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Kane and Lynch 2 is the sequel to io Interactive’s not-so-successful Kane and Lynch. However, instead of focusing on Kane as the first Kane and Lynch does, the story flips over to Lynch’s perspective. In the beginning of Dog Days, Lynch has settled down in Shanghai, and welcomes Kane to the city as he is making a top for an arms deal. Enough to say, things get out of hand, and they’ll have to fight their way through endless swarms of thugs, policeman, and what seems to be members of the Chinese Army.

Liked:

Welcome to Shanghai: Dog Days, for the most part, does a good job changing the atmosphere of plain buildings of Dead Men to the streets of Shanghai, filled with neon signs.

Ammo Limits: Instead of the infinite ammo that you have in Dead Men, Dog Days force players to be more conservative with their ammo, as you can no longer get them from your NPC ally. Instead, you’ll have to pick them up from dead enemies.

Hated:

Camera Madness: The developers might boast the camera as innovative and new, and some reviewers might say it’s hardcore, but it’s really nothing more than a lazy step taken by the developers. The angle has changed from the standard third person view to what seems to be a cameraman following the action (or as some would like to call it, like a bootleg film). Blood and water would leave temporary droplets on the screen; dead civilians, people killed with head shots, and nudity are censored, as are explosions. When the player controlled character is moving faster than a walking pace, the camera would wobble around unsteadily. While that may be new, it seems to be a cheap gimmick to add frustration and headaches to the player. Also, it could be a way used to hide the low def details of this game in today’s hi-def world.

Bad Multiplayer: We gave Dead Men the benefit of the doubt when they blamed GFWL for their bad multiplayer and quickly dying player base. However, with a simple look at Dog Day’s multiplayer run by Steamworks, we’ll easily see that GFWL wasn’t at fault here. While the game does provide more game modes than the first, they’ve improved almost nothing. Matches are still held via in-game lobbies, which will then run through local hosts. If the host decides to quit, every player loses their progress. There’s still no way to control voice chat, so you’ll often hear people breathing in their mics, as well as a lot of other thing you don’t want to hear. The multiplayer population is at a low even when the game has just been released, and you’ll most likely be playing with the same couple dozen of people, if you can get a game started at all.

Short, Repetitive Campaign: Dead Men’s campaign is really short for a game of it’s type. Only boasting to be around four hours long, the campaign has you running around the city massacring your enemies, with no real plot in the game. The dialogue is random most of the time, so players will have to focus on listening to even understand what they’re doing and why. Unless you plan on playing the game in short bits, it’ll become stale fast.

Overall, Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days is a unmemorable massacre of a shooter. It has a dull campaign, boring multiplayer, and a very vomit-inducing camera ( which can have it’s level of vomit-inducing-ness lowered in the options). After finishing with this game, I’d like to quote Lynch: “We’re finally done with this shit” (or something similar, since the swarms of crazy AI detract from plot too much). If you’re a masochist and want to suffer, then go ahead and play this game. Otherwise, stay the hell away from this title.

Final Score: 3/10

From today forth, we’re announcing a slight change to the way our game reviews will be posted onto our website.

We’ll no longer be doing our game reviews in an essay format (like our anime reviews). Instead, we’ll be doing a general impression, list what we liked and disliked abut the games, then end with a final word and a review score.

We hope this will make it much easier for our different readers, so whether you’ll want to read the full review or just skim through the main points, our reviews will suit you.

All Points Bulletin, or APB for short, is a “massively multiplayer online shooter”…or, that’s what Realtime Worlds, APB’s developers, would like to say anyway. The game promises a persistent online world, where your character “levels up” through completing task such as delivering stolen good, robbery, or fighting criminals. While it seems good on paper, APB failed to meet most people’s expectations.

APB’s customization engine allows for an endless character customization. You play the game to earn decals and symbols to use in the game designer, which you can use to design your character’s clothing or vehicles. The customization is perhaps APB’s only good quality. The game falls short outside of customization.

It’s really simple to grasp the idea behind APB’s “innovative” leveling system: You have to complete missions to earn standing with certain factions, which will in turn unlock higher tiered weaponry and upgrades for your character. Players can experience PvP (player vs player) combat during missions, but otherwise, everyone is practically unkillable…unless you’re a griefer. This game allows players’ vehicles to interact with each other even though they’re not bound to the same mission. This results in an unusually high amount of 12 year old kids with too much Red Bull to ram their garbage trucks and armored vehicles into your path during a nice chase, thus ruining your mission.

The missions structure is also flawed. APB has few missions varieties, where players must either got to A, hold “F” fetch item, or run away for a set period of time. While this may seem to be forgivable during the first couple of weeks, it quickly becomes boring. Also, the same said 12 year olds love to exploit the system ,and will do anything to ruin your day. If they’re opposed to you in a mission, they could simply not show up, and earn cash and standing (more than you) for doing little tasks such as stealing and turning in cars.

The game’s flaws could be forgiven, if only it’s community was understanding and would play fairly. However, understanding the nature of such games, we notice that they attract an unusually large amount of trolls and griefers, and any complaint or request of help in their in game forums or in game chat will result in pages and pages of content that seems like 4chan material.

APB has an excellent idea, but it failed in execution. Lots of in-game bugs, too early of a release, and the developers lack of attention to playerbase suggestions has brought this game down. This has been attested through the game’s below average sales. AS of today, RTW is under administration ( a process similar to filing for bankruptcy). While the official website states that the game itself won’t be affected in any way and encourages users to keep player, a smart person can see that it’s the dying studio’s last attempt at trying to rake in money to fill in for losses before the project sinks. Stay away from this game. You won’t like it in the mean, troll caves of San Paro.

Final Score: 3/10

Alpha Protocol is Sega and Obsidian’s latest game. It boasts to be a modern-day espionage RPG, giving players customization, freedom of choice, and non-linear gameplay.

The hype, however, ends right there. The game somehow fails to deliver in both content and satisfaction.

For a game in 2010, the graphics are pretty lacking. Graphics will often glitch, and it’ll take a good computer quite a bit before the detailed textures load in.

The gameplay, however, is even more bash-worthy than the graphics. The enemy AI jumps from being totally stupid to wallhack smart.Although the game claims to be based off modern day espionage, I feel like playing a Superman RPG instead. Enemies will get their healths upgraded, and they’ll do weird things. The screen will spin 180 degrees suddenly at random times, making your perfect setup all wasted effort. Linearity is laughable at best. Sure, the game in “non-linear”, you get to choose which one of three areas you’d like to tackle first.

With all these flaws ruining a supposedly good IP, Obsidian should just go back and do what they do best: making sequels for games.

Score: 6.5/10

Blur is an action/racing game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision. Aiming to steal Mario Kart’s throne, it tries to steal the target audience by stating that this game is for “grown men”.

The game’s main focus is an action-intensive racing game where each racer can use various power ups to gain an advantage over the other racers. The cars are modeled after realistic vehicles by different real life car manufacturers.

However, the game fails to achieve its role. The amount of power-ups made available to the player is very limited. The vehicles in the game are very easy to handle. However, the lack of race tracks and different game modes put this game at a disadvantage. While Mario Kart’s tracks are filled with colorful patterns and challenges, Blur’s courses are all standard looking race courses with very little variability.

Score: 6/10

Over E3, Valve made an announcement about an upcoming game I’m sure all of us here are excited about: Portal 2. Portal 2 is the sequel to the successful puzzle game Portal. Valve promises gamers for a longer, challenging but not too hard singleplayer campaign, and a co-op multiplayer part as well. Check out the E3 trailer below.

Splinter Cell: Conviction is the fifth and latest installment of the Splinter Cell franchise. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the story focuses on Sam Fisher, after he’s left Third Echelon. What started as a quest to find who murdered his daughter became something much bigger than he imagined.

The gameplay of Conviction has been, for the most part, toned down to suit a wider variety of gamers. Stealth no longer plays a huge role throughout the game, and while it still rewards players for stealthily taking out hostiles, one can practically run it guns blazing and achieve the same effect. Sam’s pistols also have infinite ammunition, to allow for the run-n-gun style of play.

Interrogation of certain suspects are a new – although unimpressive – feature in Conviction. When you approach certain key characters, you’ll be locked into an area, where you can then interrogate certain NPCs for information (usually by slamming him into certain objects). While this is not only scripted, it shows as nothing more than a way to satisfy the inner devil in you, to torture information out of people (Jack Bauer much?).

The characters are also weird in a way. Sam seems to always frown in this game, and he has an unusually long lip to frown with. Grim….well, let’s just say whoever worked on her model seems to have messed up the physics of her chest. Lip syncing seems to be below par at best. When characters talk, their faces just repeat a set of mouth movements, which may or may not match what they’re saying.

Worst of all, near the end of an adventure of non-stealth gameplay, players will be forced to relive through one of the worst moment of the entire Splinter Cell series: laser mazes. Also, what’s wrong with the cameras having lights to show where they are?

The multi player should be marked as 2-player co-op or duel. All it is is two players running through an extra mission (which is as long, if not longer, than the Conviction single player campaign).

Conviction is an average game at best, straying away from it’s roots and appealing to modern run-n-gun standards. If you’re expecting a faithful sequel to the series, disappointment is in store. If you’re looking for an action game to play until the next big thing hits the shelves, then give it a try – though the $60 price tag, and the new DRM for the PC version might drive some away.

Score: 7.5/10

Last week, we found out that the Starcraft II beta would officially end on May 31st. Well, not anymore. According to an official forum post, the beta has now been extended until June 7th, giving gamers an extra week to practice their gameplay strategies, or to play some of the new custom games made available since Patch 13.

They say the reason for the extension is to “prepare for the final phase of beta testing”, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the in-game lag everyone is experiencing lately. Perhaps they’re trying to fix this bug before the final product is released, because if they don’t fix it by then, I’m pretty sure a lot more people will be flaming on their forums.

According to a video posted on Valve’s popular STEAM game distribution service titled “Free Yourself”, Half Life 2 is coming to Mac users on 5/26/10. The 34-second preview shows Alyx, Gordon Freeman’s partner throughout the series, run from a squad of combine soldiers, then hurl a crowbar at a screen of Dr. Breen giving a presentation. The video boasts that game owners can now free themselves from the “dictation of platform”. However, you’re still not free from the cost of the game itself. You can view the clip by clicking here.

Metro 2033 is a post-apocalyptic first person shooter. After a nuclear war destroyed most of the habitable lands of Russia, the citizens of Moscow are forced to live below the ground, in metro stations. These metro stations frequently suffer from mutant attacks, and the people of the metro either have to defend against them, or become victim to the new creatures.

You play as Artyom, a citizen of one such metro station, called “Exhibition”. When your station suffers from attacks from strange new creatures called the “Dark Ones” and your friend Hunter goes missing after trying to hunt down the Dark Ones attack Exhibition, you are forced to leave in order to search for help from the other stations.

The gameplay revolves around a linear trip through the metro stations, with the occasional trip to the outside world.Most of the time, the player will have companions who travel with the protagonist, but on occasion, he might have to venture the dark tunnels alone.

The atmosphere of Metro 2033 is like no other. The dark tunnels really set the creepy mood, and will keep the player on his toes at all times. On one of the journeys with a character Artyom meets, the player will encounter some creepy, though fairly harmless creatures. Brings the chills down my spine.

The creatures of metro 2033 are very much limited, and they, for the most part, look like something out of a Star Wars movie. The human AI also needs working. Stealth can play a major part in this game, as sneaking by enemies successfully will allow you to bypass enemies, and save ammo. However, a sound from a grunt dying from a headshot, and you’ll get enemies from the entire level looking for you.

There are a limited selection of weapons the player can choose to wield, and most of them cost quite a bit. The armor selection is very limited, offering a choice between stealth or defense (and even then, the armor upgrade merchants are easy to miss).

There are also a number of game breaking bugs that players will have to be stuck with. One such bug is the gas mask bug. Every time you die, if you don’t reload twice, you’ll respawn with no gas filters at all, and you’ll never know until you’re stuck in an area with no gas filters.

Overall, the game does bring a pretty interesting, although the unattractive linear gameplay might off some audiences. If you’re a fan of hte post-apocalyptic setting though, you wouldn’t want to miss this one.

Score: 7.7/10