This more familiar Splinter Cell is what hit the shelves last week, although it still has gone through a not-insignificant transition since the conclusion of Double Agent. The indecision that dogged Conviction’s development was a cause of concern for me as I felt it could result in the finished product suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. When making these kind of transitions there’s always a risk that the content becomes diluted, so just how does the new Sam Fisher handle? Does Conviction breathe new life into the series or are we left with a “worst of both worlds” dilemma?

Angry Sam
For as long as I can remember Splinter Cell titles, as well as the Tom Clancy franchise as a whole, have struggled to really engage the player in the game’s plot. Disembodied radio chatter directing you towards a series of interchangeable MacGuffins have been the staple of the series ever since Sam first donned his iconic night vision goggles, which this time have been symbolically removed from Sam’s arsenal. It’s good to see therefore that Ubisoft have made a real effort to address this issue and provide a more personal story and fleshed out relationships between characters.

Set around three years after the conclusion of Double Agent, Sam is now officially a civilian and has a single focus in life;to find the men responsible for his daughter’s death and bring them to justice. We’re not talking prison sentence or group therapy justice here either, Sam has nothing but revenge on his mind and this angrier mindset is well represented in the ruthless and lethal way that he deals with enemies. After playing through so many games listening to Sam walk the tightrope between loyalty to his country and his own moral compass, I enjoyed being able to experience him just let go for once.

Sam’s personal motivations go hand in hand with the motivations of his shady employer who wants to stop an impending electromagnetic attack. It quickly becomes apparent that Sam is in way over his head as Third Echelon appear to be masterminding the attack, leading to a juicy conspiracy in which it becomes harder and harder to know who to trust. This thread of the plot bucks the trend of other Ubisoft games by actually being quite interesting. Doubles and triple crosses are almost as common as snapped necks in Sam’s world this time around, and the way that the plot-line constantly switches time-lines (including the occasional foray a few days into the future) provides an effective vehicle for fleshing out back-stories and introducing the occasional plot twist.

Sneaky Snacky Snoo…
From the outset it’s clear that we’re dealing with a new Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Conviction; he appears to have taken a few night classes with Jason Bourne while absent from Third Echelon. There’s considerably less emphasis on patient, calculated stealth with the focus now shifting towards improvisation and a more action oriented approach. To that effect Sam’s skills have gone through a more noticeable expansion and redefinition than in any other transition between games.

The most significant of these changes is the Mark and Execute mechanic, which allows Sam to predetermine which targets he’s going to aim at before quickly killing them all at the press of a single button. It’s an interesting idea that allows for intricate planning to be accomplished relatively easily, quickly and if I say so myself stylishly, but there is an inherent flaw in the mechanic. In certain cases it allows you to perform actions that would otherwise require superhuman reactions or an unprecedented dose of luck, such as kicking in a door and instantly clearing the room with a few quick shots. These quick, merciless kills fit in perfectly with the new direction that the series has been taken in and looks absolutely fantastic to boot. Despite allowing for some visually spectacular kills, I do feel that it can be just as detrimental to the experience in equal measure. There are restrictions in place such as putting a cap on the number of targets who can be marked but a Mark and Execute sequence amounts to a flurry of unstoppable headshots; free kills essentially. Even on the Realistic difficulty setting I feel like it’s too easy to fill your “Marks” with a takedown move and the result is that seemingly insurmountable odds can be cheaply turned around with no real effort on the part of the player.

"You've broken the splash zone rule for the last time"

That’s not to say that Sam has completely ignored his roots altogether however and there are opportunities throughout the game to get up close and personal with your target. Sam can quickly snap from cover to cover using context sensitive commands that will usually get you to your intended destination although sometimes leaves you crouching like a moron in the most illuminated position in the entire game. Talking of illumination it looks like Spinter Cell truly has cast aside its humble beginnings as lighting has been pretty drastically streamlined to a simple “Completely invisible/Lit up like a Christmas Tree” binary decision, which is something that I felt didn’t need to be streamlined.

It’s when you get close enough to smell your target’s breath that I found Splinter Cell to be at its best. Pressing the melee button will simply initiate a very slick lethal takedown; I particularly enjoyed watching Sam fire a couple of shots into the poor soul on the receiving end of the move even though it’s supposed to be a melee attack. Using the enemy as a human shield will often yield more satisfying results however, not only because it fits in well with a well timed Mark and Execute but opens up plethora of opportunities as you decide how you want to finish him off. Most of the environment can be used as a finishing move and even though the differences as merely cosmetic I still found it interesting finding as many as I could. There are several extended sequences that involve Sam performing impromptu interrogations which implement this in a much more polished way but I still found it to be more satisfying in the heat of battle.

Sam’s ability to quickly switch position as well as his renowned acrobatics served me well during Splinter Cell: Conviction as the enemy AI is actually pretty damn good and required me to constantly stay on my toes. They don’t seem to follow a particular path and will often flat out refuse to budge if they feel that holding position will slash their odds of ending up dead, and this unpredictability on their part is one the biggest contributing factor in providing a challenge for players who want to focus entirely on stealth.

Once you’ve had the misfortune of being spotted the option of charging into the fray guns blazing is available, but will more than likely result in a quick and undignified death. Splinter Cell: Conviction is not a shooter, which is why a lengthy sequence in Iraq which involves absolutely zero stealth is a real drag. The better decision would be to get out of sight again, which upon doing a silhouette of Sam will be superimposed on the screen indicating where the enemy thinks you are. It’s an interesting idea that allows players to use being uncovered as a potential tactical advantage, although it also acts as the enemy AIs Achilles heel. Enemies will often blindly fire at Sam’s silhouette and unless you whistle and yell “I’m actually over here now fellas” they tend to continue to do so for so long that you essentially have free reign to get in a perfect killing position.

The main outcome that these redevelopments achieves is that the action in Splinter Cell: Conviction is much quicker, more visceral and violent, but also a bit messy at the same time. There doesn’t seem to be any real punishment for being uncovered and in fact a lot of the conflicts in the game demand that Sam gives his trigger finger an itch. As a result the body count probably dwarves that of the four predecessors by the end, which is no mean feat considering the campaign of Conviction is surprisingly brief.

Graphical prowess? It’s pretty black & white…
In a rare departure from my usual opinion on Ubisoft games, I found the presentation of Splinter Cell: Conviction to be an unceasing source of annoyance. As is the norm with titles that fall under the Tom Clancy umbrella the production values are off the scale. You really could spend hours simply looking at how well put together and animated Sam Fisher and his adversaries are, if Ubisoft hadn’t made the insane decision to apply a lifeless monochrome filter to lengthy sections of the gameplay.

Whenever Sam sneaks into the shadows, the colour is flushed out of the game world to indicate that he is invisible to the enemy. Obviously if everything goes according to plan this is going to be the case for the majority of each section which results in a lot of the levels just looking plain dull. Other than environmental points of interest and enemies retaining their original hue no stylisation is applied to the game when you go out of sight; the entire screen really does just melt away into a collage of slightly different grays.  It just seems bizarre that Ubisoft couldn’t think of a less intrusive approach to the stealth indicator, especially considering the other significant visual addition to Splinter Cell: Conviction displays evidence of some real creativity from the Montreal studio.

It’s a feature that’s become a staple of the pre-release hype for Conviction but the way that objectives, hints and story elements are projected directly onto the environment is an interesting concept that is executed very well in most cases. The way that current objectives and short videos relevant to the current situation are presented gives the impression that you have a direct feed into Sam Fisher’s mind. Every time something pops into his head it’s broadcast onto the nearest surface for you to interpret. When it comes to the more mundane usages such as displaying context sensitive actions it’s not quite as effective but it still certainly raises some questions about the future viability of the tried and tested HUD functionality.

Sounds Fisher…
Despite Ubisoft somehow managing to do the opposite of polishing a turd (pooing on a gem?) with the visual style of Conviction no such mistakes have been made with the audio. The new direction allows for more up close and personal interaction with the voice acting maintaining consistently high standards. Michael Ironside does grumpy and cynical very well and it fits in with Sam’s attitude in this instalment while the other major characters are equally well represented. Even the stock NPCs usually provide some interesting conversations to eavesdrop on, although they tend to revert to an endless loop of catchphrases once they’ve realised Sam is in the room. Conviction is the first Splinter Cell in which I found myself making an effort to listen to what people had to say rather than just treating it as background noise. Although this is more down to the narrative being to a higher standard in general it’s good to see that the production values have been maintained.

Sound effects and general ambient noise are also a highlight, although that’s hardly surprising considering how the sound of a pair of night vision goggles powering up is a long standing trademark of the series if not the stealth genre as a whole. These effects take a back seat this time however as more effort appears to have been put into accompanying Sam’s hand to hand combat with bone crunching punctuations. These visceral snaps, whips and thuds go a long way to emphasising Sam’s image as a hasty but brutally effective combatant. I found the firearms to feel a bit underpowered even without a suppressor however. Anything other than a clean headshot will result in your target shrugging off the hit with Terminator-esque disregard, which is compounded by most of the weapons giving off a bit of a muffled whimper instead of the air splitting bang that I felt they should have.

Spy vs Spy
Double Agent set a difficult precedent to follow with its multiplayer element in that it offered something very different to the single player campaign as well as being bloody brilliant in its own right. Splinter Cell: Conviction’s multiplayer is quite simply brilliant however, and exponentially increases the lifespan of the game as a whole. The co-op story focuses on the characters of Archer and Kestrel, an American/Russian tag team in what is essentially a prequel to Sam’s campaign. The story itself is unfortunately a bit more in line with previous game but the ability to work together through a completely separate campaign is provides more enjoyment than anything the single player campaign brings to the table. The Last Known Position feature in particular sets up some up some nice diversionary tactics and the difficulty is ramped up enough simply by throwing more enemies into each of the maps. My only complaint is that explicit co-op moves are pretty much restricted to opening doors so don’t expect any Army of Two style back to back moves, but it’s a testament to the strength of Splinter Cell: Conviction’s core gameplay that the co-op still works very well without having to be chopped and changed.

Like Army of Two without the sexual tension...actually that's in there too

The co-op modes are excellent and are probably enough of a reason to buy Splinter Cell: Conviction on their merit alone, however I found the Face-Off mode to cast them to the sidelines with relative ease. This adversarial game mode sees Archer and Kestrel turning on each other and competing to kill as many AI controlled enemies as possible, with extra credit being awarded for taking each other down. It’s such a simple idea but provides so many moments of brilliance that I was begging for more at the end of each round. The thrill of getting the drop of a group of terrorists could instantly be tempered as they started dying by someone else’s hand, someone who is probably training their gun on you right now…

Without Splinter Cell: Conviction’s multiplayer I would imagine that most fans would feel pretty short changed by the whole experience due to the alarmingly short playtime of the campaign. As it stands, it really does pull Conviction over the threshold between being a good game and being a game that you can return to over and over. The co-op story essentially acts as a game in its own right while the other game modes and customisation options greatly increase the game’s longevity. Although it was Sam Fisher that initially turned my head, it was Archer and Kestrel who kept pulling me back in.

Convinced of Convicted?
Playing with such an ingrained formula is always going to be a risk, which is why after the initial plans of a complete overhaul Splinter Cell: Conviction is actually closer to the series roots than Ubisoft would have you believe. Despite mostly playing it safe with the new direction credit must be paid to them for making an effort to redefine one of their flagship series when most studios are churning out familiar material out of fear or rejection. The changes that are implemented are for the most part successful although I still felt that the game was a bit too easy and must be played on Realistic if you don’t want it to be over in your first playthrough. Thankfully the multiplayer provides a second wind that matches if not exceeds the enjoyment levels of the Campaign and will also last a lot longer. As a fan of the older Splinter Cell games I came out of the experience feeling that Conviction is a worthy addition to the series and shows a lot of promise as to where it can go from here.

How We Review Games

I’ve had my eye on Dante’s Inferno for a while but a plethora of hold-ups have resulted in me only picking it up now. Aside from all the controversy, the pre-release footage ticked all the right boxes to sate my ever increasing blood-lust which is reaching worryingly high levels at the moment. Seriously I need to either let loose on GTA4 or try to counterbalance it with Viva Piñata. Just because I’m in the mood for a bit of infernal minion punishment doesn’t mean that Dante’s Inferno is instantly going to be added to my must buy list however, so read on to find out just how good it really is.

The Last Crusade(r)
At the risk of coming across as a bit of a Neanderthal, my knowledge of the original source material doesn’t extend any further than what I’ve picked up on Wikipedia as well as a few phrases that have been used in nearly every recent film with religious undertones. Dante could well have had a wisecracking robot sidekick named Leroy and although I probably would have thought it was a bit out of place I wouldn’t have been any the wiser. With that in mind I’ll be sticking solely to the plot-line of the game to mitigate the risk of me looking like an uninformed tit every time I botch a reference to the Divine Comedy.

The story of Dante’s Inferno begins with the Templar Knight Dante with a knife in his back and faced with Death itself, who informs the zealous Christian that his fate is to be banished to Hell for all eternity. It’s not spoiling too much to say that it turns out that Dante, who is actually pretty handy in a scrap with mythological beings, royally batters the Grim Reaper and steals his scythe just to rub it in, but that’s only the prologue to the story. Dante returns home to find his wife Beatrice with a sword in her chest and her soul being dragged into the depths of Hell by Lucifer. Dante’s Inferno follows Dante’s traverse into the Nine Circles of Hell as he does whatever it takes to gain redemption for the sins that have resulted in Beatrice being dragged to the underworld.

"Not so grim now are ya!?"

Based on the fairly crass advertising campaign that preceded Dante’s Inferno I have to admit to not expecting a great deal in terms of the plot, but Dante’s quest is a surprisingly engaging one. The tapestry that is woven in Dante’s chest fleshes out his background through simple but effective animated cut-scenes. I always looked forward to these parts, not just because of the clever animation but because they always contained revelations regarding Dante’s past sins during the Crusades that I genuinely didn’t see coming. As the story progresses I felt like this is as much a story of Dante trying to redeem himself as it was a rescue mission, while Lucifer plays a fantastic part in constantly reminding Dante of his transgressions and belittling his efforts to achieve absolution.

Knock, knock, knocking on demon’s faces…
Now don’t let the religious themes that are prevalent throughout Dante’s Inferno fool you; this game is all about kicking ass. Dante has two weapons as his disposal: Death’s Scythe which allows for brutal melee attacks and a Templar cross blessed by the spirit of his deceased wife. The scythe performs Unholy attacks while the cross unleashes different kinds of Holy energy, both of which have their own separate levelling up paths and experience gauges. The gauges are filled up separately depending on what moves you use to finish your opponent, although there are times when you can specifically decide whether to Absolve or Punish your opponent, with the latter clearly designed to appeal to those who enjoy a bit of divine retribution. The two sides of Dante’s repertoire are actually fairly balanced and it pays to advance each of his weapons equally, although it seems to be a lot easier to level up your Holy arsenal as the game progresses.

At first the combat is relatively standard  stuff with light and heavy attacks being mapped to the Scythe and long range holy attacks possible through the Cross. Dante levels up fairly quickly however, which presents the opportunity to spend experience on the healthy arsenal of combos that can be unlocked. One thing that I feel Dante’s Inferno does particularly well is essentially make proper use of the many combos a mandatory tactic for those who are partial to staying alive. It’s easy to become overwhelmed so a lot of time is spent on the defensive rather than just madly mashing the attack buttons in a flurry of flashing effects and ever increasing hit counters. Quite simply; you’ll be punished for being gung ho, which is hardly a bad thing and it makes the experience of pulling off one of Dante’s many destructive combos all the more satisfying.

While I found the combat to be very well executed, it’s during the boss fights that Dante’s Inferno really hits a sweet spot. Dante always seems utterly fearless and committed to his task despite his hopeless surroundings, which comes across well in the brutality of the boss fights. There’s no running away from the massive beasts while platforms falls away from under your feet here; your only option is to face them and beat the (un)living daylights out of Hellspawn that have the audacity to get in your way. There are a few boss fights that degenerate into a sequence of fairly bog standard dodge, hit, hit, dodge, repeat sequences but the majority of them are straight up epic, and most importantly unpredictable, brawls. The duel against Marc Anthony is especially exciting; I always felt on the back foot having to dodge and block a flurry of incoming attacks before capitalising on the occasional mistake with a massive swing of my scythe. Rather than simply reacting to a sequence of predefined attacks and combos it felt like a genuine fight with all the twists and turns that it entails.

As is the way with most games of this ilk at the moment Quick Time Events play a significant part in the combat, although these sequences integrate into the gameplay pretty well. I usually find the QTE sequences can often break up the flow of the gameplay but they’re mercifully short in Dante’s Inferno and executed in a way that makes than feel like a natural extension of the combat. After being knocked down by an enemy you might need a few quick button presses to avoid a killing blow or alternatively a wiggle of the analog sticks will see Dante literally rip an enemy in half when he’s weak enough. Once these ultra violent animations have played out it’s straight back into the fray and as a result these moves just feel like especially gory combos rather than additional scenes that interrupt the play, most of the time that is. The boss fights are a bit too heavy on the QTE’s and while they work well during the fight, the end of every boss fight often consists of a drawn out button pressing exercise. While they look great I did feel detached from what Dante was doing a lot of the time, while a single mistimed press could result in a catastrophic loss in health or even worse, instant death.

Dante’s Inferno does make the occasional effort to break up the combat with some platforming and puzzle solving segments, but they’re pretty average and downright tortuous respectively. Although the rope swinging, pole sliding sequences provide some fantastic eye candy thanks to the heights you reach during them, they never really provide a real challenge for the player. The puzzles on the other hand come across as an afterthought as though Visceral felt constant combat would eventually see our interest wane, but they just come across as a hindrance and very rarely go beyond the age old pulling crates onto floor panels formula. I can understand why these parts of the game exist since it probably would grate a bit if Dante’s Inferno consisted solely of killing a variety of imaginative demons, but considering the quality of the sections themselves compared to the excellent combat I can’t help but feel like they needn’t have bothered.

A nightmare to remember
I was a bit worried during the first half hour of Dante’s Inferno, as it consisted of fighting through some pretty bland environments that weren’t really making much of an effort to get any of my senses remotely interested. When you make the first steps into Limbo however everything just clicks into place beautifully thanks to the inspired level and character design. Each Circle of Hell visually portrays the sins they represent very well and do what I think it’s becoming harder and harder for games to achieve; genuinely shock the player. Apart from Lust that is, which seems to resort to just flinging phallic imagery at every corner. Although “phallic imagery” is even a touch generous, it’s just rooms full of cocks. The most impressive thing about the different levels are how even the most simple concepts are given an infernal spin. Instead of climbing up vines or ladders, you grab onto the flailing hands of tortured souls that are attempting to free themselves from their prison, while Dante will more often than not find himself climbing and swinging on the rotting, compacted limbs of the poor buggers they used to belong to.

This would be one of those situations where walking into the light is a bad thing

The creative juices must really have been flowing when the characters were being designed. There are a few generic demons that appear across Hell which are a touch on the bland side, but the enemies specific to each Circle all exhibit a level of twisted imagination that the Devil himself would probably struggle to match. There is something altogether unsettling about being attacked by scimitar-handed babies and damned prostitutes who writhe around in ecstasy while trying to rip your head off. Both Dante and the enemies he faces also benefit from some excellent animation that is always smooth and lightning quick in equal measure.

I do have one bugbear about Dante’s Infernos visuals however; considering the game is set in the bowels of Hell, the fire effects are pretty underwhelming. In particular whenever Dante finds himself having to eliminate a group of enemies before moving on a wall of fire will block your path, and it just looks a bit shoddy. It’s not as much of a hindrance as I initially thought it would be as this depiction of Hell is actually quite restrained, but I feel like Dante’s Inferno could have benefited from some more eye catching special effects to match the epic scale of the levels and bosses.

Hell is alive with sound of music
The score of Dante’s Inferno is an interesting one, in that the music itself takes a bit of a back seat to the ambient noises that stifle the atmosphere in the depths of Hell. The constant wails of the damned echo throughout the entirety of Hell, while individual Circles have their own backing tracks, whether it’s the sound of euphoric moans of the Lustful or the maniacal screaming of those guilty of Wrath. The sound effects do a good job of piercing through the background to really make Dante’s attacks feel like they really are of biblical proportions (eek, that pun would make Basil Brush cringe), so that it’s only really when you stop inflicting pain that you’re forced to realise just how much of it is surrounding the environment. The voice acting is also pretty solid across the board, although Dante himself can get a bit unnecessarily shouty pretty much all of the time. I particularly liked the voice acting of the Devil himself, constantly appearing to mock Dante in a manner that never seems to be particularly vindictive or angry, just confident and snide in equal measure. He acts as a perfect foil for the occasionally bombastic Dante, and every scene in which they’re both involved is a complete joy to behold.

Heaven or Hell?
Dante’s Inferno is certainly no game for the faint hearted, and it has been a while since I’ve been able to say that. It pushes a lot of boundaries with the creative decisions made in terms of both the setting and the depiction of the many sins Dante is faced with. I know the argument is that we’re being slowly desensitised to the shocks that games are able to offer but I would advise caution; Dante’s Inferno is pretty damn messed up at times. It is, however, also a very accomplished game that perfects a lot of the best mechanics from a genre that is experiencing a bit of resurgence at the moment. The combat is visceral and exciting and I was surprised to find myself genuinely interested in how the narrative pans out. Granted, the replay value is fairly restricted even with the inclusion of an unlockable difficulty level, but I have to say that Dante’s Inferno is the best fifteen hours in Hell I’m going to have spent in quite some time.

How We Review Games

Ok, you might have noticed the odd one out there. No, not the strawberries or even the conversationalist toaster. As we all know games and movies combined have roughly the same affect of plonking a noisy car next to a crowd of horny chimpanzees. At least one of the involved parties is going to end up covered in bodily excretions and feeling slightly ashamed of themselves… well I did say roughly the same effect. So with that in mind I’m going to be spending the next few weeks scraping the barrel of video game adaptations in the attempt to find one that actually does justice to the source material. I mean, they can’t all be bad, right? Right!?

The first instalment of TIMJ at the Movies takes us to Mars, as demonic (well, kind of) creatures go toe to toe with The Rock in Doom.

The Game
For those of you who aren’t aware of the events of the original Doom… you’re an idiot, but I suppose you still deserve to be synopsisised. Doom is widely regarded as the game that most FPS’s have to thank for providing them with inspiration, expanding on Wolfenstein 3D’s already impressive engine by taking to steps to really immerse the player in the hellish world that they were fighting through. Well I say world, Doom actually takes place on the two moons of Mars after a transportation experiment results in the forces of Hell itself crashing the party and obliterating everyone but a lone Space Marine, which is where you come in.

What followed is a relentless onslaught of fire breathing, mini-gun toting demons for you to chainsaw, shotgun and plasma into squidgy little bits. The fact that the phrase “Doom Clone” was originally a more widely used descriptive term than First Person Shooter shows just how much of an impact Doom had, so it’s a safe bet that Universal Studios didn’t fully appreciate the impossibly large boots that they had to fill when they decided to attempt the adaptation. Attempt they did though and like many of the gamers who has fond memories of Doom introducing us to just what games could do, I eagerly sat myself down to watch.

The Film
I’m going to come right out and say it, when compared to the majority of monster flicks, I thought Doom was actually not that bad. As an adaptation of one of the most influential games of all time however, it’s just all kinds of wrong. I try to keep an open mind when film studios play around with the source material. Sometimes even the biggest games just won’t translate onto the big screen, it’s completely understandable. Considering ‘Doomguy’ is the only character across the first two games that isn’t a spiky murderous hellspawn I even went into this thinking that it would be an achievement if they managed to weave an even remotely engaging plotline. For a gamer/film fan as cynical as I can be, I felt that I was being exceptionally generous, so why the hell did they go and take the only course of action that would make me want to volunteer myself for the nearest sensory deprivation class!?

Now I’m aware that there’s no textbook guide on how to bring a video game to the silver screen, since let’s face it; no one has really done any more than an average job up until now. That being said, there are a couple of pretty well established rules on what not to do and Doom breaks the holiest of them all: No unnecessary plot changes. At first glance the narrative is deceptively similar but during the first break in the action the whole thing is essentially jettisoned out of the airlock. Hell is never even mentioned in Doom (apart from the films tagline bizarrely), the monsters that are running riot on the station are humans who have picked up a nasty infection that has different effects depending on whether the recipient is good or evil. Now let’s ignore the complete stupidity inherent in the idea that this extraterrestrial virus has a conscience, just what exactly is so uninteresting about the demonic forces of Hell being granted access to our universe that deems it unworthy of forming the driving force of the plot? Instead, we have a group of Lemmings being picked off and transformed by this indecisive infection until only a few remain for the film’s climactic escape; we have Resident Evil essentially.

It's not bloody difficult!

Speaking of those Lemmings, how do they measure up to those of the game? Pretty well actually, although that might be because the protagonist of all Doom games is entirely mute while every other character in the game exists solely to throw fireballs at you and be shot at. It’s all pretty clichéd to be honest, with the majority of the characters falling into the tired old horror movie soldier stereotypes that we’ve already seen in 28 Weeks Later, Dog Soldiers, Predator… and of course, Resident Evil. That being said I was pleasantly surprised at how much of an ass The Rock turns out to be in this film, then again he could star in a film as the goddamn Tooth Fairy and probably still be the coolest thing about it! I’m sorry what? Oh… With Julie Walters? Oh I see…

The demons… sorry, nightmarish man-flu sufferers don’t translate very well either, although that could be because most of the more interesting demons are completely non existent in the film. I get the feeling that the filmmakers painted themselves into a corner when they dropped the Hell context, since it’s pretty difficult to explain a bipedal humanoid becoming infected and then turning into a giant, floating, fire-breathing ball or a minigun wielding Minotaur. Instead we have to make do with a few Imps and an entire waiting room full of mindless zombies. The Pinky demon does make a brief appearance but by that point the tedium has well and truly set in and the monsters that inhabit this version of Mars never got close to inducing that feeling of sheer awe when you first encountered a Cyberdemon or Hell Knight.

Now Doom does deserve some credit, as it’s apparent that the film-makers have made a concerted effort to pack as many fan serving references to the game as possible, although that doesn’t make me any less angry that they ignored the entire context of the game. As The Rock claims the Bio Force Gun and looks on in marvel declaring it the “Big Fucking Gun” it’s obvious that at least a bit of homework has been done, but the most noteworthy attempt to capture the feeling of the game is an extended scene which is shot from the perspective of the character Reaper. The mere fact that  any kind of first person perspective has never been attempted before in a big budget Hollywood flick is noteworthy and it’s admirable that a real attempt has been made to actually recreate the experience of the original Doom. However it really only serves as an example of how this kind of shooting technique only works when there’s a level of interaction involved. The way that Reaper glides around corridors while enemies pop out from behind walls before being popped in the head reminded me of a haunted house ride rather than any of the Doom games; it just feels too on-rails and having all of the control taking away in those kind of environments is actually quite off-putting at times.

The first person sequence really sums up my feelings on Doom as a whole in that it has got good intentions and some nice ideas to back them up, but the whole thing is let down by some unnecessary stretching of the creative license. Doom isn’t a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination and throwing in references to the source material is always welcome, but it could have been one of the first video game adaptations to really do the original justice if only they had decided not to deviate from what made Doom so damn cool in the first place.

Ok so not a good start but I’m certainly not going to be giving up there. There has got to be a single movie based on a game that doesn’t offend the sensibilities of anyone who’s ever played it. What’s everyone else’s thoughts on Doom: The Movie? Also, pass on any other suggestions for video game adaptations you think deserve a beating… ahem… I mean review and I’ll be happy to oblige.

Now that some hard evidence has come to light through the media it’s pretty easy to put my feelings into a humorous noise: “Wuh?” or perhaps more appropriately “Wuhthufuh?” I realise that it’s still very early days in the development process and I’m trying to exercise a bit of blind faith here, but I’m feeling nothing but soul-crushing disappointment at the content of the first screenshots of Fallout: New Vegas.

“Surely not!” you might yell, “Blasphemer!” Some might call me. “Put your trousers back on you weirdo” the masses will cry (I dull my pain by stripping, so what?), but I think that I’m well within my rights to feel worried, aggrieved and downright ticked off at this early stage of New Vegas’ development. My concerns about where the development of this game is heading can be pretty neatly wrapped up with the following screenshot:

Remember me!?

Now I’m not going to inundate you with the many reasons why I feel that this screen is an absolute slap in the face to a long serving fan of the Fallout series…well actually I am, but not yet. First up a positive, the inclusion of the “Fore!” command tells us two things; 1. Golf clubs are making an appearance as a weapon which is a nice touch, I felt that the weapons in Fallout 3 were lacking a bit of blunt force trauma so a nine iron can only go some way to remedying this; 2. Groin shots are being added to the protagonist’s roster. The experience of swinging a sledgehammer into someone’s privates just to hear them yell “No! My groin!” is a fond memory of Fallout 2 that will stay with me for a long time so being giving the opportunity to relive those times is a big win for me.

Now the big, stinking elephant in the room of a negative: Those four little letters, F.O.R.E, are the only thing that could be used to differentiate this screenshot from Fallout 3. Well, apart from the change of the HUD’s colour; I’m sure you’ll agree that the Fallout series is in desperate need of even more brown. There’s nothing wrong with Fallout 3 of course, I thought most it of was excellent but after hearing the news that Obsidian were developing a spin-off my initial expectations were focused on something new, exciting and innovative. Instead it appears that a few new patches are being sewn onto some old clothes. While I have a good feeling that most of the additions will have a positive effect on certain aspects of the game (the aforementioned groin shots and the inclusion of Geckos as enemies will certainly have the nostalgia cells in my brain ticking along nicely) I won’t be able to shake the idea that Fallout: New Vegas could have been so much more. The gaming industry is supposed to be a hotbed of creativity so why not take a risk and bring something fresh to the table?

A stunning screen shot from Fall...Obliv...Mor...ummm

The downloadable content for Fallout 3 proves that no matter where you move the characters to, even if it’s an alien mothership on the edge of the galaxy, the core formula of Fallout 3’s gameplay is pretty restrictive in terms of expansion. Fighting through the snowy cliffs of Anchorage or the lush wildlife of Point Lookout it felt very much like I was retreading old ground, which is a feeling that I can’t see Obsidian circumventing when they make the move to the West Coast. Not that it looks like they’re even making an attempt to actually stamp their own authority on the gameplay of course, with it becoming apparent that the same combat system, graphical engine and dialogue mechanic are all firmly still in place. Come on guys I’ve had to watch the camera zoom in on character’s faces while there lips randomly flutter on top of their completely static frames twice already (Oblivion and Fallout 3 in case you were wondering) you could at least throw in a few new animations to liven things up. Maybe people could actually put on foot in front of the other while their mouths fail hopelessly to accurately visualise what they’re actually saying or start slapping themselves in the face every time to you loop through a cyclic piece of dialogue. Maybe I should just start putting down a bit of cold, hard cash on the eventuality that all black characters will be voiced by same guy as everyone in Fallout 3 apart from Three-Dog AND every Redguard in Oblivion.

I can understand why this could be perceived as a rant bourn of anger, but to be honest I’m not even all that surprised. Borrowing an IP from a big publisher, cherry picking the best bits from the early games in the series and then repeating them in the exact same way could almost be described as Obsidian’s modus operandi after Neverwinter Nights 2 and KOTOR 2, but this is an entirely unique set of circumstances considering they’re borrowing an IP from a publisher that bought it from them in the first place. I am experiencing what can only be described as a sense of hopelessness, disappointment not just in Obsidian and Bethesda, but in how much of a cut-throat conveyer belt that the gaming industry is becoming, and the factory line is becoming more ruthless and efficient by the day. From a business perspective, turning Fallout: New Vegas into a glorified expansion pack is the right decision to make; who could blame either party from capitalising on the critical success of such a bankable franchise? Don’t mistake understanding for acceptance though, my confidence in the technologically creative aspect of the gaming industry is gradually dwindling with every sequel, prequel, reimagining and Ubisoft title that is nonchalantly thrown over the fence.

Phew, and breathe. I’m interested in finding out what everyone else thinks about this. Even as a massive Fallout 3 fan I can’t see me getting the same enjoyment out of an entirely new standalone title that is so similar. What about you guys? Are you happy to see more of the same or would have preferred to have seen Obsidian do their own thing at the risk of it being worse than before?

Things start out in a horrifically cheesy tone, with the protagonist Rico Rodriguez a.k.a. Scorpio meeting with… hang on a second, Scorpio? Rico Rodriguez?  I knew that this game was never going to have a particularly engaging narrative, but what a lazy naming convention. Who else will be making an appearance I wonder? Rico’s young but plucky (and rocket launcher wielding) sidekick Tito? Or perhaps a mysterious Italian informant who goes by the name of Flavio di Pizza, who it turns out is a bad guy of course because, well, he’s European and they’re always evil. Especially if they wear a suit, which I imagine Flavio will. Anyway, Scorpio (sigh) is meeting with the leader of The Reapers, no not those ones, a group of rebel mercenaries who look to overthrow the self serving dictator Baby Papay, who rules the island of Panau with an iron fist since his father popped his clogs under mysterious circumstances. Well I say mysterious, Papay clearly killed him.

This introduction is mercifully brief however and after being introduced to our extremely unlikable but generously equipped protagonist we’re dropped right into the action with only one objective, turn the entire island into a flaming mass. The lifeblood of Just Cause 2 is chaos, which is accrued by killing the occupying forces, destroying property and also taking over government strongholds such as radio towers which will then be occupied by Reaper forces. There seems to be a decent level of variety in the different strongholds, and based on the size of the map there’s certainly no shortage of them. I found myself being a bit frustrated however as there aren’t any visual cues that point you in the direction of which structures need to be destroyed or what items need to be picked up within each stronghold, which resulted in me wasting a sizeable chunk of the demo’s half hour playtime.

I decided that my first target would be a small village at the bottom of the hill I was standing atop. As I looked down on the settlement I was about to reduce to a cinder I couldn’t help but admire how lush the island looks. The draw distance seems limitless and the detail is impressive, the former of which is extremely useful when planning an attack. Since I hadn’t built up any heat at this point I could have walked straight into the town without too much interference from the local militia, but where’s the fun in that? So my approach involved off-roading my jeep down the hill towards the village towards the petrol station on the outskirts and once I had gained a decent bit of momentum I jumped onto the roof of the car using the very well executed stunt driving controls. As my vehicle hurtled towards the very, very explosive station I was unloading both of my submachine guns at anything that moved before jumping off at the last minute to see the entire thing go up in flames. It was pretty damn epic. It also gave me the opportunity to see just how well the Avalanche engine handles destruction, which it does admirably and seems to particularly set up some nice chain reactions.

Any chance of a lift mate?

After my outrageously stylish entrance however it all got a bit stale. The core gunplay is pretty boring with the enemy AI being extremely simplistic. Every location is littered with destructible environments and explosive barrels which helps to keep things exciting, but there really isn’t enough depth to the shoot em’ up element of the game to keep me interested for an extended period of time. Scorpio’s grappling hook can also be used as a weapon ala Bionic Commando, but it seems like the only move he is capable of is throwing them through the air which only has the desired effect if they happen to be standing at the edge of a cliff. Melee attacks are equally uninspiring and seem to be as powerful as whipping the enemies with a wet fern, with would be fair enough if enemies could be annoyed to death but doesn’t really have a place in Just Cause 2. Enemies are also able to absorb a hail of bullets before going down unless you score a headshot, which is nigh on impossible unless you use the zoom function, slowing yourself to a crawl in the process. Basically, don’t expect to win a fight through finesse in Just Cause 2, shock and awe is the only effective way to see you through the revolution.

After “reclaiming” a couple of strongholds and causing an acceptable level of carnage in the name of the Reapers, a Faction Mission is unlocked which seem to be essentially the same as the stronghold assaults, except much bigger and with more things to blow up. A different approach was required this time in order to get myself over the vast wall of the complex I was trying to infiltrate, so I decided that Scorpio’s slingshot move would do the trick. The slingshot makes use of both his grappling hook and parachute, launching him in the air before deploying the parachute to control his descent. It’s a very quick way of getting around the island, but doesn’t allow for much of a controlled entrance. Pushing forward to gain some speed results in the control of the parachute resembling a wonky unicycle, while pulling back somehow manages to levitate you even further in the air. The view from that high in the air is undoubtedly remarkable, just don’t expect to hit your landing zone, or anything within a few hundred yards of it for that matter.

Just Cause 2 pushes a lot of the right buttons and when you run through a list of the ingredients it should result in a winning concoction; high octane action, breathtaking stunts, massively destructive environments and a well accomplished sandbox element. However, it just doesn’t seem to come together well and falls apart when it comes to the more basic elements, with the gunplay and grappling hook mechanics in dire need of an overhaul. The general tone and pace of the game reminds me a fair bit of the film Desperado which can only be a good thing, but it’s going to need to do a lot better if it wants to really break out of the pack, and not be remembered in the same light as that weird bit where Enrique Iglesias sets everyone on fire with a guitar case.

The mechanic of building up your world beating team doesn’t come in the conventional, with form players, managers, stadia, contracts and performance enhancing drugs (or stat boosts); it comes in the guise of old school card packs. You know the ones I mean; those inviting tin foil packets of ten or so flimsy scraps of paper that you already have firmly attached to your despairingly empty looking Panini book. Presumably EA Sports are aware of just how much money we all vainly pissed away into those sticker books as kids (or I did at least) and wanted to recreate that same feeling of senseless addiction, although I have to say that it does work pretty well. Cards are split into Bronze, Silver and Gold categories with each category having both common and rare varieties, allowing for a range of players with skill reaching the heights of Lionel Messi, right down to the lows of Sol Bamba.

Although you are granted a free set of bronze players to get you started, it’s necessary to build up your collection early on which is where the store comes in. Buying a pack of cards adds a random combination of players and consumables to your collection, which can then be assigned to your active team as you see fit. The feeling of anticipation is always palpable in those few seconds before you find out what you’ve actually bought, although disappointment will often set in as it’s very difficult to acquire some of the more exclusive player cards. The interface is pretty minimal but still slick enough to allow you to switch cards between your collection and active squad without too much fuss.

My main point of contention with the Store system however, is how accessible EA Sports have made the option to spend MS Points or cold cash on cards. Ultimate Team has an internal currency system which allows you to build up coins through selling cards to other players or playing games, with the rewards becoming sweeter as your challenges become more difficult. It works well and I found spending my hard earned coins on a new player or card pack to be immensely satisfying. It intensifies the feeling that I’ve actually gradually built a team and earned my new batch of players. However every time that I choose the option to buy a card pack a prompt is displayed reminding me that I could spend my points, or I could just skip all of that bothersome hard work and throw down some notes for a bit of instant success.

The playing field would be considerably levelled if the option to spend MS points was removed, although I suppose that’s a bit of an unrealistic suggestion considering the countless transactions that have probably passed into EA Sports coffers since Ultimate Team’s release. As it stands at the moment a considerable portion of Ultimate Team players have clearly taken the Roman Abramovich route, with my ragtag group of plucky underdogs regularly being drawn against what is essentially the Brazilian national team, led by Alex Ferguson. Then again, it does make it all the more satisfying when I register a win against the lazy sell-outs.

As I gathered a more impressive looking team I found that better transfers could be had in the trading menu, which provides an auction system for you to buy individual cards as well as offload your old ones. It works in a similar fashion to pretty much every online auction in existence but certainly isn’t any worse of for it. It’s a perfectly functional system that allows players to be a bit more specific with the cards that they add to their roster. I also like that any bids made on cards within the last few seconds of the auction will result in an extra fifteen seconds being added to the auction, which should deter all of those speculators waiting until the last second to snatch away that elusive Cristiano Ronaldo card.

You can have a lineup like this too! After you hand over about thirty notes...

There’s more to Ultimate Team than simply amassing as many Messi cards as you possibly can, although it certainly goes a long way. A significant factor in how your team plays is the chemistry that your players have with each other, which is affected by an impressive number of conditions to give you a little bit more to think about than each player’s skill. Putting players in the right position and picking a formation will yield positive results, but the way that players interact with each other has much more of an impact. Players of the same nationality or who are based at the same club play better when they are positioned next to each other and as a result successful managers will have to juggle their formations depending on where the majority of the squad hails from.

The chemistry system is a necessary one as it forces an extra level of strategy upon the players who want to build up a Galacticos style team, however the effect that poor chemistry has on the pitch can be drastic at times which can cause a lot of hassle for up and coming teams. Passes will be misplaced, cross will float into the keeper’s arms, shots will be sliced and crucially, players seem to insist on taking an extra touch before releasing the ball. It’s a bit too drastic, especially considering the cards that you’re initially provided with barely manage to get your team chemistry near 40%.

Consumable cards are available to subtly convince players to your way of thinking however, such as changing their preferred formation. Training cards can also be used to temporarily boost player stats, fitness, morale or heal injuries. It’s good to see that a player’s stats can only be increased for the next game, as in FIFA 09’s Ultimate Team it was possible to indefinitely improve every aspect of a player’s game until even Kirk Broadfoot was capable of scoring from the half way line.

After assembling my team of stars it was time to throw them into the deep end with a couple of games. Single standalone games are an option but the real excitement comes through the Tournaments, which are implemented with a surprising level of depth. Tournaments are split into Single Player and Online categories with your team being allowed to enter one of each at any particular time. To keep things interesting each tournament has a specific set of entry requirements, which range from only having bronze players in your team to having no more than two players of the same nationality in the squad. The combinations of different criteria result in prospective managers having to think about what kind of players they want to buy and means that amassing a squad of gold star internationalists won’t always mean success across the board. The restrictions on tournaments could have made switching the different players between squads awkward, but a simple mechanic that allows you to save formations and specific squads makes it much easier to flick between them prior to your next cup run. EA Sports also appear to be making an effort to keep the community as active as possible through the Feature Tournaments, which are limited edition competitions with their own unique pre-conditions.

As long as this is regularly updated then I can’t see any reason why the lifespan of Ultimate Team can’t extend right up until the release of FIFA 11. For gamers like myself who love the idea of taking a team that was crafted with their own hand up against other players, FIFA 10′s Ultimate Team is a relatively safe purchase. Even if that’s not your bag however don’t be put off straight away, as Ultimate Team provides a surprisingly in-depth new game mode for a very reasonable price. At £3.99, Ultimate Team actually sits at the top end of the value for money spectrum, which is especially shocking considering its source. Then again, how much money you’ll be tempted into blowing in the aid of actually winning a few games, I wouldn’t be surprised if EA Sports haven’t already made a pretty tidy return on their investment!

How We Review Games

Bad publicity is still publicity
Keith Vaz, Kevin McCullough, Jack Thompson, The Daily Mail; despite being ill informed imbeciles the gaming industry owes these guys (and many more) a great big hug for the way they’ve selflessly promoted the market. “Xbox 360 gains sentience and cripples decorated war hero”, “Sonic the Hedgehog promotes bestiality” and “Gary Glitter: I was normal before I got a Wii” are all (in some universes) genuine headlines that have attempted to degrade the reputation of games as a viable platform for artistic expression. Of course the only thing these lobbyists have all succeeded in is doing the exact opposite, with the games in question receiving a popularity boost in a similar manner to the way that Vernon Kay is now regarded as being actually newsworthy.

Rockstar Games have undoubtedly benefited the most from these unintentional plugs, and it’s fair to say that they know exactly which mass media buttons to press. The GTA series can certainly walk tall based solely on its technical merits, but that can’t be said for the Manhunt series which I imagine would have fallen under the radar completely if not for the hysterical reaction to its gruesome content. Manhunt’s appeal was that it was breaking the boundaries of acceptable levels of violence in such a way that gamers across the globe were buying the game out of  sheer curiosity rather than based on the game itself. That’s not to say that its necessary to go looking for trouble however, since the global media will regularly manage to  find something to have a good old fashioned “It wasn’t this way in my day” campaign, regardless of minor details like factual accuracy.

Not so interesting now is it?!

While Mass Effect was already doing pretty well for itself with rave reviews from all sides, it received a welcome publicity shot in the arm through the frankly hilarious over-reaction from Fox News and Kevin McCullogh which was utterly convinced that Bioware’s space epic was in fact an unrelenting interspecies gangbang with an error ridden article with concluded with a sentence that will (and deservedly should) stick with him for the rest of his days:

“With it’s “over the net” capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.”

This showed that he not only completely misunderstands the nature of technology at large but a distinct lack of evidence that he had ever actually played the game. Even though the realisation that he had based an entire opinionated article on a completely fictional concept forced a prompt public apology, the media furore had already ahcieved the desired effect from Bioware’s perspective. Though thousands of extraterrestrial nipple hunting teens would have been disappointed at the sight of a mere blue side-boob I have no doubt that Mass Effect would have shipped a considerable number of copies based solely on the promise of being able to… well maybe you should take this one, Kev:

“hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of…”

Indeed.

There are occasions where bad publicity can have a plain and simple damaging effect on your game however, which Electronics Arts found out using a marketing ploy that only they would have the balls to even briefly entertain, never mind pick up and run with. Considering the biblical nature of Dante’s Inferno (as well as including an achievement for killing non-baptised babies, how the hell did that make it in!?) you would expect religious protestors to descend upon the game’s development studio with great haste. Well not quickly enough according to EA, as it came to light that a group of protestors kicking up a fuzz at E3 about the game’s religious context were in fact hired actors, with EA themselves picking up the bill. With a false website and reading material to back up this “unique” viral marketing campaign, EA must have thought that they had covered all of the bases. Until the next day that is when the entire thing was unveiled as a farce, and we all went back to vocally regarding EA as a shower of unscrupulous suits who live in volcano lairs and set our hard earned cash on fire to light their gargantuan cigars. Bastards.

Get yourself meme’d
The internet is a phenomenally power marketing tool and it’s very rare to jump into any gaming website without your screen being filled with the latest God of War 3 or Wii Fit propaganda, which is more often than not implemented with the subtlety of an Activision rep throwing a Call of Duty branded brick at your head. It’s not just the shady contracts between publishers and reviewing sites that gets people talking though, with a game that is worthy of being subjected to the meme treatment essentially doing all of the work itself, for better or worse.

If you can include any kind of glitch, hammy acting or moment of awkwardness in your pre-release footage you can bet that it will have been recreated, re-imagined and redistributed within hours of it entering the public domain. The E3 presentation of Genji 2 for the PS3 reached hilarious levels of stupidity and as a result the phrase “Giant Enemy Crab” is jokingly referenced across the industry, from Viva Piñata to World of Warcraft. While the producer of the game excitedly revealed that the game would be full of genuine historical battles from ancient Japan, footage of the infamous Giant Enemy Crab filled the screen behind him, leading to a few confused attendees frantically checking their history books, while the rest of them simply soiled themselves laughing. The situation was compounded as innovative new features such “real time weapon changes” were unleashed on the unsuspecting audience. Despite the obviously embarrassing consequences, the farcical press conference put Genji on the map in an unprecedented fashion, although I don’t think many publishers would go employ that particular marketing plan too readily.

Be a tease
Sometimes when it comes to building up the interest in a game, less is more. A well placed teaser trailer for your upcoming game can get the masses salivating at the mouth before you’ve even written a single line of code, particularly if you’ve already established your brand. Take the Mass Effect Teaser trailer as an example. It consists of two core elements, the first of which is a brief recollection of the many glorious achievements you as Shepard had heroically performed in the first game, followed by the useful tidbit of information that he’s dead…

I’m sorry what? Commander Shepard, who I spent slightly north of fifty hours levelling up has died within a few months of me turning my back? Why is that Geth wearing his armour?! I have too many questions, someone take my money so I can find answers! PLEASE!! Ok, that reaction was certainly on the more vocal end of the spectrum but it got people talking in a way that never really died down until Mass Effect 2 hit the shelves, with hype hitting fanatical levels as each character in Shepard’s suicidal space opera was gradually drip fed to us.

Where do I pick up my cheque?

Not that drip feeding information has a detrimental effect on the hype surrounding a game, with many publishers rightly making the decision to release as many trailers that tell us absolutely nothing for as long as they can. In the same way that gory scenes in horror movies are most effective when left to our imagination, the number of people attempting to hopelessly dissect a game trailer increases as the level of tangible information that the trailer provides begins to drop. The recent trailer for the next title in the Ghost Recon series, Future Soldier, encapsulates this pretty well with the fifty second video telling us that it’s set in the future and some people will be invisible. Do we know who we’re fighting? Where this conflict takes place? Why the US Military have gone all Predator on us all of a sudden? Hell no! Does that stop the gaming community shouting their support or distain at the tiny morsel of information they’ve just been fed? Of course it doesn’t!

There’s no doubt that I’m only scratching the surface and some of the larger franchises have probably already implemented new advertising techniques that us simple gamers would never even consider. Where does the pre-release hype machine go from here though? Subliminal messaging perhaps? For all we know, every minute that we play the latest FIFA or Call of Duty could result in thousands of unnoticeable commands being hardwired into our minds.

Fortunately my mind is protected from any such ~ BUY ARMY OF TWO ~ attacks and as a result I’m impervious ~ FOOTBALL MANAGER IS YOUR FRIEND, GO TO IT ~ to any such suggestions…

Disclaimer: Of course I’m aware that Commander Shepard can be played as either a male or female, but for the sake of this review I’ll be referring to Shepard as a male to keep in line with my playthrough. Please don’t yell at me Bryony…

Come with us now on a journey through time and space…
Mass Effect 2 begins two years after after Commander Shepard defeated Saren and the Reapers, with him taking the helm of the Normandy once more in order to face a new threat, the mysterious Collectors. That’s all you’re getting. Mass Effect 2 should be experienced entirely unspoiled and for that reason details of the story will be kept to a bare minimum in this review. What I will say is that the plot is a captivating and exciting story which is expertly backed up with fantastic characters and dialogue. The core plotline is still a bit short (and I didn’t like the game being split into distinct missions with explicit debriefings at the end of each one) but where it falls short in terms of longevity it compensates with suspenseful storytelling with sheer impact. Each mission drip feeds more information about the motivations of the Collectors while occasionally hitting you with a haymaker of a twist; it’s another epic tale of space heroics that builds on the already substantial foundations built by the first game.

That being said, the foundations of the first game aren’t exactly set in stone. Players with a saved game from the original Mass Effect can import their own version of Shepard into the new story. This has slight implications on a gameplay level in terms of abilities, but much more significant ramifications regarding how the new story pans out. Characters who died in the first game are dead, while decisions you made back in your original quest can and do make a difference this time round, whether you’re reaping the benefits or having something come round to bite you in the ass. I was surprised to see just how many minor actions that I had taken in Mass Effect had translated into the sequel and I think it’s a great thing to be able to experience the long term consequences of your actions first hand. This could have a detrimental effect on a newcomer’s enjoyment of Mass Effect 2′s narrative on the other hand, since it does refer back to Shepard’s original quest a lot. That being said, it’s a sequel! I managed to rush through an entire Mass Effect playthrough in order to get a completed save (thanks to my original save becoming corrupted, not that I’m bitter), what the hell makes others so special!?

I could've sworn there was a ceiling here before...

Shepard’s mission in Mass Effect 2 sees him going slightly more rogue this time round, and as a result you get to experience some of the galaxy’s seedier locations and inhabitants. The characters that are encountered throughout Mass Effect 2 range from mercenaries to vigilantes to outright murderous criminals, which seems to have given Bioware more scope for some excellent menacing banter between them and Shepard. The members of your crew aren’t exactly angels either, most of which have complex personalities and motivations that must be fulfilled in order to gain their complete loyalty. Shepard’s crew is a diverse and fascinating ragtag group of fighters, although I think it’s just a bit too big and could have benefited from having one or two less members. That said however I can’t really think of anyone on the Normandy who I’d want to throw overboard, with the possible exception of Jacob, who goes through the least development across the story and is generally a bit boring to talk to.

It’s an RPG, but not as we know it
Mass Effect 2 still falls under the ‘Action RPG’ category, but with more emphasis on action than its predecessor. Some of the more bloated RPG elements have been stripped down, streamlined or just removed altogether while the combat has been dramatically improved. Shepard and the crew of the Normandy still gain experience through completing missions and winning battles, but the number of abilities has been reduced to four per character, with the exception of Shepard himself who has a bit more flexibility. The ludicrous inventory system from Mass Effect is no more, with weapon and armour upgrades having a cumulative effect each time you research them on the Normandy. I’m glad to see the back of the inventory, but feel that the new levelling system is a bit too basic. Each skill has four levels, with the number of skill points required to upgrade a skill increasing each time (Two skill points to upgrade to Level Two etc.). Initially this works fine, but as I progressed further I found myself effectively having to hoard skill points until I had enough to do anything with them, meaning I could level up two or three times without receiving any benefits from it.

The dialogue mechanic is relatively untouched, apart from the addition of “interrupt” actions which allow you to put a premature end to a conversation through a Paragon or Renegade action. These help to make conversations feel a bit more dynamic and natural, and a well timed interrupt can also result in the occasional unexpected benefit. I also like that characters very rarely stand directly facing each other while the camera flicks between faces. People move, gesture and react in realistic ways which go a long way to providing a much needed cinematic touch to the way dialogue is presented.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the more lightweight RPG elements in Mass Effect 2 is a step backwards, but these changes have been made to allow more room for the new focus of the Mass Effect series: shooting people. During most missions I very rarely found myself having time to holster my weapon, with the body count often reaching Total Recall levels. The number of weapon types has doubled, not including the destructive Heavy Weapons, with Shepard already being completely proficient in whichever weapons his class allows him to use. Weapons feel a lot more meaningful this time round, with weapons blowing limbs off of enemies and ammo upgrades granting bonuses such as freezing enemies to the spot or removing shields. They no longer suffer from overheating problems either, through the use of dischargeable heat sinks which introduces a simple but effective method of ammo management. The biotic’s and tech abilities also seem to yield more tangible outcomes such as briefly reprogramming an enemy mech to fight for you or simply setting someone on fire. Enemy AI is nicely varied although it’s a little easy to judge at times (Krogans willl constantly advance before launching a desperate charge, while Asari will usually perform supporting roles with biotics), while new squad AI grants Shepard a simple interface to control team members individually. Every change to the combat mechanic improves the experience in some way and as a result it’s a much more exciting and rewarding experience, particularly when Shepard’s team has to come up against a heavy mech or Thresher Maw.

Of course before you can go toe to toe with a bunch of mercenaries there’s the little matter of traversing the galaxy to find them, a function that’s provided by the Normandy’s shiny new Galaxy Map. You actually get to control the Normandy as it flies around each system this time round which is a nice touch that adds to the feeling that you’re actually exploring deep space, rather than just selecting a set of predefined locations. The galaxy is comprised of cluster of solar systems which are connected through Mass Relays. Each solar system can be directly accessed at the expense of fuel, after which you get down to the nitty gritty of exploring each of the planets within. Rather than just clicking on each planet and hitting the Land option however, planets can be scanned from a distance via a pretty fun mini-game. Scanning for resources involves moving the scanning reticule across the planet’s and launching a probe towards its surface when something comes up. Some planets also house anomalies which give you the option of dropping in for further investigation, even if Shepard’s “investigation” will without fail end in an all out fire-fight. The scanning is a bit sluggish at times and having to replenish the Normandy’s stock of probes can be a chore, but it’s a much more less cumbersome task than exploring planets with the Mako, while watching your scanner go off the charts after uncovering an untapped resource is surprisingly rewarding.

Shepard’s mission against the Collectors is widely regarded as a suicide mission, with the complete annihilation of your team being a very real possibility at the end of the game if you haven’t gained the complete loyalty of your squad. While this concept is an interesting one, its execution is a bit too transparent and formulaic. Outside of random side missions Mass Effect 2 is made up of recruitment missions to expand your squad, one loyalty mission per crew member and plot missions which keep the story moving along. By completing a character’s loyalty mission they are instantly flagged up as loyal, and while certain decisions can result in Shepard losing a character’s loyalty or not getting it at all, I would have liked to see more subtle influencing of characters rather than the binary setup that’s in place. Fortunately the content of the missions themselves is exceptional and brimming with beautifully realised locations and believable characters, so gaining a character’s loyalty will never feel like a drag. Except Jacob funnily enough, boredom seems to dog his every move for me.

Massterpiece
The visual element of Mass Effect 2 has probably gone through the least amount of upheaval between the two games, although that’s hardly a bad thing and the changes that have been made make nothing but a positive impact. Facial models have been tweaked slightly, allowing for more emotive expressions from the hundreds of characters across the universe. This redesign also results in character’s faces looking much more cohesive and natural, where I felt that in Mass Effect sometimes their composite parts appeared to be acting independently of one another. The revamped combat is also given a much more visceral feel thanks to some of the new special effects on display. I love how enemies realistically react to taking a hit (enemies falling when you shoot them in the legs, chunks of metal being dislodged from a Mech by a shotgun blast) which gives a much more satisfying level of feedback from using each weapon.

Thank goodness someone left those highly unstable explosives lying in the middle of a corridor

The environments that Shepard’s crew travel to throughout the game are a pleasure to look at, not least because of the variety and scale that Bioware have been able to maintain throughout. With the removal of the Mako, vast, explorable (as well as bland and interchangeable) planets are no longer necessary which allows much more thought to be put into the style of each location, and it really shows. Repetition is almost a distant memory among the planets that can be landed on, with stunning beaches, vast cities, derelict ships, treacherous jungle worlds and much more all making an appearance. I felt that the interior locations could benefited from some more variety, particularly on the non-essential locations, but for the most part I found myself being pleasantly surprised with the eye-candy on offer every time I landed on a new planet.

Mass Effect 2 includes pre-rendered FMVs during gameplay, which goes a long way to adding a more cinematic touch to even the most random of side missions. Rather than the same quick scene of the Mako being dropped from the Normandy being played to death, every new planet is accompanied with its own distinct landing scene. It might seem like a small thing but I felt that the excellent presentation throughout made some of the more peripheral assignments I decided to tackle come across as an integral part of the game. Not that these cut-scenes are restricted to touching down on a new world of course, they’re also extensively used in the core plotline to great effect, with the game’s opening being on par with anything to come out of the most recent big budget sci-fi flicks to grace the screens.

In space, no one can hear you seduce a robot
The biggest strength of the Mass Effect series is the depth and high production values present in every aspect of the narrative, with the voice acting being especially well executed. So it’s great to see that Bioware have delivered on this front in Shepard’s second outing, with Mass Effect 2 benefiting from an enormous dynamic script that is delivered to perfection almost without fail. When you consider that there must be hundreds upon hundreds of lines of dialogue across the missions the high quality throughout is nothing short of astounding. The voice acting very rarely comes across as if it’s being read from a script with each line being delivered in just the right context. Choosing Renegade or Paragon options also seems to have a more significant effect on the flow of a conversation which is backed up by the emotive voice acting. Choosing to threaten an NPC from the beginning will result in the rest of the conversation coming across in a more sarcastic or aggressive tone for example, while a Paragon Shepard will usually be more sympathetic and formal. Your overall Paragon and Renegade scores won’t have an effect on this, but I thought it was a nice touch that made each conversation feel a bit more consistent.

Massively Effective
The core elements of what made Mass Effect so great are very much still in place here, but when you add the vast number of improvements made across the board Mass Effect 2 is a very impressive package. It’s incredible that Bioware are able to create an entirely new story, add ten new characters that succeed in really engaging the user into the world. Fan service is consistently prevalent throughout the game with almost every character who you happened to even walk past in Mass Effect reappearing, with the decisions from Mass Effect all translating seamlessly into the sequel and really enriching the experience as a whole. There’s still plenty to get newcomers up to speed however and the new streamlined combat will certainly win some new fans in the shooter demographic. Mass Effect 2 is quite simply one of the top titles available for the Xbox 360 at the moment and is so fluid and dynamic that players will be able to experience something entirely different every time they take the Normandy out for a spin across the galaxy.

Oh, and elevators are no more, rejoice!

How We Review Games

The demo starts worryingly, with far too many connection issues and ridiculously long waits just to find a game, which stopped me from getting going. I understand that it’s just a demo and it’s probably unfair to judge the final product (which will have a lot more networking hardware behind it) against this, but it’s a frustrating start for a multiplayer demo. Fortunately the matchmaking system finally found seven other people who were looking for a game, with me joining the lobby as part of the Xenomorph roster.

Alien
The modus operandi of the Alien is pretty much public knowledge. Creeping silently along any surface and striking with surgical precision, the chances are the only time you’ll get to see one is in the split second before it rips you in half. Rebellion have recreated this feeling pretty well, although it will take a lot of practice to get anywhere near as proficient.

Marines: At the bottom of the food chain for a reason.

All of the abilities are there, but the Alien’s trademark agility is pretty difficult to get the hang of. The Alien is capable of crawling along ceilings and walls, which is possible through two different methods. Pressing the right shoulder button while standing next to a surface will result in you immediately snapping onto it, while aiming towards a point and pressing the jump button lets you make a leap towards the surface you’re aiming at, latching onto it if you’re close enough. The main problem with this mechanic is that the transition between each level is very quick and disorientating. A quick jump to the ceiling and all of a sudden the entire map is upside down, which despite being what you’d expect to happen threw me off for a couple of seconds. After a few games I did get used to it but there was still the odd occasion where I’d end up running around in circles for a few seconds trying to work out where the hell I was.

After getting to grips with the Alien’s occasionally erratic movement I was able to put its offensive capabilities to the test. The Alien is the only species to rely solely on hand to hand combat, but this is counterbalanced by the fact that most of the attacks are absolutely lethal, even though mapping them to the shoulder buttons rather than the triggers is a bit of a strange call. The heavy tail attack is more often than not a one-hit kill and has a pretty impressive reach, while the quick claw attacks can stun an enemy long enough for you to unleash one of the very well presented execution attacks. These attacks really personify what the Alien is all about and appeases some of my more sadistic tendencies as you get to look right into your helpless victims eyes before you impale, devour or decapitate them. Like the wall crawling however the Alien combat isn’t entirely without issues. Tail attacks occasionally fail to register at all, while it can all get a bit frantic and muddled if you’re going toe to toe with someone. Because of the sheer speed that you attack with, diving forward with your claws can be quite dizzying at times I occasionally had to resort to thrashing my claws around wildly in the hopes of hitting someone. The inclusion of Focus Mode (which automatically tracks the camera to a single person) can remedy this most of the time, but I’d have no chance if Sigourney Weaver was in the vicinity.

Marine
From the outset of my games with the marine it’s clear that they’ve been designed as the plucky underdogs (or in my case, the other species bitch). They’re much slower than either of the other species and can be killed almost instantly no matter what the attack, but this is compensated by the massive arsenal they have at their disposal. The standard Pulse Rifle can do a fair bit of damage from a distance, but there are much more destructive goodies for those who can survive long enough to find them. The shotgun is useful for last ditch shots at Aliens who want to get too personal, and I managed to get a good run going with the Smart Rifle.

That being said, I think too many things go against the Marine to make it a fair fight. With a well organised team of Marines the imbalance isn’t too noticeable, but it will certainly ensure that any gung ho marines will be dispatched a lot quicker than the ones who employ teamwork. My main issue with how the Marine played was that he often has to rely on his flashlight to see a few feet in front of him, a problem which was only amplified by the lack of natural lighting in the map on the demo. Even with my Motion Sensor periodically identifying any incoming threats, I often found myself looking at the business end of a Predator’s claw before I even knew we were in the same room. The Motion Sensor also doesn’t show up on your HUD until a few seconds after you spawn, leaving you extremely vulnerable in that short window. It just seems a bit unfair that the Predator utilises high tech thermal imaging and the Alien has naturally enhanced sight, while poor old Marine has to make do with a torch that barely manages to perform its sole function in the first place. The Marine is also a lot less manoeuvrable than the other species, having to rely on the age old practice of legging it while Predators and Aliens leap all over the place.

I did get the hang of the Marine closer to the end, although most of my more successful runs involved arming myself to the teeth and using the rest of my team as human shields. That being said it wouldn’t make sense for a single Marine to come out on top against either of the other species, and watching a single blip on your gradually close in is absolutely thrilling, in a “soiling your pants” kind of way. You really can do some major damage with the artillery at his disposal, but until you actually get your hands on any of it you’ll often find yourself being promptly parted from your limbs without much warning.

Predator
There’s no denying it, the Predator is bad-ass. I’ve yet to meet anyone who wanted the Alien to come out on top in either of the (woeful, Uwe Boll-esque) films, and as a result it took a while to actually get into a game with me in the shoes of Arnie’s nemesis. In the demo at least, only two predators are permitted in the map, which is a reasonable constraint when you see how supremely destructive they are. The Predator is supposed to be an almost unstoppable killing machine, and with this in mind Rebellion have done a pretty good job of balancing things out while still maintaining the feeling of “I could kill you all within a heartbeat” that must surely be going through the Predator’s mind.

"As long as I don't see Arnie or Glover these noobs are mine"

While the Predator doesn’t share the wall crawling stealth of abilities of the Alien, it can outstrip it in terms of agility through massive leaps across the map. Entering Focus Mode allows you to pick a spot to jump to and a tap of the jump button sends you soaring through the air. It can get you into advantageous positions very quickly, whether you’re getting into an ambush position or bailing out of an uneasy fight. Entering Focus Mode also flags up points of interest in your HUD such as weapons or health, the former of which are essential if you want to fulfil your potential as a being of gory awesomeness. The shoulder mounted Plasma Cannon (the one that blows Carl Weather’s arms off in the most epic moment in cinema history) is just as powerful as you’d expect it to be and looks absolutely fantastic while throwing discs are very useful for quickly dispatching large groups of advancing Aliens. These weapons have a pretty limited supply of ammo and you’re left exposed when recharging them at stations around the map, but I found that other species found it tough to get anywhere near me when I was packing some extraterrestrial hardware.

Away from the more meatier weapons, the Predator’s default weapons are his wrist mounted blades, which are used in an identical fashion to the Alien claws. The Predator can also make use of Execution kills, making the Alien’s equivalent look like a pillow fight in the process. The Alien undoubtedly knows how to shed as much blood as possible, but with the Predator it’s different… You get to experience him savouring the kill. My very first execution involved jumping in front of a terrified Marine who managed to get a few shots away before I impaled him in the stomach, lifting him in the air in the process. Driving the blades in farther, the Predator holds up his victim and just admires the kill for a brief moment, before ripping his head off in a manner highly reminiscent of Mortal Kombat. It’s very bloody, but in terms of asserting dominance over your foes, it beats the hell out of teabagging.

Despite the only map available in the demo being a bit one-tone and dull, the Aliens vs Predator demo provides enough of an experience to get an insight into what the game has to offer. The main thing for me is that Rebellion have captured the feeling of what it means to take control of each of the characters. I can’t help but worry that the multiplayer will be unbalanced in favour of the Predator but I also get the feeling that this will eventually balance out as players get more familiar with the advantages of each species. As long as the connection issues are merely a pre-release blip, fans of up close and personal decapitation could have something to keep them busy for quite some time.

An ‘elementary’ story
The context of this game is pretty well summarised in the title really. Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper takes you through the pretty accurately recreated series of events surrounding the Whitechapel murders, with a tiny bit of artistic license being applied in the form of the inclusion of the entirely fictional Sherlock Holmes, becoming part of the investigation as he does. An interesting twist and getting the world’s greatest detective involved in one of history’s most famous unsolved murder cases is surely a winning concept.

Which it would have been, if it wasn’t brought tumbling down by some laughable production values and headache-inducing pacing issues. The story itself is an intriguing one, which is really what you’d expect considering you’re trying to unmask the infamous Ripper. However, there are large sections of the game where you’re too busy performing meaningless tasks to make any significant progress in your investigation. So much so that I often found myself struggling through some of the more tedious sections based on nothing more than a blind faith that a juicy revelation would be round the corner. The good news is that they usually are, but they’re also usually over in a flash and then it’s right back to the dull plateau of meaningless procrastination until someone else shows up dead. The story really suffers because of the painfully slow, dripping approach to plot progression, which only marginally improves as the story goes on.

Someone's murdering cartoon characters? I smell a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit

The dialogue is passable, although certainly not enough to really drive the story on in an effective way. Maybe my opinion has been spoiled after watching the utterly awesome Robert Downey Jr completely devour the role in the recent Guy Ritchie flick, but I found it all to be very polite, cautious and a bit bland as a result. This isn’t helped by the voice acting, which really can be diabolical at times. The script does the job admirably though, it conveys most of the information that you need to progress pretty well, even if it would have benefited from being a bit less business like.

Errand boy
Since you’re taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes, you’d quite rightly expect to spend the majority of the game getting your hands dirty with some rigorous clue finding, forensic analysis and interrogation in order to come to conclusions about the nature of each murder. This is true to an extent, but considering the stature of the man, Holmes spends a hell of a long time running tedious errands for people he’s just met, which really takes away the urgency of conducting a vigilante murder investigation. Most sections of the game begin with you being given a single lead to follow, such as another murder taking place or an eye witness making themselves known. What follows however is an ever spiralling set of grunt work in order to get a tiny titbit of information:

“What’s that Holmes? A prostitute has been gruesomely killed, disembowelled and partially eaten? How awful! I hope you catch the blighter that did it! Now that I think about it, I did see a suspicious looking character shifting around the murder scene last night, I’ll tell you his name… if you nip down to the shop and get me a carton of milk and a packet of fags, here’s some cash and I want change. On your way, Legendary Detective.”

The people of Whitechapel are mindbogglingly reluctant to be separated from any useful information they may have, and as a result I occasionally found that I wanted to commit a few atrocities myself by the time I could actually visit a murder scene.

Once you’re given the opportunity to conduct some proper investigation however, things do start to perk up a bit. Taking a slow, methodical approach in order to gather all of the clues and examining bodies (which are represented through cartoonish representations to lower the gore levels) to determine how they died is an interesting and different experience to most games, but it’s when you have to combine the facts you’ve gathered in order to reach logical conclusions that the grey matter gets a proper workout. These sections involve all of the clues being placed on your deduction board, with certain clues combining together to present you with a choice of deductions to make such as “No blood on the ground therefore she was stabbed while standing up”. It’s a satisfying process seeing all of the conclusions come together to build up a more complete picture of how the murder took place, although it’s sometimes a bit too easy to reach the correct conclusions solely through trial and error.

As the game progresses however more and more clues start to fill up the board which means you really need to think if you want to solve the case properly. I particularly liked how referring back to some of the previous conversations you’ve had and notes you’ve taken in your journal really does go a long way to solving some of the mysteries, as applying a level of patience to the abundance of information you retrieve makes a big difference. Unfortunately these sections are fairly brief and more often than not merely punctuate lengthy sections of tedium. After making a breakthrough in the case I more often than not found myself having to regress back to helping an aging brothel Madame find an elusive bottle of perfume, hardly befitting of Professor Holmes.

I think playing the game in from a first person perspective is the best way to play the game, as it allows for a much more hands on exploration of crime scenes, but it also acts to the detriment of the game as a whole. Maybe it’s just me, but I often had to remind myself that Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper is an action adventure, a ported point and click game, which seems oddly out of place from a first person perspective. However, even when I had grasped the concept I still found myself aimlessly wandering about the street of London far too much due to the lack of any effective mission tracking.

Not only that; outside of the investigation/deduction sections of the game, there’s very little to do other than tread along a linear path of people to trigger dialogue with, exhausting your options and then moving on. In fact, up until the first murder scene (which came in after about an hour) I think I progressed solely through the use of the left analog stick and the A button.

Dial ‘M’ for mediocre
The main area of intrigue for me with Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper was being able to investigate my way through an interesting story. Despite the plot being presented at a disorganised and confusing pace, it is interesting and keeps you guessing right up until the end. Unfortunately the impact of the story, as well as the dialogue, is let down by some bland character models, plain awful animation and lip synching that wouldn’t look out of place in a low budget anime. The poor presentation is especially apparent while conversing with Whitechapel’s many inhabitants, as it appears that every character can only manage one repetitive body movement while their lips haphazardly flutter in a motion that looks vaguely like speech. Even if Holmes is making a groundbreaking discovery or deduction, it’s almost impossible to take him (or anyone else for that matter) seriously as he continuously waves one arm from left to right for an entire conversation.

Fortunately, neither Holmes nor Watson have any pride when it comes to solving crimes

While the character animations are particularly bad, they’re not the only graphical issue that arose during my investigation. In fact, it’s difficult to pinpoint a particular standalone issue, since everything from the textures of the environments to the detail in the character faces and the atmospheric lighting is incredibly dull and lifeless. I can appreciate that Whitechapel wasn’t exactly the most vibrant area of London at the time and it has to be said that there are a few nice touches of detail when you step indoors to some of London’s many points of interest, but it’s just all so… boring. Lifeless characters march along the dimly lit streets wearing different shades of beige, while an impenetrable fog of war prevents your perspective from extending any more than a hundred yards in front of you. There’s really nothing to invoke your senses, no eye candy to briefly cast your eyes upon, and as a result I found myself shifting through each location as quickly as I could. In fact, I often used the fast travel feature to try to move about as quickly as possible, solely due to the overwhelming fear of my eyes suddenly imploding due a lack of stimulation.

Elementary school acting
It’s not just the subpar quality of the visual presentation that saps away the cinematic lifeblood of the plot however; I often found myself cringing like I was watching my uncle try to dance at a wedding every time one of the characters opened their mouths. The voice acting isn’t terrible, and certainly not as bad as the character animations, but most of the time it’s very awkward and could have benefitted greatly from some polishing up. Holmes himself is pleasant enough to listen to, even if he always sounds out of breath, but it doesn’t take long for it to become clear why I’ve never heard the dulcet tones of any of the other voice actors before. Dr Watson comes across as too polite and enthusiastic, even when he’s supposed to be getting riled up at Holmes antics and The Ripper himself achieves a pantomime level of moustache twisting melodrama.

It also appears that Frogware have sacrificed some of the atmospheric sounds in favour of sharpening the clarity of the voices. It’s particularly noticeable with Holmes, as some of the background noise drops in volume or outright disappears whenever he has something to say. The worst of it is, they’re at the top end of the spectrum, thanks to the hilariously bad performances of the stock NPC’s.

Several characters are voiced by the same actor who either do a terrible job of disguising their voice, or just don’t even bother to hide it. That’s not the problem in itself (Oblivion kind of got away with it after all), but the actors are just so finger nails on a blackboard irritating that you’ll want to skip the conversations as soon as you’ve got the information you need. The handy inclusion of textual dialogue logs in your inventory means you can skip all the way through without having to listen to a hammily acted peep, but it’s merely a workaround to what is a damningly poor aural experience that, especially when combined with the graphics, hampered my enjoyment of the story as a whole almost to the extent of completely ruining it.

Case closed
Considering how much of a slow, plodding start Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper makes I was surprisingly optimistic as a progressed, thinking that a bit more digging would unearth some hidden nuggets of brilliance that were previously invisible to me. I was wrong. This game is just plain bad; an open and shut case.
When I actually got to experience some of the things that I had initially made the mistake of assuming would make up the bulk of the game (such as actually conducting an investigation) it did an admirable job of sating my desire to properly put my noggin to use. Unfortunately these moments only combine to form a small minority of the game, with the cement binding these moments together being extremely flimsy and almost bringing the whole thing crashing down upon itself. Unless you’re desperate to see this tale out (which admittedly is intriguing in parts) to it’s slightly odd conclusion then it’s probably best that you leave this particular investigation to someone else.

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