Platform: PC

Zeno Clash brings brawling and melee combat to the FPS genre and makes it work. Whenever a game has attempted this in the past it has always been kludgey. Mirror Edge is the only game I can think of that came close (that, and maybe the boot from Duke Nukem 3-D). The fights in Zeno Clash work because the action is a little bit slower, more focused and the dodge and block mechanics require timing and skill missing in your typical button masher.

On top of this is a wildly inventive art direction in which your tribal hero meets humanoid bird creatures, giant moles, a squirrel bomber and a number of other truly imaginative enemies. The environments are a bit sparse and the creature animation can be wonky, but these technical shortcomings don’t distract much from the game play or the interesting, flashback-heavy story line.

This is a sequel I have been meaning to play through for a few years now. The original Deus Ex was very well executed, although I would be hesitant to heap as much praise on it as seems to receive these days. Its big hook was the open game play it offered: sneak, negotiate or kill… it was up to you. Invisible War has some of those choices, but it is dumbed down to the point where you might as well just kill everybody you meet because there is no advantage (or fun) to choosing a different path.

The game also lacks the precise allocation of RPG stat points that you got in Deus Ex. Instead, you get to fill a few slots with “biomods.” These are essentially generic power-ups. I never felt like I was creating a unique character. By the end of the game I found myself just ignoring any new biomod canisters I came across because they didn’t really do that much.

What Invisible War does do right is maintain the feeling that every object in the world can be manipulated. I loved just randomly throwing chairs at bystanders and watching the rag doll physics work. The graphics are also much improved and hold up quite well. The story is just as convoluted as the original, but, for what its worth, we do get to see some of the main characters reprise their roles (sans the amateurish IT department voice acting).

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.