Metareview - Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Nobody likes game delays, but sometimes they are actually a good thing. Apparently the folks over at Eidos don't concur with that sentiment as they clearly thought it was more important to get their latest offering, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, to market in time for the holiday sales crush rather than release it later and give gamers a product worthy of their sixty bucks.

It seems the game's story is powerful, if under-utilized, while the gameplay is decidedly last generation. With a glut of great shooters already hitting store shelves this season, Eidos should have done us (and themselves) a favor by delaying K&L and heaping a few (hundred) buckets of spackle and polish on it.

1UP (75/100) So there are problems that prevent Kane & Lynch from fully realizing its potential, but its concept and execution are strong enough to survive them. We rarely see scenarios and story structure this good in a game, and that makes it easier to forgive some of the more hardcore technical game-design issues. It's definitely more of a popcorn game for the action-movie crowd than a hardcore shooter, but there's nothing wrong with that.
IGN (70/100) Foul language alone wouldn't be enough to make Kane & Lynch stand out from the myriad other titles looking to gain some notoriety. This is where Kane & Lynch earns its stripes. Rather than employing a series of cheap shock tactics as so many other games have, IO Interactive crafted an intense and visceral story to go along with the game. Say what you will about the language being over the top, but these anti-heroes are wonderfully bent. It's no easy task to create such despicable characters and then give them motivations and situations that allow even the holiest of us to relate to their situation and feel for them. These are hard men put in an impossible situation. Following them on their journey is a wild and bumpy ride. As well constructed as the plot is, one would assume the game would play smoothly. Unfortunately, it does not. Instead, it plays like a game that lacks focus and needs a few more months of polish. But then, most of the gameplay feels like it was pulled directly out of a game from the last generation, so perhaps more time wouldn't have done any good.
Gamespot (60/100) Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is an ugly game, and we're not necessarily talking about the graphics. This criminal tale is packed with a collection of completely unlikable characters with no redeeming value whatsoever. It's impossible to even root for them as antiheroes. Once you get past the messy, meaningless story, things don't get too much better because you're saddled with clunky artificial intelligence on the part of your allies and your enemies, as well as a core shooting mechanic that simply doesn't satisfy. The unfortunate part is that the game does have a few bright points and feels like it had a lot of potential that just didn't come together as well as anyone must have hoped.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Metareview

Sony and their fans have had a tough year with lost exclusives, delayed blockbusters and a continuing stream of top flight games appearing on non-Sony platforms. Now, Naughty Dog, the developer responsible for the Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series' is giving those fans one last basket to place their remaining eggs of hope in in the form of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Gamers want to feel like the $600 they spent on a PS3 was not wasted, and Sony needs to move consoles this holiday season. To say there is a lot riding on the success of Uncharted would be a major understatement. Can it fulfill the vast promise of the beautiful screenshots we've been ogling for the last six months? Our metareview has the answer!
IGN (91/100) A lot of times we as an industry like to wax on and on about how videogames rival movies, but rarely do we have an example as well done as Uncharted. Nate is funny as he laments over yet another wall he needs to scale, Sullie is loveable as he tells the same traveler's tales over and over, and Elena's fire for her story and give-and-take with Nate is endearing. When these characters interact and you watch their relationships grow, you feel like you're part of their circle. You feel like they're your friends. Uncharted does what few titles manage -- it completely immerses you in its experience. From the moment the game begins with a sweeping camera move through the waters off Panama, a rich score and the words of Sir Francis Drake etched on screen, Uncharted will have you hooked. It'll maintain that hold with its story, style and gameplay.
Eurogamer (90/100) In a game where the split between combat and platforming is about 50-50, you don't want one aspect of the game to be any less fun than the other. Such imbalances nearly always cause you to resent the disparity, and it's evidently something that Naughty Dog has worked extremely hard to avoid. Rather than the game's ongoing narrative and action feeling like a sequence of vaguely connected set-pieces, most of the chapters in the game flow expertly into one another. It feels like a journey, albeit a particularly fraught and dangerous one where imminent death lurks around every crumbling corner. By starting with a great control and camera system, building on that with excellent combat and a wonderful spin on Ico's platform adventuring, and then topping it off with a decent storyline, Naughty Dog has cooked up one of the most relentlessly entertaining, fat-free games to emerge in ages. Topped off with the most stunning use of the PS3's underused technical prowess yet, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is, for my money, the first must-have PlayStation 3 title.
Gametap (90/100) The game borrows platforming elements from the Prince of Persia games (minus the wall running), shooting mechanics from Epic's Gears of War, and the subject matter of a Tomb Raider game. Visually, it's a stunning game, with extraordinary textures. Drake's character is fascinating to watch, and he's full of gestures and quips motivated by context. When he walks the wrinkles of his shirt move and crease appropriately. When he swims, all the material gets wet, and eventually dries off. He even breathes heavily from the workout a swim gives him. And those are just the surface details--it's the nuanced features that make make you appreciate Drake as a human being. He curses and gets visibly irritated when he runs out of ammo in the middle of a firefight. When he's hiding behind cover, he flinches as bullets graze the wall he's hiding behind. And thanks to an innovative technique that blends various animations together at random, when Drake shoots and takes cover, the pose he comes back to tends to look a little different each time. When all of these details accumulate, it makes for a pretty rich experience. This game is one of the most immersive gaming experiences I've had this year, and it's definitely a great reason to own a PS3. The mix of platforming and gunplay worked really well and left me craving the next title in the series. Hear that, Naughty Dog? Get to work!

"Puzzle Quest" Casts A Spell Over Xbox Live

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords keeps getting better as it evolves from PC screen, to handheld screen, and finally to glorious HD on the Xbox 360. While the DS and PSP versions received decent scores, the new 360 iteration with added online multiplayer modes has gotten stellar scores from both IGN and Gamespot. With the Wii version costing $30 and PS2 version at $20 due Nov. 13, the real Puzzle Quest gem is the $15 HD version available on XBLA.

Gamespot (90/100) - "Online play is a great addition, even if it's limited to straightforward ranked and player matches. It's still fun to be able to take the character you've been building up in the single-player campaign against another live player, and the ability to adjust the time limit for each player's turn can make the action much more frantic and challenging. ... Despite coming out on XBLA a good half a year after the original DS and PSP releases, Puzzle Quest still feels incredibly fresh and vital, and the changes made in between make it even easier to recommend."

IGN (90/100) - "The minor glitches that were apparent in the DS version are nowhere to be found here. It's also a bargain on XBLA, priced at half the amount of the portable versions. If you haven't played Puzzle Quest, yet, this is a definite download. And if you have it's likely you'll fall in love with its seemingly endless set of quests to be accomplished, different classes to try, and new spells to master all over again. Throw in achievements, higher resolution graphics, and online multiplayer -- Puzzle Quest is a marriage that will last."

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl - Metareview

After more than five years in development, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Shadow of Chernobyl was finally released last week and now the reviews are starting to pour in from around the net. I have not played the game personally, therefore I cannot comment on it's gameplay. As far as graphics...considering the length of time since the game was first conceived, the graphics engine holds up quite well. Here's what some major gaming outlets have to say about it.

IGN (8.2/10) The game offers significantly more content than any other FPS out there, but struggles a little when it comes to the open world. What remains consistent throughout the experience is the compelling atmosphere. The gnarled trees, bleak skies, and rumbling thunderstorms of The Zone grab you firmly by the ears and yank you across irradiated wastelands. In your first hours expect to be filled with an intrepid glee as you acclimate to the game world. A little while later, you'll likely realize the environment's limitations and yearn for more.

GameSpot (85/100) "At its heart, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a first-person survival game that blends action with role-playing. This isn't a linear game, like Half-Life or Call of Duty, where you basically are restricted to a straight path and are taken for a tightly controlled and scripted ride. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s huge environments and open-ended gameplay make it more like a role-playing game, as you can go where you want and do what you want if you're willing to live with the consequences."

Boomtown (9/10) There’s almost a melancholic feel to running though the ruins and going though dark cellars deep under ground, listening to strange voices and sounds from the many anomalies caused by the accident – its downright terrifying, especially if you play in a dark room. ---- Even though it all ends kind of sudden, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is still one of the best First Person Shooters I’ve played in a long time, especially if you like the post-apocalyptic atmosphere from games like Fallout. It’s beautiful, it has a nice feel and is so well built that it deserves a 9.


Yahoo! (90/100) "given all its troubles we're fortunate to have a game at all, let alone one this good. Its setting is superb, its gameplay tense and convincing, and it boasts what are definitely the best fill-your-pants moments in a PC game for quite some time. It's hard to see how it could have turned out better."


Eurogamer (80/100) "For some people the odd rough brokenness of Stalker will frustrate and annoy. It isn't finely polished, and it's not Hollywood; this is more like an antidote to the Americanised way of doing things. It's a warped behemoth from the Ukraine, and one of the scariest games on the PC."

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s Multiplayer mode offers Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Artifact Hunt for up to 32 players.