giant bomb tiny zine 1 beta

7/29/2019 Giant Bomb Tiny Zine 1 Beta

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BETAVERS

ION


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TINY

ZINE


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Lang ZoneIm typically not someone who gets drawnup in public displays o emotion. Im gener-ally more o the deal with it quietly whiledrinking sort, but so ar that hasnt really

worked out.

A lot has already been written and said

about Ryan, so Ill just get right to it and lay

out the two thoughts I cant escape rom:

Thing 1: When I rst started regularly in-

teracing with the press I was horrible at it (as

I type this I can hear Ryan saying Waassss

horrible?). I was sti, nervous, and utterly

dull. Id get done with an interview, listen to it,

and be completely displeased with how I rep-

resented mysel and my company. But whatoption did I have? I couldnt actually just be

me, right? Id say something really dumb and

make people hate me or the company, and I

couldnt risk that. Only a crazy person would

do such a thing.

Then one day I had a thought: Hey, dum-

my, all that stu youre terried o, well Ryan

does that all the time and or the most part

people love that dude. Ater several mental

attempts at derailing this logic, I decided tobe sincere and not soten my personality in

public. In essence I decided to be more like

Ryan. I decided to be genuine in what I say

and how I say it. I decided to let people get to

know me. I nothing else Im happier with how

the interviews turn out now. Thanks, Ryan.

Thing 2: The military has a term or things

that enhance the ability o their troops in the

eld, they call these things orce multipli-

ers. A orce multiplier can be anythinga

technology, a skill set, a weather condition

so long as it makes your ghting orce more

eective than your opponent. An example

would be elevation in a ranged skirmish. The

geographic eatures are a orce multiplier or

the elevated units.

Ryan, and indeed the whole Giant Bomb

crew, are Friend Multipliers. I met so many

awesome people through them, people I con-

sider dear riends, that I wouldnt have met

otherwise. Ryan and the Giant Bomb guysaccepting me as a riend was a good enough

credentials check or the rest o their crew to

accept me with open arms. So now Ive got

a lot more awesome riends. Thanks, Ryan.

Its hard to praise Ryan in a bubble. So

much o what made Ryan, Ryan was the

way he is woven into the abric o what Giant

Bomb is. Its almost impossible to separate

his contributions rom those o Je, Brad,

Patrick, Vinny, or Drew. Because o this a loto the thanks or Thing 1 and Thing 2 go to

those guys as well. Im not thanking them

now, though, because net time I see them

those motheruckers are getting the big-

gest hugs o their goddamned lives.

Dave Lang

Editor in ChiefOriginally Posted July 9th, 2013


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Ask JeffAnonymous asked: Should someone make MUGENcharacter specically or Salty Bet that has a super thatjust plays a video o a twitch ad to see i it tricks people

and pisses them o?

This is my new avorite idea or anything ever.

disemodied-dave asked: On the subject o the Last

o Us. From everything Ive seen or heard it doesnt re-

ally seem to live up to its hype. Ive been watching an

LP and the story beats are incredibly predictable. The

gameplay doesnt look too dierent rom any other 3rd

person shooter with stealth stu. Do you think that this

is going to be another game thats a critical success at

release but will be torn to pieces months down the line

like Bioshock Innite?

Ive been watching videos o this interactive epe-

rience and I dont think its all that!

Anonymous asked: You seriously saved me rom a lie

o depression by doing what youre doing. Thank you

and keep doing.

I will keep doing i you keep doing.

awcko asked: BOTTOM TEN VIDEO GAMES OF ALL

TIME GO

PORK TIME 2000

MAVIS BEACON TEACHES MURDER

RED BARK

DOG TRACK SIMULATOR 98

TUSCAN BEATDOWN FEATURING THE

B.O.O.Y.A. TRIBE

TREME: THE VIDEO GAME

SOAP 2

SIT MAN

VALOR DAYS: PURPLE HEART EDITION

NIGHTS INTO DREAMS

ocustestingorrestarters asked: Have you ever

thought o becoming/been a vegetarian?

Yeah, spending the rest o my lie eating ake meat

and trying to convince everyone around me that its

just as good sounds like a real scream.

impulse422 asked: You have any thoughts about the

spat between Phil Fish/Jonathan Blow and Marcus

Beer o GameTrailers? Beyond the specic characters

in play, it seems like it raises questions about the ap-

propriateness o certain kinds o games media com-

mentary, and the responsibility developers might hold

in industry conversation based on past discussion.

Glad to see Twitter is continuing to turn the video

game industry into one giant high school.

DID YOU HEAR WHAT SO AND SO SAID ABOUT

THAT OTHER GUY?

YEAH, BUT HE ONLY SAID THAT BECAUSE HES

FRIENDS WITH THE GUY THAT DUDE HAS BEEN

TALKING TRASH ABOUT FOR THE LAST FEW

MONTHS!

YEAH, BUT DOESNT THAT GUY SORT OF DE-

SERVE IT?

THATS NOT THE POINT, THE POINT IS WE LOVE

DRAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

m1st3rv asked: I noticed that Luigis mansion DarkMoon is just called Luigis mansion 2 here in the UK.

Is there any reason in the Internet age to have the

same game released with a dierent name in dierent

regions? Unless it translates into something oensive

doesnt it just create conusion?

In the UK Dark Moon is slang or a street drug that

is taken rectally, so they had to change it.

Questions from blog.jeffgerstmann.net!


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Reviews


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Drained. Tired. Ready or a drink. These

were my eelings as the credits rolled

on Naughty Dogs latest. The Last o

Us is a story about hope in a hopeless world,

and the lengths well go to or those we love.

Who is good? Who is bad? Do such distinc-

tions matter in a world gone crazy? The Lasto Us is a bold work, especially or a devel-

oper recently known or strapping us into cin-

ematic roller coasters. The Last o Us is not

un, at least not in the traditional sense, and

thats exactly why its so interesting.

The Last o Us is Naughty Dogs take on

the zombie apocalypse. Here, the disease is

ungal. Breathe in nearby spores, and youll

turn. I youre bitten or scratched by an in-

ected? Same ate. Its not clear where the

inection came rom, but like The Walking

Dead and Metro 2033 beore it, The Last o

Us isnt concerned with exploring why the

apocalypse came to be, but what happens in

the days ater. Humanity ollowed a amiliar

playbook when the crisis broke out. Sections

o society have holed themselves up in mili-tary cities where citizens deal in ration tick-

ets. The inection is still present, and theres

no prospect o change. Were quickly intro-

duced to Joel, who led a stressul but nor-

mal lie with his daughter and brother beore

all hell broke loose. Twenty years later, Joels

changed. Hes survived, but its taken a toll on

him. Joels partnered with Tess, a recracker

wholl just as quickly bust your lip as help

you across the street. The two have similar


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values, so they get along. A series o events

put them in charge o Ellie, a young girl that

needs to be transported to the Firefies, a mi-

litia group trying to establish order.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves remains one

o this generations most celebrated games.

Bombastic, sarcastic, over-the-top, un. Itwas Naughty Dogs legacy o technological

prowess with a character o matched ambi-

tion. Uncharted also popularized the term

ludonarrative dissonance, wherein the char-

acter portrayed in cutscenes doesnt match

the one players control. Nathan Drake is an

aloo everyman thats easy to relate to, a man

one suspects doesnt take killing a man or

granted. Yet, over the course o three games,

Drake leaves thousands o bodies in his

wake, and never bats an eye. We know why

this disconnect exists: in service o un. The

gunplay in Uncharted was enjoyable, and

ghting o waves o enemies was, besides

platorming, the core gameplay. The series

was also amous or its setpieces, orches-

trations o madness and destruction on an

unparalleled scale. You were oten in control

o these moments, and i you happened tomess up a simple jump, the sequence started

over. A crumbling bridge is tense and exciting

the rst or second time around, not not nearly

as much when playing it a tenth time.

The Last o Us rejects all o this. The Last

o Us plays like Naughty Dog internalized the

biggest design criticisms leveled against its

last ranchise and set out to make the anti-

Uncharted. While The Last o Us retains

Naughty Dogs signature ability to push hard-

ware urther than anyone elsea PlayStation

3 game has never looked betterit gives the

player ar more agency during the games

biggest moments, ratchets down the overall

body count by a signicant degree, and tries

to make each kill worth a damn.

The developers achieve this by attaching

weight and consequence to your actions.

Early on, its a brutal, dicult game. The more

powerul inected have one-hit kills that arent

counterable until later, and a single pistol shot

will lop o one-third o your health. Health

does not regenerate in The Last o Us, and

one must crat or collect new medical packsthat are slowly applied in real-time beore re-

gaining any vigor. Its possible to clear sec-

tions o every threat, but thats a great way to

wind up with no ammunition, little health, and

not much else to show or it. In many situa-

tions, the best option is to run away. (Its pos-

sible to simply restart encounters, but I ound

this to quickly diminish the threat o being

caught and having to improvise.) The Last

o Us asks players to ght their usual com-

pulsions when it comes to playing a video

game ocused on enemy conrontation, and

make on-the-fy judgement calls that dont

have clear risks or rewards when you initially

take them. I you worry about checking every

room and looking around every corner, have

un dying over and over again. Then again,

some o the games best crating pieces,

ammo, and other collectibles are hidden inthose places. Is it worth the risk? Your call.

By holding down L2, Joel crouches to

the foor and uses sound to gain a sense o

whats around him, highlighted in black-and-

white. Its not a supernatural ability, but a

visual extension o Joels 20 years o hard-

ened experience. Joels perception changes

as the enemies move, and i an enemy hasnt

yet made a sound, youll have to place them

in sight or prod them. Bricks and bottles are

scattered around, and youll use them oten,

as the inected and humans react to sound

(sometimes to an exaggerated, unbelievable

eect). Joel can and must use distractions

to make quiet killing easierplayers choose

between a loud choke-out or shivvingor to

sneak along. The same objects are useul on


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the oensive, as well. In one sequence, a build-

ing with six or seven enemies was too much or

me to take on without using up most o my avail-

able pistol ammunition. One alse move during

a stealth kill later and everyone was alerted.

Noticing the exit to my let, I ran. The exit itsel

was guarded by a beey dude with a shotgun,though, and I tossed a brick at his ace to stun

him. This allowed me to run by, head around the

corner, and avoid unnecessary combat with a

whole room ull o bad guys. Did I miss an op-

portunity to loot a sae or collect extra materials

to upgrade my bat or build a bomb? Probably.

But I also came out alive.

Staying alive is a balancing act that requires

more than a steady aim and calculated move-

ment. Crating plays a huge role, one that comes

with its own checks and balances. Players have

a small amount o cratable items that unlock

over the course o the gamemolotov cocktails,

health kits, smoke bombs, melee upgrades, oth-

ersbut each requires multiple materials, and

making one item will inevitably mean you can-

not build another. Are you condent youll make

it through the next section without a scratch? Is

it more important to kill the our inected block-ing the way with a molotov cocktail? Like heal-

ing, crating takes time, which is precious in The

Last o Us. Once the bullets start fying or the

inected start chasing, there are rarely moments

to sit down, open your backpack, and wait or a

bar to ll, signiying the creation o a new item.

Crating speed, healing speed, and other tech-

niques can be upgraded by collecting medicine

during the game, but nothing will make you all-

powerul. Death is always around the corner.

Ellie is a key component during much o the

game, as well. Shes not just a character you

talk to, but someone who takes part in the ac-

tion. This would raise red fags in most games.

Thankully, it works neshes helpul. In ad-

dition to Ellie, there will be other characters

ollowing you around, shooting enemies, and


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hiding behind desks. They wont get in your way,

and while its a little weird when enemies dont

notice these characters walking right in ront o

them, thats preerable to having them constant-

ly messing up your approach. The characters

are not in your control, but theyre also useul

and resourceul.At times, The Last o Us eels like a classic

survival horror game, and it prompted certain

personal instincts to kick in. In games like this,

Ill hoard everything, use very little, and nd my-

sel at the end o the game with a glut o items,

weapons, and other stu that the game never

orced me into a position o using, so I never did.

I the game isnt going to back me into a wall

and orce the use o precious cargo, Im going to

be cautious and make sure Im stocked up. The

Last o Us deeply constrains the player in the

early hours, but i youre like me, that no longer

becomes an issue in the latter hal o the game.

Joel is capable o holding more than hal-a-doz-

en weapons at once, and while the game does

an admirable job o ammo limiting certain weap-

ons or long stretches o the game, I eventual-

ly hit a point where I wasnt thinking about the

weapon I was wielding. The games early hoursare the most harrowing, and its why Id recom-

mend players interested in a rougher experience

consider dialing up the diculty beore diving in.

Maybe its the nature o a lengthy video game,

but despite its restraint, the bodies start to stack

up in The Last o Us. Eventually, the violence is

no longer appalling, the kills no longer shock-

ing. Its partly due to Naughty Dog indulging in

Uncharted-like setpieces that transorm enemies

into shooting galleries. One has dozens o guys

swarming a sniper spot, and youre orced to kill

them in a clinical and detached ashion at odds

with whats come beore it. And you have un-

limited ammo. Its a moment engineered to eel

indulgent, as the player has been slowly sneak-

ing through a town to eliminate a sniper thats

been a total jerk, but it doesnt work. When the


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last enemy had hit the ground, I was rolling

my eyes instead o being relieved. But play-

ers may react to these moments dierently,

largely ueled by the agency Naughty Dog

gives them in determining the kind o surviv-

alist Joel is.

The emotions are heightened by the be-lievable acting happening in-game and out.

The perormance capture techniques that

made Drake, Sully, and riends come alive

in Uncharted are put to terric use in here,

with Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson both

ully committing to their roles as Joel and

Ellie. Contrary to most games, Joel is not

the player surrogateEllie is. You empathize

with her, and she says what the player is

thinking. When she tells Joel to uck o, you

want to give her a high-ve. (At one point,

you actually can press triangle and give Ellie

a high-ve!) Ellie can hold her own. Joels

perspective has been warped, and yet this is

the guy you play ashe asshole. You dont

choose how Joel acts. Naturally, theres much

more to Joel thats explored as the story goes

alongthe man has his reasons or being

bitterand some o the best moments dont

even happen in the cut-scenes. Every onceand a while, Ellie (or another character) will

have an icon appear above their head, sug-

gesting an optional piece o dialogue. Oten,

these moments occur while Ellie is staring at

a painting, poster, or another piece o scen-

ery. Joel lived or years beore the world im-

ploded, while Ellie only knows chaos. These

moments inorm the larger ction o The Last

o Us, and bond Joel, Elile, and the player.

I you choose to ignore these moments, Ellie

comments on your decision to ignore her. Its

a nice touch, and the interactions evolve as

the game goes on. Early in the game, Ellie


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Insomniacs rst multiplatorm game in its

post-Sony era comes in the orm o Fuse,

which used to be Overstrike, which used to

be more humorous and stylized than the run-

o-the-mill gritty, uture-tech shooter it ulti-

mately became. Fuses bland art design and

overall lack o personality are disappointingin the context o that initial reveal trailer, but

under the hood its still a generally well made

third-person shooter with a clear emphasis

on co-op and the imaginative weapons In-

somniac is so good at dreaming up. But there

are too ew o those weapons, and a ew too

many irksome issues, to lit Fuse signicant-

ly above the many, many other cover-based

shooters its competing with.

The game casts you in the role o the

our smartmouthed mercenary agents o

Overstrike 9, who trot around the globe, hid-

ing behind crates and shooting at aceless ar-

mored bad guys to satisy the whims o their

paying clients. In this case, youre hot on the

trail o a or-prot terrorist outt called Raven,

whos in possession o the titular super-ele-

ment, one o those pesky substances that

behaves in whatever ways the plotor thecharacters unconventional weaponsneed

it to. Each o the characters have a single ex-

otic Xenotech weapon taped to their arm.

Group leader Dalton gets a magshield that

you activate with the let trigger, which stops

bullets and lets teammates shoot through it

or extra damage. Naya has a warp rife that

lets you paint multiple targets and then set

them all o in a really satisying chain explo-

sion. Jacob has the most broadly eective

weapon with a crossbow that shoots a sort

o energy dart that vaporizes enemies and

is great or headshots. And redheaded Izzy

has a rapid-re rife that crystalizes enemies

or a ew seconds when you pour shots into

them, ater which you can easily shatter them

to pieces. These guys make limp little jabs

at each other as the missions progress, but

theres not a lot o lie in the banter nor the

storyline itsel, the twists o which are easy to

see coming a mile away.

Youre ree to play Fuse by yoursel, during

which you can quickly swap between charac-

ters to utilize their unique weapons and fankgroups o enemies. For the rst couple o

missions, setting up warp chains or dropping

a magshield to take cover behind is pretty in-

teresting, but since each character is stuck

with the same primary Xenotech weapon

the entire game, the novelty wears o aster

than it should. Each agent has a skill tree that

you can put points into as you level upand

the way experience is doled out encourages

you to use your weapons creatively, so you

level asterbut the skill trees dont oer a

meaningul level o customization. Instead,

they really only oer you the choice between

crit eects on your Xenotech weapons or in-

creased damage on your regular ones, and

aside rom a ew weapon-specic secondary

abilities, each tree merely gives the same ge-

neric abilities to each agent.

Certain aspects o playing alone turn outto be irritatingly cumbersome. Most o the

time, switching to another character puts you

in a compromised position where youre out

o range o the action, standing straight up

in the middle o a reght, or acing a wall

while a bunch o guys are shooting you in the

back. The AI characters will occasionally get

in your way, jump onto a turret youre trying

to use, or ail to revive you when youre down.

Distributing skill points requires you to manu-

ally switch to the character in question, dig

through the layers o menus to get to the skill

tree, then back all the way out to the action

and perorm the whole process over again.

Its a case o a ew little things that add up to

a big annoyance ater a while.

Worse than those quirks, I just ended up


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eeling bored by the stretches o the cam-

paign that I played through by mysel. Aside

rom a ew rudimentary climbing sequences,the entire game is one long linear sequence

o large combat-oriented rooms laid out with

numerous cover points and walkways. Most

encounters give you a chance to knock out

a stealth kill or two beore the bullets start

fying, but the only real choice you have is

which cover or walkway you want to return

re rom, and what kind o gun you want to

do it with. Theres so little to the storyline and

such a lackluster attempt at humor on the

characters part, the endless shooting at en-

emies who usually sponge a ton o damage

started to wear thin or me about two mis-

sions beore the game was over.

Fuse is substantially more entertaining with

other people. Even though you dont have the

reedom to switch around as much and enjoy

all the characters specic weaponry, playing

with thinking human allies lets you actually

set up intelligent combos and maneuvers thatyou cant pull o with the AI guys (though,

aside rom going or headshots with Jacobs

crossbow, youre really just dumping bullets

into enemies with the same old guns, some-

times through Daltons shield). Many o the

characters unlockable secondary abilities

become more satisying to use in co-op as

well. For instance, Izzy gets a throwable heal-

ing beacon that can resurrect downed allies.

Playing solo, I tended to just throw that thing

at my eet when the ghting got intense, but

playing the tougher last couple o missions

with riends, I got to eel like I was taking on

a useul healing role by aiming the beacon at

teammates who were down so I could bring

them back remotely and get back to the

ghting. Playing with a team actually lets you


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fank enemies, which is good since what eels

like roughly hal o Fuses enemiesrom riot

shield-equipped inantry to big hulking ro-bot suits with vulnerable uel tanks on their

backsneed to be shot rom behind. Solo,

its hard to get those enemies to ace any-

one but the character youre playing, but in

co-op you can actually sort o kite enemies

around and draw their ire (or aggro, i you

like) so others can get back there and do

maximum damage.

Playing with riends was so much more

entertaining or me that Id go as ar as to

say its the only way you should play the Fuse

campaign. I actually ound three players to

be a nice sweet spot, since you get plenty o

intelligent tactical potential but can still swap

around a bit i you need to take on a dier-

ent role or some reason. Co-op doesnt ully

alleviate the tedium that sets in as you dump

round ater round into the especially resilient

enemies later in the game, but its a heck o alot more interesting than plowing through it all

alone. I you want more Fuse aterward, you

can replay individual chapters to keep build-

ing up your agents. I didnt nish any one

characters skill tree by the end o the story

mode, and only bought three o the the incred-

ibly expensive team perks that increase your

experience intake, give you more time beore

bleeding out, and so on. So theres still plenty

o post-game leveling-up to do, i thats your

thing. The most rigorous ghting is to be had

in Echelon, a wave-based survival mode with

rotating objectives that you certainly want

our good players or i youre going to tackle

it seriously. Bringing leveled-up charactersinto this mode is a must, and youll earn a

bunch more experience or playing it. But

Echelon is tough enough that it also exposes

some o the most annoying things about the

games enemies, like the cloaked ones that

are hard to see in a reght and will disable

you the second they touch you.

Fuses gameplay has some good ideas,

but they dont carry enough weight in whats

otherwise a shooter campaign the like o

which youve almost certainly seen beore.

And its hard not to think back to the exciting

rst trailer rom two years ago, since many o

the shipping games most outlandish aspects

would have been more at home in that highly

stylized, wisecracking version that never got

made. Fighting in an undersea base and a

space station? An exotic Asian assassin who

turns out to be someones ex-girlriend? Asneering Russian who shoots himsel up with

Fuse and grows 10 stories tall? It eels like

the o-the-wall good ideas Insomniac had

or that sillier game have survived, but those

ideas are a bit uncomortably at odds with

the serious look and tone o the game as it is

now. Fuse plays pretty well, but with smooth-

er execution and a more cohesive identity,

it would have an easier time standing out in

a genre that, as this generation o consoles

comes to a close, is wearing out its welcome

more and more. BRAD SHOEMAKER

Insomniacs trademark creative weaponry gives a little etra

oomph to Fuses otherwise by-the-numbers third-person shooting.


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How do you surprise someone thats

expecting a surprise? I went into Bio-

Shock Innite wondering i Irrational

was content to simply all back on ormula,

swapping out city beneath the sea or a city

above the clouds, the Big Daddy or Song-

bird, and so on. Instead, Innite cleverlypreys on those expectations right out o the

gate. It eeds you just enough amiliar mate-

rial and gameplay to make it all t into what

you think the word BioShock implies, but it

strikes out in some really exciting directions,

too. The combat is nicely varied and the story

moves along at a pace that gives you plenty

o things to piece together on your own as

you get closer and closer to discover whats

really going on in Columbia.

Columbia is a foating city ruled by a man

named Comstock, more commonly known

as the Prophet, and its intended inhabit-

ants worship Americas ounding athers as i

they were gods themselves. The game opens

in 1912 with the player controlling a man

named Booker DeWitta man with debts

and regrets who agrees to hunt down a girl

who happens to live in this mysterious city.One rough ride in the sky later and DeWitt is

loose in Comstocks decaying utopia on the

hunt or Elizabeth.

Though youre not certain why youre

trying to nd her, it quickly becomes clear

that shes a central gure in many o the

strange things happening around Columbia.

These things take the orm o tears in real-

ity, small openings to... something, some-

time, or somewhere else. Most o the more

meaningul tears are utilized to urther the

games linear story in some airly mindbend-

ing ways. This is one o the ways that Innite

distinguished itsel rom its predecessor.

Rather than waiting or one big moment to

twist and pull the rug out rom underneath

you, this game starts showing you things


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theyre not my thing here, either, but the abili-

ties are about as useul as they were in the

original BioShock.

Though there are optional treasures and

audio logs to nd in various corners and hall-

ways, Innite is a linear game, and you can

tap up on the D pad at any time to make an

arrow appear and guide you in the right di-

rection. The games great about pacing its

combat sequences and spreading things out,

giving you plenty o time to explore your well-detailed surroundings between gunghts. I

ound mysel mostly relying on the electric-

ity power to stun a chain o enemies long

enough to shoot them all in the head with a

carbine or machine gun.

Elizabeth is with you or much o the game,

but an on-screen bit o text makes it pretty

clear that Innite isnt one big escort mission

and that she can take care o hersel. Thats

only partially true, really. Shell still run into

trouble, but only when the story demands it.

The rest o the time, enemies just seem to

ignore her completely. During combat, shell

occasionally shout out to let you know that

shes ound some salts, health, or ammo. You

can tap a button to get her to toss the goods

over. Out o combat, shell occasionally nd

and toss you some money. The way the AI

appears to be blind to Elizabeths presenceis one o the games ew disconnects, though

at least you dont have to constantly rescue

her rom trouble.

Innites audio is outstanding. The voice

cast has turned in a remarkable set o peror-

mances, and the dialogue theyre reading is

well-written and believable. The music is also

a top-notch collection o material perormed


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in a period-appropriate way. Hearing a bar-

bershop quartet perormance o the Beach

Boys God Only Knows also served as one

o the early clues that Columbia is a strange

place, indeed. Theres a lot to like about the

way Innite looks, especially on the PC, but

Ill sum it up by saying that the emotional

points o this story would all completely fat

i Elizabeths ace hadnt been as animated

as it is. Those animations do more to sell the

story than anything else.Youll see a lot o BioShock in Innite, but

even i you try to make direct comparisons

between the two, its clear that Innite is a ar

better game than its predecessor. It moves at

a better pace, with more meaningul and more

playable big encounters than BioShock. But

it still carries that sense o exploration and

the eeling o dread that comes with knowing

that everything is just continuing to unravel

beore your very eyes. Watching Columbia

all while attempting to take Elizabeth away

rom the foating city is a antastic way tospend a ew days. JEFF GERSTMANN


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Memory can be a depressing thing.

Oten some o our ondest memo-

ries end up lost to the ravages o

time, while some o our most traumatic linger

endlessly, like a punishment. So, what i you

could excise those memories? Or input new

ones? What i you could experience the lieo another through their own past experienc-

es? Its a dangerous-sounding and ascinat-

ing premise, one that Remember Me, a new

third-person action game rom rst-time stu-

dio Dontnod, almost manages to success-

ully realize.

Almost.

Where it alters is unortunately where so

many other thoughtully written games tend

to: its mechanics. Remember Me is a bet-

ter story than a game, a mixture o Philip K.

Dick-style plotting and Luc Bessons sci-

aesthetics grated onto an initially nity, but

ultimately repetitive gameplay design. There

are a ew characters here worth caring about,

a story that twists itsel eectively around the

troubled morality o orever trying to eraseones own painul history, and a visual palette

thats absolutely gorgeous. But in-between

the margins o Remember Mes best elements

are sluggish combat, brainless traversal, and

a ractured sense o progression and pur-

pose. This is a game o many highs and lows,

with little middle ground to speak o.

Fortunately, one o the highs is the char-

acter you spend the most time with. Nilin is

a memory hunter ensconced in the seedy

underbelly o Neo-Paris civil war. When the

game opens, Nilins memory is in the process

o being wiped clean by nearious scientists

o a corporation that more or less runs the

whole show. The companys Sensen technol-

ogy is ubiquitous in Neo-Paris, with all walks

o lie sporting implants that allow them to

access others memories and dump un-

wanted ones. Unortunately, it can also grant

access to those with Nilins special skills,

who might be looking to play around inside

o your mind.

Though Nilin has lost much o her mem-

ory at the outset, a strange voice appearsand helps guide her out o the prison shes

mysteriously ound hersel in. The helper, an

omnipresent Errorist leader named Edge,

tells Nilin bit-by-bit who she is, what shes a

part o, and what her mission once was. Its a

airly typical case o rebellious anti-corporate

terrorists looking to bring down Big Memory,

but how that struggle is ramed against the

slowly returning memories o Nilin is where

Remember Me most denitively succeeds.

Remember Me is deliberate in its meting

out o inormation, introducing you to other

characters o varying degrees o villainy over

the course o its roughly eight-hour adven-

ture, and then proceeding to give you a bit

o insight into how they came to be what

they are. The characters the script both-

ers to fesh out are oten strong presences

throughout the game. However, a ew toomany characters are tossed into the mix or

brie periods, only to be tossed aside later

with nothing worthwhile learned about them.

I mention this only because the story is at its

best when Nilin is allowed to dig deep into

these characters motivations. Some o the

less-interesting characters, like the miserable

warden o the new La Bastille prison, are sim-

ply psychotic and horrible. Others, like the

husband and wie duo that run the corpora-

tion, have more nuanced reasoning or how

they came to be so powerul, so merciless,

and so deeply destructive.

These memories are presented to Nilin in

separate gameplay sections, which task you

with remixing dening memories in their lives.

Theres not much to it, in that you essentially


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just rewind the memory until you nd exploit-

able glitches, which you can then use to com-

pletely alter the scope o whats happened.

Though it amounts to little more than a bit o

extra button-pressing, the consequences o

those changes become immediately appar-

ent, and result in some o the more thoughtul

storytelling moments in the game.

Unortunately, not enough is done with

these memory remixing sections to make

them more than an occasionally meaningul

distraction. The rest o the time, youre punch-

ing and jumping your way through the variousslums, skyscrapers, and scientic acilities o

Neo-Paris, taking on enemy soldiers, robots,

and Leapers. Leapers are essentially memory

junkies, grotesquely deormed dregs o this

uturistic society that can scarcely hold a co-

herent thought, and lash out at anyone not

similarly deormed. The Leapers are a sad,

tragic enemy that nonetheless never evolve

into a more consistent threat than anyone

else in the game. They, like the soldiers un-

der the companys employ, simply lash out at

Nilin every time you enter a battle arena, and

proceed to die at your hand.

Were the combat better, or at least better-

paced, ghting them might have been a more

engaging experience. As it stands, hand-

to-hand ghting is largely Remember Mes

weakest link, a hodgepodge o basic button-

mashing combos made ar more complex by

a system that requires precision and trial-

and-error to be most eective. Each move

Nilin learns can be manually placed in the

structure o a larger combo. There are our

distinct attack varieties, each which does

something a bit dierent, bonus-wise. Some

attacks help restore health, while others re-

duce the cooldown time on Nilins special

moves, which can range rom intense blasts

o memory disrupting energy, to circuit-

scrambling attacks that bring robotic ene-mies over to your side.

Its a nice idea, but it alters in execution.

Each hit requires a airly precise timing to

continue to the combo string, and the volume

o enemies you oten ace simply doesnt al-

low or much precision in your ghting at all.

Nilins attack animations also have a tendency

to run a bit long, which makes parsing out the

combo timing a real pain early on. Eventually

youll get the hang o it, but it never becomes

much un to ght, no matter how tricky the

enemies eventually get.

The rest o the game is peppered with

traversal puzzles and the occasional ac-

tual riddle to be solved. These suer rom a

similar problem o repetition to the combat,

where you simply nd yoursel darting rom

Remember Me is an elegant premise eecuted problematically.


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The trouble with stealth games, or me

anyway, is all that stealthiness. Which

isnt to say that stealth in games cant

be an enjoyable actor, but too oten the

stealth genre deals in such rigid requirements

o absolute precision in movement and ex-

ecution that it kills a lot o the un or play-ers who arent invested in becoming the most

skilled thieves, ninjas, or special operatives

out there. Sometimes, you dont necessarily

want to lose every single time a guard spots

you. Sometimes, you just want a little more

chaos in your stealth gameplay, you know?

I you share my sensibilities, theres a good

chance youll enjoy Pocketwatch Games

Monaco: Whats Yours Is Mine quite a bit. Indevelopment or something like our years

now, Monaco has evolved rom its early

showings as an intriguing indie curiosity into

a ull-fedged adventure, replete with numer-

ous characters, skills, and challenging stages

to master. Its especially strong in coopera-

tive multiplayer, where up to our players can

plan, execute, and in some cases, rantically

try to salvage elaborate heists that oten have

a tendency to go haywire, albeit oten in themost enjoyable ways possible.

There are eight characters to choose

rom in Monaco. Fourthe Locksmith, the

Cleaner, the Lookout, and the Pickpocket

are available right at the beginning o the

game. Over time, youll also unlock the

Mole, the Gentleman, the Redhead, and

the Hacker. Each o these characters has a

unique skill that makes them vital or specic

tasks throughout the story. The Locksmith,or instance, can push through locked doors

twice as quickly as any other character; the

Hacker can disable security systems by up-

loading viruses through any power outlet;

the Gentleman can disguise himsel or a set

amount o time; and the Cleaner can chlo-

roorm any in-game enemy he manages to

sneak up on.

I youre playing alone, you can just pick

rom any one o these characters once theyre

unlocked. Every stage in Monaco can be

beaten with any character, but some levels

are denitely designed with certain abilities in

mind, and some characters are just balanced

better than others. The Mole, or instance,

can dig through walls, and especially in the

rst hal o the game, is exceptionally useul.

Conversely, the Pickpocket, despite having a

monkey that collects coins or him, is regret-tably pretty useless in most key situations.

The primary goals o Monacos many un-

savory characters evolve over time, but


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objectively speaking, pretty much everything

revolves around you getting into a heav-

ily guarded/booby trapped area, stealing

something, and getting back out. Cops, ci-

vilians, guard dogs, cameras, laser barriers,

computer-locked doors, and just about every

other manner o security must be navigatedsuccessully in order to survive a mission.

In addition to your primary goal, youll also

be trying to collect the many coins that have

been scattered throughout each stage, all

while generally trying to avoid detection.

The thing is, you wont avoid detection

orever. While its distinctly possible that

some obsessive players may be able to

sneak through whole levels o Monaco with-

out ever spooking a guard or being spotted

on a camera, you really dont have to do this

to succeed. When playing solo, getting de-

tected really only means that you need to

bolt to a nearby hiding spot, either in another

room, or in an air duct, or even inside a near-

by shrub. Enemies arent terribly thorough

in their searches, so i youre ar enough out

o their sight line and arent making noise,

theyll usually just wander o, and youregood to go.

Multiplayer requires a bit more strategy,

given that you could have up to our people

all wandering around dierent areas o the

environment. It pays to have a plan, which is

to say that it pays to spend time learning the

layouts o the dierent stages, and have cer-

tain characters attack certain areas or maxi-

mum coin collection and minimum collateral

damage. That, o course, doesnt alwaysgo according to plan. In most games, see-

ing your best laid plans go to pot is usually a

source o rustration. However, at least in the

early goings, Monacos levels are generally

bite-sized enough to avoid orcing players

to restart large chunks o content, while also

providing just enough challenge to ensure

that when things do go wrong, they go hilari-

ously wrong. Later on, as the levels become

more intricate and rankly just a lot longer,

those ailures do become a bit less amusing.

Obviously a disastrous outcome isnt the

point o playing Monaco, but that the disas-

trous outcomes are, in their own way, oten

so very entertaining is a testament to how

un the game can be in multiplayer. Pulling

o a well-constructed heist, lled with coor-

dinated distractions and intricately executed

strategy is awesome, but even having it allall apart on you, with guards and sirens and

dogs all converging on everybody, is weirdly

un too. O course you never want to be the


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guy who ruined everything, but there are,thankully, just enough ways to get yoursel

out o a jam in Monaco to prevent you rom

ever eeling like youve hopelessly destroyed

everyones chances just by screwing up

once or twice.

It helps that Monaco is a pretty simple

game, mechanically. You can use a control-

ler on the PC version i you like, but the de-

ault controls really only require movement

via the WASD keys, holding the right mousebutton down to sneak quietly, and using

the let mouse button to use weapons and

other items that pop up rom time to time.

These can range rom simple guns to EMPs

that knock out all the electronics in a nearby

area. For every ten coins you pick up, you

earn another use o the item youre current-

ly equipped with, which can be very handy

when you just need to get one guard out oyour way to get to the next area.

There are quite a ew chapters to play

through in Monaco, though you cant unlock

the second volley o levelswhich are es-

sentially remixed versions o previous lev-

els designed with more challenge, and an

alternate story path, in minduntil youve

cleaned out enough stages on the rst.

Cleaning out requires collecting all the coins

in a given stage, which, especially in the laterstages, is easier said than done. The earli-

er stages are easier to pull this o in, and

in act, I managed to clean out a ew levelswithout really even trying too terribly hard.

But those arent the norm, and in most cas-

es, youll have to painstakingly scour levels

to nd all those coins.

The story is cutely written, meting out

pieces o ino that simultaneously fesh out

the stories o the games characters, and pay

homage to a ew o the all-time crime movie

classics. Still, the atmosphere o this game

isnt really what sells it. The piano-heavysoundtrack by Austin Wintory does a nice

job o capturing the sort o jaunty, old-timey

soundtracks o classic silent lm, but the

games visual palette sometimes has a hard

time dierentiating certain environments and

settings. Its a good looking game with some

nice pixel art, but there are denitely mo-

ments where all the little icons, characters,

and pieces o scenery turn into something oan indistinct blur.

While I admittedly became less enamored

with Monaco as it ramped up its diculty

and turned some o its later missions into

tedious exercises in trial-and-error, the vast

majority o Monacos content is simply a de-

light to play, especially when enjoyed along-

side a rogues gallery o your most deviously

skilled riends. It may not best serve the sol-

itary brand o player, but or a cooperativegroup o would-be thieves, Monaco can be

terric un. ALEx NAVARRO

Monaco makes or a more compelling multiplayer

romp than a single-player adventure, but its charms

shine through any way you choose to play it.


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Games are a unny medium. Unlike

movies, books, and music, games are

made in dierent parts o the world,

but we hardly take note o their place o ori-

gin. I its un to play, does it matter? In some

respects, this makes games a wonderully

progressive medium, one in which the qualityo the creation is judged or what it is. Its also

resulted in a homogenization o design. That

we cannot tell i a game is rom one place

or another suggests the desire or worldwide

acceptance is oten stomping out quirks that

could help dene the medium.

Thats what made 4A Games Metro 2033

stand out. Metro 2033 was set in Russia,

made in the region, and played like it camerom there. You wanted to swig rom a vodka

bottle to be a little closer to itI called it ull

immersion. Just being dierent wouldnt be

enough, though. Metro 2033 was drunk on

atmosphere, and brought players to an alien

place where the real and the supernatural

swapped places at will. It also had terrible

combat. Im happy to report Metro: Last Light

makes impressive strides there, changes that

will make jumping into its world easier orthose who were put o by some gameplay

elements that didnt work well last time.

Metro 2033 concluded with Artyom launch-

ing a barrage o missiles at a nest o Dark

Ones. Ever since the bombs dropped, the

survivors o the area around Moscow have

been barely scraping by living underground.

Theres not much ood, water, or other sup-

plies, and in addition to the mutated animals

that have adapted on the surace, a new

race o sentient beings capable o destroying

olks minds with a wave o their hand is

causing humanity to wonder i its about to

be replaced. Artyom appeared to have suc-

cessully destroyed all the Dark Ones, but

Last Light opens by encountering a survivor

o the blast, starting a quest to learn their

true nature.Atmosphere went a long way towards

helping you orget the rustration o shoot-

ing things in Metro 2033. The gunplay was

shoddy enough to break the illusion. Im par-

tial to the theory that awkward controls can

actually contribute to immersion when done

properly (see: Silent Hill), but in Metro 2033,

youre supposed to be a gunslinger with a

deadly arm, and it was tough to be that guy.

It takes precious ew moments with Metro:

Last Light to appreciate the mechanical up-

grade. On a controller, the controls are much

more streamlined, and allow you to swap tac-

tics on a whim. This translates to the mouse

and keyboard, as well, and refects a general

shit in combat design to encourage more

than popping o rounds and hoping or the

best. The way it eels is harder to describe.

It just...eels like a modern shooter, and is nolonger a distraction. The Metro games arent

about the power antasy in so many other

shooters, and it doesnt reinvent shooting a

gun. Now, rather than ussing with the con-

trols, you can easily re away, and ocus on

surviving the hellscape.

Your survival is acutely conveyed in the

rst-person, a perspective that comes with a

great power that ew games wield very well.

Each time Ive declared Im done with rst-

person-shooters, what Im really saying is Im

4A Games makes impressive strides in

improving Metros core gameplay without losing

the pieces that made the original so special.


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tired with what the games areor arent

doing with the opportunity in ront o them.

There will always be something satisying

about holding let trigger to aim and holding

right trigger to shoot, but that eeling dulls alittle more with each game. Its easy to think

thats all there is to it, and then a game comes

along and reminds us games arent trying

hard enough. Mirrors Edge was one such

game; Metro 2033 was another.

Its the little details that matter in Metro,

and how they add up. Its about having to put

your gun away in order to manually recharge

your fashlights battery. Its about being asked

to both reload bullets and manually pump the

pneumatic tubing on a rife that you can, oh

yes, accidentally over-pump. Its about hear-

ing a terriying beep rom your watch, signiy-

ing theres a minute let on your current mask

lter, the only thing keeping you alive while

scouring the surace or a replacement. Its

about the game employing mission markers

only by asking you to check a compass, or

pulling up a notebook that has the next ob-

jective written down. Its about being in an

intense reght, blasting a twisted creature

away with your shotgun, their blood splat-tering onto your mask, and the only way to

see whats going on is literally hitting a button

assigned to wiping your mask o. Its these

dierentiations that combine with Metro: Last

Lights oppressive and claustrophobic sense

o place to transport you to a world o hope

and suering.

And Last Light spends a surprising amount

o time conveying that suering. In Metro

2033, this largely happened through idle

dialogue and inerence. Last Light doesnt

abandon asking players to draw their own

conclusions, but its also ar more blunt, and

introduces a narrative trick that allows the

game to indulge in some truly horric mo-

ments that recall the day the bombs ell. One

sequence, involving a plane, remains etched


43/54

in my mind. By the end, you still dont know

why the nuclear winter was triggered, but Last

Light succeeds at conveying the awe-inspir-

ing terror o the day that changed everything.

It doesnt skimp on the ollies o man in the

post-apocalypse, either, including a harrow-

ing moment early on when the player quietlymoves through a concentration camp run by

uture Nazis. In these moments and others,

the player is given opportunities to help, but

its not impressed upon them, and rarely is

it tied to the unlocking o an achievement or

signicant player benet. I you chose to help

the citizens o Metro, its because you chose

to reach out your handor dont.

Possibly the most surprising addition are

the amount o stealth sequences. Its com-

mon to be presented with a huge room ull

o soldiers, and while its possible to ght

through them, thats a bad idea. Ive been

rather vocal about games with trial-and-error

stealth gameplay, so there was a brie mo-

ment o panic. This was ollowed by a sigh

o relie, as it became apparent how ast

and loose 4A Games was with the concept

o stealth. Seriouslythese enemies neednew glasses. It means you can waltz in ront

o them, so long as your hands indicator

says youre invisible. While it made these

sequences tolerable, it robs all tension rom

them, and the sheer volume o the stealth se-

quences had me wishing the game was more

punishing about playing them.

As with Metro 2033, Last Light is a tech-

nical juggernaut designed to bring the most

powerul o PCs to their knees i youre try-

ing to max the visuals out. My modest but

capable Radeon 7850, 16GB o RAM, and an

i7 CPU heavily chugged at the games most

intense moments (almost all o them were

outside and included environmental eects)

on the high settings. The Xbox 360 and

PlayStation 3 versions are acceptable ways

to play the game but hardly ideal. While the

rame rate holds up admirably, texture detail

take an enormous hit.

I was also bugged by an oversight that

probably wont present itsel to many peo-

ple reading this. I view Metro 2033 and Last

Light like oreign lms. I could play them withEnglish dubbing, but as they were developed

in Russia, it makes sense to play them with

Russian voices and English subtitles. While I

dont expect to understand everything, Last

Light doesnt subtitle a number o story mo-

ments, and not or any obvious technical rea-

sons. It may be understandable that every

piece o ambient dialogue cannot be trans-

lated because the game wont know where

the player is looking, but there are important

ambient set pieces where the players atten-

tion would be directed nowhere else and the

game ails to subtitle them at all. I not only to

maintain my level o disbelie and immersion,

its also a ailure to successully address ac-

cessibility or the disabled among us.

To be this ar without having gone on and

on about how well Last Light renders the end

o the world speaks to the impact o every-thing else. Did I mention it has the creepiest

spiders since Deadly Creatures? By its very

nature o being a sequel, Last Light doesnt

eel as resh as Metro 2033 did, but theres

still nothing else like it. Few games gener-

ate immersion through gameplay and trans-

port you to their world the way Metro does.

PATRICK KLEPEK


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Shadowrun Returns would not exist

without Kickstarter, but the moment a

game leaves the Kickstarter station, its

crowdunded background no longer matters.

When it appeared on a marketplace with a

price tag attached, it became a game that ex-

ists alongside every other game. Thats not a

problem or Shadowrun Returns, ortunately,which unctions just ne as a great strategy

game, regardless o origin.

The Shadowrun universe, a mashup o cy-

berpunk and antasy, comes rom the mind o

Jordan Weisman, the designer also responsi-

ble or MechWarrior and Crimson Skies. Set

in a 21st century Seattle taken a turn towards

the dirty, Shadowrun exists in a world where

magic exists alongside your usual technolo-

gy, and orcs, elves, dwarves, and dragons are

real. I dont know why this is, and Shadowrun

Returns never really explains it, either, which

is indicative o problems within Shadowrun

Returns that run ar deeper than the prem-

ise. (Wikipedia tells me the world suddenly

shited in 2011, with magic becoming part o

the world, and parts o the human population

randomly becoming orcs and trolls. Children

became a mix o human, elves, dwarves, and

other things. Who cares? Its cool.)

Whatever one makes o the universes

mixtape elements, it sets the strategy game

up or a wide diversity o play that makes the

gooness worthwhile. The Shadowrun games

produced or SNES and Genesis took RPGelements rom Shadowruns tabletop origins

and combined it with ast-paced, real-time

action gameplay. Shadowrun Returns adopts

a much slower pace that will eel immedi-

ately amiliar to anyone whos played XCOM:

Enemy Unknown or Fire Emblem: Awakening

in the past year. Viewed rom an isometric

perspective, players control teams o one-to-

our characters, with one being your primary

character and the others oten hired goons.

Players choose rom a set o raceshuman,

el, dwar, orc, trolland assign one o several

classesstreet samurai, mage, decker, sha-

man, rigger, physical adeptthat automates

early stats. You can opt to not choose a class,

but entry level players may eel overwhelmed

by the sheer choices in stat selection.


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About halway through the game, I -

nally came to grasp the breadth o what

Shadowrun Returns had to oer, and ound

mysel prooundly disappointed at some o

my decisions, choices made in ignorance.

Shadowrun Returns primes players to play

the way they actually want to during a sec-

ond playthrough, but only because it spends

so little time explaining its nuances. I un-derstand not wanting to include a two-hour

tutorial to walk players through every detail,

but giving players the option to learn that or

themselves would have been useul.

But when the game nally clicks, it clicks,

and theres so much to play with. The bat-

tleeld is a toy box. Every class approaches

combat so dierently, and this makes en-

counters ripe or discovery (which, sadly,

it actively discourages, but lets talk about

the ideal scenario). My avorite lineup was a

mage, rigger, street samurai, and whatever

class I hadnt touched yet. Riggers are robot-

ics experiments, capable o sacricing their

turns to dierent types o controllable drones.

Some drones are mobile medics, others are

gun-toting mercenaries. Their tiny stature

means theyre able to sneak through vents,

setting up all sorts o wrinkles in your tactics.Id use my drones to suck up aggro rom en-

emies, bu up my street samurai through my

mage, and send that sword wieldin maniac

into the thick o battle, slicing down ools let

and right. My street samurai would oten be

hiding in plain sight, while everyone else took

cover around the world. Cover and movement

works similarly to XCOM, with the mouse

hovering over environment tiles and commu-

nicating movement cost and whether a spot

will provide zero, hal or ull cover. Your view

is xed, though, and this lead to some costly

mistakes when its not entirely clear where a

movement choice will leave your character.

For the most part, it works just ne.

Other than movement and cover,

Shadowrun Returns is dened by random-ness, a ckle mistress that will both reward

and punish those arrogant enough to test her

wrath. There are ew experiences more pain-

ul than watching a careully calculated set o

maneuvers to fank a set o enemies unravel,

as the text bubble missed show up over

and over and over. While its easy to ocus

on the times ate works against you, it grants

unbridled power just as oten. The dice rolls

happening behind-the-scenes in Shadowrun

Returns eel air, pulling o the troublesome

balancing act o making the player eel equal-

ly parts rustrated and elated each turn.

Whats less random is Shadowrun Returns

much-maligned save system, which com-

pounds the game backing players into a

creative corner. There is no way to manually

save, which usually means missions must be

nished beore you can saely turn the gameo. The autosave system kicks in during

loading screens, which means some multi-

level missions get you o the hook. It makes

sense or Shadowrun Returns to ditch play-

ers ability to save and load reely, as it could

eliminate any sense o consequence during

combat. Its sound logic, as Im the kind o

person who reely exploited loading to avoid

You dont have to know a lick aboutShadowrun to enjoy this deliciouslyweird, i fawed, strategy game.


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permanence in XCOM. This leads to some

unintended consequences during unexpect-

ed diculty spikes, bad rolls that turns an or-

dinary combat sequence into a shit show, or

lie orcing you o the computer.

Heres a good example. Money (nuyen) is

tight in Shadowrun Returns, and every pur-chase is important. Hiring a squad is expen-

sive, and or just about every mission requir-

ing one, someone gives you money upront to

make it possible. One o the games previous

ew side missions skips that step, leading me

to believe I could get along with only me and

another shadowrunner. That was mostly true,

but the nal encounter, which kicks o ater

30 minutes o otherwise ordinary reghts, is

much, much harder. I was pummeled ater a

ew dice rolls went in the enemys avor, and it

was back to the start o the level. With some

creative thinking (read: running away and re-

grouping), I was able to complete the mis-

sion, but having to crawl through 30 minutes

o battles several times over was enough to

make me consider giving up on the game en-

tirely. A save system with strict restrictions

in place would have encouraged players totake risks with the gameplay systems. As it

stands, saving is an wholly unnecessary hur-

dle to immersion.

Once you learn to begrudgingly live with

the save system and get up to speed with the

various classes, you begin to sigh, realizing

the campaign is beginning to near its climax.

When it all comes together in Shadowrun

Returns, its satisying to watch the narrative

sync up right alongside your understanding

o how the game works.

There are, i you click around enough, a

ew ways to extend the journey. Some side

missions exist in Shadowrun Returns, but the

game is a largely linear aair. Finishing the

campaign will probably take you between 10-

13 hours, but a powerul mission editor holds

tantalizing promise.

An unexpected delight was how the game

encourages players to urther dene their

characters through branching dialogue trees

without the patronizing good vs. bad split

in other games. My shadowrunner, Scully,

would regularly scuttle between a goodperson caught a bad situation to an oppor-

tunistic scumbag The lack o systemic re-

action opened up avenues or roleplaying

without worrying about i points were going

up or down.

I hadnt touched a strategy game with any

serious intent until Firaxis turned my world

upside down with XCOM. Though Shadowrun

Returns assumes too much about the play-

ers prior knowledge about the universe and

too oten skimps over introducing key game-

play systems, getting over the hump is worth

discovering the deeply gratiying strategy

game within. PATRICK KLEPEK


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Saints Row IV builds o o Saints Row:

The Thirds successul break rom

the open-world crime game norm in

plenty o successul ways by giving you new

abilities and options set in an increasingly

ridiculous world that gets wrapped around

some solid, unny writing. In plenty o ways

its all-but-identical to the previous game,

but plenty o deviations both big and small

make it eel quite dierent. On the small side,

a more-ocused track through the games

side missions makes it more enjoyable to

see and do everything the game has to oer.

On the large side, the developers at Volition

eectively created Lewd Crackdown by

imbuing your cyber-President with the abilityto leap over buildings, glide around the city,

and collect hundreds and hundreds o orbs.

Clusters! Sorry, theyre called clusters. Orbs,

sheesh, where did that come rom?

The story picks up where The Third let

o, more or less, with a quick escalation and

a ve-year fash orward to the point where

the boss o the Saints (thats you) is now the

President o the United States. Oh, and then

theres an alien invasion courtesy o the Zin,

your main enemy or the bulk o the game.

The alien leader, Zinyak, tosses you and your

crew in a Matrix-like computer simulation o

Steelport, the same city rom the previous

game. Since real-world rules dont apply in

this oppressive simulation, things quickly

spiral out until you can run aster than cars,

jump higher than buildings, and shoot reeze

blasts out o your sts. This, as you mightexpect, changes everything.

The developers willingness to utterly dep-

recate major parts o the previous game is

really interesting. Why would you ever drive

or upgrade a car once you can run aster

than the games astest vehicles? Grenades

and other thrown weapons are completely

replaced by a trio o super abilities and the

Saints Row IV builds on

the style and sense o

humor o the previous

game really well, even i it

leans a little too heavily on

its predecessor at times.

weapon tree gets blown out with guns that

shoot black holes, alien rockets, or the heal-

ingsorry, destructivepower o dubstep. It

makes a game that was already pretty gooy

even gooer. And throwing the vast majority

o the game into a dark simulated versiono the city o Saints Row: The Third makes

the whole thing eel like some elaborate ex-

pansion or mod, rather than a ull-fedged

sequel. Obviously, that has good and bad

baggage associated with it. Returning to the

city makes or interesting story setups and

remembrances o the previous game, but

even i youre gliding over all o it and ignoring

most o its structure, it occasionally doesnt

eel like something that stands on its own.

Actually, the story leans pretty heavily on

your knowledge o Saints Row: The Third,

to the point where Id probably recommend

playing that game rst i you havent al-

ready. Crazily enough, it also throws back

to the rst two games in some key ways,

but missing these reerences wont leave

you struggling too muchalso those games

are a lot harder to go back to at this point.The story goes in some interesting direc-

tions by occasionally ocusing more on the

characters around you and giving you some

insight into their past and present motiva-

tions. These missions are the best part about

Saints Row IV, and in many cases, they give

the characters more depth than youd ex-

pect rom what might otherwise look like


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one 17-hour Matrix-meets-Mass-Eect gag.

Unortunately, a ew opportunities or char-

acter building are really squandered, leaving

all the interactions with one highly anticipat-

ed return character eeling completely fat.

That 17-hour number isnt something I just

pulled out o the air, by the way. Thats abouthow long it took me to complete Saints Row

IV, including all o the side missions (most o

which with silver or gold medals) and with

copious amounts o time devoted to collect-

ing well over a thousand o the clusters. The

game is shorter, but in a way that comes o

as more ocused. The side missions are o-

ered up to you in batches, so i you like, you

can let the game guide you rom one task

to the next, with a bonus item or bu wait-

ing or each group you complete. Or you

can run around as beore and just complete

the tasks as you nd them, and the game

will adjust accordingly and not orce you to

complete the missions twice. Its a smart ad-

justment that makes the tasks ar more man-

ageable while giving you meaningul rewards

or your eorts.

Visually, Saints Row IV has the capacityto look better than the previous game. The

moodier lighting o the simulation and the

way the walls occasionally swim as the sim-

ulations textures animate across the sides

o buildings is a nice eect, and things even

look nice when youre fying high above the

city. But rom a tech perspective, its mostly

on-par with Saints Row 3. The characters

models are roughly identical, the weapon

eects are oten similar, and so on. Its not a

huge leap orward, even i the games engine

is better at serving up its polygons and tex-

tures at high speeds. Also, I can only say this

about the PC version o the game.

Not to sound elitist, but going rom the

PC version o Saints Row IV to the Xbox 360version o the game was enough to make

me think that they maybe shouldnt have

released this game on consoles. The rame

rate o Saints Row: The Third wasnt pretty

on consoles, and the bigger ask related to

your characters speed and mobility make

this game run even worse. The rame rate

is rarely acceptable and on top o that, the

game likes to hitch up completely or a bit

when it autosaves. Making precision land-

ings and lining up headshots is more dicult

with its rotten rame rate, and the game is,

overall, less un on the Xbox 360 than it is on

a proper PC as a result.

That said, I enjoyed it a great deal, and

parts o this game almost eel like theyve

been specically tailored to my interests. I

mean, Ri Ra hosts one o the radio sta-

tions. Thats a great choice. The game ispacked with some great moments that sub-

vert the open-world crime genre even urther

than SR3 did, its unny, and its reerences

arent just lazily tossed o, theyre earned.

Youll eel like youve played some o this be-

ore, but i youre at all interested in Saints

Rows brand o weird, its absolutely vital.

Play it on PC, though. JEFF GERSTMANN


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Kentia HallIrst met Ryan in person at Caliornia Extreme.I was a big an o Giant Bomb and the Whis-key Media properties in general and had heardabout Ryans anity towards collecting laser-discs. I just happened to have a huge pile o LDsthat were part o a stu purge and couldnt thinko a better home. We met up at the show (coinci-

dentally also the same show that Patrick pickedup his Neo Geo cab) and lugged a giant bin backup to his hotel room. We shared a ew drinks, dis-cussing the technical superiority o the LD ormatand all the gems we learned rom directors com-mentary. Sitting on the balcony chatting, I elt likeI had been given the key to some secret club thatI could tell you about, but then Id have to kill you.

Ive always known that GB was a cult o per-sonality, you elt attached to the site because youelt like you knew the people behind it. Ryan toldme that hed oten be approached by ans talk-

ing about something on the Bombcast and hedhave to say something like and whats yourename? People (mysel included) elt so connect-ed to him and the rest o the crew that ans wouldoten orget that it was oten a one-way street,at least initially.

Thats what impressed me most about actuallymeeting the man and getting to know him a littlebetter. Ater that one encounter he made me eellike I was a close riend, even i I really wasnt inthe traditional sense. Ryan was so genuine and hehad this incredible inectious energy where eve-

rything seemed awesome when he was around. Ihave to admit that rst time I heard my name onthe Bombcast I elt like I was on top o the world.

I remember being contacted by Anna, thelove o his lie and wie or too short a time. Shewas looking to get him a Ms Pac Man machineor Christmas and somehow my name came up.Serendipity, I ound an insanely clean upright ora great price and worked out all the details. Wewheeled in the machine the day ater Christmas,

big red bow attached, and I wanted to tell himto marry the woman who made it possible. Ocourse, he already knew that and even to the cas-ual observer you could tell how much they meantto each other. Even then he mentioned that sheloved Area 51 and a ew years later we were ableto ll that hole in the Davis arcade.

The last interaction I had with Ryan was talkingwith him about how to get the Neo Geo cab romPatricks place to his. I had just gone through sur-gery and couldnt help personally, but did whatI could to get him some help. I was looking or-ward to some Warlords cash games at CaliorniaExtreme and sitting around drinking whiskey,catching up since my move.

Being around Ryan, in-person or over the in-ternet, made lie seem more un. As many havesaid, even him giving you shit elt great in a waythats hard to explain. I remember him telling me

that he just put himsel out there and let others bethe judge, just ocus on what he elt being a goodperson should be and let the chips all where theymay. At the time I was probably doing too muchto curate my online persona and his thoughts re-ally helped to change a lot o that.

The outpouring o support today on Twitter,Reddit, NeoGa, etc. just makes more publicwhat we already knew. We lost someone veryspecial this week and though today tears havebeen shed, theyre mixed with laughter as we re-member all the joy hes brought to our lives.

I only broke bread with him a handul o timesand cant imagine what it must be like or thosewho knew him well. I oer my deepest condo-lences to his riends and amily. I eel ortunateto have known Ryan Davis and truly believethat my interactions with him have made mea better person.

Thank you, duder, or everything you shared

with us while you were here. Rest in peace.

Steven Plin Originally Posted July 8th, 2013


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