Thus far, the third series of Telltale’s Sam & Max games has proven to be arguably the strongest episodic gaming series that they’ve churned out so far.  While ‘The Tomb Of Sammun-Mak’ was an excellent episode, it’s follow up, ‘They Stole Max’s Brain!’ wasn’t quite as strong.  So, we go Beyond The Alley Of The Dolls to see if things pick up a bit.

We commence this episode as the previous one left off.  A horde of Sam clones clad in nothing but golden biker-shorts have appeared, and chase Sam, Max and a mentally broken General Skun-ka’pe around town.  They encounter a plate-throwing argument between Stinky and Grandpa Stinky, and when they realise what’s happening, everyone barricades themselves into Stinky’s Diner, brandishing guns and attempting to fight off the, as Sam puts it, ‘devilishly handsome’ clones.

The game continues the strong story telling and comedy that The Devil’s Playhouse has displayed so far, with the build up to the finale continuing nicely.  Just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, there’s a nice twist towards the end that builds up to the finale nicely, but some changes are confusing.

For example, the main antagonists in the series so far, General Skun-ka’pe and Monsieur Paperwaite essentially having their roles in the series scaled back, with Skun’ka-pe disappearing early on, and Paperwaite helping Sam & Max.  Hopefully, Telltale has a role for them in the series finale next month.  There also some nice pop culture references thrown in, as usual.  (See if you can spot the Avatar reference in the tunnels)  There are no new characters in this episode, which is a shame.  There’s also a lack of new places to visit, with BoscoTech, Stinky’s and Paperwaite’s Office in the Museum all being used again, and only a couple of new places.

Max has all the psychic toys from the previous episode, plus he gets his hands on 3 more.  The ventriloquist dummy, Charlie Ho-Tep, makes a return after last being seen in the possession of Max’s ancestor back in ‘The Tomb Of Sammun-Mak’.  In addition, you finally get your hands on the mind-reading playing cards that have been teased in the previous episode, and they form the basis for most of the puzzles in this episode, and provide most of the humour.  It’s particularly good when Stinky suspects her mind is being read, or when Max hears something he finds gross.  The final toy is the destroyer robot, which destroys anything from the Dark Dimension.  The puzzles themselves are a lot more reliant on blind luck than on the previous episodes, and you might find yourself getting frustrated.  It took me at least 20 minutes just to figure out the first scene.  Even having hints on the highest level is very little actual help to you.

As you’d expect for an episode in a continuing episodic series, the controls haven’t changed.  Another thing that hasn’t changed is the annoying tendency of the camera to change at the worst moments, making it difficult to click on things you want or need to click on.  There were also a couple of bugs in the review build.  There are a couple of scenes in which Max is completely invisible.  In addition, a couple of conversation scenes freeze for a few seconds, although the actual talking does carry on.  Hopefully, these problems have been ironed out for the retail release.

This episode does seem a bit shorter than the rest of the series.  Despite my early problems, I was able to wrap the story up in under 4 hours, as opposed to the 5-6 hours of previous episodes.  But the amount of content in the series as a whole is shaping up to be well worth asking price for the entire season.

FINAL THOUGHTS
‘Beyond The Alley Of The Dolls’ is a nice addition to this series of Sam & Max.  The writing is as sharp as ever, and the puzzles are well designed for the most part, although there is noticeably more reliance on trial and error than in previous episodes.  You’ll get it wrapped up noticeably quicker than the last couple of episodes, but the surprise twist at the end suggests that Telltale have some big plans up their sleeve for the season finale.  Roll on August.

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This game will have you playing the part of a nefarious pie thief named P.B. Winterbottom, who lives for pies, stealing them at will in an 19th century city. However, something changed, making him able to warp time, recording “clones” that repeat a point of time indefinitely until he removes them… and you will use this power to collect all the pies in each level, ultimately trying to gather some kind of epic super-pie at the end of the game. There may be more to this pie or the story in general, but I didn’t get far enough to tell you. Not all is bad, however. The story is told between levels slient movie-style, and both the art and the rhyme with which we read it both carry a certain charm to them.

And this silent movie charm will carry through the entire game. The whole game looks like one of these movies between the black and white, the film-marks that will go over the screen, and even the music is piano music as you would expect for this kind of film. This music is perfect, however to this end, there was no real sound to speak of…

But once the charm of the first impressions wear off, we get to the meat of the game… a puzzle game where the objective is to collect all the pies on each screen. To do this, you will be allowed to make clones of yourself, and this is where the game’s disappointment began to creep in.

First, I got through over half the game, and the only levels I played that let me use more then 3 clones at once were challenge levels I didn’t really need to play to finish the game, limiting the mad-cap I was hoping to create quite severely. Now I understand that this game was made to be a challenging puzzle game, but it should be fun before even that, which brings us to our next issue…

Namely that this game’s idea of challenge becomes far less about setup and far more about twitch reflexes. This has a lot to do with the clone limit complaint since later in the game, they force you to not just be smart but be smart their way. In a game that sports creativity, this is a HEAVY blow against it. It also doesn’t help that the control scheme on the keyboard is fairly awkward, making timing that much harder. And that feel is yet another point in it’s own right to knock this game for. The entire time I was playing, all I could think was “this belongs on Newgrounds.” It feels like a flash game. From the control scheme right down to the animation of Winterbottom, this game screams flash in high resolution.

And further pressing this flash impression is the game’s length. I’m rather notorious for taking my time and enjoying what I’m playing when I’m allowed…. and this game, complete with optional missions, took me about an hour and a half to almost get 3/4ths of the way through. For a puzzle game this is ridiculously short, further limiting the game, assuming you enjoy it all the way through.

In the end, I have a hard time recommending this game to anyone, really. It’s short comings are far to many to really say it’s worth buying, even at $5. I bought it during Steam’s summer sale for $2.50… I still feel ripped off by the nefarious pie thief.

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The MMO is very much the ‘in’ thing these days.  With the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft raking in obscene amounts of money from it’s 11 million or so subscribers, everyone and their wife wants a piece of the online pie.  APB is the second game to come out of Scottish developer Realtime Worlds, who previously brought us Crackdown, a game looked upon fondly by many.  So can Realtime Worlds keep it up with APB?  Read on to find out.

APB is an action, pay-to-play MMO shooter, based in the fictional city of San Paro.  The city is in turmoil with a constant fight between the rather imaginatively named “Criminals” and “Enforcers” factions.  Before creating a new character, you must decide which of the two factions you want to play as.  Then, you create your avatar.  The character creation has a vast and varied range of settings and choices, and is quite straightforward to use.  You can make your avatar as normal or as freaky as you like, from a regular looking guy in a t-shirt and shorts, to a green skinned monster with bright yellow hair and huge feet.  You really can go wild with it.

The customisation doesn’t stop with your avatar, though.  As you progress through the game, you can use the money you earn from missions to upgrade your weapons and vehicles, as well as buy decals to truly make the car your own.  You can also buy extra clothes and tattoos for your avatars as well.  Truly, the sky is the limit with the customisation.  If you can picture it in your head, you can probably do it.

The missions themselves aren’t anywhere near as varied as the creation tools, though.  When you start the game for the first time, you will be put in touch with several contacts whom you can pledge your services to.  Once you have done that, they will contact you and ask you to do a mission for them.  But the vast majority of missions involve the ‘go here, do this’ objectives that are extremely common to open world games.  This does mean that the missions get very repetitive very quickly.  Completing missions will increase your standing with your current contact.  As your standing levels up, you will be able to buy new weapons, vehicles and clothes.

As you complete missions, complete crimes or stop crimes from happening, your Prestige (for Enorcers) or Notoriety (for Criminals) level will increase.  As you increase these levels, you will gain benefits of extra bonuses for completing levels and extra things to buy.  However, it will also get the attention of the opposing faction.

Once your level gets high enough, players of opposing factions will be put into groups to try and halt your progress.  If you’re not presently in a mission, you will often find you’re given a mission to stop the opposition, which does get grating when it happens constantly. If you manage to get your level up to the maximum, and a bounty will be put on you.  At this point, an announcement will appear to the opposing faction and your location will appear on the map.  Any opposition player can then attack you and try to claim the bounty.

The biggest problem with the PvP missions is that, basically, it favours people who camp.  If you’re in the first team to arrive at an objective, the chances of you winning are significantly higher than if you arrive second.  This isn’t helped by the fact that players don’t appear on your radar, so the enemies will see you before you see them, by which point, you’ll be half dead.  It doesn’t help with the fact that the gunplay is poor and the weapons are highly unbalanced.  Despite claims that APB would reward skill rather than time spent in game, the fact is that if you put in the time, you’ll get the better weapons.  So, if you’ve played for 5 hours and come up against an opponent who had put in 50 hours, you have very little hope of coming out on top.

As if the poor gunplay and unbalanced gameplay weren’t bad enough, things aren’t made any more fun by the look of the game.  While the graphics are decent enough, the different buildings are really just functional, and don’t really catch the eye, and tend to look a bit samey.  The districts in the city have design issues also.  If you’re trying to escape members of the opposing faction, there are certain fences and barriers that you can jump by hitting the ‘action’ button. However, if you come to a wall that is the same height, but isn’t designated as a barrier you can jump with the action button, you can’t get over it.  This sometimes leads to the situation of you being chased into a dead end.

This being an open world game based in a city, the quickest way to get from A to B is, of course, by car.  Sadly, driving is a pain in the rear end as well.  The handling on cars is the equivalent of trying to steer an oil tanker through a sea of treacle.  Cars turn and stop so slowly, that you’ll find yourself crashing and missing your turns quite often.  Basically, when doing handbrake turns is a necessity rather than an option, you’ve got some serious problems.  There are slight differences to the cars, mainly acceleration and speed.  The smaller cars do steer a bit better, but you will find yourself using the handbrake most of the time.

FINAL THOUGHTS
On paper, APB is an interesting idea.  In practice, it’s quite poorly executed.  The customisation options for your character and vehicles are fantastic and really let you personalise your look.  The trouble is, the game is no real fun to play, and the missions get repetitive fast.  Add to this the shoddy gunplay mechanics, poor balancing and horrific car handling, and you’ve got something that really feels like a chore to play.  While balancing the game and changing things like handling can be patched, the core game is just not enjoyable, and so it’s very difficult to recommend APB to anyone.  Just get Crackdown and a mate instead, you’ll have a much better time.

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Transformers: War for Cybertron takes place during the war on the planet before anyone left and crash landed on Earth. At this time, the war is at it’s most intense, and you will play through 2 distinct campaigns: one following the conquest of the Decepticons, and a second following the Autobots as they fight back against Megatron and his army. Each campaign is 5 missions long with the Autobots one following the Decepticons to complete the story. While this story is not particularly shocking or surprising, it is solid and carries the style of the original story quite nicely, complete with each mission behaving like an episode you play through to move the story along.

Gameplay, on the other hand, will shock a lot of people. Let’s be honest here… Transformers games for the most part completely and utterly suck. Until now, we have seen exactly ONE score a green score on Metacritic, and that one flew under a lot of radars because it was based on the much pooed by the fans Transformers: Armada. When a new Transformers game is announced, most people expect to see a game they will laugh at everyone who buys it for buying utter garbage. I myself learned to be that synical after the release of the game for the first Transformers movie, so I understand that people would expect this game suck the moment they see the name on there. But they could not be more wrong.

The game plays as a solid shooter before anything else. The robots move nicely and feel perfectly natural, even as you move between your 3 different modes: Run’n'gun, slow and aiming (you move slower, but you get much tighter aiming controls), and transformed into a vehicle. And it’s also insanely smooth to swap between these different styles, and you will many times before you finish a mission. And that doesn’t even count the melee attack which flows with equal smoothness or the powers you get to play with based on which transformer you choose to play as. Simply put the controls and the gameplay feels absolutely awesome.

It also doesn’t hurt this game that these campaigns can be played with 2 friends or random players, making for a really fun co-op experience…. and with a drop-in system as effective as Left4Dead 2 where you don’t know another player joined without paying attention, it’s another feature that is almost perfectly developed and implemented into the game. I will get into why almost later, but suffice it to say, this was a fun addition to an already great game!

The gameplay itself is just about matched in the audio department, to boot! From the transforming sound effect, to the solid sounding gunfire, to even the music, this game fits together ridiculously well and sounds fantastic. But the real audio star is the banter. Returning to his immortal roll of Optimus Prime is none other then Peter Cullen, making most of the Autobot campaign a treat to all fans of the old series instantly. But every level of this game is just loaded with the conversations of your allies, and so full of character that it can’t help but speak for the love the series was shown in making this game. You REALLY want to spend a little time to listen to some of these conversations.

Graphically, this game also just plain looks right. I wouldn’t give it special awards for technical advancement, but it captures the feel of a robotic planet very well, and looks very nice overall. Occasionally the game seems to pause for a moment, but that could well be my machine dealing with the PhysX engine, so I can not be sure you would run into the same issue. It was a small issue however, usually occurring for no more then a second when it did… I just felt like any bug that I could count on, it was worth mentioning in the review.

However, as so often happens, there are some gripes to pick up about this game… and I can sum them all up in one word… port. This game is a port directly from the console version and it is next to impossible to forget that. Right off the bat, you will notice the game does NOT allow you to change your key layout. If you play with a keyboard and mouse, you have exactly one set of keys to play with. It sucks that the system known to be customizable to the player has a version with NO CUSTOMIZABILITY, but thankfully the natural layout seems pretty nice, so you wont have to worry about this too much.

Another problem I found from this is online… you have absolutely zero ingame communication. In today’s gaming world, this is pretty damning, especially in team-based vs play when you have to work together. However, Steam already has a few groups setup for this game, and their chat system can cover for this game like anything built into the PS3′s and 360′s networking software would, so it’s not quite so bad. Still, this doesn’t help the random game option very much, or if you leave your co-op game open to others. Chances are the three of you will be playing silent…. still fun as hell, but if you have a plan, just hope your “friends” have the same plan.

To go with this, the Escalation mode is fun as hell, with or without chat, but it did prove why PC gamers have put up the “Dedicated Servers or we hate you” field. When I tried, basically I found that the game iether goes well for the host, or they rage quit and no one gets to finish. Granted, this is more a mark on some gamers rather then on the game, but it can ruin your experience for the night, so once again, if you can play with friends over steam, I highly recommend it.

In the end, this is definitely a game to pick up. If you are a fan of action games, you will have a lot to love from Transformers, more then enough to warrant the $40 price tag (I still don’t know what it was so low, but Im NOT complaining). If you are a fan of the Transformers, then pick this up. Don’t wait. Get on Steam now and grab this damn game now! Till all are one.

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The story begins after the events around the Vault, when our treasure hunters happen apon a very creepy looking forest… and the zombies waste no time showing up! After helping secure the almost abandoned town, you hear about how Dr. Ned (who is totally NOT Dr. Zed with a sweet fake mustache attached to his mask) has been trying to find a cure for the disease that is killing the people here, and turning them into zombies…. starting your next adventure.

Seeing as this game is actually a DLC expansion to Borderlands, you can expect more of the same, if not with a bit of a different theme. Rather then Mad Max, you are now playing a B-rate horror story, complete with all the cheese you could want. True to the formula of Borderlands, this game’s plot is not that deep and probably not really needed, but it is a great change in pace. There is one real twist, but it’s so obvious that you probably know it before you even get into the game for the first time.

Sound-wise this also matches the main game in quality, if not with a bit of a cheese-b-rate-horror spin. No, zombies don’t constantly say “brains” but they do basically make gurgling and puking noises quite often. The ECHO recorders you will find also add to the joy of cheese quite nicely, parodying all kinds of “spooky” cliches.. as well as taking one massive shot at Scooby Doo, much to my absolute entertainment (god I hate that mutt).

And as usual, the meat of the game comes in with the gameplay, which again, is pretty much more of the same… in this case, perhaps more so. The game will be played in the exact same way with the exact same characters, and be just as fun for it. The only real difference is that you are now fighting zombies for the most part… which means they are tough, slow moving, hurt like hell if they hit you, and headshots are your best friends. I would like to say this game is better with other players, but I didn’t get to play with as many as I did in the main game…. it seems that the expansion just wasn’t as popular as the main game. A real pity…

This game is also a lot shorter then the main game… and by a lot, I mean I think it took me about 5 hours to finish it, and for the first half, I was making a point to do every mission. This isn’t really a stay so much as a visit to creepy-ville done up in Borderland’s flair.

In the end, this is definitely an expansion to get if you loved what you played before. If you were just kinda interested, there isn’t enough here to be worth your money. But if this was a game you can’t wait to get more of, a $10 entrance fee to what amounts to a Borderlands haunted house (complete with the special brand of Borderlands cheese) is indeed a very small price to pay.

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The Freelance Police never seem to catch a break.  Having successfully seen off the nefarious General Skun’ka-pe and Professor Paperwaite in the previous two episodes of this season, Sam returns from an ill-timed toilet break to find that Max has had his brain literally stolen from his head.  This makes Sam extremely angry, and quite violent, and he goes around town slapping suspects around trying to find clues to the whereabouts of Max’s brain.

And so, the latest episode of the new Sam & Max season starts off very differently, with Sam travelling around town in a Noir-like style, complete with big neon signs as he drives the DeSoto and his inner monologue.  Sam uses fierce interrogation to try and crack three people who have clues that can help Sam discover who stole Max’s mind.  This involves you choosing to threaten them, accuse them of lying, or tell them to get on with telling their story.  Information you get from one character can be used to prove that another is lying and get more information.  Despite the fact that Sam has become very aggressive, this section doesn’t take itself that seriously, with Sam threatening a rat by simply flicking him in the face.

The story of this third season continues to be strong, and this episode in particular has a massive event that happens halfway through, turning the chapter completely on it’s head, and the ending will also be a major surprise that you don’t see coming.  As ever, the humour is superbly written and the chemistry between characters is great.  There are a lot of familiar faces in this episode, with a couple of new ones, such as Sal the security guard, and an unlucky German tourist who seems to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The puzzles you have to solve in this episode revolve around the same psychic powers as episode 1 mostly, namely the Teleportation, Rhinoplasty and Future Vision.  Telltale have been a bit more mindful with the future vision this time around.  Back in ‘The Penal Zone’, this power pretty much blatantly told you the solution to a problem.  This time around, things are a bit more vague.  You can still see what will happen in the future, but you will be left on your own to figure out how to get the result you see.  The teleportation takes a bit of a back seat this time with the puzzling.  And this time you can quickly walk between most of the destinations you can teleport to.  Meanwhile, the rhinoplasty ability is  a much bigger tool this time.  While it’s nice to use these powers again, it would have been nice to see something new.

As has become the theme this season, there are new locations to discover, as well as a couple of sort-of familiar places.  The museum is nice an atmospheric.  However, as with the tomb in the previous episode, the camera does change a bit too frequently, leaving you back tracking unintentionally.  But this is a minor niggle in what is otherwise a very strong addition to the series.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Three episodes in and ‘The Devil’s Playhouse’ is still looking like the strongest episode set that Telltale has put out.  A great story, fantastic humour, interesting locations and tricky, yet never frustrating, puzzles make this a great addition to the series and it everything is building towards a fantastic finale at the end.  This episode is a tad shorter than the previous episodes in the series, clocking in at around 3 hours or so.  But if you’ve already played and enjoyed the previous two episodes, then there’s no reason not to get this as well.

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Independent developer Team17 has been around for a good long while.  20 years, in fact.  They are probably best known these days for making the cracking Worms games.  For their latest venture, they’ve delved into their back catalogue and revived an IP that was quite revered back in the day, Alien Breed.

Alien Breed: Impact is an episodic arcade-style shooter which sees you playing the part of engineer Theodore J. Conrad, as the spaceship Leopold collides with a ghost ship, and a host of aliens board the crumbling ship, taking out most of the crew.  So you have to try and save Conrad and defeat the alien menace.

The game is played from a top down perspective.  Movement is controlled with the WASD keys, with aiming being controlled by moving a reticule around the screen with a mouse cursor, and firing handled by the left mouse button.  Also, moving the reticule around the edges of the screen will cause the camera to rotate, which can be a wee bit annoying when you accidentally move the mouse too far out to the edge and spin the camera by accident.

The first thing you notice is how polished and good looking the Leopold is.  You walk past the shattered remnants of walls, big piles of rubble and dead people, while checking their corpses to see if they’re carrying anything of value.  Flickering lights and random explosions add a sense of atmosphere, with all hell literally breaking loose all around you. The music is quite atmospheric as well, with not much in the way of sound effects.  Basically gunfire, explosions and big nasty aliens meeting their bullet-riddled doom.

The animation is also smooth and doesn’t slow down, even when the screen is filled with alien creatures.  The creatures themselves don’t look too varied, though.  In some cases, ‘new’ enemies are the same as previous enemies, just with different coloured skin and different attacks.  In addition, some areas do look a little poor in contrast to other, more shiny areas.  Also, I wasn’t a fan of the use of the comic strip style used to convey the story between levels.  Not that there really is much of a worthwhile story

The actual gunplay in the game is pretty good, accidental camera rotation not withstanding.  The shooting and killing of aliens is actually quite fun, although does get repetitive after a while. The guns themselves are pretty bog standard, though, basically consisting of things like pistols, lasers, flamethrowers and a couple of flavours of grenade.

A lot of objectives within the game will have you making your way to a specific area to activate or shut down some form of system within the bowels of the ship.  However, once you get to the system, you invariably find that something has gone wrong with it, requiring you to, more often than not, trudge back to a room you went past about 5 minutes earlier to activate a console that you couldn’t interact with before.  You’ll find yourself doing this rather a lot, which gets pretty damned frustrating after about the tenth time it’s happened.  Constantly doing the same thing over and over again does seem a lot longer than it actually is, and not in a good way.  This lack of surprise makes for a very predictable game.

The campaign itself consists of 5 levels in total, each taking somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour to complete, depending on how easily you find your way and how often you die.  It’s not particularly long, but it is episodic, so there will be more to come.  In addition to the campaign mode, there is a ‘free play’ mode, in which you can try to beat your scores on the campaign levels.  There is also a co-op mode as well, which consists of the same levels from the campaign.  Tackling it with a friend basically makes the game easier, although there will doubtless be some fighting over ammo, health packs and such.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Alien Breed: Impact is a fun game, of that there’s no doubt.  Running around, laying waste to hordes of nasty aliens is very satisfying.  The trouble is, it doesn’t really do anything particularly new or interesting, and gets very repetitive quite quickly.  The constant going back and to makes the game seem a lot longer than it actually is.  But Team17 have certainly created a pretty, atmospheric game.  If you yearn for some old school shooting games, then this is well worth playing.

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Left 4 Dead 2 is a First Person Shooter that will have you and up to three other friends playing the roll of a new set of survivors in the apocalyptic nightmare, where teamwork really is all that matters. Yes, you can play this single player and have the computer help you, but if you are doing that, you are kind of missing the point of this one. Just like the first game, you are supposed to go online and either play with friends, or at the very least open the game so others can join. They will, and you will all have a blast. You’re goal will be to travel through the landscapes between safe-houses and ultimately survive an end challenge and escape or be rescued… that’s right, this time others coming to get you is not the only way you can make it. Sometimes, you need to fuel a vehicle up so you can drive off yourself!

But this minor change is far from the only upgrade. The biggest and most immediate change is a connected story. Every “movie” happens in order, including the new addition, “The Passing” (which comes free with Left 4 Dead 2 on the PC). There is a complete story here told, which is a new thing instead of the individual and fairly unrelated episodes that populated the gameplay of Left 4 Dead. The story isn’t all that deep, but you get to know the characters a lot more this time.

Nor are the survivors the only characters with a change. We now have new zombies. In addition to the old tanks, smokers, boomers, witches, and hunters, we now have spitters (spits acid which stays for a while), jockeys (jumps on a survivor’s back and takes partial control over where they go, hurting them as they go), chargers (ramming SPEED!), and a whole new class called Uncommon Infected. This new class varies depending on the movie you are in, and have a special ability unique to them. For example, the Dark Carnival has clowns, which due to the bells they wear, attract the horde around them. These zombies make the game that much more interesting to play, as well as MUCH more fun to be the zombies in vs mode!

Control-wise, I don’t want to go too deep into it. As I’ve said many times, FPS controls in most PC games are pretty much perfected, and this game is no exception. The default layout puts all the controls easily in your reach, including the chat button so you can use your mic to reach out to your team without even slowing down to type. The ONLY improvement I could think of would be a button free chat, but that’s why Borderlands got special notice on this.

Graphically, this game has moved up, but not a lot. The Source Engine, is once again what the game runs on, and while it looks nice, the engine is starting to show it’s age. Not that this should be a huge marker against it… I mean this engine is over 5 years old and it still looks nice enough that unless you are fanatical about the hottest graphics, you have no reason to complain. Although this is the kind of game that it’s probably for the best anyway…. when the zombies come racing in with the full background effects used (Hard Rain is one of the coolest looking storm-sets I have ever seen in a game), it still runs at liquid smooth!

And of course sound-wise this game is fantastic. The music is perfect and placed exactly right to drum up the tension, and considering this game has NOTHING SCRIPTED, that is beyond an achievement. The zombies themselves make sounds that all sound like grunts, yet different enough to know what kind is making the noised BASED on the noise. A very nice balance, especially with the set of possible zombies you will face now.

When it comes to gameplay, this game screams exactly two words… team and work. Weather you are playing the survivor or zombie (and yes, you can play them in vs like the old game), you have to work together if you want to win. A lone wolf zombie rarely is effective, if at all since a good group of survivors will play like a team, and a lone survivor will die…. period. To drive the point home, the Director has been upgraded since the last game, and now even computer zombies can and will work together. To put it bluntly, this game is amazing, but if you are not a team player, all you will do is piss off yourself, piss off your teammates, and probably get booted from the game. This also means most Halo-style players have already passed this game off, so your odds of finding “that guy” are slim to none.

Overall, as long as people want to hunt zombies, this game should have a home on your hard drive. It’s fun. It’s fast, it’s paced by a sadistic computer program who wants to eat your brains, and Valve uses a mutation mode to give some new spin every weak, keeping the game far more fresh then most FPSs stay. Get it, play it, love it. Just don’t wander off on your own.

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So when the game went on sale for a weekend at Direct 2 Drive, I decided to pick it up, and about a month later, installed the game for the first time…. and right off, I can see I’ve been missing out.

In Borderlands, you play as one of 4 treasure hunters in a Mad-Max post-apocalyptic environment, and soon finds yourself on a treasure hunt for the legendary treasure known as “The Vault.” There really isn’t too much more detail to the overall plot, but this game doesn’t really need it. Rather the details are all in the environment, and bits of the world you pick up on when you take on jobs for the locals. To that end, the story and the world has a LOT of character.

Graphically, this game will more then please as well. Running on the Unreal 3 engine, Gearbox managed to avoid the “everything is wet and shiny” look this engine is famous for by taking a decided more cartoony look…. and I mean that literally. This game brings back the cell-shading tactics of a few years ago, and looks absolutely AMAZING while doing it, from the first Claptrap that greets you to the end conclusion. This game is both gorgeous artistically and technically… a rare feat in today’s world!

Soundwise, this game will immediately strike with it’s very limited soundtrack, choosing instead to go for ambiance and a subtle and not so noticeable music score more often then not and letting just the theme song (“No Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant) stand out strongly against the rest of the game. The result is a game that pulls you into the world all the more, although at the same time, the battles are left to do that on their own more or less. But with enough character to ooze out of the drives of your computer, this is far from a bad thing.

And of course we come to the meat of the game, how it plays. With little story, little music, a cartoon atmosphere, and a game that focuses on being multiplayer, the gameplay clearly becomes the star of the show, and man does this star shine. From the moment you log into Gamespy (you already have an account if you play any other PC game that runs on Gamespy networks), you are in for a treat. Imagine if Diablo and Halo had a baby that went to Halloween as MadMax and you pretty much have EXACTLY what this game is. You will have the leveling and skill trees of Diablo meshed in with a colorful post apocalyptic world and all meshed together in a first person-shooter for up to four players and boiled down to the fun of being a team taking on a major adventure. Hot-seat-joining is more then welcome!

The game even has fully supported and button free voice-chat! Making for a functionality to match playing online on XBL or PSN, but with higher quality sound (even if you won’t be talking privately… sorry, but voices are over the main speakers, not separated to a headset). This feature, according to friends I played with, has been recently added, though so all the more, be sure you patch this game before you play!

Not to say that this game is flawless, however. For reasons I will never understand, 2K Games did not include controls for Borderlands to detect what version it was running when you logged in and patch to the newest one on the spot. And anyone who says Gamespy games can’t do that are full of it, because the feature works just fine on games like Dawn of War. It was an oversite, which can cause some issues when playing with friends, as you will have to make sure everyone is playing the same version to get into a game. A blast from the past that, like having to type in IP addresses (which you thankfully do not have to do), would have been better left there.

Overall, this game has apparently improved immensely since it’s initial launch and has easily become one of the most fun multiplayer titles I have played in a long time. At it’s current price of $30, it’s a no brainer to anyone craving a game to join with some friends and play online,or to bond with new friends, as an open game WILL attract players in there to do the same thing you are… have fun.

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If you’re a veteran strategy game player, you may be familiar with something called ‘Defence of the Ancients’, a map that is associated with Warcraft III. DotA is a multiplater arena battle game where players battled to elminate the opposing factions base with a combination of a hero character they choose and NPCs that flow out of your own base.

Heroes of Newerth is heavily based on DotA. This game takes the form of a 3v3 or 5v5 battle to destroy the opposing teams monument. Along the way, there are 3 ‘lanes’, where the NPC fighters, known as ‘creeps’, charge towards the enemy. You need to eliminate the enemy defence towers along the way to the monument, with your army getting stronger and more varied the more structures you destroy.

There are a grand total of 64 heroes to choose from in the game, 32 for each team. These are further broken down into 3 classes, Intelligence, Agility and Strength. Each hero has different abilities, which makes each game of HoN a unique experience.

There is a levelling system in the game, which currently has a cap of 25 for each hero. You gain experience by killing enemy creatures and destroying enemy buildings. You gain significantly more experience by killing an enemy hero. When you level up, you can put upgrade points into one of 4 abilities that your hero has. Each ability can be upgraded 4 times, and once all your abilities have been upgraded, you put the points into your stats instead, so you can customise your hero more. In addition, you get gold as well as experience. This can be used in the shop at your base to buy armour and items to recover health and mana or give additional stat benefits to your hero.

Despite the age of the scenario on which this game is based, the graphics are pretty impressive, looking somewhat like you’d expect Warcraft III to look like if it was released now. The effects for spells and explosions are pretty and there is a good amount of detail.

The game is certainly a fun and interesting game, but the big factor that will put most people off the game is that the learning curve is horrendously steep. The in-game tutorial only teaches you the gameplay basics with one of the heroes, but then you’re left to your own devices. Jumping straight into a public match is ill-advised, as all but the most experienced DotA players will find themselves being eaten alive, and likely getting a torrent of abuse from their team mates as a result.

The community is very hardcore, and in some cases, quite elitist. There is good reason for this, as the developers S2 have started organising tournaments with cash prizes for the most successful squads. Despite the competitive nature of the game, however, there is help at hand for the newcomer as well. There are lots of videos and things to read around the forums and on other sites, and there are clans in the game dedicated to helping new players learn good tactics for the game. There is also the ability to set up and play in private matches that have been designed for people with low skill levels, although as you might expect, there are the odd ‘feeding traps’ that experienced players set up to steamroller the inexperienced, but these are few and far between in my experience.

Once you get over the steep learning curve, which does take time, the game becomes a lot more fun and you realised how well designed the mechanics of the game are. However, this is a game for people who are willing to take the time to learn it. If you’re looking at this from the perspective of a casual gamer, you should look elsewhere. The lack of ability to try the game out is a risk, but there will be set times in the future when people will be able to try the game for free.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Heroes of Newerth is a good looking, well designed and very deep arena battle game. The community isn’t always the most friendly and the time needed to truly appreciate the game is prohibitive to people who want to play casually. If you’re a newcomer to DotA games, then you might want to wait for a trial period before plonking down the cash for this, as it’s not for everyone. But if you’re an experienced player who wants the challenge to compete for actual prizes as well as pride, then it’s a no brainer.

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