While its innovative premise and exciting aerial combat highlight this ambitious shooter, reviewer Cameron Lewis found Dark Void’s lackluster AI, short campaign, and lack of polish detrimental to the game’s overall experience.
If you’ve ever wished you could get one of those lumbering no-necked thugs from Gears of War to leap more than a few inches off the ground, you’ll appreciate Dark Void’s concept of “vertical cover”: the ability to blast skyward and grapple onto something high overhead to gain a tactical advantage is initially thrilling. Unfortunately, that exhilarating gimmick quickly becomes tiresome and the disjointed, uneven experience will leave you reaching for the barf bag.
Dark Void’s development team includes some of the same talented folks who birthed the Crimson Skies series, so their pedigree for high-flying games can’t be argued. That expertise really pays off with an introductory sequence that really flies (pun intended): after a quick primer mission, you hop into the pilot seat as Will Grey, a square-jawed jockey who wrecks his plane on an uncharted island in the Bermuda Triangle and fumbles his way into a grim parallel universe of hissing Watchers and desperate resistance fighters. What starts as a mission to repair your busted ride becomes a quest to save humanity from alien invaders. Unfortunately, the game quickly degenerates into a repetitive and unsatisfying experience that fails to fully capitalize on the initial sense of inertia. Hurtling between huge rock columns in the alien equivalent of Monument Valley while blasting agile flying saucers to bits is fun at first but the novelty quickly wears thin, especially when you realize that every aerial arena is virtually identical to the one you just conquered
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A financial performance update reveals Ubisoft’s plans for DS development, game delays, and new games.
According to a financial performance report, Ubisoft is delaying Splinter Cell: Conviction and R.U.S.E. to April 2010 and a hazy “2010-2011″ respectively.
The also report says Ubisoft is developing new titles for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and scaling back development for Nintendo DS games. CEO Yves Guillemot revealed that the company fell short of its financial goals this year between shrinking sales in the DS and Wii casual markets and under-performing or under-selling titles like James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game.
Interestingly, the report lists the Conviction and R.U.S.E. delays as contributing factors in Ubisoft’s operating losses, suggesting that they’re not part of a financial strategy to shield the games from competition in the February release lineup. Calls to Ubisoft for comment on this matter were not immediately returned.
It’s not all bad news out of Ubisoft, however, as the report also reveals that Assassin’s Creed 2 sales topped 6 million and that the game is on-track to hit 9 million by the end of March.
Going forward, Ubisoft plans to scale back development for the DS and ramp up development on its major franchises on Xbox 360 and PS3. The report reveals that Ubisoft is already working on a new game in the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon series, Driver, a fourth Raving Rabbids game and a new “episode” of Assassin’s Creed which they say will have an online multiplayer mode.
Sam is changing gears. In Conviction, he’s not hiding the shadows anymore. Now, he’s blending in with the crowd.
His daughter is dead. His status as a nonofficial cover operative for the CIA has disintegrated. And now, Sam Fisher is on the run from the NSA. Double Agent’s final “To Be Continued” message was one hell of an understatement.
Last September, Ubisoft made a widely-publicized oopsie when it posted two gigabytes of promotional material (regarding games both announced and unrevealed) on its public FTP. Double Agent hadn’t even been released, but the first hints of its sequel spread across the internet in a feverish blaze. Images of a bearded Sam Fisher, sporting long hair and civilian clothes, sparked rumor and debate overshadowed only by Double Agent’s long-awaited release the following month.
Until recently, talk of the fifth Sam Fisher game was the stuff of wonder and speculation. Now, with facts in hand, Splinter Cell: Conviction is preparing a debut under the revealing rays of the noonday sun. And we do mean revealing-Sam will be stepping into daylight this time around for what looks to be, for him, a very different take on stealth combat.
Like Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft’s other stealth game currently under development, Conviction will find Sam using crowds as a form of dynamically-shifting cover. In place of a ’shadow’ gauge, the game will sport a ‘danger’ gauge, serving as a visual cue to relate to the player just how much hot water they’re in at any given moment, no matter the time of day. The trick to keeping that gauge low will be to follow the ebb and flow of the crowds, moving at the same pace and in the same manner as the commoners.
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There’s an old adage about the first impression being the most important one and unfortunately, my first encounter with Bayonetta wasn’t positive: it was when the game was first announced and the very first image of the titular witch was released. I glanced at the main character’s sexy pose and ridiculous outfit, thought “Did they really attach guns to the back of her legs?” and wrote it off as yet another ham-fisted action title that would ultimately offer nothing more than a few moments of titillation. But as it turns out, Bayonetta is surprisingly good and it’s better than I could have ever anticipated.
I just wish it didn’t take two hours of actually playing the game before you are given an opportunity to fully realize that. The game’s introductory levels move at such a chaotic pace that you barely have time to breathe, let alone take in the basic gameplay concepts and narrative linchpins that are thrown your way. It’s a hectic and confusing primer but it’s not particularly surprising: Bayonetta’s director, Hideki Kamiya, knows how to build memorable worlds but he’s not so great at introducing you to them. He should take a cue from the fictional Willy Wonka who didn’t rush his lucky contest winners through his wondrous factory (as Kamiya does in Bayonetta) nor did he force them to stand outside the gates while he lectured them for twenty minutes on the hidden wonders that lay inside (as Kamiya did with Okami). Instead, the madcap chocolatier ushered his guests in and started them off slowly, showing them a few minor miracles so that they could acclimate themselves, and only after they started to feel comfortable did he unveil the real magic.
And there is a terrific sense of magic to Bayonetta — it’s just unfortunate that it’s so completely and utterly obfuscated by the main character’s overt sexuality and frantic anime-inspired shenanigans. Those two aspects may garner Bayonetta plenty of attention but it actively detracts from the game’s true strengths: A refined combat system and a ridiculously inspired menagerie of enemies on which to use it. The titular witch is like a skilled magician who is terrific at sleight of hand — a very subtle and intimate form of magic — but rather than rely on her natural skill to wow the audience, she leans on a heavily overproduced stage show complete with burlesque dancers and a rocking soundtrack. As a character and heroine, she falls incredibly flat and it’s only when she lets her fists and feet do the talking that she starts to become palatable. Many gamers will be seduced by her looks and her vampish ways but I actually would have preferred it if she had cut down on the come-hither theatrics and focused more on kicking ass.
Bayonetta is often compared to Devil May Cry, and while the two games do share a lot of similarities — no surprise considering Kamiya directed both — the game that serves as a better point of reference is Sony’s God of War. Both have epic stories, memorable protagonists and refined combat; of course, God of War’s story and hero are handled with far more expertise and skill, but I actually give the edge to Bayonetta when it comes to the controls and battle system. The combat is a mind-blowingly ludicrous affair, and while it starts off as an over-the-top mess, it eventually settles down to become a taut technical challenge. The later levels, especially, require a deep commitment to precision and timing, but you always feel like you’re in command of the action. It’s far more surgical and deliberate than God of War — Bayonetta is the scalpel to Kratos’ meat cleaver — and the number of available combos is utterly ridiculous. Even better, most attacks end with an incredibly satisfying finish in the form of an earth-shattering Weave Attack: this is where Bayonetta’s suit, made of her hair, natch, comes alive to form a magic fist or high-heel adorned foot and put the exclamation point on your attack. You can also build up a magic meter to activate a deviously designed Torture Attack that reminded me a lot of Mortal Kombat’s Fatalities. Then there are the boss fights which get progressively weirder and better, and while they all boil down to an exercise in pattern recognition and timing, the payoff is enormous. The game also does an incredible job of never giving boredom an opportunity to set in. It’s like a perfectly designed roller coaster whose peaks and valleys are perfectly meted out to deliver the best possible thrill. The sheer variety of things you do is also fantastic, with new enemies appearing just as you start getting over the awe of the ones you’ve already encountered, and the action is broken up by some unexpected sequences that never fail to revive your flagging interest.
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Another day, another downloadable bonus thing for an upcoming game. This time it’s Sega’s Aliens vs Predator, and the pre-order bonus is a collection of multiplayer skins.
Sega’s Aliens vs Predator for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC won’t be with us until next February, but Gamestop is eager to get you to commit your cash now. Pre-ordering the game from the retail giant will net you three “exclusive” multiplayer skins in the shape of veteran space marine Sgt. Kaneko, a special form of alien called “Number Six,” and a Predator with an Alien mask. You pay now, you get the code to download the goodies when the game ships next year.
So. Does stuff like this make you more likely to pre-order? Let us know in the comments. Tell us how big of a blip Aliens vs Predator is on you radar while you’re at it.
