2011 Year in Review: Game of the Year

This year… has been interesting… at least from a personal perspective. But I digress, let’s talk about the games that I have played.

Catching Up on Classics: Partem Deum <—(I likely butchered that)
Last year, I picked up a Playstation 3 and set to work playing and reviewing a multitude of modern classics. I’ve continued that trend, albeit on a much larger scale, extending it to the current generation of games. In this year alone, I have played both Mass Effects, Red Dead Redemption, Oblivion, Minecraft, LIMBO, Splinter Cell, half of the Call of Duties, Dragon Age: Origins, Super Meat Boy, Jamestown, Portal 2, Resistance 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Vanquish, Terraria, Torchlight, inFamous, fl0wer, Bioshock 2 and Heavenly Sword. That barely scratches the surface.

I borrowed Red Dead Redemption from my friend Devan, and I had limited time to spend with the game and barely scratched the surface. I completed the campaign up to the <SPOILER> death of John Marston, but never played the postgame missions with Jack </SPOILER>. Nonetheless, the 20 hours that I did enjoy with the game were memorable and satisfying. Going into the game doubting that a New Mexican desert could make for an interesting environment, I was shocked to discover that Red Dead Redemption had one of the richest and liveliest game worlds to be seen in a game. Its a game that I regret not owning myself and an easy recommendation to anyone.

I bought Super Meat Boy at a Steam Sale approximately one year ago, and I have not yet beat the second world. Nonetheless, the intense difficulty and low punishment-factor not only makes SMB one of the most challenging games of the year, but one of the most consistently playable. Your reflexes will be challenged, but not your patience. This is a fine casual game that anyone should have on their hard-drive for the time between classes.

I liked inFamous. While I felt that Empire City was a bland and uninteresting place, the game redeemed itself with excellent action, buttery-smooth controls and fun powers. I wasn’t that pleased with the jarring storytelling, but was entertained through the entire duration of this flawed classic.

I hated Modern Warfare 2, the scattershot plot, rage-inducing multiplayer, cliffhanger-story and agency-robbing set-pieces failed to carry over what made the first Modern Warfare one of the best shooters ever made. That said, I did have fun with Black Ops. The conspiracy-laden story was entertaining, clear and understandable. While still linear and filled with hand-holding,the game was not as egregiously unreplayable as the previous game. For all the bashing I put on this series for spawning an unsustainable trend of copycat shooters, Zombies makes this game a guilty pleasure of mine.

My Personal Game of the Year

I have not yet played Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Arkham City or Skyward Sword, so I cannot include them in this part of the post. But for the sake of thought, here are my three top games of 2011.

Minecraft was the second 5/5 I awarded on this blog, and for good reason. It holds shocking emotional impact and touches the player’s soul in an unexpected way. The lonely freedom the player experiences is liberating in its childlike gleefulness. It is a brilliant game filled with brilliant ideas played by brilliant people. Don’t let the allegations of an unintuitive tutorial dissuade you, running the game in windowed mode with the Wiki available in the background completely alleviates this problem. The possibilities, like in life, are endless.

I love the Mass Effect games, while a mixed bag from a moral perspective, the endearing characters, epic narrative and lovable world work together to make a remarkable impact on the player. Mass Effect 2’s release on the PS3 early this year brought this brilliant series and its varied denizens to a new audience. I grew attached to a certain Scientist Salarian named Mordin, his caffeinated manner of speaking, affable dialect and homicidal humor ingrained his character into my heart. The same can’t be said about a certain Miranda Lawson, I didn’t shed a tear when that pretentious and unsympathetic douchebag was left for dead in the center of the galaxy. 

Portal 2 is the best puzzle-game ever made. The apotheosis of a movement initiated by the first Portal and expanded in Braid and LIMBO, the game exemplifies the positive trial-and-error aesthetic. The game is unspeakably difficult, but the intelligent construction of the puzzles promote rigorous experimentation and never fails to be fresh. The game is reinforced by genius writing, hilarious characters and a unique cooperative mode requiring the use of two brains. Portal 2 is great, and that does not even touch on the deep and involving feminist subtext that got even my Ethics teacher interested.

And the Winner is…

And this is what makes any Game of the Year decision so difficult. Portal 2, Minecraft and Mass Effect 2 are all great fun, intellectually and emotionally gratifying and vastly different. One is a the apotheosis of intelligent play, another is a immaculately detailed fantasy world and another is, like life, what you make of it. All I enthusiastically recommend to all and consider to be immaculate examples of brilliant game design and if I could, I would give trophies to all the studios responsible for the games and knit sweaters for their respective producers, but I can’t. So, with a smidge of regret, I declare that:

Portal 2 is my personal game of the year. The choice was difficult, and while Minecraft kept me awake through the wee hours of the morning and I will never stop loving Garrus, only Portal 2 transcended its ludic constraints to become something indescribably moving and impactful. Portal 2 was, unlike the other games, perfectly paced and never repetitive. This was an important year in gaming, and while the medium does suffer from the repetitious annual releases of gratuitously and self-indulgently violent multiplayer shooters, Portal 2 shines among these games as a beacon of hope for the medium. Play it, and look to the wide-open future with optimism.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to all!

~Kevin

Minecraft Review

There’s a certain, magical sense of childlike wonder permeating throughout every moment of Minecraft that few of us have experienced since the cessation of our childhoods. It is a memory marked by the wondrous sense of innocence that we took for granted before our lives became inundated with the harried strife of reality, a memory of a time when every day brought with it a joyful new experience, a time when every nook and cranny of the enchanted world could have been a cave filled with forgotten treasure, a world where monsters lurked under the bed every night and we cried to our parents to protect us. For all of us, it has been decades since we last experienced that euphoric sense of novelty accompanying every moment of our existence, the very next morning becoming something we perpetually dread. Childhood has been lost forever to the insatiable maws of tomorrow, innocence is shattered forever while we desperately try to put together the shards, be it through our first breakup, our first job, or even the rite of passage of entering Elementary School.




And thus is the beauty of Minecraft. It is through the simple joy of exploration through which a long-forgotten facet of our each of our individual histories is recalled to life. This is an incredible game recalling a time when everything was new and hope bled through our fantasies into reality. It thus goes without saying that this is not a game for the decade, but one for eternity.

Gameplay
In simplest terms, Minecraft is a sandbox/RPG in which every component of the gameworld can be modified by the player and used as a tool. The goal of the game’s RPG component is to collect resources and build structures during the day to survive the night, during which the monsters roam. This is an extremely open-ended style of play and the game’s infinite range of possibilities becomes immediately perceptible. There is a goal to Minecraft and there is a final boss and end sequence, but the game’s already open-ended main quest is easily eschewed when one realizes the creative potential the game’s construction system offers. In short, the player must collect arcane materials buried deep in the earth to create a portal to another dimension to slay the “Ender Dragon”. It’s a childlike set-up that could have been conceived in any number of Kindergarten recesses and perfectly appropriate for the imaginative nature of the game.

What happens between the player’s initial spawn and the defeat of the Ender Dragon is totally up to the player. This freedom, shockingly enough, does not feel overwhelming, but liberating. Within moments, a single thought implants itself in the player’s mind: “I can do anything in this game!” Roaming the procedurally generated gameworld guided only by the built-in achievements guide is an exercise in glee. That cave over there? Grab a torch, let’s go spelunking in it! The grassy meadow over there? Go ahead, pick some flowers. The islands in the distance? Not a hard swim, I even see smoke rising from an NPC village there. All the resources you discover from deconstructing the gameworld can be used in the single most robust crafting system seen in gaming. Within minutes, the gameworld becomes a playset for your imagination, a kind of modern-day LEGO set. The trees, rocks and caves become the components for your tools, weapons, armor and houses, you begin to see the world around you differently.

That is until nightfall. Despite the joyously hyperactive imagination of the daytime, night in Minecraft is greatly reminiscent of a child’s dread of bedtime. The monsters of Minecraft are brutally persistent in their tenacity to chew on your brains, zombies will moan from unseen dark corners and skeletons will fire arrows at you from a distance. None of these enemies compare to the terrifying onslaught of the Creeper. A quadrupedal mass of wrinkled green skin, the Creeper is perpetually haunted by a sad, mournful frown. The most advisable thing to do when encountering one is to run the hell away. The Creeper can explode for an instant kill, causing the player to lose all progress, resources and equipment, respawning him at the game’s start. Watch out for these enemies, as they are terrifying to encounter. Night in Minecraft effectively becomes as horrific as enduring nights as a young child, the perpetual threat of monsters lurking inches below your mattress. Its a brutally haunting game to play and beautiful in the memories it evokes.


A memory that will always stay with me originates from a few hours ago as I emerged from my safehouse prior to the break of dawn. Armed with a newly crafted stone sword, I beat down the zombies that were knocking at my door throughout the night and saw some cows and sheep across the strait on an island. I swam across the strait and slayed the animals for meat, wool and leather, the intent of weaving a warm jacket lurking in my mind. I heard an unfamiliar moan and raised my head to see, staring from about twenty feet away, a Creeper. I backed away, turned around, and made a break for it, sprinting as fast as I could go. I jumped into the strait and splashed my way across, thinking that the water would separate us because it could not swim. I emerged on the opposite bank and turned around, wading, already halfway across the river, was the Creeper. Terrified, I dashed away, fumbling over a hill, turning my head periodically to observe its progress as it quickly gained on me.

Not looking where I was going, I fell into a crevasse and injured myself. Looking up into the hole through which I fell, I saw that I rolled down about a hundred feet… losing the Creeper in the process… Wonderful… Getting back to the surface and back to the safehouse is going to be so much more of a bother. I lowered my head and saw, jutting out from the cobblestone of the mouth of an extensive system of interweaving caves and catacombs, a cache of glittering diamonds. Like in life, one downfall opens up a host of new opportunities. I picked up my pickaxe and set to work. When the diamonds were gone, I ventured deep into the cave system, eagerly seeking out an adventure.
Minecraft’s second game mode is called “Creative Mode”, and removes the constraints of hunger, experience, health, resources and gravity to allow the player to construct anything he can imagine freely. With the available mods and texture packs, incredible stuff can be done. Just look at some of the things the community has conceived.

Further proving the LEGO comparison: Minecraft has already been popping up in art and computer science classes all around the country. Its an exciting proposition with the potential to do a lot of good for society

Graphics and Audio
Minecraft, running on the same Lightweight Java Game Engine, of whose components I am using to power Dark Deception, suffers from scattershot performance. Despite the minimalistic and attractive 8-bit aesthetic the game adheres to, only on minimal settings is the game playable at an acceptable frame rate, at least on a common laptop. To run the game at its best, you’re going to have to turn off fancy graphical features such as ambient lighting and high-render distances. Its a shame, since Minecraft isn’t supposed to be visually awe-inspiring to begin with. It nonetheless channels the first moments of any Bethesda game at all times. A strong incentive to keep exploring is to see what incredible natural structure the procedurally generated world will come up with next, the vastness of valleys and mountains constantly pushing the player to go further.

From an audiovisual standpoint, it would appear that Minecraft is still under construction even this late in its release cycle. C418’s piano orchestrations sound great in the game, and the simple piano and synth soundtrack frames the game's theme well, adding great emotional ambiance. Sound effects have been vastly improved since the game's beta and now apply to all the game's objects. The high dynamic range of the audio gives night time a palpable sense of creepiness as zombies and creepers moan right outside the door.

Impact and Community
Minecraft’s creator, Markus “Notch” Perrson, expressed interest from an early point in making Minecraft open-source after sales died down. Already a vast amount of the game’s codebase is open and modifiable, giving the game an unforeseen educational and creative value. More importantly, the game’s openness has spawned a mammoth mod community unseen since the hacker culture of the early 90s. If playing the core game gives the illusion that anything can be done in Minecraft, editing the game’s source and installing modifications proves that anything can be really done in the game.

The game’s empowering truly comes to life in the various community mods for the game. Portalcraft, for one, turns the entire game into a reimagining of Valve’s subversive puzzler. An upcoming Zelda mod promises to build another entry in the venerable series, complete with functional items, environmental puzzles, dungeons and bosses. Pokemob, nearing a state of completion, recreates the entire Kanto region with complete character models for the original 151, and, oh yes, all the gameplay functionality of the original game, such as inventory, battles and Gym Leaders, will be implemented in the mod. Sadly, no word on Missingno.

Minecraft’s openness has had a social impact on my community. I witnessed several people from my school who had no interest whatsoever in video games become enthralled by the idea of learning how to program in Java and build character models. Despite a lockdown on modifying school computers, Minecraft executables began to pop up on desktops like weeds. School bandwidth plummeted as multiplayer servers were clandestinely run on the community network. Its an easy game to become instantly obsessed with, and the extent of community mod support extends the value of an already infinitely replayable game to Olympian heights. A new generation of independent game developers is being incubated right now, and they are supported by the freedom that Minecraft’s code base affords them.

Conclusion
If there is one game you purchase this year, let it be Minecraft. Minecraft touched my soul in a way that I never imagined possible after my tenth birthday. This is a pioneering game and the embodiment of the values of freedom upheld by computer hackers that have been drowned out since corporations began to encroach on the medium. Notch and Mojang have effectively captured lightning in a bottle: the childlike playfulness that drew us to gaming in the first place. As we became entrenched in shooter after shooter, fighting game after fighting game, we have forgotten the youthful joy we so desperately sought after. How fitting is it that the original wonder of childhood would manifest itself in a world that, much like our own, is procedurally generated, be it through science or the rule of God. Minecraft shines as a beacon of hope, not just for gaming, but for mankind. Play this game… and tremble. 5/5

Resident Evil 4 Review

Quick quiz: name the top five most influential games from the last generation.

Good job, Resident Evil 4 has been lauded universally as one of the most important games of the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era, having pioneered third person shooting while bringing in a new era of graphical fidelity and gleeful violence. It currently retains a position comfortably as one of the highest-rated games on Metacritic and has been ported and remade multiple times in its six year lifespan. There is no doubt that Resident Evil 4 is a great game, but whether or not it has stood the test of time remains up to debate.

Story and Atmosphere

It is a cloudy afternoon in a remote Spanish mountain pass. My pistol drawn and ammuntion low, I inch forward through the woods, dry leaves crushing beneath my feet, into an empty shack on the side of the road. I find medicinal herbs and unused clips on the table. As I turn around to exit, I see a ghastly sight: the decapitated and decomposing corpse of a local woman impaled onto the shack wall. My nerves tense and I continue towards the village I was ordered to investigate.

Three villagers sit around a campfire atop a cliff. They catch sight of me as I walk down the path and immediately run away, not even taking care to extinguish their fire. My spine begins to tingle and I cross the rickety rope bridge to the village gate.

Taking cover behind a tree, I bring out my binoculars to scout out the village. There are about twenty or so farmers roaming about the square, circling a flaming stake. I peer towards the stake and see the charred corpse of the police officer that drove me here. I clench my teeth as my hand inches toward my pistol. I make a run for it.

A scream pierces the air and I double take looking for its source. One of the villagers points at me, teeth bared and the look of venom in his eyes. The chill of death shakes my bones as farmers burst out through every door, dropping their tasks and rushing towards me, teeth bared and tools ready to stab me. I bolt into an empty house and slam the door shut, pushing a dresser to barricade the door. Rushing up the stairs, I discover a shotgun. I rush towards the window and begin to open fire from above. For now, everything is alright.

I hear a knock from the balcony behind me, the villagers have pulled up a ladder. I vault through the window and throw down the ladder, hearing the sickening thud of the man’s bones crushing into the ground. But it is too late, the villagers breach through the downstairs door and the terrifying screech of a chainsaw revs into existence. I swing around the banister and fire a shotgun blast directly into the torso into the fat man with a bloodied bag over his head and the chainsaw in his hand.

But he barely flinches, the force of the shrapnel, enough to blow a normal man in two, hits him with the force of a thrown pebble. I fire again and again as my ammo runs dry, and nothing happens. He raises the chainsaw above his head and swings it into my neck. The vibration of the blade shakes my bones as my head separates from my body and I die. Behind the screen, my controller sits dropped on the floor and my mouth agape in shock.

If the narrative passage above hasn’t yet convinced you, let it be known that Resident Evil 4 is a scary and atmospheric game. Its opening sequence consistently engraves itself into the memories of all who play it. Permeating throughout all of the game’s environs is an overwhelming sense of hostility towards the player, the feeling that the player is not welcome into its bleak, dark world.

 

For all of its atmospheric glory, Resident Evil 4 features a rather weak and silly story grounded in conspiratorial clichés spoiled by forced presentation elements. The creepy atmosphere is all but broken when the hero discovers in the enemy base a document, helpfully titled, “OUR PLAN”. Furthermore, the game’s atrocious voice acting, holding the quality of the background voiceover of a Disneyland ride, oftentimes turns the creepiness into ridiculousness. 

Gameplay

Resident Evil 4 has been universally lauded as the catalyst for the birth of the modern third-person shooter. Games as diverse as Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect owe their mechanics to Resident Evil for their over-the-shoulder perspective, which included modes for quick moving and accurate shooting switchable at a moment’s notice. This allowed for a more fluid and action packed method of navigating the games environments, thus making third-person shooting precise and accurate. Audiovisual impact makes the use of each item of Leon’s arsenal extremely fun.

Some have derided Resident Evil 4 for not featuring a cover system, a gameplay mechanic that would make its way into many third-person action games to come. Frankly, this argument is invalid: Resident Evil’s enemies do not shoot at the player, thus negating the need for a cover system. The infected villagers, monks and industrial workers of the game shamble slowly like zombies, closing in for melee attacks. This forces the player to alternate between move and shoot modes as he tries to distance himself from enemies as they close in, thus establishing a rhythmic pattern of run-turn-shoot, run-turn-shoot, run-turn-shoot. Its fun stuff and establishes the game’s theme of constant terror, flight being a constant response no matter how well armed Leon may be.

And well-armed you may be, Resident Evil 4 features a RPG-like system of item acquisition and upgrades. Scattered throughout the game’s environments are treasures, which can be sold to merchants for gold. Gold in turn can buy new weapons, health upgrades, medicines and weapon-attachments. These items and upgrades are all placed in Leon’s invisible lockbox.

Managing the lockbox is again, an RPG-like system of recognizing the slots each item takes up and rotating them, moving them and removing them to squeeze a maximal amount of ammunition, medicine and weapons into as small a space as possible. It’s a process as stressful as packing.Thankfully, lockbox upgrades are available as the player progresses throughout the game, alleviating the frustration while making the player more powerful than the enemies of the game, thus making the game’s later levels far less frightening than earlier ones.

Its not all stylized ultra-violence, in fact, quirky puzzles and treasure hunts are interspersed between sections of combat, thus giving the game a needed cerebral facet. Unfortunately, the puzzles aren’t based in the gameworld and are not based on the same mechanics that ground navigation and combat. Oftentimes, the player must enter a separate screen to solve a slider puzzle or other minigame to pass through a locked door or access a hidden treasure. These puzzles are oftentimes frustrating and break up the game’s brisk pace.

Graphics/Audio

From an auditory perspective, Resident Evil 4’s sound design perfectly grounds and enhances the game’s hostile and creepy atmosphere. The quiet moan of an enemy around the corner, the clanking of metal chains and the wind quietly howling from beyond a cave are all strongly atmospheric. Tense music, unlike the voice acting, works well to improve the game’s creepiness.

Resident Evil 4 has aged relatively well over the years. While the game’s textures have abysmal resolution, beautiful lighting and character models still look great. A fantastic art style grounds each of the three environments Leon will explore, and each chapter is visually and thematically distinct. From the overwhelming hostility of a remote European village to the mysterious secret passages of a monastic castle and the crazy experiments of a island laboratory, the game’s worlds are memorable and fun to explore.

Conclusion

Resident Evil 4 may seem dated by modern standards especially in terms of its graphics and shooting mechanics. Nonetheless, the historical impact of this game is immediately perceptible, it having spawned the modern third-person shooter and introducing a new precedent for gameplay control. In spite of some forced storytelling, Resident Evil 4 maintains its shine and remains one of the finest adventures of the last generation. 4.25/5

Bioshock 2 Review

Having not played the first Bioshock before delving into its sequel, I can attest that the game is inexplicably weird. The game is unlike anything I have ever played, the closest precedent to it would be the incredible Metroid Prime. Amazingly ambitious, the game attempts to tell a story with the depth and breath of an RPG through the lens of an action-based first-person shooter. Its an interesting experiment in the vein of neoshooters like Portal.

 
Gameplay
Bioshock 2 is far more combat oriented than its predecessor, featuring an entirely revamped combat and character-upgrade system. Players can now dual wield Plasmid Powers and weapons, allowing for simultaneous combo-attacks such as freezing an enemy solid and shattering him with a shotgun blast. Plasmid powers are still acquired and upgraded with ADAM, the acquisition of which is revamped.

As a hulking Big-Daddy, the player has the option of participating in a minigame where he must protect a Little Sister as she collects ADAM from corpses as waves of splicers attack. Its a fun and integral part of the game wielding a multitude of rewards. The binary “Bioshock-Morality” system is still present and unchanged, allowing the player to greedily harvest Little Sisters or restore them to uncorrupted girlhood. “Power to the People” stations, which appear once a level, allow for permanent upgrades to be made to guns, allowing for such gleeful weaponry as incendiary shotguns and freezing speargun bolts. While this constant character progression is indeed fun and rewarding, it does throw off the balance of the gameplay, as the game’s first hours are exponentially harder than its later hours.

One of the major concerns about the first Bioshock was its lack of online multiplayer. Bioshock 2 remediates this flaw by including a multiplayer mode unlike that of anything else in the shooter-market. Like in the single-player game, players dual-wield plasmid powers and guns, and the same strategic combinations still stand. Unique to the mode are hackable turrets for strategic defense and “corpse-research”, which allows for a substantial damage bonus to be acquired if one photographs a fallen-enemy’s corpse. Much like Call of Duty, a persistent system of unlocks is available giving the player reason to continue playing. Much unlike Call of Duty, combat is not frustrating and always balanced. Unfortunately, in my experience with the game, the only playlist that is consistently populated are for the Team Deathmatch and Deathmatch gametypes.

Story
Bioshock was lauded for having one of the most impactful narratives of any action-game to date. As a gameworld-exploration of the moral ramifications of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, it ventured into territory unknown to most gamers.

Taking place over ten years after the events of the first game, Bioshock 2 returns the player to the dystopian world of Rapture. The underwater city has been overrun by drug addicted splicers led by the cruel-Collectivist/Altruist Sophia Lamb. The player takes the role of Subject Delta, the original Big Daddy, who had his protectorate, Eleanor, stolen from him by Lamb and was forced to commit suicide. One day, he finds himself brought back to life and begins a quest to rescue Eleanor.

Unfortunately, Bioshock 2’s narrative is far less impactful than that of its predecessor. The new Rapture of the 70s, in its glorious ruin, is far less visually impactful than its predecessor. It is still beautiful, especially in its underwater areas, but the world itself does not support the game’s main theme of the dehumanizing aspects of collectivism. Sophia Lamb is not as charismatic or deplorable an antagonist than Andrew Ryan, and her influence in the gameworld is not as pronounced.

The game features a series of moral choices that will influence the story’s conclusion. Most of these amount to the decision to spare or kill a key enemy, and it becomes immediately clear what the game considers good or evil. This binary approach to morality is problematic given the comparative depth of the game’s philosophy. I chose to rescue every Little Sister I encountered and was equally rewarded as if I were to harvest them.

Graphics/Audio
Graphically, the game is gorgeous from an artistic and technical perspective. The dystopian 1950’s-era Art Deco world is pronounced, richly unique and starkly believable in its bleakness. The underwater city is collapsing, and evidence of decay is omnipresent in the world as water leaks in through cracks and breaches in the windows and wood begins to rot.

Excellent use of light and shadow strongly improves the visual impact of the game, setting forward the bleak mood of Lamb’s version of Rapture. Great sound effects lend an appropriate visceral rush to combat, and a 40’s era soundtrack grounds the setting nicely.

Conclusion
I greatly enjoyed my time with Bioshock 2, and while it may not be as unique as its predecessor, it remains refreshing and absorbing to those jaded by identical military shooters. The wonderful graphical style, realized gameworld and deep combat win the game the commendable score of 4.25/5.

Mass Effect 2 Review

I have discussed my dear Mass Effect series before on this site from a philosophical/moral perspective and praised it for pushing morality beyond binary norms of good and evil, instead critiquing player’s actions from a deontological and teleological perspective. While that stood as more of a critique of the game as a literary work, here I will discuss the game from a more traditional, “review” standpoint.

Yet, before we begin, I must make a single, absolutist statement. Buy Mass Effect 2, the game is a wondrous journey into a richly imaginative universe populated with interesting characters and incredible worlds.

Gameplay

From a gameplay perspective, Mass Effect 2 is an amalgam of third-person shooter and role-playing game tropes, its main gameplay sections being divided into combat and conversation. Fighting is done in semi-real time, allowing the player to pause the action at any point during a battle to assign commands and cast “spells”, when played in real-time, Mass Effect 2 operates very similarly to a cover-based shooter, forcing the player to dance in and out of cover with visceral grace. Upgradable powers and experience points level out the game’s RPG elements, adding the strategic depth of character development to the game. Ultimately, Mass Effect 2’s combat engine creates a perfect marriage of RPG and shooter elements, and as a result, what we have is a fluid cover-based shooter with enough tactical depth to recall classics like Diablo and Knights of the Old Republic. While it is true that Mass Effect can be considered to be a “casual-ized” and “dumbed-down” RPG, this works to the game’s benefit, having fewer opportunities to level-up and fewer points to allocate makes upgrade decisions more meaningful.

Nonetheless, combat is marred only by questionable friendly AI. While there are squad commands for holding positions, advancing and retreating, these do not necessarily work, and when left to their own intuition, oftentimes fail to use cover. It is truly jarring to see your feeble, mage-type character vault over a barrier to engage a horde of Krogans using his weak pistol.

Where it comes to conversation, Mass Effect 2 radically simplifies discussion through its “Paraphrase System” and its dialogue wheel. Up to six dialogue choices can be chosen from a radial menu, each of them summarized in brief on it. While this does reduce the amount of reading one has to deal with, it does create some awkward moments when the paraphrased choices fail to embody the tone and nature of the inherent dialogue choice. And as a result, Mass Effect 2’s conversations are imperfect.

Where the game’s conversations do excel at, though, is the narrative impact that each interaction has. Relationships between characters can be built or destroyed, and the choices that the player will make will have far reaching impact far beyond the scope of the immediate games. As a result, the Mass Effect trilogy feels less like a series of self-contained games, but rather a single continuous story meant to be played from start to finish. Indeed, the narrative power afforded to the player by the game justifies the name, the player has a Massive Effect.

That said, Mass Effect 2 suffers from a few technical faults. One such problem comes in the form of load times, which, while not monumental, are still annoying in environments that require many map-transfers or reloads. This is especially problematic in the multi-leveled Normandy. Crew member reside on each of the ships different floors, and suffering a 45 second load time to converse with each floor of characters remained a severe turn-off to the game’s best aspect.

Furthermore, a few technical problems, such as slow-loading textures and glitchy collision detection on vehicular levels are inherited from the game’s predecessor. This however is rare and occurs only during a few select DLC chapters.

Story

Mass Effect 2’s story ties directly into the events of the first game, thus, it comes as highly recommended to experience the tale of the first game before plunging into Mass Effect 2. (The PC version is $20 on Steam and has relatively tame system requirements for an action-RPG, I was able to run it on a 2.0 GHz Pentium Laptop with an integrated graphics card.) That said, Playstation 3 players can download a beautifully drawn interactive comic book summarizing the events of the first game. What tames this prospect is the fact that the comic does little to emphasize the moral weight and impact of the game’s choices and characters, and thus, while the player might understand the first game’s story, little in way of emotional connection is established.

That said, Mass Effect 2 takes place approximately two years after the events of the first game. Protagonist Jane Shepard is killed by a passing alien ship before her charred body is captured by Human-Supremacist organization Cerberus. Aliens called Collectors from deep space are abducting human colonies and Shepard, now a galactic hero from her exploits against the Reapers of the first game, must investigate the problem and assemble a team to deal with it. What follows is an epic and very personal saga involving a multitude of realistically written characters. Surprising plot twists keep the story interesting with every mission, and the battle to attain each crewmember’s loyalty is both moving and entertaining. A wonderfully realized universe is filled with imagined histories and lore. One of the best aspects of Mass Effect is its “Codex”, an encyclopedia of lore so well written that the game’s optimistic sci-fi universe seems to be a viable place to spend one’s imagined life.

Calling the character arcs “interesting and realistic” does little to describe the depth and care put into their creation. Characters are exceptionally well written and feature incredible voice acting. Through idle conversation and active “loyalty missions”, the player must develop a relationship with each of them, and by the game’s conclusion, the player will feel like he has made a lifelong friend of these virtual characters. Particularly memorable is the saga of Garrus Valkarian, a Turian operating his own version of justice on the crime-ridden planet of Omega, his long-ingrained memories of revenge and injustice characterize him as one of the game’s most interesting characters. Mordin Solus, a hyperactive Salarian doctor, who initially comes off as a source of comic relief, contributes strongly to the game’s extensive lore by his regrettable involvement in the Genophage, a synthetic disease that severely damaged the galaxy’s population of Krogan. While the game may be dark in tone, intense drama and self-referential humor are done with such great care that exploration is fun and rewarding.

One of two problems that can be said of Mass Effect’s narrative is that the paraphrase system occasionally creates moments where the player does not feel in control of the conversation. This is especially apparent during conversations with potential romantic partners, where Shepard will invariably open a conversation with a flirty line whether or not the player wants to participate in a romantic subquest.

The second problem comes in terms of the game’s morality system. While eschewing a single, sliding-morality meter in favor of two meters for respective “paragon” and “renegade” choices. The two are meant to symbolize the player’s tendency to adhere to either deontological and teleological ethics in given situations, which, in theory, is a great idea that will eliminate binary morality. What makes this problematic is that situational choices are still binary in nature. Players who adhere to the deontological path are portrayed as noble, kind and heroic, whereas players on the teleological path see their Shepard’s behave selfishly and cruelly, forming Sith-like facial scars. This reduces what was intended to be a multifaceted and realistic version of morality into a binary one.

Graphics and Audio

From a graphical perspective, Mass Effect 2 is an artistic and technical triumph. Alien races are convincingly portrayed and go far beyond the “Muppets in Space” the original Star Wars was decried for. Even more striking is the diverse variety of worlds that the player will traverse through. The Asari colony of Illium evokes Coruscant’s skyscrapers with saturated blue and purple to create a very cosmopolitan-feeling planet. Similarly, the red and brown streets of slummy Omega work wonderfully to showcase the decrepit imagined history of crime-filled ghettoes and gangs. The post-apocalyptic wasteland of Tuchanka is impressive in the scope of destruction it has suffered, and the memories of a previous civilization are evident in its Varren-infested surroundings. Each planet is artistically unique and impressive, making for an imaginative diversity of styles unheard of in most games.

Technically, Mass Effect 2 is far improved over the first game. Facial animation is incredibly detailed and bridges the uncanny valley with grace. Lighting, particles and textures realize the artists’ vision with skill and finesse, and Mass Effect 2 is one of the prettiest games on consoles… at least when its not hit by one of its exceedingly rare graphical glitches.

From an auditory perspective, Mass Effect 2’s cast of skilled voice actors is a treat for the ears. An inspired performance by Jennifer Hale as Jane Shepard is a highlight, her tonally intense yet open style connects the player to her actions wonderfully. Seth Green’s “Joker” and Martin Sheen’s Illusive Man also give wonderful performances, conveying respectively the character’s sarcasm and mystery with finesse. Sound effects and music set the emotional tone well for combat and conversation, adding to the intensity of the game’s battles.

Conclusion

Mass Effect 2 is one of those games that will take over your mind and inhabit your thoughts and daydreams. With a cast of lovable characters, an inspired universe and visceral-yet-strategic combat, Mass Effect 2 surpasses its predecessor with aplomb and solidifies its place with RPG-greats like Chrono Trigger and KOTOR. Play this game. 4.75/5

Resistance 2 Review

First-person shooters are an oversaturated market these days, and with the flood of nearly identical titles being released every month, it is unsurprising that the quality of these games is on a downward trend. Resistance 2, developed by the esteemed Insomniac of Rachet & Clank fame, exemplifies that sad decline.

Background

Resistance 2 is a run-n-gun first-person shooter about an alternate history wherein invading aliens called the “Chimera” interrupt World War II and begin an unstoppable conquest of Earth. The player takes control of Nathan Hale, an impossibly generic marine infected with the “Chimera Virus”, and must fight his way through frustrating levels of irritating enemies. Its a thoroughly uninspired and uninteresting story that has little emotional weight and serves only to break up the action.

Gameplay

In essence, Resistance 2 plays very similarly to nearly any sci-fi shooter to be released in the last five years. Progress down a linear path filled with set-piece battles to the level’s end. What makes Resistance 2 unique is how frustrating its levels and enemies are, making what should be exhilarating combat a frustrating process of trial-and-error.

The chief element contributing to the frustration is irritating enemy design. Small, hard-to-hit drones float in the air, firing weak bolts at you. These enemies are not difficult to dispatch, but disrupt the pacing of the combat by forcing the player to circle-strafe in crowded environments. More irritating are zombie-like enemies that swarm around the player clawing at him. These enemies do little damage, but the sheer volume through which they attack the player makes them especially irritating, causing the player to repeatedly mash his melee attack to survive this encounter. Perhaps most irritating of all, an invincible shark-like enemy that instantly kills the player as soon has he ventures close to it. This makes swimming a trial-and-error experience requiring the memorization of its movement patterns to make a mad dash across water for land. Its not fun at all, and understanding the levels becomes a matter of memorizing enemy spawns.

Disappointing, for the most part, are giant, cannon-wielding aliens intended to represent a “boss-fight” of sorts. These enemies are not challenging and represent the irritating challenge of circle-strafing around cluttered environments. Their great girth makes fighting them a matter of placing the crosshairs over their bodies and holding down the trigger until they explode. Its not challenging, and not very fun.

What is challenging and annoying is navigating the environments. Myriad enemies fire at you from many directions, making decent cover hard to acquire. Most frustrating still, are holes in the environment which, given the vertical nature of combat, usually go unseen by the player until he has already fallen to his death in one. Its a thoroughly annoying and unfun experience.

Boss battles are graphical showcases and are jaw-dropping in their scale. Too bad they are frustrating practices in dodging attacks and memorizing patterns, putting none of the skills that players have learned to use and preferring instead to instill new mechanics for each boss. This leads to scattered gameplay and incredibly irritating encounters. Particularly despicable is a giant insect battle on top of a circular tower. The battle requires the player to consistently fire at the boss’s mouth as it crawls about the tower unleashing annoying spawn that must be killed with melee attacks. The scarcity of ammunition during this fight makes the battle frustrating to the extreme.

When it was released in 2009, Resistance 2 was redeemed by its massive 60-player competitive battles and its deep 8-player co-op mode. However, it is 2011 now and the community has dwindled to about five or six active, unranked matches. As a result, the once great multiplayer is essentially dead, and without anyone to play with, the multiplayer cannot be enjoyed at its fullest potential.

Guns and Ammunition

That said, Resistance 2 is redeemed from the realm of crap by its creative and gleeful weaponry, a testament to Insomniac’s experience with the vastly superior Rachet and Clank series of action-platformers. A standout is the “Magnum”, a .44 revolver modified to have remotely detonated rounds. It is truly great to fire a bullet into an enemy and press alt-fire to detonate the round within his body. Also great is the Marksman, a powerful assault rifle with a sniper-like scope which alternately fire a floating drone that shocks anything in its vicinity. A sniper-rifle that can slow down time, as well as an alien assault rifle that can “tag” enemies for shots to home onto, are also standouts. Despite the fact that, for most of the campaign, players will only consistently rely on two or three weapons, there is little to fault about the game’s varied arsenal.

Graphics and Audio

Graphically, Resistance 2 looks great. A massive draw-distance makes for spectacular environments fraught with stunning set-piece battles. Bosses, despite the annoying gameplay that they arouse, are vast in their size and push the Playstation 3 to its limits without a single frame-rate drop. A strong variety of colorful environments, from a Californian Redwood Forest, to a twilight-shaded San Francisco Bay to the red, rocky canyons of New Mexico, shows off the skill of Insomniac’s art team.

From an auditory perspective, Resistance 2 works well. Strong voice acting combines with thoroughly unlikable characters to create a strong sense of mediocrity. Weapons generally sound powerful and are fun to use. Ambient music is utilized effectively to heighten what should have been tension, but ended up as frustration.

Conclusion

Unless you’re truly bored and are looking for a game to play in-between shooters, avoid Resistance 2. Inspired weaponry and great graphics do little to redeem the game from uninteresting level-design, awkward difficulty spikes, annoying enemies and now non-existent multiplayer. Resist this game. 2/5

Jamestown Review

The PC/Mac gaming world grinds to a halt whenever Steam has one of its legendary sales, and for good reason. $25 bought me Left 4 Dead 2, Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition, Jamestown, Alien Breed 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and a cool hat. The first thing I installed was Jamestown (mostly because it was the smallest at 84 megabytes), playing this indie shoot-em-up immediately, I came to be shocked at its outstanding quality and polish.

Introduction and Story

The year is 1619, Sir Walter Raleigh escapes from the Tower of London with John Smith to British Colonial Mars, strapping on a flying suit of armor, he leads an attack on the colony of Jamestown, which has since been occupied by the traitorous tentacled martians of Roanoke loyal to the Spanish.

As you can see, Jamestown is a weird game. Its unbridled weirdness gives the game an irresistible charm, and as a result we are left with a gleeful smile throughout the entire presentation. From the hyper-detailed backgrounds reminiscent of both classic 16-bit titles and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to the static and silly introductory panels, it is clear that much love has been poured into the game, and Jamestown becomes awesome because of that.

Gameplay

Shoot-em-ups, currently the 7th most popular genre of game in Japan, are relegated to only a tiny niche market here in the west. As parts of a dying genre, these games are unappealing to American tastes because of their unrefined graphics, frenetic pace, simplistic gameplay and masochistic difficulty. Needless to say, Jamestown has much to overcome to become appealing to the western market.

And fortunately, Jamestown succeeds with more than flying colors in being accessible to the Western market. For one, the game moves at a much more sane pace than Japanese shooters, the game is still frantic, yes, but your ship and those of enemies move at a pace that the human mind can comprehend, and as a result, we have a shooter with a much gentler difficulty curve.

Jamestown makes its primary innovation in its “Vaunt” system, which allows a player to collect dropped coins from enemies to fill up a “Vaunt-Gauge”, which, when deployed with the spacebar (or center mouse or X button), grants seconds of invincibility and increased damage and score until the gauge is depleted (the gauge can be refilled mid-vaunt by collecting more coins). Its a system that affords the game a considerable level of strategic depth and skill, deciding the best times to deploy a vaunt and advantageous enemy formations for extending vaunt-time becomes an integral part of the game’s appeal, making Jamestown unique in what might otherwise be a mindless style of gameplay.

Cooperative play another one of the game’s greatest strengths. Instead of sharing a limited pool of lives and credits, the entire party can be brought from the brink of failure as long as one person survives to the end of a level. This significantly reduces the pressure on each of the players and makes the penalty for death bearable. Furthermore, a selection of four ships feature abilities and limitations that complement each other, making for effective cooperative play requiring actual teamwork.

That said, Jamestown is still a very difficult and skill based game. Patterns must be recognized and reacted to accordingly and evasion, while slower paced than Eastern shooters, is still a challenging task. You will die a lot in the game and a limited amount of credits guarantees that the player will need to take multiple tries to succeed. Limits on progression at certain difficulties effectively bolster a player’s skill and usher them into higher difficulties.

Graphics/Audio

Perhaps Jamestown’s strongest aspect is its inspired artistic design. Highly detailed hand-drawn sprites and adorable enemy ships showcase the graphical prowess that can be achieved when a 16-bit aesthetic is attempted with modern hardware. Steampunk trappings solidify the silly martian-colonial story. A multitude of resolution settings gives the player the option of either playing at pixel-perfect ratio or at a highly-stretched fullscreen. Animations feature a multitude of frames and run smoothly on dated hardware. I ran the game on a Intel HD Graphics card and was still able to play at pixel-perfect ratio.

From the auditory side, Jamestown is also a triumph. An orchestral-rock soundtrack is exceedingly rare for an indie title. Sound effects are “just right”, adding a sense of satisfaction to collecting dropped coins and scoring direct hits on enemies.

Conclusion

Jamestown’s greatest challenge was remaining relevant in an age where 2D-top-down shooters are irrelevant and unnecessary. From the screenshots, one would fairly believe that the game offers nothing different from the legions of crappy free Flash games out there on sites like addictinggames or Kongregate. It is through creativity and innovation that Jamestown beats these insurmountable odds to become relevant in the western market and acquire the respectable score of 4/5.

inFamous Review

I recently had the opportunity to play inFamous because of Sony’s infamous “apology package” for the infamous Great PSN Hack of 2011. But I realize I should shut up with saying “infamous” now because you’ll be hearing the word “infamous” many times in this review of inFamous.

Introduction and Story

inFamous is an open-world game structurally more similar to the likes of Spider-Man 2 rather than Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series. The player takes the role of Cole MacGrath, a bike messenger who gains electrical superpowers after the package he was delivering explodes in his hands, taking out several blocks of Empire City and forcing the federal government to quarantine the city. What follows is an entertaining story that seems harebrained and inane due to its mixed narration. inFamous constantly shifts back and forth from a third-person present narration to a first-person past style in both its gameplay and cutscenes. The mixed perspectives make the game somewhat of a confusing mess of a tale, and while this is helpful from a gameplay perspective as it minimizes cutscene time, it detracts from the game’s story as characters, motives and events are lost in the inconsistent narration.

That said, when one extrapolates the plot, value is found in the game’s twisting and fun narrative. An excellent plot-twist at the game’s conclusion nicely wraps up the tangled threads in an epic fashion. Some vaguely emotional moments, coupled with the illusion of an open-ended narrative and amusingly black-and-white moral choices, make the game’s plot more involving than it has any right to be.

Gameplay

inFamous’s gameplay shows its greatest strengths and weaknesses. Combat and navigation, for the most part, is gleeful and exhilarating. Cole’s massive variety of cool, lightning based powers is a joy to use, from his static thrusters, to his precision power and megawatt hammer, effortlessly raining chaos and destruction upon enemies is an absolute joy. Without a doubt, upgrading Cole’s powers by gaining experience points creates a sense of progression, and as a result, us players are left feeling like true badasses.

Unfortunately, Cole’s more useful powers are not introduced to the player until he has made significant progress through the game’s story, and as a result, early missions become more difficult than later missions. A high-powered sniper-rifle ability is given to the player about halfway through the campaign, thereby making the elimination of stationary turrets much easier. As a result, early-game missions featuring these turrets become difficult to the point of frustration. A lack of a New Game Plus feature feels like a missed opportunity, as the game would have greatly benefitted from the ability to replay the campaign with all powers unlocked.

The fundamental mission design is also problematic. While combat is exhilarating and free-running through Empire City collecting Blast Shards is undeniably fun, most missions come down to just these two elements, and, after playing Red Dead Redemption, a game in which I cannot remember doing the same thing twice, inFamous’s variety in its level design just doesn't measure up to other open-world games. That said, there are a few notable exceptions, including a mad rush across the game’s entire world to disable toxic balloons, a prison-defense scenario and some incredible boss battles reminiscent of Zelda.

inFamous’s gameplay makes it ultimately a flawed masterpiece, the mainstays of urban open-world games are missing here, such as reliable aim-assist, varied missions and vehicular navigation, but ultimately, inFamous proves that it doesn't need it.

Graphics and Audio

From an artistic perspective, inFamous is a bit of a mixed bag. Gorgeous hand-drawn cutscenes nail down the dark comic-book feel that the series tries to achieve, nonetheless, these moments of graphical brilliance are marred by a generically bleak urban world. Technically, the world is inconsistent and scattered with various graphical glitches such as textures that fail to load fast enough for the game, an occasionally stuttering frame-rate and environments that Cole can fall through. Bizarre facial and character animation leaves emotional moments adequate at best, laughable at worst.

inFamous’s audio works very well for the most part, the music drums up appropriate dramatic tension at the right moments and there is little to object to about the excellent voice acting. Sound effects are visceral and contribute greatly to the feeling of power and weight behind Cole’s powers.

Conclusion

inFamous is not a bad open-world game, its just an unconventional one. By focusing on intense, stylish and gleeful combat and navigation in a comic-book world, inFamous effectively eschews what we expect from open-world games to create an fresh and fun experience. In a era where games are becoming increasingly similar to each other, inFamous comes as a heroic remedy to protect creativity in open-world game-design. Recommended. 4/5

Portal 2 Review

About a third through my playthrough of Portal 2, the realization dawns on me that I have been playing for three consecutive hours. Normally, for me, this would not be unusual, but the night before the final exam of my most difficult class in my Junior year, it certainly is. Portal 2 is one of those games that you’ll wish you were playing when you are not playing it and morbidly fear completing its campaign.

The Story and Humor

The game picks up some time after the events of the first Portal. Chell, the game’s protagonist, wakes up in a decrepit Aperture Science Hotel Room. From there, a bumbling personality core called Wheatley breaks apart the room and sends her through Aperture. Eventually, Wheatley accidentially awakens GlaDOS and sets forth a surprisingly involving, and very funny narrative.

Really, to give any more away is to spoil a lot of the fun of Portal. Learning the secrets and history of Aperture Science and its relationship to the vibrant world of Half-Life is a large part of the game’s appeal. Showing any screenshots from beyond the first quarter of the game would spoil not only the story, but also puzzle-solutions, environments and gameplay mechanics.

One thing that is safe to reveal is that Portal 2’s writing and voice-acting is phenomenal. Stephen Merchant, genius behind the British Office, makes his video-game debut with flying colors as Wheatley. His dry delivery of Wheatley’s lines perfectly characterizes him as a bumbling idiot, and listening to exchanges between him and GlaDOS are sure to leave many in stitches.

Perhaps most importantly, Portal 2 makes its greatest innovation in the delivery of its humor. Environments, not just scripting and dialogue, deliver laughs in a way unseen in any other medium. Be it a darkly humorous sign or a beautifully ruined office, Portal 2 delivers its hilarity in ways unique to the medium, and for that, it deserves high commendation.

Gameplay

Perhaps even more dangerous than story-spoilers, knowing about Portal 2’s in advance can absolutely ruin the experience because the game constantly introduces surprising new elements. For the sake of completion and to sate the interest of those interested, I will include information on it. That said, MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

Portal 2 begins simply enough and might come off as non-innovative to fans of the first game (in fact, a few test chambers are entirely recycled, albeit, in decrepit form). Simple staples from the first game, like conservation of velocity through portals, return for the first few test chambers. This is all fun and dandy, until Portal 2 decides to get creative.

The first thing that the game springs on you are “thermal discouragement beams”, which are lasers that can be directed into light-switches using mirror cubes and portals. The difficulty curve in the game is immaculate, and simple “teaching” levels give way comfortably to diabolically insane challenges that the player ultimately feels prepared to handle.

The pacing for Portal 2 is highly refined as new puzzle-elements are introduced at a near-constant rate, and just as the player feels he has mastered one element, that element is deployed in an innovative new way making it fresh again. For example, the lasers, an early-game element that feels pretty easy to master, is given new life as the player must simultaneously activate three light-switches using only one mirror cube. It is through challenges like these that Portal 2 achieves its incredible balance and remains fresh to its very end.

Later in the game, new, Portal-controlled environmental aspects, like light-bridges and ascension-rays, challenge the player in unexpected ways. Three types of special “gels”, orange, blue and white, alter the environment in clever ways. Blue gel turns any surface it is applied to into a trampoline. Orange gel-coated ground is slick and slippery and lets the player achieve incredible speeds, and white gel turns anything it touches into a portal-able surface. What is particularly genius about these elements is that the player never gets to control them directly. Instead, the player must utilize his/her limited abilities to indirectly solve puzzles by manipulating these gels and bridges in creative ways. This forces the player to think of all possible applications of the Portal Gun, and as a result, the player’s most powerful asset is his mind. This lends the challenges a Braid-like sense of cerebral bashing, making the difficult challenges incredibly satisfying to solve.

Not all of the challenges soar. In particular, one mid-game plot twist removes the player from the test-chambers and sends the player on a long-trek through Aperture’s ancient hallways, comes off as mediocrely designed in comparison to the “meat” of the game. The gameplay-shift this entails makes these challenges more about searching for the one area of Portal-able surface than using the Portal Gun’s capabilities. This effectively turns the game into more of an adventure game than a puzzler, and, while the detailed environs are a joy to explore, challenges become slightly tedious. Thankfully, this section of gameplay is brief and bearable.

Spoilers end here. Ultimately, Portal 2 is a nearly immaculate experience marred only by a short section of substandard puzzles.

Graphics and Audio

Running off the now-ancient Source engine, Portal 2 nonetheless looks surprisingly good. Ambient light and dynamic physics lend the vast corridors of Aperture a sense of atmospheric vastness comparable to the very first Metroid Prime.

Portal 2’s best visual aspect comes in its artistic direction. The sterile test-chambers fall apart to reveal the “backstage” of the facility in all its vast, technological ruin. Different parts of Aperture showcase the company’s history, thus, visualizing a progressive history culminating with the modern era. The quality of the art-style, as well as the “living” feel of the incredibly animated rooms and backdrops as they are literally assembled as the player enters them, makes Aperture Science a fun and interesting place to explore, a credit that few shooters can live up to.

From an auditory standpoint, Portal 2 is also flawless. Procedurally generated music seems to compose itself as the player traverses through climaxes and crescendos within a level, and frames the player’s emotional and intellectual progression as he solves puzzles. For example, being launched into the air by an “aerial faith plate” speeds up the pace of the music and adds tense percussion beats while falling into a floating light-tube slows down and mutes the bass. Voice acting by Stephen Merchant and Ellen McLain remains flawless and hilarious. Jonathan Coulton, writer of the infamous “Still Alive”, returns for a catchy ending theme that wraps up the entire experience satisfyingly.

Multiplayer

Portal 2’s cooperative multiplayer mode is a unique campaign containing the game’s most difficult challenges. With two portal guns and up to four portals deployed, an unique type of synergistic thinking is needed for any level of success. That said, Portal 2 is not a game that can be enjoyed without voice chat or with strangers. Using only pings and gestures to communicate is severely limiting and leads to considerable frustration. Playing with a headset and with a friend, the game becomes considerably more playable, intriguing and fun. Ideally, Portal 2 works best in its splitscreen mode, which simplifies interpersonal communication significantly and paves the way for synergistic thinking nicely.

That said, Portal 2 would have benefitted with a set of competitive challenges and leaderboards. Challenge maps, one of Portal 1’s best aspects, are jarringly missing from this game. This harms the game’s already limited replay value and comes off as a missed opportunity for the developers.

Conclusion

In the end, the worst thing that can be said of Portal 2 is that it has some annoying fans. Even with its few flaws, this is one of the best puzzle games of the generation if not all time. Portal 2 fits the geniuses at Valve and Digipen as the foremost advocates of innovation and creativity in game-design. Strongly recommended. 4.75/5