Whether or not nudity should be in video games could be endlessly debated and it will still come down to personal opinions (myself, I don’t see any reason for it). What can be legitimately argued is that it hurts a game’s sales to contain it. Nudity alienates a large group of buyers that either can’t or won’t purchase the game because of it.

Walk into any high school or middle school and it will quickly become obvious that under-aged gamers play titles rated M (must be over 17 years old). Countless students will be chatting about Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto. Many parents out there feel their children can handle a mature game, and they may well be right. They believe their children are fine with the violence since it really isn’t any worse than what you will find on cable TV. The language doesn’t bother many parents since they are aware that children have heard every bad word once a day on the playground by the time they are in third grade. I have met many of these parents who will tell their children they can’t play a game with nudity. A company will immediately lose sales from these parents no matter how good the game is. On the other hand, never once has anyone said, “Yeah, that game looks good, but I won’t buy it unless it has some naked people.”

I’m not saying nudity has no place in gaming at all. Just like movies, it can add to the emotion of a scene. Consider 300; there are a couple of scenes of nudity in that, but it was done from a very artistic and emotional perspective (and used natural women that didn’t pay more on cosmetic surgery than I paid for my truck, but that’s a whole different subject). The same can be said about Mass Effect; a game that got quite a bit of publicity for it’s sex scene. Gamers that actually saw it can tell you that it was a love scene that respectfully cut away before any of the sex began. Depending on the player, all that was shown was either a guy’s or girl’s butt; nothing over the top. Chances are that an immature player that wouldn’t understand the love aspect of the scene won’t play through a game like Mass Effect anyway. On the other end of the spectrum are movies like Under Siege (I know it’s old, but it’s a perfect example) where they hired a Playboy Playmate to pop out of a cake topless in her first major scene. Even when I saw this movie in middle school, I had to wonder how that was necessary. A good game example of this is Conan. Topless women are scattered throughout the game and have nothing to do with the story in any way. I am aware this is part of the Conan mythos, but they could have put the girls in leather bikinis and gotten the same exact point across. Actually they could have been left out since they really have no purpose or reason for being in there. I can’t tell you how many people look at that game box and say something along the lines of, “Nudity? Really? That seems dumb. What other games are out now?” I myself rented it and found that it was very good game, but I didn’t buy the game simply because of the unnecessary topless women. Further proof can be found in the stores. I recently was digging through the Walmart bargain bin and saw Conan for less than twenty dollars. It was the only game less than two years old in the bin and many other, older games are still selling for forty dollars or more.

I know major companies don’t consider morals when creating games, but making money will be a factor behind most major decisions. There is no question about it, nudity will hurt a game’s sales. When it is going to be included in a game, developer needs to really take a step back and think if it is needed. There may be situations when it will be good for a scene, but in most cases, a game will be better off without it. Unnecessary nudity may sell a couple more copies at first, but you will lose far more in the long run, including the respect of more mature gamers.

Welcome to the Call of Duty off-year. Two different developers switch off making the series and this year’s, Treyarch, has earned the title of ‘the other Call of Duty guys.’ That doesn’t mean their games are bad; they are still quite fun. It just means they don’t have the same wow factor as the far superior Infinity Ward does.

World at War plays like a direct sequel to Call of Duty 3 (which makes sense since that was Treyarch’s last CoD game). The series goes back to World War II and playing through that conflict is beginning to get a little stale. There is a beach landing scene that is insanely intense and ends with your character swimming underwater in slow motion while bullets streak by and you allies get shot up. It would have been a really epic scene if it was an almost exact duplicate of the beach scene from Call of Duty 2. One part of the game takes place during a campaign that starts in Stalingrad and ends in Berlin while the other part takes place in Japan. The Japanese sections help add some variety since that side of the war isn’t portrayed very often in games.

The game plays exactly like the rest of the series. So much so that the developers didn’t even include a tutorial. They just expect you to know how to play already. Basically, they are saying, “We hope you haven’t played any other shooters since Modern Warfare, or else you’re going to be confused.” It’s still fun and exactly what you expect from the series, although each new game is even shorter than the last; this on can be completed in under five hours. At this rate, the tenth Call of Duty game will be over in about an hour. What makes this worse is that a few of the levels are artificially lengthened by repetition. For example, one mission sends you through several similar looking underground trenches and you must destroy three mortar emplacements that look exactly the same. It is incredibly disappointing to see things repeated in a game that is so ridiculously short.

Although I had quite a bit of bad things to say about the game, I still had a blast playing it. The action stays intense throughout. There are several highlights, like a mission that puts you inside a plane and makes you run from one gun turret to another while defending your aircraft from all sides. The final mission (without giving too much away) takes place in large room that is constantly being flooded with an impressive amount of enemies. This was probably my favorite level in the series so far. The game definitely continues to build torward the end and doesn’t have it’s best levels half way through the way many other games do.

The graphics are excellent. Everything looks almost real and characters react realistically when under attack. While the sound is good, some of your allies talk way too much, especially early on. The fourth level is a sniper mission where your spotter never stops talking. The entire time, I was just waiting for him to give away our position because he was so loud and wouldn’t shut up. Near the end of the mission, the Germans are shooting flamethrowers through the windows and the only clear spot is along the floor. After about ten seconds of this going on, your spotter yells, “They’ve spotted us! They’re trying to burn us out! We need to crawl along the floor!” Thanks, Sherlock.

Many people have heard about the zombie mode that is unlocked after finishing the game. At the end of the credits, there is a respectful quote about World War II veterans that is immediately followed by ‘Nazi Zombies’ being plastered on the screen in red. Honestly, I have to say that this mode is completely unnecessary. This is a serious game about a real life conflict and zombies have no place in it. It is borderline disrespectful. The mode is kind of fun, but if I wanted some co-op zombie action, I would play Left 4 Dead. At least there you don’t need to play through the whole game before you are allowed to fight zombies.

World at War may be a step backward from Modern Warfare, but it is still fun. The game is more of the non-stop action we have come to expect from the series. Just don’t expect the revolutionary gameplay that we got from the last title in the series.

Nothing says laziness like creating a game that doesn’t have a single player experience. I’m not talking about MMOs like World of Warcraft or Warhammer; those can be played solo if a person prefers. I’m talking about making a shooter that is multiplayer only. It is a pathetic cash-in attempt that should not be encouraged by consumers on any level.

There are many games out there that were designed with multiplayer as the main draw; Halo, Ghost Recon, and Rainbow Six to name a few. Even though the idea behind each started with online play, that didn’t stop the developers from putting together a single player campaign (and in some cases, a great solo experience). For SOCOM to drop any kind of single player is one of the laziest movies I have ever seen in gaming, next only to Shadow Run being not just online only, but making it have nothing to do with it’s source material in any way. Even if I didn’t mind the lack of solo play, the developers didn’t advance on the PS2 version other than giving it a next gen face lift. Even that ‘praise’ might be pushing it. Rarely have I seen such a bland, dull looking game. Nothing was done to improve the gameplay that was already getting stale in 2003 on a last gen system.

There is an insane amount of work that goes into a single player campaign and that is what we should have come to expect for our money. Writers must be employed to craft a story that at least justifies the action. Far more single player maps need to be constructed than multiplayer ones because in a solo campaign, there is constant progression forward instead of repeated play on the same area. Several different enemy models must be crafted to keep the variety up and the AI needs to be balanced to keep the game a challenge while not making it a breeze. These aren’t things needed to make a good game; they are what should be expected of any title released. To make a multiplayer-only shooter, all you need to do is grab the framework from any other game, throw together a half a dozen maps, and slap on a character creator. These points should be bullets under the game’s features, not a complete description of the game itself.

Had this game sold for ten bucks, I would have felt very differently. Almost every budget title out now not only has multiplayer that is equal or better than what is found in SOCOM, but they at least make an attempt at pleasing the single player crowd. I can’t think of a more disreputable way of trying to con gamers out of forty dollars.

Even though there wasn’t a new movie to base this game on, it is clear that this is a continuation of the series. It takes place in the comic book universe and the story is not related to the movies, but it plays very much like Spider-man 3. This is both good and bad, since the last game got mixed reviews as well.

The action is very straightforward, which many will like while others may get bored. The majority of the battles will take place on the ground and can be won just by repeatedly pressing the attack button. Anyone that plays this way will not be getting the most out of it, though. It’s better to try out all of the game’s combos to see how many different ways you can dispatch your enemies. This will actually make the game more difficult than simply button mashing, but it will also be much more fun. The aerial fights take a bit more finesse, since you must keep using your web on the enemies to stay in the air while also attacking them when you get close. Even these fights can get repetitive once you get a good rhythm down, but there are always new moves to try out to spice it up. Another area with it’s own moves is the side of a building. There is a smaller move set, the camera is too close, and judging distances between you and the enemy is difficult. It’s for these reasons that I avoided fighting on walls as much as possible, but it was rather annoying in the cases where I had to do it. Web-swinging around the city that was made popular by the last couple games is still as fun and seamless as ever.

The mission breakdown is possibly the games weakest point. Most every mission chain follows the same pattern. You start by having to either go defeat a enemy, destroy a target, or save a group of people. Once you complete this objective and return to the person that gave you the mission, they then basically tell you, “Good work. Now go do it three times.” After you finish that, you are then asked to do it again five times, then ten. Most of these missions are optional, but you still must do a good number of them to progress through the game. Many boss battles follow this same repetition. After doing a set amount of damage to them, many will flee through the city and force you to follow them while sending enemies to attack you. Some will run away from you up to five times and the battle can become quite tedious. This makes the game last a while longer than many other action titles (I finished in around ten hours) but it was definitely artificially extended by repetition.

My absolute favorite aspect of the game is the way it handles the black suit. During the tutorial sequence, you have a battle with Venom in which you gain the ability to use it whenever you want. With a quick button press, you can switch to it. It is so seamless that you can even switch between suits in the middle of a combo. Past games with the black suit balanced it with the regular suit so that neither really had an advantage over the other. In this game, the black suit is devastating. Since there are consequences to using it, you actually experience the same dilemma that Spider-man goes through when deciding if he wants to keep it or not. There are multiple endings based both on the moral choices you make and how much you used each suit. Since you can actually become a very bad person if you let the suit take over, the game does an excellent job of showing what would have happened to Spider-man in the movies or comics if he didn’t eventually get rid of it.

Regardless of which suit you choose, experience is earned from battles that can upgrade the abilities of each (or both if you take the time to earn enough exp). New combos are added, different attacks can be unlocked, and damaging finishing moves are learned. I would have preferred if there was either more to unlock, or it was harder to get each new upgrade because I had both suits maxed out and I didn’t even do all of the optional missions. In addition to spending experience on upgrades, you also can search for hidden spider symbols to increase your health, special ability meter, and web swing speed. Higher levels need so many symbols to increase and the difference is so minimal that I didn’t spend much time looking to level up after too long.

Although the beginning of the game is a bit bland, once the story gets going, it is quite entertaining. It can be a little confusing since it isn’t clear at what point in Spider-man’s history this game takes place. His identity is still a secret, so it is not up to date with the comics. Only Mary Jane and Venom know who he is. It also isn’t clear if Spider-man is either dating or just friends with MJ. The story begins during a typical fight with Venom. During the battle, pieces of Venom’s suit jump off and spread around the city. Par of it also fuses with Spider-man, giving him the black suit (apparently again, since several people mention that he has had it before). The symbiote from the suit eventually takes over most of the city and it’s people. It is a very epic tale that brings in many Marvel regulars, like Moon Knight, Wolverine, Luke Cage, Kingpin, and many more. The final of the three acts actually has a strong feel of a zombie movie around it and is fairly impressive.

The game looks mediocre. When standing on a building, it is impressive how far you can see across the building, but nothing looks particularly detailed up close. At the beginning of the game, the voice acting is terrible. Spiderman does nothing but whine and moan in the most pathetic fashion (worse than in the movies, believe it or not). As time goes on, it gets better and is even halfway decent by the end of the game. There are a ton of graphical glitches and clipping problems. Enemies can be knocked through buildings or the ground and will get stuck from time to time. Spider-man will clip through buildings or the ground constantly as well. I normally am not bothered by low frame-rates, but it gets a bit ridiculous when swinging through the city at high speeds. I would say there are actually times when you see less than five frames per second, especially late in the game. There were even four different occasions when the mission I was on completely broke; either the next wave of enemies never appeared or a person I was supposed to save was stuck inside of a wall. This forced me to reload the game and start the mission over. These kind of problems were almost expected in the last Spider-man games (excluding Friend or Foe) since the were forced to stick with release dates that were around the movie releases, but there is no reason that this game couldn’t have been pushed back a little to fix these issues.

Web of Shadows is a good game. The repetitive missions will prevent it from being a classic, but there is still some good fun to be had. If you go in expecting it’s problems, you will be prepared for a great time.

Take everything you know about Far Cry and throw it out the window. This story has no relation to the first game. The feral abilities are gone. Instead of different levels, this game uses an open world environment. There wasn’t really any reason to actually call this Far Cry 2, but that doesn’t stop it from being a good game. Just be prepared for a very different experience.

The gameplay actually has far more in common with Fallout 3 than it does the original title. It is definitely an action game and not an RPG, but the basics are much the same. After the opening tutorial sequence, you are thrust into an open world and can go anywhere you like. At first, this can be a little daunting because the game doesn’t give you much direction. Tasks can be received by a number of different people that will reward you with information, assistance, or diamonds (the currency of the game). Most of the missions play out much the same, with only one of three different objectives in most scenarios: kill a person, destroy a target, or get an item. Most of these objectives are located quite a ways from where the mission starts, and you probably will end up driving to your destination. This is one aspect that may impress some people and disappoint others. You will be driving more than shooting in this game. The average mission takes around fifteen minutes. Five of those minutes will be driving to the location, five will be fighting the enemy at the objective, and five will be driving back to the person that gave you the mission. This got particularly annoying when I wrecked my car or got it stuck between two rocks. I then had to walk to my destination or hope to stumble across a new car. There are bus stops around the map that allow you to fast travel, but not very many and their locations aren’t the most convenient. The vehicles controls are very good. They strike a good balance between fun and realism. It feels like you are really driving the vehicles, but you will never have to fight against the controls to keep the car on the road at high speeds. Far Cry 2 is also an incredibly long game, especially considering that it is a first-person shooter. Most of the time these games can be finished in under seven hours, but this one can last anywhere from twenty five to fifty hours, depending on how many side missions you attempt. There are multiple difficulties that further extend replay value.

Traveling around the map in the game is brilliantly implemented. At anytime, whether walking or driving, you can pull up you map. If you are moving, the map is lower partially so you can see where you are going but is raised back to full view when you stop. Like many other games, there is a compass on the bottom corner that shows you which direction your objective is. Also like many other games, there are sign posts at intersections that tell you which direction points of interest are. Unlike other games, instead of having to slow down to read these signs, the one pointing to your destination will be colored while all others will be white. This makes it extremely easy to get around at high speeds without getting lost. My only gripe with the map would be that you cannot set your own markers. This means when you aren’t on a mission, getting where you want to go will mean constantly checking your map to make sure you’re heading in the right direction. This is a minor issue, so otherwise, travel is a breeze.

In the beginning, you start with four basic weapons: a machete, pistol, assault rifle, and rocket launcher. As you perform missions for the weapons dealer, many more will become available. Once a weapon is purchased, an unlimited number can be found in your armory. Upgrades can be purchased for each weapon or other areas, such as camouflage or your ability to repair vehicles. This was the driving force behind the game for me. I didn’t care about the story or completing missions. My main goal was to earn diamonds to buy all the weapons and upgrades.

The graphics are probably the best I have seen on the next generation consoles so far. The envoirnment looks like a real jungle with extremely realistic trees and grass. Each vehicle is intricately detailed, both inside and out. They will even gather mud the longer you drive them around. Although you do hear tons of birds and animals in the environment, you don’t see many, which makes the land feel empty and unrealistic at times. The character models aren’t the game’s strongest aspect, but they look just as good as most other games. There are tons of little things that add to the experience. For example when a NPC hands you an item, in most games they would reach out and the item would disappear from their hand. In Far Cry 2, you will see your character’s arm take the item. I was a little disappointed at how little effect you actually have on your surroundings. Bushes and grass don’t move as you walk through them. In lakes or streams, it is clear that the animations for splashes or ripples are playing on top of them and the water itself isn’t affected. All things considered, though, this game is still a treat to experience.

Although there isn’t really anything wrong with the game, nothing really made it stand out. All of the characters are generic stereotypes that you would expect to find in a diamond-mining third world country. There are the mercenaries (of which you are one) who are motivated only by money and don’t particularly care who they are fighting for. Then of course you must have the rebels who want to drive out the foreigners. Everyone else that would be expected is there, from corrupt police to the brutal militia that just wants to shoot at anyone they can. The only person with any real personality is the main enemy, an arms dealer known as “The Jackal.” This makes it hard to dislike him, especially if you’ve seen movies like “Lord of War.” In addition to the characters being bland, the missions aren’t very exciting either. There aren’t many large areas and most missions sent you to a small group of run down shacks with ten to fifteen enemies guarding them. Most tasks break down to shooting a straight line to your objective then running back out. Even the destruction missions end poorly because just as your target begins to explode, a menu immediately pops up on the screen to let you know you completed the task and breaks up the action. Thanks, the gigantic explosion wasn’t obvious enough. I also never understood why the militia always shoots as soon as they spot you. In the opening scene, you drive right past them, but after the game starts, you become public enemy number one for no apparent reason. Even after you kill enough of them to be perceived as a reasonable enemy, they still open fire long before they would be able to recognize you.

Although I had fun playing Far Cry 2, it is also important to note that once I turned the game off, I didn’t feel it dragging me back. It’s a very well done game; there’s no doubt about that. It is probably a good idea to rent this one first. Many people will love it from beginning to end while others may not like all the driving or sparse action moments.

Three words best describe this title: shortest game ever. I was done with it in four hours and once complete, there isn’t a whole lot left to do. To the game’s credit, the action is awesome and intense, but this doesn’t even begin to make up for the short length.

The action is a solid mix between a brawler and a shooter. The fighting sequences are fun, but can get repetitive. There is a light and heavy attack and they can be combined into several different three-hit combos. The block button can be used to defend against every incoming melee attack, so it is possible to win nearly every fight on the first try with enough patience. Boss fights are a bit more difficult, but only because they block your attack more than other enemies do. Every time you connect an attack, an adrenaline meter on the bottom of the screen fills up. As this fills, you can perform up to three takedowns on enemies. Against a normal enemy, these are instant kills. Against bosses, they do significantly more damage than a normal attack. These takedowns can be performed near most objects in the environment to use them against your enemy, like smashing their head into a jukebox or throwing them through a coffee table. While the combos do get old after a while, it is always fun to find different items around the level to use against your foe. The shooting in the game isn’t much different than in other games, but the the ability to use your Bourne Instinct spices it up a bit. Pressing this button sends the world into black and white but anything of interest is left in color, including enemies, weapons, explosive objects that can be shot, or hidden items. It also highlights how to get to your objective on the mini-map in case you are lost. You have unlimited use of the Bourne Instinct and it can be used constantly. The only issue I had with it was that it would automatically zoom to the nearest target upon use. Sometimes it would spin me around to look at a propane tank behind me when I really wanted to see what was hiding in front of me. If your adrenaline meter has enough saved up, you can also perform shooting takedowns when enemies are present. All the takedowns, shooting or melee, are fairly cinematic and look very good. When performing one on more than one enemy at a time, there is a timed button press segment that keeps the intensity of the moment up. One other problem I had with the controls; the game wouldn’t let me take cover behind an object or open a door until the animation for moving was completed and this left me open to attack a few times. Other than this, the controls work very well. To mix things up a little more is the car chase scene. It’s a fun segment and the controls are decent, but it is immediately obvious that this isn’t a racing game.

The boss battles stand out as one of the games best parts. The scenes from the movie are recreated and extended perfectly. The hand to hand fight in Bourne’s apartment is awesome, all the way down to actually having the chance to stab your enemy in the hand with a pen. The fight against the sniper out at the country home is the best scene in the game. Just like the movie, all you have to work with is a shotgun and you must blow up different objects to provide cover for yourself while you make your way to the enemy. There is even a timed button press segment where you look at yourself through the sniper’s scope and must evade his shots. The high level of quality and fun behind all the boss battles makes the final one that much more disappointing. Not only was the fight itself lame, but it didn’t even fit in with the story. After the final action scene in the movie, another assassin kills the man that set Bourne up. In the game, Bourne goes after the killer for no apparent reason. At first he says it is to find out who sent him, but then you kill the assassin without talking to him and the game ends. The fight itself is actually easier than a shoot-out against a normal enemy. You shoot him once and he runs further away. Chase after him four times or so, shoot him once each time and you win.

The game takes place during the first movie, The Bourne Identity, but throws in a few flashbacks of past missions, including the entire assassination attempt against Wombosi that leads to his amnesia. None of the actors from the movie are in the game but the replacements are worthy and don’t hurt the flow of the story. It seems strange that the game only covers the first movie’s time frame since the three books and movies have been out for so long now. With the extreme short length of the game, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for us to expect the entire trilogy in one game. This would have made the final time clock in around ten hours, which is what I feel the minimum should be for an action game to be worth my money. While some scenes are shortened or skipped over, enough of the story is intact for the plot to flow well and you don’t really miss much.

The developer’s attempt at creating some replay value falls short. There are three difficulty levels, but I played the first two and didn’t notice much of a difference. There are passports hidden through each level, but the side rooms and secret niches where they are located are easily spotted on your mini-map, and it won’t really take more than one or two playthroughs to find them all if you are really looking. The awards and achievements don’t help much either. Every one of them can be earned during the course of two playthroughs. Anyway you look at it, there is nothing that you can do with this game that can’t be finished in half a rental period.

The in game graphics are very impressive. Everything looks great and most of the environment is destructible, both when being shot at or having an enemy thrown into it. The rain effects in some of the missions are the best I have seen in a game. The enemies look good, but there is a very small number of character models. In the first level alone, you will fight the same guy nearly a dozen times. While the in game graphics look very good, the cutscenes look terrible. The CGI itself is good, but the scenes are intentionally made grainy for some unknown reason and just look bad.

I did very much enjoy the game. The action is honestly some of the best I have seen in a third person shooter in a long time and the game itself is incredibly polished and glitch free. My only major issue is the incredibly short length. You could buy the whole Bourne movie trilogy for half the price and get twice the time out of them. Four hours of gameplay is just not acceptable.

Very few racing games can combine arcade and simulation gameplay successfully, but this game pulls it off. It isn’t perfect and made a few questionable design decisions, but it is still one of the best racing games I have played in a long time. It starts off a bit generic, but as more time passed, it really grew on me.

Edge of Control is the perfect title for the game. The entire time, you are right on the brink of loosing it, but actually flying off the track doesn’t happen unless you make a mistake. The other racers in the beginning of the career are bad enough to ease you into the gameplay but it doesn’t take long before they really start to challenge you, even on the easy difficulty setting. There is rarely a time when you can just keep the gas down and you must keep a fine balance between the regular brake and the handbrake. A technique that must be mastered in order to earn victory is the use of the clutch. When at low speeds, pressing the clutch will rev the engine up. Releasing it will give you a slight but effective speed boost. Naturally, this is very bad for the clutch and it will wear down after continuous use. Even in the rare event that I got a good lead on the rest of the pack, the game was still non-stop excitement because of how much you have to concentrate on keeping the truck on the track.

The AI is, hands down, the best I have ever seen in a racing game. I don’t mean the best drivers, but the most realistic. On their website, the developers make a point to say that they made sure all the rules that apply to you in the game also apply to your AI opposition, and it clearly shows. They make just as many mistakes as you will. They don’t drive better and faster when you get in first like many other games do, but they also are good enough that you won’t win by massive margins once you get good. Many other games will have that driver from time to time that cannot be beaten. I almost thought this game did that in one particular race. I fought as hard as I could the entire time to catch one particular racer. We were coming to the last turn and I was about to be annoyed when suddenly, he took the turn a bit too wide, over corrected, and slid to a stop in the middle of the track. Seeing the computer make colossal mistakes like this on occasion really makes the game much more fun.

There game strikes an awkward balance between simulation and arcade. The damage system is incredibly detailed: tires wear down, vehicles overheat, the clutch burns out, shocks go bad, and tires go flat. When these things happen, all that you need to do is pull into the repair area and wait a few seconds while your vehicle is automatically fixed. The vehicle physics are incredibly realistic, but if you leave the track, all you have to do is hit both top shoulder buttons to be reset onto the track without losing much time. After resetting, your car is a ghost for a few seconds that other cars can drive through. Even though the game is based on the real life Baja 1000, that race isn’t actually part of the career mode in it’s entirety. It is broken up into several different segments that are spread throughout your whole career. Most career events can be completed in less than fifteen minutes, which breaks the game into short, arcade-like gameplay segments. A full, three hour version of the Baja 1000 can be raced outside of the career mode, but it would have been nice to get some career rewards for doing it. While none of these things really hurt the game, I would have preferred if it leaned a little more away from the arcade racing. MotorStorm has that category cornered and there isn’t a good choice for a realistic off-road game in this genre. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a blast playing, though.

There is a vast number of licenced vehicles available to drive, ranging from an old Volkswagen Beetle to the trophy trucks that are seen on television. There are eight categories of vehicles. In the single race mode, all categories are open from the beginning, but not all the vehicles are available in each until they are unlocked through the career mode. In career mode, only the first category is open and experience must be earned to unlock more.

Progression through the career mode is probably the best aspect of the game. Many of the events are tournaments that consist of three or more tracks. Points are awarded depending on your place and the winner is the driver with the most at the end of the tournament. Like MarioKart, it is possible to win a tournament without ever getting first place in a race. The other type of event is a rally race. These are basically just a race against the clock with other racers on the track. The game tells you that although all categories of cars are on the track, you are only competing against those the same as you. I don’t really believe this because I have been passed by cars in the same class as me but remained in first. Even though the scoring isn’t entirely accurate, these were still my favorite events. These were races over large areas of the desert that were usually at least fifteen minutes or longer. There were no repair points in these races. If you damaged your vehicle, which is bound to happen in these longer events, you have to call in a repair helicopter that will land ahead of you to help you out. The higher you place in either race type, the more reward credits (i.e. money) you earn to buy new vehicles or upgrade your current one. There are different levels of each upgrade part, but the price difference is minimal, so there is no reason to buy anything but the best parts. Credits can also be earned from sponsors. As you gain notoriety, better and better sponsors will offer to put their decal on your vehicle and pay you for it. The amount they pay depends on if the panel that their decal is attached to is still on the truck at the end of the race. This adds an interesting aspect to the game because if you drive conservatively and place second or third, you can actually make more money than if you beat the hell out of your vehicle in order to make first place. Since you still earn experience from a race even if you don’t get first place, the next category of events can still be unlocked without always getting first; it will just take longer.

Since the last off-road racing game I played was MotorStorm, I was a bit disappointed by this game’s graphics at first. As time went on, however, I grew to like them. During the rally races, you can literally see for miles and the view is amazing. The free roam mode covers nine square miles of completely unrepeated land. The trucks could have looked better, but still look good. While the tracks left in the dirt look nice, the mud flung up by the tires looks bad and the dust kicked up dissipates too quickly. The pieces that start flying off your vehicle as it gets damaged look great. As they start to fall off, they will flap in the wind and after they come loose, they will remain on the track for you to run over on the next lap. Collision detection between vehicle is a bit off. The collisions between bodies of the cars themselves is accurate but the tires will clip into each other regularly. Once you get into a race, these issues don’t really detract from the action.

Problems considered, I still can’t stop playing this game. The action never gets old and the game is always challenging. Since it seemed to have come out of nowhere, I didn’t expect much. I was pleasantly surprised by this title.

You play as Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. If this statement peaks your interest even slightly, then drop what you are doing and go get this game. It isn’t perfect, but it’s the best Jedi action in a game to date and the story helps fill in the gap between the new and old trilogies.

To best describe this title, you would need  to take the gameplay from the last Jedi Knight game and put it on crack. Nearly all the moves are the same, but far more extreme. Instead of picking guys up and tossing them around, you fling them across the level at a speed that kills them on impact. If you find the right angle, you can easily throw a guy over a half mile and much more if there is a cliff nearby. Instead of the Force push knocking down a couple of guys here and there, you can actually blow over an entire squad of storm troopers. At it’s most powerful, the Force lightning can hit every guy in the room and even take down a Rancor or an AT-ST. Even your character’s lightsaber technique is totally unique and over the top. The game starts you with some decent powers, but you must earn experience from fighting or finding hidden items to level them up and become truly devastating. Using the Force powers aren’t without their problems, though. The push and lightning will miss when you could have sworn you were looking right at the target and picking up enemies to throw them can be difficult in rooms with a lot of debris lying around. Many times the game will grab the closer item that is near your crosshair rather than the enemy in the distance that is directly in the crosshair. It’s not a big deal since the item you accidentally picked up can easily be tossed at the enemy you wanted to grab, but it’s still a little annoying.

The rest of the game may be awesome, but the story is the main reason to play. The Jedi Knight series, as well as most other Star Wars games, were content to simply be spin-offs with a few cameos from the major characters. This game is basically the reason why thing were the way they were at the beginning of the original trilogy. It leads up to and explains how the rebel alliance began, as well as shows what happened to many of the Jedi that survived Order 66. Since it only follows your character, the game doesn’t have the same epic feel as the movies. Imagine if the movies only followed Luke’s point of view. They would have still been great, but we would have missed many important events. Even considering this, the story has to be one of the best in a Star Wars game yet. It does have the light side and dark side ending, but it is simply a single choice made at the end of the game instead of a build up of all the decisions made throughout the way the Jedi Knight games did. The rest of the game plays the same whichever side you want to be on. Most of the time is spent fighting storm troopers since the emperor isn’t supposed to know about you or slaying natives to a planet that want you dead regardless of your allegiance to either side of the Force. The only downside would be that it is another short game and can be completed in around six hours. There are four difficulties and plenty of secondary objectives to complete that increase replay value, but I still wish the story was longer.

The graphics are amazing. The character models are some of the best I have seen, although your pilot unintentionally has a creepy Joker smile on her face most of the time. The voice acting is spot on and it’s not easy to tell that they aren’t being performed by the original actors and actresses. Each planet has it’s own feel that makes you believe it is a real place. Thanks to their new DMM technology, much of the environment reacts realistically. Trees bend like they would in real life. Metal doors contort just like you would expect when hit with a massive Force push. Wooden doors crack and break depending on where they get hit. It’s a blast trying to break stuff and see what happens. There are a bunch of objects that are unaffected by any kind of physics and cannot be damaged. This is probably due to hardware restrictions or level design, but when I throw an object at a tree and it bends in one level but a tree in the next doesn’t, it take me out of the experience a bit.

This title not only expands on the Star Wars mythology, but let’s you explore explore the dark side in a way that the movies and other games haven’t. Had the controls not been slightly annoying on occasion and the story longer, this could have been one of the greatest games in a long time. As is, I still love it and highly recommend it to any action fans. One more statement to help convince you. In the first level you get to play as Darth Vader; how can you beat that?

I really wanted to enjoy this game. It had a cool idea and plenty of potential. Unfortunately, it ended up being just another bland shooter that doesn’t do anything to set itself apart from the rest of the crowd.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about the gameplay. If you have played most any other shooter, you will jump right into this one. Anything that is slightly different about the controls will have a pop-up before you have to perform the action to explain how. The game is simple enough that you won’t need a reminder of the controls the way some other titles require. The one unique aspect of the game is the use of the drug Nectar. You can inject this into yourself to increase your combat abilities, but you only have access to this for the first half of the game. After that point, it is replaced by the ability to play dead and, yes, that is as boring as it sounds.

The story was supposed to be the biggest drawn of the game, but ends up being it’s greatest failure. It is tagged as a ‘mature and compelling storyline’ but I had the entire plot figured out from the first one page ad I saw in the game magazines. Even if that wasn’t clear enough, the back of the game’s box basically ruins the entire first two to three hours. The game begins with your character working for Mantel, a private military corporation that takes jobs from governments to clean up hot spots (like rebel uprisings, in this case) around the world. They keep their troops morale up by giving them a drug called Nectar, which keeps them in good spirits and increases their combat abilities. Right from the start, you notice that everyone is way too happy to be there. Before you can say Sci-fi Channel original movie, you start to see weird occurrences: soldiers being overly brutal, not caring about fallen comrades, and the news stations broadcasting false information about the war. Like the back of the box states, after a few hours of gameplay, you turn your back on Mantel and join the rebels. This hurts the game by making the first part feel like a waste of time since you are killing the same people you already know you will be siding with later. The story may be predictable and unoriginal, but it is still told very well. The voice acting is great (yes, it really is meant to be that cheesy in the beginning) and although I always knew what was going to happen, I was still interested in seeing how. The entire game is seen from your first person perspective, including cutscenes. This can be both a good and bad thing. Good because it really puts you in the experience and makes you feel like part of the story. Bad because you see the big events from the perspective of a single person and the game doesn’t feel as epic as it would have with wider camera angles and aerial shots of the pivotal moments.

My favorite thing about the game in the beginning became the reason I didn’t like it in the end. Soldiers on Nectar don’t see blood or dead bodies because the drug is designed to protect them from the horrors of war. When you kill someone, there is a small impact flash and they disappear almost as soon as they hit the ground. As you continue on with the Mantel section of the game, your nectar wears off (at pre-scripted sections) and you begin to see the real world. An enemy you just killed is writhing around on the ground while screaming in pain, but instantly disappears when the Nectar kicks back in. In another area, you walk through a room where a battle occurred a few days earlier. At first, there is nothing in the room. When your drug wears off for a minute, there are bodies everywhere and blood all over the place. These moments are disturbing and really add to the atmosphere. Once you join the rebels and no longer have access to Nectar, the game loses this aspect. When you shoot someone, there is a small splash of blood, but the bodies still disappear after a bit. Enemies don’t stay alive and scream like they did earlier. The game plays almost exactly the same as the first part, just without the ability to use Nectar to improve your combat ability. This successfully removes the one unique aspect from the game and turns into ‘just another FPS’. It feels as if the game was designed to lead up to your eventual betrayal of Mantel and then the rest was just slapped together to close out the storyline.

The graphics continue the bland streak the rest of the game started. Nothing really looks bad, but the environments are sparsely decorated and everything is spotlessly clean. There are a couple of panels and barriers that move when you shoot them, but most everything else doesn’t react. Plants don’t move when you walk through them. Explosions occur just above the ground and don’t leave any lasting marks. There is a fade to black every time the game switches between a scripted conversation or event. I’ve never seen any other game do this and it really breaks up the overall flow. Although the game was relatively glitch free, it did lock up on me four different times. The checkpoints are frequent enough that it didn’t set me back too far, but it was still quite annoying. I recall the moment that I completely gave up on the game; a helicopter crash sequence that was incredibly poorly done. My character was inside the chopper and there is a explosion outside. I wasn’t even sure we had been hit because there were no windows or open doors. The screen went black and every few seconds I was shown a still shot from my characters point of view, but all the images looked almost identical. After Call of Duty 4 had such an amazing first person crash sequence, seeing this in a game was just pathetic.

There aren’t really any saving graces to this title. The gameplay can be seen anywhere else. The story isn’t worth more than one play through. The entire campaign can be completed in around five hours. There is some fun to be had here, but it can all be had in a rental period. I didn’t see any reason to own this game. Just another opportunity to take advantage of the PS3’s supposedly superior hardware blown.

Mercenaries 2 provides a level of freedom that you can’t find anywhere else. Every game, open world environment or not, has sequences at some point that are designed to let you go along a single, predefined path. That never happens here. When attacking an enemy location, you have the choice to go in guns blazing on foot, have a tank airlifted in for you, steal a helicopter that is in mid flight, or just drop a bomb on them and pick up the pieces. This is just a small taste of the freedom and you can go about the destruction any way you see fit. Had it not been for the excessive amount of glitches, this game could have been great. As it stands now, it is just a good title that is still a lot of fun.

The game is very easy to pick up and play if you have played any other action or open world game. The weapons are the same that you have seen in every other war game. Commandeering a vehicle is done with a single button press when in the right spot, almost exactly like Grand Theft Auto. Land and air vehicles handle great, but sea vehicle are jumpy and unpredictable. This is made worse because nearly every sea-based mission is a timed race through obstacles which you cannot predict how your craft will react to. Air-strikes and bombs aren’t as readily available as in the last game, but they can still be used liberally. The game begins with a single contact, but more are added as you complete missions, though usually there are only two to choose from. What is different from other games is that many of these contacts will send you on missions against other potential employers. If you attack a faction, they will eventually not allow you to work for them anymore unless you pay them a bribe. There was a missed opportunity for the developers here in that you cannot play the factions against each other by doing jobs for both. Basically, the best way to play through is to do all the jobs for one faction, then bribe the other and do their missions. If you upset one side, they will no longer allow you to buy their supplies, but the other side usually has something equivalent. The mission variety is a bit lacking also. Almost every mission is no more than go take over that outpost, go kill that guy, or go blow up that building. There are a few glimpses of brilliance. Delivering the ‘Devastator’ in one of the first missions was ingenious (I won’t ruin it). Also, escaping a collapsing oil rig with a tied up captive was intense, but most of the mission quickly just become ‘more of the same.’ There are a number of side missions that usually consist of checkpoint races. They are referred to as different things, like test the prototype vehicle, deliver the items, or simply beat the clock. The delivery ones were fairly original. They consist of transporting anything from rum to human organs. You are given a pickup truck with supplies in the back and you have to make it to the destination in time without the stuff flying out. The physics behind the items in the bed are very impressive. They slide around, bounce off each other, and fly up in the air. As long as enough are left in the bed by the time you arrive, you pass the mission. The entire game can be played as co-op, although the difficulty is not scaled for a second player which makes the game much easier. If one player dies, the other can revive them so being just mildly careful can lead to never having to restart at base. While it is a fun game, there isn’t much in the way of replay value since there aren’t multiple difficulties. There are hidden items to hunt for (which have a tendency to disappear from their spots when you are looking for them and then reappear later), and the rewards may be fun to mess around with but they won’t help you play the game better. The main enemy of the game doesn’t actually seem all that bad in the big picture and actually seems to want to help the country. Of course, you play mercenary and he didn’t pay you. Screw politics and give me my damn money.

I did really like the way resupplying works. Everything, from bullets to bombs, must be purchased from the headquarters of the faction that is selling the item you want and only a very few items are available from multiple sides. It’s a good idea to make sure you have bought everything you want from a faction before you attack them, including a few of their spare vehicles to use as a disguise once they don’t like you anymore. Once purchased, the item is added to your stockpile. At any time after this, the item can be airlifted to your location. Just make sure that there is no enemy anti-air weapons in the area or you supplies will be lost and your money wasted. In addition to money, you must also collect fuel in order for your helicopter to fly the items to you or the jet to perform the air-strike. The only problem I have with the system is that you are unable to sell items back. For example, I bought a bunch of helicopters to make it easier to get around. I used one to complete a couple of missions and then unlocked the ability to buy a much better helicopter. Now I was stuck with about ten choppers that I will never use. Even if they could be sold at an extreme price cut, it would have been nice to get them off the list of supplies.

While the game is an absolute blast to play, it is marred by an insane amount of glitches. Several times I had to save and restart my Xbox 360 because the voices stopped working during all mission briefings. A grappling hook can be used to steal helicopters and on a few occasions, the running animation continued to play while I was in the air. Far more often than is acceptable, I ordered one of my helicopters to be delivered and the pilot would land it on top of a box or piece of debris. This would make him think he hadn’t landed yet and so he wouldn’t get out or let me in. After a minute or so, the chopper would simply disappear from right in front of me, but my money and fuel was not refunded. One of the more strange ones was when every time I called for a supply drop during one particular play session, after the chopper left he reported being under attack by an enemy I could not see and then the chopper damage bill appeared on screen. This would have been incredibly annoying if it weren’t for the fact that it actually gave me money when this happened instead of taking it away like it was supposed to. Everyone in the game talks way too much for the small amount of recorded statements that are in the game. This is really more of a design flaw, but the hundredth time you hear someone yell ‘Hey, it’s the Merc,’ you’ll think of it as a glitch. There are tons of other problems like this in the game, such as people hovering in mid-air or invisible vehicle when driving at high speeds. None of these are game breakers, but they are incredibly disappointing to see (let’s hear it for EA’s quality assurance department).

The graphics look great in some places and sad in others. The explosions are awesome and the environments look very realistic, especially from the sky. Basically everything is destructible: buildings, trees, the aforementioned oil rig. Drop a nuke on a city and everything is flattened. The only thing that can’t be blown up is the ground itself. On the other end of the spectrum, the tracer fire looks bad, mostly because it moves so slow. Helicopters always make a loud, metallic bang and throw sparks when they land (including the ones with tires) even though they are designed to not do exactly that. Also, the swimming animation plays at about ten times the fastest speed of Micheal Phelps. It just looks ridiculous.

This is basically the original game with some next gen polish on it and a new location. I’m not sure why there were so many glitches in the game since there was so much time for development. Even with it’s faults, the game is still a lot of fun and worth a look from any action junkies that get a kick out of excessive destruction.