Modern Warfare 2
Platform: XBox 360, PS3, PC
Just what's going on here anyway?
The title explains it pretty well. Through this game you can experience all the elements of modern warfare, and I do mean all. Guns, bigger guns, explosions, betrayal, terrorism, civilian casualties, the brutal deaths of your comrades, it's all here. This is simply one of the best games I've ever played, and unless you really dislike shooting games, it should become one of the best games you've ever played too.
Is it FUN?!
Oh yes. You're usually playing as one of a team assigned to a particular objective which will require you to fight your way through waves of enemies using various sorts of weapons, usually guns, but there's plenty of other fun to be had as well. Sometimes you'll have to call in airstrikes or man rocket launchers or ride snowmobiles. The game is pretty fast-paced and you're not likely to get bored.
Is it interesting?
The story, which takes you all over the world from favelas in Brazil to snow-covered bases in Russia to fast food restaurants in America, is compelling and gritty and neither kills nor saves anyone solely on the basis of them being an enemy, an important ally or even your own character. The game tries really hard to simulate actual modern warfare; I'm not and will never be a soldier and so I don't think I'm in a position to tell you whether or not it succeeded. I did find it a bit too melodramatic at times, but overall, a plausible hypothetical scenario that clearly has a good deal of thought behind it.
Will it make me want to throw my controller across the room... again?
Depends on what difficulty you want to play. The introductory mission is a "test" to see if you get to join an elite squad (which you get to join anyway as long as you finish the thing at all), but it's also a quick tutorial on the game mechanics. When you've finished the game will recommend a difficulty setting depending on how well you did, but you can choose a different setting if you like. At the lower difficulty settings the game gives you an amazing amount of leeway; your bullets will kill even if your shots are somewhat inaccurate and you can take a lot of damage before dying. You can also auto-aim to some extent which makes everything that much easier. At the higher levels, as you would expect, things are a bit more difficult. After every... oh, about two? guys you kill, there's a checkpoint, so you'll never have to redo too much if you die. If there's one thing we love here at AGF, it's gratuitous violence... and also cookies... and... okay, if there are THREE things we love here at AGF, they are gratuitous violence, cookies, and frequent checkpoints. MW2 provides two of the three, so you see why I recommend it so highly.
Will this game consume my life?
After I started playing the campaign (single-player mode), I really didn't stop until I'd finished. However, the campaign is not *that* long and can be finished in a day or two with some dedication. The part of any Call of Duty game that really eats your life is the multiplayer, because what's more fun than watching your best friend's virtual body fly up in the air after you've lobbed a grenade at him? Sneaking up behind him, unseen, and knifing him in the back, that's what.
Do I want to spend that much of my life with these people?
This game is not really about the characters, but I guess they serve their purpose well enough. You'll get to see some of your old favourites from Modern Warfare; Soap is all grown up and in charge now, and there's another guy whose name I won't reveal so as not to give away the plot.
Is it worth it?
YES. If you haven't already, you need to buy this game. It's the best first-person shooter out there and a brilliant addition to the already excellent Call of Duty series.
Lego Batman
Just what's going on here anyway?
Did you love smashing up your brothers' Lego creations when you were a kid? No? Then you had less annoying brothers than I did. Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones are all your favourite movies... now playable in Lego.
Is it FUN?!
Oh yes. Things smash up nicely and there are a large number of items to collect - in this case, Joker cards, minikits, red bricks, and lots and lots of Lego studs (used as currency in the game). The red bricks give you access to fun "extras" such as getting two, four, six or eight times as much money. These stack so that by the end of the game you can actually be earning 384 times as much money, which is just insane. Some of the red bricks unlock little minigames. The Joker cards are like baseball cards with Batman characters, vehicles or locations and a bit of info about each one.
The cutscenes are often quite humorously done and good for a giggle or two, and you can, over the course of the game, unlock most of the major Batman characters to play. Each one has special skills and can only use certain types of items and you have to work out how to use these skills together to get from where you are to where you want to go. You get two characters at a time, or eight in Free Play mode, and you can switch between them at will to use their skills as necessary. It's not generally that difficult, and if you really get stuck, try smashing everything. I consider this to be a winning strategy in pretty much all areas of life...
The two-character system means you can easily team up with a friend (a real-life friend, not a Lego guy... unless you're into that... but they tend to have some trouble with controls. It's a lot of jumping for a little guy. Or girl.) Anyway, yes, team up with a friend, each of you takes one character, and you play the game together.
The gameplay can get a bit repetitive, especially fighting. You don't usually have the option for much strategy beyond "hit this guy until he falls apart". I also get sick of doing essentially the same things over and over again to go from point A to point B. It might well take you ten minutes to get both your characters across the screen, and I personally find that gets tedious after I've done it several times.
Is it interesting?
The stories in Lego Indy and Lego Star Wars follow the movies with a few little tweaks to make them more suitable for the Lego game. I'm not sure whether the Batman stories were taken from somewhere or made up for the game, but they seem reasonable. You can play each one twice, once as Batman and Robin and then again, from the other side, as the villains in the story. It's an interesting twist and even though the settings are the same, you have to get around them differently and accomplish different goals, so it's not repetitive. My one quibble with the villains stories is that you don't get to fight Batman and Robin at the end.
Will it make me want to throw my controller across the room... again?
Most of the time your path will be fairly straightforward. It can be frustrating seeking out that last hidden minikit or ending a story with 99% of the studs required to get True Hero (or True Villain). On the whole, though, gameplay is pretty simple... definitely easy enough for this to be a good game for kids or for those new to video games.
Will this game consume my life?
Personally, I found the repetitiveness of this game to be a pretty good safeguard against addiction. There are six stories in total (three hero, three villain) and you can probably finish each one in sixty-ninety minutes at most. After that, the total time you'll spend on this game largely depends on how much time you want to put into running around and getting everything. If you're one of those who MUST HAVE every single item, you will have to play each level at least twice and possibly several times over. This is, however, an improvement over Lego Star Wars, where you had to play each chapter no less than four times in order to unlock all the achievements. And some of those levels included Jar Jar, so folks, this really was an undertaking. Lego Batman is quite short in comparison.
Do I want to spend that much of my life with these people?
Most of your favourite Batman characters are here and you can play as them. They don't necessarily resemble their movie/comic book personas very much, being as they're made of Lego and don't talk, but you can play them and they are cute little guys, for sure!
Is it worth it?
I think Lego Indy was my favourite of the Lego games, but the mechanics of the three games are almost exactly the same and so you can really pick whichever story/character set you like best and then move on to the others if you like the style. You will have to do essentially the same things over and over again and if you're easily bored (or just, like, WAY too cool for kid stuff) then these games may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you're just after a bit of lighthearted fun or, like me, knew you were going to buy this from the second you heard the word "Lego"... then you'll probably enjoy the series quite a bit.
Dragon Age: Origins
Just what's going on here anyway?
Ah, the dragon-slaying story. There's a long history behind these, including Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, Dragonlance, World of Warcraft, and now Dragon Age, which testifies to the immense popularity of this sort of adventure story. It's a medieval kind of theme, but with less of the open sewers and high infant mortality rate and more of the magic and giant swords.
Is it FUN?!
Magic and giant swords are fun, yeah? This game has nice graphics as well, so you get to see your Arcane Bolts in all their glorious colourful splendour. There are the usual assortment of enemies, from giant spiders right up to dragons. The spells, as with the rest of the game, are nothing groundbreaking, but it's always fun to knock a large group of enemies on their asses with an enormous fireball. Also, you have the option to play as a dog.
Is it interesting?
Here's where I have a problem with this game. Sure, it's interesting if you like this style of game... but it's like World of Warcraft lite. Which is fine for a recovering WoW addict like myself. A similar game with less time commitment. Fantastic. The thing is that this game really adds nothing new to the genre. You play a human, elf or dwarf and can be a mage, warrior or rogue. The storyline is fine, but again, nothing new. You have a few moral choices to make and your party members will approve or disapprove of those choices. (Personal pet peeve here: I don't want to have to worry about currying favour with people in video games. There's enough of that kind of ridiculous drama in real life.) I like video games that allow you different choices that will affect how your game progresses. They make it more interesting and add to the replay value. It would have been nice if this game allowed more of those decisions to have an effect on the storyline; in most cases in this game, any option only leads to a different dialogue where you then get forced into the only outcome allowed by the story.
Will it make me want to throw my controller across the room... again?
Some of the controls were not terribly intuitive, for me, but basically it's not that difficult and you have your main spells mapped out for you in the bottom right corner of the screen so that you can't possibly forget which button does what. You will want to play around a lot with the radial menu (brought up by left trigger on the XBox) as there's a lot in there that's not immediately obvious.
One thing you need to know is that this game does NOT autosave nearly often enough and if you forget to save on your own, you're going to end up having to do a lot of stuff over after you got jumped by that group of mages twenty rooms after the last autosave.
The game does have different difficulty settings and you can switch between them mid-game if you're really getting your ass kicked. During battle you play whichever character you want and the others will fight automatically. If you choose to use it, you can have an enormous amount of control over their fighting styles via the tactics option, or if you're more coordinated than I, you can switch between them during the fight. Or you can just play a warrior, set the game to "casual", and enjoy the adventure without having to worry too much about anything more than bashing away with your sword.
Will this game consume my life?
It can. It's one of those things where you can always go just a little farther, just play for five more minutes... and then before you know it, you have to get up for work and you haven't even been to bed yet. Still, it's better than a WoW addiction.
Do I want to spend that much of my life with these people?
I did enjoy the characters in this game. They actually have some, for a start. Plus they mostly have sexy English accents and Alistair is totally doable. The girls look pretty sexy too, but you'll have to ask the Hatter or the Caterpillar if you want a really credible opinion on that matter. You have a lot of options to customize your character's appearance, you can name them whatever you like, and you can play as a man or a woman of whatever colour you desire. That's cool.
The characters on your team all have their own unique personalities and will comment on things happening in the game or have little conversations with each other while you're just wandering around. That's cool, and it makes the game a lot more engaging.
Is it worth it?
You've heard the phrase "nothing new under the sun"? Yeah. Like I said before, this is WoW lite. If you want something WoW-ish without the time commitment, this game just might do it for you. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but definitely a solid addition to the "magic and giant swords" genre.
Alan Wake
Just what's going on here anyway?
Alan Wake, a struggling writer, goes to Bright Falls with his wife hoping for some inspiration. He gets a little more than he bargained for...
Is it FUN?!
I, Alice, am a big fan of horror. I'm also sort of attention deficit and have a hard time watching movies or TV for any length of time. I need to be a little more engaged. Alan Wake was perfect for me because it's like not only watching a horror movie, but being a part of it yourself. I couldn't wait to find out what happened next and what was the truth behind Alan's story. Fun? Maybe not the right word. Interesting? Well, that's the next section of the review.
Is it interesting?
Have you ever watched a horror movie and wanted to be one of the characters? Do you like suspense, drama, and things that go bump in the night? Alan Wake is a good story told in a way that blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination. The main mechanism of the game is the age-old primal fear of the dark. Bad guy coming at you? Shine light on him. Don't know where to go? Run toward the light. Dark is bad, light is good, and that's all you really need to remember in this game.
There are essentially two different modes in the game which, again, follow the dark vs. light theme. When it's daylight you will be talking to people in a world which seems quite normal. I have to admit that I, Alice, am not a big fan of games making me do things like make coffee. I play games so that I can avoid real life, not emulate it. That said, the game doesn't make you do a whole lot of those things and much more of the story takes place after dark, when you will be running and fighting for your life in a nightmare world where shadows can attack and enemies lurk behind every tree.
The story itself is narrated by Alan and you find manuscript pages throughout which are worth reading if you care about the story at all. It is a good story; not Shakespeare, but it would certainly do for airplane reading or for some other situation in which you're looking for a diversion.
Will it make me want to throw my controller across the room... again?
Your defensive weapon in this game is a flashlight, which will (mostly) keep the bad guys at a safe distance from you or at least slow them down and weaken them. Your offensive weapon is a gun. There are also flashbangs which function much like grenades and which you will grow to love. The one big problem I had in this game was dodging, which requires you to press left button and then move around. This can be a bit difficult during a fight as your left finger is usually pretty busy on left trigger boosting the flashlight beam.
Alan is just an ordinary guy, and a writer at that; he's not too strong. He can't sprint for long distances or jump very high. He can, however, open doors... a talent so many otherwise super heroes seem to lack in video games.
It is very easy to find your way around. Aside from the yellow dot constantly showing you which direction to go, there is usually only one direction you can go in anyway, one button you can press or switch you can throw, so it's not usually too hard to figure out where you're meant to be going.
Will this game consume my life?
Once you play through the story then you're pretty much done. There's no multiplayer and not much replay value unless you want to go for achievements or trophies or unless you're the sort of person who likes watching horror movies again even after the surprises have been revealed. There are a few little things you'll notice on a second playthrough that you probably missed the first time around, but on the whole, it's not the sort of game that you'll likely want to play for months on end.
Do I want to spend that much of my life with these people?
Alan is a pretty grim protagonist, but hey, if my wife had been kidnapped, all the people around me kept turning into psychotic axe murderers, and the forces of darkness were throwing boats at me, I'd probably be grumpy as well. He's definitely hot! The rest of the characters have enough personality to make them interesting. Barry is annoying but occasionally good for a laugh (the Christmas lights, in particular, made me chuckle), Sheriff Breaker is suitably strong and competent, and the Anderson brothers are probably my favourite video game characters in quite some time.
Is it worth it?
The game might be a bit difficult for casual gamers, but isn't that what walkthroughs are for? If you love horror and suspense, this is the game for you.