The wait is over and now we finally have something to do with our characters that have been sitting at level 70 for over a year. Wrath of the Lich King gives us a level cap raised to 80, a new land to explore, and another character class to play. This new expansion doesn’t revolutionize the game, but just adds bits and pieces that improve on an already great game. However, if you had given up on the game because of any of it’s particular faults, this probably won’t bring you back.

The new land of Northrend is a worthy addition to the game. Just reading through it description in the manual, you would think that it would be nothing more than a frozen mountain range similar to the Alliance area around Ironforge, but there is actually quite a bit of variety. Not just between zones, but even within each zone itself. Just in the first one, there are at least five geographically different areas. Many of the quests are more story-oriented, which I preferred. Players that just want to rush through and get to level 80 as fast as possible may get annoyed by this because there are several scripted segments that you must watch before you can continue some quests. These scenes are cool, but I would venture a guess that well under half of the game’s population actually pays attention to the storyline. These scripted segments may also get repetitive when playing any additional characters through the new areas. More vehicles and mounted weapons have been added to some of the quests. One had me firing a cannon from the deck of a ship while another gave me full control of a makeshift tank. These features wouldn’t hold up in an action game, but they do a lot to spice up the gameplay here. The graphics may not noticeably look better, but all it will take is a quick run through any of the starting areas to see how much things have improved. The style hasn’t changed, but everything looks more vibrant and detailed. There are a large number of rehashed enemy models from the original game, but not as many as the last expansion. The game still stands up well against it’s competition, which is impressive since it is still using the same graphics engine it started with over four years ago. Basically, if you are still playing your level 70 character, there is no reason not to pick up Wrath of the Lich King.

The other major addition is the new class, the death knight. Unlike the other classes, the death knight starts at level 55 and cannot be created unless the you already have at least one other character already at that level. The death knight is basically a warrior with stronger abilities. They are mostly a melee class but have some fairly devastating special attacks. What makes them different is their use of runes. Each has three types of runes and two of each type. Most special attacks use a rune of their corresponding type and then the rune must go through a short cooldown. It doesn’t take long, so by the time you use the last of your six runes, the first is ready to go again. As you level, stronger attacks may use multiple runes at one time. The death knight has some of the strongest attacks, can wear plate armour (the best in the game), and can even heal themselves. All this makes me wonder if they might be a bit overpowered, since no other class is so well rounded. There won’t be any way to know for sure until more people reach level 80 and I begin to see them in some PvP action. As for right now, I can tell you that my friend with whom I usually quest with was fighting just as effectively with his level 68 death knight in basic gear as he was with his level 70 hunter in full battleground and arena gear. The death knight starting area is, by far, better than any other starting area in the game. Every quest is very important to setting up the return of the Lich King and the entire segment has a very epic feel to it. It is slightly disappointing that it ends with you being dumped into Orgrimmar without any direction to go from there. All you can do at that point is head over to Outland and work your way up in levels. This is disappointing for two reasons. First, most everyone is tired of Outland by now and wants to jump right into the new area. Second, since the expansion came out, Outland is basically empty of other players. I flew around the main city, Shattrath, on a Saturday afternoon and I didn’t see one other player. Both of these things could have been avoided if the death knight began at level 65 instead of 55.

There are still a few existing problems that should have been addressed. The first thing I ran into was the ridiculous respawn rate just outside of the starting area. The enemies are rather close together and once you kill two or three, the first is already reappearing. Once outside of this area, the respawn gets more manageable. Another major issue I had was that less than one hour into the new area, I was sent on a boar hunting quest. Either Blizzard is running out of ideas or it is some kind of inside joke with the developers, but there is no reasonable excuse as to why we have a quest to go kill boars in nearly every single zone of the game. There is also the return of the quests where you must collect an item that you would expect to be found on every enemy of a certain type, but it only drops off of one out of every five or so. These are really the only problems most people have with the game, but it is disappointing to see that they have persisted through two expansions.

One more thing to keep in mind is that this expansion has no content for anyone under level 55. The last expansion encouraged people to start new characters from level 1 while also having an added area for high levels. In Wrath of the Lich King, you can’t get any of the quest in the new area until you are level 68 and the new character class is only available to high levels. If you are just starting out with the game, there is absolutely no harm in holding off on this expansion until your character has made it into the sixties.

Wrath of the Lich King is basically more Warcraft. If you didn’t like it before, you still won’t. If you can’t stop playing, you’ll still be hooked. If you quit playing just because you ran out of things to do, then this will give you plenty of reasons to start up again.

The developers of Gears of War weren’t content to simply shovel out a sequel that was basically the last game with new levels, even though they still would have made a ton of money doing so. Improvement was made on the original in just about every area. They addressed every complaint from the first game and almost doubled the length. Because of this, it is probably the best action game available on the system today.

For the few of you that haven’t played the original, Gears of War 2 is a fairly straightforward shooter. The cover system works very well and must be mastered in order to be victorious. Much like Call of Duty, you don’t have a health bar. You simply have to hide and rest for a second if you take too much damage. The guns all have a good feel and every battle is intense and rewarding. On the other hand, the grenades still feel too weak. Unless your enemy is standing right on it (which doesn’t happen often, since they are smart enough to run away), they won’t get more than a scratch. Some may think the gore is a bit over the top, but it is part of the feel of the game. Sniper shots to limbs leave a stump spurting blood into the air. The main machine gun weapon has a chainsaw attached that can be used to cut an enemy in half which sprays blood everywhere, including onto the television screen. The action is basic, but never gets old.

The last game was great, but it had it’s share of issues. A clear effort was made to improve where ever they could. The original was about six hours long, while this one took me around ten. The chainsaw is much more reliable this time around. In the last game, there were times when it just wouldn’t work when I pressed the button, but that never happened here. When an ally goes down in battle, they now crawl to you so you can rescue them, instead of just lying in one spot and waiting. There is much more variety to the levels this time and you will never get tired of looking around at the environment. More weapons were added, which is nice because I used the same gun almost the entire time in the original. The vehicle driving segment is a vast improvement over the last one and there is a second ‘vehicle’ driving part near the end that is even better. If I explained why I put quotes around that, I would ruin the scene. Lets just say that it is one of the best moments in the game.

If there was one thing that should have been improved and wasn’t, it would be your teammates’ AI. They are all complete morons. There almost always is at least one person with you, but you would be better off alone. They constantly run into your line of fire (then yell at you for shooting them). Rarely will they ever get a kill. On several different occasions, I was shot down and crawled to my nearest teammate’s feet, only to have them stand on my body and let me die instead of helping me up like they are supposed to. Any time they weren’t running into my line of fire, they could be found hiding in the back of the room behind some cover and not shooting at the enemy. Not exactly the kind of behavior you would expect from battle hardened marines. This problem can be eliminated by playing co-op with a friend (unless you friend is a moron too), but if you are playing alone, be ready for some pathetic behavior from your allies.

Some other minor complaints would be the lack of boss fights and the lowered health of the enemies. You don’t even have your first traditional boss battle until five hours into the game. The final boss battle consists of nothing more than holding down the trigger and keeping the crosshair on the enemy. After some awesome bosses in the last game, I was quite disappointed to find only one memorable battle in this one. All enemies’ health has also been lowered in comparison to the last game. They are mostly the same enemies, but they take far less hits to kill than in the original. I recall being terrified every time I heard a Boomer approaching in the first game. This time around, all you have to do is empty a half of a clip into the general vicinity of their head and they will go down every time.

The game is hit and miss on replay value. There are many more hidden items to find and they are much harder to spot than in the last game. Each item also provides insight into the war in some way and every one adds a little more to the story. The vast majority of the game is based around scripted events. These are cool at first, but they loose their impact on the next playthrough. There are four difficulties (one of which has to be unlocked) that really help keep you coming back, though.

The story is told quite well, but isn’t original in any way. Basically, if you combine The Matrix and Resident Evil, you will get the exact plot of Gears of War 2. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, since the last game so blatantly ripped off Pitch Black in it’s middle section and the rest of it had almost no storyline. This game also jumps right into the plot a little too quickly. I would recommend at least renting the original game first if you haven’t played it, just to get caught up on what is going on. All of the characters are very likable and the game has more progression than the last one. There are a few emotional scenes, which connects you with each person more and is a key component that was missing from the last game. Gears of War doesn’t fall into the trap that many game and movie trilogies do, where the second title is just filler until the finale. In this one, there is a clear beginning and a strong closing. The story could end here and it isn’t until after the credits that a short audio clip plays that sets up the final game.

The graphics are still the best on the system. Everything looks photo realistic and there is plenty of dust and debris that really brings the world alive. There are practically no clipping problems and zero glitches that I found. The level of polish on this series is nearly unheard of among other titles that are out these days. The only down side would be the colors used in the levels. Everything is either some shade of gray or brown. On several occasions, I couldn’t find the door to the next room at first because it looked just like everything else. Although this was annoying, it actually meant the levels look more real because of it. For example, in a room that was burned by a fire, the door is going to look just like the wall at first in real life, so it should in the game also.

Other than the moronic AI, all of the problems I mentioned were minor. If it weren’t for the idiotic allies, this game would easily have made my ‘best games of all time’ list. Even so, it is still an awesome shooter that shouldn’t be missed, especially if you want something to play co-op with friends.

Fallout 3 is one of those titles that is so much more than a good story with some cool action. Like Fable 2, it is meant to simulate living the life of your character. If you just jump in and go straight from one story mission to the next, you will be missing the vast majority of it’s content. For this reason, it can be better described as an ‘experience’ rather than just a ‘game.’

While the spirit of the series remains intact, the gameplay itself has more in common with Oblivion. This is understandable since Bethesda made both games and didn’t have anything to do with the first two Fallout titles. The series switched to first person view and real-time combat. Although I did miss the top-down, turn-based strategy of the first games, the change is handled well. The focus is even more on combat this time around and plays much like a first person shooter. The one major difference is the use of V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System). This system freezes time and zooms in on your target. Percentages appear on each part of your enemy that tell you your chance to hit each location. The expected areas can be shot, like the head, arms, torso, or legs. Other things can be targeted as well; my personal favorite being grenades in a raider’s hand. This system cannot be used constantly, but it recharges at a fairly quick rate. Running around will slow down the recharge while finding a spot to hide will make it come back in a few seconds. If gamers preferred the slow paced strategy of the previous games, they can rely entirely on the V.A.T.S system. Action junkies can completely ignore the system and play the game just like a shooter. It’s a brilliant setup that helps the game reach a much broader audience. One glitch that did bother me about V.A.T.S. occurred when an enemy got right up in my face and I tried to target them with a longer gun, such as a shotgun or rifle. Many times, the barrel of the gun would go through the enemies body and when fired, the shot would miss. Not only did this look dumb, it also left me open to attack from an enemy that should have most likely been killed. I also thought that the enemies in the game could use some more variety. The vast majority of your battles (especially during the main quest) will be against either raiders or super mutants. You are also thrown very quickly into fights with these enemies, so they aren’t as intimidating by the end of the game in comparison to the last two titles in the series. The deathclaws from the past games don’t even make an appearance in the main quest. I only happened to stumble across a town overrun by them in my random wanderings.

Outside of battles, the other part of the game would be the in town interaction with NPCs. This is where the game shows off it’s great writing and voice acting. In nearly every situation, I genuinely cared about what each person was talking about and never got tired of talking to random people. Conversation can play out completely differently depending on each player. For example, if your character has a high intelligence, there may be conversation options that are too technical for a character that isn’t as smart to be able to say. There will be other options that will allow you to attempt to talk your way out of a situation based on your speech skill. Some of my favorite moments where the ones where I know I was able to talk my way out of a fight with a skill check that had a chance to go either way. The series did lose some of it’s humor this time around. Most of these interactions felt a little too serious in comparison to the overall tone of the previous games.

Ammo is a bit more scarce than I would have liked early on. I didn’t mind having to scrounge for items to sell in order to make money, but the shops don’t seem to get resupplied as often as they should. Also, the ammo crates found while out exploring never had much in them either. These are the same crates that the military uses to store hundreds of bullets in, but I never really found more than ten in each. As the game progresses, ammo becomes easier to get a hold of, but the beginning seems far more difficult than it should have been because of this issue.

Leveling up is less like Oblivion and more like traditional RPGs. Every quest and enemy killed give you experience and leveling up is based solely on earned exp. At each level, you are given skill points (the exact number depends on several different things and can change throughout the game) to spend on whatever you wish. The skills are basically the same as in past games, but the max level is now one hundred instead of three hundred. The max character level is twenty. I don’t particularly like the idea of not having unlimited levels for the characters. It just doesn’t make sense that there is a point where I can’t get any better at my repair skill because earlier I spent too much time improving my small guns ability. I think if a player wants to put the time into the game to max out every skill, they should have that option. It is also too easy to waste points that could have been used elsewhere. There is almost a countless number of books around the world that raise your skills by one point. If your skill is already maxed, the book is wasted, which means you could have used that point on a different skill. It’s even worse in the case of the hidden bobble-heads that raise your skills by ten. Once I got a skill above eighty, I was afraid to put more points into it because of the off chance that I might find other ways to increase it.

In an attempt to fully immerse the player their character’s life, the game starts at the exact moment of your birth. You then play through key moment of the next nineteen years of your characters lifetime as you grow up inside the vault, safe from the harsh outside world. Not only does this set up the game perfectly, it is also a superbly disguised tutorial and character creator. Right after birth, you select your race and gender. As a toddler, you find a baby book outside of your playpen that explains each statistic in the exact manner that you would expect to find in a book written for children. There are several other things introduced in this segment that lay out the framework of your character and give you the feel for the game. Once you reach the end of this section, you have one last chance to edit your character before thing are permanently set. Once you exit the vault and enter the main game world, you are free to do as you wish. You can search for your father that has gone missing (played by Liam Neeson from Batman Begins and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) or just go out and live your life as you see fit.

I wasn’t completely sold on the size of the world and cities in the game. The last Fallout game covered the entire west coast of America, but this one only takes place in Washington D.C. and the surrounding area. While several of the locations in the last game really felt like large, bustling cities, nothing in Fallout 3 feels bigger than a small settlement. This can be good because it is easier to find shops and important people, but it made the game feel less epic in scale. It is understandable that the world is smaller since the entire environment is rendered in 3D; not like the last game that was only an overhead map that would randomly generate a small grid for encounters. I think one or two more large towns would have really helped. Traveling around is handled quite well. You must walk to each location once. Once reached, it becomes marked on your map and you can fast travel there any time you wish (provided you are outdoors and there are no enemies around). This forces you to see all of the land at least once, but eliminates the monotony of making the same trek over and over to commonly visited places. One more thing that bothered me was the way the game ends. Once you complete the final mission and the credits roll, you are dumped back to the title screen. This would have been the perfect game to continue playing just to explore without the pressure of a story quest, but you aren’t given that option. Also (partial spoiler), one of the endings I played made me sacrifice myself by walking into a highly radiated room to activate a machine. I had a super mutant with me that is immune to radiation, but I wasn’t allowed to ask him to go into the room and was forced to die in the end. Not only do I hate when games kill the main character (although you do have the choice to follow a different ending), but it is worse when it doesn’t make any sense as to why.

The graphics are perfect for the game. There is always something new to see or find. I spent several different play sessions just randomly wandering around just to see what I could stumble across. The city of Washington D.C. looks just like you would expect after a nuclear war. Freeways are still in place, but mostly crumbled. All the major monuments can be found, but are broken and deteriorated. I did feel that most of the indoor areas were far too dark. It was easy to miss a container of supplies in the corner simply because it was impossible to spot without being right on top of it. While I understand caves and ruins being dark, many places that should have been well lit still weren’t. Operational vaults in the last two games were very brightly lit, whereas in Fallout 3, they still had dimly lit corridors and dark corners. All of the NPCs look great and there is a good number of character models, so you won’t be talking to people that look exactly the same over and over. I thought the gore was a bit too over the top. Early on, being able to blow extremities off simply by targeting them seems cool. When someone’s head gets blow off in nearly every single firefight, the experience starts to get a little stale. I don’t think that the enemies should have been any harder to kill, just that dismembering them should not have been so commonplace.

Even with my few complaints, Fallout 3 is still one of the best RPGs on the Xbox 360. The game easily has over thirty hours of game play, and much more if you search for all it has to offer. Since there are several endings and different experiences depending on whether you play as a good or bad person, this game will have you playing for a long time to come. As a fan of the Fallout games right from the beginning, I have to say that the second one is still a superior game, but this is a worthy addition to the series.

I have done the impossible. I have succeeded where many others have failed. I, Paul from GameFury, have defeated the hype machine. We were told this would be the deepest gaming experience we have ever encountered, but I resisted. We were told that this game would change our lives, but I remained firm. We were told this would be the most important title to video games since Pong, yet I did not give in. Now with the beaten and bloody hype monster lying dead at my feet, I could truly enjoy Fable 2 without being disappointed by it not living up to the impossible standards that started growing the moment it was announced.

Although the game is looked at as an RPG, it has just as much in common with Zelda as it does Oblivion. The entire development was done with casual gamers in mind. Most battles can be won with simple button mashing, but can be more complicated if you choose. Your character cannot die; they only fall unconscious for a moment and get back up with a new scar. There is no leveling up and only three separate skills under which to spend points to improve your abilities: Strength, Skill, and Will.

The combat is fairly basic at first but gets much deeper the more you play. Melee starts with simply pressing X over and over but more moves, like blocks or flourishes, are added later. Ranged weapons start the same way also. Press Y over and over to fire at the nearest enemy. Later, you can gain the ability to free aim, which allows you to pick off enemies before they spot you. I have yet to decide if I really like the magic setup yet. The basics are good. Each spell has two fire modes: targeted or area of effect. For example, if the lightning spell is selected, simply pressing B will hit every enemy in the immediate vicinity. Holding a direction while pressing B will concentrate the spell on the nearest enemy to where you aimed. This works great, so stunning all enemies with an area attack then picking them off one by one before they can recover is great fun. As spells level up, holding the button longer will charge a meter on the side of the screen that builds up to the currently unlocked level. Even if a spell is maxed out, all other levels of it can still be used by releasing the button at the right point on the meter. The problem with this arose when I realized that you can only assign one spell to each level and switching back and forth isn’t easy. Since magic is handled with only one button, this means if you have multiple spells assigned, tapping B may fire your lightning, while holding it for one second will shoot fire, and holding it for two seconds will slow time. Many players may like the idea, but it lead me to only using one spell the whole game to avoid confusion.

Leveling up abilities take the same idea that many games are using since God of War. Colored orbs fall from your enemies during battle. Green orbs only appear once an enemy is killed and they supply you with experience that can be spent on any of the three statistics mentioned earlier. Doing significant damage with a specific attack type will supply you with orbs for it’s related statistic. Blue orbs come from melee attacks, yellow from Ranged attacks, and red from magic attacks. Most of your experience will come from the stat-specific orbs. You won’t get very many green orbs and these can be used to round out your character by improving abilities in areas that you don’t regularly use. I really like when games allow you to improve based on the skills you use most and always thought the idea of spending one pool of experience on any skill you want was kind of dumb, so this made me really enjoy playing Fable 2.

The main storyline is fairly simplistic. Basically, a super-evil bad guy wrongs you, so you need to get your revenge and in the process save the world from the aforementioned super-evil bad guy’s evil scheme. The simple story is part of the game’s charm. It’s easy to follow and all of your allies are very likable. Much of the game is fairly funny. You probably won’t laugh out loud too often, but it is still very entertaining. The biggest problem I had was that many important conversation begin without you realizing it. Several times, a quest would just appear on my list because I didn’t realize the two citizens that I heard murmuring in the corner were actually talking about my next quest and I missed what they were talking about. Since the story isn’t too complex, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what was going on, but I couldn’t help but feel like I missed something.

While the story is good, the best parts of the games will occur when you aren’t doing anything related to the main quest. If you are short on cash, jobs are available to make money. You can work as a bartender, woodcutter, or blacksmith. The mini-games behind each are very simplistic but I never got tired of them. The monetary rewards are a bit unrealistic once you get good at them. At one point, I was earning over six hundred gold for every beer I poured in the tavern. If you are more of the type of person that doesn’t like doing the work for yourself, you can purchase nearly every building in the game. Every five minutes, you are given your share of the profits or rent money from all of the buildings you own. This money even continues to accumulate a bit more slowly when you aren’t playing. I didn’t play at all this weekend and came back Monday morning to a nice five thousand gold bonus. I only owned two buildings at this point, so you can imagine how much money will come pouring in later in the game when there are hundreds of building available for purchase. In shops, you can select the mark up (or down) of the items, but not much else. In houses, in addition to setting the rent or making it your own home, you can decorate it with better furniture to make it worth more money.

The social side of the game rivals The Sims in it’s complexity. Every single person in the game has their own personal opinion of you based on their observations and popular opinion in town. If you save a whole town from bandits, most people will like you for it, but there will always be a couple that don’t like you simply because everyone else does. Each person also has their own personal likes and dislikes. One man in the town square may think it is absolutely hilarious if you jump on a box and fart in front of a crowd, while another will be disgusted. You can even have a people fall in love with you. Since you can become somewhat of a celebrity, many people will love you even before you meet them. In a large town, you will find yourself being followed by a group of the opposite sex with hearts over their heads and a few yelling marriage proposals. Actually if you look closely at the crowd, you will see a few members of the same sex in that crowd, since NPCs are gay, straight, bisexual, or celibate. Once you decide that it is time to get married (either to a person you have been speaking to for a while in the game or just one pulled at random from your crowd of followers) you will need a wedding ring and a house. If you have sex with your spouse, you may have a child. Don’t worry if you are playing a female character, you don’t have to wait around for nine months before getting back to the adventure. Time jumps ahead for you. Not only do you have to send money back home to support your family, but you will also need to make regular visits back to spend time with them or you may end up divorced. The better you treat your family, the better the gifts they will give you in return when you do come visit them. Some spouses will be more needy while other will be understanding. Also, very early in the game you come across a stray dog that becomes your pet. From then on, he follows you everywhere and helps out however he can. If you knock an enemy on the ground, the dog will jump in and attack. Buried items or hidden treasure are no problem for your dog to sniff out. He also has a personality that always shows through. If he gets bored, he will start to chase his own tail. He will get scared when in dark dungeons until you reassure him. He will always react the way you would expect a real dog to. He may not be vital to success in the game, but I was always glad he was around. The entire social aspect is one of the deepest I have seen in a game. I have spent entire play sessions just wandering around town doing jobs and interacting with people.

Like many games are doing these days, Fable 2 give you the choice to be good or evil. Unlike most of these other games, your choices here have drastic effects on the rest of the world. Be nice to everyone and spend a lot of money in town, it’s economy will go up. Terrorizing the townsfolk, stealing items, and murdering shop keepers will cause the economy to drop. This shows the main reason to be evil in the game; low economy means low prices, whether it be items or the shops themselves. Of course, then everyone hates you, so the choice is yours. There are two long breaks in the game that last around ten years each and when it starts back up, you can really see your impact on the world. Help the shop keepers and the good people and, later on, the town will be prospering. Steal money and support the criminals and, several years later, the town will be overrun with thieves and beggars. Many of the choices in the game don’t really make you think and the results are fairly obvious. One is clearly good and one is clearly bad. Your choice will be based on what character you have already decided you wanted to be and not on what you would do in real life. Some of the choices don’t even have options that make logical sense. The worst was the ghost who asked me to get revenge on the woman that stood him up at the altar by making her fall in love with me and then doing the same thing to her. Your only two options are to do as the ghost says and leave her at the last minute (the evil choice) or marry her ( the good choice). This means if you want to keep your character good, you have to marry someone you don’t actually care about. No one in their right mind would marry someone they just met just because it’s the ‘right choice.’ Why can’t we just tell her what is going on and make her confront the ghost? Most of the other quests make sense, but this quest comes early in the game and put a bit of a sour note on the game very early on. I was a bit thrown back by the developer’s attempt at forcing their own morals on us. Eating any form of meat is considered not pure and you will gain corruption. I have no problem with people that are vegetarians, but I do have a problem with them when they try to convince me that I am a bad person for eating meat.

Now I come to my only major problem with the game; the map. In short, it’s crap. It only takes up about a quarter of the screen on the pause menu and has no zoom function. Not only that, but it only centers on your character and cannot be moved around. Exit’s are labeled on the map, but they do not tell you where they go, so learning your way around can be difficult. The map legend is fairly useless as well. Weapon shops are clearly labeled, but clothing shops, hair stylists, and tattoo artist all are labeled as Appearance Shops. If you need to find a potion shop, forget about it. That shop type falls under the category of everything else in Miscellaneous Shops. You can fast travel to any location that you have already visited, but good luck finding somewhere you haven’t been. I spent an entire hour wandering the world looking for a town that I had a job in before giving up. Several hours later, I realized that the town I needed to get to wasn’t unlocked yet. Add all of these problems together and you come up with the worst map system ever implemented in a game.

The graphics do an amazing job of creating a believable world. Everywhere you go, you will be treated to amazing scenery and impressive visuals. Unfortunately, a very low number of character models and tons of clipping issues mar these otherwise beautiful graphics. It is not uncommon to see three or four of the same person in a crowd and every time you come to a hill, your character’s feet will disappear into the ground. A countless number of times, my entire dog would disappear into a rock or wall. Also, when NPCs are traveling with you, they have a hell of a time walking through doors. They will make two or three circles in front of the door until actually walking through. Although these thing hurt the game, it doesn’t stop it from having one of the most pleasant worlds to walk around in that I have seen in a long time. Another cool detail is the way your character changes based on your decisions. If you run around as a goody two-shoes and only perform pure actions, you will have much brighter features and a halo over your head. Be an evil bastard and your skin will darken while horns will start to grow. If you gear your character toward melee, their muscles will get bigger and will start to look like professional wrestlers. Magic users will start to have bright blue designs appear on their skin. Working on your Skill will keep your character skinny, but they will start to grow taller. Even though everyone begins the game as one of the same two characters (a male or female), by the end their appearance will be fairly unique.

The story is good, but the economy and social aspects provide nearly endless fun. Not only is the game a decent length, there is also a ton of replay value since the game can play out differently depending on your actions. If it weren’t for the absolutely horrendous map, this could easily have been one of the greatest games of all time.

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?

The Mario Kart formula hasn’t really changed much since it started on the Super Nintendo, but there hasn’t really been any reason for it to. It’s still the best of the not-so-serious racing games out there. Races often come down to blind luck, but it is still fun.

The controls are a simple as can be. Even though it comes with the steering wheel attachment, the game doesn’t cost anymore than normal; more proof that Nintendo really cares about it’s gamers. Turning the wheel to steer is incredibly responsive. The game can actually be played using only two buttons. The 2 button accelerates and any direction arrow uses the items gathered around the track. There are more complicated controls once a player gets good at the game; the different direction buttons do different things with each item. For example, if you get a green shell, Up shoots the shell forward, down shoots it behind, and holding either left or right keeps it stuck to the back of your cart and protects you from many of the other racers attacks. There are also two controls modes: automatic and manual. This would imply shifting gears, but that isn’t the case. Automatic will allow your car to power slide around turns on it’s own when you turn the wheel enough. Manual requires you to press the B button, which makes the car hop into the slide. The advantage to manual is that if you power slide long enough, you get a mini-boost out of the turn whereas automatic doesn’t have this option.

While the vehicles control great, that doesn’t mean the races play out based on your skill at driving. Many races are won more by luck than ability, especially since one of the attacks the enemy can get will blow up the person in first place and can’t be defended against. This means if you are winning, there are eleven other racers that have a chance to blow you up anytime they cross the item boxes scattered all over the track. There was one particular race that I was in first the whole time until the last turn. Once I got there, I got hit by three attacks, one right after the other, without any warning. I ended up in eleventh place and this blew the whole tournament for me.

Each racer has their own strengths and weaknesses that make big differences in how you race with them. There are the expected ones like Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, and the always under appreciated Koopa Troopa. All of the characters come from Mario games or spin-offs but I would have liked to see some other popular Nintendo characters, such as Link from Zelda or Samus from Metriod. The game starts with thirteen different characters to choose from with more being unlocked. You can also unlock the ability to race as your Mii. I didn’t like the fact that the game doesn’t tell you what you have to do in order to unlock characters and I had to search the internet to find out how.

My absolute favorite thing about the game is how winning is figured. The tournaments consist of four races and points are given depending on what place you finish in. The person with the most points at the end wins. This means it is still possible to win the tournament even if you never win a race. I don’t know why the more realistic racing simulations make you get first every time if a cartoon racing game can have such a great way to handle tournaments. There are eight different tournaments to choose from  which gives us a total of thirty two tracks. The first sixteen are new for this game while the last sixteen are from past games, making up a ‘best of Mario Kart’ list. I would have prefered if there were a few more from the first SNES game since that is where the series got it’s start. There are only two tracks from that version. All the tracks are varied and there wasn’t one that I didn’t like or was too confusing.

Battle mode isn’t nearly as fun as I remember from the SNES version. The battles take place on an arena track and the goal is to get to the item boxes to gather weapons and attack the other team. Whoever gets the most hits on the other team wins. It’s a good idea in theory, but that tracks are so large that much of the time is spent trying to hunt down the other team. Since there are no battle tournaments and no rewards or unlocks for this mode, it almost seemed pointless after a while.

The online mode is cool, but doesn’t stand up to the options in most Xbox 360 games. Opponents are randomly selected based on their user ranking that starts at five thousand and goes up or down depending on race performance. I did like having the ability to play split screen with a friend while racing online against others. There are also tournaments that are started by Nintendo from time to time. I haven’t joined one yet since there have only been two since the game came out and none since I started playing. Due to a lack of voice chat, I wondered if I was actually racing real people at all from time to time.

I expected more from the graphics. I know that it’s basic graphics are supposed to be part of it’s charm, but many things looked rather bland. The smoke and sparks are dull and the explosions don’t look good at all. Most people won’t mind because this is what was expected, but after playing other Wii games like Resident Evil 4 and The Legend of Zelda, I thought that Mario Kart could have looked much better.

Writing a review on the game almost seems pointless since everyone will buy the game because Mario is on the cover, but the game does live up to it’s namesake. It could have been better, but it’s still one of the best racing games on the Wii. Also, don’t forget that this is one of those games that your friends will expect you to have when they come over to check out the system.

Civilization is one of the longest running strategy titles around, and this game takes a surprising turn for the series. Each new version got more and more complex, but this one took a step way back. I would even go as far as to say that it is more simplified than the original game. This isn’t necessarily bad, but many long time fans may be a little disappointed.

The premise of the game is to become the greatest civilization in the world, plain and simple. There are many ways to accomplish this. A domination victory is earned by taking over everyone’s capital city. An economic victory comes from saving up 200,000 gold. A cultural victory is when you attract 20 of any of the following: great people settled in your cities, wonders of the world, or converted cities. A scientific victory results from building a space station and launching it to Alpha Centauri. Since your strategies are vastly different depending on which of these victories you are going for and each of the sixteen civilizations have unique advantages, the game is almost infinitely replayable. This is increased further by five different difficulty levels. Even if the main game gets old to you, there are a large number of historical scenarios that can be played.

The game starts from basically the beginning of recorded time. You start with one settler and nine squares on the map revealed. The settler allows you to found your first city and the game can go any direction from there. You can build a large army to try and quickly hunt down the other civilizations. This will leave your city’s development behind since all your resources are going to the army. Another option would be to build up you city in order to allow it to grow and bring in more resources. This will, of course, leave you open to and other civilizations that decided to attempt the first option. Then there is always the choice to build a wonder of the world, which will give you excellent bonuses but often take a long time to build. In addition to allocating your cities resources, you must also balance between scientific discovery and economic prosperity. Focus too much on one, and the other will fall behind and make victory more difficult. During all of this, you must also find time to explore the world, settle more cities, and fend off attacks from barbarians or hostile opponents. Battles are a numbers game. Each unit has a number for attack and another for defense. These number can be increased (and in a few cases, decreased) by several things: terrain of the land, experience of the unit, presence of support units, an so on. Since it is only a number that decides the outcome, it is possible for a well seasoned army of archers to kill a tank, which is funny to see but the system makes sense and works well. The number isn’t just a set-in-stone attack rating, but more of a chance of victory. This means a weaker army always has a chance to win, but the chance goes down the bigger the difference between the two units is. The game is turn based, so you will have plenty of time to sit and think about the best course of action. Each game will take anywhere from three to five hours to complete, more if you spend a lot of time planning your turns. This is definitely a thinking game, so action junkies will quickly get bored.

Although it is a very deep game, there are many corners that were cut and options left out that were in past games. The world is incredibly small in comparison and the size is always the same. There are always four other randomly chosen civilizations for you to go up against, unlike in previous games where you could choose from three to seven. Some other long running features are not really present. Keeping you people happy basically happens on its own and even when they aren’t, it really doesn’t affect much. Many of the statistics that could be tracked before, can’t be in this game. You used to be able to use spies to learn how big other civilizations armies are or what building and technology they are working on. Now, spies are merely for stealing minor things from enemy cities. Long term peace treaties are non-existent. The computer players will occasionally approach you and say they will leave you alone for five turns or so if you give them something they want. To make matters worse, there is no way you can place the same demands on them. There are a bunch of other minor exclusions that were in past games that would have been nice. If an enemy builds a city right next to one of yours and you take it over, you can’t get rid of it and both must share the same land squares. This hurts both cities and prevents them from growing as much as they need to. Also, old units cannot be disbanded. This isn’t a big deal since you don’t need to use resources to support them like in past games, but it is just a bit dumb to see your first ancient warrior unit you ever made protecting a city along side a tank. Nuclear weapons aren’t as present in the modern era of this game either. If you build the Manhattan Project wonder, you recieve one missle and no more can be built. You get one; that’s it. I may not like a lot of these design choices, but I do understand that they were made to make the game a bit easier to learn and reach a broader audience.

Another major gripe I have with the game is that the computer controlled civilizations seem way too war-like. In one game session, I was giving everything I possibly could to the Russians just so they wouldn’t attack me. After a few hundred years of them completely using me, they randomly decided to tell me that they had to ‘crush my puny civilization.’ Hell, even Ghandi declared war on me when I told him that I didn’t want to give him one of my technologies that he demanded without giving me anything in return. The other players can win with any of the four victory conditions as well, but every single one wants to destroy you. I also have yet to see any two computer players fighting each other. I’m sure they do, but they always seem to want to fight me first.

The graphics aren’t stellar, but they look nice. They are a bit too cartoony for my tastes, though. The 3D characters for the advisers and opponent’s leaders look great and are entertaining to watch. It would have been nice to have the option to view a 3D model of your cities with all of the buildings. The first few do appear clearly within the city, but after that it just turns into a jumbled mess of structure and you can’t really see specific things.

This game is best described as Civilization Lite. It’s the same game we know and love, just not as much of it. This is a great intro for newcomers to the series that would like an awesome strategy game that is more than just building a bigger army than the other guy (although that can be one possible strategy if you like). Longtime fans will probably look at this as simply a fun diversion rather than the next iteration in the series.

It’s hard to say exactly why this game is so good because everyone is going to be in one of two categories: the long time fans of the series that already love the game and the people who can’t understand why this series is so popular. This game wraps up the Metal Gear Solid storyline perfectly. There may be more Metal Gear games, but it closes Solid Snake’s part of the series.

The stealth action continues to get better. The already good controls have been tweaked to near perfection. Although it takes several button presses to do a simple action (like aiming your gun), the scheme is so intuitive that it quickly becomes second nature.The aiming moves a bit slower than I liked and it lead to some confusing moments during some of the more intense battles. Many people won’t like the game’s slow pace, but that is exactly why I loved it. Waiting for the perfect moment to pop out and quietly take down one guy is so much more rewarding than mowing down a hundred enemies while running through a level at full speed. Instead of having to switch camouflage like in the last game, you get a new suit that automatically takes on the pattern of anything you lay down on or lean against. This makes sneaking around a bit more fun, but still keeps the challenge because you will have to be extra careful when going through an area with several different floor patterns. It is also much easier to run and gun in this game than past ones, but I still wouldn’t recommend it. In addition to monitoring Snake’s health, you now also have to keep an eye on his stress level. Actions like getting shot at, being spotted by the enemy, or even just walking around in the open will raise his stress. If Snake gets too stressed, he will not perform as well in combat.

One of the reasons it is a bit easier to get away with not sneaking is the addition of the character Drebin (and his always entertaining hairless monkey with a soft drink addiction). He is an arms dealer that you meet early in the game who will allow you to buy weapons and ammo from him using Drebin points. You can also automatically sell any weapons you find to him as soon as you pick them up as long as you already have another one in your inventory. This adds a new, unexpected aspect to the game. After watching a squad of rebels get mowed down by the enemy, I would debate whether or not it was worth it to expose myself to gather their weapons or just play it safe and move on. By the end of the game, it is possible to have so many points that ammo will never be an issue. Some players will like this, while others will feel it isn’t really faithful to the series since in every other game, you had to work so hard to conserve ammo.

The boss battles are hit and miss. Some are a ton of fun and quite memorable while others are completely lame. All of the bosses are named for the bosses in the first Metal Gear Solid and are a bit similar, but still unique. The Screaming Mantis battle was awesome and reminiscent of the Psycho Mantis battle. I can’t really describe it without ruining it for you, so you will just have to take my word for it. The Crying Wolf fight, however, was disappointing. The series is known for it’s sniper boss battles, so I was ready for a long fight. I ran to a tank to hide under it and was able to see the boss. I shot her with my rifle which caused her to run around looking for me. When she was done running around, she returned to the same spot and I could shoot her again. After repeating this several times, I won the battle. Even though this fight was a little boring, it doesn’t even begin to compare to how bad the final fight is. The final boss battle is a fist fight and the controls are completely changed. I had to die a few time before I even got the feel for how to fight. Even once I got the controls down, the fight is so poorly constructed that I died several more times. The hit detection basically doesn’t work and always seemed to favor your enemy. I would throw punches and my hand would go right through them. They would swing at me and clearly miss by a couple of feet but it would still register as a hit. During the fight, Snake only takes small steps and cannot run at all, making avoiding attacks near impossible. After an insane amount of practice, I got to the point where I can win the fight most of the time, but I still hated it.

The cutscenes, as always, are top notch. Every camera shot and angle is Hollywood quality. Although they are impressive, many of them drag on way too long. It will take more than a half hour from the first time you put the game in your PS3 to the time you actually start playing. There are a few scenes that are about forty five minutes long. The final movie, including credits, is almost an hour and a half. You can pause during these movies, but you cannot save and quit. If you don’t have more than an hour of free time, you might as well play something else and wait until you have some more time on your hands, because you won’t get anywhere with this one. The game took me about eighteen hours to complete, but I would guess that less than ten was actual gameplay.

Even though the scenes can be lengthy, the story is amazing. The main purpose of the plot is to explain all the past games, so newcomers will easily get lost. Just about every question you ever had is finally answered. What happened to your allies from the first game? Why is Snake so old? Is it possible for Raiden to go from sissy to bad ass? I’ll spoil this one: yes. Why can’t Vamp seem to die? Hell, they even go as far as to explain why the guard in the first two games had stomach problems that made him go to the bathroom so much and tie that into the story. How’s that for closure. Almost every character from the series makes an appearance (some only in flashbacks) and everyone has an impact on the story in some way. I can’t think of a better way to tie up the story I have been following for ten years and three console generations.

This is the just about the perfect end to the Solid Snake saga. Aside from a few poorly designed boss fights, I loved every bit of this game. Finally, there is a reason to own a PS3.

So I have this friend that lives in Hell and he informed me the other day that it has, in fact, frozen over. Though he was unsure at first as to the cause, it was soon discover that it was due to EA making a good game. Actually, scratch that; a great game. Bad Company is impressive on nearly every front: graphics, gameplay, story, and so much more.

While the basic gameplay isn’t that much different than other first person shooters, what makes this game stand out is the destructible environments. Every single building in the game can be completely destroyed, except for the floors and stairs. This includes the walls, roof, all furniture, and doorways. I cannot fully explain how entertaining it is to fire a grenade at a well hidden enemy inside a building and see nothing but a massive hole in the wall where they were hiding once the smoke clears. It also makes the tank and helicopter fights completely different than in other games since you can’t hide behind the same wall and pop out when you have the chance. You are forced to stay on the move and hope you can take the enemy out before they destroy all the cover in the area. All the possible destruction made me flash an evil grin when I saw that the last mission takes place in a fairly sizable town with more buildings than I have ever seen in one level. The destruction doesn’t just apply to buildings, either. Blow up a wall of sandbags and you can watch them fly through the air. Fire enough bullets into a tree and it will fall over (a vehicle mounted machine gun can clear a forest). Explosions even leave holes in the ground that can be used to slow vehicles or as a makeshift hiding spot. Bad Company has the highest level of destruction that I can ever remember seeing in a game.

There are a vast number of weapons to use in the game. So many that they actually double as the games hidden packages. Weapons are scattered around the maps and the more powerful ones are hidden better than the weaker ones. On the title screen, there is a menu option that shows you which guns you have found and which you have yet to discover as well as each ones rarity. Even though each one handles differently, none are too easy to use. I mean this in a good way, though, because it makes you feel like you earned each kill. I did think the explosive weapons were a bit under-powered. Many times it felt like if the enemy wasn’t a couple of feet from a grenade, they wouldn’t take much damage.

While most war games have boring or non-existent storylines, this game’s plot is one of it’s strongest points. In the beginning, you are transferred to B Company (aka Bad Company), which is where the Army sticks it’s misfits that it doesn’t care about anymore. After the first mission, your squad runs across a mercenary group that is rumored to pay it’s soldiers in gold bars. After about two and a half seconds of moral dilemma, your squad decides to go after the gold. What follows is a chase across a couple of countries that has the squad fighting mercenaries, helping an exiled dictator, and maybe a tiny bit of treason. Every character has memorable and entertaining personalities and every cutscene is hilarious. Everything is explained about each person through the course of the game except your character, which I thought was odd. The game opens with him saying that he could have been thrown in jail for what he did, but they transferred him to B Company instead. This is that last that is mentioned about it and left me wanting to know more. Outside of this, the rest of the story is, by far, the best narrative I have ever seen in a war game.

Unfortunately, there are three big problems I have with the game that prevent it from being an instant classic. First is it’s length. Although it is longer than Call of Duty 4, it can still be completed in around 7 hours. I have always felt that an action game should be at least ten hours long for me to feel as if I am getting my money’s worth out of it. Three difficulties and hidden collectibles help the replay value, but I still feel it is too short. Second is the fact that you pretty much can’t lose. Similar to BioShock, you are respawned nearby when you die and all the enemies that you killed before your death are still gone. This takes the feeling of danger away when you know that you aren’t really making progress by staying alive longer. I actually won a battle against a tank by throwing a grenade, dying, throwing another grenade, dying, throwing another grenade, and the last blew the tank up. Occasionally, there is a mission objective that must be accomplished and if you fail, you must restart at a checkpoint, but most of the game has no penalty for death. The final problem is that there is only one multiplayer game mode. It is a fun mode that is a twist on the ‘attack or defend’ games, but the Battlefield series is know for it’s online and only having one choice is lame. There are rumors of new modes being added in free updates, but shipping the game with only one is…well, very typical of EA, actually.

Graphically, the game looks amazing. The character models may be just a step behind the likes of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, but there is one addition that makes this game stand out: dust. There is dust or fog in the air all the time. Explosions throw debris that takes a few seconds to clear. Helicopters kick up dirt when they are low enough to the ground. Many games have better graphics but are so spotless that they don’t look real. This one thing makes Bad Company look like the most realistic FPS I have ever played.

Just about everything was done right in this game and the end result is some of the most fun FPS action I have had in a long time. I would go as far as to say I liked it more than Call of Duty 4. This outstanding game more than makes up for EA’s last botched war game attempt that I played; Medal of Honor: Airborne. If you are a single player or multiplayer fan, you can’t go wrong here.