The Wasteland Refuge

Psycho Babble
Growing up, I often envisioned the future as.....something greater than what we have in the today. That one day we would leave behind all these petty differences that have divided us as a species. War. Hunger. Poverty. Disease. All of these notions and states of being eventually swept away in the name of the greater good. But, as I got older and the world showed me different, as the cynical adult within me rose up, I knew that despite the efforts of the few, the many would mar us in the past. The rich would only get richer, the poor would only get poorer. Diseases would still try entire nations. And constant wars would separate us even more.

And although the science fictions of the past have become the new sciences of today, it is a worrisome trend. This notion that one day I will awaken to the idea, and the dawn, of a future imperfect. A dystopia. A place where humanity has only learned new ways to addict themselves to old vices. A place where the escalation of war only seems to eclipse the previous one in terms of death and atrocity. A place that has no middle ground. Only the rich. And only the very poor.

It is a bleak picture, I know. But I cannot help but see the signs that we are at this tipping point. A crucial moment when we awaken to the reality that the once proud and noble tomorrow is simply a very dark today. A future that, sadly enough.......

..........has no future.



The Future is Red
“A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his dreams, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colourless void... The Sprawl was a long, strange way home now over the Pacific, and he was no Console Man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, hands clawed into the bedslab, temper foam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.” - William Gibson, Neuromancer

Based on the popular pen and paper table top game by Mike Pondsmith, upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 will be several firsts for Polish video game developer (and publisher) CD Projekt Red. For one, not only will this be the developer's first new game outing outside of their wildly popular Witcher franchise (which itself is based on the wildly popular book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski), the other is that Cyberpunk 2077 will be CD Projekt's first try at a multiplayer element. Though as to what kind of experience it will be, CD has said that it is still "experimenting" on it.

In a recent interview with Eurogamer CD Projekt Red's Managing Director Adam Badowski confirmed that "[Cyberpunk 2077] will be a story-based RPG experience with amazing single-player playthroughs, but we're going to add multiplayer features." Beyond that, considering the game is still in a very early pre-production phase, nothing else is known (or was said) on the matter. What is known is that CDPR is looking to keep their appeal to both console and PC players alike, bringing them both the same experiences regardless of how they game, so long as they keep gaming. "I don't think that the gaming world is split between PC and consoles," Badowski said. "I'm a console player and I was a PC player and ... I don't want to be treated as stupid or less smart than a PC player. It's not like that. We definitely want to bring mature and ambitious gaming experience to the wider audience."

As far as the game goes, don't expect Cyberpunk to set you down as a predetermined hero. Rather, Cyberpunk will allow you to create your own, and define him (or her) however you want. "Cyberpunk will have different character classes," Badowski said. But again, as to what those will be, and just how extensive the game's character creation engine will be, it's still too early to say. What we do know is that Cyberpunk will be a very open world experience, leading one to believe that an easy 50-hours-or-so long tour of duty will be required to get the full experience out of the game. "The first and most important environment for Cyberpunk is the city, obviously," Badowski said. "But not only the city: you can expect some more environments in the Cyberpunk game. We want to start in the Night City, which is cool. And yes it will be an open world game as well."



Speaking in Tongues
Probably one of the most creative aspects of the game will be its unique use of how it will attempt to deal with the regional language barriers that most games seem to face upon release. For example, having to translate the entire game's rather extensive spoken language track from Polish to English when it makes its way over to U.S. distributors. Or having to translate that into Japanese when it hits Japanese markets. Rather, CD Projekt’s Sebastian Stepien revealed that they plan to record all NPCs in their original, intended language with a translator implant acting as your in-game Babelfish.

“As of yet no decisions have been made, but we’re thinking about a system that could tell the world’s story. The idea is to record everything in original languages, i.e. if we’ll meet Mexicans in the game, they’ll be talking [in Spanish] - portrayed by [real] Mexican actors. The player would be able to buy a translator implant, and depending on how advanced it is, he’ll get a better or worse translation.” Stephien says that, not only will this be a unique feature, it will also add to the authenticity of the game. “You can’t reliably recreate street slang of Los Angeles or some other American city, you can’t simply dub it and reproduce those emotions, rhythms of speech, mannerisms." he said. "Everything has to be cohesive. Otherwise we’d simply hear that Polish actors are trying to imitate Americans. That won’t work.”

Speaking of implants, the game will offer your character the ability to augment their bodies with a rather extensive array of bio-mechanical devices, ranging from the previously stated translator implant to more extensive devices that can impact the way your character interacts wit the world around them in any number of ways. But use caution. The more you implant and augment your character, the more you run the risk of losing your empathy towards your fellow man. Too many augments and your character becomes abrasive, inhuman, and eventually loses all self-restraint until they turn into a “psycho.” And when that happens, CD Projekt says, expect to have a very lethal intervention with the Psycho Squad, the game's equivalent to police's S.W.A.T. team.

"These guys are exceptional, these guys are crack troops," said Badowski. "The fact that they're proud of that name tells you a bit about their mindset. They wear a badge with their official emblem on their right sleeve, but their left is reserved for their unofficial Psycho Squad emblem. It's primitively made and the image itself is on the crude side of things. It's not unlike a badge special force operators might make and wear to distinguish themselves from the ranks of grunts in any theater of war."

Beyond that, and the announcement that the tale of Geralt will continue with their upcoming Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (more on that in a later article), CD Projeckt is keeping some ideas on the close backburner. "We have some prototypes and we'll see if we can deliver something cool to the players....every studio should have good R&D, especially independent studios. It's good to know what you may do in the future."

But, Badowski adds, "We have two leading projects, and they are the two hearts of our company. It's [a] crucial moment for Cyberpunk," he explained, "because we have tonnes of ideas and we need to have the perfect direction and we have to be in-line with the global vision of the game. We don't want to grow too big on the prototyping stage because it's much easier to manage We need to have precise, good, well-organized strike teams for that. The guys are working together brainstorming a lot, so a smaller team is better. And then we will go out to full production speed."

Cyberpunk 2077 is slated to be released - in CD's own words - "When it's ready." Honestly, if it delivers on all the promises it intends to make before release, I'm willing to wait for as long as it takes.

Warning. The following opinion piece contains strong adult language, disturbing images, and a campaign spoiler for Yager/2K Games' Spec Ops: The Line. The views and opinions here do not, in any way, reflect the views and opinions of BeautifulPeoplesClub.org. This article should not be viewed by young children, or by individuals that may find the following images used as offensive. As stated, this is simply one man's opinion. Differing viewpoints or counterarguments are, as always, welcomed. I do, however, ask that the discussion remain civil, polite, and respective of opposing opinions.***



When people use the term, "War is Hell," they're not that far off. Despite the rosy tint that various news media and outlets attempt to paint over war and the aftermath of war, you're not even seeing half of what really goes on beyond the scope of the camera. War is brutal, cold, shocking, sickening. War is dirty. War is bloody. War is death's little playground, and we're all invited to play.

War is also, oddly enough, a little honest. It brings to the surface of some people their true form. That dark and sinister.....thing that, in the eyes of civilized nations, would be considered something abhorrent, something almost inhuman. War is almost like, if I had to put it in another term, something that releases a person of their inhibitions. Like some sickening drink. The more you drink it, the more you let go, the more you let go, the more you do things that you normally wouldn't do. That's what also makes War very addictive. Because it gives you a sense of power. Power over life and death, entire nations, the course and flow of the world around you. Being "drunk on power," as it were.

At eighteen years old, a few months shy of my nineteenth, I saw my first dead body. Shit, I can say, without trying to come off as being a braggart of any kind, that I've seen things that would break most men. Things that would make someone want to put a bullet through their fucking skulls. When I arrived in Saudi Arabia, the oil fields had been out for a few months. But you could smell it, that pungent oily, heavy, acrid stench of smoke. And that almost sweet, sickly sweet, smell of dead bodies. But it's not the soldiers and the insurgents that you'd think you'd find. No.

On the border between Kuwait and Iraq, in that disputed grey area between nations, you found civilian life. Children. Mothers. Fathers. Infants. Bodies that had been baking for months in the sun. Kids in their mother's arms, or ripped from them, bayonet marks through their small bodies, or even the all too telling boot heel that have literally crushed in their heads. Stomped it into the muck. Some of them burnt to skeletons and ash. Even still were the people strewn across the street, executed en mass. They were staring off into the sky, never to see it again. Dead, pale faces. The young. The old. Civilians all.

And all of them unarmed.

And we're not talking about an indiscriminate killing here and there. We're talking about an entire village of people. Dead. Everything that could live there. Dead. People. Animals. Dead. Homes looted, burned down. Genocide reduced to one tenth the scale. But still genocide. When you kill like that, it's not noble. Or right. It's hate. It's murder.

I am....I will always....be haunted by these brutalities. By these crimes. Because that's what they are. War crimes. Men drunk on power and this hubristic sense of immortality. All based on something as simple as that unseen border, or a different religious belief or, God help us, the skin they're born with being just a little darker than their own. Shit, it can even be as something as them having a different flag flying over their heads. But it's the representation that comes with that flag, I suppose that makes it legitimate to some, to some nations specifically, for attacking another species of man with the sole purpose of extinguishing their very existence and way of life forever.

Wounds. Scars. Try as I might, and as some people will also do, they'll never fully heal. I don't think they ever will. Because it marks you in ways for the rest of your life that.....It's indescribable in words. These things, these experiences. You can't just talk about them. Simply talking about it doesn't do it enough justice. It can't. The only way you're ever going to know what a soldier is or has gone through in war is by being one. That's the only way you can understand just how horrible war can be. Hell, simply writing about this right now is bringing up some brutal shit in my head. Stuff I haven't really thought about in years.

That's not to say I've forgotten about it all. Far from it. But if I fucking sat there every damn day and dwelt on all the just.....monsterous shit I've experienced and seen, well, it'd be unhealthy. It'd fuck you up mentally, if you let it. You'd sit there in a fugue, just reliving it all, like some people have, before you do something brutal in return because you can't take it anymore. Like drive up to a Wal-Mart and open fire with a semi-automatic weapon. Or, in some instances, take your own life. So I don't dwell on it. But I also don't forget. To simply forget is to allow these past atrocities to be repeated. I've said it before and I still mean it. Not just as a soldier, not just as a person. But as a human being:

"No man comes away from a war without scars. Physical, mental, spiritual. We all suffer them. Some hide them better than others. But they're there. They always will be. But it's what we do with this...with these scars.....that is what makes us survivors. That is what makes us vigilant. That is what makes us soldiers."



It goes against our nature to actively want to kill another human being. Because, for the most part we are social animals. And this idea of a mass murderer, well, you have to already be a little broken on the inside to actively want to kill.

That's why our government.....that's why they have to train you to kill. To prepare you for it. To...in a way, justify it mentally for you. I'm not trying to say that inherently our government and our armed forces are evil. They teach you this shit so you can survive. To be ready when you have to make that decision. But they're not exactly pure either. Especially when we have less than honest fucking people pointing their finger and saying, "Kill this thing."

There's an old saying about war and killing. "War is simply a trick on the young to fool them into fighting for old, bitter men." It's easy, sometimes, to think that, when our world's evils make those easy black and white choices, War becomes a simple thing. Some tyrant invades, we fight them back. Some dictator threatens the world, we take them out. Black. White. Clean.

But our world isn't so black and white. And war isn't so simple. Something that asks, as payment for living through it, for you to kill another human being. That's never a simple thing to live with. Or to do.

That's why I think things like this, they can't be shied away from. Or ignored. They can't be put in textbooks only. I think you'd have to experience it in some other form. Photographs, documentaries, experiences told by the very people who lived through it. So when we're told by others that we can't because it's too traumatic, it's too brutal to "trivialize" in a video game. First off let me just say that, although you have the right to say it, and I will die defending your right to say it, you have no damn right to make that decision for me. In fact, you're doing more harm that good by doing so. I'll get into more on that later, but for now, let's put the spotlight on the reason why I'm writing this article in the first place, that being Six Days in Fallujah.

The game is a recounting of events during a span of six days with the United States 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines during the Second Battle of Fallujah on November of 2004. In a GamePro interview with Atomic Games president, Peter Tamte, stated that "One of the divisions in our company was developing training tools for the United States Marine Corps and they assigned some U.S. Marines from 4rd Battalion, 1st Marines to help us out. When they came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do."

The Second Battle of Fallujah is remembered for being one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq War. Coalition Forces consisting of U.S., Iraqi, and British forces suffered a total of 107 killed and 613 wounded during the offensive, of which 95 were U.S. casualties with 560 wounded. Insurgent forces were estimated at anywhere between 1,200 to 2,000 killed. An estimated 800 civilians were said to have also been killed during the fighting.

It's also remembered for its use of White Phosphorous as a weaponized device. Now, White Phosphorous (or WP or even "Willie Pete" as it's nicknamed), is normally used as a very effective smoke screening device and/or in illuminated tracer rounds. Fireflies we used to call them. Every third bullet fired from an M16 military rifle will usually be tracer rounds. This gives a soldier a visual aide on the battlefield as to where their shot clusters are going, particularly at night.

White Phosphorous is also a very dangerous incendiary. From the time of ignition to the time that the WP element is spent, it will maintain its constant temperature of 5,000 Degrees Fahrenheit. That means, should you have the misfortune of being struck by a white Phosphorous "droplet", you have something that will continuously burn into you at 5,000 degrees from contact to finish. Imagine trying to live through that kind of pain, that....just sheer destructive force, if it landed on your arm, your back, or, God help you, your chest or face for even ten seconds.

These "droplets" burn anywhere from 5 to 8 minutes. Each.

To give you and idea of the devastating effects of WP on the body, the following images are deaths/injuries attributed to White Phosphorus attacks.

Warning: These are extremely graphic in nature and should NOT to be viewed by children or the easily upset.

Again, viewer discretion is highly advised



You'd have to ask yourself, what kind of monster would do that to another person. As much as I want to believe that this kind of evil is only possible under the order of some fascist dictator, by the very evil we were sent to destroy, it wasn't.

It was us.

Initially, the U.S. Department of Defense denied using WP as a munition, stating that they had only been used as a screening and illumination device. However, in a report from the North County Times (California), reporter Darrin Mortensen, who had been imbedded with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines Regiment, Mortensen described in detail how WP rounds were being used.

"....a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday... The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call "shake 'n' bake" into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week...."

On November 15, 2005, Dept. of Defense spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Venable confirmed to the BBC Network that white phosphorus had indeed been used as an incendiary antipersonnel weapon in Fallujah.

"Yes, it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants. When you have enemy forces that are in covered positions that your high explosive artillery rounds are not having an impact on and you wish to get them out of those positions, one technique is to fire a white phosphorus round into the position because the combined effects of the fire and smoke - and in some case the terror brought about by the explosion on the ground - will drive them out of the holes so that you can kill them with high explosives."

As a soldier, as someone who never questioned at the time the orders given to him, I am at a loss for justification beyond the perfunctory "Yes, Sir." I cannot imagine any other response to it. When your commanders give you an order, you carry them out. You have to.

But as a man, as a human being, it is deplorable. It is a war crime. It is the very thing we, as soldiers, are sworn to prevent. And in the mind of a soldier, buried deep in that place we keep hidden from everyone, sometimes even from our own selves, I often wonder if any of them have even a single thought, an almost traitorous impulse, to say outright that this was wrong. Maybe. I'd like to think some did.

But as a soldier, you really can't say anything. Not when you're told to aim. And not when you do. Not when you're told to fire. And again, not when you do. You can only say two words. Two very polite words for the potential death you're about to deliver:

"Yes, Sir."

Which is why I wanted to know what this game might have delivered on that front. Would it have justified events that the world deems deplorable? Would it have looked at it, unflinching, unblinking, and allowed me to decide? More importantly, would it have given me a way to say two words that, as a soldier, you can never really say:

"No, Sir."

We'll never know. I don't think we ever will know. Because the game is in limbo. Shortly after the game's announcement, Six Days in Fallujah garnered the ire of British war veterans from the United Kingdom, as well as from a British peace group known as "Stop the War Coalition."

Reg Keys, father of slain RMP Lance Corporal Thomas Keys:

"Considering the enormous loss of life in the Iraq War, glorifying it in a video game demonstrates very poor judgement and bad taste. These horrific events should be confined to the annals of history, not trivialized and rendered for thrill-seekers to play out... It's entirely possible that Muslim families will buy the game, and for them it may prove particularly harrowing. Even worse, it could end up in the hands of a fanatical young Muslim and incite him to consider some form of retaliation or retribution."

Tim Collins, former Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment:

"It's much too soon to start making video games about a war that's still going on, and an extremely flippant response to one of the most important events in modern history. It's particularly insensitive given what happened in Fallujah, and I will certainly oppose the release of this game."

Konami, who would have been the game's publisher, later backed out of their commitment.

While I applaud and understand their viewpoints, I think it's wrong. I think that, by not allowing the world to bear witness to these events, that by never allowing people like you or me from deciding, or to try and justify certain events for themselves that it was wrong or right, you are doing more harm than good.

Because the world will never know what the common soldier went through. What they thought. What they experienced. You've only hidden all of that away. And hiding something this dark, something this repulsive in the eyes of the world, only ensures that it is eventually forgotten. And we all know what happens when we forget.

"Those that learn nothing from their past are doomed to repeat its mistakes."



By never allowing people to make the distinction, by never allowing them to decide if Six Days' storyline was in poor tastes or not, you're effectively silencing the truth. You're confining the roar to a whisper by bottling it away and forgetting it even existed. And I think that it is, in so many ways, a travesty. Because, unless something is seriously done to allow these brave men to speak, to roar, their stories will soon be forgotten.

August 6, 2009. An article from Industrygamers:

Atomic Games said that they were unable to obtain a new publisher and would let go of some staff....

"Out of 75 people, less than a dozen are left and about a third of that isn't even developers. The remaining team is basically a skeleton cleanup crew that will be gone soon too. They are trying to downplay the extent of these layoffs, but the reality is that Atomic is pretty much dead."

So, as much as I want to see this story told, we may never. I think that the closest thing we'll ever get to seeing something similar, is an event that transpired in Yager/2K Games' Spec Ops: The Line.

Your team, when arriving at a heavily fortified (and heavily defended) position in the storyline, decide to use White Phosphorous mortar rounds to take out the alleged resistance/insurgent fighters. Normally, most games would vacuum up the aftermath of those kind of decisions. Kill a room full of enemies, they disappear the moment you reload. Bomb an area to hell and back, you move on to the next chapter without facing the consequences of your actions. Everything's sterile, clean. You never see the scorched, fire-blasted landscape, the mutilated corpses piled one atop the other.

The thirty or so civilians you just burned alive.



Would Six Days have even acknowledged the tragedies that came with the events it portrays? Maybe, maybe not. Again, we may never know. Which is why I think it's vital that the game sees the light of day, and not suffer the fate that old soldiers do.

We don't die, we just fade away.

I think, given the history associated with it, Six Days is just too damn important to do that. Even if it doesn't touch the controversy, even if it only tells the story of these Marines, the unsung but exceptional, never being allowed to hear and experience and see their stories would be its own atrocity. An insult to every man and woman who have put their very lives on the line to allow these very same people the right, the privilege, to protest.

Ultimately, I don't know what can be done, beyond the hope that Atomic Games takes Six Days to Kickstarter. I think that would be its saving grace. Let the people who want to hear its story decide. Let the world make its own choices. And in the end, even if that fails, then at least we'll know it tried.

But I think it will succeed. If we allow it. Or rather, if it's allowed to let us allow it. That's why I think we need to stop for a moment and decide a plan of attack. We need to get behind this game. We need to do something. And we need to do something very soon.

Do not let this game fade away. Do not let these soldiers' voices be silenced. Do not let this event slip through our grasp. That's why I implore everyone here, everyone reading this;

Help us to help them. Throw every last bit of energy and creative thought behind Six Days. Send e-mails, implore Atomic Games, the gaming community at large, to save this game. Beg them, if you must, to allow this story to be told. Do not let it go gently into the night. Do not let it fade to black.

Do not forget it existed. Because I can't. I won't forget that this game exists. You may not share my concerns or my beliefs that the game should be given a chance. You may think that the game is exactly what the protesting masses believe and that Six Days should not trample on the delicate nature of the events that transpired during its history.

But do not take the ability to have it made taken away from others. Do not take the ability to have it experienced by the people taken away from them. You have the right to voice your opinions, you have the right to protest its very existence.

But you do not have the right to cover someone else's eyes and never allow them to see it. You do not have the right to silence its voice. You do not have that right.

You just don't.

Developer: Crystal Dynamics
Publisher: Square-Enix
Platform(s): Xbox 360 / PS3 / Microsoft Windows
Released: World Wide (excluding Japan): March 5, 2013 / JP: April 25, 2013
Genre(s): Action Adventure / Third Person / Shooter / Platformer
Rating(s): ESRB: M / PEGI: 18 / CERO: Unknown

An Icon Is Reborn
"A famous explorer once said, that the extraordinary is in what we do, not who we are. I'd finally set out to make my mark, to find adventure.

"But instead adventure found me.

"In our darkest moments, when life flashes before us, we find something. Something that keeps us going. Something that pushes us. When all seemed lost, I found a truth.

"And I knew what I must become." ~ Lara Croft

She huddles by the fire, cold and unsure. Misty vapor clings low to the tropical island she is forced to take refuge at. A refuge that offers little solace, small comfort, and no mercy. Quite the opposite. It seems to want to actively compound her predicament with every test and form of death that it can throw at her. But she takes it. Because she can. Because she has to.

Because she must.

Every journey begins with but the first step. Sometimes, if we're either lucky or cautious enough, we can control that journey. We can shape and steer it to our heart's content. These safe and pedestrian journeys that lead to safe and pedestrian lives.

But sometimes, whether or not we are initially prepared for it, the journey finds us. And in some cases, only the exceptional among us can survive it. Be it by divine grace, for us and for her, she just so happens to be one of those exceptional beings. A survivor. Someone who can take it. Because they can. Because they have to.

Because they must.

And, being privileged enough to experience it with her, I will see her journey through to the end of her beginnings. Not simply because of my curiosity, or because I should. But because I can. And because I have to.

And because I must.



"Tombs? But.....I HATE Tombs."
I knew I was in for something, well, different when in the first ten minutes of the game I died horribly at the hands of some deranged island nutjob that kept screaming at me that he was only trying to help. I suppose hearing him say that threw me off my game, because I failed to respond to the quick-time event that popped up shortly before he pulls out a knife, stabs me in the chest and runs his grimy, greasy hand across my face all the while he whispers "I'm only trying to help," in this creepy, spine-chilling voice.

Yeah, this Tomb Raider isn't for the queasy.

In this series reboot of the franchise, a very young Lara Croft is on a voyage of discovery. Not just of old crypts and dusty relics, but of herself. Youth has its advantages; vigor, strength and resiliency. And yet, also its disadvantages. A lack of wisdom and experience, a certain level of mistrust among her peers. So, eager to prove her worth, she drives herself to extremes most people wouldn't.

And you're going to need every last bit of resolve, drive and resiliency you can muster.

Because Tomb Raider puts this poor girl through the ringer. And then through a meat grinder. And then into a Purre'-er.

And then it takes it all, puts it in a bag, and then douses it in gasoline before setting it on fire.

In fact, if I had to use a term to describe what I went through with Ms. Croft, I'd probably say that the game was almost borderline torture porn. You might think that's a little extreme to compare but trust me. If you've played it, you can almost draw the parallels between the two.

What I found surprising was the fact that the game has some RPG elements to it that felt oddly satisfying, if a bit too lean on the selection. While initially this can help flesh out and separate your Lara from your friend's Lara, by the end of the game, if you've collected every little relic, GPS cache and so on, you've effectively collected enough xp to pretty much max out your character.

Speaking of the collection metric, every weapon, tool and item you need to survive and progress through the game are things you find throughout the story. It not only feels rewarding, but it makes sense given the content of the setting. Also, most of them are upgradable, which makes the need to collect all the salvage you can find not only necessary, but vital.



"I don't think I'm that kind of Croft....."

Graphics: 10/10. Absolutely. Phenomenal. This game is beautiful from start to finish. From red stoney tombs to icy and snow covered ruins, greening forests, and that vertigo-inducing climb up some crumbling granite peak. Although the game doesn't have this continuous flow of day-to-night progression, some events do happen at night while others during the day. You'd think this would somehow feel jarring, but oddly doesn't. It all progresses and feels quite natural.

Gameplay: 9/10. Fantastic. There's no HUD to really worry about blocking your field of view beyond the on-screen ammo count. Changing weapons (and their secondary fire option) is as simple as a press of the D-pad, or left bumper button and so on. Most of the interactive elements in the game are context sensitive; press A to climb, X to pick up and so forth.

If you're ever in a pinch to figure out what to do or how to solve certain elements in the game, Lara has this almost Batman: Arkham Asylum/City "detective vision" ability when you press the left bumper button by itself and the area washes out into a black and white version with all of the interactive elements highlighted in yellow. This includes climbable walls, ammo crates, lootable salvage crates, and so on.

What I found worked surprisingly well, and I hope it gets used more in upcoming Tomb Raider games (come on, you KNOW they're coming), is the intuitive cover system. When enemies are near, Lara instantly crouches, takes out her currently available weapon, and uses any available element currently tall enough to hide behind. There's no need to make her "stick" to anything or press any button to make her crouch. It feels fantastic to not only have to worry about it, but is just feels, well, natural.

The one snag with the game happens to be it's, how shall I put it, "liberal" use of quick time events. On a personal level, I detest QTE's. Mainly because I just feel like QTE's are cheap and lazy elements in a game when they just don't need to be in there. When they make sense, sure use them, but don't use them all. the. time.

Audio: 10/10. Again, another exemplary mark. Voice acting is top tier. The island sounds organic, the audio logs you pick up sound fantastic. From the eerie way history seems to come to life when you relive these little snippets of the island's dark, murky past, to the too brief moments when Lara finds herself in the safety of friendly company. Goody, heady stuff.

The musical score is Triple-A fantastic. For the most part it's somber piano scores interspersed with this spine-freezing metallic-sounding.....I really can't describe what instrument they use but it is effectively unnerving to hear.

Story: 10/10. The strongest point for me. It was emotional in all the right places, it was poignant when it needed to be, but most importantly it was good. It made me WANT to see everything, to see it from beginning to end. There haven't been many stories in recent games that made me do that. In fact, I think I can count on one hand stories that have made the list. And I can say that Tomb Raider is one of them.

Customer Care: 9/10. While I've never experienced any bugs in the game, I have heard of some players experiencing a few. One in particular makes story progression impossible. I don't know if Crystal Dynamics or Square-Enix are looking to fix the problem, so it's still on the big question mark page. People who have pre-ordered the game have had exclusive content to extra optional tombs, mutliplayer map packs and so forth. Some even came with a free copy (depending on where you got it), with a free download of Guardian of Light.

All in all though, it's still a bit early on the DLC front, what with the game still new on the market, but so far it looks good.

Final Score: 48/50. Damn near perfect on every level, Tomb Raider is unquestionably the first Game of the Year choice for 2013. Despite some small stumbles here and there, Tomb Raider's story, its beauty, its music, its....damn near everything is fantastic. I can honestly say that Tomb Raider has done two things. One I was expecting. The other was unintentional, but welcomed. The first was reinvigorate a stale and sagging franchise. It gave it new life, new purpose, new meaning. And I am overjoyed by it.

And the other was that it made me love it more than, yes, even the original. Throughout all of Lara's triumphs and tragedies, her hits and her misses, her boons and her banes, Tomb Raider has made me love the series all over again.

If there's any game you need to get and play and support right now, Tomb Raider is it. I cannot stress enough how near perfect the game feels. If you can, get it. Get it now. And if you have it, put it in a place of prominence in your "never sell" collection. Not because I'm asking you to. Not because you can.

But because you must.

Developer: Eidos Montreal
Publisher: Square-Enix / Feral Interactive (Mac)
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows / PS3 / Xbox 360 / Mac OS X / Cloud (OnLive)
Released: NA Aug 23, 2011 / AU Aug 25, 2011 / EU Aug 26, 2011 / JP Oct Oct 20, 2011 / April 26, 2012 (Mac OSX)
Genre(s): Action-Adventure / RPG / First Person Shooter / Stealth
Rating(s): ESRB: M / PEGI: 18 / OFLC: MA 15+ / CERO: Z

Too Close to the Sun
"Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." -Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Like Icarus and Daedalus before us, like every man woman and child after, we all have a yearning for one common thing, one universal hope; Freedom. Freedom to soar to new and once thought unreachable heights despite the bonds of our earthly prisons. Freedom to seek the beauty of knowledge despite the ugliness of ignorance. Freedom to choose our fates, to define ourselves and our future, despite the dogmatic views from "spiritual" leaders telling us our destinies are predetermined, that our ends are already written.

We are, I think, creatures of our own end. If this was not so, then what power lies in free will? Why do something when someone, somewhere already knows how it all ends? Why try to defy, to challenge, to progress as a species if this wasn't undeniable fact?

Because everything you've been told is a lie. This conspiracy of power, this dark and twisted facade we call normalcy, begins the moment you're born. And from cradle to grave, the powers in shadow and shade do all they can to promote their agendas in secrecy and clandestine rule.

It takes the exceptional to see the threads undone. It takes the brave to push away the veil hiding the small, insignificant creatures that hide truth behind a smile. It takes knowledge and free will and defiance to soar above these petty plays of power.

It takes you to stop them.



Vulcan's Forge
So. We come to it at last. Deus Ex. A game series that in recent news has been, how shall we put it, "mimicked" by other parties to disastrous result. And while someone could draw parallels all day between the two, describing where one makes sense given the content and universe that it lies in, and the other is simply an amateurish facsimile that defies the very core principles set forth by its own lore, we'll simply concentrate on the conspiracy, mystery, and the transhumanistic overtones that define the Deus Ex series so well. And simply move on from there.

In this prequel set 25 years before the original Deus Ex, you play as Adam Jensen, a security chief at Sarif Industries, a leading biotech firm offering the people a chance to better themselves through augmentations, or "augs" for short. This stands in stark contrast to the supposedly terroristic nature of Purity First, an anti-aug faction with strong ties to the Humanity Front which, like Purity First, are against the ideals of transhumanism. After an attack at Sarif Industries leaves Adam horribly injured, he is forced to undergo cybernetic augmentation in order to survive. This of course sets the stage for the rest of the game. However, being Deus Ex, the supposed black and white moral tapestry we may have grown accustomed to in other stories isn't always so clearly defined here when the grey area of hidden truth begins to seep into the fabric. It simply is what it is. And yet isn't.

It all might sound complicated at first, especially when various other factions, the Illuminati for example, start getting into the mix. But DE:HR tries to keep its narrative threads as tightly woven together as humanly possible. And having previous knowledge of the series never hurts. But a complicated, mature story is what I've liked the most from the Deus Ex series. And I can say that this one does not disappoint.

The game itself is seeped in this sepia-colored motif, which gives it this sort of "historical" look, as if someone were looking back at old records to see where it all began. The various cities you visit during the course of the game all have this neo-gothic, almost 'Blade Runner'-esque look to them. It fits the dystopianic future (vis-a-vis it makes sense) within the Deus Ex universe. Technology reaches to the sky, bright and clean and almost cold, all the while it clashes stubbornly with roots of our dark past.



Augmented Realities

Graphics: 7/10. While the game tries to do a good job of conveying the atmosphere and setting of a dark and depressing future, some of the character animations, the facial expressions on some characters for example (or rather, the extreme lack thereof), sort of drag this score down. Which is odd, considering some characters are done rather well, while others seem to just be so wooden as to really be, oddly, almost last gen bad. I can't explain it really. I'm at a loss as to why it's so up and down like this.

Gameplay: 8/10. The overall user interface is good, though the HUD can be a little bothersome with a lot of different elements on screen. It's not exactly clutter, but it is rather extensive stuff on screen.

Control schemes can be a little confusing starting out. For example (and I don't know why they decided that this default was acceptable), they decided that the command function for taking cover was the left trigger, normally reserved for (if you're into shooters) aiming. So here I was, in the middle of a firefight, trying to "aim" when all I managed to do was duck in cover. You can tweak the setup the way you want to, though, so it's not this game-breaking thing. But it still should be noted that I considered it an odd choice for default choice.

DE:HR, being a Square-Enix-fed venture, has some good old fashioned RPG vignettes to it. Doing pretty much anything creative, be it finding unique pathways through the various levels, interacting with the myriad NPC's, hacking security nodes and networks, and completing various side-quests (ie. deciding to sneak through a heavily guarded room to reach and free a group of hostages), all reward you with XP. Reach that new level and you can spend that precious skill point (or two) to, well, "augment your augmentations." Like being able to see through walls, being able to hack security doors without being detected (or having more time to do so beforehand). The list goes on and on, and the appeal here is that you can alter and shape your character as you wish. So I can probably say that no two Adam Jensens will be the same if you decide to play through again and again.

It should also be noted that weapons can also undergo upgrades in the form of weapon mods. Things like a faster reload time, more damage, deeper ammo clip and so on. Trust me, you're going to need them. Default weapons are not that....powerful. And when I say not all that powerful, I mean not all that useful in a firefight. Except surprisingly the one-hit stun gun.

Audio: 9/10. Exceptional. I love the themes, the ambiance, the voice acting. All of it meshes well, even if Adam himself is a softer-spoken Clint Eastwood. That's not a bad thing really, but.....I don't know, you kind of get to the point that, after a while, you'd expect to hear something different out of your protagonists. And no, I'm not saying that they should all start sounding like Mickey-fricking-Mouse, but I would appreciate something different. That's all.

Still....Mickey Mouse would be.......nah.

Story: 10/10. More please. That's been the strongest point and appeal to the Deus Ex universe. Deep, intellectual and thought-provoking storylines. Yes, they stumbled a bit with Invisible War, but even their stumbles are a a lot better than most people's leaps. You may, of course, feel free to disagree, but I was satisfied with the story's strong points of conspiracy and mystery, all the while having to deal with a certain level of bigotry and idiocy that seems to boil to the surface of some people whenever they're exposed to something new.

What I also found surprising is that the game has this weird sense of progression even when you think it doesn't. For example, the first quest after the prologue surprised me, in that I thought that I had plenty of time to start it with everything waiting on me as I meandered around the Sarif offices, talking to NPC's, ducking into vent shafts. Just, you know, play around before I start.

After about 10 minutes, I get the call from the boss-man telling me the situation "had gotten worse." Meaning that, while I dallied about, the terrorists had decided to kill the hostages they had taken. Hostages I had the chance to save had I decided to go sooner.

....whoops.

Customer Care: 9/10. I never ran into any bugs or glitches or design SNAFU's the entire time I played Deus Ex. There may have been some, but honestly, I never experienced them.

Both Eidos and Square have been, hmm, I guess you could say they've been somewhat generous with the game in certain ways. Beyond the one, and currently only, DLC expansion "The Missing Link," you've also got Play Arts Kai action figures, the tie-in novel Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect, a six-issue DC Comics add-on series, and there are rumors still swirling that the game just might be reaching the silver screen some time in the near future. So it looks good on that front.

Final Score: 43/50. Despite the small graphical marring with the wooden character animation, the somewhat poor default-control scheme, and the somewhat cluttered HUD, Deus Ex makes up for it with a solid story narrative, strong voice acting, deep level of social interaction, a robust RPG mechanic, and a satisfying sense of freedom to the levels and solutions presented to the player. I can only hope this is simply the first chapter of a new and well told story in the Deus Ex universe. And I eagerly await any news that lets me continue the tale.

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows / PS3 / Xbox 360
Release Dates: AU - November 29, 2012 / EU - November 20, 2012 / NA - December 4, 2012 / JP - March 7, 2013
Genre(s): First Person Shooter / Open World Action-Adventure / Stealth

Insanity Personified
“I think the knowledge came to him at last - only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.

“Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I
was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror - of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: 'The horror! The horror!'” - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

There is a beautiful chaos to the natural world. It is both complex, yet simple. Serene, yet savage. Cold, yet truthful. Some people, who live their lives in equaled, measured days safe in the comforts of civilization, will never witness its brutal spectacle, its physical beauty, and its noble and harsh truth. To survive, you must adapt. But to adapt, you must survive. While man may think himself the apex predator, place him in the woods, in the jungles, in the darkening forests far from the trappings of civilization and you will know the fallacy of that boast. If he is of equal measure with the natural world, should he survive the crucible of life, he will emerge more...and less...than what he was. A master to a natural force. A warrior. One who is worthy.

But if he forgoes the lessons and refuses to accept the ordered chaos of nature; should he shun its brutality, its beauty, and its truth, then he is lost. He simply becomes nothing more than a cautionary and sad little tale of failure in the face of something greater than himself. Something as old as time. Something both beautiful, and violent, in the lessons it attempts to teach us. That within us lies the potential, if we are brave and cautious and worthy enough to seek it, to be more than what we are.

It simply lies buried in our nature.



Down the Rabbit Hole
“And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman. She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witchmen, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her.

"She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed
to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.

"Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, halt-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscoutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance” - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

I'll say it right now; for the record, I don't like Jason Brody. In fact, as a character, Jason Brody should've been the one that took the bullet to the throat in the first five minutes of the game, and not the potential bad ass that was his brother. This soft, sheltered, one percent'er should've been the casualty, the throw away friend, the shallow and unremarkable to your remarkable. Instead we are made to experience the world through him, through his eyes.

We are made, I think, to somehow grow and learn and like this unlikely hero. To root for him and carry him on our shoulders. That he is, in some way, the every man. Ubisoft's answer to the question, "If you were put in the situation he has been placed in, how far would you be willing to go, what would you be willing to do, to survive?" I get that part Ubisoft. I see the narrative hook you tried to sink into me with the attempt.

What I don't get, or particularly like, is the fact that he is thrust, dumped, and abandoned upon us with no real emotional weight. Jason Brody is not the every man. He is not from humble origins, from humble beginnings. Someone who knows what it means to struggle and fight and sacrifice every day of their lives to eat, to live, to provide a roof over their heads.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing appealing about Jason Brody's rise from spoiled rich kid to warrior paragon of righteousness, this every man hero personified, that it should have been. That it should have felt like. At best, he is a blank slate, an empty avatar, the proverbial void in the storyline. A void that, had it worked, would have been filled in by the player, by their defining him in ways that become personal between them and him. By how they mold him as a person, as a character, and push him to the end that they wish.

But to me, he is nothing but an empty, unlikeable shell. Dead weight in a story that he is attempting to champion. The one character that should
have been the defining lynchpin, the most emotionally engaging center to the story who, in the end, simply turns it into an almost unplayable mess.

I would have been just as content to spend the game watching more engaging, more interesting characters like Vaas, visit upon him every kind of twisted bit of torture his cold hard truth can muster upon Jason without killing him in the end. I wanted Jason to physically suffer; for his pride, for his foolishness, for his stupidity. They are three traits I have little understanding and even smaller patience for.

I have no time for a man so buried in personal pride for being rich and spoiled.

I have no remorse for the consequences that result from exceptionally foolish and borderline childish thought.

And I have less than no use for idiots and fools.

Jason Brody encompasses all three traits simultaneously. How do I know this? Simple. It is shown to us in the first two minutes of the game. And why do I feel like these traits carry on in the forty hours I spent with this man? Simple yet again. He carries on throughout the entire game like some whimpering, whiny little boy. You'd think that after the fifth or sixth creature he skins he'd stop pouting and complaining about it. "Ugh. Oh Gawd, this is disgusting..." By the tenth time I heard it, I had to physically shout at the screen for him to balls up, quit complaining, and shut the f*$k up. He didn't hear me of course. And went about whining throughout the entire game.

So for the record, I hate, with all my heart, the very concept of Jason Brody.



Dysfunctional Functional Narrative
"They were men enough to face the darkness......Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed 'round him - all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination - you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate." - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Which is why I find it so fascinating (but ultimately not surprising), that Jason is merely the shadow being cast by the brilliance of the game's supporting characters. Hoyt Volker, Vaas Montenegro, Citra Talugmai. These are just three of the defining characters, the reasons and the moments in the game, that made me see it through to the end. I was loved, hated, feared, and envied by these creatures of code brought to life by a phenomenal voice cast.

I was tempted by their dark promises. I was enraged by their senseless violences. I was chilled by their menacing whispers. If there is but one reason to play this game, then these three examples of what to expect this game to give you on a character driven level is all the reason you need to experience Far Cry 3's otherwise vapid and by-the-numbers storyline.

To that extent, I find it utterly baffling that some must meet such wildly questionable and ambiguous ends. Ends that left me shaking a head that was filled with unanswered reasons as to the hidden metaphors behind them. Secretly however, I am hopeful, cautiously hopeful, that with one such....questionable conclusion, that we may yet see them again in the future (please Far Cry 3 DLC, you are my only hope). For the moment at least, I will say honestly and, for the record that Vaas, my dear and psychotic friend, Ubisoft did you a grave injustice.



Unwanted in My Skin
“There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Can someone please explain to me, while I travel upon this dark and depressing thought, why the only race capable of righting the world's wrongs has to be a white man? That, no matter where, no matter how, no matter why, the only person capable of saving the day has to be, despite how far away they are from their place of origin, Whitey McWhiterton who will be there to tuck you in, scare away the boogeymen, and save your ass from certain death. I am growing so tired of this cliche'.

I'm sorry, is there some unknown codex in Ye Olde Booke of Gaemings that states; "And lo, if ye be naught of the fairest skin, ye shalt not be the ablest of kin to save yon gaeming worldes?"

So let it be written......and all that dramatic bullsh*t.

I find it amazing that, despite an industry that is trying to make greater strides to be more all-inclusive as it possibly can, especially towards female gamers (who, according to some genre polls, can account for almost 49% of game's sales), they have such a spotty... hell... more like shoddy.... track record for racial inclusion and diversity in their gaming protagonists.
.
Anyway, I know not everyone came to hear me rant and rave and lament about ideologies that I am (currently) powerless to change within the
gaming community. You came to hear about a review. So, without further ado, let's get on with the show, shall we?



The Beating Heart
"They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness.

The conquest of the earth which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to...”- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Graphics: 8/10. Technically brilliant if at times slightly flawed visuals are the hallmark of the game. To climb the highest parapet I could find, watching the sun settle down over the distant misty borders of the sea, watching the shadows splinter across white sandy beaches as the moon rose and sliver-lit the waterfalls and little shallows across my view. I was amazed at how primal, how unspoiled nature can be. And saddened by the encroaching fingers of a humanity that didn't care.

Gameplay: 7/10. The HUD is minimal, but functional. Inventory can be a little pain to deal with, since it's limited in the beginning but can be expanded upon over time with the proper crafting ingredients. And changing/utilizing items are simple command functions; press A to use, Left Bumper to switch weapons, etc etc. Even then though, I've noticed it can be a little unresponsive during high frame rates (ie. during a heavy firefight for example). But nothing that becomes problematic.

Audio: 9/10. Beautiful voice work, rich, organic environmental sounds; the hiss of some unseen predator, the soft and hollow whisper of wind in your ear, the unseen primal life deep in the jungles of Rook Island. Michael Mando as Vaas, my GOD that was absolutely the best thing Ubisoft did for Far Cry 3. The two go together like chocolate and peanut butter. My hat's off to you Ubi, for making that happen and sharing it with the rest of the world.

Too bad I can't say the same thing for Jason Brody.

Story: 6/10. I'd give Far Cry 3's uninspired main story a 1, if it wasn't for the strong and noteworthy performances by the secondary character cast.

There is also a lot to do here in Far Cry 3, beyond the simplistic story points. So I have to point that out. Beyond hunting and gathering and crafting, you can pick up any number of sidequests that allow you to progress (if not properly mature) on the path of the warrior. Things like bounty hunter missions, special hunting and "Target" missions with specific requirements (ie. kill X targets with only your knife. Kill the target without being spotted, etc).

There are other, slightly arcade-ish missions, like the timed speed runs that have you on all sorts of vehicles where you need to reach a
certain destination before time runs out and so forth. They're all optional, of course, but they do tend to give more content to the paper-thin story.

Customer Care: 8/10. There have been some noticeable glitches, some texture marring, some slow down when the action gets heavy (ie.
during outpost/hideout shootouts with a dozen pirates or so all on the screen at the same time). But from what I've heard Ubisoft have tackled
the problems head on, and in an expeditious manner.

They've also taken a lot of customer and player feedback for their recent updates, offering a higher degree of difficulty, and fairly cheap DLC packets that are all optional to the storyline. It's good to see Ubisoft actively listening and acting so quickly after the game's release. To be honest, it's quite refreshing.

Final Score: 38/50. Despite Ubisoft's attempt at trying to make the "every man hero" moment work, with Jason Brody in charge it fell amazingly flat exceptionally fast with only a boring and uninspiring story to backbone this weakness. The only saving grace is the game's exceptional visuals, near phenomenal secondary cast, and plethora of side activities contained within it. This is, of course, only my opinion.

If you can perhaps find the thread buried deeper in the tapestry than what I saw to give some unquestionable truth to Jason Brody's character, to his story, then by all means play on my friends.

But, if you are like me and see only the things that I have given you, and you see simply the shallow nature of this man creeping into the exceptional. Then I beg you, gentle reader.

Turn the page.

Welcome to the Dark Side
"If you don't want to be noticed, you don't use a Star Destroyer." - Talon Karrde, Dark Force Rising

Light and Dark. Two sides of the same coin. One is willing to do what the other is not. Nobility and sacrifice. Death and Destruction. Two sides, same coin. For many, crossing the line is difficult, almost impossible. To seek the abyss, or climb from the ashes. Lesser men fear even try. And yet, there are those few who are capable, comfortable even, walking that thinning border that separates hero and villain. People who are willing to do the difficult tasks that these lesser men fear attempt. People who are willing to get their hands dirty, venture into the dark with a smile, stare into the abyss and laugh. Neither light or dark, saint nor sinner. They do willingly the jobs that both sides only dream of doing, but are never brave enough to try.

In other words; they do the fun stuff.



"A Hive of Scum and Villainy..."
Welcome to the new age of Star Wars. What started as an ambitious movie in 1977 has spawned an empire that Palpatine himself would be proud of. And yet, it hasn't been without its....flaws. For the most part, despite the core audience growing into adults (and some into parents), the series itself never really went out of its safe box. Sure, there were a few attempts to make it likeable to more mature fans. 2005 saw the release of Star Wars: Republic Commando, a squad-based shooter that felt and acted surprisingly mature given the universe that it was made in. However, with the reveal of the upcoming Star Wars: 1313, Creative Director Dominic Robilliard plans on carrying on the more mature theme even further.

"I think that the reason this mature side of the world is so compelling is that we’ve always known it’s there, lurking in the background," he says. "Ever since I saw the original Star Wars and that iconic scene in the Cantina, I’ve longed to see more of this mysterious criminal backdrop that characters like Han Solo and Jabba represent. Importantly though, it’s not just that it’s a cool idea for a game setting, it’s also that it’s the right environment for the player experience we’re trying to create. A lot of the motivation for our moment to moment gameplay is to create an exciting sense of threat, pressure, and tension for the player, which really means we need a more grounded hero, more visceral mechanics, and perhaps most importantly, vulnerabilities we can relate to. It’s that vulnerability and more human quality that led us to this part of the universe instead of the more god-like Jedi that LucasArts has explored in the past."

From what's been revealed of the story, you play as a-still-unnamed Bounty Hunter who must travel down into the steely heart of Coruscant, the seat of power for both the Galactic Empire and, much later, the New Republic. Coruscant itself is nothing more than a once vibrant world now consumed by the giant sprawling city that covers the entire planet. Multi-tiered, the rich (and corrupt) live upon the "surface." While the poor, who sometimes spend their entire lives never seeing the sun, live in the deep and the dark. With your partner and mentor, you must venture into this dark, into the seedy underbelly known as Level 1313, doing the jobs that some people are too important, or too cowardly, to do.

"You’re going to see characters motivated and challenged by more mature situations from a thematic point of view," Robilliard says. "We talk a lot about creating a world painted in shades of grey rather than the more explicit black and white, good versus evil explored in the movies. Much of that vibe comes from having characters who are struggling with things which are more relatable to us, and the world we live in....I love every aspect of Star Wars, but being able to investigate something that’s always been in the background but that you’ve never really spent any time in is just awesome.”

Some of the finer details are still up in the air; namely when in the Star Wars canonical timeline the events of the game takes place. LucasArts still isn't talking, but it would be nice to see some cameos from some of the characters who defined the series as a whole. Another point worth noting is that a possible multiplayer component is still drawing up that large and proverbial question mark. But it would be possible, given that previous games in the franchise, namely Star Wars: Battlefront and Battlefront II had them. And yes, though they were done by now defunct Pandemic Studios, it wouldn't be unheard of to have LucasArts to conscript it out to another developer as they have in the past.



Letting Go Your Conscious Self
Being Creative Director to an ambitious project as this, some might be tempted to overstep their boundaries and start meddling in projects that they are ill-suited to tackle. Like writing an ending that makes no sense to the story *cough*. Thankfully, that's not going to happen here. “I think my job…is not to be that game guy who suddenly jumps in and starts writing and directing stuff when I don’t have any experience with that,” Robilliard explains. “The best thing about being at Lucasfilm right now, if I need someone to come in and performance direct our actors in a cutscene, even though I can probably sit here and think 'I can do it,' I’m not going to ruin the product by doing it myself. I’ll go and get our ILM effects team to find an experienced director to come and help out, and we’ll collaborate with him to find out what the best way is to get that cutscene figured out.”

“We just try to keep everyone’s expertise focused in the right place, and I have to kind of edit it and put it all together," he goes on to say. "You have to keep that humble attitude and make sure you’re doing the best thing for the project rather than using it as a vehicle for you to go out and play moviemaker. Ultimately we’re here to make games. All of the people on the team, even though we’re making a cinematic game, everyone is passionate about making an interactive cinematic experience. That’s the goal that we’re chasing. It’s definitely beginning and ending as a game. That’s the most important thing.”

And although Robilliard and his team practice the concepts of humility, they're not above going hilt deep with the ambition. Besides having LucasArts, personnel from Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, and Lucasfilm Animation are all collaborating on making 1313 work. “They’re just as fascinated with doing cool stuff as we are,” Robilliard says of the collaboration so far. “They also have this fascination with real-time. Everything they do has a long render time, so they might take five or six hours to produce a single frame of content at ILM, but we have to do it 30 times per second. So they get this very tactile experience and feedback loop when they’re changing the lighting, the characters, and so on.”

As the team puts on the finishing touches, making sure to cross all their t's and dot their i's on what could be a benchmark entry into the Star Wars series, one has to wonder if taking a triple-A risk is worth taking. After all, a lot of successful small indie games have all but surpassed and, in some cases, overshadowed the larger and more bombastic releases as of late (see: The Walking Dead by Telltale Games). As Creative Director, one would be worried about that right? Not really, according to Robilliard.

"I think that making videogames is about making the right game within your means," he says. "And I think the most awesome thing about indie development - and I’ve worked on small games here at LucasArts, as well, such as the Monkey Island Special Edition titles....is that you have to work within your means to make a game. If those means are small, then you need to use those restrictions to do something creative within them. But the point is that those small indie games can still make a hell of a lot of money, which means we’re actually in a really exciting time. So I don’t think it’s triple-A or bust. I think there’s a huge amount of other stuff that people who want to work in the games industry can still do and still be really successful, and that’s unlike any period that I can remember in the period that I’ve been making games."

Star Wars 1313 is scheduled for a TBD 2013 release date.

Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Platform(s): Mac OS X / Microsoft Windows / PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 / iOS
Genre(s): Single Player / Third Person Point and Click / Action Adventure
Release Dates: Episode 1: April 2012 (July 2012 for iOS) / Episode 2: June-July 2012 / Episode 3: August 2012 / Episode 4: October 2012 / Episode 5: November 2012 / Retail Version: December 11, 2012
Rating(s): ESRB: M / PEGI: 18

What Remains
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans 'round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. - Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

There is but one single, undeniable event in all our lives. On the day, the moment and the second our lungs fill with air, to cry out across the place of our birth, huddled by anxious faces, nervous with worry and hope, with a greeting towards a world still new and unfamiliar to us; it is this moment, when we accept the gift of life, that we must also accept the price of death. That in time, with what is given us, when we must one day stand upon the misty shores of the beyond, to wait gently as the Riverman comes to take us to that place that many have been lost to, only to be found by those who come looking when we pass on, that we did the right thing.

Because, despite our endings, we are, for the most part, not remembered for how we died. But rather, for how we lived. For how we treated our fellow man. For how we left our mark upon the world. We are remembered by those who loved us, those who hated us, those who took from us all of our lessons and put them to use. On how to live, on how to treat their fellow men, on how to leave their mark upon the world. If we do what is intended, the lessons that we've taught will not only better the world, but better the people. For though we are not perfect creatures, striving to do what is right is all that we can hope for. Because hope is all that we have sometimes.

In the fullness of time, when I myself must stand upon those misty shores to cross that shadowed river into the final beyond, I can only hope that I did the right thing. By me, by the people I leave behind, by the world that I once tread underfoot.

I can only hope. And pray.

By then it will be all that I have left.



Oh, My Darlin' Clementine
There's a deepening sadness that seems to settle in the moment you begin your journey in The Walking Dead. A sadness that never seems to let up until the end. An end that is just as powerful as it is tragic, and as beautiful and tender as it is ugly and violent. I cannot think of a story in the last five years that has moved me, on so many emotional levels, as this one has. A story that makes me question every decision that I make, as carefully as I can, considering that some decisions must be made quickly, as there are time limits on certain conversational decisions throughout the game. Once made, you must be willing to live with the consequences. Because there's no going back.

In the game, you play as Lee Everett, a man convicted of murder on his way to prison, once a prominent University professor before the world, before his world, changed forever. For it is in the wreckage of his old life, that Lee's new one will be forged. Through the people that he meets in this new life, through the ones that he must care for the most during those small quiet and brief respites. But more importantly, through you Lee becomes the period at the end of all of the decisions, throughout all the consequences, that comes from them. Through you, he is remembered by those that remain because they become the living testament to how you acted throughout the episodes of his life.

Most important out of all of them, is a small and precious little gem known only as Clementine, a nine year old girl that acts, effectively enough, as Lee's moral compass throughout the game, voiced beautifully by VA actress Melissa Hutchison. Clementine makes the game, the story, the struggles, and the decisions throughout, completely and totally worth the experience. I think it would be a safe bet to say that the game would still be worth it had Clementine somehow never been added, but would the experience have been as emotional, as impactful as it turned out to be? Without question no, no it would not have been.



Through Heaven and Hell

Graphics: 9/10. The game has a very interesting look about it. Parts of it remind you of comic book panels; harsh light and shadow, deep thick borders, this almost "sketchy" design to certain people. As if they're rough draft images brought to animated life. And I don't know why, but visually there's this light whisper in my head that the design almost mimics the look and feel of a Borderlands game; slightly cartoony at times, especially in certain set pieces (cars, weapons, certain buildings, etc). Which seems odd, considering how harsh, brutal, and gory this game can get at times. Yet it meshes well despite all of this. Not perfectly all the time of course, but well enough.

Gameplay: 7/10. Since this is a point and click affair, gameplay takes a certain backseat to storytelling. There are times when the action picks up a little, but even then it's a point and click (or rather up/down/left/right arrow decision in your cross-hairs) affair. HUD is....well...exceptionally minimal. I do find it amazing that Lee can carry a car battery in his "pocket inventory" when he has to, and not be...oh say...weighed down or encumbered in any way. But I'm willing to give the game a certain level of "suspension of disbelief" because it makes up for it with some of the best storytelling I've seen in a video game in quite a long while.

Audio: 9/10. I love the music, the ambiance, the voice and the subtle little quirks throughout. As I've said, Melissa Hutchison as Clementine cements the character, solidifies the story, and makes the game completely and utterly worth every moment. That's not to say the other voice actors are a slouch. Far from it in fact. Dave Fennoy as Lee Everett, Kenny Hammon as Kenny, and Nicole Vigil as as Carley are just some of the memorable characters given heavier gravitas due in no small part to how believable they're made by their respective voice actors.

The music fits the mood and the current moment quite well throughout the game. Be it the tense and life threatening moments when you're trying to fight off everything from the proverbial zombie to the not so expected cannibal nut job, to the quiet and gentle melodies that come with the all too short moments of peace in an otherwise chaotic world.

Story: 10/10. I can honestly say that I haven't had a story move me in so many emotional ways as this one. Anger, disgust, shock, sadness. Genuine and sincere emotions that haven't been touched quite so deeply in a good long while. Anger at the loss of a companion due to the paranoid delusions of another, disgust at the short-sightedness some people display despite the dangers around them, sadness or, more appropriately honest tears, when the long road ends at such a poignant and unforgettable end. Every decision I've made is met and dealt with, and though some may disagree, I felt no real strings were left dangling when the game concluded. Beyond the hint that a sequel might be possible. And that's not a bad thing really.

Customer Care: 8/10. If you do get the game, download it to your hard drive immediately. Do this to avoid the just......totally obnoxious and unnecessary frame rate drops that occur during those key moments in the game. Namely those life and death point-and-clicks that could mean all the difference between moving the story along and reloading and redoing said event. Repeatedly. Otherwise you'll find yourself getting aggravated/frustrated at the game more than you want or wish to. So, fair warning to you guys and gals out there who got the retail on-disc version. Like me.

Final Score: 43/50. Despite some small hiccups now and again, The Walking Dead is a storytelling tour de force. If you haven't experienced it from beginning to end, you're missing out on one of the most poignant, one of the most emotional stories in the last five years of video game storytelling. The Walking Dead will tear you apart emotionally, mentally, spiritually. But in a good way. In a believable and honest way. In a way that some stories should have made you feel, but fell flat on its face due to last minute WTF's that just didn't make sense to the story, or to the universe it exists in, as a whole. This, this right here is how you tell a story. This is how you make believable characters you want to cling to and love and cherish for as long as you can. And more importantly, this is how you make a Game of the Year work. You don't make it louder, you don't make it flashier, you don't make it for you. You make it for others. You make it for them. For the fans. More importantly, you make it honest. And that's not just a sign of a great developer. It's the sign of a great game.

Beyond what is said, I want to thank everyone for their support over the last few days. The last few months have not been easy. They have been the hardest of my life so far, and to know that there are people out there wishing me well, hoping and praying for me and my family during these trying times is extremely humbling and heartfelt. I thank you all for this. For helping me stand up when all I wanted to do is feel down. You are all the reason I need to continue on. To fight. To do my best despite the setbacks. And it's because of you, all of you, that I'm here now doing it. So thank you. Thank you all, so very, very much.

Wastelander75.

Paradise Lost
Banoi. Paradise Damned. You had thought, when you took steely wing to escape this unliving hell, that it would be the last. That you would simply ride off into the quiet night to await the even quieter dawn, and simply be thankful that you are alive. But fate, apparently, has other plans. During your escape, as you traveled across stormy seas and blackened skies, your fleeting hope was cut short. Far from the security of the living world, you find yourself crashed upon Palanai, an island near the archipelago of Banoi.

And its resplendent beauty, its natural wonder, is marred only by its ugliness. By death. By its dead. By the Undead. And as tired as you are, as beaten down by the world as you've become by the events of the past, you must fight on. If not for yourself, then for the people who share your fate. For the people who are, much like yourself, trapped upon this Paradise Lost.

Being a hero is never easy.

And apparently never ending.



Dead Stop
Welcome back to the zombie apocalypse. From what's been revealed about the sequel to Deep Silver's somewhat creative take on the survival horror/open world zombie genre, Dead Island: Riptide takes place almost minutes after the original ending. "The narration will pick up exactly where we have left our heroes the last time, in Dead Island," explains Creative Producer Sebastian Reichert. "Just when they thought they were saved… they're proven wrong," he goes on to say with a small grin. "Over the course of the game we will also learn more about the backstory [of] why this all happened and who’s behind it. From the feedback we received, what really represents the 'Dead Island experience' are [those] “water cooler moments” about the player and his actions in co-op play and the game world."

In a somewhat creative approach (and a reason why you really should play the first game in the first place), players who wish to can import their previous characters into the sequel to start off on a higher level (though not topped out, Reichert says) as you struggle to survive new and old perils across the island. However, for those new to the series, players can choose to start fresh with the original four heroes or opt to go completely new with the game's introduction of John Morgan, an ex-US Navy SEAL on vacation when the outbreak happened. John's very existence, Reichert says, owes a lot to the creative approach some players took to the original game's PC toolset. "You might remember, when we released Dead Island on Steam the first version still had the debug options in it," he says. "So some fans had the idea of tweaking around with the values and creating new versions. One, which became a big hit, was 'Fist of the Dead Star,'" he laughs. "They put the French title song of the anime series Fist of the North Star from the original '80s anime and let the character run around punching zombies. The character had something like 2 million damage points to a punch, so when they hit a zombie it flew away very far, heads exploding instantaneously. I was so amazed that we thought, ‘Well, if the fans like it so much, and we do too, why shouldn’t we do it?’ Of course, we don’t go completely bonkers. It still all fits into the game. But John Morgan is very much inspired by '80s martial arts action."

New elements in the sequel will implement a dynamic weather system; something that can either help or hinder a player along the game's story. "The weather conditions will give us another subtle tool to play with the atmosphere and mood the player has to deal with," Reichert says. "Players often don't actively realize it, but they might return to an area and notice that the atmosphere is horribly tense. We love how we can subtly adjust the weather, but we can also throw a dreadful storm in there, causing the view distance to decrease because the whole screen is enveloped in water basically. And that's the peak of the tension, because you'll be having to work out whether you're looking at a zombie or a tree. That's when it gets very interesting."



Lake of the Dead
One point that Techland and Deep Silver took to heart was the lackluster appeal to the original game's first (and currently only known) DLC offering known as Ryder White, a DLC that eschewed the four player co-op fest that was the highlight of the first game and instead focused on telling a single-player story. Fans were.....less than welcoming of that change. That's NOT something that Reichert and the team plan on revisiting in the sequel. "[Ryder] showed us clearly that the DLC digressed too much from the concept of Dead Island," he says. In [the DLC] we did exactly the opposite to the main game: single player, story driven, linear levels. We learned that removing the open world multiplayer experience from the game experience is like taking out the zombies."

In fact, to support the ideal of co-op gameplay, Riptide will introduce players to occasional "Base Defense" moments in the game. "Defending a house like in a classic zombie movie brings a whole new experience to the table. And the possibilities in multiplayer are a hell load of fun," Reichert says with a chuckle. To help do this, players who go at it alone will get occasional AI back-up to help during these moments. Just don't expect to have the other original heroes lending a hand during these moments. "The heroes are more efficient, while other survivors can fight and will fight, but they're not as efficient as the heroes. And of course, they are the guys that you protect the most during defense missions," he says. "It was important to us to still remove the other characters, because if you're not in a defense mission, there won't be other characters because one of the risks would be having a guy running around that is blocking you, hindering you and using your equipment, so we said no [to having AI allies throughout]. The first game worked this way and players will understand that it's better to give them no AI help than bad AI help."

With the recent explosion in zombie-based storytelling being spearheaded by the likes of Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead" TV series, Reichert wasn't shy in explaining that the sequel took some cues from the series, yet still tries to maintain its own thing. "There are definitely some things we take away from The Walking Dead," he says. "The atmosphere in that is very interesting, for example. The thing I like about that show is that the conflict is really between humans, and zombies simply provide the background. We took a little bit of inspiration from that, but not too much because the game is very much about hacking and slashing zombies. There was something about the mood the TV show presented that we liked."

One key feature that Riptide will tweak somewhat exponentially will be the gunplay that gamers felt was lacking in the original. "One of the criticisms was that even when you had guns, they weren't powerful enough," he says. "So we've adjusted the gun gameplay to ensure that the guns have the punch and impact that you'd expect. A weapon that is so rare, shouldn't be so weak. We've tweaked that a lot, and they now appear more often. We took our time, made sure the guns are cooler, and that they can be used more often." However Reichert was quick to say that, "We essentially keep the focus upon close-quarters combat and ammunition will still be restricted. It's a very true observation to say that we will have more gunplay in Riptide, but we don't want to shift the focus."

Can fans expect newer enemies in the sequel? Yes, but nothing that would be considered out of place in the fiction of the game of course. "We want to stay humanoid," Reichert says. "The Ram is still the biggest enemy and we don't want to go with tentacled mutants. We're tempted, but we don't want to break the cardinal rules of the zombie fiction. Bigger is sometimes cool, so we've thought about how we can do something more drastic, but we don't want to remove the human shape, as that's something very important. Maybe in the future we might think about animals, because then we could go a lot bigger, yet the shape would still be recognizable, like a zombie bear [for example]."

Fantastic. Zombie bears. Where'd I put my shotgun?

Dead Island: Riptide is on track for an April 2013 release date.

Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Platforms: Microsoft Windows / Xbox 360 / PS3
Released: June 25, 2010 (EU) / June 29, 2010 (NA)
Genre: First Person Shooter / Survival Horror
Rating(s): ESRB: M / PEGI: 18+

Time and Tide
“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future.
Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now.
We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it;
and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.” ~ George Harrison

They say that time is a river. A raging beast that twists and turns across an entire universe. It permeates through every aspect of our lives. We measure it, only to find that we do not have enough. We ignore it, only to find that we have too much. We draw inspiration from it, and yet forget the important lessons that it teaches. This galactic deluge sweeps away all things; sight and sound. Empires and people. Sorrow and Memory. And as much as we dream to, we've yet to change it. To be able to swim against the current, back to the beginning. Back into the past. That is its power. To prevent change, while enacting it all the same. And one wonders what chaos becomes of time should man one day learn to swim upstream. To venture into history. To change the unchangeable. If even by one second, man must ponder the ramifications of such an act. To push someone away from danger, to fire a weapon against some rising tyrant, to save someone from inevitable death.

Like dominoes falling, pillars of the past are suddenly broken away and the present, even the future you once expected, are suddenly altered. Those subtle, subtle shifts in the galactic torrent. One must wonder of the events that would happen if a man, if a tyrant, was expected to fall. And you saved him.

What world would we create because of this? And how do you answer the timeless question of this personal folly?

Dear God, What have you done?



Does This Look Infected To You?
What an interesting little title this Singularity. At best I consider it a hybrid, at worst I consider it a slightly flawed diamond in the rough. It's equal parts shooter, equal parts survival horror, equal parts buggy, and equal parts frustrating. Why frustrating? Well, we'll get to that in a minute. But let's take a look at the backstory for a moment shall we?

In the game you play as Captain Nathan Renko, an American soldier sent to the supposedly deserted island of Katorga-12 after an unknown energy discharge disables a spy satellite when it makes a fly-by of the area. Before you get there however, your copter is hit by an unknown EMP pulse and you crash land on its decrepit, garbage strewn beaches. After doing some exploring, you find out that Katorga-12 is a secret Russian testing facility for the mysterious element they call Einsteinium-99 (E-99 for short), which only seems to be available on said island. From various audio tapes, movie projector entries, and scattered notes found scattered across the facility, E-99 is highly radioactive and, in worse case scenarios, highly mutagenic when someone's put in direct exposure to it.

What E-99 also does is allow for the manipulation of space and time. Which apparently the Russians were experimenting with prior to your arrival. Only just not recently. But rather, several decades prior to the start of the game. Still with me here? Yeah it can get a little confusing at times. Mainly because as you progress across the island you sometimes hit pockets of distorted time. One of which, at the start of the game, sets in motion the entire storyline. One act of kindness, it seems, doesn't always equate to a better planet.

Eventually, you come across the single best tool in the game, the Time Manipulation Device. This little toy is both a weapon and a puzzle solver as you traverse across the various parts of the facility on your way to correct past mistakes and hopefully get out of here alive. The TMD can be used to "reverse" parts of the environment; meaning that if you come across a collapsed bridge, for example, you can manipulate the time around it to "rebuild" it. Certain enemies can also be affected by the TMD in that you can rapidly age them to the point that they turn into dust. Especially handy when you're low on bullets. Or you just want to watch someone go from potentially dangerous adversary to bag of bones in less than five seconds.

Another aspect that I found personally addicting was the ability to augment certain abilities and weapons after collecting enough E-99 related items and using one of the various power stations scattered across the game. You can upgrade all sorts of things here, be it the magazine size of your weapons, damage output, effective range, and so on and so forth. It's almost RPG-ish in that fashion and I found it a creative, if limited, use of both a collection metric and RPG vignettes in a hybrid FPS survival horror game.



Spiders. Why Does It Always Have To Be Giant Mutant Spiders?
Graphics: 6/10.The game does an adequate job of utilizing the UE3 engine to make the environments and the people look pretty enough. Though there are some texture pop-up problems from time to time. There are also some clipping issues (I could see mutated arms passing through certain walls on some levels), and the occasional graphical sputter when new areas load up (which then ties into the texture pop-up issues).

Gameplay: 6/10. The shooting mechanic is solid enough, and the utilization of the TMD powers later on are a blast to do. The puzzle elements are easy to overcome and sometimes just, well, a little too simplistic in design (i.e. broken staircase, leading to upper level. Hmm, let's see, rewind time, fix said staircase, puzzle solved). The boss fights can get a little heavy at times though (giant mutant spider + train ride = frustration city).

Enemy behavior, or more specifically the human-based enemies, can be a little.......special. And when I mean special, I mean really, really dumb. There were times when they'd be shooting at me and I realized they really weren't hitting anything. It was more like they were shooting NEAR me without doing anything but making it look tense. Plus they seem to be somewhat lazy. I remember one part where I turn a corner in a hallway, and there two stood....just looking at me. They didn't start shooting at me until I shot at them. And when I backtracked to take cover, well, you'd expect them to at least come after me, or at the very least take some kind of cover. Nope. They just stood there, shooting blindly until I popped back around and finished them off. Immersive-breaking? Yes. Game-breaking. Eh, sort of but not really.

Audio: 8/10. The music does a good job of setting the mood, and the voicework is good. The weapons and powers sound different and unique from one another. From the light pop of the pistol, to the thundering boom of a crowd scattering shotgun, the game is actually quite good in this department. So I have to give it credit there. Is there anything that sound incredible? Not really, but it's not bad either.

Story: 8/10. While it does get a little serious at times, it can get a bit hammy. I do like the neat twist at the beginning that starts it all off. Coupled with the grey area morality (best point: the end), you really don't get the sense that the game is this clear-cut good vs. evil, making all the right decisions to ride off into the sunset as the hero of the century kind of game. I happen to like that in my games.

Customer Care: 3/10. I don't know of any post or in-game DLC that accompanied the game. Which is a shame, I'd of loved to experience more in-game content along the way. But from my understanding, the game didn't live up to expectations and didn't garner enough support from Activision to get any. Plus, the multiplayer is vapid, if not just downright borderline wasted here. A shame, but at least the game is solid in places well enough to make it enjoyable enough. Also it should be noted that the game has, for whatever reason, frozen on me five times, mostly during the slow down sputter when graphical elements are loading up. Luckily though, it's generally after the point where it's saved progress, so nothing was really lost during these experiences. I just wish I didn't have to experience it.

Final Score: 31/50. Singularity is, well, it's not perfect, but it is a rather creative title all the same. Barring the texture problems, clipping issues, the extremely poor human enemy AI, loading slow down, game freezes and somewhat (note: somewhat) frustrating difficulty at times, Singularity is still what I'd call a diamond in the rough. Your mileage may vary, but I still enjoyed the title all the same. Mainly because it wasn't a corridor shooter with limited character growth. My recommendation is rent before buying, though it is rather cheap to own at this point (roughly ten bucks online). So take that as you will.