Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Developer:  DICE (Digital Illusions CE)

Publisher:  Electronic Arts (EA)

Rating:  “M” for Mature

Review by:  Nick Cohen

Platform reviewed on:  PC

After months of hype and an uneven multiplayer beta, Battlefield 3 is finally here.  EA and developer DICE have been promising the most realistic, best looking, and best playing first-person shooter (FPS) on the market.  EA hasn’t been coy in marketing this game; they’ve promised that Battlefield 3 was going to be the “Call of Duty killer” when it was released.  The game is out, I’ve played tons of it, and I have to say—EA wasn’t lying.  Battlefield 3 is the best looking, best sounding, and best playing multiplayer shooter out there (key word here being “multiplayer”).  Battlefield 3 really is the “Call of Duty killer.”

I’m going to spend the next few paragraphs gushing over what Battlefield 3 does right, and trust me—it does a lot right.  The first thing everyone wants to know about Battlefield 3 is how the graphics look; can it really look as amazing as the videos EA has released?  If you’re playing on a decent gaming PC, prepare to be stunned; Battlefield 3 actually looks better than it did in those videos, even on moderate settings like my PC runs it on.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it looks like running on Ultra settings, but the Frostbite 2 engine puts out the most amazing graphics I’ve ever laid eyes on.  Lighting is insanely gorgeous, textures are extremely detailed no matter what distance they’re viewed from, environments are massive, character models look great, the framerate remains steady (of course, this depends on what hardware you have); I don’t care what you’ve played before (Uncharted 2?  Pfft.  Gears of War 3? Not even close), Battlefield 3 makes all other games look pathetic by comparison.

It’s not all peaches and cream, of course—you’ll need a pretty beefy machine to run it at even moderate settings (see my PC specs at the end of this review to get an idea), and the console versions don’t look as good (though, they still look great, from what I’ve seen).  This game is worth upgrading your PC for, though; show Battlefield 3 to friends and have them all stare in disbelief.  The best part about the game’s graphics, though, is that they are universal to every game mode.  A lot of games lose graphical fidelity in multiplayer, but not Battlefield 3.  Every second of this game is a visual masterpiece on PC.  Frostbite 2 pumps out what are far and away the best graphics anyone has ever seen.

Battlefield 3 not only looks much better than every other video game, it also sounds better.  The dialogue is well-voiced and the minimal use of music is much appreciated, but the true star of Battlefield 3’s audio design is the sound effects.  Every gun and every vehicle sounds incredibly realistic, to the point that I think DICE literally spent tens of hours recording the sound of every single weapon and vehicle in the game.  It’s hard to put into words how much this amazing audio adds to battles; step out onto a 64 player Conquest map with vehicles and you can hear every little thing that’s going on around you.   Try not to be amazed by the way each weapon sounds when fired and how you can hear jets and tanks blowing stuff up hundreds of feet away; I promise you won’t be able to.  Take the stunning graphics of Battlefield 3 and combine it with the incredible audio design and you have the recipe for the most immersive gaming experience out there.

Now it’s time to talk about what really makes Battlefield 3 special, the multiplayer.  This is absolutely the best multiplayer game you can buy right now.  Call of Duty and Halo play like ancient relics after you’ve sampled the complete Battlefield 3 multiplayer experience.  Take the fast-paced action and deep unlock system of Call of Duty, mix in the near-perfect balancing of Halo, add in the team dynamics of Battlefield:  Bad Company 2, throw in the massive scope of Battlefield 2, and blend them all with the best graphics and sound of any game and you have an idea of what Battlefield 3’s competitive multiplayer is like.  There’s so much in this game that I honestly don’t know the best place to begin.

Think this screenshot looks good? Wait until you see this game in motion.

I guess I should start with maps?  There are nine (9) multiplayer maps in Battlefield 3 at launch.  That might not sound like much when games such as Call of Duty and Halo typically pack in around 15, but every map (even the much-hated Operation Metro from the beta) is so huge and so much fun to play on that you won’t be thinking about the number of maps.  There’s a great variety here; everything from close-quarters focused maps such as Operation Metro and Grand Bazaar to wide-open environments like those found in Caspian Border and Kharg Island are represented.  The maps vary greatly aesthetically—Tehran Highway takes place at night, while Grand Bazaar takes place during a storm and Caspian Border features sweeping valleys full of vegetation—and change drastically based upon which mode you’re playing.

Battlefield 3 essentially has three modes; Conquest, Rush, and Team Deathmatch.  Conquest is the classic Battlefield mode that sees two teams fight it out for control of up to five territories on the map.  Conquest is the only mode that supports up to 64 players on PC (24 is the maximum for all modes on consoles) and tends to get positively hectic with a ton of vehicles and players running around.  Rush was introduced in Bad Company and supports up to 32 players here.   One team plays the attackers, whose goal is to blow up two M-COM stations per wave, while the defenders have to stop the attackers from blowing up the stations by killing them until their tickets (lives) are depleted.  If the attackers are successful, they move on to the next pair of M-COM stations, until they either do this successfully four times or are stopped at any wave.   Vehicles also play a big part here, depending on the map.  Team Deathmatch is a lot like Team Deathmatch in Call of Duty.  Here, two teams try to kill each other until one team is the victor.  There are no vehicles in Team Deathmatch.

There are variations on the three basic modes (Squad Deathmatch is a multi-team gametype where four teams of four players kill each other, while every mode supports options for infantry only and hardcore mode, which makes bullets do more damage and removes a lot of the HUD), but they are all kind of similar to the main three.  Call of Duty players should start with Team Deathmatch, while people looking for bigger conflicts should jump right into Rush or Conquest.  There’s something for everyone.

The realistic gameplay on offer in Battlefield 3 is the thing that takes the most adjusting to.   Call of Duty is very arcadey in feel, with little in the way of weapon recoil and a ton of auto aim.  Battlefield 3, by contrast, features a ton of weapon recoil, especially on high-powered assault rifles and machine guns—holding down the trigger won’t suffice in this game.  Auto aim is also very minimal, so you’ll need to line up shots or find yourself wasting tons of ammo.  If you don’t want any realism in your military shooters, Battlefield 3 isn’t for you.  However, if you spend about an hour or so with the game and unlock some better equipment, you’ll most likely fall in love with the satisfyingly realistic gameplay.

Speaking of unlocks, there are a ton.  Battlefield 3 takes a cue from Call of Duty here and then goes overboard with it.  Each side (Russia and the United States) has its own set of weapons and equipment.  You level up your soldier using a universal leveling system that has 100 levels, which unlocks weapons and equipment.  Each of the four basic classes (Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon; more on them in a bit) have their own set of weapons and unlocks.  Each weapon has its own unlockable attachments (such as scopes and silencers).  Each class of vehicles (tanks, jets, armored transports, etc.) has its own set of unlocks.  Each player has customizable dog tags that can be upgraded with special designs and even your own stats if you rank up enough.   You can steal other players’ dog tags by knifing them from behind. There are Service Stars that are similar to Call of Duty’s Prestige modes, but there is one for everything in the game.  You can also unlock the ability to use each faction’s weapons and equipment while playing the opposite faction.  I’m probably forgetting some, but you get the idea—there are a ton of unlockables and ways to personalize your experience in Battlefield 3.

Battlefield 3 is the best multiplayer game available.

About the classes:  the Assault class is your basic soldier.  They get to use assault rifles and are useful in any situation.  For Battlefield 3, they’ve also been given the abilities of the old medic classes, meaning they hand out health packs to teammates and can revive fallen teammates with defibrillators.  Engineers are the same as they’ve been in past games; they get the best ways to take out vehicles and can also repair friendly vehicles.  Engineers use close-range carbines.  The Support class gets to use the heavy machine guns to lay down suppressing fire (a new mechanic that turns enemies’ screens blurry and decreases their accuracy) and has ammo packs to give teammates.  The Recon class is the sniping class, but they also get things like motion detectors and portable spawn points for squadmates that make them good in a supporting role, as well.  Going prone has been added to make snipers more accurate, but beware; all scopes in the game give off a glint that will alert enemies to a sniper’s presence, and holding your breath is necessary to stop sniper rifle sway.

Infantry classes are great and all, but it’s the vehicles in Battlefield 3 that really steal the show.  There are something like 26 vehicles in Battlefield 3 out of the box (if you have the Limited Edition of the game, you’ll get three more in December with the “Back to Karkand” expansion, as well as four new maps, 10 new weapons, and some more unlockable equipment) spread amongst numerous classes.  There are vehicles such as jeeps, tanks, boats, amphibious vehicles, helicopters, and jets.  All of them handle well and are balanced extremely well with the infantry soldiers, but helicopters and jets are tough to fly at first and require practice to master.

Holding the multiplayer together is the love-it-or-hate-it Battlelog.  The Battlelog (PC version only) resembles Facebook, but it keeps track of all of your in-game stats and acts as the method for launching every component of Battlefield 3—campaign, co-op, and multiplayer.  This means that you’ll be able to create Platoons (the game’s version of clans) and join a multiplayer match in the Battlelog interface.  Quick match works great, but you can also surf the server browser (also on consoles, for the first time since the original Gears of War) if you’re looking for a specific game mode, map, ruleset, or combination thereof.  In all honesty, I love the Battlelog interface and the way dedicated servers work, but it does hitch up temporarily from time to time.  The only way to use voice chat in-game on PC is to form a party in the Battlelog before joining matches, too—a major oversight considering how teamwork oriented the game is (a patch should be released soon that will add in-game voice chat).  Battlelog works flawlessly 98% of the time, but I wish it worked flawlessly 100% of the time.

This is a shot from Battlefield 3's campaign. It isn't as exciting as it looks; you don't get to fly the jet.

Now that I’m done gushing about the presentation and multiplayer of Battlefield 3, here come the parts where I tell you about the things that aren’t so good, namely the campaign and co-op.  The campaign is fine—it’s a lot like the campaigns in recent Call of Duty games.  This means it’s short, action-packed, and extremely linear.  It isn’t what we were promised, however; it isn’t very realistic (Medal of Honor has a much more realistic campaign) and features a storyline ripped right out of a Tom Clancy novel or movie.  You play as Sgt. Henry “Black” Blackburn, the most generic of soldiers, as he is interrogated by a couple of forgettable captors and recalls events from the past few days. The story involves Russians and nukes (there’s the Tom Clancy-like elements) and isn’t memorable in the slightest.  Call of Duty:  Black Ops did this basic framing device better last year.

The levels themselves are extremely linear, but they do feature some very exciting moments involving tanks, a jet, and other setpiece elements I won’t spoil for you.  Plus, let’s not forget about the amazing graphics and audio—they add a lot to the experience.  It’s a shame that it also features a ton of quick time events (that are the only parts of the game that don’t support an Xbox 360 controller, my preferred input method) and is over after only six to eight hours.   It also doesn’t teach players how to fly helicopters or jets, so it’s not a particularly good tutorial for multiplayer, either. It’s not bad for a military shooter campaign, but it could have—and should have—been much more.

Undoubtedly the worst part of the Battlefield 3 package is the co-op campaign.  This mode feels like a complete afterthought; it’s as if DICE had grander plans for the co-op that were cut when they realized how much more time those plans would have added to the game’s development cycle.  Co-op supports only two players and features only six missions.  The missions themselves are okay (one actually lets you fly a helicopter!), but they are very linear like the campaign and feature no checkpoints—if both players die before they are revived, it’s game over.  The story is only told through brief before- and after-game text and doesn’t have any tangible bearing on the gameplay.  This barebones co-op is extremely disappointing; I wish DICE could have included a Horde-like survival mode or even Bad Company 2’s Onslaught mode.  Maybe more will be added later via DLC?

Overall Thoughts

I debated for a long time about how I’d score Battlefield 3 in the end.  Is a game that I can’t universally recommend to every player worthy of a perfect score?  Ultimately, I decided it isn’t.  If you don’t plan on playing Battlefield 3 online for whatever reason, I’d recommend you give it a rental so you can play through the campaign once or twice and marvel at the stunning presentation.  However, if—like the vast majority of video game players—you plan on taking Battlefield 3 online, the game is a must buy.  This is the best looking, sounding, and playing multiplayer FPS experience on the market.  While it won’t outright kill Call of Duty—Modern Warfare 3 is sure to outsell Battlefield 3 at first and will be a good game—Battlefield 3 is selling well enough and is so clearly the superior multiplayer experience that it rightfully deserves to be called the “Call of Duty killer.”  Battlefield 3 has brought out the big guns and claimed its place as the king of multiplayer games.  Call of Duty needs to take some time off and be completely reevaluated if it’s going to be at all competitive with future Battlefield games and even with Battlefield 3, especially if DICE can figure out a way to make a better all-around package next time.  Other big-budget developers—with few exceptions–should frankly be ashamed of themselves for not pushing technology, gameplay, and multiplayer forward like Battlefield 3 has.

Breakdown: 

Sound:  Battlefield 3 sounds much better than any other shooter on the market.  The voice acting and sparse use of music are fine, but the weapon and vehicle sound effects are the true standouts.  Everything sounds so realistic and immersive that you’ll find yourself sucked in to the world of Battlefield 3 for hours at a time.  This is truly groundbreaking stuff.

Storyline:  The plot of Battlefield 3 feels like a generic Tom Clancy imitation.  It’s filled with generic soldiers, evil Russians, and a plot to detonate nukes in major cities.  I’ve seen, read, and played through similar stories hundreds of times before.

Gameplay:  Battlefield 3 features the most realistic-feeling weapons and vehicles I’ve ever used in a game.  It’s not going for ultra-realism since that’s boring (go play Red Orchestra 2 or ArmA 2 to see what I mean), but guns feature plenty of recoil and jets are hard to control at first.  The ratio of realism to fun is perfect.  Multiplayer gameplay is easily the best in the industry, but the campaign and co-op are too linear and feature too many quicktime events.

Graphics:  Battlefield 3’s Frostbite 2 engine actually exceeds the hype, especially on PC.  There’s no other game that’s even in Battlefield 3’s league graphically.  This is easily the best-looking game ever made; your jaw will drop to the floor and stay there.  I’m still shocked by how fantastic this game looks.

Overall Fun Factor/Replay Value:  Battlefield 3 features a mediocre campaign and co-op that feels like an afterthought.  You won’t care, though.  The multiplayer in Battlefield 3 is gorgeous, plays great, and is perfectly balanced.  There’s a ton of content to unlock, a plethora of map and mode combinations, tons of ways to support your team (or lone wolf it if that’s your thing), and a flawless pairing of infantry and vehicle combat.  Battlefield 3’s multiplayer will keep you hooked for years; once you’ve played it, there’s no going back to any other game.  In fact, why aren’t you playing this game instead of reading this review right now?

Final Score:  9.5/10 (fantastic)

(My PC specs and a note on running this game properly on PC:  I use a custom IBuyPower gaming PC setup with an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor overclocked to 3.5GHz, 8GB of RAM, and a DirectX 10-compatible 1GB BFG Tech Nvidia Geforce GTX 285 overclocked.  I am able to run the game at a constant 60 frames-per-second or better on a combination of medium and high graphical settings at the highest possible resolution.  Optimization is better than it was in the beta; I’m able to throw on things such as 4x anti-aliasing and low anisotropic filter, whatever that is.  Still, if you want to run Battlefield 3 decently, you’ll need a dedicated gaming PC, not a Dell or HP you bought from Best Buy.  If you want to run the game on Ultra settings, you’ll want to spring for either an Nvidia Geforce GTX 590 or two Geforce GTX 580s running in SLI mode, both of which are extremely expensive options.  Don’t use ATI cards because they don’t run the game as well as the Nvidia cards do.  If you want to make the game look great but not spend an arm and a leg, buy a quad-core processor and a midrange DirectX 11 card, maybe a GTX 570 or even 560.  Always run the game on the recommended settings; turning up the graphics will result in severe performance hitches.)

Here’s a cool infographic that takes the XBox Achievement Unlocked concept and uses it to show what people in the US Army are able to achieve in the form of badges, ribbons, awards, etc.

From: MilitaryEducation.org

Platforms: 

Developer:  DICE (Digital Illusions CE)

Publisher:  Electronic Arts (EA)

Rating:  “M” for Mature

Written by Nick Cohen

From September 27^th through October 10^th, I got to sample the much-hyped “Call of Duty killer,” Battlefield 3.  Thanks to DICE, EA, and my Limited Edition copy of Medal of Honor—which granted me access to the beta two days earlier than most people—I got to sample two maps and modes from the most-anticipated FPS of the year.  Does Battlefield 3 look as spectacular as we’ve been led to believe?  How does it play?  What are the differences between the console versions of the game and the PC version? Will it be able to topple Call of Duty this holiday?  Read on to find out.

Being a Battlefield veteran (I first played Battlefield 2 on PC years ago and have played every installment in the series ever since), I kind of knew what to expect from the Battlefield 3 beta—huge maps with tons of vehicles, amazing graphics, and an extremely well-polished gaming experience…none of which I actually got from the beta at first.  Wait, what?

Let’s talk presentation first, since everybody has been floored by footage of Battlefield 3.  This is where disappointment and reality first creeps up on you; the Operation Metro map does not look that good.  It’s pretty, to be sure—and sometimes it looks amazing, particularly when leaving the subway tunnels and entering the city square at the end of a match—but it’s initially disappointing.  It looks like Battlefield:  Bad Company 2 with better lighting and textures.  What’s so great about the much-hyped Frostbite 2 engine?

At least it sounds great:  weapons are extremely loud, explosions have a lot of aural impact, and the lack of music means that you can hear everything going on around you.  This may be the best sounding game I’ve ever heard.  If the graphics were this good, no one would be complaining.

The one mode on offer for most of the beta—and the entirety of the beta on consoles—was Rush on Operation Metro.  This mode makes a return from the Bad Company games and charges two teams of either 12 (consoles) or 16 (PC) players with either destroying (attackers) or defending (defenders) four waves of two objectives.  The battle starts in an outside area, then moves into the dark and cramped subway tunnels (easily the best part of the map), and then finishes outside in the city square.  In the beta, there were no vehicles in this mode.

Operation Metro is fun, but not the best way to show off Battlefield 3.

Rush on Operation Metro is fun, but not indicative of the greater Battlefield 3 multiplayer experience.  Infantry only on a smaller, more narrow map is not what Battlefield  does best, making it a strange choice for the public’s first hands-on time with the game that is meant to take down Call of Duty.  Still, it is fun.  What it does do is highlight the core gameplay of Battlefield 3, showing just how good it is.

What makes Battlefield 3’s gameplay so great is the realistic way weapons feel.  As opposed to the more arcadey feel present when shooting guns in Call of Duty, Battlefield 3’s feel extremely powerful and realistic.  As mentioned above, they sound great.  However, there is more to it.  Each weapon has an appropriate level of recoil, meaning that spray-and-pray is not a legitimate tactic for most weapons.  This is in contrast to Call of Duty, in which holding down the trigger produces very little recoil.  Another reason Battlefield 3’s guns feel great is the way DICE has simulated muzzle flash.  Most games either ignore this completely or have a steady stream of yellow flames erupting from the barrel of the guns; not so in Battlefield 3.  It’s hard to explain, but watch videos of players shooting guns in Battlefield 3 and you’ll see what I mean.  It’s a small detail, but it’s the little details that separate the great games from the good ones.

What does all this mean?  Well, it means that it’s fun to shoot at enemies in the game, more so than in any other FPS I’ve played.  And DICE has politely provided players with tons of guns to shoot at enemies.  Unlike Bad Company 2’s small selection of weapons and unlocks, Battlefield 3 features a huge—even intimidating—amount of weapons and unlockable equipment.

The way unlocks work in Battlefield 3 is truly impressive.  You have a general ranking that increases as you play more, up to level 50.  This unlocks things such as customizable dog tags (which weren’t in the beta) and weapons that every class can use, like shotguns and pistols.  Then, each class (Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon) has its own set of unlocks.  Assault-class soldiers get things like better assault rifles and the defibrillator for reviving teammates (the Medic from previous games has been combined with the Assault class).  Support soldiers get better machineguns for laying down suppressing fire.  Engineers—practically useless for much of the beta—get Stinger missiles for taking down aircraft and better SMGs.  Recon players get things like better sniper rifles and mobile spawn point drops.

But wait, there’s more!  You see, each weapon also has its own unlocks.  Assault rifles gain reflex scopes while heavy machineguns gain bipods for better accuracy when stationary or prone, for example.  Battlefield 3 may actually have more unlocks than Call of Duty, which is really impressive.

Unfortunately—this being a beta—there were glitches; lots of glitches.  Falling through the map and not being able to aim down the sights of your weapon were just two examples of common gameplay glitches players had to deal with.  Weird visual bugs like reanimating corpses and strange lines appearing onscreen cropped up.  Even the fantastic audio would sometimes cut out at random!  Thankfully, this won’t be a problem when the game is finally released.  DICE has said that the beta code was well over a month old, with the console versions being particularly unpolished.  The PC version still had problems, but the consoles were much worse.

A lot of players were put off initially by the buggy and somewhat-unimpressive Operation Metro level.  For PC players who stuck around until the last weekend of the beta, however, there was a huge surprise—64 player Conquest on the already-legendary Caspian Border map.  Anyone who has played this (including me!) no longer has any doubt as to how good the final version of Battlefield 3’s multiplayer on PC is going to be.

Jet combat on Caspian Border--it looks and plays better than you can possibly imagine.

Literally everything that wasn’t so good about Operation Metro is fantastic in Caspian Border.  The graphics are amazing—even on my computer that can only run the game on medium settings (this game is quite the system hog!), Caspian Border looks phenomenal.  In fact, this map is easily the best looking thing I’ve ever seen in a video game; you walk over a hill on the Russian side and are astounded to see just how huge the map is.  The terrain stretches out as far as the eye can see (which is really far—the draw distance is massive and there is no texture pop-up), there are planes and choppers flying overhead while tanks and Jeeps drive by, the trees look fantastic, the sunlight blinds you if you look directly into it, there’s a huge communications tower looming over the center of the map…words don’t do it justice, you have to see it for yourself.  I can’t even imagine how amazing this looks on Ultra settings, but nothing else even comes close to this visually on medium settings.

As mentioned in the above rant about how amazing the graphics in Caspian Border are, there are a ton of vehicles for you to try out.  Jeeps and tanks patrol the streets, while helicopters and the heavily hyped jets fly overhead.  They all control beautifully (although it’s hard to fly the jets and helicopters at first—you need a bit of practice before you feel comfortable flying them) and are balanced extremely well.  The sense of scale they impart is truly impressive, aided by the gargantuan size of the map and the huge player count.

Caspian Border was also less buggy in general than Operation Metro.  Sure, the occasional bug would crop up, but it was usually nothing as major as falling through the world in Operation Metro.  Caspian Border is just insanely fun; I couldn’t pull myself off of it.  It truly represents some of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever had in any multiplayer game.  It makes the relatively small maps and lack of vehicles in other FPS games seem pathetic by comparison.

Which brings us back to the big question:  does Battlefield 3 have what it takes to take down Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 3 this holiday season?  The glitchy and unimpressive Operation Metro map would seem to indicate that Battlefield 3 is just going to be another missed opportunity.  I’m sure it scared off many potential players who think the rest of the full game is going to be like that.  However, Caspian Border looks, sounds, and plays better than any other multiplayer game out there.  If the rest of the game looks and plays as good—and from what I’ve seen and heard, it does—Call of Duty’s days as the top FPS on the planet are numbered.  It may be too early to tell—the rest of the multiplayer could be terrible, after all—but the Caspian Border map in the Battlefield 3 beta combined with everything else I’ve seen and heard about the full game makes me think that Battlefield 3 is going to kick Call of Duty’s butt when it releases on October 25^th.

Platform: 

Developer:  Epic Games

Publisher:  Microsoft Game Studios

Rating:  “M” for Mature

Review by Nick Cohen

In 2006, during the early years of the Xbox 360, Microsoft was looking for a big exclusive game to move its new Xbox 360 system off shelves.  Call of Duty 2 and The Elder Scrolls IV:  Oblivion had proved to be hits, but neither game was published by Microsoft and neither did the sales numbers of Microsoft’s flag-bearing Xbox franchise, Halo.  With Halo 3 not releasing until the fall of 2007, Microsoft needed to give consumers a big reason to upgrade to an Xbox 360.  With Epic Games’ Gears of War, Microsoft found that reason.

The original Gears of War was a huge hit, bolstered by a huge marketing campaign, a surprise-hit multiplayer mode, and—let’s face it—a lack of competition.  Gears sold like crazy and gave Xbox 360 gamers a great shooter to play while they waited for Halo 3.  In 2008—facing stiffer competition from Halo 3 and the hugely popular Call of Duty 4:  Modern Warfare—Microsoft and Epic released Gears of War 2, the sequel to Microsoft’s biggest exclusive new game of this generation.  While initial sales were high, Gears 2 ultimately suffered from a disappointing campaign and a new matchmaking service for multiplayer that barely worked.  Consumer’s interest in the Gears of War franchise waned while series like Call of Duty attracted millions of new players.

Microsoft and Epic Games announced Gears of War 3 a couple years later, promising a more-satisfying campaign and multiplayer that actually functioned properly right out of the gate.  Initially meant to be released alongside Halo:  Reach in the fall of 2010, Microsoft delayed Gears 3 to give Epic more time to develop the game, to give the Xbox 360 a big hit in the otherwise empty fall 2011 season, and to avoid having Gears go up against both Halo:  Reach and Call of Duty:  Black Ops.  With record-breaking preorders and a hugely successful multiplayer beta this past spring, Gears 3 is poised to reclaim the series’ former glory.

Gears of War 3 is (pun intended) an epic game.  Like Halo:  Reach, Gears 3’s main menu screen presents the player with so many options that he/she may initially feel a bit overwhelmed.  There’s a Campaign, Horde mode, the brand-new Beast mode, and Versus multiplayer, as well as an option to view your stats/achievements and another to go to the Xbox Live Marketplace.  That’s a lot of options, but most players should start with the Campaign.

The Campaign is the bread-and-butter of Gears 3.  The first two Gears games weren’t exactly renowned for their amazing stories, but Gears 3 actually tells a good one filled with loss, grief, reunions, and lots and lots of gore—this is a Gears game, after all.  I won’t go into details about the story since that would spoil the plot, but Gears 3’s story is heartfelt and sad—unlike Gears 2’s, where attempts at making the player feel sad came off as cheesy.  It’s a surprising bright spot in a game where you wouldn’t expect to find a good story.  A cautionary word to those looking to jump straight into Gears 3 without any prior knowledge of the  events in the Gears universe, however—many of the characters and situations pretty much require knowledge of the previous two games’ events, in addition to the extended-universe stories from the comics and novels.  Players of the previous two games shouldn’t have too much of a problem, but new players might feel a bit lost.  I recommend you first play through the campaigns of the first two games, and then read the Gears of War novels Jacinto’s Remnant and Coalition’s End before jumping into Gears of War 3.

Gears of War 3 features an excellent Campaign. Not pictured--the great story.

Not that the storyline is compensating for the gameplay—the campaign in Gears 3 is a blast to play.  Players still fight the classic Locust enemies from the first two games, but new Lambent enemies present a stiff challenge that is unlike anything you’ve ever seen in a game before.  The Locust also bring new enemy types into the game, and the free-for-all battles between the human Gears, the Locust, and the Lambent are some of the best in the game.  Even better, though, are the bosses; without spoiling anything, there are some truly huge bosses in this game that are a ton of fun to take down.  The final boss is a bit frustrating, but otherwise Gears 3 features some absolutely fantastic boss encounters.

Interspersed between the normal enemy encounters are monotony-breaking sequences like turret sections and levels where you come across Stranded settlements where there is very little action.  These sections don’t overstay their welcome like the many turret sequences did in Gears 2; instead, they pop up every now and then to keep the gameplay from getting stale.  All levels now feature four Gears instead of just two.  You can choose to keep the three remaining Gears as A.I. controlled—and they’ll do a decent job of shooting at enemies and reviving you—or you can play through the Campaign cooperatively in two-player split-screen or with four players via Xbox Live.  The Campaign is fairly long for a shooter—there are five total chapters comprised of many smaller sections that should take you a good 10-12 hours to see the first time, depending on difficulty and skill level—and has a lot of replay value too, thanks to an Arcade mode that enables scoring and unlockable mutators.

The best part of Gears 2 was the Horde mode, in which players had to fight off waves of Locust enemies with up to four friends.  Horde mode is back in Gears 3, but it’s even better than it was before.  Taking a page from tower defense games and Call of Duty’s popular Zombies mode, players can now set up fortifications such as barriers and turrets in-between rounds to hold off or distract incoming enemies.  These can also be upgraded, so that a simple spike strip becomes a laser fence, for example.

Also new to Horde is currency (You didn’t think the aforementioned fortifications were free, did you?).  Not only do fortifications cost money, but basic things like new weapons and ammo do, too.  This forces players to really think about how they spend their money—spend too much money on laser fences to keep out normal enemies and you might not have any money to spend on ammo for boss waves.  You see, every 10^th wave is now a boss wave against things like Berzerkers and—if you’re really unfortunate—a Brumak.  Nothing is scarier than facing off against a hulking Brumak with no teammates left and little ammo.

Horde mode is comprised of 50 increasingly-challenging waves.  As mentioned previously, each 10^th wave is a boss wave; however, once that boss wave is defeated, the next wave brings about tougher enemies with more health and better aim that take more damage to kill.  By wave 50, enemies do 2.5x the damage, have 2.5x the health, and have 2.5x greater accuracy than they did at the beginning.  This makes things extraordinarily challenging; a moment I’ll never forget was taking down a wave 50 Brumak with another teammate.  It took almost 2,000 shots from my Lancer assault rifle (seriously), but it was a load of fun.

New in Gears of War 3 is Beast mode.  Beast mode is basically the opposite of Horde; instead of playing as the humans and trying to fight off waves of Locust and Lambent, in Beast you play as the Locust and must defeat 12 waves of humans.  You only get a small amount of time per wave to take out all humans, so you have to be fast.

Initially, you only have access to weaker Locust, such as the Ticker and basic Drone.  By killing humans and wiping out their fortifications, you gain access to stronger Locust such as the Serapede and Bloodmount.  Each Locust type—even the lowly Tickers—has a role to play, however, so you never feel completely useless no matter which Locust you’re playing.  Beast mode is a lot of fun, but it’s too short and easy.  It does at least have a lot of replay value.

The last—and most disappointing—aspect of the Gears 3 experience is the competitive Versus multiplayer.  Those who have played the beta earlier in the year know what to expect, although there has been some balancing and there are more maps open in the final game (10, to be exact).  There are six modes in Gears 3’s Versus component, three of which are variations on wiping out the other team.

An action scene from Gears 3's competitive multiplayer. It's much gorier than this in motion.

In Team Deathmatch, each team of five tries to wipe out the other team’s respawns.  When a team’s respawns are depleted, each player on that team must fight to stay alive because once they are killed, they are out of the game.  Warzone and Execution are a lot like the end of a Team Deathmatch round, but in Execution, players must execute their opponent to kill them, forcing players to get in closer when going for kills.   King of the Hill is exactly what you’d expect—a fight for a moving control point. The first team to a set score wins.  Capture the Leader is a combination of the Capture the Flag and Guardian modes from Gears 2—here, one player on each team is designated the leader.  The leader can see enemies through walls, but once the leader is captured by an enemy for a specific amount of time, the game ends.  Lastly, there’s Wingman, which is similar to Halo’s multi-team modes because there are four teams of two.  The first team to reach a set number of kills wins.

This all sounds like it could be a lot of fun, but balancing and map design issues hold the Versus multiplayer back.  The new sawed-off shotgun is really overpowered—it can wipe out a whole team in one shot thanks to its extraordinary power and wide firing arc.  Spawn placement is terrible—each team only gets one or two spawn points a map—and these are shown on the map to all players before the start of a round, making for rampant spawn camping, particularly in Team Deathmatch.  A lot of the new weapons are useless—the Retro Lancer is so inaccurate that it’s barely useful outside of the bayonet charge.  Holding the ‘X’ button for a few seconds to pick up weapons leaves you vulnerable and doesn’t work all the time.  Gears of War 3’s competitive multiplayer can be fun in short bursts, but it’s not balanced well enough and can be too frustrating, so I don’t think many players are going to make this their new multiplayer game of choice.  People who have been playing Gears multiplayer through the years and have stuck with it may enjoy it quite a bit, though.

Tying together all of the modes in Gears of War 3 are a huge amount of unlockable content.  Your character levels up no matter what mode you’re playing, which unlocks things like new weapon skins and characters.  There are ribbons to be earned for doing specific in-game tasks, such as getting three kills in a short amount of time or completing all 50 waves of Horde mode.  There are collectibles that can be found in the Campaign.  Lastly, there are medals that can be earned for doing certain things, such as winning a certain amount of multiplayer matches or getting a certain number of kills with each weapon.  There’s a ton of stuff to chase after if you’re so inclined.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out something that really bothers me about the way extra content is handled in Gears of War 3.  Following the trend set by Mortal Kombat, a Season Pass can be purchased for 2,400 Microsoft Points ($30).  This will enable you to gain access to all upcoming downloadable content packs at a 33% discount.  I don’t have any real problem with this.  The thing I do have a problem with is all of the paid weapon skins you can buy.  As I mentioned previously, you can unlock certain weapon skins through playing the game.  However, there are only a small number that can be unlocked this way; most of them cost real money to use.  I’m not talking about 50 cents a pop, either—they’ll cost you a few dollars apiece.  If you want to buy them all in one shot (and no, they’re not covered in the Season Pass), you’ll have to spend a whopping 3,600 Microsoft Points (a whopping $45!).

One of the major problems I have with these weapon skins is that they are already on the disk, meaning you’re potentially paying a ton of money for things you already own.  There’s also the fact that a lot of them are very ugly and look like they didn’t take much work to make—look up videos online to see what I mean.  Who wants to make their shotgun have flowers on it, or put ugly splashes of blue on their Lancer?  Worst of all, though, is that your $45 will only get you the “Launch Collection” of skins—meaning, there could be even more for you to buy later!  I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that you have to spend so much money on something that should be free or at least not so expensive and not already on the disc.  I strongly recommend you don’t buy them, or at the very least, buy only one or two that interest you.

As you’d expect if you’ve played any previous Gears of War game, Gears of War 3 is a visual stunner.  However, the level of visual fidelity on display here puts the other two games to shame.  Gears 3 is easily the best-looking Xbox 360 game you can buy right now; it even gives Uncharted 2 on the PS3 a run for its money.  Environments, in particular, look great and have much more color and diversity than before.  The sense of scale is incredible.

Audio is decent.  The music is exactly what you’d expect—a mix of heavy metal and some slower-paced instrumental pieces for emotional moments in the story.  Voice acting is a bit inconsistent, though; while most of the characters sound fine, two particularly stuck out for me—Dizzy and Prescott.  Dizzy has the same voice actor as before, but now sounds more annoying and “country redneck” to me.  The worst, though, is easily Prescott—he has a different voice actor than before who gives him a really whiny voice that instantly grates on my nerves.

Overall Thoughts

Gears of War 3 is a huge game that is easily worth the $60 MSRP.  The competitive multiplayer isn’t going to hold many peoples’ attention when Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty release soon, but the Campaign is a blast and the co-op modes are great fun and very replayable.  It’s a shame this isn’t the total package it could have been if the multiplayer was better balanced, but there’s still so much to do in the game and so much of it is fantastic that anyone who has any interest in Gears of War or third-person shooters should pick it up.

Breakdown:

Sound:  The music is mostly forgettable (except for a rather good song by rapper Ice-T’s metal/rap hybrid band Bodycount).  Voice acting is mostly good, except for a few characters who grate on the nerves.

Storyline:  Gears of War 3 features easily the best storyline of the entire series.  It’s a tale of loss, sadness, despair, and also hope.  Some moments will stick with you long after you’ve finished playing through the Campaign.

Gameplay:  The Campaign and co-op modes feature top-notch gameplay that places an emphasis on cover and a feeling of weight.  Versus multiplayer is too unbalanced, however.

Graphics:  Gears of War 3 is easily the best looking game on the Xbox 360 right now.  Environments are extremely detailed, but also more colorful and varied than in previous games.  Character models are still big and beefy (just like in prior games), but faces aren’t the most convincing I’ve ever seen.  Gears of War 3 is also the most violent and bloody game I’ve ever played, so don’t let kids play this.

Overall Fun Factor/Replay Value:  Gears of War 3 really shines in its Campaign, Horde, and Beast modes.  Versus is fun for a little while, but balancing issues mean you won’t be coming back to it a year from now.

Final Score:  9/10 (great)

Platforms: 

Developers:  Danger Close, DICE

Publisher:  Electronic Arts (EA)

Rating:  “M” for Mature

Review by Nick Cohen

Platform Reviewed on:  Xbox 360

A summer with very few major game releases is a great time to dip into your back catalog of videogames and play the games you haven’t yet had a chance to.  With the impending release of Battlefield 3 at the end of October, I decided that now would be a great time to crack open my Limited Edition copy of 2010’s Medal of Honor and see if EA has already made a legitimate Call of Duty contender.  The fact that I can now get into the Battlefield 3 beta two days earlier next month doesn’t hurt, either.  Is Medal of Honor a Call of Duty killer?  The short answer is no, but I did enjoy some aspects of Medal of Honor.

Medal of Honor is really two games in one; there’s a campaign and there’s multiplayer.  The two portions of gameplay vary wildly in quality thanks to two different developers (Danger Close and DICE, respectively), making for an uneven experience.  There is, however, one element that is in both portions of Medal of Honor—it’s darn fun to shoot guns in this game.

Medal of Honor undoubtedly features some of the best weapon firing sounds ever put into an FPS.  Every single gun sounds like it packs a major punch.  Supporting the great weapon sounds is a great feeling of power, weight, and realism when firing weapons.  When you shoot an enemy in the head with an assault rifle, you can almost feel the impact of bullet on flesh.  Medal of Honor absolutely nails what it feels like to fire powerful weaponry better than any other videogame I’ve played.  This is extremely important for a realistic modern military shooter, but the actual package built around the great core gameplay is often severely lacking.

As mentioned, Medal of Honor is really two different games in one.  I’ll begin with the first game:  the campaign.  Developed by recently-renamed internal EA studio Danger Close, Medal of Honor’s campaign runs on the Unreal Engine 3—the same engine that powers Gears of War.  This is strange, because Medal of Honor’s campaign is pretty darn ugly.  There’s a general level of fuzziness and jaggy textures that make the campaign look like it’s being played in high-definition on a PS2.  There are also plenty of visual bugs, like soldiers appearing out of nowhere right in front of you and floating corpses stuck in odd positions.  It’s not going to hurt your eyes, but the campaign doesn’t look like it was made for a major AAA FPS.  Instead, it looks like it was made by a smaller developer who didn’t have a lot of time for visual polishing.

Medal of Honor's campaign. It doesn't look this good in motion, trust me.

It does play well, however.  As mentioned, the core shooting gameplay is topnotch, and many of the levels are great.  The third level has you piloting an ATV from enemy camp to enemy camp, sneaking into each camp and trying to remain silent while you clear it of enemies.  In a later level, you are given an extremely powerful sniper rifle and must locate targets on a hillside, taking each one out with a gratifying headshot that pops their heads like watermelons.  Not all of the levels are equally great—the last level, in particular, has you facing off against endlessly respawning waves of generic enemies—but more levels are fun than are not fun.  I do wish that objectives had been more clear, though; I would sometimes get stuck and wander in circles because I missed the one line of dialogue explaining what I needed to do.  It’s too bad the campaign is over after only a few short hours, too; I was enjoying it.

The story is practically nonexistent.  There’s no overarching Call of Duty-style “bad guy” to defeat; this is a realistic tale of soldiers trying to survive in Afghanistan.  This works fine because Medal of Honor is going for a realistic feel.  You take control of a few characters, but one of the game’s flaws is that you don’t really have enough time to get to know any one of them because of the short length of the campaign and the fact that you bounce between characters so often.  If Medal of Honor’s campaign had been a couple hours longer, it may have been truly great.

In contrast to the mostly fun campaign, the multiplayer portion of Medal of Honor is a disaster.  Developed by DICE—the Swedish studio responsible for the excellent Battlefield series—Medal of Honor’s multiplayer is most easily summarized as a complete rip-off of Call of Duty.  The only major difference is that Call of Duty’s killstreaks have been replaced by scorechains, which are awarded for doing things such as killing enemies and capturing objectives.  It’s a good reward system, but the offensive scorechain rewards are too hard to use and ineffective.  Don’t expect to get many kills with mortar strikes and other offensive scorechains.

Medal of Honor's multiplayer may be pretty, but it's not fun.

Everything else in Medal of Honor’s multiplayer is exactly like Call of Duty, only worse.  There are no respawn timers in team deathmatch, but there aren’t any killcams, either, so snipers run amok.  There’s a persistent leveling system, but there aren’t enough things to unlock and they’re all unlocked in a linear progression.  There are only two respawn areas—one for each team—so you’ll often get killed by an enemy seconds after spawning, just like in Call of Duty.  I could go on and on, but you get the idea:  Medal of Honor’s multiplayer is like Call of Duty’s, but worse.

At least it looks fairly nice (unlike the campaign).  DICE is utilizing its acclaimed Frostbite engine in Medal of Honor’s multiplayer, so of course it looks good.  It doesn’t look as good as DICE’s own Battlefield:  Bad Company 2, but I’d say it looks a bit better than Call of Duty.  It’s just a shame that it doesn’t play well and won’t hold your attention as a result.  It doesn’t appear to have held anyone else’s attention, either; very few people are playing Medal of Honor online, making some game modes almost impossible to play.

Medal of Honor’s campaign is pretty good, but over too quickly.  The game’s multiplayer is a pathetic imitation of Call of Duty.  Put them together and you have a wildly inconsistent game, one that probably isn’t worth your time unless you’re bored like me and have nothing else to play.

Final score:  5/10

Breakdown:

Sound:  8 (The one area where Medal of Honor truly shines is in its sound design.  Guns all sound great–realistic and very powerful.  Dialogue is often drowned out by the gunfire, however.)

Storyline:  6 (The game features very little story.  You control a few U.S. soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.  It’s realistic and all that was needed, but I wish you spent more time getting to know each character.)

Gameplay:  6 (The core shooting itself is fun.  The campaign, despite having some rough patches, is pretty good.  The multiplayer is atrocious.)

Graphics:  5 (The multiplayer runs on DICE’s Frostbite engine, meaning it looks pretty good.  The campaign runs on Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 but looks surprisingly unpolished and dated.  There are much better-looking shooters out there.)

Overall Fun Factor/Replay Value:  4 (The campaign is pretty fun…for the five hours it takes to beat it.  There’s a Tier 1 mode that increases the difficulty and makes it about completing the missions while timed, but it’s not enough to make you want to play through the game again.  The multiplayer is horrible; you’ll play it for an hour or two if you’re a masochist and then be done with it.)

Final Thoughts

            Medal of Honor really isn’t worth your time unless you absolutely need to play every military FPS out there and/or have exhausted every other game you own.  The campaign is good, but it’s too short to make it worth the purchase on its own.  The multiplayer is a waste of your time.  My recommendation is to stick to playing Call of Duty or Battlefield and forget that Medal of Honor exists.

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Price for DLC: 800 Microsoft points ($10 on PSN)

Available for both Xbox 360 and PS3

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Platforms: 

Developer:  Team Bondi

Publisher:  Rockstar Games

Rating:  “M” for Mature

Review by Nick Cohen

Platform Reviewed on:  Xbox 360

Every once in a while, a game comes out that is so wholly unique, so unlike anything else, that it immediately grabs your attention.  A lot of them are smaller indie games–games like Limbo or Journey.  While small indie studios making unique games is great, what’s even better is when a large publisher/developer thinks of a wholly unique idea for a videogame and then is actually allowed to develop it into a retail product.  L. A. Noire is such a game; one that is so unique and such a huge risk for publisher Rockstar Games and developer Team Bondi that it’s a big surprise the game has seen a release.  What’s even more surprising, however, is just how good L. A. Noire is—this is without a doubt the best game released so far this year.

L. A. Noire is set in 1947 Los Angeles and tells the story of LAPD detective Cole Phelps.  Phelps is a medal recipient in World War II who is trying to clean up the often dangerous streets of L.A.  He doesn’t make for the most intriguing protagonist right away—he’s no Niko Bellic or John Marston—but, as the game goes on, you learn a lot about Phelps…and not all of it is good.

Phelps’ stint as a detective begins as a lowly patrolman, but players will guide him through the more interesting traffic, homicide, vice, and arson desks.  The patrol missions are simply quick tutorials meant to ease the player into the setting and gameplay mechanics of L. A. Noire.  Once you reach the traffic desk, however, the game begins in earnest.  Each desk has a number of cases, some of which are as short as a half-hour and some of which can take up to two hours, depending on a player’s skill at finding clues and interrogating witnesses (more on those later).  Each case feels like it could be its own self-contained movie, but over the course of the roughly 20 hours or so it takes to complete a single play through of L. A. Noire, players will experience an overarching story that slowly unravels its twists and turns.

In most games like this, players are limited to shooting enemies and driving around the environment.  L. A. Noire, on the other hand, places the emphasis on doing actual police work.  Sure, there are action sequences (all of which can be skipped if the player fails enough times at them):  there are extremely basic Grand Theft Auto 4-style shootouts and fistfights, there are exciting car and on-foot chases, there are boring car tailing segments, and there are a few extremely frustrating ‘tail suspect X’ on-foot segments—thankfully, the latter only show up a few times during the game.  The actual meat of the gameplay, however, consists of three main elements—driving, scouring crime scenes for clues, and the incredible interrogations that are the hallmark of L. A. Noire.

Meet Cole Phelps, L. A. Noire's protagonist.

You can choose to spend a lot of your time in L. A. Noire driving around the city.  I say “choose” because you can have your partner drive you from location to location if you don’t want to do so yourself, but you’d be missing out on a lot of the game’s content.  While there aren’t a ton of side missions to keep players busy like in Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption, L. A. Noire does feature 40 short “street crimes”.  Street crimes are essentially short action sequences that you’ll pick up by answering your police radio while driving around the city.  They’re short and aren’t very varied, but they do earn you experience points that level Phelps up.  As you level up, you’ll unlock things like extra outfits or intuition points that can be used in interrogations and to help find clues.  There are also plenty of hidden/rare vehicles to find around Los Angeles, though they’re not much of an incentive to explore since your basic police cars work just fine as transportation.

The real reason to drive around Los Angeles is to take in all of the meticulously recreated sights of the city.  You’ll discover tons of historic landmarks—such as the Hollywoodland sign (remember, this is 1947) and the Hall of Records—in exactly the spot you’d expect them to be.  You’ll also have a blast just cruising the streets and taking in the sights—the city exudes a ton of period-correct atmosphere and everything looks beautiful, despite the pop-up and graphical glitches that sometimes break the illusion.  Cruising down Vine Street or taking in the sights and sounds of the downtown area are some of the greatest thrills to be had in L. A. Noire.  Let your partner drive you everywhere and you’re missing out on a lot of what makes the game so great.

Of course, driving isn’t all you do in L. A. Noire.  You’ll do a lot of poking around crime scenes for clues that will help you in your investigation.  This is sure to be the most divisive element of L. A. Noire for many people, but I thoroughly enjoyed them.  You’ll spend most of your time during these sequences walking around and inspecting every object you come across.  By default, controller rumble and musical chimes kick in to let you know when you’ve walked over or near something of interest, though these can be disabled for those who so choose.  It’s a bit too easy to find every clue at a crime scene right away—especially since the music swells and then fades away once you’ve found every noteworthy clue—but the alternative is to spend hours looking for tiny objects on the screen, basically turning the whole ordeal into a glorified pixel hunt.  You can use an intuition point to highlight all clues at a crime scene, but I recommend saving them for the tougher interrogations unless you’re really stuck.

Once you find something of interest, you can have Phelps inspect whatever it is more closely.  If it’s a dead body, you can check the face, arms, and shirt/jacket pockets for clues using the right-analog stick to rotate the selected body part.  If it’s something like a can or a note, you can press A on the 360 controller to inspect the object further.  If you’re trying to find a particular detail on a larger clue, you have to move the right analog stick around until the controller shakes, at which point you hold the analog stick in the required direction until Phelps inspects the detail more closely.  It’s all very simple and engrossing, though Phelps’ animations can look a bit wooden as he bends over to look at a few objects on the ground and points at each until you decide which one to inspect more closely. A lot of times, you’ll just find something that isn’t helpful, which may or may not be indicated by a quip from Phelps.

The third and final major aspect of L. A. Noire’s gameplay is the interrogations.  The interrogations are the most impressive aspect of L. A. Noire and a huge part of why the game is so amazing.  You’ll be interrogating a witness/suspect whose face isn’t animated in the traditional sense; rather, each face belongs to an actual human being whom Team Bondi has recorded using innovative motion capture technology.  Each subtle movement and facial expression of the actor has found its way into the game, meaning you’ll be studying a freakishly-real character’s face in the hope of determining whether they’re lying to you or not.

Interrogations can be very intense in L. A. Noire.

You have a notebook that keeps track of all the clues you’ve found at crime scenes or coerced out of other suspects/witnesses.  This notebook also contains a list of questions you can ask each person during an interview.  You select a question, Phelps asks it, then the witness/suspect responds and it’s up to you whether to believe what that person says or not based upon that person’s face, the clues you’ve found, and your own instincts.  If you do believe what he/she has said, you select “Truth” and that person responds in an appropriate manner.  Select “Doubt” if you don’t believe what that person has told you and you’ll get a response in a similar way.  If you guessed correctly, the person may give up an important clue; if not, that person won’t give you anything and may even end the interrogation.  The last possible choice is to select “Lie,” in which case you have to choose the correct clue from your notebook that proves the person was lying.  If you select the wrong one, you won’t get anything out of that person.

Interrogations may sound simple, but they’re often extremely tough.  A little girl may not be hard to coerce information out of, but real-life mob boss Mickey Cohen certainly isn’t going to give up information so easily.  It doesn’t help that the game is sometimes unclear as to what you’re supposed to be responding to.  A person’s response to a question may be long and detailed, and then you’ll have to accuse that person of lying based upon an unclear element of that response.  It can be a little frustrating to think you’re accusing someone of lying about one thing only to have Phelps accuse him/her of lying based upon another piece of dialogue entirely.  If you get stuck, you can always use an intuition point to either remove a wrong selection or ask the Rockstar community (the latter requiring an Internet connection), but these intuition points never regenerate and you don’t get a ton of them, so they are best used wisely.

L. A. Noire represents a landmark achievement in videogame design.  Never before has a game made players feel like they’re doing actual police work instead of just shooting everything in sight.  The game’s innovative facial capture technology and Team Bondi’s incredibly detailed recreation of 1947 Los Angeles combine with innovative gameplay to create a game unlike any other.  While it won’t be for everyone, L. A. Noire is an innovative and incredibly fun game that represents a huge risk for Rockstar and Team Bondi.  What better way is there to reward them for their creativity and willingness to take risks than by purchasing L. A. Noire?  If you do, you’ll quickly discover that L. A. Noire is the best game of the year so far and one of the best games in years.  Don’t miss it.

Final score:  10/10

Breakdown:

Sound:  8 (The voice acting is superb and there are a ton of licensed music tracks from the 1940s.  Not all voice-acting is equally top notch, though, and the constant sound of police sirens can get on your nerves after a while.)

Storyline:  9 (While not immediately engrossing, the story is anchored by a cast of interesting support characters and reveals its depth slowly over time as the game unfolds.  There are plenty of twists to keep players interested in Cole Phelps’ rise through the LAPD.)

Gameplay:  10 (L. A. Noire is considerably slower-paced than most action games, but its three core elements—driving, searching for clues, and the amazing interrogations—provide a wholly unique and extremely entertaining gameplay package.  You’ve never played anything like L. A. Noire before.)

Graphics:  8 (Team Bondi’s amazing facial capture software means that people’s faces emote just like they do in real life, even if the rest of the character models aren’t as impressive.  The city of 1947 Los Angeles is extremely detailed—no expense was spared in recreating the city.  A black-and-white filter is available for those who prefer the visual style of early 20^th century noire films.  A few visual glitches, some stiff animations, and pop-up detract from the immersion somewhat.)

Overall Fun Factor/Replay Value:  9 (It won’t be for everyone, but those who get sucked into     L. A. Noire’s world won’t want to leave.  There’s no multiplayer, but 40 optional street crimes, hidden vehicles, and landmarks help add to the main game’s roughly 20 hours of playtime.)

Final Thoughts

If reading this review still hasn’t convinced you to buy L. A. Noire, you should at least rent it to see if it’s right for you.  L. A. Noire won’t be for everyone due to its slow pace and unique gameplay, but those who are at all interested in it for any reason are going to fall in love.  After playing through it, all I wanted to do was spend more time in the game’s world.  You won’t be able to stop thinking about it long after you put down the controller.  L. A. Noire is a great example of why more large publishers/developers need to take creative risks.  It’s the best game yet released in 2011.

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