Eador: Masters of the Broken World will keep you busy for a very long time. That’s not to say the gameplay is bogged down by clumsy GUI problems or that it proceeds at a snail’s pace. Rather, it gives you a series of randomly generated miniature fantasy worlds to conquer, and the worlds are rich with challenge and opportunity.
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Hardcore 40k fans shouldn’t be asking themselves whether they should buy Space Marine. They should. Space Marine is a fresh take on the established universe, a 40k game that plays like none of the others and yet stays true to the genre’s heart and soul. For those who aren’t 40k fans (yet), Space Marine gives you an enthralling first glimpse of the epic battle for the soul of the galaxy and delivers a solid, entertaining action title.

The single player campaign puts you in the power armor of Captain Titus of the Ultramarines. He’s on a mission to recover a vital artifact from a forge world that’s come under an ork invasion. That will involve killing a great number of orks, and eventually, the forces of chaos.

If you’re a 40k fan like me, the first few minutes of Space Marine will have you shivering in anticipation. Everything’s correct here, from the terminology to the general look and feel of the tech. There’s just a touch of old school Aliens as you view the forge world shrouded by orbiting space debris.

Titus does one thing, and that’s kick ass. He is fearsome from a distance with the overpowered armory of the Imperium in his fist. In melee, he is nigh unstoppable. You control Captain Titus from a third person perspective with the exception of when you’re gazing down the sights of his firearm.

The top selling point of the fighting system of Space Marine is how Captain Titus heals. He regains health and armor with time, but time is hard to come by when he’s surrounded by 20 orks. In the thick of battle, the best way to earn health is by performing over-the-top execution moves.

The melee system is a bit like Dynasty Warriors. Pressing X will perform a basic attack. Pressing Y is a stun that can be chained to the end of a series of basic attacks. Stunned opponents can be executed, and executions are rewarded with a health boost. The bigger and badder the enemy executed, the bigger the health boost.

It sounds simple, right? Slash, slash, execute, Titus will never die? Actually, no. Titus is frequently swamped by a horde of enemies, and he still takes damage while he’s performing a desperate execution move. You have to be smart about slaughter to keep Titus alive. My tactics are usually to thin the horde with firearms and grenades until it’s time to bring the chainsword into play.

Space Marine doesn’t have a cover mechanic, but I don’t think it needs one. The levels already have a lot of cover available and there are none of the problems associated with having to press a button to “stick” to cover.

The plot in the single player campaign is excellent. Space marines are armor-encased superhuman warriors, and as such they’ll be doing superhuman things. Everything is epic in Space Marine. The first mission is surprisingly suicidal, and when Titus emerges unscathed and ready for more, you’ll know what kind of hero a space marine is.

So I’ve been enthusiastic so far about Space Marine, but there is something that’s leaving me surprisingly cold, especially for a 40k fan: the multiplayer. There are two multiplayer modes, Annihilation and Seize Ground. Annihilation is straight up team deathmatch. The first team to reach 41 kills wins the match. Seize Ground is your classic capture-and-hold game mode, where teams will earn points for keeping strategic areas under their control. So there’s nothing really new here as far as game modes go, though it bears mentioning that the maps are excellent for the most part. (Nitpick: the Waste Management is oddly claustrophobic compared to the rest of the maps, which means assault marines will have a real advantage there. The rest of the maps seem to have great balance.)

Players will have a choice of three classes to play, though they’ll have to unlock two of them by leveling up. You’ll start with a tactical marine, which has a choice of light to medium firearms and a combat knife. After a few levels, you’ll unlock the devastator class. It’s the equivalent of the Heavy class in Team Fortress 2. Devastators start off with a heavy bolter that has a decent rate of fire while on the move, but they’re also able to adopt a “brace” position that will send the rate of fire through the roof at the cost of becoming an immobile turret. Assault marines trade off firepower for mobility and melee domination. They have jet packs and dominating melee weapons like chainswords, daemon mauls and thunder hammers. When you’re attacked at short range by an assault marine, chances are you will die in very short order.

You won’t be able to customize your loadouts in Space Marine until level 4, but that doesn’t mean you’re helpless against uber tweaked players until then. Every time you spawn, you have the option of copying the loadout of the guy who just killed you. So if you’re a level 1 player who hasn’t unlocked the assault marine class, all you have to do is die against an assault marine, copy his loadout, and boom, you’re rocketing all over the landscape.

So what don’t I like about Space Marine multiplayer? Well to start, a level 1 player can copy the loadout that I earned after multiple playthroughs. If the point of leveling up is to unlock more toys to play with, why should a newbie be able to play with my toys? It’d be one thing if the player was able to unlock ONE thing at a time per death, but instead it’s a complete loadout, weapons AND perks.

My remaining complaints are really 40k fan nitpickiness. The stuff that I feel is missing is stuff that’s been in other 40k games and shouldn’t have been that big a deal to implement.

Warhammer 40k is all about customization. In the tabletop game, you can kit out your heroes to your heart’s content, all the while knowing that every additional piece of war gear comes at a price. That philosophy is carried over in Dawn of War. One of the big draws of the RTS series is the multitude of war gear with which you can equip your hero, personalizing him or her (or it) with equipment that complements the way you want to play.

The customization options in Space Marine multiplayer are scant. You can choose among a few weapons. You can choose among a few grenades. There are perks, but they aren’t game changers.

Yes, you can customize the look of your Space Marine. You can make it look like one of the classic chapters or make a whole new look all your own. I was really looking forward to this. I had my color schemes all planned out, and I’m happy with the results. There’s NO WAR GEAR. How difficult would it have been to give players certain bonuses if they look like one of the classic chapters? How about special powers if you ally a chaos space marine with one of the four chaos gods? What about something as simple as a purity seal to let you gain a little extra XP with every battle? Team Fortress 2 has shown that a shooter can have ridiculous amounts of gear with lots of abilities without breaking the game.

So while I’m very enthusiastic about the single player mode of Space Marine, I’m not nearly as gung-ho for the multiplayer. Considering how I’m usually the guy who will eschew single player for multiplayer in games, that might be considered a problem. I have not finished the single player yet, but so far I’d say it has been flawless and fun. The multiplayer seems to be a no-frills, tacked-on afterthought. It’s challenging, it’s fun, but other similar games offer deeper tactical experiences with much greater customization.

If pressed, I could describe Deus Ex: Human Revolution in four words: Cyber Metal Gear Solid. Sure, the story is much deeper and more interactive. Sure, there are multiple ways of handling obstacles. However, when the bullets start flying and you’re being called upon to use your gaming skills in split second situations, Adam Jensen might as well have a mullet and a pack of cigarettes tucked away in his jacket.

Radar showing the position of enemies? Check. Equivalent of the “?” and “!” symbols over enemy guard heads? Check. Semi-constant pestering from people speaking directly into your head? Check. Ducking from cover to cover attempting to get from point A to point B without being detected? Check.

Granted, that might be just the way I approached Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In my first encounter with armed enemies, I died, quickly. “So, it’s gonna be like that, is it?” I muttered as I endured a lengthy reload of my last saved position. I started using what I know best: MGS-style stealth. I ducked behind cover. I used the easy Gears of War style interface to duck quickly from one position to the next in order to stay hidden. When I did open fire, I did it in a situation where one guy would definitely be dead before other guards would even notice what was going on. MGS-style tactics worked, but that’s not to say a true Halo-style run-and-gunner wouldn’t have success assuming his or her aim was true.

Thankfully, or perhaps I should say wonderfully, that’s not all there is to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The story is straight-up cyberpunk. Megacorporations are starting to take the place of nations. The topic on everyone’s mind is whether humans are ready for the integration of cyberware. As Adam Jensen, you’re the security chief of Sarif Industries, a leading cyberware company. Sure, that gives you an excuse to carry a gun in the corporate headquarters, but that also means you’re going to have the opportunity to deal with some corporate drama. The guy in the tech department is that person you might have to deal with at your real job whose only purpose in life seems to be to belittle you. By accessing your coworkers’ computers, you can read their emails and get to the bottom of all the drama that’s going on that doesn’t deal directly with you.

In my brief time with the game, I was put in several situations where morals directed the path of conversations. Without spoiling too much, what would you have Jensen do if a coworker wanted him to cover up some corporate wrongdoing? What if a superior asked Jensen to do something that wasn’t exactly legal? During my playthrough, I knew it’d be easy to play the morally ambiguous type, so I went out of my way to play the paladin. I was surprised how the game managed to bend to my play style.

In my last two hours with the game, I made several moral decisions and didn’t fire a single shot, though I definitely could have if I just wanted to jet from one place to another with the intention of murder. The story is a mature and engaging mix of corporate drama, human ethics and mystery. The plots would fit with little difficulty into Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Moral decisions aren’t the only choices you’ll have to make in the game. You’ll also have the opportunity to dictate how your cyberware progresses. Of all the decisions I made in the game, the cyberware upgrades were the most intriguing and took the most hand wringing. As you progress in the game, you will get Praxis Points. You’ll either find them lying around in the level or get them naturally through experience. You’ll use them to buy cyberware upgrades. Every upgrade you can get is awesome, but the rarity of Praxis Points means you’ll be agonizing over which upgrade you should get first. Do you want to get the stealth cloak even though your limited power supply will mean you’ll only get a few seconds of invisibility? Do you go for the radar upgrade that will let you see guards’ cones of sight? Do you go for the ability to leap nine feet in the air or the one that will let you fall from any height without damage? Do you want to see through walls or punch through walls?

If I could complain about anything in my limited play time, it’d be the takedowns. Takedowns are your melee attacks that incapacitate or kill your enemies. Maybe it’s just an Xbox thing, but when I triggered a takedown, the screen went black for less than a second as if the machine was loading up the takedown animation. Then the animation occurred, the foe was vigorously kung fu-ed, and the camera went back into Adam’s skull for the first-person perspective. It seemed quite clumsy to me, since Ezio and Batman have been doing takedowns for a long time without having a black “wait, I’m loading!” flash.

And yes, another small gripe I have is the fact everything is yellow. This strikes me as a very weird artistic decision. Also, the font in this game is SMALL and I can’t see a way to change it. While the subtitles were generally readable because they were a bright white color, the text is a dull gray against black when you’re reading emails. I had to physically get closer to the TV in order to read them.

I feel like no one told me Deus Ex: Human Revolution is what it is. It’s a solid, mature cyberpunk story that’s flexible enough to let you do whatever you want to do however you want to do it. It has my solid recommendation.

The more I read about Minecraft’s upcoming “Adventure Update,” the more I worry that Notch and Mojang don’t understand what they’ve created.  Notch and others have said they like what Terraria is doing with the summonable boss monsters, and that they want to add something like that to Minecraft, and I don’t get it.  In a way, it would be cool, but in another, that’s not what Minecraft has evolved into, and Terraria will always do it better.

Terraria works as an exploration/monster-slaying game because building massive structures on a 2D scale just isn’t all that terribly impressive.  Add to that, Terraria has a huge amount of stuff you can find, build, buy, and earn.  In comparison, Minecraft really has a very limited toolset, and I think that toolset lends itself to building up structures and making the world your own, because it’s not that difficult to hit bedrock, and it’s not that difficult to reach the sky, so what else is there but to build?  Plus, in 3D, huge structures feel huge, and can be explored from all angles, making them incredibly impressive.

Terraria also makes some design choices that promotes exploration and monster killing, rather than staying put and building.  Items don’t have durability, and stacks are considerably larger than in Minecraft.  Even your inventory is larger, I believe.  You can load up on wood and torches and have no need to return to the surface for a very long time.  Granted, you can take a workbench and furnace with you in Minecraft, and rebuild your tools and whatnot, but I’ve almost always found it more desirable to have a base of operations to return to on a regular basis, even if I’m playing on “Peaceful” difficulty.

The “Better Than Wolves” mod guy has the right idea.  We need more stuff to build in Minecraft, more ways to interact with the world, not more animals and monsters.  If I want to explore dungeons, hunt monsters, and collect loot, I’ll play Terraria.  I play Minecraft to pull an Ozymandias and say, “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Granted, you and I may play Minecraft in completely different ways.  Granted, Minecraft is still in beta, and perhaps “Terraria in 3D” has been Notch’s intentions all along.  Granted, the Adventure Update could come along and cause me to drop Super Metroid as my greatest game of all time.  Granted, it’s not like anyone at Mojang is going to see this and suddenly cry, “How did we get it so wrong!”

I’ll grant you all of that, but I still think it’s important, because if someone comes along and combines the Minecraft formula with the “Better Than Wolves” philosophy, I could very easily be convinced to switch.  I’ve gotten my $15 of enjoyment out of Minecraft, and then some.  Notch can do what he pleases, but if someone else scratches my itch in just the right way, I won’t be ashamed to jump ship.

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It won’t take me long to summarize Breach. It’s a modern military FPS with destructible terrain, bullet penetration, offensive cover, blindfire, suppression, a rudimentary XP system, a bunch of gadgets and a handful of maps and play modes. It’s $15 on XBLA, $20 on PC and has no single-player campaign.

The game pits CIA covert ops against OPFOR operatives who say the same tough guy lines the spooks say, only in a Russian accent. There are five classes of soldier to choose from that break no new ground in this kind of game, unless lacking a medic is groundbreaking. Riflemen are issued the standard assault rifle, gunners carry a SAW, snipers snipe, support soldiers are your shotgun-bearing close-combat guys, and recon gives players something between riflemen and snipers. The available modes are team deathmatch, infiltration (capture and hold), convoy (very similar to TF2’s payload mode), retrieval (capture the flag, only with randomized flag locations) and sole survivor (deathmatch without respawns).

For $15, you’re getting a lot of game. For the most part, the game delivers on its promise of tense, modern military action. You’ll be constantly ducking into cover or hurriedly clearing rooms of enemies as you try to complete your mission. When someone has the drop on you, the end comes very, very quick. A radar at the top corner of the screen gives you an indication of where your enemies are, but only while you or one of your comrades has sight of them. There’s also a hardcore mode that does away with the radar and halves your health.

The maps are excellent, though there are only five of them. Each has a multitude of hiding spaces and multiple firing angles to key locations. Destructible structures force players to choose between safety and a prime shooting spot. For instance, I was able to kill a few covert ops soldiers from my perch in a cliffside hut, but a well placed RPG round destroyed the building around me and sent me tumbling to the ground to my death.

Players will gain XP and more tactical choices as they level up. Low level gadgets include explosives and sniper detectors. Later gadgets will allow players to receive visual clues on enemy locations, even enabling them to see through walls. You won’t have to decide where to allocate your bonuses for leveling up; you’re given full access to all the perks, weaponry and gadgets available at your level.

My playtest of Breach on XBLA wasn’t completely without problems. More than a few times, popping into the control option of the menu switched my Y-axis reversal. Also, when I popped up my Xbox Guide during gameplay to check out my friends list while a game populated, the music crackled and skipped. Also, the cover is a little TOO sticky. When you’re in cover, you’re in cover, and you’re not going to come out of it unless you press the “cover” button again, even if you attempt to rotate your firing angle behind you.

Those are small problems, though. Breach is a game that is well worth $15 on XBLA. That being said, however, I’d say that another $15 shooter, Monday Night Combat, has even better gameplay value. I know comparing those games is like comparing apples to oranges, but I’m just letting you know where I stand if the question is simply which $15 shooter I’d choose to play. If you’re looking to get it on PC, it might be a harder sell. There are other PC shooters out there that offer similar gameplay, more maps, campaign modes and established communities for not much more than $20.

Rating: Rent It. Approach with caution.
Reviewer: Alex the Producer

Arcania: Gothic 4 is a third-person fantasy action RPG and the fourth installment of the Gothic series. You control an unnamed hero who seeks revenge on a faraway king whose forces have destroyed all he loves.

Sounds pretty formulaic, right? You got it. Read more »

Here’s the latest trailer for Blood Bowl Legendary Edition!

Blood Bowl Trailer from Alex the Producer on Vimeo.

My friends wouldn’t be surprised if I rushed up to them, shook them violently and exclaimed “OMG RUSE is the best game EVAR!” I’m Alex the Producer of the Way of the Game podcast. I’ve gone on the record as saying Endwar is my second-favorite game of ALL TIME. I’ve written a series on the tactics involved in Solium Infernum. Slow, plodding, strategic warfare is my thing.

The fact that I’ve been waiting for RUSE a long time is well known. Regular listeners will know my family pre-ordered the game for me for Christmas, back when it was assumed it was going to come out in March. It’s now September, and I cheerfully purchased the game with avaricious glee from my friendly neighborhood Gamestop when the pre-order got messed up.

So be aware this review has to be taken with a grain of salt. It comes from a guy with a definite predilection for this type of game, one that requires forethought and strategy rather than simply assembling your horde quicker than your enemy and smashing their base.

Now that I’ve provided enough caveats, I can now repeat my thesis statement with wide-eyed, flailing-armed excitement. OMG RUSE is the best game EVAR.

Allow me to explain what I’ve learned in my first few hours with the game. Read more »

We are back!  As much fun as it was to record with David, it’s refreshing to return to our usual format.  We’ve got some game talk, a little revisit of the changes, and a topic for you this week.

Jonathan is accused of poop-socking Red Dead Redemption.  He denies it, but it’s kinda true.  Alex has been playing Aliens vs. Predators, and wishes there were others to play with him.  Solium Infernum comes up (shock shock), as does a brief mention of the upcoming third season of Table Saw Blood Bowl.

In the topic section, we discuss EA’s new multiplayer strategy, and explore whether it’s a good idea or not.  We also compare it to the decisions other companies are making with regards to DRM (we’re looking at you, Ubisoft), and even discuss the fashion industry for a moment.  (This is a pretty fascinating TED Talk.)

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