Walking Dead Review

A screenshot from The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead
RRP: $48 ($US24.99 on Steam)
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3 and PC
Classification: MA15+
Reviewed on: Xbox 360
Reviewer's rating: 9/10

I'm glad adventure games are having a resurgence. Well before the days of grey/brown shooting games, some surprisingly thoughtful gems came out of a genre that asked you to put the pieces together yourself and be rewarded with some weird and wacky stories in turn. As technology caught up with the twitchy, coffee-fuelled internet addicts of my generation, we lost a lot of the emphasis on story-telling and charm. Not to say The Walking Dead is charming, but it does tell one of the best stories in the last year of gaming.
Taking place concurrent to the outbreak of the popular series of comics, but still in that universe rather than that of the television series, The Waking Dead puts you in the shoes of Lee Everett. Lee is a convicted murderer being escorted to prison when the rather serendipitously timed apocalypse throws an elongated branch in the unicycle wheels of justice. The police car crashes and Lee finds himself wandering the newly zombie-infested wilderness. Stumbling upon a seemingly abandoned house, Lee is soon met by Clementine, an 8-year-old girl hiding in the tree house in the back garden. Lee does what any self-respecting human would do and rescues Clementine from a slow death by starvation or a faster death by zombie. You soon meet up with other survivors and attempt to make a go of it. Things don't exactly go to plan.

A screenshot from The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead has already been out for several months, but was originally refused classification in Australia because we didn't have an R18+ rating for games. You could still get the game on Steam though (showing how ultimately pointless that whole argument was) and many players will have already finished all five episodes. Finally the R18+ rating came through and now the game is finally hitting shelves. What's especially amusing is that now we have an over-18 rating, the game was reclassified as MA15+ anyway. Regardless, this review is for the people who may have missed it the first time around and if you did, it's well worth your time.

 

The Walking Dead is all about the story. This is an adventure game but far more based in story than the adventure games of yesteryears, which were more a combination of story and puzzles. While there are puzzles, they are never as obscure as games like Monkey Island made theirs. It revolves around Lee's story and your relationships with the other characters in the group. This is where Walking Dead surprised so many when it was first released, you find yourself actually caring about the safety of the group and the people in it.

As Lee you can choose all of your important dialogue options and there is rarely a clear right answer. Siding with fellow survivor Kenny might endear yourself to him but not everybody in the group will be happy about it. Not only are you attempting to manage the growing tension and fear in the group you will have to make choices about who lives and dies. Usually in these situations you're only given a few seconds to decide but you'd better hope you're happy with your choice as you'll have to live with the consequences.

A screenshot from The Walking Dead.

The story these characters are struggling through is also fantastically told. You devise a vague plan to escape on a boat but along the way, you'll run into fellow survivors looking to survive and the classic post-apocalypse nut jobs. You won't know which is which though and as Lee and the group grow increasingly paranoid, they learn they must do anything to survive. You'll frequently have to ask yourself how far you'll go to protect your group. Things descend into madness by the end of the last episode and you'll look back on the early days of the outbreak fondly and wonder how you got here. I dare not share too much as the twists and turns of the story, all with their own difficult choices to make, are constantly surprising.
Hands down the best element of the game is Lee's relationship with Clementine. Telltale have managed to make a strange and mismatched friendship totally believable and surprisingly powerful. At first Lee has trouble relating to Clementine and can be taken aback by how mature she is for an 8-year-old. While you decide your own approach, I found myself talking to her honestly and frankly without dumbing anything down. How you interact with Clementine will change how she and other characters talk to you. The best aspect is that you find yourself becoming more and more protective of her. If a character put her in danger or suggested taking her off my hands I would instinctively choose the strongest reaction without a second thought. Making a player feel so strongly for what could've been an awkward train wreck is a feat Telltale should be proud of. From the beginning of the game until the dark, sweet and sad ending you never stop believing Clementine and the other characters are people.
My only reservation with the game is that regardless of what choices you made throughout the game, the ending is still essentially the same. There are definitely variations in different players' experiences, such as certain characters being alive or dead, but the broad strokes are the same. When the rest of the game gives such weight to your choices it feels odd to take the player out of the most important moment. Don't get me wrong, what does happen fits the story like a glove but it felt like such a departure from the experience leading up to it.
It's fascinating to see that the audience have had little to no negative reaction to this but the furore when Mass Effect 3 didn't provide a satisfying pay-off for your many decisions was swift and ruthless on the part of the audience. Maybe because The Walking Dead doesn't set itself up as a sweeping space opera with a cast of billions affected by your decisions but as a simple character drama and as such, doesn't overextend itself.
Even with some vague misgivings about the ending, what does happen is still undeniably pitch perfect. The whole experience is such a tightly told story that even players not drawn in by the promise of zombie killing should check it out just to play through such a surprisingly well told tale. You'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll definitely smash some brains.

Q&A with Kevin Boyle, executive producer on The Walking Dead.
Why do you think that your Walking Dead has had such a monumental reaction?
I have to admit, the degree of positive reception came as a bit of a surprise to the team. We had put a great deal of effort into narrative, believable characters, and giving players a real feeling of impact on the game through their choices, but I think it's safe to say none of us were expecting as positive a reception as we received when our first episode went live. The worst anyone seemed to have to say about it was "let's see if they can keep this up for the rest of the season", which is exactly the right kind of pressure.
What makes a character like Clementine resonate so strongly with audiences? Many of the situations require a strong paternal instinct on the part of Lee and the player, Was this hard to create so convincingly?
A convincing relationship with Clementine was definitely an important part of the recipe for success. From the beginning we knew we didn't want Lee to be this tough guy, looking out for just himself. The stakes just aren't high enough in that situation. We also didn't want players coming into a relationship that had great value before they arrived – we wanted them to feel that same attachment. Falling into the role of de-facto parent figure, and building that relationship from nothing helped to get players invested. Then of course there's casting. We were very nervous about making an 8-year-old child one of our principal characters due to the difficulty in casting a child who could pull off the emotional range we needed, or an adult who could pull of that same range and not end up sounding like a grown-up putting on a voice the whole time. We were very fortunate to have cast Melissa Hutchison as Clementine. Having her play off Dave Fennoy, as Lee, was no small part of why the relationship was so convincing.
Digital distribution methods obviously help with an episodic format, but do you feel as though point and click adventure games might be experiencing a resurgence. If so, why?
It's definitely an interesting time to be making adventure games for digital distribution. I'm hopeful that we are seeing a resurgence of adventure games, though I wouldn't place a great deal of emphasis on point and click control schemes as a major contributor. My feeling is there has been a convergence of a few key factors helping adventure games, such as widespread readiness to purchase content digitally, acceptance of smaller-than-$60 experiences as top-tier entertainment, and a hunger for interesting stories and compelling characters.
For season two, how do you take the story into new territory? You've touched on many tropes of post-zombie apocalypse survivors gone mad, do you still think the world has stories to tell?
I'm certain we haven't exhausted the potential of The Walking Dead. At its core it's about people, and how they come together, clash and change in the face of horrible circumstances. There is plenty of ground we haven't covered that'll be dealt with in the second season.
Why did you make the decision to ultimately have the ending the same regardless of the player's choice? Considering the reaction to Mass Effect 3, it seemed like a risky decision.
Although we knew we wanted to tell a complete story that needed to close in a fairly specific way, we hoped the impact players had on those around them, Clementine in particular, would stay with them, and that the way the game ends would leave players to think through many of those decisions with different hopes and regrets. I think it's fair to say we prioritised making an emotional connection and closing the game in a way that underscores and brings importance to that connection over wildly varied ways to end the season

By Calum Wilson Austin

Resident Evil: Revelations Reviews

When I was asked to review Resident Evil: Revelations, I’m going to be quite honest with you, I wasn’t all too thrilled. Even though I wasn’t elated, I didn’t roll my eyes. The better word for it would be numb.
I remember playing the 1996 Resident Evil and thinking “this is so cool!” It was fresh, original, scary and just downright enjoyable. Staying up for hours (on the weekends) shooting aliens and hoping this “cannibalism thing” wasn’t real. It was everything a young budding gamer could ask for.
However, throughout the years it has become not even a shell of its former self. Between the twenty-two video games, five movie adaptations (the sixth being released in 2014), the comic books, the novels and countless other merchandise, this franchise has been dragged through the mud, tied to the back of truck and what’s remaining of its corpse (if you can even call it a corpse) has been left to rot in the Arizona desert sun. It other words, it has been done to death.
Despite all this, I’ve held onto a glimmer (although fading) of hope this franchise would be great again, if only it returned to its roots. Remember what made this franchise so great in the first place? It wasn’t the sale receipts, it wasn’t the flashy hype; it was about the story and its characters. Over the years, the fans – including myself – loved the plot. The Resident Evil franchise wasn’t about shooting some weird hybrid zombie-cannibals. It was about Jill Valentine, Ada Wong, Leon S. Kennedy and so many others sent off to investigate all the mutations and these strange disappearances and occurrences. The way the plot slowly unfolded as it would reveal each character’s story was mesmerizing and kept me glued to my controller. And no, I’m not going to lie, I did love shooting those scary yet incredible looking mutations. For those who still hold onto hope for the franchise, you have been noticing throughout the previous months Capcom releasing videos focusing on the game’s atmosphere, the virus outbreak, the characters and the fear we the gamers will face while playing Revelations. Credit has to go to Capcom for doing everything in its power to convince us this game will bring back those old 1996 feelings, transporting us to a time when Resident Evil was fun and fresh.
It is my honor to proclaim it is has succeeded…somewhat. Well…

The game is set between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5. It depicts the events shortly after the establishment of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA), a counter-terrorism group introduced in Resident Evil 5. The story revolves around BSAA co-founders Queen Zenobia, which serves as the game’s setting. The game’s story includes a flashback, which revolves around the “floating city” of Terragrigia one year prior to the game’s events, when the Federal Bioterrorism Commission (FBC) sent agents, including Parker and Jessica, to keep the situation under control after the bio-terrorism organization “Il Veltro” launched an attack on the city using bio-organic weapons (BOW) in opposition to Terragrigia’s solar energy development. In 2005, BSAA head Clive R. O’Brian sends out Jill Valentine and her new partner, Parker Luciani, to search for Chris Redfield and his new partner, Jessica Sherawat. They have reportedly gone missing and lost contact with HQ during their mission to investigate Veltro’s possible reappearance. Jill and Parker are sent to search for them at their last known location, the cruise ship SS Queen Zenobia. During their search, they encounter several B.O.W.s on the ship infected with the T-Abyss virus, a marine virus derived from the deadly T-Virus.
Let’s start from the beginning with the good stuff. Capcom describes this game as “dramatic horror” and it tries it best to deliver on that promise. From the very beginning, the game starts off with all the makings of a “dramatic horror” story. Dramatic music? Check. A plethora of cut scenes which gives you just enough to fuel your appetite but leaves you wanting for more? Check. How about a scary ominous location which you’re trapped inside? Check. From the beginning of the game you’re thrust into the tale of series favorite Jill and newcomer Chris’ adventures aboard the Queen Zenobia. The beauty about the design of this ship and what makes the game so strong is the fact it’s designed very realistically. It’s huge, with many levels, doors, set pieces and numerous corridors that need exploring.
Nevertheless, the designers have created a masterful contrast by creating tight, very unlit spaces that would make any claustrophobic person suffer a panic attack. The ship is elegant when you stroll through the few open spaces that are made available which is filled with many minute details to marvel at. The first thing you’ll notice while navigating aside from the smoky, slightly hazy environment is the closeness of the camera. It’s close. Very close. You will have no peripheral vision. Making things that go bump in the night that much more frightful. Now pair this with the over-the-top dramatic music; tension and fear are created. It is hands down the best setting since the mansion.

Just as you become preoccupied with exploration, rather unexpectedly comes “them,” the many mutants you will face. Whether they come through windows, fall from the ceiling, pop out of closets or appear through the bathroom stall, they’re always there to greet you with the friendly “hi” that’s meant to kill you or cause injury (they never say “hi” they just really want to kill you). They will always be there, the concern is when.
Your enemies will resemble anything from plant-like adaptation of “The Blob”, to ooze with spikes, to a weird lizard looking like creature. Moving rather slowly they don’t seem to be a threat at first, however, when they do begin to pick up speed, you’ll find yourself doing a weird cha-cha dance with the controller to either escape their presence or to kill them. The main goal is to not let them back you into a corner. They seem to find joy doing this and it makes dodging and killing that much more frustrating. If you do survive with just an injury and find yourself out of herbs you’ll spend the remainder of the level with bloody blotches all over your screen, and nobody wants that.
The weakest spot to shoot at is obviously the head followed by the arms and then the legs. Why the legs? They fall, thus bringing us back to shooting them in the head. When it comes to slimy oozing creatures with spikes, don’t get near them, they will cause injury (remember what I say about the blotchy bloody screen?). Another helpful tip, use the night vision scanning goggles. You’ll need them anyway for scanning the mutants. But use them anytime you enter a room. It will be your best-friend, making finding herbs, gun parts, ammo, guns that much more easier. Don’t get too happy and start scanning the mutants before you kill them, this will slow you down tremendously causing more bodily harm to you.

Another high point about Revelations is that it doesn’t stay on one character’s story for too long before your whisked away to another cut-scene (they really love cut-scenes) or episodic segment, and you find yourself with Chris and Jessica in a snow-ridden landscape investigating a plane crash. Your task is to scan for clues and to fight off the more mutated creatures…this time in the form of those lovable dogs. Compared to the mutants awaiting you on the ship, the dogs are rather simple, however they do take some firepower to go down, so just keep shooting at their heads and you’ll soon be doing the victory dance. But don’t worry, just when you think you’ll be spending your time shooting dogs all day long, the cut-scenes are cued back up and you’ll find yourself back on that boat. The story switches back and forth between the main characters.
Since I made a point focusing on shooting, the use of fire power should be mentioned. The gun’s power is made as realistic as possible. Meaning, you’ll finding switching between different guns very smoothly. What’s also realistic are the bullets, meaning you will run out if you start shooting at every sound you hear. So save your ammo. While I’m on the topic of guns, I should also spend some time discussing the beauty of customization. It is glorious. The gun’s power you create is never overwhelming yet you’ll never find yourself lacking. The mutants can be troublesome to kill at times. So make sure you take your time customizing.
A pretty nostalgic feature that returns is Raid Mode. For those who aren’t as educated in Raid Mode as others, Raid Mode is a wonderful opportunity to defeat enemies solo or with another online player. It also enables you to earn points to purchase more and better guns. The mutants are harder; bigger, faster and stronger. This mode also allows you to work on your shooting skills which can help you in Campaign Mode. It’s the gaming circle of life.
Now comes time for the game’s downside. Revelations technically isn’t a new release. It was released last year for the 3DS and was easily considered one of the best games in the franchise. However, it wasn’t fair for only those with a Nintendo 3DS to have all the excitement to themselves. Why not release the title on an “upgraded version” for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC through a method called “conversion.”
And thus begins the game’s downfall…

The graphics are atrocious. In all honesty the 1996 PlayStation version had better graphics. The problem is the Nintendo 3DS despite, all its beauty, is that it’s very compact. The screen is tiny (4.88-inch), the graphics are lovely on this console because the game was designed to fit that size screen. However, when you take that image and stretch it out on your television screen, the graphics lose their quality. The images are not crisp and clear. Nothing can change this. I tried messing with my television settings, putting on stronger glasses. Nothing worked.
Even more shocking is how much the game glitches. I was baffled, befuddled and stunned. I had characters running into and through each other. I was attacked by dog that randomly disappeared and reappeared. There were creatures shot that bumped into each other. I had spiky mutants that attacked through my character’s head. It would have made for a hilarious blooper reel. What’s sad is that it really took away my attention from the story and made gameplay frustrating. Resident Evil is known for its ridiculous over-the-top stories but that’s also what I find so appealing about the franchise. I enjoy my plot points, and this was robbed from me by graphics joining the WWE and running amok.
While I spoke about the gloriousness of the ship and how much the developers spent creating the environment and the atmosphere, it gets old rather quickly. The music is so over-dramatic it becomes annoying. Music is supposed to help create and carry the gameplay, not make it laughable. Every time you go inside a room or head down the stairs the music picks up. However, you soon realize it’s all for naught. While the mutants are there, they’re not always there. In fact, the majority of the time, I spent looking for herbs and scanning. It became tedious. You no longer marvel at the designs, you soon start to dread trekking through them…again and again. The positive aspect is that you can open new doors you couldn’t access before and there are the puzzles (yay for puzzles) and if you’re really lucky you’ll discover new creatures. This isn’t entirely bad, like I mentioned previously, the way the story is broken up into short episodic sections, jumping back and forth between different characters and locations keeps the pacing brisk and the staleness short. While I did get tired of one situation, I knew I wasn’t long before I was whisked off to another journey. But I did get tired.

The closeness of the camera I spoke about before, I soon realized was all for show much like the music. It’s never really utilized properly. The main problem is that Revelations never does much of anything with this. You’re never startled or given a reason to dread what is luring around the corner. The combat is straightforward. While there are environments that allow you to roam a bit more freely, take a swim and do other things, you’re just walking around with limited vision of a flashlight all unnecessarily.
While I was baffled by the lack of graphics I was stunned and equally confused by the boss battles. Every gamer loves the boss battles; you get to test your skills, be dazzled by these huge hideous and challenging creatures. I dred it, I love it, I’m filled with so many mixed emotions its enough to go into therapy. Instead, I underwhelmed. There is nothing and I mean nothing special about the boss battles. Yes they are bigger. Yes they are stronger. They’re also standard and blah.
What’s also “blah” are the characters Jill Valentine and Chris. While they are back, they aren’t given any opportunities for character development. They’re just lovely reminders of the previous games. Like a childhood teddy bear you find in the back of a closet. While Jill’s partner Parker is a perfect addition to the series by being likable and someone you’ll know will always have your back (when he’s not busy running into and through you), Chris’s partner Jessica is the complete opposite. She’s obnoxious, slow, annoying and did I mention slow. I did? Well let me reiterate, she’s slow. There are scenes where you have to rely on her to shoot mutants and you can literally die twenty times over before she makes her way to shoot anything. I’m more surprise she can even figure out how to fire a gun let alone land one decent shot. Heads up, practice your shooting because relying on her to have your back is fruitless.

Overall, while the game has laughable and questionable downfalls, Revelations is a great return to the series. It feels familiar while being fresh and original. Despite some hiccups I actually did enjoy playing it. However, if you can, just stick to the original 3DS version. If not, don’t expect to get much of an impact from the “upgraded” version other than a fun game with a nostalgic throwback feeling to the series. It is decent and makes for lovely addition to the series. However, if you’re new to franchise or play it as a stand-alone the game is just okay. There is nothing that will “wow” you nor is there anything that should make you run out and by this game pronto. It’s just one of the many new releases that will get lost in the 2013 gaming shuffle.

By Dana Abercrombie

New Ea Releases And Date

 

• Command & Conquer to Be Announced
• EA SPORTS FIFA 14 Coming 2013
• Battlefield 4 Available 2013
•   Need for Speed Rivals Available Nov 19, 2013
• EA SPORTS NHL 14 Available Sep 13, 2013
• EA SPORTS™ Madden NFL 25  Available Aug 30, 2013
•      The Sims 3 Island Paradise Available June 2013
• 
• Fuse
• 
• Tetris® Blitz for iPad and iPhone
•  Army of TWO: The Devil’s Cartel

• 
• Ea Sports Yogify

Remember Me Review

Remember Me arrives at the end of a console cycle, as gamers chew over the future of used games and wonder which next-gen consoles are worth their money. It’s strangely fitting that this game’s story revolves around class consciousness in a futuristic world obsessed with a dangerous but alluring technology. Remember Me deserves more than to wind up as a cult favorite in bargain bins for gamers who couldn’t afford a fancy console upgrade, but given the game’s themes, that wouldn’t be a bad hill for it to die on.
After all, the protagonist of Remember Me, Nilin, is the heroine of the underclass. It’s 2084, and Neo-Paris has been segregated by status. Everyone has a device called a Sensen installed on the back of their necks; a massive corporation called Memorize developed the tech, which lets people modify their memories. Trouble is, messing with memories causes nasty, zombie-like side effects in the long term. Everyone has a Sensen installed, but most folks can’t afford to stay human for long.
Memory alteration also seems to be addictive; the poorer districts of Neo-Paris feature men and women desperately begging passers-by for a memory upload just so they can experience something, anything. The analogue to videogames doesn’t seem like much of a leap, here.
Nilin begins the game in the Bastille with no memory of who she is. (Yes, the upper-class of Neo-Paris went ahead and called their futuristic prison the Bastille; presumably the rich hipsters in this world also wear “let them eat cake” T-shirts.) Nilin soon gets her memory jogged when Edge, an activist friend of hers from the outside, hacks into her Sensen and tells her how to escape the compound.
Soon, Edge barrels Nilin with piles of exposition and tasks to help their cause. It turns out Nilin was quite the bad-ass before the brainwash, and now her escape has rocketed her back to being Public Enemy Number One. As Nilin’s old tough act persona filters back into her memory in bits and pieces, she must choose which parts of her past she still identifies with.
Throughout the game Nilin wrestles with her past, but also with what she has done to others for the sake of the “cause”. Remember Me‘s strongest sequences are Nilin’s memory remixes; she can change someone’s personality and motivations by hacking their Sensen and altering their memories of past tumultuous events. These sequences play like point-and-click adventures, in which the player must select the correct combination of objects to produce a desired result. Nilin just keeps changing the story until she gets the result she wants; she has learned how to “game” other people’s senses, as though playing their brains in a sort of God-mode.

Unfortunately, in spite of being about games thematically, Remember Me features some unfortunate missteps as a game. The combat system invites players to design their own combos, and the menu for creating these attacks feels user-friendly and simple. In practice, however, the combos often don’t work as they should; the slow-motion timing of attacks is likely inspired by Batman: Arkham Asylum, but Nilin doesn’t share the terpsichorean grace of the Batman in action. Remember Me’s controls feel clunkier and less responsive than Arkham. When fighting large groups, Nilin must spend more time leaping around than attacking in order to avoid getting surrounded. When Nilin gets encircled—and she does, often—Remember Me’s slow combat style and bizarre camera shifts drag her down.
The choices for enemies in Remember Me seem to go against its central themes, since Nilin’s most irritating enemies are the zombie-like underclass who have been corrupted by Memorize’s technology—the very people on whose side Nilin should be on. Nilin also fights agents of Memorize, but ironically, these enemies are slower and easier to take down. As Edge tells Nilin, it is strange but apparently necessary to fight people you wish you could protect. If only the combat sequences with them were not so annoying, I could have spent more time feeling sorry about their plight.
I had hoped for a more complex combat scheme—or, at least, smoother and more responsive brawling—from Remember Me. Instead, I got the opportunity to play as a bad-ass, anarchist woman of color fighting to reclaim her own identity, all within a stylized, colorful world that celebrated the kinds of themes that I always wish games would discuss: class, race, gender, who has a “right” to game, and who we expect to be good at hacking and gaming the system, as well as the difficulty of dealing with being the people’s tokenized hero. I’m willing to forgive boring, occasionally unresponsive, and frustrating combat for the sake of the experience provided by the aesthetics of this game’s world.
The game’s strongest points—its striking visual aesthetic, its unusual fusion of classical and electronic music (no doubt an homage to the game’s futuristic French Revolution theme), and the character of Nilin—may not feel like enough to players seeking a long-form experience with tighter combat, especially since this game is only 10 hours long. But for those willing to overlook programming missteps, Remember Me has a lot to offer narratively and thematically. Many videogames are metaphorically about videogames already, but Remember Me manages to go beyond just that initial trope to also juggle a narrative about class, corporations and systems of power. Here’s hoping a future sequel will someday sort out the combat mechanics as well.

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Remember Me was developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Capcom. Our review is based on the Xbox 360 version. It is available for the PlayStation 3 and the PC.

By Maddy Myers

Army Of Two: The Devil's Cartel Review

 

Game Game Details Game Scores Screenshots

Published on Mar 27, 2013 There’s a videogame first that happens in Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel, which we’re pretty sure shouldn’t happen in a game that’s entirely devoted to Shooting Things. And that thing is this – shooting the environments is more fun than shooting the generic bad guys. Far more fun. It’s not that the shooting is bad, per se. Like previous outings in the series, Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel sees you and a partner team up to work your way through streets of endless bad guys, who are armed with guns, grenades and AI that means they never quite learn to keep their heads fully tucked behind cover when they’re not firing back. You’re now playing as Alpha and Bravo, who replace Salem and Rios. Alpha and Bravo still suffer from the same verbal diarrhea that plagued the previous duo, as though the biggest threat they face on a mission is an awkward silence. And yes, the dialogue will still make you cringe. Alpha and Bravo no longer high-five each other or play air guitar after murdering an entire drug cartel though, so there is that. Army Of Two Working Together (Sort Of) The idea is that you work in tandem with your partner, one of you drawing fire while the other flanks around the threats to take them out. This works best when the map design forces it through split pathways or obvious side-routes that offer new angles to shoot back. It's not a revolutionary or new idea any more but when it works, it still feels fresh and interesting enough that it engages you. The key part being 'when it works'. More often than not, the map design is messy and confusing to the point that it’s hard to really lock down any sort of tactic beyond surviving and fighting back. When The Devil’s Cartel moves from narrow streets into more open areas, threats appear all around you and it’s hard enough to figure out which bit of cover is safest, let alone how to initiate any fire-and-flank tactics. This doesn’t make The Devil’s Cartel difficult, as it’s surprisingly generous with how many shots you can take before you have to be revived. It’s more that when you’re shot at from all directions, working in tandem with your partner is the first thing to suffer and when that disappears, the action feels clumsy. It happens surprisingly often for a game where co-op play is the main calling card. Cover Me What makes things worse is the cover system. You look at cover, a small cover symbol appears and you hit the appropriate button to begin an animation to slide towards safety. From here, you can then line up a symbol on the next bit of cover, the idea being that you spring from cover to cover without breaking a sweat. Again, this works best on narrow streets when you have time to ‘aim’ where the cover symbol will appear and all the angles of cover ahead of you are flat. In wide-open areas, as you’re panicking under fire from all directions, it’s too easy to accidentally select the side of the cover you wanted rather than behind it simply because you didn’t have time to fine-tune the aim on where you wanted to go. Then there’s the additional panic of cancelling the run-to-cover animation – do I press the cover button again? Do I hold back? – followed by further panic when you successfully and unexpectedly cancel the automatic spring, leading to you standing upright in a hail of gunfire. It’s not exactly elegant and it’s a cover system you’ll spend most of the game wrestling with. As a result, you’ll find one spot of cover and stick to it rather than engaging with the game’s cover-to-cover mechanic, just to avoid the frequent mishaps when something goes wrong. The Devil's Cartel High Scores Still, what’s important is that in a game where you’re either shooting or moving to the next location where you’ll be shooting, The Devil’s Cartel offers a punchy sense of feedback across all the weapons – the sound, the recoil, the animation of hit soldiers, the ragdoll effects, everything comes together to make your arsenal of weaponry surprisingly potent. Score bonuses also reinforce the sense of feedback. Flanking enemies, headshots and shooting the same grunt as your partner are a few of the examples that award you points and encourage you to play in a different way that aiming in the general direction of distant movement and squeezing the trigger. Some score bonuses serve as unintended rewards than a pat on the back – “SURPRISE! 25 points. DECOY! 25 points.” – but even so, they all contribute towards your Overkill meter, which slowly fills up. Then you activate Overkill and everything changes. Shooting The Environments > Shooting The Bad Guys Score enough points between both players and you unlock Overkill, which temporarily awards you invincibility, infinite ammo and a new destructive tint to the weapon you’re holding. Watching the scenery crumble and shatter under your new-found strength is empowering in a way that most shooters fail to achieve, possibly because so few of them put attention in that sort of area and rarely do they do it so well. It’s why shooting the environments is more fun than shooting bad guys. It’s a thrill that never really gets old and will justify unwarranted use of Overkill at the least appropriate times. There’s one guard left and you shouldn’t really use Overkill… but look at all the untouched scenery behind him! Activate Overkill. Watch bullets fizz off metal, cover splinter and crack, walls spit out concrete chunks. It’s something that Visceral has clearly cottoned onto during development, because there are plenty of environment targets sprinkled around each mission, daring you to attack it with an Overkill onslaught. It starts with explosive barrels and oil tanks moves onto fireworks and toppling water tanks as you race through town firing a mounted machine-gun at anything that looks like it will react to your gunfire. It’s a surprise that shooting at environments should be as engaging and thrilling as it is in The Devil’s Cartel but it’s not the biggest surprise here. The Devil Cartel's Co-Op Fail The biggest surprise is how poorly online co-op is implemented, given that’s the entire reason for this game – this series, even – existing in the first place. It’s not drop-in drop-out co-op. Well, you can drop out without any problems, so that's half the problem solved, we suppose. But drop in? When a player wants to join your game, you’re asked if you want to allow him in (yes, fine) and then you’re warned that doing so will boot you back to the start of the chapter (wait, what?). Co-op is supposed to be Army of Two’s speciality, the one thing it does right, and this clunky design feels like a 2008 throwback when co-op was a new and wonderful thing developers were trying out for the first time. Army Of Two has had three games to get this right. That it hasn’t managed to do so is bizarre. Are You Human? That in itself would be forgivable if playing alongside a human partner had some sort of impact on the gameplay itself but again, The Devil’s Cartel comes up short. There’s no indication that you’re playing with a human player rather than an AI bot once both players are locked in, which makes the co-op experience feel bland. Customisation is one of two things that separates a human Alpha or Bravo from an AI partner and even then, mask and weapon aside, it’s simply one set of drab mercenary uniform replaced by another. The only other indicator of a human player is the occasional splash of head-smacking behaviour, such as the player who charges headfirst into a throng of enemies and then screams slurs at you until you revive his fallen body. Each completed mission shows you a small table comparing stats in different areas and which player 'won' the mission but it’s too understated and impersonal to matter. Having a scoring mechanic like that prominent and in your face during the game itself might encourage a sense of competition, a tug-of-war between the players as they hunt down the last few soldiers to grab vital points. As it is, it’s too easy to ignore. The end result is that playing with another player isn’t really different enough to playing with an AI bot and at times, is actually more inconvenient than going through campaign alone. It's not a problem if you have friends planning on picking the game up as well but it is a clear issue if you were planning on playing with random players online, which will be an inevitable state of affairs when your friends move on or if you come to this game later in its life. Missed Opportunity There are a lot of faults here – the messy map design, the awkward cover system, the surprising co-op fumble – but Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel manages to make its core action of shooting things engaging and fun, and that’s what will pull you through the game. It’s not the co-op that makes The Devil’s Cartel unique in any way but rather, the destructive environments, which explode and shatter in a way that will leave even Battlefield fans nodding their heads with approval. It’s a shame that beyond the shooting that The Devil’s Cartel comes up short in almost every other area, leaving this as yet another fun but flawed outing in the Army Of Two series.