Dante Inferno

While Dante slices through the belly of an undead beast with his razor-sharp scythe, traverses a crumbling bridge with a quick-time event, and overthrows the ruler of a damned land with vicious determination, a burst of familiarity might flash through your mind. From the gothic art style and the vengeance-fueled story to the stationary camera clearly displaying the blood-splattering combat, Dante's Inferno is a wholesale imitation of the superb God of War series. Or, at the very least, it's desperately trying to be. Unfortunately, the impression lasts for only the first few hours. What starts as a fast-paced and epic quest to destroy Lucifer in an underworld populated by grotesque and disfigured beings, devolves into a monotonous and downright predictable hack-and-slash. Dante's Inferno gets close enough to its source material to make for a gory and satisfying few hours in hell, but its many flaws prevent it from rising to paradise.

Even nice wizards end up in hell.

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The lesson delivered by Dante's Inferno is one every person should keep in mind: Do not, under any circumstance, make a deal with the devil. You will lose, and you may not be handy enough with a scythe to hack your way out of the mess you create. In this case, Beatrice thought too highly of her husband Dante's moral character. Worried that he would lose his life while liberating heathens during his holy crusade, she comes to an agreement with Lucifer. If he stays faithful, the devil will ensure that he makes it home alive. If he loses control with a seductive slave girl, though, Beatrice will forfeit her own soul forever. The story is told using three distinct styles to chronicle Dante's descent into darkness to rescue the eternal spirit of his betrayed wife. The CGI and in-game cutscenes are expected, but it is the series of sparsely animated cartoons that stand out. These fill in the backstory of Dante's actions during the crusades and go a long way toward developing his character. The story has few surprises, but the manner in which it slowly puts Dante's entire life into perspective makes for an interesting setup for his adventure.

And the adventure does start out on a strong note. The first few hours have an epic scale that makes the descent from the earthly plain into the pits of hell feel like a momentous transition. Pathways crumble underfoot, threatening to spill you into the bubbling lava below; gargantuan creatures loom in the distance, tossing out taunts as you make you way through their defenses; and horrible abominations are introduced every few minutes. The vile enemies you battle are modeled on the circles of hell, and they do an impressive job of embodying these contemptible sins. Lust, for instance, is populated by prostitutes who were all too willing to sell their bodies while they were alive, and they are punished by having their souls sold in the afterlife. The typical anatomy of these women of ill repute is grossly exaggerated, and though you'll certainly want to avoid their disgusting makeshift lassos, their presence makes for a disturbing trip to the land of the damned.

Dante even spills blood while opening doors.

In the early stages, you will battle a number of horrific caricatures. The prostitutes of lust are followed by obese monsters who do a fine (yet gross) job of personifying gluttony, and an army of blade babies who haven't been baptized are sure to get a rise out of even the most jaded individuals. But these disgusting portrayals of the deadly sins are soon forgotten as you get deeper into your quest. After the shocking imagery used in the early going, you have only knights and wizards to look forward to, which lack the appeal of the repulsive enemies that precede them. In fact, the only memorable foes in the entire game are introduced within the first couple of hours, making the rest of the adventure much less interesting and far more predictable. Furthermore, although it makes sense that the circle of gluttony would be populated by grossly obese individuals, the fact that they pop up in heresy, anger, and every other circle doesn't mesh with the rules set in place.

The level design follows a similar descent into banality. What starts as epic and explosive soon becomes repetitive. Too much of Dante's Inferno takes place in confined rooms that don't hint at the huge world you're in, which lowers much of the impact of clawing your way through the netherworld. The puzzles that crop up only serve to artificially slow your progress rather than give you a worthwhile change of pace from the violent combat. Much of the time, endurance is the only tool you will need to complete these tests. Box-dragging or crank-turning puzzles aren't fun or mind-bending challenges. Rather they are just time wasters and only detract from the experience. The few times that they do force you to think only reinforce the poor design of these puzzles. Difficulty only exists because the camera either doesn't show you what you need to see or highlights an area that is not important.


The bulk of the game focuses on Dante's expertise in eliminating forsaken souls, and the combat is the element that most closely mimics God of War. Battles are brutally violent. Your powerful scythe slashes through treacherous beasts like a hot knife through butter, and it's great fun to hack away at your enemy while you deftly roll away from its counterattacks. Quick-time events play a large part of the action, letting you take down your foes in elaborate and horrifically violent ways. The over-the-top, merciless portrayal of the combat fits in perfectly with the dark themes presented in the game, which makes it the strongest aspect of your quest. You earn souls for every enemy you kill, and these points go toward upgrading your attacks. There are both holy and unholy meters to fill, which let you personalize your moves a bit. Upgrading Dante gives you a steady stream of new attacks, and though you aren't able to unlock new weapons through the course of the game, there is enough variety to make sure combat doesn't get stale.

Those prisoners lining the walls must have done something really awful.

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But the combat is not without a few flaws, which results in more than a few aggravating moments. First of all, once you begin a combo, you must see it through to the end, which is maddening if you're trying to avoid an attack but Dante is stubbornly still swinging away. Second, you have a handy projectile attack, but the auto-aim functionality doesn't work right, so it's nearly impossible to hit a specific enemy in a crowded room. Third, challenge is all over the place. Most fights are fairly easy, but knockback attacks are overpowered. All too often, Dante will be caught in a chain of punishment that is impossible to break out of because enemies can attack you even when you're lying prone on the ground. It's possible to lose half of your life bar or more to these annoying situations, which makes the otherwise fun fights quite frustrating.

The quality of Dante's Inferno fluctuates wildly throughout the course of the game. During the first one-third of this eight-hour adventure, the diverse array of enemies and epic environments make for an enjoyable, hectic quest for vengeance. Things level out in the middle one-third, though. Memorable characters are no longer introduced and the level design is far less adventurous, but the frantic combat is enough to make this stretch fun, if not particularly noteworthy. The final one-third of this game is uninspired and downright bad at times, making for a wholly unsatisfying end to this derivative game. During the buildup to the end boss, level design has been virtually scrapped. Instead of tearing through the depths of hell, you are confined to a series of platforms where you must pass certain objectives before you can move forward. For instance, you will need to eliminate every enemy without summoning magic or by just using air attacks, which is just as lifeless as it sounds. This is a boring way to end the game and leaves a sour taste when the credits roll.

Oh joy, another block puzzle!

It's a shame the entirety of Dante's Inferno couldn't match the frenetic pacing and horrific imagination found in the beginning of your adventure because it could have been a worthwhile alternative to the excellent God of War series. But most of the game falls far short of its impressive beginning, which results in a repetitive and uninspired adventure that loses steam long before you reach the bitter end. Dante's Inferno is certainly fun during those hectic first few hours, but there is little reason to play beyond those parts. It's not worth visiting hell without the promise of heaven on the other side.

HEAVY RAIN REVIEW

When discussing the evolution of video games as artistic entertainment, commentators and pontificators alike have asked a simple question: "Can a game make you cry?" Let's get this out of the way first: Heavy Rain will most likely not make you cry. It does, however, provide one of the most emotional experiences I've ever had playing a videogame.

If you've been following coverage of Quantic Dream's latest title you know that Heavy Rain focuses on four protagonists as they fight to track down and capture a serial murderer known as the Origami Killer. But what stands out from this simple premise is the unapologetically adult story. I don't mean adult in the sense of gratuitous sex and violence or even in the game's mature rating. Rather, it's adult in the way that it doesn't talk down to its audience. Heavy Rain encourages you to empathize with its characters, and in so doing allows you to experience a more satisfying and genuine role-playing game than what we typically consider an RPG. It also puts you in adult situations that, on paper, seem ridiculous, but you'll find yourself standing in awe at doing something as pedestrian as changing a baby's diaper.

Click the image above to check out all Heavy Rain screens.

You interact with the world through a non-traditional control scheme: Holding down R2 lets you walk around the environments and the Left analog stick changes directions. At best, this process is cumbersome and by far the weakest part of the experience. It's never out and out bad, but I was never completely comfortable doing it either. When trying to maneuver around a desk or chair I'd often find my character pacing back and forth because there seemed to be a small amount of input lag when changing directions.

The other part of the control scheme lies in your interaction with the environment. This is accomplished by following on-screen prompts to press face buttons, performing motions with the Right analog stick, and sometimes using Sixaxis control movements. Again, it might seem clunky on paper, but it's elegant in execution. If you have the opportunity, I would absolutely implore you to play this game with a DualShock 3 controller; I don't think any game has used the rumble feature this effectively since the original Metal Gear Solid.

The motions and button presses don't always directly correlate to the motions of your character, rather they approximate the feeling of those actions. In one instance I had to struggle to get my character up a muddy hillside. By holding a series of buttons down in a finger-twisting series of motions, I actually felt like I didn't have a firm foothold -- it's little things like this that help further your immersion into the world.

But a game that prides itself on its story is only as good as its writing and actors. The quality and detail of Heavy Rain's sets are truly spectacular -- whether it's a faded wallpaper pattern or dilapidated apartment, this is a world that feels lived-in and genuine. The characters have a similar gritty realness, but occasionally veer into uncanny valley territory due to some inelegant animations. Regardless, the game conveys a subtlety of emotion that very few games have ever succeeded at.

Despite their occasionally wooden appearance, I genuinely came to care for the protagonists. I liked these people and wanted them to complete the task before them. Before going in I knew that any and all of them could potentially die, which adds a stressful layer to an already tension-filled story. There were moments in Heavy Rain where I found my heart rate rising -- not because of a cheap, momentary fright caused by something like a dog jumping through a window in Resident Evil, but because of a sustained level of tension that would leave my hands shaking. Heavy Rain portrays pain, suffering, and death with a stark frankness that doesn't elevate horror as something to be entertained by. Instead, you're regularly put in positions where you must choose between two equally horrific outcomes.

Click the image above to check out all Heavy Rain screens.

Talking to others who've played through Heavy Rain, I don't think I'm overstating it when I say that no two people will have the exact same experience. And I would encourage you to not cheat yourself on your first time through the story. When you first boot up the game you're taken directly to the opening rather than the main menu; avoid the Chapter Select screen and keep your experience more organic.

Though shorter than other epic, multi-disc titles, there's more than enough content in Heavy Rain to warrant a purchase. At the end of my first playthrough I was left utterly satisfied with the conclusion of the story and wanting more titles of this caliber. Heavy Rain may not appeal to every twitch-shooter fan out there, but if you believe games can evolve beyond Pac-Man and Mario then I suggest supporting the amazing work Quantic Dream has done.

Prince Of Persia The Forgotten Sands preview

As promised, Ubisoft delivered the first trailer for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands at the 2009 Spike VGAs. In the years since we've seen him, it seems the Prince has kept his stupid goatee.
The cinematic trailer shows a town getting attacked by uh, sand. The game is a return to the Sands of Time storyline so we're being asked once again to ponder the magical possibilities of sand. According to the narrator, it's harboring some kind of "dark secret."
Forgotten Sands is due in May 2010 for consoles, handhelds, and the PC. It'll arrive alongside the Jake Gyllenhaal film Prince of Persia: The Sands In Time.

Call of Duty Modren War Fare 2 Review

Even if your willpower or geography has kept you from picking up Modern Warfare 2, you're probably reading this as you drive to go do just that. Activision's marketing people like to call this one the most anticipated game of the decade, and there's no doubt it will sell oodles of copies from now until Modern Warfare 3: Even Moderner. But is it worth the hype? I spent some serious time pounding plastic to see if Infinity Ward's latest has the fun to back it up and you can find out what I thought right after the break.

Just pull over first, okay?

Single Player

Modern Warfare 2 picks up five years after the ending of the original game, and there's a montage to bring you up to speed and introduce returning favorites like "Soap" MacTavish (now a Captain), Nikolai and Captain Price. Though, for the most part, you play as Sergeant "Roach" Sanderson, you'll again embody different characters and encircle the globe in the process, touching down in places like Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Washington D.C., Kazakhstan and ... Virginia.

The global conflict centers on a full-scale war that whisks you through characters and exotic locales at a dizzying pace, and that's the heart of the campaign's only real stumbling block: It has so much story to tell that, at times, it feels far too frantically paced. What's the hurry? Personally, I'd like more time to enjoy some of the jaw-dropping levels Infinity Ward has created.

The most prominent example is the controversial Airport scene, which seems sorely out of place here. Sure, the entire plot of the game hinges on it, but did we need to play through it? Served up early in the game, it's not only one of the shortest scenes you'll play, it also feels incongruous to the point of being jarring: one minute you're training in Afghanistan as Private First Class Joseph Allen, and in the blink of an eye you're asked to kill dozens of innocents. A cut scene (which is what you get if you skip the scene) would serve just as well, so why IW baited controversy this way is a head-scratcher. Sure, that controversy can mean publicity, but it's a shame that it comes at the cost of storytelling, particularly when there are so many other powerful moments that pass by unused.

For instance, at one point you come across the hulking wreck of Air Force One crashed nonchalantly in a front lawn. Isn't that sort of a big deal? That could be the entire plot of a season of 24, yet it isn't even mentioned in the game, underlining the disconnect between story and gameplay. When you jump from character to character with each level change, and miss big chunks of the narrative that unfolds around you, you're not as personally vested as you would be if you played the same character all the way through. Yes, it's a staple of the CoD world to jump from soldier to soldier, but it's not the best way to tell an emotional story.

Another minor complaint was that the squadmate AI would randomly turn from "capable" to "boneheaded" without notice. There were times when an enemy would run into a room we were defending, and our squadmates would completely ignore them. It didn't happen constantly, but enough to be noticeable and frustrating, usually about once per level during intense firefights. The enemy AI can be so smart that it's scary as they flank you, seek cover, and hang back to use ranged weapons, making it all the more frustrating when the friendlies just give a bad guy a hall pass.

Graphically, Infinity Ward hasn't reinvented the wheel here ... but it has made that wheel look a heck of a lot better. From the photo-realistic bloodsplatter on the screen to indicate you've been hit (no more red haze), to the textures and colors that pop off the screen, the imagery of Modern Warfare 2 is dazzling. There's a classy new voice cast too, featuring actors like Keith David, Barry Pepper, Glenn Morshower and Lance Henriksen, all benefiting from improvements to the character lip-sync animations. Paired with the graphics, it's a presentation that feels like you're really being plunked down into a tangible world.

The user interface is cleaned up as well: the new HUD is very streamlined and consolidates all of the information in the lower right-hand corner in a tight, redesigned package. A new radial, vertical compass encircles the D-pad layout, and where CoD 4 only had waypoints marked on the compass (which sometimes made it hard to figure out where you were heading) MW2 actually paints the waypoint over the actual destination on the screen. Being able to glance down and get all of the information in one corner, rather than searching the screen, trying to figure out how many frag grenades I have left or if I'm crouched or standing, is a welcome addition.

As much globetrotting as Modern Warfare 2's story has you doing, gameplay is similarly all over the map: Vehicles and mild platforming (the ice picks and snowmobiles from E3 play a notable role) combine with your basic array of different mission types ranging from protect and defend to flat out obliterate and destroy. I don't want to spoil anything, but rest assured that this story truly is global, and you'll understand what we mean by that in one of the later levels. More of this, and less civilian shock and awe, would have been appreciated.

And finally, yes, Infinity Ward has tucked in another "Mile High"-esque post-game nugget, and no, I'm not going to say another word about it. Sorry. Zip. Nada.

I finished the entire campaign (and yes, I killed civilians in the airport and will require therapy later) in about 10.5 hours on Hardened, though your mileage will probably vary if you aren't stopping to gawk at the landscape. The story has a fairly satisfying conclusion and there's a very strong hint that Modern Warfare will continue. Yes, shocking. Did I enjoy all of those hours? Yes. Would I play through the campaign again? Most definitely ... if I ever got tired of multiplayer.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer was where the replay value paid for itself over and over again in the first game, and Infinity Ward obviously realizes that. The team's taken what works in multiplayer (the Killstreaks) and improved on it, and taken what doesn't work (like multiple grenade spamming) and removed it. That's right: you won't hear the "tink, tink, tink" sounds of rolling grenades in your sleep anymore.

Grenades are still in the game of course, but gone are the Martyrdom and the Frag x3 perks, so you won't have to run away from them every second. Well, nearly every second. Killstreaks now go all the way up to 25, and while IW includes old favorites like the UAV and Airstrikes, there are now a lot more toys to play with as well. You can guide in Predator missiles, call in airdrops, jam the enemy radar, and summon multiple airborne vehicles (no more waiting for enemy copters to disappear before you can deploy your own). My personal favorite is Emergency Airdrop, which showers down four crates containing random Killstreak rewards. It's Christmas!

On the flipside of Killstreaks are the addition of Deathstreaks. If you are being pwned in multiplayer, these are your new best friend. There are four total and you'll start by default with the Copycat Deathstreak, which gives you the Perk load-out of the enemy who last killed you if you suffer multiple deaths in a row without killing anything. New Deathstreaks (including Martyrdom) are unlocked as you level up, and you can only select one to use per match. It's a nice boost that takes a small step toward balancing the game, but it's not going to turn the game around for you single-handedly. Remember: If you're being helped by a Deathstreak, it means the other team is racking up kills. So it's like a badge of honor made out of dog poop. Sure, it's a reward, but do you really want it?

Other than the addition of new Killstreaks, the biggest change to multiplayer is that Perks can now be upgraded. Take Sleight of Hand, for instance. It allows you to load any weapon a lot faster, and when you get a certain number of kills using the Perk, you upgrade to Sleight of Hand Pro, which will let you switch to down the sights or scope aim faster.

There are a ton of other additions to the experience (unlockable custom weapons, the ability to decorate your in-game information tag with Emblems and Tags, Capture the Flag) and gametypes have been revamped. For example, on Headquarters, when a new HQ spawns, it will be visible on the map, but you'll have to wait 30 seconds for it to activate before you can attempt to control it. This totally alters the flow of the mode, making for more of a battle than a camping festival.

A Winning Kill camera has also been added to deathmatches, and at the end of each match everyone on both teams will be treated to a slomo shot of the final kill. This is particularly fun if the player in the spotlight dies in some comical fashion, like getting whacked in the head with a grenade that hasn't armed. It's just a pity that nothing is recordable to your console for playback later. I'd love to see a video editor as robust as the one in Halo 3 so I could share triumphant moments and stellar blunders with friends online.

New game modes are unlocked as you level up, and this includes the new 3rd Person playlists. I gave these a whirl, and it's extremely jarring to suddenly play behind your character, but you'll soon see how it allows you to peep around corners or notice if someone is sneaking up on your six. It's kind of neat to try, but by no means is it going to replace your go-to first-person modes.

Multiplayer is where the action is for most Modern Warfare players, and there is enough new stuff here to make you feel like you're not just getting a few new maps; a much-needed shot in the arm from the original, which has since grown stagnant after it saw only one map pack with four new maps over the past two years.

Special Ops

Arcade mode is (happily) jettisoned and in its place is Special Ops co-op. These are missions that you play with a friend via split-screen or online or just by your lonesome. There is a ton of variety here: vehicles, Ghillie suits, breach charges and more all make appearances in the 23 different missions.

As difficulty increases, you'll soon learn that you're not going to be able to survive some of these challenges unless you communicate. A good example is Overwatch, which features one player overhead in an AC-130, as the other on the ground tries to reach an extraction point. The airborne player clears the path using the trio of massive guns, but at times he'll rely on the ground-based soldier to laser-sight targets for him. Oh, and if one person dies, it's all over.

Each tier scales in difficulty, with one mission description even teasing, "This probably isn't even possible." The final three Spec Ops feel that way, especially when you play on Hardened or above. I spent a long time with a buddy trying to clear one level, and although we must have died 30 times, we kept hitting "Replay," which is probably the best compliment you could pay to a mode like this.

Hopefully, Infinity Ward can include new Spec Ops in future DLC, because the mode was much more enjoyable than I expected it to be. Playing through them solo almost feels like cheating, because they are scaled back in difficulty, but playing with a friend or a random player online will have you working in tandem in ways that you don't even get close to in Multiplayer.

Final Thoughts

Though we can't comment on the plastic night vision goggles or the other bonuses you'll get in the Hardened and Prestige editions, the actual disc containing the game is well worth every cent you'll shell out for it. The single-player campaign might not engross you enough to want to play through the entire game again, but multiplayer and Spec Ops will both bring you back many, many times.

Army Of Two 40 Days

A few campaigns into Army of Two, and mercenaries Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem are lugging their risible body armour, pimped hand-cannons and mismatched names towards their next encounter with a bunch of insurgents who look like a street gang, in an army base that looks like a skate park, in an Iraq that looks like the outskirts of Denver. Rios (bald, scarred, The Serious One) is being Basil Exposition, wondering aloud to Salem (tousled, tattooed, The Impetuous One) whether a mole might be betraying them to the enemy.

"Don't know don't care," barks Salem, and the mindless killing begins once more.

In case you hadn't guessed from the getup that makes its supposedly macho heroes look like camp, sado-masochistic, medieval ice hockey goalies, Army of Two doesn't take itself all that seriously. This co-op-focused, third-person shooter is no Tom Clancy's Advanced Military Anorak Fantasy. Why are we killing these men? What's the plot again? Which third-world country are we blowing up next? Don't know, don't care. In the middle of one firefight, Salem starts banging on about who the best rapper in the Wu-Tang Clan is. It's practically self-parody.

Yes - that is a codpiece with 'Merc' written on it.

It's a good thing, too. The light tone helps you get past the drab locations, dodgy politics, dumb machismo, clumsy dialogue and production-line plot of this superficially standard action game, and focus on what it does well: tactical AI, weapon customisation and superb two-player co-op dynamics.For all that it revels in shooter cliché, the fact that Army of Two was designed from first principles for two players makes it quite an unusual beast. The core of this is the "aggro" system that splices the cover-and-flank tactics of a squad shooter with the threat management mechanics of an MMORPG, and then telegraphs it to the player with all the subtlety of a sucker punch. When one of the pair of "private military contractors" is shooting at the enemy, he draws their fire and glows red. His partner fades to transparency and can move to a flanking position unmolested, the better to take out the enemies behind cover, in body armour, or at machinegun posts. Or to not die, if he's the one under fire already (a "feign death" move also allows you to instantly drop aggro when your health is low).

Versus mode lets you play as any enemy character.As if the visual cues weren't easy enough to understand, there's an aggro meter at the top of the screen, showing you where things stand. It might seem like overkill, but the absolute clarity of the aggro system is Army of Two's greatest strength. It makes it supernaturally easy to fall into the game's steady, swinging rhythm, and means that EA Montreal has been able to notch enemy behaviour a few levels above blind and brain-damaged without making the game frustrating to play. Your opponents frequently attack from two sides and use cover properly, blind-firing and falling back when threatened - but since they can always be outsmarted and outflanked by using the aggro system, you've always got options.

The game is best enjoyed by far with another player, and supports split-screen play as well as a robust drop-in drop-out mode over Xbox Live or PSN. But the AI that takes control of your partner when you play alone is surprisingly capable, too. It's not that it's outstandingly clever, believable or error-free - rather that the command system is elegant and effective, with directions on the d-pad allowing you to toggle between passive and aggressive versions of advance, regroup, and hold-position. Between this and the aggro system, it's simplicity itself to manipulate the AI to get you out of thorny

Whether alone or with a friend, progress in Army of Two is consistently effortless, without being dumb. Outright deaths will be rare, thanks to the healing system that allows downed players to keep firing while their partner drags them back to cover for a heal. There's a clear GPS overlay to point you to the next objective if you get lost. And despite not requiring any button presses to stick or unstick you, cover works seamlessly and intuitively, giving firefights an easy flow.

These are the only things that really matter, even though it's unfortunate to find not everything in Army of Two works so perfectly. There's a whole plethora of other co-op mechanics built into the game, and the majority of them are mildly pointless and prosaic in their implementation. Boosting up to high ledges, simultaneous co-op sniping, pre-animated feats of twin strength, and the scripted moments of back-to-back, slow-motion massacre all feel rather forced and flow-breaking.

The swear-filled camaraderie commands - press X to play air guitar, pull trigger to butt shoulders - just make you cringe. The hovercraft sections are devoid of challenge (or any discernible handling model), although parachuting in with one player controlling the 'chute while the other snipes enemies has a dash of daredevil cool to it. Best of the bunch - and also the most overtly homoerotic touch in a game that's not exactly short of them - is the riot shield system, which allows one player to use a shield or car door as portable cover while the other cuddles up close behind and dispenses "lead" from his "iron".

There's nothing like the love of one Mexican wrestler for another.

Virtually all of this comes into play in Army of Two's cunning and original Vs. mode. Wisely, EA Montreal has realised that without co-op and aggro, there's nothing to distinguish Army of Two from a very run-of-the-mill shooter, so it's enshrined these in the competitive multiplayer, too. Two teams of two are dumped in one of four large maps, crawling with AI enemies and a series of rolling targets. They compete for the cash rewards, vying to be the first to down a helicopter, kill an armoured enemy, or escort a wounded contact to an extraction point. The varied objectives, race-against-time feel, and the busy firefights on two fronts make this an original blast, but it must be said that the performance during our demo session on PSN was on the laggy side compared to standard co-op play.

Army of Two's guns feel dismayingly flat at first, but time reveals this apparent oversight to be a stealthily smart move. It encourages you to shop around and customise in the game's tantalising armoury (access is given midway through each mission), tuning your weapons for aggro, accuracy, ammo capacity, damage and ludicrous, gold-plated looks. Initially bland guns can develop a lot of character and tactical function over the course of the game, and you'll find yourself developing strong attachments to some of them, and swapping with your partner to try others. There are also some OTT super-weapons like a minigun and rocket launcher to unlock for a second play-through.

Mummy, those boys are laughing at us!

But that second play-through is Army of Two's Achilles heel, its sticking point. The campaign is short, painfully anti-climactic, and (with the exception of a memorable attack on an aircraft carrier) it lacks any imaginative spark in its level design or set-pieces. It's just room after corridor after cave after factory after canyon after room full of cover points and shouting terrorists and rattling guns. There's not much in the game's presentation to draw you back either, with its graceless, gawky animations, blanket over-lighting, ugly art, wallpaper music and desolate lack of atmosphere.

The fine-tuned excellence of Army of Two's co-op gunplay will easily sustain you through one run through this gutsy, broadly enjoyable game. But the desire to revisit it is weak, and for a game that's designed with social online play in mind, that's a big problem. Any level of the current co-op king, Halo 3, has more spectacle and incident packed into it than the entirety of Army of Two; more that you'll want to relive in company over and over again. Bearing the strong Vs. mode in mind, it would be wrong not to warmly recommend this as a smart twist on a stupid shooter, but perhaps it should have taken itself a little more seriously after all.

situations.

Bayonetta Review

The best two Japanese action games of the year are diametrically opposed in approach. Demon's Souls is a brooding traipse through the corridors of purgatory, fair but relentlessly unforgiving. It teaches that modern videogames have made us weak and stupid, that our gaming muscles have atrophied through the efforts of so many mollycoddling developers. Every sword strike must be carefully considered, and button-mashers are not so much ridiculed as downright abused for their lack of sophistication. The result is a tense but ponderous experience, one that demands supreme trepidation before each step taken, careful contemplation before every input made.

In Bayonetta, meanwhile, you press a button and your television implodes.

Beloved is a celestial giant with the face of a three-year-old cherub and the body of a weightlifting Buddha, who falls from heaven to cobblestone with a squelchy thwack. Standing just 20 feet from this sudden epiphany, Bayonetta smirks to the cameraman, who's angled our viewpoint on the scene from ground level in order to fully celebrate the titular anti-heroine's ninja Barbie physique and secretary-cum-sex-worker attire. Her wink to lens is the starter pistol for interactivity.

You rotate the left analogue stick and hit the X button on cue, and Bayonetta cartwheels into a handstand, firing the twin pistols attached to her stilettos into Beloved's rolls of fat by clicking her heels in rapid succession. You break the sequence short with a triple jump through the air, esoteric purple wings momentarily sprouting from her arched back as you do so, before landing on Beloved's shoulders. The camera wheels and dives around, matching the kinetic assault of Bayonetta's body blows with dazzling movements of its own.

Finish him: an invitation to execute a Climax Attack on your wearied angelic opponent stamps onto screen. As you make the input, Bayonetta plants her feet square on the ground. Her black latex suit is absorbed into her skin, inexplicably extending the strands of her hair as it's drawn up through her body.

In between levels you play a lightgun-style arcade mini-game, in which you're given a limited set of golden bullets with which to shoot down some angelic beings. Points can be converted into cash or performance-enhancing lollipops.

Shielding what's left of her modesty with her arms, Bayonetta flings her head backwards and her new 30-foot hair extensions assume the form of a black dragon: follicular shape shifting. It bares shadowy tooth shapes before lurching forward and down onto the cherub's torso. You madly hammer X to fill a Megaton bonus-point gauge, each mash encouraging the beast to chew a little harder. Then, in the final moment of climax, it rips Beloved's torso in two, dropping a crimson waterfall onto the cobblestones below like a dead weight.

Bayonetta's hair retracts itself back into her scalp. Her clothes re-envelop her body. She pops a lollipop into her mouth and sucks twice. Lara Croft shivers. Airport massacre levels, be damned. Bayonetta eats angels with her hairdo. Let's have a discussion about that on the Today programme.

For director Hideki Kamiya, Bayonetta is the final destination of a stream of flamboyant creative endeavour he first tapped eight years ago. With Devil May Cry, Kamiya invented his own sub-genre: a scrolling beat-'em-up that combined kung-fu wire combat with near endless combo strings and wrapped it all up in a camp gothic aesthetic. Rather than attempting to merely recreate Devil May Cry's successes in Bayonetta, Kamiya's bravely stripped away all of the dead weight from his initial template, ruthlessly streamlining the form and function to deliver something at once fresh and familiar. It's also, unquestionably, the greatest game yet to spill from this niche.

Developer Platinum Games' influence is clear from the off. Bayonetta discards the dark and dry anime tone of Kamiya's earlier work for something more tongue-in-cheek and irreverent. The story is delivered in bite-size, snappy cut-scenes, with slightly ropey albeit effective cutaway stylisation and camp voice-acting that soon wins you over. The approach suits the game style well, allowing for humorous quips and wry visual gags to be interspersed with the action, revelling in the silliness of its scenario in a way Devil May Cry never quite dared.

While the presentation teeters on the edge of objectification, with long, lingering shots of anatomically perplexing females, the characterisation does much to counterbalance the sexist overtones, and Bayonetta emerges as one of the strongest Japanese leads in recent memory. Discarding a grand gothic soundtrack, the game instead settles upon an incongruous but irresistible mix of J-pop and jazz. The thrill of batting away celestial bodies to a poorly enunciated lounge version of "Fly Me To the Moon" is unforgettable.

Darksiders Review

While plenty of games are set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, not many let you participate in the actual end of the world. In the case of Darksiders, this is precisely where the action begins. Influenced by games like God of War and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and often dangerously straddling the line between homage and plagiarism), Darksiders offers an expansive world to explore, with satisfying combat and intriguing puzzles to solve peppered throughout. Though it falls prey to a poorly fleshed-out story and overly complex controls that don't always work the way they should, Darksiders is nonetheless a thoroughly fun and visually engaging adventure that manages to take some old ideas and make them feel fresh once again.

As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your jo

b is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen's most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you're somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it's time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it's a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes

the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you're introduced to are fleshe

d out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War's weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death's scythe), and it's simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it's incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

When you're not on the warpath, there's an enormous world waiting to be explored and dozens of intriguing puzzles to solve along the way. Traversing from one area to the next isn't always straightforward, for your progress is often hindered by your gear, or at least by your lack of it. As you proceed through the many dungeons on your journey through Darksiders, you find that each one includes a useful new item, such as a bladed boomerang, a grappling hook, or an armored gauntlet, each of which opens up new paths for you to travel and is used in often creative ways to solve puzzles and defeat bosses from then on out. Puzzle complexity ramps up nicely, and each new variation encountered is a fair step up from the previous one. Though some can initially look overwhelming--such as a series of puzzles near the end of the game in which you must redirect a beam of energy from its source using mirrors, moving platforms, and interdimensional portals--they never feel impossible and are extremely gratifying to complete. At the end of each dungeon is a large-scale boss battle that puts what you've learned solving these puzzles to the test. These impressive, multifaceted fights are sometimes a bit on the easy side, but not so much that it makes them any less fun.

Throughout the game, you are constantly rewarded with new pieces of equipment, weapons, and abilities--every hour of gameplay yields something new, which keeps you wanting to play to see what's next. The unfortunate downside of this is that there are so many different things to keep track of that it can get confusing sometimes. Unfortunately, the complex controls don't do much to curb this confusion. Every single face button on the controller is used (sometimes for more than one thing), and some moves require combinations of buttons to be pressed. Certain actions, such as throwing a charged boomerang at several targets, require a dizzying array of inputs to be made: in this case, you have to tap the right analog stick to enter aiming mode, hold the left trigger down, paint your targets with the cursor, and hold then release the right trigger to finally charge the boomerang and toss it. Because only so many pieces of gear can be instantly accessible through the D pad, in the latter parts of the game you'll find yourself frequenting the cumbersome inventory menu to swap out items for easy access, which can be annoying. Finally, the controls aren't always as responsive as they need to be, which can cause you to flub a jump, miss a dodge, or inexplicably fall while hanging off a wall or ceiling when you meant to do something entirely different. This doesn't happen often, but it's always troubling when it does.

War's a pretty big guy, but many of his opponents tower over him.

Though the world of Darksiders is one of decay and neglect following the premature apocalypse, it is still one of visual splendor. From the lush vegetation of the Drowned Pass to the barren desert of The Ashlands, a refreshingly bright and colorful palette is always on display. Varied and imaginative, the open world and dungeons look great, though there are some unfortunate graphical issues in the Xbox 360 version. Screen tearing is a huge problem that surfaces almost any time the camera is rotated, and it's bad enough to distract you even when you're just exploring. In addition, battles that get too big make the frame rate suffer, causing graphical slowdown. The PlayStation 3 version suffers neither of these issues. Action in Darksiders is punctuated by an appropriately moody and atmospheric soundtrack, and the vocal cast does a good job bringing the characters to life, considering how meagerly they're fleshed out. Mark Hamill in particular seems to relish his role as the Watcher, a sadistic demon tasked with keeping an eye on War (though it's a bit odd to hear him recycle his Joker voice so soon after Batman: Arkham Asylum).

Darksiders unapologetically borrows gameplay ideas and mechanics from all over the spectrum and is constantly cramming new ones in all the way up to the very end. While it's not innovative by any stretch of the imagination, neither is it entirely derivative, as these myriad features not only gel together surprisingly well, but when put together even feel fresh again. Though it's hobbled by a disappointing story and excessively complex controls (as well as some technical issues on the Xbox 360), Darksiders is a fun and entertaining adventure with a host of fair but challenging puzzles, a lengthy single-player campaign, and an engaging combat system.

While plenty of games are set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, not many let you participate in the actual end of the world. In the case of Darksiders, this is precisely where the action begins. Influenced by games like God of War and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and often dangerously straddling the line between homage and plagiarism), Darksiders offers an expansive world to explore, with satisfying combat and intriguing puzzles to solve peppered throughout. Though it falls prey to a poorly fleshed-out story and overly complex controls that don't always work the way they should, Darksiders is nonetheless a thoroughly fun and visually engaging adventure that manages to take some old ideas and make them feel fresh once again.

6244941War isn't about to let anything stand between him and vengeance.none

As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your job is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen's most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you're somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it's time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it's a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes, the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you're introduced to are fleshed out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.

While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War's weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death's scythe), and it's simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it's incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

Executions are bloody, violent, and fun to perform.

While plenty of games are set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, not many let you participate in the actual end of the world. In the case of Darksiders, this is precisely where the action begins. Influenced by games like God of War and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and often dangerously straddling the line between homage and plagiarism), Darksiders offers an expansive world to explore, with satisfying combat and intriguing puzzles to solve peppered throughout. Though it falls prey to a poorly fleshed-out story and overly complex controls that don't always work the way they should, Darksiders is nonetheless a thoroughly fun and visually engaging adventure that manages to take some old ideas and make them feel fresh once again.

6244941War isn't about to let anything stand between him and vengeance.none

As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your job is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen's most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you're somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it's time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it's a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes, the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you're introduced to are fleshed out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.

While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War's weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death's scythe), and it's simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it's incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

Executions are bloody, violent, and fun to perform.

Dragon Age Review

Since the release of Baldur's Gate in 1998, BioWare has cultivated a strong reputation for quality role-playing games, exploring various aspects of the genre ranging from traditional D&D roles and rules to space marine and Jedi Knights. Dragon Age: Origins is a shift back to traditional swords-and-sorcery standards, unashamedly embracing the archetypes that made RPGs what they are, and using them to tell a complex, interesting story in a familiar yet unexplored world. In addition, BioWare has done yet another iteration of their combat system to make it deeper and allow the player to dictate the level of engagement. The result is that Dragon Age: Origins is one of the best RPGs in recent history. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.
Character creation starts you off with a few simple choices that have far-reaching effects. There are three races (Human, Dwarf, Elf), and three classes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue), and they are much as you'd expect if you've ever played a fantasy RPG before. Depending on what you pick, one or two of the 'Origins' stories becomes available. These are short scenarios which detail the introduction of your character to the main plot line. For example, Human Rogues get their beginning as part of a noble house. Dwarf Warriors can choose either the dwarf noble or dwarf commoner starting areas, and both Elven and Human mages share a starter-story due to their class. (The only race restriction is that Dwarves can't be Mages.) These decisions affect how NPCs interact with your character throughout the game.

While only having three classes may seem limiting, your characters will have a high degree of customization as you start leveling up. You have talent trees (well, not so much 'trees' as 'lines') and each level gives you a talent point to spend. The talent lines are divided up into major fighting categories. The categories for Warriors are Dual Weapon, Archery, Weapon and Shield, and Two-Handed. Within each of these categories are sets of activated and passive abilities that grow progressively more powerful as you spend more talent points in that line.

The result of this is that you can easily have multiple Warriors in a group, each performing a different role and having different gameplay. One can swing a massive axe and lay waste to whatever he touches, and another can grab a shield and take on the tank role, utilizing a host of defensive talents. Mages get a similar selection of roles, and are able to play as elemental sorcerers, healers/buffers, or dabblers in the dark arts. On top of all this, each class has a set of four Specializations, which confer certain bonuses and unlock another set of abilities. Rogues can choose to become bards, which grants them songs to buff their party and mesmerize their enemies; they can also choose Assassin, making them better at finding weak spots, or Ranger, which lets them summon forest creatures to their aid. You get to pick a specialization at levels 7 and again at 14, but perhaps the most interesting part is how you acquire them. Some you can purchase, some are trained by various NPCs or party members, and others are unlocked by quests.

The stat system will be instantly familiar to anyone with experience in the genre; strength makes you hit harder, constitution makes you tougher, etc. It's quite simple, and the tooltips explain everything you need to know. Every level gives you three stat points to spend as you will. Various items and talents will have a stat requirement to use or acquire, but it's a fairly smooth progression. You won't typically have to wait very long to use that shiny new sword you picked up. There's no single, monolithic alignment system, but your actions will have an effect on how NPCs treat you. Perhaps more importantly, your actions will have an effect on how your group members feel about you. Each of them has an Approval Rating, which is a measure of how much they like you. Extreme ratings can unlock side plots — friendship and romance for high ratings, mutiny and abandonment for low ratings — and they can have an effect on the characters' stats.

The Approval system is a fun way to learn about each of your companions. There's a surprising amount of story to be told for each of them. Surprising, at least, until you realize how much story there is in the rest of the game. I was impressed by how often I had a meaningful choice in how the plot unfolded. That is, when the dialogue allowed for different options, they didn't feel like window dressing. (e.g. Do you want to kill him? Yes/No Yes. Are you sure? No/I Guess Not Damnit.) I just picked whichever option I felt like picking, and the plot still worked.

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The story succeeds, by and large, for two reasons: the writing and the voice acting. BioWare made a lot of noise about getting some big names for Dragon Age: Origins (and they did; Kate Mulgrew, Claudia Black, Tim Curry, Steve Valentine, and Tim Russ, to name a few), but that isn't a guarantee of good voice work. Virtually all of the NPC dialogue in this game is spoken (you can skip through it if you care to; I rarely felt the need to), even when you're asking them about mundane things, so poor voice acting would be hard to tolerate after a while. But this cast turned in a performance that (sadly) I don't tend to expect from video games. What helped a lot in this regard is that the characters are very well written — which is to say they actually seem fleshed-out and believable, with a personality that's consistent from one scene to the next. The details of how the characters react to events and interact with each other are spot on. Your companions will occasionally trade jokes or insults at random times throughout the game, whether you're in the middle of dialogue or just wandering through a city.

Now, don't get me wrong; the plot itself is interesting too, but it's hard to tread new ground here (Doom threatens the world; a hero arises; things go wrong that the hero must put right), and the writers don't really worry about doing so. They're just trying to tell a cool story. Without spoiling too much, the Mage Tower story in the main plot is particularly fun. The writers leave you a trail of breadcrumbs to figure out what happened, dump you into fantasy land for a few puzzles and a different way of fighting, then top it off with an epic battle, all while maintaining an atmosphere of hopelessness and dread. What's more, all the different portions of the main plot are completely distinct, each with its own moral dilemmas, level layout, look, and back-story.

In addition to countless hours of dialogue, one big way BioWare goes about establishing their game world is through books, scrolls, and notes scattered around the areas you visit. When you click on them, they'll put a page or so of text in your Codex explaining who's who and what's what, so you're not inundated with a flood of made-up, fantasy-world names at any one time. The Codex entries are relevant to whatever task you're currently doing, and vary in form from dictionary-style explanation to diary entries to poems.

*

So, how about the gameplay? Many RPGs have met their downfall on the weakness of their combat mechanics, or have succeeded in spite of it. (I'll name no names, but one such rhymes with Moblivion.) Like several other BioWare games, you can pause the action and queue up an ability that will fire off when you un-pause. You can also take control of any other party member(s) whenever you please. Group size tops out at four, which allows a fair amount of micromanagement without becoming tedious. For general commands like attacking or movement, you can control multiple party members at once. There's not a lot of movement during combat. Rogues have bit of an incentive to move behind their targets, and mages will occasionally have cause to kite a monster, but most of the running you do will be to get your melee in range to hit something. My only major gripe is that melee classes tend to run out of stamina quickly, so for long battles they spend a lot of time auto-attacking.

Even with just that, it would be a solid combat system, but there are three other major features which allow you customize your level of engagement. First, there are four difficulty settings. Easy will let you basically just point-and-click to win. Normal will require some planning and pausing, and some potion use on the tougher fights. Hard makes you do a lot more micromanagement, use consumables often, and watch out for friendly fire. Nightmare is for people who should probably be medicated. Second, you can set generalized behaviors for each of your party members; this will make them run to seek a fight, run away, ignore it altogether, or a few other options.

Third is your Tactics page. This lets you set up responses to a large variety of actions or game states. For example, you can set a Mage to cast a heal when somebody drops below 50% health. Or, you could have your warrior tank run over to attack whatever monster is beating on your rogue. There are hundreds of trigger conditions neatly laid out in a set of drop-down menus. You can set some some fairly complex behavior if you'd like to, or just automate the basic tasks. When you put this whole system together, you end up being able to tailor the fighting to your personal preference for involvement. You can micromanage as much or as little as you want.

The UI is very streamlined and responsive. The camera is over-the-shoulder, and if you zoom out far enough it pulls back to an almost top-down, "tactical" view. (The console versions are restricted to over-the-shoulder.) For using your abilities, you have a boilerplate action bar, and your group portraits are off to the left for monitoring health and mana. If I were nitpicking, I'd say the health and mana bars should be somewhat thicker; they're a bit small to take in the whole group at a glance. Click-able bars pop up on the bottom of your screen whenever you get quest or codex updates (and a few other things), which makes it very easy to keep track of what's going on with the plot. You can hold down a button to highlight everything on screen that you can interact with (chests, NPCs, monsters, loot-able corpses, quest items, doors), so finding what you're looking for is dead easy.

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That streamlining carries over into the gameplay as well. Any of your party members who fall in battle come back to life if the remaining characters win the fight. It's silly from a realism perspective, but at the same time it saves me from spending 30 seconds casting Resurrection every other battle or keeping 500 Phoenix Downs in my bags. (Though, oddly, characters come back to life with injuries — minor stat debuffs — that require an item or a visit to base camp to heal.) Itemization is perhaps a victim of this streamlining. As I leveled up, I naturally picked up better gear, but it never felt like the items made a significant difference. On the other hand, stat gains from leveling were constant, and new talents provided obvious improvements. Quests are sometimes quite simplistic because of the interface as well, but those quests mainly exist to serve the narrative. I expected this to bother me, but it didn't; I just wanted to see where the story was going.

Dragon Age: Origins has a ton of (quality) playtime in it; even more when you consider replayability. I'm sure I could go through the entire game again and have a largely different experience, both in story and in combat. (I tend to stick with a group configuration I like, so one of my potential companions has been sitting on the sidelines the whole time, and I slightly killed another one. Not to mention different talent choices and specializations.) BioWare didn't blaze a new trail within the genre, but they succeeded in their effort to create a game that presents a new, fun take on the familiar with elegance and polish