Help! I’ve Been Shanked! (Shank Review)
I thought that "shanking" someone was a harmless prank, like depantsing or something of that nature. I was way, way off base.
Of course, "shank" is at its origin a noun referring to a certain section of an animal's body (the thigh) that will be butchered and then consumed.
Later, the word "shank" came to be used to refer to knives; specifically, knives made in prison by prisoners. Shanks and shivs wherever I go, oy!! The verb form of the word then referred to these prison stabbings. And more unsavory things can be drawn from looser interpretations of the word.
All of the above came as preliminary research before I booted up the game SHANK, released on PSN and XBLA from developer Klei Entertainment and publisher EA at the end of August. With nothing but research on the game's title as my backup, I still had quite a bit of surprise to go through.
Shank. Costumed. Killing dudes on a bridge.
Shank is a 2D, side-scrolling beat 'em up with a strong story-telling element. Furthermore, despite its simple cartoon-like animation, it is one of the most intentionally ultra-violent games out there. Fans of the old flash video series Ninjai will recognize the style almost immediately. Though, it should be noted, Jeff Agala's art style is different from the pseudo-anime of Ninjai.
Because I'm a story nut, I tried to ignore all the visceral action (minus 10 points for using the forbidden word) and instead soaked up the dialogue and the excellent flashback sequences. And though it's a great story, it is ultimately quite derivative. Many critics were quick to compare this game to the works of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino; this comparison is absolutely appropriate. Not just for the excessive gore, no. Shank's plot is a revenge plot. Ready for the spoilers?
Shank, the titular character, is a big muscular guy who worked in a crime syndicate, led by a man named "Cesar." Shank is a loyal follower, but one day he falls in love with a young lady and gets her pregnant. Cesar tells Shank he must kill the girl (as a rather sick test of loyalty), but Shank is obviously reluctant to do so. So Cesar sends 4 of his other high-level goons to kill the chick and Shank. They take care of the girl as expected, but after roughing up Shank they leave him to die in a fire. Never a good idea; of course he's going to survive and come back years later for revenge.
You just gonna leave me to die? At my own wedding? Wait, no, that would be too similar.
Points go to the scenario writer, Marianne Krawczyk (who co-wrote the plot for the GOD OF WAR trilogy), for a well-executed tale. But no points awarded for basically re-telling the film "Kill Bill" with a male protagonist. Seriously, the entire action of the game is Shank hunting down and killing the 4 goons, and finally, Cesar himself. I seem to remember Beatrix (spoiler?) doing much the same thing. The only difference is that in Kill Bill, you have a reasonably happy ending with mother and daughter reunited. In Shank's scenario, there is no reunion. Only revenge, more revenge, and finally, a man walking into the sunset, with no one to turn to.
As far as the game itself is concerned, I have some short praise and critique. I like that Shank is capable of performing a variety of attacks with each of his three weapon types (fast, strong, and ranged). He starts with just his "shanks" (the knives), a chainsaw, and pistols. Over time he also adds a katana, two machetes, uzis, a shotgun, and chains to the roster of weaponry. They can all be changed on the fly, and each comes with a change in delay and, usually, some special attacks. On Shank's end, the combat was well thought out.
Unfortunately, I cannot give that praise to the enemies and their AI patterns. Basically, the game plays like this:
1. Fight a ton of enemies thrown at you with seemingly no order or strategy.
2. Fight a gimmicky oversized dude who can only be beaten by paying attention for special button-triggered events.
3. Fight another ton of enemies.
4. Fight a more strategic boss (about Shank's height); win by dodging attacks and then countering.
Rinse and repeat.
It's fun to control Shank, but the repetition, even for a 3 hour game, does get old by the end of the first playthrough. You do need to play smart to win; some enemies are simply immune to certain types of attacks. And when you're in a large crowd, one of the best things you can do is pounce on a smaller guy (just to incapacitate him) and then while he's down, shoot enemies around you with a pistol. Interesting concepts, to be sure.
This is step 2 of the 4-step pattern listed above.
Outside of combat, the environments do lend themselves to some fun acrobatic work. Shank can run on billboards, swing on poles, climb walls, and come out of pretty much any sticky situation with weapons at the ready. Motion is swift, and the player has to keep up if they're going to survive. They are pit deaths and other one-hit environment kills throughout the game. Always gotta watch out for that.
A quick note regarding the music: it's good, and thanks to pressure from the fans, it's free to download.
My concluding thoughts are these: the game looks great, though I could do without the excessive blood and many, many decapitations. The game plays fairly well, but overstays its welcome even considering its short length. The story is cool, but a little too derivative for its own good. And, finally, I'd just like to state that I do not ever, under any circumstances, want to be "shanked." Whatever that means.
Played: 5 hours
Platform(s): PlayStation 3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Price: $14.99
Besting the best? BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (review)
I love you, BlazBlue. I loved you last year when you first invaded consoles. I loved your music. I loved Rachel. And now, a year later, I love your sequel.
Yeah, that's right, sequel. All this time I thought BLAZBLUE: CONTINUUM SHIFT was little more than an expansion. Two new characters and some gameplay mechanics being balanced. Right? Wrong.
BBCS, like Calamity Trigger before it, has this extensive story mode to it. That's the essential difference between the arcade cabinet and the console port, right? You have this huge story that fleshes out the "main event" and all things leading up to it from the perspective of every playable character. Like that Faulkner book I hated reading in high school. For those among us who can stand the "graphic adventure / visual novel" non-game experience and enjoy it being juxtaposed to the fighting, The story mode of BBCS is fan-freaking-tastic.
"Teach me: Miss Litchi!" (boobie lady!) is back! The entire 8-part series from the first game is on the disc, as are 5 new episodes. Rejoice!
Every character comes with three endings, which can be compared to the film Wayne's World. There's the normal (bad) ending, the silly (Scooby Doo) ending, and the True (generally good) ending. This time around, you don't need to lose in every fight to get 100% completion of each character's stories (though *some* fights will require it), and there aren't any secret paths opened with Distortion/Astral Finish. Generally, it's easier to get around.
AND, most importantly, it is my opinion that the script and voice acting has improved (how? I don't know!). For people who really want meat behind their favorite playable character in a fighting game, BBCS offers it in spades. You'll know in full detail where each character stands in relation to any other character very well if you complete all story paths (as I did). That's very important, since things change pretty significantly from BBCT to BBCS.
Oh, and then there's the full plot arc. When we left off in BBCT, Ragna encounters Nu-13, shit hits the fan, and they fall in a cauldron together. If you achieved the "true ending" (finishing all character paths first) in BBCT, you learned spoiler***
Noel jumps in too, saving Ragna, and somehow everyone gets out unscathed. Except Nu.
***spoiler end
In BBCS, the hinted-at villain (Hazama/Terumi) becomes a playable character and is, generally, the true villain, though by the time you reach the true ending in BBCS, you see that even he is a pawn to someone with more power and authority over the world. When you see who it is, you will pee your pants. I couldn't have guessed, only because I forgot about the character in question entirely up to this point. But those rabid fans who dig as deep into this as they do into, say, Battlestar Galactica, may be able to figure out what's coming before it hits them like a ton of bricks.
That's all I'll say about the story mode.
The "balancing" issues were mighty important. Let's face it: Jin, Nu, and Tager were overpowered. Arakune could be cheap given the right conditions. Carl and Hakumen were generally useless. Something had to be done about this. And generally, I think Arc System Works achieved their goal. I still think Jin is a little over-the-top in his power. All things being equal, a decent Litchi player is still prone to losing to a decent Jin player. You follow?
Oh, and Nu is gone. Though she is a downloadable character, her spot is essentially replaced by a weaker version of her: Lambda-11. Lambda has her own subplot in the story mode, and it's actually very interesting. Though it's mostly about sector seven scientist Kokonoe, the "Scooby Doo" ending for Lambda is actually bittersweet instead of off-the-wall hilarious. Robots make me cry.
So hey, how about those two new characters? We already mentioned Hazama. He wears a black suit, has green hair, and his movements in-game feel a hell of a lot like late '80s Michael Jackson. He's a smooth criminal, and he's got an ability that puts Scorpion's "Get Over Here!" to shame. Able to release up to 2 "Ouroboros" snakes at a time, he can latch onto the opponent, or to plain air, and then swing himself to the destination point. Handy, right? He also has daggers, and in his Unlimited mode he gets a circle of life-draining awesomeness around him. Makes for a hell of a fight on anything higher than "Normal" mode if he's your AI opponent.
Did I mention that this game is eye-gasm gorgeous? Because it is.
The other playable character is Tsubaki Yayoi. Once upon a time, we'd understand her to be Jin Kisaragi's girlfriend, and a good friend of Noel Vermilion during their school days. Today, she is a part of the NOL's "Zero Squadron," also known as the "Wings of Justice." Her job is to run around the NOL (Novis Orbus Librarium, aka "The Library") and assassinate traitors and defectors. We know even at the end of BBCT that Hazama has ordered her to hunt down both Jin and Noel. That is her primary motivation in BBCS, at least at the start. Outside of plot and motivation, her fighting style is ... slightly similar to Ragna. Though, she also has a shield-like thing that immediately makes me think of Sophitia from the SOUL CALIBUR series. However, she's one of these "I can do the same attack in four ways" kind of gals. Almost all her special movies can be performed with quarter-circles and then A B C or D. Of course, if you use D, you're using Seithr, which is gaged out very particularly for Tsubaki. It's not to be confused with the heat bar on the bottom. She has her own five-block bar which fills only when you hold D. So you hold D, then you do a special move with the D button, and it uses one of those five blocks. End result? Said special move is enhanced in one of a variety of ways. Her aerial attacks are especially deadly, or so I've found.
I noticed one thing about part of their "balancing" of characters: they changed the inputs for some special moves. It used to be easy as pie to use Rachel's signature attack "Sword Iris." Some exposition: Rachel can place up to three lightning rods on the field by shooting flowers out of a shape-shifting cat who turns into a cannon (I know, right? Isn't she the coolest character ever?!). These three lightning rods will all be struck with lightning, simultaneously, with the "Sword Iris" ability. If the opponent is standing near one or more of these rods -- well, as they say: MASSIVE DAMAGE. Sword Iris used to be accomplished with something like, down down B. Now it's something like half-circle back, forward, C. I don't have that exactly right, but the point is, it's a little harder to achieve. Being a career Rachel player, this is the one move that comes to my attention, but I did notice a few other characters having their special ability inputs tampered with between BBCT and BBCS. I guess that's all part of balance. That, and, reducing the amount of damage characters do. Or, in the case of Hakumen, increasing said damage. And explaining the freakin' Magatama system a little better.
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is basically perfect. It is the 2D fighter. And for $39.99 (compare that to BBCT which retailed for $59.99 last year) it's a steal. Mind you that these days, BBCT will only by $19.99 at most stores, so you can get both games and sit through a hell of a lot of dialogue if you're into the story mode, like I am. But even if you hate story mode, this game is well worth the money just for arcade mode and online versus mode. The fighting is intricate, and button-mashing will get you nowhere against a player with the slightest amount of skill and knowledge.
BBCS's only flaw? EXPENSIVE DLC!! I'm all for adding characters via DLC, but don't dick with me. They've announced that 3 characters are coming, and they're $8 each. So far one is out: Makoto Nanaya. She's the third in a trio of gals that were friends in school (Noel, Tsubaki, Makoto). Makoto is a beastkin humanoid (half-squirrel). As a fighter, she's absolutely great. She uses her fists, and her "D" attacks rely on a small gage that fills and then re-empties quickly (like kicking a field goal in almost every football game ever). That's awesome, right? Well she's pretty cool. But she's eight freaking dollars! That's one fifth the price of the full retail game! And get this: no single-player arcade mode for her! What?! I wasn't expecting her to get her own story mode, though at $8, I almost find it warranted. But at a minimum, she ought to have an arcade mode where I play through 10 characters and get some basic exposition on her. Nope! She can only be used in multiplayer versus modes. That is weak sauce. Am I going to pay another $16 for Valkenhayn (Rachel's butler) and Platinum (some kid with multiple personalities)? Not bloody likely! I'll wait until they're included in the third game.
Oh oh oh, speaking of! BBCS makes no bones about whether or not there will be a third game. There will be. And it will take place in Ikaruga. Both BBCT and BBCS took place in Kagutsuchi, the "13th Hierarchical City." The next game will be in Ikaruga, the land of the ninja clan that Bang Shishigami belongs to. The game's story mode, and even the arcade mode, clues you in to the fact that this place is little more than rubble now thanks to a civil war that ended in some sort of horrific, worse-than-multiple-atomic-bomb-drop mass death. Whatever happened there has piqued the interest of all characters, good and bad, so that's where we're going next. I cannot wait, and they share as hell better make Jubei playable.
Before I forget, I should mention that Nu is also downloadable if you want her back from BBCT (I think she's like $5 instead of the standard $8), and that Mu-12, a character you'll meet in the story mode, is free but can only be unlocked by getting the true ending in story mode (or, I think, beating arcade mode with all characters). Either way, she's cheap as hell and totally worth it. While Lambda and Nu are essentially the same, Mu plays with a completely different weapon type and is almost unstoppable, especially in unlimited mode.
Oh oh oh! One last thing! Do you feel like you can't get into this game because the complex combos require all sorts of charts, graphs, and practice? They actually introduced a "beginner mode" that you can flip on that turns your assigned buttons into combos. So button mashing CAN work, if your opponent agrees to let you use beginner mode. Even then, though, you better know when to execute them or you're screwed.
Go get this game. Play it a lot. Be happy. But beware the DLC. It does not get to be a part of the perfect 5-star ranking! Makoto SHUN!!!
Played: 30+ hours
Platform(s): PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Price: $39.99
Getting my money’s worth: the $5 Viral Survival (review)
I follow NIS America like a hawk. Why? As a publisher, the games they bring to us tend to be one (or both) of the following:
a) quirky
b) awesome
In the case of VIRAL SURVIVAL, a $5 WiiWare title developed by Peakvox, we get a lot of a, but only a bit of b.
Much to my surprise, this game actually does come from Japan (original title, "Escape Virus"). It feels like an indie game developed in a basement. That's not meant to be a damning statement -- plenty of great games have had such a humble origin. But it does feel... small, and unrefined.
If you play this game for more than 30 minutes straight, your eyes will hate you, and the color orange, for days to come.
What is Viral Survival? It's a fast-paced action game that thrives on short busts of play and intentional limitations. You control a virus in a square-shaped petri dish. While swimming in a sea of orange goop, you can run into any of the following: other viruses, two or three varieties of bad guys (presumably anti-viral agents), and rockets. Grab a fellow virus, and he tags along. The more you grab, the longer your tail becomes. Hitting a rocket means rocket(s) go out and hit bad guys. If you, as the "head virus," make contact with a baddy, you're dead. Game over. If someone on your tail hits a bad guy, that segment of the tail and all segments after it go loose, like Sonic's rings.
You've fought segmented bosses in games before right? Remember every boss in 3D WORLD RUNNER, or those giant serpents that appear in every fantasy action RPG (up to and including YS SEVEN)? Yeah, well you're playing as one of those bosses. Except your form of regeneration is to find virus pals and grow longer, and you have no armor for your head.
And that's about it. The game comes in five modes: Normal, Progressive (up = forward, left/right = turn), Horde (lots of bad guys), 128 Zoom (um...), and Shooter. 128 Zoom mode is very specific: the camera is force-zoomed very very close so you basically have no idea where anything is. You have to collect 128 viruses and then the round ends. Shooter mode is my favorite, because you're equipped with missiles to shoot loads of bad guys and there are no viruses to collect. The drawback is that it's not twin-stick like, say, SUPER SMASH TV. You must face the direction you're shooting in. I think I could survive longer in shooter mode.
Horde mode = find power-ups, bowl through the enemies Pac-Man style (complete with inverted colors!).
The longer you play, the more you notice little quirks about the game. For example, your head virus has a little eye that will always look in the direction of the nearest "good thing" (either a rocket or a fellow virus). But I don't recommend playing this game in long spans of time. It will hurt your eyes.
All told, I'm not sure I can recommend this game. A part of me says "look at the price point: $5 really isn't that bad." But then I think about what else I can get with $5. In the land of XBLA, particularly in the "Indie" section, I can get games of equal or greater quality for less money (anywhere from free to $3). It's nice having an oldschool-style "run away!" arcade title on WiiWare, but then again, I'd just as soon play a free flash game on my PC.
If the game had more than one song, visuals that didn't make me want to hurl, and perhaps some sort of story/level/campaign mode, I'd be willing to rate it higher. As it stands? Nah. Only get this if the Wii i's the only console you got and most of your friends are too ADD to play anything that requires more than 45 seconds of concentration.
Played: 3 hours
Platform(s): Wii (WiiWare)
Price: $5.00
Quick hits: Jurassic Hour, review, news
Y'all.
Have you ever read a post written by a blogger who feels mildly contrite about ditching his readers? No? Weird, because people do this all the time. I'm about to do it!
(The apologizing bit. Not the ditching bit.)
Prickishness aside, sorry for the absence. It's not that I haven't been thinking about games or playing or writing about them -- I definitely have, I swear -- I've just been terribly busy preparing myself for a project I'm kicking off early next year. It's unusual of me to think more than a week in advance, especially where money is concerned, but I've finally got some incentive. And I'm not getting any younger.
I'd be more vague about all of this if I could. Wait, maybe I can. I'm getting ready for something you guys will find really exciting, and I absolutely intend to deliver on that promise. It's something I've tried before, and it involves doggie day-care and a bicycle. The entire endeavor will be chronicled exhaustively in this space.
There. Those are all the clues you monsters get.
Anyway, I have some stuff for you guys! One of them is a Gameosaurus first. It's a review I wrote two weeks ago for MONDAY NIGHT COMBAT, the great DOTA-inspired Xbox Live Arcade title released early this month. The review was published in the Dispatch, but our network deleted the file before I could archive it.
So I took a picture! And I'm too lazy to transcribe it. Click to embiggen.
My second item is the latest episode of the Jurassic Hour, which I recorded with Pat Gann a few weeks ago. Pete Rambo joins us one last time to hold forth on why moving is at once terrible and awesome. Plus, LIMBO, STARCRAFT II, NIER and other games we've been playing. It's a good episode and deserves more and fancier preamble than this, but I don't want you guys to have to wait any longer. With music from Anamanaguchi, the Mad Caddies, Phantom Planet and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
The episode has been in the show feed for a while. If you missed it there, get it here!
(right-click to save, use theplayer below, or get the show on iTunes here)
Jurassic Hour #8: Point A to Point B
I'm posting a column here Tuesday summing up Microsoft's Summer of Arcade (and the complete lethargy Sony showed in response), and you can expect another podcast shortly after that. And with the fall gaming season kicking into gear, you can expect our impressions of METROID: OTHER M, VALKYRIA CHRONICLES II, YS SEVEN, BLAZBLUE: CONTINUUM SHIFT and more -- not to mention the triple-A heavyweights that drop toward the end of September. For me, that's HALO: REACH and CIVILIZATION V.
For Patrick ... I don't know. It'll probably be a couple unjustly derided eastern RPGs published stateside by Aksys with an initial production run of 800 copies and a heap of Twitter buzz, amirite? I mean, there is an Atelier game slated for October or something, right?
Stay frosty in the interim, folks. LYLAS!
Review: Patience pays off in second ‘StarCraft’
I was born with a competitive streak, but it doesn’t manifest in the ways you’d expect. I’m at once obsessed with fitness and terrified of team sports. I love video games but refuse to get serious about online play.
The chance that I might lose is paralyzing. And losing in front of other people, what with the spectating and replay features packed into so many games today? Forget it. Get out of here.
So I approached STARCRAFT II: WINGS OF LIBERTY last month’s sequel to Blizzard Entertainment’s 1998 strategy landmark, with some serious performance anxiety. I remembered the first game as a neat single-player experience with great voice-acting, but to the millions of people still playing it 12 years later, the game’s multiplayer suite has become a lifestyle — or, worse, a spectator sport.
In parts east, professional STARCRAFT players are bona fide celebrities, swimming in endorsement money and actions per minute and barely ironic nicknames. South Korea recently lost its collective marbles after a betting scandal rocked the country’s professional StarCraft community.
Horrifying. I would use exclamation points if our in-house style guidelines allowed as much, such is my disgust.
But part of my brain always knew not to worry. For as long as Blizzard has been making games, the company has expertly juggled the interests of casual and hardcore players — see “World of Warcraft,” where I self-destructively reactivated my account last week — and Wings of Liberty is no exception.
Love yourself: The multiplayer functionality, powered by Blizzard’s recently overhauled Battle.net matchmaking service, is the main draw here, and it’s the thing that’s going to give StarCraft II legs until 2029, when the first chapter of STARCRAFT III will enter a closed, three-year multiplayer beta. Or something.
But because I flip my lid at the mere suggestion of human opponents, I plunked down my $60 mostly for the single-player content. And I’m happy to report that this is a perfectly satisfactory way to experience the game. The full campaign is spread over 26 missions, each of which can take as long as 45 minutes to complete. There are a few additional missions scattered about as well, but you’ll have to interfere with the adventure’s narrative momentum if you want to see them all in one playthrough.
About halfway through the game, for instance, you’re forced to choose between two special ops units to add to your army. The Ghost is a professional, long-ranged sniper unit. The Spectre is an unhinged, short-ranged bruiser. Both have cloaking devices and can paint targets for nuclear attacks, which is the only thing you’ll use them for anyway.
But because Ghosts and Spectres hate each other, you can choose only one. And in so doing, you get a unique mission.
You’ll make a handful of such choices throughout the campaign, and though the manichean outcomes feel a little obvious at times, the extra missions greatly extend the game’s solo playability.
The same goes for the bevy of upgrades, secrets, varying difficulties and achievements that litter the single-player side of things. There’s simply an overwhelming amount of content exclusive to the campaign, which makes a fine argument for the pricetag on its own. Many Terran standbys from the first StarCraft — Wraiths, Goliaths, Vultures, science vessels — are back in slightly upgraded form, but they’re only found in the campaign.
Blizzard’s storytelling always leaves something to be desired, but the experience here is exceptional in spite of itself. Plotting is dense but strangely paced, thanks mostly to the freedom the game affords you when choosing missions. Several important characters are teased early on but don’t appear in earnest until the last few hours of the tale.
But the eye-raising ending, which concludes an important arc from the first game, is absolutely killer.
And if you’re chomping at the bit for the first of two expansion packs already announced for the game, you’ll have some pretty big questions at the end of Wings of Liberty. To say anything else would be to tiptoe into spoiler territory, but take my word for it — they’re intriguing questions.
Okay, fine: Because the missions are so fun and so varied, you’ll likely tear through them more quickly than you mean to. And if you aren’t inclined to do all of that a second or third time, you’ll have no choice but to try the multiplayer.
Because it will sit there, softly mocking you from the unknowable depths of your hard drive platter. Teasing your loved ones, calling you names and threatening to corrupt your iTunes library unless you man up.
Fortunately, Blizzard has gone out of its way to make the online experience more palatable for wimps like me. A series of nine solo challenge missions teaches you the basics — counters, hotkeys and whatnot — of the three playable factions, measurably improving your performance.
After messing about with the Terran challenges, my early-game Marine / Marauder / Medivac build can withstand feints from Sentry / Zealot raiding parties and most Zergling / Hydralisk rushes. If that means nothing to you, congratulations. To me, it means survival.
And though I’ve yet to to officially take my game into league play, I’ve tried enough custom games and watched so many YouTube and Justin.tv matches that I feel comfortable praising Battle.net’s stability and matchmaking. Blizzard said months ago that Wings of Liberty had been delayed so long because of improvements to its online service, and after poking at it for two weeks, it’s clear that the finished product was worth the wait.
As good as Battle.net has become, though, the best news about multiplayer matches in StarCraft II is that they are entirely optional. You can buy this game, never step online and feel completely confident about your purchase. There’s a lot of game here.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch
Review: ‘LIMBO’ is all killer, no filler
Seriously, spiders are the least of your problems.
I'm fully aware that STARCRAFT II debuted Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT, and I'm enjoying this singular, momentous, 12-years-in-the-making achievement as much as anybody. If I could have played hooky Tuesday and Wednesday to run all the way through the game's incredible single-player campaign, I'd be writing that up for today.
But at my yeoman's pace, that will take a week or more.
Thank the maker, then, for remarkable, bite-sized adventures like Danish developer PlayDead Studio's LIMBO, a moody platformer released last week on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade.
Worlds apart from the canonical baggage that shapes franchises like StarCraft, the only narrative context you'll find in LIMBO exists entirely outside the game itself.
As Wikipedia's curators have it, you control a boy in pursuit of his missing sister.
And ... that's it.
The game's description on Xbox Live is similarly vague, and PlayDead has shown no interest in elaborating on any of it.
That's just as well. Not knowing who you are, where you are or why you're there makes a strange sort of sense in this quiet, brutal world, where spiders are as big as houses and up is often down.
Put another way, LIMBO isn't about hit points or water physics or some densely woven narrative. It's about the purity of the platforming experience, and by that metric, it performs like a champ.
As the game starts, you're coming to your senses in a dense parallax forest. The camera eases into focus for what feels like forever -- your avatar takes more than a minute to sit up, open two lamp-like eyes and climb to his feet.
This whole sequence is a joy to watch.
Eventually, you'll realize the game has relinquished control to you, and your inborn gaming vocabulary tells you to run right. You'll clamber up a small hill, instinctively jump off an enormous log and immediately fall to your death.
Then you'll respawn, start over and get it right.
This will happen to you dozens of times -- maybe a hundred or more. You'll drown, electrocute yourself, alert automatic turrets and get skewered by the aforementioned spiders.
The game's gorgeous, occasionally devilish aesthetic is partly to blame for your haplessness. Your character (and the other ten or so living creatures that populate LIMBO) are drawn only in sillhouette, and the entire game is rendered in black, white and a thousand handsome shades of gray.
So you'd be forgiven for glancing past that narrow strip of spikes that closes around your tiny legs the moment you disturb it. Or the tiny natives who attack you with blowguns on sight. Or the gravity-suspending switch that will keep you from plummeting to your doom.
PlayDead calls this "trial by death," and though it occasionally bummed me out -- I grew attached to my nameless, voiceless hero, and watching this world vivisect him over and over again was unsettling -- it works well enough.
Some of the puzzles might seem inapproachable at first, but most of them give away their secrets as soon as they slaughter you.
If you work at my pace, you'll clear the game in a little under three hours. Then, unless you're fishing for a few fantastic achievements or salivating for a second go, your time with LIMBO is regretfully finished. Like "The Empire Strikes Back," it's the sort of thing you wish you could forget, if only so that you could experience it for the first time all over again.
So, yes. It's short. I hesitate to mention all of that that in the same breath as the game's pricetag, as nearly every writer in the gaming press has managed to do. Yeah, the going rate for Xbox Live Arcade games this summer is $15, and no, LIMBO doesn't buck that trend.
But when an interactive moment is as fun and thoughtfully crafted as this one is, $15 is a bargain. If even the Practice League in StarCraft II is handing your dignity to you on a digital platter, consider LIMBO.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.
Review: ‘Sin & Punishment’ sequel squeezes sweet science from the shmup
I’d love to tell you that I’ve curated a complete library of games from celebrated shoot-’em-up developer Treasure, but I’d be lying.
I’ve struggled through all five stages of IKARUGA, played a couple levels of GUNSTAR HEROES and rented GRADIUS V once, and that’s the long and short of it. The games are famously hard, and I’m a wimp.
So I can’t really tell you whether it’s strange for Treasure titles to attack you with pods of homicidal dolphins and bionic hamsters, as SIN & PUNISHMENT: STAR SUCCESSOR does.
What I can tell you: If you like lasers and a stiff challenge, you’ll like Star Successor, released exclusively on the Wii earlier this summer.
You control one of two tween warriors — Isa, who has a jetpack, and Kachi, who has a hoverboard. Aside from a few mechanical differences, that’s all you need to know about either of them up front. They journey forward in three dimensions, switching occasionally to side-scrolling 2-D, and shoot everything that moves using rapid-fire laser weapons, melee attacks and a charged shot that can dispatch multiple enemies at once.
There’s a story of sorts, but if you play the game, I beg you to skip as much of it as possible. It’s nonsense of the lowest order, and even if it were Shakespeare, you’d be tempted to blow past it. The gunplay is the main attraction here, and it’s sublime.
By pinning the movement controls to the nunchuk and the aiming and firing to the remote, Treasure has developed one of the tightest action games to use Nintendo’s novelty controller. Thanks in part to a largely flawless frame rate, everything feels fluid, precise and incredibly responsive. When you get hit in Star Successor, it’s usually your fault, not the hardware’s.
Played start to finish on the easiest difficulty, the game takes only a few hours, but if you stop there, you’re missing the point. The real thrills come from mastering the many, many bosses, each with its own tricks and shortcuts, and eventually clearing the game without dying (or, if you’re nuts, without getting hit at all).
And the differences between Isa and Kachi are substantial enough to warrant playing through Star Successor at least twice. Isa’s lasers and charged shot are meant to be blind-fired for extra damage, though he can lock on to an enemy when things get hectic.
Kachi locks on to enemies automatically — a handy feature when you’re trying to boost your multiplier by killing every one of the hundreds of smaller monsters that swarm you, but an occasionally frustrating when you’re trying to select a strongerr target.
Her charge shot, however, is much more fun to use. While holding the A button, you sweep your on-screen reticle across each enemy you want to hit. Release, and voila. Lasered dudes.
There are a couple of wrinkles, particularly where those terrific boss fights are concerned.
Because you’ll be dying at the bosses’ hands quite a bit, it would be nice to be able to skip some of the cutscenes involved in fighting them. The end boss of the fourth stage, for instance, shouts “My blood is on fire!” after taking enough damage, shrieking as she morphs into a kind of winged jungle witch.
The process takes a few moments, and because this boss’ second form is exponentially tougher than her first, you’ll likely have to start over a few times, which means sitting through the entire sequence again and again.
Hammering on the Wii remote’s plus button will get you past most of the ridiculous story moments. (Pro tip: It even speeds up your Gameover screen.) But not the bosses. We’re talking about just a few seconds here and there, but when they’re repeated every time you die, they can make a stubborn boss all the more frustrating.
The game’s other major design hurdle isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, though it might scare off more casual players.
Most of the challenge in Star Successor is impossible to anticipate if you’re brand new to the game. You’ll be struggling through impossible bullet patterns and boss attacks that seemingly cannot be dodged on your first go, and though this all becomes second nature with enough repetition, it can feel cheap up front.
If you’re a once-and-done kind of gamer, or one who’s easily set off, this might be a problem. For example, that same fourth-stage boss — the one who enthuses about her fiery blood — eventually unleashes a flock of blue and red birds that she calls her “ravens of time.” Once the ravens reach your character, they turn into circular blobs that appear to be unblockable.
Only through experimenting (or reading this review) will you learn that you have to use your melee attack on the blue raven blob, which will explode nearby red blobs and slow down time so that you can get in a few extra hits.
If you accidentally touch one of the red blobs instead, time speeds up, giving said boss a few free hits on you.
It’s one of hundreds of unpredictable risk-reward scenarios littered throughout the game, and it isn’t unique to the bosses. Do you use your melee attack on an incoming missile to fire it back at your target, or do you dodge the missile to keep your score multiplier safe?
How this sort of thing rubs you could decide whether Star Successor is your kind of game. I found it exhilirating and well-crafted, but I’m a patient, nimble masochist. Your mileage may vary.
Review: ‘Singularity’ tears up space, time
You'll be facing all manner of mutated Russians in Singularity's many shiny, Unreal Engine 3-powered corridors.
As the MC of "Cabaret" once said, "You know the funny thing about Herman? There's nothing funny about Herman."
That basically sums up my feelings for SINGULARITY, a first-person shooter from veteran action developer Raven Software. The great thing about the game, released on HD consoles and the PC this week, is that there's nothing truly Great (capital "G") about it.
It doesn't aspire to some sort of literary permanence, a la HALF-LIFE 2 and its rudimentary multiplayer getup isn't the tent-pole spectacle of MODERN WARFARE 2.
Instead, Singularity revels in the silliest, schlockiest corners of science-fiction gaming, tasking your American avatar with an investigation of Cold War experiments on a secret island off the coast of Russia.
In pursuit of an edge over the tyrannical West, the Soviets in 1950s apparently created a time-space anomaly on said island, inadvertently mutating its inhabitants and screwing things up in 2010. Your character might or might not have participated, thanks to some time-travelling shenanigans. Awkward!
The game offers you the standard complement of FPS weaponry -- shotguns, rifles and explosive stuff -- as well as a few less conventional items. The Seeker, which you find only during scripted moments in the 1950s, lets you guide your bullets in slow motion; another gun fires darts that detonate a second after burrowing into their targets.
Each gun, save for an utterly useless pistol, is fun to fire, and all can be upgraded tokens you find hidden throughout the game.
But Singularity doesn't really take off until about 90 minutes in, when you find a mysterious robo-glove (called the Time Manipulation Device, or TMD) that lets you stop time, instantly age enemies by hundreds of years and, of course, throw heavy objects great distances.
If that sounds familiar, it's probably because you played BIOSHOCK or its sequel. Magic in your left hand, gun in your right, dispatch meanies as you please.
But where combat in BioShock and BIOSHOCK 2 never inched past serviceable, Singularity feels genuinely good. This is the DOOM of modern-day shooters, throwing plenty of ammo and nine or ten enemies at you at once. The game is not about conserving bullets; it's about shooting time-travelling zombies in the head and telekinetically chucking explosive barrels at them, counting your remaining health packs after the fact.
Puzzlingly, you're constrained here by the Halo Rule. Where Doom, QUAKE and their successors allowed you an entire arsenal of destruction, today's shooters limit you to only a handful of guns at once. This presumably is done in the name of realism -- how many rocket launchers, plasma rifles and BFGs can one man carry, after all? -- but when a game trafficks in the absurd with as much gusto as Singularity does, the size of your war chest seems like a silly place to draw the line.
Still, the fighting is usually very satisfying, particularly once you pick up the Deadlock power about one-third of the way through the game. The ability lets you create a sphere inside which enemies are frozen and bullets move at a snail's space. That trick, coupled with the sniper rifle's slow-motion zoom, lets you watch rounds actually rotate out of the chamber on their way to your target's face.
The single-player campaign (no co-op here), shiny and diverse though it is, lasts about eight hours on normal difficulty, and once it's over, you're at a crossroads. You could slog through the first hour or so again on the harder difficulty, armed with naught but your terrible pistol and dodging enemies who steal nearly all your health in one swipe.
You could try the game's two class-based multiplayer modes, which pack a few thrills but currently suffer from awful connection issues and terribly net code.
If neither of those sound appetizing, you're done. At $60 for the console versions (and $50 on the superior PC version, though the game performs like a champ on all platforms), that can feel like a tough sell. And that's totally fair.
But the single-player content here is as cheeky and exciting as FPS campaigns come today. Even though story isn't something you'll be quoting years or even days from now -- there's no "would you kindly" moment here, folks -- Singularity is packed with enough memorable sequences and tight gameplay to merit any action junkie's attention.
Confessions of a PixelJunkie
I'm a non-owner of an Xbox 360 and a cautiously optimistic owner of a PlayStation 3. Each console has had its ups and downs. If there's one thing Microsoft has done exponentially better than Sony, it's connectivity.
From the XBLA library (and the XBL Indie titles) to friend-making to most forms of match-making (I'm ignoring ODST here...), the 360 has outclassed PS3 in nearly every form of online content, be it in quality, quantity, service terms and conditions, stability ... Sony has a lot of catching up to do.
One thing Sony has over Microsoft is the development studio Q-Games. Based in Japan, but run by a Westerner (Dylan Cuthbert), the titles made by Q-Games are often international collaborative efforts. And though they've also done work with Nintendo (example: STAR FOX COMMAND), they are best known for the PixelJunk series: PSN-exclusive titles that hold strange commonalities.
According to Cuthbert, what groups the games together are "simplicity, familiarity, and originality." Though they may have some 3D games in the works for their second series of games, series 1 (labeled as 1-1, 1-2, etc) are all 2D games whose stark colors look beautiful in 1080p, and whose soundtracks will always hold your attention.
I have at least dabbled in each of the four PixelJunk titles, and have absolutely conquered one of them. I'd like to share with you my experiences with each of the existing titles to date, and lay out some of my hopes for future ones. Here we go!
PIXELJUNK RACERS
How can anyone understand what's happening here? Thank the PixelGods this series got better.
This is the only PixelJunk title I don't like. And I think most of the PS3-owning community is with me on this. It wasn't a strong start for Q-Games. Series 1-1 title PixelJunk Racers is not a racing game at all, but rather a strange "destruction derby" style game where your goal is to wipe everyone else off the track within a time limit. The controls are awkward, the top-down view is frustrating, and the "character art" (if you can call it that, for the anthropomorphized animals) nauseates me. Word on the street is that, like the other games' follow-ups, there is an update (1-1a) in the works called "PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap." I can assure you already that this is a lost cause. Let's move forward.
PIXELJUNK MONSTERS
This is why first impressions, while often valuable, shouldn't paint the whole picture. So Racers was a dud. We get it. But 1-2, PixelJunk Monsters, more than makes up for it. Monsters is a variant of the now tried-and-true "tower defense" genre. I won't explain the details of the gameplay, since you ought to be familiar with tower defense gaming already. The things I will comment on? Let's see...
First, the difficulty level. Technically there are three difficulties for each level (21 in the base game, another 15 added in 1-2a, "PixelJunk Monsters Encore"). Wanna hear the crazy part? Even at the easiest difficulty, you will struggle with this game in the later levels. I know I did. And I'm no slouch when it comes to tower defense. They made this game hard. Very, very hard. If you want to get all of the trophies for this game, expect to put 100+ hours in. (ed. -- I was going to flag this outrageous figure with some sort of objection, but ... you're absolutely right.)
Next, the aesthetic factor. Outside of Racers, I can give only extremely high marks to the visual and aural components of the PixelJunk titles. I daresay that these things are what make me a true "PixelJunkie." The art in Monsters is simple -- almost too simple. The backgrounds could be made in MS Paint (experts in MS Paint, mind you). The sprites (including your player-controlled sprite and the enemy sprites) are sufficiently detailed but don't pack a lot of animation. Again, simplicity is the key. It will never strain your eyes, which is good considering your critical thinking and quick execution skills will definitely be strained.
I don't care if you buy the soundtrack before or after the game. But do buy the soundtrack.
As for the music, composed by Japanese duo otograph (Takashi Iura and Sachiyo Oshima), let's just say it's awesome. Sony acknowledged its awesomeness and actually released the soundtrack, digitally, via PSN (see "Dive Into PixelJunk Monsters" on PSN). Twenty-four tracks of surprisingly catchy (and surprisingly tonal) electronic music. It's a total win. But, in my opinion, even this excellent album pales in comparison to what we'll be discussing next.
But before that! I should also mention that this is the only game in the PixelJunk series to date to reach the PSP. "PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe" includes all the content of "Monsters" and "Monsters Encore," plus more levels, art, music, etc. It's a nice deal for the portable gamer, or so I'm told. I'm not buying the game again when I already have it once on my PS3.
PIXELJUNK EDEN
Without question, without hesitation, without reservation, this is my favorite game in the PixelJunk series. This is the game that made me a PixelJunkie, that made me want to explore the other titles.
Before even getting to the gameplay, I have to gush about the art and music. The soundtrack, composed by artist Baiyon (real name Tomohisa Kuramitsu), is crazy-addictive. It's electronic, but more ambient electronic than Monsters' score. It is absolutely hypnotizing. Each of the 16 songs in the game (one for each stage, plus the "world map" music) have reached "must-have" status in my collection of game music. Even more important is how well the music blends with the game's visuals. And there's a reason for that...
Baiyon did the game's art as well.
So yeah, this Baiyon fellow is a large part of what makes this game awesome. It sucks you in. Play for too long and it might give you a headache. But this game gets ridiculously high marks for aesthetics. Color is extremely important in PixelJunk Eden, and the monochromatic, or low-count multi-chromatic, layouts of the stages in Eden will be burned into your retinas after only a few plays.
This game is more beautiful than you (understand).
Now let's move to the gameplay. All of the PixelJunk games build on already-established genres in gaming, but Eden goes the furthest. At first glance, one might say "this is a platformer." Specifically, a 2-D platformer collect-a-thon. But no, it turns out it's much, much more than that. First of all, the sense of scale in this game is crazy. You play as a tiny little pollinator called a "Grimp." It's your job to plant seeds and make flowers grow. So you "collect" pollen by breaking little round spores and then the even tinier pollen units can be collected and will flow towards a designated spot where the seed can be planted. Once filled, touch the seed, and a plant grows. Now you can move up (or left, or right, or occasionally down) by jumping around.
The grimp also has a small spiderweb that allows him to do a number of things. With it he can spin in a circle and collect pollen. He can also use it as a way to boost a jump in any given direction, or to simply hang down to get a better view of what's below (the camera is fixed). That's what I was getting at with sense of scale. Sometimes the camera will zoom out if you spin in a circle long enough, but generally, the camera stays centered on the grimp and you have to memorize what is around you, because the size of these stages is usually *enormous* compared to the size of the grimp. From what you can see on the initial screen, you may go up as many as 50 times the height of what you see at first. When you reach the "top" of a level and then do a free-fall to the bottom, it's insane to witness just how long it takes to reach the floor. Imagine all the progress you've made!
The end purpose of growing all these flowers is to find "Spectra." Each Spectra adds a flower to the world map, which allows you to reach more levels. Now, each time you enter a level, you end your play time after collecting the required number of Spectra. Each level has 5 Spectra, and you have to play through the level 5 times to get them all. First entry: you need one Spectra (Spectrum?). Next entry, two Spectra. So you eventually reach five, and that means you really collect 15 per stage (1+2+3+4+5). It's a lot of repetition, but you can add to the replayability yourself by trying to get the Spectra in different order, take different paths, pollinate different areas, etc. Only a few of the levels are strict in their linearity.
I got all 75 Spectra in PixelJunk Eden (including 1-3a, PixelJunk Eden Encore, which adds stages 11 through 15). After doing all this, I got a bonus skill for my spiderweb ability. Now I could actually shoot the web to latch onto plants, as compared to the original usage where you must already be firmly affixed to a plant and then create the web. This adds a whole new sense of fun and absurdity to the game.
Did I not mention this game is beautiful? I think I did. But I'm saying it again. This game is beautiful. Each level has a very unique feel, thanks to the art and music. It's a must-have. Thanks a lot, Q-Games, for turning me into a PixelJunkie with this title.
PIXELJUNK SHOOTER
1-4 is the most recent game in the PixelJunk series, having been released in late 2009. It's also the most complex as far as gameplay goes, because it's not merely a shooter. The control scheme for your subterranean vehicle is akin to GEOMETRY WARS (or, for you true classic gamers, ASTEROIDS). But you will equip different attachments to your ship to overcome different obstacles, with the end goal of rescuing stranded scientists. Depending on what you do (or don't) do in those stages, the scientists can be killed by water, lava, or other hazards before you can rescue them. Like Monsters, the difficulty level in Shooter is very high.
The fire and ice ball just got a whole lot puzzlier. Yes, I said puzzlier.
Visually, the game boasts more stark, monochromatic influences, much like Eden. Orange, blue, and white are probably the three most dominant colors, though lots of neon-tinted colors throughout the spectrum make their way into the game. As for the soundtrack, it was handled by a team named "High Frequency Bandwidth," made up of Alex Paterson and Dom Beken. It's not the best soundtrack in the series, but it will grow on you if you continue to play the game.
I think, as a combination shooter-puzzle-adventure title, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better downloadable game. That is, if you're willing to put up with the challenge. For perfectionists, you can do a lot more than just "clear" the stages. You can try to rescue all scientists, find hidden bonuses, and complete areas within certain time limits to earn more trophies. There are also enemies, and even boss fights, and how you handle them will also determine trophy collection.
While many have already declared this game the best PixelJunk yet, my personal opinion is that Eden is superior to Shooter if only because I'm into artsy-fartsy games. Get over it. You can like 'em both. I know I do.
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For the future, there is plenty on the horizon. A PIXELJUNK SHOOTER 2 title has already been confirmed; whether or not this will be like the Encore titles and appear as 1-4a, or as a fully separate title, remains to be seen. There are rumors of a 1-5, PIXELJUNK DUNGEON, in the works as well. What kind of game this would be, who knows. If it's an RPG-style dungeon crawler, I will wet my pants.
Cuthbert has also talked about a second series of PixelJunk titles (2-X) that would all be 3-D instead of 2-D. As long as they continue to hold to their quality standard (minus Racers) I'll be plenty pleased. The PSN library may be sorely lacking in quality titles that XBLA has, but this is more than a consolation prize for Sony owners. This is something you can get sucked into. Something you can get *addicted* to. See for yourself: become a PixelJunkie.
Review: ‘War for Cybertron’ has real spark
Like every playable Transformer in "War for Cybertron," Bumblebee has a retractable melee weapon. Duh.
After umpteen efforts across a variety of platforms, the Transformers finally have a game they can be proud of. Free from the narrative shackles of a TV show or movie cash-in, developer High Moon Studios has built a sturdy shooter and terrific multiplayer experience in “Transformers: War for Cybertron,” out this week on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
The game is set before the events of the 1980s cartoon, giving you one company’s look at the civil war that ravaged the Transformers’ home planet and sent the dastardly Megatron and the heroic Optimus Prime into deep space. They’ll eventually scrap in our solar system, crash-land on Earth and take a 4-million-year dirt nap before waking up in 1984.
But as “War for Cybertron” begins, Optimus is not yet a “Prime,” a title bestowed upon the leader of the Autobots (the good guys). He’s not even a proper truck. Because the robots haven’t yet encountered our 18-wheelers and Volkswagen Beetles and whatnot, they transform into space-age versions of the same things. Optimus, for instance, is a strange sort of hover-barge.
The narrative is strung together over 10 missions (five each for the Autobots and Decepticons), which can be tackled solo, cooperatively or competitively. The levels are beefy, occasionally overstaying their welcome but never leaving you with less than your money’s worth.
There are collectibles to hunt down, of course, and a handful of inventive achievements will give you a reason to go through some of the stages a second time. But by the time you’ve cleared the single-player campaign once or twice, you’ll be glad to say goodbye to it.
Not because it isn’t good, but because the multiplayer is so much fun.
Though it can feel a bit like a checklist (gradually unlockable abilities, a la “Modern Warfare” and “Blur”; a cooperative mode that pits players against waves of computer-controlled enemies, a la every modern shooter), High Moon pulls off the online component with panache.
The class-based competitive multiplayer, with its points and levels and challenges, is a serious timesink.
So “War for Cybertron” has the game part covered. But be honest, you’re here for the license. So how good is the Transformers part?
Pretty great, actually. The voice cast is superb — faithful to the franchise’s roots where it matters (Peter Cullen as Optimus) and fittingly histrionic elsewhere, too. Megatron is still a screeching nihilist bent on getting his way; Optimus, in Cullen’s rumbling baritone, still gives long-winded speeches about honor and sacrifice. It isn’t SAG Award-caliber stuff, exactly, but it’s more or less what you remember from the cartoon.
The sound effects work deserves special mention, too. Transforming is a crucial component of the game, and the accompanying rattle in “War for Cybertron” is rapturous. It blends the cartoon’s classic “ruh-rut-Rut-RUT” with a more sophisticated hydraulic whine, admirably approximating what an alien robot transforming into a jet might actually sound like.
The same goes for the game’s substantial library of weapon noises, from the heavy thud of a laser gattling gun to the sickening, satisfying crack of truck-on-robot violence.
The visuals, though solid, don’t always fare as well.
Giantbomb.com lists 91 games powered by Epic’s flexible Unreal Engine 3, and “War for Cybertron” is one of the most unremarkably shiny among them. If you’ve played “Gears of War 2,” “Mass Effect 2” or any other shooter from a third-person perspective in the last few years, you’ve already seen the best of what’s on offer here.
The problem is rooted mostly in the game’s title and setting — the Transformers’ home planet of Cybertron. Per franchise lore, the entire planet is one big robot foundry, and a Transformer in its own right. I think. That means everything is metallic, angular, mildly reflective and a little boring.
It’s not that any one part of the game looks especially bad; in more than a few instances (the levels that involve low orbit, open air and lens flares, usually), it actually looks very nice. But if you’re tired of corridor crawls, this isn’t going to change your mind.
In some ways, though, keeping the action on Cybertron makes a lot of sense.
By setting the game before the events of the TV shows, High Moon wasn’t beholden to the burdensome, muddled, often pointless history of whatever the Autobots and Decepticons did on Earth.
And because Cybertronian environments are understandably built to spec for these enormous machine-people, the game steers clear of the scale issues that have plagued the franchise elsewhere (Is Optimus as big as an Earth tree or an Earth building? If Megatron turns into a big Earth gun, why is he as tall as Starscream? Such are the things that keep me up at night).
Fortunately, the character models themselves look quite good, each with their own glowing and moving parts. Some of the Decepticons can be tough to tell apart, as is the case with Michael Bay’s live-action “movies,” but by and large, the Transformers are sharply-designed bits of engineering.
Also worth noting — each robot credibly collapses into its vehicle form. Unlike the movies and cartoons, all of the interlocking pieces appear to end up somewhere in “War for Cybertron,” even if they don’t.
Though not without some issues, including a few day-one bugs that have yet to be ironed out, this game is easy to recommend. The online community is there, too, so you won’t want for teammates.
If you’re looking for something to string you through the summer, you could do much worse.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.