just a bit off and can cause you to rally back hoping to break at least even for the match.

The myriad of bonuses for getting a “kill streak” are also nice because these are also customizable. In the previous version 3 kills was a radar, 5 an airstrike, and 7 an attack helicopter. This version gives more than 15, everything from a radar jammer to a nuclear strike which ends the match. They vary in difficulty from three kills to 25 for the nuke. I like to stack three in a row so that I get them quickly, especially if one of them is an airdrop of four random streaks it can quickly become a game changer.

The boards are huge, which eliminates the random grenade kills that permeated the previous version. They are also hilly which almost gets rid of people sitting at a far corner with one of the sniper rifles and picking people off from across the room. The only gripe I have with the game is that they have over powered certain weapons leading to abuse. This occurs with the shotgun called “The Ranger” a sawed off double barreled break open gun. In real life it should have an effective range of about ten feet, and take forever to reload them. Yet players run around with them akimbo and kill anyone they remotely point at from about thirty yards.

It’s a minor complaint, but it is frustrating to deal with. You can tell that this game sacrificed the single player for the multi-player. This is also frustrating because the previous was a great mixture of both, and the severe holes in the plot really take away from what little story there was.

Final Count: Single Player 2/5, multi 5/5–recommended.

*Which I think shouldn’t be a reward for using the sniper rifles since that is their purpose to begin with.

Assassin’s Creed II

Critically acclaimed the first Assassin’s Creed was a well developed story set against the backdrop of the Crusades and a conflict between the very real Knight’s Templar and the very real Hashshashin (from whom we derive the word “Assassin”). A well researched, well designed game that suffered several flaws that its detractors considered catastrophic while its fans were willing to overlook for the mysterious plot that unfolded concurrently in the 12th and 21st centuries.

The second game was going to be one of two things and thankfully it turned out to be a complete improvement over the high water mark set by the first game. The game is moved forward three hundred years and shifted from the Holy Land and the wars of the Crusades to the Italian Renaissance starting off in the city of Florence, the de facto economic and cultural center of the “rebirth.” I, personally was giddy with delight that the game was taking place in Florence at this time for some very specific reasons, but more on that later.

The character is no longer a Muslim Assassin, but Ezio Auditore da Firenze the eldest son of a clerk in for the powerful Medici banking family. He and his family are betrayed by the Gonfalinier (it would be like the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) his father and two brothers are executed while Ezio finds himself a hunted man. It is revealed by his cousin that he is a member of the secret Assassins organization and he is to continue his father’s work trying to unravel the web of conspiracy that takes Ezio through some of the more pivotal moments of the Italian Renaissance.

Having read so much by Machiavelli concerning the history of Florence and the region I had an idea of what to expect in events and people that I would run into. In this respect the game did not disappoint as Leonardo Da Vinci makes your weapons, you receive assignments from Lorenzo De Medici, and you even get to take part in the Pazzi Conspiracy.* However there were some disappointments in this respect as well. The chief antagonist is Rodrigo Borgia, who would later become the infamous Pope Alexander the VI but you don’t deal at all with his son Cesare Borgia aka Duke Valentino even though you operate in the Romagna–his chief stomping ground. The other problem I had plot wise was the introduction of several characters that you either run into or are made mention of but then are completely dropped. The first is Caterina Sforza the duchess of Forli.

Caterina is an interesting woman, a warrior noble and a woman that suffered a plot by the Orsini. She was told to either surrender or they would murder her children. She walked to the battlements of her fortress hiked up her skirt and told them that they could kill her children for all she cared she still possessed the means to make more. You rescue her as she is stranded on a small hill surrounded by water but then she is dropped completely from the plot.

The other is my personal favorite, Niccolo Machiavelli. For being one of the geniuses of the Renaissance, and for having his reputation introducing him as an ally and then doing nothing with him seems like a crime. The man was the Ambassador to the Ten of Florence (equivalent to being the U.S. Secretary of State) and would have had dealings with almost every villain in the game. It’s odd, and not just because I’m a huge fan, that you don’t even deliver one of his letters. Although I do have to admit that I did get excited when a man fitting his portrait did mysteriously appear.

Other than that, having the game center on Florence was a great idea but then missing the upheavel of the late 15th century is queer as well. After Lorenzo becomes the unofficial ruler of Florence, deposing the Republic, Girolamo Savonarola establishes a fundamentalist state and ushers in the “bonfire of the vanities” where all items of excess are burned. Machiavelli would write of him that the unarmed prophet never succeeds as he is captured and executed by Pope Alexander. I think it would have been an interesting plot twist to contribute to this only to find out that you were being manipulated the whole time. Again, this is one of those things that is mentioned but then dropped.

The environment is just as good, if not better than the original. Standing in the Piazza della Signoria, it looks just as the pictures do as does the church at Santa Croce. The first game shined in the immersion into the world of the Crusades and it does not lack here as well. The developers also added a database feature that serves as an encyclopedia for the world. The aforementioned landmarks have entries that delve into the histories and architecture of them as well those of over 50 other landmarks in Italy. I’m not into art history as much as I should be but the game is a nice introduction.

Gameplay has changed significantly as it plays more like Grand Theft Auto: Florence than it’s predecessor. The first game was quite linear: you received your assignment, beat up two people for information, pickpocketed two more, eavesdropped then killed your target. This was repeated ad nauseum. Here there are quite a few options on how to proceed, greater variety in missions (you even get to fly Leonardo’s flying machine), with the more rote tasks relegated to being optional. The fighting system has changed as well with different weapons and styles but it is still inherently flawed. The original became way too easy when you learned the counter kill method. Now there is a disarm feature, which serves the same purpose because an unarmed guard is a corpse waiting to happen. Once you take their sword, mace, maul, axe, or pike it only requires one attack to put them down. They still stand around like dolts in an early 90s ninja movie waiting to attack one by one.

Another are of improvement is that the present missions are quick and serve more of a point than simple exposition. They also move faster rather than the slow, Desmond walks around and looks at the computer.

Finally, there are the puzzles. I called the last game “Lost-ish” in the way that it ended, giving more questions than answers. This game gives 20 clues called “The Truth” hidden throughout Italy which open up different puzzles. They are based on code breaking, art history, and picture deciphering ramping up the difficulty as each is found. Once cracked they lead to a one second video sequence that reveals the truth behind everything (I mean that literally, “everything”) I have yet to crack five of them but the promise they have keeps me looking where in lesser stories I simply would have given up.

This game is a significant improvement over what was already an incredible game to begin with. The drawbacks I have mentioned probably are minor to people that aren’t me, but even then I can overlook them as this game is quite remarkable both in scope and achievement.

*I’ll probably do an entry on the Pazzi Conspiracy in the future.

The Biggest Threat to the American Family

It’s not gay marriage, nor is it Islamo-Fascism, my friends the biggest threat to the American Family is Super Mario Bros. Wii. It’s insidious to the core in its method. First off the game has the nerve to be a throw back to the old NES/SNES days as a side scrolling platformer. This lures each of the unsuspecting family members into wanting to play it. It lures the parents who are nostalgic for the games of their youth, lures the little children because it’s colorful and has lots of dancing turtles, mushrooms, and weird fish–and…this is the important part: everyone can play it together at the same time!

I posted the first line of this entry as a facebook update several weeks ago because I thought that the internet needed to be warned. See the last feature is what makes it the biggest threat to the American Family (by the way it comes from Japan…at least during Pearl Harbor we knew we were being attacked) the co-op mode is supposed to make it look fun. Fun for the family, they can all work together jumping on goombas and turtles all the while collecting powerups. Yet the game seems to have built it into it a feature that turns the ones you are supposed to love the most into your biggest murderers. As the family moves forward in a board one member will push the other into a hole so that they can grab that precious 1up that they will need as the fallen family member does one of two things: swears vengeance or makes a deal with a third family member to do the same. The video game couch becomes Hobbes’ state of nature.

My own wife has killed me so many times I’m beginning to wonder whether she is a government agent or not. Sure, she claims these are accidents but accidents like this don’t occur with such an alarming frequency. Luckily the monster baby can’t play yet or we’d both be in trouble (as she has not learned the moral sense yet and is unencumbered by it). That in mind it was the first time I ever looked at my wife and called her a “team killing fucktard”…and it was then I realized that this game was trouble.

How do I know this is an attack and not just a simple inability of my family to get along? Because the game is way too easy with only the machine to play against. In little over an hour I ripped through two worlds, accumulated 30 lives, and numerous power ups in my supplies when I was playing alone. The boards aren’t that tough and the helicopter head thingy makes some of the boards so easy that the Bowser kids might as well just crash their airship into the ground taking her with it. In fact I didn’t beat the first board very much behind the insane “tip” video that you buy with the in game star coins. This was alone. With my “partner” an hour later we were on level three arguing over to fight the giant mushroom or proceed on to the next actual level (both options had their advantages).

Control wise the game is just like the old NES controls, one button jumps the other is for everything else. The Wii though, has to shoe horn in the motion controls which is a bit excessive. In order to make the helicopter thingy fly you shake the controller, but a button combination would be just as good especially for someone who has spent his history with video games trying to kill that very instinct of tipping the controller to think that it gives you some sort of edge.

Is it fun? Yes. Easy? Too easy in fact. Will it cause you to hate your closest family member after the second time they accidentally use Yoshi to spit you into a pit of spikes? Definitely. So be cautioned, while it is worth it, it will also consume whatever bonds of family you had.

Modern Warfare 2: The place where the truck goes

Part 2 of the Modern Warfare 2 review.

The truck goes in the various plot holes, and complete lack of motivation for the villain’s primary motivation. I should warn right now that this is going to contain spoilers if you haven’t played the game or haven’t finished it and, yadda yadda, then don’t continue reading this.

The game single player campaign takes place five years after the previous game. The antagonist from the first game, Imran Zakhaev’s ultra nationalist party has taken over Russia despite the efforts of the player from the first game. Zakhaev has been declared a national hero in Russia and a statue in his honor has been erected in the middle of Moscow. Now one of his followers Markarov, which is too close to “Markov” who was your ally in the first game, has taken over. The plot runs several different parallel stories concentrating on an SAS Soldier “Roach,” an Army Ranger named James Ramirez, another Ranger Joseph Allen, and finally SOAP McTavish (the main character from the first game).

It leads off with the player as Roach attempting to retrieve a spy satellite component from a Russian Airfield, which is pretty derivative of the opening scene in the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies,” all with a very Bondish escape on snowmobiles. The game then deviates to Allen and a patrol in Afghanistan that comes under ambush. Then there is the controversial level that I have explained at length. The point of the controversial level is that Allen, is undercover in Markarov’s organization the issue is that Markarov knows about this and frames Allen for committing the massacre. This prompts the Russian government to invade the United States Red Dawn style setting up the remaining missions of Ranger Ramirez.

At the same time that Ramirez is fighting off the Russians; Roach, Soap, and the counter terrorist task force 141, are hunting Markarov. This is under American General Sheperd, who initially sent Allen undercover in the first place. Roach, and Soap rescue the one prize that Markarov cannot resist, Captain Price, the team leader from the first game out of a Russian prison. Once rescued Price, who just assumes command once more, leads the team to a Russian Submarine Base, hijacks a Sub and launches an ICBM at Washington DC. He detonates it in the upper atmosphere which releases an EMP frying all electronics and slowing down the invasion to a crawl.

That settled, the hunt for Markarov continues as Group 141 searches for his location. They track him down to two possibilities: one, a safe house in the Caucasus Mountains where some valuable intelligence is recovered and General Sheperd awaits you for pick up. However Sheperd betrays you, killing Roach and stealing the intelligence. It seems that Sheperd was behind the whole thing in the first place, angry over the loss of 30,000 troops in the nuclear explosion from the first game so he arranged for the invasion to take place in order to get a blank check to hunt Markarov. Soap, and Price escaping track down Sheperd in Afghanistan, killing him while escaping as the most hunted after fugitives in world history.

I’m not going to discuss the game technically, because it is outstanding in every respect. The weather, weapons, and game control obviously have a lot of care involved in their crafting. Initially the control was a little slow, but that was adjustable. The missions themselves are very well crafted, showing a lot of creativity in design as well as some rather breathtaking views. The entire Washington DC level paid great attention to the layout of the city as well as what it might possibly look like while a battle was being fought around the Washington Monument and inside the White House.

The biggest gripe though is the overall story, which makes almost no sense. Sheperd, the final antagonist, has no plausible motive. Sure, it is a tragedy to have lost 30,000 troops, but the person responsible was dealt with along with the country that harbored him. Why spark an invasion of the United States, when he was already in control of Black Operations group 141? If he has that much authority why not just murder Markarov to begin with and call it a day, he goes to way too much trouble to set the whole thing up. Markarov doesn’t like nor trust Sheperd but for some reason he allows one of his agents into his organization and lets him hold a machine gun while walking behind him.

Furthermore Markarov as a character makes some sense. If he was Zakhaev’s second in command we can understand that perhaps Zakhaev was Markarov’s leash. This was an argument I heard post 1991 Gulf War, that Saddam kept someone worse from being in power (probably one of his sons–the sociopath one…Qusay?). However, it’s unclear what Markarov’s position is and why in the midst of the invasion of the United States is he fighting Sheperd in Afghanistan? Furthermore, why is their even a US presence in Afghanistan when DC is being fought over? One might think that if the US was invaded that the military would drop everything and begin a counterstrike immediately.

The other question concerns the rescuing of Captain Price. The mission is great, but the remaining question is why is Price still alive? Zakhaev’s party took over the government and Price is one of the two people responsible for killing him, unless in the game’s world, the Russians don’t have the death penalty.

The game was enjoyable, and a technical marvel. But like all technicians and engineers that I know they just can’t tell a good story. The story feels like the first draft of a bad spy novel, where the twists don’t make as much sense thereby eliminating their impact. It simply doesn’t live up to the first game.