Need for Speed: The Run

What Need for Speed: The Run has going for it is that it feels more like an old-school NFS game than the last few "spinoff" titles have. Developer Black Box has been making NFS games for over a decade, and they bring a lot of that arcade style, nitrous fueled racing action back. Racing down snow and ice covered tracks, skidding along a turn and narrowly avoiding plummeting off the edge of a cliff face is exhilarating. Weaving through traffic on a crowded freeway feels tense and frightening.

Throughout the campaign, the scenery and gameplay constantly change as you race from coast to coast. There's a good balance of different race types. You'll go from a standard eight car race, to a checkpoint time attack, to a one on one mountain drifting battle, to a cop chase. It's very rare that the same type of race repeats twice in a row. The driving can feel floaty at times, but the car classes perform differently, and getting a good time can largely depend on good car choice. On the Normal difficulty the racer AI is, well, kind of dumb. They'll crash into other cars, police will target only you, and they'll miss shortcuts, even if you enter one right in front of them.

The locales are definitely best part of this Need for Speed. In fact, The Run has some of the most gorgeous and interesting set pieces I've seen in a racing game. The Rockies, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco, even the New Jersey Turnpike are all lifelike and well detailed. Which is why it's a shame that so many of the tracks in The Run are boring. To be fair, they mostly match up with the areas of the country that are boring, too (sorry, the Midwest). But even some tracks that should be amazing, like the final battle race in New York City, are entirely underwhelming.

Part of the problem stems from how scripted the campaign feels. There are cop chases where all your competitors get stopped by roadblocks. Survival races where you just have to not crash. And the final climactic race has multiple sections where it doesn't matter what you do, you get a scripted event. I can blaze ahead of the opponent, but suddenly he's at my side to show a cutscene and push me off the road. If there was an awesome story being told then maybe these would make more sense, but usually it feels like the game is holding your hand.
And it's a problem because otherwise the online is set up great. I like how I earn bonus XP for nearly everything I might do in a race. I love that AutoLog is back so I can constantly compare race times with my friends. The playlists work well and the racing was nearly lag free in my albeit limited exposure to it. But then I'm limited to picking between exotic sprints or a muscle car challenge and my interest wanes.

Prototype

 You are Alex Mercer. What exactly that means is initially unclear because this is a man who has lost his memory, but awoken in a morgue to a world in which he possesses untold power. A viral outbreak has claimed Manhattan, forcing the island into a military quarantine. The infected citizens are undergoing radical, monstrous changes -- none more drastic than Alex himself. This anti-hero finds himself with the ability to shape shift and absorb other beings. As the most powerful being on a closed island, the entire city is your playground. And it is a game world that feels unfinished.


Prototype is a single player, open-world action game in the style of Crackdown or The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. You play as a man gifted with superhuman powers and the option to go most anywhere you like and do most anything you want once you get there. It's sandbox gaming with a heavy focus on pure action.

Though you play as a man bestowed with superhero power, Mercer is anything but heroic. There are no moral choices here. Mercer has vowed to destroy those responsible for his current situation and he has the means to do it. To gain new powers or refill your health bar, you'll literally absorb other living beings. Find yourself a little low on hit points and you can simply grab an innocent bystander, crush his or her head, and then consume them for a quick boost. If you find yourself in a pinch with attack choppers chasing you through the roads, you can absorb a person and morph into their likeness to blend in with the crowd.

Prototype's design leans heavily on the fact that you can refill your health by consuming victims at any time. Some attacks can drain half of your health bar or more. Others juggle you in the air leaving you open to frustrating combos from enemies. And sometimes you'll think you've dodged an attack only to get hit a few feet away anyway. But it's OK, because you can always go get more health, right? Not really. The action heavy sequences involve barely surviving to the next checkpoint or running in and out of the action ad nausea trying to stay alive. Skilled players won't have too much trouble, but Prototype's chaos could quickly become overwhelming for others. I found several points of the game to be unnecessarily aggravating to the point where I would have turned Prototype off and walked away if I weren't reviewing it.

Alongside the main quest is a set of side missions called events to tackle at your discretion. Beat them and you earn some Evolve Points (EP) used to upgrade Mercer's powers. Radical smartly hands out EP like candy. Complete just a mission or two and you'll quickly find yourself spending EP to grab new powers and abilities early and often. It's hard to stop playing when you know you'll get a new move by making it through just one more mission.

Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of variety in these events and I often found myself wishing they made better use of Mercer's vast array of powers. Those included here are dominated by things like checkpoint races and killing sprees -- things that have been done so often as side missions in games like this that they're hardly worth mentioning. It's cookie cutter game design at this point. There is one exception: A mission that tasks the player with gliding long distances towards a bulls-eye. Why aren't there more imaginative events like this? You can throw a person hundreds of yards. Why not include some sort of shot-put event? There was a real opportunity to get creative here, but instead too many of the side missions directly mirror the mindless killing or limited stealth of the main game.

Grand Thief Auto 4

One of the many things that set GTAIV apart from its predecessors is Liberty City, which is more convincing as a living, breathing urban environment than anything that you've seen in a game before, and bears little resemblance to its namesake in 2001's GTAIII. Liberty's diverse population believably attempts to go about its daily business, seemingly unaware that several criminal factions are at war in the city. Niko has no such luck. He's compelled to start working for one of the factions shortly after arriving, when he learns that his cousin Roman has some potentially fatal gambling debts. Niko's military experience makes him a useful freelancer for employers in the business of killing each other, and though his reluctance to carry out their orders is often apparent, he does whatever is asked of him in the hope that completing missions for other people will ultimately give him the means to complete his own.

Actually, Niko doesn't have to do everything that is asked of him. On several occasions as you play through his story, you'll be presented with decisions that afford you the option of doing what you think is right rather than blindly following instructions. You don't necessarily have to kill a target if he or she promises to disappear, but you have to weigh the risk of your employer finding out against the possibility that the person whose life you spare might prove useful later in the game, or even have work for you in the form of bonus missions. To say anything more specific on this subject would be to risk spoiling one of GTAIV's most interesting new features, but suffice it to say that every decision you make has consequences, and you'll likely want to play through the game at least twice to see how the alternatives unfold.

Grand Theft Auto IV's story mode can be beaten in less than 30 hours, and there are so many optional activities and side missions to take part in along the way that you can comfortably double that number if you're in no hurry. The majority of the story missions task you with making deliveries and/or killing people, and play out in much the same way as those in previous games. With that said, most of the missions are a lot easier this time around, partly because Niko is a more agile and efficient killer than any of his predecessors, and partly because the LCPD seemingly has better things to do than hunt down an illegal immigrant who's gunning down undesirables all over the city. Some of the more imaginative missions sprinkled throughout the story include a kidnapping, a bank heist, and a job interview. The cinematic cutscenes associated with story missions are superbly presented and are the sequences in which the game's characters really shine. Without exception, the characters you encounter benefit from great animation, great voice work, and superbly expressive faces. They're not always so impressive when they join you on a mission and refuse to do what they're supposed to (for example, not following you on an escort mission, or failing to negotiate a doorway). Nevertheless, these problems are few and far between, and they're made less painful by the new "replay mission" option that you're presented with whenever you fail.

When you're not running missions for criminals, taking part in street races, stealing cars to order, or randomly causing trouble, you'll find that there are plenty of opportunities to unwind in Liberty City. Some of these optional activities offer tangible rewards that can prove useful in missions later on, whereas others are just a fun way to kill time and take in more of GTAIV's superb humor. For example, you can watch television, listen to numerous different radio stations, check out some genuinely funny shows (including some big-name acts) at cabaret and comedy clubs, and use a computer to surf the in-game Internet.
GTAIV's Internet is filled with spoofs of all the kinds of Web sites that you'd only ever look at accidentally or when you know there's no danger of getting caught. Some of them can be found only by clicking on links in spam e-mails, whereas others are advertised prominently on the search page. There's plenty of amusing stuff to find if you spend some time in one of the "TW@" Internet cafes, but the most interesting site by far is an online dating agency through which you can meet women who, if they like your profile, will agree to go on dates with you. Dating and socializing with friends is something you can spend as much or as little of your time doing as you like, and though the people you meet can occasionally be demanding to the point that they become irritating, keeping them happy invariably benefits you in some way.

Battlefield 3

 

        Battlefield 3 is a squad-based first person shooter is the prime competition for the juggernaut that is Call of Duty and, while always an excellent PC game, is a shining example of just want can be done with today’s consoles. When you first enter a game you'll be prompted with a screen familiar to any fan of the Battlefield franchise. A map of the level showing spawn points and squad member locations allows you to strategically map out which command post you want to defend or attack, or provide backup for other squad mates in need of some help. Below the map is your current class and loadout, which can be changed on the fly, in the middle of battle. This is convenient as there are dozens of weapon attachments and specializations to choose from.
        In the world of Battlefield, strategy is very important.  Players can pick between Combat Medic, Engineer, Support and Recon. Battlefield 3 can be also consider as the true definition of multiplayer game because, the objective cannot be done by a single person or individual. The intense game experience happens Between the Support and Recon classes providing covering fire from afar, the Engineers defending command posts from enemy vehicles and aircraft and the Combat Medics holding the front lines while reviving and healing each other, players get a real sense of being in a unit in the middle of war.What makes Battlefield 3 so different from the twitchy, FPS genre is its characters' weight; the intense weight of gear slows character motion, unlike the ultra-high turning sensitivity of Call of Duty characters. Even the Battlefield 3 weapons feel heavier than anything in the Call of Duty series and that's a compliment.You'll run past gunfire, artillery shells and feel the bullets and explosions nearly miss you; your character will stumble and hurdles over obstacles as he makes his way to objectives and through enemies. It's a rush that has yet to be achieved by any other game.
        Vehicles are terrifying. Terrifying to the point that a whole squad will back off of a command post if an engineer isn't around or they don't have the means to take the enemy vehicle down. The game's multiplayer provides a real sense of character class roles and keeps you thinking about your next move constantly.The highlight of the game is working, moving and carrying out orders with your squad. Playing as a lone wolf only works if you inadvertently or accidentally get help from nearby players. You wouldn't have run out of ammo had you jumped into a squad with someone playing a support class, you may have been revived had you jumped into the squad with a combat medic and so on and so forth. There are no Rambos here. In fact, you get the most points when working with and helping others. Meaning, the player who went 20-0 may not be the MVP if someone else was capturing command posts or throwing out health or ammo packs the entire game. Battlefield 3 encourages teamwork and strategic planning, and it is exactly what the FPS genre needs.