Persona 4 begins when your main character–a silent protagonist whom you name–is sent to live with his uncle in the sleepy village of Inaba. After experiencing some difficulty adjusting to your new school life thanks to a nightmarish homeroom teacher, you make fast friends with Yosuke, another big-city transplant like yourself; Yukiko, the daughter of a family famous for running a traditional local inn; and Chie, a hyperactive girl obsessed with martial arts movies. Things seem to be going well, until one morning shortly after your arrival an unnaturally thick fog sets in and leaves behind a body hung upside down from a power line. With the local police seemingly unable to even determine a cause of death, and faith in them waning thanks to a second, eerily similar case, you discover that you may be the only person who can put an end to the killings. For some reason, you possess the ability to travel into the Midnight Channel–a rumored show said to appear and reveal your soul mate if you stare into a TV on a rainy night–where victims are trapped before they meet their fatal end, and provided you make it in time, you can set them free and thwart the killer.

It is there, inside the Midnight Channel, that you discover your second power, the ability to summon forth personae–reflections of your true self aligned with one of the major arcana of the tarot deck. With this innate talent, you can defeat the monstrous shadows that roam the TV world and help your friends to confront their own inner shadows, allowing them to unleash their own personae. Together, you investigate a series of dungeons crafted around the victims’ insecurities or darkest fears, which range from the mundane (a castle for a princess waiting for a prince to take her away) to the retro (an 8-bit game complete with pixelated fire) to the twisted (a men’s bathhouse for a young teenage punk unsure of his sexuality). Each dungeon is randomly generated, but unlike the 200+ floor Tartarus from Persona 3, they tend to be only about a dozen floors deep, keeping them fresher and more interesting. You no longer have to worry about your party becoming fatigued, and you can explore to your heart’s content, though you will often find that the rarity of spirit (magic) point restoring items will limit the amount of progress you can make in a single trip.

Like its predecessor, Persona 4 takes place over the course of a complete year that you work your way though one day at a time, but unlike in previous Shin Megami Tensei games, major events are not tied to the moon phases. Instead, your investigations into the Midnight Channel are ruled by the weather–occasionally someone will be trapped inside, and if you don’t rescue that person by the time the fog returns after a heavy rainfall, he or she will die, forcing you to restart. It’s not all about dungeon crawling though, because you must balance your secret life as a supernatural detective with your everyday existence as a student. Friendships and relationships need to be forged and maintained because your ability to create new personae is limited by the strength of these bonds, called social links. By spending time with a friend or love interest in often hilarious or touching events, you can strengthen your social links–which are tied to an arcana as personae are–and you can unlock new powers in allies such as the ability to defend you from a mortal attack in combat. On top of that, you also need to worry about your own personal growth–your character has five attributes that can affect everything from how well you do in your tests to whether you have the guts to ask that cute girl for her phone number. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to raise these skills, such as studying in the library, reading a book, attending school clubs, or even working part-time jobs for extra cash and social links. Just be sure to keep an eye on the weather reports, because your time is limited.

Fans of Persona 3’s battle system will be pleased to know that it is almost entirely intact with several tweaks and improvements. Shadows still appear as amorphous blobs when you’re running around a dungeon, and combat is initiated by either making physical contact or attacking them with your weapon. Attacks are divided into seven types, which both you and your enemies are weak against to some degree, and striking a shadow’s weak spot will knock it down and award you with another turn. Downed enemies can be struck again to beat them dizzy and cost them a turn, and if they’re all knocked down, your party can bum-rush them in an all-out attack for massive damage. Enemy weaknesses can be discovered only by trial and error, and though you’ve always got an ally on support to keep track of the ones you’ve already found for later reference, you still have to deal with their annoyingly obvious narration of your fights. Two other notable changes are the absence of the controversial pistol-like evokers used to summon personae via mock suicide (your inner self is evoked by shattering a tarot card this time) and your ability to directly control party member actions rather than being forced to rely on their AI behaviors. While the former is purely aesthetic, the latter is perhaps the best change to occur in the game because your teammates will sometimes perform inexplicable (and inappropriate) deeds in the middle of a heated fight if left to their own devices.

Visually, Persona 4 shares a number of similarities with its predecessor, including a realistic modern-day setting, an outrageously stylish presentation, and, unfortunately, a lot of reused art assets and a poor camera system that makes navigating the twists and turns of dungeons difficult. The music is heavily inspired by J-pop and J-rock and is extremely catchy, so despite the number of times you may hear the battle theme throughout your entire journey, it never gets old. The majority of the game is voice-acted by a mostly stellar cast, though there are some awkward stretches of text in social-link events and side quests that for whatever reason do not have spoken dialogue, even though some of it does.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is an excellent sequel that builds upon an already successful formula by improving it in nearly every way. With a down-to-earth cast of likable characters, an intriguing story further realizes its cast by highlighting their psychological complexities and making them seem that much more real, and an engaging and fun combat system, it’s sure to keep your attention for the duration. Whether you’re a fan of the dark and bizarre Shin Megami Tensei series or a first time shadow fighter, Persona 4 is a superb role-playing adventure with something to offer to everyone.

The most notable improvements are in the single-player realm. The lackluster 24/7 mode has been ditched in favor of a lengthy Career mode and the scripted Road to Wrestlemania. In the Career mode, you choose a superstar (existing or created) and enter a bracket to make a bid for the title belt. Each bracket has five opponents, including the current champion, and you’ll have to earn stars by winning matches to get a shot at the title. You win up to five stars for each match by earning points in three areas: match results, technical, and excitement. These categories encourage you to get into the WWE superstar mindset by rewarding you for both pummeling and mocking your opponent. At the end of each match, your attributes will increase, and your health will replenish automatically based on how the match went–no micromanagement here. You’ll also earn amusing awards for things such as striking your opponent 35 times or breaking a barbed-wire-wrapped plank over his or her back. It takes only a handful of successful matches to earn you a title shot, which is great because it keeps your career moving along at a good clip. This action-packed Career mode is the perfect complement to the Create a Superstar mode, and winning belt after belt as you bulk up your created character is satisfying and fun.

The other single-player mode, Road to Wrestlemania, features six unique story arcs that let you play as various WWE superstars (including Chris Jericho and Triple H) and defeat numerous foes (and a few nemeses) on your quest for Wrestlemania glory. Matches are interspersed with story scenes packed with typical WWE action and voiced by actual WWE superstars, so fans of outrageous melodrama will be pleased. In keeping with traditional SmackDown vs. Raw strengths, the superstar models and entrances are excellent. Although the character animations are good (despite occasional clipping problems), the wrestlers still lack fluidity when maneuvering around the ring. This feels like a result of staying too true to the source material; though WWE wrestlers do often move slowly, it’s not very exciting to actually plod around the ring in a video game. The muted audio only further detracts from the excitement factor. It dampens the supposedly hard-hitting action, and though the once-dismal announcers from years past have been improved, the sound design is in serious need of a shot in the arm.

Despite how it may sound, the action is indeed hard-hitting. It’s easy to perform powerful moves using the analog stick and a few buttons, and the breadth of things you can do in and out of the ring is impressive. From removing the turnbuckle cover to slamming your opponent through a burning table, there’s no shortage of satisfying ways to deal damage. Specific match types have their own nasty additions, from rubbing your opponent’s face against the elimination chamber to the powerful hot tag, which allows a tag team partner to build up momentum so that, when tagged in, he or she will get the quick-time chance to unleash two unblockable attacks followed by a finisher. Enabling such a wide variety of moves is one of SmackDown vs. Raw 2009’s chief strengths. Like previous games in the series, it too relies on relative position to increase your repertoire, and your wrestler is still prone to miscues as a result. However, missing a move because you aren’t quite in the correct position is less frustrating than missing one because your opponent is in an uninterruptible animation. This usually crops up in matches with three or more players when one player is performing a move on another. In these realistic-to-a-fault situations, you get a good feeling for just how exciting it is to stand passively aside while other wrestlers battle it out.

In addition to the Career and Road to Wrestlemania modes, the competent AI and unique wrestler abilities make playing single-player much more appealing in SmackDown vs. Raw 2009. No longer content to stand around drooling, computer opponents will actively attack you, tag their partners (you included), and use environmental elements reasonably well. Though the Road to Wrestlemania and early stages of the Career mode will seem easy to experienced players, it won’t feel like you’re playing against brainless apes. Last year’s fighting-style system has been removed, and in its place are unique wrestler abilities that existing superstars have and created superstars can earn. The effects range from attribute boosts (the ability to remove your belt in a ladder match more quickly) to enhanced abilities (the ability to regenerate a small amount of health). Although these abilities aren’t particularly powerful, they can come in handy during tight matches.

Of course, SmackDown vs. Raw wouldn’t be SmackDown vs. Raw without the still-impressive Create a Superstar tool. Once again, with a little time and a lot of patience (this mode is hampered by juddering slowdowns), you can create almost anyone you like, from famous celebrities to hideous abominations. You can then customize your character’s move set to craft a fighting style, choreograph your ring entrance, and even create a finisher to decide how he or she (or it) will finish off opponents. The Create a Finisher tool lets you choose from a huge list of move parts and chain up to 10 of them together to create a finisher as quick and brutal or as long and painful as you want. You’ll get a constantly updating preview of the move while you design it so you can easily tweak it to your liking. It’s fun to experiment with all of the different move combinations, and this feature rounds off a formidable suite of customization tools.

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 benefits greatly by restraining its scope. You can still edit rosters in Career mode, but other than that, the menu-heavy GM mode has been fully dropped. The result is a game completely focused on action and on letting you customize and enjoy that action. Although some elements still need improvement, SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 is ultimately successful because it embraces the dramatic fights and outrageous showmanship that are the heart and soul of the WWE.

The game’s setting is intriguing and unlike any other MMOG on the market. The American Southwest is the last known cradle of civilization after natural disasters and nuclear war devastate the planet, and it’s here that you’ll struggle against the mutated beasts and lawless brigands that threaten what’s left of humanity. You and other players are clones–able to regenerate in a LifeNet pod after each death. After a brief tutorial that introduces you to combat and interface basics, you find yourself in the middle of a meager desert town with only the barest essentials to help you scrape by. And it will take you a long time before you feel like you’re doing anything but scraping by. Fallen Earth is a harsh mistress. You spend your first hours trying to get your bearings, seeking help from your fellow players, and slowly determining how you are going to earn enough gambling chips (that is, money) to endure. It might take hours before you as much gain your first level or even find a way to buy a weapon or armor effective enough to protect you should you venture away from the cold comfort of your starting village.

You won’t ever tame the dusty brown Arizona wastelands, but you will eventually become part of its ecology. Scavenging is important and inescapable, so as you make your way further into the desert, you’ll find more and more resource nodes waiting to be plundered. You collect such minerals as coal, lead, and copper; forage for mushrooms, grain, and varied edibles; and stockpile scrap iron, glass, and rubber found in decrepit vehicles and mounds of rubbish. You can purchase necessary items as well, but it’s more cost effective–and often necessary–to find it yourself. In turn, you can use these resources to craft essentially any usable object found in Fallen Earth. Depending on your proclivities, you can fashion shivs and lawnmower blades to use in melee combat; pistols and crossbows if you prefer to keep your enemies at a distance; armor of all sorts, from jackets to boots; and all kinds of auxiliary items, from ammo and acid to ATV engines and horse feed.

If you enjoy the complicated economies of games like EVE and Pirates of the Burning Sea, Fallen Earth will scratch that same itch. Crafting is simple and painless: As long as you have the knowledge and items necessary, you can craft items anywhere (though the process is quicker in specific crafting labs). It takes some items minutes, hours, even days to complete, though like in EVE, crafting continues without further input once started–even if you are offline. Nor are you stuck with a particular discipline. As long as you obtain the book that teaches you the knowledge and level the crafting discipline high enough, you can make anything or everything. What you don’t use, you can sell to a merchant or put up for auction, though because armor and weapons degrade over time, you may want to keep backups handy (though you can also mend those items with the right repair kit).

Like with crafting, you aren’t forced into a single combat class. You can activate a template to help guide you toward a specific role, but there are no actual classes. You can mix and match to your heart’s content, spending the advancements points you earn in any way you like. But whether you stick with pistols, rifles, or melee, you won’t find Fallen Earth’s combat very compelling. At least it strives for something different, eschewing the enemy auto-locking of other MMOGs and going for a pseudo real-time system that simulates a first- or third-person shooter. But whether you go for ranged combat or keep your foes close, combat is clumsy and lacks a sense of impact. When using melee weapons, battles are a mess of odd, jittery animations (particularly if you dual-wield) and flailing limbs made more awkward by weak sound effects. The imprecise targeting reticles of early ranged weapons like crossbows and zipguns make shooting equally inelegant. Better weapons lead to better combat later on, but even then, skirmishes are messy and unrewarding. Not even special abilities and mutations (Fallen Earth’s version of magic) can energize the action; they don’t look dramatic and, therefore, aren’t that fun to use.

Combat isn’t the source of all of Fallen Earth’s shortcomings, though it does showcase some of the game’s more bizarre behaviors. Enemies run toward you and position themselves in odd ways once combat is initiated rather than just run at you straight on, and they follow you for unusually long distances if giving you chase, even if they are many levels below you. If you defeat a human enemy, its rag doll might fly 20 feet into the air and flip cartwheels before landing. And these are among the less egregious technical and design flaws. At one point, we fell through the floor at a mission waypoint, which initiated an inescapable loop of falling and respawning; extricating ourselves required the assistance of a game master. (Similar requests are common in the in-game help channel.) Missions don’t always update right away or may not update at all, and your active mission display will reset to another mission if you die or log out. Game performance takes a huge dive in populated areas; you’ll see enemies and other players teleport around due to occasional but annoying lag spikes; and crashes, while less frequent than they were at the game’s launch, are still common enough to be frustrating. There’s just an unfortunate amount of technical clutter standing between you and your enjoyment.

Yet while the clutter hinders the fun, it doesn’t demolish it. Quests are extremely well written, so while most of them are kill-this, collect-that tropes, they give superb context to your actions. You’ll meet a grieving husband who has created a family of pitiable human shells in trying to clone his dead wife. Rival gangs play off each other as they vie for regional dominance. Fungal blights threaten the precious few crops sustaining the nearby town. Mission dialogue is mature but not gratuitously so, and the circumstances they describe seem authentic given the cruelties of the postapocalypse. Quest-giver Carrie Pennington sends you on a simple mission to kill humpbacked monstrosities, but when she tells you the town has taken up a collection to pay for your services, her desperation rings true. With each mission you take, this horrific vision of the future takes on added poignancy, and once you reach a high enough level to choose a faction (and reap faction-specific mission rewards), the tension mounts as you discover the ideological differences that divide them.

Of course, you won’t always be alone when you tackle these missions. You’ll need to grab a few buddies for the team-oriented missions like infiltrating a decrepit prison or exterminating a giant scorpion, though you can spend most of your time as a lone ranger. Unfortunately, Fallen Earth doesn’t offer any of the helpful grouping tools you might take for granted in other recent MMOGs. You can’t search for open groups or sort through different clans that might be recruiting. Instead, you’ll need to do things the old-fashioned way: By seeking help in the regional chat channel and hoping for the best. You’ll definitely want to be in a supportive clan or have the help of friends if you want to hazard the game’s free-for-all player-versus-player areas: The resources you’ll find there are valuable, but even in these hushed badlands, you can’t always play the solitary hero.

But alone or with a friend, Fallen Earth’s missions do a good job of sending you across the entire map to take on new quests and learn new crafting disciplines. You’ll spend a lot of time traveling, so you should obtain a horse or ATV at your earliest opportunity. Travel can take you across lands fertile with resources, from cacti to lead nodes, which is a good thing considering your reliance on crafting supplies. Other times, the landscape is striking in its emptiness, barren of both creatures to fight and trash reserves to search. The stark environs add a lot to the atmosphere, but boredom can set in when you spend 10 minutes galloping to your destination. The occasional tedium is compounded once you’ve collected large numbers of raw materials and your crafting plans are in full swing. Inventory space is limited and cannot be expanded. Thus, you either make too-frequent (and often lengthy) trips back to the city to stuff excess necessities in a vault and sell the chaff or sort out the loot to salvage what is most helpful and leave the rest behind.

The lonely treks would be easier to embrace if the world were easier to look at, but Fallen Earth is not an attractive game. There are notable sights: hovering overpasses, a small village dotted with multicolored umbrellas, and an abandoned amusement park. But the technology doesn’t do these visual touches justice. Textures are bland, lighting is weak, and graphical glitches (such as limbs disappearing from character models) are common. Without textural detail or slick animations to compensate, the fascinating world eventually turns into a humdrum sea of brown and bronze. One aspect of the production stands out, however: the excellent soundtrack. The strums of a guitar give one town a decidedly Wild West feel, while discordant strings raise tension levels in another. The music is both atmospheric and unobtrusive, sometimes enhancing the bleakness while at other times easing the solitude.

Fallen Earth has its pleasures, particularly once you reach its second major region and discover the wealth of content factional missions provide. Taking long trips across the wastes, scavenging for valuable resources, and enduring the slow pace of early leveling, however, makes it so that it will take a while before you see Fallen Earth at its most enjoyable. Even then, it’s hard to escape the clumsy combat, notable bugs, and general user unfriendliness. Obviously, this is not a virtual world for everyone. But if you’re willing to endure the flaws and occasional heartaches, you might become attached to Fallen Earth in spite of it all. There is a bright gem in here, but all the debris makes it tough to see the glow.

Most of the plot of Armored Princess is a straightforward extension of the original King’s Bounty. The demons that you fought as the champion of the fantasy realm Endoria are back for round two, and only the armored princess of the title stands in their way. Princess Amelie is the hero you play as here, a maid in mail who winds up being sent to the alternate reality of Teana on a hunt for her mentor, the knight Bill Gilbert, and eight magical stones that can save the world. This basically turns into an tropical getaway because Teana is kind of a Caribbean world divided into a succession of fairly small islands, each with distinct personalities. One is full of pirates, for instance, another loaded with barbarians, and so on. This adds an energetic atmosphere to the new game and breaks up your adventure into easily digestible chunks. This structure also bluntly lets you know how you’re doing because you can tell pretty much immediately whether or not you have enough levels under your belt to take on an island. Running into a bunch of invincible barbarians on a new island is a pretty good cue that you should kick your sailboat into reverse. New islands generally have to be accessed with maps that must be taken from tough enemies, too, which also keeps you from getting ahead of yourself for the most part.

Plot and basic structure are identical to that in both its predecessor and tons of other Heroes of Might & Magic-inspired sagas. You guide Amelie across intricate maps of fairly traditional fantasy lands (enemies generally come with claws, swords, and shields, although you do run into the odd robot) with a horde of units in tow that serve as shock troops for battles. Whenever you take on some bad guys, these grunts do the fighting for you, although you give them their marching orders on turn-based hexagonal battlefields. Amelie starts off as a first-level wuss of a paladin, mage, or warrior (your choice) that can recruit only basic bowmen, clerics, and pitchfork-wielding peasants into her army. But with time, levels, and increases in her leadership stat, she will be able to field troops like giant snakes, giant spiders, ancient bears, sneaky buccaneers, creepy vampires, and many other D&D refugees. The goal is, of course, to explore the nooks and crannies of the islands, as well as slay evildoers and monsters. You’ll also solve quests; buff Amelie by leveling up and tweaking her many might, mind, or magic abilities via an extensive skill tree; and progress to the final showdown. One significant addition is a pet dragon that levels up and has special abilities that can be used in combat. The beast’s role isn’t well defined, though, so it seems less like a traveling buddy than a way to cast extra spells during battles.

So there are no stop-the-presses moments here. The only real difference between the first King’s Bounty and its follow-up is how quickly the difficulty scales up. Armored Princess assumes that you have played the original, which means that it gets right to the point. Battles turn tough as soon as you reach the second island, forcing you to really learn the ins and outs of the game’s hero skill progression tree, as well as how to best recruit and employ troops in battle. You will have a rough time of it here unless you have either played the first game or have some previous experience with strategy RPGs. Still, it’s not an unfair progression. The difficulty increases quickly but not suddenly. If you’re paying attention at all, you won’t get caught by impossible opposition. It’s not as if you go directly from whomping spiders and pirates to getting scorched by invincible demons. And even when you’re in tough against serious opposition, the incredibly detailed maps provide entertainment all on their own. Exploration is even more of an entertaining diversion than combat because your speed on horseback allows you to gallop away from impossible-to-defeat baddies and even occasionally snipe a big reward or reach a castle where you can recruit powerful units without fighting. Maps have goodies crammed into every nook and cranny, including buried chests full of gold, magical doodads, and the mystic runes that power Amelie’s skills. Quests can be found all over the place, and they are typically offered up along with reams of colorful text that develop Amelie’s personality and build up Teana as a real place through the collection of oddballs handing out these jobs. You can safely skip all this verbiage, of course, but taking the time to read it all is rewarding if you’re seriously into role playing.

With all that said, Armored Princess feels dated at times. The graphics engine is really showing its age now but the art style is more cartoony than realistic, so the game can get away with broad caricatures, chunky monster models, and whiz-bang spell effects. These consist of fireworks and cheesy animations like spooky faces indicating units being scared. Islands and battle arenas are stocked with lots of added details as well, including cobwebby corners and overgrown graveyards. But there are also some performance issues here, most notably how you get stuck on scenery when guiding Amelie around the islands. Clicking on inaccessible areas–which is easy to do because the islands are veritable mazes of narrow paths and greenery–causes her to simply stop and wait for a new order. This is both annoying and life threatening because these inopportune pauses can get you caught by pursuing enemies. Audio is also archaic. Unit sound effects in battle are almost nonexistent and never memorable even when you can hear them. Music is also a generic blat of horns that you’ll forget moments after shutting down the game.

Even though it may be a slave to its genre, King’s Bounty: Armored Princess is still an impressive representation of the modern strategy RPG. Story, exploration, combat, and character development come together in a great, addictive game that will keep you hooked for many, many hours.

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.

In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series’ third installment, you play as Ukrainian security agent Alexander Degtyarev. A number of military helicopters have crashed in the region devastated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster–known as The Zone–and you’re sent to investigate. Call of Pripyat tries a bit harder than its predecessors in the storytelling department; the camera pans around your character in cutscenes, the writing is more straightforward, and the climax ties back to Shadow of Chernobyl, the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game. The plot gets a bit interesting in the final few hours as you find out more about what’s going on in Pripyat, the abandoned city closest to the nuclear plant. Unfortunately, there’s little to get you invested before that, and the awkward scripted scenes don’t communicate a sense of drama as much as they highlight the aging visuals. A few characters, such as an alcoholic technician who will upgrade your weapons only after you give him enough vodka, are interesting or entertaining enough to make you care about their fates. But for the most part, you’ll care only about surviving–and thriving–in such bleak, lawless environs.

And what environs they are. Shacks dot the grassy landscapes, cracks open in the earth’s crust, and the famed Pripyat Ferris wheel looms beyond a barbed-wire fence. Storms rage across the skies, and frightening radioactive emissions spread across The Zone, threatening the small pockets of human life that populate it. You encounter groups of bandits fending off mutant attacks or huddled around a fire, camped near a radioactive anomaly. This is a tense, unpredictable, and sometimes scary place where the next step could invite danger or bring respite. You get some forewarning of some attacks, such as the frenzied barking of mutated dogs before a pack of them descend upon you. But other times, the darkness hides a shocking surprise, like a new enemy to the series called the burer. These misshapen dwarves are like mutant poltergeists, flinging objects at you and even telekinetically yanking your weapon out of your hands. A sinister encounter with one of these creatures in the center of Pripyat near the end of the game is one of several nail-biting highlights.

Another highlight is a nighttime ambush of another newly introduced beast called the chimera. Night is wholly black in Call of Pripyat, not the dim facsimile that so many other games provide. Not knowing when this terrible beast might bear down upon you in this blackness makes this just one of many petrifying sequences, though even most mundane encounters will have you sweating bullets. Call of Pripyat is not an easy game, so you need to aim well, know your weapons’ strengths and weaknesses, and conserve ammo. Human opponents put up a tough fight, so running in guns blazing is a quick ticket to the afterlife. There are times when the AI’s ultraproficiency seems a little too obvious. Human enemies facing away from you have the uncanny ability to notice when you peek out a window behind them and are remarkably good shots in the dead of night, even without night vision scopes equipped. But despite a bit of cheating, Call of Pripyat rarely feels unfair. It features none of Clear Sky’s lame choke points and mission design issues, and the economy and weapon upgrade systems have been tweaked in sensible ways. So while you’ll still make use of the quicksave and quickload keys, you never feel like the game devolves into frustrating save-game attrition.

These aren’t the only improvements Call of Pripyat makes over its precursors. This is by far the most stable S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game out of the box; we didn’t experience a single crash or corrupted save file, and the graphics engine performs better than ever (if not quite perfectly), even when you turn on the new DirectX 11-specific options. This update doesn’t thrust the game into the forefront of cutting-edge visuals, but while low-resolution textures and clumsy animations may betray the engine’s age, carefully crafted environments and all sorts of atmospheric touches make this a case in which art trumps technology. Other welcome improvements include flexible hotkeys,along with important gameplay additions, from preventative medications to the ability to roam The Zone freely once you’ve finished the story.

Outside of the main story, there are plenty of side quests to pursue. You’ll eliminate bloodsucker nests, search for a fabled corner of paradise, and, as before, hunt for incredibly valuable artifacts hidden in the midst of various anomalies. Gathering artifacts is as tense and exciting as it ever was, requiring you to venture into a deadly anomaly that may pick you up into the air and throw you around, burn your skin to a crisp, or zap you with jolts of electricity. All the while, you must follow your detector’s signal to pinpoint the artifact’s location. The search is frantic, and the risk is high, which makes success oh-so-sweet. All these tasks are wrapped into a free-form package, allowing you to explore The Zone under your own terms. In fact, the vague instructions you receive from some mission providers require you to thoroughly explore every nook and cranny, from abandoned schoolhouses to derelict fuel stations. Don’t expect a specific mission waypoint with every job you undertake. This is frustrating if you let it be, but it’s an authentic part of Call of Pripyat’s bleakness. The Zone does not allow you to tame it without a struggle.

The game isn’t always so open ended, and some story missions funnel you through a few extended, linear sequences, though Call of Pripyat falters slightly here. The game spends a lot of time setting up Pripyat as home to unspeakable dangers, and a protracted journey through a long, dark series of tunnels is so nerve-racking that the reward for the effort–the city of Pripyat–is a bit of a letdown. There are fewer opportunities for boundless exploration here, fewer surprises to discover–and no typical vendors, which might lead to some unavoidable travel back to the game’s two other major regions. Thankfully, this is when the story missions start to get more interesting, moving from mundane to there’s-something-freaky-going-on-here territory.

Call of Pripyat’s multiplayer options, just like those of its predecessors, are routine and slightly clumsy, because the game’s shooting mechanics don’t work so beautifully when isolated from the context that makes them successful. But it’s the chilly ambience and lifelike ecology that should lure you to the newest S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, not the ordinary online play. Well-constructed environments and superb sound design make The Zone as cheerless and ominous as ever. But it’s also rich with resources, begging you to cultivate its secrets and withstand the hostilities. Series fans and newcomers alike should don their protective gear and journey forth.

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.

There’s a bit more room to stretch out in the Coalition’s Grand Campaign, which lets players pick from one of four (only four?) powers in opposition to Napoleon. The world is a bit more open here, so things are more likely to develop in unexpected ways. It’s true that the overall conflict and alliances are a bit stiff, but there’s definitely more replayability here than there is in the other three campaigns. Even more replay appeal is sure to be unlocked once the modders start to open up the minor nations. Our only real complaint about the design here is that the victory conditions can sometimes bring the Coalition members into direct conflict with each other, which seems to go against the spirit of the game somewhat. I don’t want to have to turn on an ally just because they happen to have captured an objective I needed in order to win.

As you expand, you’ll find that the campaign AI is still a bit passive in some areas. The main obstacles to your expansion aren’t the armies and generals of your enemy, but rather by the increasing upkeep costs of fielding large enough armies to maintain your momentum and by the need to keep garrisons in your rear to subdue unrest in recently conquered regions. These are important matters to be sure, and Napoleon himself was enthusiastically dedicated to matters of logistics, so it suits the game historically. Developing a sufficient support system for your armies and keeping what you’ve won is every bit as important as battlefield heroism, but it still makes for a less thrilling game when your municipal concerns begin to outweigh the military. Though they heighten the realism somewhat, the attrition and supply rules are another small drain on your forces but most players won’t find them to be too distracting.

The full campaign options from Empire have been preserved in the Grand Campain, so players will still be improving settlements, researching technology and conducting diplomacy under the same guidelines as before. Though there are a few new tricks here, like the return of the little movies that help put the campaigns into context, the biggest improvement to the campaign is the option play in multiplayer.

One of the obstacles to multiplayer in empire building games is the time it takes while waiting for another player to finish their turn. Civilization IV made some great strides in this area by giving players something to do between the end of one turn and the beginning of the next and Napoleon follows suit by allowing you to make policy changes and issue build orders even after you’ve clicked the end turn button. When empires get a bit large, it can still take a while for players to get everything squared away but it’s still a small price to pay for the challenge of playing a human opponent.

Since waiting out during another player’s tactical battles would be particularly obnoxious, Napoleon gives players the chance to take control of the enemy in the other player’s battle. It can create a bit of a moral crisis if you’re trying to play cooperatively, but it’s a wonderful way to stick it to your opponent every chance you get. The whole scheme plays out very well but we were a bit distressed to find that the game simply ends if a player drops out. We’d much rather have had the option to continue, or at least save the game.

The tactical battles are still some of the most amazing we’ve ever seen in any game. The cavalry charges, cannon strikes and wheeling formations just look brilliant. The range of environments and atmospheric effects add a lot of variety to the experience, which is good because the actual range of units you’ll be using is thinner than most other games in the series. The subtly stylized graphics create a much more powerful impression this time around but may not be to everyone’s tastes. Napoleon seems to run quite a bit better than Empire, but then again, I’ve also upgraded to a better computer. Framerate can still be a problem in the driving snow with cannon fire bursting all around, but the visuals run fairly well when you consider the quality of the image.

In terms of AI, the tactical battles are challenging but still exhibit a few of the pathfinding and judgment problems seen in Empire. Trying to lead large groups of units in a coherent formation is still sometimes a bit awkward. Units still try to cross from one flank to the other if you try to resize or reface the line. It’s only a minor frustration in single player, where you can pause the game to get things repositioned, but it can be very aggravating in multiplayer. On the plus side, units don’t seem to go into melee mode on their own as often anymore.