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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The eponymous army is made up of Salem and Rios, two mercenaries reprising their roles from The 40th Day’s predecessor, Army of Two. The game is meant to be played cooperatively, and you can do so locally (via split-screen) or online. You and your teammate travel through the besieged city of Shanghai, shooting your way through a mercenary army and having a grand old time, despite not really knowing what is going on. The core shooting mechanics are sharp and satisfying, and moving around the varied environments is generally easy. However, some awkwardness arises from the fact that sprinting, rolling, sliding into cover, hurdling over cover, and entering a mounted gun position are all mapped to one button. Triggering the wrong action can put you in some tight (read: deadly) spots. You also have to be careful when maneuvering into cover, because though you automatically lean into it, cover isn’t sticky. Yet once you start to get the hang of the controls, you’ll find that there is a certain fluidity to the way you can move around the battlefield. And as an added bonus, you can take out a regular enemy just by running into him at a dead sprint, which is both fun and funny.

If you choose to roll solo, you’ll be left with an AI teammate who generally does a good job of staying out of trouble. That is, unless you want him to get into trouble, in which case you can use the easily issued tactical commands to influence his behavior. Solo or co-op, you should keep an eye on the aggro meter, a slider that indicates which of you the enemy is concentrating its fire on. If one teammate draws all the aggro, the other can slip about virtually unnoticed, picking off distracted foes or moving into a better position. Playing with this mechanic can be fun, and it is strategically relevant enough that a timely aggro grab can save your buddy’s skin. There are also a few other tactical tricks you can pull, like mock surrendering to the enemy, that help add some unique cooperative flavor to the action.

In both friendly and enemy AI, there is a slight tendency toward extremes, whether it is your AI teammate downing four baddies with superhuman speed in order to rescue you, or the enemy AI being so focused on your aggro-happy partner that it ignores the fact that you just put a few bullets in his back from a few yards away. Sometimes it feels like the game is erring on the side of letting the player have his fun, but there are some situations that seem more like AI stupidity. You can up the difficulty if you choose, but no matter how you play it, the campaign won’t last much longer than six hours. To The 40th Day’s credit, it doesn’t feel particularly short, and there are two elements that provide some measure of replayability.

The first is weapon customization, which you will engage in throughout the campaign. As you progress, you can unlock new guns and gear for purchase, as well as find upgrade parts throughout each level. You and your partner can initiate weapon customization anytime you aren’t in combat, though the other human player must stand near you and accept the prompt in order to actually bring up the store. You can buy guns (SMGs, shotguns, sniper rifles, and so on), weapon upgrades (silencers, clips, stocks, sights, and so on), and a few other augmentations, like increased grenade capacity. You earn a lot of money throughout the game, and many of the upgrades can be applied to multiple weapons, so customization is encouraged. There’s an array of upgrades that range from brutal (shotgun bayonet) to bizarre (bulky barrel-mounted shields) to do-it-yourself hilarity (soda can silencer). It’s surprisingly entertaining to change your loadout, experiment with different weapons, and tweak high and low aggro guns. And once you’ve finished the campaign, you can revisit any chapter with your persistent weapon locker and try even more loadouts on for size.

The second element that adds replayability is the interaction you have with noncombatants. There are civilians in this warscape, and most of the ones you encounter are being taken hostage or threatened. Saving them presents an intriguing tactical challenge. Do you blast away and hope to kill the enemies before they kill the hostages? Or do you sneak up and grab the officer, forcing his unit to surrender? (Army of Two features a tactical GPS mode, which is a handy, if distracting, visual overlay that displays relevant battlefield information and allows you to spot ranking officers.) Some characters you encounter will trigger marquee morality choices. Once you choose between the two options, you’ll be treated to a cutscene that shows the impact of your decision hours or even days later. The comic-book-style scenes are unpredictable and often very strange. A choice that seems good (like trying to keep a child alive), may end up with grim results. These choices are essentially minigames: small, tangential encounters that offer a small bonus but are otherwise frivolous. If you’re looking to derive some sort of clear or consistent message, you’re out of luck. Army of Two: The 40th Day tries its hand at moralizing, but the results range from cliche to overbearing to bizarre. Fortunately, these sections are quickly drowned out by a cacophony of gunfire and explosions.

For further action free of any noncombatants, head online and do battle against other armies of two. The Co-op Deathmatch mode is essentially team deathmatch with teams of two, and it’s a neat twist on the cooperative action from the campaign. There’s also Control, a capture-and-hold mode, and Warzone, a mode that features a fun variety of changing mission objectives. Online action is tuned to be more fast-paced: you can revive your teammates more quickly, and everyone is limited to choosing from the same gun loadouts. While it’s a bummer to have the customization stripped out, you can still add your own flair by designing a logo on the game’s official Web site, sending it to the game, and putting it on your mask or shoulder armor (this also works in campaign mode). There’s a fourth multiplayer mode that is set to be unlocked after those who preordered the game enjoy a month of exclusive play, but as it is, Army of Two’s online multiplayer is an engaging complement to its campaign. Unfortunately, many matches are plagued by lag, so unless you specifically select a match with a low ping, you may end up suffering.

Army of Two: The 40th Day is a very appealing shooter, and it looks great to boot. Diverse, ruined environments, cool enemy equipment designs, and nice animation touches make the action that much more lively. It has its fair share of issues,and you’ll spend most of the game not knowing why buildings are falling and men are shooting at you. But there’s a lot of fun to be had in both the campaign and the online multiplayer. With entertaining action, great visuals, surprising replay value, and the ability to play rock-paper-scissors while standing over the corpses of your enemies, The 40th Day is a fun way for shooter fans to start off 2010.

Aside from its storied history, Aliens vs. Predator’s main appeal is its three disparate campaigns, in which you respectively take control of a marine, an alien, and a predator. Each campaign has its strengths and starts well enough. The first two levels of the marine story, which plays as a fairly typical first-person shooter, are dark and creepy, making good use of atmospheric lighting to enhance the tension. Your first encounter with a creepy-crawly xenomorph is properly nerve-racking and will have you searching about in the dark, using your handy motion tracker to try to figure out exactly where it is (while trying to bear with the tracker’s incessant beeping). Playing as the alien, your escape from the confines of a laboratory features some good old-fashioned bloody head-chomping, and there is some short-lived fun in crawling all over the walls and ceilings. And the predator offers his own delights. It can be fun to leap from surface to surface while you gaze down at hapless marines as they stroll underneath and you prepare for a gloriously disgusting kill.

But in each campaign, the thrill wears off quickly when you discover that Aliens vs. Predator botches a lot of the basics, and what seems thrilling at first becomes downright tedious as you struggle with poorly designed levels and gawky gameplay. For example, the dark thrills of the first marine levels give way to tedium once you leave the dark behind and enter jungles and temples, which are far less interesting and make shooting the grotesque xenomorphs no different from shooting up raptors in Turok–except that the levels are much more confined and straightforward. Eventually, you’ll learn that the same trick in combat dispatches aliens almost every time: block their attack, smash them with a melee attack, and shoot them when they’re down. This doesn’t work when there are a lot of them, but it gets the job done more often than not. That doesn’t mean the marine campaign is a cakewalk; some levels feature annoying choke points or give you too little room to maneuver, which makes certain sections feel more cheap than challenging.

The alien campaign is interesting at first, thanks to a number of cool abilities that are initially fun but ultimately can’t compensate for some major mechanical malfunctions. For instance, it seems fun at first to crawl around on walls and ceilings, until the awkward controls suck all the pleasure out of it. You are supposed to hold the right trigger to scamper onto a wall, but in actuality, there’s no consistency to wall- and ceiling-climbing. You’ll crawl onto some walls and outcroppings willy-nilly whether or not it’s what you intended to do. You’ll try to activate one of the game’s super-picky button prompts and jump onto a wall instead, or wrestle with the controls and camera trying to do something as simple as slither into a vent. You’ll eventually learn to wield some control over the alien’s fickle movement, but even then, moving around isn’t all that enjoyable. You never feel in control of an actual creature; instead, it’s as if you are floating just above the ground.

Sadly, the troublesome movement gets in the way of your sneaky attacks. It can be mild fun to get in position above an unsuspecting marine and pounce, but the unwieldy movement and haphazard level design make it much more enjoyable just to stay on the ground. For example, you might try to pounce from a wall onto a passing victim, only for a beam to get in the way and cause you to drop right in front of your enemy without doing a bit of damage. Yet as clunky as it gets, you’ll have fun when everything comes together in just the right way. Playing as the alien is all about hit-and-run tactics, speeding close to your prey or ambushing him, and either taking him out with a swipe of your powerful tail or speeding away if the action heats up. Executing a well-planned attack can be fulfilling, though the game doesn’t create many such moments, leaving you to make them of your own accord.

Like the alien, the predator relies on stealth to be most effective, and to that end, you can go invisible-ish and lead enemies to a designated spot by distracting them. You need to suspend your disbelief when distracting marines; they respond to your vile grunts with a cheerful quip like “I’m on my way,” as if they heard a friendly call for help rather than the disgusting growls of a stalking menace. But the distractions are helpful, letting you position yourself just right to pull off one of Aliens vs. Predator’s beautifully brutal trophy kills. You yank your foe’s head and spine right out of his body, stare into his terrified eyes, and stroke the dangling bit of anatomy. It’s gross in all the right ways and is the most satisfying aspect of the game’s single-player experience. You commit similar atrocities as the alien, the best of which provide a terrific view of your victim’s horrific end–from inside your own mouth.

Unfortunately, irritating mechanical and level design limits yank all the fun out of scurrying around (in the case of the alien) and leaping from one destination to the next (in the case of the predator). Some levels require you to move about only in ways the developer intended. You might want to scamper up and over an obstacle, only to run into an invisible wall or ceiling; and as the predator, you can leap to certain surfaces but not to others for reasons that don’t always make sense. Why can you leap 20 feet to one spot, while you can’t hop over a six-inch barbed-wire fence? There just don’t seem to be any consistent rules in place, which makes the act of simply moving from place to place feel sloppy and unsatisfying. The inconsistencies apply to the AI as well. Enemy humanoids will do incredibly stupid things like take cover on the wrong side of a wall, exposing their backs to you. Sometimes, their ability to notice you even when you’re camouflaged borders on the magical; other times, they’re all but oblivious to your presence from two inches away. Civilians even run into the corner and cower with their backs to you in the alien campaign, clearly waiting to be harvested rather than making an authentic attempt to escape. Intelligence just isn’t Aliens vs. Predator’s strong suit.

The marine campaign avoids some of these pratfalls, instead falling victim only to its own lack of ambition. After the first excellent levels, the lights get turned on and rarely go off, and everything becomes tepid and ordinary. It turns out to be just another everyday shooter checking off the old cliches; like in so many other shooters, you’re a rookie learning the ropes, guided by the voice of an unseen comrade, a device the game loves so much, it uses it twice. You would think that boss fights would increase the energy levels, and a battle that ends in a boss engulfed in flames hits exactly the right notes. Unfortunately, none of the other boss battles, from the easily exploited final boss of the marine campaign to the final battle of the predator portion, feel fierce or intense. That’s too bad, because the story, while not exactly groundbreaking, does its best to establish some tension, and much of the voice acting is grand and dramatic. The alien and predator campaigns are less interested in narrative, but the viciousness of your actions and a few delicious cutscenes tell a tale nonetheless.

The game’s online features are much more promising, for while they still suffer from some of the campaign’s mechanical weaknesses, there’s some pure fun to be had when you mix marines, predators, and aliens together. Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch give you a chance to mess with each species’ strengths and weaknesses, and they successfully incorporate aspects of the single-player game, such as the energy nodes that predators use to keep their plasma casters charged. The game’s sense of clumsiness hovers over matches, but it’s still satisfying to play as a marine and successfully fend off a scurrying xenomorph as he moves in for the kill, even when the super-sticky targeting removes some of the edge from your victory. In Infestation, one player starts as the alien and converts his marine foes into fellow xenomorphs, while Predator Hunt is an advanced version of tag in which one player begins as the predator and seeks to make another player “it.” These modes are the most fun, partially because they embrace the differences between species, rather than trying to incorporate them into something more traditional. The game even includes its own take on the ever-popular “kill off waves of enemies” co-op mode, here called Survivor. Survivor is not as exciting as what you’d find in similar modes in Gears of War 2 and Halo 3: ODST, but the two maps you play on capture some of the creepiness that characterizes the first two chapters of the marine campaign.

It’s the little things that really drag the game down. Aliens vs. Predator seems to be a well-meaning attempt at reinvigorating a languishing series, but grotesque kills and some entertaining multiplayer moments don’t cut it–not when so many slick and exciting shooters are on store shelves, vying for your time. The attention to detail, the well-considered level design, and the sense of momentum that characterize the finest shooters are missing here. Aliens vs. Predator is sometimes enjoyable but never escapes an overwhelming sense of carelessness, so while it may remind you of the good old days, it fails to recapture them.

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon.” Scrawled across the wall above a board covered with photographs, these words greet you in the waterlogged, decaying opulence of Adonis Spa after you awaken. Ten years have passed since the surprising events of BioShock 2’s opening cinematic, and you’re a man with a mission: to find your Little Sister. As Subject Delta, one of the original Big Daddy protectors first introduced in BioShock, you were pair-bonded with a Little Sister named Eleanor Lamb through a love that could literally kill you. Your mutual desire is to be reunited, but Eleanor is now being held captive by her mother, Sofia Lamb, the new master of Rapture. As an altruist and collectivist, Lamb is the diametric opposite of Andrew Ryan, the wealthy industrialist who founded Rapture as a place where mankind could be unfettered by petty morals, the hand of government, or the word of God. As an antagonist, she lacks Ryan’s charisma and larger-than-life presence, but her personal philosophy and particular brand of madness nonetheless provides an interesting, if heavy-handed, alternative to his.

Though it is essentially a first-person shooter, the key component of BioShock 2 is its story, and while it features a powerful and compelling narrative with a satisfying conclusion, it is not without its issues. Whereas much of the first game focused on the city of Rapture and the mystery of how it fell from grace, BioShock 2 barely touches on these aspects, and as a result, prior knowledge is required to fully understand what is happening. There is supplemental reading on the big details buried within the menus for those who need it, but unfortunately, this isn’t effectively brought to your attention. Furthermore, there are a number of inconsistencies present that are never satisfactorily explained. These range from small, nagging issues with the way certain story-based gameplay elements or characters from BioShock were grandfathered in, to larger problems with your very existence as a Big Daddy. It never becomes clear why you alone among the Big Daddies can use plasmids, for example. And while your pair-bond with Eleanor lightly manifests throughout the game, there is never any emotional connection there to latch hold of–the only reason you have to pursue her is that you’re explicitly told you need to find her.

Standing between you and your Little Sister is The Family, Lamb’s semireligious cult of splicers, or former citizens of Rapture whose years of abusing a genetically enhancing drug called ADAM has granted them superhuman powers at the cost of their sanity. The years have not been kind to the splicers, who are far more warped and disfigured than ever before. They’re also more dangerous now, having spent the last ten years honing and refining their predatory skills and abilities. Most of the splicers you encounter, such as creepy wall-climbing spiders and teleporting houdinis, are recognizable from the first game, but they’re now joined by brutes, who can ruin your day with a charging tackle or a thrown piece of concrete. To keep up with these dangerous freaks, you have no choice but to splice up yourself to increase your potential and unlock new abilities. This means you need ADAM of your own, which is where things get interesting.

As a Big Daddy, you’re only too familiar with the way that ADAM is obtained: the Little Sisters. Making regular rounds in Rapture, the adorable but intensely creepy Little Sisters seek out ADAM-rich corpses (which they lovingly refer to as “angels”) to drain with their wicked-looking needles. Each Little Sister is guarded by a Big Daddy, and unfortunately, there’s no secret handshake that will get a Big Daddy to part willingly with his tiny charge–you’ve got to put him down. Once the two have been separated, it’s up to you to decide what to do with the little girl, who cries in mourning of her surrogate father. As a Big Daddy yourself, you can lift her lovingly onto one shoulder and become her new guardian, or you can ruthlessly slaughter her for ADAM on the spot–an act made all the more cruel and unforgivable by your circumstances. By choosing the former, you can help your adopted Little Sister continue her rounds, earning a nice ADAM bonus in the process, but you’re really only delaying the big decision. Do you choose to be selfish and harvest her? Or will you choose to be selfless and rescue her from her ghoulish condition? Each choice offers a different degree of ADAM as reward, but no matter what you decide, sooner or later Big Sister is going to catch up with you. These grown-up Little Sisters have been retrofitted with armor inspired by their guardians, and they are fast, powerful, and angry at you for messing with their pseudo siblings.

With enough ADAM at your disposal, you can spend it splicing up your DNA with plasmids to gain access to psychokinetic powers, such as the ability to throw fireballs, generate decoys that draw enemy fire, or shoot bees from your hands. You can also purchase gene tonics to enhance yourself with a wide variety of passive traits like faster movement speed, immunity to electrical damage, or quieter footsteps. Your combat options aren’t strictly limited to genetic mutations, however, because there is an extensive arsenal of more traditional projectile weaponry for you to find as well. Each gun you find can dish out some serious damage to marauding splicers, from the bolt-launching rivet gun and the shoulder-mounted launcher to the .50 caliber machine gun and the deadly spear gun. Each gun also has multiple types of ammunition that you can switch between depending on the situation. As you journey deeper into Rapture, you’ll have opportunities to upgrade both your guns and your plasmids, and there’s a much greater sense of improvement this time around. Plasmids gain secondary and tertiary abilities, and weapons receive bonuses, such as the power to zap and stun foes with electricity.

Much like its predecessor, BioShock 2 is slower and more methodical than your average shooter, but combat feels much more natural and effective than it ever did before. Most noticeably, you now duel-wield plasmids and guns, which allows you to dish out damage using both simultaneously or keep up an active defense with one hand and an offense with the other. Though setting traps was a useful tactic in BioShock, there are more compelling reasons to do so now because many more high-profile encounters are player initiated. Setting down an adopted Little Sister to guzzle ADAM, for example, summons a horde of splicers looking for a fix, and fortifying your position with proximity mines or trap rivets can take you a long way toward weathering the storm. When dealing with roving packs of splicers, there are often a number of ways to approach each battle. If you’re short of patience and have plenty of health, you can rush in guns blazing and hope for the best. If you’re a bit stealthier, you can catch your foes unawares and take them out before they even realize it. You can also promote infighting with the security command and hypnotize plasmids or even hack security cameras or sentry turrets for extra help (the Pipe Dream hacking minigame is gone and replaced by a much more streamlined version). Finally, the research camera returns in video recorder format–simply set the camera rolling and eliminate your enemies on tape to learn new abilities over time all while experimenting with different attack combinations to keep things fresh. This new setup is easier to use than the previous method, but you’ve got to juggle your weapons around because the camera must be temporarily equipped in place of a gun to activate it, which can be distracting during a firefight.

Rapture is an underwater city full of wonder and amazement that is steeped heavily in the architectural styling of the art deco movement. The entire city is a monument to the ego–specifically Andrew Ryan’s ego–which is a notion so contradictory to the guiding principles of Lamb and her Family that they find it necessary to desecrate it at every turn. The cryptic messages about rebirth and their accompanying butterfly motifs that are found everywhere greatly add to the haunting atmosphere of Rapture. At the other end of the spectrum are the bright and cheery crayon-drawn messages that Eleanor leaves you like a trail of breadcrumbs, each of which warms the heart. But when you see them in the context of their surroundings, they are creepy and disturbing. Rapture is a dark, dismal world that envelopes you with a blanket of isolation–excellent art direction, a great soundtrack, and a fantastic voice cast all team up with a powerful story to create an atmosphere so thick and intense that it is at times downright chilling.

Besides its 10-to-12 hour-long single-player campaign, BioShock 2 also features a fun and entertaining story-based multiplayer mode set during the fall of Rapture. As one of a handful of pre-insanity splicers, you’ve joined the Sinclair Solutions Consumer Rewards Program for self-defense to test experimental weapons and plasmids in the war between Andrew Ryan and his archenemy Atlus. Most multiplayer matches support up to 10 players, and they’re much faster paced than the single-player game–so much so that it’ll likely take you a while to get accustomed to it. With maps set in familiar, albeit less ruined, locales from the first BioShock, multiplayer features seven game modes that are takes on standard shooter multiplayer types. Capture the Sister, for example, involves carrying around a crying, screaming, and angry Little Sister for as long as possible before you’re killed and she’s kidnapped by another player. In other modes, you can become a lumbering Big Daddy if you happen to find a suit lying around or are picked at random. Multiplayer matches are fun and challenging, and this unorthodox addition to BioShock 2 can breathe additional longevity into the game.

All players have a persistent rank based on the amount of ADAM they’ve earned by winning matches and completing secondary objectives like hacking turrets, booby-trapping vending machines, or taking creeper photos of the bodies of their fallen enemies (which has the side effect of granting you a damage bonus against that player). Your rank determines which weapons, plasmids, and gene tonics are accessible, and you organize these into one of three loadouts you can select before a match begins or between respawns. Loadouts can and should be customized for different situations, and while you’re dead, it’s possible to check out what combinations the other players are using. Reaching certain ranks also earns you new voice recordings left by the multiplayer characters themselves, which provide their intriguing insights into the civil war and their downfall into madness.

Andrew Ryan dreamt of a world where his fellow man could endlessly pursue self-happiness and self-fulfillment, so he chose the impossible–a city beneath the oceans. When given the opportunity, the citizens of Rapture chose self-destruction in their selfish and twisted pursuits of his ideals. Precisely what you choose to do when you are beholden only to yourself and your own moral constraints is the backbone of BioShock 2. Rapture may not be as mysterious and intriguing this second time around, but it is nonetheless host to a powerful and moving tale that allows you to better realize–or pervert–Ryan’s principles at your own discretion. Regardless of whether or not this is a return visit to paradise lost, there is plenty to be found here to make it a worthwhile, meaningful, and compelling one.

Mass Effect 2 begins with dire events that foreshadow the game’s darker tone–an attack that leaves the SSV Normandy in pieces and the fate of series protagonist Shepard temporarily unclear. Never fear: Shepard returns thanks to the efforts of the controversial pro-human organization called Cerberus and under the watchful eye of its chain-smoking overseer, The Illusive Man. Entire human colonies are disappearing without a trace, and Cerberus needs you–as Shepard–to investigate and confront the vicious forces behind the mystery. Whether you make your contempt for Cerberus’ questionable methods clear or espouse the organization’s manipulations, you owe The Illusive Man your life. Like it or loathe it, he casts his shadow on every action you take.

A race of locustlike beings known as the Collectors cast an even larger shadow, and the threat they pose is greater than may first appear. Cerberus wants you to assemble a formidable team to assist and provides you with two human officers of its own. First, there is the sexy Miranda. Then, there is Jacob, who seems initially reticent but allows his emotional fire to burn more brightly as the journey progresses. One by one, you build up your crew of specialists to complement them. Among them are a stoic but powerful Asari named Samara, whose ethical code is as unforgiving as it is inflexible, and Thane, a brooding assassin that belongs to the reptilian Drell race. These are great characters, as are other members of your team, though the Salarian scientist Mordin Solus is possibly the finest character in Mass Effect 2 and arguably the most interesting one seen in an RPG in some time. His ultracaffeinated, ultralogical delivery is often hysterical and always entertaining (his romantic advice will have you in stitches), but his moral misgivings and humaneness make him more than just comic relief. This diverse team joins you aboard a newly built vessel named, appropriately enough, The Normandy SR-2, with the ever-reliable and ever-feisty Joker at the helm. He’s not the only blast from the past to cross your path in Mass Effect 2, but it’s best to discover for yourself which characters from its predecessor (and what role they play in this trek across the Milky Way) you’ll meet again.

The main plot is conventional science fiction that draws to a predictable close, so the narrative wonders don’t exist within the sturdy-but-safe central story; rather, they gild its periphery. Each recruit offers a quest of his or her own to undertake, and these missions give you a lot of insight into your crew members–even those, like Jacob, that seem rather boring initially. Not all of these missions involve combat, which doesn’t always work in the game’s favor; one in which you follow your target from a walkway overhead is one of Mass Effect 2’s weaker moments. But even the rare missions that are light on thrills are still heavy on character development. Writing and dialogue are top notch, keeping each teammate from being a simple sci-fi cliche. The game may come with an M rating, but it doesn’t flaunt its adult motifs. Profanity and sexual themes are handled maturely, and their use has purpose and poignancy. There’s nary a weak link in the tremendous voice cast, so each line sounds heartfelt, and great facial animations (especially among the nonhuman members of your crew) and physical gestures make it easy to connect with your cohorts.

Conversations commonly present you with a number of responses that affect the meters representing two sides of the ethical spectrum: paragon and renegade. These meters are handled separately rather than represent sides of a single gauge. This structure makes a simple but important point: Morality isn’t an either/or, good/bad attribute, but it allows for shades of gray in which to maneuver. As these meters fill, new conversation options open, giving you additional ways to solve dilemmas. These choices don’t lead to the complexity and flexibility you see in RPGs like Fallout 3 or Dragon Age, but they result in some electric moments, particularly during the final hours. If you import your character from the original Mass Effect, the decisions you made in that game will be manifested here in extraordinary ways–though it might take a second play-through for you to really understand exactly how extraordinary. A more immediately noticeable adjustment to the conversations is the addition of interrupt triggers. In certain cases, you may get a prompt allowing you to interrupt the scene. This may involve pulling a gun on an unsavory mercenary (a renegade action) or snatching an impressionable youngster from the clutches of a gang when he tries to enroll (a paragon action). These instances have a nice feeling of immediacy and prove that actions really are louder than words.

Mass Effect 2’s third-person shooting action is greatly enhanced over the original, making battles exciting and violent, which befits the overall shift in tone. Battles play out as they do in a typical cover-based shooter like Gears of War, with a few caveats (you can’t tumble, for example). Sliding into cover is slick and easy, as is popping in and out to take potshots at the wide variety of foes that assault you. Action sequences still present a few rare hangups; you may suddenly rise a few feet into the air for no reason and be unable to move. Or you may get stuck on an invisible obstacle and jitter back and forth. Uncommon bugs aside, Mass Effect 2 works well as a shooter, and other changes to the combat reinforce the improvements. For example, your shields and health automatically regenerate as they commonly do in straightforward shooters, and you now pick up ammo from the battlefield. You can still pause the action to let loose biotic-powered fury, but combat remains fluid and stimulating. It helps that the two teammates accompanying you on your missions are much less of a burden than before–not quite brilliant, but certainly smart enough to stay out of your way and stay alive.

The repetitive nature of Mass Effect’s cookie-cutter levels is gone, as are the vehicle sequences featuring the oft-maligned rover called the Mako. Mass Effect 2’s missions take place across a wonderful variety of locales, from the creepy interior of a derelict vessel to a deep-space prison. Some of them trip up the pace by throwing in additional challenges, such as one in which you must avoid direct sunlight lest it burn you to a crisp. Most levels are thoughtfully constructed, letting you charge from one cover spot to the next in order to unleash destruction. You certainly get an impressive array of devastating tools to that end, including a blinding nuclear weapon that’s always a delight to fire. Standard weapons (as opposed to heavy weapons) also support additional ammo types–such as cryo ammo–which provide additional benefits. Besides, it’s always fun to watch a Krogan merc’s final sliver of health burn away when you equip incendiary rounds. And if that doesn’t bring a wicked smile to your face, throwing a horde of advancing security bots into the air with the shockwave skill certainly will.

It’s hard to miss Mass Effect 2’s focus on action, not just because you can reasonably play it as a third-person shooter, but also because certain features associated with RPGs have been restructured and streamlined. At first, you might see Mass Effect 2 as somewhat stripped; you don’t have a traditional inventory management screen, for example, where you would choose a weapon to equip or convert an item into omni-gel. Instead, you select the weapons you want when you embark on a mission or from a weapons locker. You purchase or find universal weapon and armor upgrades, which are then transferred to the Normandy’s science station, where you can apply them, provided you have enough mineral resources. If you want to change armor, you go to your personal quarters, where you can don the armor items you’ve obtained and personalize them with different colors and textures. Even character development feels lighter. You have fewer skills to develop for each team member (though you have a much larger team to choose from), and you could complete a thorough, 40-hour play-through without reaching level 30.

Yet in most cases, the role-playing elements haven’t been pared down as much as they’ve been cleaned up, forcing you to spend less time staring at menus and more time gunning down Geth and earning the loyalty of your comrades. After all, when you can equip alternate ammo without opening up a cluttered inventory screen, you stay connected to the moment, whether that consists of a heartfelt one-on-one encounter with a tormented Thane or an electrifying encounter with a thresher maw. However, don’t assume that you won’t get time to shop for goodies or check out the sights and sounds at important space stations. You can still load up on upgrades and weapons on hub worlds or even grab souvenirs like model ships to show off in your quarters. (And be sure to pick up a space hamster, which is exactly what it sounds like.) Nevertheless, the balance between shooting and role playing is different in Mass Effect 2 than in the first game–but the focus on action works to the game’s benefit, given the intensity of the characters and visuals.

When you aren’t shooting the heads off of clamoring husks or eavesdropping on a bizarre bachelor party, you’ll be flying the Normandy about the galaxy from a top-down view, scanning planets for side missions and for the resources used to purchase upgrades. To do so, you move a scanning reticle about the planet and drop a probe when your scanner indicates the presence of a resource. At first, this is a comfortable change of tempo, but eventually, scanning wears a bit thin–though it is a necessary task if you want to get the most out of your weapons and armor. You can purchase an upgrade to speed up spanning speeds, but the reticle moves slowly regardless (albeit faster on the PC than on the Xbox 360), which makes the entire process feel sluggish if you spend too much time exploring each system at once. Luckily, other noncombat activities make a better impression. Hacking computers and wall safes initiates one of two minigames–one in which you match blocks of code to a scrolling sequence underneath and another in which you must match like symbols as you would in the card game concentration. These little hacking games are brief and last just long enough to provide a pleasant distraction.

If you played the original Mass Effect, you may remember the jarring texture pop-in and frequent frame rate stutters as much as you remember the excellent character design and atmospheric planetside vistas. You’ll notice few if any instances of those drawbacks in this installment, which means there’s less to distract you from the impressive visuals. Just as an interior designer works from a collection of complementary and contrasting colors and textures, so too does Mass Effect 2 draw from a consistent set of hues and architectural touches. Deep reds and glowing indigos saturate certain scenes, making them richer and more sinister; eerie fog limits your vision in one side mission, while rain pours down upon you in another. Subtle, moody lighting gives certain interactions great impact, such as one scene in which your troubled, tattooed teammate appears as a black silhouette. The visuals are a superb melding of art and technology, with only a few animation hitches that stand out because most aspects are consistently excellent. The fantastic musical score and sound effects do more than their share to enhance the production, working the deeper end of the sonic spectrum and communicating tension and weight without getting heavy handed or manipulative.

Mass Effect 2’s improved shooting mechanics are no-brainers; they’re the expected advancements that clean up the flaws of its predecessor. But what makes this sequel so rich isn’t mechanics, but vision. A nightclub lit with flames, deadly family reunions, a friend accused of the inconceivable–these are the sights and events that cast shadows in your mind and heart. A few blemishes prove that this planned trilogy still has potential for growth, but they barely diminish the game’s overall impact. This is a galaxy you want to explore that is populated with characters you are glad to know. Mass Effect 2 is the kind of game that you return to, not just because it’s fun to play multiple times, but also because its universe is a place you wish you could call home.

Source: GameSpot

Source: GameSpot

Source: TeamXbox

Source: TeamXbox