Call for Heroes Pompolic Wars

Publisher: Strategy First
Developer: Quotix Software
Genre: Role-Playing
Release Date: Jun 26, 2007
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Fantasy Violence
Number of Players: 1 Player
DirectX Version: v9.0c

As the back of the Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars box proclaims, “It is the darkest of times.” Well, that’s certainly true enough for anyone who installs and plays the game within. This action RPG from Quotix Software hits new lows in mind-numbing combat and ridiculously confusing level design.

Judging by the credits at the back of the manual, just two people made this one, and boy does it ever show. The twosome worked off a simple template of making a 3D copy of Diablo, but didn’t include any of the depth or catchiness of that classic dungeon crawl. The single-player story (there is no multiplayer) about battling the monstrous hordes of a demon named Pompolic is told solely on the first page of the manual. There are no cutscenes, dialogue sequences, or anything else to tell a tale in the game itself. RPG elements are also MIA. Instead of rolling up characters, you make a one-or-the-other choice between a male warrior and a female amazon, and then bestow a name and a special ability (from a whopping list of three choices per class) upon the hero that you select. And with that, it’s off to explore a succession of 15 generic fantasy castles and dungeons.

And you really do have to do some exploring. Unlike in most hack-and-slash dungeoneering games, levels in Call for Heroes aren’t strictly linear. Instead of just cutting down skeletons and goblins from Point A to Point B, you instead must delve into every nook and cranny of each level to discover all of the dark soul artifacts and open up a portal to the next level before a timer ticks down to zero. Initially, this is refreshing. Far too many action RPG dungeon crawls are so slavishly devoted to linear level design that they play themselves, so finally getting an alternative could have been a very good thing.

Unfortunately, though, the alternative here is an absolute mess. There is no rhyme or reason to the level design at all, and there is no mini-map tracking your expedition, so you feel like a rat running around in a maze. Levels are also totally isolated from one another, giving you the impression that you’re fighting through disconnected battle arenas, not making your way through any sort of story or campaign. Each level seems to have only a half-dozen or so noteworthy architectural elements, too, which leaves you adrift with no distinctive landmarks to indicate where you are at any given moment. Monsters also typically spawn in when you grab a power-up like a health potion or a dark soul, too, leaving you without a sense of place when it comes to specific fights. Welcome to a hack-and-slash treadmill.

Making matters even worse is the incessant, stupidly difficult combat. Packs of monsters constantly swarm you, forcing a lot of scrambly fighting and fleeing that further screws up your sense of direction. From the second level on, the number of creatures on your tail is so insane that you mostly just scurry away from them and hope that you happen to pass the dark souls before you get killed. All of this fighting does at least lend the game a certain white-knuckle intensity. It seems like you’re forever stuck with your hit points in single digits, leaving you constantly afraid that a random swipe from some goon is going to send you on a dirt nap. Also, you have to restart levels from scratch when killed, which adds even more pressure to the hacking and slashing unless you’ve lucked out and found one of the rare respawn icons.

Still, everything goes on too long and is far too repetitive to be the least bit enjoyable. Each Call for Heroes level takes a good half-hour to finish, and you spend every second of that time either fleeing without any idea where you’re going or click-click-clicking on the bad guys. There isn’t any excitement in this monster mash, as you’re whaling away on just a handful of types of beastie in each level. Creatures in the game nicely blend “kill-myself-if-I-have-to-kill-another” fantasy archetypes like skeletons and zombies with bizarro beasts like fireball-spewing floating orbs (the spitting image of Doom’s cacodemon) and spindly-armed ET look-alikes, but there just aren’t enough different monsters to prevent your brain from locking up with tedium. You’ll wallop forty or fifty spiders in one level, then a few dozen one-armed zombies in the next, then a veritable Shriners convention of Doom balls in the next, and so on.

Variety isn’t a part of your arsenal, either. Although you accumulate different weapons and armor along the way, there isn’t that much of it. You generally pick up one good new weapon per level, for instance. Battles can be livened up by activating special class abilities that are picked when you level up, or by collecting coins that let you activate god mode for a limited period of time, but you don’t need any of that fancy stuff; most of the time you’ll be happy (well, “happy” is a relative term) to just click-kill your way through monsters.

Minimum System Requirements
System: Intel Pentium IV 1.6 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 1300 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: Pentium IV 3.2 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB

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Dead to Rights

Publisher: Hip Games
Developer: Namco
Genre: Modern Shooter
Release Date: Nov 10, 2003
ESRB: MATURE
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Mature Sexual Themes, Violence
Copy Protection: StarForce software protection technology contained in one or more versions of this game.
Special Controllers: Mouse

Nothing delivers a vicarious thrill quite like a slick, big-budget action movie. Hollywood blockbusters, like Face/Off and The Rock, in addition to some of Hong Kong’s finest movie fare, like The Killer and A Better Tomorrow, put you right in the middle of intense modern-day shoot-outs between the “goodest” good guys and the baddest bad guys. Films like these are undeniably exciting, but they sometimes leave you wondering how on earth the good guys managed to beat such impossible odds. The answer is obvious: These movies aren’t real. Of course, Dead to Rights isn’t real, either. If you’ve ever wondered what it might feel like to be the lone action hero who’s pitted up against a ridiculous number of enemies, this game is about as close as you’ll get. Dead to Rights was originally released in the summer of 2001–exclusively for the Xbox–where its intense difficulty level polarized the game’s audience, as some loved the relentless challenge, while others couldn’t handle it. The subsequent PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions, for better or worse, greatly toned down the game’s difficulty, thus making Dead to Rights a whole lot more accessible and slightly less nerve-wracking, though no less action-packed. Now a PC port of the game is available, and while it doesn’t look like much and controls differently than you’re probably used to, it still delivers plenty of entertaining combat.

Dead to Rights is about a K-9 cop named Jack Slate, who does what he can to keep the peace in a criminal cesspool called Grant City. At the beginning of the game, Slate and his trusty dog Shadow are investigating a mysterious construction site. There, Slate discovers that someone very close to him has been murdered. Against direct orders, he sets off to find some answers and to seek revenge. The story, as told through Jack’s deadpan narration and the occasional CG cutscene, seems pretty straightforward at first. During the course of the game, however, it actually takes some decent twists and eventually becomes quite involving. The best that can be said for it is that, unlike most stories in games, this one does a commendable job of tying up all its loose ends before the credits roll.

Superficially, Dead to Rights unquestionably resembles Max Payne. This is mostly because that game, like Dead to Rights, is clearly inspired by a certain breed of action movies, the most notable of which is probably The Matrix. Like Max Payne, Dead to Rights is the tale of a fugitive cop who’s apparently fighting alone in his war against a sinister, corrupt organization. Even the game’s respective main characters have a lot in common. Their names sound alike, their dialogue is hammy and melodramatic, they shrug off bullet wounds, they shoot rapidly with two pistols at once, and when they leap through the air, all the action around them slows down. That’s a lot of similarities, but that’s also where the similarities end.

Dead to Rights plays differently from Max Payne–and from most other action games, for that matter. Most of the game consists of third-person action sequences in which Slate has to gun down countless foes before reaching his next objective. Just as the plot in Dead to Rights offers up a few surprises, so does the gameplay. Simple yet inventive minigames frequently figure into the action, as Slate will have to do all kinds of things, from disarming bombs to lifting weights to picking locks. These minigames rely on precise timing and/or button mashing, and they make for fun diversions. Also, Slate will have to fight unarmed in a number of sequences. Fortunately, he can switch to unarmed combat in the middle of a gunfight.

There’s a lot to say about the action in Dead to Rights because Slate is a versatile fighter. He can carry a number of different firearms at once, and the game features a wide selection of real-world pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and more. He’ll typically salvage these from fallen foes, but he wastes no time reloading, opting instead to coolly toss aside depleted weapons. Aiming in Dead to Rights is automatic. You just press and hold the right mouse button, and Slate will draw a bead on the closest foe. Once that enemy goes down, you press the right mouse button again to find your next target. You can also opt to manually aim from a first-person perspective. This rarely figures into play, though you’ll sometimes need to do so when using sniper rifles.

Your enemies are plentiful, heavily armed, and armored and are often quite deadly. They’ll rush at you, but Dead to Rights feels like an arcade game, so you probably won’t question their reckless tactics. As for you, if you wish to improve your chances of survival, you’ll need to make use of all of Slate’s defensive maneuvers while fighting. A martial arts expert, Slate can disarm his foes at close range by snatching their weapons while delivering a deathblow with dramatic flair.

Alternatively, he can put a vice grip on most any foe. This allows Slate to use the opponent as a human shield while retaining the ability to shoot back (at least with one weapon). If his hostage isn’t killed by friendly fire, Slate can coldly put the fool out of his misery with a bullet to the head or a shot in the back. This isn’t exactly lighthearted stuff.

Slate’s got even more moves. He can duck behind cover and can also flatten his back against a wall, thus priming himself to spring out and start shooting from around a corner. And, sure enough, he can leap through the air in any direction while keeping his guns trained on his foes. Pressing and holding the jump button causes the action to go into slow motion in midjump, while, for some reason, you get to retain a real-time rate of fire, which allows you to take out multiple targets before you hit the ground. This maneuver is hardly realistic, but it’s exciting and acts as a real lifesaver. Your ability to use it is governed by an adrenaline meter that works like bullet time in Max Payne. The meter fills back up as you defeat enemies, and it also refills gradually with time, but it’s well balanced so you can’t get away with using this powerful move excessively.

Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium III 500 MHz or equivalent
RAM: 128 MB
Video Memory: 16 MB
Hard Drive Space: 600 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: Pentium 4 1 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 128 MB
Video Memory: 32 MB
Hard Drive Space: 1800 MB
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BioShock

Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: 2K Boston
Genre: Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Release Date: Aug 21, 2007 (more)
ESRB: MATURE
ESRB Descriptors: Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Sexual Themes
Number of Players: 1 Player

While on the surface it might look like little more than a very pretty first-person shooter, BioShock is much, much more than that. Sure, the action is fine, but its primary focus is its story, a sci-fi mystery that manages to feel retro and futuristic at the same time, and its characters, who convey most of the story via radio transmissions and audio logs that you’re constantly stumbling upon as you wander around. All of it blends together to form a rich, interesting world that sucks you in right away and won’t let go until you’ve figured out what, exactly, is going on in the undersea city of Rapture.

Rapture is an amazing city that sits at the bottom of the ocean, but something’s gone horribly wrong down there.BioShock opens with a bang, but the overall plot focuses more on making an emotional impact than an explosive one. The year is 1960, and you’re flying over the Atlantic Ocean. One mysterious plane crash later, you’re floating in the water, apparently the lone survivor, surrounded by the flaming wreckage of the aircraft. But there’s a lighthouse on a tiny island just at the edge of your view. Who in their right mind would put a lighthouse this far out? You swim closer and discover a small submersible called a bathysphere waiting to take you underwater.

After catching a breathtaking view of what’s below, you’re sent into the secret underwater city of Rapture. Masterminded by a somewhat megalomaniacal businessman named Andrew Ryan, this city is driven by its own idea of total freedom, with capitalism completely unhindered by governmental meddling and science unhinged from the pesky morals of organized religion. Sounds like the perfect society, right? Well, even before you step out of your bathysphere and into the city, it becomes obvious that everything has gone horribly wrong down here. The city is trashed, and genetic freaks called splicers roam around, attacking anything that gets in front of them. At the heart of the matter is a powerful, corrupting substance called ADAM, which makes all this genetic tinkering possible and allows you to get your first plasmid power, the ability to shoot lightning out of your fingertips.

Character customization is a key trait in BioShock. You have a limited but increasable number of spaces in various customization categories, and you can totally reconfigure all of your different plasmids and tonics at will, at no charge, at specific locations in-game. Plasmids are the active, weaponlike genetic enhancement. Many of these are very straightforward. Incinerate lets you burn things and melt ice. Telekinesis lets you use your left hand as if it were Half-Life 2’s gravity gun. But others are a little more subversive. Security bullseye is a little ball you can toss at enemies, causing any nearby security cameras, turrets, or sentry bots to point in his direction. Enrage can cause enemies to fight one another. Insect swarm causes your arm to shoot bees at your enemies, which unfortunately is far less cool-looking than it sounds. You can also place decoys, plant swirling wind traps for enemies, and so on. While it’s fun to mess around with a lot of the indirect attacks, facing your enemies head-on with the more direct plasmids feels a bit more effective.

Tonics are skills that are slotted just like plasmids, but they have passive effects, like sportboost, which increases your movement and melee attack speed, or natural camouflage, which makes you turn invisible if you stand still for a few seconds. So if you want to make your swinging wrench attacks more powerful, you can slot up things like wrench jockey and wrench lurker, which increase your wrench damage on all attacks and when catching opponents off-guard, respectively. Add bloodlust, which gives you some health back every time you club someone with your wrench, and you’re a melee master with health and plasmid energy (called EVE) to spare. You can also slot some defensive stuff, like static field, which zaps anyone who touches you with a electric radius effect, and armored shell, which reduces the damage you take from physical attacks. There are more than 50 tonics to collect, giving you plenty of options to play around with.

ADAM and EVE combine to let you shoot fire, lightning, ice, wind, bees, and more out of your fingertips.Most of those plasmids and tonics will have to be purchased using the raw ADAM that you collect from harvesting vessels called little sisters. They’re little girls with a big needle that they use to collect the sought-after stuff from dead bodies, and they’re protected by the baddest enemies in the entire game, hulking armored monsters called big daddies. This is where the game makes you decide to be selfless or selfish. If you harvest the girls, they die, but you get 160 ADAM from them. If you free them and return them to normal, you get only 80 ADAM. There are a limited number of girls to deal with in the entire game, making it very possible that you won’t be able to collect every single purchasable plasmid and tonic, so choose wisely. Either route has benefits and consequences, and there are story considerations as well.

Before you start thinking this is some kind of role-playing game or something, let’s stop right here and say that in addition to all the toys that plasmids and tonics for you to play around with, you’re also going to be carrying around some more conventional firepower. Your melee weapon is a wrench, and you quickly collect a pistol and machine gun. Being that this is 1960 filtered through the isolation of an undersea world that has the art deco style of the first half of the century, the weapons aren’t nearly as high-tech as the genetic code in your body. The machine gun is your basic tommy gun, and the grenade launcher appears to have been cobbled together from coffee cans and other spare parts. You’ll also get a shotgun, a crossbow, and so on.

You can also collect different types of ammunition, such as exploding buckshot for your shotgun or missiles for your grenade launcher, and upgrades that increase damage, speed up reloads, and so on. The weapons are functional and the upgrades are pretty good, but the firing action isn’t nearly as exciting as a combat-focused first-person shooter would be. The weapons are loud but don’t feel especially right, and seeing shotgun blasts not even do 50 percent damage to an unarmored human target (on the default difficulty setting) just feels wrong. But that might also say something about the general lack of enemy variety.

Minimum System Requirements
System: Intel Pentium IV 2.4 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB
Hard Drive Space: 8000 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent
RAM: 2048 MB
Video Memory: 512 MB

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Shrek – Super Slam

Publisher: Activision
Developer: Shaba Games
Genre: Beat-’Em-Up
Release Date: Nov 1, 2005
ESRB: EVERYONE 10+
ESRB Descriptors: Crude Humor Offline Modes: Competitive, Team Oriented
Number of Players: 1-4
Number of Online Players: 24 OnlineShrek SuperSlam is a 3D melee game starring all your favorite characters from DreamWorks’ Shrek movies. It also borrows heavily from other games like Super Smash Brothers and Power Stone. SuperSlam is obviously designed for younger audiences, and it succeeds in that regard thanks to its simple controls and gameplay mechanics.

Most of the gameplay in Shrek SuperSlam revolves around short, two-minute battles with up to four participants. The objective of these battles is to “slam” your opponents as many times as possible. You’ll fill up a slam gauge after you’ve landed several attacks. Once that gauge is full you can perform a special slam attack that sends your opponent crashing around the stage in scripted, but entertaining ways. There are 20 characters in all, and each one has a unique slam attack. Shrek farts, Puss in Boots charms enemies with the cute kitty look, Donkey does a running head butt, Fiona the ogre sings (terribly), and so on. Every time you slam an opponent you get a point and they lose a point. The one with the most points at the end of the round wins. In addition to the slam attacks, each character has a light attack and a strong attack. These two attacks can be strung together to form combos. There is a combo for breaking blocks, a super-powerful combo, and a variety of special combos. You can also perform aerial attacks like butt drops, wall attacks, and throws. In addition to the basic melee attacks, you can pick up a variety of weapons and objects in each level. You can pick up a piece of furniture and toss it at your opponents, beat them senseless with a ham hock, fire projectiles from a trombone, and drink various potions to get quick power-ups like an instant slam or invulnerability.

There are three different single-player modes in Shrek SuperSlam. You can just jump into melee mode to start fighting in any of the 16 stages right away, or for a more progressive experience, you can check out story mode or the mega-challenge mode. Story mode is a brief series of straightforward brawls with a short cutscene to provide a bit of context. There are only eight stages in story mode, and you can blow through all of them in 20 minutes or so. In one stage, Gingerbread Man fights Puss in Boots after the cat eats one of the cookie’s brethren. In another stage, Donkey has to fight off Prince Charming after offending his noble sensibilities. The stages all have a twisted fairy tale theme, like a parody of MTV’s Cribs starring Gingerbread Man and his gingerbread house.

In story mode, all the matches are straightforward fights, but for a change of pace you can check out the mega-challenge mode. This mode is presented as a board game where you can move from space to space to complete a variety of special challenges or participate in tournaments. The challenges are pretty simple and aren’t too difficult to complete. For one challenge you simply have to run around a small track faster than an opponent, and for another challenge you have to toss six gingerbread men into an oven. The tournament spaces are equally simplistic, but they’re slightly more challenging. Each tournament consists of a handful of battles against one or two opponents, with the objective being to get the most slams. Sometimes there are special rules in these tournaments, like battles where every hit is a slam, but they’re still just your basic brawls.

Since it’s a melee game, you can bet there are plenty of wild and crazy multiplayer modes, right? Well, actually there are only two multiplayer modes. There’s a basic melee mode, and a king of the hill game where you score points for each second you remain in a certain area of the map. You can play with up to four players, but with the limited options and game modes you’ll get bored with the multiplayer pretty quickly. While it lasts, though, SuperSlam does provide plenty of mindless fun in short, two-minute pickup rounds.

By default the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and PC versions of Shrek SuperSlam look about the same, although the PC looks best if you crank up the resolution. However, the default PC controls are awkward, since you use WASD to move, and then use the J, K, I, and L keys to attack, jump, and pick stuff up. The Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions both feature easy, intuitive controls. Also, the PC version crashed on us a couple of times during start-up, but other than that it ran smoothly. The stages are all well designed according to their specific themes, and they look like they were taken straight out of the Shrek universe. The characters look fairly detailed as well, and they all have unique and funny animations, like when Donkey picks up an item with his back hooves and balances on his front hooves to use the item. The sound is also well done. Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz didn’t voice their respective roles, but the soundalikes deliver respectable imitations. The music is happy and upbeat, just as in the movies. Thankfully, there’s no Smash Mouth to be heard, but the tunes have the same sort of ska sound, which fits in well with the light theme of the game.

Shrek SuperSlam is a good game for younger people and fans of the movies. It’s simple, easy entertainment that isn’t at all demanding or convoluted. The characters retain the same great charm from the movies, and there are even funny moments in some of the cutscenes. The only problem with the game is that it really doesn’t have enough depth to sustain it for much more than a few hours, which makes it difficult to recommend at $40. Still, it’s worth checking out if you love melee games or the Shrek series, because it does a fairly good job of delivering on both those fronts.

By Greg Mueller, GameSpot

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Crashday

Publisher: ValuSoft
Developer: Replay Studios
Genre: Racing
Release Date: Dec 20, 2006
ESRB Descriptors: Alcohol Reference, Violence, Lyrics
Connectivity: Online, Local Area Network
Customization: Editing Tools
Online Modes: Competitive
Number of Players: 1-4
If you were to smoosh together the FlatOut series of demolition racing games and Nadeo’s TrackMania stunt-racing franchise, then systematically vacuum out all of the most appealing aspects of both titles, you’d have the basic equivalent of Crashday. It’s not that the game is terrible, but so little of it feels genuine or original; it’s more of a cheap, hacked-together clone of the aforementioned titles. And what’s more, it isn’t even a particularly good clone. The game’s race modes lack coherency–let alone excitement–and the stunt and combat modes fall flat.

There’s supposed to be a premise to Crashday, but it’s anyone’s guess as to what it is exactly. Booting up the game’s career mode simply drops you right into the middle of a backstory that features up-and-coming racers in some cockamamie imaginary racing league. But the text doesn’t explain much, and the guy doing the voice acting is practically indecipherable. Imagine, if you will, a game developer tracking down the man with the thickest British accent in the world, plopping him down in front of a series of bad New York mafia movies, handing him a script, and demanding he talk exactly like the gangsters portrayed onscreen. That’s how awful the voice acting is in Crashday.
Once you realize the premise is best ignored and actually jump into the game, you’ll find gameplay that’s just as clumsy as the voice acting. Racing in Crashday is exceedingly frustrating. Cars are a floaty, slippery mess, sliding out and crashing into random objects on a regular basis. This is an arcade racer, so no one’s asking for a devout dedication to realism. But arcade or not, these cars are not fun to drive, nor do they handle well. Of course, the trick is that you have to drive especially fast because the other racers have a preternatural ability to use their speed boosts at all the right moments and will always blaze past you if you screw up. So what you end up having to do is memorize every nook and cranny of each race track just so you can figure out where to use your boost and where not to use it. Another weird thing is that the game’s sense of speed isn’t all that good. You definitely get the sense that your car is about to go flying out of control at any second, but the visceral thrill of high-speed racing is basically absent.
Only the stunt and combat races are slightly better than the sense of speed. Stunt modes include tracks filled with ramps, jumps, and loops, but there’s a highly limited scope to the stunt track designs. The game lacks the sort of “look at how completely insane these tracks are” vibe that such games as TrackMania have all but perfected. They’re not kooky or bizarre; they’re just a bunch of ramps and loops. And they’re not even laid out well. The bonus is that the game does include a track editor, but even its scope is limited, allowing for a few bizarre twists but not much more.
The combat modes come in a couple of forms. There are straight-up demolition races where the goal is to just slam into opponent cars over and over again until everyone has exploded but you. Then there are weapon-based modes that give you a Gatling gun and a missile launcher so you can go nuts. These are, by far, the most entertaining modes in the game because, in stark contrast to the driving physics, the game’s crash physics aren’t half bad. Cars break apart pretty nicely, and the weapons aren’t hard to aim or use, which makes wanton destruction a fairly painless process. The main issue here is the limited array of tracks and weapons. It would be nice if there were more variety to the destruction at hand. But sadly there isn’t, and after a few plays against the computer, the action does get a bit tiresome.
Multiplayer would theoretically remedy that issue, but even the multiplayer isn’t without problems. The primary problem is that there’s nobody online to play against. Sure, the servers list lots of games being played, but they’re all being played across the pond by players in Europe. And the European version of the game isn’t compatible with the US version for some reason. So you won’t be able to play against any of them until Moonbyte patches one version or the other. We spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a US-based opponent but only found one playable online match during that entire span. To make matters worse, lag practically wrecked the experience. Trying to play a crash race while cars skip and jump all over the track is just about the most obnoxious thing you’ll ever experience.

Apart from the awful voice acting, the remainder of Crashday’s production value is bit more laudable. As mentioned previously, the crash effects are done quite nicely, and the cars deform and explode about as well as you would hope. The car models aren’t exactly impressive, but considering you’re just thrashing them over and over again, they don’t need to look pristine. The tracks are easily the weakest point of the visuals. The background environments are extremely generic, dressed up with bland-looking towns and set pieces, as well as unattractive textures. They’re not hideous, but they’re definitely not pleasing to the eye.
Of course, someone could try to justify the plain-Jane gameplay and total lack of originality found in Crashday by simply mentioning that it’s only a $20 game. Do you want to know how much a new copy of FlatOut 2 costs on the PC? Yes, that’s right, $20. And a copy of TrackMania: Sunrise? It’s the same price. Do yourself a favor and go right to the sources of Crashday’s inspiration rather than pay for a bargain-basement, bush-league version of the same basic gameplay concepts.
By Alex Navarro, GameSpot
Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium IV 1 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 256 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 1500 MB
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Monster Madness Battle for Suburbia

Publisher: SouthPeak Interactive
Developer: Artificial Studios
Genre: Shoot-’Em-Up
Release Date: Jun 12, 2007 (more)
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Mild Language, Tobacco Reference, Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes
Connectivity: Online
Number of Players: 1 Player
Number of Online Players: 16 OnlineMonster Madness: Battle for Suburbia really wishes it was born in the ’80s. It’s got its heart in the right place, aiming to capture the kitschy vibe of such zombie-murdering classics as Zombies Ate My Neighbors and creating a gameplay design that feels like a 3D mash-up of Gauntlet or Ikari Warriors. When you throw in four-player co-op play, a bunch of goofy competitive multiplayer modes, a lengthy campaign, and a ridiculous number of monsters to kill, the recipe for some good old-fashioned fun would seem to be in place. But Monster Madness botches the execution. This includes a counterintuitive control scheme, oddly balanced difficulty, obnoxiously repetitive combat, and a nearly useless camera in co-op mode. Eventually such problems become too numerous and too annoying to tolerate, turning what could have been a simple monster-killing romp into a scattered, clumsy mess.

Monster Madness revolves around a quartet of teenage stereotypes (the geek, the bro, the goth chick, the cheerleader) who find themselves in the midst of an invasion from a greatest-hits collection of the monster world. For some reason, ghouls, ghosts, goblins, skeletons, mummies, werewolves, gremlins, vampires, martians, UFOs, harpies, banshees, leprechauns, jack-o-lanterns, chupacabras, evil trees, demons, medusas, imps, evil clowns, spiders, gargoyles, swamp monsters, the grim reaper, zombies, zombie dogs, zombie pirates, zombie samurais, zombie Indians, zombie grannies, zombie tanks, and exploding zombies, among others, are attacking suburbia. And the four hapless kids are the only ones around to do anything about it. Armed with melee weapons, such as axes or plungers, they dive headfirst into this monster-killing adventure, cracking bad jokes and pining for one another all along the way.

The story is more of an excuse to get you killing monsters than anything else, though it’s also an excuse to insert as much awful comedy as possible into the proceedings. Occasionally, the game elicits a chuckle or snicker, but for the most part, the script isn’t all that funny. Part of this has to do with the jokes, which often rely too heavily on slightly obscure and rather lame pop- and nerd-culture references. The other part has to do with the voice acting, which is largely flat and unremarkable. Even in the rare instances where enthusiasm is mustered for a line or two, none of the actors seem to have much in the way of comic timing. The game often has characters repeating the same tired lines again and again, as well.

Monster Madness comes encumbered with a gameplay design that is best described as cluttered. You begin the game with just a simple melee weapon, but over time, you can buy and build a whole mess of new weapons with the help of a friendly mechanic named Larry Tools, who pops up in various level areas. Your weapons include everything from nail guns, shot guns, and tazers to rocket launchers, CD launchers, and laser cannons. As nice as the weapon variety is, you actually need very few of the weapons, save for very specific situations. You’ll often find that it’s more useful to upgrade a few key weapons as opposed to buying everything that comes your way, especially because you’ll often need to switch between certain weapons quickly. If you’ve got a bunch of useless junk cluttering up your inventory, it makes the scrolling process much more difficult. Fortunately, you can hotkey a few weapons if necessary.

Combat might have been enjoyable if the controls were not so wonky. The control scheme on the PC is manageable only because you can configure it as needed. On the Xbox 360, you have no such luck. Attack buttons are mapped to the triggers, weapon scrolling is mapped to the bumpers, and to jump–of all things–you have to click in the right stick. Considering how much time you spend with your thumb on the right stick, that might sound like a good idea, but the stick button often seems unresponsive. That becomes a spectacular frustration during the few bouts of platforming the game tosses at you, which is made even more insane by the fact that the A and B buttons are just redundant weapon scrolling options. Melee attacks are easy enough because all you have to do is hammer on the attack button while enemies happen to be near you, but if you’re still using melee attacks past the third or fourth stage, you’re doing something wrong. Weapons combat is OK, except that aiming tends to be a bit of a chore. There’s no target-locking feature, and moving the aiming reticle seems a bit slow (and there’s no mouse sensitivity adjuster in the PC version). It’s not that big of a deal when you’re just blasting away at big groupings of larger baddies, but any time you’ve got quick, nimble enemies in front of you, hitting them is a severe pain.

Scratch that; the whole game is just a severe pain, especially if you’re one of the unlucky folk who happens to play the game all by your lonesome. This is one of those games that thinks being really hard equates to being really fun. On the default difficulty level, the game becomes frustrating only a few stages in because the number of enemies you’re fending off happens to be massive and because the game’s checkpoint system is abysmal. You’ll have to do multiple sequences all in one line without getting killed, or you’ll have to do them all over again. These are five-to-10-minute chunks of the game too, and you’ll be doing them several times each because of one crazy onslaught of enemies or another. Boss fights are even more infuriating. If you set the game to the easiest difficulty, it’s more playable. It might be a little too easy, but you can get through it without wanting to take a sledgehammer to the game.

What makes that aspect even more frustrating is that the game encourages you to explore the levels as much as possible to find hidden parts for weapons. Larry uses these parts to build your upgraded weapons, and there are tons of them scattered throughout the game. That’s all well and good in theory, but if you’re being forced to replay big chunks of each level again and again because of the stupid checkpoint system, why would you want to waste your time going back to explore the same areas again only to lose all the items you just picked up? After a while, you’ll stop picking up any items you can’t just grab easily along your normal path.

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Xpand Rally Xtreme

Publisher: Techland
Developer: Techland
Genre: Rally / Offroad Racing
Release Date: TBA (EU)Xpand Rally Xtreme is a totally “xtreme” variation of the Xpand Rally racer. Apart from rally cars, gamers will find super-fast GT vehicles, DTR buggies, off-road 4×4 vehicles and Monster Trucks. The game features approximately 40 tracks in typical SS contests, off-road cross-country rides, and racing track races against challenging opponents. Like the original Xpand Rally, the game contains career mode, single races and multiplayer.

I am starting to believe that developers are intentionally avoiding the rally racing genre even though it is unpopulated and ignored in favor of track racing games. After all, fans have the long running Colin McRae (CMR) series for their arcade racing desires and the one and only simulation Richard Burns Rally (RBR), each with a large and dedicated following. That is why Techland are being really brave, as with XRX they are trying to challenge both at the same time, and while it is certainly not the ultimate rally racing package it has enough to compete with the current favorites.

What initially attracted me the most were the two racing modes, arcade and simulation, or more specifically how they played. Overall, I found the arcade mode a bit more demanding than CMR, and the sim mode a bit more forgiving than RBR. Xpand is literally the game which addressed the biggest issues I had with those games, which I thoroughly enjoyed in every aspect minus the physics. Not being particularly fond of hardcore simulations, I mostly struggled with RBR, yet I wasn’t that uncaring to ignore the unnatural and weird way cars behaved in CMR. Best of all is that both modes offer a challenge and in a way represent two difficulty modes, each requiring a certain amount of skill and concentration.

I believe this works so well largely thanks to the track design. In most simulations, for the better part of the race you are fighting with the vehicle, trying to keep in under control around the bends. In Xpand, you are fighting the road and your vehicle in equal well-balanced parts and, unless you are traveling on asphalt, the ground is never flat or leveled. A bump here, a rock there, trees or houses around you, water on the sides or a cement wall, grass and plants obscuring your vision, alternating road surfaces having real impact on handling, and everything becomes deadlier when you add speed, rain, or night conditions. The good thing is that few of these obstacles completely stop you, so damage and losing speed or direction are the usual penalties.

All of this, of course, remains challenging even on arcade mode where the vehicle is quick and maneuverable and it’s easy to get carried away and trick oneself into being careless. Both game modes require constant input from players, especially when tracks consist of turns after turns which need to be negotiated with care. Mistakes are allowed, however, and thankfully this isn’t one of those cases where you need days of practice and outstanding skill; if you drive well you’ll be rewarded and do well – you don’t have to be meticulous to advance in the championship.

Min. Requirements:
• Win 2000/XP
• P4/AMD Athlon 1,8GHz
• 256MB RAM
• DX 9.0 compatible (Geforce 5700 or ATI Radeon 9600) video card
• DX 8.0 compatible sound card
• DirectX 9.0c

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TomClancy’s RainbowSix : Lockdown

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Red Storm Ent.
Genre: Modern Tactical Shooter
Release Date: Feb 16, 2006
ESRB: MATURE
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Violence, Language
Number of Players: 1-16

The newest game in the Rainbow Six shooter series, Lockdown, has finally arrived on the PC. What you won’t find in this version of the game are elements of a straight console port. The game’s environments are as large and detailed as you’d expect from a PC shooter, while extraneous elements from the console versions, like the hokey cutscenes and hidden briefcases scattered around the levels, have been toned down or removed entirely. Most importantly, the game feels like a PC shooter, with all the precision in aiming and movement that mouse and keyboard control can afford. While the developers have done a great job in ensuring Lockdown for the PC didn’t end up just being a sloppy port, it bears mentioning that the game has definite arcade underpinnings. Lockdown is still a lot of fun, though.

As in all the other Rainbow Six games, you play the squad leader of an elite counterterrorist force called Rainbow. You’ll start each of the game’s 16 single-player missions at a nicely presented briefing screen where you get the lowdown on the situation, some maps of your objectives, and an equipment setup screen for your four-man team. Lockdown includes a great variety of assault rifles, submachine guns, combat shotguns, and pistols to choose from, many of which are based on real-life guns such as Kalashnikovs, MP-5s, and Desert Eagles. You’ll also be able to outfit each operative with frag or flash grenades and entry tools like hammers and breaching charges. The best part is that each gun can be outfitted with one accessory, ranging from red-dot sights and scopes to silencers and high-capacity magazines. There’s a noticeable difference in feel and utility between the various weapons, so choosing the right tools for the job is not just a cosmetic feature in Lockdown. What’s missing from the mission-prep screen is the tactical planning portion that used to be such a staple of Rainbow Six games on the PC. However, with the ability to direct your team to do room-entry maneuvers in-game, there’s less need for a planning phase.

The missions in Lockdown for PC are based on the same missions in the console versions of the game for the most part, but the mission order has been jumbled around a bit. You’ll see a variety of different environments, including desert towns in the Middle East, the Parisian catacombs, the Scottish Parliament building, and a French ferry ship. You’ll also ply through lots of underground terrorist bases. (Anarchists hate sunlight, apparently.) All of these areas are similar in layout to the ones on console, but in many cases, the levels are much more expansive and intricately detailed, with sharp-looking environment textures. But you won’t participate in any shooting-gallery sniper sequences, which played a big role in the console versions. In many of the terrorist base levels you’ll find lots of interconnected rooms to clear out and more than one pathway to get from one side to the other. There are also a lot of knickknacks and debris that can get knocked over by gunfire. In one level featuring a shootout in a police station, we were actually able to shoot boxes and other obstacles off a desk in order to get a clearer shot at the terrorist hiding behind it.

Some levels require hostage rescue and escort or bomb defusing, but in every case you’re going to be taking out terrorists, and lots of them. Even on the normal difficultly level you’ll be taking out upwards of 100 or more terrorists on a single mission. Most weapons you carry come with just under 500 rounds of ammunition. Do the math, and realize that if you’re not relying much on your teammates to do the shooting, you better be thrifty with the number of rounds you’re expending. You could easily find yourself down to your pistol at the end of a long mission. You and your teammates can survive several glancing shots before dying, but it’s very possible in Lockdown to go down in a single hail of gunfire if you get careless.

The threat of immediate death adds to the tactical nature of the game and encourages you to go at a slower, more measured pace. Aside from your quicksave and quickload keys, you’ll rely a lot on your motion tracker in Lockdown, which lets you see behind walls. You can also use your tactical commands to have your teammates peek around corners or stack up on doors for dynamic entry. Your teammates can open doors in a variety of ways, ranging from simply opening an unlocked door to placing an explosive and blowing it open, or using a shotgun to blow off the hinges. They will then toss in a frag or flash grenade before going in to clear the room. In most cases this works well, but from time to time you’ll see your squadmates screw up a dynamic entry. We’ve seen team members muff a grenade throw and blow up the whole squad. We’ve also seen teammates take more damage than they should when entering a hostile room. Flashbangs and violent entry don’t seem to have the stun duration and stun radius that you’d expect either, so you can’t rely on these measures entirely. The enemy artificial intelligence in the game is pretty decent, seeking cover when possible and peeking from around corners. They’ll pop smoke grenades to obscure their positions, or even throw frag grenades. They’re not always very perceptive at detecting you if you peer around a corner, though, so it’s possible to get quite a few cheap headshots on unsuspecting bad guys.

Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium 4 1.5GHz or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 7000 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: Pentium 4 2.0GHz or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB
Hard Drive Space: 7000 MB

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BattleField 1942

Publisher: EA Games
Developer: Digital Illusions
Genre: Historic First-Person Shooter
Release Date: Sep 10, 2002
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, ViolenceConnectivity: Online, Local Area Network
Number of Players: 1-16
Number of Online Players: 64 OnlineIt started as a buzz and grew to a roar. When Digital Illusions’ Battlefield 1942 was first announced, it looked pretty much like just another in a seemingly endless supply of World War II-based games. But thanks to leaked and official demos, Battlefield 1942 soon became one of the most highly anticipated games of the year. That’s hardly surprising, given its ambitious design. Here’s a game where dozens of players can fight online together on expansive World War II-inspired battlefields while controlling planes, tanks, and even aircraft carriers with ease. Other than some frustrating technical problems and bugs that should have been fixed before the game shipped, Battlefield 1942 is one of those games that actually lives up to most of the hype surrounding it.

Battlefield 1942 can be a lot of fun things to a lot of people, but first it’s important to tell you what it’s not: The game definitely isn’t a realistic WWII combat simulator. This is a pick-up-and-play action extravaganza, a comic book version of WWII. The fact that any player can casually hop into a tank, drive around, hop out and pick off an enemy soldier with a sniper rifle, hop into a plane, parachute out, and then call in artillery fire (within the span of a few minutes) should tell you a lot about the game–and a lot about what makes it so much fun.
In Battlefield 1942, you can fight offline with decent but unspectacular computer-controlled bots. Online, you can play in four different game modes against up to 64 players at a time. Realistically, you’ll usually find servers capable of handling only 32 players, at most. Even with that reduced number, and even if you have the game’s first patch installed, have a cable Internet connection, and get a ping in the 50s or 60s, there’s a good chance you’ll experience some lag or choppiness. Trying to shoot bazookas at tanks, which will suddenly appear elsewhere because of lag, isn’t exactly enjoyable.

But when you manage to make a good connection to a powerful server, Battlefield 1942 has lots to offer. For instance, the game’s popular conquest mode, where each team tries to capture and hold various control points on the map, can be great fun. The control points are set at strategic locations, like ruined villages or outposts with bunkers or heavy machine-gun positions, making them a challenge to occupy.

Bodies will quickly start filling the fields and streets, which leads to one of Battlefield 1942’s more interesting features. Each team is allotted a certain number of tickets at the beginning of the match. You can respawn within a few seconds of dying (the exact time varies) to reinforce your team, but for every death, your team loses tickets. When the enemy holds a certain number of control points at once, your team will also start losing tickets. When your team runs out of tickets, you lose the battle. This system is a welcome compromise between some of the other death-and-respawn systems found in other shooters. In Battlefield 1942, you don’t have to sit out around and twiddle your thumbs when you’re “dead,” yet you’re still usually penalized by a brief wait, and because of the ticket system, every death ultimately affects the outcome of the battle.

Every time you enter the battlefield, you get to pick your respawn location. At the minimum, you’ll usually get a main base that always remains under your team’s control, but you can also respawn at control points that currently belong to your team. Each time you respawn, you also get to choose from five character classes, each with a number of distinctive weapons and abilities. The scout gets a sniper rifle and can help direct long-range fire from the big guns with his binoculars. The assault class gets a powerful light machine gun or assault rifle. The antitank class gets a Panzerschreck or a bazooka. The medic wields a submachine gun and can heal himself and his comrades. The engineer can lay mines and explosives and repair vehicles and stationary weapons.

Overall, these classes complement each other well and provide just enough diversity without bogging you down with too many choices. And while the engineer and antitank classes sometimes tend to be unduly favored because of their relation to the vehicles, don’t underestimate the power of a few good assault and medic troops working together, particularly in dense terrain where tanks are at a disadvantage.

But one thing you’ll quickly notice is that Battlefield 1942’s small arms seem pretty inaccurate, lag or not, which can be frustrating. The fact that some maps offer little cover other than some slight slopes can take even more of the fun out of fighting on foot. Overall, infantry combat in the game is rather weak compared to many online shooters. Hopefully a future patch will tweak the weapons to put more life into them.

Minimum System Requirements
System: PIII 500 or equivalent
RAM: 128 MB
Video Memory: 32 MB
Hard Drive Space: 1200 MB

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Hacker Evolution

Publisher: exoSyphen Studios
Developer: exoSyphen Studios
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Release Date: May 07, 2007 (EU)
Number of Players: 1 Player

We recently got the opportunity on a full copy of Hacker Evolution (from Giveaway of the Day [which I will talk about more later]), a new game about hacking for the PC.
The game has a lot of themes that remind me of the Matrix/that movie that had that computer named HAL. You play as Brian Spencer who is a former Intelligence Agent (AI backwards, pretty tricky) for the US. Set in the future, a new kind of internet connection has been made that allows files to be set at the speed of light. So that it messes with the Time-Space continuum and allows files to be sent before they are even requested. The game describes it as a Time warp digitally. When it was made, there was an AI put in place to make sure the internet technology never screwed up. And guess what? It screwed up.
It all starts when the NYC Stock Exchange got hacked (or at least that’s what the government thinks) and you have to figure out who did it. The game features a very very very helpful tutorial and is pretty realistic (with the exception of the crack and decrypt commands, it’s never that easy).

After going about the game, I find that it’s music is really helpful to keep the game fun (else you might go insane trying to hack the idiot who logged in to the exchange’s site right before the attack). Remember the game is extremely hard. Sometimes you have to guess (other times you have to cheat, which gets annoying). Money is also a problem in the game. Beware of high trace percentiles.

Hacker Evolution is a unique twist on the puzzle genre, as the puzzle this time around is figuring out the correct way to hack into a series of computers and servers to complete each mission. The story goes that by 2010, a new way to send information has been discovered that moves at the speed of light. Unfortunately, it starts to become sentient, and instead of destroying humanity as such a program might in science-fiction movies, it begins to cause chaos in an attempt to evolve and survive. Playing as a hacker, it’s up to you to help set things right and restore order to the world’s information superhighways.

For those who haven’t played around in DOS before, there’s a tutorial to help you get started in the game, but even with that tutorial, it’s not an easy time. I did get stuck on one occasion and had to start over. The game looks good, though there isn’t a whole lot to look at, and the controls are mostly keyboard-based, but if you get lost, they’re just a help command away. All in all, Hacker Evolution is frustrating at first, but in the end, turns out to be a pretty decent game.

System requirements
Windows ME/XP/2000/2003 or Vista
Microsoft DirectX 8.0
Pentium® 1 GHz processor or faster,
512Mb RAM,
200Mb free disk space
16Mb DirectX 8.0
compatible videocard Microsoft compatible keyboard and mouse

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