Men Of War Vietnam Review

How much you enjoy Men of War: Vietnam depends on your patience for constant saving and reloading. Just like in the earlier releases in this 1C Company series of real-time squad combat games, the difficulty has been cranked through the roof. Your small squads have to battle their way through dozens if not hundreds of enemies in each and every mission, with even a single misstep often resulting in instant failure. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun, and it isn't. The mission design is so grueling that you feel wrung out by the time you cross the finish line. Still, there are some positives. Maps are intricately designed, and a cooperative option for the campaign lets you team up with as many as three other players, which both makes things easier and adds some replay value.

At least Men of War: Vietnam is honest up front. The very first mission tosses you into the deep end without any life preservers. Denied even the benefit of a brief tutorial or some tips on how to handle the first few enemy encounters, you're thrown into the midst of a battle between the US and a small group of Russian advisors and Vietcong soldiers. A Huey incinerates your convoy in the scripted opening seconds and then returns to obliterate the paltry four survivors in your squad within moments. Either you get your guys off the road and under cover in less time than it took you to read the start of this paragraph, or everybody dies. It's an abysmal introduction. It's hard to imagine anyone new to the Men of War series sticking around for very long after this greeting. Even series veterans can't help but be taken aback by how brutally the game begins. Playing on easy helps a bit by reducing enemy numbers, but the game remains incredibly punishing.
The two-part campaign that sees the first five missions focusing on Russian and Vietcong troops and the second five missions swinging over to the US is unforgiving all the way through. You go into missions with tiny squads ranging from just four guys to around a dozen or so, and you have to fight and/or sneak your way through huge maps crawling with countless enemy patrols and dotted with umpteen goals. The playing field is so tilted against you that you're at risk of it falling on your head at any moment. Enemies can spot you from long distances, hear you even when you're firing silenced rounds, and shoot you with unerring accuracy even when you're hunkered down behind brush. The entire squad can be wiped out in mere moments, at almost any time. You need to creep forward very cautiously, experiment with a lot of trial and error, and save every time you do anything even remotely good. Kill a bad guy? Save. Find a great cover spot? Save. And so on. At least the game helps out by autosaving at smart, frequent intervals.
There are a couple of saving graces. Mission maps are extremely detailed and come with multiple options to get past every enemy troop position. Granted, sometimes none of them are pleasant, but at least you have many choices, ranging from open assaults to flanking maneuvers to firing locations and weapon selection. Enemy artificial intelligence is lacking, too, though at least the stupidity of your foes makes it easier to complete scenarios against the incredible odds. Foes typically respond to attacks by going back to standard patrol routes, oblivious to the corpses of their comrades and the burning wreckage around them, or by walking mindlessly into the jungle until your lads shoot them to bits. When you're beaten, you're beaten through sheer force of numbers or by superior enemy positions like bunkers, but never from being outsmarted.
Unfortunately, your own troops aren't very smart, either. They often switch weapons for no apparent reason in mid-battle and ignore enemies gleefully murdering the whole squad from a few feet away. Maybe it's the cover itself, or maybe it's dumb soldiers not standing in the right spots, but your boys often seem to think they're hidden when they're exposed enough to take a bullet to the head. Targeting isn't very accurate, unless you micromanage troops with direct control, which is hard to do in the middle of a big scrap. You can order your squad to assault a lone VC hiding behind a truck, for example, and watch in horror as your lads line up behind the bumper and fill it full of holes…while your enemy pops out of cover and slaughters everyone.
Special abilities and weapons offer some chance at survival. There is something of a role-playing flavor here with named squadmates who come equipped with gear and combat skills. At times, the game resembles the Commandos series. Troops with silenced SMGs, sniper rifles, and big M60s provide you with a shot at whittling down enemy numbers. That said, the small size of your squads makes it devastating when just one man is killed. Lose your sniper, and it's pretty much game over unless you're in the home stretch.
Jungle terrain is both an ally and an enemy. The engine does a great job rendering the foliage of Southeast Asia, and it isn't just for show. It's so thick that you can ably stage hit-and-run raids where you blitz enemy positions and then fade back into the green. Bad guys take advantage of the green stuff as well, though, and it's so voluminous that you often can't see anything. Events develop so fast that your men might be slaughtered before you can get the camera properly into position. You expect a lot of jungle in a Vietnam game, of course, but it seems like you wind up with a big frond in your face every time you adjust the camera the slightest bit to better view a firefight.
All of the campaign missions can also be run through cooperatively with up to four other players. This is the best way to play the game, as it mitigates the extreme difficulty of going solo. It also lets you tackle objectives more efficiently via coordinated attacks. Some missions seem to have been designed with co-op in mind. The first mission, in fact, features a section where you must detonate three US Hueys before they take off. This is hard to achieve playing solo without sacrificing at least one man during the assault, because the choppers head to the skies almost as soon as you open fire. But when you're playing with a buddy, you can divvy up the targets to blow them all up before the pilots can get the rotors spinning. Unfortunately, there are some technical problems with online play. Connection errors frequently pop up on the server screen, making it impossible to join many matches. This may be because of conflicts between various versions of the game sold by different retailers or conflicts between those who purchased the DLC pack released alongside the main game and those who did not. Either way, a patch is desperately needed. Even when you can get into games, the play is a bit laggy, and synchronization issues frequently arise.
As frustrating as Men of War: Vietnam is, it still provides some satisfying moments. Emerging hale and hearty at the end of a mission is always cause for celebration, seeing how the odds are so slanted against you, and the opposing forces are made up of what seems to be the entire US Army or Vietcong. Still, the extreme challenge is a tough sell, and it makes it so difficult to get past the first mission that you might never get to the point where you can get hooked.

Call of Juarez The Cartel Review

It has been almost two months since Call of Juarez: The Cartel was released on consoles. In the time since, you may have hoped that developer Techland would have been busy fixing the problems that plagued those versions for the game's PC release. Instead, this first-person shooter is even more problematic than before. The bugs, the poor audio editing, the interruptions during combat scenarios: they're as inescapable as The Cartel's racial stereotypes and adoration of the F-word. Furthermore, a scant online community means that you may never see the best that The Cartel has to offer, though that doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. As one of three sleazy government agents, you thieve secret items hidden away in each level's nooks and crannies--and must do so without being caught by your curious comrades. It's an inspired notion in keeping with the innate distrust among these three slippery sorts. But what The Cartel needed wasn't inspiration--it was repair.
The Cartel also needed more likable leads and better dialogue, which isn't to say there isn't room for good antiheroes in game stories. (The original game's Reverend Ray is a shining example of an antihero done right.) But the three leads here--the LAPD's Ben, Kim with the FBI, and DEA agent Eddie--gush obscenities and sneer so often, you fear their faces may stay in that position permanently. There are a few attempts to deepen their personalities, such as a quiet scene in which Ben contemplates a taped message from an old friend. But most scenes involve a lot of yelling and racial stereotyping, with slimy gangsters calling each other "homes" and "ese" a lot, and the leads performing deeds so despicable that there's little to separate them from the goons they're fighting. Other cinematics are so dry as to lull you to sleep, such as an expository cutscene largely devoid of sound effects and music, in which government reps sit around a table and set up the game's premise. Audio difficulties also intrude. Characters speak over each other, and some scenes are so heavy with reverb they sound as if the actors were recorded in a public restroom. And it's hard to take a story seriously when the subtitles frequently don't match the recorded dialogue.
Both the boring and the obnoxious aspects come together in a scene in which the three partners bloody up a target in the median of a busy highway. When playing cooperatively, you and your buddies take turns delivering a violent punch or kick with a single key press--one after another after another. The scene goes on for so long you begin to feel sorry for the guy on the ground. Yet your character (and thus, the camera) stares at the ground instead of following the violent acts of your comrades. You remember the sight of the poor grass textures more than the violence your team visits upon this crook. It's an uncomfortable mix of aggression and monotony.

Smoke isn't your greatest visual hindrance. It's the ubiquitous blur.

Nevertheless, uniting three untrustworthy agents from three different agencies is a worthy foundation, and The Cartel tries to make good on it by giving each of the three playable characters a unique point of view. The plot, in which this mismatched team attempts to disrupt a web of drug trafficking, is the same regardless of which character you play. But each character has a personal agenda. You and your companions receive phone calls from contacts, filling in story gaps and urging you to perform secret missions. When you play online with another player or two filling in for the AI, this narrative device adds an intriguing dimension that nicely parallels the escalating distrust among the team. When a teammate receives a call, you hear only his side of the conversation. And the cryptic one-sided dialogue means that you experience that distrust along with your character.
The theme of distrust carries over into those secret missions themselves. Secret missions may involve nabbing a cell phone or destroying a vehicle, and each level contains hidden objects that you, and only you, can collect. Your companions, meanwhile, have different duties to accomplish and different items to nab. The trick, however, is not getting caught. Should you thieve an item in eyeshot of a comrade, you don't get credit for taking it, though your buddy gets credit for catching you. Successfully accomplishing a task earns you experience, as does spotting a double-crossing partner. And earning experience helps you gain levels, which in turn gives you access to better guns at the start of each chapter. What a neat idea this is--not just because it cleverly links the story to the gameplay, but also because it gives cooperative play a competitive twist.

Nine out of ten doctors agree: most people actually do know their asses from their elbows.

But like most of The Cartel's appealing concepts, secret missions suffer from execution errors. Updates come in the form of text messages and phone calls, at which point your pace slows and you must listen to the message or read the text. You might receive an update in the middle of one of the game's clumsy fistfights, or during a high-speed car chase. You can't hang up of your own accord; all you can do is hope your foe doesn't pummel you while you stupidly hold your phone up as if nothing unusual is going on. The secret missions' most pressing flaw, however, is that if you play alone, with the AI controlling your two companions, you miss out on much of the uniqueness. AI companions can interrupt your attempted thefts, and they never perform their own secret acts, so you are always the spied-upon, but never a spy. That's too bad, because if you don't have a regular buddy to play with, you will likely never experience The Cartel's most unique feature: it is almost impossible to find a co-op partner via the game's built-in matchmaking.
If you play alone, you also miss out on another of The Cartel's distinctive assets. While playing with others, you occasionally get the opportunity to complete challenges. Each player might receive a different challenge for any given sequence--perhaps to land a certain number of headshots or murder a specific number of thugs with melee attacks. Succeed, and you earn experience. But there's a slight wrinkle: when one player meets his goal, the other players immediately fail the challenge, so you have to work fast if you want that extra reward. Challenges add yet another competitive dimension to cooperative play, though they too come with annoyances. For instance, challenge opportunities (along with other objective-related messages) are announced with big, unsightly blocks of text that can obscure your view during a firefight. In fact, Call of Juarez: The Cartel is big on cluttering the screen with unnecessary interface elements. Every time you need to reload, the game prompts you with a big eyesore key prompt. Forgot how to skip cutscenes? Don't worry: the garish text in the corner of the screen is there to remind you. And all those prompts use the same out-of-place, ugly pixelated font used in the menus.
Of course, Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a first-person shooter. Therefore, you fire guns a lot, and the shooting model is smooth and entertaining. Many levels give you a good amount of breathing room, allowing you and your partners to flank and take advantage of the terrain. In Sequoia National Park, you might clamber to a boulder above and take potshots while your partners remain in the forest and occasionally crouch behind cover to regenerate health. Other shoot-outs occur on the decaying streets of Los Angeles, in Mexican ghost towns, and within drug trafficking tunnels. There are a good number of rifles, pistols, and submachine guns, and they feel as they should. The AK-47 serves as a nice fallback at medium range; revolvers have oomph. And if you peer down the iron sights of certain weapons long enough, your view zooms in a bit more, which is a good touch. There are some corridor shoot-outs, but The Cartel is not a corridor shooter. Thus, it's rare that a teammate--AI or human--wanders into your line of fire simply because there's nowhere else to go.
To mix up the shooting, The Cartel leans on its limited tricks a few too many times for comfort. One such trick is the slow-motion room entry, in which you and a teammate breach a door and get a few seconds to gun down baddies without fear. Another is the car chase scene. In each level, you can count on a driving sequence in which one player gets behind the wheel and the others lean out the windows and shoot at vans and escapees. This is fun when you play with buddies, because you can vary your roles. But with only a few exceptions, playing with only the AI means being forced behind the wheel while your companions exhibit their ineffectiveness. You could drive flawlessly but fail the mission, which is never fun. Other problems can also spoil the driving. In one mission, you must catch up to a fleeing felon, but the vague waypoint makes it hard to figure out where to go. You might fail over and over again because you leave the mission area, trying desperately to determine exactly what the game expects of you. Actually, this can happen in any number of places if you wander too far off the beaten path; a sincere attempt to flank a group of hooligans might inadvertently trigger a game-over screen, simply because you went somewhere the game didn't want you to go. As a rule, losing conditions are poorly communicated. Sometimes, a teammate gets the chance to revive you if you go down. Other times, it's an immediate game over. Can you run over a pedestrian during a car chase? That might be fine, or it might lead to unexpected failure.

Somehow, Kim manages to scream out this line without adding some extra four-letter words.

The shooting is periodically strengthened by thoughtful atmospheric touches. Colorful graffiti scrawled on run-down walls stands in sharp relief against the evening LA skyline. As you trudge through the forest, dual waterfalls pour from the cliffs above while your fallen enemies stain the ground with blood. It's unfortunate that such sights are demeaned by the creaky engine that renders them. Vehicles and pedestrians pop into existence right in front of you. AI companions disappear from view and teleport to another location 50 feet ahead. Sunlight might shine into a room through a solid wall. These hitches are much more noticeable on the PC than on consoles due to the platform's higher resolutions. Furthermore, oversaturated lighting and an unattractive omnipresent blurriness make it difficult to pinpoint distant enemies. If you want to sharpen up the looks, you need to toy with your video card's software: The Cartel gives you precious few graphics settings to adjust. The game supports DirectX 11, but it looks so dated, you'd never notice the effects of that technology.
Just like the campaign, The Cartel's online competitive play has initial promise that never quite comes to fruition. You join a team of cops or criminals and fight the opposition, either in Team Deathmatch or in objective-based missions in which you must, for example, break into a warehouse and steal the drugs inside. The feature with promise in this case is the partner system. The game matches you up with another player to be your partner. You always know where your partner is, and when you spot an enemy, the game marks his location for your teammate. Stick together and you receive a bonus, such as doing extra damage. As good as these ideas are, multiplayer is still mundane. Flashbang grenades are thrown every which way, blinding you every few minutes, and opponents blend into the smeary visuals. And considering the low population just days after the game's release, you won't want to play The Cartel if sustained online competition is your primary goal.

You can tell that they're henchmen because they're all dressed in the same striped polos and have the same haircuts.

Call of Juarez: The Cartel, like many other Ubisoft games, requires an Internet connection to start the game. This might not be an inconvenience to most players, but it's a consideration--though in this problematic first-person shooter, online digital rights management is hardly the greatest source of woe. This first-person shooter shows the signs of potential greatness. Few games combine the elements of cooperation and competition so ingeniously. There's nothing like being a dirty double-crosser--and getting away with it. It's invigorating to fulfill a challenge, yanking the experience points from under your comrades' noses and flaunting your shooting skills. The Cartel is worth playing if you have a buddy or two along for the ride, given that you can't count on finding random players to join. Otherwise, the potential is hard to see hiding behind all the glitches and obscenities.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 The Masters Review

When the biggest headlines about your game are trumpeting the offer of a refund by the publisher, chances are pretty good that you've got some problems. The subject of these recent news reports is Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters, a PC game that has little in common with the console games of the same name that were released earlier this year. The PC version lacks a number of features found in the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 versions, some of which are advertised as included. The game also seems like a backdoor way for EA to promote Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, in that the games share an engine along with many features like online multiplayer. So you would be best advised to stick with the console games or to go straight to Tiger Woods Online and play it in your Web browser to get a PC golf fix.

The sun is shining and the ball's about to drop--what more could you want from a day on the links?

Tiger Woods 12 is essentially a differently packaged version of Tiger Woods Online. All this game does is add the core modes of Masters play where you strive to take a shot at the coveted green jacket at The Masters and play through historic moments with or without Tiger at the legendary Augusta tourney. In some ways, it's more of an expansion pack for the Net version of Tiger than it is any kind of stand-alone game. Some vital gameplay options from the console release are not included here. The Caddy Experience feature where you access assistance from an onscreen caddy is not available, even though it was advertised as being part of the PC version of the game. Creating a pro for the Masters career mode has been knocked back so that you can only select from a handful of faces that cannot be edited. Multiplayer has been scaled back; instead of the usual suite of online matches, tournaments, and the like, you get three free months of online support before you have to pay a monthly subscription fee for Tiger Woods Online. Otherwise, you're stuck with a solo-only game after you hit the 90-day mark.
Gameplay is also not what you would expect. Control options have been dialled back to a simple--if effective and easy-to-use--three-click meter. There's also the TrueSwing option where you take cuts by sliding the mouse, but there is no gamepad support. Both options are easy to handle, especially the three-click meter because the needle moves so slowly that you can hammer balls dead straight down the fairway with pretty much every single swing that you take. Much of the game is also inextricably tied to online play. You have to be online and logged in earn the cash and experience needed to level up your golfer. Everything here is geared to getting you online and keeping you online. Of course, then you're constantly exposed to the lure of buying new accoutrements like clubs, balls, and other gear through micropayments in the online store (points needed to buy this stuff are accumulated slowly through regular gameplay). And, of course, you have to pay a monthly fee for the simple privilege of being online in the game after three months.
Online performance is far from perfect, too. Connections are dropped at times; you can be right in the middle of a match and get the message that the game has lost its connection to the servers. At that point, you're given the choice of continuing with lost access to all of the features noted above or bailing out to the menu and logging an error with EA. Neither option is particularly attractive.

Get used to paying real money for clubs and goodies here, as the cash and points roll in awfully slowly.

As with its online-only cousin, this game has stripped-down visuals with dated player models, along with nearly nonexistent sound. Gallery crowds have been excised, player faces look like something from five or six years ago, and there is no commentary in the game at all. Only the gallery crowd deletion might be seen by some as a positive because the zombielike clap-in-unison spectators from the console Tiger Woods 12 were creepy. But the total absence of people by greens in pro tournaments, as well as the lack of Jim Nantz and David Fetherly cutting up your putts, screams that this is a low-end production. With all that said, it isn't an ugly game. It supports some higher resolutions, background muzak is relaxing, and course graphics aren't hard on the eyes with the bells and whistles cranked to the "super" setting, although even then, the game's frame rate tends to chug when confronted with heavily treed areas. But when you pay $40 for a game like this bearing a well-regarded name, you expect more from the presentation.
In short, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters for the PC has been marketed under dubious pretenses as something that it clearly is not. This is more of a Masters-oriented expansion to Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online than any sort of independent golf game. Although it is not an awful golf sim, it is a very limited one when compared to the console games sold under the same name. It has also been crippled to the extent that it all but forces buyers to subscribe to Tiger Woods Online. It's a nice gesture that EA is offering refunds to dissatisfied customers, but it's hard to believe that anyone gave the OK for the release of this game in the first place.

TrackMania 2 Canyon Review

Fire the engine. Cut the first corner. Pull off a smooth drift. Crash headlong into a wall. Hit the restart button. Fire the engine. This is how TrackMania 2: Canyon begins, and for a long while this is how it stays. That's not a bad thing. This isn't a game about winning; it's a game about trying. Trying to get gold, trying to beat your friends' times, trying to shave a millisecond off your own score. It's a game about restarting, and frequently at that. For existing TrackMania fans, this description is surely familiar. The series stays true to its roots with the sequel, with an emphasis on quick-fire segments of gameplay, all neatly tied together in a package for the social media age.
Getting into TrackMania 2 is a simple affair. Solo play consists of 65 tracks, the majority of which are unlocked by obtaining medals. You load up a track, start your engine, and then keep playing until you set a time you're happy with. It's great if you're interested only in score chasing, although it's far from a shallow game. Each track has been expertly designed with the leaderboards in mind. Nailing the perfect racing line to achieve the best time takes practice and experimentation as you figure out how to cut corners and start drifts earlier.
Learning the best routes around stages is never a chore. The majority of tracks last anywhere from 18 to 40 seconds; they're short A-to-B sprints that take you around hairpin bends and over dizzying jumps. Frequently you find yourself driving up walls or drifting vertically around a quarter pipe. These stages are short, but the desire to stay on a given track, chasing the best time you can, is encouraged at every point. Each track offers up a bronze, silver, and gold medal to obtain, as well as an official time to set. These times can be challenged every five minutes, with a timer in the bottom right corner counting down until your next attempt. Setting an official time awards you with skill points based on how well you performed overall and contributes to your online leaderboard ranking.
Racing around the tracks is fun and breezy, thanks in part to the superb handling and easy learning curve when it comes to drifting. There's only one car type, so the focus is on learning the tracks rather than worrying about which vehicle to use. This gives TrackMania 2 Canyon the feel of a puzzle game as much as a racer, and it's great that when a friend beats your time you know that he's driving the same car that you do. Keyboard controls are tight, with subtle manoeuvring and wide drifts being easy to pull off with the arrow keys. Using a gamepad is even better, because the full analogue controls lend themselves well to the game. You frequently make twitch adjustments to your racing line, and either control method is conducive to this.
Trying to set the best time can be frustrating, but usually in a "just one more go" way. A few of the tracks are just plain annoying, though, as some of the longer ones end with a jump or a turn that can easily blindside you. But the immediacy of restarting (hit a button and you're instantly back on the starting grid) makes even the most irritating tracks seem reasonable. Less fun are the lap races, which occur every fifth track. These five-lap affairs are decent enough, but if you're going for gold, then they can feel like a bit of a slog when you mess up towards the end of the fifth lap. The variety and length of the A-to-B tracks make them far more entertaining.
There are no physical opponents on the track. You can choose a ghost to race against from either the preset AI ghosts, your own favourite replay, or the replay of someone on your buddies list who has set a better official time than you. Usually there are three vehicles on the track: you, the ghost you chose to race against, and the ghost of your last attempt. Multiplayer is similar, in that while you can see other cars, they take the form of ghosts. The main mode is Time Attack, in which you and various opponents race on a series of tracks, with five minutes to set the best time you can. It serves as a fun competition as well as a learning tool, being able to see the racing line that a car ahead of you is taking without having to worry about overtaking it yourself. There are other modes, like Laps and Cup, which see you racing directly against opponents, but finding a server doing anything other than Time Attack is currently nigh on impossible. Luckily there's the option to create your own and invite friends. These multiplayer options are also available to play locally, either in turns or in split-screen.
There's a big focus on community in TrackMania 2, and this is reflected in ManiaPlanet, the Facebook-esque platform from which the game launches. Through this interface you can see your current ranking and the overall leaderboards, and you can even read the game's forums. When friends set a time which beats yours, you're sent a message alerting you, and by clicking on it you can immediately challenge their ghost. It's a neat idea for a user interface, although it could do with a little fixing up; it's not the easiest thing to navigate, and it's only after playing around with it for a while that you fully get to grips with it. It's strangely contrary to the accessibility of the game. 
Customization and user-created content have always been staples of TrackMania, and it's no different here. There's a track editor, which lets you create tracks to share online, and a selection of paint tools with which to customize your cars. The track editor thankfully offers a Simple editing mode, as well as the more complex Advanced mode, which is difficult to get comfortable with at first. The same applies to the replay editor, which is reminiscent of professional editing software. Luckily, each track has default camera angles for replays too, so saving decent movies (which can also be shared or converted to video) is entirely possible with no editing ability.
The complexity of some of the features is the main reason TrackMania 2: Canyon may be off-putting to some. Make no mistake: it's to the game's benefit that it's customizable and open to modding. But unless you're prepared to go to external sites to find new tracks, or you have image editing or 3D modelling skills in order to make decals and new cars, then it's possible to feel as if you're not getting as much out of the game as you could be. Very few aspects of the more advanced components are handled in-game. Grabbing a new track requires you to find it on the Internet or receive the file from someone and extract it into the correct folder which can be accessed via the launcher program. The same is true of cars and most of the replays of official times that are downloaded if you challenge them via the buddy list. Thankfully there's the option to create a "pack" which can be shared, containing multiple tracks and cars, so each individual file doesn't have to be downloaded separately.
Despite this, there's still a highly accessible time trial game here. Given TrackMania 2: Canyon's cheap price, it's a good value even if you're interested only in the vanilla solo and multiplayer modes. It's also a great-looking game. Dust kicks up as you race across canyon floors, and the exaggerated damage model causes cars to bend and buckle into glorious wrecks. Thankfully, the fairly basic soundtrack can be replaced with your own music, and custom maps can have their own songs attached to them.

Drifting around the curving, improbable tracks provides a thrill.

TrackMania 2: Canyon is a game that tries to cater to as many players as possible, even if the gulf between the simple and the advanced is rather wide. Whether you're heavily investing in the community aspect, or simply racing the different tracks to set some times and save a few sweet-looking replays, the game is loads of fun. While it's hard to shake the feeling that some things, like content sharing, could be a little less slapdash, it's also hard to ignore the potential for community expansion. It's not really a game for those who like their racers to be a little more grounded and a little more focused on progression, but it manages to be rewarding even though you're just replaying the same track over and over, trying to beat a ghost by a millisecond. TrackMania 2: Canyon makes it clear that it's the taking part that counts, but it proves that taking part and then winning is even more of a thrill.

F1 2011 Review

F1 2011 builds on the success of Codemasters' first F1 title by developing its most impressive features and fixing many of its flaws. The car handling and visual details are significantly better, and the new Co-op Championship mode presents an exciting new way for friends to experience the intense racing together. The complex driving physics and rules could become frustrating for motor-racing novices, but Formula One fans will enjoy this incredibly faithful depiction of the sport.


The visual improvements over last year's game are striking from your very first lap. The desaturated lighting has been replaced with a realistic colour palette which better conveys the famous Grand Prix atmosphere, from the fans in the grandstands to the scarlet Ferrari and gleaming chrome McLaren. More attention has been given to the cars, too. Each team now has its own steering wheel design, complete with bespoke animations for gear changes and other steering wheel functions. Circuit marshals can be seen waving flags, and the LED caution lights dotted around each circuit work realistically. Bodywork reflects far more of the environment than in F1 2010, and damage to tyres can now be seen in the texture of the rubber on each wheel. Such is the attention to detail in the car models that you can even see the front wing flexing and bending as the cars bounce over bumps, just as during slow-motion footage from a real race. Impressively, Codemasters has achieved all of these visual additions alongside a remarkable improvement in the game's frame rate, which helps you to take in much more of the environment at high speed or on congested sections of a circuit.
Along with upgrading the graphics, the audio now more accurately mimics the real deal. Engine notes are now much more aggressive, as are the gear-change sound effects and the sound of the car hitting the rev limiter. You can even listen to the noise of the tyres on the road to predict the wheels locking up under heavy braking. The enhanced sound gives experienced players much more feedback with which to understand their car's behavior. Additional improvements have been made to the race engineer character who feeds advice to you over the car radio. In F1 2010, the advice was often irrelevant to your race, but in 2011 you are fed information specific to the cars closest to you on the track and given much clearer advice about how to best look after your fragile F1 car.
The fragility of the car is the most important change to the game this year and does a fantastic job of capturing the care needed to drive a racing car. You must find a careful balance between pushing hard and prolonging the life of your tyres. In real F1, the more damage you do to your rubber, the more often you must pit; the same is true in F1 2011. You must also control your fuel use so that you can safely make it to the finish of each race. If you use the "fast" fuel setting for too long, you will drain the fuel tank more quickly, forcing you to drive slowly later in the race to improve your fuel economy and make it to the finish. A new feature on the heads-up display tells you exactly how much fuel you have left by comparing the number of laps left in the tank with the number left to race. All of this attention to detail will be loved by F1 fans but may frustrate those less familiar with the sport. The race engineer does give advice about when to push and when to drive conservatively, but much of his advice assumes you have a high level of F1 knowledge, using terminology which can be confusing if you're not familiar with the real sport. However, fans will appreciate how similar the radio chatter is to real life.
Car handling in F1 2011 leans heavily towards simulation. You can choose from a variety of assists, such as traction control, braking help, and a dynamic racing line, but the series still doesn't have any tutorials to help novices feel comfortable with the incredible acceleration, braking, and cornering speed of an F1 car. However, the alterations to the vehicle physics make this one of the most authentic racing simulations around. The remodeled suspension system gives the car a more believable sense of weight so that you can now feel its mass moving during corners, allowing you to predict slides and correct them appropriately. Sudden spins caused by bumps and kerbs, a major problem in the last game, are a thing of the past. The different tyres are simulated impressively as well. Soft rubber creates great grip but wears out quickly and can be damaged easily, whereas harder rubber offers less grip but is much more durable. The new physics make driving with a standard gamepad a much larger challenge than before; a force feedback steering wheel creates a greater connection between you and the car. A wheel also makes the game much easier to master by allowing much more subtle steering inputs. These aren't always possible when driving F1 2011's twitchy cars with an analogue stick.
The twitchy handling is especially evident in wet weather, which is now far harder to cope with than in F1 2010. Should it begin to rain while you are using a car setup designed for dry conditions, the car will understeer horribly going into corners and oversteer aggressively on the exits, often even if you switch to the correct intermediate or extreme wet tire. If you have the correct wet car setup, you still need to be very careful, as a relatively minor mistake could cause a spin. Along with the tough handling in these situations, the visual effects for water spray are even more frightening in this year's game. Driving closely behind another car in heavy rain is akin to driving with your eyes shut. It demands extreme bravery and really captures the crazy conditions seen regularly in the real sport this season.
Should you lose control of your car, you will quickly become familiar with F1 2011's detailed damage system. With a big enough impact you can knock off your front wing or lose a wheel, but the game also helps you understand that F1 cars are sensitive even to minor incidents. If you lose your entire front wing, you will notice a massive loss of grip, but you can also lose smaller pieces of your car through minor contact. You lose less aerodynamic grip from these incidents, but they still have a subtle negative impact on handling. Puncturing a tire is a much less random occurrence this year as well. If you run off the racing line you will find that your tyres pick up small amounts of dirt and debris; do this too often and a tire might deflate.
It is almost a shame that AI cars make very few mistakes in F1 2011, as it means you rarely get to see one of the game's most welcome new features: the safety car. In Formula One, following a major accident which leaves debris or even a stationary car blocking part of the track, the safety car is released from the pit lane to drive in front of the F1 cars for up to two laps while the track is cleared. In the game, you do not have full control behind the safety car. There's a speed limit, but you can weave from side to side to keep heat in the tyres and brakes. Once the track is clear, the safety car pulls back into the pits, and you can resume racing. It might sound like a dull prospect in a video game, but it has become an important part of modern Formula One and is believably implemented in the game. You can turn it off if you would rather not use this feature, but serious F1 fans will really enjoy the need to quickly consider changes to their race strategy since the slow speed behind the safety car removes any gaps between cars that were built up during the race.
All this detail may prove too complex for casual F1 fans, but if you just want to play short races with fewer of the strategic factors in play, then F1 2011 allows for that. Career mode now lets you choose three-lap races as well as the previous minimum distance of 20 percent of a real Grand Prix. Setting up the car is also relatively simple. You can pick from preset car setups based on the weather conditions, or if you have more mechanical knowledge you can alter almost every aspect of the car to fine-tune a custom setup. You can also choose short or long race weekends. Long includes the real format of three practice sessions and three qualifying sessions, whereas short reduces practice and qualifying to one session each. Players looking for medium distance races will be disappointed to find the 30 percent race distance has been removed from the game this year; the choice now jumps from 20 percent (about 15 minutes per race) to 50 percent (45 minutes per race).
The career mode is very similar to that of last year's game. You must start with a low-ranking team and meet qualifying and race objectives to improve your reputation and attract interest from the front-runners. Along the way you can also opt to complete research-and-development objectives by beating a set lap time in practice sessions. Doing so awards you with upgrades to your car's performance. In addition to competing, you answer questions from the press between race sessions. How you answer each question from the three options available affects your relationship with your team and interest from others. The effects of your responses are made clearer in this year's game through press clippings shown at the end of each weekend, so you can see how your comments are being reported in the media. Career mode and indeed all of the other race types have been made more rewarding by new cutscenes depicting your driver celebrating in the parc ferme if you place in the top three. It's nice to see your efforts celebrated, though it's strange that Codemasters decided to implement this style of cutscene instead of the more iconic podium celebrations.

The AI drivers provide stiff competition.

Though Career mode has changed very little, the wheel-to-wheel racing is now much better. AI cars aggressively defend their position on most difficulties, intelligently moving to the inside line to protect the obvious overtaking route. As in last year's game, they can sometimes move to defend too early, giving you the chance to overtake them on the outside, but this happens a lot less in F1 2011. The AI drivers are also much more consistent across all of the circuits in this year's game. You no longer find that they are too fast at some tracks or too slow at others, and they certainly don't struggle in fast corners like they did in F1 2010.
Just as in real F1, you have two new overtaking tools at your disposal in F1 2011: KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) and DRS (drag reduction system). KERS offers you a power boost at the touch of a button. You can use only a certain amount each lap, but if timed correctly, it can help you keep up with a faster car or defend your position from someone coming up behind. It's also a terrific aid in qualifying, as finding the best places to use it on each track can shave valuable tenths of a second off your time. Pressing the DRS button opens a flap in the rear wing to reduce aerodynamic drag and increase top speed. This can be used only when you're less than a second behind the car ahead and only at certain points on each circuit. Combined with KERS, it can make overtaking much easier on the harder difficulties. Pit stops have also been improved. The AI mechanics now cope far better when the pit lane is busy and release you back into the race with great efficiency, instead of holding you stationary for a ludicrous amount of time after changing the tyres.
In addition to Career mode and the single-race Grand Prix mode, F1 2011 includes a new scenario-based time attack game called Proving Grounds. Here, you are given a specific car, weather condition, and circuit, and you must set the fastest lap time possible, without being able to alter the car setup or tire choice. This creates a fascinating level playing field on the game's leaderboards, but if you prefer to set up the car yourself, you can still choose to play the more traditional Time Trial mode.
Competitive multiplayer in F1 2011 can be split-screen or online. The split-screen mode offers only single races, but it can include a full grid of AI cars and all of the various parameters from the single-player game. The frame rate is solid as well, allowing for exciting gameplay that doesn't suffer from slowdown. Online, up to 16 players can take part in three-lap races, qualifying sessions, or tougher multiplayer games which include qualifying followed by a longer-distance race with pit stops. Unlike last year's F1 game, the 2011 game fills the remaining spaces on the grid with AI cars so you always have 24 cars competing. In the long races in particular, this makes for satisfying competition and lots of strategic options.

Looking after your fragile car is key.

The big addition to multiplayer is the brand-new Co-op Championship, which lets two players drive for the same team during a single championship season against AI cars. This fantastic new mode has you working together to bring success to the team in the Constructors' Championship, all the while knowing that only one of you has the chance to bring home the Drivers' title for the team. Do you help each other out with your car setups and upgrades in order to benefit the team, or do you hold vital information to yourself to cement your position as team leader? These ongoing personal battles, versus striving for team success, create a fascinating situation which brings fresh excitement to online multiplayer in the racing genre. In order to be a successful team you must find a delicate balance between achieving the best team result at each race, while still out-performing your team-mate in the run to the Drivers' Championship.
F1 2011 is a great sequel which captures the fragility of an F1 car for the first time and features significant improvements over its predecessor. Its extremely steep learning curve will frustrate many novice racers but will delight serious F1 fans. You may need a force feedback steering wheel to master its handling at the most difficult level, but F1 2011 is a tremendously faithful re-creation of the sport, offering rewarding and strategic racing that simulation fans are sure to be playing for a long time to come.

Out of the Park Baseball 12 Review

Out of the Park Baseball has quietly become one of the most impressive sports franchises in all of gaming. This big league management simulation has been getting better with just about each passing year since the late 1990s, and the recently released 12th version of the game may be the best yet. While there aren't any stop-the-presses moments here that will convert text-game haters, rough spots have been smoothed out and depth has been added. The game continues to wallop you with more numbers than Moneyball and a calculus textbook combined, but hardball diehards can't help but love the deeply satisfying mix of peanuts, Cracker Jacks, and sabermetrics.

First off, though, you might need to start playing Out of the Park Baseball 12 by making an adjustment to how the game launches. The game was initially so broken as to be unplayable, due to a blizzard of errors whenever simming a day or even saving. The fix, at least in our experience, involves simply clicking on the game executable and then selecting the "Run as administrator" option. It isn't clear how widespread this problem might be, but it's severe enough that it can make it tough to get through a single day of MLB action, let alone a full season.
Once you get the game up and running, you find a similar OOTP to that released in 2009 and 2010. This is major league baseball in a box, a hardball universe that lets you join the ballclub of your choice and then manage it for as many seasons as you like. You make the call on just about everything by serving as the bench boss and the GM. Many tasks can be automated, but generally, you set rosters, draw up batting orders, establish pitching rotations, make bullpen assignments, send out trade offers, wheel and deal with free agents, place players on the disabled list, and so forth. The game focuses on the real major leagues, although it also includes a full run of minor clubs, along with real and fictional circuits from all over the planet.
That said, there aren't a load of frills here. The game is completely text based via HTML pages that you navigate just as you would a Web browser. Everything revolves around numbers, which can be daunting unless you are a serious baseball fan who alternates between watching games and studying their outcomes in the stat pages of Baseball America. There is no visual wow here. The closest you come to "graphics" is the manual simulation screen, where you watch games played over a rudimentary diamond and a backdrop photo of the Phillies' Citizens Bank Park and follow the action by reading textual play-by-play while listening to canned crowd noise. This may be the most approachable OOTP yet, with loads of shortcuts on menu screens to keep you from getting lost in the number jungle, but it remains a long way from the friendly confines of an arcade-first sim like
Still, you don't need pretty pictures to enjoy OOTP 12. The depth is just incredible. Rosters are more thorough than ever, with full major league clubs as they sat on opening day 2011, along with a complete run of prospects, wannabes, and never-weres in A, AA, and AAA. Stats are tracked for just about every conceivable event that can take place on a ball diamond, so you can indulge your inner Bill James to your heart's content. Analyzing statistics and player ratings is key to any success you find on the field, along with some luck that projected ratings actually turn into real-world performance on the field. The most notable change to the artificial intelligence is how your bench bosses and managers fare when asked to fill out lineups. Before, you always got into "Why the hell is that guy batting third?" territory and had to do a fair bit of manual tweaking. Now, it's hard to pick out any serious flaws.
Player ratings are incredibly thorough, including everything from their ability to go deep to how they perform in the clubhouse. Drafting and developing based solely on stats and ratings is a crapshoot because you could easily wind up with a starting nine full of clubhouse cancers with terrible injury ratings or some me-first kids who won't even sign with your team. Little touches like this add strategic depth to building teams because you need to take all of these factors into account before making moves. Even something as potentially dull as the draft is fraught with tension because you always have to make the call on such questions like taking a risk on a potential phenom who is reportedly hard to sign or playing it safe with an average-number guy who is supposed to be easy to ink. Contracts are also much more involved when it comes to negotiating them with the addition of more personality-driven decisions, as well as things like bonus clauses and buyout options. It's all pretty byzantine, though, which makes it hard to figure out how to manage player transactions within your organization at first. At least the game provides lots of advice and warnings so you don't wind up doing something really idiotic, like designating your star shortstop for assignment when you're trying to stick him on the DL.
Storylines have been expanded to include just about everything that happens in the real world. You'll see such things as players taking leaves of absence over the death of a child, getting burned in bizarre kitchen mishaps, and being beaned by out-of-control pitching machines. Star players now have lives outside of baseball, too. As seasons progress, you'll witness such developments as your star shortstop opening up a winery or your speedy center fielder donating a kidney to his brother. Clubhouse tantrums sometimes result in suspensions or even serious injuries for things like punching a locker. You can even encounter weird situations like a prospect being judged older than he claims to be due to odd results of a DNA test, a prospect choosing basketball over baseball like a latter-day Danny Ainge, or a lawnmower accident ending a career due to the loss of a few fingers. This level of detail really sucks you into the game. At the same time, however, out-there situations do not occur often. Stories typically involve things like strained medial collateral ligaments and concussions, so don't worry about the game playing like a telenovela.
Multiplayer has also received some attention this year. The new OOTP makes it easier to get into one of the thousands of online leagues that have sprung up in recent years. You can now find a league within the game itself by logging in with a username and password and then browsing a server that is usually loaded with commissioners that are looking for fresh blood. This is the ideal way to play OOTP, so it's good to see that the developers are making it easier than ever to find a league and experience the cutthroat nature of taking on human rivals rather than the CPU.
Even though Out of the Park Baseball 12 breaks little completely new ground, the revamped rosters, refined AI, and deeper storylines do a lot to overhaul the feel of the game. With so many new ways to interact with your players, the game is more of a human simulator with a lot of numbers than a number cruncher without much of a human face, which makes for a game that is even harder to put down than its already estimable predecessors.

Mount & Blade: Warband

Mount & Blade: Warband

Mount & Blade will keep their promises. Open-world role-playing game, which was a bit 'rough and ready for the mainstream audience, when he arrived in 2008, has taken a leap forward as a Platoon alone expansion. New multiplayer modes supported by the MOB fierce battles are great to do here, along with some solo experience improvements, including delicacies such as the new wing and updated graphics. That is still not satisfied with the game, where the single-player campaign more open and above all free of background color is typically used to attract the role of a medieval castle kingdoms. But the multiplayer is addictive and exciting, quite happy to give you the fuzzies that you can not help but be more patient with the shortcomings in the campaign.

The multiplayer mode is a great way to take the mount and blade free, as it is excellent against the naturalist before the game and the center. The eight modes of frenetic level, with a maximum of 64 players warrior, archer classes / archer and horse riding (official names vary among the six factions available, but is essentially what you get to play with) hacking and cutting each other battles without lag. Each class can also be customized with armor and weapons equipped with a swimming pool bought dinars opening and improved during the games with the extra money earned for the kill. Games take place in a limited number of cards that describe the typical parameters of the Middle Ages, as the besieged castles, quaint villages in the north, the coastal villages of snow facilities, etc. Each of several parameters was dressed with a few attractive scenes that greatly improve on the canvas, dark brown, which dominated the original game.

The various multiplayer game modes are standard staples, which are standard multiplayer staples, including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Conquest and Capture the Flag, among others. As in the original game, fighting hand to hand most of the time, consisting of face-to-face skirmishes where you swing swords, axes, spears and their many friends in medieval clicking the mouse while moving the mouse in the direction you want to start your attack. And swing downwards and down, push you forward while you click. To pass from the right, you slide to the right, and so on. This is an intuitive control that also allows much of the adaptation and experimentation because of the physical battlefield precise and detailed. No two battles ever play the same.

Chaos is a large drawing card here. You never feel totally responsible for what you do. But it is not because it is difficult to control, or something. On the contrary, are so natural and fluid, moving and reacting, and will never be able to script the action, or be expected to share a hack-and-slash grooves. This adds a sense of despair and realism to the battles that just do not often find in games. That said, this style of combat has been acquired taste. If you are used to attack a mouse click in most other action games, you struggle with a learning curve to begin with. Start early frustrating as you can manage to get used to these controls, you may end up moving the camera all over the place, as you move the mouse back and forth to make attacks. Rating is not the players or the server is, inevitably thrown to the wolves, and you are more experienced opponents slaughtered at the beginning.

Yet the basic combat moves in Warband is so natural that you quickly get used to them, and soon begins to run through enemies like a good medieval knight. Battles here are incredibly addictive, even when you feel just about as the great anarchy is crazy fun, no matter how intelligent you are - no matter how many times you get killed. Just experiment with many different weapons are entertaining all on their own, like to see how you can swing a long pike remote and remove the dead at close range with a sword. When you develop an ability to melee, you can also turn to play archers and mounted knights. They offer very different challenges and the fight which is more demanding. Archers, for example, are difficult to handle because you need time to attack due to recharge and extend the concerns of default view. Just fire away continues to lose a lot of nuts and get killed.

The only persistent problem with Warband is the lack of attention to campaign solo. It is very similar to what was the original Mount and blade. Calradia the world is as you left it, with the addition obviously only be a new territory and a new faction called the Sultanate Sarranid which is based on real medieval Arab kingdoms. They come with the Mameluke cavalry style murderer, but otherwise they fit perfectly with the existing factions. None of this has been seriously extended - at least to a level compatible with the epic role-playing game popular in the line of Oblivion and Dragon Age. You, however, given a few more career options and search, such as becoming a king, the subjects of recruitment, or even marry. But always start his life almost meaningless. NPCs are the repositories of information bored with very distinctive.

Even if you do not bother with the single player campaign is Warband worth buying for the excellent multiplayer alone. The games are addictive and exciting, with lots of people crowded on the servers. While the core of Mount & Blade is still relatively primitive because of its underdeveloped player campaign and some limitations with the graphics, there are a lot of charm here. The simple pleasure of smashing skulls with spades and loaded into a gang of enemies atop a fine Arab charger really makes this game stand out in a world of cookie-cutter RPGs.

You can also exit from the trench to install a galloping horse charging attacks, or crossbow to play or sit and Archer sniping enemies from a distance (at least until the bad guys notice that the bolts came and took the time knew that).

Playing the cavalry of the process is even more due to the speed of horses and the need for perfect timing attacks to hit enemies at a gallop over. It 'a lot of fun in the opinion, but especially when you begin to master the attacks at the right time, and begin to lay the Smack Down unfortunate enemies on foot.

The terrain is mostly barren and boring, because the images date have improved only slightly altered textures, and embellishments such as HDR lighting. Although you can do almost anything you want in this sandbox Medieval roaming around as a mercenary army commander of the troops of karting around products as a trader pulling dinars, the background is lightly sketched may be difficult to maintain interest . Anyone looking for drama or color of the usual medieval role-playing game will be disappointed by the lack of history and motivation here.

Beat Hazard

Beat Hazard

It 'a good chance you've already played the game as a danger Beat. This dual-stick downloadable shoot-em-up, you maneuver a spacecraft around the small screen, blasting asteroids and other ships, before they turn into dust in space. Countless games have used this as a formula more and more popular, but differs from the Hazard: Complete the game takes shape the rhythm of the music tracks to import. The resulting diversity leads to an interesting and challenging work, and make an interesting way to enjoy your favorite music artists. This unique feature is not completely out of the game in small sins - underwhelming sound effects and the lack of facilities and types of enemies. Danger beat, though, Simple Gifts offers a lot of energy and enthusiasm, which makes it an attractive value, even the full price of $ 9.99.

Beat the works of danger with many traditional audio file formats, even though we had no luck with the files protected by strict digital rights management, or forget about working with protected songs downloaded from iTunes or the Zune store. We had no problems with any unprotected audio files, however, and the game features a large, soundtrack button. Rhythm pattern your ship firing button, and all traces of the results of Chorus Line and space rocks, projectile-spewing boss, and the ship badly. Like most games of this type, you fly around the screen using the left stick and aim and shoot right. The keyboard and mouse is also functional, although somewhat more difficult to resolve.

Recorded music with strong beats variety produces the best action, so you might want to let Brahms and Beethoven in their graves, and stick to something more current. When the music heats up and you take the few power-ups that appear, beef up your ship laser levels incredibly strong, it will also be the screen is filled with the incredibly large number Meanie. The resulting chaos seems remarkably smooth, with your ship lights neon lights and explosions fill the screen, so vivid and colorful, they look like they may explode from your screen. Background colors and morphing visualizations look pretty chaotic, but rarely it is difficult to say what is on screen. The only drawback is the visual flashy strobe effect that intensifies as the track progresses, hard mode, the flash will be uncomfortable, so if you have sensitive eyes, you may need to rest from time to time.

There is not many ways to experience Beat Hazard can be customized to the shooter to the old. You can play through a single track individually (a pleasant diversion) or take on a whole album in Survival mode (a difficult challenge to cook). For this question, there are a few different types of enemies, so do not expect the variety to a game like Geometry Wars 2, allowing several different modes and strong-willed enemies. But the way the game is draped around the music that you import provides its own form of black, and there's nothing like taking on a new melody for the first time because you never know how things will play . There is also a mechanism for leveling up that rewards you with new ranks while you play, and lets you compete against your friends on Valve's Steam service.

Without their years of grace notes, the risk of stroke is just another dual stick shooter, but how the game turns your favorite music gives you the impetus to excel in a crowded genre. It's also fun, frantic and striking - the equivalent of a viewer interactive music class. There is still room for improvement here, but Beat danger is great fun and a new cool way to experience your music library.

The sound effects are disappointing surprisingly weak, with an attractive, vibrant graphics. Shooting guns make no noise, and explosions are strangely muted. Perhaps the developer of the cold beam, games wanted to avoid an overload of music, but only minimal sound effects to make it look as if something important is missing.

A rule at the bottom of the screen provides updates on the progress of their friends, and you can compare the total points and the overall progress with players around the world with online leaderboards.

Out of the Park Baseball 11

Out of the Park Baseball 11

Out of the Park Baseball is a little better each year. The Cadillac of text-based sports Sims is now in its 11th season this spring, he stresses a long list of subtle enhancements to its unique take on big-league baseball. At first glance, it looks like a must-have suite, as owners of the game last year could probably live without the MLB minor improvements here and lists of the box, a redesigned interface and improved simming history. But many of these additions and changes really grow on you, better gameplay in so many ways as long as you soon will not be able to manage without them.

OOTP11 the center of the simulation is the same Major League Baseball, which is published every year, more or less from the late 90's. You can access the beginning of the career management of the club selected ball, then drive through the corners there are many seasons as you like, either alone or as part of the League of multiplayer online game. All important decisions are yours to do - setting formations on a daily basis, choosing between the pitching rotation, trying to understand the structure of the Bullpen, shops, the renewal of this, giving a star free agents, picking up young talent in nature, and so on. This is perfect for a baseball universe where you can do just anything that Buzzie Bavasi aspiring to do in real life on a daily basis around the majors.

New enhancements to the interface makes it very easy to navigate, though. This is the friendliest OOTP again. Although you spend much time studying the dense lists of notes and statistics of players, the game takes almost by hand, you on the opening day by asking all for you. It is almost impossible to get lost, because the indicators are generously distributed. The display head has been completely reworked with icons for the main features and even a calendar of events showing big team in the coming days. The menus allow you to access all functions with just one or two clicks. Monitors can bookmark so you can immediately make your way back through the menus, you will find yourself using on a regular basis. Immersion has been enhanced with new foods customizable, while the addition of new updates to the league and the messages on the screen simulation allows you to keep in touch with what's happening around the league when simming games.

Other new features are brighter than interface tweaks and new statistics followed. The addition is the inclusion as a genuine great baseball players in the league and team names. Now, instead of having to replace the fiction of the franchise and brush with big-name team in the league and the line lists provided by the modders, you can get the right to a good approximation (the game does not have logos teams player and photos) of the 2010 MLB truth, not easily. It's a long way from perfect - see skinny white in the CIP the player page CC Sabathia will be a little intimidating for Yankees fans Hurler enormous - but still an improvement for those who want to experiment without tinkering with MLB lists by default. Support for historical reproduction allowed into baseball history at some point between 1871 and 2009 has been improved, too, because a new historical play mode that optimizes the player scores depending on whether you play a season or a career.

You can customize how players are evaluated at the end of the year and time, you will be able to use the core engine OotP development, the creation of how the development of the players performed in real life, or off the development of all . So if you're worried about the fact that the 1927 will to hurt Babe Ruth hits 20 home runs and 0250 lives his bow career, you can opt for the latter to cancel this path back to the rating are based on what the Child is not in the real world during a season full of events. It is a kind of magic reset button to compensate for potential problems with the simulation, but it must be to develop a career path for those who want to replay the exact consecutive seasons. That said, the opportunity to kill the fun of an element of fantasy in OotP historical period in which you are perfectly free to write the record books.

If you already have last year's game, OOTP11 is not a must buy. That said, the game this year do not stay long with many progressive steps forward. The interface is so easy to use than ever, the MLB players of the box is a great addition and improvements to historic season for more exact repetitions than ever before offered by an OOTP game. So even if you do not need this then you probably want, and for fans of baseball most of the kitchen will do.

Or you can even go further and take less league teams in North America, as the game supports any organization imaginable development of rookie ball league all the way to the AAA International League. The only catch is that all this depth is transmitted via a HTML text as you browse the same way that you use a Web browser. You see, there may be a bit jarring for those coming in the console game of baseball as MLB lavish: The Show and MLB 2K series. There is no visual chrome here. The closest you even get "graphics" is in the manual simulation screens, where you see the game played on a diamond rudimentary and follow the action by reading textual play-by-play.

If you want to ditch some of the tasks, you can always transfer bench bosses as well as major and minor. Time zippiest sim yet, so you can plow through a week of activities more than a few seconds and then roar throughout the season, a few minutes. This is far from being a little OOTPs' slow in the past. Some knowledge of baseball is obviously useful to leave here because this is a very detailed game. For more puzzled by the stat abbreviations only, because the game is now to an esoteric area, such as ERA +, OPS +, and FIP. But there is no need to walk, to talk about the Hall of Fame fanatical resolve quickly and start building a pennant winner. All you need is an interest in the national pastime, and the desire to learn.

The money is also correct in time for the economy forward, just like they did in the really big companies.

Some of these fantasies is dead on arrival, too, that the illusion of going back in time is a bit shaken by the manipulation of information baseball league news network in the 19 th century, players, given the number even decades before the practice began (and the Bambino with the number 38 is bad), and a modern baseball stadium in the background with clips of Ozzy Osbourne in the PA when manually simming games.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

Sam Fisher is angry - and after playing the PC version of Splinter Cell: Conviction, you may feel a bit 'too irritated. Sam says, a conspiracy conviction based on the story of a brilliant way, and the construction of an oil slick moves are fun to do, especially in cooperative play. Unfortunately, these strengths have tarnished the cutting edge is a set of questions, which is the PC players feel like second-class citizens. Co-op that made the Xbox 360 version of the winner was seriously injured as a result of this startling omission of text and voice chat, and precision of keyboard and mouse to control a lot of tension melts in a short campaign to to produce. Glitches and bugs, some of which are related to network security copy Conviction rigorous, even under the best will in the game memorable moments of inspiration. All this white noise obscures a good game lurking around, so last Conviction console port on a PC, the platform does not do it justice.

Sam Fisher is the protagonist of gravel of expression that is as much a part of the identity of Splinter Cell such as eyeglasses and guns. The murder of his daughter Sarah has channeled away hope and joy in the life of Sam and he's back with one goal: to find his killer. An old friend put Sam on the track but the track is not a simple (is it ever?), And Sam soon finds himself entangled in a conspiracy much larger than it appears. You encounter a few surprises along the way legitimate, although the story is not as exciting as the way it is told. The text of your current mission is stretched over the walls and angles of the pipes in place, which are simple signs of the emotional state of Sam ("Repentance" is displayed for the "guilt", according to a second.) Black -white flashbacks take place on some surfaces, such as television Sams all thoughts through old film projector.

This was evident when Sam through Basic. Sam can still slink Crouch and, of course, but the conviction of the Stealth has focused on its cover system. You can take cover and press against any vertical surface with ease, walls and sidewalks for vehicles and files. You can then slip quickly to the next coverage point, assuming a visual indicator on the phone to the next place by zip. It 'an intuitive system, and can be used to move quickly all the right ways, often so that you can watch a guard wandering head, he goes without being seen his crime cohorts. You can get a good user interface tools that will help you get the bearings when you try to stay out of sight. If you are dark and invisible enemies, everything becomes black and white, put away the goals and environmentally important sites.

But do not spend the time you have done in the belief shadow in previous games. Sam is still vulnerable, you can not just walk in a group of mercenaries in broad daylight. But Conviction, Sam, to do business on their own terms and is therefore much more aggressive than before. To this end, you can choose from a number of enemies at once (up to four, depending on what weapon you are packing and have it installed) and then run in a single move. Bring out the character-and-run maneuver, you must first close-run killing. Once you've taken down the original target, the implementation is complete, and as long as each of your goals is not obscured region around an object or another (you know when you go on the label marked in red), all you have to do is press a single button.

Conviction is trying his hand at other times explosive, but they do not come together dramatically. Sometimes you can use objects in the environment, such as Tools of Destruction - shoots a chandelier, it falls on the head of an enemy, or take a huge tanker explosion, for example - but the rarity of these options are the existing scattered seem like a tease. More than a tease, they make you carry out interviews of key witnesses. In these scenes very scripted, you take your goals and to respond to bash him scrambling in the objects of the environment clearly waiting to be splattered with blood. Unfortunately, to perform the first interrogation - a bloody bathroom Beatdown - is the best in the entire game. In the rest. The invisible walls that you hem and "Hey, look at me" character of three or four conveniently placed controls make queries more predictable than provocative

Many of the levels do not give you a welcome flexibility in how to tackle the task at hand. You can Shimmy on the pipe, throwing Remote Camera (one of the few gadgets that you can use), to attract the guards nearby and detonated it - always a good way to get two or three opponents off the road. Or maybe you hang on the edge and use a silenced pistol thin the crowd with a couple of good shots to the head. The flexibility is nice, but Splinter Cell: Conviction is incredibly easy. Although mouse smoothing impatient, which makes the camera movement seems a little 'lag, keyboard and mouse to pinpoint than the Xbox 360 controller. If you're playing the normal difficulty, you will breeze through most levels, so you could easily forget that gadgets and alternative routes, because they do not need them. The hardest difficulty setting offers more of a challenge, but even then, Conviction does not produce as much excitement as would be expected, because the pedigree of the series.

Splinter Cell: Conviction comes out of his way to take in other forms of black, and fortunately it hits more than he is missing. Many levels, as a former model in a mansion filled with art, colorful look and can be approached in several ways. A trip through an amusement park, a secure checkpoint surrounded by innocent bystanders, and a tour of an aerodrome are also special attention because they offer plenty of space to sneak around and get ready for some executions . Others do not work so well that the level flashback that eliminates most of the elements that make a single sentence and is played more like an awkward third-person shooter. Level at the Lincoln Memorial includes a sequence exciting fighter - but also too long listening session involves a lot of boring dialogue.

This integration of the environment is remarkably effective, updates to radio and emotional states as if they were burned in his soul and then etched directly onto the retina. Actor Michael Ironside is still a good job as Sam, and some scenes are thick with her despair and indignation. The supporting cast keeps with him, making it easy to identify with old friends who have your back.

If you see a ghostly image of its shape will remain at its last known position, and the AI ​​will turn his attention there. The alerts and sound if they are captured or are in immediate danger of being caught. The black and white effect can mask a bit too much sometimes, but overall, they are elements of the interface that important information is taken sensible driver distraction.

Time slows down a bit ', the camera will zoom in on each enemy in turn, with the swoosh thin, and squeeze the victims of the country, can not compete with trained killing machine with a chip on his shoulder. And 'some' of confusion when the target moves behind the wall during construction, and their bullet clips through it, but the camera moves for the most part smooth, and audio signals to make it fun to pull out the executions. In fact, most of the best moments of the campaign come from a clever tactic used to run. For example, a room full of guards may be aware of the presence to support its position. Some quick note, a man dancing with the murder of a man and a zoom zoom zoom execution is an effective way to eliminate the threat.

Would be more interactive, they could be random, but they are violent, but the shrug-worthy.

And without tension, making even the most qualified versions do not offer much of a rush as you want. You can connect an Xbox 360 controller, of course, but you have to use the wired variety, because the button configuration on the wireless controllers are broken and can not be adjusted.

However, most campaign missions to play through the careful design of the levels and enemies that are quick to side when you have identified, and quick to spread when you do that puts pressure on you. AI is not always spot-on, your opponents are sometimes slow to react to grenades thrown directly at their feet, for example. But quotas are always unpredictable security and adaptive, if not downright threatening.

Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter

Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter

Although the series Serious Sam is near the top of every list of the best shooters ever made Gonzo, HD remakes and games do not get off to a good start last fall. HD Serious Sam: The First Encounter steam obtained a great splash in the month of November because of the tons of mistakes, which made the game impossible for some users to play, let alone enjoy blasting enemies to bits. But the run-and-gun madness is back at Real HD Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, an improved version of the original 2002, which is considered by many as the highlight of the franchise. What we should have six months ago, the developers will donate Croteam and digital. It is a perfect re-creation of the classic to the presence of graphics and new multiplayer modes.

As with the remake of the first meeting, take the second game does not mess with the original core. Not much of a story, and no character development or fighting a bit with the vehicles. All we have is Sam "Serious" Stone, an action hero in the race around a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. He joked, as Duke Nukem and great heavyweights six shooters fire a gun directly from the war of 1812. A surreal plot followed the movement of madness Overlord Sat insidious fear with foreign armies in ancient South America, Babylon, and a sinister medieval town (which does not match the archaeological theme of the series but it looks very cool). However, the game is basically all about mass battles with thousands of strange monsters. Robotron is a person first on the roids, incredibly challenging and exciting, with many mice break times of extreme hardship.

The handling is composed of 11 in the second game, with all that extra. There are a couple of very useful new weapons including a chainsaw that cuts the evil in a gray body anatomy section of Los Angeles (the book, not the TV), a flamethrower to the ability to make crispy creatures, a sniper rifle that can fire one-shot kills, and even a smart bomb-like severe bomb that can handle all of the battlefield, leaving nothing in its wake, but the blood smears . New enemies have also been thrown into the mix. Some changes are made to old friends as foreign soldiers who fire science-fiction Blasters, while others are hilariously inventive freak-show monsters. This includes the pumpkin Cucurbito, crazy chainsaw wielding in denim overalls with a flaming Jack-o'-lantern for a head, and the Gunslinger Zumb'ul fists Planet Nykredit Ad-Ras, which was inspired by Clint Eastwood, but looks like an alien Sat Yosemite.

The levels are tuned. In addition, the standards battle arenas from the first game, where you can bog down in the valley to the outside or inside a sort of death trap, and the killing of hundreds of monsters before they can go, all kinds of special rooms , which are crazy things with special effects. Wind blows, as you try to navigate in the box peak. Resilient flooring and walls to bounce you around the place where you are attacked by the now iconic franchise bombs screaming headless monster on your hands. And so on. It can be a bit 'too often, with enemies that keep coming and only the second repeat to drive to take a break. It does not seem to have some padding here, especially in South America, part of a Body Count is also too few spots for a game Serious Sam. Many levels have also topped the key to the puzzle, you can pick up an item or two, such as statues, to open the door.

Of course, this is all about what Croteam released in 2002, until the music is catchy and the atmosphere much more than I could expect from a Bloodfest but has not really changed at all. The same goes for sound effects and signs of phrases Sat The game is very similar to the severe Engine 3. You can really see the difference here between old and new graphics, much more than the HD version of the first meeting. This is the level of various parameters such as the grass of the Central American jungle and snow medieval. Even the bright sunlight of the guns is more realistic, as the effects of shade when the sun begins to set in later levels. All this combines to make the campaign more effective.

New multiplayer game is another point, as it is reinforced with several new options for more of The First Encounter HD. Co-op can now play the Classic, Survival (bad for the waves as a team), and the slots (only three of the battle of life) for businesses, ranging from a handful of Pals explosion with 16 players total chaos maximum. Versus Play now more than a simple deathmatch old and the HD version of the first meeting, too. Traditional multiplayer games such as Capture the Flag and Last Man Standing was added as a single structure arcade-ish. For example, Beast Hunt sees you competing to earn kills, Instant Kill is a dogfight with a sniper rifle shot to death, and my burden is the demolition of the players over weight, which is automatically awarded points to the carrier. But although there are a lot of exciting, fast, multiplayer game here, not many people are playing.

Yet, while HD Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is nothing more than a relatively ambitious remake of a game almost ten years, it is very different from most modern shooters, and certainly offers enough content to justify its price of $ 20. This is a significant improvement over the 2002-classic shooter, and as such it has a host of wacky fun for everyone who wants to see the game, and certainly recommended for fans of FPS who do not benefit a unique experience at the back today.

Connecting to scare a game in cooperative and competitive modes usually run many servers empty.

The Whispered World

The Whispered World

Traditional point and click adventure is alive and well in the world quietly. But this is good and bad for Daedalic Entertainment surrealist fantasy of a sad clown and the end of the world. While the game certainly fascinating German history and memorable characters who have adventures so endearing classic also has dozens of puzzles to the illogic of age who wants to break the hair a lot of dialogue and detailed action slows to a crawl. It's one of those experiences that makes it right in terms of storytelling to be kissed, but not to ask why you are wasting your time.

The protagonist of this strange tale is Sadwick the sad clown, a sad sack guy in a clown costume. It is much like Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh depressive donkey mate, the tail of his hat is a little too crazy long floppy ears. Sadwick is as low as Eeyore, but with good reason - it is the human cannonball and resident scapegoat for a small family circus. Grandpa can never remember his name. Ben can treat it as a kind of slavery and the insults used his artistic ambitions to write poems or make the legitimate theater. And he is constantly having nightmares about the end of the world, which in this case is a kind fantasy land of magic and distant realms. The only creature who loves this clown is his pet "Caterpillar" Spot, a green ball-shaped figure resembling the Shmoo of the 80 cartoons on Saturday morning which can also be transformed into different forms like beads on request .

Most centers Sadwick story about looking for adventure. After spending the first few minutes of the game being scolded by his reflex of a brother and grandfather senile, he wanders into the woods and run into a goblinlike messengers of the kingdom far away from Corona. The king is ill and the kingdom may fall to a race of creatures called Asgil, so the only hope is to have a magical element called Whispering stone to the castle quickly. A kind viewer named Shana is apparently the only one who can help get the stone, but when Sadwick find it, it goes into a trance and told him he is destined to destroy the world ... Just the kind of thing that all clinically depressed clowns wants to hear. Sadwick can not bring himself to tell her that when she wakes up, but then he is and said it actually predicted it would save the world. At that time, she gives him some tips on how to do this the waves, and the hunt begins in earnest.

Unfortunately, you feel like you've done all this before. The Whispered World can be loaded with history and atmosphere, with amazing painted backgrounds, animations of the characters directly from a great cartoon, and a haunting piano / flute theme, but everything is exaggerated. Some of the charm of this fairytale dream is lost because there is no dialogue as well. Each stone comes with comments Sadwick Bush, and most of the talks indefinitely, thanks to what appears to be a dozen or more options in the branching dialogue trees. Originally, the script in Florida history. An hour later, listening to all the complexities Jibber-jabber boredom built as needed to analyze the lines and click through them as quickly as possible. Quality voice acting in the dark, too. Some characters are very soft, while others are overworked, and at regular intervals, an error causes the voice to go silent until you restart the game

The puzzles are very derivative. This is an old adventure, like Sierra and LucasArts used to do, if you have to take everything that is not nailed no matter how stupid it sounds. Common sense has been stepped on a lot of time. The Sadwick just no reason to take some things, like his grandfather, a crusty old handkerchief, but make them do anyway, because you know that you're finally able to MacGyver a series of key gadget from the smallest piece of waste. In fact, to solve the many puzzles are also almost impossible, because the jumps incredible logic to figure things out. At one point, for example, you need to get some pants stuck high on the wall. You have a scale. Simple, right? Not really.

In short, The Whispered World is the most beautiful, but treacherous. Although the game has many strengths in the history dreamlike, beautiful art painted and detailed script loaded with dialogue, it is too servile imitation of the form of old adventure game to be quite nice two decades after the peak of the Sierra and LucasArts. Go Retro is one thing, forcing adventurers to quarrel with the pixel hunts and puzzles that you have no chance to find without a walk-through is another matter.

Spot cuteness to let speak for itself, is silent on the whole game except for odd squeak. He's really more a tool for investigating places Sadwick can not escape any form of adventure companion.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but because the Sadwick intranasal complain about (again, like Eeyore), which makes me want to slap him. The atmosphere conveyed by major art collections is also a bit 'too much, because it is so detailed, that the elements blend into the background. Every country is full of tiny details, all full of crap trailer Sadwick of the throne room of Crown Castle. So, even if it is just great to gawk at all of this art, it is not so great, that highlighted a series of clickable objects on each screen to hold the space bar to change the annoying pixel hunting game.

Instead of simply climb the ladder, you must close a door to see a mouse hole in the wall behind her, a delusion of the mouse on a sock, catch the mouse, then swinging by its tail on the top-wall the pants, which caught the little rodent said baggy pants with his teeth. The human puzzle ball is even more insanely, forcing you to do ridiculous things like making a sculpture in resin, wood, stone turtle, false teeth grandfather, and bear claws to scare your brother to give up his complaints to your flight (seconds) pairs of pants and a red ball juggling. Your head hurts just thinking about it here. At least the handful or two of setting puzzles involving and challenging, although they mostly rely on old standards like that. These include sliding tiles moving chess pieces, and mix chemicals to make meals and drinks.