Resident Evil 5

The Good

• Beautifully detailed graphics and character animations
• Having a partner enhances the fun and excitement while adding tension
• Real-time menu system keeps you immersed
• Plenty to do once you've beaten it.

The Bad

• Frustrating hurdles to leap when joining an online game
• Slow, deliberate movement and gunplay may not appeal to everyone
• Can't swap weapons with a human teammate online.

Thirteen years ago, Capcom helped revolutionize the action-adventure world with Resident Evil, a game that would define an entirely new genre dubbed "survival horror." In the years that followed, the series continued to build upon the standards set by the first game, until 2005, when Resident Evil 4 radically departed from its predecessors and broke new ground as a more action-oriented game. Resident Evil 5, the latest offering in the long-running series, expands on the action-heavy formula of its forerunner and is built from the ground up to support cooperative gameplay. Though it can no longer be considered a survival horror game, Resident Evil 5 manages to retain and effectively translate the most important aspect of that genre--tension--into its new mechanics, crafting a fun, collaborative experience that will keep you on your toes the entire time.

Hey Sheva, is there a vet around here? 'Cause these pythons are sick!

Ten years after the destruction of Raccoon City, former S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team member Chris Redfield is an agent of the B.S.A.A. This paramilitary anti-bio-organic weapon organization travels the globe to seek out and destroy Umbrella's creations, which have fallen into the hands of terrorists following the collapse of the multinational pharmaceutical company. When Chris gets a tip that a known weapons dealer will be making a big deal in the remote African nation of Kijuju, he heads there to put a stop to it and learn what he can about the mysterious doomsday project known only as Uroboros. Chris is joined by Sheva Alomar, a local B.S.A.A. agent, and together they battle wave after wave of infected villagers, horribly mutated monsters, and even series archnemesis Albert Wesker.

The core combat mechanics haven't fundamentally changed since Resident Evil 4--the action still unfolds from an over-the-shoulder perspective, certain battles or cutscenes are accompanied by brief quick time events, and you still have to stop moving to fire your weapon (though you gain a bit more mobility thanks to your newfound ability to walk sideways). Resident Evil 5's slow movement and gunplay take some time to get used to, and folks expecting a run-and-gun game may find the action too sluggish for their tastes. Fortunately, this slowness isn't really an issue within the game, because enemies are deliberate with their attacks and are better handled with a cool head and steady aim.

Regardless of how similar the combat in Resident Evil 5 is to its predecessor, the addition of a second character makes encounters feel quite different. Teamwork is necessary to take down more-powerful enemies and bosses, and having someone there to watch your back goes a long way toward keeping you alive. Furthermore, there have been radical changes to the inventory management system. The immersion-breaking briefcase from the previous game is gone, and enemies no longer politely wait for you to rummage through your things because bringing up your armory doesn't pause the action. At any given time, you can store up to nine items per character, four of which are bound to the directions of the D pad for easy access. This new system works extremely well and successfully conveys a sense of urgency whenever you go through your gear. It's often necessary to trade items with your partner, and keeping track of who has what at all times is crucial, because rummaging through your things while a boss beats on you is painful.

It's tough to stay frosty in the sweltering heat, but Chris always manages to keep a cool head.

Sheva's artificial intelligence makes her a competent companion, though her degree of skill seems to rely more on her armaments than anything else--she is extremely good at using burst fire with a machine gun, for example, but tends to waste ammo when equipped with a handgun. That said, at no point does she feel like extra baggage that needs babysitting (unlike some of the series' previous companions), and she can hold her own in a fight. Sheva really shines when there's someone else controlling her. Resident Evil 5 supports both split-screen and online co-op play through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and exploring Kijuju with a friend greatly enhances both the experience and the fun factor. Every game has the potential to go multiplayer, since split-screen is as simple to initiate as hitting Start on a second controller, and other online players can join in on a free-for-all or invite-only basis if your game session is set up to allow this from the get-go.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope Review

An addictive, strategic combat system makes Star Ocean: The Last Hope worth playing despite its cliche storyline and annoying characters.

The Good

• Incredibly fun and strategic combat system
• A variety of huge, beautiful environments to explore
• Simple, powerful crafting system
• Plenty to do and collect once you've finished the game.

The Bad

• Cliched story and characters
• Awful camera system
• Emotionless, doll-like characters are just plain creepy.

Since its advent nearly 13 years ago, the Star Ocean series has challenged the role-playing game norm with its real-time battles and sci-fi trappings. Despite what appeared to be the series' conclusion with the unconventional revelations seen in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, it has returned in prequel form on the Xbox 360 with a newly overhauled and better-than-ever combat system. Though it features a weak, cliche story and characters you may want to launch out of the airlock, its fantastic and engaging battles, simple yet fun crafting system, and bevy of bonuses make Star Ocean: The Last Hope worth your time.

Get used to deadpan faces, as you'll be seeing them throughout the entire game...

In the latter half of the 21st century, humankind all but nukes itself into nonexistence, forcing the survivers on Earth to look to the stars for a new home. As Edge Maverick, a first-generation member of the Space Reconnaissance Force, you start off on your mission to explore the galaxy for a suitable new home and are drawn into a battle for the fate of the galaxy when you encounter a mysterious and destructive force that threatens all life. Of course, that's nothing that a can-do attitude, the support of your friends, hidden inner powers, and the occasional all-too-convenient plot twist can't handle as you race off to save the day. Sound familiar? Star Ocean: The Last Hope doesn't have a very original story, and its frequently ridiculous plot points and consistently dreadful dialogue don't help to make it any more memorable, especially when it forces half-hour-plus cutscenes on you with alarming frequency. Luckily, you can skip these epic events at any time (though oddly enough, they can't be paused) and read through condensed text synopses to make sure that you didn't miss anything too terribly important.

The formulaic nature of the story is further compounded by the cast of characters, themselves an off-the-shelf mixture of walking, talking space opera and anime cliches. You've got the hopelessly idealistic leading man, who is full of an infinite (and often misplaced) trust in others; the self-deprecating childhood-friend-slash-possible-love-interest; the emotionally repressed, scientifically minded space elf; the busty, scantily clad staff-wielding sorceress; the overly affectionate underaged cat girl; and more. Though the members of your misfit crew do undergo some fairly heavy changes as the game progresses--both as part of the standard narrative and in optional cutscenes and events--it's always in extremely predictable ways that ultimately fail to break them out of their original molds.

Despite these shortcomings, The Last Hope is a fun and engaging game thanks in great part to its deeply engrossing and highly addictive combat system; if the story is the heart of a Japanese RPG, then the battles are its soul, and Star Ocean's shines brightly. Monsters appear on the field, and once engaged, they're fought completely in real time with a party of up to four characters. You actively control one of your crew members and navigate him or her around a wide-open battlefield, dishing out damage at your own pace, while the others act according to basic AI routines that you've given them. At any time, you can switch over to manually control anyone who you have deployed, and you can even swap out active characters with reserve ones at your discretion. Every single character plays vastly differently, and it's fun and engaging to experiment with each character in order to find the play style and party combination that works best for you.

...except for in the odd scene like this, where unnaturally exaggerated expressions are the norm.

Though the battles can get frantic, they don’t all come down to button mashing, especially when you're taking on bosses. These major battles in The Last Hope often play out like simplified versions of encounters in an massively multiplayer game such as World of Warcraft. Each boss has a specific strategy that can be followed to take it out--though it's not necessary to follow these tactics if your party is powerful enough--and figuring them out during the fight will make your life a whole lot easier and dramatically reduce battle times. Another concept taken from online games is monster aggro, or aggression. Though enemies will wander around the battlefield, you can draw aggro from them with attacks or by using specialized skills for doing so, which is useful for pulling a monster off of your physically weaker magic-slingers to give them a chance to cast their powerful spells. Once you have aggro and the monster gears up for an attack, if you dodge out of the way with the right timing, you can break its line of sight on you, leaving it temporarily confused and open to special counterattacks called blindsides. Another powerful tool at your disposal is Rush mode, which can be activated once you've taken or dealt enough damage to grant you an array of bonuses and the ability to chain attacks together with other party members.

Perhaps the most interesting part of battle is the bonus board. By performing specific tasks in combat, such as defeating enemies using only skills or killing two monsters with one blow, you add a tile to this onscreen grid that grants you an extra reward at the end of battle based on your achievement. You can have up to 14 such bonus tiles active at any one time, and these carry over from fight to fight; by carefully manipulating the types of bonus tiles you have, you can customize extra rewards that are given after every single encounter. With this, you have the flexibility to power level your characters, grind for cash or skill points, minimize the number of restorative items that you need to use, or all of the above in any combination. It's possible to lose your bonus tiles, but if you exercise good judgment in combat, they shouldn't be too difficult to keep for as long as you like.

Every character plays vastly differently in combat, allowing you to pick a style best suited to you.

When not in battle, you're exploring a series of open, outdoor locations that range from beaches to deserts to snow-capped mountains and beyond, as well as the occasional puzzle-filled dungeon. These beautiful-but-dangerous environments often contain resource nodes that provide valuable plant life or raw materials if you've got a crew member who can harvest them. These supplies and others earned through battle (or bought from stores) are then used to fuel your research in the simple-but-powerful item creation system. By finding item formulas in your journey or forming research teams and thinking long and hard enough, you can invent recipes for new weapons, armor, items, and even decorations for your ship. Once you gain the right ally, you can further customize your equipment by synthesizing the properties of other items in your inventory to generate some truly powerful gear.

The Last Hope features some top-notch visuals in its huge, open, and highly detailed environments, its abundant cutscenes, and its anime-inspired character models, but it also has a few notable issues. Sadly, the game has only a handful of unique monster designs, and it palette-swaps and reuses them ad infinitum. It's also exceedingly difficult to play on an SDTV thanks to incredibly hard-to-read text and muddied graphics. Sometimes just looking around you is an exercise in frustration thanks to the awful camera system; it zooms in ridiculously close at times and doesn't seem to know what to do whenever you're in a narrow hallway or traveling down stairs or a steep decline. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about The Last Hope is that all of the game's characters have a doll-like, glossy-eyed dead look to them, further accentuated by their complete lack of human emotion or expression. Besides being creepy, this makes supposedly emotional scenes unintentionally hilarious or just plain awkward to watch.

The game’s frequently awful voice acting makes it even harder to connect with the characters. At its very best, The Last Hope's cast will make you groan. At its worse, they're absolutely unbearable. Anyone hoping to escape the lackluster dub will be disappointed to hear that the original Japanese audio is not preserved here, though you do have the option to turn off battle quips from individual characters. Celebrated composer Motoi Sakuraba returns to lend his talents to the Star Ocean series once again, and though the voice acting doesn't work, his soundtrack is perfectly suited to the various locales visited, situations faced, and battles fought.

To infinity and beyond!

When it's all said and done and you've finished the game, there's still plenty more to do. Besides offering two unlockable difficulty settings, there are tons of side quests to complete, items to create, recipes to discover, bonus dungeons to explore, and bunnies to race. The Last Hope also has Star Ocean: Till the End of Time’s coliseum system, which lets you sign up for solo or group fights to battle your way up the ladders for prizes. You can collect dozens of battle trophies for each character by performing specific tasks with them in combat. And if you actually are interested in the story, there are multiple endings to see based on the relationships that you form as Edge Maverick throughout the game.

If all you're looking for is a strong, narrative-driven role-playing adventure, Star Ocean: The Last Hope isn't going to do much to satisfy you. But despite its deficiencies in this area, its huge number of extras and its addictive, deeply strategic and tactical combat system make it a lot of fun.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Review

This somewhat scary sequel is a solid shooter, but it can't keep pace with its lauded predecessor.

The Video Review

Alma's brings back the F.E.A.R in this video review for Project Origin.

Watch It Watch HD 520p

The Good

• Slow-motion shootouts are good, gory fun
• Mech sequences provide welcome variety
• Some cool, spooky imagery.

The Bad

• Story offers little mystery or suspense
• Cliched random scares and level design
• Multiplayer is drab and disappointing.

The image of a pasty-skinned, greasy-haired young girl has become an iconic image in horror films like The Ring, and the original F.E.A.R. introduced a similar figure with great success. Of course, that game gave its ghostly visions a chilling context, drawing you into the unnerving story of a paranormal prodigy named Alma and the horrific suffering to which she was subjected. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin returns to this fertile universe, but rather than scrutinize even darker reaches of the soul, it merely skims the surface, offering up a series of eerie visions without delivering a good mystery to bind them together. The good news for shooter fans is that the bullet-blasting core of the experience is sound, propelling you forward with enough intensity to keep the single-player campaign engaging. Most of what's here has been done better before, but the unspectacular elements have been stitched into an enjoyably moody first-person shooter that relies on rock-solid mechanics rather than true inspiration.

scenes like these are common in F.E.A.R. 2.

After a short exposition, F.E.A.R. 2 picks up where the original left off--with a bang. The city is in tatters, and as Michael Becket of Delta Force, it is up to you and your squadmates to capture the elusive Genevieve Aristide, president of the nefarious Armacham Technology Corporation. Too much description would risk spoiling the game's few surprises, which are better experienced than narrated, though as it happens, there are few enigmas to unravel. F.E.A.R. 2's story paints itself into a corner, offering very little new to players already familiar with the Project Origin referred to in the title, and nothing compelling enough to wrap newcomers into its fold. With Alma now a known quantity, paranormal secrecy has been replaced by a series of near-cliche bump-in-the-night scares and murky visions that do the unthinkable where a horror-themed game is concerned: They become predictable.

Because the pacing and story layout of the game can be a bit predictable at times, F.E.A.R. 2’s real scares come from its atmosphere--and this actually works, sometimes. Expect to jump out of your seat on occasion, when your flashlight flickers and ghostly visages surround you, or when staccato orchestral chords signal the emergence of abominations as they break free from their confining cells. Other attempts at scares just seem stale, given that the game's pacing and level design foreshadow these encounters, therefore emasculating the necessary sense of surprise. However, the excellent sound design is never to blame. A variety of creaks and groans gives ebb and flow to the sense of tension, and musical swells and increasingly hectic clatters and clangs will get your pulse pounding when needed. Unfortunately, the visuals don't paint a picture dour enough to match. Some areas are shrouded with moody environmental shadows, in which light and dark contrast to excellent effect. In other levels, the lack of ambient lighting and accompanying silhouettes are noticeable, and the surrounding frights just feel flaccid. F.E.A.R. 2 simply doesn't match its FPS peers from a technical perspective, so though it looks good, the simple textures, inconsistent shadows, and occasional clipping and other glitches detract from the atmosphere.

The level design also falls victim to a fair bit of predictability, though to F.E.A.R. 2's credit, you'll break away from the endless office corridors of the original and journey through a greater variety of environments. These areas are usually just as claustrophobic, but they won't often deliver that spine-tingling fear of the specters lurking beyond the reach of your flashlight. Trekking through the rubble of decaying city streets is a good change of pace, but the ultraconvenient manner in which the debris holds you to your narrow path is a familiar design ploy. Similarly, there's no more excitement to be found in F.E.A.R. 2's same-old subway than that of any other game. It's at its best when it leaves these stale tropes behind and builds on its roots as a corridor shooter, such as in a nail-biting sojourn through the halls of an elementary school that hides unspeakable horrors. Entering a dusky music classroom to find a hideous mutant pounding on the keys of a piano with abandon is a singular moment, and the ensuing battles are ripe and exhilarating reminders of the series' explosive origins.

There's no escape from the wrath of the assault rifle in reflex time.

Those same inhuman atrocities will spawn clones while emitting ear-splitting, disorienting roars, and others scurry about at super speeds--though as it happens, you've got a helpful skill at your disposal that helps manage nimble and sluggish foes alike. Like the protagonist of F.E.A.R., you can activate reflex time, which slows the action to a crawl and lets you battle your enemies in a bullet-time ballet. You've seen a similar mechanic a lot by now, but it's skillfully done here. Grenade explosions create impressive visual distortions, bullets leave an airstream in their wake, and spoken dialogue and sound effects grind to a muffled crawl. Landing headshots in reflex time is particularly enjoyable and gives F.E.A.R. 2's gruesome levels of violence a temporary starring role. Foes erupt in red gushers, staining the walls with blood and flailing around in their final moments, an effect made even more effective by robust (and occasionally oversensitive) rag-doll animations.

Your instruments of destruction aren't spectacular, but they're varied enough to make shooting a pleasure, even when the flow of time takes its normal path. The two shotguns are particular delights; they feel weighty and dispatch most enemies with a single bloody blast to the noggin. The hammerhead is another delight, filling your foes with neon barbs and potentially affixing them to the wall behind. However, shooter fans should consider playing at higher difficulty levels, given that F.E.A.R. 2 feels noticeably easier than its predecessor.

The AI can offer occasional challenges, particularly in levels featuring intersecting corridors in which human enemies will flank you, use cover effectively, and tumble to the side should they find themselves gazing down the barrel of your automatic shotgun. They will also tip over furniture or other objects and use them as cover (a trick you can use, though will likely never need). However, enemy behavior is inconsistent; a table-tipping guard may not follow through, running away from his improvised cover rather than ducking behind it. Some enemies will blindly fire from behind low obstacles but may also do so when in plain view. The best adversaries are those not governed by rules of human behavior, such as ethereal foes that take shape as you enter reflex time. And in some cases, your enemies are so visually elusive that you're better off finding a way out of the dark environs that spawn them.

The cool melee attacks of the first F.E.A.R. are gone, but other varied gameplay mechanics are here to fill the gaps. The most notable additions are a couple of armored-suit sequences in which you climb into a giant metal mech and riddle your attackers with machine-gun spray and rockets. These sequences aren't tough--you're a powerful death machine plowing down your weakling foes--but the mech controls nicely and you'll be treated to some impressive displays of environmental destruction and general chaos. You can move through these areas on foot if you like, so these levels do offer a bit of replay value, though you should take great pains to wreak fun robotic havoc when given the possibility. You'll also take control of the turret atop the squad's armored vehicle, but this weapon isn't all that enjoyable to use, and these bits feel like filler.

For the best bloodshed, zoom in.

F.E.A.R. 2's multiplayer component also feels like filler, and though we've come to expect online play from most of our shooters, there's nothing special about this suite of lackluster options. For fans of the original, the most notable omission is that of the slow-motion modes, which brought reflex time into an online arena and made for some clever and enjoyable showdowns. Without these modes, F.E.A.R. 2 feels a bit hollow online, serving up helpings of Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, a couple of Conquest variants, Capture the Flag, and a mode called Failsafe that owes a large debt to Counter-Strike. The best of these is Armored Front, in which a player on each team can hop into one of those robotic exoskeletons while his or her teammates capture control points. Otherwise, the shooting mechanics don't translate as well to a multiplayer environment, and the by-the-numbers levels are unimpressive. You have the ability to customize your loadout and level up in ranked matches, but this just isn't enough to breathe life into the musty online play.

You'll get the occasional heebie-jeebies from F.E.A.R. 2, but the magic of the first game hasn't been re-created here. It’s true that some of the changes in the new game seem like they were intended to address criticism of the first F.E.A.R.: tedious and claustrophobic environments, lack of enemy variety, and so on. Sadly, though these changes were made, the resulting sequel, while fun and well-crafted, seems to have lost sight of the strengths that made its predecessor so unique. Nevertheless, playing F.E.A.R. 2 is a worthwhile way to pass the time while we wait for the inevitable next installment.

Afro Samurai Review

This gory, gorgeous action game has plenty of flaws, but it will still satisfy your thirst for blood.

The Video Review

Kevin VanOrd slices and dices his way through this review for Afro Samurai. (Video Contains Mature Content)

Watch It Watch HD 520p

The Good

• Brutal, satisfying combat
• Great art design
• Awesome music
• Some really fun setpiece battles.

The Bad

• Bad platforming sections
• Inconsistent pace leads to occasional monotony
• Inferior camera can't be customized.

Nariko in Heavenly Sword. Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII. And now Afro Samurai. These are the characters that you remember for their remarkable hairstyles, though Namco Bandai's newest hack-and-slash action game offers more than just a curly coif that reaches for the heavens. It is an entertaining and thoroughly gory offering that contrasts sumptuous environments and crisp cel-shaded characters with shocking sights of slow-motion dismemberment. In Afro Samurai, you'll chop ninjas in half and watch their disembodied torsos drag themselves along by the arms until they collapse in a pool of blood. Sights like these make for some wickedly satisfying combat, though in other areas, the game falls noticeably short of the standards set by genre predecessors such as Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry. Clumsy platforming and pacing inconsistencies keep Afro Samurai from reaching its potential, but the entertaining combat and dedication to its subject matter keep it from being just another forgettable button masher.

Afro's enemies don't just shed blood--they positively gush it.

If you're familiar with the Afro Samurai anime, you'll undoubtedly enjoy experiencing the events depicted in the series, as well as several that aren't. If you're new to the franchise, the most important thing to know is this: You are a big-haired, cigarette-chomping dude who knows a thing or two about blades. This is a revenge tale, and as Afro, the wearer of the Number Two headband, you're out to defeat your father's killer--the current Number One. Even if you're not familiar with every character (the neurotic, potty-mouthed Ninja Ninja; the demure Okiku), the game's vibe has a way of pulling you in. Split-screen sequences in and out of combat embrace the game's anime theme; a fantastic hip-hop soundtrack tinged with Far Eastern harmonies enhances every slice and dice; and energetic voice acting from Samuel L. Jackson and other recognizable talents lends humor and gravitas in turn. Afro neophytes may not be drawn in by the plot, but they'll find it hard to escape the lush but violent atmosphere.

At the forefront of this vibe is Afro Samurai's combat, which cribs from most games of its type. You can issue weak and strong attacks, kick your enemies around, and string these three basic moves into a variety of combos. You'll spill a lot of blood using these simple actions, but if you really want to punish your acrobatic foes, it's better to enter focus mode and watch the guts fly. With a pull of the trigger, you can slow down time, adjust your blade's trajectory a bit, and lop heads, digits, or entire limbs off of your smack-talking enemies. You have to charge up focus mode by landing combos, but you will never go without the ability for long, and the resulting mix of old-fashioned button mashing and focus-powered slaughter is satisfying and fun. A few other moves help mix things up, such as sprint attacks, parrying, and bullet deflection (tricky to time properly but well worth the trouble). As long as you're facing a typical crowd of ninjas and a miniboss or two, it's all a drippy delight.

Once you're outside of combat (an all too frequent occurrence), Afro Samurai trips over its own feet, thanks largely to unpleasant platforming mechanics. The inelegant jumping sections are easy to stomach in small doses, but they're strung into long and frustrating sequences late in the game--one of which you have to repeat if you die at the hands of the boss that appears afterward. You can wall-run here and there, and leap up and grab certain ledges, but as a rule, you can perform these moves only when the game wants you to, and they're purely for getting from one spot to the next. You can't string them into combat moves a la Ninja Gaiden, and rough animations make these acrobatics look as awkward as they feel.

Swordplay, a sunset, and a warm splatter of blood--what more could a samurai ask for?

This leaves the burden of entertainment purely on the combat, and it's usually up to the task. At its best, Afro Samurai keeps pushing you forward, throwing a few different types of foes at you and tossing in various objectives, such as throwing foes into an electrical apparatus or flipping a switch here and there. A few set-piece battles are also a total blast, particularly an exhilarating freefall sequence that might leave you breathless. A couple of boss battles are good fun as well, such as one versus an endlessly self-cloning rival, and the easy but moody final boss battle. Some levels, such as a protracted fight versus Kuma, are lighter on combat but succeed thanks to pensive ambience, entertaining scriptwriting, and pure artistic splendor.

But as brutally beautiful as the combat is, it can't support the weight of some inconsistent pacing and the less appealing boss fights. In some levels, you'll wander around without encountering enemies for far too long; in a few others, nonstop waves of enemies will make you scream for variety that never comes. These issues come to a head in the penultimate level: The combat, normally a head rush, gets a bit tedious, the platforming takes center stage, and a few broken checkpoints might force you to replay sequences that you've already plowed through. The boss fights afterward aren't much of an improvement, spamming some cheap moves rather than providing a true challenge. The camera certainly doesn't help matters; it isn't completely broken, but it has a tendency to get hung up behind objects in the smaller combat areas or jitter around if you move it into certain positions. A related oddity is the lack of camera customization. You can adjust the Y-axis settings but not the X axis, which means that you are forced to deal with inverted camera settings when moving it from side to side. If you prefer standard settings, this frustration will simply exacerbate the other camera issues.

Nevertheless, Afro Samurai is an appealing game, and its visual style and pulsing soundtrack drives this success. The art style doesn't rely on simple cel-shading, but rather infuses this familiar technique with soft colors, muted lighting, and crosshatched textures. It's a unique look, and the gushers of rust-hued blood contrast nicely with the gently lit environments. When you enter focus mode, most of the environmental color washes away, making the gruesome cleaving of a bare-breasted ninja a bloody sight to behold. Jittery animations and other technical flaws can get in the way--particularly in the PlayStation 3 version, which suffers from minor but noticeable frame-rate drops, especially during split-screen incidents--but these rarely detract from the appealing visual design. Likewise, the occasionally lackluster sound effects can't detract from a superb hip-hop soundtrack (inspired by, as opposed to composed by, rapper RZA) and fantastic, lively voice-overs.

These manufactured monstrosities lead to violet violence.

Its flaws are noticeable, but Afro Samurai is ultimately a lot of fun. It isn't the next action classic, but it embraces its subject matter with vigor and delivers equally dynamic combat in spades. You can squeeze a good seven hours of enjoyment out of the experience the first time around, and hidden items and ensuing unlockables may drive you to return, if the fun and ferocious combat isn't reason enough. In other words, it's a problematic but ultimately worthwhile reason to don the Number Two headband and see that justice is done--and that Justice is done in.

The Maw Review

Average gameplay and an unforgettable main character merge in this short but endearing adventure.

The Good

• Bursting with charm
• Great visual and sound design
• Lighthearted humor and puzzles are good for all ages.

The Bad

• Gameplay isn't very engaging
• Short, with little replay value.

How long can a game's wily charms carry an experience before its cracks begin to show? In the case of The Maw, the answer is for the entirety of the few hours that the game lasts. However, that doesn't mean that you should dismiss this amusing extraterrestrial adventure as overly saccharine fluff. It will keep you giggling for the few hours that it lasts, but like most sweet morsels, the pleasant feeling dissipates when the sugar leaves your system, and you’ll find your palette struggling to remembering the taste.

The only thing Maw fears is fear itself. Also, birds.

The titular Maw is a voracious, globular alien, and you are Frank, his antlike companion. As captives on a giant spacecraft, you make an instant friendly connection, only to get stranded when the ship crashes on an unfamiliar planet. Nevertheless, your relationship with Maw isn't really a friendship; he's more of a bulbous pit bull, and you lead him around on a leash to help him scarf up his next meal. He starts at a nicely manageable size, but eventually Maw will tower over you, though he remains a loyal companion throughout. That's a good thing, too, because his razor-sharp teeth slice through any number of bizarre beasts, and he'll chomp them with glee, emitting eager grunts while scanning the environment with his giant, bulging eye. Though you can summon Maw to your side by calling out his name (and Frank's vocal pleas are one of many delightful sonic touches), there is no spoken dialogue. But Maw is so physically expressive, with his lively green tongue and keen enthusiasm, that he'll immediately win you over.

Thus Maw is your trusty pet, and the game is essentially an alien-care simulator. Your companion is a hungry devil, and he'll chomp down various creatures on his endless quest to grow larger and larger. But though you can lead a Maw to a gloober, you can't make him eat, so you'll need to attach your electric leash to him and direct him to the local grub, or pick up the edible creatures and throw them directly into his impatient mouth. Some of these extraterrestrials are more than just exotic eats, though, and will transfer some of their attributes to Maw when digested. Downing a temperamental alien peacock turns Maw into a laser-spewing monstrosity; gnawing on a floating puff-tor lets you grab on to Maw and leap wide distances.

Your goal is always to reach the end of the level by fattening up Maw and using his stolen skills to solve a few light environmental puzzles. This may mean using the puff-tor power to float upward on wind streams, fooling a giant horned beetle into charging toward a pulsing force field, or breathing fire into clumps of flora to reveal the hidden fauna within. As Frank, you also have a few skills of your own. For example, you can use the leash to grab and fling some creatures and rocks, and you can dodge turret fire with a well-timed button press. These disparate abilities are brimming with possibilities, yet though some of the puzzles are clever, most are incredibly simple, and you'll deal with just a single Maw transformation on every level.

The ensuing gameplay is mildly amusing but rarely compelling, showcasing plenty of hilarious Maw behavior at the expense of rewarding interaction. In one level, you hop onto Maw and shoot down turrets and space invaders with his laser-spouting eyes, but you can't die and you can't aim with any precision, so you simply wander around and blast away, scarfing up the alien cadavers that you leave behind. In another, you hold on to Maw as he stampedes toward barriers, but imprecise controls and too many moments without player interaction let the wind out of the game's sails. A few blah levels could be easier to overlook if The Maw were a longer experience, but it will take most players around three hours or so to complete. Some rewards and hidden areas may tempt you to return to the levels, and online leaderboards might inspire you to gun for faster completion times and such, but when you complete the game, chances are that you'll be done for good.

Maw signals that he's ready to move on.

The gameplay may be forgettable, but Maw certainly isn't, and developer Twisted Pixel deserves kudos for its colorful and hysterical character designs. Frank looks like a refugee from Pixar's A Bug's Life, but his faithful purple friend is hysterically distinctive. In one uproarious scene, Maw flees in terror from a deceptively beautiful loofer, and the fear on his toothy face is absolutely priceless. He's simultaneously adorable and menacing, a charismatic companion who just happens to eat adorable creatures for sustenance. Kids in particular will get a kick out of him, and the simple puzzles and straightforward controls ensure younger players an adventure free of frustration.

It sounds like a lot to ask 800 points ($10) for a game that won't take up much of your time, but here is a case in which a journey is worth taking purely on the basis of its burgeoning wit and personality. The gameplay doesn't have much bite, but the strong-jawed Maw is a great new character who deserves his starring role.

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

The Good

• Fight epic battles in iconic locations
• Evil campaign is morbidly delightful
• Cutscenes and music create dramatic atmosphere
• Playing as trolls, ents, and heroes is exciting.

The Bad

• Battles often boil down to button mashing
• Many cheap ways to die
• Playing campaign solo can be aggravatingly hard.

The Lord of the Rings universe is full of memorable battles. No matter whether they are staged in a cramped burial chamber or on a vast, open plain, each clash of arms teeters between exultant triumph and agonizing defeat. In The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, you'll experience your fair share of both. There are abundant thrills in both the good and evil campaigns, from attacking oliphaunts with catapults on the Pelennor Fields to burning the ringed ramparts of Minas Tirith. However, the frantic combat can often devolve into a button-mashing frenzy as you try to avoid the many varieties of death (some unpleasantly cheap) that await you on the battlefield. These frustrations may prove to be too high a cost of entry for many, but if you're willing to brave the pitfalls (or are a big Lord of the Rings fan), then Conquest has many hours of satisfying and immersive action for you to enjoy.

Trolls? Oliphaunts? Just another day at the office for Legolas.

The best hours you'll spend in Conquest will be in the campaigns. The War of the Ring campaign puts you on the ground in the most memorable battles from the books, taking a few detours from canon along the way. The well-crafted, immersive environments mirror those of the movies, from the filthy industrial pits of Isengard to the crumbling walls of Osgiliath, and the score draws on themes from the movies to make battles feel more dramatic. As fun as the War of the Ring campaign is, there's an exciting novelty to playing as the forces of Mordor in the Rise of Sauron campaign. In this alternate storyline, the ring bearer fails in his mission and the once-ebbing tide of evil flows forth across Middle-earth, scouring all in its path. Cutscenes between levels use footage from the movies to craft a believable narrative around your dark exploits, and it's morbidly thrilling to destroy beloved locations and heroes. The last level in particular is so delightfully sinister that you'll likely find yourself cackling with malicious glee.

During most of the battles, you'll be fighting as one of the rank-and-file soldier classes. The warrior, the archer, the mage, and the scout all have their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and special attacks. From the mage's firewall to the warrior's whirlwind sweep, each class can perform a number of pleasingly powerful special attacks by drawing on energy gained from fighting and surviving. As deadly as each class can be, they are also vulnerable. An archer can easily mow down a warrior from a distance, but if the warrior manages to close the gap, there isn't much that the archer can do to survive. Close combat is brutal and chaotic, and once you get knocked down, it can be very hard to get up. Because fights favor the soldier who lands the first strike, they often become frantic button mash-offs. This can be tense and exciting, but it also makes defeat bitterer than it ought to be.

Working with other players is a great way to shore up your defenses, and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest features a cooperative campaign mode for two players, both locally and online. However, when you're going it alone, you'll find that not only is friendly AI unhelpful, but the enemy AI also sees you as public enemy number one. You'll have to destroy the lion's share of the enemy forces and be vigilant for attacks that can kill you instantly (such as fire arrows, backstabs, and anything a troll or ent does). You have a limited number of lives, and with so many ways to die, they can go quickly. Restarting the level is mildly tedious, but it can be a blessing in disguise when a mismatch between friendly and enemy spawn rates has you facing an insurmountable tide of foes.

A poison arrow to the face will take the wind out of that Gondorian's sails.

It can be frustrating to be a grunt, so it's fortunate that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest offers many ways to make your battlefield presence more formidable. The simplest of these involve mounted weapons such as catapults and ballistas: powerful yet destructible machines of war that can be a blast while they last. You can also mount horses or wargs and ride through enemy ranks, sword a-swinging. Taking control of an ent or a troll lets you grab, smash, and throw enemies to your heart's content, and rampaging around on a massive, lumbering oliphaunt is unwieldy fun. Occasionally throughout the campaign you will also get the chance to play as heroes, such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Sauron, and the balrog. These units are powerful versions of the normal classes with their own unique special attacks that let you wreak all sorts of havoc. There is a pleasing variety of heroes featured throughout the campaigns, enough that there is an entire online mode dedicated to hero play.

Hero Deathmatch is just one of the 16-player online modes available in Conquest. There is also normal Team Deathmatch, as well as Lord of the Rings versions of Capture the Flag and Territories. Everyone chooses a soldier class to begin with, but the many maps feature the aforementioned machines and mounts to spice things up. When a team reaches a certain percentage of points needed for victory, the top-scoring player will be offered the opportunity to spawn as a hero. It can be tough to break a team's momentum at that point, but success really depends on the players' willingness to work together. Playing against human opponents is both more exciting and more frustrating. It's more satisfying to work with human teammates to kill characters with human minds behind them, but those same human minds are more capable of getting the best of you with aggravating combat techniques. This makes online battles legitimately challenging, so you'll want to polish your skills in the campaigns first.

War is messy, and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest isn't a clean gaming experience. Combat can be as exasperating as it is exhilarating, and playing solo can be a trying endeavor. Nevertheless, these pitfalls are somewhat compensated for by two epic campaigns that draw you into a rich world in new and exciting ways. Fans of this world will get the most out of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, but gamers who are looking to battle in an epic setting and willing to weather some frustrating elements will find plenty of excitement on this journey through Middle-earth.

Need for Speed Undercover Review

The Good

• Plenty of cop chases
• Instantly join races with press of a button
• Isn't long before you're driving a cool car.

The Bad

• Lots of quirks and nagging gameplay issues
• Emulates Most Wanted, but doesn't necessarily improve upon it
• Story isn't much to get excited about
• Frame rate isn't great.

For the most part, the reaction to the last few Need for Speed games was the same: "Why aren't they more like Need for Speed Most Wanted?" "Where are the cheesy cutscenes and the over-the-top cop chases?" It seems as if EA heard those cries, because for better or for worse, Need for Speed Undercover feels like Most Wanted.

In Undercover you play the role of...wait for it...an undercover officer. Along with agent Chase Linh, played by the attractive Maggie Q, your job is to take down a group of street racers that have somehow become involved in an international smuggling ring. The story is told via campy cutscenes that fail to capture the charm of Most Wanted thanks to uninteresting characters and a predictable plot. Having a story provides incentive to make it through race after race, but the whole "this is cheesy so it's cool" thing feels kind of forced this time around.

It won't be easy--we'll have to use our powers of acting to take down the street racers.

Like many other Need for Speed games, all of your racing will take place on the streets of a fictitious open-world city--here it's the Tri-City Bay area. You'll start with a lousy vehicle, but it won't be long before you're able to snag a pink slip to a nicer ride. As you progress you'll earn cash, which can be used to unlock (50+) new vehicles from manufacturers such as Nissan, Dodge, Cadillac, Ford, Porsche, Lamborghini, BMW, Aston Martin, Mitsubishi, and more. If you're into tuning individual aspects of your ride or purchasing individual parts you can do that, but if you're not into tinkering you can purchase an upgrade package and be on your way.

Not only will you earn money for winning an event, you'll earn driving points for dominating it--basically beating it really, really bad. You can power up a number of your driving attributes, but they don't have a noticeable effect on how your car handles. As long as you drive fast you'll probably dominate, but there are occasional races where you'll totally obliterate the time needed to dominate an event, but you'll still lose to the CPU. The game also encourages you to drive with style and drift, draft, and drive really close to other cars, but other than increasing your nitrous there's little to gain from doing so. That said, the new J-Turn mechanic, which lets you bust quick 180s, is invaluable when chasing down rivals or evading the cops. You'll use it because it's useful, though, not because it gets you heroic driving points.

The cops are back in full effect in Undercover, and for the most part, their return is welcome. The challenges in which you must ram and take out a certain number of police cars are great fun, as are the challenges where you must cause a certain monetary sum of damage. Of course, you don't always have to ram cars to take them down; you can also run into log trucks, electrical towers, billboards, and more to leave a little surprise for your pursuers. It's too bad that some odd quirks hamper the cop chases. The environmental hazards that you can unleash certainly look cool and are effective, but quite often you won't see any police cars get hit by the objects, yet when the cutscene ends the cars are trashed. Sometimes you won't have to do anything at all to evade police--the game says "go" and you stay still and nobody finds you. Cops are capable of laying down spikes, but you can go the entire game without them ever doing so. The biggest problem, however, is that the cops don't do much other than bang on the side of your car and yell at you, so if you last long enough they sort of fade away on their own. This makes the chases less challenging than they could have been and also makes them feel artificial, like you're just fulfilling some sort of time requirement until the game decides you've done well enough to escape.

Undercover isn't just about messing with the Man. There are events where you need to maintain a lead for a specific amount of time or get a certain distance ahead of your opponent. Sometimes you'll have to shake the cops while trying to keep a stolen ride in pristine condition, and there are checkpoint races and circuit races as well. There's not a whole lot that's original here and the races are generally extremely easy--you might not see another car for an entire race once you've cleared the starting line. They're difficult on occasion, but this is usually because of the choppy frame rate, which is often dreadful on the PlayStation 3. It's not as if Xbox 360 owners are getting a smooth, fast frame rate, but it's significantly better than the PS3's slide show, which is often so bad that it makes the otherwise great-handling vehicles a chore to drive. What's odd is that there's really no obvious reason for the game's poor frame rate; the city doesn't look much different than those in Carbon and Most Wanted, and the car models have aliasing issues.

You might not want to crash into a cop car in real life, but here, it's all good.

That said, the game does do a few things very well. The online cops and robbers mode, where the robber tries to pick up money and take it to a drop-off point while another person plays the cop and tries to ram them, is quite a bit of fun. But mostly what the game gets right is its pacing. The races are short--sometimes as short as 20 seconds, and almost never longer than five minutes. Another cool thing the game does is it lets you instantly jump to the closest race by pressing down on the D pad. If you want to find a specific event you can press up and you're taken to a GPS map, where you can instantly go to the race of your choice. It'll save you a lot of needless backtracking, and combined with the short races, makes sure that Undercover never gets boring.

If you're one of the many people who loved Need for Speed Most Wanted, flaws and all, you'll find a lot to like in Undercover. It's not very original and the slow frame rate is a downer, but there's no denying that it's just good fun to run from the cops and wreak havoc on a city in the process

Midnight Club: Los Angeles Review

The Good

• Cool-looking interface
• 16-player online with quite a few different modes
• Gorgeous rendition of the City of Angels
• Fast, exciting racing.

The Bad

• Excessive difficulty hinders fun
• Not very original
• Interface favors form over function.

After The Fact: Reviews Revisited

• What's this?

Update: Game Update

Posted: Dec 19, 2008 11:41 am PT

A recent update that purportedly "improves AI balance to adjust dynamically to user skill level" appears to primarily affect the AI early in the game. Things feel slightly less punishing as a result, but there are still several unaddressed issues that conspire to make the game more difficult than it should be.

Midnight Club Los Angeles has a lot going for it: excellent graphics; fast, intense racing that takes place day or night; and numerous online modes that support up to 16 racers. Unfortunately, it has a few rather significant problems that hold it back, including a small roster of vehicles and gameplay that, while fun, doesn't break any new ground. But most of all, it is Midnight Club's excessive difficulty that makes it a very good racing game rather than a great one.

It's a nice car now, but it won't be by the end of the race.

There's a bit of a story, but it's the bare minimum to get you in a car to race around the streets of LA. And it is quite a version of LA. The game has a day/night cycle so you're not stuck racing at one time of day the whole time. You won't just race in sunshine, either. Some days are cloudy, and every once in awhile, the clouds unleash torrents of rain. Day or night, rain or shine, the city looks fantastic. The frame rate is steady, the action is fast, and the game's re-creation of LA is absolutely gorgeous. This slightly scaled-down City of Angels covers everything, including the beaches of Santa Monica, the Hollywood hills, and downtown. What's really neat about the city here is not only how many recognizable landmarks there are, such as the 3rd Street Promenade and LA Convention Center, but also the branded buildings, such as 7-11, Pizza Hut, Holiday Inn, and even billboards for iPods. There's certainly such a thing as too much advertising, but it's not overdone here (not every gas station is a 7-11, for example), and having these real-world businesses in the game world helps immerse you in the experience.

As with most street racing games, you drive around the city looking for people to race. When you find someone, you flash your lights, and in most cases, race to the starting line. There are time trials, checkpoint races around the city, freeway races, and races from point A to point B--pretty standard stuff for the genre. You'll also have missions where you must render payback by damaging target vehicles and deliver cars across town unscathed in an extremely short amount of time. There is a police presence, which can and will chase you down if it sees you're up to no good. Chases aren't as intense as in the Need for Speed games, but it's immensely entertaining to pull over and then watch yourself on the police car's dash-cam as you peel out when the cop approaches your vehicle.

When you finish a race, you're awarded money and respect based on your position. Respect unlocks new races, as well as new licensed cars (plus motorcycles), visual customization options, and performance upgrades. The slow way in which new cars are unlocked is most likely because of how few cars and bikes are (about 44) included. But regardless of the reason, it takes a lot of winning to gain new items, which can be frustrating when you've got money to spend and a car in desperate need of improvement.

Frustration is something you'll become accustomed to as you play Midnight Club LA. This is mostly due to the game's uneven and excessive difficulty. Other than the occasional race that lets you choose ahead of time, there are no difficulty settings. There are color-coded races that purport to be easy, medium, or hard, but quite often, the "easy" races are just as challenging as the hard ones. This "one size fits all" difficulty wouldn't have been a problem if the game were balanced, but it's not. CPU racers seem impervious to the perils of oncoming traffic. They rarely make significant contact with other cars, weaving back and forth across lanes like George Costanza playing Frogger. You, on the other hand, won't be as lucky. Even minor scrapes with cars, walls, and fences can send your car spinning and leave you facing the wrong way when you come to a stop. Parked cars are particularly hazardous because they don't have their lights on and are extremely difficult to see. Because of the amazing skill level of the CPU, even one minor error on your part can--and typically will--cost you the race. This means that you'll end up doing a lot of grinding (finding races that aren't insanely tough and repeatedly doing them over) to raise your respect level. It's tedious and doesn't make for a great time.

There are other issues that prevent Midnight Club from achieving its potential. The Google Earth-style map looks really cool as it seamlessly zooms from street level to the sky, but it's not great at showing you where to go. This is a problem because it's a map. The angle at which you view the city streets isn't very user-friendly when zoomed in, many streets aren't marked, you can't rotate it, and while you can set a waypoint marker, it won't show you the best route to take. This is a huge problem when you're racing from one spot to another without checkpoints--you must constantly pause the game and consult the map to make sure you're taking the right streets. This problem is even worse in the ridiculously punishing car-delivery minigames. Not only do you need to keep the pedal to the medal the whole time, but you have to avoid damaging the car all while pausing the game and checking the map every few blocks. Even when there are checkpoints, there is no guarantee you won't get lost. Some of these large pillars of smoke are poorly placed, and the smoke actually obscures what's behind it, making it possible to zoom right by a turn. When this happens, you might as well quit out of the race to start over because you don't get the same rubber-band assistance as the AI and probably won't recover.

The map is really cool-looking; unfortunately, it's not as useful as you might hope.

If you can look past Midnight Club's many frustrating aspects (unlockable special abilities that do things like slow down time and clear cars out of your path help alleviate some, but not all, of the problems), there's a very solid racer to be found. When the difficulty is just right (it happens occasionally), and you take advantage of the simple-yet-effective drafting mechanic, races are exciting and finishes are tight. There's also a lot of enjoyment in the game's multiplayer component, which supports up to 16 racers via system link, as well as online. You can create your own races, challenge folks who happen to be driving around to standard races, or play one of the game's unique modes, such as Capture the Flag, Team Capture the Flag, Keepaway (get a flag then keep it away from everyone), Stockpile (whoever returns the most flags to his base wins), and more. Because it's a level playing field and you don't have to deal with the AI, multiplayer is where Midnight Club is at its best. Going online also gives you the opportunity to show off your ride to the community where others can rate your car's looks and even purchase it.

Midnight Club Los Angeles is exciting, beautiful, and great when played online. It's a shame that its difficulty is so uneven, because this issue and other problems take your attention away from what is an otherwise very good racing game.

Tomb Raider: Underworld Review

The Good

• Excellent mix of outdoor, underground, and underwater locations
• Lara's new moves add to her existing abilities
• Some excellent level and puzzle design.

The Bad

• Existing clipping and camera issues remain
• Forgettable story and cliched dialogue
• Lack of refinement to the core gameplay.

When Eidos handed development of the Tomb Raider franchise to Crystal Dynamics, it was a risky but ultimately wise decision. The team managed to reinvent the series while staying true to its roots with Tomb Raider: Legend, while Tomb Raider: Anniversary built on solid foundations to reimagine Lara Croft's original adventure. Tomb Raider Underworld is Crystal Dynamics' third game in as many years, and the high work rate is starting to show. Lara may have plenty of new moves at her disposal, but little has been done to address the many camera and clipping issues still present. Tomb Raider Underworld offers an enticing new adventure, but if you're a fan of the series you'll find that Lara is starting to show her age.

Lara brings new tricks to the Underworld, including wall-climbing, beam-vaulting, and abseiling.

As the "Underworld" suffix suggests, this Tomb Raider covers darker territory than its predecessors. It follows the same adventure template that we've come to expect, but it also deals with death, resurrection, and even Norse mythology in its story. Things start out badly for Lara; a prologue of her racing to escape her lofty mansion as it burns to the ground. Cut back two weeks, and we find Lara trying to take care of some of her father's unfinished business, something that leads her on to discovering more about her mother, characters from previous games, and the mythical Hammer of Thor. It's badly written, poorly voiced, and instantly forgettable for anyone but hardcore fans of the series, but thankfully the cutscenes are mercifully short, leaving you to get down to the serious business of raiding tombs.

Tomb Raider Underworld is constructed in an almost identical fashion to its predecessors, with exploration in exotic locations punctuated by occasional combat and vehicle sections. The interaction between Lara and the environments has long been the draw of the series, and performing daring jumps to scale seemingly impossible heights is as satisfying as ever. Lara's even learned a few new moves in the year since Anniversary, and she can now free-climb, balance along thin beams, and abseil using her rappel line. Crucially, none of these moves complicates Lara's basic movement, and while you have to adjust your eyes to the many new visual cues showing you where to go, they all add new levels to the simple pleasure of adventuring.

While these new abilities expand Lara's already-impressive acrobatic skills, there are a lot of gameplay issues that continue to annoy. The world is incredibly rigid, with strict rules on which platforms, objects, and edges can be interacted with and which can't. The places where Lara can go are well marked out--they feature nice right-angled edges and are usually lighter than the surrounding material to signify your route through. This makes it easier to figure out the correct way to go, but at the same time it means there's little room for improvisation, and the genre has moved beyond such linear progression. Even worse, Lara will frequently clip into a piece of the scenery and then refuse to come out until you stop, turn around, and run out of it again. Add all this to an incredibly unruly camera, and Tomb Raider Underworld is still just as frustrating as its predecessors.

The adventure begins with a prologue set halfway through the game, with Croft Mansion burning to the ground and Lara seemingly to blame.

There's an impressive mix of locales in Underworld, and the environments boast greater scale than ever before. The underwater diving is incredibly atmospheric, and while there's often no indication of where you need to go, you won't mind swimming around the beautiful-looking abyss. There are also some great outdoor locations, and you'll race through vast temples, snowy mountains, and jungle environments. While Lara's bike looks and feels more like Batman's Tumbler than anything from the real world, it's much easier to use than the vehicles in previous games, and there are multiple routes that you can take. As the name suggests, though, this game features plenty of underground adventuring, and the sense of claustrophobia as you descend into these lost worlds is wonderfully conveyed.

You won't come across an abundance of enemies in the game, but the ones that you do encounter are incredibly stupid. Human enemies will stand in front of you as you pummel them with gunfire, while the real-world and mythical beasts wait to emerge from the same spot every time. There's still no cover system in Tomb Raider, so you're left to go behind objects, run out to fire, and then repeat until you've dealt with the threat. It's incredibly fiddly when held up to the combat in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, but thankfully there's an ultra-powerful weapon toward the end of the game that eradicates the need to take cover completely. The whole weapon system is poorly balanced from the start--you choose one firearm at the beginning of each level, but if you check your inventory you'll find Lara has everything from pistols to an assault rifle into her tiny backpack. Thankfully, the tedious quick-time events have now disappeared completely, while Lara can kick enemies that get too close for comfort.

The environments offer an impressive sense of scale, although this can make for some time-consuming puzzles.

Where Tomb Raider really challenges is in its puzzles, and while they may be formulaic, the sheer size of the environments means that they can take some time to figure out. They usually revolve around collecting keys or other items to activate mechanics in another part of the level, and while you will have to cover a lot of ground to solve them, they're all logically put together. It helps that Lara can now access a tips system from her PDA, with two levels of assistance available to clarify any befuddlement. Press the A button and Lara will give you a hint on what you need to do next; press Y and she'll be more explicit about your goal. The new map is less successful--Lara's expensive (and curiously waterproof) PDA provides a wireframe model of the current area you're in, but this is useless when trying to backtrack through numerous underground caves.

Tomb Raider Underworld is an enjoyable adventure, but it's one that's just too familiar for anyone who's played the previous games. The basic problems with clipping and the unruly camera are still annoying, and while Lara's new abilities add to her impressive athleticism, the route through most levels is still rigidly linear. The AI and combat are also weak, and while fighting is a relatively small part of the game, Underworld would arguably be better without it. That said, the environments are stunning, and working your way through the many different challenges is still as enjoyable as ever. Ultimately there's still life in the Tomb Raider series, but as the title suggests, it may be in need of another resurrection.