What does stuffing game dialogue full of profanity really accomplish? Why do you put me in this horribly gloomy environment, then try to make me laugh with sitcom humor? Why the balls does Alex Mercer need an accomplice when he’s already a demigod? These are the questions I ask Prototype 2 after the first hour of gameplay.

Prototype 2 is a dark ‘n disturbing, apocalyptic, open-world, RPG hack ‘n slash potty mouth simulator. Or something like that. The idea picks up where the original Prototype leaves off. You play James Heller, a soldier whose family was supposedly torn apart by Alex Mercer, a super-powered freak on which the destruction and unholy corruption of New York City is blamed. Zombies and twisted, bleeding creatures rampaging across a half-broken landscape. Standard stuff, right? Alex gives you his shape-shifting, spiderman-shaming powers with the explanation that he wants to destroy the people that are actually responsible for the apocalypse. Extremely bloody murder ensues.

Don’t take my tone the wrong way, I -loved- the original Prototype, and I may actually be a bit bitter since I own Prototype 2 on the Playstation 3 instead of on the PC. It looks terrible (sorry, console gamers). The sequel has yet to captivate me, and I’m not quite sure why.

After a few rather linear sequences, the city opens up to you for you to do with as you please. You can run, jump and glide around the urban wasteland freely, doing storyline missions, sidequests with various objectives and tiered rewards for better completion, and optional targets for you to kill that make you stronger. All three are entertaining, though there isn’t much point in trying to get gold medals on sidequests until you’ve progressed through the game and become stronger/more agile.

So far, the game just feels bland in comparison to the original Prototype. If I had to give you a verdict right now, I’d say to stay away, but my opinion may change after more time with the game.

Megatron is the dominator. Megatron is the destroyer. How do I know this? He won’t
shut up about it. The first chapter of Transformers: War for Cybertron is approximately
50% combat, 50% evil robot threatening people with a planet-sized superiority complex.
I almost feel sorry for the big guy. Almost.

War for Cybertron looks like a mech game such as Armored Core, but plays very
smoothly. Mobility is king, and at its right hand, aim. War plays very much like a straight-
up, no-frills run and gun shooter. You get the option of picking one of three different
characters (Mr. Personalit- I mean Megatron being one of them), each with a different
weapon and a different ability. Abilities spend energy – sorry, energon, which can be
regained through breakable crates. Different weapons such as an EMP shotgun or a
pistol (which really acts like a sniper rifle) can be found at varying intervals throughout
each area, and you can carry one of these weapons as a secondary to your character’s
main weapon.

I haven’t seen a game this linear since Bulletstorm. There’s only one way to approach
every fight, and if you’re not advancing down a hallway against a half-dozen enemies,
you’re fighting out standard arena combat against a half-dozen enemies. That’s not
to say that standard combat is a bad thing, as Transformers pulls it off rather well.
It’s partially beauty in simplicity, which may be perceived as ironic given that your
environment is a constantly intricate sci-fi surrounding where even the walls look like
they’ve got as many moving parts as your little Transformer does. Just don’t expect very
much variety in the way the levels play.

I definitely don’t have a definitive answer on whether or not War for Cybertron is worth it,
unless you get it for very cheap. The multiplayer is completely dead with approximately
zero people playing, so you’d have to get it purely for the singleplayer / co-op. Stay
tuned for a full review to come.

28 bloody races complete… and I still have almost a HUNDRED to go before I’ve beaten the full Championship Cup? Welcome to Mini Motor Racing HD, the iOS top-down 3D racing game by Binary Mill, the folks that brought us Gun Club 2 and Assault Squadron (also on iOS).

Mini Motor Racing couldn’t be more simple. Drive your cute little car in multiple laps through various tracks, racing against other cute little cars to take first, second, or third place in each race. The only controls are a wheel (which really acts like an analog stick) and a boost button to slam back a nitro. Why would you do such a thing? Duh, money. Make enough bank, and you can upgrade your vehicle, increasing its acceleration, top speed, handling, or max number of boosts. If you can manage to save up enough greenbacks without buying them through an in-app purchase (you filthy cheater you), new cars are up for grabs for rather exorbitant prices.

So far, there doesn’t actually seem to be that much content. There are almost twenty vehicles total from what I can see, but as of yet I don’t see much point in buying new ones. Sure, each has different stats and the capacity on those stats are different for each, but $30,000 is a mighty hefty investment when I’m making about $400 a race when I win… and I’ve already put a lot of money into my precious BigRig. As for tracks, the game reuses the same few tracks over and over. Generally, when you run into a track you’ve raced on before, it will either be in reverse or at a different camera angle. I consider that a pretty good idea as it prevents you from using muscle memory, and most top-down racing games don’t pull that kind of stunt. The disappointing part is in the re-skinned tracks. I’ve been playing the same tracks over and over, and a new one pops up in the cup I’m playing through. It turns out to be a snowy version of one of the maps I’ve been playing.

Despite the shortcuts (and I don’t mean the good racing game kind), I’m enjoying Mini Motor Racing thus far. It remains engaging and challenging for reasons I’ll detail in a full review to come after I’ve become more intimate with every sexy (and unsexy) little detail.

iOS is still missing something awesome: A real MOBA, or Multiplayer Online Battle
Arena. While the genre title sounds rather vague, it originated with the famed Defense
of the Ancients, and spawned games such as League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth,
and Bloodline Champions. Very few attempts at a MOBA on the App Store have been
made, and, well… it doesn’t look too good, yet.

“Plants War,” by the F2P title-pumping developer Gamevil, is the main reason for that.
The idea is incredibly simple: there are 30 missions, each with three difficulty levels.
Each mission involves destroying the enemy’s turrets and base before they do the same
to you. You do this by controlling a single unit, a strong character that gains experience
when in the vicinity of dying enemy units. Every time you level up, you are healed to
full and get to increase the power of one of four abilities, or increase your health/health
regeneration or mana/mana regeneration. Every 20 seconds or so, a wave of non-
controllable allies spawns from your base (and a wave of enemies from the enemy
base), and these allies will blindly run toward each other, attacking whatever foes are
within reach.

Plants War executes this much well, but there are two core issues even here: Firstly,
unit collision is just plain bad. It’s massive. You might have to run in a wide circle to hit
a target that’s almost right next to you, and with nothing in your way. Secondly, the only
way to succeed in most levels is to abuse the leveling up that heals you to full. It’s not
that the game is difficult, it’s that it’s actually impossible to complete every level unless
you buy some of the premium currency.

As of right now, there are five “hero” characters you can get. One of them you start
with, one of them costs a little over 2000 gold, and the third costs 9000 gold. 9000 gold
takes a very long time to grind, but that character is insanely weak. The cheaper hero
is super overpowered, indicating that Gamevil doesn’t quite understand the concept of
MOBA balance. The other two heroes can only be bought with premium currency, and
you don’t earn enough by playing the game to buy them without spending cash on said
currency.

There is a bit of a redeeming quality to Plants War, and that lay in the fact that MOBA
fans such as myself can still get a little fix out of it. Is it worth buying premium currency
for? Definitely not. Is it good for a little casual entertainment? Sure. If downloading
Plants war means giving up space that could go to something else, though… you might
want to pass.

No, not so that we can lord our elitism over the loathsome “casuals.” Heck, you may
even be a casual gamer, and that’s completely fine. I have plenty of casual gamer
friends, and I respect them as people even if they don’t spend as many hours frantically
trying to frag random strangers as I do. Consider this, though (warning: theoretical
rhetoric ahead): Casual gamers are most likely to play games that have big marketing
campaigns, right? Games like Modern Warfare and Mass Effect.

Uh-oh.

I have nothing against either Modern Warfare nor Mass Effect. I think both are fantastic
games. Our problem occurs when people that have little experience and investment in
games invest in companies that turn around and treat people with more investment in
games (such as me and possibly you) like crap. “But Cheetah, didn’t you just indirectly
say you support Activision, a company that clearly fails to respect the average gamer,
by enjoying Modern Warfare?” Yes, I did. I must admit that as of right now, Activision is
teetering on the edge between “I’ll buy their games on sale” and “total boycott.” I won’t
name names, as other experienced gamers can identify at least one of the companies
that helped inspire this article.

Here’s what needs to happen. Instead of hardcore/experienced gamers insulting
and trashing other people based on their (admittedly uneducated – I’m not being
condescending, just observing) choice of purchases, it’s the gaming community’s job
to show casual gamers that there are developers and publishers that will give them
more and respect them more than the companies that we don’t like. In theory, this is
the easiest way for me and you to influence the gaming economy and support good
developers and publishers even after we’ve bought their game and gifted it to a friend or
two.

iOS games tend to have a difficult time catching my attention. Angry Birds? It’s been done and exhausted.  Words with Friends? It’s friggin’ Scrabble.  Dark Meadow: The Pact? It’s Infinity Blade meets Silent Hill – wait, I think we’re onto something here!

Dark Meadow is a “Punchout” style game that’s caught between being story-driven and RPG advancement loot-n-boot. You wake up in an old, decaying hospital with a crossbow and a sword. Some bald guy in a wheelchair is constantly ranting to you over the PA system as long as you’re not wandering the hallways – which, by the way, are filled with monsters that will make the most devoted Silent Hill fan squeal with glee. Oh, and you have to occasionally fight a super-tough, super out-of-place naked ghost girl that slaps you for half your health. Did I forget to mention the twisted, throbbing, living tentacles that stretch through the hallways? Yes?

Heaven knows what’s going on. I certainly don’t… but I love it.

If you ever watched at least a little of LOST, the TV show, you know what I’m talking about. Polar bears in the forest? “The Others”? A mysterious hatch bearing a familiar sequence of numbers? You’re so blind, and yet, so intrigued. Dark Meadow does that to you. It pulls you in. It tells you so little, and the lack of knowledge is a drug. The game itself has the major flaw of losing itself in huge portions of grinding, as you’re just not powerful enough to advance quickly… or moderately, for that matter, but the way the story and environment unfolds only makes things more interesting.

I’m just going to let the question of, “why don’t more developers do this?” sink in. It may be that they attempt to, but aren’t sure how. The writing in Dark Meadow certainly is good enough that I’m positive the writers have some measure of experience with drama and suspense.  Have you played a game that’s done the same thing? Let me know, please. I want to play it!

Your hands are sweating. Your eyes are bloodshot. Your brain is fried. You have been reduced to a primal motor function, your fingers tense over your keyboard and mouse. Nothing exists but what’s on your computer monitor, and all because you’re struggling to press one key at the right time…

If you thought I was describing a quicktime event, you probably haven’t played many games yet! The above description immediately brings Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV, a pixely platformer with 8-bit goodness and quick action, to mind. The only buttons involved in VVVVVV are W, A, S, D, and V (or Z or spacebar, if you’re down with that). How can it elicit such stress, let alone hold me for SEVEN HOURS? No, really. I’ve got seven hours logged on this game that involves flipping gravity up and down to pass through a metroid-style grid map, each box in the grid with its own challenges. Played the darn game twice.

What could possibly drive me to dwell on such a simple game for so long? The answer lies in the simplicity itself.

Sure, VVVVVV has a great chiptune soundtrack and an enticing, somewhat surreal environment with difficult challenges, but a game takes more than that to draw you in and trap you until you’ve exhausted it. I contest that how simple the game is as a whole really contributes to its staying power. This isn’t to say that complex games don’t succeed or are of low quality, say, every real-time strategy game in existence. However, the secret to the success of a game is that the title sets a high standard for itself, and proceeds to do exactly what it’s set out to do. What does VVVVVV set out to do, you ask? I could tell you, but I’d rather you experience it for yourself and support a fantastic indie developer in the process.

Where have you found the idea of simplicity to create beauty in a game? Other titles that come to mind for me are Eufloria and Super Meat Boy. Share your ideas in the comments!

Strap two PPCs to me and call me a Puma. The Mayans predicted the apocalypse
would come in 2012, and they were right! Indie studios Piranha Games and Adhesive
Games are set to deliver free-to-play, titanic, walking death in the form of Mechwarrior
Online and Hawken this year, respectively. This is huge, and I’m not just saying that
because an Atlas assault mech weighs 100 tons.

Both games revolve around heavily-customized “mech” multiplayer warfare, in which
you pick a type of giant fighting robot (crude as the phrase may be) and engage in
fast-action, ranged combat with other pilots steering other giant fighting robots. While
the two games are on slightly different scales, as Mechwarrior is all about absolutely
towering behemoths and Hawken appears to be more of mini-mega mech game with
machines only a few stories tall (only), the two titles are preparing for a head-to-head
clash as one will almost certainly take control of the big, stomping hunk-of-metal market.
Know what this means?

May the better developer win.

Now Mechwarrior already has a big advantage over Hawken. It has a huge cult
following and is the first title in several years since the end of a long-running franchise.
There’ve been around ten Battletech (Mechwarrior) games released over the course of
gaming history, with MechCommander and Mechwarrior on the PC, Mechassault on the
Xbox, and various outlying titles on other platforms. Mechwarrior originated as an in-
depth pen-and-paper RPG with very deep lore, and has had a collectible figure game as
well. Hawken is starting from absolute scratch.

Do yourself a favor, and check out both of these upcoming titles. It’ll be exciting to see
which set of mechs ends up trashing the other!

One last question for Battletech fans: INS or Clan?

Hawken – www.playhawken.com
Mechwarrior Online – www.mwomercs.com

Rage is pretty cool. The game, that is. The id team produced another decent (read: good, but not excellent) title to continue their streak of decency. It’s a fun littleFPS/driving adventure that I wouldn’t take completely seriously, but that’s definitely entertaining in hefty doses (and any single-player game that can hold my attention for more than 45 minutes at a time deserves an award). The most repetition in the game up till now has been missions where I might have to go back through a dungeon that I already cleared out once to pick up some odd item or other.

Before I continue, you need to know what the little cantina in the first town, Wellspring, is like. It’s not the asthetics that’s important, it’s what’s going on inside. There’s a bartender that gives you the only truly repeatable mission: Kill ten bandits on the road and get a reward. Rinse, repeat. It’s not the kind of thing you run out to do, it’s the kind of thing you accomplish while you’re on your way to do other things.  The tavern also includes an old guy called “Abbott” who doesn’t speak a word, but lets you play a darkly humorous minigame that involves stabbing a knife between your fingers in various patterns. Wait, accidentally shanking yourself in the index finger repeatedly isn’t humorous? Must just be me. Lastly, the tavern has a guy at a blackjack table that will play a card game with you.

Moving on, I’ve played the game for seven or eight hours, and finally come to the point where I’ve exhausted the first area, the “Wasteland.” Well, I just took a trip to the “Eastern Wasteland,” which looks much different, and was excited to arrive in a dilapidated subway town called “Subway Town” with aesthetics in great contrast to that of the dusty settlement of Wellspring. Everyone’s telling me to go to the bar to help a guy out with a bandit problem. Well, okay. I’ll go to the bar.

As I swiftly discover, the “bar” is built out of a broken-down subway train and a connecting room. Pretty cool. I start talking to all the NPCs, and… wait… haven’t I seen that Abbott guy before? With the knife? And a bartender that wanted me to go out and kill ten bandits? And a guy sitting at a blackjack table that wants me to play the same game? Oh wait, it’s a girl this time.

Frick, this place is exactly like the last place.

Now I don’t have a problem with a little bit of repetition. A little bit. Strip away the fact that the person sitting at the blackjack table is a chick and that the bartender’s name isn’t Sally, and suddenly this “new environment” is starting to look a whole lot like the old one. Suspension of disbelief = DESTROYED.

Rage might not be a story oriented game, I mean, there’s really not much plot to it. You’re a guy from the past that needs to stay away from the generic “Authority” that wants you dead, and you survive with the help of the “Resistance.” Original, right? No, Rage is about killing people. With guns. Its central feature, however unrelated, does not excuse this kind of copy/paste nonsense. What was the whole point of building an entire town out of a completely different environment if you didn’t want me to see it as different?!

Rage made me rage. Have you faced a similar obvious template before? The original Assassin’s Creed also comes to mind. If you have any other examples, we’d love to hear about them in the comments!

You know those ubiquitous little barrels with bright red all over them that scream “OH
MAN PLEASE SHOOT ME. PLEASE. I’LL EXPLODE FOR YOU.”? It’s time they got
some attention. Admit it. You haven’t given much thought to the combustible bastards…
yet they’re definitely in, at the very least, one or two games that you play / have played.

They’re stupid in most games.

Here are the facts: In the way environment ties into how you as the player act, red
explosive barrels are probably the most bleeding obvious concept for a developer to
employ. If a tutorial has to tell you to shoot red barrels, you probably haven’t played
enough video games. Their overuse has made them a huge cliche, and I guarantee that
in nearly every game involving red barrels, you will see them in one of three places:

1. In the middle of nowhere. If you shoot these, it’s just to see the pretty colors.
2. Right frickin’ next to a frickin’ enemy. Frickin’… like you don’t know what to do here.
3. Next to something that is obviously destructible. You can tell by the crack in the wall
or whatever. Shoot barrel > destroy obstacle.

Such a waste! Involving the environment in combat is great, but most games just don’t
demonstrate an appreciation for the concept.

Enter Hard Reset, the PC exclusive old-school-gameplay-with-new-school-graphics
first-person shooter. I was one of those dumb people that started his or her first game
on the Insane difficulty. Shoot me now, I’ve already been riddled with bullets and
wounds.

I’ve realized something after several deaths, though. Hard Reset’s use of explosive
barrels is fantastic! Now some of the cliche positioning still applies, for instance, an
explosive garage door opener that will obviously blow the door apart and reveal goodies
or enemies of some kind. I’ve found, though, that success is often only possible through
strategic use of the layout of combustible destructibles. On Insane difficulty, Hard Reset
WILL kill you – but then you memorize the enemy spawns and you plan ahead. Blowing
up this car for this group of enemies didn’t work last time, but maybe if I try to kill them
with this car over here, I can use the first car on the next group of enemies.

Unfortunately, this is an instance where the true value of environmental entities that
explode can exist only within the context of a rough difficulty level. However, what if a
game with more forgiving difficulty had enemies that could be killed one of two ways:
either by a horde of bullets, or by tactical use of the surrounding area’s resources?
It would reward the thinking player with well-used fireworks and thoroughly-scarred
enemies!

The idea of red barrels is just something that most people will recognize. Explosive
cars, shock-emitting electronics, pipes that spew fire when shot, etc. are all instances of
environmental resources that can be employed as a plan B for killing enemies in your
path. Do you have any stories to share regarding them? Let us know in the comments!