Resident Evil 5

Capcom's beloved survival horror series gets an extreme makeover.March 6, 2009 - Change can be a painful process. Just ask one of the unfortunate citizens of Kijuju, the fictional region of Africa that serves as the setting of Resident Evil 5, the latest entry in Capcom's ongoing zombie videogame saga. A power-mad corporation's evolutionary manipulations have caused a biological disaster that turns people into mindless hosts for a military-grade parasitic infection. And you thought the Bird Flu was nasty.
The citizens of Kijuju are going through some ugly changes, many of which involve tentacles, oozing eyeballs and heretofore unexplored bloodlust. And, as is the custom in a Resident Evil game, you drop into the situation woefully underprepared for what awaits. The resulting experience is an intense, action-packed adventure replete with satisfying combat, tight gameplay and gorgeous, well-crafted environments. Resident Evil 5 offers all those things and then some, but it doesn't do many of the things longtime fans of the series expect. It won't scare you. It won't fill you with creeping desperation. It won't have you collecting and counting bullets like they're precious stones. It won't, in essence, make you feel like you're playing a traditional Resident Evil game.

Like the story it's trying to tell, Resident Evil 5 is all about evolution. Capcom has gone out on a limb with the latest numbered sequel in its long-running survival horror franchise, and although one of your goals as a player is to survive the horrors around you, this entry in the series is a radical departure from the genre Capcom helped create near Raccoon City more than a decade ago.
You'll start out the game as Chris Redfield, who fans will remember as one of the co-stars of the original Resident Evil. But Chris is no lone wolf. Joining him on his mission is Sheva Alomar, an African national and bioweapons expert. Both Chris and Sheva are members of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, a global outfit tasked with preventing the proliferation of "biological organic weapons."

And to date, the group has done a pretty poor job of it. From the incident at the Arklay Mansion (RE1) to the outbreak in Raccoon City (RE2) and the Las Plagas infestation in Spain (RE4), the B.S.A.A. and its predecessors such as the S.T.A.R.S. team have been one step behind the Umbrella Corporation and its mysterious backers. When we last left the story of Chris Redfield in Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, he and fellow former S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine were battling through Umbrella's Russian base. So why isn't Jill at Chris's side in RE5? It's a good question, and one you'll have to play the game to answer.

This time around, it's Sheva who has Chris's back, and she'll be with you every step of the way, whether you go it alone or recruit a friend to play along. On your first playthrough you're stuck with the beefy Chris, whose bulging biceps and gigantic torso make Street Fighter IV's Ken look like a stick figure. Once you complete the game, you unlock the ability to play single-player as the more compact Sheva, who can handle herself and just about everything else.
There are several scenes in RE5 where the more acrobatic Sheva will need to part ways with Chris to reach hard-to-access areas. It's a cool nod to the co-op nature of the game, but I felt Capcom could have gone farther with the concept. There are no moments when you truly feel separated from your partner, which could have upped the fear factor significantly. Part of the horror of past RE games lay in the cramped isolation of knowing you were all alone in a dark corridor. But here, you're never truly on your own, as Sheva is always at your side.

When Sheva is controlled by the game, she does a pretty fair job of staying out of your line of fire, watching your back for enemies and healing or reviving you when you take damage. But just like any partner, she does have her annoyances. In RE5, as in other games in the series, each character is limited to a set number of inventory slots, and making the best use of that space is one of the keys to doing well in the game. In single-player mode, you have access to both characters' inventories, and you can swap items back and forth between them as you see fit.

Jagged Alliance 3 Impressions - First Look

We finally get an up-close look at Jagged Alliance 3, the sequel to the cult-classic strategy game.

We'll gladly come in out of the warm summer sun in Santa Monica for a look at Jagged Alliance 3, the long-awaited sequel to the beloved cult-classic 1999 strategy game from retired Canadian studio Sir-Tech. What we saw was extremely early, pre-alpha code that was definitely rough around the edges, but still showed hints of potential that we really, really hope will be realized. We hope.

Jagged Alliance fans are already familiar with the series' unique combination of deep turn-based tactics, role-playing-style character advancement, contemporary military fiction, and an unforgettable cast of hard-bitten, loud-mouthed mercenaries who don't always get along. Apparently, the sequel will take place in a fictitious South American country during a modern-day conflict that will require you to once again commission the services of the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.) and hire a team of mercs for a new tour of duty.

We watched a brief demonstration level with a small team of mercs, though for the purposes of the demonstration, cheat codes had been enabled to boost each character's abilities well beyond what they'll actually be in the game. If the early demonstration is any indication, we can expect to see the return of at least three familiar mercenary faces: knife expert Jean-Pierre "La Malice" Viau, covert ops expert Kyle "Shadow" Simmons, and expert sniper Sheila "Scope" Sterling. The team infiltrated a small installation which was apparently the headquarters of a local drug lord with the purpose of assassinating him. According to an Akella representative, the game will have an overarching story, but like previous installments in the series, it will be largely open-ended and will feature side missions you can take on.

The game's interface seemed a lot like what you'd expect from a game like 3D Jagged Alliance. At the bottom of the screen, as ever, was the mercenary interface with each merc's photo, health and status bars, and statistics, including old favorites like leadership, marksmanship, strength, and speed. When an individual merc is selected, a new interface appears, packed with additional iconic buttons for every available action, such as changing the firing mode on your weapon if you have an automatic or using a first-aid kit if you have one.

In Jagged Alliance 3, you still give move orders to your teammates to send them along through the areas, and once you've sighted hostiles, the game still switches to a fully turn-based battle that lets your team and your enemies move and act only as long as they have "action points" they haven't spent yet. The turns in the battles still switch between your teammates and the enemies, who, when out of sight, are represented by glowing red polygonal silhouettes. The game will still have "interrupt" phases for alert characters who still have remaining action points that let the characters react to enemies who have blundered into line of sight. Interestingly, the new game will have some measure of destructible objects, so that you can shoot through doors, for instance, though we didn't see this have any significant effect on gameplay so far; we watched Scope blast through wooden door to get at an enemy soldier who had run into sight, though we were still unable to draw a bead on an enemy who was just around the corner from the shattered entrance.

Then again, Jagged Alliance 3 isn't very far along yet, or so we're told. The game's 3D graphics seem like they could definitely improve. The environments, though populated with plenty of appropriate objects like swaying palm trees on the beach and cluttered furniture inside the houses, have a rough feel to them that could benefit greatly from some antialiasing, more-detailed textures to bring out the lived-in feel that the game is clearly shooting for, and extensive lighting effects to help differentiate different parts of the environment and add atmosphere. Still, we're told that Russian developer F3 is providing production work with design feedback from the original Sir-Tech Canada team, which is encouraging news indeed. The game itself won't be out for some time--most likely near the end of 2008--and we hope the development teams will take all that time to make sure the game ends up being highly polished and as playable as the previous games in the series.

Overlord 2

Overlord 2 (PC)
Also On: PS3, 360

Release Date: 12/15/2009
ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
Genre: Action
Publisher: Code Master
Developer: Triumph

Previews:

Just when the sheep thought it was safe, the Overlord is back with his band of evil minions in Overlord 2.
Over the last few years there have been a lot of games that have encouraged players to choose their own direction on a moral compass. Most recently, Fable 2 forced people to make a choice between good versus evil and pure versus corrupt. In Overlord, though, the choice was more fine-tuned. You could be evil...or you could be really evil. That fine tradition continues in Overlord 2, the follow-up to that cult hit from 2007.

In Overlord 2, you'll actually be playing as the descendant of the "hero" from the first game. Having been smuggled into hiding to avoid the previous Overlord's wrath, you're actually raised by minions to become a brand new force of evil in the world. Speaking of evil, while the first game had some pretty devious moments (slaughtering sheep, hobbits and elves by the truckload), the developers felt that the evil could've been more pronounced. This time around you'll still be making choices to determine how you complete each quest, but the choice is now between domination and annihilation.

The example given is when you'll have to determine the fate of a town. You can either enslave the lot of the inhabitants, or blow the place to smithereens. What you choose will determine how your powers will progress throughout the game. But it's not just you on this evil journey, you've also got your minions along for the ride. It's still the same four types of minions from the first game (brown, green, blue and red), but all of the minions have been enhanced for maximum evil. They can now ride mounts, like wolves and spiders, to deal extra damage and access hard-to-reach spots. You're also likely to become more attached to your minions this time around, as you can now name them and have them wear silly costumes from your adventures. Named minions can still die, but you'll be able to resurrect them in your home castle if the pain is just too great.

Overlord 2 is definitely more of an evolutionary step for the series, keeping the basics pretty much the same while adding in new features and more sheep torture. The game is scheduled to release this summer on the PS3, 360 and PC. PETA members need not apply.

Detective Agency

Detective Agency is a new hidden object release from Far Mills Game Studios and GFI. In Detective Agency, James is a private eye whose "daily proceedings revision" is interrupted by a call from his pal Bill at the "Editorial" who gives him a lead on a theft that's just been committed. He decides to "turn to this case."

In between levels you'll play a variety of mini-games, all of which are enjoyable though standard variations on familiar themes (connect the electrical tubes to close the circuit, match pairs of cards, decipher the secret message, and so on).

The story itself is a maddening series of visits to various buildings where no one will help you until you perform a mundane task for them first, like fixing a radio, turning on the lights, or – the most absurd – putting a man's pearl necklace back together.

And then inevitably they just tell you that they can't help you anyway, and to try a different location instead.

The levels aren't timed, but too much random clicking will result in your cursor being frozen for a few seconds. There are ample hints to be had, which are replenished by finding and clicking on tiny magnifying glasses hidden in the scenes.

Unfortunately, the hint system itself is annoying. Instead of just highlighting an item, you have to move a magnifying glass around the screen while it clicks and flashes confusingly until it suddenly begins beeping very quickly to signify that you're close to an item.

You have to find items either from a list or by silhouette, with the odd spot-the-difference challenge thrown in for good measure. The silhouette puzzles are far easier to deal with, since many of the items have been mis-labelled or are simply too vague.

Does "hat" refer to the beanie or the fedora? And "piece" could refer to half the objects in the scene. A "cell" is actually a birdcage, a "plate" is actually a bowl of rice, and "map" looks more like a paying card.

Detective Agency is another one of those games that could have used more guidance and localization before it was released to the general public.

Battlefield Bad Company Review

The rules of first-person shooters are changing. Videogames that engage the player in acts of war have always promised one thing; cover. During times of extreme duress the player has always had the option of retreating behind a wall or group of immovable sandbags in order to escape their assailants. Battlefield: Bad Company, the latest from the Sweden-based Digital Illusions CE (DICE), changes all that.

No longer is the inside of a house a safe haven for fleeing soldiers. Walls, sandbags, fences, and other formerly indestructible objects can now be torn down with a blast from a grenade or rocket launcher. Bad Company, while not perfect by any means, changes the formulaic gameplay of war-based first-person shooters enough to warrant the attention of the many fans of the genre.

The Battlefield series has always been a PC-oriented franchise. Battlefield 2: Modern Combat was the first to make the jump to consoles during the twilight of the Xbox and the infancy of the 360. While it was enjoyed by some, the immense praise that the series was accustomed to was missing. Bad Company not only represents the first story-based game in the series, but it's also the first product to utilize the all-new Frostbite engine which is responsible for all of the luscious destruction that I just mentioned.
Bad Company follows one Private Preston Marlow, a new recruit to a division of the army known simply as Bad Company, or B-Company for short. It's a group of misfit soldiers -- complimenting Marlow are Sarge, Haggard and the love struck Sweetwater -- each with his own personality and quippy dialogue. Though the missions in the campaign begin innocently enough with standard seek and destroy objectives, the team's motivations quickly take a turn once the promise of personal wealth enters the equation.

It's interesting to see how DICE dances around the politically charged climate of present day. Especially when you consider that your group of soldiers is essentially abandoned by United States military command fairly early on. DICE could have taken a more politically slanted approach but Bad Company does a good job of keeping things light-hearted and fun throughout the action.

Sadly it's that same light-hearted appeal that hurts the action in BF: BC a bit. War is intense yet the characters in Bad Company are constantly joking around and making fun of one another during battle. The comedy bit just doesn't quite fit in with the incredible level of action on screen.
That having been said, it's clear that Battlefield: Bad Company isn't necessarily trying to be as hard-edged as the drama-charged Call of Duty 4. This is evidenced -- beyond the over-the-top personas -- by both the health and respawn systems. When Marlow begins his adventure he is immediately introduced to his trusty health injector. Players can whip that sucker out, slam it into Preston's chest and his health is instantly restored. While you'll need to wait a handful of seconds before repeating the process, there are moments when you'll feel like all you're doing is running around and sticking yourself with that precious needle. Not exactly something you'd see on CNN war footage.
Next up is the respawn system which will remind many of the cryo chambers found in BioShock. When you die in most single-player games the world resets to the point of your last saved checkpoint. Not so in Bad Company. Instead you'll essentially respawn back onto the field of battle with any damage that you may have caused in your previous life still intact and any downed enemies still deader than a doornail. I can't help but feel like that system detracts from the strategy and overall intensity of the battles. Each life carried very little significance for me as I could charge in, take out a few blokes and trust that they'd still be gone when Preston returned to the living.

Where the gameplay of Bad Company positively separates itself from the throng of other war-based releases is the destructibility. At this point it sounds almost clich? but the Frostbite engine does indeed change the way you play. Hiding behind walls is no longer safe for you or your enemies. I can't tell you how many times my dwindling health sent me retreating into a house, only to have the walls shredded by an onslaught of tank shells.
There's no doubt that the destruction wouldn't have such a profound impact if it didn't look and sound so damn good. Bad Company isn't a graphical masterpiece by any means, but launching a grenade into the side of a wall and watching the debris and smoke spew out of the formerly whole structure is a sight to see. DICE also did a good job of placing plenty of explosive barrels, crates and gasoline tanks around the environment so there's never of shortage of things that go boom.

However, the visuals are not without issues. The lack of vertical sync shows its ugly face fairly often, particularly in the first level. There's also an odd film grain that, while I found it endearing to the overall style, might be lamented by some. There are also moments of wonky physics and other oddities, but nothing that overly hurts the experience.

Throw in some of the best audio effects I've ever heard in a videogame and Bad Company becomes more a treat for the ears than the eyes. The High Dynamic Range Audio (HDR Audio) creates different audio effects for gunfire, explosions and pretty much every other sound effect you can imagine. Want a real audio treat? Stand inside a house and blow out one of the walls with Preston's grenade launcher then stop and listen to the sound reverberate as the debris comes raining down. Other impressive auditory delights include the sound of a tank shell whizzing by your head and launching a fleet of missiles from an airborne helicopter. While the dialogue from the characters might be a bit too cheeseball for some, the sound effects, classic Battlefield theme music and overall audio design more than pick up the slack.
The story that's told through in-game and in-engine cutscenes is serviceable but nothing award-winning. The dialogue is slightly cheesy and over-the-top and none of the characters are all that inspiring. Marlow is sort of a shell of a hero and is more "along for the ride" than anything else. The main villain, the one who's keeping the quartet of militants from their riches, looks mean but never really comes across as the frightening hard ass as intended.
A big problem that most will have with Bad Company's campaign is that it can't be played cooperatively. With four soldiers built in to the storyline one would think that the developers would have implemented four-player co-op, yet there's none to be found. In this day and age it's pretty much inexcusable to not have cooperative play when it makes so much sense with the core game design.

Thankfully, where the single-player stumbles, the multiplayer shines. The Battlefield franchise is known more for its online matches than its solo play and Bad Company is no different. Twenty-four players can join up in ranked or unranked matches across eight maps, each with different vehicle placements and strategies needed to be successful. Players choose from five well-balanced classes, each containing its own set of armaments and tools. Though the single-player introduces you to tools like the laser guided missile and the remote mortar strike, it's while playing multiplayer that you'll need to make use of every weapon the game has to offer.
Unlike playing alone where you'll find collectible guns scattered throughout the battlefield, the multiplayer in Bad Company features a progressive unlock system that has you tallying experience points while still ascending up the standard ranks. The health injector, an item that Marlow begins the game with and carries throughout, needs to be unlocked in multi. The same can be said for the mortar and missile strike as well as a host of other death dealers. There are also awards that will pop up for things like marksmanship, double kills and other accomplishments, but at the end of the day they feel a bit inconsequential when compared to the other multiplayer trinkets.

Vehicles are another staple of the Battlefield franchise that makes a triumphant return in Bad Company. Hummers, boats, buggies, helicopters, light and heavy tanks, and other modes of transport can be used both in single-player and while playing with others. The vehicles work fantastically well when battling with people online, but using them when playing solo can leave a bit to be desired. The AI of your mates isn't fantastic and occasionally you'll wish that it was a living person manning the turret on the back of your boat.

The computer-controlled players follow a similar path with regard to their intelligence. There are moments when they'll be oblivious to your presence despite the fact that you're aiming at their head from five feet away, and others when they'll form solid attack groups and use their surroundings to their advantage. It's a bit of a mixed bag.
Luckily doing battle with the AI-controlled soldiers is never frustrating because of poorly designed controls. DICE made an interesting decision with regard to how players navigate their short list of weapons (you can carry four at one time). Essentially your weapons are tethered to both shoulder buttons. The right shoulder button is for your primary and secondary weapon -- typically a grenade launcher -- and the left shoulder button is used for tools, one of which is always your health injector while playing the campaign. Rotating between weapons is quick and easy once you get the hang of it and it's much more conducive to quick gameplay than the traditional radial menu or d-pad selection.

Closing Comments

Battlefield: Bad Company is the perfect answer for the hot summer months that most will spend in doors in search of entertainment. It?s loud, it?s pretty and it lets you blow big-ass holes in buildings. There are plenty of flaws that FPS gurus will be able to nitpick about, but Bad Company delivers a fun-filled single-player campaign with a multiplayer component that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in our industry.

Battlefield 2 Review

Despite the fact that it's a sequel, Battlefield 2 is a thrilling action game that immerses you in the chaos of combat like never before.

The Good

• Thrilling online gameplay that's revolutionary at times
• Built-in voice support is the next best thing to Xbox Live
• The new squad and commander functions elevate the gameplay
• Beautiful graphics and insane sound effects immerse you
• The best military action game yet made.
  

The Bad

• Steep hardware requirements, long load times
• No way to keep track of buddies
• Clumsy server browser
• No cooperative gameplay mode
• Rebinding controls can be frustrating.

There will be doubters and naysayers who will claim that Battlefield 2 is just an incremental upgrade from its famous predecessors, or that it only offers a marginal improvement over the popular Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942. Ignore them, because they couldn't be more wrong. EA and Digital Illusions' cutting-edge and highly awaited sequel is everything that it's supposed to be and more. Battlefield 2 is a thrilling testament to how great PC gaming can be. It packs unmatched gameplay, impressive visuals, and endless replayability in one exquisite package. And it's, by far, the most fun that we've had with a PC game this year.

Contrary to its name, Battlefield 2 is actually the third game in the Battlefield series, and, on the surface, it sticks closely to the formula established in the previous two games. In it, two teams of up to 32 players each battle it out for supremacy on huge virtual battlefields, taking the fight to one another on foot, in a vehicle, on sea, and in the air. This time around, though, you'll have the opportunity to take modern weapons and equipment into the fray, as the game is based in a near-future, hypothetical conflict that pits the forces of the United States, China, and the fictional Middle Eastern Coalition in mortal combat with one another.

Strangely enough, Battlefield 2 ships with just one gameplay mode, but the conquest mode is what made Battlefield what is today. Conquest is essentially a sprawling, king-of-the-hill-style game with multiple control points (doubling as spawn points) scattered on the map. Each team gets a limited number of tickets, or spawns, to draw upon in the battle for control of these points. The winner is the side that can either capture all the control points and eliminate the opposing team entirely, or whittle down the opposing team's tickets to zero. It's a fairly simple formula, but it sets the stage for the wild and memorable virtual battles that take place.

The beauty of Battlefield 2 is the fact that, like its predecessors, it has a totally unpredictable nature to it. It's completely unscripted and chaotic, but in an awesome way. There are simply so many insane, over-the-top moments that can happen in a single game that you quickly lose track. In any given match, you can have a dozen desperate firefights, countless moments when a rocket or bullet whizzes by your head, and the proud sense of accomplishment when you and your squad overcome the odds and achieve your objective. You'll see feats of audacious daring as someone flies a helicopter through a city's streets or runs up to plant explosives on an enemy tank that's mowing down your colleagues. You'll experience the hellish shelling of artillery, see the desperate revival of wounded colleagues, and be killed a dozen grisly ways. And yet, through it all, you'll find yourself coming back for more.

What makes Battlefield 2 better than its predecessors, though, is that there's much more of an attempt to instill some method to this madness. Battlefield 2 is full of excellent new features designed to make coordinating your efforts a lot easier. First up is the new voice-over IP system, which means that real-time voice capability is built into every single copy of the game. There simply is no excuse not to get a headset and start talking with your buddies, because even though Battlefield 2 does offer an improved keyboard-based communications system, nothing beats the power of being able to instantly and effortlessly communicate with your teammates. The voice system in Battlefield 2 is simple to set up and use, and you no longer have to fiddle around with conflicting third-party solutions.

More critically, it's the voice-chat system in Battlefield 2 that's important. Rather than have 64 players swamp a single channel with nonstop chatter and taunts, the voice system is instead integrated heavily into the concept of a commander and squads, which are both new features in the game. In earlier Battlefield games, you simply ran around as part of an unorganized mob, with little coordination between players. Battlefield 2 solves this by letting you organize into squads that come under the leadership of a single commander. In other words, a team of 32 players could split up to potentially form five or six squads consisting of five to six players each, with one player coordinating all the efforts as a commander. This fundamentally changes the nature of the game from having a bunch of lone wolves running around to having coordinated combat teams working together to get the job done.

Here's how it works. Armed with a real-time, top-down view of the battlefield, along with a number of powerful abilities, the commander can keep an eye on the big picture. The commander can scan the battlefield for enemy forces, deploy spy drones on the map that transmit data to all the members of the team, air-drop supply crates that rearm and heal adjacent units, and drop powerful artillery barrages onto enemy positions. The commander also issues orders to squad leaders, who have the job of carrying the orders out. The squad is much more than a handful of players, thanks to the potent squad abilities. Since you can spawn on your squad leader (so long as he is alive), the ability to create a sort of roving, self-supporting combat team is possible, especially if a team has a medic or two to keep the squad on its feet. The voice-chat system automatically filters all communication, so if you're in a squad, you can only talk with your fellow squad members. Squad leaders can talk to their squad on one channel and use another channel to communicate with the commander. And the commander can only talk to squad leaders. Thus, orders have a way of trickling down the chain of command, while requests go up the chain from the squad leader to the commander (like they do in real-life militaries).

When this system is clicking, it makes Battlefield 2 simply a transcendent experience unlike anything we've experienced before. While other games have incorporated concepts such as squads and commanders, none have combined them in such a brilliantly designed and executed way. The ability to only chat with your squadmates can create a sort of instant personal camaraderie, even when the sound of bullets, explosions, and artillery surrounds you. At times, you'll find yourself yelling for a medic, telling a buddy to cover you while you sprint across an open patch, or quickly organizing an impromptu assault on an enemy. It's so easy and tempting to fall into role-playing mode when playing this game. We found moments when, as squad leader, we requested permission from the commander to go after an enemy target. Or, when we were attacking an enemy control point, we screamed, "Go, go, go," and the squad rushed in just moments after an artillery barrage softened the objective, the dust from the explosions still thick in the air. The sensation that you're actually fighting as a unit is simply immersive and gripping. In fact, the only thing missing is the ability to keep some kind of friends or buddies list. This is something that you'll desperately want once you've played with a great squad and want to play alongside them in future battles.

It's fair to note, however, that your online experience with Battlefield 2 is completely dependent on the nature of your fellow players. And yes, it can be frustrating if you find yourself on a team that doesn't organize into squads or doesn't work together. This frustration is doubled if you find yourself facing a team that is organized and coordinated. With the powerful team tools in the game, it's quite easy for a completely outnumbered but coordinated team to defeat a far larger and unorganized force. The game does come with tools designed to get you familiar with the controls, but you still rely on the willingness of your teammates to work together. If anything, we wish for some kind of option that requires you to join a squad when you enter a game, and if you fail to do this you'll be kicked off, since players who play outside the command and squad system remain outside the loop. (The game could use a better auto-balancing system, as well, as far too many matches become lopsided affairs because one team has twice as many players as the other.)

Of course, all it takes are a handful of anarchic team killers to throw a wrench into your experience, as well. In that case, you can try to vote someone off a server if he or she proves annoying enough, or the server can boot players who team-kill too often. In addition, Battlefield 2 introduces the concept of persistent identity. When you log onto Battlefield 2 for the first time, you'll create a unique account that will follow you throughout your online adventures, keeping track of your rank, your statistics, and much more. The better you play, the higher in rank you will rise, and you can eventually unlock alternate weapons. A higher rank also means that you will be given higher priority to assume the commander role in a match, so hopefully this will let the serious players gain control of such a potent position.

We should note that Battlefield 2 keeps track of an astonishing number of statistics, such as the number of kills you make with each weapon, your favorite kit, the map you play the most on, and more. You can also collect dozens of different types of medals by doing certain tasks. Medics are rewarded for reviving fallen soldiers, engineers are rewarded for repairing vehicles, and so on. Collecting these medals proves to be a reward in and of itself. However, as much as we like this system, we must admit that the game's main menu/server browser, where you access your personal statistics, feels needlessly confusing at times. The server browser itself is slow and clunky, which makes it annoying at times when you're trying to find a game. Since this is the third Battlefield game, you'd expect that the designers would have figured out how to create a decent server browser by now. Meanwhile, trying to rebind the many different keyboard settings can be like pulling teeth at times, as you have to sort through different pages to unbind a key before you can bind it to another command.

If you're not feeling like playing with fellow humans, the good news is that the much-maligned bots from Battlefields 1942 and Vietnam are history. In those games, the computer-controlled bots were just a hair better than brain-dead, but not by much (they literally ran in circles most of the time). The new bots in Battlefield 2 are relative Einsteins compared to the old ones, and while they still make a few stupid errors every now and then, they can be downright ruthless and cunning. We've seen bots do things that we wish human players would do. In one case, a bot in a tank actually waited for infantry support before entering the crowded confines of an enemy village. In another, the bots threw grenades onto the rooftop we were sniping from to flush us out. These bots will also go after objectives with a vengeance. It's ironic that DICE nixed the cooperative gameplay mode featured in earlier Battlefield games just when it finally developed decent bots. To be fair, the bots can get confused, and we suspect that some maps may be too complex for their pathfinding, as they tend to do better on maps with fewer natural choke points, such as bridges and rivers.

Battlefield 2 ships with 12 levels, and while that seems like a small number, the fact that each level comes in three different sizes adds some variety. The nature of the game can change dramatically depending on the size of the map and the number of players involved. Small, 16-player games on the smallest map offer a Counter-Strike-like atmosphere, with a limited number of control points and a few vehicles. The 32- and 64-player maps are downright huge in comparison, and they offer plenty of room to maneuver around. The level design itself has evolved quite a bit from earlier games, as the designers have eliminated the huge distances that separated control points. These new levels are an interesting mix of different settings, including cities, mountains, valleys, and swamps. They're also packed with all sorts of specific, distinct areas, such as villages, hotels, construction areas, oil refineries, and more.

There are seven different kits, or basically character class types, to play as in Battlefield 2, and these kits are essentially identical across all three nations. There aren't the weird variations that occurred in Battlefield Vietnam, where the US engineer kit would get completely different weapon types from the North Vietnamese engineer kit. And for the most part, the kits are fairly well balanced. There's no superkit (like the M-60/LAW combination in Vietnam) this time around. And while there will be advocates for and against certain kits, the balance on a whole is excellent right out of the gate for Battlefield 2. For example, the support kit seems a bit overpowering at first, since it gets a light machine gun capable of firing long bursts from huge magazines, but it is tempered by the fact that it's only suitable at short and medium ranges. Try to engage anyone from a long distance, and they'll simply drop down and snipe you with carefully aimed shots. The sniper kit, usually the most overpowering weapon in these kinds of games, no longer features a one-shot, one-kill capability. However, this relegates snipers to their proper (and accurate) role of supporting the infantry and reporting the location of enemy units and vehicles.

There's a definite rock-paper-scissors nature to the different kits. The special forces kit is ideal for planting plastic explosive charges and destroying enemy infrastructure, from bridge crossings to radar stations that allow enemy commanders to conduct satellite scans of the battlefield. In fact, for balancing purposes, it's the only kit able to really do so effectively. Blow up enemy artillery, and the enemy commander can't drop artillery barrages on your team's head until the guns are repaired. The engineer kit can repair such damage and patch up vehicles, and so engineers are worth their weight in gold. Meanwhile, the engineer and medic kits are even more powerful than ever by being able to project an area-of-affect radius around them if they're riding in a vehicle, which is a big incentive for players to take up support roles in a game.

That same sort of rock-paper-scissors balancing is also evident in the vehicles. The general rule in Battlefield 2 is that every weapon has a counter weapon, and the balance, once again, feels about right. However, it can be argued that some vehicles may be more powerful than others, so therefore much is dependent on the skill of the players involved. Sure, a skilled player in an attack helicopter can take over a game, but there are answers for that situation if you know how to take advantage of them. For example, as potent as tanks and other vehicles are, they can be slaughtered by other vehicles, helicopters, planes, and infantry antitank missiles. Helicopters can fall prey to jets or antiaircraft weapons, while jets themselves can fall prey to other jets or missiles.

Many of the vehicles are modern-day versions of those found in Battlefields 1942 and Vietnam, so they will undoubtedly feel familiar to veterans of those games. There are a few neat features to play with, though. Tanks can now pop smoke grenades, which can throw off the aim of an incoming missile. Helicopters and jets can fire guided missiles, allowing them to kill multiple targets on a single pass. Once again, you'll probably want to get a joystick for optimal control of aircraft, but it's definitely worth it. Helicopters are a bit easier to fly than those in Vietnam, it seems, but it's always interesting to note that for all the arcadelike action in the game, the helicopter controls are still fairly realistic. Once you get the hang of the controls, there's no rush quite like the one you experience when you fly a chopper through trees, or pop up over a ridge and unleash a fiery barrage on a passing convoy.

Battlefield 2 is a step up from its predecessors graphically, as well. The new graphics engine is a wonder to behold, and it plays a lot smoother than earlier versions, especially when it comes to infantry combat, which was always jerky and awkward in the first two games. This is just a beautiful game overall, especially when everything around you is in motion. Tanks and vehicles are rendered with astonishing detail, such as swaying antennas, while the environments themselves--save for the somewhat crudely rendered grass--are simply beautiful. There are so many tiny details at work, from the concussive effects of nearby blasts blurring your vision to the clouds of dust that appear when tank cannons fire to the tiny fountains of dirt that kick up when rounds land next to you. It's so pretty that it almost becomes counterproductive, in a way. For example, except for a few road signs that you can knock over and bridges that you can destroy, the environment itself is barely destructible, and you feel that buildings should collapse into heaps of rubble after artillery smashes into them. Also, the instantaneous teleporting in and out of vehicles, a staple from the first game, feels more and more out of place as the series becomes more graphically immersive. You almost wish for some kind of transition animation to show your character climbing in and out of the driver's seat (it would also be more realistic, as well). Though our biggest concern with the graphics comes with the close draw in that occurs when you're flying a fast-moving jet, as it only gives you a second or two to identify and line up your target before you overshoot it.

Battlefield 2 is an excellent audio experience also, as there's nothing quite like hearing the scream of artillery overhead, the crack of various rifles, the squeal of tank treads and the sound of their engines roaring in the distance, the thump of whirling helicopter blades, and more. The only thing missing really is the memorable music of the first two games, especially the iconic soundtrack that shipped with Battlefield Vietnam. To be fair, it's asking a bit much of EA to identify the signature songs of the near future, but even then, the only music in the game is the bland Asian and Middle Eastern themes that you listen to during the very long load times. And yes, the load times are one of the biggest gripes that we have, as you'll spend quite a bit of time waiting for a game to start up, even on high-end machines. Battlefield 2 is also a bit demanding in the hardware department, since you'll need a modern 3D card to run it (anything older than two years is iffy), as well as a fair bit of memory and a somewhat powerful CPU. The good news is that the game scales well within that hardware, and it can play at high detail on even relatively midrange machines. But this is definitely a game worth upgrading for, because it easily holds countless hours of gameplay, especially once players get over the learning curve and start to work together. It shouldn't be long before the quality of Battlefield matches is raised to a whole new level. It will also help that you evaluate your performance using Battlefield TV, a built-in recording system that keeps track of all the events during a match. With Battlefield TV, you can go back and see what tactics the best players used, where the best sniping positions are, and more.

The best thing that we can say about Battlefield 2 is that even when it's at its worst, it can still be as much fun as its illustrious predecessors. However, when you experience Battlefield 2 like it's meant to be played, with everyone working together and using real-time voice chat, the game quickly becomes unlike anything else that you've played before. When it's at its best, Battlefield 2 elevates online gaming to whole new heights. Put simply, this is a thrilling and revolutionary game that just has to be played to be believed.

Battlefield Heroes First Impression

It's Battlefield. It's also totally free. Get a first look at Battlefield Heroes.

EA caused a bit of a stir recently when it announced that the next PC game in its popular Battlefield franchise is going to be a free-to-play Web-based title. We were curious, too; thankfully we finally got our first look at Battlefield Heroes at the recent Game Developers Conference. Here's what we learned: While it has and will undoubtedly continue to draw comparisons to last year's Team Fortress 2 for its cartoon look, the developers at DICE say that it's also the deepest Battlefield game that they've ever made.

To hammer in the point that this is supposed to be fun and crazy, the demonstration started with a somber trailer full of World War II images. Just when you might think that you're watching another video for another World War II game, the trailer busts open with a zany montage of cartoon violence, with soldiers running around a colorful battlefield, riding on the wings of fighter planes, zipping around in tanks as if they were sports cars, and the like.

Though the game has vehicles and weapons and uniforms that are obviously inspired by World War II counterparts, this is not set in World War II. It's not even really set on Earth as we know it. The guys in grey and black aren't Nazis or Germans, but rather members of the National Army. The fellows in green and tan aren't British or Americans. Instead, they're members of the Royal Army. Even the conflict itself is a bit silly to fit into the game's humor: The Royals and the Nationals are battling over a quarrel regarding the Olympic games. This isn't about a titanic clash of totalitarianism versus democracy.

So here's the deal. The game is indeed free to play. All you'll have to do is go to the game's Web site and click on the brightly colored play button, and that will launch the installer. The system requirements are low enough to support most integrated graphics chipsets found in budget computers. (The other requirements right now are a 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM.) When you install the game, you also create a login and a password for your profile. It will not ask for you a credit card number. Once the game is installed, you just go back to the Web site, hit play, log in, and the game launches. The entire process is designed to very similar to registering for an Internet forum or social site such as MySpace.

Free sounds like a great deal to the consumer, but not for businesses. EA plans to make money mainly through advertising. For instance, whenever the game is loading, you'll see ads. We saw two big banner ads for EA games that were released last year (keep in mind we saw the in-development version of Battlefield Heroes, so those were placeholders). EA says that there will not be any in-game advertising in the game itself, so you will not see any billboards or posters for the latest Hollywood movie or Detroit car while dodging bullets. A secondary source of income is microtransactions that are entirely optional, though EA didn't really go into depth about what types of things you'll be able to purchase.

Heroes will distill the Battlefield experience into a more intimate package online. Like with other Battlefield games, there's just one mode in Heroes, and it is sort of a mix of team deathmatch and the classic Battlefield conquest mode. Each team has 50 tickets, or respawns, at its disposal. When a player dies, he uses up a ticket to respawn back into the game. The goal is to be the last team standing. There will be control points that can be captured, and they will confer a modifier to whichever team controls them. For instance, controlling all flags might result in your team being awarded two kills for every one that you make. The maximum player limit per match is 16; in comparison, Battlefield 2 tops out at 64.

There are three classes that you can play as: soldier, gunner, and commando. You select a class at the beginning of the match and you can't switch in midmatch. The commando is the light class; capable of being completely invisible at a distance and semitransparent up close. He's armed with a knife and a sniper rifle, each of which takes a couple of whacks to kill with. That is to soften the frustration felt in other Battlefield games, where you're suddenly killed with a single shot of a sniper rifle. In Battlefield Heroes, the first hit you receive is a warning and a chance for you to do something to survive. Next up is the soldier, which is a medium class, a good mix of speed and firepower. The gunner is the heaviest class, but also the slowest. He's armed with a machine gun and a bazooka. It's key to keep in mind that while the bazooka might be ideal for killing vehicles, all classes will be equipped with sticky mines so that they have an antivehicle weapon.

The action takes place entirely in third-person, save for one moment, which we suspect is probably when you zoom through the scopes of a sniper rifle. Part of the reason is because DICE wants the game to be as friendly as possible to people who have never, ever played a Battlefield game before, and third-person is apparently more accessible and less intimidating and more casual than first-person. The other reason for third-person is so you can see your custom character and all the cool stuff that you'll unlock. Character creation is a bit like an online role-playing game in that you can select different hairstyles, colors, and other physical features. Since the game is played entirely online, it'll also keep a permanent record of your performance. As you advance through the rank system, you'll access new items that you can equip, such as clothing and accessories. The buttoned-up uniform shirt might make way to the unbuttoned-at-the-top shirt, goggles might appear on the helmet, and so on.

Like with all Battlefield games, the action is a mix of infantry and vehicle combat. The difference in Heroes is that everything is meant to be as user-friendly and colorful as possible. Hit a guy with a rifle and you'll see numbers flash above his head indicating how much damage he's taking, just like in a role-playing game. The respawn timer is set to five seconds, so if you're killed, you'll get back in the action quickly. The physics and violence are somewhat cartoonish, from the tanks that can scream through a street and run someone over to the way a pilot can jump out of a plane right before it hits the ground and land on his feet safely.

The developer also says that Battlefield Heroes is the deepest Battlefield game yet. That's because there are special abilities that you can equip before a match that let you do all sorts of things. For instance, you can equip incendiary bullets so you cause burning damage on someone. Another ability is a wall hack that lets you detect enemy soldiers behind solid objects. A health burst will heal not only you, but those around you.

Battlefield Heroes is going to be a very interesting experiment, because this is a game that is designed to appeal not only to Battlefield fans, but also to the vast, untapped masses out there who don't play games because they're too expensive or their computers aren't powerful enough. It's basically Battlefield for the people. Fans of Battlefield 2, though, should also keep note that while no future Battlefield games have been announced, the developer did insist that DICE is working on projects that it can't talk about quite yet. Battlefield Heroes will go live later this year.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Review

The single-player campaign is over in a flash, but the high quality of that campaign and its terrific multiplayer options make Call of Duty 4 a fantastic package.

The Good

• High-quality story mode packs in a lot of thrilling and unexpected moments
• Well-designed multiplayer progression gives you something to shoot for online
• Terrific audiovisual presentation.
  

The Bad

• Campaign mode is much shorter than those of the average shooter.

It took awhile, but Infinity Ward finally got the message that World War II is played out. With modern times and international affairs becoming more and more, shall we say, interesting in recent years, the 1940s just don't carry as much weight as they used to. Perhaps that's why Call of Duty 4 has a new subtitle, Modern Warfare. By bringing things into a fictionalized story that still seems fairly plausible, the developer has made a much heavier game. But COD 4 is more than just an updated setting. It's also an amazing multiplayer first-person shooter and a great but brief single-player campaign with the visual chops to make it a standout shooter in an era filled with seemingly dozens of standout shooters.

The only real catch is that the single-player is almost shockingly short. If you've been keeping up with this style of game, you'll probably shoot your way to the credits in under five hours. While you can raise the difficulty to give yourself more of a challenge, the main thing this does is make the enemies frustratingly deadly, which sort of detracts from the fun.

While it may have a lack of single-player quantity, it makes up for most of it with its quality. The game tells its story from multiple perspectives, and you'll play as a new British SAS operative as well as a US Marine. The campaign takes you from a rainy night out at sea on a boat that's in the process of sinking to a missile silo where it's on you to save millions from an unsavory nuclear-powered death. Along the way, there are plenty of jaw-dropping moments where you'll look around the room for someone to whom you can say, "I can't believe that just happened." In a world filled with war games in which the good guys come out unscathed and the world is left at total peace, Call of Duty 4 will wake you up like a face full of ice water.

The action in the campaign is usually very straightforward. You have a compass at the bottom of your screen, and the direction of your current objective is very plainly marked. But getting from point A to point B is never as simple as running in a straight line, as you'll be conducting full-scale assaults in Middle Eastern countries by moving from house to house, taking out what seems like a never-ending stream of enemy troops along the way. You'll also get an opportunity to raid Russian farmhouses in search of terrorist leaders, disguise yourself as the enemy, and, in one sequence, don a brushlike ghillie suit and crawl through the brush as enemy troops and tanks roll right past you. It's a breathtaking moment in a campaign filled with breathtaking moments. Unfortunately, it's about half as long as the average shooter, and there are plenty of sequences where you wish there were just one or two more hills to take.

Of course, if you're looking for longevity, that's where the multiplayer comes in. Up to 18 players can get online and get into a match on one of 16 different maps. Many of the levels are taken from portions of the single-player and they offer a healthy mix of wide-open, sniper-friendly areas and tight, almost cramped spaces where grenades and shotguns are the order of the day. There are six game modes to choose from. The old standby is team deathmatch, though you can also play in a free-for-all deathmatch, which isn't as much fun as the team modes. The other modes are more objective-oriented, and a couple of those have you lugging bombs across the map to blow up enemy equipment, or preventing the enemy from blowing up your base. Others have you capturing control points. Lastly, you can change up the game rules a bit with a hardcore setting that makes weapons more realistically damaging or an old-school mode that puts weapons on the ground as pickups and generally moves away from the simulation side of things.

In addition to just firing your weapon or tossing grenades, you earn some more interesting tactical moves for skilled play. If you can shoot three opponents without dying, you're able to call in a UAV drone, which basically is an upgraded radar that makes enemy positions show up on your onscreen map for 30 seconds at any time. Normally, enemies blip up onto the map only if they fire their weapon to make their location known. If you can go on a five-kill streak, you can call in an air strike, which brings up a shot of the entire level map and lets you place the air strike wherever you like. When combined with a UAV sweep, this can be really devastating. If you can make it all the way to seven kills--which is actually easier than it sounds--you can call in a helicopter for support. It'll buzz around the map and automatically open fire on enemies, though enemies can shoot it down, too. These additions to the normal first-person shooter gameplay really open up the game a lot and make it superexciting to play.

You'll also always have something to work toward, regardless of mode, because in standard, public matches, you earn experience points for just about everything you do. Capturing control points, getting kills, calling in support, all of these things give you points that go toward your rank. Ranking up unlocks most of the game's multiplayer content.

The class system in Call of Duty 4 is also very interesting. Each class has a different weapon loadout and different traits, called perks. As you rank up, you eventually unlock all five of the preset classes and the ability to create your own class. This lets you pick your own main weapon, your sidearm, attachments for both weapons, what sort of special grenades you want to carry, and three perks. The perks are broken up into three groups to help keep things balanced, and as you continue to level, you'll unlock additional perks. These class traits are one of the game's neatest tricks and, again, really helps to set COD 4 apart from the pack.

Perks in the Perk 1 group are more focused on explosives, letting you get more flashbangs if you like, or letting you lug around a rocket launcher, which is great for taking out enemy choppers. The other two perk groups have traits like juggernaut, which increases your health. There's also last stand, which activates when you are killed by dropping you to the ground and switching you to a pistol, giving you a moment to kill the guy who took you out before he realizes you're still squirming around and finishes the job. Our current favorite is martyrdom, which causes you to drop a live grenade when killed. It adds a healthy dose of mayhem to the proceedings. The perks and other unlockables feel nicely balanced, too, so you probably won't run into situations where one class is just better than the other. As it should be, your ability to point the red dot at the head of your enemy and squeeze the trigger before he does the same is still the deciding factor.

While there are a ton of compelling gameplay reasons to play Call of Duty 4, it also has top-notch presentation. The graphics are fantastic throughout, and they do a great job of rendering wide-open fields, tight buildings or houses, smoke-belching silos, and lots more. Some of the multiplayer maps look like they've already seen a lot of action, with blast craters, destroyed tanks, and other things that you can hide in or behind. It also has terrific lighting, so everything looks as it should. Everything sounds right, too. When you hear a battle raging in the distance, it sounds appropriately muffled, and up close, the crack of an M16 or the full-auto barrage from an AK-47 are appropriately loud and angry sounding. There is also quite a bit of voice work throughout the game, and it's all nicely done. The music, for the most part, is the typical sort of action-movie music you've come to expect from a first-person shooter, except for a rap over the end credits that seems to simultaneously detail the game's story while also acting as a subliminal diss record with some slick talk about how this is the third chapter by Infinity Ward, perhaps lightly inferring that you should ignore Treyarch's contribution to the series, Call of Duty 3. It's great.

COD 4 is available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC, and each version holds up admirably. The differences between the two console versions feel mostly negligible. Both systems deliver good frame rates and have good, easy-to-use multiplayer setups that most closely resemble Halo 2 and 3's party system and matchmaking playlists. The PC version of the game uses a more traditional server browser to get you into games. Both systems work just fine on their respective platforms. The PC version has the ability to run in a higher resolution, if you're equipped with a PC that can handle it, but it seems to scale quite well. You can also create servers that allow up to 32 players to play at once on the PC, as opposed to a limit of 18 in the console versions, but given the size of the multiplayer maps, putting 32 players in them makes things a little too crowded. Despite listing 1080p support on the back of the box, COD 4 appears to prefer 720p on the PlayStation 3. The only way to get it to run in 1080p is to tell your PS3 that your TV doesn't support 720p or 1080i, but the difference seems minor. Either way, you'd be hard-pressed to tell it apart from its Xbox 360 counterpart. And all versions control just fine, making the decision over which version to buy totally dependent on which controller you like the most.

It's a shame that the single-player is so brief, but you should only skip out on Call of Duty 4 if you're the sort of person who doesn't appreciate great first-person shooter multiplayer. The quality of the content in the campaign is totally top-shelf, and the multiplayer is some of the best around, making this a truly superb package.

BioShock Review

In spite of some technical issues, BioShock creates an amazing world that you'll want to explore and a compelling mystery that slowly comes together as you play.

The Good

• Absolutely amazing atmosphere and visual design
• Lots of character customization options to play around with
• Great voice cast really sells the storyline.
  

The Bad

• Suffers from some fairly nasty technical issues on some PCs, up to and including a total lack of in-game audio
• Lack of death penalty keeps things fun, but also keeps things a little too easy.

While on the surface it might look like little more than a very pretty first-person shooter, BioShock is much, much more than that. Sure, the action is fine, but its primary focus is its story, a sci-fi mystery that manages to feel retro and futuristic at the same time, and its characters, who convey most of the story via radio transmissions and audio logs that you're constantly stumbling upon as you wander around. All of it blends together to form a rich, interesting world that sucks you in right away and won't let go until you've figured out what, exactly, is going on in the undersea city of Rapture.

BioShock opens with a bang, but the overall plot focuses more on making an emotional impact than an explosive one. The year is 1960, and you're flying over the Atlantic Ocean. One mysterious plane crash later, you're floating in the water, apparently the lone survivor, surrounded by the flaming wreckage of the aircraft. But there's a lighthouse on a tiny island just at the edge of your view. Who in their right mind would put a lighthouse this far out? You swim closer and discover a small submersible called a bathysphere waiting to take you underwater. After catching a breathtaking view of what's below, you're sent into the secret underwater city of Rapture. Masterminded by a somewhat megalomaniacal businessman named Andrew Ryan, this city is driven by its own idea of total freedom, with capitalism completely unhindered by governmental meddling and science unhinged from the pesky morals of organized religion. Sounds like the perfect society, right? Well, even before you step out of your bathysphere and into the city, it becomes obvious that everything has gone horribly wrong down here. The city is trashed, and genetic freaks called splicers roam around, attacking anything that gets in front of them. At the heart of the matter is a powerful, corrupting substance called ADAM, which makes all this genetic tinkering possible and allows you to get your first plasmid power, the ability to shoot lightning out of your fingertips.

Character customization is a key trait in BioShock. You have a limited but increasable number of spaces in various customization categories, and you can totally reconfigure all of your different plasmids and tonics at will, at no charge, at specific locations in-game. Plasmids are the active, weaponlike genetic enhancement. Many of these are very straightforward. Incinerate lets you burn things and melt ice. Telekinesis lets you use your left hand as if it were Half-Life 2's gravity gun. But others are a little more subversive. Security bullseye is a little ball you can toss at enemies, causing any nearby security cameras, turrets, or sentry bots to point in his direction. Enrage can cause enemies to fight one another. Insect swarm causes your arm to shoot bees at your enemies, which unfortunately is far less cool-looking than it sounds. You can also place decoys, plant swirling wind traps for enemies, and so on. While it's fun to mess around with a lot of the indirect attacks, facing your enemies head-on with the more direct plasmids feels a bit more effective.

Tonics are skills that are slotted just like plasmids, but they have passive effects, like sportboost, which increases your movement and melee attack speed, or natural camouflage, which makes you turn invisible if you stand still for a few seconds. So if you want to make your swinging wrench attacks more powerful, you can slot up things like wrench jockey and wrench lurker, which increase your wrench damage on all attacks and when catching opponents off-guard, respectively. Add bloodlust, which gives you some health back every time you club someone with your wrench, and you're a melee master with health and plasmid energy (called EVE) to spare. You can also slot some defensive stuff, like static field, which zaps anyone who touches you with a electric radius effect, and armored shell, which reduces the damage you take from physical attacks. There are more than 50 tonics to collect, giving you plenty of options to play around with.

Most of those plasmids and tonics will have to be purchased using the raw ADAM that you collect from harvesting vessels called little sisters. They're little girls with a big needle that they use to collect the sought-after stuff from dead bodies, and they're protected by the baddest enemies in the entire game, hulking armored monsters called big daddies. This is where the game makes you decide to be selfless or selfish. If you harvest the girls, they die, but you get 160 ADAM from them. If you free them and return them to normal, you get only 80 ADAM. There are a limited number of girls to deal with in the entire game, making it very possible that you won't be able to collect every single purchasable plasmid and tonic, so choose wisely. Either route has benefits and consequences, and there are story considerations as well.

Before you start thinking this is some kind of role-playing game or something, let's stop right here and say that in addition to all the toys that plasmids and tonics for you to play around with, you're also going to be carrying around some more conventional firepower. Your melee weapon is a wrench, and you quickly collect a pistol and machine gun. Being that this is 1960 filtered through the isolation of an undersea world that has the art deco style of the first half of the century, the weapons aren't nearly as high-tech as the genetic code in your body. The machine gun is your basic tommy gun, and the grenade launcher appears to have been cobbled together from coffee cans and other spare parts. You'll also get a shotgun, a crossbow, and so on. You can also collect different types of ammunition, such as exploding buckshot for your shotgun or missiles for your grenade launcher, and upgrades that increase damage, speed up reloads, and so on. The weapons are functional and the upgrades are pretty good, but the firing action isn't nearly as exciting as a combat-focused first-person shooter would be. The weapons are loud but don't feel especially right, and seeing shotgun blasts not even do 50 percent damage to an unarmored human target (on the default difficulty setting) just feels wrong. But that might also say something about the general lack of enemy variety.

There are five types of splicers to deal with, and these are your primary enemies. The splicers are humans who have messed around with ADAM too much and have essentially lost their minds. Now they wander around the city like junkies in need of a fix. The only real difference among them is what they're carrying. Leadheads have guns, thugs have blunt objects, nitros toss explosives, Houdini splicers can teleport and shoot fireballs, and spider splicers can crawl on ceilings and toss hooks at you. As you go through the game, they get tougher to kill, but there's no real visual indicator as to why that's so, leading to some of the weapons feeling a bit weak. Headshots simply shift from killing enemies immediately to not killing enemies immediately. This makes smart use of a combination of plasmids and conventional weapons the best tactic, though even those tactics don't involve much. The same one-two punch of shocking enemies to stun them and following up with a whack with the wrench is a perfectly viable tactic throughout the entire game, depending on how you've placed your tonics.

You'll find more important human characters at certain points in the story, and though these are set up like boss fights, these guys are just more powerful and resilient versions of existing splicers. You'll also have to deal with security robots, turrets, and cameras, though these can all be hacked via a neat little hacking minigame to bring them over to your side, allowing for more indirect combat options.

Then there's the big daddy, which comes in two configurations. The bouncer has a huge drill arm that is used to, you know, drill into people. The rosie likes to launch explosives in your general direction. Both of them are fairly nasty, because they move quickly and dish out a lot of damage while not taking very much from most of your attacks. They protect the little sisters, who are invulnerable to your attacks and can only be dealt with once their protecting big daddy is dead. The big daddy is hardly unbeatable, though you may die a few times while facing your first few. Death in BioShock is barely even a setback. When you die, you're reconstituted at the nearest vita-chamber and sent on your way with your inventory intact and most of your health.

This isn't a reload, so everything is as you left it, even the damage that you've already done to any surviving enemies. So you can wear down a big daddy by just running at it again and again with little or no care for your health. That can get tedious, of course, but having that possibility is a blessing--and a curse. On one hand, you're free to try out new things, like plasmid and tonic combinations, with no penalty if you equip some bum techniques. On the other, there aren't any real gameplay consequences, so playing with skill isn't rewarded. You could fumble your way through the 15 or 20 hours it'll probably take to properly explore Rapture and still see everything there is to see. This, along with three selectable difficulty settings, leaves you with the impression that the game was made to cater to a wide audience, but the hard difficulty setting doesn't actually impact things like artificial intelligence or force you to play any more skillfully to succeed. The enemies still mostly run at you mindlessly while attacking, occasionally getting into scraps with one another or breaking off to find a healing machine, but they take longer to kill and hurt you more when they hit.

While the world of Rapture is rich and filled with interesting little tidbits, the game does a tight job of keeping you on track. Aside from two cases where you must collect a certain amount of specific items in order to proceed, you always know exactly what to do and where to go to do it, thanks to a handy map screen and an onscreen arrow that points you directly at the next objective. These helping hands feel almost a little too helpful, but in the event that you get really stuck, you'll appreciate the additional hint system that very plainly explains what you need to do and where you need to go to move forward.

You won't miss a ton of locations by sticking to exactly where the arrow points you, but the story fills out a lot more when you find and listen to as many audio diaries as possible. Hearing various characters talk about the problems leading up to Rapture's current disheveled state really fills in the blanks nicely and should be considered mandatory if you intend to play the game. Hearing the voices of these wide-eyed idealists as their world falls apart makes the whole game feel more human. Playing through without listening to any of these optional audio clips would make the game quiet and, actually, fairly confusing, as you'd be proceeding with no sense of backstory about Andrew Ryan, fish magnate Frank Fontaine, and the bit characters who comment on their increasingly hostile struggle.

It certainly helps that the environments you find throughout the game look amazing and practically beg to be explored. For something as potentially dingy as an underwater city, you sure do get a lot of different looks as you move along, from the boiler rooms and workshops of the city's core to the forest that helps keep the entire thing oxygenated. You'll also get a lot of great views of the sea through windows. In addition to a terrific artistic design that ties the visuals together, the game has a very strong technical side, provided you have a machine that's built enough to handle it. Unreal Engine 3 is under the hood, and all the requisite bells and whistles are along for the ride. If there's one thing you need to know about BioShock's graphics, it's that the water looks perfect. As an underwater city that's slowly falling apart, it's no surprise that you'll find plenty of leaks. Whether it's standing water on the floor or sea water rushing in after an explosion, it'll blow you away every time you see it.

But BioShock isn't without flaw. The game has been released with a host of technical issues, ranging from a total lack of audio on some machines to issues with the SecuROM online activation, which under normal circumstances is designed to prevent you from activating a retail copy on more than two machines. The game is also available through Steam, though all of the same audio stuttering and other issues that some players are experiencing in the disc-based version carry over to the digital version as well. While it's a sad truth that no game is ever released in a completely bug-free state for 100 percent of its users, these issues appear to be pretty widespread, and if you're at all skittish about waiting for a patch after you've purchased something, you might want to wait until at least one patch is released before buying BioShock. In our experience, we got the game running with some minor audio stuttering on a Windows XP PC, and can't get any audio at all on our Vista test machine. All of this makes the Xbox 360 version's stuttering issues (which seem to only happen on some consoles) pale in comparison.

Aside from having different technical problems, the differences between the Xbox 360 and PC versions of BioShock are fairly minor. The mouse and keyboard support works exactly as you'd expect, and using a mouse makes the combat a touch easier, since aiming for the head is usually easier with a mouse than with a gamepad. But if you're after that console-style gamepad experience, BioShock has full support for the wired Xbox 360 controller. If you're at a loss for which version to purchase, it comes down to the quality of your PC. If you're running a high-end DirectX 10 machine, the game looks better on the PC. It also has DirectX 9 support, and even running this way, it's possible for some facets of BioShock, like texture quality, to look sharper than the 360 version if your machine can handle it. But when you factor in the current bug list for each version, or if your PC isn't especially recent, the Xbox 360 version is a safer bet.

In addition to some nice period music that plays from jukeboxes or record players, you'll get some terrific music that helps set the creepy, uncertain mood. The weapons sound good and loud, and everything else just sounds right. The voice acting, which you'll hear plenty of throughout the game from both living characters and their posthumous audio recordings, really brings the story together and helps give it all an emotional impact that most games lack. You'll also hear splicers mumbling, humming, and singing to themselves as they scavenge the environment, which helps give the game a creepy vibe. The quality and depth of things like this are what set BioShock apart from other games and make it something really special overall.

If you're the kind of player who just wants yet another action-packed shooter, BioShock probably isn't for you. Its weak link is its unsatisfying no-skill-required combat, which might aim this one just over the head of the average Halo fan. But if you want to get a little fancy, there's a lot of fun to be had with some of the game's more indirect fighting methods. It builds an amazing atmosphere by using terrific graphics and sound to set a creepy mood. But BioShock's real strengths are as a compelling work of interactive fiction, and as a unique ride through a warped world with some great payoff built into its mysterious plot. If that description has you even the least bit interested, you'll definitely find BioShock worth playing--but you still might want to hold off for a patch or two, just in case.