Latest Games Reviews

Pirates of the Burning Sea (PC)

2008-02-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

Pirates of the Burning Sea (PC)
Specs: Role-Playing

Reviewed by: Kevin VanOrd
Reviewed on 2/27/08 Updated on: 2/27/08 Release date: 1/21/08

Pirates of the Burning Sea isn't World of Warcraft with swashbuckling. In fact, if we were forced to draw comparisons between Flying Lab Software's massively multiplayer role-playing game and another title, it would be EVE Online. Like EVE, Pirates is a complex game featuring an intricate supply-line economy--and like its galactic counterpart, its rewards aren't always immediate or obvious. No, it takes a while for the game to wriggle into your psyche. This isn't because the early hours aren't fun--they are--but because there's a bit of a learning curve to conquer before the pieces all fall into place. That might be enough to turn away players expecting immediate gratification, which is a shame, because Pirates of the Burning Sea is a special, and specialized, game that rewards you with some of the finest moments the genre has to offer.
Naval combat is exciting and strategic...

The year is 1720, and three nations are protecting their interests in the Caribbean while struggling with the constant threat of pirates (and one another). As you would expect, you'll align yourself with one of these entities--either Spain, France, England, or Pirate--and choose a profession. If you're a pirate, piracy is the only profession available, but aligning yourself with a nation opens up the naval officer, privateer, and freetrader professions. The style of play each profession favors is more or less obvious from its title: Officers excel on the high seas, privateers are talented adventurers, and freetraders serve as the backbone of the player-driven economy. Don't take this to mean that your role is as rigid as you would expect in another MMOG, though, since regardless of your profession, you can participate and succeed at all types of combat and trade. This is an important distinguishing feature, because you'll never need to pigeonhole yourself into a traditional RPG role.

Pirates eases you into its more sophisticated facets while keeping you entertained with a variety of well-designed quests, utterly fantastic sea battles, and somewhat disappointing ground combat. The basic questing structure doesn't offer anything unexpected: You chat with various non-player characters, receive a solo or group quest, and then travel to the necessary location to fulfill the task at hand. Sure, many of these are kill-this-and-deliver-that missions, but they stand apart from the usual generic mainstays thanks to well-written dialogue and common narrative threads that contribute to the game's overarching political tug of war. NPCs don't feature full speech, but the stories they relate in text when receiving quests lend them a good amount of character, from captains seeking revenge on their archenemies to drunken swains vicariously living off of your high-seas exploits.

You'll find yourself looking forward to completing quests that send you to sea, simply because battles in your ship are epic in scope and beautifully paced. An enormous vessel takes time to navigate across the undulating waves of the Caribbean Sea, but sea battles are leisurely enough to feel realistic while avoiding any feeling of sluggishness. Waging a sea battle is arguably the finest aspect of the game, as each tactical aspect of the battle demands your attention. You first need to be conscious of wind direction, as it dramatically impacts traveling speed. You also need to ensure your cannons are facing your target or you won't be able to fire them, but you also simultaneously need to protect each side of your ship from damage. Weighing your options in battle thus requires a good amount of finesse. Do you focus on maneuverability and turning speed to avoid damage at the expense of offensive prowess? Do you take the time to change ammo (a protracted task) and risk taking the cannon out of commission temporarily?
You can equip your ship with a variety of different ammunition, depending on whether you want to damage your opponent's sails, hull, or crew--and each type of damage benefits you and your group. This leads to some terrific team-oriented play, with one player focusing on slowing down enemy crafts with another diminishing crew numbers in preparation for boarding. Boarding is an early key to success in Pirates of the Burning Sea, though it focuses on the least interesting aspect of the game: hand-to-hand combat. You need to be close to an enemy ship and traveling at a slow speed to grapple it, and success isn't always guaranteed. Once you've grappled the enemy, however, you and your crew board the ship and participate in a somewhat messy melee that hardly caters to the game's strengths.

...but the boarding combat? Not so much.

Flying Lab certainly tried to add some punch to melee combat with the balance and initiative meters. More damaging attacks require balance, which is built up by performing relatively weak preparatory strikes, while finishing moves require initiative, which also builds up over time. There are also different schools of swashbuckling from which you can earn skills, such as dirty fighting and fencing. Yet these options, as interesting as they sound, can't rescue avatar combat. While ship combat finds just the right balance of deliberate pace and nail-biting excitement, melee battles move too slowly and look and feel dull. Some visual panache would have gone a long way toward spicing things up, but the lackluster graphics and sound of hand-to-hand combat will have you avoiding it whenever feasible.

Both types of combat fit into an overarching player-versus-player mechanic that's as awesome as it is intimidating. As you complete quests at certain ports, you also contribute to regional unrest, which results in a gradual breakdown of opposing national control. Once a region has become unstable enough, pirates can move in for the kill, creating PVP hot zones that make open-sea travel treacherous and further break down port control. After several days of real-time unrest, the original port owner and contesting nation battle it out in an epic 48-ship battle usually (but not necessarily) involving the players that contributed most to their nation during the contesting period. This is where each element of the game comes together in a glorious showdown that shines in contrast to the often lackluster PVP systems of its peers, and sets the bar for future MMOG designers. Your first gargantuan battle is likely to be one of your most memorable online gaming moments, featuring dozens of hulking ships attacking one another in a rollicking oceanic ballet. It's also a remarkably well-balanced structure in which players of any level and profession can make a difference, thanks to the unique features of ship combat. In a genre in which the best, most thrilling moments are generally reserved for top-level players, being able to see Pirates of the Burning Sea's finest feature without having to grind for a hundred hours is a breath of fresh air.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS)

2008-02-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS)
Specs: Teen, Adventure, 1 Player

Reviewed by: Aaron Thomas
Reviewed on 2/27/08 Updated on: 2/27/08 Release date: 2/19/08

The Ace Attorney games have always been exclusive to the Nintendo DS in North America, but they were essentially ports of the Japanese games, which were originally released on the GameBoy Advance. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney marks the first time a game in the Ace Attorney series has been built from the ground up for the Nintendo DS, and it includes many features (several of which were first introduced in the bonus case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) that take advantage of the handheld's touch-screen capabilities. It also has a new protagonist: Apollo Justice. These changes, along with an excellent final case, freshen things up enough to make Apollo Justice worth investigating for diehard fans of the series, but if you found your interest waning in any of the previous games, you'll want to temper your expectations when it comes to how much has changed.

You can inspect every nook and cranny of these panties thanks to the 3D evidence feature.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney focuses surprisingly enough on...Apollo Justice, an attorney with more than a passing resemblance to the series' previous star, Phoenix Wright. Apollo is young, has spiked hair, lacks confidence in court, and even has a young, quirky girl for a sidekick. In addition to Apollo, there are many new characters, some who are interesting, but few of whom are as endearing as the characters from the Phoenix Wright games. The good news for anyone suffering from nostalgia is that quite a few familiar faces make appearances throughout the game. The judge, Winston Payne, and a few other more notable people make their presence felt here. Returning characters are a blessing and a curse. On one hand, they're a nice way of tying the two story arcs together, but on the other hand, they serve to show how the new cast isn't quite as endearing as the old one.

There are four turnabouts (cases), all of which find you defending a client accused of murder. The first three cases are solid but aren't anything special. It's the last case that steals the show. It's interesting, it has a number of genuinely intriguing twists and turns, and it weaves a number of past cases together into one really compelling finale. The writing is as witty as ever (if not a bit more long-winded), and you'll notice various pop-culture references to U2, Harry Potter, Bon Jovi, and more. For the most part it's business as usual with regard to gameplay. You'll spend your time out of court investigating crime scenes, collecting evidence, and interviewing witnesses. The in-court proceedings are almost completely unchanged. You'll cross-examine witnesses and present evidence and profiles to support your position in hopes of getting the judge to hand down a "not guilty" verdict.

There's less ambiguity in Apollo Justice when it comes to presenting evidence, because the game automatically narrows down whether you need to show a character profile or a physical piece of evidence, but many of the series' flaws are still present. Witnesses repeatedly lie on the stand without any sort of punishment; the proceedings are strictly linear so there's no room for creative thinking; you'll still find yourself occasionally stuck while in the investigation portion of the game because you didn't show someone a particular object or look in some out-of-the-way corner; and the story moves along at a snail's pace, often forcing you to watch a flashback for an event that occurred just minutes before.

It's not all bad news, though. The developer has finally added some new forensic investigation mechanics that take advantage of the touch screen. Many of these were found in the last case of the first game, which was created specifically for the DS, but they've been MIA ever since. The new features will let you inspect and rotate items in 3D, dust for fingerprints, spray evidence to find traces of certain liquids, make plaster casts out of footprints, and even isolate music tracks with a mixing board. Many of the new mechanics are really neat, and they do help break up the monotony of investigating, but they're used too infrequently to have much of an impact. Like Phoenix, Apollo has the power to sense when someone's lying, though his ability is used only in court. Thanks to Apollo's magic bracelet, you can perceive when a witness is hiding something by zooming in on the witness and looking for a twitch or other slight movement. Unfortunately, perceiving when someone's lying involves some guesswork and a lot of tedious trial and error when you're hearing the same testimony over and over looking for a tiny, almost imperceptible movement.

Another benefit of having the game designed specifically for the DS is the improved presentation. There are a few nice-looking full-motion video sequences, character sprites are larger and more detailed, and the courtroom, lobby, and detention center have finally been redrawn. None of these improvements drastically enhance the way the game plays, but when you're genuinely excited that there's a new piece of artwork in the defendant's lobby, you know it was time for a change. Apollo Justice's music isn't quite as catchy as the music in previous games (admittedly the bar has been set pretty high), but it's still enjoyable and fits each character well.

It wouldn't be an Ace Attorney game without a few music references.

If you've played and loved all of the previous Ace Attorney games, you'll be able to once again look past the series' inherent flaws and will love what Apollo Justice has to offer. If you're someone who feels that the franchise is in need of an overhaul, you'll likely be disappointed at how little things have changed. Problems and all, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is a good game that's worth playing.

Conflict: Denied Ops (PC)

2008-02-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

Conflict: Denied Ops (PC)
Specs: Mature, Action, 1 Player

Reviewed by: Brett Todd
Reviewed on 2/28/08 Updated on: 2/28/08 Release date: 2/12/08

For the fifth game in a series, Conflict: Denied Ops sure doesn't show any signs of evolution. This might actually be the simplest edition of the shooter franchise that developer Pivotal Games has produced, with gameplay so out of date that it might as well be wearing a plaid flannel shirt and listening to Alice in Chains. But even though the action is a good decade behind the times, the game's rapid-fire pace blurs the fact that you're shooting the same bad guys over and over again. Attractive visuals feature diverse terrain spread all over the globe. Co-operative play is another highlight, which earns the game some applause all by itself, given how this shooter feature is so often asked for and so rarely delivered. So even though nothing here is going to slow down traffic--let alone stop it--such a speedy mindless shooter like this is ideal for those moments when you want to switch off the synapses and play Rambo for a few hours.

One grizzled old guy, one cocky young guy. Mix together and bake for 30 minutes to make a
single cheesy cliché.

As with the four previous games in the franchise, the theme here is military. The gameplay is stuck in the neutral zone between one-bullet-and-you're-dead hardcore shooters and the more absurd stuff where you can soak up lead like a sponge before meeting your maker. The story in the campaign is typical to these middle-of-the-road shooters, with you taking charge of a pair of special forces operatives working behind the scenes in 10 missions spread across the globe to unravel a nuclear arms conspiracy. Perspective has been switched to first-person from third-person, however, and your squad cut back to two commandos from the four featured in previous Conflict games. These changes don't make a great deal of difference to how the game plays. Being able to switch between sniper Graves and heavy gunner Lang is actually so seamless that you might as well be playing a single character.

That said, teamwork can be a key component of Conflict: Denied Ops. Your buddy can be ordered around and healed with quick clicks of the right mouse button. The smart artificial intelligence adeptly handles firefights as well. Storming enemy-occupied rooms, for example, is a snap. Just send Lang up to the doorway where he'll automatically lay down suppressing fire while you sit back and shoot survivors with Graves' scoped sniper rifle. No muss, no fuss. You can always count on your comrade to kill a fair number of enemies if positioned correctly and even assign him to take out level bosses like combat helicopters. The only problem here is that your squadmate takes orders too seriously. He typically won't yield the position you've ordered him to assume even if you're trying to get past him, causing congestion in tight corridors until you issue a new movement command. And you have to be careful when directing your pal when he's at the wheel of the hovercrafts or other drivable vehicles in the game because he is more than happy to roll right over you if you get between him and his assigned destination.
Other than the smooth-and-simple buddy stuff, there isn't much here out of the ordinary. Level design is the very definition of routine, although the campaign is jazzed up somewhat with the ability to choose the order in which you handle some assignments. The graphics are detailed and attractive, with the missions featuring varied scenery. These represent such diverse locales as the Venezuelan countryside, a Siberian castle, an icy Russian whaling depot, and the dusty streets of a Rwandan city. However, goals are never more involved than shooting everybody you see and blowing things up. You occasionally steal data from computers and set explosive charges, but generally this is a point A-point B expedition.

At least the pace keeps the proceedings from getting too dull. Even though you're repeatedly gunning down the same thugs and soldiers, you do so at a pretty fast clip. This isn't Serious Sam or anything, but the speed is zippy enough to keep you from feeling bogged down in endless enemies or eternally difficult choke points (although there are quite a few of the latter spread throughout the game's levels). Further excitement is provided by being able to blow up damn near everything. Levels are strewn with barrels, gas cans, and propane tanks ready to go boom at single shot. It also seems like you can't turn around without running into some catastrophic incident, such as a helicopter exploding in your face.

Multiplayer is another plus. A co-operative mode lets you play through the solo campaign with a friend over LAN or the Internet. Because so few shooters offer this feature these days, it's awfully welcome here, even in such a simplistic game. The other multiplayer modes are generic takes on deathmatch, team deathmatch, and conquest, though, so there isn't much here beyond the co-op. And even that is somewhat iffy because there appeared to be very few people playing the game online at the time of writing.

Yes, you've seen it all before. But stuff still blows up real good.

Poor audio quality is another drawback. Environmental effects are way over the top, particularly for voices. Talking in even a small, office-sized chamber is enhanced so that it sounds like the words are booming out across a canyon. Too bad there isn't any way to turn off or at least turn down this echo effect. At least this problem doesn't ruin any great scripting. Dialogue here is confined to awful buddy-movie stereotypes, with Graves being the grizzled veteran who's gruff but lovable and Lang being the cocky youngster who adds "motherf***er" to the end of every sentence. Music is just as obnoxious and so loud on the default setting that it almost drowns out machine-gun fire.

If you go in with low expectations and an appreciation for simple retro shooters, you won't be
disappointed with Conflict: Denied Ops. It isn't a great shooter by any means, although it is a competent one for those of you who don't want a lot of interaction or thinking to interfere with senseless mayhem.