DESIGN REVIEW: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

I heard good things about the Sly Cooper series, but never got around to playing any of the games. However, with the PS3 HD collection being released, I decided to see how good the games were and whether they stood up to the test of time. I always like to start at the beginning, so I jumped into the first Sly Cooper game without hesitation. After I completed the game, I was pleasantly surprised and came away impressed with the game - it's a beautiful, stylish 3d platformer that I had a lot of fun playing.

LIKED:
- Level Progression. The game is divided into 5 episodes - with each episode having a set of levels before the player is finally able to take on the boss. Each episode contains a completely different environment that suits the boss - for example, a wet island that is a frog's hideout, or a stronghold in the mountains of China for a panda bear. As the player starts each episode, he must gather keys by completing levels, which he can then use to open up more levels, and ultimately take on the boss.

The cool thing is that each level is one big picture, and all the levels complement each other very well by seamlessly blending into this bigger picture, both artistically and function-wise. A dirty, desert casino town in Utah is broken down into a level navigating the cliffside, a casino stage, rooftops and a back alley. All the levels have the same color palette and contain a few of the same art assets, but each bring something new that isn't seen in any other level.

What this means is that I really felt like I was on a continuous journey the whole time I was playing the game, and even though the game is clearly broken down into levels, which is a very popular thing to do when making platformers, I was working towards a clear goal. Reinforcing that are the groups of locks which Sly must come up to and unlock them, one by one with his collected keys. Completing each level and getting a key became a meta-game of its own, all leading to an epic confrontation with the boss of the lair.

To keep offering variety, there were a couple mini-game levels sprinkled into the game - like turret shooting and racing. The last episode contained many more of these mini-games, which is kind of a bummer, because I wanted to fully explore the levels with Sly. I suspect Sucker Punch ran out of time, but it worked out pretty well overall.



- Level Design. The individual levels in the game are overall pretty small, but they're very well built, often utilizing verticality, with gameplay areas stacked on top of each other. Most levels use a common zig-zag pattern that has the player playing all over the level instead of just progressing in a straight line.

You begin to appreciate and respect the level design when doing the master thief sprint runs, which are timed runs through levels. Shortcuts become fun to discover, and sometimes involve doing things that the level designers didn't intend you to do (bouncing off a wall to skip half the level).

The point is in a game that's all about swift, sneaky movement and precise controls, the levels and environments are the real stars of the show.

- Art Style. Did I mention the game is a marvel to look at? Sure, you can tell that the models are all low-poly, but the textures are clean and the colors are all done so well, that you instantly forget about the models and focus on the entire picture.

The environments were definitely the highlight of the game - each episode has a specific color palette, and they're all very different from each other. My favorite one was the panda king's China stronghold because of the calm, yet mysterious atmosphere it implied. Thick snow covered temples and trees, and colorful lamps hung throughout. These levels were just fun to play, containing many dynamic objects like fireworks and elevators.

Even though I enjoyed every episode, the swamp lair was by far my least favorite because everything was dark and things just blended into each other.

Another art aspect that I enjoyed were the cutesy, stylized 2d maps of every lair that showed a small picture of each stage when you entered it. They were fun to just sit and look at, identifying every detail. It solidifies the Sly universe and shows how much care was put into it.



Characters were also done well, using a standard comic book cell-shaded, inky filter surrounding their silhouettes.

- Collection Elements. Platforming games are notorious for being huge collectathons, tasking players with collecting a variety of things. Sucker Punch did collecting right by having only 2 types of things - coins and bottles.

Coins, being the unimportant carrots which are scattered everywhere throughout the level to lead the player forward, and the more secret bottles that the player collects, hoping to get all of them in each level, and open up a safe to get a new special move.

The problem with many games is that they don't help the player at all with these harder collection objects. Things like secret packages in Grand Theft Auto games or flags in Assassin's Creed - it's all up to the player to go find them, without even a sense of direction.

90% of the bottles in Sly Cooper can be found on the main path, and the rest can easily be acquired if the player chooses to explore the level a bit or just rotate the camera here and there. The levels are small enough to warrant full inspection from the player. Plus, if the player is near a bottle, it emits a sound letting the player know that they're close. Not once did I ever have to resort to using a guide to find these during my playthrough.

It's great to see Sucker Punch get collecting right so early and continue implementing it in their future games: in Infamous, the players can find scattered blast shards by using a radar ability, and in Infamous 2, the player can actually earn a power that will direct them to each blast shard on the map until they're all collected.



Sucker Punch understands that finding secret objects in the game shouldn't be a chore, and instead an interesting diversion that can help you unlock cool things.

- Story. It's great to see an actual fun story in the game which involves the main character's ancestors and the Thievius Raccoonus, a family book being stolen by a group of villains. The game revolves around Sly getting the book back, page by page. It's simple, cute, and better than "hey, I'm out to kill all the bad guys" plot.

DISLIKED:
- One Hit Kills. I understand that Sly Cooper is supposed to be a sneaking platformer, with the emphasis on being stealthy, but one hit kills feel ridiculously lame. That's right - get spotted by an enemy or fall off the level and you have to restart. It's particularly the worst in the beginning of the game when you don't have the special moves that make you invulnerable to falling off levels and the sparsely placed checkpoints don't help.

There's a mechanic that allows the player to take extra hits by obtaining "lucky charms", horseshoes that can be earned by collecting 100 coins throughout the level. When a horseshoe is earned, the player can take 1 or 2 hits without dying (there's a silver and gold horseshoe).

I feel that this doesn't work the way it's intended because you usually have trouble in the beginning of the levels, not later on when you have near 100 coins. The coins stay even if you die, so I suppose that's nice.

However, it's not the same clever "Sonic rings" gameplay mechanic, and makes some levels tougher than they need to be, particularly in the swamp area.



- Useless Special Moves. As you collect all the bottles on each level and unlock vaults, you gain special moves that you can use. They range from passive buffs that are always on like not losing a life when you fall into water, to active ones that you have to manually use. The problem is that most of the active ones are useless.

There's a move that allows you to slow down time, but it slows down time for everyone, not just you. Automatically, it loses all sorts of cool possibilities like you activating it to slow down laser beams so you can navigate around them easier, or you slowing down patrolling enemies. Instead, the only useful feature it has is allowing you to carefully make dangerous jumps, which there aren't any in the game.

Opposite of slow, there's fast, which speeds up everything in the level. The only use is when you have to wait for a spotlight to move away, but they move at a good pace anyways. You'll likely do more bad than good when you use this move, accidentally tripping alarms.

The roll move allows you to navigate faster on the ground, but it's only useful during the master thief sprint times, where timing is everything. Why would you want to use it to rush through a level that you first encounter that you know nothing about?

There's a mine that can be activated, but it also doesn't have any use as Sly can't throw it particularly far. Why throw and activate a mine, when you can take 2 more steps and hit an enemy to defeat them? Worst of all, the explosive radius of the mine can hurt you too, which in a 1-hit kill game is a bad idea.

In your arsenal is a decoy, where Sly throws a cardboard cutout of himself onto the field, distracting enemies. I never used this move, as it would be faster to just walk around the enemy and hit them from behind with your trusty cane.

All the above while sound cool have little use in the game, no matter what kind of a player you are, which is a shame.

- Level-specific Objects. One cool gameplay alteration that was used during the main levels was a wooden barrel that Sly could jump into and use it to protect himself from some level defenses. It reminded me or Snake's box from the Metal Gear Solid series. The animation of Sly tiptoeing in the barrel is really funny and well done, and I wished that more unique objects like the barrel were used throughout the game.



There's a couple levels where Sly mans a turret or drives a hoverboat, but those are more minigames than main gameplay alterations.

I just think that there could have been more comical objects that Sly could have used like waterguns or balloons that expanded on the gameplay and added variety.

- Weak Sound Effects. Both music and sound effects are lacking. The music while isn't bad is decent sneaking music, but not anything memorable, as I can't even remember one song off the top of my head.

Sound effects sound muffled and the game could have used some new sound effects in certain situations. One example is when the player grinds down vines - there's no sound effect to accompany the grinding which feels awkward. I know vines are not the same as rails, but grinding things in video games is supposed to be fun - here, it felt really lackluster. Games like Ratchet & Clank do this really well, offering fun sound effects to accompany the action on the screen.

DESIGN REVIEW: Nier

I'm not really a huge fan of Japanese developed RPGs, so it was with curiosity that I approached Nier, an action RPG that contains many elements from other genres, particularly bullet hell shooters. Nier really reminds me of a solo Monster Hunter. For me, Nier was a pretty tedious experience containing strokes of genius gameplay and presentation that are both severely underused.



If I had to recommend Nier, I would definitely say play the game twice without doing any of the sidequests - you'll get the full experience and the variety that the game has.

LIKED:
- Perspective Shifts. Nier is a 3d game with a player-controlled rotating camera. However, when the player walks into certain areas, the camera perspective seamlessly switches to a set angle. Most of the time, it's a switch to a 2d view, reminiscent of old school 2d platformers like Mario or Sonic, but with 3d models. Exactly like Super Smash Brothers Brawl.







There's one specific area in the game where the camera switches to an old-school over the top camera, and the main character becomes really small as he's surrounded by lots of enemies, which was really fun to play.

The problem is that these camera shifts are not used to their full potential. The 2d view is hardly used for anything action related - there were no set platforming sections, no cool 2d boss battles, nothing physics related. Instead we get the hero walking into a bar, talking with a person to get a quest, and then walking out. Huge wasted potential right here in my opinion.

Visually, these 2d sections look really nice with 3d models and are just cleverly thought out. For example - the hero's house has 2 stories, and as you walk in on the bottom and continue going through the house, past the right edge of the screen, the camera shifts up and he emerges on the 2nd story on the left side. Like I said, very clever.

- Combat. Nier's combat is divided into 2 parts - ranged and melee attacks. The ranged attacks are done by shooting bullets out of a flying book companion (don't ask!) and this is where the game takes a cue from bullet hell shooters - blending 3rd person action with large streams of bullets - without a question, an innovation that no other game has tried before.

You can charge up other more powerful ranged attacks, but the steady stream of bullets from your trusty book companion is your go-to weapon.

Enemies in the game exhibit some cool bullet hell shooter patterns, particularly bosses who spew energy balls in a radius, and then specific line patterns. Nothing too crazy like Ikaruga, but you can jump and dodge these attacks. Oddly, you can choose to simply block them without taking any damage which wasn't really thought out well.



The main melee combat felt really nice and responsive. There's multiple types of weapons such as one handed swords, spears, and more massive two-handed weapons. Furthermore, there's a weight differentiation with some weapons being light and quick in combat, and others doing tons of damage, but being swung around incredibly slow by the hero.

The difference is immediately felt too - it's very apparent when the hero has what weapon equipped, which you can change on the fly in the middle of combat. This is a good thing, as I found myself switching between a light weapon for smaller enemies and a giant two-handed sword for the bigger foes.



The dodge button is quick and immediate as it should be, rolling the hero out of danger and there's even a counter maneuver that the hero can pull off if you're quick enough.

For an action game, combat is what the player will be doing most of the time, and I feel that the combat in Nier is satisfying, fun and one of the highlights of the game.

- Variety. Nier offers a lot of surprising variety in small doses. Some of this variety can be huge surprises like "choose your own adventure" quests done entirely via text, including riddles (!!!), limiting player actions in certain rooms (no dodge for you!), and having 4 different endings.

It's true that some of this variety is something you've seen before like fishing mini-games or upgrading weapons, but it's variety none the less. Video games are meant to entertain, and variety goes a long way when it comes to breaking the pace and keeping people playing and excited to discover what comes next.

DISLIKED:
- Side Quests. The side quests in Nier are tedious, boring and serve only to be there as content filler. All the side quests give money as a reward, and one very long one gives you a new weapon. All of the them require you to go from place to place, fetch something or obtain more materials by farming enemies.

Because there's only so many locations in the game, and they're all revealed pretty early on, you're just going back and forth between these same locations, without encountering anything new. Further adding to the injury is that at a half-way point in the game's main storyline, any uncompleted side quests become locked on for the duration of the game. And although there is a new game+, you still can't do them because the game picks off after the half-way point. None of this is told to you either, aside from a tab that contains all the uncompletable quests - if you happen to look through it.

After the half-way point, you get more quests that task you with doing pretty much the same things as you did earlier, going to the EXACT same locations.

I strongly recommend NOT doing the side quests and instead focusing on the main storyline and just running through that.

- Location Revisits. Like I mentioned above, the main storyline in Nier is broken into 2 parts. Exploring and looking at environments is half the fun in 3rd person action games, and that's what you do in the game for the first part. The second part? You revisit the exact same areas and the exact same rooms. Nothing kills the exploration element like knowing you have to go to an area you already visited before.

Combined with the tedious side quests, you really want to stop playing when you have to go back and forth between the same areas multiple times in the game.

- Gameplay Annoyances. The game is full of odd moments where I had to stop and say if the designers looked at this twice, they would have certainly changed it.

For example, climbing ladders in the game is an extremely slow process. You can speed it up by holding a button - but it's still not fast enough. Why even have the slow climbing animation? Why not just have the hero climb at the fast speed on default without the need of holding a button. Things like these, while small are easily noticeable by me, and irk me a lot. Plus, fixing this would have been a snap.

Another moment that I remember is when you first get to a new location - a city in the desert that uses the sand current as a method of transportation. You're made to go on a small raft and slowly taken to different parts of the city, being introduced to each shop owner - one at a time. The reason that this sequence stood out so much is because in all the other towns that you visit, there's nothing resembling this excursion. To add to the annoyance, you can only stop half-way, there's no choice to not go on it at the beginning.

Another thing that was glaringly bad were the tutorial messages. When you need to do something new, or have learned a new technique, a message pops up on the screen that says "new tutorial unlocked!". You must then pause the game, select an option, navigate to the right tab, select tutorials screen, and then wade your way through a huge list of tutorials to find one that has a "new!" marker to it. Yea, all that just to read it.

A simple fix could have been a button prompt alongside the "new tutorial unlocked!" message that would take you to the tutorial. How hard could that have been? Worst of all, there's very many tutorial messages, so if you want to learn as much as you can about them, you have to do this gruesome procedure for each one.

Additionally, some of the tutorial prompts come up way to late in the game. The dodging attacks tutorial popped up on the screen 1/3 of the way through the game for me which is simply unacceptable because I doubt I would have even gotten that far without knowing how to dodge.

DESIGN REVIEW: Fallout 3 - Operation Anchorage

Operation Anchorage added what every expansion pack should - new missions, characters and items. However, on top of that it changed previously established core mechanics: player healing and obtaining ammunition.. Having the expansion pack take place in a simulation has its pros and cons, but for the most part, it provided a good change of pace.

LIKED:
- Old Mechanics Born Anew. The majority of Operation Anchorage takes place in a simulation, much like one mission in Fallout 3. Because of this, Bethesda was free to implement a new health and ammunition recovery system. Unlike in Fallout 3, the player can't hoard stim packs and ammunition - instead, health and ammo is replenished by stationary canisters scattered throughout the game world.

Because of this, every enemy encounter is much more serious. You can't simply pull up your pip-boy and heal yourself in the middle of a gunfight - you must survive the encounter and get to a health station to recover health. This is a nice way of balancing things out for a high-level player - all the player's items are stripped upon simulation entry and he has to get used to core game mechanics, now unfamiliar to him. It's almost like playing the game for the very first time again.

Searching is also non-existant - players can't search anything in the simulation, save for certain items that flash red. Dead bodies evaporate, giving you no time to ransack your defeated enemies for ammo and other goodies. This isn't necessary a bad thing, just another change to the main gameplay. Whereas in Fallout 3, I would search every nook and cranny of a room, here I just ran through, fighting enemies and never looking back. It provided a breath of fresh air for highly methodical players like me.


- New Environment. Having Operation Anchorage take place in a blue, snowy, and mountainous Alaska is a stark contrast to Fallout 3's post apocalyptic green-tinted wasteland. It provided a nice breath of fresh air for someone like me who has played the game for a long time.


DISLIKED:
- Disjointed and Unconnected. Because Operation Anchorage is a simulation, it's even more separated than other missions in the game. Once complete, the player is unable to revisit the simulation and replay it. All the characters that the player met in the simulation are gone, and while the game does reward you with some items that you used in the simulation upon completion, it doesn't give you all of them. Once the player loses or breaks these items, there's no way to get more.

Having taken place many years ago before the Fallout 3 game timeline, the player is unable to meet the characters in the simulation once he gets out, and is generally unaffected by the events of the entire expansion pack once he completes it. This lessens the effectiveness of Operation Anchorage as a whole, acting as a quick and temporary thrill, never to be relived or remembered again.

DESIGN REVIEW: Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 struck me as a very ambitious open world FPS game experiment. There's tons of small features and details in this game that elevate it above other games in its genre, but there are also surprisingly simple, yet vital details that the designers didn't quite implement correctly. If time was spent on those details, I strongly feel that FC2 could have easily stood with the best games of the year and acknowledged by the public for its interesting features instead of publicly being considered just 'good'. All the details complement each other and contribute to what I feel the theme of the game is - improvisation.

LIKED:
- Map Navigation. The map screen in FC2 is simple to use and navigate. Instead of pausing your entire game while you look at the map, the protagonist simply pulls out a map in real time and looks at it. Just this little piece of detail brings you closer to the main character and makes you believe you are him (you can select out of 7 male characters which has no real gameplay impact, and I remember reading they had to cut the women as playable characters!). As you're looking at the map, you are staring through the protagonist's eyes, which is really cool for such a small detail. This features adds to the general theme of the game - improvisation. If you're driving a jeep and being chased by a bunch of bad guys at the same time, you better know how to drive and read a map at the same time! With a few button presses, you can easily toggle the zoom level of the map, which translates to the protagonist pulling out another map out for you using beautiful animation. The maps contain everything that you need and expect like mission objectives, enemy outposts, and even collectibles that you have found.



- Weapon Jamming. On one side, it's cool to see weapons slowly degrade with actual cosmetic changes that you can observe like rust and dirt. This mechanic makes you pick up weapons on the fly, once again contributing to the overall theme of improvisation - many times while you're engaged in fierce combat. One the flip side, every weapon that you pick up from the bad guys is in pretty terrible shape, meaning that it will be useless very soon, in some cases before you can even get done with the current firefight, causing you to scramble for yet another weapon. It's not so much fun wildly running around to find a usable gun - any gun while getting shot at from all directions (thanks to the hawk-eyed AI). All is not bad however, as there are weapons that you find in crates which start in perfect condition and deteriorate from there. I may be on the fence regarding this feature, but this mechanic works excellent in the grand scheme of things of improvisation.



- Fire Spread. The fire propagation in FC2 is the best out of any video games I've seen. Many weapons, some obvious like flamethrowers and Molotov cocktails, others less so (certain explosions) start a fire in the savanna grass which grows for a certain amount of time and area. The direction is uncontrollable by the player, adding an interesting random element, but goes with the wind, making it very realistic. Many times, the fire turns back on you, forcing you to quickly think on your feet. Once again, the random an uncontrollable fire propagation in FC2 welcomes... you guessed it improvisation with open arms. This is a very interesting Gamasutra interview with the programmer responsible for the fire implementation.



- Amazing Atmosphere. Seeing the sun go down in FC2 is a really beautiful moment. The shadows jump around the jungle realistically, and the world slowly turns dark. But it's not just the graphics that make the atmosphere good, it's all the little details - game map, individual vehicle dashboards, and architecture all help make up the atmosphere.

- Something New. Emphasizing actual (or similar to real) conflicts that are happening in Africa - the chaotic nature of civil wars, FC2 is the only game that does it, and for that, I applaud the developers for trying something new and the publisher for green-lighting it.

- Map Editor. Simply throwings objects onto the terrain which you can manipulate with a variety of brushes makes a very functional map editor. The cool thing is that you can enter the map instantly and play around sandbox style in your own creation. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions also shipped with the editor, which is unheard of in the FPS console market.



DISLIKED:
- Enemy AI. The AI in FC2 is good, a little too ridiculously good. So good in fact, that it hurts player choice, which is very odd, considering that's what the game is about. Taking a sneak approach always ends up with you quietly taking out 2 enemies, followed by the entire base converging on you... during nighttime. During the day? Enemies can see you ahead, no matter what kind of trees or shrubbery is blocking their field of vision. Like hawks with terminator-like vision, enemy soldiers will spot you from a mile away and open fire. Because of this, all missions pretty much boil down to you walking into an enemy compound with guns blazing and methodically cleaning camp.

This bring me to another negative issue that me and a lot of other players had - death by jeeps! Enemy soldiers can 1 hit kill you with their vehicles, which might be realistic, but not so fun. It's cool the first few times it happens, but you never feel safe ever again (once again, improvisation). There's an audible VROOOOM! sound cue when a vehicle is about to run you over, but it all it does is make the player sprint in a random direction and pray that the vehicle misses you. A lot of times, the AI decides to run you over while you're engaged in a heavy and very loud firefight, giving the player absolutely no time to judge where the vehicle is coming from. I would have liked to see some kind of an equipment piece that the player can buy that pings your map when an enemy vehicle is nearby.

I would have relaxed the AI, making it less accurate (not a 'lower the difficulty issue') because after playing many open world games, I found that having easier AI makes the game more enjoyable for the player. The skill of the AI is always offset by the quantity of enemies.

- Infinitely Respawning Military Checkpoints. Imagine this scenario - you're driving happily across the African jungle on your way to a mission when you come across an enemy checkpoint. No big deal - you kill all the bad dudes and clear the checkpoint, and then drive on through to complete your mission. However on your way back, you have to drive through the same checkpoint, and all the enemies are completely respawned! No matter how many times you clear out a checkpoint, the next time you pass it, all the enemies will be back, ready to gun you down! The fastest way to travel through the game world is by roads which are infested with these enemy checkpoints. If you don't travel by road, it will take you a very long time to reach your destination, making it never worth it. Coupled with the fact that the enemy AI is too good in this game, fighting the same enemies in the same spot becomes a hassle.

I understand why the designers chose to implement continuous enemy respawns at the checkpoints. It's a double edged sword - if there were no respawning enemies, once the player cleared out a checkpoint once, those parts of the game world would get very uneventful and even boring, making the player feel unthreatened and less time in the action. So they chose to respawn the enemies to keep the player on their toes at all times, which adds to the central theme of improvisation.

To fix this problem, I would add an icon for each checkpoint on the player's map that would start a timer as soon as it was destroyed by the player. When the timer expired, the checkpoint would be rebuilt and repopulated by enemy AI. Different checkpoints could have different timers, maybe even all of them being a random value from 10 - 30 minutes. The beauty of this fix is that players could strategically plan which roads to take depending on how much time is left on certain checkpoints.

- Buddies. Buddies are supposed to be a huge attraction of the game, but all they're good for is reviving you on the field of battle after you die. It's nice and gives you a 2nd chance, especially if you're run over by an enemy vehicle, but other than that, all the buddies are EXACTLY the same. There's nothing different about them, save for the model and voice actor - you don't get any unique weapons or equipment for having a specific buddy, no boosts, nothing. They all give you calls after you accept a mission, and advise you to do a mission their way, which is ALWAYS the better (i.e. easier) way to do a mission.

They do however add to the overall atmosphere of the game and the nature of the player meeting new people in an unknown land of Africa, I just wish they had more gameplay value.



- Voicework. I've never been to Africa, but according to this game, everybody there talks REALLY, REALLY fast. Playing the game with subtitles is a must, as you'll constantly miss what your contacts are saying to you. I don't know if Ubisoft was trying to make the game more authentic, with everybody talking so fast, but a lot of characters were lost in the crowd, and proved to be really unmemorable, thanks to them all talking like they're in some kind of a speech race. Interestingly, the characters talked normally in the trailers for the game, making me believe that the new, fast voice work was a last minute change.

DESIGN REVIEW: Wet

Borrowing heavily from grindhouse films and Quentin Tarantino, Wet can't be played like other 3rd person shooters. The correct way to play the game is to jump or slide on the ground as soon as you see some bad guys, which automatically triggers bullet time, giving you easy kills. While a solid experience, this sole mechanic which the entire game is based on overstays its welcome just a bit, making the normal sections of the game tedious at the end. What I really loved were the balls to the wall on the rails sequences like being in a Matrix-like car chase and falling out of an airplane.

LIKED:
- Style. Wet borrows heavily from the grindhouse era of American films. Inevitably, that also means emulating Quentin Tarantino. The dialog is cheesy - just bad enough to be good, the game by default has a film grain filter to it (which you can thankfully turn off), and the characters are all crazy. The most bizarre however, are the classic advertisements you get to view before the start of each chapter, which look to be lifted straight from the movie theaters... 50 years ago. Rubi, the game's protagonist also has the most bad-ass way to climb down ladders I've ever seen in a video game.


- On the Rails Sections. These are the parts where I had the most fun in the game. Exciting and crazy, it really is something to fall 20,000 ft in the air, dodge airplane debris and shoot bad guys. I really wished there were more of these in the game, as they help break up the monotonous nature of the game fairly well.



- Rubi Vision. The world transforms into red, white and black colors and Rubi gets even more badass. Serves for some entertaining enemy deaths as they evaporate into thin air. Also a pace breaker... even though it still closely follows the main game mechanic of using bullet time to kill dudes.


DISLIKED:
- Overused Main Game Mechanic. There's a reason that bullet time should be a commodity, and not be allowed to be triggered freely, anywhere and anytime the player feels like it - if you do it all the time, it loses its special meaning and becomes monotonous. This is a very negative issue for Wet, especially since the entire game revolves around this sole mechanic!

DESIGN REVIEW: Call of Duty: World at War

Fun, but has the "been there, done that" feeling. While it didn't really bring anything new to the table, it was an enjoyable FPS experience. Oddly, the Russian campaign felt more fun, even though it's been done in previous CoD games multiple times. The American campaign in the Pacific was alright and had some small new mechanics like enemy infantry popping out of the ground to surprise you, but my main problem was that all the missions blended in with each other, and only a few were memorable.

LIKED:
- Nazi Zombies Mode. Although not considered part of the main game, Nazi Zombies is the most fun I've had with the game. This awesome game mode locks you in a house and tasks you with defending yourself from increasingly difficult waves of zombies who are also Nazis - evil incarnated! While pretty fun by yourself, this mode becomes an absolute blast in co-op (up to 4 players). The zombies try to get into the house through windows, which you can board up as many times as you wish for free. You obtain points by killing zombies, and boarding up windows. These points can then be spent on things like specific weapons or mystery weapons, where you get a random weapon, but this is the only way of getting the most powerful weapons. So pretty much if you want to get far, you're going to have to gamble! Or you can also open up new areas in the house to run around in, increasing your odds of survival, but also increasing the windows you must defend. There's also temporary bonuses that you can pick up like 1 hit kills or more points per kill. It's a hectic and fun enjoyable experience!


- Mission Briefings. Each mission briefing is done in a very appealing style - combining CG with real life footage, and a voice over. Design-wise these flashy and stylish intros serve as a nice way for people who don't really care about history to pay attention to it.


- Mission Samples. Here are 2 missions which I thought were really cool. The first, Vendetta is the start of the Russian campaign and has a really nice dynamic to it, combining sneaking, sniping (drawing inspiration from Enemy at the Gates), and straight up combat, with a little storyline plot of trying to assassinate a German general.

Black Cats is an on the rails shooting mission where you're tasked with fending off Japanese zeroes and patrol boats with multiple gun turrets on the plane, while saving a couple people when you land in the ocean. Call of Duty: United Offensive had a similar mission, but this one was more interesting due to your plane starting in the air, and then landing in the water, all while you're firing away.


DISLIKED:
- Lack of Creativity. I've played as the bold, Russian sniper hero already in previous Call of Duty games, Enemy at the Gates style. And yet, that's exactly how the Russian campaign starts. On the rails shooting mission? Did that in Call of Duty: United Offensive. Driving a tank? The first Call of Duty had that. The parts are still fun, but something new would have been welcome.

DESIGN REVIEW: Dead Space

Definitely creepy and enjoyable space horror survival game on a spaceship that brought new ideas to the table, while using very solid mechanics that other games like Resident Evil have proven to be successful.

LIKED:
- Holographic HUD. The Heads-Up Display is a holographic projection that appears in front of you, without pausing the game. You can turn the camera, and the HUD will turn with it - very futuristic and fits in well with the atmosphere and the general gestalt of the game. One button press brings it up, and it's very simple to navigate - even when you're getting chased by monsters. From this menu, you can manage everything from inventory to objectives, to the map. On a related note, Dead Space also has this innovative objective marker - with a button press, a holographic line appears on the floor, pointing in the correct direction and through which door you must go to progress. It solves the annoying problem when you encounter 2 doors, and you want to go through the optional one to pick up all the items, but you don't know which one is the optional one without going through one of the doors and possibly backtracking half the time.

- Zero Gravity. When you enter a zero-g area, you can propel yourself in a straight like off a wall to another wall. The concepts of up and down get turned um... upside down and can be pleasurably disorienting at times. Monsters do the same thing, essentially making you approach combat in a different way while in zero-g compared to normal areas of the game. Sometimes the player is out in space, with no oxygen, pressured to move ahead and make it to a door before oxygen tanks run out (refillable via items or environment).


- Tentacle Grab. Three or four times over the course of the game, you're suddenly grabbed by a giant tentacle and must struggle to shoot it in its weak spot while your aim is affected. Good pace breaker and an intense moment.

DESIGN REVIEW: F.E.A.R. 2 - Project Origin

Overall, it was a solid shooter. The slow-mo parts were fun as always, the Mech riding was well done and the Alma parts were very well designed like in the first game. F.E.A.R. 2 also takes the cake as having one of the more wilder game endings that hasn't been done before.

LIKED:
- Mech sequences. Particularly the snippets where you get in and out of the Mech - I think Monolith nailed it. It's so realistic, I can believe such a machine actually exists. Everything goes well together from the character animation getting in, to the sound of the mech being activated, to the panels lighting up from inward to outward. The HUD is also spiffy looking - I like how when you zoom in, the reticle translates. Makes me wish for Shogo 2.

- Tram sequence. A nice change of gameplay that feels particularly epic.

- Scares in the school level. There's this one section where the light keeps alternating between on/off and it creates a very eerie and disorienting feeling. Love it! Reminds me of the time when I was a little kid and went into this Halloween haunted house - they had the same effect of a light being turned on/off within a small interval. It made me feel like I was in slow motion or on something.

- Colonel Vanek QTE. A fun little addition that varies the pace.


DISLIKED:
- Melee combat removal. The removal of the melee actions that you could do in the first F.E.A.R. Maybe Monolith thought it was unnecessary? Kicking dudes across rails was always so much fun.
- Level drag. Some of the earlier levels where you play in the destroyed city feel a little dragged out and the color palette looks too dull. Thankfully, it picks up in both areas as you progress through the game.