The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

We gushed about the Witcher 2 not only because it’s just fundamentally an amazing game, but it occupies a unique niche in gaming: it’s a hardcore PC-only RPG set in a bleak, morally corrupt (and ambiguous) world. It doesn’t feel like any other game - even if it does have faults, its strengths shine through so greatly that it blows us away. In no other game will you encounter truly difficult moral decisions that have far-reaching consequences so huge you may just react emotionally when you realize what you’ve done – good or bad, although it’s never black and white.
Let’s also not forget that (if you have a beefy PC) the Witcher 2 is utterly stunning to look at. It may just be one of the best-looking games we’ve ever seen, but it’s more than just crisp textures – it’s the game’s world that is filled with imaginative details that bring it to life and make it feel like a real place occupied by real people with real problems, and this in turn makes it a world you really, really want to take the time to explore and appreciate. It’s a place filled with interesting and complex characters as well as bizarre and gruesome monsters, and the danger around every corner ensures it’s frequently exciting even if it can be frustrating in its total refusal to hold your hand. Besides, what are you, a baby? Figure out how the combat system works yourself! It’s more rewarding to work through it anyway.

Dead Space 2

The original Dead Space was a grippingly tense sci-fi spin on the survival horror genre, yet it was only a modest hit, which is why many were worried about the prospect of a sequel. Logic and history dictates that any changes would only hurt the franchise, turning off longtime fans while failing to gain any new players. Instead the transformation between the first and second games was exploding with improvements for the series and made the original title seem lacking in retrospect.
The most important update was the added depth to protagonist Isaac Clarke. He went from silent cypher to a character with thoughts, feelings, motivations, and (of course) fears. His journey through the ruined city of The Sprawl is all about him coming to terms with happened to him in the first game, and you watch him grow and change as you simultaneously hack the limbs off hundreds of necromorphs. This welcome bit of character exploration was supported by brilliantly eerie levels like the day care, breathtaking set-pieces like the tram crash, and some of the grossest things that have ever happened to eyes in a game. Dead Space 2 not only proved the original wasn’t a fluke, but that it was just getting warmed up.

Bulletstorm

It’s probably fair to say that nobody saw Bulletstorm coming. Of course, Epic’s involvement got us interested, but People Can Fly? The guys best known for that big pile of old-school madness Pain Killer? Truly Bulletstorm was an unknown quantity, and many were dubious of its wise-cracking balls-out excesses from the start. They said it looked too unsophisticated for modern tastes. They said the humor was unintelligent. They said the whole thing was one big stupid joke too far. But they were wrong. Oh so delightfully wrong.
Bulletstorm, you see, is a deeply clever, intricate design masquerading as a big dumb action game. Far beyond simply emulating the “Kill ‘em all!” maelstroms of Doom and its ilk, Bulletstorm re-taught us a more important lesson from the pre-Call-of-Duty days of FPS. Namely meaningful player input in the cause of mastering one’s environment. Bulletstorm’s insanely imaginative weapon-set and its multi-layered combo potential re-empowered players to kill their own way, giving us back the ability to creatively express ourselves on a mammoth scale, using a million different shades of gore. Fun, laugh-out-loud funny, and with immense replay value thanks to its score-attack Echoes mode, Bulletstorm has as immediate an appeal as any shooter around, but the finesse and depth to keep the most technically calculating, second-shaving point-chaser or speed-runner happy for months.

Battlefield 3

Modern first-person shooters have started to resemble big-budget Hollywood blockbusters in recent years, a trend that has received both praise and criticism from gaming audiences. Being shuttled from one explosive set piece moment to another can be thrilling, but when this formula is overused it feels like you’re on an on-rails Disneyland ride. While the Battlefield 3 campaign isn’t devoid of this feeling, its multiplayer offers a much more natural (and rewarding) sense of large-scale action. With dozens of players battling across nine massive maps in tanks, jeeps, helicopters, jets, or on foot, multiplayer matches feel like a genuine war rather than a small-scale skirmish.

Whether you’re playing through the tense campaign or spending countless hours in multiplayer, Battlefield 3 greatly benefits from the stunning Frostbite 2 engine. If your gaming computer is capable of supporting the highest settings, you’re in for an aesthetic treat that tops everything else in the genre. Character animations look smooth and realistic, explosions have significant weight to them, and environments get torn apart in showers of concrete and debris. The stellar audio design matches the high quality bar of the graphics, featuring realistic sound effects, Hollywood-caliber voice acting, and a great soundtrack. Music doesn't blare throughout most of the game, but it’s subtle and effective when it does complement the action.

Rather than delivering sweeping changes to the series’ multiplayer format, DICE chose more subtle tweaks for Battlefield 3. As with Bad Company 2, players can choose from four classes, but the assault and medic classes are now merged (with the now-open fourth slot dedicated to the LMG-toting, ammo-dropping support class). I loved both classes in Bad Company 2, so the ability to throw medkits and revive teammates while utilizing assault weaponry feels ideal. In a move that should please snipers and potentially annoy sniping victims, the ability to go prone returns. It’s as annoying as ever to get picked off by camping recon players, but the kill cam and scope glint should tip observant players off about their location.

Rush, Team Deathmatch, and the squad variants are solid modes, but with the return of 64-player matches, Conquest is once again the star of the multiplayer show. In my time on the game’s pre-release servers, I never encountered lag. Even in massive battles featuring dozens of players and vehicles competing over a single flag, the action proceeded without the slightest hiccup. The size of the maps, variety of vehicles, and overall scale of Conquest rounds make for some fantastic moments that couldn’t be recreated if you tried. During a match on the Operation Firestorm map, I was taking out enemy tanks by performing sweeping runs with my jet. After the opposing team lost a couple of vehicles, they sent their own fighter into the sky to hunt me down. Once my plane took too much punishment, I ejected and parachuted down to a nearby rooftop. As my teammates battled for flag control a couple of stories below me, I pulled out a stinger, locked onto my airborne attacker, and took the plane down with a homing rocket. I watched it crash about 100 feet in front of me, then hopped down to join the battle for the flag. These types of moments make the experience.

All nine maps that ship with Battlefield 3 are fantastic regardless of mode, and unlike Bad Company 2, you can play each map in any mode right out of the gate. The petroleum refineries of Operation Firestorm and the creeks and grassy hills of Caspian Border are my favorites of the bunch, but the other maps maintain a level of quality that reaffirms DICE is unrivaled in multiplayer level design. Even with the series’ history of quality, I was surprised by the scale of these battlefields. At one point during a Rush round on Damavand Peak, I found myself in the passenger seat while a pilot struggled to maintain control of the helicopter. Fearing a crash, I bailed. As I parachuted towards the ground, I thought I was about to land outside of the map’s boundaries considering how far away it was, but the objectives shifted as I was in mid-air and revealed that I was already well on my way to the next M-Com stations.

As exciting as the in-game action is, the method for jumping into matches is a hassle. Forcing players to exit the game menu to the Battlelog website when they want to switch between modes seems unnecessary, and I would have preferred to chat, manage my party, check server lists, and look at my stats from inside the game. The only thing Battlelog adds to the experience is a few additional steps to get to the action. Forming a party is easy if your desired squad members are already on your friends list, but communicating isn't trouble-free. Text chat is supported in standard multiplayer, but you'll have to back out of the game if you want to communicate with a co-op partner that doesn't have a headset. No matter what mode you're in, you'll have to hold the left shift button to speak to your party. Considering this is the same button as sprint, you'll run when you don't want to and your teammates will be able to hear you any time you're scurrying to the next objective. While Battlelog does have its issues, the act of actually forming parties and getting them into your game is simple (as long as you don't mind backing out of the game when you want to invite a friend). If your buddy hops online while you're in the middle of a round of Conquest, you just need to back out to Battlelog and drag him from your Com Center (friends list) to your game. From there, they'll automatically be added to your squad if there's room available.

Most Battlefield fans spend the majority of their time in the rewarding multiplayer, but this entry also delivers the series’ most ambitious single-player campaign to date. While players filled the shoes of the jokesters of B Company in the Bad Company campaigns, Battlefield 3 presents a dead-serious narrative about an imminent nuclear threat. You'll primarily play as Sgt. Blackburn, a soldier that's being interrogated about missing warheads as the story plays out via flashbacks.  As I progressed through the seven-hour campaign, I couldn’t ignore the numerous elements directly pulled from the Call of Duty format. By the time the end credits roll, you’ll have assumed the roles of several globetrotting characters, taken out ground targets from a circling aircraft, witnessed several dramatic slow-motion deaths, partook in a tense sniping section with a fellow soldier, raced against the clock to stop a nuclear explosion, and sat through a scene clearly meant to shock players. While derivative, the campaign is consistently entertaining throughout. Tight gunplay, exciting set piece moments, and a more focused narrative than its primary competitor help to make this the best shooter campaign since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Battlefield fans hoping for the most polished entry in the series won’t be disappointed by this massive sequel. Multiplayer maintains the high level of quality DICE is known for, and the campaign is the best in franchise history. Outside of the annoying Battlelog and a tacked-on, uninspired co-op mode consisting of six short standalone missions, the only downside to Battlefield 3 is the lack of substantial changes to the multiplayer formula. However, that shouldn’t stop longtime fans and newcomers from enjoying one of the best FPS experiences in gaming.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

It would be easy to dismiss Modern Warfare 3 as just another iterative update to the massively successful shooter series. After attending a preview event this summer, I left with concerns that the Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer Games collaboration shelved the multiplayer innovation Treyarch introduced with Black Ops in favor of more minor, underwhelming updates. Some of my early concerns proved valid, but many of the incremental tweaks are smart additions to the multiplayer experience. Modern Warfare 3 does little to fundamentally change the well-known franchise formula, but it offers enough enhancements to recommend it to any fan.

On the surface, this Call of Duty experience is similar to the other Modern Warfare games. If a casual fan sat down for a few rounds of team deathmatch or domination, it would be easy to forgive them for mistaking this for a map pack. Its visuals are familiar, most of the weapons are recycled from previous games, the tight gunplay feels similar, maps are still fairly cramped affairs for the most part, assembling a party operates the same, and many of the killstreak rewards return. Modern Warfare 3’s most noteworthy tweaks may be smaller changes, but they add up to contribute in a big way.

Custom classes are as crucial to online play as always, and players can choose between three new strike packages for their loadouts. Assault is for offensive-minded players, as its rewards are mostly death-dealing instruments like remote control assault drones, devastating air strikes, and the proximity-based I.M.S. (Intelligent Munition System). If you’re outfitted with this package, your killstreak progresses as always – it builds as you rack up kills, but resets to zero once you’re taken down. Considering I’m usually heavy on offense, I stuck with the assault package for my first few hours of multiplayer.

The Support package killstreaks are defensive in nature, like SAM turrets, recon drones, and counter-UAVs. They don’t have the flash of the deadly assault rewards, but they’re still helpful. Unlike the assault package, this package’s killstreak count doesn’t reset upon death. You wouldn’t normally reach one of the crazy 18-kill assault rewards without dying, but now it’s feasible to earn the most valuable support items in a single game. This package was even more appealing to me when I unlocked a few offensive rewards, like the remote sentry turret, the B-2 bomber, and the recon juggernaut suit. Once I realized the value of this package, it became my default for the majority of my future rounds.

The final package, Specialist, is for tacticians who strategize formulas for specific game types. Specialist allows you to unlock a specific order of perks as you rack up kills. For instance, let’s say you want to create a specialist package for use in Domination. You start with whatever three perks you normally have available, but you could then unlock Extreme Conditioning after a few kills to help you sprint from flag to flag. If you live long enough to capture a few flags, you’ll probably be running low on ammo. Not a problem – you can set your specialist package to unlock Scavenger to help you pick up more ammo. To reap the rewards of this killstreak package, you have to analyze how you play and where you’d benefit from the unlocked perks most. For the hardcore crowd, this is an ideal pick.

The Specialist package isn't the only addition that the hardcore crowd will love, as the new Call of Duty Elite service is an overwhelmingly in-depth feature with many different tools. The team at Beachhead has created a performance tracker that is equal parts comprehensive stats database, clan management system, loadout customization tool, social networking site, and improvement guide. You can see graphs of how your kill/death ratio is trending, customize your clan’s callsign and tag, analyze the map locations where you die the most, add friends directly from your XBLA/PSN/Facebook accounts, and even push a new custom class to your console from a free app on your phone. All of the uproar about a premium membership fee seems to be misguided after seeing the final product, as the large majority of the content is free. Members of high-performing clans (of which you can only be a member of one at a time) may want to consider the premium membership, as they make you eligible for prizes like cameras and a free trip to Paris if you’re good enough. If you’re a casual Call of Duty fan, you can still have a fun time in multiplayer without ever touching Elite. However, this new feature is a boon if you’re the type that likes to prestige multiple times.

Strike packages and the Elite service are the biggest additions to online play, but smaller multiplayer features contribute to overall mode improvement as well. Completing objectives like flag captures adds to your killstreak count, and players can cycle through killstreak rewards with the d-pad and select them in the order they wish. Prestige mode counts for something now, as players earn coins to spend on new custom classes, double XP time, or special callsigns. Leveling individual weapons unlocks proficiency abilities like reduced kick or faster fire rate. Customizable private matches allow for absurd and entertaining variations of Juggernaut, Infected, and Gun Game. You won’t respawn in the middle of a massive air strike nearly as often, either. Players won’t notice many of these changes if they’re just popping in for a quick round, but those who spend a lot of time in multiplayer will appreciate them.

Call of Duty’s bread and butter has always been its deep multiplayer, but the campaigns deliver their fair share of memorable moments as well. Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t stray from the oft-emulated Call of Duty 4 formula. This large-scale, linear, global, and sometimes controversial campaign can be finished in less than six hours.

For the first two or three hours, the game hurries from country to country with a jarring narrative that doesn’t succeed in getting much information across. All you know is this Makarov fellow is a bit unsavory, and he wants to kill a lot of people. In your efforts to find and kill him, the game finds excuses to have you shoot up the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, protect the Russian president on a jet, attempt to stop a chemical attack in Paris, and watch a supposedly offensive scene that’s essentially a less effective and less necessary version of Modern Warfare 2’s “No Russian” mission. These early scenarios are more concerned with topping the big set piece moments from previous entries in the series than with putting forth a coherent narrative. In one scripted sequence that’s awesome, terrible, and hilarious at the same time, I was even forced to shoot a hyena multiple times in the head while I was in a church.

My concerns with the early portions of the campaign have as much to do with gameplay as narrative. It’s a constant “run here, trigger the enemies, now click between the trigger buttons until everyone is dead” experience. As much as the first few hours disappointed me, it gets its act together around the halfway mark. You learn some more about your primary character and his motivations, and the latter half of the campaign isn’t filled with the convoluted double-crosses of Modern Warfare 2. Setpiece moments become more intriguing from a gameplay perspective, with one mission involving an approaching sandstorm and an air assault mission that switches perspective back and forth from the ground to the air. By the time the credits roll, the globetrotting ordeal meets a satisfying conclusion.

If you’ve wrapped up the campaign and want a break from the standard multiplayer, Spec Ops serves as a great third pillar. This mode is broken into two distinct sections now, with one dedicated to co-op missions like those seen in Modern Warfare 2 and another that’s essentially a Horde mode variant. This survival mode is a blast with soldiers, dogs, and vehicles that are far more engaging than plodding zombies. Plus, it has its own in-game economy and ranking system.

When it comes down to it, Modern Warfare 3 meets expectations. The core elements of multiplayer and the campaign remain fundamentally unchanged, but the game serves as a great example of how many subtle tweaks can add up to an improved overall product. Even with the recent turmoil at Infinity Ward, the remnants of that team (in conjunction with Sledgehammer) have put together a worthy sequel to one of the most successful franchises of all time.

L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire is ambitious. It throws the player headlong into a complex, emotional detective saga set in 1947 Los Angeles. Team Bondi doesn’t conceal the game’s literary and film influences; allusions to classic noir abound, and the game succeeds in capturing the dark, morally ambiguous atmosphere that is the hallmark of the genre. It’s a game unlike anything else I’ve played, one that uses Rockstar’s familiar open-world template as a jumping off point to deliver a deliberately paced adventure game that stresses conversation over gunplay.

Much has been made of Team Bondi’s groundbreaking facial motion capture technology, which allowed the developers to effectively “film” real actors as 3D models and put their expression and dialogue straight into the game. The results of this experiment are striking; never before have digital characters conveyed so much real emotion in a video game. In comparison to L.A. Noire, the characters in Heavy Rain and the Mass Effect series appear wooden. In addition, the casting of real-life actors like Aaron Staton (Ken Cosgrove from Mad Men) and John Noble (Walter Bishop fromFringe) pays off; this game hasn’t conquered the uncanny valley, but at times I began to accept these characters as real, breathing human beings.

As in any good film noir, appearances can be deceiving. Players take the role of detective Cole Phelps, a decorated war hero and new LAPD detective who must navigate the tense underworld of Los Angeles, negotiating the often-blurry line between cop and criminal. Cole Phelps is an honest man, but he’s often impetuous, selfish, and haunted by the events he experienced in WWII. While feted as a war hero, the truth of what happened to him in the war is tragic and complicated, and the echoes of those deeds reverberate throughout L.A. Noire. Investigating a series of murders that tie into the real-life Black Dahlia killings, Cole begins to understand that the appearance of justice is all that’s desired by his superiors. While working vice, he also learns that the difference between gangster and police officer is sometimes little more than a uniform. Eventually, the web of deceit and corruption widens, implicating those at the highest levels of society and government. I don’t want to spoil any revelations, but the events of the last third come to an explosive head, culminating in a sad, conflicted final scene that will stick with you long after the credits roll.

As masterful as the storytelling is, games are meant to be played. In this regard, I’m conflicted. Phelp’s career is divided into a series of cases that spread across the beat patrol, traffic, homicide, vice, and arson desks (the fact that arson is the last is not a misprint; it ties closely to some surprising story events). The formula for most cases is uniform: You and your partner roll up to the crime scene, gather clues, and interview witnesses and people of interest. It’s best to gather as much physical evidence as possible, as each clue you log in your notebook opens up new lines of inquiry. At first, I relished the investigations. Anything in the environment could give you a big break in the case, from a ring to a prop shrunken head in a Hollywood production studio. However, over the course of the game’s 20 hours the repetitive search mechanic wears thin. Walking around waiting for a controller rumble to alert you to an item of interest feels more like an Easter egg hunt than an actual investigation. In a nod to old-school adventure games, many items you are prompted to pick up are meaningless as well; I’m pretty sure I examined every hairbrush in the greater L.A. area. The cases occasionally challenge your deductive skills, but it’s mostly just a case of walking around until you find all the relevant items.

L.A. Noire could have used more action sequences to break up the monotonous investigating, but aside from a couple of frantic moments toward the end of the Black Dahlia plotline, most of the action vignettes are simple foot or car chases. That would be fine if they weren’t so predictable and repetitive. Honestly, if one more suspect bolted right as I was about to start my questioning, I was going to shoot him or her. The few shootouts the game does have play out well enough, but suffer from occasional problems coming in and out of cover.

The interrogations, which showcase the amazing facial animations, are the most compelling aspect of L.A. Noire. As you read your suspect’s face for signs of subterfuge you can react by either believing their statement, expressing doubt, or accusing them of lying. If you throw out an accusation, be prepared to back it up with some hard evidence. If you don’t have something convincing or incriminating you’ll likely cause them to shut down entirely, which prevents you from extracting further information. Thanks to the animations and superb acting, these scenes are fraught with tension, especially when you’re juggling two suspects at once, each accusing the other. In these moments, L.A. Noire shines, providing a real sense of human drama. However, unlike in Heavy Rain or the Mass Effect series, the outcome of the case has no bearing on the larger plot. Sure, you might miss out on some dialogue or facts, but you still proceed from point A to point B. In a game that supposedly tests your decision-making, your determinations ultimately play no role in the story outcome.

The open city itself is drop-dead gorgeous – L.A. never looked so beautiful. Rockstar’s attention to detail is evident everywhere; even shop windows are filled with fully rendered product displays. However, there’s not much to do other than some unremarkable street crime side missions. So much effort went into recreating this historical Los Angeles, and I wish the city felt as alive and interactive as GTA IV’s Liberty City. Mostly, it just serves as scenery as you drive to the next cutscene.

At times, L.A. Noire is one of the most vivid, gripping game experiences I’ve had. Other times, it can be plain boring. As in much noir fiction, the truth lies in the gray area between those two extremes. It’s an adventure I won’t soon forget, filled with characters as fascinating as they are flawed – a bit like the game itself.

Brink

When Splash Damage first announced Brink, the veteran first-person shooter developer promised a game that would seamlessly blend the single-player, co-op, and multiplayer experiences. Little did we know that this meant “your garden variety multiplayer game, now with bot matches.”

Despite its claims to the contrary, Brink is not a proper single-player game. Don’t be fooled by the paper-thin plot that pits the powers-that-be against a rebellious gang on a near-future floating city – this “campaign” is comprised of multiplayer maps populated with brainless bots. These dolts often run around without purpose, wait to shoot back at oncoming enemies, neglect objectives, and fail to coordinate attacks.

Splash Damage makes it nearly impossible to leave the single-player behind when you jump online. You’re still inundated with the overly dramatic voiceovers and cutscenes during each match, and most of the versus modes mix bots with players. Only when you drill into the Freeplay match settings do you unearth the two poorly labeled game varieties that allow you to leave the bots behind (Old Skool and Competition, for those keeping score).

Once you ditch the AI and hop online with friends, Brink starts to feel like a proper multiplayer shooter. Like Battlefield, players choose from one of four classes at the beginning of each match – soldier, engineer, medic, and operative – each of which earns experience points for performing specialized actions in a way that naturally forces players to work together. As you rack up experience, you unlock new skins for your avatar and perk-like abilities.

Players can switch classes mid-match at a command post to reconfigure the tactics for the objective at hand. This comes in handy when you’re transitioning from an assault objective, where you may need several operatives to hack a safe quickly, to an escort mission, where a multitude of medics gives you the best chance of getting the VIP out alive without getting caught in a choke point.

Splash Damage is best known for its work on the Enemy Territory series, where the studio built maps that require players to think and act strategically to find success. This philosophy carries over into Brink; these aren’t wide-open Battlefield zones or cramped Call of Duty maps. Most of Brink’s environments mix linear corridors with arena zones where an objective is located and bullets are exchanged. Your objectives are standard fare – plant explosives, escort a VIP, hack doors, repair mission critical machinery, or defend an area. Secondary missions populate the maps as well; some grant team bonuses like supply and health boosts, while others allow you to create a shortcut to the main objective. As you gain familiarity with the maps, you begin to appreciate how many tactical approaches are available for completing your mission. Finding the best places to ambush your enemies with turrets, slow their progress with landmines, or flank the objective and then executing your plan is what this game is all about. This requires timing and coordination, so Brink is best played with a group of mic’d up friends.

The one element where Brink distinguishes itself from the multiplayer pack is the SMART movement, a contextual navigation button that lets you run and climb effortlessly through the environment. Characters move too slowly for my liking (even with the smaller body type that increases your parkour abilities), but I enjoyed the streamlined freedom of movement. It seems like a subtle change, but when I booted up another shooter I found myself wishing my soldier would automatically vault small obstacles as I held down the sprint button.

The gunplay isn’t as memorable. Brink features your standard arsenal of weapons, most of which are unlocked along with attachments by completing boring challenges in an otherwise forgettable separate game mode. Weapons within the same class don’t distinguish themselves in any meaningful way, and shooting them is hardly satisfying. Every gun suffers from an inordinate amount of recoil, headshots are not one-shot kills, and even grenades and mines don’t do mortal damage.

Most disappointing of all are the myriad rookie mistakes Splash Damage made in the front end. Brink lacks a pre-game party lobby where you can gather all your friends before looking for a match – a major faux pas on consoles these days. You also can’t equip new abilities you just unlocked between matches without dropping out to the main menu. Without dedicated servers, the in-game performance is dependent upon the host’s connection quality, and I frequently experienced an unplayable level of lag.

Brink is not a bad game. If Splash Damage can stabilize the performance and fix some glaring omissions (like a pre-game lobby) with a patch, I’d gladly spend more time with it. But with only eight multiplayer maps, 20 progression levels, no clan support, and average gunplay, it’s not a good value proposition. Especially considering many Xbox Live games offer a similar amount of content for a fraction of the price.

Portal 2

How do you follow up on a four-hour pack-in title that blew up into a phenomenon that defined a year-plus of gaming culture? Valve decided to flesh out the concepts pioneered in Portal, coloring in some existing wireframes, adding details to older sketches, and doodling new expansions to previous ideas in the margins. Without turning the page, the team has painted a much richer picture that seizes your attention in a steel grip even if it’s telling a similar story.

Like the original, so much of what makes Portal 2 special is in the execution and the originality of standing in Chell’s shoes and experiencing her destiny. Any spoilers would seriously detract from the game. Not because the plot relies on contrived twists – the major beats are telegraphed in advance – but because Valve has leveraged the interactive experience perfectly. Weathering the taunts of a sadistic AI as you’re trying to survive its deadly challenges is unlike passively watching HAL-9000 try to kill off meddling astronauts. Gruesome depictions of abandoned experiments take on a new horror when you’re desperately avoiding a similar fate yourself. The dialogue’s pitch-perfect delivery is half of Portal 2’s genius, and it would be a shame to ruin the brilliant comedic timing or any of the other many nuances Valve so painstakingly crafted in this review.

This isn’t to say that Portal 2 takes itself too seriously. On the contrary, the sequel goes in a dramatically opposite direction than the Half-Life tie-in that many predicted. Descriptions of violent, painful death are played for a laugh more often than not. GLaDOS’ blithe disregard for human suffering is again a recurring comedic theme. The touch of gravitas here and there is just enough to ground the writing and serve as a contrast to Portal 2’s goofy world. I would have preferred Valve to play it slightly straighter and give a look into what catastrophic events led to the current sorry state of Chell’s world, but that’s the sci-fi nerd in me talking. We don’t need to knowwhy the Enrichment Center is; that it is trying to kill us is enough.

I was concerned that I would tire of Portal’s one-note shtick, however amusing, over the course of a full-length game. Adding two major speaking roles and a few different environments, along with carrying over the masterful pacing of the original, keeps the single-player adventure fresh through its entire eight-hour span. I never once thought I’d place GLaDOS second on any list of Portal characters, but J.K. Simmons’ character surpasses the malevolent AI even though she’s as amusing as ever. I was never bored of the dialogue, settings, or puzzles. The constant introduction of new elements ensured that I never even came close.

The co-op campaign, on the other hand, is five hours of relatively simplistic GLaDOS banter with occasional hijinks from the cooperative testing robots. Co-op play is more mechanics-driven, with occasional bits of hilarity injected by GLaDOS’ amusing attempts to sow enmity between the two of you. The puzzles are ingenious, and the simple ability to put a marker in the game world makes plotting strategies out smooth and easy. I wasn’t sure about co-op puzzle-solving beforehand, but Portal 2 made me a rabid believer. Do whatever it takes to find someone to tackle these challenges with. They’re that good.

As for the puzzles themselves, they’re wonderful. Portal 2 has fewer agility-driven obstacles, so less dextrous gamers shouldn’t find themselves stuck on anything for lack of stick-flicking ability. The new elements are each great in their own rights, and they work together beautifully. Flying through the air after setting up a mad combination of repulsion and propulsion gel is amusing, but bending your mind around using an excursion funnel’s tractor beam to levitate the goo into a set of turrets that you had previously blocked with a hard light bridge from perforating you is amazing. The better co-op puzzles, where for example your partner is continually extending the funnel you’re both floating in via portals while you have to extend bridges between your fragile shells and passing turrets, show unbelievable creativity.

Portal 2’s high points rival “the cake is a lie,” though they’re perhaps less quotable (which is honestly fine – repeating GLaDOS lines stopped being funny a long time ago). You’ll never forget the moments that accompany some of the achievements/trophies. The game’s quality stays consistently outstanding throughout; there isn’t a minute of filler content to be found anywhere in single-player or co-op. I would have loved to see something unique done with the story, which doesn’t end anywhere interesting despite a reasonably satisfying ending. I would adore seeing Portal stretch its wings beyond being a series of puzzles that almost always have one correct solution waiting to be found. That said, the next game I want to play is a second run through of Portal 2, because the existing formula is excellent and brilliantly executed.

Rage

The name id Software rings of nostalgia. Franchises like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake laid the groundwork for the first-person shooter genre, and I can still see their designs influencing many of today’s new releases. Despite the studio’s pedigree, it hasn’t developed an FPS title since 2004’s Doom 3. The genre has changed significantly in the years that have followed. Franchises like Half-Life and Call of Duty are the genre’s trendsetters. Now, id Software makes its long-awaited FPS return with a new franchise called Rage. Can the father of the FPS reemerge as the powerhouse it once was, or will it be playing catch-up to the genre’s latest trends? The answer is a little of both.

At this year’s QuakeCon expo, John Carmack, id co-founder and Rage’s lead programmer, revealed he had been working on this new title for the better part of six years. The lengthy gestation period has produced one of the most technically sound shooters to date. Rage roars at a constant 60 frames per second, offers sophisticated gunplay, and lights up the screen with an incredible level of graphical detail. The game continually wowed me with its technology and small touches, such as every NPC having unique animations scripted to each word they utter, and an enemy being smart enough to recognize that the quickest path to the player’s location isn’t a winding path, but rather cutting the distance by jumping over fences.

The lengthy development cycle could also be responsible for the game’s most disappointing component: the story. After a gorgeous introductory cinematic which shows an enormous asteroid crashing to Earth in the year 2029, producing a post-apocalyptic wasteland, players are introduced to their avatar in this world, a silent protagonist who ends up being the whipping boy of every person with a problem that needs fixing. He’s the perfect accomplice to an uneventful narrative that slogs along with all the excitement of a dehydrated person slowly shuffling his feet in the wasteland’s sands. Just when it seems this story might produce a meaty plot thread, the game ends unexpectedly with no major confrontation or sense of victory leading up to it. The best comparison I can think of is if Star Wars ended with Obi-Wan lowering the Death Star’s tractor beam. Roll credits.

While most people will likely rave about Rage’s technology, this game’s most impressive component is its gunplay. This is largely due to the game’s fearless foes. Like Left 4 Dead’s bloodthirsty zombies, the mutated hostiles of the wastes sprint toward the player. They crawl out of the woodwork, scamper along walls, and create a sense of absolute terror. I can’t overstate how impressive this game’s animation system is. Shooting a mutant in the side might make it slam into a wall, but its legs never stop moving. It drags itself along, eyes glued to yours, and fights to regain balance to continue its rapid pace. Interestingly, the player is not equipped for close quarters melee. In fact, the rifle butt and punch attacks rank among the weakest I’ve seen in a current-gen FPS. The challenge posed to the player is to put them down quickly, or pray that every close range shotgun blast hits a large chuck of flesh. Most of the major battles unfolded with me panicking, firing off shots with a furious intensity, and escaping with the feeling that I had accomplished a miraculous feat.

There’s a nice selection of close- and long- range weapons, and while id’s patented BFG makes an appearance in the form of special ammunition, this arsenal’s most trusted killer is oddly a boomerang called the wingstick – one of the most satisfying weapons in any FPS. The wingstick is designed with the specific goal of lopping off heads. Watching a mutant in a full-on sprint lose his noggin and collapse to the ground just as the wingstick flies back into your hand is a supremely satisfying spectacle.

Rage isn’t a standard level-to-level shooter. At any point in the game, players have the opportunity to freely explore a moderately sized open world. Outside of illustrating how the asteroid affected the world and how mankind has adapted to it, this vast playing space’s primary function is to shuttle players from a hub city to a mission marker. The means of travel is a vehicle tricked out with weapons galore. Bandits in vehicles of their own will try to derail your quest, but even on the highest difficulty setting they pose little challenge. As much fun as it is to blow these adversaries away with rockets, the vehicular component, which includes races, is an entertaining distraction and nothing more.

A slew of other diversionary minigames, such as an awesome collectible card game, are included into the hub cities. However, the most satisfying side activity is looting, which makes the lack of content in the overworld more disappointing. Every item that flashes in the environment – be it gas cans or bandages – can be picked up and stored in a limitless inventory. At first, these items may seem completely random, but as the game progresses and new weapon and item blueprints are obtained, they can be combined for on-the-go crafting. Turrets, remote control cars, healing items, grenades, and other handy devices can be created from anywhere, even in the heat of battle.

Rage’s story and overworld design feel dated, but its heart-pounding gunplay is a nice change of pace in a market filled with “follow me” and pop-and-fire shooters. While light RPG elements are present, this is mainly a game for players who love challenging combat experiences.

Multiplayer
Rage’s gunplay seems like a perfect fit for classic id-style deathmatching, but the only multiplayer options offered are six-player vehicular combat and two-player co-op challenges. The co-op levels are sections stripped from the campaign and outfitted with new enemy formations. They’re a blast to play, but they can be completed in a few hours total. The vehicular warfare doesn’t offer a large number of maps, and as nicely crafted as the controls are, grows old quickly. While the completist in me wanted to reach rank 20, my interest was fully tapped around rank 10.