Don't expect the PS4 anytime soon.

• Next Xbox not coming out in 2012, Sony waiting on Microsoft before announcing PS4:  Microsoft’s French marketing manager Cedrick Delmas recently told French news website Le Point.fr that the next Xbox won’t be released in 2012, noting that “The cycle of the Xbox 360 is by no means complete.”  Meanwhile, in an interview with the same French website, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s Phillipe Cardon says that Sony will be the last to announce its next system.

-Nick’s take:  Games like Battlefield 3prove that current-gen consoles need to be replaced.  With the next Xbox not coming out until at least 2013 and Sony’s PS4 not being released until after the next Xbox, however, it looks like gamers will have to stick to their current systems for now.  Expect Microsoft to at least drop hints about the next Xbox at E3 in June.  All eyes will be on the release of Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U (slated for an end of 2012 release) to see if there is consumer demand for new consoles.

THQ had a very rough week.

• THQ had a very rough week:  After vowing to ditch the family game market in favor of pursuing core gamers with franchises such as Saint’s Row and WWE, THQ had a terrible week that went from bad to worse.  On Tuesday, THQ was issued a warning from the NASDAW global securities market that its stock had been valued at less than $1 for more than 30 days and was now facing a delisting if THQ’s stocks don’t rebound to $1 or more by July 23.  Then, early Wednesday morning, the head of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Mobile Special Interest Group said that THQ had cut 170 employees.  That figure proved to be optimistic, however, as THQ noted later in the day that it had actually lain off 240 employees.  As a result, THQ CEO Brian Farrell will be taking a 50 percent pay cut.  Finally, on Thursday we learned that THQ had a horrible 2011 holiday quarter, with a total net loss of $55.9 million.  In a statement, Mr. Farrell noted that “Sales of the uDraw GameTablet and related software, and other titles in the kids, family and casual category were far weaker than anticipated, substantially reducing our financial results for the quarter.”

-Nick’s take:  Things weren’t all doom and gloom for THQ, as it was revealed that Saint’s Row the Third shipped 3.8 million copies so far and WWE ’12 has shipped more than 2 million copies.  Still, THQ is in trouble right now, and I’m not sure that focusing on the volatile hardcore market is the right way for THQ to rebound.  With solid franchises like Saint’s Row, Darksiders, and WWEunder its belt, however, maybe THQ can turn things around with a bit of luck and a new hit IP or two.

Bungie's website will no longer be updated with players' Halo data come March 31.

• Bungie.net ending Halo updates/features on March 31:  After Bungie officially handed the reins of the Halo franchise that it created to new Microsoft studio 343 Industries last year, fans could at least still go to Bungie.net for updated Halo player stats.  Come March 31, however, that will no longer be the case.  Bungie.net will still store all legacy Halo player data, however.  In addition to Halo player stats, the Bungie Pro service that gave hardcore players unlimited data storage for saving Halo videos and gametypes will no longer function starting March 31.  343 Industries—come March 31—will handle all updated Halo stats via its Halo franchise app, Halo Waypoint (available as a free download on Xbox Live).

 -Nick’s take:  This bit of news affects me personally, as Halo has been my favorite video game franchise ever since I first played Halo:  Combat Evolved back in 2001.  Bungie is working on what I believe to be an MMOFPS for next-gen consoles, so it’s understandable and expected that they would have to pass the burden of stat-tracking on to 343 at some point in time.  Halo seems to be in good hands at 343, but Bungie will always be the main reason Halo has been such a successful franchise.

Due to DRM, many PC/Mac Ubisoft games will be unplayable next week.

• DRM-equipped Ubisoft games to be unplayable on PC next week:  DRM (digital rights management) continues to be a hot-button topic in the PC gaming world.  Publishers and developers use DRM in an effort to combat piracy, while gamers argue that DRM doesn’t work and actually hurts legal customers of those games.  The anti-DRM crowd is getting another reason to hate DRM, as many of notorious DRM supporter Ubisoft’s PC and Mac DRM-equipped games—such as Might & Magic:  Heroes 6 and the Mac version of Assassin’s Creed—will be unavailable for play starting next Tuesday (February 7) due to server updates.  Ubisoft does not yet know when these games will become available for play again, either.

-Nick’s take:  Punishing legal video game purchasers is a big no-no, yet that’s exactly what DRM supporters like Ubisoft do.  It’s not like pirates haven’t already figured out how to crack the DRM and leak copies online before a game’s release, anyway.  This should be a wakeup call for Ubisoft; stop including invasive DRM in your games!

In Oklahoma, games with this sticker may soon be taxed.

• Oklahoma representative proposes new tax on violent video games:  Oklahoma state representative William Fourkiller wants to place a one-percent tax on any game rated “T” for Teen or higher by the ESRB.  The tax money would go towards programs aimed at preventing bullying and childhood obesity.

-Nick’s take:  “Violent video games contribute to some of our societal problems like obesity and bullying,” according to Mr. Fourkiller.  In other words, this tax is based upon one man’s opinion that is backed by very little (often contradictory) scientific data.  Preventing bullying and childhood obesity are noble goals, but they seem like red herrings meant to distract people from the shoddy science that is the very reason for this tax.  Taxing video games doesn’t make sense and always seems like a money grab, especially in this case where Teen rated games would be taxed.

New Sony president/CEO Kaz Hirai

• Kaz Hirai named president and CEO of Sony:  Current president of Sony Computer Entertainment International Kaz Hirai will replace current Sony president Howard Stringer as president and CEO of Sony on April 1.  Hirai was instrumental in launching the PS2 and PS3 for Sony, as well as infamous for giving the world the “Rrriiiidddge Racer!” meme at E3 a few years back.

-Nick’s take:   Congratulations to Mr. Hirai for his big promotion.  He’s been instrumental in the PlayStation brand’s success at Sony and will surely put video games near the top of Sony’s priorities going forward.

Platforms: 

Developer:  Bethesda Game Studios

Publisher:   Bethesda Softworks

Rating:  “M” for Mature

Written by Nick Cohen

Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim is probably the most talked-about game of 2011.  Amidst all of the hype for Call of Duty and Battlefield, Skyrim launched on November 11, 2011 (11-11-11, get it?) to heaps of critical praise and would go on to win numerous game of the year awards.  In my “Top 10 Games of 2011” list, however, the game only came in at #6, having been beaten by other RPGs such as Deus Ex:  Human Revolution (#4) and Dark Souls (#5).  Now that I’ve played much more of Skyrim, here are my thoughts.

The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim is a massive game.  It’s far and away the most epic game I’ve ever played in terms of size and scope.  Everything you’ve probably heard about this game’s impressive scale is true; there are literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of content in Skyrim.  I’ve put over 100 hours into the game so far, yet I feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the game has in store for me.

Besides the game’s massive scope, the main reason I believe that Skyrim took home so many game of the year awards is the huge number of “water cooler” moments.  “Water cooler” moments are those moments in a game that get people talking; think of Uncharted 2’s train sequence or Dead Space’s ending as examples of these.  Skyrim has more “water cooler” moments than perhaps any other game in history.  The first time you fight a dragon, that dungeon you stumble upon that plays host to a group of vampires, the first time you manage to barely take down a Giant; all of these moments (and many more) will get you talking/bragging to your friends.

Then again, the game’s amazing moments aren’t its only “water cooler” moments; unfortunately, Skyrim may or may not resemble a car that has seen far too many miles of hard driving.  Glitches abound in my copy of the game; I’ve experienced everything from funny bugs such as mammoths floating in midair to game-crippling things such as numerous crashes and an entire dungeon that was plagued by the worst slowdown I’ve ever experienced in a video game.  I’ve also had an interesting quest become far less interesting due to bugs that caused it to not function properly, causing numerous resets and forcing me to scour message boards for answers.  The strangest thing about all this is that numerous people I’ve talked to have had no problems with the game whatsoever.  The PS3 version is reportedly the worst in terms of bugs, but playing any version is like playing a game of Russian roulette—you don’t know whether the game is going to work properly or whether it’s going to be nearly unplayable.

Skyrim's story revolves around the reemergence of dragons, not that you'll be paying any attention to the story.

When things are working right—as they have for me approximately 80% of the time—Skyrim can be an incredibly immersive experience.  Walking around just taking in the sights is a ton of fun, as are completing quests and fighting monsters.  The game has a solid RPG foundation that is both deep and incredibly accessible—even if you’ve never played an RPG before, I think you could understand the basics of how to play this game.

The thing that still gets me is that I’m not always having fun in Skyrim; the world is huge and there’s a ton of stuff to do, but I’m not fighting for my life every second like I am in Dark Souls or getting into amazing multiplayer matches on a consistent basis like I am in Battlefield 3.  The big question to ask yourself about Skyrim is this:  Would you rather have a ton of fun every single minute you play a game for 10-40 hours (depending on the game), or would you rather have 100 hours of exciting stuff to do counterbalanced by 100 hours of boredom?  If you answered “constant fun,” then Skyrim is still worthy of a look, but probably won’t be your game of the year (as it wasn’t mine).  If you answered “epic amount of good but not great gameplay,” then you should go out and buy Skyrim right now.

I’ve now put over 100 hours into my Xbox 360 copy of The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim.  Looking back at my “Top 10 Games of 2011” list, would I change Skyrim’s position?  Nope.  It’s a great game, but in a year like 2011 that was absolutely packed with great games, Skyrim is certainly not the best.  Of course, I still have tons to do and see in the game, so maybe things will change.  Keep checking back at GamingMoments.net for my full review sometime in the future.

1.  L. A. Noire:  I gave L. A. Noire a perfect “10″ review score earlier in the year and said that it was the best game I’d played up to that point in time.  I was fairly certain that something would topple it–Uncharted 3 or Skyrim, perhaps?–but nothing in the latter half of the year eclipsed L. A. Noire.  This is the game that, when I look back on the year, really sticks out for me.  It’s unlike any game I’ve ever played; there are action scenes, sure, but they’re not the main focus of the game.  In fact, players can skip over action scenes entirely after failing them a few times if they just want to experience the story and characters.  The main focus of L. A. Noire lies in actual detective work.  As detective Cole Phelps, you search for clues at crime scenes and then interrogate witnesses/suspects.  The whole process feels like an evolution of the old-school PC point-and-click adventure titles of the ’90s.  The now defunct Team Bondi’s amazing facial capture technology allows for real facial movement and expressions when interrogating people–it’s like you really are interrogating someone.  The entire thing is woven around a pitch-perfect recreation of 1947 Los Angeles, too.  Those expecting another Rockstar game along the lines of Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption are bound to be disappointed, but open your mind a bit to something new and you’ll have a unique experience you’ll never forget.

2.  Portal 2:  The original Portal released back in 2007 as a small part of Valve’s The Orange Box compilation.  The game was short and weird, so Valve wasn’t sure if Portal would be a success as a standalone release.  As we all know now, of course, Portal was a breakout success, outshining even Half-Life 2:  Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 as the best reason to own The Orange Box.  When Valve announced that Portal 2 was going to be a standalone full-priced release, many gamers were skeptical.  The first game was great, true, but it was also extremely short and didn’t exactly seem like a game that needed a sequel.  Thankfully, Portal 2 is an unquestionable success that outdoes its predecessor in every way.  Portal 2 is much longer than the first game and features even better puzzle design built around new gameplay mechanics, but that’s not what makes it such a standout game.  Instead, it’s the story that reveals much of Aperture Science’s history and the hilarious new characters that really make Portal 2 rise above many other games released this year.  The hilarious and treacherous Wheatley–deftly voiced by British comedian Stephen Merchant–alone is enough to earn Portal 2 the #2 spot on my list.

3.  Battlefield 3:  Ask most gamers about Battlefield 3 and they’ll most likely say something about the game’s graphics.  It’s true that Battlefield 3–especially on the PC–is the best-looking game I’ve ever seen.  However, it’s the large-scale online battles that truly make Battlefield 3 a must for any FPS fan.  You haven’t experienced anything quite like Battlefield 3‘s enormous 64 player battles that mix infantry and vehicles together with outstanding gameplay and the best audio/visual presentation around.  Call of Duty is downright boring next to the dynamic chaos that occurs all around you in Battlefield 3‘s biggest skirmishes.  Those seeking a tighter focus can play smaller infantry-only Team Deathmatch and Squad Rush modes, too, meaning there’s something here for every multiplayer FPS fan to get into.  The bland campaign and afterthought co-op are disappointments, for sure, but Battlefield 3‘s outstanding competitive multiplayer offerings more than make up for any of its deficiencies.

4.  Deus Ex:  Human Revolution:  When I sat down to write this list, I knew right away what my top three games would be.  Coming up with number four, however, was tricky.  I knew it’d be an RPG–but which RPG?  There were a ton of great RPGs this year, including the extraordinarily popular critic darling Skyrim.  Yet, the RPG that I had the most fun with this year–and one of only two I’ve finished so far–is definitely Deus Ex:  Human Revolution.  Deus Ex isn’t even a good RPG in many ways–its story is generic, its characters are uninteresting, and the voice acting is absolutely horrendous.  Yet, Deus Ex is a ton of fun and allows you to mold protagonist Adam Jensen any way you see fit.  Want to focus on sneaking around and hacking into computers?  Feel free to do so.  Want to go in guns blazing like Rambo?  I don’t recommend it, but you can if you’d like, particularly later in the game.  Want to talk your way out of most situations?  You can do that, too.  Deus Ex:  Human Revolution allows you to play the game however you’d like while having a lot of fun doing so–and isn’t that the main point of an RPG?

5.  Dark Souls:  ‘Oh, come on now Nick, this is getting absurd.  Another RPG beats  Skyrim?  And it’s a ridiculously hard RPG that only the most masochistic gamers are going to enjoy?  This list is utter nonsense and I’m done reading it.’  Wait, impatient reader, hear me out!  Skyrim will be next on this list, I promise.  Besides, Dark Souls is a better game than Skyrim.  Why?  Simple; Dark Souls is better-looking, more unique, more challenging, and ultimately, more fun to play.  Sure, it’s not as massive as Skyrim, but Dark Souls has a truly unique open world that is gorgeous to look at and features a smorgasbord of incredible environments to explore and creepily designed enemies to fight.  Just wait until you see the hideous bosses that await you in the depths of Dark Souls‘ deepest sewers, castles, and forests.  Dark Souls‘ Lordran is infinitely more creative and impressive to behold than Skyrim‘s generic Nordic-inspired world.  Better still, Dark Souls features easily the best combat in any RPG.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Dark Souls has combat that is on par–if not even better–than an action game like God of War or Devil May Cry.  The barrier to entry is extremely steep thanks to a merciless difficulty level and deep systems that aren’t explained anywhere in the game or in the game’s manual, but those who are brave enough to take up the challenge that Dark Souls provides will find the most creative and memorable RPG in years.

6.  The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim:  The popular choice for best game of the year, Skyrim needs no introduction.  Everybody knows what to expect heading into this game–a massive world, deep RPG systems, streamlined leveling, hundreds of hours worth of great gameplay, and dragons.  Skyrim is so massive that you can put 200 hours into it and still not have seen everything the game has to offer.  The combat is much improved over previous games in The Elder Scrolls series, too, having some sense of weight and allowing for dual-wielding of weapons and spells.  The flipside of all this–and the thing that nobody seems willing to admit–is that Skyrim can be downright boring.  In other games, I almost always have something fun to do.  In Skyrim, though, I spend an ungodly amount of time aimlessly wandering around and searching for something to explore.  I’ve spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 hours playing Skyrim so far, and at least 15 hours of that time has been spent either wandering the world in search of adventure or talking to the boring townsfolk that inhabit the game’s cities and villages in the hopes of picking up a new quest.  When Skyrim gets exciting, though, it gets really exciting; dragons swoop down out of nowhere and attack, frost trolls chase you up mountains, and a cave may be a secret vampire lair.  Skyrim is a game that is the very definition of the word ‘massive:’  I just wish it was also the very definition of the word ‘fun.’

7.  Uncharted 3:  Drake’s Deception:  This one really hurts me.  Seriously, the amount of emotional pain I feel over Uncharted 3 is downright depressing.  It’s not because Uncharted 3 is an emotionally downbeat game, either; the pain I feel is that of disappointment.  No other game in 2011 disappointed me as much as Uncharted 3 did, not even Crysis 2 (which didn’t make this list for a reason).  Uncharted 3‘s direct predecessor–the phenomenal Uncharted 2:  Among Thieves–is the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to a perfect game and probably the best game released last decade.  It really was this good; if you ask me what needed changing in Uncharted 2, I’d give you a blank stare for a couple minutes while eventually stumbling out with “….um, the final boss could have been better, I guess?”  Ask me what could have been better about Uncharted 3 and I’ll talk to you nonstop about frustrating enemy encounters and pathetic enemy A.I..  Remember the awesome-looking cruise ship level that Naughty Dog demoed at E3?  It’s not fun at all thanks to a bunch of combat scenarios that involve lots of heavily-armored enemies that require multiple magazines worth of ammo to take down and seemingly-endless waves of enemies in tight locations.  The cruise ship section isn’t the only part of the game that is this frustrating, either; the entire middle half of the game is this way.  The entire game suffers from what may well be the worst enemy A.I. I have ever seen–these morons run back and forth in straight lines in the open when tons of cover is right next to them, begging to be shot.  It’s a complete shame, too, as Uncharted 3 manages to look even better than the last game and has some of the best scenarios I’ve ever experienced in a game, including an amazing sequence where Drake wanders the desert and the best chase sequence in any entertainment medium.  The characters, dialogue, puzzles, climbing sections–all are top-notch and put every other game to shame.  When Uncharted 3 is firing on all cylinders, no other game can touch it in terms of spectacle and fun factor.  It’s a shame that the atrocious A.I. and extremely frustrating difficulty make this my least favorite Uncharted game.

8.  The Witcher 2:  Assassins of Kings:  The last RPG on this list–and the last one worth playing this year–The Witcher 2 is every PC fanboy’s dream come true.  Exclusive to the PC for now (an Xbox 360 port is supposedly coming next year), The Witcher 2 leverages the power of gaming PCs to produce stunning visuals with the best character models ever seen.  The lighting effects and environment design look great, too.  The game suffers a bit from being generic high fantasy–it’s The Lord of the Rings with more sex– and there are quite a few annoying bugs (every time I tried to play the dice poker minigame, the game would crash on me), but the characters and dialogue are well-written and feel real.  The combat is supposedly inspired by Demon’s Souls‘, but it’s not nearly as good or as challenging.  It’s fun, though, and extremely deep.  In fact, The Witcher 2 is easily the deepest RPG I’ve yet played–there’s no pointless streamlining here.  Alchemy, crafting, magic, combat, skill trees, dialogue choices, decisions that literally change the game you experience; it’s all extremely deep and obviously made for a PC audience who grew up with classic BioWare RPGs such as Bauldur’s Gate.  It’s a bit tough to get into, sure–the tutorial throws everything at you at once, and there’s barely any time to get adjusted before you’re fighting for your life–but this game isn’t Dark Souls and won’t require constant dying on your part once you get the hang of things.  If you want to experience the deepest RPG around and have a decent gaming PC, The Witcher 2 is what you’re looking for.

9.  Gears of War 3:  The final part of Epic’s fantastic trilogy, Gears of War 3 isn’t terribly innovative; instead, it improves upon what’s already in the franchise.  Thought the story and characters of the first two Gears games were boring and flat?  Not so with Gears 3–this game has the most touching and heartfelt moment I’ve experienced in a game this year.  Seriously.  The graphics are even better than in the last two games, making for one of the best-looking games you can buy.  The cooperative Horde 2.0, four-player co-op through the campaign, and new Beast modes provide the best co-operative gameplay of the year.  The competitive multiplayer is unbalanced and keeps the game from placing even higher on this list, but everything else the game does is topnotch.  Even if you weren’t a big fan of the previous Gears of War games, you owe it to yourself to play Gears of War 3.

10.  Rayman Origins:  The last slot on my list could have gone to any number of great games released this year, including Dead Space 2 and Mortal Kombat.  Instead, I chose to highlight the best game that’s going to get buried under the avalanche of huge holiday releases, Rayman Origins.  Rayman Origins is a beautiful 2D platformer that features extremely creative level design and gorgeous graphics.  It’s also challenging–just the way I like my platformers–and has great replay value thanks to four-player co-op and a huge amount of secrets to find.  The game’s a bit short to be a full-priced $60 release, but GameStop is now offering the game for sale at $30 brand new.  If you like games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns, you’ll love Rayman Origins.

Hmm, that’s an interesting question.  I think that I can identify two distinct reasons why I’m having a better go at Dark Souls than I ever did with Demon’s Souls.  The main reason for this, I think, is that I’ve made a better character with better-allocated skill points.  You see, in Demon’s Souls I made the mistake of choosing a character class that I would normally do well with—the knight, basically the equivalent of a “tank” class in MMOs.  You know what I mean by this—a character with heavy armor and weapons that is as slow as a snail and meant to wade right into combat and hack away at enemies.  The trouble with this is that Demon’s Souls—and, by extension, Dark Souls—isn’t set up to be played this way.  I don’t care if you’re wearing armor made out of dragon scales—the enemies in these games will absolutely destroy you if you try to take them on headfirst.  You have to be able to block their attacks with a good shield and, if that fails, evade out of the way of their attacks.

The trouble with the knight class is that all that heavy armor weighs them down to the point where they can’t effectively dodge out of the way.  I’ve seen the slow roll evade practiced by knights described as the “fatty roll,” which is a pretty good descriptor.  The fatty roll is so slow that it’s next to impossible to evade attacks.  This made getting anywhere in Demon’s Souls nearly impossible for me.

To counter this, I picked the default Warrior class for Dark Souls.  Supposedly, the best way for n00bs to start out is with a ranged character, preferably a magic user.  That way, you can avoid getting close to enemies.  However, staying away and peppering enemies with spells or arrows just isn’t the way I like to play RPGs.  Give me a big sword and shield and let me wade into the fray!  Picking the warrior class has allowed me to do just that, but I’m also agile enough to quickly roll out of harm’s way should I need a breather.

The other reason I’ve having an easier time with Dark Souls is that the bosses have been easier for me.  The first boss was really easy thanks to an effective trick—simply climb up onto a tower and use the new falling attack that does tons of damage on the Taurus Demon a few times and voila!  Easy victory.  The Moonlight Butterfly seemed tough at first, but once I figured out that I could hit it more effectively by two-handing my sword I made quick work of it.  It still wasn’t easy—one of its attacks hit me almost every time—but most of its attacks were easily dodged and the Moonlight Butterfly was completely defenseless at times.

That’s not to say that all enemies are easy.  The second boss encounter I faced—the Bell Gargoyles—was extremely challenging.  You see, at first there would be just one Gargoyle.  His attacks would do tremendous damage, but it was easy to roll of their way or block them and counterattack.  However, once the Gargoyle was down to about half health, another would fly in and start breathing fire that was impossible to block.  The fire was easy to avoid, true, but having to deal with it plus the other Gargoyle was almost unbearable.

This is the first Bell Gargoyle you fight. Another one enters the battle once you bring this one down to half health.

I spent hours trying to fruitlessly kill those darn Bell Gargoyles until I stumbled upon the weapon enhancement feature.  You see, Dark Souls doesn’t explain a lot of its systems (something I’ll get into more in-depth later).  I didn’t even know I could upgrade weapons at blacksmiths until I really dug into the menus.  For a fairly cheap amount of souls—the game’s currency—I could make my lowly sword into a powerful death-dealer.  All I needed to do was grind the enemies in the area for souls until I could upgrade it a few times.

Grinding didn’t take me long thanks to the abundance of enemies in the area.  Once I had enough souls to upgrade my sword to the point where I thought I was ready to tackle the Gargoyles—I upgraded my sword from doing 61 damage per swing to doing 106 damage per swing; a huge upgrade!—I made my way to the roof where the Gargoyles were. An epic fight ensued—it probably lasted a good 45 minutes—and it wasn’t easy.  One misstep could send me flying off the roof to my death or right into a Gargoyle’s flames, but my upgraded sword was tearing into their flesh with aplomb.  I had 10 Estus Flasks (healing potions) at the start of the fight thanks to a kindled bonfire, but I used them all in defeating the first Gargoyle.  After I defeated that one, it was down to a one-on-one fight between me—with half health and no Estus Flasks—and a Bell Gargoyle with about 25% health remaining.  I lured the Gargoyle into breathing fire—which causes it to stand in place for a long time—and went to work on his body with my upgraded sword.  I came very close to stepping off the edge at one point—what fun that would have been!—and I was sweating and could barely breathe, but I finally managed to kill it and ring the bell that signaled my victory.

The victory against the Bell Gargoyles gave me a sense of satisfaction that is completely unique to Dark Souls.  When I’d finally managed to defeat them and ring the bell after hours of getting my butt kicked, I felt like a gaming god.  Sure, blowing up a tank in Battlefield 3 or completing a sidequest in The Witcher 2 is rewarding, but Dark Souls’ boss fights are so tough that you feel unbeatable after defeating one.  Of course, this lasts for all of about 15 minutes, and then you run into a new area with enemies so tough that they beat you to a bloody pulp in mere seconds.

After beating three bosses, I ran into a guy that inducted me into a covenant (the benefits of being in this covenant aren’t entirely clear, I might add) and was then willing to sell me Miracles.  Miracles are spells that require a stat called Faith.  By spending 4,000 souls, I was able to buy a healing miracle that I hoped would help me out.  I leveled my Faith stat up to the required 12 and equipped the talisman necessary to cast miracles.  Instead of healing myself, however, I did nothing.  Huh?  I tried everything—equipping the talisman in my right hand, trying to select the healing spell in the menu—but nothing worked.  There is absolutely no mention in the manual or in the game itself of why this Miracle shouldn’t be working for me.  You see, Dark Souls is one of those games that make you figure out most of its systems—the tutorial teaches you very basic combat controls and nothing else.  If you don’t like experimenting and discovering how a game works on your own, Dark Souls is not the game for you.

So, that’s where I am now.  I’ve wasted a ton of souls buying a healing Miracle that I don’t know how to use and have come up against a brick wall in the form of the Capra Demon.  The Capra Demon is a boss in a new area called the Undead Burg.  The Undead Burg lies underneath the first area you explore and is filled with numerous quick-moving enemies that will make you bleed if you allow them to.  The Capra Demon seems like it’s not going to go down easily—stay tuned for journal entry #3 to see if I’ve managed to defeat the Capra Demon and make my way to a new area of Dark Souls.

The star of NBC’s show Chuck, Zachary Levi, was the host of the VGAs this year.  He proved to be a decent choice; he seemed to know what he was talking about and even cracked a few funny jokes.  Sure, his opening video sketch was terrible, but these things usually are, right?  At least Spike didn’t go with some completely random host like they sometimes have in the past.  Artist Deadmau5 was on hand–complete with goofy mouse headgear–to provide some techno music (I think it’s techno?) to fade to commercials with.

The first award of the night went to Batman:  Arkham City.  The game won for best action/adventure against stiff competition from the sequel to 2009′s game of the year, Uncharted 3:  Drake’s Deception.  Next up was a big reveal trailer for PS3 exclusive The Last of Us.  When I first heard of the game’s existence, I was praying it wasn’t just another zombie game.  Well, it is another zombie game…from developer Naughty Dog (the Uncharted series).  No actual gameplay footage or details were shown, but judging by the CG trailer, the game appears to be heavily inspired by the Will Smith movie I Am Legend.  The Last of Us seems to focus on survival in a world overrun by the undead (hence the movie similarities) and is being developed by one of the best video game developers in the world, but do we really need another zombie game?

Mass Effect 3 was announced as the winner of the viewer’s choice most anticipated game award (not BioShock Infinite?).  A new trailer was shown featuring in-game footage that focused on a Reaper–the giant alien/machine hybrids that are the main threat in the Mass Effect series–fighting a giant worm reminiscent of the sand worms from Dune.  The game looked action-packed, but Mass Effect 3 is supposed to be an RPG–where are the role-playing elements, BioWare?  BioWare also revealed its new project to be Command and Conquer Generals 2.  A very brief CG trailer was shown that revealed the game will use the Frostbite 2 engine that powers Battlefield 3 and that Generals 2 won’t be releasing until 2013.  No other details were announced.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6:  Patriots was also given a brief CG trailer with no gameplay footage.  I feel bad for anyone watching the VGAs just to see Rainbow 6 footage–what a complete letdown.  A new game that we got a much more intriguing glimpse of is Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, an upcoming downloadable Xbox Live Arcade game.  Incorrectly rumored to be named “Alan Wake:  Night Springs,” American Nightmare looks like a full-blown sequel to the underrated Xbox 360 exclusive horror/thriller Alan Wake, no matter what developer Remedy Entertainment has said.  If you haven’t played the original game, I suggest you do so; it plays like a Stephen King novel with third-person shooter gameplay.  Maybe American Nightmare won’t be as long or as in-depth as the original Alan Wake game, hence it not being called a direct sequel?  Regardless, I’m really excited about Alan Wake’s American Nightmare and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the gameplay footage shown at the VGAs.

Legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto (The Legend of Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Pikmin–how’s that for a resume?) walked on-stage to induct the Legend of Zelda series into the “Video Game Hall of Fame.”  I’m fairly certain that other video game halls of fame exist, but Zelda is apparently the first inductee into the VGA Hall of Fame (?).  Despite my confusion, it was great to see Miyamoto-san on-stage, especially in light of all of the rumors concerning his position at Nintendo this past week.  A trailer for open-world movie game The Amazing Spider-Man was next.  It….looked like a Spider-Man game.

Pro wrestler Hulk Hogan was on-hand to introduce a video package showcasing a whole bunch of awards that were quickly glossed over.  Among these,  Uncharted 3:  Drake’s Deception won for best PS3 game and best graphics–apparently, no one voting on these things has played Battlefield 3 on a decent computer yet.  In fact, Battlefield 3 also lost the coveted multiplayer game of the year award–seemingly a shoo-in for Battlefield 3–to….Portal 2?  What the…?  Rock band The Black Keys (who?) then performed a song.  The best part of the performance was the reaction shots of Miyamoto-san and actor/comedian Seth Green, who looked confused as to why a video game awards show had a rock band performing who have nothing to do with video games.

The 2011 Video Game Awards were broadcast live on Spike from 8-10 p.m. Eastern on 12/10/2011

Leggy ex-WWE Diva Stacy Keibler (I’m a big wrestling fan, so I know who these people are) was on stage next to show off a CG trailer for the upcoming game Transformers:  Fall of Cybertron.  The game is being billed as the sequel to last year’s third-person shooter Transformers:  War for Cybertron and is unrelated to the Michael Bay films.  Completing the VGA shutout of excellent first-person shooter Battlefield 3, Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 3 took home the award for best shooter.  Look, I know that video game tastes are subjective, but Modern Warfare 3 is almost identical to Modern Warfare 2, whereas Battlefield 3 brings multiplayer shooters to a whole new level.  Battlefield 3 is generally considered to be the far-better game by those who’ve played it, especially the PC version; maybe it lost due to it’s polarizing campaign?

Infamous developer Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski (Gears of War) took the stage to show off Epic Games’ new IP Fortnite.  In stark contrast to the gory shooters like Gears of War and Unreal that Epic is best known for, Fortnite looks cartoony and less violent.  Epic didn’t share many concrete details about the game, but CliffyB made Fortnite sound similar to PC indie sensation Minecraft.  Next up was the oddly named Gamer God award, presented to Blizzard Entertainment.  A montage video showed off the developer’s many successful franchises–World of WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.  A few members of Blizzard then took the stage to show off the stunning CG opening cinematic for Diablo III.  I was never a big fan of Diablo or Blizzard’s other franchises, but the Diablo III cinematic was stunning.

Stunning female video gamer/celebrity Felicia Day next went on-stage to show off an amazing trailer for Irrational’s highly-anticipated BioShock Infinite.  The game wowed critics at E3 with its amazing demo, and it wowed the VGA audience tonight, as well.  After BioShock Infinite, the publicly voted award for character of the year went to Mark Hamill’s gleefully sadistic portrayal of The Joker in Batman:  Arkham City.  I think the absolutely hilarious robot Wheatley from Valve’s first-person puzzle game Portal 2 (voiced by British comedian Stephen Merchant) should have taken the award, but The Joker’s win video showed a teaser for Arkham City‘s possible sequel, Batman:  Arkham World.  Is this merely a joke from developer Rocksteady Studios or a hint at what’s next for Batman?

The last–and biggest–award of the night was Game of the Year.  There were five nominees, all great games:  Batman:  Arkham City,  The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim, The Legend of Zelda:  Skyward Sword, Portal 2, and Uncharted 3:  Drake’s Deception.  Only one game could win the award, and Bethesda’s massive open world RPG The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim was that game.  While I haven’t played it yet, Skyrim has become an addiction for millions of gamers and has even managed to best big-name FPS games Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 in a number of key areas relating to popularity.  The game is selling like hotcakes at retailers and is the talk of the gaming world right now.  I predicted that Skyrim had the greatest chance of winning game of the year, but I also thought that Batman and Uncharted had legitimate shots, as well.

The VGAs wrapped up with a new look at the renamed Metal Gear Rising:  Revengeance.  Kojima Productions’ head honcho and namesake Hideo Kojima took the stage to awkwardly introduce the trailer.  Kojima-san doesn’t speak English very well and seemed nervous, but the trailer was awesome.  Developed by Platinum Games (Bayonetta, Shadows of the Damned, Vanquish), Metal Gear Rising is an extremely violent and over-the-top action game that seems to have shades of Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden franchise.  I’m not a fan of previous Metal Gear Solid games, but Metal Gear Rising looks like a ton of fun.  It’s too bad that the Metal Gear Rising trailer leaked online hours before the VGAs started, as it was supposed to be the night’s biggest reveal.

Overall, I’d say the VGAs were a mixed bag this year.  I like Skyrim as Game of the Year, but why shut out Battlefield 3 and have celebrities that have nothing to do with gaming taking up so much air time?  A few stupid skits went on far too long, too; this time would have been better spent focusing on the smaller awards.  Some games’ reveals really disappointed, as well.  It could have been better, but the 2011 Video Game Awards also could have been much worse (as it has been in previous years).  If you haven’t seen it yet on TV, I’d say don’t bother–now that you’ve read my thoughts on the event, look up the reveal trailers online and skip all the filler stuff in-between.

*list of 2011 VGA (Video Game Awards) winners:

• Game of the Year:  The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim
• Studio of the Year:  Bethesda Game Studios (The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim)
• Best Xbox 360 Game:  Batman:  Arkham City
• Best PS3 Game:  Uncharted 3:  Drake’s Deception
• Best Wii Game:  The Legend of Zelda:  Skyward Sword
• Best PC Game:  Portal 2
• Best Handheld/Mobile Game:  Super Mario 3D Land
• Best Shooter:  Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 3
• Best Action/Adventure Game:  Batman:  Arkham City
• Best RPG:  The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim
• Best Multiplayer:  Portal 2
• Best Individual Sports Game:  Fight Night Champion
• Best Team Sports Game:  NBA 2K12
• Best Driving Game:  Forza Motorsport 4
• Best Fighting Game:  Mortal Kombat
• Best Motion Game:  The Legend of Zelda:  Skyward Sword
• Best Independent Game:  Minecraft
• Best Adapted Video Game:  Batman:  Arkham City
• Best Song in a Game:  “Build that Wall (Zia’s Theme)” from Bastion
• Best Original Score:  Bastion
• Best Graphics:  Uncharted 3:  Drake’s Deception
• Best Performance by a Human Male:  Stephen Merchant as Wheatley in Portal 2
• Best Performance by a Human Female:  Ellen McLain as GlaDOS in Portal 2
• Best Downloadable Game:  Bastion
• Best DLC:  “Peer Review” for Portal 2
• Cover Athlete for EA Sports’ NFL Blitz:  Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens (public vote)
• Character of the Year:  The Joker in Batman:  Arkham City (public vote)
• Most Anticipated Game:  Mass Effect 3 (public vote)
• GameTrailers.com’s Trailer of the Year:  Assassin’s Creed:  Revelations E3 2011 Trailer

Platforms:  PS3, Xbox 360

Developer:  From Software

Publisher:  Namco Bandai Games

Rating:  “M” for Mature

Written by:  Nick Cohen

Platform played on:  Xbox 360

In lieu of an actual review of Dark Souls—I’m not sure I will ever be able to beat the game, which is necessary for a full review—I’m going to keep and update a journal of my time spent in Dark Souls.  I’ll give you my impressions of the game and also update you on my progress (or lack thereof) with each post.  Please note that spoilers lie ahead with each journal entry, as they’re necessary to tell you what I’ve been doing in the game.  I’m not sure how often I’ll update this journal, and some updates may not be too exciting since it’s likely that there will be periods of time where I’m not making any significant progress, but I will try my best to pump these out on a semi-regular basis for as long as I play Dark Souls.  Come join me on my ambitions adventure.

Dark Souls is hard.  It’s really, really hard.

Dark Souls is a game unlike any other, with the exception of its predecessor, Demon’s Souls.  Whereas most games nowadays are relatively easy compared to most games on the NES or even the original PlayStation, Dark Souls is actually harder than games on those classic consoles.  In my brief (roughly three hours) time spent playing Dark Souls so far, I’ve died countless times.  I’ve fell off cliffs, died twice in the game’s tutorial, been poisoned by rats, and been hit by exploding firebombs.  Yet, I still keep coming back for more.

You see, Dark Souls is extraordinarily tough, but it’s also a ton of fun and very rewarding.  When you die in this game, you know why, and it motivates you to do better next time.  A typical life in Dark Souls involves starting out at a bonfire—the game’s checkpoints.  These bonfires will heal you and restock your supply of Estus Flasks (re:  healing potions), but they will also respawn most enemies (only bosses don’t respawn).  You will walk for a few feet and get attacked by a swarm of enemies.  You will die.

You will respawn back at the bonfire with newfound knowledge of what lies ahead for you.  Maybe you will overcome this challenge; maybe you won’t.  If you don’t, you will respawn back at the bonfire and have to try all over again.  If you do conquer the challenge, you will continue on for a little bit until you run into a group of enemies or a trap that will kill you, forcing a respawn.  Things will continue on this way for a while until you eventually have the knowledge of what lies ahead and the skills needed to overcome the challenges necessary to encounter a boss.  The first time you encounter this boss, you will die.  Most likely, you will also die on the second attempt.  And the third.  It will probably take many failed attempts, but eventually you will defeat the boss and feel like the best gamer on the planet…that is, until you encounter the next challenge.

That’s how my first few hours with the game have been so far—I’ve died over and over again, but have managed to escape the tutorial area and defeat the first true boss (the Taurus Demon).  With each death, I’ve gained the knowledge necessary to progress a bit further—all it takes after that is good execution of a strategy to overcome the challenges.  My Warrior character (you customize your character before starting the game proper, choosing from a variety of classes with different stats) is outfitted with decent swords and a good shield, but he also lacks any arrows or magic spells.  This has forced me to attack each enemy up-close-and personal.

The Taurus Demon is the game's first boss. As a result, it only took me about 15-20 deaths to overcome.

Thankfully, the combat system in Dark Souls is topnotch.  Dark Souls may be an RPG, but the combat is better than in most action games.  There’s a certain weight to each sword strike that makes fighting both fun and strategic.  Since your attacks are generally pretty slow, you have to get good at blocking, evading, and countering.  You also have to know how to draw enemies away from each other—unlike in most games, if you’re attacked by three enemies up-close in Dark Souls you’re most likely dead.  Enemies will kill you in a few hits at most (plenty of enemies will kill you instantly), and some—like the giant rats and their ridiculously powerful poison—cause debilitating status effects.

Outside of the strategic combat, Dark Souls isn’t much of an RPG.  Your character has tons of stats to level up, weapons can break, and you can pull up menus that will make onlooker’s eyes pop with their complexity, but nothing except leveling up is mandatory.  That’s the thing; you can play Dark Souls almost like an action game if you want.  It will still be mercilessly tough and slow-paced, but you can choose to ignore most of the deeper RPG elements if you wish.  I often find myself forgetting that I’m playing an RPG simply because there’s barely any story and I almost never have to look at menus or stats.

Dark Souls looks fantastic, but there is a lot of slowdown at times.  The slowdown can certainly hinder you if you’re in a tough fight, but it’s usually not a big concern.  The music is excellent, particularly in the opening cinematic.  Speaking of which, I think Demon’s Souls’ opening was much better.  It’s a minor complaint, but Demon’s Souls had my favorite opening cutscene ever, whereas Dark Souls’ is merely decent.

As I progress further into the game, Dark Souls can only get more interesting…and much, much harder.  I’ve heard frightening tales of this game’s savage difficulty, but I look forward to overcoming all challenges the game throws at me.  Will I give up after trying and failing to defeat an early boss over the course of 50+ hours like I did in Demon’s Souls?  Or will I persevere and triumph in the face of incredible danger?  I’m not sure, but you should continue following my progress through this hellish world as I go deeper and deeper into Dark Souls to discover what else the game has up its sleeve.

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.