Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Review

It's certainly novel for a game's subtitle to boast of your impending slaughter, but Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is unusual in most respects. Its combat is abnormally precise, its narrative is largely embedded within optional NPC interactions, and its multiplayer features are unconventional and initially largely hidden. While the PC version is a shabby port, there is simply no other action RPG out there like Dark Souls, which is so good that it adversely affected my opinion of how all previous RPGs handled combat.

The PC port is a disappointing wasted opportunity to technically improve on the console version of Dark Souls.

However, we must start out with a warning: the PC port is a disappointing wasted opportunity to technically improve on the console version of Dark Souls, and it lacks many features you probably expect as standard. The resolution is locked at 1280x720 (aka 720p), the framerate is locked at 30fps, and there are no high resolution textures. There's a mouse & keyboard control option, but control is so bad that it's not practical, so you'll definitely want a gamepad to play. Fortunately, there's a must-have unofficial patch available that improves the rendering resolution. With it, everything looks much crisper, although you're stuck with low-resolution textures. A framerate uncapper is also in the works, but it's currently too buggy to recommend.

Roll Up Your Sleeves

That said, Dark Souls is still an amazing game. There's no hand-holding -- to succeed, you need to invest time diligently exploring, learning the combat system, and developing your skills to overcome challenges. The open-world design makes it likely that you'll wander into high-level areas that'll mercilessly slap some perspective into your character. It's a tough, but fair experience. Deaths aren't cheap, but success needs to be well earned.

The fine young spooks are personified Humanity and great to farm.

Most of my character deaths were caused by impatience, not an inability to quickly respond.

It's easy to prematurely conclude that you lack the reflexes or experience to tackle challenges, but the combat system is incredibly precise and severely punishes button mashing. Most of my character deaths were caused by impatience, not an inability to quickly respond. You'll improve through the traditional RPG route of leveling up and finding and improving equipment, but also by observing enemy movement and attack patterns and learning appropriate responses. Once I started taking more time to acquire familiarity with the capabilities of enemies and my own weaponry, battles that once seemed insurmountable became rote.

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like an Armor-Plated Bee

While ranged-combat skills can make some encounters more manageable, fighting is largely oriented around melee. The brilliance of the melee combat system is that it accommodates whatever style you find most natural or interesting -- it's tremendously deep and well balanced, which gives you lots of tactical choices and forces tradeoffs. There are over a dozen weapon classes, and each has its own attack patterns -- many individual weapons within classes have their own unique attacks, too. For instance, while the strong two-handed attack for most straight swords is a charging slash, the Drake Sword pounds the ground and creates an impressive shockwave that also damages the sword. Weapons have normal and strong attacks, which are different when used one-handed or two-handed, as well as alternate attacks when used after rolling, back-stepping, or pressing a directional key. I naturally developed favorite weapons and relied more heavily on certain attacks, but the variety of weapons and attack methods provides a tremendous number of effective tools to overcome obstacles, and ample opportunity for rewarding experimentation.

Nothing is more effective than a sword between the latissimus dorsi.

Almost any character build is viable with the right preparation.

There are no respecs, so your character-development choices have lasting impact, but there also are no fixed classes or restrictions, so you can fully customize your character to suit your preferences. One of the system's best traits is that while certain character builds will make some challenges easier, almost any build is viable with the right preparation. For instance, it's not necessary to eventually graduate to larger weapons or heavy armor -- wearing light equipment enables you to prance around the battlefield and easily dodge enemies, which is just as viable as slowly bludgeoning opponents by blocking or absorbing attacks with heavy equipment and then retaliating. You can even be both speedy and heavily armored, but you'll have to sacrifice equipment slots and be less able to enhance your spell-casting abilities or other attributes.

Time For a Different Approach

Equipment choices can have more than one impact -- heavy armor not only blocks more damage than lighter equipment, it also makes your character less likely to be thrown off balance when hit. Large shields have great stability, which allows your blocks to use less stamina (a crucial combat resource), but light shields allow you to better land devastating ripostes. Some weapons inflict damage dependent upon attributes such as Strength. If you've neglected the attributes that modify weapon damage, you can instead use elemental weapons that don't rely upon attribute modifiers, or chaos weapons that scale with consumable Humanity points. If you find it difficult to get parry timing down, ignore it and use heavy shields for blocking or rely more upon rolling. I found that against many dangerous opponents, the additional range of a halberd more than compensated for its slow attack speed. Instead of hammering through shielded opponents, I began kick their shields away. Enemies and items don't scale in strength as you level, so if you become skilled enough at combat you can complete the storyline and grab the most powerful equipment as a very low-level character.

Good night, sweet Knight.

Even when playing on your own, being online enriches your game.

Dark Souls takes a great, unconventional approach to multiplayer and online content, although unfortunately via the cumbersome Games of Windows Live system. Unless you create an offline GFWL account, you'll always play online, allowing other players to join your game as a hostile or helpful phantom in certain circumstances. It also gives you some insight into what other players are doing at the same location within their games. You can touch blood spots to see ghostly replays of how other players died, or read notes left by other players (which could warn you of the location of an upcoming enemy or deliberately mislead you into walking off a cliff), and there are a few synergistic advantages whenever other players use spells or kindle bonfires near the same location in their own games. So even when playing on your own, being online enriches your game with additional content derived from what other players are concurrently doing in their own games.

Hollow Men

The conditions under which your game can be joined are somewhat complicated. Your character can be in either human or "hollow" form, and a character in human form who dies respawns in hollow form. The only way to return to human form is to use rare, but farmable, Humanity items. Being in human form has two advantages: it allows you to kindle and permanently improve bonfires (precious checkpoint locations), which gives you additional healing flasks, and it allows you summon other players or befriended NPCs as backup phantoms. Summoning aid can make boss fights much easier, especially since you can summon up to three friendly phantoms, who can be a mix of human players and NPCs. Joining someone else's game as a friendly phantom is a great opportunity to gain some riches without risking your own character's life, as you'll just return to your own game if your phantom is killed. Several NPCs offer the opportunity to join covenants, some of which offer additional rewards for helping, or killing, other players.

At last you meet heroic Artorias, who has broken bad.

Invasions add excitement, and the different covenants that you can join offer a variety of ways to fight other players.

The downside of being in human form is that your game can be invaded by hostile phantoms, who are largely other players but can also be NPCs. Invasions add excitement, and the different covenants that you can join offer a variety of ways to fight other players. Join the Dark Wraiths and you can invade the games of other players who have characters in human form, while joining the Forest Hunters gives you a ring that summons you to the games of players fighting in the forest.

The Phantom Menace

Unfortunately, there are a lot of multiplayer griefers. Some may have hacked characters, but generally these jerks deliberately avoid leveling while they grab powerful equipment, making them radically overpowered when they invade characters playing normally. That means every time you adopt human form, you risk your game being invaded by someone who will quickly kill you in an unfair fight. That's pretty annoying, since it makes it harder to summon help when you need it.

Time out while I run away from your Manticore lightning.

The good news is that because the PC version is new, there are still plenty of normal players to encounter, and multiplayer combat on level footing is great fun. The developers also made some modifications from the console version that make a larger variety of character builds effective in PvP combat, including reducing the effectiveness of backstabbing and the godly, backflip-enabling Dark Wood Grain Ring. There's also a new arena specifically for PvP combat, but you have to first reach the new content to unlock it (which will take most players over 20 hours) and then hope there are enough similarly leveled players in queue to get a timely match. Right now it's difficult to get a match in most game types -- that may improve as Dark Souls ages and more players both access the area and focus on multiplayer matches, but it's currently more of a novelty than a significant addition.

Many Secrets

I don't recommend going in unguided, though, as you'll probably never even find the new areas without the help of a Dark Souls walkthrough wiki. You need to first kill a boss, then leave the area and return or reload, then kill a freshly spawned creature and don't accidentally annoy a related NPC, then clear out several entirely different locations until you unlock the final set of campaign areas, then go to one of those unlocked areas and kill a new creature there to pick up an object with no clear purpose, and finally return to the original cleared out area and wander to an uninhabited corner that you'd likely ignore. Yep, not likely.

But Dark Souls has always had content that you were unlikely to find without assistance, such as the Great Hollow, a treasure trove for rare crafting materials. The lore is treated similarly, as NPC dialog is generally cryptic, easily missed, and never quite gels into a coherent narrative. I've found that uncovering and debating the setting's lore is one of Dark Souls' many optional but rewarding time-sinks.

Buildings are realistically scaled to your character, instead of being dwarf-scale models.

About three quarters of the original locations are extremely well designed, but the last few levels are simpler and just force you through an uninspired and tedious gauntlet of enemies. One detail I particularly appreciate in Dark Souls' world design is that buildings are realistically scaled to your character, instead of being dwarf-scale models as in Skyrim and most other RPGs. On a good PC, I found none of the irksome slowdowns that blight (in particular) Blighttown in the console versions.

The Undiscovered Country

The Prepare to Die Edition also adds three new areas that provide some new insight into the setting's history: a crumbling cityscape, a forest, and an area of the Abyss that's haunted by Humanity ghosts. The cityscape is the only one that impresses, as the others feel too redundant next to the original content, but the new enemies make them worth playing, including some misshapen humanoids with headstalks that can be seen in darkness and some tough stone guardians who slam their hammer so viciously into the ground that yanking them out causes an explosion of turf.

These Stone Guardians make the ones in Darkwood Gardens look like pebbles.

All of the new bosses are frenetic and extremely aggressive combatants.

The new bosses include the fallen Knight Artorias, a key figure in the lore, and a ferocious Dragon which is so tough that he's an optional fight. All of the new bosses are frenetic and extremely aggressive combatants, making them at least as tough as those in the original areas. One of those original bosses also makes a very welcome reappearance, in a manner that both fits well with established lore and gives a different tone (and some new dialog) to the original encounter.

Content with the Content

Getting all of the items and clearing out the tough creatures that don't respawn, like the deadly blowdart-wielding runts in Blighttown, is how you mark your progress through a location (since normal creatures respawn every time you rest at a bonfire). The new territories somewhat lose that satisfying feel by being more static, since they don't have enemies you can permanently kill, and most items are just lying around and easily accessible. Still, they fit in well, and add six to eight hours of gameplay (on top of the original areas, which took me more than 40 hours to get through), not counting the new multiplayer options. The campaign resets at a higher difficulty level if you complete it, and you'd need to get through almost three full playthroughs to get all of the items and achievements.

While this port isn't the significant enhancement that we'd all hoped for (to put it kindly), Prepare to Die Edition is still clearly the definitive version of Dark Souls. It plays smoother, multiplayer is improved, mods have enhanced the resolution and promise further improvements, and there's content not currently available on the consoles. PC gamers have had to wait a while, but we now have the best version of Dark Souls anywhere, and it's almost-unique type of challenging and rewarding gameplay has made it one of my all-time favorite games. more.

Battlefield 3 Armored Kill Review

With four huge maps, a great new game mode, and a handful of fun new vehicles, Armored Kill is the best reason yet for you to jump back into Battlefield 3. After the Close Quarters misstep expansion that tried to turn BF3 into something it isn't, and the rehash of Battlefield 2's maps of Back to Karkand, Armored Kill finally feels like the first Battlefield 3 expansion to get close to living up to its potential by giving us more of what makes the series so great: a strong mix of vehicular warfare and first-person shooting. It pushes Battlefield 3 to its limits, and in some cases comes to a sudden stop when it hits them.

When is Big Too Big?

Up until this point, maps like Caspian Border have carried the load of showcasing large-scale battles in Battlefield 3. Now, with Armored Kill, we have four even larger maps, one of which DICE claims as the biggest map in the history of the series. That would be Bandar Desert, and yes, it's pretty damn big. So big, in fact, that it actually makes Battlefield 3's 64-player limit feel *gasp* small, and some of the battles I played in Conquest mode turned into isolated pockets of fighting between a few players. It's a far cry from the epic scale warfare I signed up for, but it's much better in Rush mode because everyone is moving from the same objective location to the next. It's still fun, as BF3 tends to be, but I can't help but think how amazing it would be if the player limit was higher.


The other maps introduce some large battlegrounds as well (not quite to the gigantic scope of Bandar,) but it's Alborz Mountains that stands out. I mean, they're all great -- Death Valley is a nighttime desert map and Armored Shield takes place across some large grasslands -- it's just that the variety of terrain makes Alborz feel really unique. Between fighting over a frozen lake and driving up a mountain in my tank, the entire map looks like it was plucked out of Skyrim, and it's the best-designed of the four new maps.

Do You Feel Superior?

It's a design well-suited for the impressive new vehicle-centric mode, Tank Superiority (playable on all four new maps). The rules are simple: there's one control point in the middle of the map, so you should capture it. The number of vehicles to be found is increased, so you're assured to see tons of tanks and APCs all rushing and vying for control of this one hotspot. A few minutes into a Tank Superiority match, charred remnants of those vehicles start to pile up, tanks launching artillery barrages from hilltops, and a few brave (stupid) souls leave their vehicles to sprint to the control point. It's a beautiful chaotic mess, and I love it.

Check out this awesome Skyrim mod!

Tank Superiority is also the best mode to play if you're trying to complete the five new Assignments (AKA achievements), all of which are vehicle related. Completing these tasks involves making a number of kills with a specific vehicle or unlocking additional vehicle abilities like explosive rounds and TOW missiles. As opposed to Back to Karkand and Close Quarters, there are no new infantry weapons -- the focus here went to introducing new vehicles like the Spurt-SD tank, the M1128 Tank Killer, the M142 & BM-23 mobile artillery trucks.

As opposed to Back to Karkand and Close Quarters, there are no new infantry weapons -- the focus here went to introducing new vehicles.

There's also the uniquely auto-piloted C-130 Gunship, which is an awesome ride, even if I can't directly fly it. Instead, two players can hop in and take on the firing duties -- one on the anti-aircraft gun, the other shelling ground troops. Even with these two seats filled, the Gunship then serves as a mobile spawn point so players can paradrop closer to enemy-controlled areas.

Making Sure Everyone Feels Welcome

Because of the concentration on vehicles in Armored Kill, the Engineer is far and away the preferred class on these maps. The other classes have some useful tools, like Support's C4 and Recon's ability to laser targets, but they can't match the Engineer's variety. Between his rocket launchers, mines, and even the EOD remote-controlled robot, if you're picking a different class you better have a damn good reason for it. This happens to be my favorite class anyway, so I didn't mind playing with him a majority of the time, but if you're partial to your sniper you might want to get used to wielding a blow torch to repair your teammates' vehicles.

They all look like ants from up here.

Battlefield Premium members have access to Armored Kill right now, and everyone else who's interested will be able to buy it for $15 on September 25th. If you're still playing Battlefield 3, or burnt out from claustrophobia or lack of tanks, I suggest that you do. more.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Review (Part 2)

Part 2: Multiplayer and Zombies

Farewell, Kill Streak system. Back when you were young and innovative you helped elevate Call of Duty to juggernaut status, but it's high time you received an upgrade. Surprisingly, it turns out that all that Black Ops 2 needed to make CoD multiplayer feel fresh and reinvigorated, if not reinvented and free of frustration, was a seemingly minor tweak. Meet the Score Streak system, a new well-balanced reward system that makes me feel like an action hero for helping my teammates rather than exclusively celebrating brute-force killing power. Combined with a much more flexible character customization system, Score Streaks help this year's multiplayer feel like more than just another rehash.

The shift to Score Streaks is absolutely noticeable and a terrific boost.

As the name indicates, you no longer unlock support actions like UAVs or air strikes with three-, five-, and seven-kill streaks. Now, those rewards are earned by scoring points via kills, assists, capturing an objective, successfully defending an objective, and more. For objective-based gamers like me who prefer to help others rather than go for lone-wolf sprees, the shift is absolutely noticeable and a terrific boost. In past CoD games, I would expect to get one or two Kill Streak awards per objective match because I focused so intently on team goals instead of my place on the leaderboards.

Finally, Recognition

In Black Ops 2 I'm rewarded with more support actions than ever before, and it feels good to finally get a few bombs to drop as a pat on the back for a job well done. Critically, though, it doesn't appear as if this shift has led to a significant increase in support actions per match, because points are doled out in a measured, balanced way that still makes unlocking the big bad streaks feel tough.

An extra perk or a third accessory? Options!

The 10-item limit means making tough choices.

I also like how Treyarch has tweaked multiplayer loadouts with the new Pick 10 system. As the name indicates, you can outfit your character with a grand total of 10 items, including primary and secondary weapons, accessories, perks, grenades, and equipment. That's further mixed up with the use of Wild Cards, which allow you to hyper-specialize. As you can imagine, the 10-item limit means making tough choices, but it also leads to some unique combinations and some truly custom characters like my Primary Gunfighter Wild Card build.

Where The Wild Things Are

That card opens up a third accessory slot for my primary weapon and enables me to have a sight, FMJ bullets, and a quickdraw handle on my assault rifle. The drawback is that I'm taking up five of my Pick 10 slots with my primary weapon alone (including its three accessories and the Primary Gunfighter Wild Card), so I've given up any accessories on my secondary weapon, a perk, and a tactical grenade. This kind of freedom to give and take is a more than welcome addition.

Beware of the bullet-dodging, knife wielding assassins.

Your character is instantly transformed into a lightning-fast ninja.

Such freedom, however, has a drawback: the potential for imbalances. Treyarch says it has a bazillion multiplayer matches worth of data that drove its design decisions and make Black Ops 2 balanced. My eyes, seeing the many players who willingly bring only a knife to a gunfight, say otherwise. Equip the Lightweight perk and swap to your knife, and your character is instantly transformed into a lightning-fast ninja. Throw in Extreme Conditioning to make him even more superhuman and, with a little practice, you can run around the battlefield stabbing fools like Sho Kosugi on PEDs. That's if you're feeling kind. If you really wanted to rack up a ridiculous score, as I have seen many do, give old Sho a submachine gun with a laser sight for fast and convenient hip-firing accuracy.

Damned Ninjas

It's really more of an exploit, and it's a shame, because there's a terrific mix of open maps, like the Chinese aircraft carrier set Carrier, and more close-quarters battlegrounds, like luxury super yacht Hijacked, and Lightweight ninjas with submachine guns feel overpowered on all 15 of them.

With 12 modes, there's something for everyone. Except you, snarky guy.

Multi-Team is another mini-squad system that encourages players to work together.

At least in Black Ops 2's standard Core modes. There's so much that's been added to CoD over the years, much of it feels like it was designed for a group of players with specific complaints, including mine. The Hardcore game types, for example, limit the HUD, take away health regeneration, make bullets more powerful, and are a terrific escape for players looking for more challenging, serious, ninja-free shooting.

The list of features keeps on going. After being impressed by the two-man Fireteam system in Medal of Honor Warfighter (pretty much the only thing to be really impressive about that game), I was pleased to find that Black Ops 2's new mode, Multi-Team, is another mini-squad system that encourages players to work together with simple mechanics in a handful of modes, including Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, and Headquarters. It doesn't offer the basic healing and resupplying that Fireteams do, but thanks to the frantic nature of the CoD multiplayer, it doesn't need them.

I've Got Your Back

From my first match in Multi-Team, players seemed to almost instantly recognize this was no place for lone wolves. Because there are four different teams, each with three players, it has the keep-your-head-on-a-swivel tension of Free for All, but with two men watching your back like a security blanket. Without a word of communication to one another (there is built-in VOIP for you noisy talkers out there), my squad navigated to a small room with a balcony, giving us a good view of the battlefield.

It pays to stick with the team. Plus, this just looks lonely.

There are 12 modes in all, and it's a mountain of content that can potentially keep a fan busy for a looong time.

One player guarded the door while I kept watch on the balcony and our third squad mate went back and forth between us, laying down fire on enemies as needed. It was fantastic fun and we racked up a healthy number of kills before another squad got wise and lobbed a few grenades into our den. It isn't always so sublime, though. I've also found myself in a handful Multi-Team matches where I might as well be on my own, and that can be brutally unforgiving.

There are 12 modes in all, and it's a mountain of content that can potentially keep a fan busy for a looong time (or at least until next November, when yet another CoD will inevitably arrive). And that's before you even get to Zombies.

You've Gotten to The Zombies

Yes, the undead-deadening modes are back in Black Ops 2, and this time around they're much more fleshed out (zing!) with enough maps and modes to make a standalone game. Not that Activision needs any ideas, but that actually looks like where Zombies is heading, particularly with its new mode/map collection, Green Run.

This time they're much more fleshed out (zing!).

Much like Left 4 Dead, Green Run puts co-op groups through one long, zombie-filled bus trip. I started at the Bus Depot and… well, I died at the Bus Depot. Now I'm trying to get through five large areas in all, culminating in the Town, and I'll probably get there eventually, but this undead shooter is tougher than ever, thanks in no small part to environmental hazards like lava that kills players and makes zombies explode... to kill players.

Not Easy Being Green

It's tough, but it's also fun, especially when playing with a friend like me who needs his life saved a lot. Fortunately for those of you playing online with randoms, you likely won't have to suffer through co-op with me, because Zombies includes a new matchmaking system that pairs players of similar skill together. So let's all be grateful for that.

Mind the burning, exploding zombies.

Zombies includes a new matchmaking system that pairs players of similar skill together.

While these are all fairly significant changes that're pleasingly out of character for an annualized franchise famous for producing steadily degrading copies of Modern Warfare (which is still the best of the series), make no mistake: this is still Call of Duty. It looks and feels like the shooter Infinity Ward created years ago, and in many ways, that's a disappointment. Where, for example, are my wrist-mounted grappling hooks from the single-player campaign? Opportunity missed. And of course, this remains one of the best digital places in the world to go to become teeth-grindingly frustrated. But Black Ops 2 is also the most concerted effort yet to convince players to grow their wolf packs through some good old-fashioned team play, and in many ways it succeeds. It not only gives Call of Duty multiplayer fans their annual dose, but actually makes it better. more.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Review

You had me there for a minute, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. I thought you made the complete near-future leap, and thanks to a surprisingly subdued and touching opening cutscene, I even believed you would take the Michael Bay film of video games in a mature, less-is-more direction. Then, for a sizable chunk of the campaign, you dropped me into the 1970s and '80s -- a jaunt that included first-person punching Manuel Noriega in his pock-marked face. As gratifying as that was, the cross-decade narrative is disappointing and distracting. While those past portions of the campaign feel like retreading old ground, those that are set in 2025 are the best Call of Duty levels since 2007's Modern Warfare. Why couldn't we have a full game of that?
At the outset (the year 2025), I was tasked with finding out what Raul Menendez, a populist who presents himself as the savior of the world's poor, is up to. He's deftly set up as a villain with a believable motive, and the US government knows he's planning something. Just one problem: I already knew exactly what that mysterious something was because Activision told us all. (This is normally the place where I'd insert "SPOILERS AHEAD," but thanks to Activision's nearly unavoidable advertising, the damage has already been done.) I even yelled it at the screen a few times in annoyance: "He's planning to take over the US drone fleet, you idiots! Didn't you see the commercials?" Sigh.

The CoD of The Future

There may not be any surprises left, but at least it looks good. We're not talking about Battlefield 3-level graphics here, but when it's cranked up to the highest settings Black Ops 2 is head and shoulders above anything Call of Duty has done to date. Character models, particularly their faces, look terrific. Light, shadow, and water effects are also strong, but when those stellar characters stand next to certain walls or trees, they highlight how low-definition many of the environmental textures are.

Character models look fantastic, but they also shine a bright light on low-def textures.

These are bigger than what I've come to expect from CoD campaign maps.

That could have something to do with the fact that the campaign maps are bigger than what I've come to expect from CoD. Just about every one of the 16 missions (which I spent roughly eight hours completing) is set on a relatively open map with various paths, spots to take cover and flank, and pieces of equipment to use to help fend off the enemy. The early Celerium mission, set first in the jungles of Myanmar before descending into a high-tech underground facility, is particularly impressive, with its seamless blend of exterior and interior environments. After years of scripted, linear shooting, it's refreshing and far more interesting than anything we've seen churned out of the CoD factory in years.

Packing Sci-Fi Heat

Those wider maps are especially fun when Treyarch hands over the keys to future gadgets like the lumbering, Gatling gun- and flamethrower-packing CLAW walker or the swarming, bullet-spewing quadcopter drones. These tools typically aren't the scripted, "get on that machine gun!" moments CoD is famous (or infamous) for, rather, they're wisely integrated elements we can use when and how we decide. The futuristic guns aren't all that remarkable, but some of their sci-fi attachments have a wonderful transforming effect, like the seemingly basic laser dot scope that doubles as an X-ray vision device to spot enemies through walls.

Go get 'em, big guy.

There are artificial limits that rear their ugly heads at inopportune times.

Of course, while these missions are more open than prior CoD maps, it's no Far Cry 2-style open world -- they still have artificial limits that rear their ugly heads at the most inopportune times. For example, in a mission where I put the very cool Wing Suit to work by jumping off of a mountain and flying toward my target, I tried to do a bit of exploring and banked to the right. Almost immediately the screen went grey, and I was awarded with instant death for straying "too far from the flight path." On another level set inside a massive resort, I tried to flank the enemy by pushing out to a section of the map I could see on the left. All that stood in my path was a velvet rope, but it might as well have been the Great Wall of China because I wasn't getting past it.

BYO Tactics

Another nice touch of limited freedom is a pre-mission menu that allows customization of your loadout, multiplayer style, in the campaign. Weapon, accessory, equipment, and perk options are all there, giving us real options in how we want to approach each mission. Will I let my squad push forward while I sit back and snipe, or will I surge forward and flank with a submachine gun? It's terrific to actually have the choice of tactics.

The Wing Suit section is just one part of the massive Celerium mission.

Treyarch should have just made the Access Kit part of your standard inventory.

One recommendation on selecting your two perks, though: always enable the Access Kit. It allows you to open doors and cases scattered across maps that give you even more weapons and equipment (I found a nasty old bear trap in one), and, in the end, even more options in how you play. Come to think of it, Treyarch should have just made the Access Kit part of your standard inventory and allowed for the selection of two unessential perks to give real variety.

Old 'N' Busted vs New Hotness

The biggest problem with the campaign is that, even forgiving the spoilers, all the interesting, fun-to-play stuff is in the near-future setting. The story veers back to the past too often to set up an unnecessary and convoluted human drama that connects protagonist David Mason, his father Alex Mason and buddy Frank Woods from the first Black Ops, and the villain Menendez. I sighed every time I had to flash back to Angola in the 1970s or Panama and Afghanistan in the 1980s to plod through this truly silly tale without all of my cool near-future tools and gear. I'm harping on these major storyline and setting missteps because for me, they had a deeply negative impact on Black Ops 2's efforts to give us something truly new and different, most notably in its excellent FPS/RTS-hybrid Strike Force missions.

Strike Force missions put players in the role of Commander.

These are among the best missions in the campaign. They're fun, and the only truly innovative content CoD campaigns have seen since Modern Warfare. Much of their potential goes unfulfilled, though, because they feel like a sideshow to the main campaign rather than the stars they could've been.

Strike Missions have simple, intuitive controls that work terrifically.

As Strike Force commander in charge of a unit of soldiers and armor like the CLAW, I could control individuals or groups from above, RTS-style, sending my forces to attack or defend objectives (protect the power generator!) with a couple clicks of the mouse. I could also Being John Malkovich into any unit and do first-person battle quickly and easily courtesy of simple, intuitive controls that work terrifically. With one exception: there's no means of telling troops to take or remain in cover.

Mindless Soldiers

That became a big issue, because whenever I wasn't in their heads, soldiers and drones were clueless. For example, there is no "take cover" command, and if I didn't happen to place soldiers in unmarked, automatic take-cover spots on the map, they simply stood out in the open, serving as little more than target practice dummies for the invading enemy horde. When I commanded units who were in cover to attack incoming enemy units, they'd frequently run out into the open instead of firing from relative safety. Their incompetence shines a bright light on just how poor CoD's AI is, which has previously been called upon only to give us dumb targets to shoot at.

Noriega is grinning because he knows I'm fresh out of SFUs.

By the time I was three quarters of the way through the campaign I was completely out of SFUs.

Frustrating as that is, I still found Strike Force missions to be some of the most interesting gameplay Black Ops 2 has to offer, so when I wasn't allowed to play them it was baffling. You start with three Special Forces units (SFUs), AKA three lives. Lose them by failing missions and they're dead forever; and if you're out of SFUs, you can't play any Strike Force missions again until you advance further in the campaign and earn more SFUs. They're doled out sparingly, and by the time I was three quarters of the way through the campaign I was completely out of SFUs, and all of the remaining Strike Force missions were labeled as officially lost. Huh? In a shooter where I can die countless deaths without an iota of impact on my progress, that makes no sense.

Victory or Death (But Probably Death)

I suppose the counter-argument in favor of SFU permadeath in the Strike Force missions is the fact their outcome has an impact on the campaign story. Success or failure here will dramatically change how Menendez's plans for global upheaval play out in the end -- so why not heighten their importance with permadeath? Here's why: they're incredibly difficult, fought against massive well-armed enemy forces and using the aforementioned idiot soldiers. Over the course of the campaign, I was able to successfully complete only one Strike Force mission. If the pressure's going to be that high, the odds shouldn't be stacked so heavily against me.

Who would have thought Menendez would attack us with our own drones!

I was also given a handful of black-or-white decisions -- such as whether to kill or capture a target -- at points in certain standard missions. All the choices wind up creating three very different endings that definitely add replay value, even if it only means going back to those key missions. That's something a Call of Duty campaign has never offered before, and the control I had over the outcome definitely made me feel more invested.

More importantly, choice is another element that helps take the Black Ops 2 campaign off of the carbon-copy conveyor belt of typical Call of Duty shooting. It doesn't make the same whole-hearted dramatic franchise leap forward that Modern Warfare did, which is disappointing, but after five years of more of the same, it's a big step in the right direction. more.

Darksiders II Review

Darksiders II comes with a few extra technical foibles on the Wii U, but the fluid action and intriguing exploration are still front and center in this expansive adventure.

The Good

• Role-playing elements give combat a great sense of progression   
• Clever environmental puzzles with a consistent learning curve   
• The promise of new loot keeps you pushing forward   
• A lot of content to uncover and secrets to unearth  
• Atmospheric presentation draws you in.

The Bad

• Too many frame rate hitches and loading pauses   
• Most battles are too easy, even those against enormous bosses.

The Wii U version of Darksiders II may suffer from some additional technical hitches, but this vast adventure is so absorbing, it's still easy to lose yourself in its oppressive world. And what a world it is, with architecture so sharp that every spire threatens to puncture the heavens and make them bleed. You needn't worry about too many confusing story details if you missed out on the original Darksiders: this sequel's narrative isn't so much about plot as it is about place and tone. And that tone is what sets Darksiders II apart. The skies are ominous, the armor is impossibly chunky, and the game's star--Death himself--speaks with gravelly, somber tones, save a few moments of sarcastic humor that betray his agitation.

In Darksider's II, Death is but only the beginning.

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This port isn't the finest way to lose yourself in Darksiders II's fantastical universe, however. On the bright side, the Wii U release includes Argul's Tomb, downloadable content delivered for the earlier versions. The tomb isn't Darksiders at its best, with a protracted shooting segment lasting too long to be fun. (Though to be fair, you could take the melee approach in spite of all the guns scattered around.) This content can be accessed at any time, and provides you with the abilities necessary to complete it if you haven't unlocked them in the main campaign. But significantly, the game suffers from some frame rate problems, distracting loading times as you move through the overworld, and longer loading times when opening doors than in the other iterations.

Technical hiccups aside, Wii U owners get the same experience as everyone else, though with some gamepad tweaks: menus are accessible on the touch screen, special abilities can be (but don't have to be) activated by touching their icons, and tilting the pad changes your direction when swimming and pushing boulders. As for the basic mechanics, an icy opening introduces you to combat and movement. In traditional action game style, you slash away at clawed creatures with primary and secondary weapons. You run along walls and jump across beams like a devilish Prince of Persia. There are also role-playing elements: your enemies drop coins, armor, and weapons. You can don equipment, sell it to a merchant, or sacrifice it to level up rare possessed weapons, which you can customize at certain thresholds.

It's a good thing Death is half naked in this dungeon--it must be a hundred degrees in there!

Darksiders II is clearly reminiscent of other games you have probably played. It recalls the structure of The Legend of Zelda, the parkour of Prince of Persia, and even the dimension-bending puzzles of Portal. Yet in spite of how heavily it wears its inspirations, Darksiders II establishes an identity all its own. The game's large scope and thoughtful pace allow you to breathe between battles, and each new mechanic has time to settle in before a new one is introduced. The leisurely sense of pace is obvious in the first level, where you can take in the frozen chasms beneath you, and enjoy the slick motion mechanics that have you defying gravity in heady flights of fancy.

If you played the original Darksiders, you might miss the up-front barrage of action at first, but Darksiders II is more about adventure than constant onslaught, though there are plenty of battles waiting ahead. As you ride your steed to the first main dungeon, you can relish the green fields of the first of multiple major regions, and simply enjoy the act of being. If you want, you can explore some of the surrounding ruins, where treasure chests protect valuable pauldrons and cloaks. Or you can slash up the baddies that roam the land, even from atop your horse. But once you get into the dungeons, Darksiders II becomes special--more cerebral than your average action game, and more energetic than your average exploration game.

This big boy looks intimidating, but show a little patience, and he's annihilated before you can break a sweat.

As expected, each dungeon requires that you puzzle out how to get from one point to the next. At first, this involves scaling walls, throwing the naturally occurring bombs you stumble upon, and pulling a few levers. Then, you get a phantom grapple hook that allows you to swing from glowing hooks and extend your wall runs. Later, you split yourself in three, petrifying your main form and using two doppelgangers to stand on switches and move platforms. Ultimately, you fire portals to travel across great ravines and even through time itself--and these are hardly the extent of the tools you use to make progress through Darksiders II's clever self-contained puzzles.

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