Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising: The Review.

Set one year after the desolation of the Tyranid Invasions at the hands of you and your troops, Chaos Rising takes place primarily on the frozen wastes of Aurelia, the home-world of the Blood Ravens. Aurelia has been lost in the warp for thousands of years but has recently emerged and is showing signs of life. A Blood Raven distress beacon has been activated upon the planets surface, leading you to be sent down to investigate. Needless to say what unfolds on Aurelia from that point on is not what the Blood Ravens expected, which ultimately leads to another journey across the cosmos to quell unrest amongst the stars. You command your Force Commander along with the same rabble of marines you controlled in DoW2, with the addition of the Librarian who adds the spellcaster formula to the mix. Whilst this is a stand-alone expansion I do recommend that people wanting to play this fresh do play through the original campaign to get the full back story. Also your able to carry your data from the original DoW2 over to the expansion for a kick start with when it comes to equipment etc.

I must admit there is an aire of nostalgia about this game for me, as through the years I myself have collected Ultramarines, so to be able to play out the campaign as space marines was entertaining enough in itself for me to keep going. Even if you are not an old school fan of warhammer though there is a lot of good RTS elements here to keep you interested. For those of you who are unfamiliar with DoW2, this series now focuses more on the front lines of battle, as opposed to a traditional RTS feel, which normally comprises of creating units and armies and then powering your way through the enemy. The cover system, much like the DoW2 works well most of the time unless you happen to click on the wrong side of cover, which will have your units run wildly into enemy fire without care. The diversity of troops, once again similarly to DoW2, gives you good reason to play cleverly with positioning and strategical maneuvers like flanking etc. One major difference between Chaos Rising and its predecessor though is the corruption system. Depending on your actions on skirmishes and the gear you equip, you either become more corrupt or more pure. This in turn effects how the campaign plays out and its finale, as well as one or two annoying things, especially since they came with no proper warning, which I shall get to later on in this review.

The multiplayer experience for Chaos Rising is again the same as DoW2 with the addition of the Chaos faction and a few new units for the others. The Last Stand mode offers as much entertainment as it did in the original game, again with the addition of Chaos and Tyranid heroes, however does get stale quickly if you've played DoW2 avidly. The multiplayer mode of Chaos Rising again has its King of the Hill mode which again suffers from the same problem as The Last Stand, becoming old rather fast.

Now time for even more gripes with the game as a whole. Before I said there were one or two annoying outcomes concerning the corruption system. The first of these came in the form of my Dreadnaught magically disappearing once my corruption level maxed, and thus your unable to use him again as he believes he is morally superior to you. The second was not 100% the corruption systems fault I believe, but certainly played a part in it. I had acquired a token that gave one of my squads a massive damage upgrade, I chose my devastator squad which doubled their damage to a ridiculous amount. Upon selecting my next destination I received a message telling me that my devastator squad had betrayed me and I had to go hunt them down and kill them. The expansions campaign, whilst portraying a nice story, was tragically short and in total I think the whole thing covered about 5-6 maps since the developers just sent you back and forth between the same ones across the whole thing, which just seems like lazy design more than strategic placement of troops. The difficulty of the game as a whole suffered in the same way DoW2's did. Initially you start out with normal gear and you have to use cover or else you'll get torn down, then eventually you receive upgrades to the point where you can steamroll everything, not caring about cover or positioning, overcoming even the most daunting challenges by just using all your special abilities at the same time. At this point using your new unit, the Librarian, loses all desirability since you can just have your forces plow from one side of the map to the other without having to use their special abilities until the end boss fight.

On the positive side however the equipment management and levelling system is relatively unchanged, just expanding on the concept by adding new items and abilities to their respective sections. You do also gain new abilities depending on your corruption level, which provide fantastic defensive and offensive applications.

All in all, if you enjoyed DoW2, you'll enjoy this as its just more of the same thing. However with a disappointingly short campaign and additional units its not really worth £20-£25 price tag unless you are really into the WH40k universe.

Metro 2033 (PC): The Review.

The remnants of war-torn frozen Moscow remain as the dominant species of this world has pushed themselves to the brink of extinction. Skies have been scorched, buildings have crumbled and nuclear winter has become the norm. The air itself pulsates with toxic fumes, only sustaining the most hostile of life in this bleak future. Yet through all strife and desperation, civilisation lives on beneath the freezing wastes. Moscow's Metro system has been become the last refuge of humans existence as stations create makeshift towns and tunnels present danger around every darkened corner. The hope of Moscow's patrons lay in Artyom's as he battles his way from one side of the Metro to the other against Nazis, mutants and bandits.

Atmospheric yes? This buildup of ambiance is only aided by the world in which Metro 2033 is set. Graphically the environments are extremely appealing even if the majority of them are tunnels, however this can sometimes be quite demanding on your system. Toning down the graphics though does not disappoint, as the scaling of hardware capability to visual effects is user friendly as well as aesthetically pleasing. Another great tool adding to the feel of the game, amongst other things, is the story itself. The author of the book Metro 2033, Dmitry Glukhovski worked very closely with the developers in order to make sure his vision was portrayed properly. The development time utilized on the story did come at the loss of multi-player capability, however the story does make up for it, and its nice to see for once a game that values its source material enough to stick to the original creators ideas.

Whilst the whole feeling of the game is rather impressive, there are a few mechanics and development issues which really let the game down. A major problem throughout the whole game, especially at the beginning is damage recognition on enemies. In an FPS when your attacking enemies you need to be able to feel as if your doing damage to your opponents, otherwise how do you know that your hitting them at all? This problem is felt more so during the frantic parts of the game where multiple enemies are launched against you whilst your boxed in. Its extremely hard to prioritise targets and risk assess when you don't know if you've even done damage. This damage recognition follows through to the damage you take as well, which is also hard to recognise. The lack of a health bar is not the problem in this game, its pretty obvious to know when your being attacked or hurt. The big problem is realising which direction your being attacked from. Enemies will more often than not pass right through you, be crouched and be attacking you from behind without you realising, which becomes extremely annoying during certain times in play.

The enemy and ally AI is extremely poor, and leaves you frustrated when your allies just walk through danger zones without care and get themselves killed, pushing you back to the last checkpoint in order to retry. Undoubtedly the most annoying part of the game was when later on you encounter a gauntlet of exploding goo creatures, which just didn't fit into the game at all.Your ally would just walk through them, effectively making you put way more effort in than would have been required if the AI were better. The whole scenario felt really sloppy, as if they'd just created one way-point on the other side of the gauntlet for your ally as opposed to several smaller ones. Another thing about your allies that is rather annoying is that they always seem to be equipped in a far superior way compared to you. Why are my allies torches always better than mine? Why does one ally during the end of the game have a laser hand cannon that is unavailable throughout the whole game? Actual gun combat up until you acquire laser guided weapons feels unresponsive riddled with major recoil. However once you do acquire weapons with laser guided targeting, combat changes entirely and becomes a lot easier. The problem is though that enemies stay at the same level of difficulty throughout, therefore later on in the game in becomes extremely easy, its as if the challenges of the game are designed backwards.

Game play as a whole is slightly choppy. The major reason behind this unfortunately is down to the game being so story driven. Whilst the story itself gives the game an epic, almost movie like feel, a great deal of the time your not actually playing the game, more watching the cut-scenes and pre-determined events on rails. The game will last you around 8-10 hours, during that time you'll be spending a third of that time allowing the story to unfold without your influence. Also the game never really takes advantage of its horror genre. Upon acquiring the game I expected to be terrified beyond belief by mutants jumping from dark corners or appearing behind me, but it never really happened. These aspects are not a total disaster to the game but it really feels as if these points could have been utilized better, improving the game infinitely.

All in all Metro 2033 sets out what it tries to, pays homage to the book and author whilst telling the story in such a way that it effectively saves the game from its flaws. Nevertheless it was such a disappointment to play a hyped up game which didn't deliver when it comes to game play.

Rapture Returns with Bioshock 2.

As time goes on, sequels are becoming more and more frequent and recently 2k have jumped on the lucrative band wagon that is the art of "expanding" on existing material, this time in the form of the original Bioshock game. Now, I am all for giving every game a chance, however I have a certain reserved scepticism for sequels. Most games nowadays will either leave terrible cliff hanger endings on 8-10 hour long games which could have included the obvious incoming expansion for our £40 we spend on the game. OR! the other extreme, create sequels that pretty much have nothing to do with the original at all. Of course there are some fantastic exceptions, but Bioshock 2 taps into the latter of these two extremes.

The events take place 8 years after the original Bioshock and you play as "Subject Delta", a prototype Big-Daddy turned against the system in a series of predictably unfortunate events. Our setting is Rapture, once again laden with splicers, the remaining residents of the run down underwater city. Rapture has been taken over by Sophia Lamb, who's ideals and beliefs are a strong contrast to those of Andrew Ryan in the original game, the city's founder. Subject Delta fights his way through Rapture using a combination of Weapons, Plasmids and tonics in order to power yourself up passively and actively. Plasmids and tonics rewire Delta's characters genetic coding, granting him powers such as telekinesis or the ability to call insect swarms that seek out hidden enemies.

The game opens with a cinematic which quickly tells us that our Little-sister is in fact the daughter of Sofia Lamb, and shortly after, we've shot ourselves in the head by order of Lamb herself, a pleasant start to any game. 10 years down the line Subject Delta is revived at a Vita-chamber and the game beings. Upon starting to move around within Rapture you'll notice that not much has changed from the original. Dilapidated-ruins-of-a-once-proud-city have just become prettier-dilapidated-ruins-of-a-once-proud-city through the miracles of game design and graphic advancement. The tutorial of the game, all be it small and basic, is nicely weaved into the game-play so as not to cause major disruption to general flow. We're once again introduced to the splicers, their back story and their psychotic tendencies. When all of a sudden, a new challenger appears! The Big-sister makes her first appearance by swiftly kidnapping a Little-sister and causing some major structural damage to Rapture itself in a rather fancy display of acrobatic skill. These rather menacing foes, are the iron hand of Lamb's arsenal against you, and will attack you throughout the game depending on where you are and the choices you make (morality test incoming). Yes the game features the ever popular good and bad persona's system which will give you a different ending depending on the basic moral choices you make throughout the game. I chose to pursue the bad path and ran through every moral choice by either killing or maiming anyone that stood in my way, because its more fun than being nice.

As for changes and developments since the original game there are quite a few to keep new and existing fans entertained. One majorly fantastic change is that you are now able to use both Plasmids and Weapons in a duel-wield fashion, which relieves the frustration I had with the first game. The weapons attainable are pretty much the weapons we saw Big-Daddies carrying around in the first game, however with the implementation of multiple ammo choices, it adds an extra diversity to splicer killing than previously seen. The multiplayer feature of the game also offers an interesting civil war story amongst the splicers, which provides renamed classic FPS multi-user scenarios for you to play through. One feature I enjoyed about the multiplayer was the spawning of a Big-Daddy suit randomly in the level. If your able to find it, you have the option of becoming a Big-Daddy for increased damage and endurance. This is featured in all but one multiplayer mode. The way in which the story is told throughout the game is brilliantly done, as was the first games, utilizing multiple mediums in order to convey the atmosphere within Rapture, as well as advancement in the plot.

Now, time to protest a bit. What I shall never understand, and its becoming more so in FPS games nowadays, is why do the developers of these games give you the best and most useful gun at the start? I found for pretty much the entire game I was using my rivet gun a lot more than any alternative, especially when I acquired different ammo for it. Also whilst hacking isn't a big part of the game, I don't enjoy the way 2k hides this quick-time-event and plays it off as a "mini-game". I avoided this pointless exercise by carrying as many auto-hack darts as possible at all times. Crouch could have quite easily been bound to the conventional "Ctrl" as opposed to "C" (PC version obviously) and switching between Plasmids could have been attached to the mouse wheel to keep everything in the same place. I'm not fond of the way your always taking shots and damage, there should be some mechanics to at least try to avoid the incoming hailstorm of bullets. Finally, why when given the option to harvest or adopt a Little-sister, does a Big-sister only attack you if you adopt them? You go to so much trouble to collect ADAM and then take them to the vent, and then you have to fight off the hardest enemy in game. Your alternative is to just rip the ADAM out of the little-sister, hence my "bad" moral choices throughout.

Overall, regardless of if you played the first game or not, Bioshock 2 is an enjoyable 5-6 hours spent which enthralls the player in the world of Rapture. I'm rather irritated that these games are getting shorter and shorter, yet Bioshock 2 seemed just right nevertheless.

P.S. Those spider splicers shook me up!

Funcoms beta release of Pets Vs. Monsters.

Funcom are best known publicly for their blood and gore MMO “Age of Conan” which delves into the realms of barbarians, spell casters and mythical creatures. So, after finding out that they were embarking on releasing an MMO for the 8-12 year old bracket I was certainly intrigued to see what the game had to offer. Considering this games target audience it would only be fair and right to review it from that perspective to a certain extent, which is what I shall do.

Pets Vs. Monsters (from now on referred to as PvM) is a free-to-play MMO with an optional subscription package being developed by Sweet Robot, a Norwegian subsidiary of Funcom. PvM sets players out on an epic journey across a land riddled with enemy infestations ranging from fire throwing monkeys to giant skeletal bats. The world itself offers some graphically appetising treats which come in the form of such locations as forests, sea beds, rugged volcanic terrains, mysterious temples and much more. This journey is carried out by your character and a pet of your choosing, be it a bear, dog or cat. Throughout the game you are pitted against quests which have the player defeating monsters, gathering items or hunting down other npcs.

Upon entering the game you are greeted with the usual character creation screen giving you a few customizable options as well as being able to choose your first pet. I went with the bear, which although looking a little slothful, it also looked rather more ferocious than the cat or dog. After a brief loading period it was time for us to get going and the first thing that struck me, as an older gamer anyway was that there was no tutorial. Now to an older gamer confronted by such a thing I was quite surprised, but actually after playing the game for 5-10 minutes the controls are easily manageable as is the user interface, as the specific icons for each action are rather obvious. Your pets are armed with the standard melee and ranged attack, which have a different graphic output for each type of pet. Anyway moving along with the quests they seemed like the basic “defeat 5 monkeys and return to..” or “collect 10 crates and return to..” until I got to one quest that I rather enjoyed the design of, especially when considering the 8-12 year old market. Up until this point you could quite easily use your melee attack without care about your ranged attack, and whilst the quest still held the basic concept of “defeat 5 monkeys and return to..” I believe the designers of the game realised this and added a quest which you were only able to finish by utilizing your ranged attack without mentioning it in the quest description. I was rather entertained by the prospect of tackling this quest as my former 10 year old self and imagined I’d have got a sense of accomplishment out of figuring it out.

Moving along to the game design itself, it all feels rather experimental. Whilst the levels are of linear design there are some quirky instance designs for quest monsters which would otherwise be swamped by other players on other MMOs, relieving the frustration of having to wait for one specific target. The levels do stay pretty much “on tracks” up until the frozen seabed level, where the terrain opens up into a typical MMO style quest hub and field area. As much as this works in other games, it just didn’t work here as you’d find yourself running back and forth past countless monsters time and time again, it was just frustrating and felt like a chore rather than fun, especially considering you can only have one quest any given time. The environments and character models are nicely designed and have a cartoony feel to them. The items and skills which you pick up throughout your journey are portrayed as cards, which in a way reinforces the whole idea of collecting them all for a younger generation. There were quite a few bugs and glitches throughout, but that’s what a beta is about so they are of course forgiven. The soundtracks to the game is vibrant and enjoyable as were the sounds in the world themselves. I haven't grown tired of the delightful noise you hear when you collect and earn experience points. The current in game chat system is very kid friendly and allows for pre-determined phrases to be said to one another, and whilst it protects the younger player from the obvious dangers of the Internet, it doesn’t leave much room for making new friends, which I suppose is the price you pay. There were a few things which I felt the game design currently lacked though. One is the implementation of a sprint system. There were countless times where I felt that there was a lot of needless running that could be sped up by this. The second was the need for a stat comparison system when equipping new gear, however I’ve been assured that this is in the pipeline and is being implemented.

It has the obvious feeling of Diablo and even more so Torchlight about it, but so do a lot of games nowadays. However whilst other game designers were thinking about how they could tap into the success of such games directly it seems that the Funcom guys have asked more “how can we take that formula and apply it to an entirely new market”. The game is obviously never going to rival the likes of the big MMOs out there but that’s not the reason for this games design. It also seems obvious that Funcom are looking to reach out to new customers for an MMO experience which, as I’m writing this, seems to have little to no proper competition. I'm fully looking forward to future builds of this beta regardless of target audience as it was still quite enjoyable being a fan of such games.