Imperium

I am pleased to announce that my review of Gears of War has arrived, right on time for a half-year after its release!

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Gears of War

Do you know what it feels like when you land a rocket directly beneath someone’s crotch in Quake? It’s a beautiful thing to behold. First comes the muzzle-flash, the rocket leaves the long barrel, it sails, torpedo-like, toward its destination. It closes the distance (all of this happens in a matter of a few seconds at most) and with a sensation akin to a warm, friendly hug, you realise that it’s going to hit home. Finally it detonates and your foe explodes in a shower of blood and gibs, reminiscent of a New Year’s Eve fireworks display.

How about a good old fashioned frozen orb in Diablo II? The concept: a top-tier spell on the Sorceress’ cold tree with a freezing area-of-effect. The reality: a shimmering sphere of levitating luminescent white and blue elemental energy spraying deadly spikes of ice every which way, all the time freezing demons solid in their tracks, leaving them helpless against the continuing massacre. Rarely, if ever, have I felt a greater sense of being master of all that I survey than when I was dishing out frozen orbs in all directions, fending off blunderbores, giant maggots and shambling squadrons of zombies without being touched.

These and other wonders are rightfully cherished pieces of the rich tapestry of computer gaming history. And now, carried on the scorched wings of the reborn flaming phoenix of co-operative multiplayer that is Gears of War, there comes another addition to that tapestry. Bid a fond farewell to Quake’s gauntlet and pry Gordon Freeman’s crowbar from his cold dead hands and chuck it in a skip (if you can). There’s a new butcher’s mate in town – the chainsaw bayonet.

The bayonet is a work of art, a thing to be feared – an aspect of terror. You haven’t lived until you’ve pounced on a locust (Gear’s alien menace) and buried your saw deep within his chest, watching him writhe as the camera is splattered with dripping blood and bits of shredded lung. It’s the most visceral experience to be had in the game, and certainly one of the most visceral experiences in the genre. No matter how you spin it in the violent video games debate, in-game gore, done well, is always going to be damned entertaining.

The now iconic bayonet comes fitted to the ‘Lancer’ assault rifle, arguably the core of a small but stunning armoury including the screen-shudderingly beefy ‘Gnasher’ shotgun, a similarly beefy but more petite magnum revolver, and the torque bow – a true oddity that fires its meat-cleaving adhesive projectiles in a similar fashion to an attached grenade launcher, but looks more like a crossbow.

What brings these fantastic weapons to life – apart from the shocking impact they have on flesh – are the hectic, heart-pounding encounters with the enemy, infused with the almost claustrophobic atmosphere introduced by the game’s famous cover system. Heroic charges are pretty much out of the question, especially on the higher difficulty settings, thanks to the colossal damage that even a bog-standard locust grunt can do to you when he brings his boomstick to bear.

There’s plenty to keep you from feeling brave – manned turrets, ‘troikas’, that feel like they could tear a tank a new one, the locust elite (original wielders of the intimidating torque bow), boomers (hulkish brutes carrying rocket launchers), and nemacyst (slow-flying squid creatures – akin to sentinels in The Matrix – that explode on impact). The message comes across loud and clear: “Get your head down!”, and so you shall, tapping the space bar every five seconds to huddle behind a low wall, deftly slip around a corner, or dive to that next life-saving man-sized object, all with military precision and grace.

Because of all this hardship, and the reflexive ducking and hiding that will inevitably consume half of your combat time, kills, though not rare by any stretch of the imagination, feel far more meaningful. When you bring down a locust you’ll feel like you’ve leaped a hurdle. Accuracy is key; hitting particular body parts will quickly bring them to their knees, disabling them for a short while and leaving them vulnerable to your face-breaking coup de grace – the curb-stomp, a despicably violent finishing move that involves your boot and their head connecting at dangerously high speed.

Like Call of Duty 4, Gears can be severely punishing to play – mainly because it (unsurprisingly) saves at checkpoints (having been ported from console hell) and doesn’t provide the player with any other save options. A helping hand comes in the way that death is handled. When your health is depleted you keel over in a pool of your own blood and rock back and forth in agony. From there your (hopefully selfless) squadmates can rush to your assistance and miraculously lift you to your feet. It’s not ultra-realistic stuff, and it might anger the fanatical “vita chambers are a cheat” crowd, but it encourages co-operation, and it works.

Not that Gears needs these additions to instigate co-operation – the intensity of the pressure brought to bear upon you and your squad in combat is quite sufficient. Every encounter is a tactical challenge with intuitive solutions, and you’ll no doubt find yourself easing into the action. The basic rule (as with all proper squad combat) is to flank the enemy and dominate them, and you can achieve that well enough in single player, with your AI buddies providing suppressing fire as you advance.

But I didn’t use the words ‘flaming phoenix’ lightly before – these maneuvers come alive in multiplayer in a way that will make you loathe to go solo. Disappointingly, the co-op mode only supports two players (the other two characters in your four-man squad being directed by AI of average competence). If you’re the host you’ll be in the shoes of ultra badass Marcus Fenix; if you’re player two you’ll be his loyal companion, the more softly spoken and moderately hardened Dominic Santiago. They’re both hollow characters driving, or being driven by (it’s hard to say which) an empty shell of a plot, but that’s never a problem for the gameplay.

Most of the time Fenix and Santiago fight side-by-side (often with the other two squad members), but to spice things up they’re occasionally separated. A far cry from the classic Resident Evil “let’s split up so we can cover more ground” scenario, these splits are entirely believable. For one thing, they usually benefit the team (unlike Jill Valentine having to face off with a giant mutant snake on her lonesome), with Marcus seizing control of a troika pinning Dominic down, or Dominic providing Marcus with sniper protection from a balcony above his position.

And there’s always a satisfying reason given for why the team is scattered – either the trams on a railway leading to a destination are so small they can only support one man, or there are two objectives in different locations that need to be completed in a short space of time. It all smacks of inventiveness.

Unfortunately some of the other special stages are nowhere near as inspired. The few boss fights that there are aren’t terrible, but they’re eyesores compared with storming a locust-held mansion or emerging victorious from a pulse-racing street fight. Even the fearsome Brumak, touted as a central selling point of the game (particularly the PC version, featuring several Brumak-powered levels not available in the console release) is really no big deal when he’s up close.

That said, the single vehicle section in Gears – a dreaded night-time gauntlet driving a two-seater APC across a city infested with flesh eating alien bats, the ‘Krill’ – is unfathomably more shitty. It might sound like a thrilling getaway, but there’s a catch; you’re forced to fend off the swarms of Krill with an ultraviolet searchlight which, thanks to a stroke of mechanical genius, draws power directly from the engine, thereby slowing your escape. It’s not good if you suffer from stress. There’s nothing wrong with the Krill though (apart from their hunger for your bones) – think of the man-eating flying insects in the X-Files episode ‘Darkness Falls’ and you’ve more or less got the idea.

On top of everything Gears is a hell of a looker; a delicacy if you’re (like me) a connoisseur of fine graphics. At the time of writing I’ve just been wowed by the next ‘evolution’ in visual detail present in the gameplay demo of Gears of War 2; and yet I still hold praise for the delightful amalgam of gothic and futuristic elements exhibited in the aesthetic of the original.

Everything looks and feels meaty in Gears. Fenix and Santiago – and later Cole and Baird (the other two main cast members) – don’t look like normal men; they’re built more like mutated rugby players. They’ve got that bulky space marine-esque quality about them that seems to seep through naturally from the Unreal Engine. The locust take that inhuman figure to an extreme with their sickly, almost undead-like skin, and horrific, razor-sharp teeth.

What’s impressive is that Epic have crafted an enemy that is simultaneously a close match with the humans in size, shape and strength (a worthy adversary), yet utterly monstrous and repulsive in appearance. The environments are plenty and varied. Some feature grand architecture and chunky stonework; others are Moria-like subterranean mazes with gaping chasms and overhanging rock formations. Unfortunately they rather screwed up with the rain effects – I caught some water in the act of flowing upwards over a rock – but let’s not dwell on minor hiccups.

Let’s instead dwell on Windows Live, the near-unbearable menu and lobby system serving as the hub for all your Gears activities. If I remember correctly it was a bit of a chore to even sign up because the login system was conflicting with some other software I had installed, so for a few hours I wasn’t able to play the game at all. The menu is more confusing than most to navigate, multiplayer options that one could take for granted in other games (like being able to invite friends to your game) have been reserved for Gold account holders (who have to pay a fee), and you can only have one single player and one multiplayer game on the go at one time. The fact that the interface is plastered with annoying instructions for players using an XBox 360 gamepad is the icing on the cake.

And I’d be remiss without warning you that there are some major bugs (still unfixed the last time I played) which will stop you in your tracks. The one that happened to me several times was that I would get to the finale of Act Two (the game is split into five acts), the game would crash and all of my saves would be wiped. All in all I’ve probably completed the majority of Act Two about four or five times, the silver-lining being that I have an unusually intimate knowledge of Marcus and Dominic’s night mission.

But please don’t be discouraged from purchasing a copy if the preceding tracts of adoration had you seduced. I’ll tip my hat (or at least I would if I wore a hat) to Epic and say that they’ve created what I consider to be by far the finest co-op game in existence. It’s so good that I’m having trouble thinking of any other in its class. Time after time it delivers some of the most challenging, exciting, gruesome action scenes in gaming, and at no point does it sacrifice immersion for cinematic flamboyance (apart from during the cinematics of course).

If you want an over-the-top, testosterone-fuelled frag fest of an FPS with an amazingly solid tactical dimension whisked in, then this is your medicine. And if you want to take a break from squabbling with your comrades in frivolous deathmatches to join the co-operative revolution, then this is your ambrosia. Drink your fill.

92%

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My apologies for the delay. I’ve been busy writing posts for Planet Half-Life (where I’m once again reporting as suedama) so the frequency of my updates on Imperium has sadly suffered.

I got a whopping three votes in my last poll, which has encouraged me to get a new one up for my next review. I’ll bash that together in the next few days.

Boom!

- Chris

Many apologies for the prolonged wait. Finding the time for Imperium is much harder now that I have other things taking up my time. My review of the KOTORs is now finished, as promised:

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Knights of the Old Republic I & II

About a month ago now I reached the finale of my revisitation of the Knights of the Old Republic saga, a revisitation that started when I gazed across the room at my brother’s iMac, on which he was playing through the opening sections of KOTOR for the first time.

I couldn’t help but feel pangs of nostalgia when the menacing Darth Malak turned, in that frightening Vader-esque way, to face one of his officers. Fond memories quickly resurfaced of an epic storyline on a galactic scale, worlds populated with masses of characters, a huge body of side-quests, tonnes of force powers, lightsaber combat and the conflict between the light and dark side tying it all together. In short, a classic Bioware production.

I had decided before the game was even installed that I was going to play a dark side character (my default path), perhaps for no greater reason than to avoid the cringe-worthy light side ending cinematic. My class choices came later – Scout for the first chapter and Jedi Consular for the rest of the game – but ended up suiting my twisted ego all too well. As a Consular inclined toward the dark side, I was free to revel in the full destructive power of force lightning, and the life sapping potential of force grip and drain – my favourites.

The introduction was enthralling enough, with various tutorials (essential for a newbie) skillfully punctuated by the slowly building drama of the ship you’re on being ripped apart and boarded by ‘Sith’. Sadly that drama vanished rather too quickly once I’d crash landed on the planet below.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a wrecked escape pod might’ve attracted the attention of the local authorities, especially when those authorities were Sith, the very same chaps who were desperately trying to assassinate me only moments beforehand. If KOTOR was a great RPG, the crash would’ve been swiftly followed by a chase scene, or a narrow escape from capture – something to make me feel like actual people lived on Taris (the planet in question) rather than a bunch of mindless drones who didn’t seem to give a shit about anything outside of their pointless daily routines.

Alas, whether because of mediocre designers hired sometime after the release of the Baldur’s Gate series, or through sheer laziness, Bioware filled the majority of KOTOR with uninspired side quests and boringly tranquil city hubs in which very little of import ever occurs. Does anyone really give a toss about procuring a serum to cure a load of hapless beggars of the dreaded ‘rackghoul’ disease? Was I supposed to care when I came across an OAP alien with a head shaped like a bent crucifix being bullied by a couple of children? Maybe so, but I didn’t.

The quest-giving characters in KOTOR are (without a single exception that I can think of) a lot like the desperate couple in the diner in Pulp Fiction: they may have great lines (not that I think that the quality of writing in KOTOR even comes close to Pulp Fiction’s) but they’re never given the screen time of the main characters. As a result I’m never as involved with them emotionally as I am with Bruce Willis’ ‘Butch’ or John Travolta’s ‘Vincent’, or in KOTOR, Bastila or Malak.

And that’s KOTOR’s greatest flaw, shared by KOTOR II, as well as other Bioware productions like Neverwinter Nights and the more recent Jade Empire. The lion’s share of the content of all these games is a mire of embarrassing crap that’s frankly unpleasant to play. It’s crap because it smells, and it’s embarrassing not to me or you or anyone else, but to the finer elements of the games themselves.

In the case of the KOTOR series, those finer elements are the few truly intriquing playable characters who travel with you on your journey, the menacing villains who overshadow your every step (the Darths), and those rare moments when you’re steeped in Star Wars lore, visiting places where only legendary Jedi and Sith Lords have dared to tread.

Combat is generally a tiresome chore in both games. Even the most extravagant force powers tend to become very underwhelming very quickly, given that you’re more or less forced (no pun intended) to use them every five seconds. Lightsaber duels, though somewhat captivating at first, are the same from beginning to end, no matter who’s dueling, and so also become mundane early on. Gun fights are even worse: with no cover system to speak of, all you can do is stand twenty paces away from your enemy and exchange fire until one of you drops to the floor.

The player character is a great deal weaker in KOTOR than the one in KOTOR II. In KOTOR battles are more or less always challenging, often irritatingly so; in KOTOR II they progress from being fairly easy to totally one-sided about three quarters of the way through.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of fights that a Jedi should never have trouble with, and it’s good to have those in the game so that I can feel warm with smug superiority, but I think you’ve got to make the duels with other Jedi (light and dark) more trying. The balance is perfect in Jedi Academy, where the duels are perilous right the way to the end, but stormtroopers and the like are a pushover.

Where KOTOR really bitch-slaps its younger brother is in the polish department. I remember when I’d first played through KOTOR II (around the time of its release) it was in its youthful unpatched state, and therefore crippled (though not quite as crippled as the infamous Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which I adore by the way) by bugs as well as missing or unfinished content. Coming back to it recently I found that several patches, some containing the bulk of the that missing content, were available for download.

My opinion of the game is somewhat changed for the better as a result. Though I noticed that some things were still missing, like a few side-quests and NPC conversations on Nar Shaddaa, it is a much more complete affair, and (crucially) free of fatal errors. But it still never feels as well rounded as KOTOR. There’s something intangibly disjointed and spaced-out about the way that KOTOR II plays; with KOTOR everything just felt right – mostly not up to scratch as I’ve already described, but still a fully intact work.

Stuff like your alignment (light side/dark side) changing depending on your choices in and out of dialogue makes much more sense in the first game than in the second, in which the rules of morality were hard to grasp to say the least. I actually had to cheat to turn myself to the dark side near the end of KOTOR II. I knew I was evil, that my actions had been deliciously unsavoury throughout, but apparently the game had calculated me to be a model of virtue. I wanted force crush, not some namby-pamby aura!

Ultimately KOTOR has the edge over KOTOR II for this and other reasons, some difficult for me to articulate. There are bits of KOTOR II that are quite charming, but it never comes together properly. What matters more than the differences between these two games though are the differences between them and other (far greater) RPG titles.

I’m about to embark on a play through the Baldur’s Gate saga with my brother (who stopped playing KOTOR about an eighth of the way through funnily enough) and a friend, and if my memory serves me well the BG storyline is far more involving and the side quests nowhere near as pathetic as those I’ve just ranted about. We’ll see, but for the time being I think I’ll warn you not to bother with these two pretentious miscreants. They’re revered in the RPG gaming community, but for me they’re anything but special.

KOTOR: 72%

KOTOR II: 66%

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Woah, those scores are harsh. I almost feel like going back and giving WOW’s score a good kicking the in the bollocks to restore the balance. It would lose ten percentage points I expect. Perhaps another time.

Next up will probably be Gears of War, which I’m now playing through on insane difficulty when I get the time. Stay tuned.

- Chris

The first of my bite-size reviews is done. Ok, it’s slightly less bite-size than I originally intended, but BOTF is a big game. Enjoy.

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Birth of the Federation

Let’s say that you manage to get Birth of the Federation up and running. Now imagine that you’re playing as the United Federation of Planets. A Ferengi scout ship ventures into your space, hails one of your command cruisers and, with the uniquely charming tone of voice that all Ferengi share, says “Greetings from the Ferengi Alliance! We are very pleased to meet your people, and look forward to a long and profitable future of trade and commerce with you.” What do you do?

You might instinctively decide to wage war on the big-eared scourge, and I wouldn’t normally advise against that decision; but the Federation have certain limitations (as do the remaining three playable galactic powers – The Klingon Empire, The Romulan Star Empire and The Cardassian Union), one of which is a populace who generally disapprove of their military being used as a tool for conquest.

Instead, you might consider diplomacy: the Federation’s forte. Navigate your way to the diplomatic screen (by way of a delightful radial menu) and you’ll find a list of all the races you’ve encountered – both minor and major – with an approval indicator corresponding to each one. Most peacemaking consists of sustained gift giving and establishing trade relations, until there are enough bars in the approval indicator to propose a new deal. Simplistic fare; but no more so than the diplomacy in Civilization IV.

System management is also all about allocating points into bars. In this case, the point pool represents population, and you place points into the four production bars: food (for growth), industry (for building stuff), research (for upgrading ships and buildings and learning how to build new ones) and intelligence (for spying and the like). The closest approximation to Civ’s trusty worker is the colony ship, which can either terraform planets (providing room for population growth) or colonize systems.

Espionage (the province of the Romulans and the Cardassians) is controlled from the intelligence screen. You’re allocated one hundred points to spread over internal security (counter-intelligence), espionage (gathering information) and sabotage (bang). If you power up more intelligence centres in your systems, your points will carry more weight, and you’ll start to receive pleasing reports of successful operations carried out by your agents, such as bombings and hijackings, or staged diplomatic embarassments.

There are six avenues of research to pursue – biotech, energy, computer, propulsion, production and weapons – that you divide research points over, thereby accelerating or decelerating technological progress in particular areas. Each avenue contains ten tech levels; and every building or ship that you can construct has a number of prerequisite levels. There’s not as much room for research strategy in BOTF as there is with Civ IV’s more organic system (where all techs are lumped together and inter-related), but it’s sufficiently stimulating.

All of those features aside, it’s a scientific fact that a Star Trek game without massive spaceships exchanging phaser fire, blitzing each other with disruptor volleys and letting loose with full spreads of photon torpedos, is doomed to failure.

Thankfully, BOTF handles war well for a turn based strategy game. There’s a good variety of ships for each side. They can gain experience through battle with the enemy or training at a starbase. And there’s the battle screen – a fairly satisfying tactical mode with a rock/paper/scissors structure – that you can switch to whenever fleets clash, as in the Total War series.

BOTF holds its ground with valiant tenacity against its younger, fresher competitors. Granted, Civ IV is a substantial leap forward in a lot of ways. It’s consistently polished, more user friendly and almost entirely free of bugs. BOTF is hostile to first time players (lacking an equivalent to the Civilopedia) and a tech support fiasco on modern PCs.

But it has a subtle allure about it for a Star Trek fan like myself. The playable powers, though nowhere near as numerous as the civilizations in Civ IV, are far more detailed and distinctive. And minor races – that can either be persuaded to become your vassals or simply conquered – breathe life into the galaxy map and bring new strategic meaning to securing territory.

BOTF 2 is currently in the hands of third party modders, with a number of projects, some shaping up better than others, in varying stages of development. If and when one of these projects reaches completion, I’ll be sure to write about it. But for now, BOTF remains highly recommendable if you’re a Star Trek devotee who wants a change from Civ. Just be prepared for a little troubleshooting and problem solving to get it to work.

✓ It’s Star Trek
✓ Minor races are a great idea
✓ Generally very solid gameplay
✓ Good for a war
✗ Bugged to hell
✗ User unfriendly

82%

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- Chris

And now, the final part of my review of The Orange Box, Team Fortress 2:

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Team Fortress 2

More so than in any other genre of computer gaming, team multiplayer is only as good as the players make it. Take a look at case number one: Counter-Strike. I’ve been in CS matches that made me feel like a god. Even a steady 2:1 kill to death ratio is enough for a decent session; anything upwards of 3:1 can be euphoric. But, if you happen to be on bad form, or if you’re playing on a server infested with certified members of the l33t club, you can end up spending half of your evening in a state of clinical depression.

If you die early on in a round of CS, you’ve got to wait for all the other players to finish up. In reality, the wait is only ever minutes long; but when you’re spending those minutes thinking of the myriad ways that they could have been used up had you not perished – getting lovely precision headshots on terrorists with your M4 assault rifle for instance – it seems like hours have passed.

Case number two, Battlefield 2, doesn’t have this enforced period of anguish; rounds are much longer and you’re allowed to respawn. However, you’re sorely mistaken if you think that a mere respawn system is sufficient for eternal bliss. Oh no, “we have ways of making your game time suck” boasts an Electronic Arts representative, cowering over you, while a Digital Illusions designer prepares an interrogation droid in the background.

In any one round of BF2, you’ll be shot and instantly killed and have no idea who did the deed, be intensely frustrated by how easy it is for the enemy to down your attack helicopter, repeatedly have your plane blown to bits before you even manage to take off, or have some complete and total arse burger sneak out from behind a rock and plant a couple of sticks of C4 on the rear end of your tank. The list of things that can happen in BF2 that will make you miserable is really quite long.

Now, I’m not saying that Team Fortress 2 will never let you down, and that every moment you spend playing it will be equivalent to drinking from a goblet full of ambrosia; but the fact remains that, in the month or so that I’ve been playing it, I’ve very rarely felt like quitting because I was pissed off. Perhaps the overriding reason why this is the case is because TF2 doesn’t take itself at all seriously. In fact, it really is rather silly.

There are nine classes: Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper and Spy. They’re all caricatures of roles you might find in other games. The Spy is a perfect example: he has a .357 magnum, a flick-knife for backstabbing, an ‘electro sapper’ for disabling turrets, dispensers and teleporters, and a disguise kit that allows him to look like any class he wants on either team. He can also cloak for short periods.

That all sounds just about normal, but the way that it’s been implemented is delightfully absurd. If a friendly spy passes by, disguised as a member of the opposite team, he’ll appear to be wearing a piece of cardboard over his face sporting an image of the class he’s impersonating. What’s hilarious is that, to the enemy, he looks exactly like one of their own.

The classes are more than just a bunch of weapons thrown together though; they’re characters in themselves. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a fast paced multiplayer game; there’s no time for a heavy to abruptly halt his march half way up a hill and deliver a rousing, soul bearing Shakespearean monologue. What you get in the course of a game are hints of personalities – a few of which have been expanded upon in the ‘Meet the …’ series of trailers that Valve released prior to the game’s release.

No monologue from the Heavy; rather, he’ll exclaim “I love this doctor!” if a Medic starts to heal him, shout “Engineer is credit to team!” if he uses a portal (built by the Engineer) and let loose a manic, bestial roar if he gets a killing spree with his gatling gun. Every class has these wonderful outbursts, not to mention their own set of animated taunts – one for each weapon they carry. These are small things really, but taken together, they’re a valuable contribution to the game’s tangibly up-beat atmosphere.

TF2 has been engineered to foster relationships between players. Rivalries are made official by the Dominated/Revenge system. If you manage to accumulate several kills against a particular opponent, a triumphant horn arpeggio will sound, and he will be labelled as ‘Dominated’ on the score board. But there’s a chance for a comeback; if he manages to kill you in return, his mark of shame is removed and triumph is his. These rivalries are further reinforced by the death-cam, which zooms to your murderer the moment you fall.

The more important relationships though, are those between team members. Fortunately, team play is where the game shines most brightly. Each and every class has a vital role that it can play. The Medic and the Engineer, being support classes, have clearly defined tasks to carry out from the get-go. But in the course of an evening there are going to be plenty of opportunities for the other classes to show their team spirit too.

The Soldier, or the Demoman, depending on the situation in question, are often the only classes capable of breaking an entrenched fortification of fully upgraded turrets. The Soldier can saturate the area with rockets from afar; the Demoman can, if he has the skill, land a bundle of grenades next to the Engineer who’s keeping the turrets repaired. The Spy can be excellent at this as well, disguising himself as an Engineer so that he can get close and perform some sabotage, before or after plunging his knife into the backs of any Engineers present.

The Demoman can secure capture points by covering them in sticky bombs (which he can detonate remotely), a tactic that can also be used to deny the enemy access through entrances and passages. The Pyro can do this (if he manages to obtain the element of surprise) with his flamethrower, bathing a room in fire and driving the enemy out. He can also expose disguised spies by immolating everyone he sees – as long as friendly fire isn’t on, of course.

Almost every action will impart some benefit, however big or small, to the success of the team. Some of these actions are purely selfless; some will also benefit the player. Being a good Medic is all about finding someone suitable (i.e. big, nasty and capable of taking some damage) on your team and pairing up with him, keeping him healed and unleashing your uber-charge on him (making him invulnerable for a short time) at just the right moment. The Medic/buddy partnership is important to the team because it can turn the buddy – previously an ordinary footsoldier – into a juggernaut, forcing the enemy to disperse in fear of his unending stamina.

As a reward for his loyalty, the Medic shares the points from his buddy’s kills. But other team members will look to the Medic for healing as well. If he turns to heal them, he’ll effectively be doubling their staying power; but he runs the risk of sacrificing points, since he doesn’t get any from healing for its own sake. Will he devote himself to his buddy, forsaking all others? Or will he be prepared to leave his buddy and dabble in triage when necessary? It’s a matter for the Medic to decide what kind of a team player he’s going to be.

TF2 is very much an objective oriented game. Except for the sudden death period that follows on from a stalemate, there’s no deathmatch. Instead, there’s a descendent of the classic capture the flag – in which flags are replaced with intelligence briefcases (alleviating that nagging thought in the back of my mind that flags really aren’t of massive strategic importance) – and a control point mode that comes in two or more (I’ve been racking my brain to think of how many, and I failed) variants.

Along with this there are six maps. 2Fort – a remake (so I’m told) of a map of the same name from the original Team Fortress – is the only CTF map. The remaining five maps are structured around control points. On some, control points can be taken by one team and then later retaken by the other, back and forth; on others, the team designated as the attackers must secure a number of territories (preventing the defenders from recapturing them) before unlocking the final one.

The supreme quality of the maps means that it’s barely a criticism to point out how few there are. Compare TF2 with Quake 4 in this respect: Q4 had something close to twenty maps, of which only about three or four passed muster. Which would you rather have? A shed-load of badly conceived arenas, and a select few quality ones that you actually play? Or six well refined beauties that you can really sink your teeth into? And don’t let me forget that many of TF2’s maps can be rotated, so that one set of control points is closed off (essentially a map in itself), and another is opened up. Then we’re really talking about ten maps or more, not six.

There is one major problem with the game that I can think of: the Scout. The basic concept of the Scout is that he’s fast as hell, stings like a bee with his double-barrelled shotgun, can double-jump and capture points faster than any other class. The way things have turned out, he’s still fast as hell, but his sting is more like a bashing from a battering ram, and he can capture points faster than you can say “Oh, bugger! He’s capturing the point bloody quickly!”.

The speed of their captures varies from map to map, but it can be stupefying. One time, I was playing on ‘Well’ (a ‘back and forth’ control point map). I had just respawned and I was exiting the resupply room (the central port of call for health and ammo replenishment) when two Scouts leapt up the steps to the final control point. Their capture speed bonuses stack, so, after they had both reached the point, they won the game in no more than two seconds. I was a Pyro, and even at close range there wasn’t enough time for me to defend against them.

This could be more of an issue with Well than with the class itself, but its an issue nonetheless, and the fact remains that the double-barrelled shotgun does far too much damage. Imbalances can always be repaired with patches though, as can minor glitches on maps such as ‘Dustbowl’ that allow fire to be exchanged before the match has even started.

I posted a while back with my impressions of my first time playing TF2. It was in beta then, and I was stunned by how consistently enjoyable it was. My opinion of it has hardly changed since. If you’re in the mood for a multiplayer experience that stinks of realism and breaks you (rather than eases you) in, check out CS, BF2 or even Call of Duty 4, which has been released in the time that I’ve been writing this review. If you’re just ‘up for a laugh’, then you’re much better off buying The Orange Box and diving into a TF2 match straight away.

✓ Jolly silly
✓ Real teamwork
✓ Well conceived classes
✓ Great maps and game modes
✗ Imbalanced Scout class

90%

__________

- Chris

Fresh from my brain, here is the second part of my review of The Orange Box, Portal:

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Portal

You’ll recall that I was imagining how The Orange Box would be stacked, and that Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was on top. I’ve now realised that imagining boxes is the sort of activity that a lunatic engages in, and so I’m going to stop it immediately.

If Episode 2 is a continuation of a grand, sweeping tale (and it is), Portal is a highly original and unique puzzle game. You’re placed in the shoes of a test subject in a laboratory owned by ‘Aperture Science’, a research organization dealing in experimental physics. You awake, from an indeterminately long sleep, into what looks to be a very expensive solitary confinement cell. You have your basic amenities: a bed (which looks more like an escape pod), a toilet and a radio on top of a bedside table. For a while you’re left alone in your cell, with naught but a cheerful tune coming from the radio to keep you company.

Shortly, your solitude is disrupted by the strangely melodic voice of GLaDOS, the resident AI, who instructs you through sequential test chambers. She’s kind enough to have established a perfectly smooth learning curve with her tests. You’re first introduced to the fundamentals of portal technology: there must be two portals, one is red, one is blue, if you enter one, you instantly materialise through the other. No doubt, these are concepts that an ape could master, and quite quickly. The difficult part – the part that certain apes might struggle with – is figuring out how those fundamentals can be used to traverse otherwise impassable obstacles, direct balls of energy to switch on a moving platform, or harness the power of momentum to leap great distances.

There are nineteen tests in all, followed by an endgame chapter that takes place outside of the lab. The lab is beautifully clean and clinical, reminiscent of the stripped-bare aesthetic of the virtual reality in Tron. The walls are made up of tiles with different textures, each texture signifying whether a particular tile can or cannot be used as a surface for a portal. Crucial objects and devices are scattered like rocks in a Zen garden, surrounded by a sea of monotonous colour.

In stark contrast, the moment you emerge from the end of the nineteenth test, you’re immersed in the cluttered, industrial guts of the enrichment centre. It’s about as far from a Zen garden as you can get: there are ladders and stairways that fall apart when you try to climb them, pneumatic compressors that threaten to crush your bones, and massive fans of the kind that make you imagine some poor, foolish soul who falls backwards into them and has his flesh instantaneously puréed. The environments clash, but the portal mechanics remain the same. The challenge is to adjust to the noisy atmosphere, apply your training to more complicated situations, and learn once again which surfaces will support your portals, and which won’t.

Portal is an intellectual game (it made me feel the same mental tingling that I feel whenever I play Chess), but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Like the classic lightsaber, the portal gun is a fantastic toy. It’s fascinating to experiment with portals. You can create an infinite loop, where you place the portals at points facing each other. If you open one on the ceiling and the other on the floor directly below, you can fall forever. Or you can put one adjacent to the other in a corner, so that you can see three or four images of yourself, as in a hall of mirrors.

Solving the later, more complicated puzzles is hugely satisfying. The eighteenth test had me quite firmly stumped for a while. I found myself dividing it into several, smaller tests. First, I knew that I had to get rid of the many turrets in the chamber. Second, I’d need to power up the platform. And third, somehow get the cube on the far side back over to the entrance, so that I could drop it on the pressure button in the previous room, and make my way to the exit.

All of the puzzles require you to establish your objectives, analyse the environment, and devise solutions. But don’t let me make them sound like simplistic affairs; it would be a mistake to think that you’ll breeze through every one in a matter of seconds.

Furthermore, don’t let me make Portal sound like it’s deadly serious and only accessible to the ultra hardcore, conundrum solving, Myst playing populace. It’s enthused with fine wit and hilarity, most of which comes from GlaDOS’ ongoing commentary. For instance, she’s quite casual about notifying you of the many dangers involved in the tests, such as the aforementioned flying balls of volatile energy (as seen in Half-Life 2 and its episodes), pools of highly corrosive acid and turrets.

The turrets can speak, by the way – I suspect because the Aperture engineers that crafted them theorised that programming them to plead with intruders in a cute, pitiful voice might catch a few of them off-guard, and persuade them to stroll up to the turrets in a doomed attempt to give them a cuddle. I can imagine the scene now: “Put me down!” the turret begged.
“Oh, so sorry!” replied the intruder, carefully setting the turret down, “are you alright?”
“There you are!” exclaimed the turret, registering movement in its sensor range and opening fire, consigning the intruder to her bullet-ridden fate.

Something that Portal lacks – and this works in its favour – is an emphasis on twitch gameplay. I submit that, from the perspective of a newcomer to computer games, traditional first person shooters are the hardest of all games to play. To play a FPS you’re required to be able to navigate in a 3D space – which means becoming accustomed to using the WASD and mouse combo – and also learn to fire accurately at enemies.

Portal does away with the second prerequisite altogether, which makes it far more accessible than the other two games in The Orange Box. It also lacks an emphasis on violence, present in the other two games, which certainly widens its appeal. So, if you want to ease your girlfriend or your mum into computer gaming, don’t, for the love of all that is good and decent, present them with The Sims; give them Portal.

Finally, much has been made of how short Portal is. You’ll get no argument to the contrary from me. It is too short, in the sense that when I reached the end, I wanted more. Its being short is definitely not a reason to penalise it though. First, the price of the game doesn’t demand anything much longer. Second, its brevity is simply a byproduct of its intense quality. The story is a simple one, but it’s condensed into a rich concentrate. Every puzzle and every room is supremely designed; every object and every line of dialogue is perfect in its time and place. It doesn’t have the emotional depth of Episode 2, but it is a masterpiece in its category.

Besides, it has massive potential for expansion by Valve and by modders. Since the building blocks of puzzles in Portal are so simple, it should be correspondingly simple to design new levels. The hard part of the design process will not be arranging objects and textures to make levels that have the right look and feel; rather, it will be doing the necessary thinking for creating a problem with a clever solution. At least, I hope that’s the case. I’m certainly no expert in the field, so I don’t really have any idea what the hell I’m saying. We will have to wait and see what modderkind is inspired to create. Perhaps, some cake?

✓ Sublimely clever
✓ Original
✓ Joyous
✓ Accessible to non-gaming types
✗ It smells? No, not really.

90%

Check back in a few days for Team Fortress 2.

- Chris

Ok, I’ve been advised that I should post my Orange Box review in installments. Hopefully that should make it easier to read, and it will be up on the site earlier. To start, here’s the introduction and the review of Episode 2:

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The Orange Box

I haven’t always been a fan of boxes. I’ve been a PC gamer long enough to recall the days of cardboard packaging, five times the size it needed to be. My copy of Homeworld stood to the height of a small tome, with the jewel case and the manual rattling around inside. Those were dark times, and I look back on them now with not a single hint of nostalgia. You’ll not find me in a flight of whimsy, longing for Hellgate: London to be delivered in a gargantuan sleeve, just so that I might make another contribution to the recycling heap.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point in years past there was a ’switch’, and games began to be sold in economical DVD-size cases. For these compact treasures, I have a much greater fondness. They’re not so small that they’re insignificant; and they’re not so large that they’re obese. They’re perfectly formed for the human hand without being chunky and childish. I like the way my collection looks, neatly arranged in my shelves as it is. I liked the way that I was slowly but surely running out of space, so that soon I was going to have to seek additional storage solutions.

Now, the age of boxed games is drawing to a close. A revolution has come. The one known as ‘Steam’ has risen to prominence. What was once an insignificant application for keeping your Valve products organised has been transformed into a computer gaming hub. There’s an online store selling titles from such giants as Activision, Eidos, 2K and id. Patches are released regularly. Community functions have been added to encourage teamplay. Most important of all, the service is reliable, which means that the one lingering concern I had with downloading games – that there was a chance that I would lose access to my purchases – is no more.

Just as the introduction of gunpowder to the battlefields of of the west brought with it a gradual evolution in the ways of war, so now does faster Internet access begin a new era in computer games sales. I’ve already started the transition myself: I’ve downloaded Peggle Deluxe, Defcon and Uplink over Steam. But those three were scarcely available in stores. A while ago, when I decided that I had to have Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, I stayed true to the old ways and got a hard copy. Now, something has happened that has converted me completely. That something is The Orange Box.

I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking: “A box? You just said you were done with boxes, you flouncymouth!”. Indeed, but this box is of a different species to the boxes of yore. It is, in fact, not actually a box at all. It’s just called a box. Well, it is a box if you get it in a store, which you can do, but I’ve got it off Steam, so in my case the box is metaphorical in nature. The contents of the box, however, are far from metaphorical. They are very real, and also spectacularly good.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

When I imagine The Orange Box as an actual box, with the games within it in boxes as well, I imagine them stacked in a particular order. The topmost on the stack being Half Life 2: Episode 2.

Episode 2 kicks off only a few seconds from the final moments of Episode 1. But, before you (Gordon Freeman) spawn inside a precariously balanced train carriage, you’re treated to a helpful ‘previously on…’ sequence, in which you see your faithful sidekick, Alyx Vance, fighting, hacking and talking her way through the levels of the previous episode. You’re reminded of your mission, which is to escort a vital data packet (in Alyx’s possession) into rebel hands.

You’re also reminded of the reason why your train crashed: that the reactor inside City 17’s Citadel had gone critical, and a truly epic explosion had issued forth, obliterating the city and untold acres of surrounding countryside. Besides the initial desolation, the aftermath is marked by portal storms – shockwaves of shimmering bluish energy, heralded by thunderous booms. Portal storms shake the earth and everything standing upon it, and sturdy metal bridges – built to provide safe rail transit for tactically versed MIT graduates and their beautiful female companions – are no exception.

The destruction of the bridge is a magnificent set piece, and it serves well as a showcase for the new physics functionality that Valve have coded into the Source engine. The physics of the Half-Life 2 series was already some of the best in the business, but with Episode 2 Valve have outdone themselves. One can no longer rely upon the integrity of the once unchanging landscape. Large structures can be entirely levelled into a rubble of planks and bricks, and the ground you’re standing on can suddenly and dangerously shift. This isn’t simple tech either; when a lumber mill is shattered by a Strider’s main cannon, it really is shattered, into its constituent parts. Most importantly, these destructions are glorious sights to behold.

There are a multitude of graphical enhancements to the engine as well. Most noticeably, dynamic lighting means that Gordon’s flashlight casts realistic shadows on every object in the game, including characters and enemies. So now, when you shine it in Alyx’s eyes and she raises her hand in irritation, it looks much, much better. There’s greater detail across the board: Alyx looks more defined, and the vortiguants have been given a masterful makeover. In fact, I had the distinct impression that everything was visually richer, I expect in part because Valve have learned from their work in Episode 1, and also because advancements in lighting are bound to impact positively on general graphical quality.

There are some treats in the gameplay department too. Early on you have to traverse the many caves and tunnels of an Ant Lion hive, and you’re forced to confront the worker caste of the colony. The workers are just as agile as their warrior kin (which you’ll be familiar with from previous outings), if not more so. But instead of moving to engage you in melee with razor sharp talons, they content themselves with spitting volleys of highly corrosive acid at you from long range. You can tell they’re charming little blighters.

The combine aren’t sticking with their old deployment either. The deadly Hunters have been unleashed: savage, calculating predatory tripods that make for efficient enough killers on their own, and will often come at you in packs. They’re incredibly tough, and apparently quite happy to work in concert with Striders or Combine soldiers, drawing your fire and dishing out charged flechettes that stick to surfaces and explode soon after.

The Hunters will tend to pounce when you’re on foot, when you’re far more vulnerable to their lightning fast attacks. Fortunately, for much of the game you won’t be on foot. Instead, you’ll be speeding through miles of valleys, mountain trails and hilltop villages in a nitro-charged turbo ultra mega super…car. It’s a far cry from the shoddy buggy of Half-Life 2, that was essentially nothing more than an engine strapped to a climbing frame. This time you’re gifted with a ferociously fast beast with extraordinary handling, an engine that looks and sounds like one that you’d find in the bonnet of a Bigfoot monster truck, and a boost function that recharges in about 5 seconds.

Not only does the ‘Hotrod’ (as it’s being called) multiply the fun factor of the outdoor areas by 10 times, it’s also a lethal weapon for hit-and-runs. Even Hunters – who are quite capable of absorbing the damage from 10 direct hits from the shotgun, or several well-landed grenades (at least, on hard difficulty) – are turned to lifeless ragdolls if you charge into them at high speed.

It’s not the new additions that secure Episode 2’s place on the top of my imaginary stack though; nor is it the garden gnome hidden in the communications outhouse at the beginning. The reason why it’s firmly in first place is simply because it’s another storytelling masterpiece in the Half-Life saga, and because it’s another demonstration of Valve’s commitment to create and develop characters that shine with emotion and personality.

Prior to the game’s release, I had feared that I was to be parted from Alyx, and that I’d either have to proceed on my own or in the company of a fresh comrade. This is mercifully not the case, although there are chapters where you’re required to leave Alyx in order to achieve certain objectives. For the most part, she remains at your side, and it looks to be Valve’s intention to carry on the partnership into Episode 3. For that, I am eternally grateful.

I’m further grateful in declaring that the Alyx of Episode 2 is more delightful than ever before. I fell in love with her almost at first sight in Half-Life 2, but the emotional rapids of this latest episode have left me utterly besotted. I got an even stronger sense of the implicit bond between her and Gordon, which comes across subtly, in and out of combat, through small gestures and remarks. I think that bond remains also because of what she doesn’t say. She never wildly gesticulates toward you in blind adoration, and she never tries to seduce you. Like any more reserved person, she has her inhibitions, her small measure of pride, and her potential embarrassments, and she’s all the more convincing as a character because of it.

Valve have also seen fit to expand on the role of the Vortiguants in Gordon’s adventures. In those sections of the game when you’re separated from Alyx, an unnamed Vortiguant ally takes her place. He’s extremely valuable to have around. Like Alyx, he’s indispensable as a means of opening gates that block your path; but unlike Alyx, he fights like a demigod, wrestling Ant Lions and zombies to the ground and quickly zapping them to death. And at White Forest (the rebel headquarters) there’s one who goes by the name of ‘Uriah’, who has donned a white lab coat and works tirelessly as a colleague (or perhaps more accurately, servitor) of a new and most welcome introduction to the saga, Dr. Magnusson.

Like Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance (once again superbly acted by Harry S. Robins and Robert Guillaume), Magnusson is a ‘fleshing out’ of some of the scientists from the original Half-Life. He’s easily irritated by the activities of those around him, or indeed anything that happens to interrupt his work, but not in a way that made me resent him. He’s proud, pompous and arrogant, but enough of a genius that he doesn’t end up looking like a fool.

There’s some hilarious interplay at White Forest between him and Kleiner, who, according to Eli, were rivals long before the Combine invasion. Kleiner remains overtly compassionate but easily panicked; Magnusson has no time for sentiment and, in moments of crisis, adopts the role of the overseer frustrated with his underlings. When they’re together in the lab it’s like watching a rabbit who’s been thrown into a cage with a python, without the inevitable constriction, swallowing and slow digestion of the rabbit.

As always in the Half-Life series, the game underlying the story is also first class. There’s tremendous excitement to be had from the episode’s action sequences. I’ve heard other gamers speak of their distaste for the opening sequences in the Ant Lion hive, but I think that those sequences are home to some of the most thrilling scenes in the game. At one point you delve deep into the hive with your Vortiguant companion on a mission to obtain a sample of a substance much revered by him and his brothers, ‘the extract’. Of course, it’s not a simple task of finding and retrieving; the inner sanctum is patrolled by an especially tenacious Ant Lion Guardian.

Immediately upon entering the sanctum, the Guardian charges at you in a fit of pure rage. You’re undoubtedly familiar with fighting Guardians from Half-Life 2 and Episode 1; this time, you can’t risk killing it, because if you do, the extract is immediately spoiled. You must outrun the Guardian in its own habitat, pushing the HEV suit, and your wits, to their limits. The key is to sprint from cover to cover, from alcove to alcove, before the Guardian can catch you in the open. It’s a heart-pounding encounter.

Prior to the ‘Guardian Gauntlet’, as I’ve come to call it, there’s a drawn out stand-off against waves of Ant Lions. Anyone who’s seen Aliens will recognise the set up: a small band of isolated soldiers, a couple of automated turrets to help stave off overwhelming hordes, and a frantic last stand once those turrets have failed.

You’re not on your own though. To begin with, two colourfully charactered resistance members demonstrate their ingenious early warning system – essentially a set of traffic lights plugged into motion sensors – and then bravely stand with you against the first few waves. At the finale, you’re joined by a wayfaring group of Vortiguants, and a swarm of Ant Lions – I’d say twice the number of all of the previous waves combined – desperately flood into the chamber. A glorious slaughter ensues, in which the Vortiguants are deployed in full battle mode, forks of lightning piercing chitinous hide, met by the applause and astonishment of the resistance members. The only thing missing was for someone to shout “they’re coming out of the fucking walls!”.

As with all three titles in The Orange Box, it’s an uphill struggle to find anything wrong with Episode 2. The only criticisms I have are niggles; instances where Valve have apparently not brought the full weight of their genius to bear upon a problem. There are two such instances, as far as I can discern. The first, a face-off with one of the mine-dropping Combine helicopters; the second, a physics puzzle on a sundered bridge.

For the face-off, you’re encouraged to grab the mines that the helicopter tries to bomb you with, and propel them back at it. Thus, the chopper is rapidly torn to shreds, and your rebel friends jeer in jubilation “return to sender!”. On paper it sounds like a decent enough challenge for the Freeman; in actuality, it felt cheap and fake. Who was the prodigy in Combine R&D that arrived at the conclusion that, instead of standard bombs, it was best to equip their choppers with spherical mines that roll around aimlessly and take almost 10 seconds to explode? This isn’t Dambusters! Ultimately, the mounted machine gun is far more menacing.

The physics puzzle takes place just before you get on the road with Alyx. I’d made it to the Hotrod, which had been dumped on the road, but the bridge ahead was – just like the train bridge at the start of the game – torn asunder by a portal storm. The objective, as I eventually discovered, is to shunt a bunch of abandoned cars off of the bridge so that it pivots in your favour, forming a ramp and a means of reaching the other side.

The problem is that this solution was far from readily apparent. At first, I thought I had to somehow drive the car back through where I had come from, and so I tipped it off the edge of the bridge, only to be confronted with the classic ‘you have failed to secure vital resources’ message. I began to wander aimlessly, and then to bully the cars around with the gravity gun. Shortly, the bridge shifted and all became clear as day, but it was random experimentation, not considered action, that had made it clear, and there’s something off-putting about that.

These are both exceptions to the rule though. The fact is that 99% of the battles and puzzles in Episode 2 are as close to perfection as you can get right now. I’ve been pondering the question of whether Valve have successfully surpassed Episode 1. It’s not like there’s a great deal between the two. Episode 1 introduced new enemies (the zombine and the stalker), let us explore new areas (the citadel and the hospital), spiced up the gameplay (cooperative play with Alyx) and advanced the story.

All those boxes can be checked for Episode 2. What gives it the edge is that it goes a few yards further on the road toward the promised land, where the player can’t resist being enamoured with the characters, caring for them, sharing in their triumphs and mourning their losses. When you experience the episode’s heart wrenching ending, you’ll understand.

✓ Looks gorgeous
✓ Hardcore action scenes
✓ Outdoor vehicle sections
✓ Emotionally involving
✗ A couple of disappointing bits

98%

__________

Coming up next is Portal.

- Chris

I’ve been busy playing the Orange Box games, and I had a little writer’s block, but I’ve managed to put together my review of Bioshock:

__________

Bioshock

I wanted to prolong my experience of Bioshock. It had been touted as the great spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Playing it was said to be like reading a brilliantly written novel. I didn’t want to rush it; I wanted it to last. I silently swore an oath to myself not to play it unless I was on my own, undisturbed, because that’s what I thought it would warrant. That was enough to slow the pace of my progression through the game, because I was rarely given such moments of solitude, what with the constant requests for me to play Team Fortress 2. Nonetheless, close to a month later, I am done with Bioshock, and now I can tell you what I think of it.

It begins with one of the most brilliant introductions in any game ever. You (Jack) start off on board a plane, which swiftly crashes into the sea. You swim to the surface, debris sinking around you, and once you take your first breath, you’re in control. I was immediately overwhelmed. All around me there was the most beautiful in-game water I’ve ever seen, and as if that wasn’t enough, a ring of fire surrounded me, the reddish glow from the flames reflected in the water droplets on my screen. Nearby, the main body of the plane was gradually sinking, the water frothing realistically at the base. Finally, rising up above the carnage, there stood a tall lighthouse, with steps leading up to its entrance.

Of course, I knew instinctively that the way forward was through that entrance, but I was compelled to stay outside for a while. The plane was still sinking – I wanted to see it finally disappear – and I couldn’t help but look out with awe upon the vista of fiery wreckage one more time. Once the plane had vanished, I turned around and stepped into the darkness of the lighthouse. At first, I could see only by means of a shaft of moonlight, but after a few more steps, the door suddenly slammed shut behind me, and for a brief second, I was alone in the dark.

Then, I heard the characteristic flicker of halogens, a dim ambient light fell upon the room, then more flickering, more light. I was in a lobby. A grand statue of a man leered over me. Across it there was a banner bearing the slogan “No Gods or Kings. Only Man”. Below it there was a plaque, upon it the words: “In what country is there a place for people like me?” - Andrew Ryan. At that point, I knew I was playing something special.

The core of Bioshock is its plot and its characters. The premise of the story is that, sometime in the 1930s, the above mentioned Ryan – a radical genius, and seemingly a staunch advocate of the more controversial tenets of Nietzschean philosophy – has succeeded in constructing a fully-fledged city at the bottom of the sea, Rapture. Unfortunately, the combination of an isolated ecosystem and a policy of espousing amorality has resulted in an apocalypse of sorts. The streets of Rapture are roamed by all manner of ne’er-do-wells, and a society initially unified by a common purpose is now fractured into opposed factions.

You’ll come to know this much by the time you reach the end of the first level (The Medical Pavilion) by means of listening to audio recordings left behind by certain of Rapture’s citizens. And you might find yourself thinking that it’s enough for a game to go by: a city in ruins, a tyrant in control of the chaos, you, the hero with the power to bring him down. For the first half of the game, I naïvely thought that was all there was going to be. I was glad to be wrong.

For the first half of the game (the first act, if you will) your primary objective is to depose Ryan, thereby (hopefully) liberating the people of Rapture. A likeable Irish chappy by the name of Atlas guides you over a two-way radio, kindly explaining the situation for you along the way. That all gets flipped on its head at the start of the second act, when you experience a truly earth-shattering plot twist. Of course I won’t go into the grizzly details here, suffice to say that I was totally surprised.

All of this narrative twisting and turning takes place in perhaps the best designed sprawling complex I’ve ever had the pleasure of exploring. For the opening chapter of the game you’re confined to the Medical Pavilion, which is, by itself, impressively large. After that, you move on Neptune’s Bounty, which I’d say is as large, if not larger. Once you’re done mapping out every nook and cranny of one level, you’re sent off to the next one, with its own unique atmosphere, new enemies for you to face, new weapons, new upgrades, new powers. Enough to keep you occupied for at least a further few hours.

There are about 12 levels, some of which are big hubs like the Medical Pavilion; others are smaller. The level that stood out most for me was Fort Frolic, where I met Rapture’s premier artist, Sander Cohen. Cohen is eccentric to say the least, and in his psychosis he has his heart set on creating a truly morbid masterpiece. The moment you step foot inside the level proper, Cohen seals you inside and cuts off your radio contact with Atlas. You have no choice but to follow his instructions and contribute to his work.

Your contribution consists of exacting revenge on certain citizens – all of whom have wronged Cohen in some way – and afterwards taking snaps of their bullet-ridden, or even charred corpses. After that, you post the photos on frames that Cohen has set up on a stage in the promenade.

Now that I think about it, Fort Frolic is Cohen, in so many ways. Undoubtedly, like the rest of Rapture, it used to serve its function. It used to be a lively pleasure centre with the casinos flowing with cash, concerts and functions being held, bars buzzing with activity, artists like Cohen churning out work in their studios. And, like the rest of Rapture, its undergone a tragic transformation.

Now Cohen rules it from up-high, with total control over the security system and an apparent dominion over the local splicers (citizens turned scavengers). His more recent and more manic works abound: a family set in stone around a dinner table, the father with his upturned hands bleeding, the mother with her arms restrained behind her back, the baby girl with her head bowed. As in all good horror, you’re never told straight-up whether the statues are real people encased in plaster, the victims of one of Cohen’s mood swings, or just sculptures. The mind fills in the gaps.

Sections of Fort Frolic are truly eerie, and there are some rare ‘moments’. I’m talking about special moments, of the kind that spirit you away from what is ‘just a game’, and take your experience to a higher level. When I came across the family, I remember feeling very deeply a sense of Cohen’s perversion, and later, when Cohen sent his goons at me in waves, and Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers burst forth in accompaniment to my slaying them with anti-personnel pistol rounds, pure joy. There’s an abundant supply of these moments in Fort Frolic alone, not to mention every other level in the game, and then there’s the revelatory scene at the end of the first act, which is simply magnificent.

With all this talk of plot and characters and moments, I don’t want to give the impression that the gameplay lying underneath it all isn’t up to scratch. Quite the contrary. Bioshock’s gameplay is diverse in the same way that Deus Ex’s was. There are standard FPS elements given a stylistic treatment, and character development (RPG) options as well.

There are seven weapons in total, all of which can be upgraded at rare weapon upgrade stations. Upgrades take the form of add-ons, all of which are clearly visible on the weapon itself, which I thought was great. Technology in Bioshock is very ‘retro’, so the add-ons are bulky and crude: like an array of pipes on the side of the shotgun, or a combination of gear-like wheels strapped to the pistol to allow for automatic loading of clips.

There are two upgrades for each weapon: one of which increases the base damage, the other one is unique to that weapon. So, for the pistol you can increase clip size, for the shotgun you can increase rate of fire, for the crossbow you can decrease the likelihood that a bolt will shatter upon impact, and so on. The exception to the rule is the chemical thrower, which doesn’t have a damage increase upgrade, instead you can decrease the rate at which it consumes fuel and increase its range.

All the weapons are tremendous fun, even if I found shooting with some of them to be quite disorienting in the beginning, particularly the shotgun. But conventional weapons only represent one way to take on the challenges of Rapture. You get to use plasmids. Plasmids are superhuman powers, developed from a substance – called ‘ADAM’ – derived from a previously undiscovered species of sea slugs. They work like force powers in Jedi Academy, in that you inherit more and more powerful versions of them as you progress through the game.

The first plasmid you get is ‘Electro-Bolt’, a timid version of force lightning, which you have to fire at a control panel to open the way into the Medical Pavilion. Electro-bolt is probably the most multi-purpose plasmid in the game. You can use it like a tazer, stunning an enemy for a short time, or you can electrify a body of water that they happen to be standing in, thereby doing major damage, or you can open doors, as I’ve said, or you can temporarily disable turrets and security cameras.

‘Telekinesis’ can be used to retrieve objects like weapons and ammo that are out of reach, or you can catch grenades that are thrown at you and lob them back (as with the gravity gun in Half-Life 2). ‘Incinerate’ is adequately nasty in its standard deployment – just setting someone on fire – but you can also use it to make an enemy run into nearby water, and then whip-out electro-bolt to finish them off, cackling like a Sith Lord.

In keeping with the retro theme, plasmids are bought from vendors called ‘Gatherer’s Gardens’, which, like the other vendors (for weapons, ammo and other items), look like some cross between a jukebox and a slot-machine, decorated with tacky slogans and caricatures. Whenever you find a Gatherer’s Garden, you have an opportunity to spend your collected ADAM points on whatever plasmids are available, or you can spend them on tonics (passive abilities), additional slots for plasmids or tonics, or upgrades to your health and ‘EVE’ (the substance required to fuel plasmids) capacity. The fact that you have to purchase all this with a limited amount of ADAM means that you’re inevitably making character development choices, all the way through to the end of the game, that have a substantial impact on your gameplay experience.

The choices are tough, but they can be made a lot easier if you decide that you’re an evil bastard. The big selling point of Bioshock was that it had a moral dimension. Rapture is patrolled by ‘Little Sisters’ – toddlers possessed by the slugs implanted into their bodies – and their ‘Big Daddy’ guardians. The Little Sisters travel around Rapture, jabbing their needles into the corpses of Splicers and sucking out the ADAM.

It’s abundantly clear that these girls aren’t enjoying their childhood to the fullest. So, if and when you manage to best a Big Daddy in combat (easier said than done, at least in the first half of the game) you are confronted with a vulnerable Little Sister, and a very obvious choice (obvious in that it pops up in the middle of your screen when you draw near to her). You can either harvest – which means that you rip the slug out of her, and get more ADAM, unfortunately killing her in the process – or rescue – severing the mental hold that the slug has over her but receiving a smaller portion.

I thought that the Little Sister choice was interesting, and I certainly wouldn’t want it out of the game. However, it only serves to create a simplistic Jesus/Hannibal Lecter dichotomy, where there could have been more complexity, with, say, a number of factions desperately trying to get you to fall in line with their individual philosophies. There could have been an option to save the Big Daddies as well. As it is, I felt like I was putting-down a sick dog every time I had to kill one.

It’s also a shame that the choice doesn’t have a stronger impact on your ADAM supply. I stand by my assessment that there are meaningful character development choices to be made, but I realise that, ultimately, if you dedicate yourself to harvesting, you don’t end up with a great deal more ADAM than a rescuer.

You see, if you consistently rescue, you earn the gratitude of the Little Sisters and their ‘mother’, an ex-Nazi doctor by the name of Tenenbaum. Tenenbaum will occasionally thank you by sending a Little Sister out to the Gatherer’s Garden with a present. What’s the present you ask? A healthy dose of ADAM and sometimes a plasmid or tonic that, wait for it, cannot be found anywhere else. So much for the good path being the harder one.

Furthermore, the Little Sister choice is the only one you ever get to make, unlike in Deus Ex, where there were many distinct and important choices to make on each level, in addition to the multiple divergent endings. Again I feel like there’s a parallel to be drawn with Jedi Academy: there’s one central choice that dictates the final outcome of the game.

I feel bad admitting it – because the two games are leagues apart – but I think that Jedi Academy actually does it better. In Jedi Academy, if you chose the Dark Side path, you were forced to contend with both the Sith and your former Jedi colleagues, and at the end you had to face two harder bosses instead of one. If you choose the evil path in Bioshock, your end-game experience is barely changed at all, except for a different cutscene.

Choice, or the lack thereof, is the one major issue I have with Bioshock. There are a number of minor negatives as well. First, the hacking. Hacking in Bioshock consists of a highly derivative mini-game involving swapping tiles around so that liquid can flow from an intake point to an outake point. If you manage that, you can unlock safes, turn turrets and security cameras into friendlies, and bypass keypads.

At first, I didn’t have any problems with it, because I was grateful that some form of hacking was in the game. It soon became a serious irritation, though, because I would often fail to uncover enough tiles to work with before the fluid reached a dead-end, and my health was dealt a grievous blow. It didn’t feel like an exciting challenge; it felt like an annoyance, one that I had to return to again and again.

Second, alcohol. There are a variety of alcoholic drinks scattered all over Rapture for your consumption. They drain health and increase EVE, so they’re designed as a kind of trade-off. But, whereas in reality a bottle of vodka will turn even a veteran drinker into a heap of useless puke-spewing flesh, in Bioshock one can gather up three of four such bottles, a dose of whisky that would render a bull unconscious, and a small cellar’s worth of wine, and not suffer any ill affects beyond a short period of light dizziness. I know that applying medikits to bullet wounds is essentially the same, and we’re all used to medikits, but something about the alcohol didn’t sit well with me.

Third, the AI. At no point was I impressed by the way an enemy attacked me. As in Quake 4, the default tactic was to strafe toward me spraying bullets. Some breeds of Splicer had some interesting plasmids and other genetic abilities that they would make use of, but they never fired from cover, or tried to outmaneuver me. This is explained, to an extent, by their quite blatant mental instability, but it always sucks when you don’t feel like you’re fighting an intelligent enemy. The AI has some pathfinding problems as well. On one occasion in Neptune’s Bounty, a Big Daddy got stuck behind a wall, and a glitch occurred that made him seize back and forth indefinitely. This kind of thing stands right out and momentarily ruins any sense of immersion that the rest of the game had created.

In the final analysis, none of these problems create much of a dent in Bioshock’s crown. Even my main concern – the fact that there’s only one, very limited choice that has a fairly trivial impact on the narrative and the gameplay – isn’t sufficient to spoil one of the greatest stories ever told in a computer game. Yes, Irrational have failed to catch and run with some important balls (character development, morality, mini-games etc.), but the balls they’ve scored with are, I think, more important ones. I mean, these balls are made of solid, 24-carat gold: characters, plot, atmosphere, level design, and it’s harder to slam-dunk a ball if it’s made of gold, so I think they deserve a lot of credit.

✓ Magnificent story
✓ Believable and intriguing characters
✓ Rapture
✓ Philosophical undertones
✓ Plasmids
✗ Disappointing moral dimension
✗ Artificial unintelligence
✗ Rubbish hacking

91%

- Chris