Platform: PC

Painkiller is a first generation FPS that’s about a dozen years too late. Unlike most modern shooters, your goal is singular: shoot everything. Story, characters, game play variety and puzzle-solving are all out the window. That said, I think there still is a place for games like this, but I found Painkiller lacking in a couple ways.

First, although the game has a sort of achievement system for getting power-ups, completing the level tasks just wasn’t fun. Who wants to search around a poorly designed game map looking for barrels. Rather than rewarding meaningless exploration or OCD item hunting, there needed to be a system that rewards risky game play (big points for melee attacks) or high skill shooting (headshots). The core of the game is shooting, don’t make us obsess over things that have nothing to do with our modus operandi. Secondly, if you aren’t going to give as a story, at least crank up the comedy (Serious Sam) or horror (Doom 3) that would motivate us to progress through the game just to hear that next witty jibe. The Black Edition includes the expansion Battle Out of Hell which I found to be slightly more challenging and well thought out that the original.

Mass Effect had a really interesting storyline and I was pretty excited to delve further into the universe of Shepard and his tight-clothed comrades. The game starts off with an exciting cinematic which fulfilled goal number one of any RPG sequel: strip the player of all their powers and loot so they can start from square one again. Well, all was not completely lost. I imported my character from the first game so it remembered a few of the major decisions I had made which, for all the hype, seemed to have very little significant bearing on most of Mass Effect 2.

Game play remains mostly the same. Things seem to be a bit easier this time around and the hideous inventory system has been ditched altogether and replaced with… nothing. So, inventory management is gone and now you can just blindly click through and upgrade everything without having to put any thought into your decisions. Okay, fine. I’ve said I’m a lazy gamer in the past, but this seems to defeat the role playing aspect of the experience. The new-found focus seems to make this more of a twitch-free shooter with only hints of role playing in the mix.

The majority of the game’s decisions are made in your dialogue choices. Choosing wisely gains you the benefit of avoiding conflict later on, and can help shape the loyalty of your crew. This time around I was more careful to build relationships with my crew which help me care about them more during the character killing climax of the game. I also spent more time mining resources for upgrade. This was the thoroughly boring process of mousing over the surfaces of dozens of planets and waiting for beeps to get faster. Couldn’t they have made a mini-game out of the process? Even a tertris clone would have improved this.

Fortunately, the story keeps things interesting and makes much of the grinding worthwhile. Each character is given some back story and you actually care about them all. The main plot is rather simple and lacks the grand mystery of the first game but there are plenty of side quests and lots of character development to make it seem deeper than it really was. In the end I like Mass Effect 2 and ME3 may actually be a day of release purchase for me!

Portal 2 is incredible. You’ll find plenty of gushing reviews just about everywhere else on the ‘net so I will keep this short. The game combines a wickedly funny narrative with innovative and engaging game play mechanics. Portal 2 isn’t terribly difficult (it’s much easier than Portal), but there’s still nothing more satisfying than completing a particularly rube-goldberg-esque puzzle. Also, multiplayer co-op adds a whole new level of complication to the puzzling. Hopefully Valve will keep releasing new maps for the co-op game in the near-future. This is one of those games with a fairly universal appeal which you try to get your non-gamer friends to play just so they can get hooked on gaming (and heroin).

“Leathermen don’t get nervous… leathermen don’t get nervous” The immortal words of Glenn the Leatherman from Village People movie, Can’t Stop the Music. Resident Evil 5 puts that wisdom to the test as you face a giant throbbing, oozing worm beasts with only your pistol, some potted plants and Beyonce to help you.

Resident Evil 5 follows the formula that was established in RE4. It is similar almost to the point where it feels like the exact same game. That’s hardly a complaint, RE4 was one of the best games on the Wii and my opinion of it only improves every time I go back to it. I played this on the PC so (especially compared to the Wii) the graphics are spectacular. Also, the mouse aiming controls feel a bit more natural to me. There is still some clunkiness to the character movement controls, but I found them to be better than Dead Space (which was essentially Resident Evil in space… with kicking).

The story gave just enough narrative to keep me wanting to progress through the game. Like most video games, this ain’t no Hamlet but it suffices. The only thing that I really disliked about the game was the reliance on quicktime events during cut-scenes. That stupid mechanic needs to die. Other than that, one of the best PC games I have played in quite a while.

This was my third journey into the world of Grand Theft Auto and I am starting to pick up on the formula. So, this is essentially the same game mechanics as GTA: Vice City but with better graphics. I’m usually not a graphics wonk, but this game is jaw-droppingly spectacular. Every little detail has been captured, the environments are incredibly convincing and the city truly feels alive. There is so much to see in Liberty City that you could spend days just exploring (especially if your NPC buddies didn’t keep nagging you to go play a round of virtual darts every five minutes). I’ve played the game for 50+ hours and still feel like I haven’t seen everything.

I made this point in my Vice City review, but the great thing about GTA games is that they fulfill a classic gamer’s dream of being able to just drive wherever you want in a racing game. Imagine how awesome it would be if you could drive off the track and go explore the mountains around Fuji raceway in Pole Position! However, for a game that has driving as a key game play element, the driving controls sure do suck. Every car you drive feels muddy and weightless. It takes hours to get used to the mushy controls and you will still find yourself cursing the game as your car rolls over on a slow speed turn.

The plot is nothing groundbreaking, but the various characters you meet along the way are well-defined and interesting. There is just not enough urgency to your main over-arching mission of revenge do motivate you to keep taking on missions. When the time finally comes to end it all, you just don’t really care any more. In any event, when a game lets you just roam around and do whatever you want, does the main mission really even matter? Go nuts! Drive a moped into a hospital and do wheelies in the hallways!

So, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working my way through F.E.A.R. and its two expansion packs: Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. I think this was Monolith’s immediate follow-up to their near-perfect No One Lives Forever games. Just about everything that was so great about NOLF is missing here. There’s no humor, no variety in game play and the storyline is blah.

Still, F.E.A.R.managed to keep me somewhat engaged with it’s genuinely spine-tingling moments of horror. The other big horror games I have played lately, Dead Space and Doom 3, were only good at the occasional jump-scares. F.E.A.R. excels at just keeping it creepy by allowing the “monsters” appear in your peripheral vision or on snowy TV monitors. Sure, they are just ripping off the style of J-Horror movies like The Ring, but it’s very effective.

The ghostly imagery isn’t quite enough to carry the game. 90% of the game is repetitive gunfights against your typical video game super-soldiers. These battles are solid and use a nice bullet-time slo-mo mechanic, but after about the 30th encounter you will be longing for a good old-fashioned lava level or anything to add a little variety.

Aim for the arms! Aim for the arms, dammit! Ever since I installed my completely unnecessary 5.1 surround audio speakers to my PC, I have been looking for a game that would really take advantage of this set up. Dead Space has some really great sound design and what better way to have creepy sounds erupt behind you than with a dark, creepy horror game. Through the game I was, for lack of a better term, surrounded with the creaking, groaning and buzzing sounds of the spaceship Ichimura and would occasionally start at the sound of something scuttling behind me.

The gameplay itself is a bit repetitive. It alternates between pure point-and-click shooting and a handful of zero-gravity platforming environments. The latter was fresh and new, but the majority of the game is just picking off the limbs of necromorphs with your plasma cutter. That’s not a bad thing, but even Resident Evil 4 mixed things up a bit.

When I bought this on Steam (for a measly ten bucks) I was expecting a first-person shooter—an off-rails version of Dead Space: Extraction which I had enjoyed on the Wii. Alas, the game uses a clumsy third-person perspective with sluggish controls that take about a half dozen levels to get used to.

Thankfully, the story is pretty good and has a great ending cinematic that made me glad I finished the game. It is billed as a horror game and it has its fair share of creepy rooms and monsters, but I wasn’t really scared in the way I am currently being creeped out by F.E.A.R. This game relies more on jump scares with grating music cues just at the right moment. Oh and, spoiler alert: add this game to the long list of games that use an ally’s betrayal as a key plot twist at the end. Sigh.

GTA: Chinatown Wars on the DS was my first Grand Theft Auto game and it remains one of the best games on that platform. When Vice City went on sale on Steam I decided I had to try out a proper 3-D GTA game on the PC.

Reviewers always seem to note the violence and mature themes as the selling point of this franchise, but really what makes it so great is that it fulfills a video gaming fantasy that I imagine most Atari aged gamers had as kids: being able to get off the race course and just drive wherever you wanted in a game. The closest I came to this as a kid was driving off the road in Intellivision’s Auto Racing looking for shortcuts. That didn’t really satisfy the way GTA does. Vice City lets you go just about anywhere your road rage fantasies want to take you. The game incentivizes crazy driving via the strategic placement of ramps throughout the city and awarding bonuses for extreme stunts. Add to this tons of eighties radio hits blasting in the background and you have enough for a fun game.

But the game isn’t just about driving. There is a simple story which evolves as you complete a series of missions. The plot is not great, but it was enough to keep me interested and, even if the story was dumb, there was plenty of variation in the types of challenges (from delivering pizzas to flying a seaplane) to make me want to complete everything. However, when the game makes you get away from driving and into combat it gets a bit wonky. The controls are pretty terrible on the PC and half the time I found myself failing because of bad hit box detection or some other frustrating glitch. I really, really wished you could just quicksave anywhere in the game.

Technical problems aside, this was a great game and I get what the hype has been about all these years. In fact, I just bought GTA IV on sale this morning and will be back to the mayhem soon!

Mass Effect is another BioWare RPG that I picked up on Steam for five bucks during their holiday sale (along with Jade Empire). This is a fantastic looking game. The Citadel (screen shot above) is an  absolutely spectactular environment in which to roam around. This is also one of the first RPGs I have played in which every line of dialogue is voiced—a big help for me and my poor reading skills and short attention span.

The story and the rich universe in which it takes place is top-notch (as far as video games go). The game does a good job in pointing the player in the right direction so I rarely felt like I was lost or didn’t know what to be doing. This means the game can be a bit linear at times, but, as a lazy gamer, I don’t mind that at all.

I don’t think I ever quite got the combat system. I never really felt like my tweaks to the characters really did anything better than just ignoring all the complexity and just shooting everything in sight. My only major complaint with Mass Effect is the horrible inventory management system in which you are forced to trash items you find if your inventory is full. This just doesn’t make any sense. Otherwise, a terrific game and I can’t wait until Mass Effect 2 goes on sale for five dollars.

No that isn’t a black square you are looking at above. It’s a  screenshot. A screenshot from Doom 3. Forget story and inventive game play, Doom 3 is all about mood lighting. And by “mood lighting” I mean darkness. Lots and lots of darkness… and shooting things.

The original Doom is a classic. I look at it as the pinnacle of the arcade-style shooter. When games were all about insane difficulty and scoring points. In some respects Doom 3 maintains much of the same feel of the original: lots of jump scares and monsters tucked away in places that make little sense in terms of real-world design. They exist only to jump out at you at the very moment you walk by or pick up that weapon upgrade across the room that is so tantalizingly lit. Your only goal is to shoot everything and then collect keys so you can get to the next area and shoot more things.

The graphics are pretty amazing and they seem to have aged quite well. It helps that everything is hidden in shadows. However, the maps all tend to look and play the same. The game does move quickly and offered me enough of a challenge to keep me plowing through to the end despite the lackluster story line. I do like the concept behind Doom quite a bit. The idea of a doorway to Hell occurs quite a few times in Lucio Fulci movies like The Beyond and The Gates of Hell. For that reason alone I was able to ignore the shortcomings of the story and just soak in the sinister atmosphere, and, in the end, that’s really what Doom 3 is all about.