Making a direct comparison between Prince of Persia and Dragon’s Lair or Space Ace is really not fair. Prince of Persia has a tremendous new art style behind it, looking like the beautiful bastard offspring of Okami and Tomb Raider. The prince himself has been re-imagined as a wandering thief whose royal heritage is missing right along with any of the pointless brooding or split personality disorders of the previous games. The sands of time and their accompanying mechanics are gone, but they have been replaced by a cute flying girl who rescues the prince from all sorts of dismal endings without fail, input or effort; something of a middle eastern Tinkerbell in tight Capri pants, if that were possible. Prince of Persia has absolutely everything going for it in the looks department; it is only when actually played that the seams start to show.

The prince and his new glowing sidekick move effortlessly through the levels in both look and execution. Every bit of animation, from scampering upside down in a pure affront to physics to just running over the sand as shadows play across the dunes, looks almost perfect. To accommodate this, however, the vast majority of the prince’s actions have become either automatic or have such huge timing windows that no skill is involved, and if a jump or handhold still manages to be missed, the rescue call-girl is right there to drop the prince back on solid ground. Huge chunks of platforming can be pulled off with single button presses. All the painstakingly accurate movements through beautiful environments feel disconnected not from each other, but from the player. I felt at best like a casual observer, at worst like I was playing through a quick time event that would make the fight scenes from Indigo Prophecy jealous. There was no danger or risk of failure, so there was no emotional connection with what was happening.

This is Prince of Persia for the casual gamer. Levels are chunked up into small areas with the next checkpoint sitting conveniently just behind the ledge the prince fell off of. Combat is now a completely one on one affair that offers the same safety net as everything else; it’s not that there is no death penalty, it’s that the player cannot actually die. Even the storybook presentation of Sands of Time has been completely removed. There are very few cut scenes explaining what is going on; instead the player has the option of telling the prince to talk to Elika. Most of these interactions are forgettable, even if some of them were worth seeing. Aside from the visuals, the whole experience feels watered down for the masses, but really, who can blame Ubisoft for doing this? The first three Prince of Persia games were never exactly difficult, but the new Prince is designed to hold just about anyone’s hand right on through to the end while hopefully keeping them just engaged enough to buy the next one. Prince of Persia, the franchise: love it or leave it. It’s a wonder there is no version of this that supports waggle controls.

I was surprised by how lazy the ‘no death’ mechanic made me. It spite of the path through any level being laid out as plainly as possible, I still managed to need rescuing quite often, mostly because I had stopped paying attention. Why bother lining up a jump if you can’t fall? Imagine playing through Bioshock, which also has zero death penalty, with a big daddy following you around and killing most things for you on sight. Without even the illusion of challenge, maintaining interest becomes difficult. It’s like playing Dragon’s Lair with unlimited credits: eventually anyone will get to the end, even if it is by chance.

The successful Tomb Raider games (and there have not been many of them) are necessarily formulaic. Lara needs to get from one place to another, but there is no easy way to do it without falling to death or being crushed by giant boulders, and it is the player’s job to get her there. Oh, and this should take place mostly in tombs. It’s estrogen-heavy Indiana Jones, and Underworld sticks very close to the proven patterns; it is only when it veers from them that it stumbles. There are a few ill-advised and unnecessary vehicle levels, and the combat is just as bad, if not worse than it has been in the past, but these are just temporary distractions. The focus here is on subterranean parkour; nothing new, but polished up and presented so well that any sense of déjà vu is washed away.

Tomb Raider games have never been known for their story; CORE relied entirely on boobs and a bad camera for years, and each game sold incrementally less than the one before. Even teenage boys require more than that; the fact that most porn has dialogue proves it well enough. Underworld provides a shocking amount of continuity, though I would expect nothing less from the house that built the best parts of the Legacy of Kain series. The tale of old gods and a search for dead parents is, again, nothing new, but it is interesting and un-intrusive at the same time. Lara is not a static character, nor is she a perfect one; the fact that she has personality at all is a huge step over the old Lara. Again, nothing new here, but quality nonetheless.

For me, the Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games have been the equivalent of gamer comfort food. It is like revisiting my younger, less jaded gaming days and finding things better than I remember them being. Underworld is not perfect; there are camera issues that force blind jumps and shooting things is more a chore than anything else, but what it does right it does very, very well. Tomb Raider started a genre; without it, there would be no Prince of Persia or Uncharted, and Underworld stands up to its virtual grandchildren admirably. I am not ashamed to admit that I like Lara again; she has been reborn after slumming it up with Army Men games and virtual pin-up shoots for years. Tomb Raider: Underworld is a good sequel, and if I have to wait another two years for the third game instead of six months for a repackaging of the old game with new skimpy outfits, that’s okay.

From the start, it has been facing an uphill battle: with the advent of DC characters, the game sports a Teen rating, which means no spine-ripping, skull-exploding, blood-gushing fatalities. To classic Mortal Kombat fans, this may come as a disappointment, but the rest of the game suffers little from this decision. In fact, there’s still a surprising amount of blood for a Teen-rated game, along with bruised faces and tattered uniforms. The neutered finishers are still a let-down, but would you really want your childhood idol having his heart ripped out by Sub-Zero?

Besides textures swapping when characters get too much of a beating, it is worth mentioning that the models look great (especially the faces), though the backgrounds tend to look last-gen. This game still has that Unreal Engine gloss to it, but it manages to hide it most of the time behind brightly coloured uniforms and set pieces. Presentation-wise, my biggest pet peeve is the loading screens between menus. I understand the need to load from one fight to the next, but why is it necessary when I just want to cycle through character bios?

While the loading times can make it frustrating to access them, MK vs. DC does have a lot of modes to enhance the core game. Beyond the standard “Arcade,” the game offers a story mode, online play (with no lag!), character biographies, different endings, a practice mode, and a Kombo Challenge. The story tells a much more direct tale than most fighting games, and while it is plagued with overacting, I actually felt compelled to finish it. It feels like a great episode of The Justice League.

Unfortunately, after finishing the story, none of the other modes are particularly compelling. This mainly has to do with the unbalanced fighting engine. While there are intricate combos, they’re so hard to pull off that most players (especially online) find spamming Flash’s tornado spin just as effective. You may see one or two cool juggles, but this is definitely not the next tournament fighter.

What it lacks in balance, though, it makes up for in flash. Each character’s special moves are easy to pull off and are well-suited to their persona. Also, every stage has multiple areas that one can reach by running their opponent through walls or hurling them over a railing. These offer fun scenarios of back and forth button mashing until one player gets the best of the other. They don’t make it fun to play through Arcade twenty times, but they do distract from the lack of balance and keep the game lively when playing with a friend.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe takes a number of steps in the right direction. It is by far the most fun I have had with an MK game since Mortal Kombat 3. It still has a way to go if it wants to compete with the top tier, but it provides a fun time by coupling a few unseen fighting styles with familiar characters. It isn’t for everyone, but for those who have fond memories of DC or MK, it might do enough to rekindle your interest in the franchises – it definitely has mine.

On the face of it, Left 4 Dead is actually incredibly mundane, featuring a tiny selection of weapons which all function in ostensibly the same way and a small selection of maps which all play out in a similar fashion - get your team of four survivors from point A to point B without dying. The four playable characters are, from a gameplay view, identical in function, and even the enemies are all built around the core concept of big teeth and long claws. Play with AI companions or with humans, it is your choice. They can even have the AI temporarily take over for them if they need to go out for a moment, able to regain control instantly. But zombies are not new, and shooting zombies with shotguns is just as old. So what is the draw here?

The draw here is Valve, almost incapable of the mundane, and what they have wrought here is something so special it has to be experienced firsthand to be believed. The Director, the all powerful AI that manages every single aspect of the game, has a simple aim; to ruin your day constantly. It has complete control over the spawning of enemies, the types which are included, the amount of them which appear, and from where. The music tempo and volume, the lighting of the environment, the pacing of the level and the set pieces; everything which you would expect to be hand-placed by a level designer at Valve Towers is handled by a computer. Your computer. And you will come to hate it.

Let me paint a picture here to illustrate this. The first ‘movie’ in the game is No Mercy. The objective is for you and your three friends to fight your way through an apocalyptic cityscape to a hospital, find your way to the roof and escape via helicopter. Simple, right? Wrong. In fact so wrong it quickly becomes apparent just how much of an asshole the Director is, if that is even possible. You might start and the street is empty, go halfway down and a dozen zombies jump from a rooftop onto your group. The music ratchets up and everything is so far so Land of the Dead. But the next time you play, nothing might happen. You expect a shitstorm of brain-eating horror but get silence. You continue on and no horde out for blood, no high pitched strings, no flash of lightning. Nothing. This is because the Director chose not to have that happen, and you should be glad when this happens. But it goes much further than that, springing traps for you, trying to single out members of your group, the weaker ones who have been using all the health kits and have the worst accuracy. They are the catch of the day and often the Director purposely singles them out. It’s a cruel fate that makes you get good at Left 4 Dead very quickly. If you don’t climb that learning curve, you die.

The Director is measuring the experience, meaning, unusually for a shooter, it never really gets old, despite the slight repetition in maps. You can literally never have the same experience twice, always relying on the omnipresent voice in the sky to determine when the metaphorical shit hits the fan. And it isn’t a case of just mixing things up a little between set pieces, it is actually a wholly new gameplay moment. For example, at the mid point of one movie, Blood Harvest, you enter a vast cornfield layered in fog, abandoned tractors and empty farm buildings scattered all around. First time I played this scene we trudged to the middle and then were set upon by three hundred rampaging zombies from all directions. It was an intense, heart-pounding action sequence that resulted in a pile of corpses two foot high around the base of the barn exterior. Thrilling, exciting and tense. But the next time it was quiet, the music was right down and all you heard was the screeching birds darting out of the crops and the distant hum of vehicles. Nothing happened. No sudden ambush, no pulse pounding fight for survival. The tone of the game was completely different. Eerily silent, and much more tense. This effect is replicated throughout the game, allowing these vignettes of action or suspense to be conjured from anywhere. And with an evil Director controlling the whole thing, you could be looking one way expecting an attack and then find three dozen undead have crept up behind you, or snatched your best friend and pulled her halfway across the street and up to the roof with a giant tongue. Because it is unpredictable, it always manages to create pure fear and panic.

Left 4 Dead’s greatest success is the way it manages your experience. Sure enough, the environments have a very Source Engine look to them and the level of detail is somewhat lacking compared to recent genre highlights, but the endgame here for Valve is the fun, meaning eye candy is often sacrificed for function, and object placement is controlled by necessity. You feel like the whole time you are playing, you are in the hands of people who know what they’re doing. You never feel cheated by the AI, because it is never unfair. Work together or die, it is that simple. Of course there is a versus mode, and a variety of difficulties and map selection, allowing you to play the undead side and unleash your hate on your human counterparts, but this unfortunately breaks the formula, because the Director is not trying to win, it is trying to enhance your experience, whereas other human beings don’t care for how you feel, they just want to bite your nuts off.

Have Valve, in creating the Director, made themselves somewhat redundant? This AI, this non-existant entity, has displayed more talent and skill in designing a game than the vast majority of the development houses out there. It knows when to ramp up the action, and when to give you a breather. It understands pacing and difficulty at an incredibly advanced level and will always provide a thrilling and enjoyable game. And it is always watching…

I know it’s no Forza or Gran Turismo, but it’s definitely not a Burnout title either. It’s more PGR4 than Motorstorm, but it’s still its own distinct title in middling ground. Unfortunately, this time it’s not middle enough.

There was a brief period before and after Need for Speed: Most Wanted in which the franchise had racing games with no police involved. If your most iconic title is called Hot Pursuit 2, here’s a hot tip: don’t drop the cops. Thankfully, the chases are back into the formula, and they’re done fantastically to nobody’s surprise. But the one thing fans of the series gained from the enforcers’ reprieve was a very determined focus on the actual driving and racing aspects (these somehow came to light as important parts of a racing game in which you drive cars). Undercover is a pleasing amalgamation of all previous entries into the Need for Speed family. The police have returned in full force, but at the same time, you are benefiting from the police-free titles like ProStreet and Underground, as well as Carbon, which had police, but sucked anyway. The point is, car customization is fantastic, controls are pretty straightforward (it’s hard to fuck up a good thing when it works across the board, but somebody always manages it), and the new driving engine is designed to let you pull off cool maneuvers, but it still handles your individual cars very well and as realistically as I imagine it ever should.

There’s really not much to complain about here. The plot, while ending on a kind of wait, what note is actually pretty good. A lot of people hear the basic synopsis and say something snarky and mildly retarded about the similarity to The Fast and the Furious. Good one. Yeah, you play as an FBI agent trying to uncover some racers who decided to step up their game and commit more serious crimes, which explains why you have to be in just as much danger from the police as any other racer (you are undercover, after all). The gameplay actually requires this plot and vice versa: in order to have someone to race with, you have to prove your worth. In order to prove your worth, you must “dog” some “bacon” and prove you’re not a cop yourself. To engage police in chases and escape, there must be an open game world in which to drive. In other words, while there isn’t anything to do outside of the events that progress the plot (in the form of a leveling system accompanying each race’s payout), the open road has merit just in its necessity to police chases, which are relevant to the storyline.

As I said, though, the benefits of the police-free games are here, but there is nothing beside the reintegration of pursuing squad cars to offset these perks from the “simulator” side. This game needs more “arcade.” It has a handful of cars that can only be described as “totally badass,” and each of them takes physical damage, but this has no actual effect on the performance of the vehicle, thank the gods. That is indeed “arcade.” However, in some instances, you can completely total the car, smashing it so hard that the game just says “wow, you fucked up hard, start over.” Where is my Burnout-style exploding shattering shrapnel storm of wreckage and former bits of vehicle? If you’re going to go all out and tell me my car is so screwed it can’t even drive, I think we deserve a little more than just seeing the car in the same state as it was after bumping into one million things very lightly, rather than one thing at one million miles an hour. When I smash a cruiser out of commission, I want to see it sawed in half like that poor son of a bitch in The Matrix Reloaded that got nailed by those ghost twins’ huge truck. What I don’t want is to see just another cruiser slam into park with minor cosmetic issues.

Critics and designers and fans have all touted and hailed Undercover as a return to form, but I only see baby steps from there. I see a necessary piece of the franchise being returned to its rightful place and done very well, but at the same time, it’s hard to call that progression. Yes, the game brings together the worlds of its prequels and does everything either well or very well, but it lacks that joie de vivre found in its most beloved predecessors. I thoroughly enjoyed the game from start to finish, and I had several “oh damn yes” moments, whether it was by myself or racing online with and against my friends, but occasionally pumping my fist in the air or telling an AI driver to go fuck himself as I blur past him isn’t quite worth an A+ around here. When the Need for Speed games embrace their full potential, I’ll be waiting with open arms, but for now, this is just good; an upgrade for anyone who already enjoyed the series’ previous entries.

There are many individual pieces of Far Cry 2 that work very, very well, but none of them fit together into one cohesive game. For example, simply driving around the environment looking at the scenery is amazing. Far Cry 2 is right up there with Crysis in the looks department; the day/night cycle can take a brightly lit jungle area and transform it into a nightmarish landscape where the plants themselves look ready to attack. This spirit of freedom is completely squashed, however, by the constant flow of enemies. Almost every crossroads is filled to the brim with angry mercenaries wielding high-powered weapons. Cleaning them out is futile, as they will just be back the next time; perhaps soldiers here are grown on trees like bananas. This would explain how quickly they come back, as well as their lack of self preservation. Seeing a soldier run his jeep into a rock at full speed, then get out and forget what he was doing long enough to catch a machete in the back is funny the first time, but does not make for very engaging firefights.

When Far Cry 2 wakes up and remembers what it is, or at least what it should be, the combat suddenly improves. Individual missions provide a guided tour of the savannah, and each is very good on its own. When confined to a smaller area and denied vehicles, the AI’s death wish disappears. For five to ten minutes at a time, it is a very good shooter, until poor pacing once again interferes. There is no quick-travel option to jump from mission to mission. Perhaps I was spoiled by Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but driving across the map two or three times on one job is just tiresome, especially when the magic enemy checkpoints are brought back into play. There are bus stops scattered around the map, but even those can be painfully far from the end target. The game becomes schizophrenic, open but then not open enough, slowly paced and then too fast. I enjoyed it almost as two different games, but together they are a mess.

Sadly, Far Cry 2 just becomes the opposite of Far Cry, when it could have been so much more. Far Cry is famous for its third act collapse. For two thirds of the game, it was almost perfect: open but not directionless, it required stealth and planning to overcome the eerily intelligent enemies. Then the monsters came out and the game went downhill from there. Far Cry 2 stumbles through the first two acts, until out of nowhere I found myself skulking through the underbrush in a linear final level that was just as good, if not better than anything the prequel had to offer. There is nothing wrong with a shooter being a shooter. Not every game needs a sprawling map to get lost in; by offering more, Far Cry 2 ends up being much less than it could or should have been.

Faith is a real person, and the unnamed city she traverses is a real place, not an assortment of set pieces. Run up to a wall and she stops herself by putting her hands up against it. Look away from the ledge she is hanging off of and she takes one of her hands off so she can turn all the way around. Her subconscious is even relayed directly to you via colored highlights of objects you should move across to advance as easily as possible through the level. Faith knows, so you know. The connections between player, character and environment are as close to seamless as they ever have been. With the utmost respect to Super Mario 64, this is everything it isn’t (in the best way).

It’s not all sunshine and lollipops, though. Mirror’s Edge’s story is a flop and totally usual for video games. This raises questions like ‘does a video game like this need a story?’ What if the time trial and race modes - which you unlock after beating it - were all there were to it? Would it be enough to just have to get from point A to B with no explanation of why? I think if certain areas and enemies were removed or changed, the game would have been better that way.

The other major fault in its design is that of its combat. You’re rewarded with Achievements and unlockables for beating the game without using guns, which is a shame because melee feels floaty and detached (so far the opposite of the rest of the game), and weird because developer DICE seems to be aware of its failings in this section of the game, as they’ve said in interviews that if a sequel is made, combat will be changed or removed. First-person shooting feels alright, but still doesn’t have much of a place alongside the rest of the game.

So this game fails in that it has (bad) combat because it has enemies, and it has enemies because it has (a bad) story. Remove or improve both and we really could have had something special on our hands. Instead, this game only proves its worth as a tech demo, which, thankfully, is more than enough to give us a great experience. First-person shooter developers, take heart. Put this type of animation, control and physics into your games from this point forward. The bar has been set.

What I found most surprising about this game was how much better combat felt since the first game. Battles already felt personal and satisfyingly crunchy in a way they don’t in most shooters, but in 2, things are stepped up to the next level. Slamming into cover and bursting enemy skulls with a barrage of bullets feels incredibly convincing considering how outlandish the visuals are.

Blending art and science in the way all great shooters do, where this game really shines (much like its predecessor but even more so), is in its level design. It all feels very deliberate, each fight working out like a little puzzle, especially on the higher two difficulties. It’s outstanding in how much it does with the basic concept of taking cover, and throws new ideas at you until the end. Simultaneously simple and deep, mindless fun and a thinking man’s game, tiny and enormous, it should be taught at game design schools.

In its campaign, Gears of War 2 too often strays away from this winning strategy by means of gimmicky driving and rail-shooting sections, so it has more bad stages than its predecessor, but it has far fewer frustrating ones (the game still leans over the difficult side of the fence, though). And everything underneath is so solid anyway that any frustrations are forgettable. The encounter-to-encounter stuff is pretty much as good as video games get.

It may be silly to even mention in a review now, but Gears of War 2 deserves high praise for its visuals. Most will probably find its art style unappealing at first glance, but I think my roommate put it best when watching me play the game’s final stage, saying “these graphics are perfect for this game.” If when the first time you played Crysis, you thought that no game had ever looked more realistic, when you play this game you’ll think that no game has ever looked more like a painting.

Gears of War 2 is video game shooting at its best. And that’s all there is to it, really. It’s molten fucking hot; don’t spend your money elsewhere this holiday season. And this is coming from someone who hates reviews that sound like advertisements.

Bethesda has decided to stick with their Oblivion Engine, for better or worse. Advantages include Bethesda’s familiarity with its tools, and various improvements to the engine. Disadvantages include a strange conversation perspective (like Oblivion, we zoom right into our friend’s face as we speak to them, the world behind pausing mid-step) and Bethesda’s continued penalization of ranged combat. Bows never worked particularly well in earlier Elder Scrolls titles; on top of having to aim carefully there was still a high chance to miss until your stats with that weapon were high enough, and this tradition has continued. This isn’t just frustrating, but needless and unintuitive. While I have a deep respect for dice rolls, having them effect your accuracy so greatly makes these weapons uninteresting at the lower levels, and results in constant saves for convenient reloads should you get unlucky. This was a problem in the earlier Fallouts, too, but I’m guessing this design decision wasn’t retained on account of a desire for meaningful progression or a deep respect for Fallout’s foibles and personality.

On that note, the Fallout universe has been diluted. I’m not speaking of child-killing here, that’s something I’m quite thankful to be free of, but the warm welcome this world offers. Fallout 2 featured a suffocatingly harsh cast, and some characters were memorable simply because they were friendly: this tradition has been lost. Fallout 3 offers a warm welcome with Megaton, your first home city. And while you do have an option to free yourself of it, it’s somewhat strange that the city even exists. Its residents don’t seem particularly crazed, aside from a few cult members, and the guy who runs it is protective and fatherly, qualities that seem more appropriate for a character that exists in The Elder Scrolls rather than Fallout. This is not some Episode 1 shit, it’s not a terrible disservice to fans, but Fallout’s spirit feels more alive in Fallout 3’s dangerous environments than its surprisingly polite characters.

Fallout 3’s environment is one aspect that’s been greatly improved. Exploring vaults (not unlike the one in which your character was raised) and new areas are infinitely more interesting than they were before. That’s not to say they’re going to surprise you; dungeons play out in familiar ways. You risk health and ammo for rewards, and sometimes that risk pays off, sometimes not. But as you do more of these, your encyclopedia grows, making your second and even third characters’ progression more fluid. It’s here Bethesda has played to their strengths, the novelty of discovery and satisfaction of familiarity resulting in a whole greater than the sum of all parts.

After 40 or so hours of play, Fallout 3 feels like something of a mixed bag. Bethesda’s decision to package Elder Scrolls as a Fallout game feels forced, and while it’s a fresh aesthetic, the Fallout universe isn’t used particularly well. Ultra violence is still featured, and you’ll hear “fuck” and “shit” from time to time, but poor characterizations make this world feel transparent. Still, if you’re a fan of Bethesda’s games and you can forgive these missteps, Fallout 3 offers a lot of silver lining, and it’s worth the time you put into it.

The problem is not that there is nothing new in Silent Hill: Homecoming. On the contrary; more has changed with this title than any previous, and that includes The Room. The famously bad combat is now just annoying instead of painful; I still ran past most enemies, but when I did have to fight them, I at least had a chance (and my weapons didn’t break, screw 0rigins). The game of course looks better, but many of the new graphical flourishes are cribbed directly from either the movie or other games; the influence of Silent Hill: The Feature Film That Tried Really Hard is readily apparent, and from the walls peeling away when changing worlds to a silly and canon-destroying cameo from Silent Hill 2, most of it looks cool but adds nothing. It might as well have been called Silent Hill: The Movie: The Game, only it’s several years late.

Since changes to the combat system actually made fighting easier, the puzzles are more abstract and difficult than ever to make up for it. I quickly succumbed to the temptation of GameFAQs; there are barely enough hours in a day to play everything that I want to play this time of year as it is. Spending hours on a sliding block puzzle or context-free riddle is just not an option. It should come as no surprise that this ruined big chunks of the game for me. Part of the fun, or terror, or the previous games was figuring out puzzles while being constantly worried about some refugee from a Japanese tentacle rape anime accosting you from behind. Even the puzzles became frightening; Silent Hill: Homecoming took the puzzles one step too far, past “hard” and right on to “almost impossible,” and cheating was the only way for me to keep going.

Silent Hill: Homecoming is far from all bad, though. The bosses are some of the best the series has seen: grotesque, unnerving, but beatable. Most of the cut scenes were very well done, in spite of borrowing heavily from Saw and High Tension to name a few. The game is definitely gory, but it skirts the line between icky and nauseating very well. I can only recall one or two times that it sank to the level of Condemned 2, which both my dinner and I definitely appreciated. None of this changes the fact that the game had Silent Hill on the cover, and that I had serious expectations for it for that reason. I wanted to be frightened, and I was not. Of course, if the game didn’t have Silent Hill on the cover, I would never have played it; without the now slightly tarnished moniker it would have been just another dark third person action game with loud noises and spooky music. It looks like the only really scary series left is Fatal Frame, and playing the latest in that series would require buying a Wii.