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If a modernized and more violent R.C. Pro-Am sounds like a good time to you, take Scrap Metal for a test drive. While not really a remote-controlled car racer, the bird’s-eye view you get of the action makes it feel like you’re driving miniature vehicles. The emphasis here is on arcade thrills instead of realistic simulations and there is definitely fun to be had despite some control issues and a bland art style.

This is a top-down racer in the style of Super Sprint or Super Off Road, with the twist that each vehicle is armed to the teeth and can take out its opponents. There are eight tracks to tear up, each with a variety of missions to complete. What I like most about Scrap Metal is its assortment of mission types. You’re constantly switching gears from races to destruction derbies to boss battles to survival missions. Developer Slick Entertainment, also responsible for the XBLA version of N+, knows how to keep things interesting.

Tracks sport some nice detail but that character art has got to go.

Whenever you destroy a competitor during a mission you earn that car for your garage. Every vehicle has its own strengths and weaknesses and you can only hold four in your garage at a time, so you’ll have to carefully choose the most effective cars. Completing missions earns you upgrade points you can spend to improve your vehicles, a system I find to be another of Scrap Metal’s strengths.

The controls are not a strength, though. You have two schemes to choose from. The recommended controls let you simply press the left stick in the direction you want to go. It takes some getting used to but once you get the hang of it you’ll find it works well enough. The problem is you intuitively expect to press the analog stick in the opposite direction you’re facing to reverse, when the game actually requires you to pull the left trigger to go backwards. Feels a bit awkward. Then there is the advanced control scheme which really complicates things. This option lets you drive your vehicle like a remote control car by accelerating with the right trigger, braking with the left, and steering with the left analog stick. But you drive from the perspective of the vehicle, meaning if you’re pointed towards the bottom of the screen you have to mentally reverse your steering controls. It’s a headache and I see no advantage to using this “advanced” scheme.

The other disappointing part of the package is the visuals. While racing around tracks the game looks fine — not offensive, but not spectacular, either. There are some nice details and plenty of objects lying around to be destroyed. But the characters and bosses are presented with 2D still art that looks ripped from the crappiest of shovelware. Scrap Metal would have benefited from a more unique and lively art style.

Closing Comments
Despite some wonky controls and a bland art style, Scrap Metal is a fun car combat game. The variety of missions will hold your interest and the upgrade system allows for a lot of customization. There are definitely some arcade thrills to be had here if you can get the hang of the controls. Fifteen bucks might be a bit steep, but it’s definitely cheaper than wrecking your own car.

Yakuza 3 continues the adventures of Kazuma, a former bigwig in the Japanese mafia known as the Yakuza. After two games of dealing out beatdowns, Kaz has retired to the sunny shores of Okinawa to found an orphanage and live out his days rocking Hawaiian shirts. However, when a resort/military base proposal threatens his home for kids and some of Kaz’s friends get shot by a guy that looks just like his dead dad, this former Yakuza chairman is out of retirement and busting jaws to get to the bottom of what’s going on.

I’ve previewed Yakuza 3 a lot, but I think I’ve finally settled on describing it as a Grand Theft Auto/JRPG love child. You’re getting this intense story about Japan’s seedy underbelly that’s set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as you do so, random battles are popping up, you’re earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor. There are no cars or chocobos, but you see where I’m going with this — one minute you’re slamming a crowbar into a guy’s face or tearing off a fingernail with pliers, and the next minute, you’re taking photos to blog about or on a fetch quest to find a certain fish.

Our Video Review is filled with pain!

It’s a delicate balance between the two genres, but for the most part, it worked for me thanks to the game’s three strong points –fighting, story, and crazy quirkiness.

An average mission in Yakuza 3 goes like this: get an awesome-looking cutscene, run around town, collect a side mission, get in a few fights with people who walk up to you and challenge you for one reason or another, find the objective, get another awesome cutscene, fight, get the information you needed to end this thread and start the cycle anew. As you can imagine, spreading that formula out over 20 hours means that you’re going to be fighting a lot, but Yakuza 3 has a fun system that gets deeper as you level up Kaz’s abilities.

At first, fistfighting is going to seem uber-simple. You can light attack, heavy attack and grapple. There are block and lock-on buttons tossed in for good measure. After you get the hang of wailing on guys like that, you’ll begin worrying about your Heat gauge – a tiered meter below your health that fills as you beat on people. Once full, Kaz will glow with blue fire (red eventually) and be able to pull off devastating finishers such as just stomping the face of a guy on the ground as well as hoisting one guy onto his back and tossing the jerk on a downed foe for the 2-in-1 knockout. However, the real fun starts when you toss weapons into the mix.

If you want, you can just use the nunchucks, katanas, and stun guns you find on foes in battle. Each weapon has a limited number of uses, so you’re free to button mash away as you attack people. But if you want the most bang for your buck, you’ll save these weapons (either by not picking them up in fights or not equipping them if you own them) until you’re glowing with Heat. By doing so, you can now use these for spectacular finishing moves. Kaz will hit someone in the leg with his bat, the guy will drop to his knees, and Kaz will wind-up and crack the enemy in the face. He’ll pick up pliers and rip out opponent’s fingernails, slam someone in the head with a crowbar and then bash their skull with the piece of steel over and over again, and even hurl mountain bikes on top of people.

And stay out of my 7-11.

Once you get all of this down pat, the system does – eventually — go back to being very simple. You beat on the baddies, get your Heat full, and KO the foes. Toward the end of the game, I found myself trying to avoid the random battles, but this was just because I wanted to see the story through. I enjoy the fighting in Yakuza 3 quite a bit, but it can feel repetitive when you’re getting challenged for the umpteenth time by some guy who wants you to bow when you see him.

Helping keep things entertaining – besides the awesome moves – is a whole lot of blood. All of these special moves and even your regular blows are accompanied with streams of blood. There’s blood on Kaz’s fists, pouring out of people’s mouths, and featured in glorious in-air trails as bad guys crumble in slow motion. However, it’s important to note that Kaz never kills anyone in these fights. Whether it’s a random street thug or one of the game’s bosses, these savage, bloody beatings end with the bad guys holding their heads and apologizing for starting trouble. Well, that’s usually how the random battles end; bosses get a bit more love than that.
Getting those bosses the proper amount of screen time comes down to the way the story plays out in Yakuza 3. Sure, it’s in another language, but I really dug this tale – although it dragged in places. See, Kazuma is in charge of this orphanage, and the developers really want you to connect with that side of him because it’s his motivation for everything you’re going to do in the game. That said, you spend a lot of time on the shores of Okinawa with the kiddies. You cook dinner, settle arguments, take care of the sick, and so on. It equates to a rather sluggish start (“When do I get to punch things?!”) and a speed bump towards the end of the game (“When do I get to go after the final boss?!”), but this humanity is key to the endgame – because the crap hits the fan at Chapter 11, and if you didn’t care about your support system at that point, the events would have no impact on you. Luckily, I did care and found myself watching some cutscenes at the end of the game and muttering obscenities as well as even tearing up during one of the final battles.

Framing and telling this story is the work of some really good-looking cutscenes that show the shootings, backstories, and pole-dancing clubs in the exact way they need to be shown. Still, the way Yakuza 3 is laid out isn’t perfect. I know the English subtitles are going to turn off a lot of people as you do have to read and remember what you’ve read while playing, but I also had an issue with the way some cutscenes worked. I’d have this CGI cutscene playing but then stop so that I’d have to read and click through a bunch of text in an in-game cutscene. Then, a new CGI cutscene would begin. Why not tell me all of that story in the nice-looking movie?

Come watch people get beat.

I mentioned before that Kazuma doesn’t kill the people he’s fighting, but it’s actually kind of rare for anyone to die in this game, and I feel like that’s a bit odd. When you’re playing and you see someone brutally attacked in a cutscene and then be fine, it cheapens these moments. I mean, I literally saw a guy take a sledgehammer to the base of his skull, seem like he was on his deathbed, and end up being fine. Why worry about these characters when they keep dodging certain death? Of course, I did tear up when one of them really died, so maybe that desensitization is what the game was going for. Still, I could’ve done with more consequences to character actions.

Also, if you’ll double back with me to the slow parts I mentioned earlier, I have to ask if those dips are going to kill the experience for some people. Like I said, I was enjoying the hell out of Yakuza 3, but when Kaz went back to the orphanage right before we launched into the final fights of the game, things started to drag. I think it pays off in the end, but the all-out action followed by this intentionally slow part might be a turn off for some, and if they quit, the fact that there’s this awesome cap to all that doesn’t really matter.

This could all be yours…

Still, even if a foolish player quits early, they’d get a dose of Yakuza 3’s final strength – quirkiness. Western players have seen inklings of how kooky Japanese developers can be – the LEGO heads in Dead Rising and the porn mags in Metal Gear – but Yakuza 3 really blows all of that out of the water seeing as how just about every interaction you have is peppered with wonderfully weird stuff. When someone runs up to you and challenges you to a random battle, they’re spitting obscenities and usually only starting trouble because they want money to go to a strip club or because they don’t like that you’re drunk in their town. You can buy an un-inflated blowup doll at the convenience store. You can learn new moves by taking part in “Revelations,” which involve you snapping pictures of insane stuff — there’s the one where this woman gets distracted by a billboard and flips her moped over a car while having a fictional conversation with the guy on the billboard, and this other one where a guy is drunk outside the pole-dancing club and imitating the ladies inside by spinning around a light pole… and eventually falling on his head. After snapping these photos (you need to hit the button that pops up on the screen and then pick the correct revelation from a list of three possible lessons learned), Kaz types a blog at super-speed on his phone and you get to read the entry.

The game is littered with awesomely odd stuff like this, and it really makes exploring and taking side missions exciting. You never know what’s about to happen. Closing Comments
If wrote about everything in this game, you’d have a 10-page review on your hands, but the long and short of it is that Yakuza 3 is a great experience. The story’s cool, the fighting’s fun, and there’s so much to do. (Did I mention beating it opens up an adventure mode, fighting tournament and other goodies?) The game is rough around the edges – it has issues when it comes to pacing and repetition, the Japanese-only voice track will turn some people off, and it does look like a game that’s been out awhile — but all of these issues are just bumps in the road on what should be an enjoyable ride for folks looking to beat in some faces and wander the streets of Japan.

After three years of development and three very long years of waiting, the end is finally upon us. God of War III marks the finale to Kratos’ search for revenge and properly caps off a trilogy that ranks near the very top of the best action games ever list. Yes indeed, everything does come to a complete and decisive close by the end, and though it may not be the last that we’ve seen of the franchise, this really is the end of this tale.

Well, probably.

Taking the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rule at face value, Sony Santa Monica has done very little to alter how things work, though there’s been a bit of welcome polish on nearly every facet of gameplay. That is, if you were expecting a revolution in terms of design, you’ll be sorely disappointed. But, if you simply wanted more of what has made the series so great up to this point, you’re going to be quite happy indeed.

Click the image to watch our in-depth video review.

What has worked in the past largely still holds true here in great fashion. God of War III practically redefines what the word “scale” means with regards to videogames, as it throws you into scenes with Titans that are larger than entire levels in some other games. The scope of some of these sequences is nothing short of astounding, with playable sequences that take place on creatures the size of a skyscraper. Sony Santa Monica has been promising this all along, but even when you know what sort of experience you’re in for, you’ll still be blown away by the immensity of some scenes.

While size is a hugely impressive aspect of the game, more than anything else, God of War III is a tour-de-force in terms of its visuals, and it’s even more brutal than any of its predecessors. Yes, this is a very M-rated game, one filled with blood, gore and detached limbs, but what’s important is that it all makes sense. Greek mythology was filled with violence, and Kratos’ latest doesn’t hold back in all the right ways.

The combat is just as responsive as ever with big, massive combos that you’ll always feel completely in control of. You can cancel out of almost anything and go into a block or roll, making defensive maneuvers a strong (and very necessary) part of your arsenal. One subtle tweak this time around is that the old Square-Square-Triangle combo that ends with Kratos whipping down the Blades in a big overhand motion isn’t as easily abused as it once was. This is partly due to the fact that you’ll find yourself surrounded by more enemies than ever before, requiring that you utilize your area attacks more often, but it’s also because enemies can be more aggressive. If you’re in their sights, they’re probably attacking, which makes the combat a little more balanced between blocking, rolling and attacking; that’s great. It’s not a huge change, but it’s certainly very welcome.

Kratos looks incredible (and deadly).

One problem with past God of War titles was that despite the fact that you’d pick up a handful of other weapons along the way, in large part they weren’t very useful as your blades seemed to almost always be more effective. That’s been fixed this time, and all three of the other weapons you acquire are good in almost any situation. That’s even more true thanks to the fact that you can now switch between them on the fly, mid-combo, allowing you to string together big sequences will all four weapons in use.

My only complaint here is that two of the three additional weapons that you’ll earn are extremely similar to your blades. They have unique powers and slightly different moves, but by and large, they’re more of the same. The Cestus (the pair of big metal gloves that you’ve no doubt seen previously) is really the only weapon that’s truly unique, and fortunately those are both useful and great fun to take into battle, but it’s hard to not wish that your other pickups were as different at the Cestus.

Another cool change to the mechanics is that your magic is now tied to each weapon, so switching between these has become not only simpler, but it’s also easier to tell what magic you have selected. All of this is still relegated to directions on the D-Pad, though you can now quick-swap between weapons (and therefore magic) mid-combo by pressing L1 and X. This setup actually makes a lot of sense in the context of the game as well because most of the magic comes directly from the weapons rather than being some ethereal power that Kratos magically (pun intended) gains at some point.

One change that we first saw in the E3 2009 demo, which resulted in a bit of controversy, is that the quick-time event button prompts that come up during kill moves are now situated at the edges of the screen, allowing you to watch what’s happening and use your peripheral vision to see which button to press rather than have the prompts appear over top of the action. I’m a big fan of this change as it allows you to pay attention to the action rather than waiting to see what button appears next.

Click the image to watch the latest trailer.

Another thing that I’m a big fan of this time around is that Sony Santa Monica uses the camera in a much more cinematic way throughout the game. No, you still don’t have control over it as the camera is specifically placed in spots for each scene (it’s still controlled for you, in other words), but there’s a lot more play with it during cutscenes, including in-game kills. While you’ll still see the slow pans here and there to show you where you should go next or what door you’ve just opened with a switch, other sequences where you don’t have direct control over Kratos feature multiple camera cuts from some nice angles. It’s great to see the team play with how the camera is used as I think there were some missed opportunities in the past.

One other seriously impressive bit about presentation changes is that there are no CG cutscenes in the game. Outside of the cool credits intro, everything else was rendered in the game engine with zero post-production effects added. Some scenes were too intense for the engine to handle without chugging a bit so those scenes are presented as a movie (individual frames were spit out and put together as a film), but everything you see matches up almost seamlessly because of this. In fact, if you aren’t really looking for it you might not ever notice the cuts, which is great.

The combat has been refined to near-perfection.

As I mentioned previously, the game can look incredible. There are scenes that look like they were ripped straight out of WETA Digital’s render farm with lighting so immaculate that your eyes will drop out of their sockets. Truly, God of War III presents some of the most impressive visuals that I’ve ever seen in a game. Kratos in particular looks phenomenal, and is perhaps the single most impressive-looking character ever in videogames.

However, the graphical fidelity is not entirely consistent. There are a couple areas of the game that just don’t match up to the most impressive stuff, creating an uneven feeling in the visual presentation. Granted, even at its worst God of War III still looks really good, but some spots just don’t feature the same level of lighting quality or perhaps texture work as others. The biggest culprits in this issue, however, are some of the characters. There are a few that look fantastic, but many are clearly not on the same level as Kratos, and some are even only passable as “good”.

This issue of inconsistency also unfortunately applies to the story. Despite how relatively simplistic the previous story entries were, they were told extremely well. Everything made sense and there was a clear purpose of what was happening and why. Here, the story (and therefore the game’s progression) seems to buckle under its own weight at times. It’s a little more complex, attempting to introduce intangible concepts that I won’t spoil here, but it doesn’t work as well for me as the more straightforward tales from past titles.

This also means that some of the progression elements aren’t connected quite as well as I’d have hoped. There are a couple areas that feel a little out of place, largely because they’re there to serve a story that isn’t as finely tuned as it could have been. It’s tricky to really explain this more without spoiling anything, but some spots just don’t feel as old and timeless as big locations have in the past (like the Island of Fate or Pandora’s Temple), which makes things seem a little less “epic” in terms of historical importance and breadth of scale.

Click the image to watch our God of War in Five Minutes video feature.

Back to the good stuff though… this of course wouldn’t be a God of War game without some intense boss battles, and God of War III largely delivers in that respect. What’s really cool is that there are a handful of fights that aren’t executed in standard form, where you would just need to kill them before they kill you. Sony Santa Monica played with how some of these encounters could work quite a bit, and in these cases, the sequences fit the story better than if these characters just stepped up and fought with incredible combat skills.

Not every section of every battle is incredible, but there are some really good fights in store for you. The second half of one in particular (probably about half-way through) devolves into an extremely brutal melee brawl that now ranks amongst my favorite one-on-one battles ever.

As has been the case with both PlayStation 2 releases, there are a ton of extras included on the disc including behind-the-scenes footage, a series of very difficult challenges and an arena battle room. Note that if the arena battles sound interesting, you have to finish the game and then the Challenge of Olympus (same deal as the Challenge of the Gods from past titles) before you can try that mode out.

The scale in God of War III is unmatched.

As far as the videos go, The Making of God of War III is your usual behind-the-scenes, all-encompassing clip that I found to be very enjoyable. In addition to this, there are some 15-plus other videos that dive into specific aspects, including level design, the music and visual effects. It’s all really good stuff and will take you a couple hours to go through if you watch all of it. And yes, it’s all in HD.

Closing Comments
God of War III is a great end to Kratos’ console trilogy. It’s not perfect, with some uneven storytelling and progression here and there, but it’s still a fantastic overall package. The combat is stellar once again, it’s bloodier than ever, and it is at times the best looking game ever released. I still think God of War II is the best in the trilogy, but Sony Santa Monica did a great job closing up Kratos’ journey for revenge.

In the beginning, videogames offered only one story. Survive and kill. It’s the story of war, and we’re endlessly fascinated by it. It’s on our televisions and our movie screens. It’s in our blood.

But there’s more to the story of battle than just pointing and shooting, although for a while that’s all gamers really demanded from a war game. Having a gun in your hand and a friend at your side was all anyone really needed at first. But that’s changing. Games are growing up. The developers at Sony’s Zipper Interactive know it, and they’ve taken that knowledge deep into the heart of their new project, SOCOM 4.

The SOCOM series is a PlayStation-exclusive powerhouse most known for delivering an intense, engrossing online multiplayer experience. Although the first three main games in the franchise did have single-player missions, the focus was always squarely on network play. The strategy has worked well for the studio over the years. When SOCOM 3 was released on the PlayStation 2 in 2005, we named it our favorite online PS2 game, and the series overall has sold 12 million copies around the world. Zipper has been so dedicated to online multiplayer, in fact, that its most recent game, MAG, didn’t even have a single-player mode. So what’s all this about story, then?

I recently visited Zipper to take an early look at SOCOM 4, and I’d hardly sat down before they started talking about the story they wanted to tell. But before we dive into those details, let’s get one thing sorted out straight away. Like its predecessors, SOCOM 4 is a squad-based, realistic, tactical third-person shooter. If that sentence just made you fall slightly asleep, shake it off because this installment promises to be far friendlier to new initiates than earlier SOCOM games. Zipper wants to make SOCOM 4 “the pinnacle of tactical shooters” on the PS3, says lead designer Travis Steiner, but it also wants to build a rich narrative around it.

That starts with the main character. His name, well, I don’t have any intel on that yet. Zipper simply calls him the Ops Commander. He’s the leader of a 5-person NATO special forces squad deployed near the Strait of Malacca, a key global shipping lane that connects the Pacific and Indian Ocean between Malaysia and Indonesia. He quickly finds himself in a world of pain when the rest of the NATO forces in the area are annihilated. It’s up to his team to sort it all out. At his side are two Westerners — Schweitzer and Wells — and two South Korean operatives, Chung and the mysterious Forty-five. The latter is the first female combatant in a SOCOM game. Here’s hoping she got her nickname from her weapon of choice.

Zipper assures us Forty-five isn’t just a pretty face. Ed Byrne, SOCOM 4’s creative director, says she’s a “vital character” in a story that aims to go beyond the typical bounds of military shooters. Byrne and company aren’t releasing too many specifics about the tale just yet, but they did spill a few details. The mission unfolds over a six-day period in two main acts. In the beginning, the squad faces an indigenous revolutionary group called Naga. But as the story progresses, the characters discover there’s more to the conflict than meets the eye.

The events take place in Southeast Asia, but Zipper is quick to point out that you’ll see more than jungles and beaches in SOCOM 4. Expect to train your sights on mountains, small towns and massive cityscapes as well. And unlike previous SOCOM games, the single-player mission is designed to be a seamless in-the-field experience. That means there’s no choppering out to a cushy battleship in-between missions to load out your team and regroup. The weapons and supplies you have with you at the beginning of the mission are all you get from HQ. Like a true special forces team cut off from the outside world, you’ll need to requisition supplies in-theater. Hooah.

To help build a believable story, Zipper put the SOCOM 4 actors on a sound stage together and captured their movements and dialogue digitally as they performed each scene. Naughty Dog used a similar approach with Uncharted 2 in order to achieve more natural interactions among on-screen characters. The Zipper devs didn’t show any acted scenes during my demo, but they did say that all cinematic scenes are in-engine. That means you won’t see sharp cuts to flashy pre-rendered cutscenes; story moments will blend in and out of gameplay.

The SOCOM 4 single-player campaign is built around 14 missions that unfold over about 12 hours of play time. And although Zipper is trying to make SOCOM 4 more accessible to new audiences, that doesn’t mean it’ll be a cakewalk. The team says they’ve focused intensely on artificial intelligence this time around. Don’t expect dumb enemies to present their heads to you for easy popping. They’re programmed to use suppressing fire, flanking and bounding maneuvers, and cover. Enemy commanders will even call in airstrikes on you (if you leave them alive long enough).

Luckily, you’ll have tactical options of your own. In SOCOM 4, all your orders are handled through the new Command Mode. Hold down a button and choose a direction on an analog stick, and you’ll be able to set waypoints for your team members, issue squad commands, set behaviors and even command your squad to take out multiple targets on the way to an objective. All of these choices are no more than two clicks away, and there are no sub-menus to take you out of the action.

All the commands in SOCOM 4 are given in real-time and are issued based on what your Ops Commander can see – so you won’t be bringing up full-screen maps and ordering your squad around as little colored squares and triangles. As the Ops Commander, you’ll be able to see points of tactical interest in Command Mode that you might not see in regular mode. Things will slow down slightly, and the screen will go a bit gray as you make your choices, but the bullets will still be flying. Zipper wants to keep you on the field and in the action at all times.

Sometimes that action will be in the form of a full-on firefight. Other times, you’ll go in silent and undetected. And just because your team is alone on the battlefield, that doesn’t mean you won’t have support. You’ll be getting intel along the way, and you’ll even be able to call in airstrikes and strafing runs on enemy targets.

In a brief demo of a mid-game level of SOCOM 4 called The Slums, I saw a strafing run in action, and it devastated the poor enemy saps holed up in a cluster of wooden buildings. The environments in SOCOM 4 are destructible, and building materials flew in all directions as a series of explosions ripped into the landscape.

Kaaaaaaaboom.

When they weren’t exploding, the enemies were behaving fairly intelligently, moving from cover to cover and attempting to flank the Ops Commander and his squad. Zipper only showed a small taste of SOCOM 4, and I didn’t get to kick the tires. But for being in a pre-alpha state, the game looked sharp. The audio effects and environments were impressive, and the screen was refreshingly clear of clutter.

Zipper’s already dropped a lot of info about SOCOM 4, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions. At this point, you’re probably asking yourself, “Why the heck has there been no mention of multiplayer yet? Is this a SOCOM game or not?”

Rest assured, there will be multiplayer in SOCOM 4, but Zipper’s not talking about it yet. All we know is it will be “an all new experience” that supports up to 32 players online. When asked if there would be co-operative play, Steiner simply said, “We don’t have any announcements yet about further online play.” So if you’re a SOCOM fan who’s psyched about online multiplayer, stay tuned because we’re thinking the team has a lot more to say on the matter.

The fact that Zipper’s mum on multiplayer out of the gate should tell you just how seriously it’s taking the single-player, story-driven segment of SOCOM 4. The team told me their overall goal is nothing less than to evolve the series in every way, from the new narrative approach in the campaign to an innovative multiplayer experience that will satisfy series die-hards and draw in new players.

You don’t want to see this outside your terrorist village.

To achieve the latter, the development team said they’ve basically shaved the rough edges off the SOCOM experience. For example, the Command Mode is designed to be as deep or as shallow as the player wants it to be. On easier difficulty levels, you could theoretically go through the whole game without touching the Command Mode. But more challenging modes and approaches will require serious tactical thought.

Longtime SOCOM players know that Zipper put the series on the back burner somewhat after the release of SOCOM 3, handing the reins to other developers at times while it worked on other projects. Dedicated SOCOM fans will likely be glad to head that the Zipper team is back. But will they recognize their favorite series once it takes its new direction?

“If they were able to play it without knowing what it was, they’d know it was a SOCOM game,” says Byrne.

SOCOM 4 is aiming for a Fall 2010 release date, and we’re expecting to hear a lot more about the ambitious project in the months to come. Will the multiplayer feature classes and leveling? Will usable vehicles be back? Will we be able to tackle the campaign online with a group of bloodthirsty friends? So far, the team’s lips are zipped.

We’ve been hearing about Natural Motion’s Backbreaker since way back in 2007. It began without a publisher and rumbled around the gaming industry for some time, popping up at trade shows like E3 for demos with little else to satiate the inquiring mind. “What’s taking the game so long?” I’ve read on some forums. “Why haven’t we seen anything from Backbreaker lately?” I’ve heard from other gamers. Well, finally and at long last, Backbreaker has emerged under the 505 Games label and is set to hit retailers on May 18 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

I recently had the chance to get my hands on an updated build which was my first time playing the game since back in June of last year. For those worried about Backbreaker losing its indie nature when making the switch to a formal publishing partner, don’t worry, this game is about as far from EA Sports’ Madden franchise as you can get.

It should be of no surprise by this point that Backbreaker does not have the NFL license. Instead players will be able to create their own squads with Natural Motion’s extensive creation tool. Essentially you can combine a massive library of shapes and images into several hundred layers (500 layers for uniforms and about 1,000 for endzone designs, to be exact) to form a final logo of some sort. It’s not all that dissimilar from what we’ve seen from the Forza Motorsport series.

Click above to watch some brand new direct-feed gameplay.

Well, I was once told this creation mechanic would allow players to trade created teams back and forth over Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Due to some sort of contractual issues, Natural Motion is being forced to only allow players to create teams on their own machine. That way we don’t have people making a 49ers logo and sending it all over the world for all to use. Such is life with exclusivity contracts in sports gaming, I suppose.

I, for one, am not much of a creator, so it was a big letdown to know that I won’t be able to simply download a bunch of cool uniforms and use them on the fly. Instead I’ll likely use one of the more than 60 teams that ship with the game. Just about every major NFL city is represented, minus the recognizable team names, logos and players. There are 16 stadiums in all, three of which are locked at first. They’re designed with a flair towards the unrealistic with the Golden Gate Bridge shooting out of the stadium in San Francisco.

The actual football itself hadn’t changed all that much in the last year, which is surprising given the amount of time Backbreaker has been in hiding. The visuals have taken a more arcade-like approach with colors that really seem to pop off the screen and a bloom effect that has been ratcheted up a few levels. There are also now two modes for standard gameplay: Arcade and Pro. Arcade mode highlights certain players (like the one you’re controlling, passing to, or the person you’re supposed to be covering) and Pro mode is just you on the field with the camera following you as you switch players and change possession. I’d recommend most players start on the Arcade mode to get a feel for the altered camera angle, especially if you’re used to the more pulled-back perspective that Madden presents.

Backbreaker is all about putting you down on the field so the camera rests nearly right behind your player. I’m told that they’ve actually pulled it back a bit since my play session. When I called a running play, the camera dropped so low that it was nearly impossible to see would-be tacklers coming off of the edge of the offensive line. I’ve been told that they’ve since fixed this problem, but I won’t really know until I play it for myself when the game is released.

Watch this clip for some defensive highlights.

Passing seemed to work a little better in the frantic football world that Backbreaker presents. The approach is certainly different than any I’ve seen for hurling the pigskin. Actually passing the ball is done entirely by the right stick, while targeting a player is done by holding the left trigger and moving between receivers with the left analog. The AI is largely in charge of the strength of the pass you’re throwing (something that I’m worried about) unless it’s a bomb pass, in which case you can move the analog down and then up to emulate a throwing motion of sorts. Every other pass is done with a simple flick upwards. Passing didn’t feel all that great when I played with rigid camera movements that strain to follow the ball down the field and some wonky physics when the ball hit either the ground or a player’s hands.

Aside from standard quick play games, there’s also an 8, 16, and 32 team season option and something called Road to Backbreaker which I’m guessing is designed to deliver some sort of loose tournament structure in the same vein as Mortal Kombat (escalating difficulty with meaner and meaner opponents).

There’s certainly still a lot that’s up in the air when it comes to Backbreaker. I’m not entirely sold on the game given my recent play time and the fact that it has been in hiding for so long right up until it’s scheduled to hit store shelves is never a good sign. Rest assured, we’ll have more Backbreaker coverage in the coming weeks leading up to its May 18 launch on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The adage of the once-great star being overshadowed by a young up-and-comer is ever-present in sports. You’ll find no better real world example of this phenomenon than what’s happening with the current state of baseball games. The old and wise MLB 2K series has been totally usurped by Sony’s MLB: The Show, which only recently broke onto the scene. Every year we wait and see if 2K is going to be able to keep pace with what Sony brings to the table, and every year we walk away disappointed. While MLB 2K10 takes small steps towards fixing the problems that made last year’s game such a disappointment, it still doesn’t come close to delivering the definitive baseball experience that we all want from the oldest baseball franchise around.

If you’ve been watching any of our coverage leading up to the launch of MLB 2K10, it should be clear that 2K Sports is putting a large focus on the hitter vs. pitcher duel that is inherent to the game of baseball. The authenticity that 2K Sports has been able to capture when you step to the plate or hurl the ball across it is probably the single best achievement in MLB 2K10. It’s something that other games have gotten right in the past, but 2K10 finally seems to have mastered the AI that drives these conflicts. If you swing at everything thrown your way, you’ll absolutely never get a hittable pitch. It’s up to you to display discipline and patience in waiting for a pitch to hit, much like players do in reality. It seemed like neither the hitter nor the pitcher had an advantage with the newly refined mechanic, something that was a worry when I first played MLB 2K10.

Click above for our Video Review of MLB 2K10.

Sadly, it’s the hitter vs. batter interaction that’s really the only shining achievement for this year’s game. Everything else has one problem or another that keeps it from being great or, in some cases, good. Take the new My Player mode, for instance. It’s 2K Sports’ first effort at delivering a career mode in their baseball franchise and, at least at first, it seems like they might have nailed it. But the more time you sink into the mode, the more its design and technical failings become apparent.

Things begin with the requisite player creation. It’s just as detailed as any in the sports genre and even brings new last names for Gary Thorne and company to say such as “Ahearn.” From there, you’re off to your first game which, regardless of your position, is a bottom-of-the-ninth clutch moment for you to be either the hero or the zero. After that, it’s up to you to build up your player through good in-game play and training drills.

Your fun factor in My Player is largely dependent on which position you play as the experiences differ quite a bit. If you’re playing as a pitcher you’re going to obviously be confined to the rubber with few chances to hit the ball. You’re inundated with pitching points that you’ll be able to distribute as you see fit. Other stats fall by the wayside, but that’s understandable if you’re a closer or a middle-reliever. Playing as a pitcher provided the most fun for me in My Player. The hitter vs. pitcher altercations are strong; even when in the minors, striking guys out is as satisfying as ever. I would’ve appreciated the ability to develop a pitcher that can also hit, but that’s so rare it almost doesn’t make sense to include it.

The new pitcher vs. batter mechanic works very well with many subtle changes.

On the flipside, playing as a catcher is absolutely terrible. You don’t have any control over what pitch is being thrown, thus limiting your time in the field to catching pop-ups hit behind the plate and bunts. In other words, it’s really boring. The same goes for other fielding positions, at least to a lesser extent. MLB 2K10 only allows you (and forces you to do so for “key games”) to play moments where your player is directly involved rather than allowing you to sit through an entire game if you want. It takes away any of the organic nature of My Player and instead grounds it in being a chore of a videogame experience. Further detracting from the realism is the fact that you can’t be traded away from your club by your manager. Instead you can switch teams at any time without worry. I’d like to have the option of being totally under the AI manager’s control.

Problems persist when you try and focus on developing your player into a powerhouse. I understand the idea behind the distribution of skill points, but its execution is lacking. In order to progress your hitting, you have to hit the ball. That makes sense. In order to improve your fielding you’ll need to field balls effectively and make smart throws. That also makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the base running. In order to improve your speed on the base path you’ll need to actually cross home plate to score a run (or complete a rare hit-and-run opportunity). To score a run, you’ll need to be fast and you’re also depending on your other AI-controlled players to put the ball in play, something that they can struggle with from time to time. It would have made more sense to give you points for every base that you run to or provide another alley in order to improve your player’s speed. As it stands the progression for everyone other than a pitcher is a tough road.

My Player is also plagued by lots of bugs, which is sadly something that we’ve come to expect from this series through the years. I saw things like players stepping to the plate without a bat on rare occasions, players will sometimes slide along the ground in order to catch a ball properly, and basemen will stutter against base runners when they’re running animations independently of one another (like when a base runner is walking back to the base and bumps into the baseman throwing to the pitcher). Of course, none of this mentions the incredible lack of visual fidelity in My Player. There’s much less graphical detail on everything in the game, which makes no sense when you consider that the bulk of the interactions are automated thanks to the artificial intelligence.

So while My Player is largely a mediocre rookie effort with poor design decisions and several technical shortcomings, the core baseball gameplay that you’ll see from most other modes has been nicely improved, even when considering it without the cool hitter vs. pitcher dynamic. For starters, everything is much smoother thanks to an enhanced framerate. It’s still not perfect and there is certainly a large hit taken in terms of the game’s visuals, but a sports game that’s generally free of game debilitating hitches is certainly preferable to one that chugs along. Now all they need to do is smooth out some animations, get the cloth physics back in the game (but make them good), and increase the overall quality of the crowd and the textures throughout 2K10.

My Player could be better.

You can also pre-load throws for the first time in MLB 2K. You’d think this feature would’ve been in years ago, but it’s making its first appearance here. It works very well for the most part. The only slight problem I had was when trying to tag a base and then make a pre-loaded throw to second; my player’s AI clearly had no idea that I was trying to tag first before making a throw. Instead what I got was one out at second base instead of a stylish double play. Other than that issue pre-loading works like a dream.

The core gameplay and modes that you remember are back with a few tweaks here and there. The pitching is a bit different than it has been, though those hoping for a change from the right analog stick movements will have to wait another year. I’m personally fine with the series’ different take on pitching, and this year’s mechanic works better than it has before. Hitting has also seen an addition in the form of a defensive swing. This being included in MLB 2K10 makes absolutely no sense to me. I never once used it other than checking it out for this review and certainly never felt as though I had to do so in order to stay alive at the plate. I’m fine with having it included because someone will likely find a purpose for it; I just didn’t. I did, however, take serious issue with the omission of any sort of check swing ability. It’s inexcusable for a game to ship without check swings, despite the fact that you’ll be able to download a patch on launch day that will add a check swing ability. I have no idea how well the mechanic will work, so for the sake of this review (and the fact that we can’t count on everyone reading this having Xbox Live or PSN connectivity) we’re reviewing MLB 2K10 without check swings.

Playing catcher in My Player isn’t nearly as exciting as this looks.

Franchise mode, despite the addition of My Player, will still be where you spend most of your time. MLB Today does a good job of keeping you up to speed with what’s going on in the league, and the commentators have a good repertoire of quips to spew out that reflect past performances and trends developing throughout the season. Trade abilities are standard, though the inability to spice things up with three-team trades, draft picks or cold hard cash is a disappointment. I also ran into what appeared to be a bug in the trading artificial intelligence. It seemed as though teams totally disregarded how much money they had at the time of the trade. I made a deal that included sending Derek Jeter and A-Rod to the Cardinals, thus leaving the team from St. Louis more than $20 million in debt. They didn’t really seem to care.

Of course, no game of baseball would be complete without some online play. MLB 2K10 comes complete with online leagues and standard quick match options. You can also invite a friend into any franchise game that you might be playing. Sadly, my experience online wasn’t quite as smooth as I’d expect from a release so late in a console cycle. Lag was apparent even when playing 10 feet away from another IGN employee on an insanely fast Internet connection. We also had a nearly debilitating bug pop up when one player stayed in the batter’s box as another stepped to the plate. The result was something out of a horror movie that was made only worse when one of the two now-conjoined players hit a homerun and my pitcher proceeded to pitch to the next batter before the guy who just blasted one out of the park finished rounding the bases. It was a buggy game to say the least.

Closing Comments
MLB 2K10, despite its many flaws, is still a much better core game of baseball than the series presented last year. It’s just too bad that My Player mode didn’t work out as well as I had hoped after first playing it. There are some very questionable design decisions that will hopefully be ironed by next season because the idea behind the mode itself is sound. You can also see that the foundation for great baseball is nearly there with things like the pitcher vs. batter gameplay going so smoothly. I feel like I’ve said this for the past several years with MLB 2K, but I’m really looking forward to what they can put out with MLB 2K11. Let’s hope that release will be able to capitalize on what 2K started with MLB 2K10.

One of the most common themes in discussions and arguments among gaming aficionados is the idea of endless industry progression. Games are supposed to become more and more beautiful as time goes on. Accompanying soundtracks are supposed to become increasingly epic. Storytelling should become more seamless and enthralling. Ingenious methods of gameplay are expected to push us into the great unknown of the medium. And that’s fine. For the most part, such notions are what keep our beloved industry trucking forward, dropping jaws and bloodying thumbs in the process. But when you play a game like Mega Man 10, delivered by Capcom to its old-school fans as yet another offering following the 2008 release of Mega Man 9, you realize that stagnation and regression can be good things, too.

Mega Man 10 is a game for the core Mega Man franchise’s many fans, and its appeal inherently sits with its backwards-looking approach. There’s nothing new about Mega Man 10’s tech, delivery or gameplay. The title looks, sounds, feels and plays like the very first Mega Man game released twenty-three years ago on the NES. While Mega Man 7 (SNES) and 8 (PSX/SAT) deviated from the 8-bit path, and ended up disappointing many an ardent fan as a result, Mega Man 9 returned to the series’ roots, and Mega Man 10 stays firmly on that same path. And that’s a good thing, because the 8-bit world is where Mega Man truly belongs.

Mets, Mets everywhere!

For those gamers unfamiliar with the premise of the core Mega Man series, it goes a bit like this. A group of powerful robots are created by Doctors Light and Wily to help humanity in various mundane tasks. Dr. Wily turns on Light and reprograms most of these robots to do his bidding, but one of these robots, Mega Man, quickly throws the kibosh on Dr. Wily’s nefarious plans (as played-out in the original Mega Man game). In each of the next eight games, from Mega Man 2 through 9, Dr. Wily returns in one fashion or another, this time with robots he’s engineered or corrupted, in endless attempts to take over the world, and to kill Mega Man in the process. He never succeeds, which is what makes Wily one of the more persistent and humorous foils in the realm of gaming. But he keeps on trying nonetheless.

Mega Man 10’s story attempts to turn things on its head yet again, with Dr. Wily appearing to not be behind the robotic attacks at the center of the plot (and we won’t spoil whether or not that’s actually the case, but we’re pretty sure you’ve got a good idea if you played, say, Mega Man 4, 5, 6 or 9). Instead, a robotic virus known as Roboenza has wreaked havoc, and some of these corrupted robots are attempting to take over. But no matter which direction the story dashes towards, Mega Man’s gameplay and aesthetics remain the same as they’ve been for a long time. And for a title like Mega Man 10, gameplay is king.

Sheep Man’s Electric Wool rains down lightning from the sky.

Veterans of the franchise will know precisely what to expect, and will immediately feel at home with everything Mega Man 10 has to offer (especially if you played Mega Man 9, and witnessed some of the subtle changes and additions developer Inti-Creates threw into the game). The game is a 2D side-scrolling action game. The Blue Bomber is still equipped with his trusty arm cannon, and he’ll once again be able to choose his path through a majority of the game by selecting the order to defeat eight levels, and those stages’ boss enemy, known as Robot Masters. As always, going in a certain order is always the best idea, since each weapon you earn from a downed Robot Master is another’s weakness. Exploiting these foes’ weaknesses will make the game far more manageable, and for fans of the series, figuring out this order is part of what makes these games so fun. And following those stages are the ruthlessly-difficult end levels, with a more linear approach leading up to the game’s conclusion.

But just because Mega Man 10 looks backwards in so many ways doesn’t mean the entire package is a throwback. While the classic Mega Man gameplay shines through in the game’s main campaign, there are plenty of extras that will keep gamers busy as well. For instance, Time Attack mode makes its return in Mega Man 10 (having first been seen in Mega Man 9), allowing gamers to work their way through unlocked stages as quickly as they can. Times for each stage are kept on an internet high score board for all to view, so there’s plenty of incentive to master these stages (and indeed, beating the game will also put that time on an scoreboard accessible with the Wii’s Wi-Fi connection as well).

An even more major addition to Mega Man 10 is something not seen even in Mega Man 9, and it’s called Challenges Mode. Mega Man 9 had Challenges that were, in essence, the equivalent of Achievements or Trophies. But this time, these Challenges are a bit more clear-cut to earn, and add an entirely new level of depth to the game. For instance, when you reach Strike Man on normal mode, you’ll unlock a corresponding challenge in Challenges Mode. When you go to play it, you’ll find out that the challenge is to fight and defeat Strike Man at normal difficulty without getting hit. There are 88 of these challenges, and any one of them that isn’t automatically unlocked can be earned by playing through the game in its entirety on Easy, Normal and Hard difficulties (indeed, many of the challenges are simply mirrors of each other spread across the three difficulty settings). This mode is certainly Mega Man 10’s greatest addition to the series, and we hope to see an even more-refined and deeper version of it if and when Mega Man 11 rolls around. In the meantime, Challenges Mode will no doubt suck away hours of your life, as you attempt to get a better and better overall rating (which is achieved by completing said Challenges).

However, the biggest addition most gamers are already familiar with is in regard to Proto Man, Mega Man’s brother. Mega Man 9 had Proto Man unlockable as a piece of DLC, but this time around, you can play through as Proto Man right off the bat. Playing as Proto Man has its ups and downs, as he’s able to shoot powered-up shots and slide along the ground, just like Mega Man could in Mega Man 4 and 3, respectively (and beyond). However, he takes more damage when hit, balancing out the advantages he has. While we preferred playing through as Mega Man, playing as Proto Man adds more depth to the game, and gives you a reason to play through again once you’ve beaten Mega Man 10.

The Water Shield is one of Mega Man 10’s more versatile weapons.

Speaking of beating the game, Mega Man 10 is hard. Parts of it are far harder than anything seen in Mega Man 9, though as an overall product, its difficulty setting is about on par with the previous game in the series. Where things get really hairy is on hard difficulty, which can be unlocked by beating the game once through on normal. Hard difficulty is, at times, heinous. Almost comically so. What’s so great about this difficulty setting, however, is that playing through each stage is entirely different. While the layouts remain the same, there are more enemies, different enemies, and plenty of new hazards. Even the Robot Masters have different, more powerful attack styles in this mode. Talk about brutal!

Unfortunately, something I reported in my early hands-on preview of the game hasn’t stood up. I speculated that a series of three lines of yet-unlocked Time Attack stages could lead us to believe that there was an elongated gameplay experience to be had with Mega Man 10, as there was with Mega Man 3, 4, 5 and 6. However, I’m sad to report that this isn’t the case. I even beat the game on hard difficulty just to make sure, and everything about it was the same as normal difficulty. Mega Man 10 is the same length as Mega Man 9 was, and that was the biggest disappointment Mega Man 10 delivered to us. There’s no reason why this game shouldn’t be longer, and though it no doubt will be when the DLC rolls around, it’s unfortunate that the original package doesn’t give us some extended gameplay. It’s understandable that they continue to use Mega Man 2 as their model for these 8-bit throwbacks, but it’s time to expand beyond that particular model a little bit.

You’ll require plenty of help on Commando Man’s sandy stage.

Closing Comments

Apart from any disappointment about the length of the game, Mega Man 10 still has plenty to offer, and for a game that costs $10, you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck. Mega Man 10 is unequivocally worth more than you’re going to pay for it, but that $10 might not be well-spent if you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Fans of the series are going to want purchase this game, no questions asked, and you’re going to love it when you do. But those who didn’t game during the 8-bit era and have no familiarity with older games are going to find Mega Man 10 to be a frustrating, ruthless and unforgiving crash-course in the way games used to play. There’s no hand-holding to be found here — Mega Man 10 takes levels of memorization and skill that pretty much no game today requires. It’s as throwback as throwback can get in that respect (especially on hard mode — just you wait).

But those nostalgic, skilled old-schoolers who want to take another romp with Mega Man are going to fall in love with Mega Man 10. Its graphics, while in an archaic style, are beautiful. The Robot Master designs are awesome. The music is brilliant. The gameplay is classic. And the little additions give the series enough new life to keep things going full steam ahead. It’s strange how Mega Man 9 sucked me into speed-running the game just to see my name on the leaderboard, and Mega Man 10 has done the same thing to me. Go figure.

So yes, progression in gaming is a good thing. But when you’re talking about the classic Mega Man series, the world of 8-bit is precisely where it belongs. And because of that refusal to take a big jump forward, Mega Man 10 delivers. This might be quite the statement for many, but I stand behind it 100%: in terms of pure gameplay, Mega Man 10 is easily a better game than 90% of what we play on a yearly basis. And you can take that to the bank.

The final chapter in Kratos’ story of revenge, better known as God of War III, begins precisely at the moment we last saw the very angry Spartan, on the back of the Titan Gaia as she climbs Mt. Olympus.

God of War III does not throw the player directly into battle immediately from the “start” screen, as previous demos have. Instead, we’re treated to a short cinematic that starts with Kratos snapping to no one in particular—”My vengeance ends now!”—and a pre-rendered, Zeus-narrated intro, one that should get God of War fans back into the god-killing revenge swing of things.

You’ll be introduced to many of the bad guy gods you’ll face on the climb to the peak of Olympus—Hades, Helios, Zeus, et al.—as they stare down at the encroaching Titans, but it’s Poseidon who makes himself your first target. The god of the sea leaps from the mountain’s highest point, turning himself into a watery missile, smashing into the sternum of one of the Titans, plunging it into a body of water below.

Watery tentacles shoot forth from the spinning whirlpool in which the Titan fell, bursting upward, snatching Titans from the sheer face of Olympus, and grabbing Gaia, stopping her climb.

(Now, everything you’ll see in God of War III will be rendered in the game’s engine, says the game’s director Stig Asmussen. Those pre-rendered moments will look and feel just like the game’s playable portions, with no fancy lighting tricks or post-processing trickery pasted on.)

So begins God of War III’s gameplay and, as previously noted, one of the game’s wildest moments. As Gaia struggles with the watery tendril that has ensnared her, Kratos must dispatch a group of undead underlings, an opportunity for players to re-familiarize themselves with the Greek god’s twin arm-blades.

Eventually, Kratos makes his way up Gaia’s arm, engaging Poseidon’s liquid leviathan in battle. At the business end of that tentacle beast is a horse-headed monster made of water, with a half-dozen or more crablike claws that slam down on Kratos. The battle is a not-too-difficult sequence comprised of slashing, smashing and quick time event button mashing—at one point the action flips upside-down, with Kratos hanging from the underside of Gaia’s arm—interspersed with perspective changes and camera sweeps that underscore just how massive the scope of God of War III is.

The battle between Gaia, Kratos and leviathan continues—leading at one point into Gaia’s wounded chest cavity for a bit of block-shifting puzzle-solving—until, eventually, you face the massive Poseidon himself. This version, looking far less human than the one who leaped from the peak of Mt. Olympus, is a collection of tendrils and a trident wielding, crustacean armored gigantic embodiment that looks far more intimidating. He’ll shock Kratos with electric bursts and stab at him with his giant weapon.

Along the way, God of War III breaks up the blockbuster action and wild combat with less impressive stuff, climbing vine-covered walls, pulling levers to shift elevator platforms, swinging from platforms by way of arm-blade, slaying more low-level minions and eviscerating Centaurs. Okay, the dump of innards from the sliced open bellies of those horse-men is still kind of impressive. There’s still plenty of platforming and chest-opening in-between the more glorious set pieces; it’s not all pure adrenaline filled fisticuffs.

The action is stunning, bordering on epic, if you don’t mind the adjective. The visuals, from the watery effects that spray from each spawn of Poseidon to the impressive use of depth of field blur to the far more interesting camera work, give God of War III more graphical cred than just another God of War running in better resolution. The version we played looked more graphically spectacular than previous hands-on demos.

But it was the moments, including one more that’s potentially spoiler-warning worthy, that reignited my interest in God of War. If you haven’t yet been convinced by God of War III’s offerings thus far, consider the final battle between Poseidon, in lowly flesh and blood form, and Kratos. Here, the camera shifts between third-person and second-person, as Poseidon watches while Kratos beats him to death. It’s bloody and brutal—and this is your last chance to look away—employs smart use of the PlayStation 3 controller. After a long quick time event sequence, a vicious series of circle and square button presses, the final kill, from Poseidon’s view point, asks players to push in L3 and R3. Kratos does his own thumbwork on poor Poseidon, gouging out the eyes of the sea god, the screen turning black.

Kratos casts the body aside, ready to move onto the next deity.

That’s the first boss fight in God of War III and whatever we can tell you in text likely won’t match up to the playable experience. Truthfully, this is more God of War, a high-definition, high production value spin on the tried and true gameplay. But if that’s the first 20 minutes of what God of War III has to offer, we can’t wait to see what the next 10 hours has in store.

It’s only been a couple of months and 2010 is already shaping up to be one of the best ever for gamers. If your wallet hasn’t already been emptied, Electronic Arts and development studio DICE have tossed yet another videogame on the pile that can’t be missed. Battlefiled: Bad Company 2 ups the intensity and visual prowess of its predecessor, while still delivering one of the most compelling multiplayer games around.

If you were to buy Bad Company 2 solely for the single-player campaign, you might come away a bit disappointed. That’s not to say it’s particularly bad in any way, but it doesn’t feel impressive enough to stand on its own as a great experience. Once again, the multiplayer game is the star of the Battlefield show.

Watch the video review.

The single player campaign follows the story of a rag-tag bunch of soldiers as they traipse around the world on the hunt for a mythical weapon of mass destruction which absolutely must not fall into the hands of the Russians. It’s a typical story of unlikely heroes as they attempt to save the world, and it will take you across a great variety of locations that range from frozen mountains to densely packed jungles.
These gorgeous locales are the first thing that will spring out at you as you begin the fight. The vistas and skyboxes look nearly photorealistic in many situations, and DICE did a wonderful job blending the particle effects and game objects in the foreground with the more static backdrops. The result is a sense of depth that few videogame worlds can offer.

Things become more impressive yet when the action kicks in. Returning from the last Bad Company game are nearly fully destructible environments. If an enemy soldier is holed up in a second story bedroom taking potshots at you, all you have to do is send a rocket at that wall and he’ll either wind up dead or fully exposed. The same line of thinking applies to just about anything you see – send enough firepower at it and you can watch it crumble.

Once you’re done ogling the smoke trails or mountain ranges in the distance, you’ll start to notice that Bad Company 2 has taken a few cues from the Call of Duty franchise. The last Battlefield game was the first to introduce a fully fleshed out storyline and it stumbled a bit in the process. The humor was goofy and over the top, the open mission design was a bit too open, and everything seemed coated in a dense fog. A lot has changed and improved for the sequel.

The backdrops are breathtaking.

The big change comes with a more streamlined and cinematic approach to the action. The dialogue is less overtly inane, though it does offer its fair share of humor, and the level design feels more straightforward. While the last Bad Company game couldn’t hold my attention, this one kept me interested and having fun from start to finish.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that this Battlefield game has some great mechanics. The guns react well, and sound fantastic. The vehicles handle smoothly and really do a great job of making you feel like the king of the battlefield. The instant-respawns and med kit injections of the last Bad Company have been replaced by the more standard checkpoints and regenerative health bar and that makes the challenge of war feel more realistic.

To top things off, the AI squad mates at your side act like real soldiers in battle. They’ll press the attack while you flank and hold off the enemy while you duck behind cover to recuperate. Many games slap you in a squad of largely ineffective soldiers and let you do all of the heavy lifting. Bad Company 2 is a refreshing change of pace in this regard.

Of course, if you want to start nitpicking, there are plenty of instances to call out. Some of the details and little pieces of the environment stream into view a bit late. There still are no arms drawn on screen when driving a vehicle, causing a poltergeist-like steering wheel to move on its own. On the Xbox 360 version, slow loading from the disc causes the player to be locked out for as much as five seconds from throwing grenades or using the knife when picking up a new weapon or changing kits (this issue went away when installing the game onto a hard drive).

These are mostly small complaints and, for me, the campaign’s only real troubles rest with the presentation and pacing. The B-Company (known as Bravo Two in this game) squad returns with you filling the shoes of Preston Marlowe. At your side is a crew of largely one-dimensional characters who are good for a laugh every now and then. This cast exists mainly to deliver one-liners and to direct you through the battlefield to the next objective. It’s hard to even think of them as people after watching them take a rocket propelled grenade to the face and then get up and go right back into the fight.

Though the action has been streamlined, it feels like Bad Company 2 just missed the “epic” feeling that it seems the developers were going for. Part of the problem is in the direction of the cutscenes, but mostly I feel like it rests with the non-stop high-intensity approach to gameplay. In a given level, you can do everything from sniping soldiers to manning a turret on the side of a helicopter to calling in air strikes – all in rapid succession. You’re something of a Rambo super-soldier, well versed in every facet of war. With the constant action, it feels like there is very little tension building outside of the game’s opening moments. There’s tons of variety to the gameplay and all of it is a great deal of fun, but it doesn’t quite come together to be a top tier experience.

Explosions are quite common.

And with such a frantic campaign pace, it is over in short order. I blew through the game in just a few evenings of lazy play, probably clocking in under six hours. A collectible weapon system does offer a reason to go back for a second or third run, but this isn’t the kind of campaign you’ll be returning to again and again.
For many, the shortcomings in the campaign won’t matter one bit. These people come for the multiplayer online game, and that’s where Bad Company 2 delivers. Here the destructible environments of the campaign take on new meaning. Your target might be waiting inside a shack. An enemy squad may be using a tower as a staging point. This can all change with just a few well placed explosives as you literally level the playing field. It adds an extra tier of strategy to the game as you struggle to work through extended fights, adapting your approach to the fight as the world around you crumbles.

That’s just the first level of strategic planning this shooter offers those that work well together. Battlefield has long been known and adored by gamers as the franchise that offers epic, large-scale online fights and plenty of vehicles to take into battle. That tradition continues here. Personally, I’ve always held it in such high regard because of how it is inherently team-based. The very layout of the game is designed to encourage players to work together, straight down to awarding extra points for working with your teammates.

Little squads can be created, segmenting larger teams into strike forces which can each play a specific role. Then within that squad, players can choose between four load-out kits that range from the light machinegun toting medic to the heavy weapon specialist engineer. Each has its own weapons and unique tools that allow you to set yourself up as a small but integral part in the team’s success. It’s a game that requires a cool head and open lines of communication just as much as it does a deft hand, and that just makes the victories that much sweeter.

Who doesn’t want to catch a ride?

What struck me as most impressive with Bad Company 2 is how flexible the multiplayer game is. The class system allows you to choose what your approach to battle will be. It’s the maps and modes included in this package that allow you to choose exactly what kind of game you want to play. There is a huge difference between the giant and extended team Rush games – an attack and defend mode which plays out across expansive maps and features vehicles heavily — and the tighter Squad Deathmatch games which can feel just like your standard frantic and close-quarters shooter. If you care for something in between, you can just hop into a Conquest game to try your hand at the classic Battlefield fight over specific areas controlled by raising and lowering flags. Regardless of your mood, it feels like Bad Company 2 has something for you.
And if the game itself isn’t enough reason to keep coming back, perhaps you’ll find yourself hooked on the class upgrade system. New weapons and gadgets can be unlocked, as well as little perks to give you an edge in the fight. Those familiar with Call of Duty (And at this point who isn’t?) will be right at home with the system that rewards players for completing small challenges as well as winning games or simply playing well and getting a lot of kills.

Closing Comments
Those looking at Bad Company 2 as only a single-player game might come away disappointed. It’s an action packed, gorgeous, and explosive game but it doesn’t quite come together into a campaign for the ages. It more feels like an added bonus to the multiplayer game and for those in search of that, this is a great choice. Bad Company 2 as an online shooter is flexible and engaging, offering several features that the competition can only dream of. If you’re looking for a more strategic and team-based change of pace, look no further. This is the game for you.