Mass Effect 3: Omega

Mass Effect 3: Omega Review

Aria T'Loak once presided over the Omega space station, where exotic dancers entertained and enthralled onlookers, and outlaws trafficked drugs and weapons without the threat of government scrutiny. In Mass Effect 3: Omega, Aria is on the lam, ousted from her position as the station's self-appointed dictator by the pro-human organization called Cerberus. But Aria misses home--and craves the power she once so flagrantly flaunted. And now it's time to return to the Terminus Systems to regain her lost rule.

Aria's convictions are compelling; if only the downloadable add-on in which she prominently figures were equally tenacious. Omega disappointingly leaves behind the Mass Effect series' narrative complexity in favor of pistols and profanities, and replaces its moving dialogue with sci-fi military chatter. You spend the majority of the time shooting guns as Commander Shepard, often with Aria at your side providing support, stopping for a few moments so that your companion might update the mission objective and remind you how badass she is before you once again peer down the scope of your battle rifle.

Granted, Omega's action is quite good, and the environments do a great job of communicating a sense of "bigness" that the series' level design sometimes lacks. You catch glimpses of aerial battles raging among the station's cylindrical spires and reddened skyways, and dropships enter from above as if part of a larger assault. Even when industrial-looking zones threaten to blend together, visual touches like a force field's swirling red glow, and Aria's forceful biotic eruptions, provide color and character. Open combat environments encourage you to stay on the move, and troopers and centurions frequently flank you, forcing you into the open--and possibly into view of a hulking atlas. New enemies like the rampart mech are particularly aggressive, and that aggressiveness makes the final combat sequence an enjoyable challenge.



These mechs aren't afraid to get in your face.

Omega's primary problem is that it forgets that what makes Mass Effect 3 special isn't the shooting itself--it's that you care about why you are shooting in the first place. Aria has always been an intriguing figure, and depending on your responses to her in dialogue, you might find that Commander Shepard has more in common with her than you once realized. But whenever Aria gets a chance to shine, BioWare drops the ball, reducing her to a petulant, potty-mouthed sociopath. The series has never fully shied from strong language, and Jack had her share of profane moments. But those moments punctuated that character's lingering insecurities and tough-love leadership qualities, whereas Aria's F-bombs during combat are unnecessary and grow repetitive.

Aria has a few tough-love moments of her own, but in a series that explores complex personalities, she is disappointingly one-note. When she finally gains the opportunity to encourage her subjects with a rousing speech, glitches take over, with the pirate queen teleporting and pirouetting as if the laws of physics and common sense no longer apply. The shallow characterizations continue with Omega's other primary personality, a female Turian called Nyreen. She and Aria have a complicated past--one that could have used some development. Unfortunately, Nyreen has a limited amount of screen time, which is a shame, because she provides a moral balance to Aria's consistent egotism.



Aria takes another moment to look sour and disinterested.

The character roster is rounded out with a villain who fits snugly into the "guys with accents are evil" category and who has too little screen time to make much of an impact. In that sense, he personifies Omega at large: lacking impact. The content is purely self-contained, in contrast to Mass Effect 2's wonderful add-ons, which were pleasantly inserted into the adventure at large. Once you finish Omega, the galaxy doesn't care, which is just as well, since you don't make any substantial decisions anyway. You can't return to the space station, you gain no crew members or Normandy guests, and Aria is deposited back on the Citadel--a bizarre circumstance fully at odds with her character arc.

What's left is all that combat, which seems to go on interminably with too little to break it up. The action is good at least, with level designs and enemy behavior that encourage you to do more than take cover in one safe spot and blast bullets and biotics until no foe is left standing. But you do all that fighting without ever feeling connected to what you're fighting for--and you do it without your trusted friends at your side. Shepard even quips that seeking out a crack squad for a vital mission is an all-too-familiar goal. And you know there are tough times ahead when even Shepard acknowledges the repetition to come. 

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Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Review of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - Taking Risks

Available on Xbox 360, PS3 (tested), PC

Right when you were thinking you could skip the annual Call of Duty release due to franchise fatigue or simply wanting to take a year off, Treyarch delivers one of the most full-featured and best games in the series. Call of Duty: Black Ops II makes improvements to the formula in every single one of its game modes--from its incredibly balanced and thrilling multiplayer to a campaign that's engaging and full of surprises and a Zombies mode that could pass as its own stand-alone experience.

Black Ops II takes off in the year 2025, with Black Ops' Sergeant Woods pushing 90 and David Mason (son of Black Ops lead character Alex Mason) taking over as leader of the future US Navy SEALs. Cyber-terrorist and all-around-bad-guy Raul Menendez has a bone to pick with the Masons, Woods, and the U.S. of A. over the loss of his disabled sister, and he has waited the good part of forty years planning his revenge. The story remains engaging throughout, with surprises and plot twists that change depending on your performance and several life-or-death choices made throughout the six-hour campaign.

If that sounds unlike any Call of Duty you've ever played, that's because it is. Black Ops II's story contains alternate paths that change small portions of the campaign, leading to multiple endings. Whether you meet the specific criteria of some objectives can determine if certain characters live or die, so taking too long to rescue a V.I.P. or making a wrong turn during a driving sequence might completely change the ending. The branching story is surprisingly dynamic, and seeing the substantive alternate endings adds another reason to replay the campaign after the credits roll.



The missions alternate between flashbacks set in the 1980s, starring Alex Mason and Woods, and 2025 missions from the perspective of David Mason and his high-tech Spec-Ops team. The variety is staggering and well-paced, and though there's plenty of running and gunning, all of the set-pieces are memorable and exciting. One mission, you'll shoot at tanks with a rocket launcher while riding a horse; the next, you'll guide a spider-like recon drone through a winding network of vents. The campaign excels with its pacing, excitement, and delivery, but falls short in one of the new additions: Strike Force missions.

The new Strike Force missions are optional levels that pop up during the campaign. Unlike the standard missions, you can choose to play from the first-person perspective of any unit on the battlefield; alternatively, you can swoop up to the tactical overhead perspective in which you select units and order them to move, attack, or capture points like you would in a real-time strategy game. It all sounds good on paper--but in practice, the AI doesn't work well enough to play exclusively in the overhead view (which should've been a viable option). Playing in first-person isn't much better. Enemies run out from cover to be mowed down with your gunfire, so it isn't much of a challenge.



The addition of the Strike Force missions might have come short, but the advancements in the fan favorite Zombies mode vastly improve the apocalyptic survival gameplay over the previous titles. The undead shooting survival mode has expanded to a level that is basically a separate title in itself. The traditional Survival mode (in which you hold out as waves of angry undead beasties attempt to eat your brains) is now joined with three new modes: Grief, Custom, and the expansive Tranzit mode. Grief lets up to two teams of eight total players attempt to survive the Zombie horde and outlive the other team by finding ways to get them killed. Discovering creative ways to deter the other team is hilariously entertaining, since you can toss zombie bait into opponent's defensive positions, and knife other players off balconies into the zombie horde. Custom games adjust the match settings like your starting round, difficulty, and whether want the mystery box power-ups to appear.

Tranzit expands Zombies from a traditional horde mode to a full apocalyptic adventure. You still must survive waves of undead attackers, but you can also explore the massive world map using an automated bus as transport and interact with a new puzzle element involving "parts." Parts can be used to assemble special items with unique properties, like power generators or riot shield-like weapons--pushing players to explore, take risks and develop strategies to open new doors. You’ll spend hours exploring and experimenting in Tranzit's open world, and when you and your friends unlock something new, the return for your effort is extremely rewarding.



But that’s enough about working cooperatively--what about the part where you get to shoot your friends in the face? Black Ops II's multiplayer has received several game-changing improvements. First off, the class customization uses a "Pick 10" system. Players have ten points to choose the items they want in their loadout, including weapons, perks, and the new Wild Cards that allow you to do things like equip extra perks or add an extra attachment to your primary weapon. You can also get rid of slots you don't use. Don't want to have a Perk 1? You don't have to. Use that point to add an extra lethal grenade or an additional Perk 2. Pick 10 gives players much more freedom in the way they choose their loadouts and keeps the competition balanced at the same time.

Killstreaks have also gotten an overhaul in the way they are earned and are now called Scorestreaks. Kills are no longer the only way of earning the multitude of air support, drones, and turrets that stack up the kills for you. With Scorestreaks, camping out and racking up kills is often the slowest way to earn your streak bonus. Higher score values are awarded to players who put their efforts toward match-winning objectives, like controlling capture points, planting bombs, and guarding flags. The score system becomes a huge motivator for your teammates to go for a flag capture, rather than camping out and trying to earn a Stealth Chopper, making the cooperative effort all the more thrilling.



The Scorestreaks themselves have also changed with the game’s futuristic setting, but most generally follow the same function as their previous counterparts. Being able to unleash and control several drone types and Predator missiles have a secondary cluster bomb option add variety to old favorites, but new streaks like the Guardian have particularly strategic uses. The heat-wave projecting turret prevents opponents from crossing its area of effect, essentially forcing them to find an alternate route and creating bottlenecks on the map. Streaks like these create new strategic options in team games and can be devastating to more disorganized opponents.

Outside of the gameplay, Black Ops II has also received several other upgrades as well. The Codcasting feature allows players to commentate on matches, livestream, and share their videos online. Then there's League Play that ranks your skills and places you in brackets with players that are at your skill level. This is the most feature heavy multiplayer offering in the series' history with options that will appeal to a variety of players.



Treyarch blasts away 'franchise fatigue' with one of the best Call of Duty experiences to date. Black Ops II delivers on all fronts. Zombies drops you into an intense, expansive world with untold secrets to discover, multiplayer's Pick 10 system and Scorestreaks open up new strategies to exploit, and the single-player campaign warrants repeat visits from its captivating, branching storyline. Treyarch introduces new ideas to the tried-and-true game mechanics of the series and improves upon them. Every aspect of the game has been honed to a razor-sharp experience, complete with beautiful visuals and rock-solid controls. Thought you were done with Call of Duty? Think again. This is the new Call of Duty. This is the definitive Call of Duty. And this is a shooter that absolutely can't be missed.
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Halo 4

Halo 4 Review

A thrilling, moving story and intense competitive multiple player help Halo 4 continue the series' reign as one of the premier shooter franchises.

Halo is in new hands. After chronicling humanity's defeat in Halo: Reach, developer and series creator Bungie passed the reins to 343 Industries, who has charted a new course for the iconic Spartan and his AI companion, Cortana. In Halo 4, the duo confronts a fresh new threat to the human race and grapples with mortality in a way the series never has before. The result is the most compelling story a Halo game has ever told, conveyed through a campaign that combines the excellent combat, pacing, and environmental design that have long been hallmarks of the series. The intriguing new cooperative mode feels flimsy, but the competitive multiplayer reasserts itself as one of the most exciting offerings in the genre. Halo 4 doesn't just take the franchise baton in stride; it sprints out confidently to keep Master Chief and company at the head of the pack.

At the end of Halo 3, Master Chief and Cortana were adrift on a derelict ship, having just struck the final blow to bring an end to the Covenant's devastating campaign against the human race. Chief then entered cryo-sleep for the next four years, while humanity poured its energies into fortifying its defenses and expanding its galactic presence. A captivating opening cutscene shows this new initiative taking a critical look at the past, foreshadowing some interesting tension later in the game. Meanwhile, Chief and Cortana are roused when they stumble upon a dire threat to humanity's existence. This foe provides the series with its first proper villain, one whose roots in previously-vague Forerunner mythology soon come into frightening focus.

These galactic machinations are dramatic and intriguing, and they are brought to life vividly by Halo 4's stunning technical prowess. From sweeping panoramic vistas to claustrophobic jungle clearings, the environments are rich with detail enhanced by thoughtful lighting and sharp textures. The excellent artistic design that makes human, Covenant, and Forerunner architecture so instantly recognizable is on display once more, helping to create a cohesive sci-fi world. Expressive facial animations bring characters to life, imbuing the cutscenes with extra emotional weight and making the story that much more engaging. It's all tied together with an amazing soundtrack that complements every aspect of the game. Alien environments ring with eerie strains, characters' emotions are reflected in plangent chords, and the intense action is driven along by urgent orchestrations.

Yet for all the excitement and emotion of the main plot, the most engrossing drama of Halo 4 takes place between Master Chief and Cortana. Everyone's favorite artificial intelligence is nearing her expiration date, forcing these two all-but-invincible characters to face the prospect of death in a way they never have. This delicate, degenerative process is handled eloquently, and great voice acting, animation, and writing combine for some poignant moments. 343 Industries delivers a compelling narrative on both an intimate and a grand scale, with a satisfying conclusion that will make you excited for what's to come.

Halo 4 is a striking step up in storytelling for the series, but when it comes to the action, things are more familiar. Halo has always been a shooter built on clear gameplay systems that combine in complex and gratifying ways. The crafty and aggressive enemy AI squads work together, adjusting their tactics as you assault their ranks. Your four-pronged arsenal of guns, grenades, melee attacks, and armor abilities fuels a variety of different battlefield strategies. And the environments both large and small provide enough space to maneuver creatively, occasionally furnishing a vehicle or two for your driving enjoyment.

These systems are a through line in the series and they continue to hold up well in Halo 4, right down to the Covenant enemies that you fight at various points throughout the campaign (apparently not everyone knows the war is over). They still make great foes, but the new Promethean enemies offer a fresh combat challenge. Canine crawlers fire from a distance or swarm up close, while hovering watchers flit back and forth, offering maddening support to their allies. The hulking knights look fearsome and put up a mean fight, teleporting both defensively and offensively to make killing them from a distance a tricky proposition. New enemies come with new weapons too, and though these guns fit familiar niches, neat tweaks like the boltshot's shotgun-esque alternate fire and the scattershot's ricocheting bullets make them feel distinct.



As you balance aggression and restraint, you see your enemies doing the same thing, and this tactical interplay makes the core combat eminently engaging and replayable. The campaign is well paced and often challenging, and though some Forerunner areas flirt with repetition, the whole endeavor is exciting for the 8 to 10 hours it takes to finish it. Playing with up to three other players is a blast, and Halo 4's campaign thrives in cooperative play. More Spartans means more freedom for you to employ team tactics, put vehicles to good use, play around with the various game-tweaking skulls, or simply have fun horsing around

You can also flex your cooperative muscle in a new mode called Spartan Ops. Planned as a regular series, each free, downloadable episode of Spartan Ops comes with a CG-animated short depicting life among the Spartans, as well as a number of brief playable combat scenarios. The first video features a lively cast and some enjoyably dramatic scenes, with animation quality comparable to the cutscenes from the campaign. Though the commanding officer from the video lends some voice-over supervision to the individual scenarios, the missions themselves feel fragmented and disconnected from each other. Though they can be played solo or with up to three others, these skirmishes are over in a matter of minutes, and this brevity makes them feel inconsequential and unsatisfying. Still, it's a flexible and novel way to deliver fresh postrelease content, and it will be interesting to see how the Spartan Ops story builds in the coming weeks and months.

Back on more familiar ground, War Games is the new name for the vaunted competitive multiplayer action that has been a genre standout for more than a decade. The classic deathmatch and objective-based game types return in free-for-all and team varieties, with only a few tweaks and additions. Infection has been renamed Flood, casting the "zombie" characters as Flood-mutated humans with super speed and a giant spike arm that behaves like an energy sword. Regicide is a new free-for-all game type that puts a bounty on the player with the highest score and occasionally grants him or her an overshield or other perk for remaining on top. Invasion is gone, and in its place is Dominion, a team contest focused on capturing and maintaining control of three bases. Bonuses for holding them include spawnable vehicles, automatic turrets, and weapon drops, making for some feisty back-and-forth struggles.

(An important logistical note: To play these modes, you need 2GB of storage space to install War Games, and 1.5GB per episode of Spartan Ops. It's unclear how much space Spartan Ops will demand in the future, but suffice it to say, a memory card won't cut it.)

Halo's competitive multiplayer modes have always dictated the weapons available to players in a given match, creating a level playing field from the get-go. But now, in a move reflective of modern shooter trends, Halo 4 introduces loadouts. These consist of familiar categories like primary and secondary weapons, grenades, and armor abilities, as well as two new attributes that grant small bonuses, like quicker weapon switching, bigger grenade explosions, and broader motion sensor range. You unlock extra loadout slots and the ability to equip these bonuses as you level up, and you must also pay to unlock individual loadout items with points you earn with each rank. It can feel a bit limiting at first, but regardless of your rank, there are always a few fully stocked predetermined loadouts to choose from, so you're never at a disadvantage for being low-level.



Not knowing the map is also less of a disadvantage now, because weapons spawned on the battlefield are clearly marked. Furthermore, players who do well can call in their own ordnance drop mid-match. Familiar weapons like needlers, shotguns, and swords are accessible only through such drops, as are new entries like an explosive railgun and a light machine gun. There are even boosts to shields, movement speed, and damage output. Picking one of the three random options in your personal ordnance reward is an interesting strategic decision that affects how you proceed and adds another defensive consideration for your opponents.

New abilities can help you deal with these variables; Promethean Vision lets you see your enemies' silhouettes and identify which weapons they're holding, while a hardlight shield can save you from an imminent explosion. The online battlefields of Halo 4 are more varied than their predecessors, but none of the changes or additions are powerful enough to destabilize the core balance. This plays like a richer version of the competitive Halo that many have come to love over the years, and the new tweaks add a welcome freshness to the action.

If you want to avoid or embrace any given element, you can always fire up a Custom Game and tinker with the battlefield conditions to your heart's content. Options are as robust as ever and are exponentially expandable once you dip into the still-incredibly-powerful Forge level editor. Though it can be daunting, some changes to Forge have made placing objects easier and the whole experience generally more user-friendly. Play around with friends, tweak existing levels to your liking, craft something using the new tools, or simply download the fruits of other people's labor--Forge remains an impressive platform for creative play and thoughtful design.



Halo 4 is every bit the massive shooter package that its predecessors were, and it holds the series' standard high. The thrilling and emotional return of Master Chief and Cortana is the highlight, and the campaign breaks new ground in narrative quality for the franchise. The top-notch competitive multiplayer picks up where Halo: Reach left off, infusing the action with some mainstream elements while still remaining undeniably unique. Spartan Ops may stay a mere sideshow or prove its worth in the weeks to come, but there's no doubting that the next planned Halo trilogy is off to a great start. 343 Industries should be proud of what it has accomplished, and you should be excited to experience it for yourself.

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Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 Review

Far Cry 3's intelligent and elegant open-world structure balances exciting action with the joys of free-form adventuring, making it one of the best shooters of the year.

Far Cry 3 is a delightful and harsh tropical wonderland, crawling with wildlife and threatened by the pirates and drug runners that disrupt its peace. The troubled paradise you explore is colorful and wild, enticing you to investigate its ravines and discover new ways to enjoy the open-world playground sprawling in front of you. This is a game that ignites the desire to complete every last challenge and check out every last icon on your map. You gradually journey across the entirety of two sunny and sinful islands, hunting for rare game, speeding medicine to needy communities, and skinning sharks so that you might craft new wallets with their hides. Far Cry 3 is an excellent game, marred mainly by some irritating design elements and an inconsistent story that often defaults to generic "tribal" cliches to make an impact.

When the story leaves those cliches behind for deeper territory, however, it does manage to communicate ideas of substance. It takes many hours for its themes to come together in a coherent way--yet in certain aspects, the incoherence makes sense. As protagonist Jason Brody, your initial quest to rescue your friends from a chaotic and truly frightful pirate named Vaas turns into a personal journey blurred by drugs, and fueled by the desire to follow a new and exciting spiritual path. Those friends are too shallow for you to care much about them, which keeps the story at arm's length for a good half of the game. But his friends' shallowness ultimately allows Jason to take a guilt-free look inward, as he grows further mesmerized by the customs of the local Rakyat tribe that takes him under its wing. You might see the narrative curveballs coming after a while, but the trippy manner in which certain events unfold effectively blurs the lines between reality and Jason's occasionally drug-addled imagination.

Nonetheless, narrative oddities stand out. Some of Jason's friends are strangely unaffected by the horrors inflicted upon them. The game quickly glosses over an event that would make most of us emotional wrecks, making Jason's proclamations that the issue was harder to deal with than he expected ring hollow. Some moments seem made to be shocking for the sake of shock alone--not because they develop the world or its characters--but Far Cry 3 isn't so much about story as it is about its world, and the ways you exploit it for your own personal enjoyment. Story missions have you navigating caves and holding off enemies in modern shooter fashion, but out in the wild, you have an entire paradise to tame.

And it's that lush and menacing world that makes Far Cry 3 utterly enthralling. The game is big, certainly, but where Far Cry 2 could feel aimless, its sequel feels more focused without ever losing its sandbox appeal. One core activity may sound familiar to returning fans: you shoot up enemy outposts so that you may liberate them, turning them into safe zones where you can load up on ammo and other supplies. These camps also serve as quick-travel points, lessening the tedium of driving from one objective to the next. Early on, freeing an outpost can be remarkably easy: you shoot down a handful of pirates, and the flag is raised declaring the camp as the Rakyat's. Further in, however, you must put Far Cry 3's diverse possibilities to intelligent use.



So much of a relaxing Vacation 

One consideration: you must be aware of an outpost's alarm. Should a pirate trigger it, reinforcements arrive in a matter of seconds, so you might want to sneak in and deactivate the alarm system. Or, you could snipe the individual alarms, though shooting one does not deactivate others. Caged leopards and bears can be freed with a single shot, granting you a temporary ally in your quest for vengeance. Consider using a C4 charge and luring a small group of pirates to an explosive demise, or using a flamethrower to char evil henchmen to a crisp. That same flamethrower can lay waste to vegetation and effectively create moats of fire that can keep combatants at bay. (Well, some combatants, anyway.) Near the end of the game, your foes can put up quite a fight, and be great in number, so Far Cry 3 doesn't just give you the tools to be creative; it ultimately demands you use them to survive.

You don't have to conduct your business so loudly and dramatically, however: Far Cry 3 gives you ample opportunity to be stealthy and sometimes outright requires it. Forced stealth, such as that seen in a later-game mission that fails you the moment you are discovered, isn't that enjoyable. Fortunately, sneaking about is usually a blast, because it pays off in a brutal take down of your unsuspecting target. Such moments are even greater once you have earned certain powerful abilities, such as the one that allows you to assassinate a pirate and toss a blade into another's skull in a single, effortless move.

Liberating outposts is only one of many activities to pursue in Far Cry 3. To reveal more of the map and gain access to free weapons, you climb radio towers and hack their transmitters. The entire concept is clearly inspired by the Assassin's Creed series, and no wonder, considering both games were created by the same development studio. First-person platforming is a frequent frustration in shooters--but Far Cry 3 makes it a delight. The tower creaks and groans as you climb ladders, make a few well-timed leaps, grasp some ledges, and ultimately arrive at the pinnacle. After you make a few hardware adjustments to the transmitter, the camera zooms to several points of interest, and you can make a breathless descent to the ground via zip line.



Cuts like a knife.

There's so much more out there: hunting missions that give you a bow and arrow or a shotgun, perhaps, and send you after rare creatures. You can jump on an ATV or behind the wheel of a truck for a timed medicine run that showcases Far Cry 3's bouncy vehicles--and how they respond authentically to the bumpy terrain. Some challenges compare your performance to other players via the game's online leaderboards; others require you to murder a specific target using your knife. These activities are tied together in smart ways, with one task often leading you to another hunting challenge, a vehicle to race, or even a cave to investigate.Mix in a vast array of role-playing elements, and you have a fully featured single-player game that lasts upward of 35 hours or more, depending on how much you want to do. Kills earn you experience, which in turn earns you upgrades (such as more health bars) and new skills (kill an enemy from the ledge beneath). Corpses and chests can be looted for cash and sale able items; you then buy new weapons and maps, and can replenish ammo at safe houses. Out in the wild, you collect plant life of various kinds so that you can fill syringes with meds that heal you, make you less vulnerable, or enhance your senses.



If the shooting gets too hot and heavy, you can always make a quick getaway, either by land or by sea.

Some of those enhancements make it easier to hunt wildlife, which is not only a fine pastime in itself, but also rewards you with skins and hides, which you cut from their corpses in properly squeamish fashion. Expect your quarry to put up a fight, though; tigers apparently don't enjoy being riddled with bullets and set on fire. Wild animals are more than just targets, however: they are also part of the world's ecology. Leopards attack boars, leaving behind their carcasses for you to loot, and scaring off the remainder of the herd. You might merrily waltz into a run-down shack seeking loot, only to have a couple of Komodo dragons wander in and sink their teeth into you. Such moments lend Far Cry 3 an air of unpredictability; you feel like anything could happen--and that whatever it is, you'll probably end up bleeding from it.

A game doesn't have to be great just because it gives you a lot to do, but Far Cry 3 is good at most everything it does. There are a wide variety of guns to shoot, and each weapon feels properly hefty and powerful. Vehicles are fun to drive, but feel just rickety enough to remind you that you're speeding through the jungle in a run-down jalopy, not zooming along a highway in a Ferrari. Various quirks can get you frustrated, though. Certain missions feature respawning enemies, which can put a damper on things, especially when you see a small crowd of pirates spawn in plain sight. Dying and respawning at a checkpoint to find all the enemies you killed still alive, yet all the ammo you used to shoot them depleted, is frustrating, as is the game's occasional failure to sense that you're holding down the button that heals you. A phone call that drives you to the next story mission might repeat again, and again, and again. Far Cry 3 is wonderful when it gives you free rein…but not always when it tries to direct the action.



Some story missions have you feeling like a modern-day Indiana Jones.

On the PC, the online DRM can also be a hassle, as the game can crash should the servers go down, even while playing the offline campaign. But most of these annoyances are minor blights in a game that does so much, and does it so well. Far Cry 3 is an impressive piece of technology that showcases large portions of its landscape at once, though PC owners need a powerful system to enjoy the vistas at their most glorious. The rolling hills and stone temples invite you onward, yet this modern Eden is defaced by dilapidated shacks and military compounds. The difficulties of this spoiled promised land are reflected in the behaviors of its inhabitants. Vaas' unhinged rants, Buck's dismissive cruelty, and Dr. Earnhardt's hallucinogenic ramblings all speak to the troubles that cloud the sunny skies above.

Far Cry 3 rounds out a sizable and quality campaign with a series of cooperative missions that have up to four players shooting enemies and completing objectives. With only two players, certain encounters can get frustrating, and gunning down bullet-absorbing heavies can be a real slog. But when the action comes together, the impactful gunplay shines, even if the more-structured levels might have you missing the freedom of the open island. Competitive multiplayer doesn't feature many surprises during the course of the match, though the back-and-forth action of Firestorm mode, in which teams try to set fire to each others' supply depots while protecting their own, gives rise to tight battlefield tension.

Outside of matches, character progression is home to some intriguing twists to the usual array of expected features. One twist is decoding, in which you earn electronic objects (CDs, memory cards, etc.) after completing matches, and then decode them--an automated process that takes place over a few minutes or longer. Another is the battle cry, which provides a bonus (such as a health boost) to you and nearby teammates.



Skulking about is all well and good, but sometimes you just want to shoot dudes in the neck.

The good times are even further extended by Far Cry 3's impressive multiple player map editor, which makes it relatively simple to bring your ideas to fruition. You could lose many hours to this one feature, let alone the game's other facets, all of which make this one of the most robust shooters on the market. Yet Far Cry 3's bigness isn't a detriment: you rarely feel that the game's size led to individual elements suffering from a lack of attention or detailing. Stretches of unpredictable exploration and free-form hunting alternate with challenging pirate confrontations, sometimes culminating with a rocket blast to the helicopter hounding you from above. This is an ambitious and finely tuned adventure that gets better and better as you play.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dragonborn

Review  of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dragonborn 

You’re walking peacefully along the ash-covered shore on the island of Solstheim, marveling at the massive mushroom trees in the distance when, suddenly, a flaming spider explodes in your face! Dragonborn, you’re in Morrowind now. …

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s latest expansion takes players to the Morrowind-adjacent island Solstheim, a place bathed in ashes from the volcanic Red Mountain and teeming with a variety of beasties that really want to kill you. This is the first Skyrim expansion to take players outside the snowy confines of Tamriel’s northern territory, and that’s not entirely good. Players familiar with past Elders Scrolls games likely remember Solstheim while those new to the franchise will see it is an ugly, ash-covered wasteland.

Such a desolate place is a perfect backdrop for an epic battle against a power-mad figure from Skyrim’s history. The original Dragonborn Miraak was not a champion like Skyrim’s protagonist. Instead, he served the dragons as a priest before mysteriously turning on them and attempting to enslave all of Tamriel. Since your character is also a Dragonborn, it’s inevitable that your paths will cross.

It’s just a shame that the journey to the ultimate dragon-soul-eating showdown is fraught with frustrating dungeons and truly annoying enemies.

What You’ll Like

Black books

The Daedric prince of fate and knowledge Hermaeus Mora returns in Dragonborn in a big way. His powerful black books are hidden all across Solstheim, each one teleporting the reader into his bizarre and dangerous Oblivion plane.

Like the horrific source of enchantment magic called the Soul Cairn added in Dawnguard, Hermaeus Mora’s world is radically different from both Solstheim and Skyrim. Icky, green-black pools full of tentacles stretch as far as the eye can see while writhing corridors full of spinning book pages twist their way over its inky surface. Mora’s influence is primarily dangerous knowledge, and his world is a demonic library.

Aesthetically, Hermaeus Mora’s plane is amazing. You’ll never spend more than 40 minutes inside a black book, and that’s the perfect amount of time to set you on edge as a sea of Lovecraftian horrors wash over you. I’ve always thought H.P. Lovecraft’s elder gods inspired the Daedric princes, and the black books reflect that perfectly.

A little slice of Morrowind

It’s really cool to get a glimpse of Morrowind in Skyrim. While Solstheim is on the edge of Morrowind’s map, it perfectly reflects the landscape. You can see the Red Mountain billowing ash into the air just off the island’s coast, and that draws a lot of the territory’s native fauna. Those floating brain-tentacle beasts called netch peacefully hover over the coastline and sometimes meander through the magical mushroom trees that dark elf wizards live in.

While an ash-covered landscape might not sound as beautiful as the snowy cliffs in Skyrim, Solstheim has character. It also has its own mountains, where a race of nature-worshiping Nords called the Skaal live.

Ultimately, Solstheim is a great trip away from Skyrim and leaves me wondering if other parts of Tamriel will make their way into the game in future expansions. I like the idea of exploring a large part of the continent in one game without it turning into an online experience.



New items and spells

One of Bethesda’s biggest selling points for Dragonborn is the ability to tame and ride dragons around, but that isn’t my favorite addition. What I like even more is a new powerful set of spells and a crazy suit of lightweight armor that offers 100 percent protection if you can find all the pieces.

Dragonborn more than makes up for the lack of new weapons introduced in the previous quest expansion, Dawnguard. Players now have access to a variety of ebony weapons, enchanted Daedric swords, and a new kind of crafting material that is best described as metallic ice. A lot of existing armor types also get a new coat of paint, giving players more variety when finding the right armor for their characters.

It’s a horror story

Rather than defending the sun from vampires or preventing dragons from regaining their grip on Tamriel, Dragonborn focuses on how dangerous and powerful knowledge is. Miraak, the new antagonist, was once a dragon priest until he learned something that caused him to switch sides and start slaying dragons for personal gain. Miraak’s thirst for power oozes madness, and that is spreading across Solstheim.

When you first arrive on the island, you’ll notice a glowing green pillar just off the coast. If you activate it, your character abruptly starts building a shrine while other workers drone on about remembering past glory. Something is very wrong on Solstheim, and no one can explain why they’re compelled to build the shrines littered across the island.

The moment my character started building the shrine and a weird voice spoke about Miraak in a disjointed way, I knew I had to see the story through.

What You Won’t Like

Dwarven ruins

All right, so I really don’t like Dwarven dungeons, and I think Skyrim’s various plots rely on them too heavily. Exploring Dwemer cities should feel cool and mysterious since you’re rummaging around in the ruins of a civilization that dared to blend dark magic with science, but I look at all that steam-powered machinery and see nothing but tedium. In Dragonborn, these areas get a lot more excruciating thanks to water puzzles.

Yes. Water puzzles. Like a terrible flashback to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the main quest in Dragonborn requires you to manipulate water in a sunken Dwarven city all while new and frustratingly overpowered automatons attack you.

It would be great if for once an epic quest didn’t involve an empty mechanical city full of annoying robots. I get that the Dwarves wiped themselves from existence by being too curious, but at this point I play through new Skyrim quests dreading the next decent into one of these steam-powered nightmares.

Poor performance

I don’t go into Bethesda-developed games expecting a flawless experience. Massive, open worlds lend themselves to all sorts of unpredictable hitches, but Dragonborn’s problems are too predictable.

Whenever you go into a black book or get magically transported across Solstheim, the game freezes for 15-30 seconds. Anytime you get stuck between a dragon and one of the new enemies called lurkers, everything locks up again. And if you ever need to fire arrows in quick succession or blow back a group of monsters with a shout, be sure you’re ready for your attacks to fall flat.

These are just a few of the problems I’ve had with the latest expansion, and they’re incredibly frequent. I’m not sure if it’s because the Solstheim map is entirely new or all the layers of add-on content are working at once, but the constant slowdown and performance issues made playing through Dragonborn a major hassle. My system crashed a few times, but worst of all was getting killed in a fight and reverting to an old autosave just because my arrows fell limply to the ground a few feet in front of me.

If you are eager to play this expansion, I recommend being very patient and manually saving anytime you think you’re coming up to a big fight. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief.

You will die

The character I’ve used to review both Dawnguard and Dragonborn is a level 62 dark elf named Ataeri. He’s an assassin/thief with an emphasis on two-handed combat and archery, and most of the time that works perfectly. Except in Dragonborn.

Monsters and enemies in Solstheim love to swarm you. Ataeri’s strength lies in quick, stealthy attacks or ranged combat, and neither of these skills apply when the things you’re fighting rush you all at once. I’ve rarely encountered battles in Skyrim where I feel completely outnumbered and underpowered ever since leveling my character up to 62, but Dragonborn makes my beloved character feel very weak.

Obviously, no two player-characters are alike, but one thing remains the same: Enemies in Dragonborn are very aggressive and hit incredibly hard. I’m sure a more hand-to-hand focused character would fair better than mine, but it’s absurd that my character is so well leveled (and pretty protectively dressed) and is still dying like he’s going in naked.

I was not expecting to walk into Dragonborn and finish it easily, but I did want my hard work to mean something against new enemies.

Difficult to start

Much like Hearthfire, starting Dragonborn is a bit difficult if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Ideally, a group of Miraak-worshiping cultists will stop you on the road in Skyrim and try to kill you, but I walked from Solitude to Whiterun and never had this happen. Actually, the cultists didn’t attack me until after I’d taken a ship from Windhelm to Solstheim.

I don’t think adding in-game directions for downloadable content is a bad idea. Sure, a seamless story experience is cool, but sometimes a screen saying, “Go to Windhelm if you want to go to Solstheim,” is way more useful than leaving your introductory event up to chance.

Conclusion

Dragonborn is a creepy descent into madness set in a mini Morrowind that isn’t quite as epic as Dawnguard, but it compensates for that with a wealth of new items, shouts, and spells. Its performance issues and overreliance on Skyrim storytelling tropes are difficult to ignore, but beneath all the frustration is a great adventure that examines the power of knowledge and how far one man will go to rule the world.

Technical Support

Visit Bethesda Softworks web site at: http://www.bethsoft.com/

Official Site

Visit the official The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dragonborn web site at:http://www.elderscrolls.com/

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