Dead Space 2.

Dead Space 2 is no tiptoe through the tulips. Fans of the original game will be more than ready for the experience that awaits them, but people new to the series should really prepare themselves for an intense, disturbing, protracted, but addictive, campaign through some very unpleasant environments and even more unpleasant enemies. The story tends to get muddled after a little while but the characters are sharply drawn and well acted, and the series' trademark visual and audio design really dazzles, even if some of the things you have to look at are stomach-turning.

I might as well get the bad stuff out of the way first, because there's really not much that drags this game down and the rest of it is pretty fantastic. The enemies and environments you encounter in this game are some of the most disturbing, disgusting, nightmare-inducing that you'll probably ever encounter. For new initiates, the enemies are all reanimated corpses that have been disfigured and contorted into horrendous abominations of their previous forms, and they all scream out at you with vaguely human voices that just takes the effect overboard. They are ugly, unnerving creatures that come at you incessantly, sometimes in excessive numbers, throughout the whole game. There's a certain catharsis you experience from disposing of these creatures, but the combat starts to grind on a little bit, especially towards the end game, when they start dropping out of the ceiling every other minute. I can definitely say there's a point at which they stop being horrifying they simply become aggravating and a little tedious. While I can't say it ever felt "fun" dealing with them, I was strangely addicted to the experience.

The addiction carries over from the first game, which I think is a much scarier and tense experience. The setting was much more claustrophobic and unnerving, and the desperation of having to repair the ship caught in a downward spiral while dealing with the Necromorph infestation kept you glued to the game. When you made it to the end, you breathe a sigh of relief as you’ve survived the horror and finally made it to safety. Sadly, a lot of this did not make the transition to the second game, and we’re left with a much more straightforward, action-oriented game where the levels are more start-to-finish type experiences than venturing out and returning to relative safety. The new setting is a huge space station called The Sprawl that contains all the living environments of a functioning city, but they’ve been overrun by a Necromorph infestation. Some of the levels, including an insane asylum, an old gloomy church, and a morgue, sounded pretty good on paper but they seemed to fall a little flat to me because of a lack of imagination or innovation. The game also takes a few cheap shots at the player and require you to trudge your way through a blood-splattered children’s school (complete with disembodied baby cries and creepy children’s music), but there are also a few neat surprises and twists in store that take you places where you’d least expect it. As before, abandoned text and well-acted audio logs chronicle the station’s descent into chaos and give more weight to the bloodstains and makeshift last-stand barricades you encounter on your journey.

The story conveyed in the text and audio logs, the mission objectives that unfold, as well as the handful of NPC’s you encounter, starts out strong but starts to lose its draw about halfway through the game and it devolves into a series of mundane errands like realigning a solar array, repairing an abandoned drill, etc. There is one errand that stands out which, to avoid spoilers, will please fans of the first game immensely. Then along the way you learn that a second Marker, the monolith responsible for all the unpleasantry in the first game, has been constructed on the station and through some obscure and not very scary hallucinations, you are drawn into a quest to track it down and destroy it. Unitology also makes a big appearance in the game, sparking a lot of controversy over its similarities to Scientology, but it doesn’t factor into the storyline as much as you’d think it would. For example, you never once meet a living Unitology member, and most of the subject matter is contained in museum exhibits and a few scattered audio logs of demented church members early on in the game, and then are never revisited later. There is a still-human antagonist that again tries to hault your progress, but he’s nowhere near as satisfying an enemy as Dr. Mercer was in the first game.

What took the first game to extraordinary levels for me was an abundance of well designed gameplay systems and technology that made the game a lot of fun to play, and they’re thankfully all present in the second game too. The design of the game incorporates all the HUD elements into the back of the player’s suit, so that there’s no overlaid information displays.. your life meter is a column of light along the spine of your suit, the ammo counters for weapons are all projected as holograms off to the side, inventory screens and text logs all project from your helmet and your character appears to be viewing them as you do. The game does not pause when accessing these screens, so there’s an ever-present feeling of vulnerability that’s hanging over your head. Also returning is the rather genius system for upgrading your weapons, which require the use of rare and expensive components which can also be used to unlock certain doors, so you have to ration out what weapons need to be bumped up as well as carry a spare one with you in case you find a locked door later in the level. Then there’s the awesome zero-gravity sequences that are appropriately disorienting and complex to maneuver, vacuum areas that require you to act quickly so you don’t run out of air, and a few straightforward environmental puzzles. There’s even kenesis powers which allow you to pick up and move large objects easily, and stasis which can slow down uncontrollable objects (and enemies) to solve other puzzles. There’s just a huge variety of gameplay involved in the game, making it one of the most interesting and mechanically satisfying games to play. Finally, the genius objective locator system returns, which helpfully displays the path to your next objective with a beam of light that trails along the floor.

All this technology is backed up by superb graphics and sound design, some of the best you’ll experience today. Graphically, it’s everything you’d expect from a modern AAA game, with beautiful textures, complex models, and realistic lighting effects that make the already foreboding levels even more dreadful. The visual design takes a lot of cues from the Aliens film series, giving the space station a very “blue collar,” well-worn scifi look. Characters are well designed and animated, and again takes a cue from the Aliens series where movement of an alien creature can sometimes be just as effective as their appearance in conveying danger. Sound design is also a crucial part of a horror game, and Dead Space 2’s never disappoints... there’s clanging of malfunctioning machinery, crumbling rock falling in the mines, zapping sounds of electrical short circuits, buzzing of flickering overhead lights, and of course those godawful screams of the Necromorphs as they sneak up behind you for the kill. When you enter a vacuum, there’s a really neat muffling effect that drowns out the sound and makes you feel isolated and cut off. Then there’s the shrill musical cues when a monster jumps out at you, causing you to whip the camera around to find the new threat.

Which brings me to what I think is the biggest improvement over the previous game, which is a much tighter control scheme. Most of the buttons and actions are the same, but they’ve really tightened up the camera movement so that it’s easily two to three times faster. This ironically makes the game a lot less claustrophobic and scary, because you feel more in control than before. I still think the game is better for it, because the first one tended to feel clumsy during intense fights and now it feels a lot more manageable (which could be explained by Isaac being less experienced in combat in the first game than he is in the second game),. Which is a good thing, because there’s many, many more enemies in the second game and some more difficult fights to survive. There’s still an emphasis on hoarding ammo and health packs and being judicious with shot placing, but with every enemy dropping at least some kind of loot you’ll eventually amass quite a bit of inventory (often too much to carry, so you must decide what to drop, based on how far away the nearest store is), or enough credits to buy any deficient supplies in the stores that conveniently appear typically at the beginnings and halfway points of levels.

The store placement is another improvement. Whereas before the stores and upgrade benches were placed more or less in the “lobby” of the current level (which also served as sort of a “safe zone” for each one), they’re scattered more organically throughout this game in places where you might expect them to be. The map system, which I never used in the first game due to it being to cumbersome to navigate in 3D, has been replaced with a more intuitive waypoint system that incorporates with the smartly-designed objective locator system. New weapons, like the javelin gun are a welcome addition, but I found myself using the old standbys like the pulse rifle and line gun the most often. New RIG suits are also on tap, which all add different perks and advantages, although there’s a definite progression to follow, where later suits have more inventory slots and better armor, but some give you stuff like store discounts and damage buffs on certain weapons. There are also a handful of new necromorph types that change up the action a little, and make for some interesting new fights that are well conceived.

All in all, the game is an improvement, with a new story and settings that don’t quite measure up to the first game, but the mechanics of the gameplay have been really polished up. Stuff that didn’t work before has been reworked, and the tighter controls make the game a lot more responsive and satisfying to play. It still looks great and sounds even greater, and delivers the scares despite being a more straightforward action game. New players will enjoy it, but it’s a real treat for returning fans to see how much this great series has evolved after only two games.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

I've been a fan of the Castlevania series in almost every one of its incarnations. While I think the high points of the series were Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood / Dracula X, I also thoroughly enjoyed the "Metroidvania" entries, especially the first one, Symphony of the Night. Just about every entry, even from the beginning with the first NES game, has been what I think a higher class of action/adventure game, with superior, moodier soundtracks, much more detailed and atmospheric graphics, uncompromising in its difficulty and challenge, and larger in its scope.

The exceptions, I always thought, were the 3D entries. They always seemed to fall short of the Castlevania standard, and seemed to slip into mediocrity as soon as it made the transition. This latest game, Lords of Shadow, I think is an exception to that rule and tries very, very hard to reach for the grand sweeping design of classic Castlevania games, and mostly achieves it, I think.

The game has been billed as a "reboot" of the Castlevania franchise and appears to take the path of an origin story, which I'm typically not a huge fan of, and I feel is often a necessary inconvenience. So as is typical of an origin story, I enjoyed the characters of this game: Gabriel Belmont (presumably the first of the clan) is a troubled hero, bent on revenging his wife's death and hopes to bring her back to life with a mystical artifact called the God Mask. This story isn't typical Castlevania lore, but you can excuse it as part of an origin story. We do deal with lots of typical Castlevania bestiary like werewolves, zombies, vampires, goblins, trolls, animated skeletons, and suits of armor, but the setting is what throws it off for me most of the time. There's a tour through a vampire castle, for example, but it is just a short stop along the path of a much longer journey that includes swamps, mountain cliffsides, enchanted forests, deep caverns, deserted wastelands, and ancient city ruins. While the Castle levels are mostly great and well realized (albeit a little non traditional, because it provides the game's obligatory ice and snow level), it's over quickly and there's easily a third more of the game left to get through.

While the gameplay mechanics of a castlevania game aren't what you would call unique or original, Lords of Shadow definitely flies in the face of any kind of originality and borrows HEAVILY from just about every popular action genre on the market. The core of the game is a combo-heavy beat-em-up with fixed camera angles, straight out of God of War/Dante's Inferno, complete with contextual quicktimer events and finishing moves. You also use experience points to purchase new combos and moves, which is typical fare for this genre. One little changeup is the magic system, which is pretty simple: activate light magic to regain health during battle, and activate dark magic to increase attack power. Both are surprisingly effective in battle, considering the ubiquitous health fountains are scattered pretty sparingly throughout the game, and some of the larger beasts require quit a bit of flailing to kill unless you turn on the dark magic to increase your hit power. Your health and magic levels are all, of course, upgradeable by collecting colored gems. Again, straight of of GoW.

Then there are puzzles, which are also very similar to God of War. It usually involves manipulating some kind of ancient mechanism to unlock a door or open a new path. Some are ingenious (including a neat little memorization puzzle that takes place in, of all things, a music box), while others are just plain tedious and based on little more than trial and error. There's even a minigame that's like a scaled-down version of chess but more frustrating to play due to some confusing magic rules. The worst is the second to last level, which contains two of the more tedious mechanism puzzles, followed by an entire level full of Lost Woods - style portals and enemies that can kill you in two hits. If you die, you have to start over from the beginning. It's a cheap, tiresome note on which to end the game.

If that's not enough variety for you, there are also three titan battles that are straight out of Shadow of the Colossus. These fight scenes come out of nowhere and seem to have little bearing on the story other than being yet another obstacle to overcome. While they're mostly enjoyable to play, they feel nothing like a Castlevania game and feel very tacked-on, like the developers thought they needed one more feature in this game.

Finally there's the ever-present platforming puzzles, which are a lift right out of the Uncharted games. While the mechanic feels mostly good and predictable, they're much less inventive than Uncharted ever was, and end up mostly being tedious. One highlight, though, is the inclusing of rapelling and swinging with your primary whip/chain weapon, which is a nice nod to Castlevania IV. Then there's the obligatory Clocktower level in the vampire castle, which ends up being a rather genious level-long platforming puzzle consisting of turning gears and levers that feels right at home in the Castlevania universe.

The game's saving grace, and the one that pushes it from being just a middling, derivative action game, is the graphics and sound design. This is easily one of the best looking games of the current generation, with incredibly detailed graphics, beautiful lighting effects, rich textures, fluid motion-captured animation, and intricate character designs. The soundtrack, which has little touches of the Castlevania IV themes here and there, is beautiful and dramatic, and at times addicting. They're nowhere near as infectious as the original Castlevania themes like Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears, or Wicked Child, but they're remarkable in their own way.

In the end, Lords of Shadow is the definitive mixed bag. Audiovisually it's a great game, with amazing graphics and sound. The origin story isn't much like a typical Castlevania story, but it is enjoyable on its own merits and, to avoid spoilers, we get back on track with Vampire hunting when the end game epilogue rolls around. The level designs are impressive and nuanced, but again they don't mesh with the Castlevania universe very much. The gameplay mechanics are derivative at best, but they're still mostly fun, aside from a few tedious mechanism and platforming puzzles. I had fun with this game, and I'm excited about more Castlevania games in this format. The developers are obviously very talented, and with perhaps a little more focus, they can bring the true Castlevania "feel" back home in this latest incarnation. For now though, this game may not feel a lot like Castlevania but it's still a fun playthrough with enough unlockables and replay value to warrant a buy.

Metroid: Other M.

Because there's so much that Metroid: Other M gets right, it disappoints more than it should in the areas that it fumbles.

Let's start with what it gets right. You get a strong sense that this game was made by big fans of the Metroid series, especially Super Metroid: the green text recaps of your progress when you load a saved game; the return of several creatures from the classic Metroid bestiary like geemers, skrees, and wavers; the revisit of numerous musical cues, sound effects, and generally nostalgic audio texture; the reuse of familiar level designs (Sector 1 is the spitting image of Brinstar from Super Metroid, and Sector 3 is a more industrial take on Norfair, with its more mechanical sections reminding me of the Phazon Mines of Metroid Prime); and the return to a more "linear" level design that (usually) makes backtracking a little less confusing.

Obviously, the third person perspective gameplay is a return to the series' roots and away from the first-person reimaging of Metroid exploration that we saw in the Prime trilogy. The nostalgic change is further emphasized by the way you control Samus... you hold the Wiimote sideways like an old NES controller and use the plus button to move her around, button 1 for firing, button 2 for jumping, etc. It doesn't completely shrug off the 1st person innovations though, because the game rather sublimely blends the best parts of the first person gameplay from Prime into this game, and allows you to shift to first person perspective on demand for more precise targeting. The method of switching to first person mode, accomplished by shifting the remote in your hands to point at the screen like a traditional Wii game, is intuitive and genius in its simplicity. Also, the morph ball sequences and puzzles, while nowhere near on par with the virtuoso morph ball puzzles from Prime, definitely pay homage to them and make for some satisfyingly quirky gameplay that never ceases to amuse. By doing this, the game creators simultaneously acknowledge the greatness of the Metroid Prime contributions, and give chance for us to see Samus herself in action while you play (probably the part I missed the most when I was playing the Prime games).

While the levels definitely look and sound the part of a Metroid map, they're all a bit on the short side and a little disappointing in scope and creativity. It's hard to top Retro Studios's work in designing the levels in Prime, but even in comparison to the levels in Super Metroid these seem to fizzle. It seems like each level has maybe one or two interesting sequences and gameplay mechanics but the rest is a samey corridor crawl that doesn't quite cut it by today's standards. In context with the story I guess it makes sense... the premise is the whole game takes place on a giant spaceship with three artificial habitats created, a la Metroid Fusion, so each one isn't vast and sprawling like the Prime levels, or even the levels in Super Metroid. But nonetheless it still gives you more of a sense of playing a GameBoy or DS game instead of a full-sized Wii game. The labyrinthian levels of the previous metroid games were a halmark of the series, but in this game they feel pint-sized, like you're playing "Metroid Lite". The boss battles are also a little disappointing.. they used to be huge, set-piece type events in previous games that required skill, precision, imagination, and preseverence to finish. Here they're simplistic and very few and far between. The Ridley fight, especially, is disappointing in both difficulty and design, which is unfortunate because it was one of the many highlights of Metroid Prime.

So if it looks like Metroid and sounds like Metroid, and even plays like Metroid, what's not to like? Basically, everything that Team Ninja took liberties with. Front and center is the story, which is woefully bad and poorly written. It's chock full of schmaltzy flashbacks to Samus's early days and tiresome soliloquies about Samus's relationship to Adam Malkovich, her former superior officer, with whom she has a curious and disturbing father-daughter type relationship. There's also a lot of business with the Galactic Federation developing bio-weapons, creating artificial intelligence to control them, and a massive coverup when things go haywire.. it's stuff that would have made more sense in a Metal Gear Solid game but is just perplexing and needlessly complex here.

The disappointing story and plot filler gets presented in a series of protracted cutscenes, which are very nicely animated and tastefully directed, but the voice acting is so poor that it ruins them. Samus's voice acting is especially stilted and awkward; the first time we get to hear Samus speak is a huge disappointment. Adam's voice acting isn't much better, and is mostly void of any emotion or emphasis. It's the same problem that the Star Wars prequels had, in which the story is taken too reverentially and seriously, and it's hard for the player to empathize with any character in the game.

Samus's strange subservient relationship to Adam leads into probably the dumbest mechanic in the game, that of "approving" Samus's various weapons and abilities. The story goes that Samus is following Adam's orders and he has to authorize the use of various weapons in interest of preserving the ship's systems. But it stops making any sort of sense very quickly, when Samus has to quickly run through a lava-filled cavern without the Varia suit enabled (a sequence that resulted in several of deaths as I played through), only to have Adam tell me I could have my Varia suit back while I was fighting a couple firebats. To think that he would have allowed Samus to die in the lava cavern simply because he didn't approve of her using any kind of heat protection is preposterous. There are numerous other examples of this throughout the game, where having a particular upgrade would have had little or no impact on the environment, but it serves as an artificial barrier that requires you to backtrack later in the game to advance the story or pick up items. The game takes one of the great touchstones of the series, searching for items and using them to explore deeper areas of the game, and turns it into a demeaning obstacle course while your superior sits and watches, approving bite-sized upgrades if you do well.

It all leads up to a confusing and lackluster finale (including a frustrating final boss fight that doesn't tell you when you are allowed to use a power bomb to finish the enemy off) that leaves you a little empty-feeling by the time the credits start rolling. Thankfully, once the game is finished, you are allowed to return to the ship to retrieve "one last thing that was left behind", and this is where the game slips back into very familiar territory, and feels like a sweet little bit of fanservice. You are allowed to go back into every part of the ship and retrieve any missile and energy tank upgrades that you might have missed before (indeed, even some of the upgrades were not even reachable without power bombs, which you don't receive till the last boss fight). One particular upgrade is an eye-wink to diehard fans... the last possible pickup you can get before you leave is a missle tank, which takes you up to a full count of 80, but you receive it after you fight the last enemy of the game. Plus, the last sequence in the game even gives you a percentage count per area on your item collection rate, so purists can keep track of how much left there is to go before you get the full 100%. This, combined with one last, terrific boss fight from a surprise returning enemy in a previous game, gives Metroid fans a nice warm fuzzy feeling before you set the game down.

That last post-game wrapup section is a relief, because a lot of what comes before it is jarring, disappointing, and just lame in general. Great game mechanics, beautiful art direction and sound design, and solid but stunted level design round out the good parts of Metroid: Other M. Campy and groan-inducing dialog, silly plot developments, and that darned weapon approval system unfortunately drags the whole lot down a few notches. Then, the game rebounds with a brilliant post-credit curtain call that left me mostly satisfied with this latest Metroid outing, but more than anything I want to go back and replay the universally superior Metroid Prime games. And wait to see what, if anything, Team Ninja might do in the next game to make up for all their mistakes here. In the end, you really need to play this game if you're a Metroid die-hard, but just about everyone else can probably give it a pass.

Avatar.

Let me start by saying that if you enjoy movies on any level at all, you should probably go see "Avatar" because on a technical level it an astounding achievement that raises the bar for cinematic craft and provides an experience that is unique entertainment; it is most likely nothing like you have ever seen on the big screen. The story is equally strong and captivating, and together they fashion an experience that will stick with you for a long time after it's over, and it will reward repeated viewings with its meticulous design and abundance of detail.

The good majority of this film is digitally created, but the state-of-the-art technology and methods used to create it that are so much more advanced than anything that has come before propels it far above the achieved realism of any other movie I've seen. It obsoletes previous movies and sets a new standard. The digitally created characters inexplicably sidestep the Uncanny Valley and behave just like real actors, and in the case of Sam Worthington's and Sigourney Weaver's digital counterparts, even resemble and mimic their real life mannerisms. It's a remarkable effect, and one that quickly suspends disbelief even within the first few scenes. Later scenes simply serve to solidify the belief that these are real creatures and not just digital constructs. The same goes for all the environments, from a vertigo-inducing shot of a massive spaceship's cavernous interior to the multiple, multiple sequences on the planet involving lush jungles, steep cliffsides, and precarious treetops. Everything just looks so real and naturally occuring, with an abundance of minute details like wondrously imaginative alien wildlife and incredibly diverse plantlife that really draw you into the scenery. Then, effective use of 3D draws you in even further and gives the visuals amazing depth and proportion... foreground materials seem to jump out from the screen so that you could reach out and touch them, and background scenery seems to disappear far into the distance beyond the screen. The vibrance, realism, nuances, and spectacles simply defy adequate description; it has to be seen to be believed.

Lots of attention to detail and effort have been put into the story and characters as well, so this isn't just an all style, no substance affair. The plot tells the story of a peaceful, forest-dwelling race on an alien planet that lives in harmony with the plants and animals. Lots of effort is spent showing the relationship between the hunter-gatherers, their prey, and their homeworld in a "circle of life" type concept in which all living things share a life force and energy that is constantly reused and held in balance by a "mother nature" entity that seems to be alive at a biological level. Sigourney Weaver's character, Grace Augustine, supervises a scientific team that studies the indigenous N'avi people and their remarkable connection to their world, and interacts with them through the use of "Avatars", biologically-engineered genetic replicas of the N'avi that the human researchers can control through a telepathic link. It's broad, sweeping science fiction that reaches so far, strives for so much grand scope and achieves it; this is a story that sparks your own imagination and simultaneously draws parallels to your own experience; it makes you look first outward at what might be possible, and then inward at what already is.

The story is further given a green slant by the arrival of heavily armed soldiers from Earth, which we learn is has been presumably run dry of all natural resources. The soldiers, along with massive war machines and excavation equipment, lay waste to entire regions of the planet in search of a precious ore, sloppily called "Unobtainium" (one of the film's few weak decisions). The obvious implication is drawing a parallel with the environmental and anti-war movements, but at times feels a little ham-fisted and preachy. A massive company, in a very Cameron-esque plot element straight out of "Aliens", contracts with the military to clear out the locals and their land to reach the precious ore, and in an interesting twist, we find ourselves siding with the aliens this time around and against the human invaders. Cameron's decision to look at the classic conflict of human imperialists versus hostile natives through the other perspective is fascinating and refreshing. In many ways, this is "Aliens" told from the other side.

Amusingly, the film contains a lot of Cameron trademarks and allusions to his previous work. To the Cameron initiate this is inconsequential, but for Cameron fans like myself that enjoyed "Aliens", "Abyss", and "Titanic," it's great fun to see Cameron leave his fingerprints all over the little details and quirks in this movie. For one, Cameron really enjoys futuristic military hardware that's got a layer of grease and some dents on it. The hoverships are the spiritual successor to the Dropships in Aliens, as are the bipedal tanks the spiritual successor to the PowerLoaders. The mothership they arrive on, complete with cryotube sleep chambers necessary for sublight space travel, resembles the sprawling design of the Nostromo and Sulaco in its function-over-form design. The mining and excavating equipment also hearkens to the space-age blue collar equipment seen in the original "Alien" film and "The Abyss". Then we have the revisited theme of a megalomaniacal company asserting their power over an alien species and exploiting them for their own profit. Even the project foreman, Parker Selfridge, is a direct lift from the Carter Burke character from Aliens. Michelle Rodriguez plays Aliens' Vasquez role, here she's named Trudy Chacon but she's the same tough female marine, albeit a little more one-dimensional this time around. Sigourney Weaver is right at home in Cameron's world as well, and fans will be amused to learn that Michael Biehn was originally signed on to play Colonel Quaritch, the military commander assigned to the project, before Stephen Lang stepped in (interestingly enough, Lang turns in a very entertaining performance and gives you a hint of what a real-life Sarge character might be like in a more faithful "Doom" movie adaptation). Cameron's touch can even be found in the imaginative character name choices, like Jake Sully, Grace Augustine, Trudy Chacon, Parker Selfridge, and Miles Quaritch.

In the end, though, the human story in "Avatar" is what draws the audience in after they've been dazzled by the special effects and technical achievements. Sam Worthington turns in a powerful performance as Jake Sully, a parapalegic marine who is given the chance to walk again by enrolling in the Avatar program, wherein he controls one of the towering, graceful N'avi replicas. His assignment is first to act as security to Augustine's research team, but secretly to spy on the N'avi and report weaknesses to Quaritch in hopes that they can more easily persuade them to leave, or if necessary, exploit weaknesses during their forced relocation. He successfully penetrates the N'avi society and gradually becomes one of their own, learning new values of honoring the wildlife as a whole and the customs of the society, and eventually falling in love with his guide to this new life, the surprisingly captivating Neytiri, the daughter of the tribe's patriarch. As Jake slowly becomes accepted in this new life, and learns the awesome power of the bond between the N'avi and their homeworld, he effectively drops his human militaristic side and stages a rebellion, leading the N'avi against the marines in a spectacular battle sequence that carries more weight than most third-act shootouts because of everything that has come before. The awesome scope of the story and characters makes this battle immediately important to the audience, and we have so much invested in the characters that every seesaw in the fight is exhilarating.

And exhilarating is a good description for the movie as a whole. There's just so much movie here: the far-flung science fiction imagination; the incredible realism of the digital characters and the sensory feast of visuals from an alien planet that has been meticulously realized and executed; characters that are simultaneously archetypes and fully-fleshed out characters that engage the audience; a story that encompasses environmentalism and pacifism, imperialism and industrialism, and draws a human thread through the whole that teaches human strength, achievement, and redemption of trust; and technical and storytelling greatness that draws it all together in just the right proportions to make the movie more than the sum of its parts. "Avatar" is a sublime narrative, and an awesome achivement in filmmaking craft.

Left 4 Dead 2.

Valve continues their unorthodox naming convention first explored with Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Episode 2, and published a followup to the original Left 4 Dead, almost one year to the day later and called it Left 4 Dead 2. This is a full-priced game, and the screenshots led me to believe that this was basically the same game but with more content, a la the Madden and Tiger Woods games with their annual full-priced updates, however there's enough new twists and reworkings of the original formula to actually make this a worthwhile game, especially if you get in on a four-pack with three other people, which brings the price down to a much more enticing $35.

I was a big fan of the original Left 4 Dead, mainly by association with a strong circle of gaming friends who really dived into it and played it heavily. We had regular weekly matches online set up that started out as co-op campaigns that quickly ran out of free slots, so we graduated to versus play for a several months, occasionally mixing it up with an ad-hoc survival or co-op map during the rest of the week if enough people were online at the time. The game provided I would estimate about 8-9 months of solid entertainment, which is pretty remarkable, considering the relatively small amount of content (4 original campaigns, 2 of which had versus capability for half of that time). The gameplay was compelling, the teamwork was tense and vital to your success, the weapons were sublimely balanced, the levels were cleverly designed with lots of choke points and tricky places to hold during a horde rush, and the enemies were lethal in the right combination. The versus play emphasized all of this even more, with some truly diabolical combination ambushes being possible with just two hunters, a smoker and a boomer.

Needless to say, it was hugely popular online, and because of this I thought that Valve was trying to pull a cash grab by releasing a full-priced sequel instead of incremental DLC packages, as they promised. When the demo, consisting of one half of a campaign, was released, my fears were solidified as we played through two levels of essentially new maps, new weapons, and new bad guys. There was no innovation in the gameplay aside from a couple new powerups, just more of the same.

Thankfully, the demo did not do the game justice. The final version is an evolutionary step, not quite revolutionary, with some very exciting new features and remixes of the old formula. It all begins with the co-op campaigns, which have been heavily rethought and restructured to provide some new compelling gameplay and strategy. The levels are still basically a run-and-gun from the starting point to the safe room, but along the way the developers have added some new twists, such as incorporating some basic scavenging missions like running to get a rooftop sniper some much-needed Coke so he can clear a path for your exit, and a particularly compelling sequence at the end of one campaign that requires you to gather gas cans to fill up your getaway car all while fighting off the last-stand hordes and tanks. Then another campaign requires you to clear and then backtrack through three relatively short levels and ration out your health packs because they don't replenish on your return trip. To add difficulty, the second time through many areas of the levels have been flooded out by heavy rain and are treacherous to pass so you are forced to find alternate routes.

Formula remixes like this are a welcome change, as are some fun new weapons and powerups that add a lot of diversity to the strategic element. In addition to the old tier 1 and 2 weapons, there are now a variety of assault rifles and shotguns with different statistics, such as rate of fire, stopping power, buckshot spread, as well as a grenade launcher. A magnum pistol (my personal favorite) is also available that replaces your standard dual-wielded sidearms with incredible stopping power and accuracy for a pistol. I also enjoy the AK-47, with a slower rate of fire than the M-16 but much more stopping power so conserving ammo with single taps is much easier and you waste far less ammo taking out a throng of zombies. You also have a variety of melee weapons like fireaxes and samurai swords that replace your secondary weapon, and deliver surprisingly damaging blows to the zombies. Then there are defib paddles that can revive fallen teammates, adrenaline shots that increase the speed of everything you do (including healing), incendiary and explosive ammo to ratchet up your weapon effectiveness, and canisters of boomer bile that you can use to lure the horde away or attack a tank. The additional weapons and powerups are lots of fun and add lots of depth to the gameplay, but the sheer number of them can be bewildering at times, and you can only carry one item of a class a time, i.e. ammo powerups and defib paddles take the place of your health kit, adrenaline shots take the place of pills, and boomer bile is another grenade type.

The new infected types are another welcome addition that really mix up the enemy bestiary, ensuring that you won't easily tire of the same old attack patterns from the boomers, smokers, and hunters. We now have chargers, which will run at you and pin you to a wall, jockeys that will grab a hold of you and steer you away from the team, and spitters that deploy a lethal pool of acid on the ground that quickly eats away your health. The new attack types are interesting and keep the encounters more spontaneous-feeling simply because there's more variety. These transfer well to the versus mode too, and provide even more deadly combinations to ambush the survivors with.. i.e., using a jockey to guide a survivor into a pool of spitter acid while you wait for a charger to build up speed and pummel them.

The alternate play modes versus and survival return, along with two new types, Scavenge and Realism. Scavenge mimicks the gas tank collection scene mentioned earlier and requires the survivors to retrieve a set number of gas tanks and pour them into a generator while fending off waves of zombies. Realism ratchets up the difficult of a standard campaign by removing the glowing outlines of teammates and pickups, while disabling the respawn closets and increasing the zombie resiliency to your weapons. With five campaigns and five different play modes, the sheer amount of gameplay has been drastically increased since the last game.

All of this added up accounts for a significant improvement, in my opinion, and I think justifies the "sequel" worthiness of the title, even though the game mechanics and graphics engine are largely the same. This is definitely not a cash grab, but it's unfortunate that Valve has waited this long to release the first major update to the game, especially since they were promising from day one that there would be regular updates to the original game. I would have much rather had regular monthly or bi-monthly updates to the old game to keep it fresh and interesting throughout its life than one major annual update. Also, considering the amount of content and depth in a game like Fallout 3 or Borderlands, I have a hard time justifying the full $50 for a game like this. If they would have included the original plus L4D2 in a bundle for $50, I think that would more readily justify the cost. Alternatively, if they were to add the five original campaigns from L4D1 to this game as downloadable content, that would instantly add tremendous value.

All in all, I think the game is a must-play for diehard and casual fans alike, because it basically offers more of the same plus a lot of new twists to keep things interesting. The price is a little steep, considering the first game also cost $50, so you could potentially be paying up to $100 for the complete Left 4 Dead experience. But if you get the 1+2 bundle for $70 or a 4 pack for $35 each ($23 each for L4D1), it's a much better deal.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game(s).

The next game on my list to complete is ostensibly "Ghostbusters: The Video Game" (you can probably guess at the length of my gaming backlog, considering this game came out almost six months ago). I say "ostensibly" because the game exists on multiple platforms and is, in fact, two completely different games, depending on what platforms you play them on. At first glance, the two versions appear to be purely cosmetic.. we have a cartoony, brightly-colored version on the Wii and the PS2 and PSP, and a darker, more film-realistic version on the PS3, X360, and the PC. They are, in fact, two completely different games with different play mechanics and even storylines that make both worthy playing separately, especially if you're a big Ghostbusters fan like me.

The two version do share a lot in common, though.. each feature fantastic writing and dialogue written by the original writers themselves, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, who also reprise their roles along with Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson in providing the voicework for the game. The performances are mostly great, and hit all the right vibes that they had in the movies. It's great fun to hear them banter on during the gameplay, and it lightens the experience enough to push this from a semi-serious encounter into a more comedic romp, just like the movies. Both also reuse incidental music and cues lifted right from the first movie, and use them to such perfect effect that you swear the music was written for the game specifically. It's details like this, along with the exquisite modeling of the characters and proton packs and Ecto-1 (at least in the PC/X360/PS3 version) that makes the game feel like the real thing, and not a cheap knock-off game like has been done so often in the past.

In both versions you play a new recruit to the team, and you get to live one of my favorite childhood fantasies (and probably one shared by many a Ghostbusters fan), being able to run along with the four Ghostbusters on ghostbusting missions, laying waste to everything in your path with the ridiculously overpowered and unpredictable Ghostbusting equipment like the Proton Pack, boson darts, slime thrower, etc. The feeling of comeraderie between you and your four employers and the hilarious unpredictability and chaotically dangerous nature of your equipment makes this a real "blast" to experience, as you destroy whole rooms in an effort to catch one ghost. As you grab one in your capture stream and slam it all around the room to weaken them down so they can be trapped, the lightshow that entails is over the top, at times incoherent, and violent. You definitely get the "mad scientist" vibe from this experience, that doesn't quite feel like science but more like art. Of course, you get Egon and Stantz constantly spouting off technical jargon and explanations for what's happening and it all sounds very impressive but sufficiently bewildering too. So you and your in-game protagonist are simultaneously mesmerized simply by working with this crew and this equipment.

Whereas both versions hit all the right notes with the texture/characters/props/music/setting/writing, both have wildly different gameplay mechanics and even story differences that accentuate the two different platforms. The Wii version's controls are vastly simplified, and consist mostly of you waving the wiimote at the screen in various motions to mime the motions of blasting and wrangling the ghosts. There are also times where you'll need to use the capture stream on the proton pack to pick up objects and move them around to solve some simple puzzles and item fetching sequences. The story also takes you down a path that involves more lightweight action like this, less intense ghost encounters, and more enclosed interior environments that take better advantage of the Wii's lesser graphics capability.

The PC version, on the other hand, has much more technical controls, including a feature to manually vent the heat from your proton pack, switching between different beam modes, alternating between a blast stream and capture stream, using the infrared goggles in conjunction with the PKE meter to scan ghosts and artifacts, and a more abstract "slamming" command than actually waving the controller in the right directions. The ghost also come more rapidly and in greater numbers, pushing this version into more of a shooter than a puzzle solver. You also have to keep track of your teammates and revive them if they get knocked down and incapacitated by the ghosts too many times, otherwise the game ends and you have to restart from the last checkpoint. So on the PC version there's more emphasis on reflexes and skill and managing your team than the Wii version, which is definitely a lighter weight, less technical, more accessible gameplay, which I think goes nicely hand-in-hand with the more cartooney graphical style.

These are my impressions at maybe a quarter to a third of the way through the game. I'm sure there's more in store before I reach the end, but so far I'm very satisfied and sucked into this game, because it just feels so right, and it's everything that I thought a Ghostbusters game should be, from the writing to the musical cues to the visuals to the chaotic fun of trapping a ghost and holding it indefinitely. It really feels like you're busting some heads, in a spiritual sense of course.

MW2 on the PC doesn't bode well.

There's lots of buzz lately about the PC version of Modern Warfare 2, and how the developer has hamstrung a lot of the features that make PC games superior to console games. A lot of this came out of a Q&A session with the developers hosted by Best Buy earlier this week.

Essentially it sounds like they're dumbing down the PC version to the point where it's essentially a port from the consoles. The big one that jumps out at me is the lack of developer console, which prevents you from tweaking stuff like field of view (FOV), something that I've done with most games ever since the Quake 3 days. I like to have more peripheral vision, but it looks like MW2 is going to lock you in at 65 degrees, which makes games feel molasses-slow. Sure this may have an effect of unbalancing the game in favor of enthusiasts as they tweak the game to their preferences, but knowledge is power... and it teaches people to be resourceful. This stuff is not difficult to figure out and accomplish. And the timid can always just stick to the single player campaign.

The other point of contention is the lack of dedicated servers, and in its place they've implemented a dubious peer-to-peer hosting system where PC's are chosen to host the game in progress. Coming from a background of administering my share of private game servers, this sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen, as systems with poor asymmetric internet connections and misconfigured firewalls try to host a multiplayer game. I guess that's why they're limiting game sizes to 9v9 only. My question is, is the typical client-server model that every other game uses so unusably broken that they have to reinvent it? Or is this another way for them to control the experience end to end, by quashing the ability to run your own server?

The rest of the features present in COD4 that were seemingly axed from the PC version of MW2 are listed in a pretty concise spreadsheet... and they include such surprises as not being able to kick misbehaving players, no mods, no custom maps, no recording, etc... basically all the reasons why PC games are usually more feature-rich than their console counterparts. In most cases extra maps and similar add-ons are considered DLC on console games and Microsoft/Sony see fit to charge you for such niceties, whereas they're usually free on the PC version. Not any more, they're simply not present in MW2. And other stuff like recording and kicking players have always been boons for more enthusiastic gamers that want to push the gaming experience above and beyond.

This is all being done in the name of "balancing the game" as the developers see fit. I guess we'll just need to wait for the hacking community to step in and restore the proper balance. And as typically happens, the hacked version will be superior to the official version, and not just because of lack of DRM this time... it will most likely have the features that PC gamers actually want.